Aurorarama - Jean-Christophe Valtat [26]
William now had both elbows on the desk, biting his thin lips as he pored over the message.
“You would be better placed than I am to crack a code your own wit devised.”
“I tried, but to no avail,” avowed Brentford.
“Would you tell me your dream, Mr. Orsini? And be reassured: I am not going to analyze it.”
He had a conniving smile that Brentford mirrored. They were both from the Good Old Days, when the analyst was dreaded as a peculiarly perverse form of policeman who could cause endless trouble and spoil one’s Transpherence plan. Brentford told the gist of his dream, without, however, mentioning Helen.
“What?” asked William, his glinting eyes suddenly sparkling. “Blue boxer shorts?”
“As I told you,” said Brentford, who was not too keen on dwelling on his underwear, real or dreamed.
There was a long pause.
“Interesting,” said William.
“If you say so,” said Brentford modestly.
“Because it is the key we are looking for.”
It was Brentford’s turn to remain silent.
“I once had a good friend who wore such shorts,” said William with a surprising seriousness, and even, it seemed to Brentford, a little trembling in the voice. “A great Matball player.”
Igor Plastisine, thought Brentford, but did not say anything. The man had overdosed and gone crazy from metabolizing his own Pineapples and Plums. He, too, was part of the lore.
“We had a code between us. And this is written in some dream-twisted version of that code.”
“But I would not know it, even subconsciously, would I?”
“Maybe you wouldn’t know it, but you came to me, someone who does know it, sent by someone or … something, who knew that you would do that. So, that dispatch was in the wrong canister and the wrong canister was in the right tube, after all. Those networks can be a bit complicated, but this is Smalltown, Dreamland all the same.”
William, pencil in hand, crossing out and substituting letters, was now quite animated, and seemed to decipher the text without much difficulty. It was done in two minutes flat.
“As to what the message says, I am sure that I do not have to fear your disappointment.”
“And why is that so?”
“Because it is, precisely, an appointment. A date, an hour, and a place.”
William looked at Brentford, visibly amused.
“But you may not like it.”
Brentford waited, his heart beating.
“On your own. March the 1st,” announced William in his hoarse voice. “90° N 65, 5 W°. H.”
“That is the North Pole,” said Brentford, happy to hear from Helen.
“450 nautical miles due north of us. Yes. That was where you must have been standing in your dream. That will be quite an interesting trip, I dare say.”
“March first. It would still be polar night there,” said Brentford, computing quickly. He could not even say that he was surprised. Helen, if indeed it was she, was, typically, expecting a lot from him. In a sense, it was flattering. But it put him under some rather intensive pressure.
“Oh, yes. You should bring a flashlight. And a camera to immortalize the deed. For you would be the first man ever to get there. Just imagine that.”
“Why do you say that? Peary went there, didn’t he?”
“Oh, no,” William chuckled, “he did not.”
“So you think that it was Cook.”
“Oh! Him! Even less so, if that’s possible.”
William got up and went straight to one of the teetering piles of books. Without much fuss, he withdrew a red volume, which he handed to Brentford. It was called Journey to the Earth’s Interior by a certain Marshall B. Gardner.
“Another of those Hollow Earth books,” said Brentford with a slight disdain.
“Exactly. But this one has the peculiarity of having been written after Peary’s and Cook’s expeditions, which means the author was facing a tough challenge when, without ever leaving his library, he still claimed that the pole marked a gate to the Earth’s interior. In this, you will agree that he was a brave man.”
“Certainly,” said Brentford, browsing through the book, thinking that Peary and Cook were, on the whole, more likely candidates for a Bravery award.
“It was vital