Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America (42 page)

The Colorado maid was not afraid

When the Deacon's henchmen caught her,

She suffered in her pride,

But they beat her till she cried,

And when her courage grew thin

She confessed her sin:

"I was kissed by the Deacon's daughter! Oh!

Kissed by the Deacon's daughter!"

By Piston, Loom, and Anvil, boys ...

There was a sudden flash of light, and a thunderous report—I looked apprehensively at Deacon Hollingshead—but the Deacon was intact—it was only that the fireworks had begun out on the Great Lawn. The band abruptly ceased playing, and we all adjourned outside with a certain sense of relief.

Calyxa sat next to me, breathless from her exertions, and I was very proud of her, though very worried, as the Independence Day fireworks crackled through the hot night air above the Executive Palace.

She had probably just scotched any possibility that my Commongold pamphlet would receive the Dominion Stamp of Approval. But that didn't matter much—the pamphlet was doing well enough without it. In any case, if it had been Deklan Comstock's intention to humiliate Calyxa, I believed he had gotten more than he bargained for.

For the duration of the fireworks display we sat on wooden bleachers.

There was a special box reserved for the President and a few close allies, including, I was dismayed to see, Deacon Hollingshead. Calyxa and I sat with Julian and Sam and Mrs. Comstock among the lesser Eupatridians.

"There are portents to be read at any event like this," Sam said in a low voice. "Who attends, who doesn't—who speaks to whom—who smiles, who frowns—it can all be read, the way a fortune-teller reads a deck of cards."

"What fortune do you divine?" I asked.

"The Admiral of the Navy isn't here. That's unusual. There are no representatives from the Army of the Californias—ominous indeed. The Dominion is favored. The Senate is ignored."

"I don't know that I can parse such signs."

"We'll learn more when the President speaks. That's when the axe will fall, Adam—if it does fall."

"Is the axe literal or meta phorical?" I inquired anxiously.

"Remains to be seen," said Sam.

That was alarming; but the matter was out of my control, and I tried to enjoy the fireworks while they lasted. The Chinese Ambassador had arranged for the importation of some incendiaries from his own Republic, as a gift to the President. The Chinese are experts in armaments and gunpowder.
In fact the presence of that Ambassador, and his obvious largesse, propelled a rumor that Deklan Comstock was attempting to buy advanced weapons from China as a sort of riposte to the Chinese Cannon of the Dutch.
⁶⁶

Certainly the celestial fire was an excellent advertisement for Chinese workmanship. I had never seen such a display. Oh, we had had fireworks in Williams Ford—fine ones, and they had impressed me in my youth. But this event was altogether more spectacular. The warm summer air was alive with the smell of cordite, and the sky crackled with Occult Starbursts, Blue Fire, Whirling Salamanders, Keg- Breakers, and other such exotic devices. It was almost as noisy as an artillery duel, and I had to restrain myself from flinching when the bangs and stinks provoked unhappy memories of the War. But I reminded myself that this was In de pen dence Day in Manhattan, not winter in Chicoutimi; and Calyxa put a soothing arm around me when she saw that I was shaking.

The spectacle concluded after a good half-hour with a Cross of Fire that hung over Lower Manhattan like the benediction of an incendiary Angel.

The band played
The Star-spangled Banner.
 The assembled Eupatridians applauded vigorously; and then it was time for Deklan Comstock to make the final speech of the eve ning.

The Executive Palace was fully electrified, powered by dynamos designed and operated by the Union's most cunning engineers.
A fierce artificial light drenched the stage that was set up for the President.
⁶⁷
He stepped up on the makeshift wooden platform and braced his hands on both sides of the podium.

Then he began to speak.

He began with homilies and platitudes appropriate to the occasion. He spoke about the Nation and how it was formed in an act of rebellion against the godless British Empire. He quoted the great Patriotic Phi los o pher of the nineteenth century, Mr. John C. Calhoun. He described how the original Nation had been debased by oil and atheism, until the Reconstruction that followed on the heels of the False Tribulation. He spoke of the two great Generals who had served as Presidents in times of national crisis, Washington and Otis, and flung about their names as if they were personal friends of his.

That eventually got him onto the subject of war. Here his voice became more animated, and his gestures bespoke a personal urgency.

"Perpetual peace is a dream," he said, "as much as we may yearn for it—but war! War is an integral part of God's ordering of the universe, without which the world would be swamped in selfishness and materialism. War is the very vessel of honor, and who of us could endure a world without the divine folly of honor? That faith is especially true and adorable which leads a soldier to throw away his life in obedience to a blindly accepted duty, in a cause he little understands, during a campaign of which he has little notion,
under tactics of which he does not see the use.
⁶⁸
On the field of battle, where a man lives or dies by the caprice of a bullet or the verdict of a bayonet, life is at its best and healthiest."

"That's a novel definition of health," said Julian, but Sam hushed him.

"To date," Deklan Conqueror declared, "we have had some notable successes in Labrador and some regrettable failures. Failure is inevitable in any war, I need not add. Not every campaign will be brought to a successful conclusion. But the number of failures in recent months points to a dismaying possibility. I mean the possibility that
treason
 rather than
fortune
 is at work in the Army of the Laurentians." The President's countenance became abruptly grim and judicial, and his audience cringed. "For that reason I have today taken bold steps to consolidate and improve our armed forces. Several Major Generals—I will not name them—have been taken into custody as I speak. They will undergo public trials, and be given every opportunity to acknowledge and recant their plotting with the Dutch."

Sam groaned quietly, for the unnamed Major Generals probably included men he knew and respected.

"The places of these traitors," Deklan Conqueror continued, "will be filled from the ranks of enlisted men who have distinguished themselves in battle. Because of this we can look forward to renewed success in our effort to establish control over this sacred continent as a whole and the strategically important waterway to the north of it."

He paused to sip from a glass of water. Absent fireworks, the night seemed very dark.

"But not all the news is bad. Far from it! We have had our share of suc-cesses. I need only cite the example of the Saguenay Campaign and the rescue of the town of Chicoutimi from its Mitteleuropan occupiers. And let me repeat, acknowledging a certain familial pride, that a key role in that battle was played by my own nephew Julian."

Here the President smiled once more, and paused in the way that invites applause, which the ner vous Eupatridians hastened to give him.

"Come up here, Julian," the President called out, "and stand beside me!"

This was the humiliation Deklan Comstock had been storing up all evening. Putting Calyxa on show as a singer was only the prelude to it. He would have the son of the man he had murdered stand beside him as an ornament, helpless to protest.

Julian at first didn't move. It was as if the command had scarcely registered on his senses. It was Sam who urged him out of the bleachers. "Just do as he says," Sam whispered in a mournful voice. "Swallow your pride, Julian, this once, and do as he says—go on, or he'll have us all killed."

Julian gave Sam a vacant look, but he stood up. His journey to the Presidential Podium was visibly reluctant. He mounted the steps to the stage as if he were mounting a scaffold to be hanged, which was perhaps not far from the truth.

"Dear Julian," the President said, and embraced him just as if he were a true and loving uncle.

Julian didn't return the embrace. He kept his hands stiffly at his sides. I could see that any physical contact with the fratricidal Chief Executive was nauseating to him.

"You've seen more of war than most of us, though you're still a very young man. What was your impression of the Saguenay Campaign?"

Julian blinked at the question.

"It was a bloody business," he mumbled.

But Deklan Comstock didn't mean to give his nephew the freedom of the podium. "Bloody indeed," the President said. "But we're not a nation that flinches at blood, nor are we a people constrained by feminine delicacy. To us all is permitted—even cruelty, yes, even ruthlessness—for we're the first in the world to raise the sword not in the name of enslaving and oppressing anyone, but in the name of freeing them from bondage. We must not be miserly with blood! Let there be blood, if blood alone can drown the old secular world. Let there be pain, and let there be death, if pain and death will save us from the twin tyrannies of Atheism and Europe."

Some cheering erupted, though not from our part of the bleachers.

"Julian knows first- hand the price and preciousness of liberty. He has already risked his life anonymously as a soldier of the line. Sacrifice enough for any man, you might say, and in normal times I would agree. But these aren't normal times. The enemy presses. Barbarous weapons are deployed against our soldiers. The Northeastern wilds swarm with foreign encampments, and the precincts of Newfoundland are once again in jeopardy. Therefore we are called upon to make sacrifices." He paused at that ominous word. "We are
all
called upon to make sacrifices. I don't exclude myself! I, as much as any citizen, have to forego my own happiness, if it contradicts the greater national purpose. And as pleased as I am to have my brother's son back in the bosom of my family, a soldier with Julian's skill can't be spared at this critical hour.

For that reason I have already relieved from duty Major General Griffin of the Northern Division of the Army of the Laurentians, and I intend to replace him with my own beloved nephew."

The audience gasped at the boldness of the proclamation. It was a great benevolence on the part of the President, or so he wanted us to think. The Eupatridians burst into another round of applause. Encouraging shouts of

"Julian! Julian Comstock!" went up into the gunpowder-scented night.

But Julian's mother didn't join in the bellowing. She seemed to grow weak, and put her head on Calyxa's shoulder.

"First Bryce," she whispered. "Now Julian."

"This is the axe I spoke of," said Sam.

God has chosen the weak things of the world,
to confound the things that are mighty.
—First Corinthians 1:27

I will not exhaust the reader by narrating every incident that attended on our dispatch to Labrador, prior to the triumphant and tragic events surrounding the Thanksgiving season of 2174.
Our
 departure, that is, and not just Julian's; because the recalled-to-battle order proclaimed by Deklan Conqueror also included Sam Godwin and myself.

In short I was compelled to leave my wife of a few months, and my brief career as a New York City writer, and to sail off to Labrador as part of the staff of Major General Julian Comstock—and not to one of the pleasanter sections of Labrador, such as the Saguenay River, but to an even more inhospitable and unwelcoming region of that disputed State, on a mission the true purpose of which was to turn Julian from an awkward potential heir into a silent and untroublesome martyr.

In mid-October we left New York Harbor on a Navy clipper and sailed north. This was a weathery time of year in the Atlantic, and we survived a ferocious storm in which our vessel was tossed about like a flea on the rump of an irritable stallion, before we rendezvoused with a fleet of ships under Admiral Fairfield off the port of Belle Isle (now in American hands).

The Union Navy is not as powerful a po liti cal entity as the nation's two great Armies, to which it is attached as a nautical wing; but just lately it had harassed the Mitteleuropans more effectively than had our land-based forces.

Deklan Comstock, in one of his few genuinely useful strategic initiatives, had declared a comprehensive blockade of Eu ro pe an shipping in the waters off Newfoundland and Labrador. This had been attempted before, with disappointing results. But today's Navy was larger that it used to be, and better equipped to conduct such an ambitious project.

I was aboard the flag-ship of the armada, the
Basilisk,
 during the famous Battle of Hamilton Inlet. The Dutch had been aware of our movements, for an enormous battle- fleet is a difficult thing to disguise; but they had mistakenly assumed that we meant to attack them near Voisey Bay, from which they export the nickel, copper, and cobalt ores that are mined so abundantly in Labrador. (The many small islands and waterways in that region make Voisey Bay a haven for blockade runners even when it's under heavy surveillance.) But we had been given a bolder objective than that. We put in for Hamilton Inlet instead; and while the Dutch were hunting us farther north our guns silenced their fortress at the Narrows, and we quickly reduced their artillery emplacements at Rigolet and Eskimo Island. Because the Dutch defenses weren't braced for us, we suffered relatively minor casualties. Of the twenty gunships in our flotilla only one, the
Griffin,
 was altogether lost. Five others suffered damage the ship's carpenters were able to repair; and our ship was altogether untouched, even though we had been in the vanguard of the battle.