Aurorarama - Jean-Christophe Valtat [4]
“I suppose this airship worries you as much as it worries everybody,” said Brentford.
Mason shrugged his shoulders.
“I have four anti-aircraft guns pointed at the thing. Whatever it is, it should worry as well.”
He seemed to reflect for a while, then turned toward Brentford.
“What is your take on it, Mr. Orsini?”
“I hear a lot about ‘aerial anarchists.’ But I think anarchists would be either more discreet or more aggressive. So far, this airship has been more inoffensive than it appears.” Brentford also thought that anarchist threats were a well-known trick used by the authorities to keep everyone in line, but he did not find it necessary to inform Mason of that opinion.
“In my trade, as you know, nothing is inoffensive,” said Mason, walking back to his desk. “Either something is dangerous, or it could well be dangerous.”
“Why not simply blow it up, then?” asked Brentford, faking naïveté.
“Some things or people can be more dangerous when they are destroyed. By the way, have you heard of this book, Mr. Orsini?” he said, with a smile that Brentford, busy trying to regain his balance and control his own reaction, did not have time to interpret.
The book that Mason was showing him was a thin black leather-bound quarto with silver lettering, that reproduced in font and style a seventeenth-century pamphlet. It was signed by a certain Henry Hotspur and was entitled A Blast on the Barren Land, or The Standard of True Community Advanc’d. In spite of its garb and guise, it was a transparent thrashing of the Council of Seven that bordered on a call to arms, and indeed it was not unknown to Brentford.
“By reputation,” he answered, as coolly as possible. “I am surprised you have it in your hands.”
“The Council wanted me to read it. Which I did. And what is your take on it?”
“It sounds like one of those hoaxes. People tend to get bored, you know.”
“I have not been here for very long time,” said Mason, “but I know that a hoax can be as effective here as any real thing.”
“Certainly so,” Brentford admitted. “Do you think it could be connected to the airship?” he asked, indicating the window with his chin.
“I also know,” Mason persisted, “that everything has been, is, or will be connected at some point or other. This is a small place, after all.”
“Once again, I could not agree more.”
To Brentford’s relief, Mason put down the book. But it was only to stare at him in a way that made him feel slightly uneasy. He welcomed the knock on the door and the announcement that the Inuit had arrived and were waiting for them in the maps room. They were, after all, not so late.
CHAPTER II
The Gentlemen of the Night
The romance of the police force is thus the whole romance of man. It is based on the fact that morality is the most dark and daring of conspiracies.
G. K. Chesterton, The Defendant
Since Gabriel d’Allier had discovered he could not allow himself to keep a full-time housekeeper anymore, he dined out more and more often. Not that he minded that much: he had always had a taste for market-stall and stadium food, and, as long as he could maintain a three-foot-radius bubble of empty space around him, he was perfectly happy to be among the busy crowds of his beloved city.
He was now having some shrimp from the smorgasbord at a Swedish specialties counter in the Pleasance Arcade, letting the spectacle of the food market alley paint itself on his retinas. As far as the eye could see, the mock castles and the nicely handcrafted wooden shops extended under the iron-and-glass roof like mirrored reflections of one another, overbrimming with shiny cans, fish and seals beached on gleaming ice, muskox and reindeer carcasses hanging upside down, pyramids of shining fruits and thick