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

Mrs. Comstock was relieved to hear the news, so much so that she had to sit down and compose herself. It was a long moment until she took notice of me again. “I’m sorry, Adam,” she said. “Take a chair and keep still while I explain the situation. Then we can discuss the important question of what to do about it.”

Her explanation was discursive, with much back-tracking, and heated interjections from Calyxa, but the gist of it was this: Since Deacon Hollingshead’s arrival in town last July the Dominion had been hard at work, cleansing New York City of moral corruption.

“Corruption” is a popular word with the enthusiasts of the Dominion, usually uttered as a prelude to the knife, the docket, or the noose. In the present case it referred to the growing number of non-tithing churches in this city—churches, that is, which were not just unrecognized by the Dominion but disdained that recognition; for they regarded the Dominion as a worldly institution, feeding on forced donations while it suppressed genuine apostolic brotherhood and individual salvation in Christ.

I had heard of these renegade churches. They existed in all the large cities, but were especially common in Manhattan , where several varieties of them catered to the poor and malcontent, to the lowest echelons of mechanical workers, or to the Egyptians and other newly-arrived immigrants. But I could make no connection between these institutions and the confinement of Calyxa and Mrs. Comstock.

“We were found in, ” Calyxa said bluntly, interrupting Mrs. Comstock’s more nuanced narrative.

“What do you mean, found in ? Found in what ?”

“It’s a legal term,” Mrs. Comstock said. “We were arrested with a dozen other people when one of these institutions was raided by Hollingshead and his clerical police—‘found in attendance,’ in other words.”

“You were attending a renegade church?” That surprised me, since Mrs. Comstock’s religious devotions in the past had been wholly conventional; and Calyxa, who was educated in a Catholic institution, often told me she had garnered from that experience just as much religion as she expected to need, and then some.

“Not for religious purposes,” Calyxa said. “The church allowed its premises to be used for political meetings. I had been telling Mrs. Comstock about the idea of the Parmentierists, and she was interested, and we went there so she could take a sample.”

“Isn’t that an extenuating circumstance?”

“Not in Deacon Hollingshead’s eyes,” said Mrs. Comstock. “ Parmentierism hardly constitutes an alibi, under the current regime. I almost suspect the Deacon pursued us for the explicit purpose of incriminating us. It may have been part of some scheme he worked up with the Executive before Deklan was deposed.”

“But Deklan is deposed, and you’re still confined to the house.”

“Deacon Hollingshead is as powerful as ever, and a Writ of Ecclesiastical Quarantine isn’t so easily suborned. Once issued, it tends to stick. We’re only here, and not in jail along with all the other Found-Ins, because I am a Comstock, and Calyxa is pregnant.” [The law preventing pregnant women from being jailed on suspicion, or prosecuted for proven crimes, dates from the era of the Plague of Infertility. For many years after the Fall of the Cities it seemed as if our human numbers might drop below some critical level—that we would become an extinct species, as so many other species had become extinct during the Efflorescence of Oil. That threat has receded, of course—our numbers are steadily increasing—but the law, along with a host of other laws and customs protecting female virtue and fertility, remains firmly in effect.]

“Julian will fix it,” I said.

“I expect he will,” Mrs. Comstock said, “once he learns about it. He won’t be easily reached, however, now that he’s installed in the Executive Palace.”

“I can find a way to him.”

“I expect it won’t be necessary. Julian has never failed to join me for Christmas, if he was in Manhattan , and I’m sure he’ll send for me this year. In any case Calyxa isn’t due until April, which means Hollingshead can’t act until then. No, Adam, I have another commission for you, if you’ll accept it.”

I could hardly refuse, though this was all a surprise to me, and disorienting in its effects.

“My commission,” Mrs. Comstock said, “involves Sam Godwin.”

“Sam! I haven’t seen Sam since Labrador. He was sent home with an injury. We asked after him at the military hospital in St. John’s , but he had already passed through, bound for New York. He must have arrived long since—have you seen him? I would like to shake his hand again.”

His remaining hand, I thought, but did not say.

“I made similar inquiries,” Mrs. Comstock told me, “and I know he arrived safely in the city, and spent some days at the Soldier’s Rest, but he was released—and promptly vanished, or at least hasn’t bothered to contact me. This isn’t like him, Adam.”

I agreed that it was not. “Perhaps I can find him, and solve the mystery.”

“I hoped you would say so.” She beamed. “Thank you, Adam Hazzard.”

“You don’t need to thank me. But what about the guard on the door? He’ll be back before long, and I can’t stay.”

“Never mind the guard—he’s harmless, and as prisons go this one is comfortable enough.”

“Once I’m out of the house it might be difficult to get back in,” I said. I didn’t like the idea that I might be barred from my marital chamber for some indefinite time. It was cruel, if not unusual.

“Stay at the Soldier’s Rest, if you have to, and say your goodbyes to Calyxa for the time being. We’ll be together again on Christmas Day, I’m sure of it.”

“Welcome home, Adam,” Calyxa added, and she embraced me again; and we exchanged intimacies once more, until Mrs. Comstock indicated by the clearing of her throat and the rolling of her eyes that the time had come for me to leave—too soon!

The guard was returning as I came down the steps into the damp December air. “Thank you, Colonel,” he said. “That was a fine meal, much appreciated, and Merry Christmas to you.”

“Keep a firm watch on the house,” I told him. “Be sure you don’t let any villains in.”

I passed the night at the Soldier’s Rest near the docks. My rank entitled me to better accommodations than a common soldier would have received, though in practice this was just a cubicle containing a yellow mattress and a threadbare blanket. The bed and the blanket were infested with fleas, who took the opportunity to cavort at will and dine at leisure; and I slept fretfully, and hurried out as soon as the sky grew light.

Sam Godwin was in New York , or recently had been. That much was an established fact. I went to the Regimental headquarters, and the clerk there showed me a ledger which said Sam had been discharged as a wounded veteran. It listed a New York address where mail could be forwarded.

The address was in a disreputable neighborhood, not far from the Immigrant District. I went there directly. The houses in that location were mainly wooden frame structures crowded shoulder-to-shoulder, most of them divided up into rooms for rent, with here and there a tavern or hemp shop or gambling den in which degraded men could indulge their vices without traveling very far out of their way. Smoke poured from every chimney, for the day was cold. The thought of all those coal-grates and wood-stoves made me wary of fire, for these buildings were little more than tinder and brown paper, putting on airs of architecture.

I knocked at a ramshackle door, and after a while an elderly woman with pox scars on her face answered. When I asked for Sam Godwin she said, “I don’t know any.” But I pressed her with a description, and proclaimed him as my friend; and she relented and showed me to an upstairs room at the end of a lightless corridor.