Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America (39 page)

It wasn't earth- shaking news. I had seen him blush whenever Mrs. Comstock entered a room; and I had seen her blush, too, in a way that suggested the possibility of mutual affection. Sam was nearly fifty years old, and Mrs.

Comstock the same, but I had learned that love can blossom even in the elderly. Still it was shocking to hear him speak of it aloud.

"I know what you're thinking, Adam—the barriers are insurmountable."

It wasn't exactly what I had been thinking, but it would do.

"Nevertheless," Sam said, "I've confided some of my feelings to Emily, and she has hinted that those feelings might be in some mea sure returned."

"She told you to grow your beard back," I observed, "and you did it."

"Beards don't come into the matter. This is serious. When Bryce Comstock was alive I kept my affections to myself, and Emily was a devoted wife to a brave soldier, a man for whom my respect was immea sur able and my friendship absolute. But Bryce is gone these several years, and Emily is a widow, and in social eclipse on top of that. The day may come when I can propose a wedding to her. Not until po liti cal matters are settled, however—and not at all, if I'm revealed as a Jew." The Dominion forbade such marriages, and called them unnatural.

"That would make you Julian's step-father," I said.

"What else have I been, since Julian was a child, except a second father to him?—though he thinks of me more as a servant, I'm afraid."

"He's fonder of you than he can say. He trusts your advice."

"I don't deny that I'm of value to him—only that he values me as a useful servant might be valued."

"More than that!"

"Well, maybe so," said Sam. "The situation's murky."

That was the third day of the month of July, the eve of our visit to the Executive Palace.

Independence Day! What cherished memories of Williams Ford that date provoked, despite all my present anxieties.

It had always been the least solemn of the four Universal Christian Holidays, second only to Christmas in my childish calculations. It was, of course, a profoundly sacred occasion, marked by innumerable ser vices at the Dominion Hall. There had been many public lectures by Ben Kreel about the Christian Nation in which we lived, and the valuable role of the Dominion in all our lives, and such weighty matters as that. But Independence Day also marked the true beginning of summer—summer in its maturity, July and August populating the world with perfume and insects. The creeks that fed the River Pine, though still cold, were available for swimming; squirrels begged to be stalked and shot; peddlers came up from Connaught with fireworks to sell.

Best of all, In de pen dence Day drew the Aristos out of their Estate for picnics and celebrations, which meant that my mother, in her role as a seamstress, could sneak into the Estate library and fetch out a book or two for me to read.

(These volumes were usually, but not always, returned in good order.) I was prompted by this sentiment to compose a letter to my mother in Williams Ford. Because Julian's identity had been revealed I could finally write to her openly, and receive mail in return, and I had already sent her several notes—though no response had been received. I sat by the window in the room I shared with Calyxa; there was a small desk there, and I took a sheet of paper from its topmost drawer.

Dear Mother
, I wrote.

If my last letter reached you, you will already know that I have survived a year in Labrador—that I did not embarrass myself in battle—that I have married a good woman in a legal Dominion service—and that your daughter-in-law is Calyxa Hazzard (formerly Blake) of Montreal.

Well, all that must be news enough! I have not got any reply just yet, but I hope you will write soon, and communicate your thoughts and Father's on this exciting subject. Naturally, I hope for and expect your blessing. If Father is disappointed that I did not marry in the Church of Signs, please tell him I'm sorry but that there was no suitable Pastor available.

We are well and doing fine in New York City. In fact I have recently published a Pamphlet (I enclose a copy), and I have been commissioned to write an entire Novel for the same publisher. I seem to have become an author, that is to say, after the style of Mr. Charles Curtis Easton! It is a more lucrative profession than I had expected; and I will send you some money if you tell me how to address it so that it won't be stolen.

As I write it is the morning of Independence Day, very sunny and pleasant all around, and all over Manhattan church bells are ringing. How is it back in Williams Ford? Does Ben Kreel still talk in the Dominion Hall until nightfall, and are the fireworks still reflected in the waters of the River Pine?

I have said we are well, and that's true. In fact, because of my friendship with Julian Comstock, Calyxa and I have been invited to the Executive Palace this evening for the annual celebration there! I know you have told me not to mix with Aristos if I can help it—"tempt not contagion by proximity," as you used to quote to me from the Dominion Reader—but an invitation from the President carries a certain weight, and can't safely be refused.

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 ner vous 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 horse back, 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.
⁶¹
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 horse men making their way toward the Executive Palace from each of the Park's four Gates. The coaches had gilded fittings, the horse men 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 own er 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 de-portment, 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 êtesbête,"
 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 craw-fish 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.

"Was that necessary?" he asked.

"That man you call Wieland is a thug, however much he owns."

Julian asked what the injured driver had had to say for himself.

"He's been working for Wieland most of his life. He's a blacksmith's son from some little town in Pennsylvania. His father sold him into Wieland's mill when the smithy business failed. He spent years casting hubs, until the coal fumes made him stupid. That was when Wieland took him for a personal driver."

"Then Wieland's entitled to beat him if he chooses. The man is chattel."

"Entitled by the law, maybe," Calyxa said.

"The law is the law," said Sam.

The Executive Palace was so expansive and grand that it might have done double-duty as a museum or a train station. We entered through a Portico, where marble pillars supported a cathedral-like ceiling, and passed into an im-mense Receiving Room, where Aristos clustered in conversation and waiters circulated with carts of drink and plates of small food items.
Some of these
⁶²
were impaled on toothpicks. I thought it was a skimpy selection for a Presidential Dinner, until Julian explained that the morsels were not the main course but only "appetizers," designed to provoke hunger rather than slake it.

We picked at these trifles and tried to appreciate the elaborate wainscoting, which was painted with images from the history of the Pious Presidents, and the sheer scale of the architecture.

Julian's fame had preceded him. In fact the story of his career as a soldier and his sudden re- appearance in Manhattan had circulated widely. Several Senators approached to congratulate him for his bravery, once his presence was noted, and many young Aristo women made a point of flattering him with their attention, though he was merely courteous in return.