Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America (47 page)

But it would be a desperate attempt at best."

"Desperate indeed, since we're considerably outnumbered."

"The decision is yours, of course." Admiral Fairfield stood up. "Leaving you in these circumstances is inexcusable, but I've already stretched my written orders past the limits of interpretation."

"I understand," Julian said, taking the Admiral's gnarled hand in his own with a touching sense of occasion. "I hold no grudge against you, Admiral, and I thank the Navy for everything it's done on our behalf."

"I hope the gratitude is not misplaced," the Admiral said grimly.

Julian and I went down to the docks, where Sam and dozens of other seriously wounded men were carried to boats for removal to the
Basilisk.
 I delivered several typewritten sheets to that vessel's Quartermaster—my war dispatches to the
Spark,
 which the Quartermaster promised to post from Newfoundland.

We caught up with Dr. Linch, who was supervising the proceedings, and he led us to Sam, who rested in a litter with a woolly blanket wrapped around him and the fitful snow collecting in his beard. His eyes were closed, and fever-roses flourished on his weathered cheeks. "Sam," said Julian, laying a gentle hand on his mentor's shoulder.

Sam's eyelids peeled back, and he gazed up into the rolling clouds a moment before his gaze fixed on Julian.

"Don't let them take me," he said in a shockingly frail voice.

"It's a question of need, not wish," said Julian. "Do as the doctor tells you, Sam, and soon you'll be well enough to resume the fight."

Sam wasn't soothed by these homilies, however, and he reached up from the blankets with his good right arm and took Julian by the collar. "You need my advice!"

"I can hardly do without it; but if you have any advice, Sam, give it to me now, for the boats are preparing to cast off."

"
Use it,
" Sam said, cryptically but insistently.

"Use it? Use what? I don't understand."

"The weapon! The
Chinese
 weapon."

Julian's eyes grew wide and his expression mournful. "Sam ... there
is
 no Chinese weapon."

"I know that, you young fool! Use it anyway."

Perhaps he was the victim of a febrile delusion. In any case, if he had more to say, we didn't hear it; for the litter-bearers carried him off, and before long he was tucked aboard the
Basilisk
 and bound for the Naval hospital at St.

John's.

I think I had never felt quite so alone as I did when the
Basilisk
 weighed anchor and sailed east—not even on the snowy plains of Athabaska, with Williams Ford and all my childhood standing behind me like a closed door.

Then, at least, I had been in the familiar company of Sam and Julian. Now Sam was gone ... and Julian, in his blue and yellow uniform (slightly tattered), seemed hardly a ghost of the Julian I had once known.

Among the goods Admiral Fairfield left us was a bag of mail. These packages and letters were distributed to the troops the same day. One of Julian's adjutants brought me an envelope with my name written on it in Calyxa's hand.

Night had fallen; so I took the letter close to a lamp, and opened it with trembling hands.

Calyxa had never been much of a correspondent—no one would call her wordy. The letter consisted of a salutation and three terse sentences: Dear Adam,

The Dominion threatens me. Please come home soon, preferably alive.

Also, I am pregnant.

Yrs, Calyxa.

Much could be said about the days leading up to Thanksgiving, as I experienced them. But I won't belabor the reader with trivialities. Those were dark and hungry times. I kept a careful record, sitting down each night with lamp and typewriter before I permitted myself the luxury of sleep. The pages are still in my possession, and in the interest of brevity I'll confine myself to quoting passages from them,
viz
:

It has become necessary to exclude what remains of the civilian population of Striver from the town, in order to conserve supplies.

The residents of Striver were no more or less hostile to us than might be expected of any group of otherwise comfortable men and women subjected to occupation and forced from their homes at gunpoint.
Many were relieved to be handed back into Mitteleuropan custody, for that's their preference, irrational though it might seem to a sane American.
⁷⁴
I stood on the roof of our headquarters this afternoon and watched the men, women, and children of Striver trudge across a frosty no-man's-land between the opposing trenches, protected by nothing more than a flag of truce. Their hunched figures, limned in an early twilight, tumbling now and then by accident into artillery craters, made me feel sympathetic, and I could almost imagine myself among them.

Perhaps any man is potentially a mirror of any other—perhaps that's what Julian means by "cultural relativism," though the term is reviled by the clergy.

At least in the hands of the Dutch these unfortunates will be guaranteed a daily meal. We are not. Rationing is in effect. Dutch luxuries taken from the dockside ware houses are counted as carefully as the salt beef and cornmeal, and apportioned along with those familiar foods, strange as it seems for American soldiers to be dining on calculated portions of Edam cheese, sturgeon roe, and mashy goose- liver along with their trail-cake and bacon. In any case, these delicacies serve only to postpone the day when our hunger becomes absolute. Given our numbers, and the accounted supplies, Julian calculates that we'll be tightening our belts by mid-month, and thoroughly starved by December.

The men still speculate about a Chinese weapon, and expect Julian to deploy it soon. He refuses to dispel these rumors, and smiles with a sort of mad recklessness whenever I mention the subject.

My mind, of course, is generally on Calyxa, and her troubles with the Dominion, and the other astonishing news contained in her letter. I am to be a father!—
will be
 a father, assuming Calyxa carries the child to term, even if I'm killed in this desolate corner of Labrador. For even a dead man can be a father.

That's a small but real comfort to me, though I can't hold back from worrying.

The wind blows steadily from the west, and is very cold, though the sky remains clear. Dusk comes early. We burn few lamps, to conserve fuel. To night the Aurora Borealis does a chill and stately dance with the North Star. It's not, unfortunately, a
silent
 night, for the Dutch have brought up their heavy artillery, and shells fall into the town at irregular intervals. Half the buildings of Striver are already blown up or burned down, it seems. Chimney-stacks stand like upraised fingers along empty, shattered streets.

Julian is moody and strange without Sam to guide and advise him. He insists on compiling a list of goods—not food, but dry goods—contained in the dockside ware houses. Today I assisted at one such inventory, and brought the list to Julian at the mayor's house.

The Dutch and their luxuries! The
Stadhouders
 are not just gluttons; they insist on all the subtler fineries of life, it seems. Julian carefully perused the lengthy cata log of textiles, tortoise shells, pharmaceutical compounds, cattle horns, musical instruments, horse shoes, ginseng, plumbing supplies,
et alia,
ours by right of pillage. His expression as he examined the list was thoughtful, even calculating.

"You don't itemize these bolts of silk," he remarked.

"There was too much of them," I told him. "The silk is all crated and stacked high—I expect it had only just arrived when we took the town. But you can't eat silk, Julian."

"I don't propose to eat it. Inspect it again tomorrow, Adam, and report back about the quality of it, especially the closeness of the weave."

"Surely my time could be better spent than by counting threads?"

"Think of it as
following orders,
" Julian said sharply. Then he looked up from his lists, and his expression softened. "I'm sorry, Adam. Humor me in this. But keep quiet about it, please—I don't want the troops thinking I've lost my mind."

"I'll knit you a Chinese robe, Julian, if you think it might help us survive the siege."

"That's exactly my plan—to survive, I mean—no
knitting
 will be required—though a little
sewing,
 perhaps."

He wouldn't discuss it further.

It occurs to me that Thanksgiving is coming. We have not given very much thought to that Universal Christian Holiday, perhaps because we can find so little to be thankful for in our current situation. We're more likely to pity ourselves than to count our blessings.

But that is shortsighted, my mother would surely say. In fact I'm thankful for many things.

I'm thankful that I have Calyxa's letter, however terse and brief, folded in my pocket next to my heart.

I'm thankful that I might be blessed with a child, the product of our possibly hasty but blessed and bountiful marriage.

I'm thankful that I'm still alive, and that Julian is still alive, though our condition is provisional and subject to change. (Of course no mortal creature

"knows the hour or the day," but we're unusual in being surrounded by Dutch infantrymen eager to hasten the unwelcome terminal event.) I'm thankful that despite my absence life goes on much as it always has in Williams Ford and in every other such simple place within the broad borders of the American Union. I'm even grateful for the cynical Philosophers, grimy Tipmen, pale Aesthetes, corrupt Own ers, and feckless Eupatridians who throng the streets of the great City of New York—or anyway grateful that I had the chance to see them at close proximity.

I'm thankful for my daily ration, though it shrinks from day to day.

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2174

Today our troops overran a Mitteleuropan trench which had been dug too close to our lines. Five captives were taken, and in an act of Christian charity they were allowed to live, though it will diminish our own supplies to feed them. Julian hopes they might be traded for American prisoners already in Dutch hands—he has sent that suggestion by flag-of-truce to the Dutch commander, but as yet no reply has been received.

I went to see the captives as they were being interrogated, in part to satisfy my curiosity about the enemy, whom I know only as faceless combatants and as the authors of incomprehensible letters. Only one of the men spoke English; the other four were questioned by a Lieutenant who has some Dutch and German.

The enemy soldiers are gaunt, stubborn men. They offer little more than their own names, even under duress. The exception to this is the single English-speaker—a former British merchant sailor, conscripted out of a barroom in Brussels while he was insensible with drink. His loyalties are mixed, and he doesn't mind giving estimates of the enemy's strength and positions.

He said the Dutchmen were confident that they would prevail in the siege.

They were cautious about initiating any attack, however, for rumors of the (unfortunately imaginary) Chinese weapon have reached them.
The prisoner said there was no detailed information concerning this weapon,
⁷⁵
but speculation about its nature suggested something profoundly deadly and unusual.

I carried that news to Julian to night.

He greeted it with grim amusement. "Just what I hoped the Dutch were thinking. Good! Maybe we can find a way to
deepen
 their fears."

Again, he wouldn't explain what he had in mind. But he has sequestered one of the ware houses by the docks (out of range of enemy artillery), and is converting it into some sort of workshop. Men have been recruited and sworn to secrecy. He has requisitioned countless bolts of black silk; also sewing machines, hooks and eyes, strips of lathing from damaged houses, bottles of caustic soda, and other peculiar items.

"Maybe it's good for the Dutch to believe in this imaginary weapon," I said, "but unfortunately our own troops believe in it too. In fact they imagine you're preparing to activate it."

"Perhaps I am."

"There
is
 no Chinese weapon, and you know that as well as I do, Julian, unless hunger has driven you entirely mad."

"Of course I know it. I'm a firm believer in its non-existence. All it means is that we're forced back on our ingenuity."

"You mean to build a weapon out of silk and fish-hooks?"

"Please keep that thought to yourself. The rest will become clear in time."

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2174

The pace of activity in Julian's sealed ware house increases. The "secret weapon" is now so commonly spoken-of that I fear the men will be bitter or even vindictive in their disappointment, when the truth is finally revealed.

More shells fell today, causing heavy casualties among one particular regiment. I volunteered at the field hospital in the afternoon, assisting Dr. Linch in the chopping, paring, and stitching of shattered limbs. The work is almost unbearable for anyone of a sensitive nature (and I count myself among that number), but necessity knows no excuse.

Our gravest enemy, Dr. Linch says, is less shrapnel than dysentery. At least a quarter of our soldiers are down with it, and it spreads with the infectiousness of a fire in a kindling-yard.

Corn-cake and salt cod for dinner, in small servings.

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 2174

Extraordinary events! I mean to set them down before I sleep, though it is already very late.

After the evening meal Julian summoned me to his quarters and asked me to bring along my typewriter. I carried the machine (no small task, in my weakened and hungry condition) to the upstairs study of the former mayor's house, and Julian instructed me to keep it ready, for there was a message he wished to dictate.

Then, to my astonishment, he summoned an adjutant and ordered Private Langers to be brought into his presence.

"Langers!" I exclaimed as soon as the adjutant had gone out. "What do you want with Langers? Has he committed some fresh outrage? I saw him at the hospital, perpetrating his clerical fraud; but I don't suppose that's what this is all about."