Julian Comstock: A Story of 22-nd Century America

EPILOGUE
SPRING, 2192

It has been my purpose in this book to give the reader a true and authentic portrait of the life and career of Julian Comstock—or, where truth was in doubt or unobtainable, to err on the side of drama. To the best of my ability that is what I have done; and I lay down my pen with mixed feelings of pride and shame, love and guilt.

Sixteen years have passed since these events. The Goldwing anchored safely at Marseilles in the new year of 2176, and although we were strangers in Mediterranean France, and of the bunch of us only Calyxa spoke the language, and that in an accent which made the natives wince and curl their lips—nevertheless, we have prospered here. The weather is generally pleasant. The local population is mixed but peaceful—the Moslems and the Christians maintain a rivalry, but they haven’t killed one another for decades, at least not in large numbers.

When we first arrived we lived at the expense of Emily Godwin, who had imported enough of the Comstock fortune to pay for a villa in a small town by the sea. But neither Sam nor I was content to be “kept” in that fashion. Sam eventually found his way into the horse business: he borrowed enough of Emily’s money to import a selection of brood mares from east of the Caspian Sea, and with these he built up a brisk local trade, and made a considerable reputation for himself.

Calyxa regularly sings at the local taverns, and is sometimes called upon to perform in the port of Marseilles. Her accent, which provokes such contempt in ordinary conversation, is considered “charming” when she applies it to music; and out of this paradox she has forged a respectable income. She also finds occasional work voicing American women in French movies, for the movie industry has a strong presence in Mediterranean France. It has no Dominion to quash its originality (though the government interferes from time to time), and recorded sound is becoming commonplace. Lately Calyxa provided the voice for a French translation of Julian’s Life and Adventures of the Great Naturalist Charles Darwin, which was mechanically recorded; and copies of the film were smuggled into the Mitteleuropan mandates north of Lyon, where it reportedly played to enthusiastic audiences. News came just yesterday of a riotously popular exhibition in Brussels.

Flaxie is a young woman now. She was taught to read at an early age, in English and in French, and she’s a master of both languages, and popular among the village boys, none of whom are suitable for her, in my opinion, although she disagrees. She loves books and music, and her hair is as glossy and dark and tightly coiled as her mother’s was before the gray set in. She assists Sam at his stables out of a fondness for horses, not inherited from me, and she also enjoys long rides in the hills north of town. [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.]

We are very proud of her.

As for me, I earn my bread by means of my pen (typewriter, literally, though Mr. Dornwood’s machine is old and well-traveled, and missing some of its parts). The presses of New York City survived the fire, and the American book trade thrives under President Fairfield despite the edicts of an enfeebled Dominion. I am a mainstay of that trade, I’m told, though my manuscripts are delivered by Atlantic mail, and frequently lost at sea.

My last book (before this one) was American Boys on the Moon, which sold well even without a Dominion Stamp. [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.]

The book was praised by Mr. Charles Curtis Easton, who also survived the fire, though he is even older than my venerable typewriter, and is drawing his career to a close. I took inspiration for American Boys on the Moon from my copy of the History of Mankind in Space.

That antique book sits on my desk now, along with a number of other mementos salvaged from the Palace grounds—a faded letter which begins Lieftse Hannie ; a train ticket, validated from Montreal to New York City; a Comstock dollar with Deklan Conqueror’s face on it (Julian didn’t last long enough to mint his own coins); a play-bill from the Broadway debut of Darwin ; a decorative Knocker (badly stained); and other such items as that. Tomorrow I’ll pack them away again.

As if in silent commentary the breeze flaps the pages of a calendar hanging on the wall. Hard to believe that in only eight years we’ll be entering the twenty-third century! Time is mysterious to me—I can’t get accustomed to how it passes. Perhaps I’ve become old-fashioned, forever a Twenty-Second Century Man.

Now Calyxa comes through my study on her way to the garden. Our villa sits on a high bluff, and the property grows little more than sea-grass and sand, but Calyxa has long since walled off a square of good soil, and she plants it every year with lavender, mimosa, and sunflowers. She has been an invaluable resource in the writing of my Julian memoir—filling out exact French phrases from my memory of a few dim words, and copying the sentences for me with accents grave and aigu and such frills.

Today she pauses and gives me a cryptic smile.

“Tu es l’homme le plus gentil et le plus innocent que je connaisse,” she says.

“Tu rends les laideurs de la vie supportables. Sans toi, elles seraient insoutenables.”

No doubt this is some mild joke at my expense, for Calyxa is skeptical by nature, and often couches her ironies in French, which after sixteen years in this country I still do not confidently understand. “That’s what you think,” I tell her; and she laughs as she walks away, her white skirt swirling about her ankles.

I mean to leave my typewriter and follow her. The afternoon is too tempting to be denied. It isn’t Paradise here, or even close, but the mimosa is in bloom and the air from the sea is cool and pleasant. On days like this I think of poor old Magnus Stepney’s evolving Green God, harking us all up to Eden. The Green God’s voice is faint enough that few of us hear it clearly, and that’s our tragedy, I suppose, as a species—but I hear it very distinctly just now. It asks me to step into the sunshine, and I mean to do its bidding.