Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America (69 page)

And that's why I can't join you aboard the
Goldwing,
 in case you were about to ask. I might infect the whole crew and passengers. Kill half the people I love, and die myself, into the bargain."

"So you came here?"

"It's as good a place to die as any, I think."

"The fire will kill you before the plague does."

He only shrugged at that.

"What about you, Magnus?" I asked. "You're sitting there right next to him—aren't you afraid of getting sick?"

"In all likelihood I already am," he said, "but thank you for asking, Adam.

I mean to stay with Julian as long as I have the strength in me."

It was a saintly thing to say. Julian took the hand of Magnus, and stretched himself out on the pew, moaning a little at the pressure on his sores, and rested his head in Magnus's lap.

I had always hoped Julian would find a woman who loved him, so he could experience some of the pleasures in life that had been granted to me and denied to him. That didn't happen; but I was consoled that he would at least have his friend Magnus beside him in his extremity. He might not have a wife to give him solace, or to smooth his dying pillow; but he had Magnus, and perhaps in Julian's eyes that was just as good.

"I missed the third act curtain," Julian said wistfully—I think his mind had begun to wander. "Was there applause?"

"Applause, and cheering, and plenty of it."

It was hard to tell in the dim light, but I think he smiled.

"It was a good show, wasn't it, Adam?"

"A fine show. None better."

"And I'll be remembered for it, do you think?"

"Of course you will."

He nodded and closed his eyes.

"Is it true," I asked him, "what you told the Deacon about his daughter?"

"She's safe in Montreal on my orders."

"That was a noble act."

"It offsets the stink of war and death. My own small offering to Conscience. Do you suppose it's good enough?" he asked, turning his feverish eyes to Magnus.

"Conscience isn't particular," Magnus said. "He accepts most any offering, and you made a generous one."

"Thank you for coming, Adam," Julian said, and I could see that he was tiring quickly. "But you had better make for the docks now. The
Goldwing
won't wait, and the flames are spreading, I expect."

"The wind carries embers over the canal. This very building will be on fire soon, if it isn't already."

"I expect you're right," said Julian.

But neither of them moved, and I couldn't turn away.

"I'm afraid I wasn't a very good President," Julian whispered.

"But you were a good friend."

"See to that baby of yours, Adam Hazzard. Do I hear her crying? I think I'd like to sleep just now."

He closed his eyes and paid me no more attention. I thanked Magnus for his kindness and left without turning back.

In the hot and cindery air outside the building I said my goodbyes to Lymon Pugh. Lymon took my hand a final time, and said he was sorry about Julian, and wished me well in "foreign places." Then he rode away uptown, a lone horse man on a vacant street all strewn with windblown embers.

I made the docks by midnight. I took the saddlebags from my breed-horse and donated the animal to a passing family of Egyptians, to whom it probably represented the wealth of Croesus. The
Goldwing
 had not sailed. I came aboard and found my cabin. Calyxa was there, tending Flaxie in her crib.

Calyxa was impatient over my absence, and wanted to know where I had been; but I didn't explain myself, only took her in my arms and wept against her shoulder.

The
Goldwing
 left harbor at dawn, ahead of the flames. She came through the Narrows and anchored in the Lower Bay to wait for a favorable breeze. A bright December sun was shining.

We could see the smoke rising from the city. The fire took lower Manhattan almost up to the Palace grounds before the wind turned the blaze back on itself. The smoke rose in a wide canted column, up to where the upper air caught it and fanned it over the ocean. I had the macabre idea that this cloud of ash and soot contained—
must
 have contained, by scientific reasoning—particles of what had once been my friend Julian. His own atoms, I mean, transfigured by fire, and cleansed of disease, and finally allowed to rain down over an indifferent ocean.

The thought was painful; but I supposed Julian would have approved of it, for it was Philosophical in nature, or as close as I could come.

By mid-day the captain of the vessel elected to get under way. This was not a single act, but involved the raising of anchors and the setting of sails and the rotating of winches and several such actions as that. (The
Goldwing
 had only a small boiler-engine, for close navigation. At sea she was a schooner and at the mercy of the wind.) Calyxa and I left Flaxie with a nurse and came up on the aft deck to watch the sails loft, and we found Sam and Julian's mother already there, and the four of us fell together in a group—not saying much, for we shared a grief that was literally unspeakable.

The captain's orders were shouted down the chain of command in serial echoes, and the results reported back in reverse order.
"Ship the capstan bars!"
dinned about our ears, and
"Heave in the cable to a short stay!"
 as the anchor was brought apeak. Sunlight heated the planked deck and made it steam.

Sam went to the taffrail to look back at the burning city. We joined him there, keeping out of the way of the busy sailors. The topsails were shaken out, sheeted home, and neatly hoisted. The
Goldwing
 gave a little stir, like an animal turning in its sleep.

Sam turned to Emily. "Do you think it would be all right," he asked, "—
appropriate,
 I mean—if I said—well, a prayer—?"

"Of course," she said, taking his good hand in hers.

"One of my prayers, I mean."

"Yes, Sam," she said. "There's no Dominion here to punish you for it, and I imagine the crew have heard stranger things—half of them are Eu ro pe an heathens."

Sam nodded, and began to speak the prayer for Julian, which he must have preserved in memory from distant childhood. The nautical shouting continued over his solemn chant. Saltwater slapped the vessel's wooden cladding, and gulls cried out above us.

He lowered his head.
" Yit gid-all,"
 he began,
"va-yit ka-dash
—
"

"
Man the jib and flying halyards!
" came the next command relayed from the captain by the mate. Sailors swarmed the high rigging.

"—Smay ra-bah balma div-ray—"

"Hoist away! Avast, and pawl the capstan! Cat and fish the anchor there!"

"—Hero-tay ve- am-lik mal ha-tay—"

"Port the helm now!"

The
Goldwing
 began to move through the water, briskly.

"—Bu-chaw yay honey vi-ormy chon—"

"Man the outhaul! Cast off the brails and loose the vangs!"

"—Of chay-yed whole bate yis-royal by agula you viz man ka-reef—"

"Man the fore and main braces! Let go and haul! Haul, now, haul hard,HAUL!"

"
—
vim roo ah-main,"
 said Sam; and "Amen," said Emily; and Calyxa said "Amen"; and so did I.

Then we stood at the rail and watched America slip away over the western horizon.

Doubts of all things earthly, and intuitions of some things heavenly; this combination makes neither believer nor infidel, but makes a man who regards them both with equal eye.
—MR. HERMAN MELVILLE, in a book rescued from the Dominion Archives by Julian Comstock

It has been my purpose in this book to give the reader a true and authentic portrait of the life and career of Julian Comstock—or, where truth was in doubt or unobtainable, to err on the side of drama. To the best of my ability that is what I have done; and I lay down my pen with mixed feelings of pride and shame, love and guilt.

Sixteen years have passed since these events. The
Goldwing
 anchored safely at Marseilles in the new year of 2176, and although we were strangers in Mediterranean France, and of the bunch of us only Calyxa spoke the language, and that in an accent which made the natives wince and curl their lips—nevertheless, we have prospered here. The weather is generally pleasant.

The local population is mixed but peaceful—the Moslems and the Christians maintain a rivalry, but they haven't killed one another for de cades, at least not in large numbers.

When we first arrived we lived at the expense of Emily Godwin, who had imported enough of the Comstock fortune to pay for a villa in a small town by the sea. But neither Sam nor I was content to be "kept" in that fashion.

Sam eventually found his way into the horse business: he borrowed enough of Emily's money to import a selection of brood mares from east of the Caspian Sea, and with these he built up a brisk local trade, and made a considerable reputation for himself.

Calyxa regularly sings at the local taverns, and is sometimes called upon to perform in the port of Marseilles. Her accent, which provokes such contempt in ordinary conversation, is considered "charming" when she applies it to music; and out of this paradox she has forged a respectable income. She also finds occasional work voicing American women in French movies, for the movie industry has a strong presence in Mediterranean France. It has no Dominion to quash its originality (though the government interferes from time to time), and recorded sound is becoming commonplace. Lately Calyxa provided the voice for a French translation of Julian's
Life and Adventures of theGreat Naturalist Charles Darwin,
 which was mechanically recorded; and copies of the film were smuggled into the Mitteleuropan mandates north of Lyon, where it reportedly played to enthusiastic audiences. News came just yesterday of a riotously pop u lar exhibition in Brussels.

Flaxie is a young woman now. She was taught to read at an early age, in English and in French, and she's a master of both languages, and pop u lar among the village boys, none of whom are suitable for her, in my opinion, although she disagrees. She loves books and music, and her hair is as glossy and dark and tightly coiled as her mother's was before the gray set in.
She assists Sam at his stables out of a fondness for horses, not inherited from me, and she also enjoys long rides in the hills north of town.
¹⁰⁶
We are very proud of her.

As for me, I earn my bread by means of my pen (
typewriter,
 literally, though Mr. Dornwood's machine is old and well-traveled, and missing some of its parts). The presses of New York City survived the fire, and the American book trade thrives under President Fairfield despite the edicts of an enfeebled Dominion. I am a mainstay of that trade, I'm told, though my manuscripts are delivered by Atlantic mail, and frequently lost at sea.

My last book (before this one) was
American Boys on the Moon,
 which sold well even without a Dominion Stamp.
¹⁰⁷
The book was praised by Mr. Charles Curtis Easton, who also survived the fire, though he is even older than my venerable typewriter, and is drawing his career to a close. I took inspiration for
American Boys on the Moon
 from my copy of the
History of Mankind in Space.

That antique book sits on my desk now, along with a number of other me-mentos salvaged from the Palace grounds—a faded letter which begins
LieftseHannie
; a train ticket, validated from Montreal to New York City; a Comstock dollar with Deklan Conqueror's face on it (Julian didn't last long enough to mint his own coins); a play-bill from the Broadway debut of
Darwin
; a decorative Knocker (badly stained); and other such items as that. Tomorrow I'll pack them away again.

As if in silent commentary the breeze flaps the pages of a calendar hanging on the wall. Hard to believe that in only eight years we'll be entering the twenty-third century! Time is mysterious to me—I can't get accustomed to how it passes. Perhaps I've become old-fashioned, forever a Twenty-Second Century Man.

Now Calyxa comes through my study on her way to the garden. Our villa sits on a high bluff, and the property grows little more than sea-grass and sand, but Calyxa has long since walled off a square of good soil, and she plants it every year with lavender, mimosa, and sunflowers. She has been an invaluable resource in the writing of my Julian memoir—filling out exact French phrases from my memory of a few dim words, and copying the sentences for me with accents
grave
 and
aigu
 and such frills.

Today she pauses and gives me a cryptic smile.
"Tu es l'homme le plus gentil et le plus innocent que je connaisse,"
 she says.
"Tu rends les laideurs de la vie sup-portables. Sans toi, elles seraient insoutenables."

No doubt this is some mild joke at my expense, for Calyxa is skeptical by nature, and often couches her ironies in French, which after sixteen years in this country I still do not confidently understand. "That's what you think," I tell her; and she laughs as she walks away, her white skirt swirling about her ankles.

I mean to leave my typewriter and follow her. The afternoon is too tempting to be denied. It isn't Paradise here, or even close, but the mimosa is in bloom and the air from the sea is cool and pleasant. On days like this I think of poor old Magnus Stepney's evolving Green God, harking us all up to Eden. The Green God's voice is faint enough that few of us hear it clearly, and that's our tragedy, I suppose, as a species—but I hear it very distinctly just now. It asks me to step into the sunshine, and I mean to do its bidding.

Julian Comstock
 could not have been written without the generosity and support of people too numerous to list (including, once again, my endlessly patient wife, Sharry). Of the legions of used-book dealers I consulted in the course of my research, two deserve special mention: Jeffrey Pickell, at Kaleidoscope Books & Collectibles in Ann Arbor, who first drew my attention to the work of "Oliver Optic" (William Taylor Adams), and Terry Grogan, at BMV Books in Toronto, who has an absolutely uncanny talent for finding the right book at the right time. Many thanks also to Mischa Hautvast, Peter Hohenstein, Mark Goodwin, and