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

“Yes.”

“And was he universally loved?”

“It wasn’t a unanimous sentiment, no.”

“Nor could it have been, since it was his job to elevate virtue and excoriate wrong-doing. Thieves do not love prisons, and sinners don’t love the Church. My point is that the Dominion stands in relation to the United States as that pastor stood to his troops. His purpose wasn’t to be loved for himself, but to coax and herd a recreant population into the corral of divine love.”

For some reason I had a recollection of Lymon Pugh and his description of the meat-packing industry.

“The Dominion takes a profound interest in the destiny of this nation, and every nation,” Ben Kreel said. “Compared with that institutional interest, the whims of Presidents are fleeting.”

“This conversation is too cryptic,” I complained. “Is it about Julian? If that’s what you mean, just say so.”

“Who am I to stand in judgment of the Chief Executive? I’m just a country pastor. But the Dominion watches, the Dominion judges; and the Dominion is older than Julian Comstock, and ultimately more powerful.”

“Julian has nothing against the Dominion, except in some particulars.”

“I hope that’s true, Adam; but, if so, why would he attempt to sever the ancient and beneficial connection between the Dominion and the Armies?”

“What! Did he?”

Ben Kreel smiled unpleasantly. For many years this man had seemed to me a minor deity, above reproach. He was a kindly voice, a useful teacher, and a sturdy peacemaker when there was conflict in the community. But looking at him now I detected something sour and triumphant in his nature, as if he delighted in having stolen a march on an upstart lease-boy. “Why, that’s exactly what he did, Adam; don’t you know? The news came by wire from Colorado Springs this morning. Julian Conqueror, so-called, has ordered the Dominion to withdraw its representatives from the nation’s Armies and cease participating in military counsels.”

“That’s a bold step,” I said, wincing.

“It’s more than a bold step, Adam. It’s very nearly a declaration of war.” He leaned close to me and said in an oily and confiding tone, “A war he cannot win. If he doesn’t understand that, you ought to enlighten him.”

“I’ll be sure to tell him what you said.”

“Yes, thank you,” said Ben Kreel. “You’re a good friend to Julian Comstock.”

“I try to be.”

“But you shouldn’t walk in the footsteps even of your best friend, Adam Hazzard, if the road he’s following leads to Hell.”

I was tempted to tell Ben Kreel that my belief in Hell was even shakier, these days, than my confidence in Paradise. Or I might have said that I had met a man in New York who claimed the only God was Conscience (“have no other”), under which standard the whole Dominion was an Apostasy, if not something worse; but I didn’t want to engage him in any further discussion, and I sat sullenly the rest of the way to Connaught.

Shortly thereafter I boarded the train that would take me back to Manhattan. It was a more comfortable ride than the Caribou-Horn Train had been, the first time I left Williams Ford. But I felt no less afraid as I traveled in it.

After I had arrived back home, and made my reunion with Calyxa and Flaxie, and bathed away the grime of travel, and slept a night, I went to the Palace to see Julian.

The Executive Palace was still, in the main, a mystery to me. It was an immense structure, finely divided into labyrinthine rooms and chambers. It housed servants, bureaucrats, and a small army of Republican Guards, in addition to the President himself. It rose three stories above the ground, and sheltered extensive basements and cellars beneath. It was the most wainscoted, draped, sashed, carpeted, and furbelowed building I had ever been inside; and I was never comfortable in it. The minor officials I passed regarded me with a disdain bordering on contempt, while the Republican Guards scowled and fingered their pistols at the sight of me.

Julian did not “inhabit” this entire space—surely no one man could have done so—but spent most of his time in the Library Wing. The Library Wing contained not just the Presidential Library (which was extensive, though mainly Dominion-approved, and to which Julian had added many items culled from the liberated Archives) but a large reading room with high, sunny windows and an enormous oaken desk. It was this room Julian had made particularly his own, and that was where I visited him.

Magnus Stepney, the rogue Pastor of the Church of the Apostles Etc., was also present, lounging in a stuffed chair and reading a book while Julian sat at the desk applying pen to paper. Pastor Stepney had been Julian’s close companion for many weeks now, and both of them smiled when I entered. They asked about Williams Ford, and my father and mother, and I told them a little about that sad business; but not much time had passed before Julian once more raised the question of his Movie Script.

I mentioned to him that I had discussed the script with Mr. Charles Curtis Easton. I was afraid Julian might be unhappy that I had taken the matter “out of the family,” and gone to a stranger with it. He did seem a little nonplused; but Magnus Stepney—who was as much an Aesthete and devoted follower of Drama as Julian was [Stepney, though sincere about his pastoral duties, made no secret of the fact that he might like to play the part of Charles Darwin when the production eventually began. This was not as vain as it sounds, for he was handsome, and had a talent for striking poses and putting on amusing voices.]—clapped his hands and said I had done exactly the right thing: “That’s what we need, Julian, a professional opinion.”

“Possibly so. Did Mr. Easton render an opinion?” Julian asked me.

“He did, in fact.”

“Would you care to mention what it was?”

“He agreed that the story lacked some essential ingredients.”

“Such as?”

I cleared my throat. “Three acts—memorable songs—attractive women—pirates—a battle at sea—a despicable villain—a duel of honor—”

“But none of those things actually happened to Mr. Darwin, or had any connection with him.”

“Well, I suppose that’s the point. Do you want to tell the truth, or do you want to tell a story? The trick,” I said, remembering Theodore Dornwood’s commentary on my own writing, “is to steer a course between Scylla and Charybdis—”

“Fine talk for a lease-boy,” Magnus Stepney said, laughing.

“—where Scylla is truth, and Charybdis is drama —or the other way around; I don’t remember exactly.”

Julian sighed, and rolled his eyes; but Stepney gave a little cheer and cried out, “That’s just what I’ve been telling you, Julian! It was good advice from me, and it’s good advice from Adam Hazzard and Mr. Charles Curtis Easton!”

Julian said nothing more about it that day. Initially, of course, he was skeptical. But he didn’t resist the idea for long, for it appealed to his sense of Theater; and by the end of the week he had adopted it as his own.

The rest of July was devoted to producing a final script. Some scholars have suggested that Julian “fiddled” with cinema, while his Presidency was collapsing around his head. But that’s not how it seemed in the summer of 2175. I think Julian saw the possibility of redemption in Art, after all the horrors he had experienced in War, though War is more customarily the business of the Commander in Chief. And I think there was a deeper reason why Julian ignored the protocols and entanglements of political supremacy. I believe he had genuinely expected to die in Labrador—had accepted it as his fate, once the Black Kite maneuver failed—and was shocked to find himself still alive, after he had led so many others to their deaths.