Aurorarama - Jean-Christophe Valtat [11]
“This gentleman knows the matter,” said Brentford.
Mason returned him a frowning “whose-side-are-you-on” look, but he also knew a dead end when he saw one. However, he did not feel inclined to give in to Brentford in front of his guests.
“But you know I am not entirely qualified to decide on such important matters. I will have to refer to the Council of Seven concerning the possibility of this contract, as well as to the City Council for Customs and Commerce, and probably to the Nunavut Administration for Native Affairs to make sure everything is clear to all parties,” he said, both to gain time and to embarrass Brentford a little, knowing of his strained relationship with the Council of Seven.
Tuluk translated as well as he could, but Uitayok had already understood and his face showed clearly that the word administration in an Inuk’s ear sounded about as promising as the word tupilaat did to the qallunaat’s. Ajuakangilak said something to Uitayok who in turn repeated it to Tuluk.
“There is another matter,” Tuluk announced.
“What is it?” said Mason, a little impatiently.
“Some of qallunaat soldiers. They are very scary.”
“Some of my soldiers? What do you mean?”
“They are evil spirits. Dead and living. Very Hungry. Very Evil.”
Mason turned toward Brentford with an inquisitive look. Brentford was not that surprised. He had heard the story before, when he was a child, actually. The Phantom Patrol was a popular legend when it came to scaring disobedient children: the living dead, mummified, mutilated corpses of British and American sailors or soldiers lost in polar explorations prowling the ice fields for blood, animal or human, on sleds of bones drawn at full speed by skeletal dogs. They were, beyond the lore, not an uncommon hallucination for today’s strayed travellers or Inuit.
“They are hunting on your grounds?” asked Brentford, with a polite interest.
Ajuakangilak launched himself into a long explanation that Tuluk translated as an unequivocal yes. They had made their dogs pillortoq—crazy—and dug up graves and stolen one child.
“Can someone explain this to me?” asked Mason.
Brentford tried to smile. It was his experience that the less you heard or talked about some things, the less they were bound to bother you. Those who had never heard about the Phantom Patrol were not likely to see them. Or such had been the case so far.
“Oh, it’s nothing that should concern you, really. Part of the folklore.”
But he also knew, as the Inuit did, that here fictions were like animals: they could migrate, and they ignored the lines.
CHAPTER IV
A Teacher’s Pet
And to adorne her with a greater grace,
And ad more beauty to her louely face,
Her richest Globe shee gloriously displayes
Michael Drayton, Endimion & Phoebe, 1595
For a prelapsarian sensibility such as Gabriel’s, work was nothing but a curse, the sin committed against man. Seldom bored, which was not common at those latitudes, and always busy in his own mysterious ways, he had no spare time to lose in such a tasteless fashion: he would, normally, not have touched a “profession” with a barge pole and a pair of fur overmittens if he could have helped it.
But, years ago, as the Blue Wild catastrophe had left parts of the city in (beautiful) deep-blue ruins, he had been obliged, like all the other scions of the so-called Arcticocracy, all the more because he happened to be the son of a profligate father whose legacy consisted of nothing but debts, to become, in his own bittersweet words, the Earl of Real. He had been cunning or lucky enough to get into one of the rare trades he could tolerate, and the only one among those that could materialize a monthly paycheck. The task was mostly a bit of acting, which he handled competently enough, in a courteous yet slightly desultory way, always walking the thin line that separates discretion from uselessness. But it has to be said that since his interview with the Gentlemen of the Night, his already minimal commitment had dwindled