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

In the privacy of that building, which had once housed the Dutch Mayor of Striver, in the upstairs bedroom Julian had commandeered for his office, Admiral Fairfield—whose initial skepticism of Julian’s abilities as a commander had yielded to grudging and finally enthusiastic approval—explained that his entire fleet had been ordered out of Lake Melville.

“ Ordered out!” Julian exclaimed. “Why?”

“The command came without explanation,” Admiral Fairfield said with patent disgust. “From New York.”

“From my uncle, you mean.”

“I suspect so, though I can’t say for certain.”

“And all obeyed it but you?”

“Officially, the Basilisk is covering our retreat against any Dutch attack. That was my excuse for remaining behind long enough to contribute what I could at Goose Bay—which was little enough—and to come here to consult you.”

“But you’ll have to leave shortly,” Julian surmised. “And, obviously, you can’t deliver reinforcements.”

“I cannot, though it pains me to say so. All I can do is offload what extra provisions the Basilisk is carrying, and take away those of the wounded who need better treatment than a field hospital can supply.”

“Leaving us here,” Julian said, “besieged, until the day comes when we yield to starvation, or surrender ourselves to the Mitteleuropan forces… which is no doubt what my mad uncle intends.”

“My oath of loyalty prevents me from acknowledging the truth of it. In extremis, General Comstock, you might attempt to break out to the east. A road runs through to the Narrows , though it’s unimproved, and the fortifications there ought to remain in American hands long enough to receive you. But it would be a desperate attempt at best.”

“Desperate indeed, since we’re considerably outnumbered.”

“The decision is yours, of course.” Admiral Fairfield stood up. “Leaving you in these circumstances is inexcusable, but I’ve already stretched my written orders past the limits of interpretation.”

“I understand,” Julian said, taking the Admiral’s gnarled hand in his own with a touching sense of occasion. “I hold no grudge against you, Admiral, and I thank the Navy for everything it’s done on our behalf.”

“I hope the gratitude is not misplaced,” the Admiral said grimly.

Julian and I went down to the docks, where Sam and dozens of other seriously wounded men were carried to boats for removal to the Basilisk.

I delivered several typewritten sheets to that vessel’s Quartermaster—my war dispatches to the Spark, which the Quartermaster promised to post from Newfoundland.

We caught up with Dr. Linch, who was supervising the proceedings, and he led us to Sam, who rested in a litter with a woolly blanket wrapped around him and the fitful snow collecting in his beard. His eyes were closed, and fever-roses flourished on his weathered cheeks. “Sam,” said Julian, laying a gentle hand on his mentor’s shoulder.

Sam’s eyelids peeled back, and he gazed up into the rolling clouds a moment before his gaze fixed on Julian.

“Don’t let them take me,” he said in a shockingly frail voice.

“It’s a question of need, not wish,” said Julian. “Do as the doctor tells you, Sam, and soon you’ll be well enough to resume the fight.”

Sam wasn’t soothed by these homilies, however, and he reached up from the blankets with his good right arm and took Julian by the collar. “You need my advice!”

“I can hardly do without it; but if you have any advice, Sam, give it to me now, for the boats are preparing to cast off.”

“ Use it, ” Sam said, cryptically but insistently.

“Use it? Use what? I don’t understand.”

“The weapon! The Chinese weapon.”

Julian’s eyes grew wide and his expression mournful. “Sam… there is no Chinese weapon.”

“I know that, you young fool! Use it anyway.”

Perhaps he was the victim of a febrile delusion. In any case, if he had more to say, we didn’t hear it; for the litter-bearers carried him off, and before long he was tucked aboard the Basilisk and bound for the Naval hospital at St. John’s.

I think I had never felt quite so alone as I did when the Basilisk weighed anchor and sailed east—not even on the snowy plains of Athabaska, with Williams Ford and all my childhood standing behind me like a closed door.

Then, at least, I had been in the familiar company of Sam and Julian. Now Sam was gone… and Julian, in his blue and yellow uniform (slightly tattered), seemed hardly a ghost of the Julian I had once known.

Among the goods Admiral Fairfield left us was a bag of mail. These packages and letters were distributed to the troops the same day. One of Julian’s adjutants brought me an envelope with my name written on it in Calyxa’s hand.

Night had fallen; so I took the letter close to a lamp, and opened it with trembling hands.

Calyxa had never been much of a correspondent—no one would call her wordy. The letter consisted of a salutation and three terse sentences: Dear Adam, The Dominion threatens me. Please come home soon, preferably alive. Also, I am pregnant.

Yrs, Calyxa.

Much could be said about the days leading up to Thanksgiving, as I experienced them. But I won’t belabor the reader with trivialities. Those were dark and hungry times. I kept a careful record, sitting down each night with lamp and typewriter before I permitted myself the luxury of sleep. The pages are still in my possession, and in the interest of brevity I’ll confine myself to quoting passages from them, viz : THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 2174It has become necessary to exclude what remains of the civilian population of Striver from the town, in order to conserve supplies.

The residents of Striver were no more or less hostile to us than might be expected of any group of otherwise comfortable men and women subjected to occupation and forced from their homes at gunpoint. Many were relieved to be handed back into Mitteleuropan custody, for that’s their preference, irrational though it might seem to a sane American. [Despite the well-known cruelty and Atheism of Mitteleuropa, that principality nevertheless inspires in its subjects a kind of “patriotism” which resembles in almost every particular the real thing.]

I stood on the roof of our headquarters this afternoon and watched the men, women, and children of Striver trudge across a frosty no-man’s-land between the opposing trenches, protected by nothing more than a flag of truce. Their hunched figures, limned in an early twilight, tumbling now and then by accident into artillery craters, made me feel sympathetic, and I could almost imagine myself among them. Perhaps any man is potentially a mirror of any other—perhaps that’s what Julian means by “cultural relativism,” though the term is reviled by the clergy.

At least in the hands of the Dutch these unfortunates will be guaranteed a daily meal. We are not. Rationing is in effect. Dutch luxuries taken from the dockside warehouses are counted as carefully as the salt beef and cornmeal, and apportioned along with those familiar foods, strange as it seems for American soldiers to be dining on calculated portions of Edam cheese, sturgeon roe, and mashy goose-liver along with their trail-cake and bacon. In any case, these delicacies serve only to postpone the day when our hunger becomes absolute. Given our numbers, and the accounted supplies, Julian calculates that we’ll be tightening our belts by mid-month, and thoroughly starved by December.

The men still speculate about a Chinese weapon, and expect Julian to deploy it soon. He refuses to dispel these rumors, and smiles with a sort of mad recklessness whenever I mention the subject.