Radiance (43 page)

“Iggy, you look gorgeous! How about a stiff Sazerac?”

Santiago Zhang blushes. His mouth bleeds freely; shards of metal spike through his lips, his severed tongue. He squeezes Anchises's hand joyfully. “It's my lifelong ambition to try every cocktail known to man—this'll be number eighty-two!” His lips leave a smear of blood on the glass like lipstick.

“And last but not least: Mari, Mariana, an apricot zombie for
mi corazon
, my darling, my sugar, apple of my eye and bird in my hand—is it too soon for hand jokes? Well, you know I never had a proper upbringing, I can't be expected to know these things.” The sound engineer scowls, but she can't keep it up for long. She grins girlishly and waggles her fingers. Mould covers her hand, her arm, bores into her cheeks. Fleshy fiddleheads yo-yo out of her palm. Maximo gives a mock bow and pulls a tuppence out of Anchises's ear to show there's no hard feelings. His eyes hang hollow in his face, his skin ashen, sallow, slick with Plutonian influenza, which is nothing to sneeze at.

“We'll top that off with a Death in the Afternoon for you, Anki, and a bourbon neat for me,” Cythera finishes with a twirl, her feathers and scales catching the chandelier light and tossing it back up to the painted ceiling.

“You're incorrigible!” Erasmo hollers. Severin glimmers with silver-screen delight. “Let the nice man make it a Daisy, at least!”

“Never!” cries Cythera Brass.

The company roars laughter.

“Oy, Mr Grumpy Bear, you forgot somebody!” comes a voice like chocolate-covered starlight, sailing over the assembled host.

“Don't you believe it for a second, missy.” Anchises snatches a final snifter from the bar and fairly hops over to the late arrival. She has always known how to make an entrance. She's buffalo fur and dragon leather from head to toe, young as the day is short, a plunging neckline and a soaring sweep of hair, her Moroccan features severe and welcoming all at once, her smile brand new, All-American. “A sweet moonlight for my sweet moonbeam,
crème de violette
for my dreamy Violet, queen of the airwaves.”

Violet El-Hashem takes her due praise and her seat, scootching in between the octopus and the mongoose. She waves shyly at Calliope. Marvin curls up in her lap and begs for belly scratches.

A hush falls. Expectant, nervous silence moves like a hot potato from hand to hand. Maxine Mortimer whispers in Mary's ear. Percy makes a face at his daughter; she giggles behind her nickelodeon hand.

Anchises quaffs his absinthe and champagne in one gulp and opens his arms extravagantly, taking everyone in: everyone, everything, his life, his past, and his future.

“
Mesdames et messieurs
, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, octopi and mongooses, whales and wendigos, slatterns and stick-in-the-muds! We are here to investigate the early retirement of one Severin Lamartine Unck. I won't bore you with the facts of a case you know all too well. Every one of you has a piece of the puzzle, and tonight is the night we put it all together and—if we're lucky and everyone plays fair—point a finger at the baddie, have a spot of cake, dance it off, and call it a night. Are you ready? Has everyone visited the necessaries? Shall we begin?”

Mary Pellam whistles through two fingers. “Go get 'em, St. John!”

Anchises's parents clap enthusiastically. Their dead hands make no sound. “We love you, honey!” they cheer.

Marvin the Mongoose hops up from Violet's lap, spins around three times, bites his own tail, and yelps in his trademark lisp, “I am SO EXCITED. I don't know what's happening, but IT IS AMAZING. I want another snakebite! Two 'nother snakebites! HOW MANY YA GOT?”

“Why, hullo!” laughs Violet, scratching him behind one animated ear. “You're voiced by Alain Mbengue, aren't you?”

“Sure am!” Marvin puffs out his fluffy chest.

Violet shakes his paw. “My goodness, we're practically related!”

Cythera produces a brass gong from behind the Myrtle Lounge bar and wallops it with a hammer. “I've always wanted to do that,” she confesses. “Enough with the patty-cake and the chit-a-chat! Eyes forward, mouths shut!”

Anchises begins. “Very well! As I see it, there are two possible solutions to this mystery. I shall lay them both out and we shall have a vote. Acceptable? Excellent. Now, the first solution is the easiest one, Occam's old standby: I propose that Severin is dead.”

“Well, that's not very nice,” Calliope the Carefree Callowhale harrumphs. She speaks with the voice of the actress who played her—an unsettling experience for the lady herself, Violet El-Hashem, seated one mongoose away. The whale's long-lashed eyes narrow. “And I resent the implication. I mind my own business; you lot ought to mind yours!”

“That
is
the trouble, isn't it, Miss Calliope? We
haven't
been minding our own business. In fact, we—human beings, I mean—have rather taken hold of
your
business and called it our own without so much as a by-your-leave, isn't that right?”

“Damned right,” huffs the cartoon whale. “How would you like it if I came and yanked on your personal bits while you tried to have a nap and made ice cream out of whatever oozed out?”

“How dreadful!” gasped Mr Bergamot, hiding his face with his tentacles. “I do hope none of these bandits have
my
address!”

“I'm sure we're all very sorry,” snaps Mariana Alfric. Flakes of jade-coloured mould fly from her lips. “But we didn't
know
. None of us were even alive when the
Yue Lao
landed on Venus. It doesn't give you the right to go around smashing up villages and sticking your
personal bits
in my
personal bits
!” Mariana waves her tentacled hand by way of illustration. A chorus of approval echoes through the dead.

Calliope the Callowhale sniffs indignantly. “I feel we made it perfectly obvious we didn't want to be interfered with. Would you trouble a tree for apples if the branches vaporised you instantly? I should think you'd leave it well enough alone! We ought not to be castigated for defending ourselves! Ask her!” Calliope points her animated fin at Violet El-Hashem.

“I don't know what you think I had to do with any of it,” the radio star opines.

“You were one of the first of the robbers to come knocking at our door.”

“I beg your pardon! I was eight years old!”

“Oh, come off it. We know your voice. We've heard it over and over in our heads, sizzling back and forth like incandescent grease in an infinite pan. ‘When I looked upon that new world, splendid in every way and in every way terrible, I looked upon a tiger with stars falling from his striped tongue. I looked and saw my true bridegroom!' I am
not
your bridegroom, sweetheart, but I shall be your tiger if I have to.”

Violet El-Hashem laughs long and hard. “Fishie, my love, it was only radio! The first time I set foot on Venus my publicist handed me a script, a contract, a cocktail, and slapped my bottom twice.”

“May I ask a question?” Arlo Covington raises his hand, still in its thick diving glove. Muck dribbles from the corner of his mouth and into his cool green drink.

“Hold your question for one moment, Arlo?” Anchises begs. “I fear some of our friends are getting rather upset. Let's remember we're all stuck in this together, shall we? We can play happy families for one evening, can't we? Mariana? Violet?”

“Fine,” the girls grumble.

“Calliope? Let's see some of that carefree callowhale we all know and love?”

“Fine,” spits the whale.

Anchises claps his hands together. “Now, Mum, you old scamp, get up here.”

Severin Unck disentangles herself from Erasmo and skips up to the bar, where she fixes herself another gimlet.

“Come on, Mumsy. You can tell us.”

“ARE WE POISONOUS?” holler Erasmo, Maximo, Mariana, Santiago, and Arlo, collapsing into helpless giggles.

But that's not Anchises's question. “Are you dead?”

Severin's celluloid eyes twinkle. She taps her nose with a silvery finger. “I don't want to spoil it.” She smirks. “Never go swimming for at least an hour after lunch, kids!”

Madame Mortimer stands up, stroking her eye patch as she thinks. “The only reason anyone thought twice about the whole business was on account of the footage of your bloody great eyeball, Calliope. Normally, death requires a body; but there are many exceptions, and this easily qualified. Callowdiving is a dangerous profession at the best of times. The careless are atomized like a ball of af-yun. It's tragic, but it's happened a thousand times without all this
Sturm und Drang
and beating of breasts. Without that little filmstrip, it's an open and shut case.”

Mary Pellam pipes up. “That, and the fact that Maxie-boy over there has blubbered all over the known universe that he killed her.”

Anchises nods. “Yes, I do think it's time we had a whack at that, don't you, Prospero, old friend?”

Maximo Varela does not stand. He salutes with his margarita. “Ah, but I did kill her, my boy.”

“Liar,” purrs Severin from behind the bar. She saunters back to Erasmo, bearing a fresh pink lady. She perches on the seat of his armchair. “Oh, what a big fat liar you are.”

“Are we playing the lying game?” yips Marvin the Mongoose. His whiskers
sproing
merrily. “I love that game! I'm aces at it! Pick me! Pick me! I killed Severin, too!”

“Who
are
you?” sighs Peitho Kephus in exasperation. “What do you have to do with any of this? What are you doing here?”

Marvin the Mongoose puts both paws over his mouth. He hiccups. “I don't know!” he yips. “I hitched a ride with the octopus!”

Max's plague-slicked face droops. “I'm telling the truth. I'm so sorry, Rin.”

Severin rolls her eyes. “Good grief, Max, whatever for?”

“I hit you.”

“I hit you, too. I'm comfortable with our score.”

Maximo's sunken eyes fill with rheumy tears. “I shoved you. You fell onto the rocks.”

“I had a bruised arse. Big deal.”

“You fell onto George and smashed it.”

“You've got me there. Your honour, Maximo Varela murdered George the kinesigraph camera in cold blood. I saw it with my own eyes. Take him away!”

“Baby, you should listen,” says Erasmo softly.

“I did kill you,” the Mad King of Pluto whispers. “But I did it after you died. On the
Clamshell
. Erasmo and Cristabel cut
Radiant Car
for you. As a way to say goodbye or a way to keep you alive, I don't know. It took them weeks. Konrad and Franco brought food to the darkroom and left it outside the door. We didn't see them or the boy for weeks. It was like they'd vanished, too. And all the while, I still had that static in my head. That horrible static filled with voices, our voices, sawing on my skull every minute. I can still hear it.”

“You never told me that,” says Erasmo.

“I don't tell you much, Raz. But it's true. And then, a month out of lunar orbit, the three of them emerged from their exile. They asked us all to come to the cantina for a screening. They even made popcorn. Trying to make some little happiness. And we watched
The Radiant Car Thy Sparrows Drew
. It was a hundred and twenty-seven minutes long. When the lights came up, everyone wept. They hugged each other, kissed foreheads and cheeks. In movies and books they always say:
A spell had been lifted
. But it had. They were in grief. But they would live.”

Severin Unck leans toward her lighting master. Her breathing quickens. “Was it good? Was it
good,
Max? Did I do okay? Did I make something … right? Tell me it was wonderful. I have to know it came out all right.”

And Percival Unck rises from his seat to take his daughter into his arms.

“That's my girl,” he says. He kisses the top of her head.
It's nice to have made a person to commiserate with
, he thinks, and Severin knows his thought without hearing it.

“I always thought you were going to be taller.” Percy laughs. His voice goes softer. “I always thought we'd patch it up someday.”

“We did,” Severin says. “Just you wait.”

“It was beautiful,” Max admits. “Sad, and terrible, and monstrous. But beautiful. People would have kept watching it as long as they knew how to work a projector. And that's when I killed you.”

“Oh, Max,” sighs Mariana.

“The static crawled in my head, and my dead, obliterated Mariana crawled in my heart, and I couldn't get a second's peace, not a moment's quiet. The static sent hideous knives of lightning though me, and the lightning spoke with your voice. It said, over and over:
They have killed a Nereid. And she was full of roe. Full of roe. Full of roe
. Like a nursery rhyme. Once
Radiant Car
started playing, Mariana began to sing along with the killing of the Nereid in my bones.
Twinkle, twinkle, little dragon, won't you come and pull my wagon
. The two of you did not sing in harmony. Utterly atonal. I wanted to die. And when it ended, and you disappeared out of the frame like a cheap jump-cut trick, I heard you say a new thing:
A mother is a person who leaves
. I knew then how to stop the white noise from burning me out from the inside. The way princesses know things in fairy tales. The way you know things in dreams.”

Maximo Varela cannot go on. He sobs, guilt and lymphatic fluid seeping out of his grey skin. Erasmo finishes his confession for him.

“While we slept, he stole everything. All the reels, the scraps, the outtakes, everything. Even the unusable stuff. He dragged it all up to the observation deck and laid it out in the sun to overexpose. You tried to stop him, Anchises. Maybe you remember. Hopefully not. I don't know how you could even have understood what would happen to film left in the light, but you tried to grab it all up in your little arms like so much black spaghetti. You held it tight to your little chest and hissed at him. And Max … well, he hit you until you let go. Hit a kid with his fists. Stomped on your hand. I never forgave him. Never will.
Radiant Car
fried all night. Chemical fumes everywhere. Smoke but no fire. By the time we figured out what he'd done, those four miserable pieces were all we could salvage.”