CYTHERA: You were involved in a romantic relationship with Severin Unck, correct?
ERASMO: You’re right, that is easy. Yes. Please do not use the past tense, or I shall have to start swearing again.
CYTHERA: When did this relationship commence?
ERASMO: Officially? Christmas…um…1937. At the Phobos wrap party. Unofficially, I met her when I was ten and she was twelve. Felix—that’s my father—contracted on Atom Riders. Mum was off working on some Blom flick. They never worked on the same film at the same time. People felt uncomfortable with a black man and his white wife just walking about, holding hands, laughing, other assorted sins against civilization. So I was helping Dad paint the flats for the shadow rodeo scene, shading depth on the radioactive lassos when Rinny wandered over to me. I saw her shadow on my shadows before I ever saw her. She said: Gosh, that’s just splendid! I feel as though they’re about to leap out and snatch me round the neck! And that was it for me. The rest of us just took a while to catch up.
CYTHERA: Very romantic. Did you ever have similar trouble when you and Severin worked on the same projects? On Radiant Car?
ERASMO: If we did, it didn’t matter. Come now, you know better. The director can do as they like. My parents were just set painters. Instantly expendable, if a producer happened to glance at them and get a crick in his soul.
CYTHERA: [amused snort] So you and Unck were together from 1937 through to 1944, is that right?
ERASMO: We broke up for a while on the way back from Neptune. There was another girl, a levitator. Rin was crazy about her, too. That was the problem, I guess. We both strayed. Took most of a trip across the solar system to spackle over it. That, and Rin didn’t want to get married. You can’t blame her, given her history. Then we split again when she was doing p
reproduction for Radiant Car. I thought she was being pigheaded, refusing to go into the shoot with an open mind. It wasn’t like Self-Portrait or And the Sea, which were personal and confessional, or even like Phobos and The Sleeping Peacock, where we were in the right place at the right time and filmed what was happening; the food riots or the proxy war on Io. Radiant Car was supposed to be almost…journalism. We were seeking answers. And if you think you’ve already got all the answers before you start investigating, you…alter what you find. You miss things. Ignore things. I told Rinny Bart Worley wanted me on Let Them Eat Death, his big French Revolution epic. Would have been a good gig for me, a huge production like that. But she gave in for once. Maybe she shouldn’t have. We would have patched it up anyway. Being apart never really stuck.
CYTHERA: But you would describe your relationship as stable during the Venus expedition?
ERASMO: As stable as we ever were. We’re not…easy people, either of us. We’re both selfish and stubborn and want our own way all the time, every time. We fought. We’d start laughing in the middle of the fight. Then pick up the argument a week later like we hadn’t even taken a breath.
CYTHERA: [clears throat] Are you sure you want to say that you and your girlfriend were having problems when her whereabouts are in question?
ERASMO: What the hell does that mean? We fought about what to have for breakfast. Who’d left their washing all over the trailer and thus was the bigger pig. The shooting schedule. Whether she or I or everyone on Venus was drinking too much. Normal couple things! Are you insinuating that I did something to her?
CYTHERA: I’m not insinuating anything, Mr St. John. I think we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Let’s go back to easy questions. What was your crew compliment at launch?
ERASMO: Oh, fuck off. You know all this. Eight attached to Radiant Car, ten support staff.
CYTHERA: And upon return?
ERASMO: I don’t know, what does your expense report say?
CYTHERA: Please, Mr St. John.
ERASMO: Well, I think that depends how you count. How is Santiago doing these days?
CYTHERA: [clears throat] I have been instructed not to discuss that with you, Mr St. John.
ERASMO: Of course. Fine. We got back on the Clamshell in White Peony Station light one director, one sound engineer, one idiot, one cameraman, and heavy one kid. Happy?
CYTHERA: And for the record, how do you account for the discrepancy?
ERASMO: Are you joking?
CYTHERA: I am not. Let’s take them one by one. Mariana Alfric, your sound engineer?
ERASMO: [shakes his head] Dead. We buried her in the village cemetery.
CYTHERA: Arlo Covington, the Oxblood representative?
ERASMO: Emphatically dead. Most likely, almost certainly, probably dead.
CYTHERA: Horace St. John, your cameraman? You knew him well, is that right?
ERASMO: He’s my cousin, yes. Dead…ish. I don’t know. We had to leave him.
CYTHERA: And Severin Unck, the director?