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.
The list goes on.
It is not yet nine in the evening. The public announcement system pulses a warm and comforting stream of French. They have read us a bit of Molière and Voltaire, some Victor Hugo, some Chrétien de Troyes, a bit of Apollinaire and Balzac. They have sung us “La Marseillaise” seven times, by my count. They have exhorted us to remember the ideals of the French Republic and the glory of Jeanne d’Arc, Charlemagne, the Sun King.
[A MAN’S VOICE crackles over the shot of SEVERIN on the balcony.]
RADIO FRANÇAISE
Rappelez qui vous êtes. N’oubliez pas d’où vous venez. Nous ne vous oublierons pas. Nous vous attendons pour vous. Terre est votre maison pour toujours. La France est toujours votre mère. Le Soleil est encore Roi sur tout… Remember who you are. Don’t forget where you come from. We will not forget you. We will be waiting for you. Earth is always your home. France is always your mother. The Sun is still King over all.
SEVERIN
I recognize the voice: Giraud Lourdes, who fell off the Moon, as they say. Monsieur Lourdes failed so utterly on-screen that he suffered a most modern form of professional disgrace—he returned to Earth. And then became Chaunticleer, the voice of Radio Française, reading the news each morning and telling his tall tales every Wednesday night.
He is a bigger man than his sweet, soft voice might suggest. A thick red moustache. A preference for purple cravats. A weakness for women, poetry, and marzipan. These are the things that make up the beginnings of a person. But for me he is only those things. I met him just two or three times as a child and I remember nothing else. And now I can add to that list that his is the voice Paris chose to sing Neptune to sleep, for it is easier for Paris to pretend that they will go to sleep for seventy years than face the fact that when they come back into the fold, they will be no more French than England. So Giraud uses his seductive vowels to plead with a planet to behave itself while the cat’s away, to freeze itself in time, to lie still, to change not. He sings it, he recites it. The violins of a Berlioz concerto whisper: Hush now, my far-off children. Prick your fingers on the spindle of our voice. Be the kingdom that fell asleep for a hundred years and woke unchanged.
But who knows what wild things Sleeping Beauty dreamt of while waiting to awake?
[CUT TO: SEVERIN, ERASMO ST. JOHN, and AMANDINE NGUYEN recline on black-and-white chaises, watching the party flicker and move within the oily, distorted storm glass separating the observation balcony from the interior of Enki proper. AMANDINE belongs to a levitator cult based on the tiny moon of Halimede, where the wind hardly blows at all. She is a titanium sculptor; she practices a sexual variant of Samayika meditation. Her hair is lashed with traditional leather whips that hang down around her face like wires or liquorice. Her skin is dyed green, as is the custom on Halimede. The gravity of Neptune does not allow her to practice her faith here. She seems to stretch upward slightly with every movement, as though her body remembers its home, where it floats instead of merely sitting. SEVERIN drinks clay cups of creamy saltbeer with the levitator. ERASMO nurses a pink lady that looks rather orange. The lights of Enki turn their faces into a play of shadows.]