"My mother has been making plans for all of us to leave the country. I've told her repeatedly we won't be forced into such a drastic retreat. But I may be wrong. It's true that I've made enemies. I've gambled with History, and I can't guarantee the result. Adam, do you see those three film canisters on the table by the door?"

"Hard to miss them. What are they, some fresh discovery from the Archives?"

"No. That's The Life and Adventures of the Great Naturalist Charles Darwin. All three acts, a master print of it, plus the performance script. Perhaps it's childish, but I don't like to think of it being permanently destroyed. If the political situation gets worse, or if anything unpleasant happens to me, I want you to take Darwin out of the country with you."

"Of course I will!-I give you my word-but you'll come to Mediterranean France along with us, if the necessity arises, and you can bring the canisters yourself."

"Yes, Adam; but it would please me to know I'm not the only one thinking of it. I put all the best part of myself into that film. It deserves to be seen."

"All Manhattan will see it. The debut is only a few weeks away."

"Of course. But you promise to do as I ask?"

It was an easy guarantee to make. I gave him my hand on it. Then I left the room, without bowing.

As I walked off, I heard the projector start up again.

The enclosed grounds of the Palace make up a rectangle two and a half miles long by half a mile wide, carved out of Manhattan by a man named Olmsted in ancient times. Pleasant and rustic by day, in the small hours of the night it was a lonely place. It hosted a large permanent population of bureaucrats, servants, and Republican Guards; but the majority of them had been asleep since midnight. Now even the revelries of the Wrap Party had ceased. Little evidence remained of what had taken place earlier in the evening, apart from a pair of Aesthetes snoring in wicker chairs along the Palace's great piazza.

Not every member of the Republican Guard was allowed to sleep, however. They kept the watch in shifts, like sailors. They manned the four great Gates at all times, and patrolled the high walls for intruders. Lymon Pugh was one of them, and he met me as I was leaving the Palace. "On duty still?" I asked him.

"Just coming off it. Felt like walking a little before going to bed, the night air being so warm."

The moon was up. A mist rose from the nearby Pond and put its pale fingers into the ailanthus groves edging the lawn. "This weather seems strange to me," I said. "In Athabaska we often had snow by Thanksgiving. And in Labrador, too, of course. Not here, though ... not this year."

"Let me walk a little way with you, Adam. I have no other business, and I doubt I could sleep, to be honest."

"Sleep is an elusive quarry some nights," I agreed. "Do you enjoy doing this work for Julian?"

"I guess I don't mind it. It was kind of him to select me, and there's no heavy lifting involved. I don't expect it to last, though. No offense to Julian Commongold-Comstock, I mean-but I'm not sure he's altogether suited to the Presidency."

"Why do you say so?"

"From what I've seen, it's one of those jobs like being a line overseer at a packing factory-it rewards ruthlessness, and it kills whatever goodness a man might have in him. I knew a Seattle man who was hired up to be a line overseer at the factory where I worked. A generous man, saintly to his children, well-liked all around; but they made him a line boss, and after a week in that job I heard him threaten to cut a man's throat for slowness. He meant it, too. Began to carry a razor in his hip pocket. Flaunted it from time to time."

"That's how you see Julian?"

"It's not that he's bad by nature. He isn't. That's just the problem. A truly bad man would have an easier time as President, and probably make a greater success of it."

"Must a President be bad, then?"

"It seems so to me. But I don't know much history-maybe it hasn't always been that way." We walked a little farther, listening to the soft sound our shoes made on the gravel path. "My point, though," Lymon Pugh said, "is that Julian's not succeeding in the Presidency, whatever the reason for it. I know you and your family are planning your get-away-"

"Who told you that?"

"Nobody told me anything, but I hear things. I don't repeat what I hear, if that's on your mind."

"No-what you say is true. I hope it isn't necessary to flee the country. But it never hurts to know where the back door is. Come with us, Lymon, if the worst happens, God forbid. Calyxa has good things to say about Mediterranean France."

"Thank you for asking, Adam. That's very flattering to me. But I wouldn't know what to do in a foreign country. I don't know France from Canaan. If it comes to that I mean to steal a horse and head west, maybe as far as the Willamette Valley."

We came to the guest-house where Calyxa and Flaxie and I had made our temporary home. I felt unaccountably sad; but I didn't want Lymon Pugh to see that emotion, or hear it in my voice, so I did not speak.

"You have a fine family, Adam Hazzard," he said. "You make sure nothing unpleasant happens to them. That's your task, if you don't mind taking advice from a plain Republican Guardsman. And now I'm off to bed." He turned away. "Goodnight!"

"Goodnight," I managed.

I paused at the door as Lymon Pugh headed back toward the Palace.

The night had that unusual calm which marks the hour before the dawn, "silence brooding like a gentle spirit / O'er all the still and pulseless world." Off in the darkness I saw a huge silhouette lumbering among the trees-that was Otis, who seemed well on the way to becoming a nocturnal Giraffe. Perhaps he especially enjoyed the lonely hours of the morning. Or perhaps he couldn't sleep any better than the rest of us.

I looked into the darkness for a good long while. Then I went indoors, and crept into bed with Calyxa just as the sky was lightening, and curled into the warmth of her sleeping body.

* 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.

* Much to Calyxa's disappointment and disgust.

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.

* 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.

* The former President, not the Giraffe which was named after him.

* 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.

8.

Less than a month passed between the night of the Wrap Party, which marked the end of the filming and editing of The Life and Adventures of the Great Naturalist Charles Darwin, and its debut in a plush Broadway theater. A short time by ordinary reckoning; but it was a dire eternity in Julian's reign as President.

Sam Godwin, who maintained close contact with the military, had taken on the thankless duty of conveying bad news to Julian-a role he was forced to play increasingly often. It was Sam who told Julian that the Army of the Californias had been met with fierce re sis tance by ecclesiastical forces at Colorado Springs. It was Sam who told him how the Rocky Mountain Division of that Army had rebelled, and swung its support from the Executive Power to the Dominion of Jesus Christ on Earth. It was Sam (and I envied him this task least of all) who was obliged to tell Julian that, after extensive but ineffectual shelling and burning, Army commanders had worked out a truce with the Dominion Council and declared a unilateral cease-fire-all in violation of Julian's direct orders.

Sam emerged from that session ashen-faced and shaking his head. "At times, Adam," he confided in me, "I don't know whether Julian even understands what I say to him. He acts as if these reverses were inconsequential, or too distant to matter. Or else he storms and rages at me, as if I were the author of his defeats. Then he hides away in that Projection Room of his, mesmerizing himself with moving pictures."

There was worse to come. A mere three days before the debut of Charles Darwin, news reached us that the joint leaders of the Army of the Laurentians had declared solidarity with their comrades in California and had raised the possibility of a march on New York for the purpose of unseating Julian Conqueror. The name of Admiral Fairfield (who had been so successful at sea) was mooted as a possible successor. That might have been the keenest cut of all, for Julian admired the Admiral, and they had got along well during the Goose Bay Campaign.

These small and large insurrections shook the foundations of his Presidency; but Julian continued to make plans for the Broadway opening of his film. Local churches had begun calling for a boycott of it, and it would be necessary to cordon the theater with Republican Guards to prevent riots. Nevertheless Julian invited us all to the premiere, and made sure the finest carriages were available, and told us to dress in our best clothes, and make a grand occasion of it; and we did so, because we loved him, and because we might not have another chance to pay him such an honor.

A phalanx of gilded carriages, surrounded and preceded by armed Guardsmen on horseback, made its way out of the Palace grounds on the appointed afternoon.

Calyxa and I rode in one of the central carriages, following the vehicle that carried Julian and Magnus Stepney, with Sam and Julian's mother in a third conveyance behind us. It was near Christmas, but the streets of Manhattan were not merry. Banners of the Cross had been pulled down in order to clear a line of sight for the sharpshooters Julian had placed on all the rooftops between Tenth and Madison Avenue. But the streets weren't crowded in any case, in part because of the new Pox-the same Pox Dr. Polk had worried about last summer-which had been communicated by fraudulent vaccination shops to young Eupatridian ladies, and which had spread from there into all walks of life in the great City of New York.

It was not an especially virulent disease-not more than one in forty or fifty New Yorkers had come down with it-but it was unpleasant and deadly. It began with fevers and confusions, followed by the appearance of yellow pustules all over the body (especially the neck and groin), and culminated in bleeding lesions and a rapid decline into death. As a result many people chose to keep at home despite the season, and many of the pedestrians we passed wore paper masks over their noses and mouths.

All that, plus a chill wind blowing from the north, lent a certain bleakness to the city's Christmas.

Fear of Pox had not altogether prevented public gatherings, however, since the disease seemed to be transmitted by something more than casual contact. The theater as we approached it was brightly-lit, its sidewalks swarming with patrons and curiosity-seekers, and the roast-chestnut vendor was doing a roaring business.

The theater's grand marquee proclaimed the title of the movie, and added a banner announcing THE WORLD DEBUT OF JULIAN CONQUEROR'S BRILLIANT AND STARTLING CINEMATIC MASTERPIECE!* A cordon of Republican Guards kept out would-be troublemakers, mobs of whom had been dispatched by church committees as an obeisance to the Dominion. The film, of course, was not attractive to especially pious or conservative people; but there were more than enough Aesthetes, Philosophers, Agnostics, and Parmentierists in Manhattan to make up the deficit. These people were Julian's constituency, if he could be said to have one, and they had turned out in force.

Julian left his carriage just as ours was pulling up. He would watch the movie from a protected box above the gallery, along with Magnus Stepney, who was accorded that privilege as the star of the film. Sam and Julian's mother had a similar box assigned to them, while Calyxa and I held reserved seats in the orchestra section. We were only halfway through the enormous lobby, however, when a man I recognized as the Theater Director came up to us in a rush.

"Mrs. Hazzard!" he cried, recognizing her, for she had had some dealing with him in her role as lyricist and composer.

"What is it?" Calyxa asked.

"I've been trying to reach you! We have an unexpected and serious problem, Mrs. Hazzard. As you know, Candita Bentley* vocalizes the role of Emma. But Candita is ill-a sudden attack-Pox," he confided in a scandalized tone. "Her understudy is down with it, too."

"The show is canceled?"

"Don't even whisper it! No, certainly not; but we need a new Emma, at least for the songs. I can call up someone from the chorus; but I thought-since you wrote the score, and since everyone says you have the voice for it-I know this is absurdly short notice, and I know you haven't rehearsed-"

Calyxa took the startling invitation very calmly. "I don't need to rehearse. Just show me where to stand."

"You'll sing the role, then?"

"Yes. Better me than some chorister."

"But that's wonderful! I can't thank you enough!"

"You don't have to. Adam, do you mind me voicing Emma?"

"No-but are you confident you can do this?"

"They're my songs, and I can sing them as well as any of these Broadway women. Better, I expect."

Calyxa had been offered the vocal part of Emma early in the planning of the production, but she had reluctantly refused it, since she was preoccupied with Flaxie and the ceaseless duties of motherhood. Tonight's unexpected opportunity obviously pleased her. Stage fright wasn't one of her faults.

I wished her well, and she hurried off to prepare. There was a general announcement that the curtain-time had been postponed by fifteen minutes. I milled in the lobby in the meantime, until Sam Godwin approached me.

His expression was somber. "Where's your wife?" he asked.

"Recruited into the show. Where's yours?"

"Gone back to the Palace."

"Back to the Palace! Why? She'll miss the movie!"

"It can't be helped. There have been fresh developments, Adam. She's packing for France," Sam said in a very low voice, adding, "We leave tonight."

"To night!"

"Keep your voice down! It can't be that great a shock to you. The Army of the Laurentians is moving on the city, the Senate is in open revolt-"

"All that was true before this evening."

"And now a fire has broken out in the Egyptian district. From what I've heard, most of Houston Street is in flames and the burning threatens to cross the Ninth Street Canal. The wind spreads it quickly, and if the flames reach the docks our only avenue of escape may be cut off."

"But-Sam! I'm not sure I'm ready-"

"You're as ready as you need to be, even if you have to sail with just the shoes on your feet and the shirt on your back. Our hand has been forced."

"But Flaxie-"

"Emily will make sure the baby gets to the boat. She and Calyxa calculated everything well in advance. They've been ready a week now. Listen: our ship is the Goldwing, docked at the foot of 42nd Street. She sails at dawn."

"What about Julian, though? Have you told him about the fire?"

"Not yet. He's sealed himself in that box above the balcony and ringed himself with guards. But I'll speak to him before the movie is finished, if I have to knock heads together to get at him."

"I don't expect he would be willing to leave before the end of the show." Nor would Calyxa be, now that she had been recruited into the business.

"Probably not," Sam said grimly. "But as soon as the curtain rings down we must all leave at once. Look for me in the lobby between acts. If you don't see me, or if we're separated-remember! The Goldwing, at dawn."

A bell rang, signaling us to take our seats.

Of course my head was whirling with these plans as the curtain rose on Charles Darwin; but (apart from the fire in the Egyptian quarter) none of it was entirely unexpected, though I had hoped the need for flight would not arise so soon. There was no immediate active role I could take, however, so I tried to focus my attention on the event at hand.

The orchestra played a lively overture combining the film's major musical themes. The excitement in the audience was palpable. Then the lights went down and the projection began. A grandly ornate title card announced: THE LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF.

THE GREAT NATURALIST CHARLES DARWIN.

(FAMOUS FOR HIS THEORY OF EVOLUTION, ETC.).

Produced by Mr. Julian Comstock and Company

WITH THE ASSISTANCE OF THE.