Aurorarama
Page 29
In every case, as the guests were prompt to note with satisfaction, the plots and ponds (abounding with a curious amphibian animal that the Inuit recognized as the mysterious tiktaalit) were common to all. The overall atmosphere was apparently, perhaps deceptively, one of harmony and peace, though Brentford, while taking mental notes on the Greenhouse distribution, also found it a bit boring, like some kind of very sloooooow roundabout. This was not the kind of rustic Fairy Tale he wanted New Venice to become.
The Inuit, however, liked it better, to the point that they insisted on staying in Findias for the rest of the day. They were not very eager, one could tell, to return to the castle and meet the twins again, or as they called them, with a shiver of disgust, tyakutyik—“What kind of being are these two?” as Tuluk translated to Brentford.
It was only as they sat for lunch, the day already turned to a lavender twilight, that Gabriel made his appearance in the dinner room, without the twins, who, tenderly intertwined, were still sound asleep in his room.
“Our hosts aren’t with you?” asked Brentford, knowingly.
“No, they’re playing hide-and-seek together,” said Gabriel as he sat down at the table, taking a red apple from a cut-crystal bowl.
“You missed something.”
“Did I?” asked Gabriel between two mouthfuls.
“We saw some very interesting penetration twinning.”
“Oh, really?”
“I don’t know why, but I haven’t been able to stop thinking of the Elphinstone Myriorama, since last night. All these possible permutations.”
“So what? Isn’t Do All Be All the motto on your coat of arms?”
The Anarchists pretended not to pay any attention to this cryptic teasing, but Heidenstamm couldn’t help observing, “I have never heard of a case of xiphopagus twins being of different sex. It must be really interesting from an anatomical point of view.”
Gabriel looked at him coldly and answered nothing. But after a while, he whispered into Brentford’s ears, “They are more like hermaphrodites, in fact. And very playful.”
Brentford recalculated the permutations. If he sometimes found Gabriel’s pursuits to be less than tasteful, he had to admit they bore witness to a curiosity of metaphysical proportions. The previous evening must have been, he supposed, Gabriel’s own farthest north, though doubtless from Gabriel’s point of view, his true North Pole was the Ingersarvik. From there onward, he could only go south.
“You know, there’s something else I keep thinking of since last night,” Gabriel said to Brentford, more loudly this time. “That story about Father Calixte.”
“The religious fanatic? You think he preached Nixon-Knox into creating the Phantom Patrol, do you? I have come to the same conclusion myself.”
“That was rather obvious,” Gabriel said nastily. “It was something else that sprang to my mind. You remember my godfather?”
“The archbishop? The one that had you spied upon by your Eskimo maid?”
“That’s the one. He knew this Father Calixte from his days in the Marist Missions among the Inuit. Apparently, the man had made himself half-mad from privations and wanting to live like an Eskimo. He had more and more frequent visionary fits, which he thought were prophetic, and he was of course a kind of black sheep for the Church hierarchy.”
“They have eyes and they cannot see,” said, without perceptible irony, Hardenberg, who had overheard the conversation and was getting interested in it.
“Just before Calixte died,” Gabriel went on, “he asked my godfather, who had always defended him as well he could, to execute his last will. But it was a rather hard task, even for an archbishop. The most delicate provision of that will was that Calixte wanted one of his own prophecies to be carved on his tombstone, rather than some quote from the Bible. As you can imagine, the idea fared rather poorly with his superiors. Finally, a compromise was reached: it would be written in old-style French, with a lettering so ornate as to be barely legible to the average passer-by. Some years ago, I saw this tombstone, somewhere in the floor of a particularly ill-lit spot of the crypt of St. Mark’s Dream, and, according to my godfather, it read thus: “La ville sera la proie du serpent jusqu’à ce que le fils deux fois né devers le pôle arctique les en délivre.”—“The city will be prey to the Snake until a twice-born son from beyond the arctic pole delivers it.”
“And?” asked Brentford, holding back a yawn.
“Well. At the time I would have understood this rubbish as purely allegorical. The Snake of course represented evil, or else the desire to reach the Pole, which Calixte was constantly raving about. The twice-born son could be a man baptized as an adult, a convert Inuk, for instance. That would have been consistent with Calixte’s missionary work. But then, yesterday, I saw a twice-born son from beyond the arctic pole, and it just rang a sleigh bell in me.”
“The twins? Is that who you mean?” said Brentford, his eyebrows arching Gothic-style.
“Who else? Not to mention that they are the only direct matrilineal descendants of one of the Seven Sleepers, whose return in one form or another is awaited by the New Venetians. And after having spoken a little with the twins, I can tell you that they are much more than you think.”
“In what sense?” asked Hardenberg, inviting himself into the conversation.
“They have obviously undergone some sort of innate Transpherence. They are as d’Ussonville as d’Ussonville himself was. I suspected it in the way they told their story. They knew everything their grandmother or mother had seen or felt, and could see it as vividly as I see you.”
“But d’Ussonville was never Transphered,” protested Brentford, though he had already understood how it could have happened. “Unless … it was Plastisine.”
“Yes, from what I can gather, Igor Plastisine’s metabolism was pure Pineapples and Plums when he met Myrtle. He may have triggered something in her that she was never conscious enough to notice but that she passed straight on to the children she was carrying, whether they were Igor’s or Edmund’s—something sufficiently strong to keep them alive while they were borne by a dead mother. Maybe this was the message or, more exactly, the riddle Isabella wanted to convey to us by coming back to the city: these children, Brentford, are the only way the Seven Sleepers can come back and save the city. Because there’s one more thing that I have forgotten to tell you and that you, of all people, should know.”
“Drum roll, please …” said Brentford, who had become wary of Gabriel’s own Book of Revelations.
“I saw the Seven Sleepers rotting in the Scavengers’ Arcaves. The Council had tried to sink their cryogenic coffins in a canal.”
Brentford was thunderstruck.
“Blankbate did not tell me of this.”
“He did not want to spoil your wedding, I suppose. Or was keeping it for the right moment. Or he just didn’t care.”
“And why would the Council do such a thing?”
Gabriel shrugged his shoulders.
“Maybe they’re more afraid of the prophecies than they want to admit. Maybe they didn’t want to take any chances that the Sleepers would return.”
The Anarchists were totally befuddled, and looked at each other wide-eyed. Only Hardenberg, a frown creasing his large forehead, seemed to be pondering what he had heard. He was the one who spoke first.
“That changes everything, then.”
Brentford thought he knew what he meant, but wanted to make sure.
“In what respect?” he asked.
“It means, Mr. Orsini, that the Council has betrayed its own duty to the Sleepers and that their power is now devoid of any authority. You are now, if you’ll allow me such unholy words, a legitimist and your revolution is a restoration.”
“I have never believed a word of this prophecy about the Sleepers’ return.”
“Of course, you haven’t. But the question is not to believe it or not, it is whether to make it come true or not. Do it, and believe me, it will become believable.”
“Since you’re tempting your neighbour, and offering kingdoms to him, Mr. Hardenberg, you will not be surprised if I ask you to give us some kind of proof of your powers.”
“Our peculiar kind of magic deals only with reality. Be careful what you ask for.”
“What can you do to save the Inuit independentists?”
“Oh, that!” said Hardenberg, taking his watch from his waistcoat pocket. “It has already started. Herr Treschler should be ready by now, if you want to follow us …”
Treschler had not been part of the excursion but instead had been busying himself on a terrace of the castle with both a reflecting telescope and a box covered with studs and dials and topped with a swivelling antenna ending in a silvery ball. As the others rejoined him, the telescope was pointed at an aurora Borealis that had broken out just above the top of the Island’s vapour veil, and was shimmering like an emerald gauze curtain lightly dancing in a draught.
“Now,” Treschler explained to the assembly, “this device is just a little Tesla wireless transmitter that I use to send a signal to rotate another machine, called a Selenium Telectroscope, located on a distant island. This machine, which is itself coupled with a camera obscura, transforms the images it captures into amplified electromagnetic pulses, that are in turn beamed, thanks to powerful transmitters and a whole array of antennas, onto the aurora itself, in order to modulate its heat and composition according to the patterns of the original pictures, which it thereby replicates. I call this the Aurorarama.
“The what?” asked Gabriel, a puzzled look on his face.
“The Aurorarama, or the Hertzian Harp, if you prefer.”
“And what is its purpose, exactly?” Brentford asked impatiently, wondering how this thingamajig was supposed to help the Inuit independentists.
“You’ll see, and quite literally so,” Treschler answered patiently. “But I must warn you that it is a bit laggy and almost out of range, so you will have to focus very hard, I’m afraid.”
By and by, as all looked on, the striations of the aurora seemed indeed to form phantom, ephemeral shapes, perpetually dissolving and regrouping into vaguely purplish spectres on the green swaying backdrop. Small mountains seemed to be the general scene of the action. In the foreground, human shapes slowly came into focus, revealing a group of fur-clad Inuit, entrenched behind hillocks, their backs to the spectators, their weapons aimed at the landscape.
From time to time, explosions, seemingly from mortar shells, swelled the aurora, but caused little or no damage to the Inuit position. The Inuit remained motionless, as if waiting to see the “Whites of the eyes” of their opponents to start shooting at them. Straining his own eyes, Brentford could see, approaching the defenders, barely perceptible modifications of the landscape that gradually turned into figures carrying darker objects, which by and by appeared to be rifles. Brentford recognized the snow camouflage of the Alpine Marines of the Sea and Land Battalion, as they began attacking the trenches. Their snow glasses and their shoes, of a dark blue hue against the pale green aurora, made it easier to see them more precisely as they charged. It grew strange, then quite nerve-racking, for the helpless spectators to observe that the Inuit did not seem to react. Maybe they were out of ammunition and waiting, bayonets fixed, for a final hand-to-hand fight, which Brentford was not sure that he wished to see.
He turned toward Hardenberg, who in his Macfarlane and wide-brimmed Puritan hat retained an Olympian calm, while just beside him the four Inughuit cried encouragements and insults.
The first assault section of the Sea Lions reached the rim of the trenches, but the Inuit still did not move as they were shot at from above, the bullets tearing their clothes and jerking their bodies. Brentford was baffled. Had some poison-gas shells killed them before the land attack began?
The soldiers jumped into the trenches, so close now that the images, still striated and undulating, were as clear as those of a slightly damaged hand-colorized fantascope movie. The first Sea Lion, his fur-lined face mask as big as a moon in the sky, turned over one of the corpses at his feet, then suddenly jumped back, recoiling in horror, just as his comrades did when they checked the other bodies.
Eventually, an unmasked officer arrived, and Brentford recognized him as Mason himself, flanked by another man, the Count-Councillor and Army Commissar Auchincloss, wearing a black overcoat and a black chapka. The captain-general pulled one of the corpses upright and, with a disgusted face, tore off one arm. Brentford felt like throwing up, but then realized that the arm had not been human: it looked more like a musk ox bone or something of that kind. Mason then decapitated the corpse with a violent backward slap, and Auchincloss, picking up the head, became enraged and ripped off the wooden human mask that hid the muzzle of a seal.
“Tupilaat!!!” cried Tiblit in relief, as the other Eskimos laughed, slapping their thighs and each other’s backs, and hugging the anarchists, who were laughing with them. Brentford looked quizzically at Hardenberg, who smiled back at him.
Up in the sky, meanwhile, Mason and Auchincloss were now having what was obviously a heated debate. Eventually shrugging his shoulders, Mason ordered his reluctant men to rearrange the bodies, as if they had been shot during the attack, or thrown in a mass grave, taking care that their “faces” were hidden. As soon as this grisly task was completed, a photographer arrived and shot a picture of the bodies from above the trench. Obviously, Auchincloss had decided to make this look like a victorious battle and something to brag about when he got home. Mason stood apart, his arms crossed, sombrely looking off at the snow.
The aurora was now fading, the images losing clarity.
Hardenberg walked up to Brentford and, taking him by the arm, led him toward the crystal balustrade of the terrace.
“Now. How did you like our little tupilaat troopers? Made in East Greenland, thanks to our Inuit allies. It’s been a lot of work.”
Maybe Brentford would have liked it better if he had not faced the Phantom Patrol just the night before. This pantomime, successful as it was, hit too close to his funny bone.
“A bit horrible for a fairy tale.”
“Tss, tss. The most horrible are the best. Every child knows that. So you will take the kingdom I offered you?”
“It depends on what you want against it.”
“Nothing I will ask permission to get,” said Hardenberg with a certain haughtiness. “But nothing that should be of consequence to you.”
Brentford thought about it for a while. He had, so far, no reason not to trust the Aerial Anarchists.
“I have one more condition, or favour, to ask.”
“That would be your second wish. You’ll have just one left,” said Hardenberg pleasantly.
“I want no bloodshed.”
Hardenberg smiled widely, as if genuinely amused.
“Ah, Mr. Orsini … Do you know what it is that I like about you? You like to cast yourself as a down-to-earth politician and a no-nonsense strategist, but at heart, you’re like me, aren’t you? An artist and a poet. You should have called your book a Butterfly on the Barren Land. But you are no fool, and neither am I,” he added darkly. “And there is no way I can promise you such a thing.”
The night before the departure, Brentford had a dream. It was night and
he was walking the streets of New Venice. In the mock moonlight, the city was nothing but a self-repeating myriorama of ruins, smashed-in roofs, broken columns, toppled statues, scattered objects, and clothes half-smothered in the snow. His steps crunching through the silence, he walked and walked on in the cold, along avenues and across bridges, past empty arcades and pillaged shops, and did not meet a living soul. Now it is mine, he thought with bitterness, all mine …
CHAPTER XXIX
Terrorists!!!
Others, because the prince my seruice tries,
Thinke that I think State errours to redress:
But harder iudges iudge ambitions rage:
Scourge of itselfe, still climbing slipperie place:
Holds my young brain captiu’d in a golden cage.
O fooles, or ouer-wise, alas, the race
Of all my thoughts hath neither stop nor start
But only Stellaes eyes and Stellaes heart.
Sir Philip Sidney, Astrophell and Stella, XXIII
Hardenberg’s plan was that the Anarchists would not return to New Venice with the Ariel: now that the contract with the Council had been broken, it would have meant a field day for the Anti-Aerial Artillery. It was a much better idea, and Brentford had agreed, to let the Council think they had got rid of the traitors and the threat they posed.
They had hidden the airship in a cave inside the cliffs on the northern coast. Then, at night, using clever little electric motor sleds equipped with kites and spiked wheels at the front, they had discreetly rejoined the Fisheries, where the Scavengers, after Brentford’s explanations, welcomed them with no further question. By way of the Parcel Pneumatic Post they had been propulsed and hidden in the underground lair of the Scavengers, where they had made both their quarters and headquarters.