Julian Comstock

by Robert Charles Wilson

  Julian left his carriage just as ours was pulling up. He would watch the movie from a protected box above the gallery, along with Magnus Stepney, who was accorded that privilege as the star of the film. Sam and Julian’s mother had a similar box assigned to them, while Calyxa and I held reserved seats in the orchestra section. We were only halfway through the enormous lobby, however, when a man I recognized as the Theater Director came up to us in a rush.

  “Mrs. Hazzard!” he cried, recognizing her, for she had had some dealing with him in her role as lyricist and composer.

  “What is it?” Calyxa asked.

  “I’ve been trying to reach you! We have an unexpected and serious problem, Mrs. Hazzard. As you know, Candita Bentley* vocalizes the role of Emma. But Candita is ill—a sudden attack—Pox,” he confided in a scandalized tone. “Her understudy is down with it, too.”

  “The show is canceled?”

  “Don’t even whisper it! No, certainly not; but we need a new Emma, at least for the songs. I can call up someone from the chorus; but I thought—since you wrote the score, and since everyone says you have the voice for it—I know this is absurdly short notice, and I know you haven’t rehearsed—”

  Calyxa took the startling invitation very calmly. “I don’t need to rehearse. Just show me where to stand.”

  “You’ll sing the role, then?”

  “Yes. Better me than some chorister.”

  “But that’s wonderful! I can’t thank you enough!”

  “You don’t have to. Adam, do you mind me voicing Emma?”

  “No—but are you confident you can do this?”

  “They’re my songs, and I can sing them as well as any of these Broadway women. Better, I expect.”

  Calyxa had been offered the vocal part of Emma early in the planning of the production, but she had reluctantly refused it, since she was preoccupied with Flaxie and the ceaseless duties of motherhood. Tonight’s unexpected opportunity obviously pleased her. Stage fright wasn’t one of her faults.

  I wished her well, and she hurried off to prepare. There was a general announcement that the curtain-time had been postponed by fifteen minutes. I milled in the lobby in the meantime, until Sam Godwin approached me.

  His expression was somber. “Where’s your wife?” he asked.

  “Recruited into the show. Where’s yours?”

  “Gone back to the Palace.”

  “Back to the Palace! Why? She’ll miss the movie!”

  “It can’t be helped. There have been fresh developments, Adam. She’s packing for France,” Sam said in a very low voice, adding, “We leave tonight.”

  “To night!”

  “Keep your voice down! It can’t be that great a shock to you. The Army of the Laurentians is moving on the city, the Senate is in open revolt—”

  “All that was true before this evening.”

  “And now a fire has broken out in the Egyptian district. From what I’ve heard, most of Houston Street is in flames and the burning threatens to cross the Ninth Street Canal. The wind spreads it quickly, and if the flames reach the docks our only avenue of escape may be cut off.”

  “But—Sam! I’m not sure I’m ready—”

  “You’re as ready as you need to be, even if you have to sail with just the shoes on your feet and the shirt on your back. Our hand has been forced.”

  “But Flaxie—”

  “Emily will make sure the baby gets to the boat. She and Calyxa calculated everything well in advance. They’ve been ready a week now. Listen: our ship is the Goldwing, docked at the foot of 42nd Street. She sails at dawn.”

  “What about Julian, though? Have you told him about the fire?”

  “Not yet. He’s sealed himself in that box above the balcony and ringed himself with guards. But I’ll speak to him before the movie is finished, if I have to knock heads together to get at him.”

  “I don’t expect he would be willing to leave before the end of the show.” Nor would Calyxa be, now that she had been recruited into the business.

  “Probably not,” Sam said grimly. “But as soon as the curtain rings down we must all leave at once. Look for me in the lobby between acts. If you don’t see me, or if we’re separated—remember! The Goldwing, at dawn.”

  A bell rang, signaling us to take our seats.

  Of course my head was whirling with these plans as the curtain rose on Charles Darwin; but (apart from the fire in the Egyptian quarter) none of it was entirely unexpected, though I had hoped the need for flight would not arise so soon. There was no immediate active role I could take, however, so I tried to focus my attention on the event at hand.

  The orchestra played a lively overture combining the film’s major musical themes. The excitement in the audience was palpable. Then the lights went down and the projection began. A grandly ornate title card announced:

  THE LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF

  THE GREAT NATURALIST CHARLES DARWIN

  (FAMOUS FOR HIS THEORY OF EVOLUTION, ETC.)

  Produced by Mr. Julian Comstock and Company

  WITH THE ASSISTANCE OF THE

  NEW YORK STAGE AND SCREEN ALLIANCE

  featuring

  Julinda Pique as Emma Wedgwood

  and introducing

  Magnus Stepney in the Title Role

  That faded to a simpler card reading:

  OXFORD

  IN THE COUNTRY OF ENGLAND

  Long before the Fall of the Cities

  Thus the scene was set; and now young Darwin appeared for the first time, strolling through the Oxford countryside, which was really the game preserve of the Executive Palace dressed up with signs reading FORTY MILES TO LONDON AND WATCH OUT FOR FOX HUNTS and such, to create a general impression of Englishness.

  I had not seen any of the finished footage of the movie before tonight, and I had entertained some doubts about Pastor Stepney’s acting skills. But he performed a respectable Darwin, somewhat to my surprise. Perhaps a career in the pulpit is acceptable training for an actor. In any case he made a handsome naturalist; and the famous Julinda Pique, though nearly twice his age, portrayed a suitably attractive Emma, with make-up to conceal any cosmetic imperfections.

  I have already given the outline of the story, and I won’t repeat it here, except to mention certain highlights. Act I held the audience’s attention in a merciless grip. Darwin sang his Aria about the resemblance between insects of disparate species, voiced by a powerful tenor. The Oxford Bug Collecting Tournament was portrayed, with Emma cheering from the sidelines. I was unfailingly aware that, while it was Julinda Pique’s form and figure on screen, the voice that seemed to issue from her mouth was in fact produced by Calyxa in a side-booth. I had been afraid that Calyxa’s inexperience would betray her; but from her first refrain* she sounded strong and straightforward; and there were murmurs of appreciation from the audience.

  Of course the audience was disposed to be sympathetic, being composed mainly of apostates and rebels. Still, it was shocking to hear heresies so openly proclaimed. When the villainous Wilberforce sang Only God can make a beetle he was repeating exactly the orthodoxy I had learned in Dominion school; and Darwin’s riposte (I see the world always changing / unforced, unfixed, and rearranging) would have earned me a stern lecture, or worse, if I had offered it up to Ben Kreel in my youth. But was Darwin wrong? I had seen too much of the unfixed world to deny it.

  The insect tournament concluded with victory and a kiss for Charles Darwin. Darwin’s subsequent vow to travel the world in search of the secret of life, and Wilberforce’s jealous pledge of vengeance, formed the subject of a rousing Duet, which rang down the curtain on Act I, to riotous applause.

  A dry December wind blew steadily from the north that night, fanning the flames in the Egyptian quarter. The Spark had hurried out a special edition, and newsboys were already hawking copies of it outside the theater doors. BIG BLAZE HITS GYPTOWN was the vulgar but accurate headline.

  This was dismaying news, for an uncontrolled fire in a modern
city can quickly become a general disaster; but the theater was far from the flames, and there was no panic in the crowded lobby, only some excited conversation.

  I looked for Sam, and found him coming down a stairway from one of the high balconies.

  “Damn Julian!” he said as I came up beside him. “He won’t open that theater-box to anyone, including me—sits in there with Magnus Stepney and armed guards on the doors—no exceptions!”

  “I expect he’s nervous about the success of his film.”

  “I expect he’s half mad—he’s certainly been acting that way—but it’s no excuse!”

  “He’ll have to come out eventually. You can speak to him at the conclusion of the last act, perhaps.”

  “I’ll speak to him before that, if I have to pull a gun to do it! Adam, listen: I’ve had a report from the Guardsmen I sent along with Emily to the Palace. They say she had two wagons ready to go, and that she set off for the docks along with Flaxie and several nurses and servants and a fresh contingent of Guards. It was all very neatly and efficiently done.”

  I didn’t like the idea of Flaxie being spirited through the streets of Manhattan on a perilous night like this, without me to protect her; but I knew Julian’s mother loved the baby as if it were her own and would take every possible precaution. “And they’re safe, as far as you know?”

  “I’m certain they’re safe. Probably snug aboard the Goldwing by now. But there’s trouble at the Palace—that’s the bad news. The servants and Guard troops saw her drive away with all her possessions, and they’re bright enough to divine the reason for it. Lymon Pugh is doing his best to preserve order and prevent looting. But the news will get around quickly that Julian Conqueror has abdicated the Office of the Executive—and he has, whether he knows it or not—and the Palace grounds might yet be invaded by rioters or a rogue Army detachment.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means the hounds are at our heels, and I hope this damned Movie comes to an end soon!”

  With that, the bell rang for Act II.

  Act II was the story of Darwin’s travels at sea, a stark contrast to the rural idyll of Act I. As such, it mirrored the tempests and turmoil taking place in my own mind.

  Here was the Beagle (actually an old schooner hired by Julian for the production, anchored off Long Island), bound for South America with its crew of hardy sailors. Here was Emma Wedgwood back in En gland, refusing the courtship of the increasingly bitter (and wealthy) Wilberforce. Here was Wilberforce in a low dive by the sea, paying a drunken pirate captain to pursue and sink the Beagle.

  Here, too, was South America with all its peculiar tropical beauty. Here was Darwin discovering sea-shells in cliff-sides and prying up the bones of extinct mammals from ancient marl, all the while singing a meditation on the age of the Earth and fleeing from unusually aggressive armadillos. Here he was on the Galapagos Islands, collecting mockingbirds and confronting a ferocious Lion (really a mastiff dressed up in a carpet and a wig, but very convincing for all that). Jungles (mostly paper) stretched to distant mountains (painted), and a Giraffe appeared fleetingly.*

  The Beagle encountered Wilberforce’s cut-throats on the return voyage to En gland. The Beagle was boarded, and the ensuing battle was very realistic. For pirates Julian had recruited a number of men from New York waterfront dives, who suited the part in perhaps too many ways. They had been told how to strike blows and wield swords without killing anyone; but their grasp of the technique was often uncertain or impatient, and some of the blood in the scene was more authentic than the professional actors might have liked.

  Darwin proved to be a surprisingly skilled swordsman, for a Naturalist. He leapt up on the Beagle’s windlass, and defended the forecastle against dozens of assailants, singing:

  Now we see in miniature the force that shapes Creation:

  I’ll slay a Pirate—this one, here—and stop the generation

  Of all his heirs, and all their heirs, and all the heirs that follow,

  Just as the Long-Beaked bird outlives the starving Short-Beaked Swallow.

  Some pious men may find this truth unorthodox and bitter:

  But Nature, Chance, and Time ensure survival of the fitter!

  It was as good a scene of fighting as had ever been filmed, at least in my limited experience. The attending crowd of Aesthetes and Apostates was not easily impressed, but cheering broke out among them, and triumphant shouts when Darwin pierced the Pirate Captain with his sword.

  The Beagle reached London battered but unbowed—watched from the shore by Emma, and from the shadows by Wilberforce, now a Bishop, who gritted his teeth and sang a reprise of his murderous intentions.

  In the lobby, waiting for the third and final act to begin, I moved through the crowd to the great glass doors of the theater. I could see that the wind had gained strength, for it tore at the awnings and banners along Broadway, and the taxi-men at the curb were huddled together, struggling to keep their pipes alight. A two-horse fire wagon came rattling by, its brass bell ringing, no doubt headed for the Immigrant quarter.

  Messengers in Republican Guard uniforms came and went in flurries, shouldering past the ushers and ascending and descending the stars to the high balcony where Julian kept his box. Sam did not appear in the lobby, however, and I went back into the auditorium for Act III without being further enlightened.

  It was during this final act, as Darwin and Bishop Wilberforce sang at one another relentlessly during their great Debate, that the truth of my situation began to sink in. Even as the audience showed its appreciation for the drama—with cheers and whistles for Darwin, boos and catcalls for Wilberforce—my spirit was weighed down by the knowledge that I would soon be leaving my native country, perhaps forever.

  I considered myself to be a patriot, or at least as patriotic as the next man. That didn’t mean I would bow down to just any individual who assumed the Presidency, or to the Senate, for that matter, or even to the Dominion. I had seen too much of the imperfection and shortsightedness of such people and institutions. I loved the land, however—even Labrador, as much of it as I had seen, though with a tempered love; and certainly New York City; but above all the west, with its sundered badlands, open prairie, lush foothills, and purpled mountains. The boreal west was not rich or greatly inhabited, but its people were kind and gentle, and—

  No, that’s not what I mean. I don’t suppose westerners are humbler or nobler than anyone else. I knew for a fact there were crooks and bullies among them; though fewer, perhaps, head for head, than in Manhattan. No: what I mean is that I had grown up in the west and learned the world from it. From its wideness I learned the measure of a man; from its summer afternoons I learned the art and science of repose; from its winter nights I learned the bittersweet flavor of melancholy. All of us learn these things one way or another; but I learned them from the west, and I was loyal to it, in my fashion.

  And now I was leaving it all behind.

  These feelings gave a particular edge to Darwin’s Aria on the subject of Time and the Age of the Earth, though the sermon was not a new one to me, for I had heard these sentiments from Julian often enough. The mountains I admired were not eternal, the wheat I fed on grew from the bed of a primeval ocean, and ages of ice and fire had passed before the first human beings approached the Rocky Mountains and discovered Williams Ford. “Everything flows,” in the words of some philosopher Julian liked to quote; and you would be able to watch it do so, if you could hold still for an eon or so.

  That idea was as disturbing to me, this night, as it was to Bishop Wilberforce, up on the screen. I did not approve of Wilberforce, for he was a villain to Charles Darwin and a menace to poor Emma; but I felt an unexpected sympathy for him as he climbed the crags of Mount Oxford (actually some headland up the Hudson), hoping to gun down Evolution and murder Uncertainty into the bargain.

  It was Calyxa’s voice that brought me out of my funk. Emma Wedgwood sang,

  It’s difficult to marry a man />
  Who won’t admit the master plan

  In nature’s long exfoliation,

  But finds a better explanation

  In Natural Law and Chance Mutation—

  His theories shocked a Christian nation—

  But I love him nonetheless!

  Yes, I love him, nonetheless!

  and she sang it so wholeheartedly, and in such a winsome voice, that I forgot that it was Julinda Pique’s image on the screen, and saw Calyxa in my mind’s eye; and I became Darwin, battling for his bride. It wasn’t a trivial analogy, for Calyxa was in as much danger from the collapse of Julian’s Presidency as Emma Wedgwood ever was from the Bishop’s bullets and schemes.

  Those bullets and schemes were cunningly portrayed, and the audience gasped and cheered at each turn and reversal, and it seemed to me that Julian’s Life and Adventures of the Great Naturalist Charles Darwin was a great success, and that it would play to packed houses wherever it was allowed to be seen, if it was allowed to be seen. But by the end of it I was so wrought up with anxiety over current events that I didn’t wait for the end-credits to finish showing, but jumped the orchestra and cut around the screen to the hidden booths where the voice-actors and noise-makers did their work.

  That might not have been a wise act, for rumors of fire and abdication had already made the audience nervous. Ticket-holders were startled by the sight of me dodging in such a hurry past the screen, and casting awkward shadows on it; and when I tripped over a snare drum of the sort used to mimic the sound of gunshots, causing a racket that might have been the opening cannonade of a military attack, the audience finally gave up applauding and cleared the auditorium, endangering an usher in the process.

  Calyxa was surprised to see me, and a little miffed that I cut short the curtain-calls. But I caught her by the arm, and told her we were forced to leave Manhattan this very evening, and that Flaxie and Mrs. Godwin were already aboard the Goldwing. She took the news stoically and accepted a few compliments from her fellow players; then we left by a stage door at the rear.