Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America

by Robert Charles Wilson

  The wind was fierce, and carried sparks and embers with it. At least so far, however, the water-engines had succeeded in keeping the Houston Canal as a sort of fire-break, and the flames had not spread beyond it. That was fortunate, for the address I was seeking was just this side of that Canal.

  “You might as well break down and tell me where we’re going,” Lymon Pugh said.

  “The Church of the Apostles Etc.”

  “What—Magnus Stepney’s old barn? It was raided last year, I thought.”

  “He keeps a smaller version of it in the loft of a building on Ninth Street.”

  “You think Julian went there, despite the fire?”

  “It’s an intuition,” I muttered, and it was, and probably a mistaken one; but the idea that they had come here, once fixed in my mind, had been impossible to dislodge.

  “Maybe more than that,” Lymon said suddenly, reining up his horse and gesturing to me to follow him into an alley. “Look there.”

  We kept to the shadows as a group of horsemen rode by, not away from but toward the fire, the same direction we were going. Shortly I realized what had alarmed Lymon about them: the man at the head was Deacon Hollingshead himself, with a body of Ecclesiastical Police in gilded uniforms trailing behind. I was sure it was the Deacon, for he was close enough to be easily recognized, and I could not forget the hateful face of the man who had attempted to put Calyxa on trial.

  He glanced at us as he passed; but the plague masks served to disguise us, and he was too intent on his business to spare us any closer attention.

  His destination was ours. By the time we reached the warehouse which contained the attic Church of Magnus Stepney, Hollingshead and his men were dismounted in front of it. The half-dozen Ecclesiastical Police quickly surrounded the building, blocking every entrance. Lymon and I watched from a safe distance as they performed their evolutions.

  There were no fire-fighters nearby—in fact the street was deserted; its residents had long since fled. The street had changed some since my last visit, mainly due to Julian’s lifting of the ban on apostate churches. Just a year ago it had been a furtive neighborhood of hemp-shops and boarding houses and other low businesses. It still was; but newly-established Temples and Mosques and Places of Worship had sprung up among the taverns and slatternly hotels, many of them painted in gaudy colors, or decorated with fanciful symbols and slogans, as if a Carnival of Faith had arrived in town.

  The fire-wagons were all down at the Canal itself, behind and to the west of us. The Immigrant District burned freely, and wind-blown embers floated down, but neither the warehouse containing the Church of the Apostles Etc. nor any of the nearby structures was actually burning yet.

  “Julian must be inside, as you guessed,” said Lymon Pugh, “or else the Deacon wouldn’t be here. Look how they cover the entrances—very professional, for Dominion men, though any Army patrol would do it better.”

  “And they’re well-armed,” I added, for the ecclesiastical troopers carried gleaming Pittsburgh rifles in their hands. “If only we had got here first!”

  “No, Adam, you’re wrong about that. If we had got here first we’d be inside with Julian, and subject to the Deacon’s whims. As it stands we have a chance of taking the enemy by surprise.”

  “Just the two of us?”

  “Calls for stealth,” Lymon Pugh admitted, “but it can be done.”

  “I don’t have even a pistol to use against their weapons.”

  “Leave that part to me. They divide their forces, Adam, see? Six men plus the Deacon, and he just sent three of them around the back to cover the exits.”

  “Even three armed men—”

  “Dominion police! Why, I could have brought down a dozen such men even before I joined the Army. Often did.”

  Despite what Lymon had told me about his street-fighting and beef-boning days, it struck me as a risky proposition. But he was firm about it. He told me to stay where I was, and soothe the horses, while he circled around back of the warehouse. Once the rear guards were out of action he would commandeer their rifles, and when we were both armed we could assault the front—if I thought it was worth doing. I told him I had come this far, and might as well finish the journey, so long as we had a reasonable chance of escaping death.

  He smiled and dashed off into the darkness, keeping to the shadows and circling wide.

  The horses were made nervous by the fire across the Canal, and they wanted to whinny and stomp. I tethered them to an alley post, and spent considerable time calming them down. The flames were so high in the sky that they cast a red twilight over everything, and the smoke was so thick that even my plague mask couldn’t keep it out, and it was all I could do to keep from coughing explosively.

  Then there was the sound of a gunshot, followed by a second stuttering volley of rifle fire. All my work calming the horses was instantly undone. I looked across the street to the warehouse. The ecclesiastical thugs remaining there took up their weapons and hurried around the side of the building to find out what had happened, leaving the Deacon by himself.

  The Deacon didn’t linger, however. He entered the warehouse by the front door, alone, and seeming very determined, and with a pistol gripped tightly in his hand.

  Lymon’s plan was not developing as expected, and I was forced to act on my own recognizance. I hurried across the empty street, past overturned trash-barrels and flakes of ash newly-fallen from the sooty sky, and followed Deacon Hollingshead into the building, treading very lightly so he would not be aware of my presence.

  It took me a while to make my way up the stairs, for the only illumination was the glare of the fire as it came through the landing windows. At every moment I feared hearing another gunshot, and expected to arrive at the upstairs chapel to find Julian dead at the Deacon’s hands. But no such shot was fired; and when I came to the sign at the top of the stairs—

  CHURCH OF THE APOSTLES ETC.

  GOD IS CONSCIENCE

  —HAVE NO OTHER—

  LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOUR BROTHER

  I was able to hear the sound of voices.

  A few more steps brought me to the door of the large attic room which Magnus used for a chapel, with its benches for parishioners and its high round window under a peaked roof. There were no parishioners inside, however, as I discovered when I put my head around the door. What I saw was Deacon Hollingshead with his back to me, aiming a pistol at Julian Comstock and Magnus Stepney, who sat side-by-side on the nearest bench.

  This was about all I could make out, for the only light was from the high window facing the Egyptian district. Everything was bathed in shades of umber, orange, and smoldering red; and this light was not steady, but trembled and wavered and waxed and waned.

  I had not yet been seen, and I stopped where I was.

  “Of all the crimes you committed,” Hollingshead was saying, “and they’re too numerous to account, the one that ‘brings me here,’ since you ask, is the murder of my daughter.”

  Magnus and Julian leaned into one another on their bench. Their faces were shadowed and obscure, and Julian’s voice, when he spoke, was hardly a whisper.

  “Then you’re here on a useless mission,” he said. “Whatever else I may have done, I haven’t harmed your daughter in any way.”

  The Deacon gave a wild laugh. “Haven’t harmed her! You ordered the attack on Colorado Springs, didn’t you?”

  Julian nodded slowly.

  “Then you killed her as surely as if you had driven a dagger into her breast! Her house, my house, was demolished by artillery fire. It burned to the ground, Mr. President. No one survived.”

  “I’m sorry for the destruction of your property—”

  “My property!”

  “—and for all the lives that were lost in the attack—pointlessly, I suppose—though history will have the final word on that. The Dominion could have yielded, you know, and all that bloodshed would have been prevented. But as far as your daughter is concerned—your daughter i
s alive, Deacon Hollingshead.”

  The Deacon had probably expected some fumbling denial or perhaps a plea for mercy. But this mild retort took him by surprise. He lowered his pistol a few degrees, and I thought about tackling him and fighting him for it, but the risk seemed too great just now.

  “Do you mean something particular by that,” he asked, “or are you completely mad?”

  “The story of your daughter’s troubles circulated widely—”

  “Thanks in part to that vulgar song your friend’s whorish wife performed at last year’s Independence Day celebrations—”

  “And I admit I took an interest in her. I investigated her situation very carefully. Not long before the attack on Colorado Springs I sent two of my Republican Guards to interview her.”

  “To interview her! Is this true?”

  “My men apprised her of the pending military action and offered her a means of escape.”

  Hollingshead took a step closer to his captives. “Lies, no doubt; but I swear to you, Julian Comstock, if in fact you took my daughter as a hostage, tell me where she is—tell me, and I might let you live a while yet.”

  “Your daughter’s not a hostage. I said she was offered a means of escape. By that I mean relocation to another city—far from the heart of the Dominion, and far from you, Deacon Hollingshead—where she can live under an assumed name, and associate freely with anyone she likes.”

  “Sin freely, you mean! If that’s true, you might as well have killed her! You’ve murdered her immortal soul, which is just the same thing!”

  “Just the same to you. The young lady has a different opinion.”

  That cranked up the Deacon’s rage another notch. He took a menacing step forward, and so did I, coming up behind him. By this time Julian and Magnus had seen me. But they were wise enough to give no sign.

  “If you imagine you’ve achieved some sort of victory,” the Deacon said, “think again. President Comstock! Julian Conqueror! Hah! Where’s Julian Conqueror now, when you think about it? Hiding in an apostate church, with his Presidency down around his head and the city burning not a hundred yards away!”

  “What I did for your daughter I did for her sake, not on account of you. Your daughter carries scars from the whippings you gave her. If I hadn’t intervened I doubt she would have lived to see thirty years of age, under your tutelage.”

  I wondered if Julian was trying to get himself killed, he vexed the Deacon so. I took another quiet step forward.

  “I’ll have her back before long,” the Deacon said.

  “I expect you won’t. She’s pretty carefully hidden. She’ll live to curse your name. She’s cursed it more than once already.”

  “I should kill you for that alone.”

  “Do so, then—it won’t make any difference.”

  “It makes every difference. You’re a failure, Julian Comstock, and your Presidency is a failure, and your rebellion against the Dominion is a failure.”

  “I guess the Dominion will stagger on a while longer. But it’s doomed in the long run, you know. Such institutions don’t last. Look at history. There have been a thousand Dominions. They fall and are forgotten, or they change beyond recognition.”

  “The history of the world is written in Scripture, and it ends in a Kingdom.”

  “The history of the world is written in sand, and it evolves as the wind blows.”

  “Tell me where my daughter is.”

  “I won’t.”

  “I’ll kill your sodomitic friend first, in that case, and then—”

  But he didn’t finish his speech. I took from my pocket the Christmas gift Lymon Pugh had given me. It was a Knocker, of course. Lymon had continually improved his technique in the art of Knocker-making, and had honored me with one of his best. The hempen sack was stitched and beaded in a cunning pattern, and the lead slug inside it might have been forged in an Ostrich egg.

  I lunged forward, and employed this useful gift in knocking the pistol out of the Deacon’s hand.

  He got off a shot in the process, but the bullet went wild and lodged in the floor. Hollingshead whirled around, gripping his injured hand, and stared. First he stared at me (I suppose he recognized me as Calyxa’s husband), and then he stared at the device in my hand.

  “What is that thing?” he demanded.

  “It’s called a Knocker,” I said, and I gave him a brisk demonstration of its uses, and before long he was lying at my feet, inert.

  Lymon Pugh came up the stairs just then. “I had some trouble,” he began, “but I put away all the Ecclesiastical Police, one by one—but I heard a shot from up here—say, is that the Deacon? He looks all caved in.”

  “Keep a guard on the door, please, Lymon,” I said, for I wanted to hold a private conversation with Julian. Lymon took the hint and left the room.

  Julian didn’t stand, or otherwise alter his position. He sat propped against Magnus Stepney, who was likewise propped against him, and they looked like a pair of rag dolls tossed aside by an impatient child. I stepped around the fallen Deacon and walked toward them.

  “Not too close,” Julian said.

  I hesitated. “What do you mean?”

  Magnus Stepney answered this time, instead of Julian: “I nearly failed to recognize you in that plague mask. But you had better keep it on, Adam Hazzard.”

  “Because of the smoke, you mean?”

  “No.”

  Magnus reached down to pick up a lantern, which was at his feet. He lit it with a match, and held it high, so that the light fell over him and Julian.

  I understood instantly what the problem was, and I admit that I gasped and fell back a step.

  Julian was pale, and his eyes were half-lidded, and fever-spots burned on both cheeks. But that wasn’t the telling symptom. The telling symptom was the crop of pale yellow pustules, like snowdrops in a winter garden, that rose above his collar and descended down his arms.

  “Oh,” I said. “Oh.”

  “The Pox,” Julian said. “I wasn’t sure until tonight that I was infected, but when the lesions appeared I couldn’t fool myself any longer. That’s why I kept myself separate in my box at the theater—that’s why I left without warning. And that’s why I can’t join you aboard the Goldwing, in case you were about to ask. I might infect the whole crew and passengers. Kill half the people I love, and die myself, into the bargain.”

  “So you came here?”

  “It’s as good a place to die as any, I think.”

  “The fire will kill you before the plague does.”

  He only shrugged at that.

  “What about you, Magnus?” I asked. “You’re sitting there right next to him—aren’t you afraid of getting sick?”

  “In all likelihood I already am,” he said, “but thank you for asking, Adam. I mean to stay with Julian as long as I have the strength in me.”

  It was a saintly thing to say. Julian took the hand of Magnus, and stretched himself out on the pew, moaning a little at the pressure on his sores, and rested his head in Magnus’s lap.

  I had always hoped Julian would find a woman who loved him, so he could experience some of the pleasures in life that had been granted to me and denied to him. That didn’t happen; but I was consoled that he would at least have his friend Magnus beside him in his extremity. He might not have a wife to give him solace, or to smooth his dying pillow; but he had Magnus, and perhaps in Julian’s eyes that was just as good.

  “I missed the third act curtain,” Julian said wistfully—I think his mind had begun to wander. “Was there applause?”

  “Applause, and cheering, and plenty of it.”

  It was hard to tell in the dim light, but I think he smiled.

  “It was a good show, wasn’t it, Adam?”

  “A fine show. None better.”

  “And I’ll be remembered for it, do you think?”

  “Of course you will.”

  He nodded and closed his eyes.

  “Is it true,” I asked him, “w
hat you told the Deacon about his daughter?”

  “She’s safe in Montreal on my orders.”

  “That was a noble act.”

  “It offsets the stink of war and death. My own small offering to Conscience. Do you suppose it’s good enough?” he asked, turning his feverish eyes to Magnus.

  “Conscience isn’t particular,” Magnus said. “He accepts most any offering, and you made a generous one.”

  “Thank you for coming, Adam,” Julian said, and I could see that he was tiring quickly. “But you had better make for the docks now. The Goldwing won’t wait, and the flames are spreading, I expect.”

  “The wind carries embers over the canal. This very building will be on fire soon, if it isn’t already.”

  “I expect you’re right,” said Julian.

  But neither of them moved, and I couldn’t turn away.

  “I’m afraid I wasn’t a very good President,” Julian whispered.

  “But you were a good friend.”

  “See to that baby of yours, Adam Hazzard. Do I hear her crying? I think I’d like to sleep just now.”

  He closed his eyes and paid me no more attention. I thanked Magnus for his kindness and left without turning back.

  In the hot and cindery air outside the building I said my goodbyes to Lymon Pugh. Lymon took my hand a final time, and said he was sorry about Julian, and wished me well in “foreign places.” Then he rode away uptown, a lone horseman on a vacant street all strewn with windblown embers.