Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America (54 page)

Deklan Comstock deposed!
 And have they installed a new President?"

"Yes, Sam, they have ... but perhaps you had better sit down again before I tell you about it."

I helped Sam dress himself, and comb his hair, and when he was relatively presentable I took him to a nearby tavern, where we ordered eggs and toast from the kitchen. It wasn't gourmet fare—the butter was maggoty—but it was filling. Sam admitted that he had been alone since his return to Manhattan. It wasn't just his grief over Julian's presumed death that had caused him to hide himself away; it was the loss of his left hand, or the sense of wholeness and manliness that went with it. He ate efficiently with his right hand but kept his left forearm immobile in his lap, and he was careful at all times not to show the stump. He kept his chin down and avoided the eyes of other customers.

I didn't mention his condition to him, or act as if I noticed it, and I thought by that strategy to distract him.

While he ate I shared the story of my adventures with Julian in Striver, and Julian's unexpected ascension to the Presidency. Sam was greatly interested, and thanked me repeatedly for relieving his mind about Julian. "Not that the Presidency is any kind of safe haven, God knows. I'm glad you came to me, Adam, and I thank you for the meal, but you had better leave me alone after this. I don't care to see people, as things stand. I'm not what I used to be. I'm of no value to Julian anymore. I'm a useless appendage."

"The problem is more pressing than that, Sam. Deacon Hollingshead has been making trouble for Calyxa. She and Julian's mother are both confined under guard, pending prosecution."

Sam's eyes, which until now had worn a moist, narcotized glaze, narrowed to a fine point. "Emily is in danger?"

"Potentially, yes—and Calyxa. It was Mrs. Comstock who asked me to find you."

"Emily!" He spoke the word in a tormented voice. "I don't want her to see me like this."

"Understandably; but we can buy you a bath and a haircut as soon as you finish your breakfast."

"I don't mean that!"

"But it might be a good idea in any case. Mrs. Comstock is particular about the odors of things."

"What I'm ashamed of, Adam, is nothing I can bathe away!"

He was talking about the stump of his arm, of course. "Emily Comstock doesn't care about that, Sam."

"Perhaps she doesn't—
I do.
" He lowered his voice, though the pain in it was impossible to disguise. "There was a time after I left Striver when I prayed for the infection to kill me."

"That kind of prayer isn't welcome in Heaven, and I'm not surprised it wasn't answered."

"I'm less than a whole man."

"Did you feel that way about One-Leg Willy Bass, back when he was chasing us through the wilds of Athabaska? Seems to me you had considerable respect for him, though he lost more of his leg than you did of your arm."

The comparison appeared to startle him. "Willy Bass was nobody's cripple.

But is that what you imagine I want, Adam—a career in the Reserves?"

"I don't pretend to guess what you want as a
career,
 but don't you want to help Mrs. Comstock, when she needs you? That's the issue right now."

"Of course I want to help her! But what use is a drunken cripple?"

"None—so you must stop drinking, and you certainly must stop thinking of yourself as a cripple. Show me your injury."

He bristled, and kept his arm below the table, and refused to speak.

"I worked alongside Dr. Linch at the field hospital in Striver," I said. "I've seen amputations before, and worse things than amputations. You have always been a kind of second father to me, but it seems the role is reversed. Don't be a child, Sam. Show me."

His cheeks burned crimson, and for a long moment he sat stiff in his chair. I hoped he would not take offense and strike me with his good right hand, for he was still a powerful man despite his recent debauches. But he relented. Averting his eyes, he raised his arm until it was just visible above the rim of the table.

"Well, that's nothing," I said, though in fact it was an unsettling sight, the stump of his forearm terminating in an old ban dage rusty with stains.

"It still weeps from time to time," he whispered.

"We all do. Well, Sam, I suppose you have to decide which you value more—your wounded pride, or Emily Baines Comstock. If the former, go back to your hovel and drink yourself to death. If the latter, come to a barber with me, and have a bath, and let me change that ban dage; and then we'll get our women out of the trouble they're in, or die trying."

There was a risk in saying this. He might have walked away. But I had never known Sam to refuse a challenge, bluntly presented.

"I suppose a bath won't kill me," he muttered, though the look he gave me was vicious and ungrateful.

The town's barbers and bath-houses had already begun to close for Christmas Eve, but we managed to find one of each still willing to serve us. We also visited a clothing shop, and exchanged Sam's military rags for a more presentable civilian outfit. These purchases just about exhausted the pay I carried with me, and Sam had only pennies in his pockets.

But he wouldn't go to Emily Comstock's house right away. He wanted to recover from his debauches first; so we spent a night at the Soldier's Rest. He slept soundly, while I fought a series of skirmishes with the invertebrates gamboling among the bedclothes.

Christmas morning came. We woke about dawn, and refused the offer of a charitable breakfast. "We should go directly to Mrs. Comstock's," I said, "if you're ready."

"I'm far from ready," he said, "but I won't get any readier by waiting."

There was a carriage at the brown-stone house when we arrived there. It was a fine full carriage, with three horses to pull it, and gilt embellishments, and the crest of the Presidential Palace on the doors. It was accompanied by a number of Republican Guards, who had overpowered the single posted sen-try (not the same man I had treated to a meal), and who were escorting Mrs.

Comstock and Calyxa to the vehicle.

Calyxa and Mrs. Comstock caught sight of us as we approached. They beckoned us aboard the carriage. The Republican Guards initially resisted this suggestion—it wasn't part of their detail—but relented after a tongue-lashing from Julian's mother. As quick as that, the four of us were confined together in the cabin of the conveyance.

Sam looked at Mrs. Comstock, and she looked at him, and there was a protracted and uncomfortable silence.

Then Mrs. Comstock spoke up. "You lost your left hand," she said.

I blanched, and Calyxa winced, and Sam turned red.

"Emily—" he said in a husky voice.

"Was it a war injury, or just carelessness?"

"Lost in battle."

"Can't be helped, then, I suppose. Your beard is whiter than I remember it. I suppose that can't be helped, either. And you look frail—sit up!"

He straightened. "Emily ... it's good to see you again. I'm sorry it had to be under such circumstances."

"The circumstances are about to be altered. We're off to the Executive Palace at Julian's request. Is that your best shirt?"

"My only shirt."

"I don't think the war has done you very much good, Sam."

"I guess it hasn't."

"Or
you,
 Adam—is that a flea on your trouser-leg?"

"Speck of dirt," I said, as it leapt away.

"I hope there are no photographers at the Palace," Mrs. Comstock said grimly.

We were escorted through the main public chambers of the Executive Palace, past the wainscoted rooms where we had been entertained during the Presidential Reception of the previous Independence Day, to a series of cozier rooms in which lamps glowed on polished tabletops and fires burned in ventilated iron stoves, and at last to a spacious but windowless sitting room in which a fir tree had been set up and decorated with colored glass bulbs of intricate design. Julian was waiting for us there, and he dismissed the guards at once.

It was an emotional Christmas morning all around, considering half of us had nearly given up hope of seeing the other half alive. Julian embraced his mother tearfully; Sam's haggard face regained some of its former animation whenever he gazed at Emily Baines Comstock; and Calyxa and I were inseparable on a settee near the fire.

Hasty narratives and explanations were delivered by all hands. Julian had only just learned of his mother's confinement at the hands of Deacon Hollingshead, and he was seething with anger; but he suppressed those feelings for the sake of the holy occasion, and tried to focus his conversation on pleasanter things.

But it was impossible to ignore the changes in Julian's manner and appearance since the last time we had all gathered together. Both Calyxa and Mrs.

Comstock gave him troubled glances. It wasn't just the scar on his cheek, or the immobility of his mouth on that side of his face, though those things lent him a new and uncharacteristically sinister expression. There was a coolness about him—a deliberation that appeared to mask great turbulence, the way a calm sea conceals the peregrinations of the whale and the appetites of the shark.

Julian asked about his mother's confinement to the brown-stone house, and what sort of case Deacon Hollingshead had made against her and Calyxa.

He was startled to learn that they had been Found In at an Unaffiliated Church, and he asked his mother whether she had given up Methodism for incense and prophecy.

"We were there for a po liti cal meeting of Parmentierists—"

"Even worse!"

"—but the Church of the Apostles Etc. is not that kind of institution, in any case. I spoke at length with the pastor, a Mr. Stepney.
He's a thoughtful young man, not entirely a fanatic, and very presentable and handsome."
⁸⁷

"What does he preach? Death to the Aristocracy, like his Parmentierist friends?"

"Pastor Stepney isn't a fire-breather, Julian. I don't know all the details of his doctrine, except that it has to do with Evolution, and the Bible being written backward, or something like that."

"Evolution in what sense?"

"He talks about an Evolving God—I don't understand it, to be honest."

"I think I might like to meet Pastor Stepney one day, and debate theology with him," Julian said.

It was a genial remark, not seriously intended, though it turned out to be prophetic.

In view of the continuing harassment of Mrs. Comstock and Calyxa by Deacon Hollingshead it was sensibly resolved that they could not return to the brown-stone house. There were a number of luxurious guest-houses on the property of the Executive Palace, not currently in use; and Julian designated one of those for his mother, and another for Calyxa and me. We would be safe there, he said, until he could settle this row with the Dominion.

For the rest of the day, and well into the evening, Julian turned aside any courtiers who came calling, and devoted all his attention to his old friends and family; until, at last, full of good food from the Palace kitchen, we retired.

It was a blessing to lie down on a bed that was soft, and not an invertebrate playground, and to share it with Calyxa for the first time in many months. We celebrated Christmas in our own fashion, once we were alone—

I'll say no more about it.

Julian was busy, too, though we didn't know it. I had only just finished breakfast the following morning when he summoned me to attend a meeting he had arranged with Deacon Hollingshead.

Christmas had fallen on a Sunday that year, a sort of double Sabbath, which accounted for some of the unusual calm at the Executive Palace. Monday marked a return to the customary bustle. Servants and bureaucrats were everywhere, as well as a number of high-ranking military men. They brushed past me as I went to keep my appointment with the President, alternately ignoring me or eyeing me with suspicion.

But Julian was alone in the office where he was scheduled to meet the Deacon. "Any conference between the Executive Branch and the Dominion," he explained, "is closed to the bureaucracy."

"Then what am I doing here?"

"Hollingshead is bringing a scribe, presumably to write down anything I say that might be turned against me. I insisted on the same privilege."

"I'm not much of a scribe, Julian. The politics of the situation are opaque to me."

"I understand, and all I expect you to do is sit quietly with a pad and pencil. If at any point Deacon Hollingshead begins to seem uncomfortable, write something down—or at least
pretend
 to write something down, so as to compound his discomfort."

"I'm not sure I can remain complacent, if he begins to talk about Calyxa."

"You don't have to be
complacent,
 Adam, just
silent.
"

It wasn't much longer before the Deacon arrived. He came with a cortege of Ecclesiastical Police, which he parked in the anteroom. He was dressed very formally in his Dominion vestments, and he bowed his way into Julian's presence with all the pomp of an Oriental king. He nodded at Julian, and shook his hand, and smiled unctuously, and congratulated him on his swearing-in as Deklan's successor. He could not have been sincere in this, but his acting was first-rate, entirely suitable for the Broadway stage. Apart from a single glance he ignored me altogether, and I wasn't sure whether he recognized me as Calyxa's husband.

His own "scribe" was a mean-looking little man with gimlet eyes and a fixed scowl. This creature set himself down in a chair opposite the chair where I sat. He glared at me, and I glared back. We did not speak.

The formalities and pleasantries continued for a time between Julian and Deacon Hollingshead. They spoke not as Princes but as Principalities, each of them "we," alluding to the separate fiefdoms they represented, the Executive Branch and the Dominion.

They didn't launch immediately into a discussion of the difficult subject at hand, but warmed up with generalities. Julian talked about his plan for greater cooperation between the Navy and the Army of the Laurentians in the conduct of the War in Labrador. Deacon Hollingshead talked about the need for a pious and prayerful foreign and domestic policy, and about the Dominion's role in fostering that happy outcome. Commonplace as these sentiments might seem, they were, at bottom, disguised assertions of power. Julian was boasting that he controlled the military, and Hollingshead was re minding him that the Dominion held a sort of veto power, exercisable through the nation's pulpits. They were like two tomcats, each one puffed up to make himself seem larger in the eyes of the other. Though they smiled, they growled; and the growls were an invitation to combat.