Aurorarama - Jean-Christophe Valtat [130]
“Tupilaat!!!” cried Tiblit in relief, as the other Eskimos laughed, slapping their thighs and each other’s backs, and hugging the anarchists, who were laughing with them. Brentford looked quizzically at Hardenberg, who smiled back at him.
Up in the sky, meanwhile, Mason and Auchincloss were now having what was obviously a heated debate. Eventually shrugging his shoulders, Mason ordered his reluctant men to rearrange the bodies, as if they had been shot during the attack, or thrown in a mass grave, taking care that their “faces” were hidden. As soon as this grisly task was completed, a photographer arrived and shot a picture of the bodies from above the trench. Obviously, Auchincloss had decided to make this look like a victorious battle and something to brag about when he got home. Mason stood apart, his arms crossed, sombrely looking off at the snow.
The aurora was now fading, the images losing clarity.
Hardenberg walked up to Brentford and, taking him by the arm, led him toward the crystal balustrade of the terrace.
“Now. How did you like our little tupilaat troopers? Made in East Greenland, thanks to our Inuit allies. It’s been a lot of work.”
Maybe Brentford would have liked it better if he had not faced the Phantom Patrol just the night before. This pantomime, successful as it was, hit too close to his funny bone.
“A bit horrible for a fairy tale.”
“Tss, tss. The most horrible are the best. Every child knows that. So you will take the kingdom I offered you?”
“It depends on what you want against it.”
“Nothing I will ask permission to get,” said Hardenberg with a certain haughtiness. “But nothing that should be of consequence to you.”
Brentford thought about it for a while. He had, so far, no reason not to trust the Aerial Anarchists.
“I have one more condition, or favour, to ask.”
“That would be your second wish. You’ll have just one left,” said Hardenberg pleasantly.
“I want no bloodshed.”
Hardenberg smiled widely, as if genuinely amused.
“Ah, Mr. Orsini … Do you know what it is that I like about you? You like to cast yourself as a down-to-earth politician and a no-nonsense strategist, but at heart, you’re like me, aren’t you? An artist and a poet. You should have called your book a Butterfly on the Barren Land. But you are no fool, and neither am I,” he added darkly. “And there is no way I can promise you such a thing.”
The night before the departure, Brentford had a dream. It was night and he was walking the streets of New Venice. In the mock moonlight, the city was nothing but a self-repeating myriorama of ruins, smashed-in roofs, broken columns, toppled statues, scattered objects, and clothes half-smothered in the snow. His steps crunching through the silence, he walked and walked on in the cold, along avenues and across bridges, past empty arcades and pillaged shops, and did not meet a living soul. Now it is mine, he thought with bitterness, all mine …
CHAPTER XXIX
Terrorists!!!
Others, because the prince my seruice tries,
Thinke that I think State errours to redress:
But harder iudges iudge ambitions rage:
Scourge of itselfe, still climbing slipperie place:
Holds my young brain captiu’d in a golden cage.
O fooles, or ouer-wise, alas, the race
Of all my thoughts hath neither stop nor start
But only Stellaes eyes and Stellaes heart.
Sir Philip Sidney, Astrophell and Stella, XXIII
Hardenberg’s plan was that the Anarchists would not return to New Venice with the Ariel: now that the contract with the Council had been broken, it would have meant a field day for the Anti-Aerial Artillery. It was a much better idea, and Brentford had agreed, to let the Council think they had got rid of the traitors and the threat they posed.
They had hidden the airship in a cave inside the cliffs on the northern coast. Then, at night, using clever little electric motor sleds equipped with kites and spiked wheels at the front, they had discreetly rejoined the Fisheries, where the Scavengers, after Brentford’s explanations,