New Venice 02 - Luminous Chaos

by Jean-Christophe Valtat

  He’d barely had time to press his eyes shut before the buzz started.

  Like every potent drug, the first lesson Supreme Selenium Standard imparted was submission, though Gabriel doubted that the so-called spirits of such drugs were the wise teachers that some users claimed they were. If there are spirits, they are probably as panicked as we are to encounter a foreign, unknown mind, and would blow the same gasket as we would. But before Gabriel could develop this theory, he found himself wearing an ice helmet, with a dagger of freshness stuck in his spinal cord, his bones like translucent lemon candy and his veins full of lime juice.

  “Whaa …” he whispered, his forehead suddenly drenched in cold sweat.

  But the buzz quickly resorbed, and now Gabriel felt as if his body were sinking down inside itself—as if his bones, as heavy as stones, had slowly fallen down and piled up into a heap in the darkest, muddiest silt, forever severed from his will. It was like fainting and still remaining conscious, for his mind, although foggy, still struggled in this quicksand. And yet quite easily, with nothing more painful than a tug, he felt himself abruptly float up to the surface, pass through the top of his own head with an electric thrill, and when he opened his eyes, he found himself hovering a few inches over his own slumped body. Not a pretty sight, he had to admit.

  His soul had expanded as if freed from a crate. It was both scary as hell—shat fear of not coming back—and almost pleasant at the same time, with Gabriel having the curiously physical feeling of being able to move his soul with muscles made of air. It was not much more difficult—nor much easier—than swimming at night after two glasses of absinthe, he observed. And so, still keenly conscious of having only limited time, his Self paddled off like a dog, and the wall he went through was more an afterthought than a physical obstacle.

  Reduced to a floating, gliding eye, he crossed the salon, a few inches above the heads of the guests, exhilarated by the view even if they flickered eerily and threatened to revert to the haphazard dots of his luminous chaos. Had he not really left his body, then? What a useless word really was, really. He swerved towards the library door and as he crossed it felt a wave of fear: would Papus or de Rochas notice him? But there was nothing to fear; the Plick and Plock of the arcane would not know a stray soul if it came and kicked their astral butts. The angel Gabriel, however, had no trouble spotting Tripotte among the damned.

  Their voices weren’t very clear, and Gabriel, waving his imaginary limbs, decided that a phonograph horn in a shadowy corner of the room would be a better spot to hear them from. He dabbled towards it, lowered himself to curl snugly into the horn, and crouched there, staring out. It felt warm and comfortable, and he could hear perfectly, provided he didn’t lose his focus.

  “… and you’ll never guess …” Hébert was saying, “… but we found Father Tonnerre’s Millet bike in the remains of the Widow.”

  “That savage stole it from me,” Tonnerre muttered.

  “What savage?” Tripotte asked.

  “What do you call them—Eskimos?”

  “Not that many Eskimos in Paris, eh?” Hébert said to Tripotte, barely controlling his rage. “One of your crazy Canadians again? They go around asking for the Blackamoor, they haunt La Villette, and now they kill my men and burn the Widow! It’s a crime against our national genius!”

  “Who liveth by the sword, shall perish by the sword,” Tonnerre intoned.

  “Come now, Father,” Hébert answered. “I don’t think Christianity has ever shunned violence against its enemies.”

  “Perhaps not,” the priest admitted. “But at least it avoided such abominations as your little pagan ritual.”

  “We need something to instill a fearful respect in the people, Father, and Catholicism has become unable to achieve that in our day and age.”

  “Oh no? Sacré-Cœur is being made for precisely that purpose—to instill respect and a God-fearing awe in the heart of our countrymen.”

  “The Sacred Heart is for sissies,” Hébert protested. “It’s for women and little girls. It won’t clean the country the way I’m cleaning it, because, you see, I’m not afraid to dip my hands into a little blood.”

  Tonnerre stood up, red with anger.

  “If it weren’t for the present threat to the Sacré-Cœur, I’d leave this room and be done with you immediately.”

  “And renounce the money that Madame de Bramentombes has promised you on her daughter’s death?” Hébert said.

  “Promised to God,” Mme. de Bramentombes corrected him, pursing her lips. “Poor little girl,” she added, as if to herself …

  Hébert sniggered at her and, ignoring Tonnerre completely, turned to Tripotte.

  “The Sacré-Cœur, then—do we even know what threatens it?”

  “Swell-in-she-Sack couldn’t tell. But the man d’Ussonville was with, Guillaume Froment, is a chemist. A disciple—” Tripotte added with a grin, “—of Berthelot.”

  “Ah, Berthelot. A brother alchemist,” Papus said. “But his politics are abominable.”

  “Froment is rumoured to be working on especially powerful explosives,” Tripotte went on. “We searched the whole damned church—pardon, Father—but found nothing at all. Imagine the scene if the Sacré-Cœur was blown up … You may not believe it, Hébert, but the effect would be disastrous.”

  “It would certainly put us in a very bad way with the Czar,” Papus interjected. “He might even decide not to visit Paris next year—especially, if, as rumour has it, we’ll soon have a new Socialist government that’s not so favourable to the alliance with Russia in the first place. All of which would cost us the benefits of our success in the de Lanternois case.”

  “Which reminds me,” Tripotte said. “The Eskimo you suspect of having murdered your Wolves was caught fiddling with Lanternois’ wax figure in the Musée Grévin, trying to steal something from it. I wanted to be sure before I alarmed you, but it seems that those damned Canadians are on de Lanternois’ tracks, too.”

  “And this Eskimo!” Papus exclaimed. “Where do you think he comes from? Where de Lanternois disappeared from, of course! These Canadians are on his tracks, and—” suddenly he stood gaping and whispered, as if to himself, “They have the crown!”

  “What?” de Rochas exclaimed.

  “Two Canadians came to see me the other day,” Papus recalled. “They had allegedly inherited a magnetic crown. How could I not understand! They have found de Lanternois’ crown, and they are after us.”

  “They may not have read it,” de Rochas tried to reassure Papus.

  “Either way, it’s evidence against us. It should be in no hands but ours.”

  They were all silent for a moment, weighing the implications, before Tripotte said, “I’ll send someone to get it from their hotel.”

  At this, the disincarnate Gabriel made a mental note. But he was becoming tired and distracted and felt as if he were being sucked into the horn, slowly sliding like treacle down its sides. It seemed as though his body was tugging him back, like a dog on a leash. Clenching his teeth, he listened with renewed energy. As he refocussed on the scene, trying to coax every word into his uncertain memory, he heard a crackle somewhere below him. It took him a while to understand that it was the wax roll of the phonograph, which had started to spin and record the conversation. It was as if his mind had decided to use the machine as an extension of itself, replacing his absent body, saving the memories that he was bound to forget. For a while Gabriel feared that the conspirators would hear the whirring mechanism, but no, they were talking too loudly.

  “This is getting out of hand,” Hébert declared. “Why don’t we just clean the whole mess up the simple way? These Canadians to start with, and d’Ussonville and his English Lord of a friend. I’ll bet they’re all in it together anyway.”

  Mme. de Bramentombes yelped, “My brother is not to be ‘cleaned up the simple way’!”

  “Why not?” Hébert snarled back at her. “Your daughter is still alive and his only heir. And your brot
her is becoming dangerous with his anarchist whims and Arctic projects—we should act quickly to make sure that his fortune isn’t pocketed by some other cause. Not to mention that you know a little too much to change your mind now.”

  There was a distinct note of menace in Hébert’s words. Mme. de Bramentombes had to take a seat as it finally dawned on her how deep she was in the mire.

  But Father Tonnerre was not so easily intimidated. “I cannot condone such murder,” he said calmly.

  “Oh, really?” snapped Hébert. “What’s the problem? I’ll confess it to you and you’ll absolve me, while keeping the secret of the confession.”

  “You take these things too lightly, Hébert.”

  “Oh, do I? Believe me, I’ve thought of the consequences. If we get d’Ussonville out of the way we save the Sacré-Cœur, and we stop his plans to colonize the North Pole, for which our Russian friends will be very grateful. It’s war, my dear Venus, and your brother is a traitor to his country and its faithful Russian ally. Where is he, by the way? Shouldn’t he be here somewhere?”

  “He got a note twenty minutes ago and had to leave,” Mme. de Bramentombes sniffed, her handkerchief in her hand, not noticing the knowing look that Hébert and Tripotte exchanged. Father Tonnerre had put a hand on her shoulder to comfort her.

  “Let’s start by finding Froment,” Hébert said to Tripotte, “and persuading him to write a note, asking d’Ussonville to meet him at the Sacré-Cœur tomorrow night. There he’ll have to face some wolves, and we’ll see if he’s the hunter that he claims to be.”

  “And d’Ussonville’s accomplice, the English lord?” Papus asked.

  “Yes, he’s also dangerous,” Tripotte commented. “I watched him closely, cleverly disguised as one of his fellow citizens. And guess who I saw boarding this yacht of his—none other that Monsieur Taxil and Diana Vaughan.”

  “What?” de Rochas exclaimed.

  “It’s worse than you think, Albert,” Papus said. “I’ve heard rumours that Diana is about to surrender to Lord Savnock a sacred relic that she’s stolen from the Palladians, as a retaliation for their persecution of her. With this relic, he’ll soon have as much power as the Palladians themselves.”

  “A relic from the Palladians?” Tonnerre interrupted. “No instrument of the Devil can be called a relic!”

  Papus ignored him. “He must never obtain it. He already holds the Golden Dawn under his sway—with this, he’d be too powerful, and too feared among the initiates for us to act against him. It’s now or never, gentlemen.”

  “I’ll take care of it personally,” Tripotte said. “I’ll just need a few wolf skins.”

  Suddenly a coded knock rang out on the door. “Come in,” Hébert ordered immediately, as if he were at home.

  It was Swell-in-the-Sack. He stood in his fur coat, his face pale as death, his curls stuck to his sweaty forehead. “Something has happened in the catacombs!” he cried, in a voice somewhere between a shout and a plea.

  Gabriel started at the news and, with a violent pull, felt himself expelled from the horn and flung backwards, hurtling over the heads of the guests in the salon to be sucked back into his body, like a fish reeled in at enormous speed. It was all so violent that, soul returned or not, his body refused to react at first and remained paralyzed on the toilet seat. His mind was hardly more useful: groggy from the shock, his brain was suddenly overcome by an immense exhaustion and an overwhelming need to sleep.

  “Warn … Brentford …” someone slow-witted whispered inside his head, where all the lights were going out one after the other, “warn … Brentford …”

  IV

  The Battle of the Catacombs

  “I’m proud to have a son like you,” the Colonel said to Tuluk, who had just finished rigging up the Wimshurst machine. “But, believe me, boy, I could do without this damned rod protruding from my head. Makes me feel like a bloody unicorn.”

  “Shhh…” Tuluk interrupted him. He’d heard voices, not very far away. How close, it was hard to tell, with all the whirling echoes of the Catacombs.

  “Wait for me here,” Tuluk whispered to the Colonel.

  “Surely, boy,” the Colonel whispered back. “I can hardly run away.”

  Tuluk checked the seal-shaped hunting knife in his boot and darted off towards the voices.

  He didn’t mind the darkness that quickly engulfed him, and, following the walls with his hand, he concentrated on the sounds, which were becoming clearer and clearer. It didn’t take him long to find their source, in a gleam of the faintest light.

  Crouching warily against the skulls until his eyes had adjusted enough to make things out, he saw three men standing over a lamp in a sort of recess. One of them had a cane that was somehow also a light, and for a moment Tuluk marvelled at the device. It was the man he had seen at the skating rink a few days before, the one who had asked him so many questions about where he was from. He was speaking to a man who appeared to be some kind of military officer, and who was equipped with one of those mechanical limbs that qallunaat were so good at constructing. The third man, meanwhile, hung back from the conversation and appeared to be, simply, a tired, old man, dressed in what looked like rags.

  What little speech Tuluk could hear was in French, so he couldn’t understand it anyway, and it left him at a loss as to what to do. But at least these men didn’t seem to pose any danger to the Colonel … although he had a sense that Brentford might not be happy to see them when he arrived.

  However, Brentford’s appearance might be momentary, judging by the sudden pounding of footsteps he heard approaching rapidly. Then he noticed that the three men had gone stock still, their eyes full of worry. An instant later, he saw why.

  Wolves.

  There were six of them, carrying torches and bull’s pizzles, and they burst out of the darkness to charge the three men. The half-iron man pulled out a gun and without pause fired point-blank at the clustered pack of furs and masks. One slammed backwards, hitting the floor with a grunt, but the others were too close now for another shot and, after stunning one with his metal arm, the military man tried to unsheathe his sword. The tall man from the ice rink, with a swift sweep of his luminous cane, sent one opponent to his knees, then kicked him in the face.

  Meanwhile, the ragged old man had been seized by a Wolf and dragged away, screaming for mercy.

  To attack an old man! It made Tuluk crazy. Before he knew what he was doing, he had grasped the handle of his knife and was running towards the Wolf, who now had the old man pinned to the ground. Tuluk tackled him from his blind side, and as the Wolf writhed to get away, pushed his blade through the throbbing fur until he felt it skid against a rib. The man was still kicking and thrashing, and Tuluk, pulling the blade out with an effort, reached back for the final plunge. Instantly, however, he knew something wasn’t right—a shadow engulfed him and a furry arm wrapped around his throat, and, holding him tightly, pulled his head back as if to tear it off. Tuluk tried to strike behind him but found nothing. Then there was a flash of bitter cold in his throat, before he saw the blade come away. He felt his life bubbling out of him. In a sphere of exploding pain, images sparkled: ice fields, fires, faces, friends, and light.

  Now, it would be all auroras.

  Thomas had lost his way. His pocket flashlight—an anachronism here that he realized he’d best hide from Blanche—had shown him nothing but mind-boggling knots of tunnels and skulls. He would lose track of the voices, then find them again; but now, as he drew close, he recognized more than voices. He’d been in enough brawls to know what was happening.

  He hurried onto the scene only to discern an indistinct dark mass of people so violently tangled that he couldn’t tell the sides apart at first. Then in the light of a fallen torch he recognized Tuluk as he lifted himself off the body of a writhing werewolf. But it seemed barely a second had elapsed before the same Tuluk slid forward, his throat a gaping, toothless smile. Thomas threw his flashlight away, pulled out his gun, and shot the Wolf t
hat emerged behind Tuluk with a dripping knife in his hand, sending him crashing into the wall of bones behind him. Another wolf turned his head at the detonation, and that second was enough for Yronwoode to plunge his blade into his chest. The last remaining wolf, who had been fighting d’Ussonville with no success, saw himself outnumbered, and, leaping over a wolf-headed corpse, headed for the nearest dark tunnel. Thomas started after him, but d’Ussonville stopped him.

  “It’s no use. He could ambush you anywhere.”

  Thomas realized it was true and, gaining control of his adrenaline, rushed over to Tuluk, wondering whether he should turn him face-up and not finding himself able to do it.

  “Friend of yours?” Yronwoode asked. Thomas nodded. “Sorry, young fellow. Truly sorry.”

  “What were you doing here?” Thomas asked. “What led to this?” He felt sadness numbing his senses, but knew he could not blame the incident on something other than Tuluk’s recklessness.

  It was d’Ussonville who spoke: “Major Yronwoode judged that it was time for me to get acquainted with certain aspects of the current situation. Your friend, I’m afraid, got mixed up in it of his own accord. He just appeared, and fought valiantly. I, too, am truly sorry.”

  “The wolves were after Monsieur de Bramentombes,” Yronwoode explained, indicating the old man still huddled against the wall. “As you know, there is a price on his life. I think he has become too fond of seeing his daughter these past few days, and that put them on our track. But it’s even more unfortunate that these wolves have now discovered that Monsieur de Bramentombes and his stepbrother are both, shall we say, in the know. They will have to act quickly now …”

  “Can we help you with your late friend?” d’Ussonville asked, putting a hand on Thomas’s shoulder.

  “Uncle? Daddy?”

  They all turned to see Blanche, in her evening dress, stepping into the light with Brentford at her side.

  She advanced slowly, stunned. “What happened here?”