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

In the end it was Lymon Pugh who offered to be my intermediary.

He was the healthiest of us, and he came to the ward-room the day he was due to be released. We talked idly at first. Then he saw what I was reading, and asked me about it.

It was A History of Mankind in Space.

I had kept this tattered and very ancient volume with me all through my military career, tucked into the bottom of my ditty-bag. It wasn’t heavy—the formidable stiff covers of the book had fallen off months ago. Really it was only a bundle of pages held together with a binding of threads which I had sewn myself (clumsily). “An old book,” I said to Lymon.

“How old?”

“More than a century. It’s from the last days of the Secular Ancients.”

Lymon’s eyes widened. “That old! Did they write in English back then, or did they have some language of their own?”

“It’s English, though some of the words and usages are peculiar. Here, look.”

Lymon had lately taken an interest in books, since he was now able to puzzle out enough words to make them intriguing to him—books, which had been mute lumps in prior times, were suddenly full of voices, all clamoring for attention. In the course of Lymon’s instruction I had read him chapters of Mr. Charles Curtis Easton’s Against the Brazilians, which had also survived intact in my ditty-bag, and I had even allowed Lymon to borrow the volume and read ahead, once he was captivated by the plot. [Lymon, though not experienced in reading, endorsed my opinion that Mr. Easton was probably the greatest of our living authors. He could not imagine a better one, at any rate. It was a miracle that anyone wrote books at all, Lymon said, much less good ones; and he was impressed by Mr. Easton’s formidable knowledge of foreign places, historic battles, pirates, and such interesting subjects.]

But the History of Mankind in Space seemed to oppress him as he leafed through its pages and inspected its photographs. His features knotted into a spindled emblem of perplexity. “It seems to say here that people went to the moon,” he uttered in a low voice.

“That’s exactly what it says.”

“And this is not a work of fiction?”

“It claims not to be. I don’t know whether folks walked on the moon or not. But the Secular Ancients clearly believed it, and so does Julian.”

It was a poorly-ordered world we lived in, Lymon said, if moon-visiting was deemed to be “non-fiction” while Mr. Easton’s straightforward narratives about wars and pirates were excoriated (as they had been, Julian once told me, in some quarters) as crude storytelling. “This isn’t a Dominion book, is it?”

“No. When it was written, there was no Dominion.”

“Keep your voice down—you’ll get us in trouble with that kind of talk.”

“It’s not ‘talk,’ only history. Even the Dominion admits that it came into being with the False Tribulation. Before that all the churches were independent, and disorganized, and had little sway with the government, or any way of fulfilling the ideal of a Christian World under the direct administration of Heaven.”

“That’s what the Dominion means to set up?”

“That’s its ultimate purpose—to unite the world in advance of the rule of Jesus Christ.” Which he would have known, if he had not slept through so many Sunday services.

“I’m not well-churched,” said Lymon, rubbing his left hand over his scarred right forearm. “Do you suppose that’s about to happen, with the fall of Chicoutimi and all?”

“The Dominion must conquer a great deal more of the world than just Labrador before the end of all worldly strife. I doubt we’ll see the Global Reign of Christianity in our lifetime.”

Lymon nodded with obvious relief. He said he didn’t mind the prospect of Christian government—he was willing to be ruled by Heaven—what troubled him was that Heaven might employ men like Major Lampret as intermediaries.

I asked whether the Major had recovered from the wounds he received during the capture of the Chinese Cannon.

“He did, and he even survived the cholera; but he’s gone back to Colorado Springs for the time being. The events up the Saguenay were an embarrassment to him, and he needs to improve his morale and reputation as much his health.”

“Good news for Julian, at least,” I said. “Lymon, since you’re leaving here shortly, and I’m still confined to bed, would you do me a favor?”

“Yes, certainly—what?”

“I have two packages I need delivered in Montreal.” I took these out from where I had stashed them beneath the bed. “The smaller one is a letter, to be delivered personally to Calyxa Blake. I’ve written her address on the envelope—can you read it adequately well?”

“I think so.”

“This bigger bundle of papers is meant for Mr. Theodore Dornwood, if he’s still around, and if you can find him.”

“Dornwood the newspaper writer? That might be difficult. Rumor is that he left the regiment when we went up-river, and that he sits in some cheap rental and posts lies to Manhattan , between bouts of drunkenness and debauchery. But I’ll try to find him, for your sake, if you want me to, Adam.”

The reader may imagine with what impatience and anxiety I awaited Lymon’s return, for each of the missives I had entrusted to him was greatly significant to me. The package for Theodore Dornwood contained my whole account of the Saguenay Expedition. The smaller letter, meant for Calyxa, was even more momentous. In it, I expressed my intention to propose marriage to her, should she find the time to visit me in the hospital.

But Lymon did not return that afternoon, nor in the evening. To forestall my uneasiness I talked with the two other patients with whom I shared the ward. One was a lease-boy like myself, but from a Southern estate, where he had been worked cruelly in the tropical heat; he had been wounded north of Quebec , and his whole right arm, though intact, was a useless appendage. My other companion was a cavalryman with a generous mustache and his head shaved bald, who wouldn’t say how he had acquired the injury that was hidden by a layer of bandages wrapping his belly. Neither of these men were scintillating conversationalists, since both were in constant pain; but the cavalryman owned a box of dominoes, and we passed an hour or two playing Estates. After that I asked the nurse whether the hospital had any fresh reading material, since I had memorized nearly every page of the History of Mankind in Space and Against the Brazilians.

“I think there might be something,” she said. But all she could scare up was a slender volume of stories by Mrs. Eckerson. Mrs. Eckerson was one of the classic authors of the nineteenth century, suitable for modern tastes, and preserved from extinction by the Dominion press; but she wrote mainly for young girls, and the book provoked memories of my sister Flaxie. Nevertheless I read until my eyes tired of it; and my bedside lamp, by the time I blew it out, was the last one burning.

In the morning I was treated to one of the hospital’s Hygienic Baths—a mandatory ordeal, overseen by nurses, and damaging to male dignity—and when I returned to my bed I found Lymon Pugh waiting in the visitor’s chair. He was alone.

“Well?” I said. “Did you deliver the messages I gave you?”

“Yes,” he said, with an apparent uneasiness.

“Well, don’t make a mystery of it! Tell me what happened.”

He cleared his throat. “I found that Theodore Dornwood for you. The stories about him are true, Adam. He’s living by the docks, in a shack not much better than a stable. He lies in a yellow bed and drinks whiskey and smokes hempen cigarettes all day long. He still possesses that ‘typewriter’ you always talk about, but he don’t seem to employ it much.”