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

I asked Pastor Stepney if he had been drinking. He said he had not.

“Well,” I said, “is this a sample of Paradise , then—this raucous party?”

“Conscience isn’t a brutal taskmaster. Conscience has no argument with kisses in the dark, if they’re freely given and freely received. Conscience offers no cavils to our taste in music, clothing, literature, or amative behavior. It smiles on intimacy and banishes hatred. It doesn’t scourge the reckless lover.”

That was an interesting doctrine, and it seemed sensible, if heretical.

“So, then, yes,” he said, waving his hand at the champagne-and hemp-fueled festivities proceeding about us, “you can think of all this as a rehearsal for Paradise.”

I meant to ask him what Conscience in his leafy underwear might have to say about Julian’s conflict with the Dominion, or the posting of severed heads on iron spikes. But Pastor Stepney rose and went off to pursue his own unspecified pleasures before I could pose the question. So I took his advice, and tried to look at the revelries unfolding before me as if they were a foretaste of that Reward to which we all aspire; and I had some success at this effort, until a drunken camera-man stumbling up the Palace stairs paused and vomited at my feet, which diminished the illusion considerably.

Conspicuous by his absence from these revels was Julian himself. He had appeared briefly at the opening of the Wrap Party, waving at us from one of the indoor balconies where his murderous uncle used to address Independence Day gatherings—but he had absented himself shortly thereafter, and I hadn’t seen him since. That was not unusual, for his moods were mercurial, and he was increasingly inclined to brood alone in the Library Wing or in some other part of the labyrinthine Executive Palace. In truth I didn’t give it much thought, until Lymon Pugh came down the marble stairs, sparing a disgusted glance for the gamboling Aesthetes, and said I ought to come see to Julian.

“Why, where is he?”

“In the Throne Room with Sam Godwin. They’ve been shouting at each other for most of an hour, ferociously. You might need to interfere, if it comes to blows—if you can walk straight.”

“I’m completely sober.”

“That makes one of you, then.”

“Do you find this shocking, Lymon?”

He shrugged. “I’ve seen drunker parties. Though where I come from they usually end in a murder or a mass arrest.”

I followed him to the Executive Office, which Lymon and other members of the Republican Guard called the Throne Room. Perhaps they can be pardoned for the exaggeration. The Executive Office was a vast square tiled room at the very heart of the Palace, windowless but forever ablaze with electric lamps. Its high ceiling was painted with a panoramic picture of Otis [The former President, not the Giraffe which was named after him.]on his gunboat fighting the Battle of the Potomac long ago. This was the room in which Presidents signed their Proclamations, or met with foreign consuls or Senatorial delegations on formal occasions. As such, it was set up to emphasize the dignity and power of the Presidency. The Presidential Chair wasn’t quite a “throne,” but approached that description as closely (or more closely) than any respectable republican chair really ought to have: it was carved from the heart of some noble oak, upholstered in purple cloth and plastered with gold leaf, and raised on a marble dais. Just now Julian sat sidelong on it, while Sam paced before him in short angry strides.

“All yours,” Lymon Pugh whispered, ducking out of the room before I could announce myself. Neither Sam nor Julian took any notice of my presence, for they were too busy arguing. Their voices echoed from the ornamental tile floor and bounced back from the high ceiling.

I didn’t like to see the unhappiness so obviously written on Julian’s face, nor was it pleasant to hear Sam berating him. The argument concerned some decision Julian had given out without Sam’s knowledge or approval.

“Do you have any conception,” Sam was asking, “of what you’ve done—of what the consequences of this will be?”

“The consequence I’m hoping for,” said Julian, “is the extinction of an old and ugly tyranny.”

“What you’ll get is a civil war!”

“The Dominion is a noose around the neck of the nation, and I mean to cut the rope.”

“A noose is what you’re staring at, if you don’t desist! You act as if you can proclaim any doctrine you like, and enforce it with soldiers—”

“Can’t I? Isn’t that exactly what my uncle did?”

“And where is your uncle now?”

Julian looked away.

“The enemies of a President hold daggers in their hands,” Sam went on. “The more enemies, the more daggers. You offended the Dominion—well, that can’t be undone. You’ve defied the Senate, which doubles your danger. And if these orders reach the Army of the Californias—”

“The orders have been dispatched. They can’t be withdrawn.”

“You mean you won’t withdraw them!”

“No,” Julian said, in a softer but no less hostile tone. “No, I won’t.”

There were smaller chairs arrayed before the Throne, presumably for lesser dignitaries to sit in. Sam kicked one of these chairs with his foot and sent it screeching across the tiled floor.

“ I will not let you commit suicide!”

“You’ll do as you’re told, and be quiet about it! The fact that you married my mother doesn’t make you my master! I had but one father, and he was killed by Deklan Conqueror.”

“If I protected you all these years, Julian, it was out of my loyalty to your father, and my affection for you, and for no other reason! I don’t have any ambition to sit on a throne, or meddle with the man who does so!”

“But you didn’t protect me, Sam, and you do meddle! By all rights I should have died in the Goose Bay Campaign! Everything that’s happened since then is just a ridiculously prolonged last gasp —can’t you see that?”

“That’s not the sort of thing your father would ever have said, or allowed you to say.”

“Your debt to my father is your own business. Mine was paid in full, with Deklan’s head.”

“You can’t salve your conscience with an execution! Bryce Comstock would tell you the same thing, if he was here.”

Julian had ceased shouting, but his anger had not abated. It had run underground, instead, and glittered in his eyes like a rushing torrent glimpsed through the crevice of a glacier. “Thank you for your advice. But there’s nothing more to discuss. You’re dismissed.”

Sam looked as if he might kick over another chair. But he didn’t. His shoulders slumped, and he turned to the door, defeated.

“Talk to him if you can,” he whispered to me on his way out. “I can’t.”

“I’m sorry you had to hear that,” Julian said as Sam’s footsteps faded down the corridor.

I advanced to the foot of the Throne. “Lymon Pugh tipped me off. He was afraid it might come to blows.”

“Not quite.”

“What did you do, Julian, that offended Sam so much?”

“Declared a sort of war, in his view.”

“Haven’t you had enough of war yet?”

“It’s nothing to do with the Dutch. There’s been a rebellion in Colorado Springs. Yesterday the Council of the Dominion told their parish Deacons to disobey any Presidential mandate that conflicts with ecclesiastical regulations.”

“Is that what you call a rebellion? It sounds more like a lawyer’s brief.”

“It amounts to an expressed wish to overthrow me!”

“And I suppose you can’t tolerate that.”

“Tonight I declared the City of Colorado Springs a treasonous territory, and I ordered the Army of the Californias to capture it and establish military law.”