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

The next day, rather than attack the Mitteleuropan forces, we exchanged prisoners with them.

Julian went to the trenches to oversee the exchange, which took place under a flag of truce, and I went with him. The Dutchmen scurried across noman’sland with their white flag fluttering, and an equal number of our men passed them going the other way. There was no ceremony, only a brief cease-fire; and when the business was complete the Dutch snipers resumed their deadly practice and the Dutch artillery geared up for more pointless volleys.

“The prisoners we returned,” I said to Julian, as we stood shivering in a rear trench, “are they aware of last night’s test?”

“I made sure their quarters faced the right direction. They would have had a fine view.”

“And your objective is to add their narrative to the rumors already circulating among the Dutch—including that note you dictated, assuming Private Langers has yielded to temptation?”

“That’s the goal exactly.”

“Well, this is all fine theater, Julian—”

“Psychological warfare.”

“All right, if that’s the name of it. But sooner or later the psychological has to yield to the actual. ”

“It will. I’ve given the order to prepare for battle. We sleep in forward positions tonight. The attack will begin before dawn. We have to strike while the Dutch panic is still fresh.”

I grasped the sleeve of Julian’s tattered blue and yellow jacket, to make sure I had his full attention. It was cold in that trench, and despite the cutting wind the air stank of blood and human waste, and desolation was all that I could see in every direction. “Tell me the truth—will any of this charade make a difference, or is it only a show to bolster the courage of the men?”

Julian hesitated before he answered.

“Morale is also a weapon,” he said. “And I like to think I’ve increased our arsenal at least in that insubstantial way. We have an advantage we lacked before. Any advantage we can take, we sorely need. Are you thinking of home, Adam?”

“I’m thinking of Calyxa,” I admitted. And the child she was carrying, though I had not mentioned that news to Julian.

“I can’t promise anything, of course.”

“But there’s hope?”

“Certainly there is,” Julian said. “Hope, yes—hope, always—hope, if nothing else.”

I wrote another letter to Calyxa that afternoon, and buttoned it into the pocket of my jacket so that it might be found on my person if I died in battle. Perhaps it would eventually reach her, or perhaps it would be buried along with me, or become the souvenir of some Mitteleuropan infantryman—the calculation wasn’t mine to make.

I thought about praying for success, but I wasn’t sure God could be coaxed to intervene in such a remote and desolate land. [If I were Him I might be tempted to suppress My power of omniscience when it came to Labrador , and focus My attention on the world’s warmer and greener places.]

In any case I doubted my prayers would be altogether well-received, given my ambiguous denominational status. I was not in an easy state of mind, and wished I did not have to face death quite so soon.

Because it was almost Thanksgiving Julian ordered extra rations for everyone, including the last of our meat (strips of salt beef, plus whatever we could spare of horse—the mules had already been eaten). It wasn’t a proper Thanksgiving dinner as my mother would have prepared it back in Williams Ford, with a baked goose, perhaps, and cranberries purloined from the Duncan and Crowley kitchen, and raisin pie with stiff cream. But it was more than we had had for many days. The feast depleted our larder: all it left was hardtack, and we would need that for the march if we succeeded in breaking the siege of Striver.

The field hospital was a gloomy place when I visited it that evening. A group of orderlies sang sacred songs, in keeping with the spirit of the season, though somewhat halfheartedly. Many of the wounded men were unable to travel, and Dr. Linch said they might have to be abandoned to the mercies of the Mitteleuropan army. The choice of who would be hauled off and who left behind rested in his hands; and he disliked the obligation, and was in a sour mood about it.

“At least,” Dr. Linch said, “the men are a little warmer tonight—that intolerable cold wind has finally stopped blowing.”

It took a moment for the significance of what he had said to register on my mind. Then I ran outside to see for myself.

Dr. Linch was entirely correct. The wind, which had been keening steadily for almost a month, had suddenly ceased to blow, and the air was as still as ice.

We are becalmed!

I wrote in my journal.

No food but trail food, and we must be parsimonious with that. Julian can’t tell the men why the attack has been delayed, without betraying the secret of the Black Kites (which of course cannot fly without wind). The troops are restive, and grumble constantly. Thanksgiving Day, 2174—bitter and disappointing.

Another cold and windless day. Julian frets over the question, and is constantly scanning the horizon for meteorological clues and auguries.

None are perceived, though tonight the Aurora shimmers like a cloth of gold just north of the zenith.

Dutch shelling increases, and we have had to put out a number of fires in the eastern section of town. Fortunately the fires do not spread—no wind.

No wind .

We are in danger of losing any advantage Julian’s plan might have given us. He suspects the Mitteleuropans have already been reinforced. We’re greatly outnumbered, and the “Chinese Weapon” begins to seem like an empty threat, if it was ever anything more.

Nevertheless Julian has dreamed up another addition to the charade: his “male seamstresses” have hastily produced nearly two hundred protective masks for the men at the vanguard of our envisioned advance on the Dutch. These are essentially black silk sacks, with holes cut for the eyes, large enough to drape over a man’s head. The eyeholes are circled in white paint, and they present a fearful appearance from a distance—up close they seem slightly clownish. But a phalanx of armed men in such garb would surely be intimidating to a wary enemy.

Still the wind does not blow.

No wind, but snow. It falls gently, and softens the gaps and angles of this broken town.

A few gusts today, not sufficient for our advance.

Wind! —but the snow obscures all. We cannot march.

Clear skies this morning. Gusts fitful but freshening as the afternoon wears on. Will it last until dawn?

Julian says it will. He says it must. We advance in the morning, he says, wind or no.

At last, after a dark midnight, and much surreptitious preparation, I stood with Julian and the rest of the general staff in an earthen breastwork near the front lines. We sat at a crude table where two lamps burned while Julian read a letter from the Dutch commander—received that afternoon—offering terms of surrender, “given your present unsustainable occupation of a town the jurisdiction of which is bound to pass to us sooner or later.” The Mitteleuropan general, whose name was Vierheller, [Perhaps the Mitteleuropans know how to pronounce this jaw-cracker—I do not.]said that we would all be well-treated, and eventually exchanged back to American territory “at the cessation of hostilities,” so long as our surrender was not conditional. [Hostilities which had not ceased for decades, and showed no sign of doing so now, which weakened the argument somewhat.]