Aurorarama (11 page)

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 fell 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’:

“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.

“What happened?” he asked after a moment, while Playfair pretended with not much conviction to feel his pulse and check his pupils.

“It happened that you had a fainting spell in the waiting room and were brought here,” he explained.

“We have probably detained you too long, so we will let you go now, Mr. d’Allier, hoping that it has not caused you too much discomfort,” Wynne added with a chilly courtesy. “Do you want us to call you a taxsleigh?”

“Oh no. I’m fine,” said Gabriel. “I will walk a little. The air will do me good.”

He rose to his feet, uncertain as a young foal.

“You seem to need exactly that. I suppose you know the way back,” said Playfair.

“I certainly do,” said Gabriel.

But he did not head toward the exit.

T
he first thing Brentford saw when he walked out of Yukiguni was the chaos around the Toadstool: dozens of reluctant bohemians being pushed into ambulance aerosleds by neat but inexorable Gentlemen of the Night cutting sturdy black silhouettes against the headlights and casting shadows long enough to reach him. Protests were muffled, reduced by the distance and the cold to disapproving cartoon balloons of vapour. Brentford restrained his impulse to intervene, deeming it wiser to stay clear of the mayhem and go home. Still, he worried about the increasing number of troubles caused by the Council itself.

Up to now it had been a tenet of New Venice that there should be no uniformed police force and that the plainclothes force must be almost invisible. For reasons he strove to understand, this sound utopian principle had recently started to tilt a little, then a little more, to the point where there was now a distinct trend toward the harassment of certain categories of citizens, such as the bohemians, who were usually too busy or too lazy to create trouble outside their own bodies and brains. Not to mention that the already subtle borderline separating a plainclothes policeman from a provocateur had on more than one occasion become rather blurred.

It seemed as if this unfortunate turn of events was what had summoned forth the black airship that Brentford now saw as he crossed Bears Bridge, floating overhead in a miniature elliptical eclipse that gave the moon a certain disquieting wink. Perhaps it was some foreign threat, or some panopticon watch keeping the Gentlemen of the Night incredibly well informed of what happened below; either way, it was anything but reassuring. When you added to the equation the Inuit Independentists and the recent
tupilaat
invasion, you had an overall atmosphere akin to what the Alaskan Inuit called, if Brentford remembered correctly, the
Qarrtsiluni
—the moment spent waiting in the dark for something to explode.

Brentford, leaving the bridge and its sculpted bears, reached the Arctic Administration Building and headed toward the Botanical Building, further on the right. Its lights were turned down, and the glass-and-metal structure loomed large and mysterious. One could sense the life inside, the silent but stubborn relentless growth that had a strength of its own that Brentford had come to appreciate. He was walking to the back door, his own keys in hand, when out of some dark nook a darker shape emerged, wearing the black outfit and white beaked mask of a City Scavenger. Secret words were exchanged.

“Blankbate?” said Brentford. “Do you want to come in?”

Blankbate did not answer, but he followed Brentford inside. They passed rows of thick curtains and glass doors and eventually found themselves under the glass dome, surrounded by palms and enormous leaves and feeling smothered by their warm, damp breath. The heat could be felt rising from the floor, along with the faint rumble of the buried resonance coils. A few light bulbs, planted directly in the soil, gave off a sparse light that made the paths visible. This might not have been what a long and noble tradition had in mind when it affirmed that Eden was to be found at the North Pole, but to Brentford it was a delightfully close approximation, and the fact that it was man-made did not spoil it for him—quite the contrary.

He sat with Blankbate on a stone bench in a bower.

“How can I help you?” Brentford asked, although—or because—he had more often been helped by the Scavengers than been useful to them.

“You have heard the news? About the Done-Gone system?”

The Done-Gone system was the principle that allowed the Scavengers to go home or drift freely in their barges as soon as the trash was picked up, instead of having regular shifts. Brentford had indeed heard that the Council, who had little hold over the Scavengers and wished to gain more, had put some pressure on the Arctic Administration to put an end to this “abuse.” Working on a tight schedule did not agree with the Scavengers, who prized their freedom all the more because they had paid for it by being a caste of anonymous, invisible pariahs. The Administration, which could not refuse
everything
to the Council, had relented on this point, and now, as was only predictable, the Scavengers were angry.

“Yes. I have heard. There was nothing I could do.” Brentford indicated the greenhouse to account for the fact he had no power over such matters anymore. Blankbate could not
doubt, he thought, that he had done his lobbying best, but to no avail.

“There may be a strike, then,” said Blankbate, who was a man of few words.

Brentford understood. This would add spice to the troubles that were presently brewing and disorganize the city even more than the usual tug-of-war between the Council and the Administration, in a way that cast both institutions in roles that were rather against type. Whereas the Council was supposed to keep intact the utopian ideals of the Seven Sleepers who had founded the city, it was now more than ever involved in all matters of business with the “Friends” who funded it, and these Friends had themselves increasingly turned from philanthropists into shareholders who wanted a return on their investments. The Administration, which had originally been devoted to the practicalities of running a city at a latitude that was anything but reasonable, had meanwhile—and Brentford was one of the main actors in this conversion—evolved toward a faithfulness to the first principles that was at times somewhat fanatical. For once, they had agreed on something, and that was going to cause more harm than good.

“Do what you should,” said Brentford, though he could not say he relished the idea of a Scavengers strike and the trouble it would bring, mostly in the prowling shapes of Bipolar Bears high on fresh human garbage. But some loyalties, and debts, had to come first. During the Faber affair, the Scavengers had proved to be reliable and essential allies. Maybe it was in his power to convince them not to go on strike, but he respected them and their autonomy.

“I’m behind you whatever happens. You’ll have to be aware that they’ll probably ask you to resign your weapons.”

Blankbate nodded his beak. “But there still will be bears.”

“Yes, and even more of them. But I suppose the Council will decide that you only need the guns when you pick up the Garbage.”

“Who will defend the city against the bears, then?”

“The Subtle Army, I suppose.”

Blankbate thought about it for a while.

“They’re not allowed to carry guns in the city.”

“Not yet. But they will be. I even think the Council is only waiting for such an occasion, with that airship over us, and all the Inuit agitation. One might even wonder if the attack against the Done-Gone system is not being made for the precise purpose of having you play into their hands.”

“So, no strike would be better? This is what you’re saying?”

“I’m saying it’s not up to me. I suppose there will be a vote. Just do not forget to mention those consequences when you address the voters.”

Blankbate remained silent for while, lost in thought.

“Chipp sends his regards,” he finally said.

“How is he?”

“Like a man who has made some big discovery. He brought back something strange yesterday that he thought I should tell you about, before we warn the authorities.”

“Why me? Am I implicated?”

“Not as far as I know. But he knows you deal with strange things sometimes. Like that woman who talked to the Polar Kangaroo and stopped time or something.”

“Hmm,” said Brentford, who suddenly remembered he had an appointment with Helen at the North Pole. Maybe Chipp was right after all: he
did
deal with strange things.

“Chipp found a sled in Niflheim with no driver and a dead woman in it. It had arrived straight from the North.”

“You mean the dogs took it here on their own?” said Brentford, hiding how the words
dead woman
had affected him. Could this be Helen coming back?

“That’s what Chipp said. Yes. The woman was holding this.”

Blankbate unbuttoned his coat and took out a small oval mirror that he handed to Brentford, who examined it as well as the lights allowed. Its slightly convex surface seemed tainted by some faint greenish hue. He held it up to his face, and the blur of his breath made something appear on the glass, a letter or a drawing, as if traced with a finger. He brought it closer to his lips and exhaled on it, so as to blur the entire surface.

“
Lancelot”
he read.

“What?”

“The word ‘Lancelot’ is written on the mirror.”

Blankbate shrugged his shoulders, signifying it meant nothing to him. To Brentford it meant little more, except that it was his friend Gabriel’s middle name (a name which, Gabriel would remind him, was not even Lancelot’s real one).

“How long can you keep this secret?” he asked Blankbate.

“As long as we want. We have hidden the lady in our cold storage room.”

“Can I keep the mirror?”

“As long as you need it,” said Blankbate. “I have to go now anyway. Good-bye.”

“Good luck,” said Brentford as Blankbate’s black, bulky shape receded toward the exit. The white mask turned toward Brentford and nodded, and then was seen no more.

Brentford’s apartment was located in another wing of the Botanical Building, accessible through an exquisitely crafted wrought-iron spiral staircase. This led to a flat decorated in the finest Art
Nouveau style, as if the iron girders had melded with the hothouse plants and given birth to a profusion of hybrid forms, in an unseemly and probably hypocritical reconciliation of nature with industry. Brentford
knew
it was kitschy, but that did not prevent him from finding it beautiful and comfortable (though he would not have advised someone to take phantastica in there).