Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America (41 page)

"My modesty is well- known," Calyxa said, though she had lobbied to wear just such a sleeveless costume—Mrs. Comstock had overruled her.

"Then I won't offend you by mentioning, um—"

"Unpleasant vices are offensive to me, Deacon Hollingshead, but the words describing them are not. How can we eradicate a problem unless we're allowed to name it?"

She was baiting him; but Hollingshead was too virtuous or drunk to understand.
"Homosexuality,"
 he whispered. "Do you know
that
 word, Mrs. Hazzard?"

"The rumor of such behavior has occasionally reached my ears. Is your daughter a—?"

"God forbid! No, Marcy is a model child. She's twenty-one now. But because she has yet to marry, she drew the attention of a league of degenerate women."

"In Colorado Springs!"

"Yes! Such a thing exists! And it continues to exist, despite all my efforts to eradicate it."

"What efforts have you made?"

"Both the Municipal Police and the investigatory arm of the Dominion have been put on the case. Needless to say, I don't let Marcy go anywhere un-observed. There are eyes on her at all times, though she doesn't know it."

"Is it really a wise thing to spy on your own daughter?"

"Certainly, if it protects her."

"
Does
 it protect her?"

"Several times it has saved her from absolute ruin. Marcy seems hardly able to leave the house without wandering by accident into some depraved tavern or other. Naturally, when we discover such establishments we shut them down. More than one degenerate woman has attempted to make Marcy a special friend. Those women were arrested and interrogated."

"Interrogated!—why?"

"Because there's more than coincidence at work," the bibulous Deacon said. "Clearly, some group of deviants has
targeted
 my daughter. We interrogated these women in order to find out the connection between them."

"Has the effort succeeded?"

"Unfortunately no. Even under extreme duress, none of these women will admit that their interest in Marcy was planned in advance, and they deny all knowledge of any conspiracy."

"Interrogations aren't generally so fruitless, I take it," said Calyxa, and I could tell by the reddening of her face that she didn't approve of the Deacon's enthusiastic approach to the knotty issues of vice and torture.

"No, they're not. Our investigators are skilled at extracting information from the unwilling—the Dominion trains them in it."

"How do you explain the failure in this case, then?"

"Vice has unsuspected depths and profundities—it hides by instinct from the light," the Deacon said grimly.

"And it occurs so close to home," Calyxa said, adding, in a low tone,
"Onaurait peut-être dû torturer votre fille, aussi."

I expected Deacon Hollingshead to ignore this incomprehensible remark.

He did not. Instead he drew himself up in a rigid posture. His features hardened abruptly.

"
Je ne suis ni idiot ni inculte,
 Mrs. Hazzard," he said.
"Si vous vous moquezde moi, je me verrai dans l'obligation de lancer un mandat d'arrêt contre vous."

I didn't know what this exchange meant, but Calyxa paled and took a step backward.

Hollingshead faced me. His put his smile back on, though it seemed forced. "I congratulate you again on your success, Mr. Hazzard. Your work does you credit. You have a fine career ahead of you. I hope nothing interferes with it." He took a noisy sip from his glass and walked away.

I don't mean to leave the reader with the impression that all the Eupatridians we met at the Presidential Reception were boors or tyrants. Many, perhaps most, were entirely pleasant, taken as individuals. Several of the men were yachtsmen, and I enjoyed listening to their spirited discourse on nautical subjects, though I couldn't reef a mainsail if my life depended on it.

Mrs. Comstock knew a number of the wives. Many of them were astonished to see her here, so long after the death of her husband; but they were accustomed to the caprices of Presidential favor and quickly accepted her back into their ranks.

Sam spent his time with the military contingent, including a handful of notable Generals and Major Generals. I suppose Sam was gauging their attitude toward the Commander in Chief, or trying to pick up clues about the President's intentions toward Julian. But all that was beyond my ken. Julian himself was deep in conversation with what he described to me as a genuine Phi los o pher: a Professor of Cosmology from the newly-reformed New York University. This man had many interesting theories, Julian said, about the Speed of Light, and the Origin of Stars, and other such refined subjects. But he was under the thumb of the Dominion, and could not discourse as freely as he might have liked. Nevertheless the man had enjoyed some access to the Dominion Archives, and hinted at the artistic and scientific trea sures concealed there.

The general hilarity occasioned by the drinking of Grape Wine, etc., soon reached fresh heights. The musical band had adjourned for a short while—they were out behind the stables, Calyxa suggested, smoking hempen cigarettes—but they returned in relatively good order, and better spirits, just as Deklan Comstock made a third appearance on one of his marbled balconies.

This time the President called out recognition to the most elevated members of the crowd, including the Speaker of the Senate, Deacon Hollingshead, several prominent Landowners, the Surgeon General, the Chinese and Nipponese Ambassadors (who had been eyeing each other uneasily from opposite ends of the room), and other dignitaries. Then he smiled his unwholesome smile and said, "Also present, and home from his adventures defending the Union in Labrador, is my beloved nephew, Julian Comstock, as well as his celebrated Scribe, Mr. Adam Hazzard, and his former tutor, Sam Godwin."

Hearing my name pronounced by this man was unnerving, and caused a shiver to rush up my spine.

"Mr. Hazzard," the President continued, "has a very great and subtle literary talent, and I've recently learned that his wife is talented as well. Mrs. Hazzard is a singer, and it occurs to me to wonder whether she might favor us with a ballad or such, now that the band is warmed up. Mrs. Hazzard!" He feigned shielding his eyes against the light. "Mrs. Hazzard, are you willing to entertain these ladies and gentlemen?"

Calyxa's jaw was grimly set—clearly this was Deklan Comstock's attempt to humiliate her, and indirectly Julian, by exposing her as a cabaret singer—but at the same time it was an invitation she dared not refuse.
"Hold my drink, Adam," she said flatly;
⁶⁵
then she climbed up onto the bandstand where the musicians were arrayed.

This turn of events had taken the bandleader by surprise as well. He looked at her blankly, perhaps expecting her to call out a familiar song-title—

Where the Sauquoit Meets the Mohawk,
 or some respectable piece like that.

But Calyxa was never one to do the expected, especially at the beck of a tyrant like Deklan Comstock. She looked out at the sea of Eupatridian faces confronting her. It was an awkward moment. She didn't speak, or even smile, but lifted her cumbersome skirt and began to stomp her right foot. This activity amused some of the Aristos, and it didn't display her ankles to her best advantage; but it established a terse martial beat, which the drummer soon picked up.

Then, without prelude, she began to sing:

By Piston, Loom, and Anvil, boys,

We clothe and arm the nation,

And sweat all day for a pauper's pay

And half a soldier's ration...

There was shock at first. Many of the Eupatridians in the room knew this song, or had heard rebellious servants singing it from kitchens and cellars. If they didn't know it intimately, they knew it by reputation. In any case the lyrics were explicit in their sympathy for the common man.

The silence and gasps from her audience did not discourage Calyxa, though even the drummer faltered for a beat or two. She finished the chorus and ran right through the first verse, which—like every other verse in this long and encyclopedic song—decried the suffering of some class of laborer at the hands of an Industrialist or Own er.

Heads turned toward President Deklan Comstock as if to gauge his reaction. Was he enraged? Insulted? Would the Republican Guard bring out their pistols and end the show abruptly?

But Deklan Conqueror didn't appear to be angry. He raised his hand, instead, in a kind of mock salute.

That small gesture broadcast a signal among the Eupatridians that for tonight, at least, the usual proprieties had been suspended. They drew the inference that Calyxa's per for mance was not a Protest but a kind of Show, ironically intended.
Piston, Loom, and Anvil
 sung at the Executive Palace! It had the deliciously inverted logic of a bacchanal. A few of the more astute Aristos began to clap in time.

That caused the orchestra to take courage and join in. The musicians were all familiar with the tune, and began to work little trills and arpeggios around Calyxa's powerful voice. Calyxa herself carried on as if none of these nuances mattered: it was the song she meant to sing, and she was singing it.

"Bless her," said Julian, who had come to stand beside me.

Some in the room still didn't appreciate the incongruous per for mance.

Mr. Wieland, Mr. Palumbo, and Deacon Hollingshead stood in a single dour knot, arms crossed. Because they worked directly with indentured men, Wieland and Palumbo knew the song for what it was: a dagger aimed at their livelihoods. Deacon Hollingshead had no such direct interest, though he was a stalwart supporter of the status quo, and perhaps had tortured men who dared such verses in his presence. Even the President's indulgence could not persuade these worthies to relax their vigilance.

In fact I began to worry about their health. Wieland's already ruddy complexion deepened, until his head came to resemble a beet embedded in a shirt collar, and Palumbo wasn't far behind in this competition.

Julian had once told me a story about deep-sea divers. In recent times it had become possible for Tipmen in sealed rubber suits, supported by air pumped to them from the surface, to descend into the murky waters around the ruins of seaside cities. This was an occasionally lucrative but wildly dangerous pursuit. It often yielded fresh trea sure from sites that had, on land, been picked clean. But for every valuable antiquity thus obtained, a man's life was put at risk.

It is a peculiar quality of the oceans that the pressure of the water increases with depth. There was a legend among these undersea Tipmen, Julian had said, that a diver, if he came untethered in deep enough water, might sink so far that the fist of the sea would squeeze him to death. Worse, the water pressure would literally
roll him up like a tube of tooth-paste.
 His body, encased in rubber, would be crushed and then forced into his enclosing helmet, so that the whole of him would at last be concentrated in that steel shell like a bloody stew in an inverted bowl—until even the helmet itself exploded!

This was, of course, usually fatal.

I thought about that legend (which, for all I know, may be true) as I looked at Wieland, Palumbo, and Hollingshead. With every succeeding verse—the one about the buried coal- miner, the one about the seamstress reduced to penury and prostitution by her employer, the one about the railway porter bisected by a runaway train—yet more blood rushed to the crania of these indignant gentlemen, until I wondered whether they would simply drop dead or whether their skulls would burst like pressed grapes.

Calyxa, if anything, was slightly miffed by the genial reception she was now receiving. She cranked out even more radical verses, which named Owners as Tyrants and Senators as Fools. "I'm not sure this is especially decorous," said Mrs. Comstock from beside me. But the President continued to grin (though his grin was far from mirthful), and the Eupatridians, by and large, continued to mistake insult for irony, and smirked at the joke of it.

I began to think Calyxa's inventive powers had been exhausted—which might have been a good thing—when she stepped to the very edge of the bandstand. Aiming her gaze directly and unmistakably at the industrialist Nelson Wieland, and still pounding the stage with her foot, she sang:
I know someone, a blacksmith's son,

Who learned to mill old steel—

He cast the parts

For rich men's carts,

But the heat took a toll,

And the fumes of the coal—

He was broken at the wheel, oh!

Broken at the wheel!

By Piston, Loom, and Anvil, boys,

We clothe and arm the nation ...

If there was any doubt whether she had improvised this verse for the specific benefit of Mr. Wieland, he didn't share it. His eyes started from their sockets. He clenched his fists—in fact his entire body seemed to clench. It was as if the deep ocean had taken him in its grip.

Then, apparently satisfied with the reaction she had produced, Calyxa finished the chorus and addressed the agriculturalist Billy Palumbo, singing:
The indentured men in the Own er's pen

Are bought and sold like cattle;

But a man's got a mind,

And an Own er might find

That all he bought

Is an awful lot

Of Revolutionary Chattel, oh!

Revolutionary Chattel ...

Mr. Palumbo was not accustomed to this kind of insolence any more than Mr. Wieland was. I watched with profound apprehension as the veins in and around his face stood forth. The legend of the explosive Diving Tipmen came once more to my mind.

Then, inevitably, it was Deacon Hollingshead's turn. As she repeated the chorus the Deacon glared viciously. But Calyxa had faced down Job and Utty Blake, and she was not to be intimidated by a mere Dominion cleric, no matter how powerful. Her voice was her cudgel, and she meant to use it. She sang—
con brio,
 as the composers say—