Radiance (16 page)

CYTHERA:
You're certainly a very … frank man.

ERASMO:
Good. Good. That makes me happy. I want to keep going, if I can make you squirm. If I can make you embarrassed to listen to me, because you should be.
     I woke up like a shot at four in the morning. Severin was snoring away next to me. Only she didn't quite snore. She made a sound with her jaw like a click, and then a sigh, and then a little soft choke. The first time I heard it I thought she was dying. Anyway. You know how sometimes you wake up and you're certain as the grave that's it for you and sleep? That's how it was. So I got up and went down to the lounge. A proper hotel lounge never shuts, and I made sure the Waldorf was a proper hotel when Logistics was booking everything. I went down to the lounge. I wanted a pink lady. They're my favourite. Do you have a favourite?

CYTHERA:
Bourbon neat.

ERASMO:
[laughs] That's because you're a terrible person. It's my opinion that you should never order anything “neat” at a bar. Pour yourself a couple of shots at home for free—there's no skill in it. Let the nice bartender-man strut his stuff a little! Me, I love pink ladies. I order them on every planet, on every tiny bootheel of a moon. A pink lady is never the same twice. Did you know, on Neptune they make them with saltwater? Disgusting, but wonderful. It's all wonderful. I mean that. Everything, every place. Even salty grenadine. So I got down to the lounge and my cousin Horace was sitting up at the bar with my drink already ordered for me. We've always been like that. When we had sleepovers as children, we always had nightmares at the same time, or had to get up to pee at the same time.
     The lounge had a wizened little gramophone wheezing its way through something called “Over the Rainbow.” I'd never heard it before. Horace pushed my drink over my way and said, “It would appear the Venusian recipe is a vague stab at gin, which they make out of all this white moss; grenadine which comes from xochipilli fruit and has nothing whatever to do with pomegranates besides being red; frothed callowcream; and a spritz of grapefruit, which is, shockingly, actual grapefruit.” Horace favoured pisco sours. Rinny was just starting to see my ineffable wisdom. She'd taken to chasing down gimlet variations.
     It wasn't half bad. Spicy. A little musty. We drank for a while and watched the twilight outside. The autumn light on Venus is a big gift wrapped up in a bow for a DP. A year of magic hours. No waiting for that perfect four-thirty p.m. sunlight. Venus is forgiving. The shoot can run as late or early as it wants, and you'll still have the light.
     I asked Horace, “Have any theories? Before we get started. My money's on psycho axe-murdering diver. Chops everybody up and feeds them to the eels.”
     Horace smiled. Two things about Horace smiling: It's the only time you can really see the little scar on his cheek where I pranged him with a pub dart when he was eight, and when he's smiling, he looks more like my dad than I do.
     “Aliens,” he said. “Stands to reason we'd find some, sooner or later. I mean, other than the whales. They don't count. They don't
do
anything. I mean proper aliens that walk and talk and complain about the weather. Aliens, or Canada. That whole sector is contested. Could have been a tactical thing ordered by Ottawa. Peasants won't move? Easier to wipe them out than try to have a civilized talk about it.”
     And then we got this idea into our heads that we'd go for a run before everyone else got up. We didn't have the right shoes for it but we jogged the whole length of Idun Avenue, down to the estuaries. We stuck our feet in the red water. His feet smelled horrible. Always did.

CYTHERA:
I think we're getting a bit far afield.

ERASMO:
So what? You said, “in my own words.” These are them. You take what I give you or you get nothing.
     Fine. I'll speed up the reel. No fraternal waterfront breakfast for you.
     Aylin Novalis met us at the Pothos docks at 0900 with four gondolas. She had to have been as hungover as the rest of us, but she never looked it. Even at the end, Aylin never looked tired or shaken. She was a better actress than anybody I ever met. Scrubbed and shined and ready to go, that was Aylin. Born and raised on Venus, Aizen-Myo Sector. She'd been a guide for ten years. The best. If you woke her up in the dead of night I bet she'd have her work shoes on under the covers. Her hair was up in a pretty little knotted ponytail that looked complicated to fix but really wasn't. I saw her do it at camp later on. She looked for all the world like a schoolteacher ready to take us all on a field trip to the aquarium.
Look at all the lovely fish! Let's see how many different kinds we can count! One, two, three—don't touch the glass, George …
     We loaded up the gondolas. Land travel is useless on Venus—it's all mud and silt. It took them forever to get the few cities there are to stand up straight enough to take a road. But the water goes everywhere. The gondolas weren't anything of the sort—I assume they're named after some hoary old Venusian/Venetian pun, but they're just industrial swamp boats with pontoons and outboard engines and absurd little flourished prows like someone's gonna pop out from under the tarp and start singing “
O Sole Mio
.”
     Really, it all went fine. We montaged right past it in the first cut. Battened everything down, said goodbye to the
Clamshell
kids, except the doc, Margareta, who came with us in case of … injuries. The rest of them were pleased as punch at the prospect of six months' debauchery in White Peony without us. We set off by 1000. Took nine days in the waterways to get to Adonis, which is due south of White Peony Station on the backside of nowhere. We came out through the Suadela Delta just clotted with dark pink silt. The pontoons looked like fairy floss. The cacao-trees canopied us, all full of blue-throated glowworms as long as my forearm. I gather they're quite predatory toward the local fauna but uninterested in humans. I took stills; Horace got some establishing shots, some bits of Severin smiling, of Aylin consulting our maps and permits.
     I should say that contrary to what I've heard on the radio down here, the whole area around Adonis was totally quarantined, no different than Enyo or Proserpine or any other run-of-the-mill disaster site. We had a pile of permissions the size of a baby hippo. Because of Venus's unique political situation, our passports and visas looked like a Parade of Nations. That little world belongs to everyone and no one. Too precious to be claimed. Severin recorded a voice-over to play through some of those boring establishing shots.
     
When she came shining from the sea, all the gods desired her greatly, and strove one against the other for possession of her. But Jupiter the Lightning-Father knew that to give her hand to any among the Olympians would only cause war unending in the quiet of his halls, and so no one was allowed to station enough personnel or resources to effect a manned quarantine or repair or dispose of much of anything; nor, even if they could, would any of them agree upon the rights of one officer to shit before another on Venusian soil; and thus quarantine on Venus means little more than a sign saying
GO AWAY
in as many languages as can be shouted out before the Honourable Representative Whoever from the Republic of Nothing finishes her drink
.
     We built our camp on the freshwater delta before attempting Adonis. Minimum safe distance. Aylin had secured us what amounted to a portable town, all military surplus. Collapsible barracks with solid roofs to keep the rain out and foldout floors to keep the equipment and our feet from sinking in the mud. A mess tent, a command centre, fire braziers, a chemical toilet, the works. Horace, Cristabel, Santiago, and Mariana set about testing all the equipment to make sure it had survived the trip. The Sallandars got dinner started—hardtack, 'tryx stew, tinned peas.
     It started the next morning. Everything went tits up right away. We took one of the gondolas into Adonis proper. We saw everything just like you've seen it. It was so much like the stories and stills we'd seen that walking through the place felt like being in a movie that was already made. The hotel looked like an earthquake had hit it. The old carousel, smashed into a twisted junk heap studded with horses' eyes.
     And there he was, centre stage. It was like glimpsing a celebrity at a café. Anchises, just walking around the memorial like it was nothing, a morning constitutional, and in a moment he'd ask for orange juice and eggs. Only he wasn't Anchises yet, he was … an artefact. Like a weathervane. Or a church bell. Part of the town. Evidence.
     We spent the afternoon setting up lighting for the sequence where Rin makes contact with him. And, you know, sometimes I think the only difference between Severin and her dad is that he lived through things first and then reshot them to get them right, while she hung back until everything was perfect,
then
called action. Couldn't live through a thing until the camera was rolling.
     [coughing] I need a break.

CYTHERA:
If we could just get through your first encounter with the auditory phenomena …

ERASMO:
I. Need. A. Break.

 

How Many Miles to Babylon?
: Episode 764

Airdate: 1 June, 1943

Announcer
: Henry R. Choudhary

Vespertine Hyperia
: Violet El-Hashem

Tybault Gayan
: Alain Mbengue

The Invisible Hussar
: Zachariah von Leipold

Doctor Gruel
: Benedict Sol

Guest Star
: Araceli Garrastazu as the Finnish Fury

ANNOUNCER:
Good Evening, Listeners, if it is indeed Evening where you are. Gather in, pour yourself a cup of something nice, and sit back for another instalment of the solar system's favourite tale of adventure, romance, and intrigue on
How Many Miles to Babylon?
Celebrating our thirtieth year on the waves,
Babylon
is a joint production of the United/Universal All-Worlds Wireless Broadcom Network (New York, Shanghai, Tithonus) and BBC Radio, recorded at Atlas Studios, London.
     This evening's programme is brought to you, as always, by Uzume Brand Soap, milled pure and clean with soothing oils, invigorating herbs, and wild alpine flowers plucked fresh from the gentle fields of Europa. Additional promotional consideration provided by Hathor Co. Premium Callowmilk, Diver Owned and Operated since 1876; Red Chamber Specialty Teas, Bringing the Bounty of Titan Home; the East Indian Trading Company; and Edison Teleradio Corp.
     Previously on
How Many Miles to Babylon?
: Our pioneer heroine, Vespertine Hyperia, having been taken captive by Venetian bandito-magicians in the Venusian pirate paradise of Port Erishkegal, was bound by unbreakable chains to the volcanic glass spire of Namtar Tower! The dastardly king of the banditos, Doctor Gruel, determined to make sweet Vespertine his bride, strapped her into his wicked Cartesian Splitting Machine, causing her to forget not only her beloved, Tybault Gayan, but her own twin brother, the great inventor Valentino. Valentino staged a daring rescue, soaring through the Venusian mists on his miraculous mechanical musk ox Braggadocio. Listeners gasped as Vespertine turned her face away from her own kin! They leaned in close when Braggadocio begged her with his tinny tongue to come and live with Valentino in his big belly and sail through the skies, safely home to Earth, where Tybault waited with the longing of a thousand hearts. And when she would not answer, the whole system wept.

VESPERTINE:
[sounds of whistling wind and clanking metal] Begone, deceiver! I
shall
marry Doctor Gruel at the stroke of dawn! He is my one true love! How I adore his warty chin and heavy fists! I grow faint at the thought of his hunchback; I dream of nothing but his scarred and hairy brow! I will never love another for all my days! [long, mournful groan over clanking engine parts]

ANNOUNCER:
Meanwhile, we find our stalwart hero, Tybault, having defeated a band of mercenaries and black alchemists bent on inciting war with Austria at any cost, recovering from his grievous wounds in a mysterious hospital, attended by buxom masked nurses and a physician revealed last week to be none other than his sworn enemy: the Invisible Hussar!

THE INVISIBLE HUSSAR:
[music cue #3: minor key crescendo 2] Yes, it is
I
! None other could vanquish the Hero of the Crimea! And these masked beauties are my sisters, the Ninja-Nuns of Nanking! They thirst for the blood of good men. I really don't know how long I can hold them back. But first, you must witness the magnitude of your defeat! Behold, this is not a hospital, but my ship! [sounds of howling space winds] You have slept soundly, my old foe, with the help of my sisters' potions. We will soon rendezvous with my comrades—Doctor Gruel and his band of banditos! [music cue #4: minor key crescendo 6]