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

I didn’t tell Lymon Pugh our destination until we were much closer to it, for I was constantly unsure of the wisdom of going there; but I thought Julian deserved a final opportunity to change his mind about staying in Manhattan, especially now that the city was burning down; and if I found him (or so I reasoned) I could ask him why he had not offered his farewell by some means less impersonal than a short, scrawled note.

I wasn’t entirely sure I could find him; but I had a firm hunch as to his whereabouts, and I calculated there was enough time left to pursue the matter, if only just.

If anything would stymie us it would be the fire in the Immigrant District, depending on how it had spread. As we crossed Ninth Street we were nearly borne back by a tide of fleeing Egyptians. They were a troubled people, despised by the majority. Many of them had left their native country to escape the poverty and warfare of Suez and the sickness that haunts the terrible ruins of Cairo. They had seen destruction before, and they didn’t seem surprised by this fresh catastrophe, but were resigned to it, and trudged along with their packs on their shoulders and their carts dragged behind them as if it were not the first apocalypse they had witnessed or the last they expected to see. They paid us no attention; but we were riding against a human avalanche, and it slowed our progress.

Soon we could see the fire itself, leaping above nearby rooftops. The flames had already consumed most of the Immigrant District, where the flimsy houses, often appended to old concrete ruins and built from whatever debris could be dug out from makeshift excavations, burned like tinder. All Manhattan’s fire-wagons and water-engines had been brought to bear on the problem, or so it seemed. The pumpers took their water from the Houston Canal, a freight canal, and from the Delancey Canal, a sewage canal—though in practice there was little to choose between them. Debris of the most noxious sort often plugged the firemen’s hoses; and the stench of smoke, char, and boiling human waste nearly turned us back. Fortunately Lymon Pugh had brought along an assortment of paper plague masks (some dipped, as was the Eupatridian custom, in oil of opoponax); and we each donned one of these, and they were modestly useful in impeding the unwelcome odor of the conflagration.

The wind was fierce, and carried sparks and embers with it. At least so far, however, the water-engines had succeeded in keeping the Houston Canal as a sort of fire-break, and the flames had not spread beyond it. That was fortunate, for the address I was seeking was just this side of that Canal.

“You might as well break down and tell me where we’re going,” Lymon Pugh said.

“The Church of the Apostles Etc.”

“What—Magnus Stepney’s old barn? It was raided last year, I thought.”

“He keeps a smaller version of it in the loft of a building on Ninth Street.”

“You think Julian went there, despite the fire?”

“It’s an intuition,” I muttered, and it was, and probably a mistaken one; but the idea that they had come here, once fixed in my mind, had been impossible to dislodge.

“Maybe more than that,” Lymon said suddenly, reining up his horse and gesturing to me to follow him into an alley.

“Look there.”

We kept to the shadows as a group of horsemen rode by, not away from but toward the fire, the same direction we were going. Shortly I realized what had alarmed Lymon about them: the man at the head was Deacon Hollingshead himself, with a body of Ecclesiastical Police in gilded uniforms trailing behind. I was sure it was the Deacon, for he was close enough to be easily recognized, and I could not forget the hateful face of the man who had attempted to put Calyxa on trial.

He glanced at us as he passed; but the plague masks served to disguise us, and he was too intent on his business to spare us any closer attention.

His destination was ours. By the time we reached the warehouse which contained the attic Church of Magnus Stepney, Hollingshead and his men were dismounted in front of it. The half-dozen Ecclesiastical Police quickly surrounded the building, blocking every entrance. Lymon and I watched from a safe distance as they performed their evolutions.

There were no fire-fighters nearby—in fact the street was deserted; its residents had long since fled. The street had changed some since my last visit, mainly due to Julian’s lifting of the ban on apostate churches. Just a year ago it had been a furtive neighborhood of hemp-shops and boarding houses and other low businesses. It still was; but newly-established Temples and Mosques and Places of Worship had sprung up among the taverns and slatternly hotels, many of them painted in gaudy colors, or decorated with fanciful symbols and slogans, as if a Carnival of Faith had arrived in town.

The fire-wagons were all down at the Canal itself, behind and to the west of us. The Immigrant District burned freely, and wind-blown embers floated down, but neither the warehouse containing the Church of the Apostles Etc. nor any of the nearby structures was actually burning yet.

“Julian must be inside, as you guessed,” said Lymon Pugh, “or else the Deacon wouldn’t be here. Look how they cover the entrances—very professional, for Dominion men, though any Army patrol would do it better.”

“And they’re well-armed,” I added, for the ecclesiastical troopers carried gleaming Pittsburgh rifles in their hands. “If only we had got here first!”

“No, Adam, you’re wrong about that. If we had got here first we’d be inside with Julian, and subject to the Deacon’s whims. As it stands we have a chance of taking the enemy by surprise.”

“Just the two of us?”

“Calls for stealth,” Lymon Pugh admitted, “but it can be done.”

“I don’t have even a pistol to use against their weapons.”

“Leave that part to me. They divide their forces, Adam, see? Six men plus the Deacon, and he just sent three of them around the back to cover the exits.”

“Even three armed men—”

“Dominion police! Why, I could have brought down a dozen such men even before I joined the Army. Often did.”

Despite what Lymon had told me about his street-fighting and beef-boning days, it struck me as a risky proposition. But he was firm about it. He told me to stay where I was, and soothe the horses, while he circled around back of the warehouse. Once the rear guards were out of action he would commandeer their rifles, and when we were both armed we could assault the front—if I thought it was worth doing. I told him I had come this far, and might as well finish the journey, so long as we had a reasonable chance of escaping death.

He smiled and dashed off into the darkness, keeping to the shadows and circling wide.

The horses were made nervous by the fire across the Canal, and they wanted to whinny and stomp. I tethered them to an alley post, and spent considerable time calming them down. The flames were so high in the sky that they cast a red twilight over everything, and the smoke was so thick that even my plague mask couldn’t keep it out, and it was all I could do to keep from coughing explosively.

Then there was the sound of a gunshot, followed by a second stuttering volley of rifle fire. All my work calming the horses was instantly undone. I looked across the street to the warehouse. The ecclesiastical thugs remaining there took up their weapons and hurried around the side of the building to find out what had happened, leaving the Deacon by himself.

The Deacon didn’t linger, however. He entered the warehouse by the front door, alone, and seeming very determined, and with a pistol gripped tightly in his hand.