Aurorarama - Jean-Christophe Valtat [2]
And the people there write books and raise bananas.”
Polaris, To the editor of The New-York Times,
November 12, 1885
Strange as it seemed, Brentford Orsini had never been to Frobisher Fortress, and on the whole, especially now that he was freezing himself at the back of the speeding, shaking Dorset Dragoons’ aerosled that had been sent, with a chauffeur, to fetch him, he felt he could have got through his life without ever going there.
The fortress was located some miles away from New Venice, as both Administration and Council had—untypically—agreed on the idea that the fewer soldiers you have hanging around in the city the less trouble you are going to have to deal with. The antics of the Navy Cadets (among whom Brentford had done his own service in some glittering, flickering past) surely enlivened many drab New Venice evenings, but the authorities did not deem it desirable to have more of the same. Brentford, on that grey, windy morning, almost regretted it, or, more exactly, he regretted that he had insisted on the meeting taking place so far away.
The silvery aerosled was noisily scraping west, following a track of snow-covered permafrost, which under the present cheerless light would have been dull unto death, except for the moving panorama it unfurled roaringly on each side of Brentford.
On his left, on the first slopes that led to the mainland mountains and glaciers, the “whirly woods” of the purring city wind vanes soothed him as he was propelled past their ever changing perspectives: they seemed to him like winged creatures of angelical nature waving semaphores of protection and peace.
But, if he turned his eyes to the right, toward the frozen ocean and the bristly white outlines of New Venice itself, he could still see the mysterious black airship that had been hanging over the city for a week or so like a dark cloud brooding and threatening to burst: it looked as if New Venice was in a bad mood, which, indeed, could well be said to be the case.
The fortress, he saw as he approached, barely deserved its name. There was a little fort at one end, but the place mostly consisted of rows of wooden barracks, each one decorated with the coat of arms of the units they housed. Brentford knew and recognized the insignia of the Northern Light Brigade (Dorset Dragoons, Lancaster Lancers, and Sirius Scout Squadron), the Sea and Land Battalion (the famous Sea Lions), the Ellesmere Engineers’ Construction Corps, the Alert Armoured and Anti-Aircraft Artillery, the Boreal Weather Warfare Battery, and, in its own Tesla tower, the Tactical Transmission Team. From what he knew, the whole amounted to a force of a mere two thousand men, but it had been sufficient so far. The best defence of the city was its Arctic location, a challenge no invaders had so far chosen to take up.
Though the weather was rather chilly and wet, soldiers in fur-lined trapper hats, mittens, and kamiks were loitering in front of the barracks, playing curling or some rather clumsy soccer, with an air of relaxed resignation to the well-known drabness of the soldiering life. Brentford remembered with somewhat exaggerated nostalgia the time of his own military service, when life had seemed more romantic, full of fancy uniforms, dazzling waltzes, and half-serious duels fought with serious hangovers. Things were now less fanciful, and probably better adjusted to the time and place, however uncertain those notions could be in North Wasteland.
The aerosled swerved toward the fort, and Brentford could now perceive the hangars—where two immense Van der Graaff generators were being serviced—as well as the building site of his own brainchild, the new greenhouse, which would ensure the autonomy of the fortress in terms of food supply. On the whole, the Frobisher Fortress added to the sobriety of its military purpose the stripped-bare severity of an Arctic base, and Brentford really hoped that he would be back before nightfall in his safe, warm hothouse of a house.
The vehicle stopped at the entrance to the fort and a nauseated Brentford, the propeller