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

This was not a pleasing prospect; but I bit my lip and said nothing.

“Meanwhile,” Julian said, “I owe you a favor.”

“Surely you don’t.”

“I do, though. You befriended me in Williams Ford, and showed me all you knew about that Estate and how to hunt it.”

“And you’ve shown me Edenvale.”

“Edenvale is nothing.

Manhattan, Adam! My town is Manhattan , and I want to instruct you in the perils and the pleasures of it, before you begin life as a working man.”

Perhaps this was meant as a distraction, but I was willing to abandon myself to it, considering how perilous our existence seemed to have become. “Maybe I can learn some of the ways of the Aristos before I’m thrust into their company at the Presidential Palace.”

“That’s right. And the first lesson is not to use the word ‘Aristos.’ ”

“ Aristocrats, then.”

“Nor even that. Among ourselves, we’re ‘the Eupatridian Community.’ ”

A label big enough to strangle a man, I thought; but I practiced it dutifully, and after a while it ceased to stick in the throat.

The reader, if not versed in recent history, may be anxious to discover whether or not Julian and I were killed on Independence Day. I do not mean to protract the answer to that important question, but the events of the Fourth will make more sense once I have described some of what happened prior to that date.

It was a nervous time for Calyxa and me, though we were newlyweds and tempted to believe in our own immortality. President Comstock was hardly concerned with us, Calyxa said, and in any event we were not locked up in the fine rooms of the Aristocracy. We could pack up our belongings at any time, and travel to Boston or Buffalo , and live there anonymously, beyond the reach of any maddened Chief Executive. I would write books under an assumed name (in this scenario), and Calyxa would sing in respectable cafés. We went so far as to price railway tickets and scrutinize timetables, though I was distressed at the prospect of abandoning Julian to his fate.

“It’s his own fate,” Calyxa said, “and he could shed himself of it if he chose to. He ran away once—can’t he run away again? Ask him to come with us.”

But when I proposed this option to Julian he shook his head. “No, Adam. That’s no longer possible. It was a miracle that I escaped from Williams Ford. Here, I’m under much closer scrutiny.”

“What scrutiny? I don’t see it. New York City is a big locality—big enough to get lost in, it seems to me.”

“My uncle has eyes everywhere. If I so much as packed a bag he’d hear of it. This house is watched, though very discreetly. If I go for a walk, the President’s men aren’t far behind. If I drink to excess in some Broadway tavern, a report will find its way to Deklan Conqueror.”

“And are Calyxa and I also under this observation?”

“Probably, but the surveillance isn’t so strict.” He cast a glance to make sure no servant could overhear us. “If you want to escape, you’re well advised to do so. I won’t stop you or blame you. But it must be a clean escape, or else the President’s men will haul you back and use you against me. To be honest, given your trivial position in Deklan’s eyes, you might be safer here than elsewhere. But the decision is yours, of course.” He added, “I’m sorry you find yourself mixed up in it, Adam. I never meant for it to be so, and I’ll do anything I can to help.”

So Calyxa and I went on studying our railroad timetables, and made airy plans, but failed to pursue them. We continued living in the brownstone house as the days and weeks passed. Mrs. Comstock kept on with her charitable work, and held occasional gatherings of the Manhattan artistic circle, events which Julian enjoyed very much. Sam was often absent during this time, pursuing contacts in the upper echelons of the military—for he was no longer “Sam Samson” but Sam Godwin once again, restored to his reputation as a veteran of the Isthmian War; and I imagined he was performing his own kind of intelligence-gathering, with the aim of discovering the President’s ultimate intentions.

There was no such useful work for me, but I spent many pleasant hours with Calyxa as we adjusted to wedded life. Calyxa in her own way was as philosophically-inclined as Julian, and liked to discuss the flaws and shortcoming of the system of Aristocracy, of which she disapproved. When that palled, we took walks around the city. She enjoyed exploring the shops and restaurants on Broadway or Fifth Avenue ; and on fine days we ventured as far as the great stone walls of the Presidential Palace Grounds. [The grounds of the Executive Palace had once been a great Park, according to Julian, and open to the public; but that had changed when the federal government moved north from Washington.]

The walls were immensely tall and thick, and made of granite fragments salvaged from city ruins. The huge Broadway Gate at 59th Street , with its stone and steel guardhouse, was a work of architecture nearly as impressive as the Montreal Cathedral where I had first spied Calyxa in her surplice, and twice as monolithic. I couldn’t imagine what lay within those moated and forbidding walls (though I was destined to find out).

The month of June was unusually fine and sunny, and we took such walks often. To avoid monotony we varied our route; and we were returning from Broadway by way of Hudson Street when we passed a Manhattan book-store. The sunlight fell aslant through the window glass, revealing the illustrated cover of a book by Mr. Charles Curtis Easton—a volume I hadn’t seen before, called American Sailors Afloat.

Needless to say, I hurried inside.

I had never been in a book-store before. All the books I had read had been borrowed from the Estate library at Williams Ford, or (in the case of A History of Mankind in Space ) dug moldering from ancient Tips. Of course I had known such stores existed, and that Manhattan must include more than a few of them. But I had not gathered up the courage to seek one out. I suppose I had imagined a book-store to be an intimidating place, as airy and marble-pillared as a Greek temple. This store was not such a sacral establishment. Grogan’s Books Music and Cheap Publications was the name of it, and it was no more or less grand than the shoe store to the left of it or the vaccination shop to the right.

Even the smell of the air inside the shop was inviting, a perfume of paper and ink. The books on sale were many and various, and all unfamiliar to me; but I made my way by some instinct to the section where Mr. Easton’s novels were on display—a great plethora of them, fresh and bright in their stamped and colored boards.

“Close your mouth,” Calyxa said, “or you’ll begin to drool.”

“This must be near everything Mr. Easton has published!”

“I hope it is. He seems to have written far too many books already.”

I had been hoarding my back pay from the Army of the Laurentians, grudging every expense—the hope of one day owning a typewriter was still at the back of my mind—but I could not resist buying a volume or two [Four, actually.]of Mr. Easton’s recent work. Calyxa browsed among the sheet music while I counted out Comstock dollars to the cashier.

When we left the store Calyxa lingered a few moments in front of the vaccination shop next door. Calyxa, for all her contempt of the Aristocracy, was not immune to certain aspects of Manhattan fashion. The window of the vaccination shop advertised a newly-arrived Yellow Fever serum, popular with the sort of stylish young city women who sport vaccination scars as if they were jewelry. A single dose of this serum cost more than a dozen novels, however; and Julian had already warned us against such shops, which tended to dispense more diseases than they ever prevented.