Tybault Gayan: Alain Mbengue
The Invisible Hussar: Zachariah von Leipold
Doctor Gruel: Benedict Sol
Guest Star: Maud Locksley as Gloriana, the Panther Queen
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 thirty-eighth year on the waves and in your hearts, 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 Castalia Water Filtration, Wherever You Go, Have a Glass of Home Sweet Home. Additional promotional consideration provided by the Audumbla Company, Bringing Our Family of Quality Callowproducts to Your Table and Your Family to the Stars; Your Friends at Coca-Cola; the East Indian Trading Company; and Edison Teleradio Corp.
Previously on How Many Miles to Babylon?: Our heroine, Vespertine Hyperia, finally wed her beloved Tybault in the Halls of Hyperion, formerly Doctor Gruel’s Sinister Seraglio. Her bridesmaids: two gentle callowhales. Her bouquet: the stars.
VESPERTINE: Oh, Tybault, my long dreamed-of destiny, will I ever feel more joy than I do now in your arms, with all of Venus safe and at peace and our child sleeping soundly in my belly?
TYBAULT: I know I shall not, faun of my fate.
VESPERTINE: But our adventure is not over, is it? There is so much more to do and to dare! The Mountain of Memory, the Fortress of Forty Thousand Wishes, the Dragoon Lagoon! Together we will bring each of them to the welcoming arms of the Crown!
TYBAULT: We will never cease, not even in death. This is our home for all time!
VESPERTINE: Tonight, I shall fall asleep in your arms as I have longed to do for so many years. The night wind will come through our windows and whisper sweet promises of tomorrow. I shall sleep and I shall dream of the world we made when first our eyes met and our hands touched. Farewell, Sorrow! Vespertine is your maid no longer!
The Deep Blue Devil
The Man in the Malachite Mask
Doctor Callow’s Dream
And If She’s Not Gone, She Lives There Still:
The Case of the Reappearing Raconteur
Wide angle. Establishing shot. Slow zoom.
The White Peony Waldorf glows like a candlelit cake. Supper waits under silver domes, ready, but not yet served. A basket of mints sits in the dumbwaiter, its contents all set to kiss every pillow with their neat green foils. The painted ceiling, like a strange chapel, depicts Venus interceding with the Trojans and the Greeks. Armies surround a patch of swamp. The goddess cradles Paris’s bruised body in one perfect arm and pleads for peace with the other. She bleeds
from a wound over her heart; her hair is soaked in blood. It is a famous painting, though no one presently enjoying the pleasures of the lobby looks up.
Tracking shot over the labyrinthine rose-and-cobalt pattern of the rich carpet, past the gleaming grand piano, the vases full of varuna flowers and gardenias-which-are-not-really-gardenias. A rowdy group of out-of-towners are making quite the rumpus in the Myrtle Lounge. Such manners! Passersby can hear the uproar all the way out on the twilight-washed street.
“Ate us?” shouts Arlo Covington, C.P.A. He thumps his fist on the helmet of his diving suit. Peitho and Erzulie Kephus cringe away from him; they remember the sudden thump of their own deaths, and they still cannot bear loud noises. “Ate us?”
Calliope the Carefree Callowhale keeps her cool. Her animated lines crackle turquoise to black to ultramarine with suppressed indignation and embarrassment. “I beg your pardon. But what would you do if a roast chicken flew through your kitchen window, landed on your plate, and carved itself with your knife and fork? I daresay you’d fall to, sir.” She blushes her cartoon blush, two magenta circles on her cetacean cheeks. “You walked right into me, Mr Covington. What would you have me do?”
Percival Unck strokes his daughter’s black hair. Her movie-tone skin flickers and skips. They have not stood together thus for so long. Severin presses her lips together. She can hardly look at the crew she lost. She knows the score, but has not yet been asked to put it on the board.
“And what about me?” Horace St. John draws himself up, with great difficulty, on a jewelled cane. His broken, bow-tied legs wobble. “I couldn’t sleep. I committed the great sin of insomnia. The unforgivable transgression of taking a walk instead of having a piss inside my own tent.”
Erasmo St. John puts his broad hand on his cousin’s back. It is cold; Erasmo doesn’t mind.
Calliope hangs her head. “You were an accident. We offer an apology—only the seventh we have ever made.”
“Oh, apologize to Horace but hang the rest of us, is that it?” cries Mariana Alfric, mould flaking off of her skin and floating into the air.
“But what happened to me?” Horace begs. His voice drops to a whisper. “I don’t remember dying.”
“What do you remember?” Anchises asks.