Radiance

And the Sea Remembered, Suddenly

(Oxblood Films, 1941, dir. Severin Unck)

(ACCOMPANYING MATERIAL: RECORD 8, SIDE 1, COMMENCE 0:12)

SC1 INT. LOCATION #19 NEPTUNE/ENKI—STORM

OBSERVATION DECK, DAY 671. NIGHT

[29 NOVEMBER, 1939]

[FADE IN on a balcony crusted with salt and electric green coral. Its coils and floral motifs and columns recall the balustrades of New Orleans. Rust-bound lanterns hang on long, Marleyesque chains, casting white-blue light onto the churning cobalt sea that covers the whole of the unspeakably vast surface of Neptune. A semipermeable glass bell encloses the balcony; rain spatters onto the crystal and rolls down, but wisps of marine wind are allowed through—nothing, however, compared to the gales outside, which would murder any human in their path in the space of a thunderclap. The soft, grinding, gentle rumbling of Enki moving through its equatorial circuit underlines every spoken word.]

SEVERIN UNCK

The city of Enki is also a ship, perhaps the greatest ship ever sailed. She circumnavigates her planet once a decade, following a lugubrious echo of the Gulf Stream that flows more or less true, avoiding with grace the white and squalling knot of the mother storm from which all the other cyclones of this world descend. This balcony and thousands like it blister the exterior walls of the Neptunian capital. Whatever else occurs in this city—whatever work, whatever ambition, whatever decadence—its souls always return to these lookouts: a pilgrimage, a comforting hearth, a night watch. They come to see the storm. To stare it down. Whether for an hour or eight—or, in the cases of some old-timers, every moment not spent sleeping or eating—Enki-siders are drawn to this primeval sight of their world contorted, writhing in her constant oceanic distress, to bear witness to the eternal maelstrom that is the ancient heart of Neptune.

[All the camera can see is blue. Monstrous waves lash an indigo sky oppressed by clouds. Whitecaps crest and shatter; shadows of kelp forests the size of Asia skitter and dance. But there is no scale, can be no scale, because there is no land in sight. It could be the Pacific; it could be Lake Geneva. But it is neither. Only when a fishing vessel drifts into frame and, a moment later, the body of some unphylumed leviathan breaks the surface off its portside, geysering the sea into the methane-rich air, is there a moment of sickening understanding. There are cities on Earth smaller than that barnacled beryline beast.]

SEVERIN (V.O)

Enki is a nomad; she follows the tide. There are, of course, other ships on this sea: Manannan, Snegurochka, Ys, Lyonesse, Sequana. But Enki dwarfs them all.

[SEVERIN rests her hand on the balcony rail. Coral crinkles and drifts away under her fingers. She looks exhausted—dark rings around her eyes, a thinness to her skin.]

SEVERIN

Silence is the rarest commodity in Enki. The ear never rests; the engines that roar life into the city call and answer, call and answer, without ceasing.

And yet, from home? Nothing. Though nominally a French colony, Neptune will pass behind the sun tonight, disappearing from radio contact with Earth for an estimated seventy-two years. The voices will stop. The only news will come from lonely ships creeping through the black on the longest of roads. They will not hear any rumbling of war, any rattling of Viennese sabres or English guns. If the government in Paris changes once again, they will learn too late for it to matter much. No one will know whether Tybault will defeat the Invisible Hussar this time, or whether Doctor Gruel will succeed at last in making Vespertine his bride and his victim. It will all happen without us.

I say us. There is, of course, a passenger liner leaving before the lines go dark. A last chance to jump ship for civilization. The truth is, I have not yet decided whether I will be on it. My crew is going home. Tickets in their breast pockets, cabins reserved, champagne already chilling in silver buckets below polished portholes. Mariana, Amandine, Max, Margareta, Santiago, Horace, Konrad. Even my Raz has tired of kicking snowballs around on the frozen arse-end of the universe.

But me? Me, I don’t know. I find myself at the end of this journey I mapped out after the death of dear Uncle Thaddeus—how many uncles have I had? I think every man on the moon has been my fuddy old uncle at one time or another. I suppose it has all been a funeral march to outlast the dreams of Hades. Saturn back to Mars and out again to Neptune. And I do not know if I am done. There is always somewhere further to go. Until there isn’t.

[PAN LEFT to the warmly lit interior of Enki’s starboard hull. Women in dresses with iridescent hoopskirts wide enough to conceal small armies raise their hands to the glass; rain drives down across their dry palms. The women, men, and children all wear shades of blue and green, sea shades, full-fathom colours, the turquoise of each rosette, the emerald of each brooch painted onto the film frame by frame, as Virago Studios did in the old days, as Clotilde Charbonneau did. The clothes were chosen for the evening’s celebration: old-fashioned, seventy years out of date, dug out of grandmothers’ trousseaus and costume trunks, just as their own clothes, made new today, will be seventy years past la mode when Earth comes round again. Chandeliers dangle like seabirds and music can be heard, harpsichords and strings and drums made tinny by the thickness of glass.]

SEVERIN (V.O.)

Tonight, Enki is dancing. Before Tritonrise, I will dance as well. This is not a night to stay in, curled up with a pipe and a book and a snifter. This is the end of the world, but the beginning of the world, as well. This is Cinderella’s ball. And at midnight, Neptune will flee her Prince into the gloaming, leaving the nameless, lonesome shoe of her last broadcasts abandoned on the steps of the stars.

And what broadcasts: They have killed a Nereid, and she was full of roe.

[DISSOLVE TO a fishing vessel, approximately the size of the Isle of Wight, crawling with thousands of Nereid-men, the broad-muscled, ice-bearded career hunters who have tracked and killed the creature being hauled on board with cranes and hydraulic lifts.]

They may never catch another in their lifetimes, but for them this once is enough. They are Ahabs without rancour, living for the chase, men and women whose hearts quicken only at the eardrum-shattering bassoon song of their prey.

[The storm batters them mercilessly; still the fishermen heave and ho as the dark mass of the Nereid rolls, obscenely, onto the decks. CUT TO: the flensing plain, a white expanse of artificial sand and salt crystals on Enki’s lower levels. Despite her size, the Nereid looks bereft and helpless in the blazing lights, naked and abandoned by whatever god rules these dragons. She is quite dead. She is icthyosauran: a long neck ending in two heads, each covered in sea detritus and pink Neptunian lampreys, her four eyes blue, lifeless, but strangely primate-like in that cetacean head. The black-green body, the myriad flippers, the vestigial legs, the orange sailfin, the tail tapering for an imperial mile. Her bulk swallows the lens. The image jiggles with the slightly uncanny effect of coloured paints hovering over the black and white footage, never quite sinking through. The Nereid-men open their catch with equipment meant for industrial forestry—just a small gash at first, they can manage no more. But from this gash the deluge comes, magenta roe, quivering, each egg as big as a dancing girl, tumbling like awful Easter eggs across the flensing floor. The Nereid-men cheer; tears course down their cheeks amongst the ruby muck of countless unborn calves. CUT TO SEVERIN.]

SEVERIN

The Nereid-men have made their fortune tonight. The Nereid has lost hers. And if Paris or London or Nanjing expresses concern for the conservation of these astonishing animals—for all xenofauna—after tonight, it will not be heard.

[CUT FROM the Nereid-men sharpening long knives to a YOUNG BOY cleaning his pocketknife. He empties his pockets, counts his coins, then counts again.]

There are no rules at the end of the world. Everything is permitted. [SEVERIN smiles with one side of her mouth.] The people of Enki have spent weeks painstakingly hammering out the rules for a ritual of rulelessness. Parliamentary procedure was decorously observed. [SEVERIN produces a beautifully typeset broadsheet. She reads out its contents.] The final official broadcast from Paris will play until orbit silences it at approximately forty-six minutes past midnight. For a period of not more than seventy-two minutes afterward—one for each year the Earth will slip beyond notice—law and order shall be suspended

. Post-hoc prosecutions will blind themselves to all incidents save the most egregious crimes of murder and rape, grievous harm to Enki or her essential mechanisms, or injury to children. To this end, firearms must be turned over to the constabulary, as ballistics are, at best, unpredictable bedfellows. Rank shall not be enforced or acknowledged. Stores of food and alcohol shall be open to the public. All other contraband will fall under the discretion of its purveyors, and the council certainly knows nothing about the identity or location of such persons. Those not wishing to partake in the festivities may enclose themselves in the southern sphere of the city, whose gates will close at twenty minutes to midnight and not reopen until morning under any circumstances.