Robert Wilson - Julian Comstock - A Story of 22-nd Century America

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 sentry (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 political 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.” [Sam frowned at this description but said nothing.]

“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. ”