New Venice 02 - Luminous Chaos

by Jean-Christophe Valtat

  Peterswarden, who for once could barely hide his own emotion, walked back to the pulpit. It was now time for the new Regent-Doge’s address. Brentford barely listened, busy as he was fathoming the bubbling well of his own black bile. From time to time he emerged, picking up some snatches that, unsurprisingly, did little to brighten his mood. He felt that every word was projected towards him at full speed, like a phantasmagoric ghost of his worst fears about the city’s fate. Finally, this torture came to an end, and his sigh of relief got lost among the turncoat cheers and the sycophantic handclaps.

  Suddenly, when everyone thought the ceremony was over, a voice rang out from aft.

  “Sir,” Reginald cried, raising himself and Geraldine from their throne, “we have a present for you.”

  Had something been forgotten in the protocol? Peterswarden looked up from his pulpit, visibly annoyed. Obviously, Brentford thought, he didn’t like the reminder that, as a Regent, he was just a stand-in for the Dauphin-Doges.

  The Twins walked towards him among the puzzled, murmuring guests, a little silver icebox in their gloved hands.

  “Actually, it is a present and a pledge,” Geraldine explained, as they arrived at the pulpit. “A token both of our trust in you and of your commitment on our behalf.”

  “I’ll gladly take both the present and the pledge, Your Most Serene Highnesses,” Peterswarden answered with his cool polar explorer’s nerve, bowing slightly towards the Twins, his bony hands protruding from his wide sleeves.

  Reginald opened the box, and, both twins tiptoeing forward in unison, Geraldine took out a little block of ice that she put into Peterswarden’s upturned palm.

  “Here,” Reginald said with a straight face, “we are proud to offer you a little ice from the pole. Will you promise to watch over it and give it back intact to your successor?”

  A hush fell on the audience. Peterswarden could not but accept the unpleasant gift and the ridiculous, impossible mission that went with it. “I promise,” he said in a voice he strove to keep as dignified as possible. The block was already beginning to thaw, both burning and drenching his hand.

  “Then we are satisfied. We declare the ceremony completed,” Geraldine said, as the Twins turned their backs and solemnly pranced back to their throne among the stunned onlookers. Brentford could feel himself wince with pleasure at the trick. It was not, however, very strategic. But then who was he to give strategy lessons?

  As the Dukedominion made a labourious U-turn and the crowd dissolved in a scandalized buzz, he spotted Gabriel leaning against a port, his brow resting on his arm as he watched the landscape intently, as he had done during the whole murderous speech.

  “Diadems—drop—and Doges—surrender—

  Soundless as—dots—on a disk of snow”

  he declaimed pompously as Brentford approached.

  One had to be a trained d’Allierologist to know that there was, first, a sneer behind the quotation, and, second, no malevolence in that sneer. Gabriel, after all, was in the same leaking boat as Brentford.

  “It certainly looks as if the fog is rising,” Brentford answered, as the private joke demanded. “How was your day?”

  “The six-month one? Not so bad, as a matter of fact. Thanks to you, I must say. But, unlike you, I never deluded myself that it was going to last forever.”

  “How wise of you. I don’t think your pupils have profited much from your wisdom, however.”

  “How did you find our little addendum to the protocol?” interrupted Reginald, who had silently joined them, arm in arm with his Siamese sibling. He wore the mischievous grin, not exactly smug but irritatingly close, that Gabriel had come to know by heart.

  “I’m sure the Regent-Doge found it quite thrilling,” answered Brentford. “Don’t tell me you had something to do with it,” he added, turning to Gabriel.

  “Bah. So little it is not worth mentioning. Don’t you think the little bug—that is, their Most Serene Highnesses, can come up with their own ideas?” he answered, ruffling Reginald’s head in a good-humoured breach of every conceivable etiquette. They could have been triplets, the three of them. But Brentford could feel the filigree of regret that ran through their routine, surely because he shared it, too.

  “Already plotting behind my back, are we?” interrupted Peterswarden. The thick nest of courtiers that surrounded him guffawed in unison.

  Brentford turned slowly towards him.

  “Why should we plot? Aren’t we still in a Republic?”

  “I am the living proof that we are,” Peterswarden answered with barely concealed irony. “I simply hope you bear me no grudge over my victory. Let us make peace.”

  He offered his hand. Brentford took it reluctantly, and felt how cold and wet it still was from the ice block. Their eyes locked for a short uncomfortable while. Democracy or not, Brentford had found, politics often came to these showdowns of savage hypnosis.

  Peterswarden relaxed his grip and, lightly touching Brentford’s arm, motioned him towards the porthole.

  “You see, it is well known in my line of work that in ancient times, when a king was not deemed able to guarantee natural growth and protection for his people anymore, he was quite simply put to death. Shouldn’t we all rejoice that we live in more enlightened times?”

  Before Brentford could sharpen his answer to this unusually bald threat, Peterswarden had already turned his back and moved off.

  “As for their Most Serene Highnesses,” he hissed towards the Twins as he left in the midst of his escort, “They can be assured of my wholehearted commitment.”

  Meanwhile, while all backs were turned on the dwindling Dukedominion, a hooded, faceless woman with bare feet picked up a little golden ring from the ice field. But that has nothing to do with the rest of this story.

  II

  The Midnight Mission

  Back in the city, Brentford had agreed to meet for a late snack with Gabriel and the Twins, though he did not expect much solace from this private farewell ceremony. For the time being—a chilly stretch of starry night—he was walking in the rundown Pleasure Island district, his head in the blur of his breath, his fists clenched deep in his greatcoat pockets, his hobnailed shoes squeaking hastily on the glazed greyish snow. Pleasure Island, despite its name, was nothing like a red light district. As a matter of fact, it was barely lit at all. And there was not much to see there, anyway, besides grim rows of warehouses and workshops and, between them, deserted moonlit wharves with skeletal T-Rex cranes vaguely clanging in their sleep. But the place was dear to Brentford’s heart. It was here, at the end of this street, in the former factory of the Société Hyperboréenne d’Exploitation Industrielle de Tabac et d’Allumettes Nordiques, that Helen Kartagener had once saved the city with her incantations to stop time. And it was here that he was working on the project that would help him overcome the blue devils of early retirement and, he hoped, also help him to play a new part in the city’s future. It was now on its way to becoming the Polar Phalanstery for Possible Poletics, a cultural centre for local creativity and a forum for ideas that could benefit the community. No doubt Brentford would see the usual crowd of crackpot dreamers with plans for telepathic mail networks, compulsory Esperanto, hothouse naturist colonies, or petrol-powered vehicles all come a-flocking. Whether any of them could invent something as absurd as this city in the Arctic remained to be seen, though.

  Past the gate, he crossed the inner yard towards another archway, until he reached a double door that pretended to resist his push a little, like an old private joke. His gas lantern left wide Rorschach patches of darkness untouched, but it was enough to see that the whitewashing and the tiling had made some significant progress, which gave him good reason to hope that the place would open as planned.

  But inspecting the phalanstery was not quite the reason for his visit. He let himself slide down the wall and remained seated there in spite of the sneaky cold, the gas-lamp at his side, his arms around his knees, allowing thoughts to drift through his
head. It was here, he reflected, in this very hall, that Helen had not only reassembled the excavated bones of the Polar Kangaroo but had seemingly resurrected it. It was here that she had, well, made love to him, in a way that had left his mind as much befuddled as enlightened. It was here that he had seen her for the last time, dead (well, in her own way) from having stopped the flow of time over the city when Delwit Faber’s Lobster Girls had cut the power lines with their claws. If she had any idea what he should do now he would certainly listen to it. And wasn’t his own oblique shadow, moving on the adjacent wall, drawing her clear-cut profile?

  “Helen?” he asked in his head.

  “Are you a child?” his own voice answered, knowing exactly what Helen would say. “Coming to me when another boy kicked you in the shins?”

  “Thanks for the kind words. They’re exactly what I need right now.”

  “No, what you need now is a lesson. You wouldn’t have come here otherwise. You wrote the rules of a game and you don’t want to accept a defeat that’s not even yours. You do not accept it, yet you embrace it. You not only feel humiliated, you’ve let your opponent see how you feel. You were taught to act with pride, and your pride is racking you.”

  “Well, I could have said that much myself,” Brentford replied, wincing.

  “Of course. But I’ll say what you can’t bring yourself to say: let the bastard be, Brentford, let him glow with the notion that he humbled you. That’s what will lead him to his own demise.”

  “I’m not sure I understand.”

  “To admit that proves you’re wise.”

  “But I don’t feel like it.”

  “Then don’t listen to the advice of that old, stupid Helen.”

  He was about to apologize when the door creaked disapprovingly and a shadow slid into the room, quickly followed by a man.

  “Your, er … Excellency?” the man said tentatively, as he raised his own lantern.

  He wore the the navy blue, gold-striped topcoat and small top hat of the Boreal Beadle Brigade, which had been founded a few months earlier as a counterweight to the Gentlemen of the Night. Another ghost of Brentford’s reign coming to haunt him, then.

  He got up with a sigh.

  “Yes, beadle. How can I be agreeable to you?”

  “I was looking for you, Your Excellency. You have been called by the Regent-Doge.”

  “On what grounds? I have no official duties that would justify such a late call.”

  The beadle looked embarrassed.

  “I haven’t been told, Your Excellency. But they insisted that it was urgent and important.”

  “Has something happened?”

  “I can’t say, Your Excellency.” The man hesitated, looking ill-at-ease.

  Brentford mulled it over. For a while, he considered refusing flatly, just to see what would happen, but he felt reluctant to further embarrass the beadle. Maybe Peterswarden had counted on that too—the famous Orsini manners.

  And that is how Brentford found himself in the back of a propelled police sled, speeding through meringue monuments and crossing blancmange bridges over quiet tinfoil canals.

  Much to his surprise, he wasn’t taken to the Blazing Building, but further away, to Maurelville, where he quickly recognized the observation tower and the bridge that marked the entrance to the sturdy neoclassical buildings of the Kane Clinic.

  He was ushered into a meeting room, and was surprised to find the whole Senate of the Sectors assembled there, huddled in the dim light around a long mahogany table, where Dr. Playfair, the new Gestionnary-General for the H.H.H., stood behind the Regent-Doge like a menial waiting for orders.

  Here was, it seemed, a government that made its decisions at night and acted at night. Clearly something big was in the works, and some distant part of Brentford stirred, vaguely elated to be a part of it. He noticed a human shape in a shadowy corner of the room, wrapped in blankets on a three-wheeled litter, but before he could make any more out, Peterswarden spoke.

  “Ah, Mr. Orsini. We are relieved that you could join us.”

  The Regent-Doge did his best to sound straightforward, but Brentford could sense the uneasiness of the senators surrounding him. Brentford also noticed that he wasn’t offered a seat, which made him feel as if he were somehow on trial. What the pole was going on in here?

  “We are sorry to have disturbed you at such an hour, but as you can see, you are not the only one whose presence has been requested. There is a general consensus among us that little can be done about the present matter without your cooperation.”

  “You flatter me, your Most Serene Highness,” answered Brentford, almost feeling the canker sores bursting in his mouth as he gave Peterswarden his title.

  “We took the risk of bringing this agonized man down here in the hope he would talk to you and explain the situation himself,” Peterswarden went on, indicating the sick man on the stretcher, “but I am afraid he has passed out for the moment. This is what we have gathered, however. The man is a French explorer, called de Lanternois. The Health Angels found him beyond the city limits just in time to save his life, if not all his limbs. We first thought he’d been on his way to the pole, but he appears to be on a mission, and, more exactly, asking for our help. Not on his own behalf, mind you, but on behalf of France.”

  Brentford almost snorted at the idea.

  “France is calling New Venice to its rescue?”

  “Well, Paris, more exactly. It appears that the last few Parisian winters have been exceedingly harsh. Polar harsh. Life has been, from what we gather, completely disorganized. These people are asking for a delegation of experts to go over there and help them learn how to cope with these unfamiliar conditions. The council has debated about this most unexpected demand, and we have come to the conclusion that it would be an honour to accept, especially under the present conditions.”

  “Which are?” inquired Brentford. As far as he knew, Peterswarden had never been a dedicated Francophile, nor especially bothered with humanitarian concerns.

  “France, as you know, is a close ally of Russia. Given the recent movements in the Russian part of the Arctic, the council deems, and I agree, that by ingratiating ourselves with France, we may deflect the interests of Russia in our zone of influence. That would be, if you prefer, the price of our expertise.”

  “And then, if I may say so, there are the natural ties that link our city to France,” added Élisée Bulot, a diminutive, balding, moustachioed man who served as senator for Nouvelle-Ys, the French sector of New Venice.

  “Yes, well, of course,” said Peterswarden, with a sigh. “There’s that.”

  “There are two things I’m still struggling to understand,” Brentford insisted. “The first one is why France would call us, rather than, well, their Russian allies, whom, I suppose, have a little firsthand experience of wintry life themselves. Or for that matter, rather than anyone who can put on snowshoes without tripping every two steps.”

  “I can read neither French nor minds, Mr. Orsini, so it would be presumptuous for me to think that I can read French minds. And meanwhile Mr. de Lanternois has not expatiated on that point. There is of course our natural superiority in dealing with the most extreme conditions, but besides that, I suppose that they do not want to look too dependent on other major nations. Comparatively, we can go unnoticed. Secrecy is also one of our specialties. This will be, in Polaris Guild parlance, a Canadian passport operation.”

  “A secret embassy, then …” Brentford said to himself, as if tasting the words like wine, for texture and body. He added aloud, “The second point I fail to grasp is why nothing can be done without my cooperation.”

  “Because, Mr. Orsini, as former Regent-Doge you would be the most honourable and prestigious ambassador we could send to France, and as a former Elite Engineer from the Arctic Administration as well as Gestionnary-General of the Greenhouses and Glass Gardens, you are the most efficient expert we can think of. I would hate to offend your well-known modesty, but you shou
ld know that the council is unanimous on this point. As a matter of fact, we have just voted.”

  Brentford looked in disbelief at the senators he had thought faithful to him, but none, it seemed, wished to meet his et tu eyes. Bloody turncoats. Could they possibly think they were protecting him? The very idea that Peterswarden had won them over to his side filled Brentford with bitter contempt.

  “So, what is left to me is to accept or refuse, I suppose.”

  “Actually, your alternative is between accepting gracefully or accepting reluctantly. You know as well as I do that refusing a diplomatic assignment is cause for imprisonment. And knowing you as I have the honour to do, I am sure you will easily find nobler reasons for accepting. Helping suffering people in need of your talents, for instance, or respecting a dying man’s last will,” Peterswarden added, pointing to the litter. “A man who has risked and probably lost his life to ask for our help.”

  Brentford sighed. Not only was he in a corner, but he had his foot in a trap. Let the bastard be, a voice whispered in his head. Well, but not blindly.

  “Had he any document on him that could precisely describe the extent of this mission?” he asked, not even bothering to hide his suspicion. The council was following this dialogue with a certain tense expectation, exchanging looks and whispers whose meaning Brentford could not quite decipher, except as a general confirmation that he was being set up one way or another.

  “No, but this may be useful,” Peterswarden said, flourishing a large horseshoe-shaped piece of metal fitted with leather straps and looking somewhat like a crown.

  “I’m impressed,” said Brentford, with barely suppressed irony. “But what is it, pray tell?”

  “We are not sure, but de Lanternois clung to it, and he claims it contains all the necessary information. We are not certain of how it works, but we think it is some mind-reading technology. Rather less sophisticated than our own Psychomotives, as you will soon be in a position to appreciate.”