Aurorarama (5 page)

“But would there be surplus at the Greenhouse?” asked the captain-general, playing his last card.

“I do not know,” conceded Brentford, “but I doubt very much that sweet peas and french beans run the risk of becoming extinct.”

Uitayok and his cohorts followed the exchange with, Brentford could see, much curiosity and expectation but also, or so it seemed, some amusement. They had been witnesses to enough betrayals and murders between
qallunaat
to know that if white men could be bad to them, there was always a chance that they would be still more wicked to one another.

“But,” said Mason, who had obviously found another card up the sleeve of his uniform, “if these
gentlemen
hunt for us,” this with a note of contempt that made Brentford flinch inwardly, “we will not be as independent as
your
plan intended to make us. Why do not we define zones where we are allowed to hunt?”

Uitayok, after having listened to Tuluk’s version, answered this better than Brentford could have done. He drew from a bag some pieces of driftwood that, to the
qallunaat’s
amazement, he organized to make a map that corresponded precisely to the geography of North Wasteland, though there was little chance that he had ever seen the area otherwise than by paddling around. He pointed to various zones, miming the migrations of species.

“It happens that the animals move. The lines, they do not know. If
qallunaat
have them all what will the Inuit do? And the Inuit, they have to move with the animals.”

Mason frowned, trying to grasp Uitayok’s meaning, and eventually he turned toward Brentford.

“This
gentleman
knows the matter,” said Brentford.

Mason returned him a frowning “whose-side-are-you-on” look, but he also knew a dead end when he saw one. However, he did not feel inclined to give in to Brentford in front of his guests.

“But you know I am not entirely qualified to decide on such important matters. I will have to refer to the Council of Seven concerning the possibility of this contract, as well as to the City Council for Customs and Commerce, and probably to the Nunavut Administration for Native Affairs to make sure everything is clear to all parties,” he said, both to gain time and to embarrass Brentford a little, knowing of his strained relationship with the Council of Seven.

Tuluk translated as well as he could, but Uitayok had already understood and his face showed clearly that the word
administration
in an Inuk’s ear sounded about as promising as the word
tupilaat
did to the
qallunaat
’s. Ajuakangilak said something to Uitayok who in turn repeated it to Tuluk.

“There is another matter,” Tuluk announced.

“What is it?” said Mason, a little impatiently.

“Some of
qallunaat
soldiers. They are very scary.”

“Some of my soldiers? What do you mean?”

“They are evil spirits. Dead and living. Very Hungry. Very Evil.”

Mason turned toward Brentford with an inquisitive look. Brentford was not that surprised. He had heard the story before, when he was a child, actually. The Phantom Patrol was a popular legend when it came to scaring disobedient children: the living dead, mummified, mutilated corpses of British and American sailors or soldiers lost in polar explorations prowling the ice fields for blood, animal or human, on sleds of bones drawn at full speed by skeletal dogs. They were, beyond the lore, not an uncommon hallucination for today’s strayed travellers or Inuit.

“They are hunting on your grounds?” asked Brentford, with a polite interest.

Ajuakangilak launched himself into a long explanation that Tuluk translated as an unequivocal yes. They had made their dogs
pillortoq
—crazy—and dug up graves and stolen one child.

“Can someone explain this to me?” asked Mason.

Brentford tried to smile. It was his experience that the less you heard or talked about some things, the less they were bound to bother you. Those who had never heard about the Phantom Patrol were not likely to see them. Or such had been the case so far.

“Oh, it’s nothing that should concern you, really. Part of the folklore.”

But he also knew, as the Inuit did, that here fictions were like animals: they could migrate, and they ignored the lines.

F
or a prelapsarian sensibility such as Gabriel’s, work was nothing but a curse, the sin committed against man. Seldom bored, which was not common at those latitudes, and always busy in his own mysterious ways, he had no spare time to lose in such a tasteless fashion: he would, normally, not have touched a “profession” with a barge pole and a pair of fur overmittens if he could have helped it.

But, years ago, as the Blue Wild catastrophe had left parts of the city in (beautiful) deep-blue ruins, he had been obliged, like all the other scions of the so-called Arcticocracy, all the more because he happened to be the son of a profligate father whose
legacy consisted of nothing but debts, to become, in his own bittersweet words, the Earl of Real. He had been cunning or lucky enough to get into one of the rare trades he could tolerate, and the only one among those that could materialize a monthly paycheck. The task was mostly a bit of acting, which he handled competently enough, in a courteous yet slightly desultory way, always walking the thin line that separates discretion from uselessness. But it has to be said that since his interview with the Gentlemen of the Night, his already minimal commitment had dwindled to Lilliputian proportions. It had even come to the point where he sat in his Doges College office whitewashing his brain with cheap “snowcaine” freshly bought in Venustown from a certain Charley Sleighbells.

Today his excuse for doing this was not a class to teach but the “private conversation” he had just been invited to in the Dean’s Office, by way of a none too polite letter, which we would gladly have shared with the reader if it were not at this very moment sulkily crumpled at the bottom of the wastepaper basket. Gabriel was fed up with people wanting to discuss things with him, and it was only when he deemed himself sufficiently sharpened that he could bear getting up and going down to the meeting.

The corridors looked their bleak mid-February selves, with a few stray students gliding about like ghosts and shadows against the dying daylight pouring from the arched windows at each extremity. There had always been, since his own student days at Doges, a light aura of unreality about this place, or maybe about himself, he reflected, sniffing and checking that his nose was not running too much.

Gibiser, who occupied the honourable and much-coveted position of Dean of Doges, was a white-haired but healthy man, with a sympathetic surface and tolerably murky depths, the kind who would pat you on the back to choose the best spot to
stab you. But today, he was not even that cheerful when Gabriel sat before him in his large first-floor office with its view of the mock Parthenon and the—ridiculous—miniature Rialto bridge that marked the entrance to the Campus.

“I am glad to see you here,” Gibiser said.

“I work here,” answered Gabriel with typical snowcaine poise, though he knew that Gibiser was a bit challenged when it came to grasping other senses of humour than his own—Gabriel’s especially, peculiar as it was, often proved a tough nut to crack.

“Oh, I know that very well,” Gibiser said darkly. “Listen, Professor d’Allier, I am going to do for you something I should not do, which is to disclose private correspondence from a third party. If I do so, it is only because I hope it will do more good than ill for the community.”

He handed Gabriel a letter, which Gabriel read with growing disgust, while barely suppressing his sniffles and hoping those that escaped could pass as sniffs of contempt.

“Dear Colleague and Dean
,

I wish to speak to you about a Masters student called Phoebe O’Farrell
.

This student has taken my class “The Pen and the Plough: The Peasant as Poet, the Poet as Peasant” this semester, and her paper on “John Clare’s Use of the Word ‘Croodle’ ” was of a very high level and by far the best I have read for this course. I have nothing more to add on this matter
.

She had chosen at the beginning of the term to write a dissertation under the guidance of our colleague Mr. Allier titled “Stoned Landscapes: Laudanhomes & Hashishtecture in Coleridge’s ‘Kubla Khan’ and Baudelaire’s ‘Rêve Parisien’ ” (sic). For
reasons that she may or may not wish to explain to you (it is her own decision), she would like to ask you if it would be possible that this dissertation now be supervised by myself
.

I fully support this request and I think it would be better for all if you and Allier would agree on this point, as she is currently undergoing certain difficulties in her work where I could be of great help
.

She is one of my best students, and I hope you will give her your most benevolent attention
.

Cordially Yours
,

Prof. Albert Corkring

Full-Fledged Fellow

House of Humanities

Doges College

“What am I supposed to do with this rag,” asked Gabriel, his voice as icy as the tip of his nose. “Propose it as a commentary in a poetry class?”

He could see that Gibiser was embarrassed. But he could also see, his own brain a dazzling crystal ball, that it was more over being involved in such an imbroglio than for Gabriel’s sake.

“Do not get carried away, Mr. d’Allier. I’m saying this in your best interest. And please, rather, tell me if you have any idea what these … allusions might refer to?”

Gabriel could see very clearly indeed what the fuss was all about, and it was not very glorious. In the world of dark muted passions that is Academia, the witches’ brew that blends scholarly susceptibility with delusions of seduction is rather everyday fare, but here Corkring had obviously been scraping the bottom of the cauldron.

“It is simple enough. Sometime around the Flood, my colleague Corkring wrote a rather derivative booklet on Coleridge and so considers that author as a private property I am intruding upon. I suppose that the abduction of this student is for him a form of revenge.”

Gibiser seemed to find the explanation plausible but did not want let Gabriel see that, and adopted instead a diffident, disapproving, whatever-it-is-I’m-against-it expression that came as part of the package along with the panoply of Dean.

“If I read correctly between the lines, his allegations are, however, of another nature.”

“I don’t like to wallow in another’s man mud,” muttered Gabriel, barely unclenching his jaws to say it.

Gibiser nodded pensively.

“We are coming to a situation where it is his word against yours, then.”

“It’s my word against his oink, you mean.”

The Dean pretended he had not heard.

“And I regret to say that in such a situation, his word is mightier than yours. First, he is a full-fledged fellow and you are not. Then, Mr. d’Allier, you are, if I may say so, a man with a past. I am speaking, of course, of previous involvements with students.”

Gabriel wanted to protest, in the name of the largely mythical nature of the said involvements, but he was silenced by a gesture from Gibiser, who did not want to discuss further such an unsavoury matter.

“And at last, and this may be even more crucial, Professor Corkring is, as you may know, Special Councillor of Studies for the Council of Seven. And—I am speaking honestly to you here—his defeat for the office of Vice-Regent of the College has made him, shall we say, a bit nervous and dangerous to contradict. I would not want him to carry these matters higher
than they should go, which he is wont to do, if he is not given satisfaction.”

“Which, if
I
may read between the lines, means I cannot count on your support?” asked Gabriel, who, as soon as he had heard the words
Council of Seven
knew not only that his case was hopeless but also that the noose would only get tighter if he struggled.

“Since when do you need support from anyone, Mr. d’Allier? You are a
loner,”
said Gibiser, as if that settled the matter. The French half of Gabriel’s brain heard
l’honneur
and almost felt flattered, while the other half remained a cold blank. He got up and walked out without a word.

He went back to his office, holding his anger in himself as in a cup about to spill. Rage in Gabriel never burst out in fits but got ice-cold and crystallized into unforgettable, unforgiving grudges. Fuelled up by the snowcaine, he paced up and down, from door to desk and from sofa to bookshelves, sometimes whispering atrocities to a phantom Corkring, sometimes devising various plans for public humiliations, sometimes refusing to stoop so low as to acknowledge both the miserable scheme and the pitiful existence of his colleague. He almost did not hear the soft knock on the door, but eventually he opened it with an aggressive swiftness, only to find himself face to face with none other than Phoebe O’Farrell.