Aurorarama - Jean-Christophe Valtat [64]
“Why did she come back?” asked Lilian.
Gabriel shrugged.
“It’s her city, after all.”
“And why was Lancelot written on the mirror?” asked Blankbate, who now seemed less impatient and even interested in the matter, as far, that is, as his mask allowed Gabriel to guess.
Gabriel spread his hands, clueless. Flummoxed, that was his middle name, not Lancelot, he thought.
“How would I know?”
The idea that it might have something to do with the fact that he happened to be one of the few people to know her story crossed his mind. But if it pointed toward some responsibility, well, thank you, he certainly wasn’t going to pursue the matter further.
“Can I show you something?” asked Blankbate. “It’s not too pretty, though.”
“If you wish,” said Gabriel, checking his fob watch so as to be sure he would not miss Stella when she came out of her damn show at the Trilby Temple.
“It’s fine with me,” said Lilian.
“You have been warned,” said Blankbate, walking toward a large tarpaulin that covered and outlined some bulky vertical shapes lined up against the wall.
“Help me with this, Chipp.”
Each took an end of the tarpaulin and pulled it down firmly.
Lilian let out a little cry.
Gabriel fought not to vomit.
Seven silvery cylinders appeared in the trembling light, revealing, under their crystal lids, the mortal remains of seven old men dressed in black frocks and starched white shirts, wearing sashes and livery collars around their necks. Their swollen, blackened faces were grinning from unfinished putrefaction.
Gabriel had never believed the Seven Sleepers would ever come back from their sleep as the legend promised, and it was well known that their Claude Cryogenic Coffins had been damaged during the Blue Wild, but facing the bare truth still tore away for him some piece of persistent childhood.
Blankbate and Chipp quickly put back the tarpaulin.
“Where did you find these?” Gabriel managed to ask, while a pale Lilian held her gloved hands to her mouth.
“In a canal in Lotus Eaters. With cast-iron weights tied to the coffins. All of them swaying straight up. They must have been dumped before the winter, but the ice has limited the damage.”
“The Council did it?” asked Lilian.
“It’s cold in here,” said Blankbate. “Maybe we should go back.”
CHAPTER XVII
The Ghost Walks
“That which makes conjuring an art of deception is not its technical appliances, but its psychological kernel. The working out in the realm of the senses of certain capacities of the soul is something incomparably more difficult than any finger-skill machinery.”
Max Dessoir, The Psychology of Legerdemain, 1893
Brentford turned off the faucet and took a towel from the tray. As he bowed down to throw it in the basket, he checked in it to see if the answer he was waiting for had already arrived. Yes. It was there. This “waste” network really worked. He picked up the folded paper and deciphered the code. Lilian had been exfiltrated out of the Kane Clinic and was safe somewhere. He tore up the paper and threw the towel away on top of it.
Was it a good idea to have started this? He could not really tell. Barely out of the Blazing Building, he had felt an urge to take his revenge on the Council in one way or another. He had scribbled a hasty note and thrown it, not far from the Blazing Building, into one of the special garbage cans that the Scavengers used as post boxes and where he knew it would be collected quickly. They had acted swiftly and, as usual, efficiently. Now he owed them another debt, but he felt there would be plenty of occasions to repay them. Or to beg them for help again.
He went back to the theatre, if the Trilby Temple could be called that. It was more like a music hall, actually, and typical of the Midway. Behind its neoclassical facade it hid what was allegedly a replica of the Place St-Anatole-des-Arts in a fantasy of Bohemian Paris. The mock-leprous walls were