Aurorarama

by Jean-Christophe Valtat

  “Oh, yes. You should bring a flashlight. And a camera to immortalize the deed. For you would be the first man ever to get there. Just imagine that.”

  “Why do you say that? Peary went there, didn’t he?”

  “Oh, no,” William chuckled, “he did not.”

  “So you think that it was Cook.”

  “Oh! Him! Even less so, if that’s possible.”

  William got up and went straight to one of the teetering piles of books. Without much fuss, he withdrew a red volume, which he handed to Brentford. It was called Journey to the Earth’s Interior by a certain Marshall B. Gardner.

  “Another of those Hollow Earth books,” said Brentford with a slight disdain.

  “Exactly. But this one has the peculiarity of having been written after Peary’s and Cook’s expeditions, which means the author was facing a tough challenge when, without ever leaving his library, he still claimed that the pole marked a gate to the Earth’s interior. In this, you will agree that he was a brave man.”

  “Certainly,” said Brentford, browsing through the book, thinking that Peary and Cook were, on the whole, more likely candidates for a Bravery award.

  “It was vital to his theory that neither Peary nor Cook had ever reached the pole. And he spared no efforts to prove that. And if he is wrong about what he affirms, he is right about what he negates.”

  Brentford had found the chapter entitled “Was the North Pole discovered?” From what he read there, skimming though he was, it was evident that both explorers had stretched the truth by quite a length.

  “Peary,” resumed Whale, “came back much too quickly to substantiate his claim. Forty miles a day on a sled that Peary himself admitted he (or his men, since he could barely walk) had to push like a plough is simply not possible. His bearings must have been rather sloppy, to say the least, especially in a place where you quite easily get lost, and he had not taken into account the drift of the ice sheet either. So to say that he was thirty miles off the mark is really a generous estimation. As for Cook, he was certainly heroic as well, as the end of his trip more than proved, but he himself admitted that ‘to touch that spot would be an accident,’ and his Eskimos let him down by saying they had never lost sight of the land. Henson was probably right when he said that Cook had just ‘half-hypnotized himself’ over the whole matter.”

  “These men had certainly estimated that they had reached some North Pole inside of themselves,” said Brentford, handing back the book. “It is perhaps the one that counts.”

  “Oh, yes, certainly. As Emerson said, ‘Character may be ranked as having its natural place in the north. It shares the magnetic currents of the system. The feeble souls are drawn to the south or negative pole.’ Who, really, would boast of reaching his inner South Pole? You know what Lorber said?” asked William, with a wicked little smile, while Brentford sniggered knowingly. It was usual, if not ritual, in New Venice that any mention of the solid, pedestrian Antarctic would trigger a connivance of contempt. Jakob Lorber’s crackpot theory that the North Pole was “the mouth of the earth” and the South Pole the “the eliminatory canal” was, in this respect, a perennial favourite.

  “Seriously,” William insisted, “what you say has some truth, and we all wish we could reach that point, don’t we? But there are other ways to think of this failure. The first would be the disappointment. After all, the place is nothing if not nondescript. The North Pole and four hundred miles off it are just the same endless expanse of dreary faceless desert. The very place where you would plant your flag would drift away with the pack, so you couldn’t prove anything. Or to put it otherwise, the North Pole is Nothing. Just a name, an idea, that is not worth dying for, after all.”

  “I would think that the pole being an idea as much as a real spot explains very well the drive to go there. I have never seen that futility ever got in the way of human endeavour. Quite the contrary.”

  “I could very well agree with you on that. As you know, I am, first and foremost, a chess player, so I understand your argument even better than I would care to admit. Let us try something else, then. Maybe they did not really want to go there. Maybe they were, consciously or not, afraid or reluctant to face the fact that there was nothing there. Maybe they did not want to be the men who would disenchant the world, kill everyone’s dream of Eden or Hollow Earth, dry the fountain from which so many utopias were pouring forth—the very same reveries that, in some ways, had attracted them to the pole. They wanted, deep inside, to keep it a terra incognita.”

  “I can sympathize with this idea,” said Brentford. “But it does not make me want to go there, even if I considered myself able to do it, which, I must add, is not the case at all.”

  William looked at him with what was unmistakably benevolence.

  “If I judge by the way you have been invited there, the risk of disenchantment is rather reduced. Maybe you will find the very thing that those explorers were afraid not to find.”

  CHAPTER VIII

  Hypnotized!!!

  “I will not suffer myself to be hypnotized, or mesmerized, nor will I place myself in such a passive state that any uninitiated person, power, or being may cause me to lose control of my thoughts, words or actions.”

  The G. D. Neophyte Obligation

  It was not Plaster Easter yet—with its early spring procession of clumsy, unlucky skaters—but the casualty ward at the Kane Clinic was teeming with more people that it could reasonably contain. Some had managed to secure a seat among the rows of polished wood benches that recalled a Transaerian Station waiting room; others were standing huddled against the wall under the paintings of Elisha Kent Kane and his bride Margaret Fox, the medium, and some were pacing up and down, expressing the late winter of their discontent more physically than vocally, for the commanding presence of the Gentlemen of the Night discouraged all attempts at free speech.

  You could almost, or so thought Gabriel, deduce from all these bodies and faces the drug menu of their evening. The compulsive striders were probably full of stokers, pills for blood pressure, or boilers, for metabolic enhancement, and there were even one or two that were showing the coordination disorders typical of Gibberne’s Accelerator, which made everything around the user appear to be moving in slow motion. Most of the sitting bohemians, meanwhile, seemed rather sedated, by distance drinking or opiates, but you could also spot among them those who had taken psylicates or phantasticas and who were experiencing uncomfortable perceptual distortions: lids twitching from endless déjà-vu loops; cataleptic frowns disclosing a sudden fascination with minute details of the room or patterns on the floor; pupils wide open to the bright, bristling pulsation of furniture and walls; eyeballs rolling relentlessly to follow the course of Lilliputian figures, or inugarullikkat, having a ball on the benches. Some had started to show evident signs of distress, oscillating on their seats or talking nonsense to themselves.

  Displacing drugged people from their chosen environment was cruel and made the drugs more dangerous than they already were, ruminated Gabriel, who then concluded that this may well have been the idea after all. He did his best to don the enchanted silver suit of armour that comes from keeping one’s sangfroid, but he found it undersized and bursting at the joints with the pent-up anger he had accumulated.

  From time to time, someone was called and taken away along a corridor. The Sun Dogs had been among the first to go (never to reappear), as well as Bob and Budd-Jones, who had both been released earlier on and had saluted him on their way out. Gabriel, thanking God (or Himself, for that matter) that he had been relatively sober, had been waiting like this for an hour or so, his shoulder leaning against the wall, legs casually crossed so they would not twitch too much, when, at last, Sealtiel Wynne appeared at the end of a corridor and summoned him to follow.

  “We are truly sorry to have kept you waiting for so long, Mr. d’Allier,” said Sealtiel as he stepped aside to let Gabriel precede him into the examination room. “We were ourselves waiting, for someone to c
ome especially for you.”

  Two men were already sitting behind a desk. One was a thin doctor, with a long nose and a white smock, who was introduced by Wynne as Doctor Playfair. The other one, a man with a pockmarked face, dressed in a dinner jacket, top hat, and crimson-lined cape, was simply introduced as “the person I told you about.” He was fidgeting, impatiently, it seemed, as the doctor indicated a chair to Gabriel.

  Wynne now stood behind the pair.

  “We are well aware that this has not been an easy day for you so far, Mr. d’Allier,” he continued, in a tone that made Gabriel want to spool off the man’s intestines with a spiked wheel at the first opportunity. “But things should go at a steadier pace from now on, especially if you would be so kind as to help us a little.”

  Gabriel said nothing, but looked at Wynne with a look that he hoped was unequivocal.

  “We will gladly spare you the blood test. We both know what would be found in that precious blue fluid of yours. It is really unfortunate that you have dealt in drone design these last months. Not only for your own health, for which we are, as you know, genuinely worried, but also for the people you put at risk. You were probably unaware of the dangers, we know that perfectly well, but imagine that, because of the damage done, some of these people felt they should sue you. Whatever the outcome, it would be detrimental to your professional pursuits, wouldn’t it?”

  “I have listened to these,” said Playfair, waving a wax roll he had taken up from the table, “especially ‘Lobster-Cracking.’ These are, Mr. d’Allier, or should I call you Mr. Air-Loom Gang, impossibly low frequencies whose resonance could cause lasting lesions in the organism. Taken with drugs, they could provoke a coma, or even cerebral death.”

  Gabriel felt like telling the doctor to mind his own drug business but tilted down his mental silver helmet instead. What came next, however, crushed his visor like a tin can.

  “We discovered that roll,” said Wynne, “in the handbag of one of your students, a certain Ms. Phoebe O’Farrell, whom we found unconscious in the street not far from the Botanical Building late in the afternoon. We are worried about her condition, since she has not regained consciousness yet.”

  Gabriel felt a cold sweat on his forehead and palms, and a curious buzz arose in his ears. He clutched his chair, turning his rage into images of mayhem and murder. He saw himself spoon out Wynne’s eyes and spit into their orbits. Cruelty made sense to him as it never had before.

  “She seems to be in a kind of cataleptic trance,” said Playfair, handing the roll to Wynne. “She had some trace of snowcaine in her hair and we strongly suspect what she had taken caused a bad reaction to the music. Your music.”

  “Interesting. Could I see her later?” asked the anonymous man in an affected voice.

  “Oh, certainly,” said Wynne, as if he ran the clinic. “I am you sure you would be of great help to that poor girl.”

  “We should also keep you under observation, but this gentleman,” Playfair said, indicating the top-hatted man with what Gabriel thought a slight gesture of disapproval, “has accepted Mr. Wynne’s idea that he can help us by giving you a quick mental examination.”

  Gabriel still said nothing, slowly calming down, preparing for the next attack.

  “It is nothing painful,” continued Playfair.

  “Just a few questions under hypnosis. To make sure everything is all right,” explained Wynne.

  “I refuse,” said Gabriel flatly.

  “Observation will take more time,” said Playfair, with a sigh, “much more time. Precious time that I will not be able to devote to Ms. O’Farrell, I’m afraid.”

  “Not to mention that Ms. O’Farrell’s parents, who have not yet been informed of the accident, may take it badly that you refuse to cooperate with the authorities. Especially given some of your colleagues’ testimony about your personal involvement in their daughter’s education,” Wynne threatened.

  “I do no doubt your own parents would be proud of you, Mr. Wynne,” Gabriel said, so icily his words congealed in front of him and fell on the floor like little hailstones.

  Wynne flinched, almost imperceptibly, and Gabriel knew he had turned his Guardian Angel into a personal enemy. There was a moment of awkward silence.

  “I am tired of all this and have nothing to hide, after all,” said Gabriel, like someone who feels he has gone far enough. “Just promise me I’ll go free afterward, and I accept.”

  “This could be considered, I suppose,” said Wynne, moodily.

  “Do I have your word of honour, Mr. Wynne?”

  The other two turned toward the Gentleman of the Night.

  “You have it,” he said, straightening up. “And I accept your apologies.”

  “I do not demand that much,” answered Gabriel.

  “Now, if you please, Mr. d’Allier …” said the man in the top hat, who seemed in a hurry to be done with the circus of it all.

  He rose and stood in front of Gabriel, two fingers forking as if to poke out his eyes, and searched to “catch” his gaze with his own green intrusive irises. Gabriel felt the violence of the impact. The eyes, after all, are a tender part of the brain. A sentence crossed his mind: The soul is a castle where even God can’t look. He was not sure what its author meant, but for him it now made perfect sense. He would lock himself inside and that beggar in a top hat could bang at the door as long and loud as he pleased. Pretending to struggle a little against the vicious little drills, Gabriel simply thought of what he had learned in the Subtle Army: if you are tortured, hold your breath and try to faint as quickly as possible. He would do it his way, trusting that he could use a little dissociation trick he had mastered during Transpherence training and years of afternoon naps. Instead of looking at the hypnotizer’s eyes, he focused himself on his own reflection in the intruder’s pupils, short-circuiting him with this narcissistic ménage-à-trois. Working on his breath and silently repeating his own name in a chant to parry the orders he was supposed to obey, he hypnotized himself into a half-dreaming state, until everything that happened was purely between himselves, his mind a stubborn block of solid fog that would relinquish nothing of any importance or interest to them, just the usual off-the-cuff hieroglyphics of sleep, so involuted as to be senseless. At the surface, though, he remained aware enough to hear the man say:

  “Now, Mr. d’Allier, now … You will answer any questions Mr. Wynne will ask you. Will you please do that for me?”

  Gabriel vaguely nodded his head. He could hear a drawer being opened and some machine being installed on the desk. He knew that sound: someone was fitting a tin horn onto a phonograph and cranking the mechanism to record every word Gabriel would pronounce under the influence.

  “Mr. d’Allier,” said Wynne, “how are you?”

  “Fiiiiiiiinnnnnnne” moaned Gabriel, hoping he was not overdoing it. He could feel his mind unfocused and foggy, but knew that if it was drifting, it was drifting away from them.

  “Do you swear you will tell me truth, and nothing but the truth? Raise your hand and swear, Mr. d’Allier, if you please …”

  Gabriel felt himself slowly raising an arm that was heavier than he expected.

  “I swear,” he murmured.

  “Say that again, if you do not mind, louder.”

  “I swear.”

  “Mr. d’Allier, there is one thing we would like to know above all others. Would you please tell us what or whom A Blast on the Barren Land evokes for you?”

  A flurry of images gushed forth in his brain. Whatever they were, they would have to do.

  “Flap,” said Gabriel, after a pause, not without surprise.

  “Who?”

  “Flap.”

  “Who is Flap, Mr. d’Allier?”

  “Flap is … a friend.”

  “Where did you meet him?”

  “Her. I met her in the Greenhouse in Grönland Gardens. I took a path that I thought would take me out of the hothouse but did not. It kept on, it seemed forever. At some point, I fe
ll asleep under a tree. And after a while, I woke up, feeling a fresh sensation below the waist, and Flap was over me.”

  “Over you?” said Wynne, in a faltering voice.

  “Over me. Yes. I opened my eyes, and I saw her. She was rather cute but a bit on the chubby side, with little dragonfly wings on her back. I asked her who she was and what she thought she was doing. ‘I’m Flap the Fat Fairy,’ she said, ‘and human semen is like honey to me.’ Then she spat something on my belly and flew away. I reached to see what she had spat and it was a little heart-shaped ice crystal she had kept in her mouth all the time. It immediately attracted two little elves or fairies on my belly, who were commenting on my withering ‘snowdrop’:

  ‘Oh, you naughty Pocket!

  Look, she drops her head.

  She deserved it, Rocket,

  And she was nearly dead.’

  “Then they fought for the crystal, tugging at it till it burst in a cold blast and Rocket and Pocket both ran away, leaving the land quite barren. That’s all I remember.”

  “Rocket and Pocket, hmmm,” said Wynne, who sounded tired. “Please, kind sir, wake him up,” he asked the man, hastily hiding the phonograph back in the drawer.

  “Wake up, Mr. d’Allier,” said the hypnotist in a low but firm voice, putting his gloved palm lightly on Gabriel’s forehead. “You will forget everything that has happened since Mr. Wynne called you into the examination room.”

  Gabriel opened his eyes, and saw the three men looking at him with a blend of puzzlement, disbelief, and distaste. Some personal shades of disapproval, however, had been added to their looks. Wynne seemed particularly disgusted, while Playfair’s eyes reflected a very light streak of irony. As to the nameless man in the cape, he seemed somewhat furious, and maybe slightly vexed.

  Gabriel was careful to wake up slowly and pretended not to remember anything. He was himself a bit ashamed by what he had come up with.