Free Aurorarama by Jean-Christophe Valtat

and went to the PneumaticPost Booth. There he wrote a message to Sybil to tell her he would be home late (though she would probably be partying somewhere), put it in a canister, sent it through the outward tube, and set about looking for William de la Whale’s address in the Dispatch Directory, where he found it quite quickly. It was in Yukiguni. He then ate his sandwich—the bread slices were held together by a miniature harpoon—at the lustrous counter, and having finished his beer with a manly gulp that recalled his glorious days in the dreaded Doges College Ice Rugby Club, he set forth for the Japanese quarter.
    It was just a few moonlit bridges away. Added to the fact that is always pleasant to cross bridges in New Venice, Yukiguni happened to be one of Brentford’s favourite places in the city. He entered the gate, slaloming among the smoking shadows queuing in front of the Toadstool, apparently a trendy spot these days, and immediately felt at ease in that somewhat labyrinthine network of narrow streets, miniature canals, and gibbous bridges covered with a snow that seemed lighter than anywhere else. It was deserted and dark, with a hum of its own, distant and muted, which made the place sound calmer than the rest of New Venice.
    Onogorojima, where William was supposed to live, was a tiny island right in the centre of the zone, circled and crossed by convoluted paths that quickly caused orientation trouble. The Hokkaido-style houses, with their empty bear cages and taboo windows in front, which were for divine use only, had no numbers whatsoever, and Brentford had to count them one by one before he decided on which door he was going to knock. Luckily, he could count well.
    A middle-aged woman slid open the entrance door just widely enough to poke her head through and take a look at the visitor, who, deerstalker hat in hand, introduced himself with the utmost politeness. The woman disappeared for a while, and then reappeared, letting Brentford in with a bow.
    He took off his rubbers, and after following the woman down a corridor was introduced into a space that was more Western than Japanese, and very disorderly. Around a solid desk, books were crammed everywhere, piled up in unstable rookeries, and the floor was littered with chessboards and go-ban, all frozen in mid or end game. The light was sparse, but though all Brentford could see of William was a flaky hand softly brushing a bald head, it was enough to make him realize that he had an aged man in front of him.
    “Mr. William de la Whale?” asked Brentford.
    “Plain William Whale will do,” said a slow, hissing voice that Brentford could barely understand. “These arcticocratic games are past their prime, aren’t they?” the voice kept on, slurring and dwindling into a crackle of slobbery static.
    “I am Brentford Orsini,” he answered, feeling he should skip the ducal part. There was a pause.
    “Visitors are rather rare here, Mr. Orsini. I suppose I should be grateful.”
    The words fell slowly, as in some sort of Chinese saliva-drop torture. Brentford started to feel embarrassed by the hot, stifling atmosphere, and he remembered, but too late, the rumours that a lifetime of substance taking had taken its toll on William’s brain, causing his early retirement from public life.
    “I do not know whether you should be grateful. But you can certainly be helpful.”
    “I seem to remember you run the Greenhouse?”
    “I do. Yes.”
    A long silence ensued, mercifully interrupted when the woman re-entered the room and put a tray with a kettle and two cups on the edge of the desk, where it just fit. A sweet-scented steam arose when the woman filled the cups.
    “This is my spouse, Kujira Etsuko.”
    Brentford bowed as he received the burning cup. As the light fell upon her, he could see that her skin still had that yellowishorangehue typical of the “Greenhouse girls” who used to metabolize Pineapples and Plums from their sweat while dancing for Matball