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

In all likelihood nothing untoward will happen at the Palace. The chance that I will be beheaded or disemboweled or any such unpleasant thing is really very slight, although Julian is at a somewhat greater risk. Please do not assume that I have been killed if you do not hear from me—you know how unreliable the mails are!

That is about all for now. Please give my love to Father. Many troubles have come my way since I left Williams Ford, but I am less a child than you remember me, and able to carry myself virtuously through even the most venomous garden, while keeping my eye on the straight and narrow path, and looking neither left nor right, except as necessary to keep from tripping over things.

I signed it, Your loving son, Adam.

In the late afternoon we boarded a carriage—Calyxa, Mrs. Comstock, Sam, Julian, and myself—and set out for the Presidential Palace. It was a nervous journey; but we were brave, and did not speak about the risks and hazards.

The long light cast a golden patina on Broadway, which was dressed up for the occasion with banners and bunting. I was dressed up, too, in a tailored Aristo costume that pinched various tender parts of me, and so was Calyxa, whose elegant mauve-colored dress took up all the space not already filled by Mrs. Comstock’s even bulkier outfit. I was glad to have a seat by the window of the carriage, where I could see past these mounds of compressed silk to the outside world.

We entered the Palace grounds by the Broadway Gate at 59th Street. Our carriage and our invitations were inspected by a black-uniformed member of the President’s private security force, which is called the Republican Guard. Once approved by that dour individual, and carefully watched by a dozen just like him, we passed over the moat and through two heavy iron doors into the manicured grounds of what had once been, according to Julian, a vast Central Park.

Very little remained of the original version of that Park, Julian said, except the great Reservoir in the middle of it. All the wooded areas had been burned over during the False Tribulation, and what did not burn had been cut down for fuel by starved and freezing urbanites. Both the Sheep Meadow and the Ramble had been plowed and planted in the years that followed—a quixotic enterprise, for the soil was not suited to agriculture. Then, after the fall of Washington , the entire Park from north to south had been donated to the Executive Branch under President Otis. It was Otis who had caused to be built the huge enclosing walls of brick, marble, and stone recovered from the ruins of Manhattan ; it was Otis who had designed the Hunting Grounds and stocked them with game; it was Otis who had erected the Executive Palace overlooking the Great Lawn.

Our path wound northward past ailanthus groves and broad meadows of mown grass to something called the Statuary Lawn, where large examples of sculpture dating from the Efflorescence of Oil had been preserved. Here to the left of us was a statue of a man on horseback, named Bolivar, and a stone spike called the Needle of Cleopatra. To the right, a huge metallic Arm held a verdigrised Torch as tall as an Athabaska pine, and a fractured Crowned Head adjoined it. [The Head and Arm were fragments of the Colossus of Liberty, Julian said. According to legend the Colossus used to stand astride the Verrazano Narrows , while boats and barges passed between her feet. A cursory inspection shows that the scale is off, and Liberty would not have been able to span the distance even with her legs splayed at an unflattering angle. Still, she must once have been a very large and prominently visible Statue—I don’t mean to diminish her grandeur.]

These items (and others like them) looked both bold and melancholy, casting shadows like the gnomons of monstrous sun-dials as we rode among them in the last light of the day.

We were not the only coach on the path. There was a regular circus of carriages, coaches, and mounted horsemen making their way toward the Executive Palace from each of the Park’s four Gates. The coaches had gilded fittings, the horsemen were formally dressed, and the carriage lanterns were lit and had begun to glimmer in the gathering dusk. All the finest and richest men and women of Manhattan had received an invitation to this annual fete. Those who did not, considered themselves slighted. The failure to receive an invitation was often a sign that some unlucky high Eupatridian had fallen from favor with the Executive; and the uninvited person, if he was a Senator, might begin to watch his back for knives.

Calyxa, of course, was not impressed with all this gaudiness and show, on account of her Parmentierist principles. I had hoped she would conceal her disdain for the Eupatridians, at least for the duration of the Independence Day event. But that was not to be the case.

We arrived near the vast stables of the Executive Palace , where boys in livery were accepting the carriages of the many guests. We dismounted and had begun to walk toward the entranceway of the Palace when we came across an angry Aristo beating his driver with a cane.

The Aristo in question was a stout man of middle age. His carriage had thrown a wheel, and the owner apparently blamed his driver for the accident. The driver was a man at least as old as his master, with hollow cheeks and a sort of doggish resignation about his eyes. He bore the beating stoically, while the Aristo cursed him in words I can’t repeat.

“What the hell!” exclaimed Calyxa, coming upon this scene.

“Hush,” Sam whispered to her. “That man is Nelson Wieland. He owns half the re-rolling mills in New Jersey , and holds a Senate seat.”

“I don’t care if he’s Croesus on a bicycle,” Calyxa declared. “He ought not to use his cane that way.”

“It’s none of our business,” Mrs. Comstock put in.

But Calyxa would not be dissuaded from walking right up to Mr. Wieland and interrupting him in the strenuous work of beating his employee.

“What has this man done?” she asked.

Wieland looked at her, blinking. He didn’t recognize Calyxa, of course, and he seemed to be confused about her status. By evidence of dress, if not deportment, she was a wealthy Aristo herself—she had, after all, been invited to a Presidential reception—and he decided at last to humor her.

“I’m sorry to trouble you with an unpleasant sight,” he said. “This man’s carelessness cost me a wheel—and not just the wheel but the axle, hence the carriage.”

“How was he careless?”

“Oh, I don’t know exactly—he claims the rig struck a stone—that the suspension of the vehicle was not well-maintained—in other words he offers every excuse that would relieve him of responsibility. Of course I know better. The man shirks—it’s habitual with him.”

“And so you beat him bloody?”

This was not an exaggeration, for the blows had caused wounds which stained the fabric of the driver’s starched white shirt.

“It’s the only way he’ll mark the event in his memory. He’s an indentured man, and slow.”

“ De toute évidence, non seulement vous êtes un tyran, mais en plus, vous êtes bête,” said Calyxa.

Mr. Wieland was brought up short by the unfamiliar language. He gave Calyxa another perplexed look, as if she were some exotic form of life, a crawfish perhaps, that had emerged unexpectedly from its native element. Perhaps he thought she was the wife of an ambassador.

“Thank you,” he said finally, “you flatter me, I’m sure; but I don’t speak the language, and I’m afraid of being late for the reception.” He took up his cane and hurried away.

Calyxa lingered a while longer with the beaten driver, conversing with him in a tone too low for me to overhear. They spoke until Sam called her back to us.