Aurorarama (36 page)

CHAPTER XXVI
The
Ariel

T
he Phantom Patrol had passed under the reversed runners and were now pounding on the windshield with the butts of their rifles. By chance, it was one of the new Benedictus laminated panes, and for the time being did not cave in, though it burst into cobwebs of cracked glass.

At every impact, Brentford shook himself further from the palsy that had held him in thrall. He realized that his gun was useless against the Patrol, as would be any weapon he could improvise. He jumped to reach the hatch above his head and, lifting himself with his arms and elbows, crawled into the hold, knowing there would be a way to open it up at the bottom, which now faced the stars. He closed the hatch under himself as well as he could and, lamp in hand, began looking for the trapdoor that was used to load the ship from below. Once outside, it was his plan to sprint as fast as he could: maybe he could outrun dead men. He tried to be as silent as possible, but the
trapdoor was stuck and needed a good shove. Brentford worried that they would hear the thudding and climb up the sides to meet him, but it was not as if he had any choice. So he pushed, with the strength of despair.

As the trapdoor suddenly yielded, the hold was flooded with light from above. “That’s it,” thought Brentford. The thought flashed through his mind that he would become one of the phantoms, condemned to prowl the ice packs until kingdom come. But the light did not come from their lamps. It was the white blinding glare of a searchlight. A rope ladder fell right under his nose. Before he knew it, he was climbing it, as fast as the swaying of the rope allowed him to.

He had no idea what he was scrambling toward but it could not possibly be worse than what he was escaping from. It seemed to him that the ladder was going up straight into the sky. It was hellishly cold, and the rungs were already caked with ice, but Brentford did not care about such trifles right now. He would keep on climbing, using his teeth if he had to. Shots cracked beneath him, with rumbling echoes; bullets whistled around his head, but he was carried away too quickly to be a sitting duck for long. He looked below: the wrecked ship was now almost invisible in the night, and all he could see of the Phantom Patrol was their lamps, the shadows they threw, the sparks of their shooting rifles. He looked up and could see that the rope led to a square of light, where some silhouettes awaited him. It looked like what people describe when they are about to die, but now he knew this is what you see when you’re resurrected.

He was lying on the floor of an airship, a crowd of topsy-turvy people surrounding him. He slowly soaked up the images, trying to make sense of them: Gabriel was there, dressed in mourning black, his hands in bandages. Three of the four Inughuit of the Frobisher Fortress delegation were there, commenting
with animation upon his presence in front of them. But there were new faces as well. A few figures wearing black jackets and woollen hats, and a lean young man, dressed in black as well, with a large forehead, an aquiline nose, and long wavy hair tucked behind his ears.

“It is a pleasure and honour for us to welcome you aboard the
Ariel,”
said the young man, in a faint German accent. “The ship, I suppose, is not unknown to you. You have probably seen her floating above New Venice lately.”

Brentford rose up and shook the hand that was offered to him. He tried to express his surprise, but after the Phantom Patrol, he found it hard to be amazed.

“My name is Maximilian Hardenberg,” the man added, planting the gaze of his immense eyes on Brentford’s.

“Brentford Orsini. I owe you my life, sir.”

“No one ever owes anyone anything,” said Hardenberg, curtly but firmly. “And I pride myself on being no one’s sir.”

“If you say so,” said Brentford, slightly taken aback.

“If you will permit me to introduce to you some of my brothers. This is Johann Treschler, from Prague,” Hardenberg continued, as a clever-looking man with bushy brows and short blond hair proffered his hand.

“Herr Treschler is our engineer, and this ship is his brainchild. He will give you a tour if you are interested. This is Dr. Sven Heidenstamm, our doctor and, I dare say, philosopher,” he added, indicating a stocky person who had the strangest glint in his eyes. This was not, Brentford thought, the doctor he would choose, but he was still immeasurably better than Doctor Phoenix, who still made Brentford shiver with disgust and pity.

The next up was a bright-faced, square-headed little man with cold-steel eyes.

“Saying that Herr Hans Schwarz is our chemist would be cruelly reducing the extant of his competencies,” said Hardenberg. “It is thanks to him that our modest armoury is so full of
surprises. Our pilot, Hugo Trom, is of course busy, as are most of his crew, and they regret not being able to meet you at the moment. The rest of the people here, you know already, I think. We will leave you to yourselves for a while, but I would be glad if you joined us for dinner, even if you are, of course, totally free to behave as you wish.”

“Nice to see you,” Brentford said to Gabriel. His friend, his borrowed black clothes flapping around him, looked slightly embarrassed, probably about the wedding. Brentford decided he would not talk of it at all. It had been ages ago, anyway.

“What happened to your hands?”

“Jackfrostbitten. More ridiculous than serious. As usual.” Gabriel launched a Punch and Judy show with his bandages on the edge of the table.

They were sitting in wicker armchairs in the almost cosy deck-saloon of the
Ariel
. A corridor led aft to the engine room and the cabins and berths of the crew’s quarters, and forward to the wheelhouse and the magazines, where a kennel had been improvised for the sled dogs, suddenly very compliant now that their “mission” had been accomplished, it seemed, with the rescue of both Gabriel and Brentford. Gabriel was still amazed that they had darted straight in the direction of the
Kinngait
, just as he had been thinking about his friend.

The Inuit, except for Ajukangilak, who stayed sulkily in his berth, obviously trying to avoid Gabriel, were busy exploring the dirigible, pussyfooting into every nook and cranny. From time to time Gabriel and Brentford could see Tiblit passing through the lounge, usually pursued by one sturdy, black-clad, bearded member of the crew who was trying calmly but firmly to wrestle from him some object the Inuk had found especially interesting or desirable—a box of crayons, a barometer, or a brass telescope.

“So you did not make it to the Pole,” said Gabriel, casually.

Brentford winced, as he had when he learned that he had been found barely fifty miles from the city. This mysterious banshee must have made him run around in circles. If he had wanted to impress Helen, it had all been quite a failure.

“No. And I’m cured of the will to go there. I would not advise anyone to try it.”

He did not feel like talking about what he had seen, shivering at the idea of just thinking about it.

Gabriel remained focused on his Punch and Judy show.

“You would not have met Helen, anyway,” Judy said to Punch, with a twangy voice.

“You have a gentle way of breaking the news, these days,” said Brentford. “How do you know?”

“Because I met her,” Judy said. “And she said you did not need her anymore.”

“You
met
her?” asked Brentford, trying to catch Gabriel’s fleeting eyes.

Gabriel looked up and stopped clowning.

“Well, sort of.
That
kind of dream, you know.”

Brentford nodded as if he knew.

“Why would she have given me that appointment, then?”

“She did not approve of your wedding, obviously.”

Brentford let it sink in and sighed, his eyes on the ceiling.

“Neither did my mother and neither did you. And neither did Sybil, and neither do I anymore, I suppose. And now even the Gods are against me.”

Gabriel said nothing, promising himself not to talk about the wedding anymore. It seemed to have happened a long, long time ago anyway, and this time, he also brought good news.

“But she also said that she would take care of your hunting quota problem.”

“How’s that?”

“How would I know? She’s the goddess, not me. Expect good seal and walrus hunts, though. In my dream, it was rather her line of work.”

“Does she have anything to do with the Inughuit being here?”

“Not that I or they know of. But now that you ask, there is a kind of connection, actually. Helen referred to the Polar Kangaroo as being of great help. He was in my dream as well, and He appeared to the Inuit and took them to me just in time.”

The implication of the Polar Kangaroo was big news, indeed. If the Macropus Maritimus Maximus had surfaced again, it was both the sign of a major crisis and the signpost toward some sort of solution. What Brentford had to do was follow its big footprints to wherever they led: it had already woven some threads, hadn’t it, though Brentford was still striving to see a pattern. And if, moreover, the Polar Kangaroo was involved with Helen, the pattern promised to be quite spectacular.

He rose and walked to the window in the side of the gondola. There was nothing but darkness down there, with maybe something that stirred and was only their own shadow. What he saw was mostly his own worried reflection, trying to follow another thread in his head without getting further tangled.

“What do you know about magic mirrors?” he asked Gabriel. For some reason, Gabriel, sceptic though he was, always seemed to be acquainted with the strangest notions. However absurd the question, Brentford knew he might get an answer.

“You mean the mirror you told me about? From the coffin? With
Lancelot
on it?”

“The very one. I saw a woman in it,” Brentford said as he slowly walked back to the table.

“It is never be too late be acquainted with that side of your personality, I suppose.”

“A woman that wasn’t me or in me,” Brentford specified with an amused patience as he sat down.

“Hmm …” As always when he reflected, Gabriel raised his eyes slightly toward the left, as if he were reading his cue from somewhere over Brentford’s shoulder. “All I know is that such visions are called phantoramas. Some seers favour mirrors over other methods, as they induce no abnormal states and show things in a more stable, less fleeting way than the usual magnetic vision. But as to the content, give or take a few specificities, it does not differ from normal clairvoyance and is entirely dependent on the disposition of the seer. Theoretically, what you saw was either a distant or dead person photographing herself onto it, so to speak—or, of course, some trick of your sick mind.”

“Are you by any chance calling Isabelle d’Ussonville a trick of my sick mind?”

“A trick of your mind, very certainly, but sick I hope not, for I happen to have seen her as well. Dead in that coffin, first.”

Brentford opened monocle-dropping eyes at the coincidence.

“Then,” his friend went on, “I saw some younger, vaporous version of her coming from the mouth of one my students, but that, of course, is strictly between us.”

“More between us than you think,” Brentford answered, rubbing his chin, which was his own symptom of reflection. “I have seen her myself, besides, as a, what, phantorama. In a dream and as the same sort of vapour you describe, maybe out of the very same mouth, at the Trilby Temple. But why would this dear lady haunt us?”

Gabriel thought perhaps it was because of their shared tendency to expect wonders from women. Trying to turn someone like Sybil Springfield into a model spouse or a vaudeville girl like Stella Black into a pure romantic love was in its own way being open to supernatural phenomena, but maybe, he surmised, Brentford wanted a less speculative answer.

“Well, it seems Helen uses her spirit as a kind of homing pigeon to contact you,” Gabriel proposed. He had a hunch that Helen was not too keen on appearing to Brentford in her present state, but he kept that to himself as well. “What business this d’Ussonville may have with us, however, I do not have the least inkling.”

“Nevertheless, we’re on to something here,” said Brentford, easing himself back in his wicker armchair.

“Would you care for quick a tour of the
Ariel?”
Treschler interrupted them.