Read Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America Online
Authors: Robert Charles Wilson
57
The ladies were not pleased with certain Broadway sophisticates also present, whose cries of "That's right—keep single if you can help it!" were quickly suppressed.
[back]
58
An error of history, since the northern states had not yet been acquired at the time of the Fall of the Cities; but forgivable in the name of Art and Patriotism.
[back]
59
I felt I had nothing to lose by honesty—nor much to gain, come down to it.
[back]
60
At first I thought the immigrant Egyptians might also be Jews, since they worshipped at unusual temples of their own; but this was not the case, Sam said.
[back]
61
The Head and Arm were fragments of the Colossus of Liberty, Julian said. According to legend the Colossus used to stand astride the Verrazano Narrows, while boats and barges passed between her feet. A cursory inspection shows that the scale is off, and Liberty would not have been able to span the distance even with her legs splayed at an unflattering angle. Still, she must once have been a very large and prominently visible Statue—I don't mean to diminish her grandeur.
[back]
62
The food items, not the waiters.
[back]
63
As Palumbo had, long since, though I do not hold a man's girth against him.
[back]
64
The quotation from Psalms is authentic, although it would never have been allowed into
The Dominion Reader for Young Persons.
[back]
65
Calyxa had not refused the Champagne as consistently as I had.
[back]
66
The Chinese were officially neutral in the War in Labrador, thereby doubling their supply of potential customers.
[back]
67
This light attracted flying insects in brigade strength, and they swooped back and forth as if bathing in it. Before long a number of bats joined in, drawn by the plentiful prey. It was as if another Feast was being conducted in the air, now that our own dinner had concluded.
[back]
68
A fairly succinct description of the situation in Labrador as I remembered it.
[back]
69
I had made it a point to befriend some of the sailors, and I picked up a little of their "salt slang," which I thought would lend verisimilitude to the novels I planned to write.
[back]
70
"And Cain went out from the presence of the Lord, to dwell in the Land of Nod, in the eastern part of Eden." Genesis 4:16—it doesn't mention anything about Lake Melville or Goose Bay.
[back]
71
They were perhaps a little slow in their thinking, for among the other luxuries imported by the Dutch had been a few bales of cultivated Indian Hemp, some of which had begun to circulate among the troops, until Sam had the contraband placed under guard.
[back]
72
The flag of the Goose Bay Campaign had been designed by Julian himself. It showed a red boot against a yellow orb on a starry black background, and carried the legend "WE HAVE STEPPED UPON THE MOON." Most of the troops understood the story of Americans on the Moon as a fable, rather than historical fact; but it was a bracing boast, and implied to the enemy that we were experienced at treading on things, and that they might be next.
[back]
73
I had learned all my strategy and tactics from the war narratives of Mr. Charles Curtis Easton, in which every attack is fierce and bold, and nearly fails, but finally succeeds by some combination of luck and American ingenuity. These circumstances are more easily arranged on the printed page than on the field of battle.
[back]
74
Despite the well- known cruelty and Atheism of Mitteleuropa, that principality nevertheless inspires in its subjects a kind of "patriotism" which resembles in almost every particular the real thing.
[back]
75
Nor could there have been.
[back]
76
A skill every Eupatridian of Julian's class has mastered: it consists of regarding the world and all its inhabitants as if they emitted a faint offensive odor.
[back]
77
A revival of which had been popular in Manhattan the summer past. I know it only by reputation.
[back]
78
The Dutch use it for military signaling, but it also serves in theatrical effects.
[back]
79
If I were Him I might be tempted to suppress My power of omniscience when it came to Labrador, and focus My attention on the world's warmer and greener places.
[back]
80
Perhaps the Mitteleuropans know how to pronounce this jaw-cracker—I do not.
[back]
81
Hostilities which had not ceased for decades, and showed no sign of doing so now, which weakened the argument somewhat.
[back]
82
To this day I don't understand how Julian was able to estimate the kites' position by noting their apparent height above the horizon and the amount of string paid out. It seemed like black magic; though it involved numbers, not spells or toad's-feet or any such occult contrivances.
[back]
83
Even one who owns a typewriter, for those machines are not convenient to carry in one's pocket.
[back]
84
I did not, in my dispatches, condemn Deklan Conqueror by name, or even mention him; but it was possible to infer from what I wrote that the Lake Melville campaign had been mismanaged from New York. I did record a few cynical comments of Julian's directed toward "those who cut orders without considering them first, and would make history without having read any." I thought this barb at the President would be blunted by its obscurity—I may have been mistaken.
[back]
85
Not the 53rd—that's a common mistake. It was the 52nd Amendment that allowed succession by inheritance; the 53rd was the one that abolished the Supreme Court.
[back]
86
The law preventing pregnant women from being jailed on suspicion, or prosecuted for proven crimes, dates from the era of the Plague of Infertility. For many years after the Fall of the Cities it seemed as if our human numbers might drop below some critical level—that we would become an extinct species, as so many other species had become extinct during the Efflorescence of Oil. That threat has receded, of course—our numbers are steadily increasing—but the law, along with a host of other laws and customs protecting female virtue and fertility, remains firmly in effect.
[back]
87
Sam frowned at this description but said nothing.
[back]
88
This is the core doctrine of the Dominion, to which every participating Church must commit itself.
[back]
89
The glances she returned were not always equally warm, for carrying a child to term is a cumbersome job, which can wear down a person's good spirits.
[back]
90
There are several such accounts in print, by various authors. Some of these are quite accurate, and others have received the Dominion Stamp of Approval.
[back]
91
We had named the child Flaxie in honor of my lost sister, but also because of her crop of fine wheat-colored hair. By the time she reached her first birthday Flaxie had lost that baby hair, and wore an ebony crown just as lush and tightly-curled as her mother's. We kept the name, however, despite the apparent contradiction.
[back]
92
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.
[back]
93
Stepney, though sincere about his pastoral duties, made no secret of the fact that he might like to play the part of Charles Darwin when the production eventually began. This was not as vain as it sounds, for he was handsome, and had a talent for striking poses and putting on amusing voices.
[back]
95
The English, in those days, were not particular about wooing and marrying cousins. It was a practice as acceptable to them as it is to our own Eupatridians.
[back]
96
The cells were installed during the reign of the very first Comstock, and had been used by every Comstock since, including Julian: Julian's uncle Deklan, since his deposition, had been languishing in that same internal prison.
[back]
97
Much to Calyxa's disappointment and disgust.
[back]
98
In July of 2175 a rebellion among indentured laborers at an Ohio broad-silk mill had spread to neighboring ribbon factories and dye shops. Over one hundred men died in the resulting siege.
[back]
99
To be fair, many of these same individuals defied expectations in matters of Masculine and Feminine Deportment even when fully sober. It's a common failing among theater people, I have found.
[back]
100
The former President, not the Giraffe which was named after him.
[back]
101
I asked Julian whether this was about the False Tribulation, but Julian said no;
On the Beach
had been produced nearly a century before the End of Oil. The events it dramatized must have been purely local in nature, or purely imaginary.
[back]
102
A bold boast, but that's how show-business operates.
[back]
103
A Broadway voice- actress, famous for her silvery voice and impressive girth.
[back]
104
I had not entertained the thought
That I could love a scholar,
For they read from books an awful lot
And seldom spend a dollar...
[back]
105
Giraffes, strictly speaking, are not native to South America; but we had a Giraffe, and we used it.
[back]
106
But not for the purpose of carrying supplies to the Parmentierist rebels who hide out in the caves there—she was cleared of that charge.
[back]
107
Sam had a few criticisms of that work. He argued that a Space Rocket, buried for a century and a half under the sands of Florida, could not be put into working order by a mere band of boys, even if some of them were students of the mechanical arts. Perhaps not; but they could hardly have got to the moon by any other means, and I let the improbability stand.
[back]