Robert Charles Wilson - Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America

Julian Comstock

by Robert Charles Wilson

from Tom Doherty Associates
A Hidden Place
Darwinia
Bios
The Perseids and Other Stories
The Chronoliths
Blind Lake
Spin
Axis
Julian Comstock

Robert Charles Wilson

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.
JULIAN COMSTOCK
Copyright 2009 by Robert Charles Wilson
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.
Edited by Teresa Nielsen Hayden
An Orb Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
www.tor-forge.com
Tor is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Wilson, Robert Charles, 1953
Julian Comstock : a story of 22nd-century America / Robert Charles Wilson.
p. cm.
"A Tom Doherty Associates book."
ISBN-13:978-0-7653-1971-5 ISBN-10:0-7653-1971-3 1. United StatesFiction.
2. Political fiction.
I. Title.
PR9199.3.W4987J85 2009
813'.54dc22
2008053400

First Edition: June 2009
Printed in the United States of America

To Mr. William Taylor Adams of Massachusetts, who might not have approved of it, this book is nevertheless respectfully and gratefully dedicated.

We read the past by the light of the present, and the forms vary as the shadows fall, or as the point of vision alters.
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE

Look not for roses in Attalus his garden, or wholesome flowers in a venomous plantation. And since there is scarce any one bad, but some others are the worse for him, tempt not contagion by proximity, and hazard not thyself in the shadow of corruption.
SIR THOMAS BROWNE

Crowns, generally speaking, have thorns.
ARTHUR E. HERTZLER

I mean to set down here the story of the life and adventures of Julian Comstock, better known as Julian the Agnostic or (after his uncle) Julian Conqueror.

Readers familiar with the name will naturally expect scenes of blood and betrayal, including the War in Labrador and Julian's run-in with the Church of the Dominion. I witnessed all those events firsthand, and at closer proximity than I might have liked, and they are all described in the five "Acts" (as I call them) that follow. In the company of Julian Comstock I traveled from the pine-bark Eden in which I was born all the way to Mascouche, Lake Melville, Manhattan, and stranger places; I saw men and governments rise and fall; and I woke many a morning with death staring me in the face. Some of the memories I mean to set down aren't pleasant ones, or flattering, and I tremble a little at the prospect of reliving them, but I intend to spare no onewe were what we were, and we became what we became, and the facts will ennoble or demean us, as the reader chooses to see it.

But I begin the story the way it began for mein a town in the boreal west, when Julian was young, and I was young, and neither of us was famous.

In October of 2172the year the Election show came to townJulian Comstock and I, along with his mentor Sam Godwin, rode to the Tip east of Williams Ford, where I came to possess a book, and Julian tutored me in one of his heresies.

There was a certain resolute promptness to the seasons in Athabaska in those days. Summers were long and hot, December brought snow and sudden freezes, and most years the River Pine ran freely by the first of March. Spring and fall were mere custodial functions, by comparison. Today might be the best we would get of autumnthe air brisk but not cold, the long sunlight unhindered by any cloud. It was a day we ought to have spent under Sam Godwin's tutelage, reading chapters from The Dominion History of the Union or Otis's War and How to Conduct It. But Sam wasn't a heartless overseer, and the gentle weather suggested the possibility of an outing. So we went to the stables where my father worked, and drew horses, and rode out of the Estate with lunches of black bread and salt ham in our back-satchels.

At first we headed south along the Wire Road, away from the hills and the town. Julian and I rode ahead while Sam paced his mount behind us, his Pittsburgh rifle in the saddle holster at his side. There was no perceptible threat or danger, but Sam Godwin believed in preparednessif he had a gospel, it was BE PREPARED; also, SHOOT FIRST; and probably, DAMN THE CONSEQUENCES. Sam, who was nearly fifty winters old, wore a dense brown beard stippled with white hairs, and was dressed in what remained presentable of his Army of the Californias uniform. Sam was nearly a father to Julian, Julian's own true father having performed a gallows dance some years before, and lately Sam had been more vigilant than ever, for reasons he hadn't discussed, at least with me.

Julian was my age (seventeen), and we were approximately the same height, but there the resemblance ended. Julian had been born an Aristo, or Eupatridian, as they say back east, while my family was of the leasing class.

His face was smooth and pale; mine was dark and lunar, scarred by the same Pox that took my sister Flaxie to her grave in '63. His yellow hair was long and almost femininely clean; mine was black and wiry, cut to stubble by my mother with her sewing scissors, and I washed it once a weekmore often in summer, when the creek behind the cottage warmed to a pleasant temperature.

His clothes were linen and silk, brass-buttoned, cut to fit; my shirt and pants were coarse hempen cloth, sewn to a good approximation but clearly not the work of a New York tailor.

And yet we were friends, and had been friends for three years, ever since we met by chance in the hills west of the Duncan and Crowley Estate. We had gone there to hunt, Julian with his rifle and me with a simple muzzle-loader, and we crossed paths in the forest and got to talking. I had been carrying a copy of Easton's Against the Brazilians, illicitly borrowed from the Estate libraryJulian recognized the title but vowed not to rat on me for possessing it, since he loved the book as much as I did and longed to discuss it with a fellow enthusiastin short, he did me an unbegged favor; and we became fast friends despite our differences.

In those early days I hadn't known how fond he was of Philosophy and such petty crimes as that. But I suppose it wouldn't have mattered to me, if I had.

Today Julian turned east from the Wire Road and took us down a lane bordered by split-rail fences on which dense blackberry gnarls had grown up, between fields of wheat and gourds just lately harvested. Before long we passed the rude shacks of the Estate's indentured laborers, whose near-naked children gawked at us from the dusty lane-side, and I deduced that we were headed for the Tip, because where else on this road was there to go?unless we continued on for many hours more, all the way to the ruins of the old oil towns, left over from the days of the False Tribulation.

The Tip was located a distance from Williams Ford in order to prevent poaching and disorder. There was a strict pecking order to the Tip. It worked this way: professional scavengers hired by the Estate brought their pickings from ruined places to the Tip, which was a pine-fenced enclosure (a sort of stockade) in an open patch of grassland. There the newly-arrived goods were roughly sorted, and riders were dispatched to the Estate to make the high-born aware of the latest discoveries. Then various Aristos (or their trusted servants) rode out to claim the prime gleanings. The next day the leasing class would be allowed to sort through what was left; and after that, if anything remained, indentured laborers could rummage through it, if they calculated it was worthwhile to make the journey.