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

Lampret remained unconscious, and just as well, or his jealousy might have killed him on the spot.

The gunfire and the damage to Major Lampret made our journey down the hillside more eerie than triumphal. It was a feeling exacerbated by the land around us, for our captive train soon passed out of the winter forest into a Stygian realm of churned and frozen craters, cutwire fences festooned with corpses, and the blackened frames of burned-down farmhouses. The fighting had been fierce in our absence.

We began to calculate our options. From here the railroad ran straight to the embattled town of Chicoutimi. As far as we knew, that locality remained in the hands of the Mitteleuropans. But Julian found a Swiss spyglass among the articles left behind in the engine cabin, and he pointed it ahead of us, looking very distinguished, it seemed to me, in his battle-scarred uniform, with his long hair flowing out behind him. After a time he began to smile. The smile broadened. Then Julian handed the spyglass to Sam. “Look ahead, Sam—focus on the church tower on the hill.”

“Hard to see in this mist.” The valley through which we traveled was foggy in places, and a leaden overcast had blunted the blue sky. “But that must be the church tower—riddled with artillery impacts—it’s not very clear…”

“Turn the side-wheel with your thumb,” Julian said, “to bring it into focus.”

Sam fiddled with the adjustment, cursing. “The Swiss are too clever by half—too clever for their own good. I don’t think—ah! There. ”

Then Sam smiled, too.

“What do you see?” I demanded. “Don’t make a secret of it!”

“Only a flag on the church tower.”

“Well, why shouldn’t there be a flag on the church tower?”

“No reason at all. What distinguishes this flag is that it has thirteen Stripes and sixty Stars.” He put down the spyglass and said more gently, “Our forces have taken Chicoutimi.”

Thus it was only a matter of slowing the train and rumbling into Chicoutimi with our prize.

A Dutch military train arriving from the east might not be the most welcome sight among American troops, Sam reminded us. We had already passed a couple of pickets, who had taken hasty shots at us. What we needed was some convincing signal of our amity.

“Major Lampret is a Dominion Officer,” Julian said. “Don’t they carry American flags with them at all times, for funerals and prayers?”

We stopped in an isolated place long enough for Julian to visit the men in the boxcars, who gave a spontaneous hurrah when he told them Chicoutimi had fallen, and to procure a flag from Major Lampret, who carried one folded inside his shirt.

Julian came back to the engine of the Dutch train, but he didn’t enter the cab. Instead he tied the flag to a charred tree-branch, which he found on the ground, and clambered onto the front of the engine, perching himself on an iron shelf just below the lantern-lens.

“Go in slowly,” he called back to Penniman.

The train lurched forward as Penniman released the brake, almost tumbling Julian onto the tracks, then proceeded more smoothly.

And that was how we arrived in the newly-captured town of Chicoutimi. A fine snow had begun to fall, and the afternoon was theatrical in its shifting scrims of sun and cloud. We rode all the way into the depot with Julian up front like a patriotic ornament. His uniform was ragged and dirty, and his face was alabaster with the cold, but he grinned irrepressibly and waved the Sixty Stars and Thirteen Stripes before the hundreds of infantrymen and cavalrymen who assembled at the sight of our smoke. The engine passed down a corridor of these astonished soldiers before it finally hissed to a stop. Then the doors of the boxcars were thrown open, and a great and jubilant outcry rose up, for it was obvious to every spectator that we had captured a Chinese Cannon all intact.

The scourge of cholera caught up with us later that month. Many brave men who had survived injury and starvation all the way up the bloody Saguenay were taken to their graves by the disorder. The stench, inconvenience, and tragedy of the disease made life unpleasant for all of us, sick or not, and eventually most of us did get sick, though we did not necessarily die. I did not, for example—and I was as sick as anyone.

The human mind edits from memory its feverish interludes, and I can recollect very little of January or February of 2174. When I came to myself, what astonished me most—apart from my emaciation and general weakness—was that I had been transported without my knowledge from Chicoutimi to a field hospital in Tadoussac, and from there to the Soldier’s Rest, a recuperation-house in the City of Montreal. I learned that many men I knew and liked had died in the outbreak, and that saddened me. But there was good news, too. Sam, Julian, and Lymon Pugh had survived the disease, though they were sickened by it; and all three of them were here in the Soldier’s Rest, also recuperating. Out of all of our small circle the sickest had been Julian; the doctors said he had come close to dying; but he was well enough now that he could sit up, and take medicinal soups and such. Sam and Lymon were in even better mettle, and would be leaving the Rest within days.

And there was another bright light on the horizon, which served to improve my mood. That was the prospect of our release from the Army of the Laurentians. The Draft Act of 2172 specified a single year of involuntary service (though an Aristo could contribute an indentured man “for the duration”); and although we were strenuously canvassed to re-enlist we resisted that temptation (except for Lymon Pugh, who felt the Army, despite its manifest dangers, was a more attractive option than the meat-packing trade). This meant that as early as Easter I would be able to leave here with Sam and Julian, and we would be bound for New York City—as civilians!—just as we had intended when we fled Williams Ford, though with a heightened sense of the injustices and opportunities of life.

During my enforced idleness I did a great deal of reading and writing. I wrote to my mother in Williams Ford, as I had written several times before, being careful not to disclose any dangerous information about Julian or our precise whereabouts, since there was always a chance the mail might be intercepted by some perfervid Dominion or Government agent still hunting the President’s nephew. That meant that I could not receive any letters from my mother in return, a sore trial for me; but I was careful to write as regularly as possible, and to reassure her about my health and welfare.

I also wrote to Calyxa Blake, confessing my continued love and my desire to see her again. She responded with letters of her own, but these were curiously brief, though friendly enough. Something in the tone of them worried me, and I vowed to seek her out as soon as I could convince the doctors to release me.

That did not happen immediately, however; so I pursued other kinds of writing. I wrote an account of the events of the winter—of our voyage up the Saguenay , the Siege of Chicoutimi, the fall of that town, and the capture of the Chinese Cannon. I tried to hew to the principles the correspondent Theodore Dornwood had taught me, that is, to remain within the borders of the truth but to veer, where there was latitude, toward Drama. I worked at the piece over several days, reading what I had written and re-writing it, until I was satisfied with the result. Then I pondered how to get the pages to Mr. Dornwood, if he was still anywhere near Montreal. Mr. Dornwood had praised my previous efforts, and—if the truth be told—I had grown somewhat addicted to his flattery, coming as it did from a professional War Correspondent.