Julian Comstock

by Robert Charles Wilson

  I was not a faithful man by most definitions. I wasn’t a devotee of the Church of Signs, and I had never adopted its doctrines as my own. Nevertheless I lifted the latch and opened the door of the nearest cage. I didn’t wear gloves or any such protection. My hands and arms were exposed and vulnerable. I reached inside.

  I had entered some wordless principality of grief and anger. There was no logic to the act, only the memory of the advice my father had given me, years ago, when I watched him feed living mice to his snakes while dodging their strikes and lunges. It shouldn’t be necessary to kill a serpent, he said, in the ordinary course of things, if you know what you’re doing. But unexpected events happen. Perhaps a stray viper threatens some innocent man or animal. Then you have to be decisive. You have to be quick. Don’t fear the creature, Adam. Grasp it where its neck ought to be, behind the head; ignore the tail, however it may thrash; and crack its skull, hard and often enough to subdue it.

  And that is what I did—repetitively, mechanically—until a dozen serpentine corpses lay stiffening at my feet.

  Then I turned back to my familiar old home, and went to the bed that had comforted me through many winters, and slept for hours without dreaming.

  In the morning the wire cages were bright with beads of dew, and the carcasses I had left behind were gone—some hungry animal had carried them off, I supposed.

  The day before I left Williams Ford I asked my mother whether she believed in God, and Heaven, and Angels, and that sort of thing.

  It was a bold question, and it took her by surprise. “That’s not the sort of thing a polite person ought to ask,” she said, “outside of church.”

  “Perhaps not; but it’s the kind of question Julian Comstock enjoys asking, almost every chance he can get.”

  “And it gets him in trouble, I expect?”

  “Often enough.”

  “You can take a lesson from that. And you know the answer, in any case. Haven’t I read to you from the Dominion books, and told you all the stories in the Bible?”

  “As a parent to a child. Not as one adult to another.”

  “You never stop being a parent, Adam, no matter how old or wise your child becomes—you’ll see.”

  “I’m sure you’re right. Do you, though? Believe in God, I mean?”

  She looked at me as if to gauge my earnestness. “I believe in all sorts of things,” she said, “though I don’t necessarily understand them. I believe in the moon and the stars, though I can’t tell you what they’re made of, or where they come from. I suppose God falls into that category—real enough to be felt from time to time, but mysterious in His nature, and often confusing.”

  “That’s a subtle answer.”

  “I wish I had a better one.”

  “What about Heaven, though? Do you think we go to Heaven when we die?”

  “Heaven is generally regarded as having strict admission requirements, though no two faiths agree on the details. I don’t know. I expect it’s like China—a place everyone acknowledges as real, but which few ever visit.”

  “There are Chinamen in New York City,” I volunteered. “And a great many Egyptians, besides.”

  “But hardly any angels, I expect.”

  “Next to none.”

  That was as much Theology as she would tolerate, so we dropped the subject, and spent our last day together discussing more cheerful matters; and in the morning I said goodbye to her, and left Williams Ford behind me for the second and last time.

  “In your many travels since we last met,” Ben Kreel said to me as we drove back down the Wire Road to Connaught, “did you ever get as far as Colorado Springs?”

  “No, sir,” I said. It was another sunlit day. The telegraph wires hummed in a warm breeze. The train that would take me away from my childhood home and all its memories was due in just three hours. “Mostly I was in various parts of Labrador, well north and east of Colorado.”

  “I’ve been to Colorado Springs five times,” Ben Kreel said, “for ecclesiastical training. It isn’t at all like the pictures in the Dominion readers. You know what I mean—the Dominion Academy is all they show, with its white pillars, and those big paintings of the Fall of the Cities.”

  “It’s very impressive, and worth a photograph.”

  “Certainly it is; but Colorado Springs is more than just the Academy, and so is the Dominion.”

  “I’m sure they are, sir.”

  “Colorado Springs is a town full of pious, prosperous men and women who are loyal to the Union and to their faith; and the Dominion isn’t strictly a building, nor even an organization, but an idea. A very bold and ambitious idea, an idea about taking the battered and imperfect world we live in and making it over fresh and new—making a Heavenly Kingdom of it, pure enough that the angels themselves wouldn’t be reluctant to tread there.”

  Unlike Manhattan, I thought to myself. “It seems as if we’re a long way from that. We haven’t taken Labrador yet, much less the world.”

  “It’s a chore for more than one lifetime. But we can’t commune directly with Heaven until we perfect the world, and we can’t perfect the world until we perfect ourselves. That’s the job of the Dominion, Adam: to make us all more perfect. It’s a stern duty, but it arises out of the common instincts of charity and good will. Those who chafe under it are generally too attached to some imperfection of their own, which they love with a sinful stubbornness.”

  “Yes, sir, that’s as you used to tell us at holiday services.”

  “I’m pleased you remember. Our enemy is anyone who rebels against God—perhaps you remember that aphorism, too.”

  “I do.”

  “What form do you suppose that rebellion generally takes, Adam?”

  “Sin,” I guessed.

  “Sin, yes, certainly, and plenty of that to go around. But most sin only sabotages the sinner. Some sin is more insidious, and aims directly at impeding the Dominion in its work.”

  “I’m not sure I know what you mean.” Though I had my suspicions.

  “Don’t you? When you were in the Army, did your regiment have a Dominion officer in it?”

  “Yes.”

  “And was he universally loved?”

  “It wasn’t a unanimous sentiment, no.”

  “Nor could it have been, since it was his job to elevate virtue and excoriate wrong-doing. Thieves do not love prisons, and sinners don’t love the Church. My point is that the Dominion stands in relation to the United States as that pastor stood to his troops. His purpose wasn’t to be loved for himself, but to coax and herd a recreant population into the corral of divine love.”

  For some reason I had a recollection of Lymon Pugh and his description of the meat-packing industry.

  “The Dominion takes a profound interest in the destiny of this nation, and every nation,” Ben Kreel said. “Compared with that institutional interest, the whims of Presidents are fleeting.”

  “This conversation is too cryptic,” I complained. “Is it about Julian? If that’s what you mean, just say so.”

  “Who am I to stand in judgment of the Chief Executive? I’m just a country pastor. But the Dominion watches, the Dominion judges; and the Dominion is older than Julian Comstock, and ultimately more powerful.”

  “Julian has nothing against the Dominion, except in some particulars.”

  “I hope that’s true, Adam; but, if so, why would he attempt to sever the ancient and beneficial connection between the Dominion and the Armies?”

  “What! Did he?”

  Ben Kreel smiled unpleasantly. For many years this man had seemed to me a minor deity, above reproach. He was a kindly voice, a useful teacher, and a sturdy peacemaker when there was conflict in the community. But looking at him now I detected something sour and triumphant in his nature, as if he delighted in having stolen a march on an upstart lease-boy. “Why, that’s exactly what he did, Adam; don’t you know? The news came by wire from Colorado Springs this morning. Julian Conqueror, so-called, has ordered the Do
minion to withdraw its representatives from the nation’s Armies and cease participating in military counsels.”

  “That’s a bold step,” I said, wincing.

  “It’s more than a bold step, Adam. It’s very nearly a declaration of war.” He leaned close to me and said in an oily and confiding tone, “A war he cannot win. If he doesn’t understand that, you ought to enlighten him.”

  “I’ll be sure to tell him what you said.”

  “Yes, thank you,” said Ben Kreel. “You’re a good friend to Julian Comstock.”

  “I try to be.”

  “But you shouldn’t walk in the footsteps even of your best friend, Adam Hazzard, if the road he’s following leads to Hell.”

  I was tempted to tell Ben Kreel that my belief in Hell was even shakier, these days, than my confidence in Paradise. Or I might have said that I had met a man in New York who claimed the only God was Conscience (“have no other”), under which standard the whole Dominion was an Apostasy, if not something worse; but I didn’t want to engage him in any further discussion, and I sat sullenly the rest of the way to Connaught.

  Shortly thereafter I boarded the train that would take me back to Manhattan. It was a more comfortable ride than the Caribou-Horn Train had been, the first time I left Williams Ford. But I felt no less afraid as I traveled in it.

  * Or if the reader doesn’t understand it right now, he will before very long. That’s the contract Life makes with Nature and Time; and we’re all bound by it, though none of us consented to the bargain.

  6

  After I had arrived back home, and made my reunion with Calyxa and Flaxie, and bathed away the grime of travel, and slept a night, I went to the Palace to see Julian.

  The Executive Palace was still, in the main, a mystery to me. It was an immense structure, finely divided into labyrinthine rooms and chambers. It housed servants, bureaucrats, and a small army of Republican Guards, in addition to the President himself. It rose three stories above the ground, and sheltered extensive basements and cellars beneath. It was the most wainscoted, draped, sashed, carpeted, and furbelowed building I had ever been inside; and I was never comfortable in it. The minor officials I passed regarded me with a disdain bordering on contempt, while the Republican Guards scowled and fingered their pistols at the sight of me.

  Julian did not “inhabit” this entire space—surely no one man could have done so—but spent most of his time in the Library Wing. The Library Wing contained not just the Presidential Library (which was extensive, though mainly Dominion-approved, and to which Julian had added many items culled from the liberated Archives) but a large reading room with high, sunny windows and an enormous oaken desk. It was this room Julian had made particularly his own, and that was where I visited him.

  Magnus Stepney, the rogue Pastor of the Church of the Apostles Etc., was also present, lounging in a stuffed chair and reading a book while Julian sat at the desk applying pen to paper. Pastor Stepney had been Julian’s close companion for many weeks now, and both of them smiled when I entered. They asked about Williams Ford, and my father and mother, and I told them a little about that sad business; but not much time had passed before Julian once more raised the question of his Movie Script.

  I mentioned to him that I had discussed the script with Mr. Charles Curtis Easton. I was afraid Julian might be unhappy that I had taken the matter “out of the family,” and gone to a stranger with it. He did seem a little nonplused; but Magnus Stepney—who was as much an Aesthete and devoted follower of Drama as Julian was*—clapped his hands and said I had done exactly the right thing: “That’s what we need, Julian, a professional opinion.”

  “Possibly so. Did Mr. Easton render an opinion?” Julian asked me.

  “He did, in fact.”

  “Would you care to mention what it was?”

  “He agreed that the story lacked some essential ingredients.”

  “Such as?”

  I cleared my throat. “Three acts—memorable songs—attractive women—pirates—a battle at sea—a despicable villain—a duel of honor—”

  “But none of those things actually happened to Mr. Darwin, or had any connection with him.”

  “Well, I suppose that’s the point. Do you want to tell the truth, or do you want to tell a story? The trick,” I said, remembering Theodore Dornwood’s commentary on my own writing, “is to steer a course between Scylla and Charybdis—”

  “Fine talk for a lease-boy,” Magnus Stepney said, laughing.

  “—where Scylla is truth, and Charybdis is drama—or the other way around; I don’t remember exactly.”

  Julian sighed, and rolled his eyes; but Stepney gave a little cheer and cried out, “That’s just what I’ve been telling you, Julian! It was good advice from me, and it’s good advice from Adam Hazzard and Mr. Charles Curtis Easton!”

  Julian said nothing more about it that day. Initially, of course, he was skeptical. But he didn’t resist the idea for long, for it appealed to his sense of Theater; and by the end of the week he had adopted it as his own.

  The rest of July was devoted to producing a final script. Some scholars have suggested that Julian “fiddled” with cinema, while his Presidency was collapsing around his head. But that’s not how it seemed in the summer of 2175. I think Julian saw the possibility of redemption in Art, after all the horrors he had experienced in War, though War is more customarily the business of the Commander in Chief. And I think there was a deeper reason why Julian ignored the protocols and entanglements of political supremacy. I believe he had genuinely expected to die in Labrador—had accepted it as his fate, once the Black Kite maneuver failed—and was shocked to find himself still alive, after he had led so many others to their deaths.

  His order to sever all formal connections between the Dominion and the Military had sent shock-waves through both Armies. Colorado Springs was in a state of virtual rebellion, and Deacon Hollingshead had ceased to visit the Executive Palace, or to acknowledge Julian in any way. The Dominion still kept a firm grip on its affiliated Churches, however, and “Julian the Atheist” was denounced from pulpits all over the country, which made the Eupatridians and the Senate uneasy in their support of him.

  But if Deacon Hollingshead did not pay us any visits, he was welcomely replaced by Mr. Charles Curtis Easton, who was invited to the Palace to meet Julian and discuss modifications to the Darwin script. Julian was charmed by Mr. Easton (“This is what you might become, Adam, if you live to a ripe old age, and grow a beard”), and delegated him to work alongside me as a Screen-Play Committee. We met on scheduled occasions, and Julian or Magnus Stepney often joined us, and within weeks we had sketched out a completely new outline of The Life and Adventures of the Great Naturalist Charles Darwin,which I will briefly describe.

  Act One was called Homology, and it dealt with Darwin’s youth. In this Act young Darwin meets the girl with whom he is destined to fall in love—his beautiful cousin Emma Wedgwood—and discovers he has a rival for her affections in the form of a young divinity student named Samuel Wilberforce. The two boys enter into a Beetle-Collecting and Interpreting Competition sponsored by the local University, which is called Oxford, and Miss Wedgwood in a coy moment mentions that she’ll save a kiss for the winner. Wilberforce then sings a song about Bugs as Specimens of the Divine Ordination of Species, while Darwin retorts with musical observations on Homology (that is, the physical similarities shared by Insects of different species). Wilberforce, a ruthless and cunning conspirator, tries and fails to have Darwin disqualified from the contest on the grounds of Blasphemy. But Oxford is deaf to his pleadings. Darwin wins the contest; Wilberforce comes in a bitter second; Emma kisses Darwin chastely on the cheek; Darwin blushes; and a simmering Wilberforce vows ultimate vengeance.

  Act Two was entitled Diversity; or, An English Boy at Sea,* and it covered Charles Darwin’s exciting voyages around South America aboard the exploratory vessel Beagle. This is where Darwin makes some of his many observations about Turtles and Finches’ B
eaks and such things, though we kept the scientific matter to a minimum so as not to strain the audience’s attention, and enlivened it with a scene involving a ferocious Lion. Out of all these unusual experiences Darwin begins to formulate his grand idea of the Diversity of Life, and how it arises from the effects of time and circumstance on animal reproduction. He resolves to communicate that insight to the world, though he knows it won’t be welcome in ecclesiastical circles. Back home, however, Wilberforce—now a junior Bishop at Oxford, and grimly determined to achieve even greater ecclesiastical power—has drawn on his family fortune and hired a gang of nautical pirates to hunt down the Beagle and sink her at sea. The Act culminates in a closely-fought Nautical Battle in which young Darwin, flailing about on the fore-deck with sword and pistol, speculates musically on the role of chance and “fitness” in determining the ultimate outcome of the conflict. The battle is bloody but (as in nature) the fittest survive—Darwin, happily, is one of them.

  By the beginning of Act Three, called The Descent of Man, all En gland is caught up in a fierce religious controversy over Darwin’s theories. Darwin has published a book about the Origin of Species; and Wilberforce, now Oxford’s head Bishop, has made a point of denouncing that work and ridiculing the author. He hopes by this strategy to create a conflict between Darwin and Emma Wedgwood, who have postponed their marriage (under pressure from Emma’s family) until Darwin’s respectability is more firmly established in the public mind. It seems a distant goal, at a time when English churches resound with anti-Darwinian rhetoric, torch-bearing mobs threaten Oxford, and Emma herself is torn by the conflict between Romantic Love and Religious Duty. The tempest culminates in a public Debate in a crowded London hall, where Darwin and Wilberforce argue over the ancestral relations of Ape and Man. Darwin expounds (sings, that is) his doctrine eloquently, with gentle humor; while Wilberforce, under the fierce lamp of logic, is revealed as a jealous poseur. “Darwin a True Scholar!” a headline in the next morning’s London Times proclaims, calming the general excitement and smoothing the way for Emma and Darwin to marry. But Wilberforce won’t suffer himself to be humiliated in such a manner. He accuses Darwin of blasphemy and personal insult, and challenges him to a duel. Darwin reluctantly accepts, seeing this as his only chance to rid himself of the meddlesome Bishop; and both men climb to a craggy meadow high in the wild and windblown mountains that loom over Oxford University.