“Still, if it’s an effective treatment—”
“Sometimes it is—more often it’s fraudulent. A syringe full of creek water and a sharpened knitting needle. The field is rife with profitable fraud, and more likely to spread disease than prevent it. Just this month a new Pox has broken out, especially severe among the high-born, probably as a result of just such unhygienic practices.”
“Can’t the Senate make a law against it?”
“Against vaccination shops? I suppose it could; but the Senators are wedded to the idea of Free Trade, and the Invisible Hand of the Marketplace, and all those shibboleths. Of course they feel the consequences too—or will, when their daughters begin to sicken. Fifteen cases this week alone. Ten the week before. Not a Pox that’s familiar to me, either. A little like Dog Pox, a little like Denver Pox in its signs and indications.”
“Is it very deadly?”
“Fewer than half my patients have recovered.”
That was alarming. “Do you fear an epidemic, then?”
“I’ve seen Pox sweep through this city half a dozen times in my career. I fear an outbreak of it every day of my life, Mr. Hazzard. We don’t know where epidemics come from and we don’t know how to stop them. If it were up to me—”
But I never learned what the doctor would do, if it were up to him, for Calyxa called out anxiously from upstairs. Her labor had begun, and Polk dashed off to attend her.
I didn’t follow him. He had told me to keep clear during the delivery. It wasn’t a difficult promise to make. All I knew of the act of birth was what I had learned as a stable-boy in Williams Ford. I understood, abstractly, that Calyxa would be enduring the same trials the brood mares in the Duncan-Crowley barns suffered when they foaled; but I could not juxtapose those memories with my intimate knowledge of Calyxa—the resulting image was distasteful, at best.
The sound of Calyxa’s cries came down from the bedroom at increasingly frequent intervals. Dr. Polk had sent for a female accoucheur (as the Eupatridians called their midwives) as soon as the labor began, and when this nurse arrived she took note of my anxiety and tried to ameliorate it by giving me a tincture of hemp oil and opium in a glass of water.
I wasn’t accustomed to the medication. It took effect within the hour, and the result was not altogether calming. I lost direction of my thoughts; and before long I had invested all my attention in a survey of the doors of the kitchen cupboards. The oiled oaken doors became a kind of Movie Screen, to my eyes, on which the grain of the wood evolved into images of animals, steam engines, tropical forests, scenes of war, etc. These impressions were elastic, and each one flowed into the next like water in a rocky stream. I laughed at some of the visions, and recoiled at others—an observer might have mistaken me for feeble-minded. And while the effect was distracting, it was less than reassuring.
Dr. Polk and his nurse passed in and out of the kitchen like wraiths during this interval, drawing pans of water or rinsing out towels. Hours passed, though they might have been minutes or months, in so far as I could calculate time in my intoxicated state. I did not entirely wake from my reveries until I heard a prodigious scream from the upstairs bedroom—a deep, masculine scream, in the voice of Dr. Polk.
I stood up shakily. I hadn’t forgotten my promise to keep out of the doctor’s way. But this seemed like an exceptional circumstance. Had Dr. Polk really cried out in terror, or had I imagined it? Uncertainty retarded my step. Then there was another cry, neither Calyxa’s nor the doctor’s—the nurse had joined the chorus. A cold dread came over me, and I rushed to the stairs.
Dire fantasies played about my imagination. Monstrous births and miscarriages had been common during the Plague of Infertility, and they still occurred from time to time, even in the second half of the twenty-second century. I refused to permit myself the thought that Calyxa might have given birth to some creature so unusual that even a hardened physician would cry out and recoil from it. But the possibility haunted me. The stairs seemed absurdly steep, and I was breathless by the time I reached the landing. I found the bedroom ajar. Unsteadily, I lunged for it.
The cause of the excitement was immediately obvious, though at first I doubted what I was seeing.
Dr. Polk and his nurse stood with their backs to the wall, expressions of stark terror distorting their faces. They were staring at the bedroom’s large double window. Earlier in the day Dr. Polk had thrown open the shutters, as he often did, in the belief that fresh air is an invalid’s best friend. Just now that same window was filled with an enormous, foul-smelling, bestial Head.
I was not so intoxicated that I didn’t grasp what had happened. The Head belonged to Otis. Otis, being a bachelor Giraffe, must have been attracted by the unusual sounds and smells of childbirth. Wandering close to the house, he had put his head inside the open window as a natural means of satisfying his curiosity. But Dr. Polk didn’t know that an adult Giraffe was allowed to roam the Palace grounds, and he was understandably startled by such a development. His nurse shared his astonishment and terror.
Calyxa was well enough acquainted with Otis not to be frightened, but his arrival had unfortunately coincided with the penultimate moments of her labor. Her face was red and dewed with perspiration, and she shouted “Virez-moi cette girafe d’ici!” in a fierce and desperate voice.
I went as close to the window as I dared and made remonstrances with Otis by shouting and waving my arms. This annoyed him enough that he eventually obliged me by withdrawing. I quickly closed the windows and latched the shutters. Otis bumped his nose against these barriers once or twice, then abandoned his inquiries in disgust.
“Only a Giraffe,” I said to Dr. Polk—apologetically, though I was not responsible for Otis.
“Keep it away, please,” he said, struggling to recover his dignity.
“Otis is his name. He won’t bother you any more, if you keep the window shut.”
“I wasn’t warned about Giraffes,” the doctor growled. Then he regained a degree of composure, and told me I was the father of a baby girl.
4
Readers hoping for a political chronology of Julian’s career as President of the United States, with all the minutiae and details of his legislation, will be disappointed by my narrative. [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.]
The weeks between Easter and Independence Day of 2174—as important as they were in the evolution of the Executive Power—were consumed, for me, by the considerable work and fuss attendant on fatherhood.
Authors who discuss the period generally portray Julian as a haughty and implacable enemy of religion, or as a broad-minded and indulgent friend of liberty, as their convictions dictate. Perhaps both characterizations contain some element of truth, for Julian—especially in the Presidency—was more than one man.
It’s true that during this time his hostile relations with the Dominion reached the boiling point, with consequences familiar to historians. It’s also true that his relations with the Unaffiliated Churches were warm and generous, uncharacteristically so for one who has been labeled “the Agnostic” or “the Atheist.” These were not contradictions of policy so much as contradictions of character. Julian loathed Power, but couldn’t resist the urge to use it for what he considered benevolent ends. He had disdained the scepter; but now it was in his hands, and he made a tool of it. His vision expanded, and his perspective narrowed.
I saw him often during these months, though not in any official capacity. He stopped by the guest-house often, and he was always delighted to see and handle Flaxie. [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.]