Aurorarama - Jean-Christophe Valtat [33]
“They’re not allowed to carry guns in the city.”
“Not yet. But they will be. I even think the Council is only waiting for such an occasion, with that airship over us, and all the Inuit agitation. One might even wonder if the attack against the Done-Gone system is not being made for the precise purpose of having you play into their hands.”
“So, no strike would be better? This is what you’re saying?”
“I’m saying it’s not up to me. I suppose there will be a vote. Just do not forget to mention those consequences when you address the voters.”
Blankbate remained silent for while, lost in thought.
“Chipp sends his regards,” he finally said.
“How is he?”
“Like a man who has made some big discovery. He brought back something strange yesterday that he thought I should tell you about, before we warn the authorities.”
“Why me? Am I implicated?”
“Not as far as I know. But he knows you deal with strange things sometimes. Like that woman who talked to the Polar Kangaroo and stopped time or something.”
“Hmm,” said Brentford, who suddenly remembered he had an appointment with Helen at the North Pole. Maybe Chipp was right after all: he did deal with strange things.
“Chipp found a sled in Niflheim with no driver and a dead woman in it. It had arrived straight from the North.”
“You mean the dogs took it here on their own?” said Brentford, hiding how the words dead woman had affected him. Could this be Helen coming back?
“That’s what Chipp said. Yes. The woman was holding this.”
Blankbate unbuttoned his coat and took out a small oval mirror that he handed to Brentford, who examined it as well as the lights allowed. Its slightly convex surface seemed tainted by some faint greenish hue. He held it up to his face, and the blur of his breath made something appear on the glass, a letter or a drawing, as if traced with a finger. He brought it closer to his lips and exhaled on it, so as to blur the entire surface.
“Lancelot” he read.
“What?”
“The word ‘Lancelot’ is written on the mirror.”
Blankbate shrugged his shoulders, signifying it meant nothing to him. To Brentford it meant little more, except that it was his friend Gabriel’s middle name (a name which, Gabriel would remind him, was not even Lancelot’s real one).
“How long can you keep this secret?” he asked Blankbate.
“As long as we want. We have hidden the lady in our cold storage room.”
“Can I keep the mirror?”
“As long as you need it,” said Blankbate. “I have to go now anyway. Good-bye.”
“Good luck,” said Brentford as Blankbate’s black, bulky shape receded toward the exit. The white mask turned toward Brentford and nodded, and then was seen no more.
Brentford’s apartment was located in another wing of the Botanical Building, accessible through an exquisitely crafted wrought-iron spiral staircase. This led to a flat decorated in the finest Art Nouveau style, as if the iron girders had melded with the hothouse plants and given birth to a profusion of hybrid forms, in an unseemly and probably hypocritical reconciliation of nature with industry. Brentford knew it was kitschy, but that did not prevent him from finding it beautiful and comfortable (though he would not have advised someone to take phantastica in there).
Sybil was waiting for him in the bedroom, and jumped out of bed in her rather transparent nightgown as soon as he walked through the door, looking very much like the White Sybil of Polarion, a painting of questionable taste that she had modelled for and which now was hanging in the room. In spite of the late hour, she was her dazzling, sparkling, kaleidoscopic self, a radiant sprite made out of glinting eyes, frothy silk, and luminous skin, who even in her negligee looked as if she were wearing jewels. Even her curls, which were exactly of the famous Venetian blond hue, had something fizzy about them. But, when you came a bit closer, her lightness and luminosity had nothing airy about them, but were rather the polished, gleaming surface of a lean muscular frame that executed nothing but high-precision movements: she was, above all, a dancer. As to