Aurorarama - Jean-Christophe Valtat [115]
“Talk about bad karma, huh?” Treschler kept on. “Maximilian and I, as self-respecting vegetarians, would not fly in a slaughterhouse, so we had to use thin bladders of vulcanized rubber instead. Now it is, if you’ll excuse me, these enormous condoms that lift us. We asked a German factory, Fromm, to make them especially for us. Now, that’s the equivalent of 200,000 babies liberated from karma. Just the thought of it makes one lighter, doesn’t it?”
“The hull itself is rather solid, or so I hope, as there are three layers of rubber-proofed fabric with five layers of dope. Unfortunately, that’s just a kind of paint. The keel, on which you’re walking now, is made of wolframinium, but as you can see, it’s covered with rubber, so that the men do not get stuck to the metal when temperatures get really cold. The bracing and rigging of the gondola is made of Italian hemp and piano wire, just for the poetry of it. Now down again.”
The visitors landed in the lounge and then headed toward the stern.
“The storerooms are a bore, I assure you, but you may like the armoury, even if Herr Schwarz does not like people to nose around. Let’s just cast a quick glance. We have Maxim machine guns, mostly because Maximilian likes the name, I suppose. That’s a ten-barrelled Nordenfeldt. But, as you know, we anarchists are mostly renowned for our bombs. These over there are forcite, and you would not want to introduce them to a gelatine blasting cap without a very good reason. But Hans’s favourites are over there, in those quart champagne bottles. It’s a compound he calls anarchite. The burning comes with poisonous fumes, if I understand correctly.”
“You intend to use these?”asked Brentford with concern.
“You see, by tradition, the odds are usually against us and experience has proved that we have little to gain by using strength against stronger enemies. But if we have to use it, it means we have no choice but to go all the way.” While sitting at dinner opposite Hardenberg, Brentford noticed the Persian motto In Niz Beguzared carved on one of the plywood beams.
“This, too, will pass,” translated Hardenberg.
“So, Anarchy, too, will pass ?” Brentford asked.
“Many things will have to pass before that, I’m afraid,” Hardenberg answered with serenity.
A buffet dinner was placed on a side table so that nobody would have to serve anyone. The Inughuit had helped themselves to generous portions but rejected whatever they did not like, which appeared to be a lot. Everybody else had implicitly agreed on pretending not to notice the table manners of their anarchist role models, and but for the odd belch that caused a brief lull in the conversation, things proceeded smoothly enough.
“May I ask what brought you here?” Brentford asked Hardenberg.
“Professional obligations, mostly. We are under contract with the Council of Seven.”
Brentford gagged loudly on his food, which silenced even the Inuit for a while.
“What?” he managed to say weakly, tears in his eyes.
“Some governments are very eager to have their own anarchist menace, as it allows them to pass what the French call Lois scélérates—scoundrelly laws. Most of them use their own secret police to infiltrate anarchist movements. But it’s not always possible, so they have to resort to freelance agencies such as us.”
“I thought you were real Anarchists,” Brentford said, surprised at his own disappointment and suddenly worried that he might have fallen into a trap. But after all, this was exactly what he had suspected ever since the airship had appeared.
“Oh! we are very much so, as much as anarchy can be real, which is not always as much as we would like it to be.”
“Reality is just one more hallucination,” spat out Heidenstamm, banging on the table. “It has to be destroyed just like any other hallucination.”
“Certainly, Sven, certainly,” said Hardenberg soothingly. “For the moment, however, it is just that we prefer dealing with these realities ourselves, instead of seeing them in the clumsy hands of the police.”
“That means you