I carried that news to Julian tonight.
He greeted it with grim amusement. “Just what I hoped the Dutch were thinking. Good! Maybe we can find a way to deepen their fears.”
Again, he wouldn’t explain what he had in mind. But he has sequestered one of the warehouses by the docks (out of range of enemy artillery), and is converting it into some sort of workshop. Men have been recruited and sworn to secrecy. He has requisitioned countless bolts of black silk; also sewing machines, hooks and eyes, strips of lathing from damaged houses, bottles of caustic soda, and other peculiar items.
“Maybe it’s good for the Dutch to believe in this imaginary weapon,” I said, “but unfortunately our own troops believe in it too. In fact they imagine you’re preparing to activate it.”
“Perhaps I am.”
“There is no Chinese weapon, and you know that as well as I do, Julian, unless hunger has driven you entirely mad.”
“Of course I know it. I’m a firm believer in its non-existence. All it means is that we’re forced back on our ingenuity.”
“You mean to build a weapon out of silk and fish-hooks?”
“Please keep that thought to yourself. The rest will become clear in time.”
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2174
The pace of activity in Julian’s sealed warehouse increases. The “secret weapon” is now so commonly spoken-of that I fear the men will be bitter or even vindictive in their disappointment, when the truth is finally revealed.
More shells fell today, causing heavy casualties among one particular regiment. I volunteered at the field hospital in the afternoon, assisting Dr. Linch in the chopping, paring, and stitching of shattered limbs. The work is almost unbearable for anyone of a sensitive nature (and I count myself among that number), but necessity knows no excuse.
Our gravest enemy, Dr. Linch says, is less shrapnel than dysentery. At least a quarter of our soldiers are down with it, and it spreads with the infectiousness of a fire in a kindling-yard.
Corn-cake and salt cod for dinner, in small servings.
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 2174
Extraordinary events! I mean to set them down before I sleep, though it is already very late.
After the evening meal Julian summoned me to his quarters and asked me to bring along my typewriter. I carried the machine (no small task, in my weakened and hungry condition) to the upstairs study of the former mayor’s house, and Julian instructed me to keep it ready, for there was a message he wished to dictate.
Then, to my astonishment, he summoned an adjutant and ordered Private Langers to be brought into his presence.
“Langers!” I exclaimed as soon as the adjutant had gone out. “What do you want with Langers? Has he committed some fresh outrage? I saw him at the hospital, perpetrating his clerical fraud; but I don’t suppose that’s what this is all about.”
“It isn’t—or only in part. And please, Adam—you might be startled by some of what I have to say to him; but it’s essential to the success of my plans that you don’t interrupt or correct me while Langers is in the room with us.”
This was a sterner tone than Julian usually took in my presence; but I reminded myself that we were at war, and under siege, and that he was a Major General, and I was not. I promised not to speak out of turn. Of course my curiosity was profoundly aroused.
We shivered for most of half an hour—Julian heated his quarters parsimoniously, to conserve the supply of coal—before Langers arrived. Langers was shivering, too, as he stumbled into the room, perhaps not entirely from the cold. He looked at Julian apprehensively. “Sir?” he said.
Julian put on his most imperial manner. [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.]
“Please sit down, Private.”
Langers inserted himself into a chair by the stove. “You called for me, sir?”
“Obviously I did, and here you are. I’ve received a complaint about you.”
Langers—no doubt recalling what had happened to him when Sam gave out the truth about his Lucky Mug during the Saguenay Campaign—seemed almost to shrivel with dismay, and his expression grew even more furtive and wary. “It’s ungrounded,” he muttered.
“You haven’t heard the charge yet.”
“I know it’s unjustified because my conduct has been above reproach. These past weeks I’ve labored exclusively at the field hospital, sir, consoling the sick and the dying.”
“I know all about that,” said Julian, “and I would commend you for it, but for one thing.”
“What thing ?” Langers demanded, feigning indignation, not very successfully.
“One of my regimental commanders discovered several suspicious items hidden under your bedroll. These included a large number of gold rings and leather billfolds.”
“Well?” Langers said, though he reddened. “A man can harbor a few keepsakes, can’t he?”
“No, he may not, not if the same items have been reported as missing from the mortally wounded. I have a corroborating statement from one of the doctors who saw you at the field hospital, your right hand raised over an injured man in a benediction while the left hand stripped a wallet from the victim’s pocket. As for the rings, ordinarily such ornaments are sent to grieving widows, not squirreled away under the bedrolls of counterfeit Deacons.”
“Well, I—” Langers began, but he faltered. The evidence against him was shocking, and he had lost the opportunity to mount a defense. His naturally long and equine face seemed to grow even longer. “Sir—the hospital is an awful place—it affects a man’s mind, over time—perhaps the circumstances drove me to irrational acts—”
“Perhaps they did, or perhaps it was just your acquisitive nature. But don’t worry, Private. I didn’t call you here to scold you or punish you. I mean to give you an opportunity to redeem yourself.”
Langers was not so naive as to grasp that straw without squinting at it first. “I’m sure I thank you—redeem myself how exactly?”
“Be patient. Before we go on, I need to dictate a letter. Adam, will you write it down on that machine of yours?”
I suppressed my astonishment at these unfolding events and said, “Yes, certainly, Julian—I mean, General Comstock.”
“Good. Are you ready?” (I applied paper to platen, hastily.) “Put in a top line with the date and mark it as from my headquarters, Army of the Laurentians, Northern Division, Town of Striver , Lake Melville , Eastern Labrador, etc.” I clacked away at this task. My typewriting skills had improved since I first acquired the machine, and I was proud of my speed, though it set no records. “Address it to Major Walton, General Headquarters, Newfoundland.”
I did so. Then Julian dictated the body of the text, which I will set down here while it remains fresh in my mind, including the unusual capitalizations which Julian demanded: This is to let you know that, after much solemn deliberation, and in the face of continuing enemy encirclement and bombardment, I have resolved to deploy the MECHANISM we earnestly hoped would never be used in civilized warfare.
I do not take this decision lightly. It is no easy thing to enter into a war as brutal as this one, and to make it yet more inhuman by the employment of such a cruel DEVICE. It is not the prospect of the IMMEDIATE death of countless enemy soldiers which pangs me, for that is the nature of war, so much as the knowledge of the LINGERING EFFECTS, in which death comes only after hours or even days of intolerable suffering. You know that in councils of war I have argued against the deployment of this WEAPON, which is so vicious in its workings that any Christian trembles at the mention of it.