“We want to make the picture real,” Brentford insisted.
And de Couard’s tics flickered about his face … until they finally took the shape of a smile on his thin lips.
The smile disappeared as soon as Thomas extracted the Colonel from his bag. For a man like de Couard, who was wary of even the slightest shock, a talking head was close to a lethal blow.
“Please calm yourself, sir,” the Colonel said. “If it doesn’t bother me, it certainly shouldn’t bother you, eh?”
“I sup-suppose so …” de Couard stammered, shaking with unease.
A few busy minutes later, the five remaining New Venetians—Gabriel, Brentford, the Colonel, Lilian, and Thomas—were sitting in a half-circle in front of the painting. The lights had been turned down, except for a lamp set behind the drawings, which made their outlines clearer. Gabriel’s cane stood upright in front of the New Venetians, with the figure of Kiggertarpoq facing them, like a gunsight on which all eyes focussed.
“And what is the use of this thing, sir?” de Couard asked Gabriel.
“It is my own experience that this object can establish a telepathic bond between us and this place,” he explained, indicating the sketchy city to his future fellow-citizen, not even sure that what he said made sense to himself.
“Oh, I see.” De Couard nodded. “Quite fascinating.”
He stood behind them, waiting to pull the rope that made the blue tattva go down just in front of the drawings.
“Remember,” he said. “First, you should prepare yourself for the vision by concentrating on this figure. When you see the negative image of the circle, just wave and I’ll lift up the tattva. Focus on the drawing and the vision should begin.”
Brentford stared ahead intently, hoping he’d know a negative image when he saw one.
“A little help wouldn’t hurt,” Gabriel said. “This is what I’d taken when Kiggertarpoq contacted me.” He unfolded a packet of Diamond Diviner’s Dust and handed it around.
“What does it do, exactly?” Brentford inquired.
“Mostly, it channels for the imagination the other sensations that you can feel in dreams but can’t imagine otherwise. For me, it made my wish come true—in fact a little bit truer than true, even if only in my imagination. Desire is the key—isn’t that what Sson said?”
Lilian didn’t hesitate to help herself, and neither did Thomas, but Brentford was reluctant to be playing tricks on his brain while he still had use for it—until he remembered his motto, Do All, Be All, and decided that if he was going to die tonight, he had little to lose by experimenting.
Meanwhile, Lilian took care of the Colonel.
“What a charming sandman you make, Miss Lake,” the Colonel told her.
“Sandwoman, if you don’t mind.”
“Now,” Gabriel said, “when I was a kid at St. Anthony’s, and it was too cold to go out, my grandfather would take me by the hand, ask me to close my eyes, and we would walk around the living room, pretending it was the town, and he would describe the monuments to me so that I could picture them in my head … Let’s do something similar: let us imagine that we’re taking a walk together, and oh, let’s make it a winter day. There’s nothing like snow to help in forming good mental images.”
The New Venetians nodded and joined hands—except for the Colonel, of course, who had to endure Brentford and Lilian pinching his cheeks.
“Now,” Brentford said. De Couard turned off the lights, except for the oil lamp that shone behind the drawings.
Their eyes stinging and pulsing from the sand, the New Venetians locked their gazes onto the tattva, until it seemed less a surface than a deep blue hole leading to the other side of the sky. Its edges throbbed as if something inside was trying to break out of it. They closed their eyes to a red flash, at last, and, on de Couard’s command opened them again while the curtain rose on the miraginous city. In front of it, the Kiggertarpoq effigy, as if heated by the looks that crossed it, had now assumed a gentle glow that made the space around it tremble slightly. Sweating and shivering from the diamond dust and trying to ignore their aching muscles and stomach cramps (the Colonel being by far the most successful), the time exiles focussed on the drawings and projected their memories with all their will onto the spots they recognized, street after street, bridge after bridge, canal after canal. By and by, as they tried to imagine themselves passing amongst the buildings, they sensed the city growing around them, almost organically, taking on more weight, assuming more precise, more angular shapes, though some parts always remained blurry and indefinite. And when they found themselves stuck in some featureless place, they would see a white furry shape hopping in the distance, and, following it, would always find their bearings again.
The crunch of their steps (or in the Colonel’s case, the grating of his sled) on the ground-diamond snow, the thrill of the Arctic air, the weight of the winter clothes—it all came back to them. Even in a snow-socked Paris they’d almost forgotten the extremity of it all. From time to time, as they raised their minds’ eyes, each could see that some location that his or her own brain had left unfinished would be gaining in substance and detail because—this much they understood—someone else strolling not far away was remembering it better. And indeed, when this happened, the Polar Kangaroo would appear and steer them so that they could see one another, walking in the distance or just turning a corner, linking and weaving their memories together. Brentford almost bumped into Lilian coming out of the Xanadu Arcades, and felt his heart leap into his throat, but at the moment it happened, it was if the drawing were suddenly filled with colour and sound and became so tangible that Brentford could lean on one of the Arcade’s columns to regain his breath, and feel the pressure of it on his back as clearly as in the reality of a dream.
For hours they walked around, each one’s memory growing more precise as it fed from the others’ and connected with them, until they couldn’t tell any longer whose recollections were whose, and their walk was like a promenade in other people’s dreams. But it was more than that. Each crossing and knotting of their paths was making the city more solid and sharp in the pale polar sun. Now they could feel that what they passed remained behind them, so that they could turn around and see it still there, rising and spreading and gleaming, the whole of it, sparkling as if it were made of salt. That it was really made out of memories and dreams only made it more real—for, after all, that was what New Venice had always been: a commonwealth of visions. Their five dark silhouettes converged on Bears’ Bridge and found de Couard waiting for them in the middle of it, unusually radiant. He, too, it seemed, had at last found a home.
“I can see it. Around your heads. Like a model made of thin air,” he announced. “Occultists call these clichés. It’s all so beautiful.”
As they painfully, slowly, and regretfully came back to their senses, all they could see through their stinging eyes was the pencil drawing and the narwhal-tusk carving of the miniature kangaroo.
But the city, they knew, was inside them, and would remain there till they died.
III
New Venice Must Be Built
When they finally left de Couard’s house the night had already seeped in and bathed Paris in a fine mist that made the lights plushy like dandelion clocks. They said not a word to one another about what had just happened, but with the vision of their home still lingering behind their bloodshot eyes, they felt like New Venetians more than ever before as they walked into the Place de la République—the last place they would ever see each other in Paris … or perhaps anywhere.
“So, this is where we say goodbye,” Brentford said in a husky voice. Thinking it unsafe to go back to the hotel, they had agreed earlier that everyone would go their own separate ways from here.
“Good luck with your new career,” he said to Lilian, trying not to sound bitter and, judging from Lilian’s crooked smile, not quite managing it.
“Say hello to me when you see her,” she said. “Or to her when you see m
e.”
“Be sure I’ll do that. Thomas, give my regards to Blanche. What about a little fencing tomorrow at the Academy?”
“With pleasure,” Thomas nodded, with a click of the heels that the snow almost smothered. “I’m sure my arm will feel better,” he added with a smile.
“And, Colonel, I wish you a safe journey home,” Brentford whispered to the bag, hoping no one was looking.
“As long as I have a good head on my shoulders,” came his muffled voice from the dark interior, “I’m sure I’ll do damn fine.”
Brentford sighed and turned, finally, towards Gabriel.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Gabriel said with a smirk. “Don’t think you’ll get rid of me that easily. Remember,” he added, lifting his cane to show Kiggertarpoq: “The thirteenth returns and it still is the first.”
“Says who?”
“Gérard de Nerval.”
“Gérard the Narwhal, you mean.”
They both smiled, but weakly.
By the time Brentford reached the Arsenal, there were so many sparkling stars overhead that the night sky looked like a suspended, motionless snowstorm. The portholes of the Dukedominion were lit, so, knowing he was expected, he crossed the footbridge over the harbour and headed for the gangway. The yacht was not guarded, and he made his way to the door of the cabin with no trouble other than a knot of fear in his stomach. The knot spasmed when a man dressed in black and wearing a raven mask opened the door and motioned him inside, without so much as a croak, before he had time to introduce himself.
Savnock was sitting in the luxurious stateroom, poring over a long ebony box on his lap. On a table beside him, a model of New Venice spread its canals and avenues. A huge tower with a light on top stood in the middle, and Brentford struggled for a moment to remember it, before deciding he was sure it did not belong to New Venice. Not as he remembered it.
Savnock looked up. “Ah, Mr. Orsini. I am mightily pleased to see you again. And for a rather good reason, this time. Monsieur d’Ussonville apologizes, by the way—he had some other business to attend to. Please take a seat. And please,” Savnock said to the Raven, “bring us two flutes of champagne.”
Brentford sat cautiously, wondering whether he should fear for his life, but then he knew very well that this was not a concern anymore. He bent to open his satchel—causing a hurried movement from the Raven behind him that Savnock stopped with a quick gesture—and extracted the magnetic crown.
“Mr. d’Ussonville asked me to bring him this,” he said as he handed it to Savnock.
“Thank you. I’m sure he’ll be delighted.” Savnock said, barely looking at it as he took it and—much to Brentford’s annoyance—set it aside before going on. “I’m celebrating a very important event, today. Not so much important for me as for my enemies.”
Without bothering to ask what they were celebrating, Brentford said instead, “I wonder whether you count me in that number.”
“We’ll have plenty of time to discuss that,” Savnock told him. “For the time being, I’d be happy if you’d join me in celebrating my new acquisition.”
He turned the box towards Brentford, and opening its gilded locks revealed what looked like a cane resting on purple velvet.
“The Tail of Saint Mark’s Lion,” he announced with a grin. “Monsieur Achille Laviarde, King of Patagonia and Auracania, accompanied by Monsieur Taxil, brought it to me this afternoon, as a present from Diana Vaughan. She stole it, allegedly, from the Eleven Seven, who run the whole Palladian organization. Did you know that this tail is actually possessed by the demon Asmodea?”
Brentford frowned. “The Tail of St. Mark’s Lion? But the lion is just a metaphor.”
“A metaphor come true,” Lodestone answered with a sly smile. “Isn’t that truly miraculous?”
“I thought the whole affair about the Palladians was a hoax,” Brentford muttered, trying to remember Gabriel’s confused explanations.
“I should know all about that,” the Sleeper declared. “I funded Taxil’s entire scheme.”
“I don’t understand.”
Savnock smiled suavely. “Thanks to this Palladian hoax, the occultist underworld now considers me invested with supernatural powers that make me a rather dangerous fellow to contradict,” he said, clearly enjoying himself. “Not to mention that I am also, as you have yourself witnessed, a secret chief of the Golden Dawn, and, accordingly, one of the supreme hierophants that command Mankind’s destiny!” This seemed to greatly amuse him. “If that doesn’t keep the Czar’s minion magi in line, and disincline them to meddle in my personal affairs, I wonder what would?” He lifted his champagne glass and said, “To your health, Mr. Orsini,” clinking his glass firmly against Brentford’s with a crystalline ring.
Brentford wondered whether there was anything ironical in the toast, but there were two things he was sure of: he didn’t find it funny, and he didn’t like the champagne very much.
His chilly reaction did not go unnoticed. “Let us return to more important matters,” Savnock said abruptly. Brentford noticed that the Raven still stood behind him in the shadows, and he braced himself for what was next—discovering that his fear was not for his life, as he had first thought, but of making an ass of himself in front of a Sleeper.
“What do you think of my little model, Mr. Orsini?” he asked, his tone now a notch icier.
“Well, it’s very—” Brentford was about to say “familiar,” but thought it wiser to settle for “—interesting. And the tower is impressive.”
“Ah yes, the Tower of the Sun. The Eiffel Tower beat it to a slot at the 1889 World’s Fair. The light at the top was supposed to shine all night, and it was so high that they had planned to build a sanatorium at the summit. We’re still hesitating about it. Personally I’m inclined to give darkness a chance.”
“We? Monsieur d’Ussonville and you?” Brentford asked, surprised at his own boldness.
Savnock did not seem to mind.
“We—the Seven Hierophants of Henochia, as we like to call ourselves.”
“Is it … a Masonic lodge?” Brentford asked cautiously.
“Do you ask because of the ridiculous name?” Savnock said with a smile, as well as a gesture that cut off Brentford’s protestations. “We are masons, certainly—but masons in a way undreamed of by the useless wig clubs known as Freemasonry. We are neither ancient nor much accepted, but we are real masons and we’re about as operative as they get: We build cities, not cardboard temples.”
Brentford had neither the time nor the inclination to play dumb. If these were to be the last moments of his life, then he would spend them in the way he had imagined the first moments after his death in some imagined heaven: having a good, eye-to-eye conversation with one of the Seven Sleepers, wherein he could ask what the pole they thought they were doing.
“Is this what you plan to build on Ellesmere Island?” he asked. “What Monsieur Vialatte described to me was a much smaller operation.”
“It is small. No bigger than Venice, really. But Venice never needed to be big to be a great and powerful city. The greatness is in the vision, not in the actual size. ‘One hundred men invent a solitude and they call it Venice.’ ”
It was the opportunity Brentford had never imagined he would have, to ask the question that had always wanted to ask. “Why Venice?” he asked, as calmly as he could.
“Why Venice?” mused Savnock. “Well, we thought of many names. New Henochia, New Hermopolis, New Golgonooza, New Hurqalya … But Venice has an advantage over other legendary cities: It is an imaginary city that is real. Or more exactly, it’s a real city that through the centuries has managed to remain imaginary. Three or four years ago, when I was in London to meet the commander Markham about his Farthest North, I took him to a show at the Olympia, staged by a certain Imre Kiralfy. This Kiralfy had managed to reconstruct a decent portion of Venice right there in the theatre, and it was such a wonder that it left on us, shall I say, an indelible mark. When, later
on, Markham and I discussed Marco Polo Bay, the idea flashed through me, and I saw it, of an imposing, spotlessly white city of palaces, domes, and towers, intersected by many bridged canals—all as close to the North Pole as man could possibly go.”
“It did not come as a surprise to me then that the Chicago Columbian Exhibitions, two years ago, had exactly the same design. From that it became evident that Venice was still, for the men of today, the ultimate utopia, a World’s Fair in Eden. This is quite simply what we aimed to achieve: not as an ephemeral entertainment or a three-dimensional daydream, but as a real human settlement, where men of good and strong will would have no excuse, no choice but to live to the best of their abilities the life they all dreamed of. So at this very moment, some of the buildings from the Chicago World’s Fair, as well as some others from the San Francisco and Atlanta fairs, are being dismantled and will be carried towards Marco Polo Bay as soon as the weather allows. Our brother hierophants are seeing to it, as they are seeing to it that we get supplies for the workers that we’ve sent.”
Brentford was still cautious, taking it in—this was his own history in the making, after all. “You’re building it based on models from the World’s Fairs?” he asked.
“Indeed, we are,” said Savnock, still declaiming as if for posterity. “We, the Seven Hierophants, are now in a position to influence, by various means, every World’s Fair that is about to take place. Watch what will happen in Berlin, Nashville, Stockholm, Turin, or Omaha, and you will see New Venice rising right from the Dreams of Men. Monsieur d’Ussonville is working right now on the Paris 1900 World’s Fair—you will find little there that we haven’t designed or approved. New Venice is man’s last chance to put things right, to bring light where there is darkness, and to support life where death rules. We are taking no chances with this chance.”
“You sound like … a philanthropist,” Brentford essayed.
New Venice 02 - Luminous Chaos Page 45