* My suggestion.
* 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.
7
It was late that summer when an assassin crept into the Executive Palace and hid himself in the Library Wing, for the purpose of putting a pistol to Julian Conqueror’s head and killing him.
August had just given way to September, and the production of The Life and Adventures of the Great Naturalist Charles Darwin was well under way. Julian had not been idle during the preparation of the book and music. All the power of the Presidency and much of the wealth he controlled as a Comstock had been devoted to it. He had renovated a set of unused stables at the West 110th Street end of the Palace grounds, turning them into a “movie studio” as modern as anything in Manhattan; and he had recruited the talents of the city’s finest Production Company, which was called the New York Stage and Screen Alliance. This combination of players, singers, noisemakers, camera-operators, film-copiers, et alia, had been responsible for many well-regarded movies, including Eula’s Choice, previously described. In the past, however, they had always been bound by the rules of the trade and the strictures of the Dominion. In this case Julian had taken charge of them directly; and they were bound to his instructions, and no one else’s.
On this particular day I was down at the “studio” watching some incidental photography not involving the major actors. It was a day off for Magnus Stepney, who was playing Darwin; and Julinda Pique, the screen actress representing Emma Wedgwood, had gone to visit relatives in New Jersey. But the players interested me less than the technical work of the business, which continued without them. I had befriended the Camera Operator In Charge of Illusions, or Effects Shooter, as he was called for short, and I was helping him arrange “shots” for the South American montage in Act Two. He had set up a painting the size of a wall, of jungles and mountains, uncanny in its realism, and he had placed in front of it some very convincing paper imitations of tropical plants and bushes, as well as wildlife in the form of tame dogs dressed as tigers, and a number of armadillos sent by mail from Texas, mainly living. Julian had instructed him not to keep the camera still, but to move it around some, giving a more lively impression; and he was doing so as I watched, trying to keep the restive animals in the frame without inadvertently revealing the artificiality of the backdrop. This was warm work on a sultry September day, and it called forth some unusual curses before he achieved the result he aspired to.
He was just “wrapping up” this business when an Executive Page in green livery came hurrying toward us. The man was obviously agitated, and he had to recover his breath before he could gasp out, “There’s been shooting, Major Hazzard! Shooting at the Palace, sir!”
I rushed there without waiting to hear more. It wasn’t easy getting past the Republican Guards who had cordoned off the Library Wing, and I was alarmed when I saw the court physician hurried in ahead of me. I remonstrated with the Guards until Sam Godwin appeared; then we both proceeded together.
I feared the worst. Julian’s position as President had become increasingly insecure as his battles with the Dominion escalated. Just last week he had declared all Ecclesiastical Writs of Replevin null and void, pending new legislation. This meant that the authorities could no longer claim, seize, or imprison fugitives on complaints issued solely by the Church. It had the effect of releasing Calyxa from her confinement, but it also set free countless jailed apostates, the congregations of various Unaffiliated Churches, a number of Parmentierist radicals who had been scooped up on ecclesiastical charges, and a few of those unfortunate lunatics who insist on proclaiming their personal divinity.
The voiding of that law, added to his ongoing attempt to separate the Church from the Military, amounted to an emasculation of the Dominion. The Dominion could still collect tithes from affiliates, and could pronounce anathema on dissenters, but without legal traction it would soon begin to lose ground—or so Julian hoped.
In response, it seemed they had sent an assassin into our midst: for I did not doubt that the Dominion was behind this treachery. “Is Julian killed?” I asked Sam as we pressed through the crowd in the Library Wing.
“Don’t know,” said Sam. “Has the physician been called for?”
“Yes, I saw him go in—”
But Julian wasn’t killed. Once we attained the Reading Room we found him sitting in a chair, upright and alert, although a bandage had been wrapped around his head. He called us over as soon as he spotted us.
“How badly are you hurt?” Sam demanded.
Julian’s expression was grim. “Not badly, or so the doctor tells me—the bullet took a piece of my ear.”
“How did it happen?”
“The assassin hid behind a chair and came out at me unexpectedly. He would have killed me completely, except that Magnus caught sight of him and called out a warning.”
“I see,” said Sam. “Where is Magnus now?”
“Lying down. The event was alarming for him—he has a sensitive nature.”
“I guess an attempted murder would alarm most anyone. What about the assassin—where’s he?”
“Mauled by the Republican Guards,” said Julian, “and taken into confinement in the basement.”
The “basement” of the Executive Palace included a set of cells in which prisoners could be detained.* “Has he said anything useful?” Sam asked.
“Apparently his tongue was cut out years ago, and he can’t or won’t write. The Dominion chooses its assassins carefully—it knows how to break men, and tries to make its men unbreakable.”
“You don’t know for certain it was the Dominion that sent him.”
“Is there any evidence to the contrary? I don’t need certainty in order to act on a well-grounded suspicion.”
Sam said nothing to this, but shook his head unhappily; for he believed, and often said, that Julian in his argument with the Dominion had set himself on a course for destruction just as certainly as if he had plunged into the rushing waters above Niagara.
“In any case,” Julian said, “the man’s motivation is plain enough. He was carrying a crudely-printed leaflet demanding the restoration of Deklan Conqueror to the Executive.”
“But if he can’t read or write—”
“I expect the leaflet was a prop, meant to draw suspicion away from the clergy, though who but the clergy would want my murderous uncle back in the Executive seat? Still, I don’t like to have Deklan used as a nail on which assassins pin their hopes. I’ll have to do something about him.”
There was a cold glint in his eye as he said this, and neither Sam nor I dared to pursue the matter, though Julian’s manner filled us with foreboding.
“And there’s the question of the Republican Guards,” Julian continued.
“What about them? It seems as if they acted as soon as the assassin revealed himself.”
“But they ought to have acted before the assassin revealed himself; otherwise what purpose do they serve? It was luck and Magnus Stepney that saved my life, not the Guardsmen. I don’t see how the man could have got this far without a collaborator among them. I inherited those men from the previous regime, and I don’t trust them.”
“Again,” Sam said in a conciliatory tone, “you don’t know—”
“I’m the President, Sam, isn’t that clear to you yet? I’m not required to know; only to act.”