Aurorarama (44 page)

It was therefore ordered by the Council that, in the wee hours of the morning before the parade took place, and under
the benevolent protection of the Gentlemen of the Night, all the Native inhabitants of the city were to meet at the newly completed Inuit People’s Ice Palace, in order to remain safely there during the time of the celebration.

The day had not yet broken over New Venice when all the local Eskimo families—about five hundred people carrying the few pieces of luggage they had been allowed to take with them—were already lined up in front of the Ice Palace, being admitted as soon as their names were ticked off the list by the efficient guardians of the Northwestern Administration for Native Affairs. Those who had been oblivious of the order or, with typical Eskimo slackness regarding punctuality, a little too slow to comply, had been collected directly at their homes by the ever devoted Guardian Angels, with the assistance of Angels of the Law, so as to avoid any ambiguity regarding the legality of the process.

Mr. Peterswarden, the director of the new facility, reiterated to journalists his satisfaction that it was “the Inuit themselves who were the first to take advantage and, in a sense, possession, of a place that respected the values of their ancient and noble culture, and which, after all, had been built with their comfort in mind.”

Meanwhile, a small group of anarchists from the Blithedale Brotherhood, who had started a protest march on the Midway against a measure that seemed to them a bit discriminatory, were being dispersed, politely but firmly, by the Gentlemen of the Night. The protestors were then collected by ambulances to make sure they had not been molested, and would not be heard of again during the following hours. The parade could now take place under the most favourable conditions.

Barely had the sun risen, its pale slanting rays emerging from behind the roofs, than a large crowd, which had been given
New Venetian flags, was flocking along Barents Boulevard, Ladies’ Mile, and Bears’ Bridge. The weather was rather chilly, but, as the
Arctic Illustrated News
had remarked, “there is nothing like waving a flag to warm up one’s spirits.”

A dais and viewing stands had been erected on Barents Boulevard under the aerial tunnel of the Pneumatic Train, and it was a measure of the event that the Seven Councillors were all attending, lined up according to their Day Names and each one wearing across his coat a sash of one of the rainbow colours. Even the wax effigies of the Seven Sleepers had been carted out to sit between them, wearing the same attire, as befitted such a rare occasion.

Behind them, one could spot the officials of the Arctic Administration, taking with equanimity, it appeared, what was nothing if not a triumph for the Council. Other notabilities and celebrities of the city were also to be noticed in the stands, such as Mr. Brentford Orsini, General-Gestionary for the Greenhouses and Gardens, and his charming spouse, Mrs. Sybil Orsini-Springfield, as well as the much-touted magician who had recently amazed the whole city, Mr. Adam Handyside. Their presence all contributed to the idea, the reporter remarked, that the City “was at last marching past the turmoil of these last months, head held high, under the proud banners of unity and reconciliation.”

Announced by a thunderous rumble of drums that echoed in the stomachs of the onlookers, the Subtle Army lived up to the occasion, displaying the most impeccable discipline as they started to parade. Marching ahead were the heroes of the Prince Patrick battle, the Sea and Land Battalion, headed by Captain-General Frank Mason, who had led the final assault himself. Buckles and barrels scintillated against the regular ranks of the blue and grey dress uniforms, “as does the glittering froth on the inexorable waves of the mighty ocean.” A storm of flags eddied around them, and confetti fell from the windows like
a more peaceful snowfall, in a “warmhearted re-enactment of their hardships of the past days.” It was, on all accounts, a “parade in Paradise.”

But then Hell froze over.

As the Sea and Land Battalion presented its flag to the Council to have it decorated with the “Order of the Winged Sea Lion” (rumour had it that Mason had declined the medal for himself, claiming that he had done nothing but his duty), a “man of probable Inuk origin, but treacherously dressed in Western clothes,” elbowed his way through the crowd until he found himself a mere ten feet away from the dais. Before anyone could react—except Mr. Handyside, who, putting his own life at risk, had almost managed to throw himself in front of the target—the terrorist pulled out a revolver and shot Baron Brainveil, who fell instantly. As he agonized on the floor, a pool of blood spreading beneath him, a commotion ensued so chaotic that the perpetrator was able to escape by slipping below the dais. Some witnesses, however, including several Gentlemen of the Night, were positive that the Eskimo Assassin had headed to the perpendicular arcades that led toward the Marco Polo Midway, and, taking an unguarded backdoor, had found a refuge among his own kind in the Inuit People’s Ice Palace.

In such situations, a crowd becomes notoriously volatile. Seconds after the deed, amidst the pushing and shoving of those who wanted to see and those who wanted to escape, amidst the shouts of anger and the screams of horror, the word was already spreading that the Eskimos had done it, and should pay for it. Stoked by vociferating men of unclear origin, several large chunks of the crowd soon directed themselves “spontaneously” toward the arcades and the Inuit People’s Ice Palace; so large a rabblement, actually, that the Gentlemen of the Night soon found themselves unable to hold them back, and “preferred to
concentrate their heroic efforts on saving women and children from being crushed in the panic.”

By an ironic twist of fate, the army, although in full marching order, could do little to react, as the remaining crowd and policemen, separating the parade from any access to the Marco Polo Midway, prevented a military manœuvre that would have been in any case difficult in the extreme. Mason himself could hardly have given orders, closely surrounded as he was on the dais by the other members of the Council, some of them reminding him that the constitution forbade the army from intervening in the city, while others proposed ways to circumvent that particular difficulty.

Meanwhile the mob was already at the doors of the Inuit People Ice’s Palace, shouting death threats while using guardrails as rams against the door.

There is little more to be found about the event in the
Arctic Illustrated News
. Probably the journalist judged it was high time for him to file his report through the pneumatic post, if he wanted it to make the evening edition.

That particular issue (and this explains its value) was actually printed but never distributed: for the simple reason that by the time it would normally have been sold in the streets, its readers already lived in a different nation.

Brentford had seen it coming. Swallowing his pride until it ulcerated his stomach, and seething with a fury he did his best to cool down, his senses were so sharpened that he could see things before they happened, as if he still had the Second Sight goggles on his nose.

He had clearly seen that the man who pretended to elbow his way through the crowd had actually been imperceptibly allowed to slip through between two Gentlemen of the Night. Though Brentford had avoided any kind of eye contact with
Arkansky, he had registered from the corner of his eye that the magician had started to move even before the terrorist had pulled out his gun. There was no doubt, if one measured it in tenths of a second, as Brentford seemed to be able to do, that Bailiff-Baron Brainveil had fallen before the first shot was heard, like a figure in a dream reacting to a noise not yet heard in real life. Then Brentford caught Arkansky’s look after his rival had palmed the bullet he had just caught in his hand.
Real
bullet catch. It was unbelievable, but still the only real thing in that grotesquely fake assassination.

The organized scapegoating that took place afterward was especially abhorrent to Brentford. This was the line they should not have crossed. If he had not already taken his decision to overturn the Council, he would have taken it now, without any further soul-searching. Things were not ripe: they were rotten.

When he had resurfaced at ground level two days before, as if nothing had happened, he had felt that his part was the hardest to play. Not that he had to resume any kind of real domestic life with Sybil, who seemed to sleepwalk with indifference between the apartment and the recording studio. But having to accept the invitation to the parade, bow to the members of the Council and sit near Arkansky (who did not appear very happy to see him either) had really taken its toll on Brentford’s morale and self-esteem. Now the time had come to settle accounts, for the city and for himself.

“Sorry,” he said to the empty-eyed Sybil, who stood motionless at his side in spite of the commotion. He jumped off the dais, not as quickly or discreetly as he would have liked to, for a Gentleman of the Night spotted him and took up the chase, as Brentford headed toward one of the arcades that linked Barents Boulevard to the Marco Polo Midway. Blending into the rear guard of the lynch mob, whose flow was now thinning out, Brentford was disgusted to see how the otherwise indifferent
New Venetians had suddenly attained political consciousness as an excuse to take it out on innocents. Still, he was sure that most of them were not acting out of an inbred, vengeful hatred, but were simply going along with the flow, out of boredom and an appetite for Grand Guignol: rubberneckers looking for severed heads on a pike.

He zigzagged through them, using them as moving obstacles between himself and the police officer, but as he arrived at the middle of the arcade, rifle shots erupted somewhere in front of him and he realized that the crowd was suddenly rushing back, like a tidal wave of pure panic. He jumped aside, pressing himself against the door of a watchmaker’s shop, as the two flows met together, the oncoming mob back-pedalling to avoid being bashed into and trampled by the retreating stampede. The arcade quickly became such a crush that the buttons of his coat were ripped off as people shoved by all around him.

As the flow of people began to thin out, he tried once more to advance, to make sure that he would stay out of reach of the Gentleman of the Night. The ice rugby player in him struggled toward the exit, ignoring the blows, focusing on staying upright, and gaining ground yard by yard. The bulk of the cowardly crowd had already passed him as he reached the gate of the arcade, and he stumbled out into the Midway, almost losing his balance among the stragglers who dashed past him.

He found the Midway strewn with scattered hats, scarves, and gloves, and even the odd shoe. But the most striking feature was this: a line of a hundred or so Scavengers in their masks and hats stood spread out across the front of the Inuit People’s Ice Palace, their lever guns pointed skyward and an atrocious stench hovering about them.

“Hello,” called one of them, whose voice Brentford recognized as Blankbate’s.

“Thanks. Once again,” Brentford said, filled with such happiness he felt about to weep.

This was nothing but what he had himself planned, though. Well, more or less.

In the Anarchists’ den, various tactics had been devised, but as soon as the news arrived that the Council had decided to turn the Inuit People’s Ice Palace into a temporary ghetto for the Eskimos (and possibly, Brentford suspected, a permanent one), the armed Scavengers had used the sewage system to enter the Ice Palace from below, so that when the Inuit went in, their liberators were already there, with the four Inughuit as translators, and much to the wardens’ dismay. The lynch riot had been unexpected, but Blankbate, a mysterious man with, it seemed, some experience of combat, had no doubts about how to proceed.

He knew that New Venetians, threatened since they were children with the idea that the Scavengers would come and fetch them if they did not eat their clam chowder, usually tended, more or less consciously, not to cross their path, and if they did to avert their eyes. Suddenly opening the doors the crowd was banging upon and stepping outside to confront them in their full Plague Doctors regalia, the Scavengers were bound to make a certain impression. And reeking of raw sewage and armed with guns as well, they were simply too formidable to resist. Taking in the sight and stench, the mob stepped back like a frightened child and, at the crackling sound of the upward volley ordered by Blankbate, escaped the subtle control of the provocateurs and ran for its lower form of life. And so did the troublemakers on the Council’s payroll.

It was looking good. Unless it wasn’t.

At the other end of the Midway now marched a company of the Sea Lions, their guns pointed toward the Scavengers. Brentford,
hypnotized by the spectacle, took a while to realize he was standing right in the middle of the fire zone. He recognized Mason, walking beside the first row of the fusiliers, his sabre held high, as if he were commanding a firing squad. Brentford knew enough of military psychology to know that all the orders Mason had obeyed reluctantly over the past few days could now well turn against him. Enemies usually paid for the stinging humiliations soldiers received from above: this was what could happen when you double-binded people with both a sense of honour and absolute subjection. It was very thin ice that Brentford now trod upon, and he was more nervous, probably, than the Scavengers were. He found himself waving a white handkerchief as if he were waving good-bye to his behind.

The Sea Lions stopped forty yards away from the Scavengers. Mason ordered bayonets to be fixed, and the first line to kneel down and take aim. Behind Brentford, the lever guns of the Scavengers clicked, sputtering cartridges on the ground. Everything came to a standstill. Brentford remembered that a Japanese martial arts instructor of the Navy Cadets had once taught him that life should be conducted as if constantly charging the spears of one’s enemies. This included, he supposed,
actually
charging the spears of one’s enemies. He contented himself with walking toward the bayonets of Mason’s troops, but the sensation, he reckoned, was uncomfortably similar.