Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America

by Robert Charles Wilson

  Julian stepped away from his map-table, throwing down a pencil in frustration. “Where is the Navy? There’s nothing happening here the shelling of Goose Bay wouldn’t correct!”

  “Admiral Fairfield promised us his armada,” Sam said, “and I believe he meant it. Whatever keeps him, it must be dire. We can’t count on him arriving.”

  “Do you suppose this was my uncle’s plan all along—to plant us here among the Dutch, and then withdraw the Navy?”

  “I wouldn’t put it past him. The point is that we don’t have the Navy, and we can’t expect to have the Navy. And without the Navy we can’t hold our position much longer.”

  “We will hold them,” Julian said flatly.

  “If the Dutch flank us and take the road we won’t be able to retreat to Striver—and that’ll be the end of us.”

  “We’ll hold,” Julian said, “until we know for a fact that Fairfield isn’t coming. He doesn’t strike me as a man who would abandon a promise.”

  “He wouldn’t, though he might be unable to fulfill it, for any number of reasons.”

  But Julian refused to be swayed. To the rear of the fighting there was a hill with an old spruce tree on it, and Julian posted an agile man atop this tree as if it were a mizzenmast on an ocean-going vessel, and gave him a sailor’s chore: to watch Lake Melville for ships. Thus any hint of Admiral Fair-field’s tardy arrival would be relayed directly to Julian’s headquarters as soon as it was perceived.

  In the meantime he bowed to Sam’s suggestion and gathered his subordinates to plan an orderly retreat, should it become necessary. If we must withdraw, Julian said, then it ought to be a fighting withdrawal, making the enemy pay for every yard of mossy soil he gained. Julian described how troops could be placed along ridges and behind the humped earth of the railway embankment, so that Dutch soldiers in pursuit of a retreating regiment might be drawn into an ambush and killed. Messages were quickly sent out to battalion commanders to coordinate this strategy, and to keep the planned fall-back from turning into a general rout.

  The scheme was successful, in so far as it went. Our front buckled—or so it was made to seem—and Mitteleuropan forces poured into the gap. The Dutch infantry were hooting and firing their rifles in triumph just as rows of hidden men turned Trench Sweepers on them and artillery shells began to burst in their midst. Their cross-and-laurel flag, which had been coming ahead at full speed, was suddenly thrown down, along with its bearer and dozens of common soldiers. Dutch troops continued to pour into the line of fire from the rear, but they roiled over their dead comrades uncertainly and were slaughtered in turn.

  It was a hideously costly advance for the Dutch … but in the end it was an advance, hard-won or not. Sam argued that we should strike our headquarters immediately and get the wagons rolling back toward Striver, where we could at least supply ourselves in the event of a siege.

  Then Julian’s crow’s-nest observer dashed into the tent and told us he had seen smoke across the water.

  Julian stepped outside, taking a pair of captured field glasses with him. His position was more exposed than it would have been even an hour ago—Dutch shells burst dismayingly nearby—but he stood unmoved in his bright Major General’s uniform, looking out over the leaden waters of Lake Melville.

  “Smoke,” he confirmed, when Sam and I joined him. “A vessel approaching under steam. Burning anthracite, by the look of it, which makes it likely one of ours.” And after a moment’s pause: “A mast. A flag. Our flag.” He turned to Sam with a kind of fierce satisfaction in his eyes. “Tell the men to hold their positions at all costs.”

  “Julian—” Sam said.

  “None of your pessimism right now, Sam, please!”

  “But we don’t know for certain—”

  “We don’t know anything for certain—battle is risk. Give the order!”

  And Sam, like a dutiful servant, did so.

  Ten minutes later the whole ship was visible, and it was the familiar Basilisk, Admiral Fairfield’s vessel. We expected the rest of the American armada to follow in its wake.

  But we were mistaken in that hope.

  Soon it became obvious that there was the Basilisk—and there was only the Basilisk.

  I cannot describe Julian’s appearance as this unwelcome truth sank home. His skin took on an additional pallor. His eyes grew haggard. His bright blue and yellow garb, which he had worn so boldly, clung to his slumped shoulders like an admonition.

  Admiral Fairfield did what he could with his single ship. The Basilisk was one of the finest vessels of the Navy, and he worked it ingeniously. He came in under full steam, all sails reefed, the ship’s stacks gouting smoke as if half the coal in all the world were burning belowdecks. He slid obliquely past the Dutch wharves at Goose Bay, strafing the town with well-placed cannon shots. Then he came up the shoreline and attempted to shell the Mitteleuropan positions where we fought. That bombardment would have helped us enormously, had it succeeded. But the Dutch shore batteries were well-manned and well-entrenched. They raked the Basilisk in return. She withstood the barrage for many minutes, trying to work in close enough to be of some use to us. But the closer she got, the more vulnerable she became. Her masts were nearly chewed away, and flames had broken out on her forecastle by the time she finally gave up the attempt. She could do nothing but limp away while her engines were still capable of turning her screws. She seemed to be headed for Striver, or some other protected place up-lake.

  Julian watched until she was nearly out of sight. Then he turned and ordered Sam to call a general retreat. His voice sounded as chill and eerie as if it emanated from a gap in some old hollow log. Sam was glum as well, and walked off speechlessly, shaking his head.

  A retreat is not as glamorous a thing as an attack, but it can be accomplished either well or badly, and Julian deserves credit for a careful withdrawal from the disaster Goose Bay had become.

  Still it was a costly and humiliating maneuver. By the time we were in acceptable form for a forced march to Striver, the Dutch were swarming at our backs. Julian assigned fresh troops (in so far as we had any) to the rear, and their careful feint-and-fall-back operations helped protect the bulk of the army.

  Much of our cavalry had been lost in the futile foray behind the Mitteleuropan lines, so we were vulnerable to sniping from Dutch horsemen. Their detachments came at us from oblique angles, attempting to cut away companies of American troops and “take them in detail.” More than a few infantrymen were scooped up in this fashion. But whenever such a firefight erupted Julian would ride to the place like a human battle-flag, to shore up morale; and we fought these battles with a ferocity that appeared to startle and unnerve our opponents.

  By sundown we were within sight of the outskirts of Striver. Messengers had warned the garrison that we would be arriving under Dutch harassment, and a defensive perimeter, with abattises and lunettes and clean lines of fire, had already been established. These were a welcome sight for battered survivors. The Dominion wagons went in ahead of us, so that their cargo of wounded men could be received by the field hospital.

  Julian and Sam, and I along with them, helped fight the rear-guard action while the bulk of our men sought the safety of the captive town. This went well enough for a time, for the Dutch had straggled in their pursuit and couldn’t put together a formal assault. But as soon as their artillery came up we were in a ticklish situation.

  Explosive shells landing in a tight mass of men, all of whom are within sprinting distance of safety, are a perfect recipe for death and panic. That’s what happened. In terms of actual losses it wasn’t too bad—Striver’s defenders silenced the Dutch cannons as soon they could range in on them—but the mossy ground in front of our entrenchments was quickly watered with a great deal of patriotic blood, and festooned with other patriotic body parts, during that long cold and terrible dusk.

  Julian on his horse was a conspicuous target, and I was astonished that he was not picked off immediately by some far-sighted Dut
ch rifleman. But—as in the Battle of Mascouche outside of Montreal—he seemed wrapped in some cloak of invulnerability, which warded off hot lead.

  The miraculous protection didn’t extend to those beside him. Our battle-flag went down when a staff officer’s horse was killed by shrapnel from an exploding shell. Sam dismounted at once and stooped to retrieve the banner. But he had barely raised it again when a Dutch bullet took him, and he toppled to the ground.

  I don’t remember exactly the events that followed, except that I rallied two men who helped me carry Sam to a Dominion wagon, where he was stacked with a dozen other wounded soldiers awaiting treatment. The ambulance driver flogged his mules when I told him he had one of Julian’s staff aboard; and I rode along with him to the makeshift hospital in that wide street in Striver called Portage.

  Sam’s wound was in his left arm, below the elbow. I couldn’t tell whether it was a bullet or shrapnel that had struck him. Whatever it was, it had broken the narrow bones above the wrist and torn away so much flesh that what remained was little more than tags and tatters. His entire left hand was nearly severed, and kept its association with his body only by the merest hinge of bloody gristle.

  He was conscious, though groggy and pale, and he told me to tie a tourniquet about his arm to staunch the prodigious bleeding. I did so. I was glad to be helpful, and did not mind the blood which spattered across my already torn uniform, so much of it that when we arrived at the hospital an attendant looked at me wide-eyed and asked me where I was hurt.

  The hospital was already crowded, and quickly becoming more so as cart-loads of injured men were unloaded at the door. Three medics were in attendance, but two of them were already engaged in operations that couldn’t be interrupted. Luckily there was a kind of triage-by-rank being practiced, and the third doctor came promptly at the announcement of Sam’s high position.

  The doctor made a hasty inspection of Sam’s injury and announced that it wanted an amputation. Sam did not like this idea, and began a feeble protest, until the medic doused a cloth with liquid from a brown bottle and held it against Sam’s mouth, which caused the patient’s eyes to close and his struggles to abate. It looked more like murder than mercy; but the physician, rolling up one of Sam’s eyelids to inspect his pupils, seemed satisfied with the result.

  “How does inhaling through that rag cure his wound?” I asked.

  The doctor took notice of my presence for the first time. “It doesn’t,” he said. “It only makes it easier for me to do my work. What are you to this man?”

  “His adjutant,” I said; and added, “His friend.”

  “Well, now you’re an assistant surgeon.”

  “I beg your pardon, but I’m not.”

  “Yes you are. My name is Dr. Linch. You—?”

  “Colonel Adam Hazzard.”

  He grabbed a cotton smock from a nearby shelf and threw it at me. “Cover yourself with this, Colonel Hazzard. Have you washed your hands lately?”

  “Yes, just a couple of days ago.”

  “Dip them in that bucket on the table.”

  The bucket contained an astringent chemical of some kind, which burned the small cuts I had acquired over the course of the retreat from Goose Bay, but it dissolved away most of the dirt. It had been used for this purpose before me, I deduced, for the liquid was discolored with oily scum and old blood.

  “And rinse a bone saw there while you’re at it,” Linch said, pointing at a nasty-looking bladed thing, which I dipped in the same bucket, and dried on the cleanest part of an old towel. “Now steady his arm while I cut.”

  Dr. Linch was a brusque man, and didn’t brook debate.

  I had never witnessed an amputation before, at least at close range. Linch was not a young man, but his hands were remarkably steady, and I admired his quickness even as I suppressed an urge to flee. I was fascinated (in the least pleasant sense of that word) by the efficiency of his bone-cutting. He was very neat about sealing the blood vessels which extended from the stump of Sam’s forearm once the grisly surgery was complete. Linch kept a number of sewing needles in the lapel of his white jacket, and each needle was fitted with a length of silk thread. At intervals the doctor would pluck one of these needles and use it to stitch a leaking vein, his hands moving with a brisk familiarity that made me think of a fisherman baiting a hook with a pulsing blue worm—leaving a few inches loose so the thread could be pulled out again once the stump had healed. He insisted on explaining these procedures as he worked, even though the thought of it made me queasy; and I resolved that I would never undertake a medical career even if the job of writing fiction failed to pan out. It was as bad as boning beef, it seemed to me—worse, in some ways, since beef carcasses don’t wake up screaming as they’re flensed, and need to be sedated a second time.

  I couldn’t watch the surgery too closely without experiencing a degree of nausea; and whenever possible I looked away, though the room was full of beds occupied by men just as badly injured as Sam, if not worse, and the sight of them offered little relief. Amputation was the chief cure being applied by the medics. The grating sound of the bone saws never altogether ceased. A blood-drenched orderly came through the room at intervals to collect severed limbs for disposal. When he took what remained of Sam’s left hand from the floor where Dr. Linch had dropped it, this unusual act brought home the horror of the occasion in a way the surgery itself had not. I wanted to retrieve the hand—carrying it off so casually seemed disrespectful, and I couldn’t silence the thought that Sam might want it again in the future. I had to clench my teeth to steady my nerves.

  During one of these unsuccessful attempts to distract myself I caught sight of a face I recognized, in a novel context. A tall, gaunt individual wearing a Dominion hat moved among the wounded and the dying, offering solace and words from the Bible. He recognized me, too, and tried but failed to keep his face averted—this individual was none other than Private Langers!

  I was outraged, but said nothing until Sam’s stump had had its skin-flaps sewn together, for fear of distracting Dr. Linch from that important work. As soon as he had wrapped the last bandage, however, I said, “Dr. Linch, there’s an impostor here,” and pointed out Langers to him. “That man is no Dominion officer.”

  “I know all about it,” Dr. Linch said indifferently.

  “You do! Why don’t you throw him out, then?”

  “Because he serves a purpose. There are no genuine Dominion officers to be had. Julian Conqueror barred them from the expedition, and for the most part that’s not a bad thing, since we haven’t had to endure their Sunday scoldings. But a dying soldier generally wants a godly man beside him, and seldom inquires into the Pastor’s pedigree. When I asked for a volunteer among the troops—someone, anyone, even if his only religious office was passing the plate at church—this man Langers raised his hand. The rest were afraid of missing the action, or of appearing cowardly.”

  “I’m sure those concerns weren’t foremost in Private Langers’s mind. What religious experience does he claim to have?”

  “He says he used to be a colporteur, distributing pamphlets on sacred subjects.”

  I explained that Langers’s pamphlets had been little more than pornographic guides to behavior not approved of by Biblical authorities, and that Langers himself was a fraud and a habitual liar.

  “Has a Dominion officer ever been disqualified on those grounds? Don’t bother about him, Colonel Hazzard—he may be a cracked vessel, but we don’t own a better one just now.”

  I took Dr. Linch’s advice. Perhaps it wasn’t as cynical as it sounded. As I left the surgical ward I overheard Langers giving solace to a man who had suffered a ghastly head injury. The victim’s one good eye was fixed on Langers, while the larcenous Private misquoted what were perhaps the only Bible verses he had ever learned verbatim, from the Song of Solomon, mingled with passages from the banned poet Whitman.

  How much better is love than wine! he intoned in a soothing voice, one hand poised in a benedi
ction and a sly, sweet smile on his lips. Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or am touched from. In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass. Awake, oh north wind, and come thou south, and blow through this garden so that the spice of it might flow out! Deep waters cannot quench love, nor a flood drown it. Set me as a seal on your heart, for love is as strong as death, and jealousy is as cruel as the grave.

  These words were not the standard consolation, but they were pleasant to hear at any time; and in the privacy of my thoughts I forgave Private Langers for uttering them under false pretenses, for the tear that formed in the single whole eye of the dying man was unquestionably a grateful and authentic one.

  * The flag of the Goose Bay Campaign had been designed by Julian himself. It showed a red boot against a yellow orb on a starry black background, and carried the legend “WE HAVE STEPPED UPON THE MOON.” Most of the troops understood the story of Americans on the Moon as a fable, rather than historical fact; but it was a bracing boast, and implied to the enemy that we were experienced at treading on things, and that they might be next.

  * I had learned all my strategy and tactics from the war narratives of Mr. Charles Curtis Easton, in which every attack is fierce and bold, and nearly fails, but finally succeeds by some combination of luck and American ingenuity. These circumstances are more easily arranged on the printed page than on the field of battle.

  3

  Sam was awake the next day, although the doses of watered opium that kept his pain at bay also interfered with his clarity of thought.

  Julian didn’t visit him, for he was too busy securing Striver to withstand what might be a long siege. We were well protected—our defensive perimeter was anchored against Lake Melville and the Northwest River, so we could not easily be outflanked; and it would have been outrageously costly for the Dutch to mount a frontal attack. But they could starve us out, given time; and that was probably what they intended to do. This meant that food and medical supplies had to be itemized, guarded, and rationed—and that was some of the business Julian was about.