Aurorarama - Jean-Christophe Valtat [129]
“Now,” Treschler explained to the assembly, “this device is just a little Tesla wireless transmitter that I use to send a signal to rotate another machine, called a Selenium Telectroscope, located on a distant island. This machine, which is itself coupled with a camera obscura, transforms the images it captures into amplified electromagnetic pulses, that are in turn beamed, thanks to powerful transmitters and a whole array of antennas, onto the aurora itself, in order to modulate its heat and composition according to the patterns of the original pictures, which it thereby replicates. I call this the Aurorarama.
“The what?” asked Gabriel, a puzzled look on his face.
“The Aurorarama, or the Hertzian Harp, if you prefer.”
“And what is its purpose, exactly?” Brentford asked impatiently, wondering how this thingamajig was supposed to help the Inuit independentists.
“You’ll see, and quite literally so,” Treschler answered patiently. “But I must warn you that it is a bit laggy and almost out of range, so you will have to focus very hard, I’m afraid.”
By and by, as all looked on, the striations of the aurora seemed indeed to form phantom, ephemeral shapes, perpetually dissolving and regrouping into vaguely purplish spectres on the green swaying backdrop. Small mountains seemed to be the general scene of the action. In the foreground, human shapes slowly came into focus, revealing a group of fur-clad Inuit, entrenched behind hillocks, their backs to the spectators, their weapons aimed at the landscape.
From time to time, explosions, seemingly from mortar shells, swelled the aurora, but caused little or no damage to the Inuit position. The Inuit remained motionless, as if waiting to see the “Whites of the eyes” of their opponents to start shooting at them. Straining his own eyes, Brentford could see, approaching the defenders, barely perceptible modifications of the landscape that gradually turned into figures carrying darker objects, which by and by appeared to be rifles. Brentford recognized the snow camouflage of the Alpine Marines of the Sea and Land Battalion, as they began attacking the trenches. Their snow glasses and their shoes, of a dark blue hue against the pale green aurora, made it easier to see them more precisely as they charged. It grew strange, then quite nerve-racking, for the helpless spectators to observe that the Inuit did not seem to react. Maybe they were out of ammunition and waiting, bayonets fixed, for a final hand-to-hand fight, which Brentford was not sure that he wished to see.
He turned toward Hardenberg, who in his Macfarlane and wide-brimmed Puritan hat retained an Olympian calm, while just beside him the four Inughuit cried encouragements and insults.
The first assault section of the Sea Lions reached the rim of the trenches, but the Inuit still did not move as they were shot at from above, the bullets tearing their clothes and jerking their bodies. Brentford was baffled. Had some poison-gas shells killed them before the land attack began?
The soldiers jumped into the trenches, so close now that the images, still striated and undulating, were as clear as those of a slightly damaged hand-colorized fantascope movie. The first Sea Lion, his fur-lined face mask as big as a moon in the sky, turned over one of the corpses at his feet, then suddenly jumped back, recoiling in horror, just as his comrades did when they checked the other bodies.
Eventually, an unmasked officer arrived, and Brentford recognized him as Mason himself, flanked by another man, the Count-Councillor and Army Commissar Auchincloss, wearing a black overcoat and a black chapka. The captain-general pulled one of the corpses upright and, with a disgusted face, tore off one arm. Brentford felt like throwing up, but then realized that the arm had not been human: it looked more like a musk ox bone or something of that kind. Mason then decapitated the corpse with a violent backward slap, and Auchincloss, picking up the head, became