Julian Comstock

by Robert Charles Wilson

  “Not far,” she said, standing up.

  “Then, this time, please let me walk you there.”

  She managed to smile, despite the horrifying circumstances. “I won’t leave you barefoot in the rain, Adam Hazzard,” she said. “Not on a night like this.”

  There is a kind of urban living, I have discovered, in which poverty and luxury mix together, and become indistinguishable. That was the case with the rooms in which Calyxa Blake lived. She occupied several chambers in a building that had been divided up into dark but rentable spaces by some absent and inattentive Owner. The rooms were confining, the windows minuscule, the ceilings perilously low. She could not have spent much money on the furnishings, which were shabby, threadbare, nicked, and splintered—I had seen better furniture abandoned at Montreal curbsides.

  But if her book-cases were humble, they were bowed under the weight of surprisingly many books—almost as many as there had been in the library of the Duncan and Crowley Estate back in Williams Ford. It seemed to me a treasure more estimable than any fine sofa or plush footstool, and worth all the rough economies surrounding it.

  We entered dripping from the effects of the storm, which continued to beat its wings against the windows of Calyxa’s snug if threadbare retreat. As soon as she had thrown the several latches behind her and lit the nearest lamp she began unselfconsciously to strip off her sodden clothes. I looked away, blushing. “You too,” she said. “No exceptions for Western prudishness—you’re dripping all over everything.”

  “I have nothing else to wear!”

  “I’ll find you something. Undress yourself—those pants won’t dry while you’re wearing them.”

  That extraordinary statement was inarguably true; and I did as she suggested, while she went to another room in search of something to cover herself, and me. She came back wearing a kind of Chinese robe, with fanciful Dragons embroidered on it, and carrying a similar garment, along with a towel, which she handed to me.

  I dried myself willingly but balked at the robe. “I think this is a woman’s item.”

  “It’s a silk robe. All the better Chinese persons wear them, men included. You can buy them down at the dockside—cheap, when the boats come in, if you know the right vendor. Put it on, please.”

  I obeyed, though not without feeling slightly ridiculous. But the robe was comfortable, and supplied just the right degree of warmth and concealment. I was content with it, I decided, as long as some Blake brother didn’t break down the door and shoot me, for dying in such a garment might provoke awkward questions.

  Calyxa started a fire in the kitchen stove and put a kettle on to boil. While she worked I examined her book-cases more closely. I hoped to find an unfamiliar title by Mr. Charles Curtis Easton, which I could borrow. But Calyxa’s taste didn’t run in that direction. Few of the books were fiction, and even fewer bore the Dominion Stamp of Approval. I guessed the authority of the Dominion was more powerful out West than in these border lands, which had so often changed hands with the Dutch. Here were titles and authors altogether unfamiliar to me. Some were in French, and could not be decrypted. Of the English titles, I selected one called American History Since the Fall of the Cities, by Arwal Parmentier. It had been published in England—a country which, though sparsely inhabited, had a long history of its own, and whose allegiance to Mitteleuropa was more formal than devotional. I took the volume closer to a lamp, opened it at random, and read this paragraph:

  The ascent of the Aristocracy should not be understood solely as a response to the near-exhaustion of oil, platinum, iridium, and other essential resources of the Technological Efflorescence. The trend to oligarchy predated that crisis and contributed to it. Even before the Fall of the Cities the global economy had become what our farmers call a “Monoculture,” streamlined and relatively efficient, but without the useful diversity fostered in prior times by the existence of National Borders and Local Regulation of Business. Long before plague, starvation, and childlessness reduced the population so dramatically, wealth had already begun to concentrate in the hands of a minority of powerful Owners. The Crisis of Scarcity, therefore, when it came, was met not with a careful or prepared response, but by a determined grasp of power on the part of the Oligarchs and a retreat into religious dogmatism and clerical authority by the frightened and disenfranchised populace.

  It was quickly obvious to me why this volume had not received the Stamp of Approval, and I moved to replace it on the shelf, but not before Calyxa, returning from the kitchen with a cup of tea in each hand, saw me handling it. “Do you read, Adam Hazzard?” She seemed surprised.

  “I do—as often as I can.”

  “Really! Have you read Parmentier?”

  I confessed I hadn’t had the pleasure. Political Philosophy was not a subject I had pursued, I told her.

  “Too bad. Parmentier is ruthless on Aristocracy. All my friends read him. Who do you read, then?”

  “I admire the work of Mr. Charles Curtis Easton.”

  “I don’t know the name.”

  “He’s a novelist. Perhaps I can introduce you to his work sometime.”

  “Perhaps,” Calyxa said, and we sat down on the sofa. She took a sip of tea, and seemed more or less at ease, considering that she had just seen her homicidal brother shot in the head, and had spent the evening leaping about the rooftops of Montreal. Then she put down her cup and said, “Look at your feet—you’re bleeding all over the carpet.”

  I apologized.

  “It’s not the carpet I’m concerned about! Here, lie back and put your feet on this towel.”

  I did so, and she fetched a medicine for me—an ointment that smelled of alcohol and camphor, and burned on application, but soon began to feel soothing. She examined my feet closely, then wrapped them in a linty bandage. “And you left your boots behind,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “That wasn’t wise. Army-issue boots. Job will recognize them for what they are. He’ll know I was with an American soldier, and it won’t improve his temper.”

  Shooting his brother in the head had probably angered him right up to the hilt, I thought, and the boots wouldn’t add much of a fillip to it; but I took Calyxa’s concern seriously. “I’m sorry to say this, Calyxa, and I don’t mean to insult your family, but I begin to wish I had shot both of them.”

  “I wish you had, too, but the opportunity failed to present itself. Your poor feet! We’ll fix them up a little more, come morning, and replace your boots with something better before you have to march back to your regiment.”

  I hadn’t thought that far ahead, and the prospect was daunting, but she didn’t dwell on it. “Adam Hazzard, I thank you for all you’ve done for me today. I was afraid of your motives at first, but Evangelica was right—you’re just as simple as you look. I want to reward you,” and here she put her arm around my shoulder, and drew my head closer to hers, and kissed me lightly on the cheek, “and I want to reward you in the best possible way, but it’s not practical right at the moment—”

  My skin still tingled where her lips had been. “You don’t need to explain! I would never question your virtue, or make any claim on it, just because I helped you fend off your brothers!” (And I readjusted my Chinese robe to disguise any testimony to the contrary on the part of my masculine nature.)

  “It isn’t that. I do want to thank you, Adam. It would be my pleasure, as well as yours. Do you understand me? But the time is not propitious.”

  “Of course it isn’t, with the gunplay and all.”

  “What I mean is—”

  “It’s enough that I can sit and talk with you. I wanted your friendship, and now I have it—that’s my reward.”

  “J’ai mes règles, espèce de bouseaux ignorant! ” she said, a little impatiently, and I took this to be another testimonial to her gratitude to me, which was irrepressible. I expected nothing from her, but I hinted that a second kiss would not be unwelcome … and she gave me that, and I returned it, and I was as happy as I ha
d ever been, despite all the rooftop calisthenics and bloody violence. Such is Love in a time of War.

  I slept on the sofa, and she woke me in the morning. She examined my feet again, and said the injuries inflicted by the sharp tiles of the Montreal roofs were not as bad as they might have been, and she re-wrapped the bandages, and added a layer of leather, one for each foot, to function as soles, and more bandages, so that I could walk out of doors without re-injuring myself. “That ought to get you where we’re going,” she said.

  She wanted to replace my boots with something better than bandages, and she wanted to find out what the ultimate outcome of the events at the tavern had been. She said she knew a place where both those needs might be addressed. She put on a large sun-hat, to conceal her face if she crossed paths with a Blake brother, and I took her arm, and we stepped out into the sunny morning.

  Last night’s tempest had washed the air clean, and the ferocious wind had been domesticated into a pleasant breeze. If not for the danger, and the pain in my feet, our stroll would have been entirely enjoyable. But it was brief, and it ended at the door of a basement shop on a street I didn’t recognize. The shop, a tannery and bootery, was closed—by law, because it was Sunday. Nevertheless Calyxa knocked loudly. “I know the owner,” she said.

  The owner turned out to be a bearded and irritable man who would not have been out of place at the table she had occupied in the tavern last night, except that his attention to his clothing was more particular. He looked at Calyxa curiously, and at me with an undisguised mixture of loathing and distaste. “Let us in, Emil, I don’t want to dawdle here,” she said; and he waved us inside reluctantly.

  His shop was a cellar, rank with the smell of tannin and glue, but he had some very nice boots on display. “Can you fit my friend?” Calyxa asked.

  “Anything for you,” Emil said slowly, “you know that, but surely—”

  “He needs something supple and sturdy on his feet. He lost his boots doing me a favor.”

  “Don’t his army masters give him boots? Tu es folle d’amener un soldat américain ici!”

  “Il m’a sauvé la vie. On peut lui faire confiance. En plus, il n’est pas très intelligent. S’il te plaît, ne le tue pas—fais-le pour moi!”

  This exchange, whatever it meant, mollified Emil a little, and he agreed to measure my feet, and when he had done that he searched among his stock of pre-made boots, and showed me a fine pair of deerskins, calf-high and golden-brown. I was sure I couldn’t afford them.

  “This has to do with your savage brothers,” Emil said to Calyxa. “I heard about what happened at the tavern last night.”

  Calyxa became more attentive. “What do you know about Job and Utty?”

  “Job was badly creased by a bullet. He lost a lot of blood, but his skull wasn’t cracked, and the story I heard is that he’ll survive it. Utty threatened to shoot a few people just for show, but Job’s wound distracted him. They left the tavern for the charity clinic—I expect Job’s still there, unless he had the grace to die during the night. That’s all I know, except that the military police took notice, and they’re holding a warrant on both men.”

  Calyxa smiled as if this were welcome news, and I suppose it was; but sooner or later, it seemed to me, the Blake brothers would be back, angrier than ever, and I was afraid for her.

  The boots were expensive even at Emil’s grudging discount. I was reluctant to spend the money—I was saving for a typewriter—but I didn’t want to appear tight in front of Calyxa, and I did need boots; so I paid the proprietor his ransom.

  And I was not sorry. Even to my injured feet the deerhide boots felt like an upholstered corner of Heaven. I had never owned boots that fit me so neatly. The men of my company would be envious, I thought, and they would mock my vanity, and call me dainty; but I decided I would endure all that without complaint, for the boots comforted my feet and reminded me of Calyxa.

  She and I walked a little farther, but the day was passing quickly, and I couldn’t stay away from camp much longer. We parted at the great iron bridge. Calyxa asked whether I might be back next weekend, and I promised I would try to see her, if the military situation allowed, and that I would think of her constantly in the meantime.

  “I hope you do come back.”

  “I will,” I vowed.

  “Don’t forget to bring your pistol,” she said; then she kissed me and kissed me again.

  * At first I had been shocked by the sight of Montreal women wearing trousers rather than skirts—in Williams Ford no respectable female wore trousers past the age of ten—but social customs vary by location, as Julian had taught me, and clothes signify differently in different parts of the world. I had lately begun to take pride in my ability to accept such unusual behavior as female trouser-wearing, and I considered myself a sophisticate, far in advance of my old crowd of Williams Ford lease-boys.

  * “Bush runners” are men who operate in the wilds of the Laurentians and up into the rocky wastelands of Labrador, living on the margins of the law. Some of them form guerilla bands, and might align themselves temporarily with the Americans or the Mitteleuropans; but their main business is horse thievery, smuggling, and opportunistic pillage.

  * Or an even stronger word, best understood under the generous allowances of Cultural Relativism, and not printable here.

  * Calyxa, unlike myself, was fluent in French, and sometimes fell into that language at odd moments. French has always been a mystery to me, and remains so; but I have taken pains to make sure her words are accurately transcribed.

  7

  I kept my promise, and returned many times to the City of Montreal that summer, and became better acquainted with Calyxa and with the city in which she lived. I won’t weary the reader with a description of all our encounters (some were too intimate to record, in any case), but I will say that we were not further troubled by the Blake Brothers—not that season, anyhow.

  Camp life was easy for a time. My feet healed quickly, thanks to light work and those supple deerhide boots. The Dutch sallies became less frequent, and the only fighting for a while (locally, I mean) was between our scouting parties and a few enemy pickets. Contradictory rumors continued to emerge from the Saguenay campaign, however: a great victory—a great defeat—many Mitteleuropans killed—scores of Americans sent to early graves—but none of that could be confirmed, due to the slow pace of communications and the unwillingness of high staff to share intelligence with soldiers of the line. But around Thanksgiving we had a substantial hint that things had not gone well. A new regiment of draftees and recruits—soft, naive lease-boys, as I now saw them, mostly drawn from the estates and freehold farms of Maine and Vermont—arrived in camp. They were quickly trained in the business of garrisoning Montreal City and maintaining its defenses, which freed up those of us with battle experience for that most dreaded of military maneuvers: a Winter Campaign.

  “Galligasken would never have approved of this,” Sam said when our regimental orders were finally cut. “The orders must have come down from the Executive Palace itself. This smells of Deklan Comstock’s meddling and impatience. The news of some defeat nettled him, so he ordered all his forces into a strategically absurd retaliation—I’d bet money on it.”

  But there was no arguing with orders. We packed our ditty-bags and slung our Pittsburgh rifles, a whole division of us, and we were carted to the docks and loaded into steam-driven boats for the journey down the St. Lawrence to the Saguenay. There wasn’t time to say goodbye to Calyxa, so I wrote a hasty letter, and posted it from the quayside, telling her I would be away at the front for an undisclosed time, and that I loved her and thought of her constantly, and that I hoped the Blake Brothers wouldn’t hunt her down and kill her while I was gone.

  The boats on which we rode burned wood rather than coal, and their smudge hung over the river and followed us in the wind, a poignant, earthy smell.

  I had never been out on a boat before. The River Pine back in Williams Ford was too swift and
shallow for navigation. I had seen boats, of course, especially since our arrival in Montreal, and they had fascinated me with their elephantine grace and their negotiations with the unpredictable and oft-stormy St. Lawrence. Consequently I spent much time at the rail of this little vessel as it traveled, experiencing what Julian called the “Relativistic Illusion” that the boat itself was stationary, and that it was the land around it that had gone into motion, writhing to the west like a snake with a war in its tail.

  We had been issued woolen coats to protect us from the weather, but the day was fine and sunny, though autumn had the countryside in its final grip. We approached and passed the great fortifications at Quebec City, and followed the North Channel beyond Ile d’Orleans, where the river grew much wider and began to carry the tang of salt. The foliage along the north bank was umber and scarlet where it had not already abandoned itself to the wind. Denuded branches cast skeletal silhouettes against a dusty blue sky, and crows swept the forest-top in wheeling masses. Autumn is the only season with a hook in the human heart, Julian had once said (or quoted). This fanciful figure of speech ran through my mind right then—the only season with a hook in the heart—and because it was autumn, and because the land was vast and empty, and the air was chill and smelled of woodsmoke, the poetic words seemed to make sense, and were apt.

  About then Julian came to stand beside me at the rail, while the other soldiers milled about on deck or went below to try their luck at mess. “Last night I dreamed I was on a ship,” he said, the long light falling on his face as the wind tousled the hair that flowed out beneath his cap.

  “A ship like this one?”

  “A better one, Adam. A three-masted schooner, like the ones that sail up the Narrows to Manhattan. When I was a child my mother used to take me to the foot of Forty-second Street to see those ships. I liked the idea that the ships came from faraway places—the Mediterranean Republics, or Nippon, or Ecuador, as it might be—and I liked to pretend some spirit of those places still clung to them—I convinced myself I could smell it, a whiff of spice above the stink of creosote and rotting fish.”