Sometime before the first report of it in 1669, calcite or Iceland spar had arrived in Copenhagen. The double-refraction property having been noticed immediately, the ghostly mineral was soon in great demand among optical scientists across Europe. At length it was discovered that certain “invisible” lines and surfaces, analogous to conjugate points in two-dimensional space, became accessible through carefully shaped lenses, prisms, and mirrors of calcite, although the tolerances were if anything even finer than those encountered in working with glass, causing artisans by the dozens and eventually hundreds to join multitudes of their exiled brethren already wandering the far landscapes of madness.
“So,” the Professor had gone on to explain, “if one accepts the idea that maps begin as dreams, pass through a finite life in the world, and resume as dreams again, we may say that these paramorphoscopes of Iceland spar, which cannot exist in great numbers if at all, reveal the architecture of dream, of all that escapes the net-work of ordinary latitude and longitude. . . .”
ONE DAY MILES BLUNDELL, off on one of his accustomed fugues through Venice, pausing to gaze at ruined frescoes as if they were maps in which the parts worn away by time were the oceans, or to contemplate some expanse of Istrian stone and read in its naturally cursive markings commentaries on a forbidden coastline, stepped across into what later inquiry would suggest was the prophetic vision of St. Mark, but in reverse. That is, he returned to the Rialtine marshes and lagoon as they had been in the first century A.D., the dark cormorants in ungainly swoop, the cacophony of gulls, the smell of swamp, the huge fricative breathing, approaching speech, of the reeds beneath the scirocco that had blown his ship off course—where, ankle-deep in the ooze, it was Miles who appeared to some Being clearly not of the immediate region. Nearby, wading distance from the indistinct shoreline, lay a curious vessel which it seemed the Being had arrived in. Not the usual lateener, in fact appearing to have neither sails, masts, nor oars.
“Are you sure it wasn’t just somebody wearing a mask or something? A-and what of that winged lion?” which Chick Counterfly, as Interrogations Officer, particularly wanted to hear about, “the Book, the page it was open to?”
“With its human face, yes, Carpaccio’s ambivalent smile, the Porta della Carta, so forth, all artists’ whim, I fear. . . . Unless you mean what the Being saw when it looked at me?”
“How would you know what it saw when it—”
“What was given to me to understand. To become as they’d say out here aptotic, uninflected, unable, sometimes, to tell subject from object. While remaining myself, I was also the winged Lion—I felt the extra weight at my shoulder blades, the muscular obligations unforeseen. The Book, what of that? Somehow I knew the Book by heart, the Book of Promises, promises to savages, to galley oarsmen, to Doges, to Byzantine fugitives, to peoples living outside the known boundaries of the Earth, whose names are as little known—how important in its pages could ‘my’ promise be, a simple promise that ‘here would thou our visitor’s body rest,’ here in some wet salt desert? While elsewhere in the Book waited matters far more important to be arranged, marriages and conceptions, dynasties and battles, exact convergences of winds, fleets, weather and market rates, comets, apparitions—what did a minor promise matter, even to the Evangelist? he was for Alexandria, wasn’t he, he knew his fate lay there, that this was only an interruption, a perverse wind up from Africa, a false turn along the Pilgrimage he knew, by then, that he was on.”
“Hey, Miles,” jeered Darby, “there’s an opening for Unit Chaplain if you’re interested.”
Miles, beaming good-humoredly, continued. “It wanted us to know that we, too, are here on a Pilgrimage. That our interest in the itinerario sfinciunese and the chain of oases set down in it is less for the benefit of those who have engaged us than for our own. When all the masks have been removed, it is really an inquiry into our own duty, our fate. Which is not to penetrate Asia in hopes of profit. Which is not to perish in the deserts of the world without reaching our objective. Which is not to rise in the hierarchies of power. Not to discover fragments of any True Cross however imagined. As the Franciscans developed the Stations of the Cross to allow any parishioner to journey to Jerusalem without leaving his church-grounds, so have we been brought up and down the paths and aisles of what we take to be the all-but-boundless world, but which in reality are only a circuit of humble images reflecting a glory greater than we can imagine—to save us from the blinding terror of having to make the real journey, from one episode to the next of the last day of Christ on Earth, and at last to the real, unbearable Jerusalem.”
Chick Counterfly, whose allegiances were to be found in a world more tangible, nevertheless felt, as always, a stab of guilt at the passion with which Miles reported his visions. As their Venetian assignment went on, Chick had found himself attending less to shipboard matters and increasingly drawn to the sotopòrteghi of the city, and the chances for adventure offered by those tenebrous passages. Down in one of which, one blurry, wet dusk, a young woman named Renata, with a gesturing of her dark curls, beckoned him in with a cigarette-case of Russian silver and niello, which sprang open to reveal a collection of “smokes,” Austrian, Egyptian, American, in varied shapes and sizes, some with gold-imprinted crests and writing in exotic alphabets such as the Glagolitic, old and new. “I pick them up, here and there, from friends. Hardly ever see two the same in one night.” Chick selected a Gauloise, and they “lit up,” she gently holding his wrist in the traditional way, pretending to examine his patent cigarette-lighter. “I’ve never seen one like this. How does it work?”
“There’s a small prism of radioactive alloy inside, emitting certain energetic rays, which can be concentrated, by specially invented ‘radio-lenses,’ and focused at a point about where the tip of your cigarette is—scusi, was.”
Renata was gazing at him thoughtfully from huge eyes of a curious verdigrised bronze color. “And it was you, Dottore, who invented these special lenses.”
“Well, no. This hasn’t been invented yet. I found it—it found me?—a fisherman in the fog, casting his lines again and again into the invisible river, the flow of Time, hoping to retrieve just such artifacts as this.”
“Affascinante, caro. Does that mean, if I live long enough, I might get to see this on the Rialto someday for sale by the dozens?”
“Not necessarily. Your own future may never include it. Nor mine. It’s not the way Time seems to work.”
“Hmm. My ragazzo—well, more than that, business associate, too—is with the police. He wants to be a detective someday. He’s always reading up on the latest criminal theories, and I know he’d be interested in—”
“Nonono, please, I am not one of Dr. Lombroso’s mattoidi, only a simple contract balloonist.”
“But not another Russian.”
“‘Another’ . . . but can you be sure?” Stroking his whiskers roguishly.
“Maybe I’ve run into one or two and know the difference.”
“And . . .?”
“Would I remember?”
“Prego, professional curiosity, no more.”
“Come, there’s a caffè just past that next little bridge. You’ll let me do the cards for you, at least, I hope.”
“Your business associate—”
A shrug. “Down in Pozzuoli, up to no good.”
They sat at a small veneered table, with room enough for their cups and the layout of miniature Tarocchi, or Tarot cards, Renata had produced a deck of from her handbag and shuffled, proceeding to put down a line of eight, above that a line of four, then two, then one, to form a rude cusp. “Allowing each of the upper cards to be influenced by the two just below it. The last card, as always, is the one that matters.”
Which tonight proved to be number XVI, The Tower. She shuffled and repeated the layout twice more, and each time it converged to the Tower, causing her to grow still, to breathe less deeply. The only other Major Arcana dealt up seemed to be gentle suggestions about character reform,
such as Temperance and Fortitude.
“In Protestant lands such as England,” Chick observed, “those who read these cards believe that The Tower signifies the Church of Rome.”
“An afterthought. The Tarocchi are much, much older. From long before Christ and the Gospels, let alone the papacy. Always very straightforward. This card, on this tabletop, for you, is a real tower, maybe even old Papà himself.”
“The Campanile in the Piazza? It’s going to be hit by lightning? Two parties are going to fall out of it?”
“Some kind of lightning. Some kind of fall.”
AROUND DAWN, as if it had just occurred to her, “But—aren’t you supposed to be with your unit?”
“As of midnight I was officially ‘straggling,’ and depending how early the boys are planning to get under way, why, I could be missing ship’s movement, too.”
“What will happen?”
“They could send a shore party after me, I guess. . . . See anybody suspicious out there?”
“Only the breakfast boat. Come on, I’ll buy you something.”
Two local fellows in a small boat had emerged from the luminous blur of the sfumato, which would not burn off till later in the morning—one rowing and the other tending a small charcoal stove whose glow was just about to be absorbed in the nacreous swell of daylight. Mussel-gatherers could now be seen out in the water, which came only up to their waists, moving about like harvesters in a field. Produce boats up from the Ponte di Paglia glided by, and small boats loaded with green crabs whose rattling struggles could be heard in the dawn.
Breakfast was ungraciously interrupted by Darby Suckling, who came abseiling down from some overhead purchase, sneering, “Gee, how típico. Let’s go, Counterfly.”
“Pax tibi, Darbe. Say hello to Renata.”
“Arrivederci, sister.”
“You used to be such a pleasant kid. What happened?”
“Eeeyynnhh, too many feebs to deal with over the years, I guess—oh I’m sorry, hope I’m not offending—”
“What if I don’t come back to the ship?”
“Sure—first you, then one by one, like some damned Farewell Symphony, we blow out our candles, walk off, resign from the Sky. I don’t think so.”
“You’d never miss me, soon the winds’ll be shifting, then it’ll be winter routine—”
“The Sky’s been good to you, Counterfly.”
“It’s the future I’m thinking of. I have some problems with the retirement plan.” An old pleasantry in the business—there was no retirement plan, in fact no retirement. Chums of Chance were expected to die on the job. Or else live forever, there being two schools of thought, actually.
“Guess I could hit you with a sap and drag you back somehow,” grumbled Darby. He had joined them at a small table outside for a breakfast of broiled fish, rolls, figs, and coffee.
“Lot of work,” Chick said.
They strolled along the Riva, past a line of torpedo boats tied up there.
“Get a ground job?” Darby said, “sure thing, sucker. But what doing? not as if there’s much call for our skills down below.”
“We’ve aviated ourselves away from the clambake, that’s certain,” Chick said.
“Bet you Padzhitnoff doesn’t feel that way.”
“That’s government work. According to my sources at the Italian War Ministry, he’s based across the Adriatic, in Montenegro, doing photo reconnaissance of the Austrian installations in Dalmatia. The Ministry is keenly interested, not to mention Irredentist elements in both countries.”
“Lot of this dang Irredentism going around lately,” it seemed to Darby.
“Austria has no business down here in the Adriatic.” Renata declared. “They were never a maritime nation and never shall be. Let them stay up in their mountains and ski, eat chocolate, molest Jews, whatever it is they do. We got Venice back, and so shall Trieste be ours again. The more they meddle here, the more certain and complete shall be their destruction.”
THE INCONVENIENCE WAS in a remote part of the Arsenale, out of dry-dock at last, shining and shipshape and somehow increased in size. Chick greeted his shipmates, who were a-thrum with excitement over reports that their Russian counterparts had been observed getting up buoyancy, carrying on board their ship a number of mysterious crates and casks, as if preparing for an engagement.
“Who with?” Darby shrugged. “Not us. How could it be us?”
“Any way of reaching Padzhitnoff?” Chick wondered.
Pugnax arrived in the company of Mostruccio, a small, ill-humored Venetian dog, with an ancestral resemblance to those observed in works of Carpaccio, Manveto, and others, some of whom had had their own private gondolas to ride around in. Emerging from dreams in which, winged as any lion, he had soared in pursuit of pigeons above the roof-tiles and among the chimneys, Mostruccio was obliged to spend his waking hours back at ground level in embittered assaults upon the ankles of the unwary. . . . He had found in Pugnax a sympathetic soul, for, owing to often weeks of being cooped up in the gondola of the Inconvenience, Pugnax also dreamed of release, running, in the early morning, into a brisk wind, leaving behind whatever humans had accompanied him, along the wild beaches of Florida hard as pavement, or the frozen rivers of Siberia where Samoyeds raced alongside in a spirit of friendly competition. He approached Randolph, arranged his eyebrows in a format of petition, and inquired “Rrr Rr-rrururu rrf rr-rrff, rr rrff rrffr?” or “May Mostruccio come aboard as my guest?”
PEDESTRIANS BELOW were moving at their accustomed gaits, sitting at the tables in front of Florian and Quadri, if Francophile raising toasts to Bastille Day, feeding, photographing, or cursing the pigeons, who, aware of some baleful anomaly in their sky, stuttered wildly into the air, then, reconsidering, settled, only to sweep a moment later heavenward again, as if on the strength of a rumor.
Seen from the ground, the rival airships were more conjectural than literal—objects of fear and prophecy, reported to perform at speeds and with a manœuvrability quite unavailable to any official aircraft of the time—condensed or projected from dreams, estrangements, solitudes. In the moments just preceding those in which the Campanile came down, to whom was it given to see the fight in the sky but to certain lasagnoni, always to be found about the Piazza, recorded over the seasons by thousands of tourist-photographers and their images taken home in silent autumnal diaspora—blurry as bats at twilight, often scarcely visible as more than sepia gestures against the dreaming façade of the Basilica San Marco, or the more secular iterations of the Procuratie—because, it is said, of the long exposures necessary in the humid light of Venice, but in reality because of the aeronauts’ dual citizenship in the realms of the quotidian and the ghostly, it was to the lasagnoni that the clarity of sight to witness the engagement was granted. To them alone. Dream-blown as the notorious pigeon population, contemplating the sky, they became aware that morning of something else about to emerge from the sfumato, some visitation . . . something that was to transcend both Chums and Tovarishchi, for all at once there was a great stunning hoarse cry from the invisibility, nearly a material thing, a lethal impedance in the air, as if something malevolent were making every exertion to take form and be released upon the world in long, dry, cracking percussions, as if jarring the fabric of four-space itself. At each salvo the two skycraft slid away at angles almost impossible to read correctly, so distorted had become the medium up here through which light must pass.
A giddiness of judgment seemed to have possessed both crews. The weapons-sighting situation oppressed them all, like a curse, with the little-understood enigmata of the simultaneous. By a few degrees or even minutes of arc, their gunners were abolishing Time—what they saw “now” in the sights was in fact what did not yet exist but what would only be a few seconds from “now,” dependent on platform and target each maintaining course and speed—or idealizations of “course and speed,” since winds were acting to modify both in not entirely predictable fashion.
The Camp
anile flowed hugely past on a severe diagonal, pigeon-stained, blotched both pale and dark, visibly out of plumb, leaning in as if about to confide a secret, haggard as the town drunk. . . .
In the next instant, Padzhitnoff saw the ancient structure separate cleanly into a multitude of four-brick groupings, each surrounded by a luminous contour, and hang an instant in space, as time slowed and each permutation of shapes appeared, to begin their gentle, undeadly descent, rotating and translating in all available modes, as if endeavoring to satisfy some demented group-theoretical analysis, until the rising dust-cloud they collapsed into obscured all such considerations in a great raw-umber smudge of uncertainty.
Among their weapons the lads had been packing their own unique model of aerial torpedo, invented by Dr. Chick Counterfly for the purpose not so much of annihilating or even damaging an opposing airship as of “reminding it of its innate susceptibility to gravitation.” The normal complement was six projectiles—known to the Chums as “sky-fish,” and listed in Inconvenience’s armaments manifest as Contrabuoyancy Devices. The unspoken question, at the post-engagement critique held that day directly after midday mess, was whether it may have been one of these—fired at the Bol’shaia Igra without allowing for a number of critical factors, such as the humidity—that had toppled the Campanile.
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