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

“It would be dangerous even so,” said Sam.

“Is it Hollingshead you’re afraid of, Sam, or the charismatic Mr. Stepney?”

Sam didn’t respond to Julian’s impertinent question, but lapsed into a brooding silence.

“It might be a fascinating Expedition,” Julian repeated. “Will you come with me, Adam? Tomorrow, say?”

I said I would. In fact I wasn’t much interested in Pastor Stepney’s apostate church. But I was interested in Julian’s interest in it.

“Stepney is just the type to intrigue Julian,” Calyxa said as I climbed into bed beside her that night. March breezes rattled the big bedroom windows, and it was pleasant to huddle under the thick blankets with my arm around my wife. “Probably a fraud, like most of these unaffiliated pastors, and his doctrines don’t interest me. But he was generous to the Parmentierists who met at his church, and he talked a good line, whenever I happened to overhear him. Not the usual small-church fanaticism. Much about Time and Evolution and such topics, the sort of thing Julian likes to babble about, and he’s as eloquent as any Aristo.”

“Julian thinks of it as Philosophy more than Babble,” I said.

“Maybe so. Either way, it’s thin gruel for a working woman or a mechanic with a grievance. Here, fold yourself around me, Adam—I’m cold.”

I did as she asked, and we grew warm together.

Pastor Stepney’s former church in the Immigrant District having been seized and sold, he had moved his enterprise to the loft of a crumbling warehouse alongside one of the canals of Lower Manhattan. Julian disguised himself in the clothing of an ordinary working man, and I wore the same, and we walked up the wooden steps to the loft by ourselves, though there were Republican Guards in plain clothes outside, ready to warn us if the Dominion’s men arrived in any force.

A sign had been tacked to the door at the top of the stairs, engraved in an ornate script with the words: CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES ETC. GOD IS CONSCIENCE—HAVE NO OTHER—LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOUR BROTHER “That’s a noble sentiment,” I said.

“I suppose it is. More often honored in the breach, though, I imagine. We’ll see.” Julian knocked at the door.

It was answered by a woman in a tight red dress and a heavy shawl. In appearance she resembled one of the less virtuous women who frequented the neighborhood, perhaps a few years past her peak of desirability; but I don’t meant to insult her character, only to offer a description. “Yes?” she said.

“We would like to meet Pastor Stepney,” said Julian.

“There’s no service on at the moment.”

“That’s all right. We don’t require one.”

“Well, come in.” The woman admitted us into a small, barely-furnished room. “I’ll tell him you’re here, if you tell me who you are.”

“Pilgrims in search of enlightenment,” Julian said, smiling.

“We get five or six of those a day,” the woman said. “Pilgrims are cheap as fleas around here. Sit down, I’ll find out if he has time for you.”

She vanished through another door, and we perched ourselves on the small bench that was the only available seat. A few pamphlets had been left on the rough pine table in front of us.

The Evolving God was the title of one. “He takes an interest in Evolution,” I said. “That’s unusual for a clergyman.”

“I doubt he knows what he’s talking about. These impostors seldom do.”

“But perhaps he’s sincere.”

“Even worse,” said Julian.

Then the adjoining door opened, and Pastor Stepney himself came into the room.

He was a handsome man. Mrs. Comstock and Calyxa had already testified to that effect, and I could not say they were wrong. Stepney was a tall, slender youth—he looked no older than Julian—with lustrously dark skin and wiry hair. But his most arresting feature was his eyes, which were penetrating, opulent, and of a shade so dark it was almost umber. He gave us a benevolent smile and said in a soothing voice, “How can I help you boys? Come for some spiritual wisdom, have you? I’m at your service, as long as you don’t forget the donation-box on the way out.”

Julian stood up at once. His demeanor had utterly changed. His eyes grew wide with astonishment. “My God!” he exclaimed. “Of all the Stepneys in New York City—is that you , Magnus?”

“Magnus Stepney, yes,” the pastor said, backing off warily.

“Don’t you know me, Magnus? Though we’re both years older now!”

The young pastor frowned a moment more; then his own eyes expanded in astonishment. “Julian!” he cried, a grin breaking out on his face. “Julian Comstock, by the grace of God! But aren’t you President now?”

It took me a while to sort out this unexpected development, but I won’t compel the reader to share my own confusion. It was obvious that Julian and Stepney had met before, and from listening to their conversation I garnered a few salient facts.

Stepney invited us into his sanctuary—which was the greater part of the warehouse loft, fixed up with benches and a makeshift altar—so that we could talk more comfortably. I use the collective “we,” but in fact it was Julian and the pastor who talked—I kept out of it. They had embarked on a series of reminiscences even before Julian remembered to introduce me.

“This is Magnus Stepney, an old acquaintance of mine,” he said eventually. “Magnus, this is Adam Hazzard, another friend.”

Pastor Stepney shook my hand, and his grip was strong and genial. “Pleased to meet you, Adam. Are you also some high functionary in the Executive Branch, operating in disguise?”

“No, just a writer,” I said.

Julian explained that he had gone to school with this man (boy, in those days) before he was sent to Williams Ford to protect him from his uncle. The school they had attended was a Eupatridian institution in which bright Aristo children were taught whatever it was considered decorous to know about arithmetic and literature. Julian and Magnus had been fast friends, I gathered, and a continual terror to their overseers. Both had been intelligent in advance of their years and impudent in their relations with authority. The friendship had been prematurely severed by Julian’s evacuation to Athabaska, and Julian had lost track of his former acquaintance. “How on earth did you come to be a pastor of a scofflaw Church?” Julian asked.

“My father wouldn’t toady to the Senate in some conflict over a dockside property,” Stepney said, “and he was punished for it, and forced to flee to Mediterranean France for his own safety. My mother and I would have followed after a prudent time, but his ship was lost at sea. My mother was all the family I had after that, and smallpox took her in ’72. I was reduced to accepting any work I could find, or making it for myself.”

“And this is the result?” Julian asked. “The Church of the Apostles Etc.?”

“By a long and winding road, yes,” said Stepney.

He gave Julian an abbreviated account of those difficult years, while I listened with half an ear. I supposed all this meant that Pastor Stepney was a fraud, and his Church nothing more than a vehicle for extracting cash donations from gullible parishioners. But Stepney spoke modestly and apparently sincerely about his religious beliefs, and how they had moved him to create the apostate sect of which he was the master.

This caused Julian and Stepney to launch into a vigorous discussion of Theology, the Existence of God, Evolution by Natural Selection, and such topics as that, which I inferred had been the subject of their childhood conversations as well. I was necessarily left out of such talk, and I passed the time by looking over the crudely-printed pamphlets Pastor Stepney had left scattered about the place.