Free Aurorarama by Jean-Christophe Valtat Page A

Players and Transpherees. Her love story with William was famous in New Venice. How Angry Ananias Andrew, then the Master of the Greenhouse, had taken her away from William so that he could secure his services as an addicted trainer for his Matball team was part of a lore that Brentford knew by heart. Eventually, or so the story went, William had shot Andrew Arkansky. Brentford felt moved to meet her in the flesh, a flesh whose secretions had produced the most powerful drug ever known to man—but then, wasn’t that the case in every love story? Etsuko retired, yet somehow lingered in the fruity tang of the tea.
    “The Greenhouse …” William kept on like a slowed-down, scratched wax roll. “How it is these days?”
    Brentford tried not to blunder.
    “It is a rather uneventful place.”
    William nodded his head, in and out of the dark.
    “In what way can I be of help?”
    “I have a code that I would very much like to subject to your perspicacity, Mr. Whale.”
    He felt instantly that he had pushed the right button on that rather creaky mechanism. William turned toward Brentford and lit a desk lamp that made his face appear more distinctly. He had sagging cheeks, a small moustache, rings around his eyes, and pupils with a moist glint that was not quite reassuring.
    “Oh, excellent. I like codes, Mr. Orsini. Human ingenuity cannot concoct a cipher which human ingenuity cannot resolve,” he said, baring his ravaged gums as he spoke. He had apparently retained his abilities and simply lost his teeth.
    Brentford handed him the paper on which he had scribbled the code and watched him scrutinize it.
    “It’s short. Which does not mean easier, as we have less material to rely on. Maybe a bit of context would not hurt.”
    “It’s a dream code,” said Brentford uneasily. “From an incubation.”
    William now had both elbows on the desk, biting his thin lips as he pored over the message.
    “You would be better placed than I am to crack a code your own wit devised.”
    “I tried, but to no avail,” avowed Brentford.
    “Would you tell me your dream, Mr. Orsini? And be reassured: I am not going to analyze it.”
    He had a conniving smile that Brentford mirrored. They were both from the Good Old Days, when the analyst was dreaded as a peculiarly perverse form of policeman who could cause endless trouble and spoil one’s Transpherence plan. Brentford told the gist of his dream, without, however, mentioning Helen.
    “What?” asked William, his glinting eyes suddenly sparkling. “Blue boxer shorts?”
    “As I told you,” said Brentford, who was not too keen on dwelling on his underwear, real or dreamed.
    There was a long pause.
    “Interesting,” said William.
    “If you say so,” said Brentford modestly.
    “Because it is the key we are looking for.”
    It was Brentford’s turn to remain silent.
    “I once had a good friend who wore such shorts,” said William with a surprising seriousness, and even, it seemed to Brentford, a little trembling in the voice. “A great Matball player.”
    Igor Plastisine
, thought Brentford, but did not say anything. The man had overdosed and gone crazy from metabolizing his own Pineapples and Plums. He, too, was part of the lore.
    “We had a code between us. And this is written in some dream-twisted version of that code.”
    “But I would not know it, even subconsciously, would I?”
    “Maybe you wouldn’t know it, but you came to me, someone who does know it, sent by someone or … something, whoknew that you would do that. So, that dispatch was in the wrong canister and the wrong canister was in the right tube, after all. Those networks can be a bit complicated, but this is Smalltown, Dreamland all the same.”
    William, pencil in hand, crossing out and substituting letters, was now quite animated, and seemed to decipher the text without much difficulty. It was done in two minutes flat.
    “As to what the message says, I am sure that I do not have to fear your