New Venice 02 - Luminous Chaos
Page 46
Savnock shook his head.
“God forbid!” he answered. “Being human is enough. I do not like men for what they are—I have no inclination towards sainthood or idiocy—but for what they could and should be. By building a city we build ourselves. We are deeply persuaded, Mr. Orsini, that Architecture can raise people to a higher degree of knowledge, of sensation, of individual and collective self-consciousness—to the heights of a living myth, to … illumination. Building is the only way we have to live up to the power of Nature in us.”
He looked Brenford straight in the eyes.
“Let us look each other in the face. We are Hyperboreans—we know well enough how remote our place is. Beyond the North, beyond the ice, beyond death—our life, our happiness.”
Brentford smiled in recognition of that phrase known to all New Venetians—before catching himself and hoping the reflex would pass as connivance. “It hardly seems possible,” he said, as if to himself.
“Possible? Let me tell you something, Mr. Orsini. Two nights ago I had the opportunity to dine with two Jewish gentlemen, Messrs. Herzl and Nordau from the Vienna press. Very interesting fellows, very intelligent. And do you know what they consider possible? Nothing less than a state for the Jews in Palestine, despite the fact that their people are being persecuted just about everywhere. And as they talked, they almost convinced me that, unlikely as it seems, it could well happen. I was almost jealous, Mr. Orsini, to hear of a project you might call more ambitious than ours. In any event, if our project is not possible and we fail, let the world judge us by our ruins and see how they compare with those of our democracies.”
“And pole—politically?” Brentford said. Savnock observed him quizzically. “I mean … is it a political utopia, as well?”
“Oh,” said Savnock. “I take it you mean some sort of democracy? It is certainly a noble philosophical notion, but like many others it tends to look best on paper. Perhaps you have been in France long enough to see how unsatisfying theory can be, to the eye and to the mind. Listen to everyone’s selfish little opinions and interests and all you get is a world of compromises and half-baked ideas, a world for clerks and shopkeepers, which is by and by drained of its beauty, because beauty demands strength of will and single-mindedness, as any artist will tell you. There are Seven of us, from many countries and many walks of life. Altogether we know all there is to know about our endeavour, and when a discussion arises about the best way to carry it out, we certainly work as equals to the best of our abilities. But a democracy it certainly is not—not as long as we live.”
For a long, weird moment, Brentford had the eerie feeling that Savnock recognized him as the man who would bring democracy to New Venice and, still more eerily, that he was deviously giving him some sort of permission to do so. I’m going crazy, he thought.
Brentford was oscillating between his respect for Savnock and the instinctive distate he felt for autocrats as he asked, “And you think people will just … obey you?”
Savnock fetched a little book from a nearby pedestal table.
“For some reason, people usually obey me,” he said, “but I doubt such an argument would satisfy an intelligent man like you. Here’s an interesting little work by a certain M. Tarde that Monsieur d’Ussonville lent me, kindly overestimating my French. But at least I understood this: ‘Society is imitation and imitation is a kind of somnambulism.’ We are good examples and good magnetizers, and we have the most powerful magnets of them all: symbols and money.”
Brentford was stunned by the baldness of it all. Was it for these ideas that he was about to kill himself, for these ideas that he had lost Lavis and Blankbate and Tuluk? He was disgusted but tried to hide it, and in spite of it all he couldn’t help gazing at the model before him with all the fascination of a child. “Yes …” he said dreamily, “it must be expensive.”
“Beyond reason,” Savnock agreed. “But New Venice must be built, and we are rich beyond reason as well. It has always struck me that all past beauty of some significance is always a monument to the wealth that built it. Beauty needed money to exist as much as money needed beauty to make itself legitimate. But now we have arrived at a turning point, where for the first time in the history of mankind, a rich man can say to himself, ‘I don’t care if it’s ugly as a long as it makes or saves me some money.’ I’m not afraid to say that, currently, it’s capital that makes the world an uglier place. And yet we think that money should not be divorced from beauty. It is the responsibility and honour of rich men to leave behind them more splendour than they destroy. And believe me, that’s a lot of splendour to start with.”
“But money isn’t everything. I mean, technically—”
“As I told you, we’re taking no chances. Everywhere, we recruit the best, and there is not a single invention that we do not study thoroughly, even if it has failed elsewhere. That said, I would be lying if I claimed that the climate had not remained something of a concern.”
“Oh,” Brentford said, before he could stop himself, “One could always use the methane clathrates in the ground, you know, to—er …”
“Clathrates? Really?” Savnock said with an arched brow. He jotted down the word in a notebook and said, “I’ll have to talk to d’Ussonville about this. He is our engineering expert. But how is it that you are yourself a specialist in these questions? I was told you worked in insurance.”
“Well … I talked about this with a man called Felice Rossini …”
This, too, went down in the notebook. And then Brentford knew that his ordeal was about to begin.
“If memory serves me,” said Savnock, “you mentioned Rossini to Monsieur Vialatte. We tend to be extremely picky about our collaborators, but I take your recommendations quite seriously. You see, Mr. Orsini, I haven’t known you for a long time, but you seem to me a very knowledgeable person. And by perusing your little notebooks and sketches—which Monsieur d’Ussonville could not help borrowing—I find the nature of your preoccupations uncannily similar to ours. Sometimes down to the most minute details.”
Saying that he came from the future just didn’t seem like a reasonable option to Brentford. He finally settled on an untruth that accommodated a good amount of truth.
“I have visions … I told you that in the Bois de Boulogne.”
“Ah yes, the Visionary Insurance Salesman …” said Savnock. “Interesting character. Listen, Mr. Orsini, I am not a torturer unless it is strictly necessary, and I know men well enough to know that, if you are lying to us, you do not do it out of enmity. Whatever your reasons for hiding the truth, I have to suppose they must be good. But you will understand that I cannot take chances. As I said, New Venice must be built. What I’ll do is leave you a choice. You either join us or face your execution. You have one minute to decide, while I help myself to another glass of champagne.”
As the champagne foam crackled in the flute, Brentford imagined himself accepting Savnock’s offer. After all, even if the others died tonight and found themselves back in New Venice, it was written nowhere that Brentford himself had to be among them. The Colonel would find Tuluk all the same, Gabriel would see the twins again, the New Venetian Lilian had proved rather well that she could live without Brentford, and so did it really matter if he stayed in Paris? Not only that, but moreover, if Sson really brought them back to a week before they had left, there would be another Brentford living in New Venice, totally ignorant of a Paris where an older or younger Brentford was working with the Polaris Guild not too far from Liane de Thyane, or perhaps even with the first Two Hundred and Ten, alongside his grandfather. It was like vertigo, imagining oneself living these two lives.
But he knew that he could not leave the others. It was his mission to see them home. Perhaps they could do without him, but he wasn’t sure he could do without them. And it seemed cowardice to try to evade the death that he had accepted yesterday in the catacombs.
“The minute is over, Mr. Orsini. What do you choose?”
He was almost in tears as he an
swered, “I cannot accept your offer.”
Savnock nodded, and for a moment, in the shadow of the lamp, it seemed to Brentford that anger and sadness fought in the Sleeper’s face. But perhaps it was a trick of the light, and before it could really register, the Sleeper appeared to Brentford to be perfectly collected.
“Very well.” Savnock turned to the Raven, “Will you please go out and put a gun to Mr. Orsini’s head. I take it he’s well insured.”
Brentford felt a claw grasp his arm.
He looked at the model of the city and felt nothing but love and longing.
“See you in a minute,” he whispered to it in his head.
IV
The First Death of Brentford Orsini
The Raven took Brentford by the arm and led him out of the stateroom, down the gangplank and off the yacht, and off towards one of the shacks that were lined along the quay. Brentford’s hands were free, and escape seemed an option, but now that he had sealed his fate himself, the only thing that mattered was thinking of New Venice with all his might in the seconds before his death.
“Kneel down, please,” the Raven asked, once they were inside the shack and he’d lit an oil lamp.
Brentford stared at this bizarre figure, wavering out of focus in the shifting light of the lamp. “I’d rather stand, if you don’t mind,” he said.
“I suppose that counts as a last request,” the Raven said. “Turn towards the wall, then.”
Brentford did as he was told. Closing his eyes tightly, he summoned the vision he’d had at de Couard’s and started walking around New Venice in his mind, crossing Bears’ Bridge on his way to the Greenhouse … taking one step at a time … trying to imagine the crunch of the snow and the effect of the cold … But he felt himself trembling, and however hard he tried, the images wavered, uncertain and feeble.
Drenched in a cold sweat, he held his breath and tightened his sphincter.
The Raven pulled the trigger.
The whole world ended with a click. And yet when, trembling, Brentford opened his eyes, it was still there. He had never been so happy to see timber, and in the light of the oil lamp the plank walls of the shack looked like heaven to him. He did not even really care that he wasn’t in New Venice.
“Well. It seems I misfired,” he heard the Raven say, in a voice that echoed as if he were speaking in a cathedral—but with an accent that had a familiar ring to it.
It was a while before Brentford’s heartbeat returned to an acceptable rate, at which point he turned and saw Alexandre Vialatte sitting on a crate. The Raven mask was at his feet, a gun dangling from his hands, and an impish smile on his face.
“But—he ordered you to shoot me—” Brentford began.
“That’s not what I heard him say,” Vialatte cut in firmly. “Little as I know him, one thing I do know is that he’s a stickler for the small details, and he has a fastidious way with words. If he had wanted me to shoot you, he would have used the word shoot.”
“He did not want me to die, then?” Brentford said, looking down at himself as if still trying to convince himself that he was alive.
“That’s my interpretation of his order,” Vialatte replied. “For whatever it’s worth.”
“It’s certainly worth a lot to me,” Brentford said in a gush of sincerity. “It makes me feel ashamed to have lied to you.”
Vialatte smiled. “No offence taken. I lied to you as well. You were only keeping a secret. It’s a quality we have come to appreciate. We’ve found it’s becoming very rare indeed.”
“And you’re sure you haven’t disobeyed him?”
“Would I stick my neck out for you, Mr. Orsini?”
Brentford shrugged. “From what I know of you, you might.”
Vialatte’s smile turned from impish to friendly. Brentford had now regained his foothold on reality—a reality that meant he would have to find another way to die. He sighed just as someone banged on the door.
Vialatte, gun in hand, opened it swiftly, and Brentford was shocked to see Lilian storm into the shack.
“Brentford!” she shouted. “Thank Cod you’re alive!”
“You’d better thank this gentleman, Lilian,” he informed her.
But Lilian had no time for Vialatte. “The Wolves! They’re going to attack! Pirouette came to tell me Swell-in-the-Sack was up to something and—”
“And you came for me,” Brentford said, a glow in his plexus.
Lilian pulled herself together. “I saw you from the walkway,” she said curtly. “Look, they’re very close. You need to warn Lodestone.”
Brentford walked up to Vialatte and held out his hand, palm up.
“Would you allow me?” he asked.
Vialatte seemed about to protest when a cascade of brittle echoes sounded nearby, like fireworks in the frozen air. He looked into Brentford’s eyes, nodded, and gave him the gun.
“Too late,” Lilian said, as Brentford walked to the door, vaguely wondering whether he was holding the weapon correctly. His cadet years suddenly seemed very long ago.
“You know, time doesn’t mean much to me anymore,” he answered as he threw open the door, feeling every inch the hero. “See you later, Lilian.”
He burst onto the quay, trying to acclimate his vision to the darkness of the harbour area as he ran. He could see faint silhouettes and wolf-headed shadows skittering about on the ice between the wrecked barges, amidst sparks that exploded in the dark with champagne-cork pops. He ran towards the yacht, hoping to get there before they did, his head hunched into his shoulders in the midst of the pinging of bullets until he finally barrelled up the gangway to the deck. He found Savnock outside, his back to the cabin wall, a revolver in his hand, calmly shooting with aplomb at fleeting shadows.
Suddenly, Brentford saw a chubby shape he knew well—Tripotte—coming out from behind a reversed keel to take aim at the Sleeper. Brentford reacted quickly and shot, but the pistol merely clicked—it was empty, of course. He threw himself on Savnock, and as they toppled he felt a hot burning in his shoulders and an explosion in his chest. Tingling as if being eaten by ants, he sank to his knees, and found himself breathing fire in a world suddenly moving in slow motion. He could still see the Wolves advancing, shooting at every step, becoming more and more numerous, unless … unless … Weren’t they falling, one after the other? Coming from behind the Wolves, as if spawned by the slanted barges, a dozen Ravens appeared, firing mercilessly at their opponents’ backs. The Wolves slumped on the ice in strange contorted shapes, like puppets suddenly unstrung. Some tried to fire back, but it was too late. Ravens were now stepping forth from all around them, and one by one, the army of Wolves fell into a furry heap.
But Brentford no longer cared. I’m dying, he thought as blood gushed from his chest, soaking his clothes with warmth. He tried to envision New Venice, but found he couldn’t think past the pain crushing his chest.
He could feel Vialatte and Lilian coming to his rescue, but they were already distant, as if seen through a windowpane being rapidly devoured by frost. “Brent! Brent!” Lilian was saying, sounding just like an old, half-forgotten song. He shook himself from the reverie, and tried to turn his eyes to face her.
Above her head, like a halo, the Black Aurora was unfolding, a gentle sway of the darkest nothingness …
“Take me to a high place …” he managed to say, while the sickly taste of blood invaded his mouth.
The strain was too much. A bottle of ink slowly spilled onto his brain, and then everything went black, softly, softly, until his mind was all blackness.
It was the cold air that woke him. He was propped against a wall or a column, the Black Aurora almost within his reach, if only he could have moved his hand. Lilian was kneeling beside him, and leaning on the curlicued balustrade, draped in his bloodstreaked cape, stood Lord Savnock, holding his own wounded shoulder.
“Where …?” Brentford groaned.
“The Bastille column,” Lilian said softly. “High enough for you?”
“Perfect,” he said.
“Good choice,” Savnock was saying. “Did you know Egyptian mummies were buried here by mistake with the dead revolutionaries?”
Lilian threw him a dark look, which did not seem to trouble him.
Vialatte’s voice resounded near Brentford.
“Here he is, sir.”
Turning his head with difficulty, Brentford could see Tripotte standing, scared and silent, between two Ravens holding him fast. But Brentford felt less hatred for the policeman now than a detached curiosity, or a growing indifference. Savnock walked up to Tripotte and knocked his bowler hat off with a backhanded slap. The hat flew over the railing, gliding and dwindling down into the night river.
“Now, Commissaire,” he said in his most commanding voice, “Would you be so kind as to follow my fingers?” He made a fork with his index and middle fingers and slowly waved it in front of Tripotte as if preparing to burst his eyes. The policeman looked too shocked to react. Savnock spoke now very slowly, in a way that almost rocked Brentford to sleep. He struggled to stay awake.
“You are exhausted,” the Sleeper told the policeman. “You cannot stand, or move your limbs, Monsieur Tripotte. You wish to sleep, as you have never wished for anything before. All you have to do is let yourself go, yes … like that … When I count to three, you’ll be soundly asleep, with all your troubles over … you understand, Monsieur Tripotte … One … Two … Three …”
On a sign from Savnock, the Ravens each took a step to the side. Tripotte stood on his own, staring at nothing, his sparse hair ruffled by the wind.
“Now, Alexandre,” Savnock said to Vialatte, who handed him the magnetic crown. Savnock took it and put it on Tripotte’s head. “Now,” he whispered, “this crown, Monsieur Tripotte, what does it tell you?”
Tripotte blinked.
“To the North,” he whispered. “To the North …”
“To the North, Tripotte, that’s where you’re going. The North of the World.”