“Leaving my tent. I walked through the village; I smelled the sea air. I thought about my equipment for the next day. I kept walking—I figured Raz would show up at some point, so I went slowly. I walked past the memorial and saw something out there beyond the houses. Beyond the old carousel. A patch of green. Not that much is green on Venus, you know. A green patch, and yellow sunlight as bright as noon, and blue water. It was a pond surrounded by long grass and bluebells and squishy mushrooms. I dipped my hand in and tasted it—the water was fresh. I thought a swim in anything other than saltwater would feel wonderful. I popped in, just for a moment.”
Mr Bergamot does a sad little soft-shoe. “Remember the pin,” he says mournfully.
Calliope speaks up. “We hold countless worlds together. When one of us dies, edges begin to fray and come apart. Worlds shear off, bleed into each other, fly away into nothing, burn out. We leave a hole when we go. Through such holes, other places seep and stain. Shards of those places stick in the wreckage of us. Songs you have never heard, movies you’ve never seen, words as unfamiliar as new planets. Other voices may cry through, orphan voices, unstuck from the mouths that made them. Voices that began in other versions of yourselves and became lost inside us, now seeking a way home. You saw another of our places. If you want to know, it’s a tiny lake outside Tonganoxie, Kansas. It’s not an important place. In your world, it does not even exist—not Tonganoxie, not Kansas, not the lake. You walked toward it. But your body didn’t walk into the bluebells; it broke in ten places on the walls of a well on Venus. You did land in the sun, though, for by the time you landed, the frayed edge had stitched itself up again with you inside it. You were not on Venus anymore. You drowned in Kansas. We do not exist everywhere at once. We are always moving. Pieces of us linger when we leave like a trail of breadcrumbs. Like a staircase. Some parts of us stayed in Adonis after we tore it apart looking for our young. Arlo walked into one. You fell through the edge of another.”
“If I may,” interrupts Madame Maxine Mortimer, removing her sleek black blazer and folding it over the arm of an apricot-coloured fainting couch. “These little get-togethers go much more smoothly when we allow logic to lead the way. We simply cannot have the recriminations before the crime—and the criminal—has been fully examined. We must lay the events out upon our operating table, pour ourselves another schnapps, and dissect them properly.”
Anchises St. John runs his gloved hand through his hair. “I quite agree, Madame. I did say there were two possible solutions, if you recall. Another round, everyone?”
“Mind if I run the bar, Anchises?” Percy Unck asks. “I made my first pennies as a barman in Truro before I managed to stow away on the Jumping Cow and get my arse to the Moon.”
“Anything for my granddad.” Anchises yields magnanimously. Cythera Brass hops up on the bar and perches there, swinging her legs like a kid. Amid much grumbling, the company gathers at the bar.
Severin laughs and holds out her glass to be filled. “You never told me we were Cornish! Or stowaways.”
“Isn’t that the point of leaving Earth?” Percy purrs in his own hidden Cornish accent. He spent so long hiding it away—it feels good to let the old boy run. “Leaving yourself, if you didn’t like yourself—and I didn’t. Making a new person when the old one’s gotten worn at the knees. I met Freddy on that boat. He was running away, too. I suppose I got further than he did.” Percy can’t help but give the bottle of gin a jazzy little flip, catching it behind his back.
“Do it again!” cries Marvin the Mongoose.
“We are indeed Cornish, my little hippopotamus,” says Percy while he pours for Mary Pellam and Madame Mortimer. “Though my mother was half French, and my father half an idiot. Your mother, of course,” he clears his throat, “was Basque. Half, anyway. I believe her mother was Lebanese. There you have it: a map of your blood.” He hurries on, shaking up cocktails for Violet, Mariana, Arlo, Mr Bergamot, and Erasmo with the practiced hand of a juggler. He flips back easily into the voice Severin has known all her life. “Oh, I know I don’t sound Cornish—funny how I thought my voice was so bloody important back then. Then I went and got a job keeping quiet. Oh, but what a glorious quiet it was! Do you know, now that Freddy’s gone, they’re starting up talkies again? It’ll never last. You probably don’t know, Rinny, but Uncle Freddy went and shot himself two years ago. They found him on the beach. Dreadful business, but I think I’m the only one who’s sorry. Take that over to Max in his corner, will you, Mary? Thanks, love.”
Calliope gets her punch bowl last.
Anchises presses on. “Now that we’ve had our intermission, if we can all remember to keep our heads? I know we all have great personal stakes here, but do let us try not to all talk at once.”
Mary Pellam tosses off her third Bellini. “I do believe I’ve spotted a hole in your theory, kid,” she says.
“Oooh, I’ve got one, too!” squeals Marvin the Mongoose. He scampers over to Mary and climbs her like a tree, roosting on the crown of her golden head with his ruddy animated tail round her neck. “You first, you first!”
“Let’s have it, Mary,” says Anchises with a smile. He claps his hands and rubs them together.
Mary pushes Marvin’s fur out of her face and points a long finger at the boy from Venus. “You are not a callowhale.”
“Oh, well done, darling!” cries Madame Mortimer.
“Should I be?” Anchises quirks his eyebrow knowingly.
“Well, it stands to reason, doesn’t it? If that little hickey on your hand is a baby callowhale, and all this happened because they came looking for their wee one, shouldn’t you look a smidge more like Mrs Cousteau over there and a skosh less like Percy’s next leading man? No offense, Calliope.”
“None taken, I’m sure.” The Carefree Callowhale glowers.
“What’s your objection, Marvin?” Anchises inquires.
“Oh, I didn’t have one.” The mongoose giggles. “I just wanted to be one of the gang!”
“You are quite right, Mary. I am not a callowhale.” Anchises begins to walk around the Myrtle Lounge. He thinks better on the move. “Indeed, that pesky detail first alerted me to the presence of a second solution to our communal puzzle. I am either thirty or forty years old, depending on whether one counts the time I spent in limbo in Adonis, and I can assure you I have suffered no ill health, no unusual physiological developments—beyond the obvious, which I will come to in a moment—and only the expected mental disturbances of any traumatized child who has lost his parents, excepting those I inflicted upon myself with a bottle or an atomizer or a film projector. There were times when I wished for all those things. I think I would have known some peace if my fingers had become gas bladders filled with milk, if my mouth had closed over with clammy flesh and I’d grown a blowhole. My life would have begun to make sense. But the truth is quite the opposite. In fact, in recent years—” Here Anchises removes his buttery leather glove and reveals his open palm like a rabbit pulled from a hat. A great gasp goes up from the crowd. The hand is healed. A rough, hardscrabble scar runs across the skin, puckered like a bullet wound. But that is all. Mariana looks down at her own hands, crawling with feathery fronds, their fiddleheads curling and uncurling. “Even this last reminder of that morning so long ago when I found that dying callowhale limb lying, so forlorn, on the beach and…” He trails off, his voice thick. “Forgive me. Even that reminder has gone. So, as they say, what gives? Thus I come to my second
solution: I am not a callowhale—but someone else in this room is!”
“Don’t look at me!” cries Mr Bergamot, retracting his tentacles into his body in terror.
“I just played one on the radio!” Violet El-Hashem holds up her hands.
“Oh, all right, it’s me.” Severin Unck grins sidelong, putting one hand on her hip.
“Hi, baby,” says Calliope, waving her blue fin.
“Hi, Mama.” Severin wiggles her fingers.