Issue #173 • May 14, 2015

“Out of the Rose Hills,” by Marissa Lingen

“The Punctuality Machine, Or, A Steampunk Libretto,” by Bill Powell

For more stories and Audio Fiction Podcasts, visit

http://beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/

OUT OF THE ROSE HILLS

by Marissa Lingen

        The first morning, the air had been so sweet in the rose hills that Tirene was glad, glad nearly unto weeping, to be out of the city and safely on her mission, out where the brambles grew fresh, and when it was hard to find a way to situate her bedroll without lying upon thorns, she doubled it over and didn’t mind too very much.

        By the third day, the taste of roses in the morning made her want to weep or possibly vomit, and it seemed as though the rose hills would go on forever.

        Yelen gave her a hard look. “It’s the same distance forward and back,” he said.

        “Is that supposed to be philosophical?”

        “No. Just fact.”

        “Well, I thank you for your fact.” She went off to the stream to splash her face. The water tasted of roses and faintly of salt, not table salt but some other kind, and she wondered if it was quite safe to drink.

        Yelen was loading their packs onto the horses when she returned to camp. “You’re sure.”

        “Quite sure,” she said.

        “No way out but through.”

        Tirene wanted to make herself laugh derisively, but she was afraid she would throw up the rose-and-bitter water if she did. “That is the way of life, I hear.”

        Yelen cocked an eyebrow, not impressed with her bravado. He mounted up and waited for her to do the same, then waited further to see which direction she would lead them.

        Onwards. At least if they rode onwards they would have an unknown fate, which was several notches better than the one awaiting them at home if they returned there empty-handed. The stories of the rose hills didn’t have endings, or they did, but none of them could agree with each other, which did not settle Tirene in the least. Yelen silently handed her some jerky made of poultry and spices, which did not taste well with the roses but eased her stomach all the same.

        For the three days preceding they had ridden in silence, but finally she thought it would take her mind off the increasingly oppressive sweetness of the air of roses if they talked a little. She looked around at the yellow rose hedges, the tiny pink tea rose bushes no taller than her knee, the dark burgundy tangles off in the distance. She remembered why they had not talked: she couldn’t think of a single thing to say.

        “Why did you come with me, Yelen?” she said, finally speaking the unsayable.

        He cracked a smile. She had known him since she was eight years old and her father had brought him home along with the other Balferen troops sworn to the household; she had only seen his smile a handful of times, festival times, nothing like this. “I drew you.”

        “You... drew me? On paper?”

        The smile deepened the cracks in his weathered brown skin, no lighter than hers but redder than her own golden tones. “Straws. When you came forth with this scatterbrained plan, one of us had to come with you. I got the short straw.”

        “Oh.”

        “Only Tenzel and I drew.”

        “Oh.”

        After that Tirene could think of nothing else to say for many miles. She had long suspected, however, that Tenzel and Yelen were the Balferen soldiers who had long held her as favorites. They were certainly her favorites. The others had always been kind, too, inasmuch as troops quartered in a family compound in the middle of... what her mother always insisted on calling “these troubles”... could find ways to be kind.

        It turned out there were several of those ways, once things came around to that.

        But in the rose hills, there was nothing much but roses, more roses, red dirt, red dust, shadows, roses. Long, angry-looking jackrabbits, and more roses. Tirene shot a rabbit with her slingshot, not wanting to waste an arrow on it, and Yelen beamed at her as though she was still nine, as though she had just demonstrated that she’d been paying attention after all, which of course she had.

        The next morning, Tirene woke up to the sound and smell of Yelen vomiting. She was almost able to keep her own stomach in check, but the sour smell of bile and lightly used jackrabbit proved too much on top of the sweetness of endless roses. She joined him, heaving until she wept.

        “We’re closer to out than we were,” he said. “We’re closer than we were yesterday.”

        “Right,” she said, letting her cheek rest in the red dirt, though she knew she would have to wash it in the salt-smelling water. “Closer than yesterday. That’s true.”

        She could hear Yelen stirring around camp, so she made herself get up and do her share. The horses seemed only marginally happier with their surroundings than their riders did. Tirene carefully did not ask what would happen if the horses fell ill also.

        “Do you think my mother and father are...?”

        “I think your parents are doing all they can,” said Yelen. “And we will do all we can for them.”

        On the sixth day, they saw the end of the roses, the path weaving out to an elaborate arch, carved and painted. They could see the city beyond it. Tirene straightened her collar and rebraided her thick black hair as they rode. “How do I look?”

        “Like your mother’s daughter,” said Yelen. “Even, yes, like your father’s son.”

        “What does that mean?”

        “I’m sorry, to your people something very different. Say, like your father’s daughter, then.”

        “What a strange people the Balferen are,” said Tirene, mostly to herself, “if they think it comes out different.”

        “I would have succeeded as my mother’s daughter,” said Yelen. “As my father’s son, I failed, and so I left Balfer, and here I am to succeed with you. Ride first through the arch. Here come the people of the city.”

        The arch, as she rode through it, tingled and rang, and Tirene felt very strange. The city folk stared at them—weary and thinner than they wanted to be and stinking of roses, their horses tossing their heads. Finally one of the city folk spoke, his accent thinner and flatter than Tirene was used to hearing.

        “Are you the princess?”

        “What?” said Tirene.

        “My old nan always said there was a prophecy that a princess would ride forth from out the rose hills. Are you it?”

        “Oh. Um.” Tirene looked over her shoulder at Yelen and felt an awful rush like she had never felt before, a whirling in the pit of her stomach. There was still a little vomit on her tunic, she saw with chagrin, and despite her best efforts her braid was coming undone. If ever in her life someone was going to mistake her for a princess, today should not be the day. And yet she had the sudden urge to lie, to tell them yes, absolutely, she was the princess, she was the princess foretold, anything, as long as they would come back with her through the rose hills and help.

        “No,” she said. “I’m just a merchant’s daughter, I’m here to hire some assistance in—”

        “She is the princess, of course,” said an unfamiliar female voice behind her.

        Tirene whirled, her horse dancing a few steps. Behind her? When had anyone but Yelen had time to get behind her?

        But there was, next to Yelen’s perfectly ordinary horse, a horse made of shadows, decked with roses, and on it was a woman made of shadows, also decked with roses. A cloak of shadows swirled around the woman onto the horse’s back.

        The city people did not seem to see anything the matter with this.

        “I’m really not a princess.”

        “She lives in the castle your nan told you about, at the center of the roses,” said the shadow woman.

        “Look, it’s perfectly simple,” said Tirene, “it’s just that—”

        “It’s terribly complicated,” said the shadow lady.

        “I’m her bodyguard,” said Yelen. “And we don’t live in any castle.”

        The shadow woman’s face was also made of shadows, so it was not visible as a face. But the shadows moved in a way that suggested an indulgent smile. “He would have to say that,” she explained. “Security. Someone has just kissed the princes, and so they have awakened.”

        And the city people all gave a sort of sigh, and their clothes rustled like the wind out of the rose hills. All was well; the strangers’ contradictions had been explained. It was security.

        “What are you doing? Who are you?” said Tirene.

        “I—” For the first time, the shadow woman hesitated.

        “She contradicts whatever you say,” said Yelen in undertones.

        “Naturally I wouldn’t contradict whatever you said,” said the shadow woman. “That would be ridiculous. Juvenile. I merely...”

        “I don’t believe this,” muttered Tirene. She nudged her horse forward. “Look, I need a place to stay, and I need to hire some mercenaries. Anyone want to help me with either of those? Anyone? We’ll need two rooms.”

        “Three rooms,” said the shadow lady.

        “Done. Three rooms. As long as you don’t mind us having any rooms at all, Madam Shadow.”

        “My cousin has an inn on Breakmoor Street,” said one of the women in the second rank of gawkers. “Three streets down and to the left. Are you going to give us your prophecy of—”

        “I am going to get a bath and a meal,” said Tirene. “Everything else can happen after supper at your cousin’s inn on Breakmoor.”

        The crowd parted to let them pass, the shadow horse and lady riding along beside as though she was part of their retinue. “Perfect,” muttered Tirene. “Just grand. What is this?”

        “There’s a reason no one rides through the rose hills,” Yelen said. “There are... things in them. Things that come out of them.”

        “I thought the everlasting sweet stench was quite enough!” said Tirene.

        The shadowed head of the lady riding next to them tilted towards them. Tirene marveled at how clearly the lady could convey emotion without any of her features being clearly visible, but then she supposed she could have seen these things in her mother or someone else she knew, in the shadows of the corridors of her family compound at night by the angle of their head, their gesture or stance.

        “Why are you doing this?” she asked the shadow lady directly.

        “I act according to my nature.”

        “Are you in the pay of my family’s enemies?”

        “None of your coin could buy me.”

        Tirene chewed her lip. The shadow lady didn’t look or sound like any of the enemies her family had in the fighting back home, but she had no idea how she would tell the first thing about a being made of roses, lies, and tricks of the light.

        “I suppose you expect us to pay for your room,” said Yelen, as they reined their horses in at the inn.

        “I think you’ll find that no one ever expects me to pay for my accommodation,” said the shadow lady.

        “Why are you following me, though?” asked Tirene. “Can’t you leave us alone? I just want to get help for my family and go home.” The last thing she wanted was to ride back through the rose hills again, but she knew that she must—at least, as long as she could find mercenaries who were willing to come with her.

        She wasn’t willing to think about what would happen to her parents if she failed. She had spent much of the ride trying not to think that it might have happened to them already.

        “Princess,” said the shadow lady.

        “You know I’m not that.

        “Princess,” the shadow lady repeated, dismounting from her shadow steed. “You knew that there would be a price to pay for this journey. You just thought that it would be in gold.”

        “No,” said Yelen, giving Tirene a hand down. “No, give her more credit than that. She knew it might well be in her own blood.”

        “And yours,” said the shadow lady.

        Yelen stepped up so close to the shadow lady’s shadows that Tirene had to squint to keep making out the familiar flat planes of his face. “My choice is mine,” he said, “and you tell enough lies to be able to recognize the truth when it enters your ears.”

        He stalked into the inn with the stiffness of pride augmented by six days on horseback, and Tirene followed him. She didn’t bother to see whether the shadow lady would join them; by then she knew that she would.

        The bath rooms were like something from home: simple, tan tiles, nothing ornamented, bottles of scent arrayed to the side. Tirene ignored those, focusing on pumping herself tub after tub of steam-heated water until the scent of roses was a suggestion upon her skin rather than an assault. The first three tubs had gone away tinged pink with the dust of the hills; the rest, though as rose-scented as any attar sold on the trade ships, ran clear.

        Yelen and the shadow lady were waiting for her down in the common room. By the look of it, so was half the city. Tirene nodded to the room at large and motioned to the barman to bring her dinner: not rabbit, she was pleased to see, not jerky, not anything made with rosewater, just a chicken pie with a gravy that oozed a satisfying blend of spices when she bit into it.

        The shadow lady waited for her to speak first. Tirene noticed that, and refused. In the years Tirene had known Yelen, he was the champion at not speaking when he didn’t want to, so they had a very quiet supper until the city folk could stand it no longer.

        “Which of you has the truth of your tale?” said the innkeeper.

        “Which of us gave you coin, that you can recall?” said Tirene.

        The innkeeper bowed. “Welcome, merchant’s daughter! How can we be of assistance in helping you to find mercenaries?”

        The shadow lady tossed her head.

        “No offense meant, lady,” said the innkeeper. “It’s just... I have her coin right here in my pocket.”

        “Spread the word, will you?” said Tirene. “I will be here tomorrow, and can negotiate contracts then and tonight. The next day we ride back.”

        “Are you sure?” Yelen asked softly.

        Tirene nodded, not taking her eyes from the innkeeper until he left the table.  “We’ll buy supplies and pomades to get us through it,” she said. “We know what it takes now.”

        “And then there’s—” Yelen jerked his head toward the shadow lady.

        “Perhaps she’ll go away. Will you go away?” Tirene asked her. “When we go back into the rose hills?”

        “Now, what could I answer that you would trust?” she replied.

        Yelen let out a brief yip of involuntary laughter. “She has us there.”

        Tirene pushed aside the plate that had contained her pie and now had only a swipe of gravy across its tin surface. She let her head sag down on the table. “Will you leave us so we can negotiate for troops, at least?”

        “I’ll help you,” said the shadow lady, blending into the shadows cast by the firelight until only her wreath of roses made her clear. “Wouldn’t you rather have followed a princess of legend to glory than taken the coin of a merchant’s daughter?”

        Yelen gave her a flat look. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

        Tirene did not raise her head, but hysterical giggles bubbled up from her throat.

        “Perhaps a princess was not on offer,” said the shadow lady.

        “That’s princesses for you. Never around when you need them.”

        “Excuse me,” said one of the women from the city, and Tirene did raise her head at that. “You are the princess who is hiring?”

        “No princess,” said Tirene, “but yes, I am hiring. We are having a civil war, in the city on the tip of the peninsula, past the rose hills, but my family’s merchant fleet left on its trading voyages before the war began, taking most of our people with it. If we don’t hire mercenaries to ride back with us, I fear that our compound will be overrun before our guards and other staff return. Is that work that interests you?”

        “So the princess, then—”

        “There is—no—princess.”

        “It’s only, the magical lady there said... and you smell of the roses...”

        “I promise you, after a day in the rose hills, you will smell of roses as well. As for this person—” Tirene found that she had no explanation for the shadow lady but turned to that maddening personage anyway. “Won’t you please accompany Yelen to examine the stables?”

        “No,” said the shadow lady.

        “I wonder if shadow horses wander off when loosed from their stalls, as flesh horses do,” said Yelen pensively. “I wonder whether city folk would be so calm about having a shadow horse among them if it was wandering around without a rider.”

        The shadow lady got up with great deliberation and accompanied Yelen outside. Tirene sat in the taproom and talked to scores of city folk, most of whom were only curious about the princess. She managed to sign up a dozen, some of whom promised to bring their friends back the next day.

        She was just about to turn in for the night when Yelen tapped on her door. “I don’t even know what that creature is, really,” he said.

        “Got nothing out of her?”

        “Oh, I got a lot out of her. I’m just not sure any of it will be useful.” He slumped with his back against the door.

        “I signed up a dozen of them.”

        “Good. Good.” Yelen sighed. “She just... eludes, and eludes, and eludes. She is nothing but evasion.”

        “That makes sense, doesn’t it? If she’s made of shadows.” Tirene realized that she was looming over her faithful retainer for no reason and flopped on her bed, hanging her feet over the edge. It was a dense goosedown mattress, harder than she expected but more yielding once she had landed. “How do you fight with shadows?”

        “Obviously, you don’t.”

        “Well, what do you do with them, then?” Tirene answered her own question before Yelen could. “You illuminate them. But that makes more shadows. But it gets rid of the ones you already have.”

        Yelen closed his eyes. Tirene wondered if he was going to fall asleep right there, leaning against her door, and never make it to his own room. After a long moment, when she was thinking about taking off her boots and crawling into bed, Yelen muttered, “The sun didn’t work. It’s got to be some magic light. Or a metaphor for something.”

        “We don’t know any magic,” Tirene said. “We’d better hope it’s a metaphor.”

        “Light of truth?”

        “We kept facing her down with that,” said Yelen. “She did not care. Serene indifferrrnn...”

        “Are you awake?”

        “Yes. Definnnn...”

        “Yelen!”

        His head jerked up. “I’m awake.”

        “You should stand up and go sleep in the bed we paid for.”

        He got to his feet sheepishly. “A metaphor. We will hope for a metaphor in the morning.”

        Tirene was so relieved not to smell roses upon waking that she almost found it difficult to care whether they would be able to find magic or metaphor to get rid of the shadow lady. This pleasant sensation was dispelled halfway through her breakfast of oat cakes, maple syrup, and berries, when the shadow lady swept into the sunny taproom.

        “Oh good,” she muttered.

        “Good morning to you, too,” said the shadow lady, sliding into the seat next to her.

        “What do you eat?” said Tirene. “Shall we order you up a breakfast? These are lovely oat cakes. Infinitely better than rose-scented jackrabbits. Is that your usual diet?”

        “I eat truth,” said the shadow lady.

        “No,” said Tirene. “You don’t. The truth sticks around regardless of you. You saw how it did. So what are we to do with you? Must we resort to further threats to the shadow horse? I don’t like threatening horses, even insubstantial ones.”

        The shadow lady just sat there. “When your father tried to get a rose for you, and you had to go to the castle of the Beast—”

        “That is not my father,” said Tirene.

        “But it is.”

        “Stop, or you will not enjoy the result.”

        The shadow lady stopped but did not seem daunted.

        Tirene finished her breakfast and went to the marketplace to buy pomanders. They were not, apparently, in great fashion for the fine ladies of the city to carry—she was not sure, upon reflection, that the city had fine ladies at all—and so she had to work with the perfumers to make approximations, after she had bought out their stock.

        The shadow lady waited outside, lying to passersby about what the round, scent-bearing objects on their chains would do, what diseases they would cure and what magic they would bear, why Tirene needed them and who had sent her for them.

        When Tirene stomped out of the shop and shouted, “They are to dispel the stench of the rose hills!”, everyone stared at her and moved away in the street.

        The shadow lady smiled. “I eat truth.”

        “Why do you want to eat mine? Go eat someone else’s truth,” said Tirene, making her way back towards the inn with set, determined shoulders, as if there was a head wind. There was not.

        “You were the one who set out into the rose hills.”

        “And I will again,” said Tirene.

        The shadow lady drew close to her, giving her a face full of shadows, drowning out the city around them, noise and smells and all, until there was nothing but shadows and roses. “And what will you give them, on the other side of the hills?”

        Tirene tried to reach out for something to hold onto, but there was nothing. The world shook and spun. “What will I—?”

        “Will you tell them that you vomited and faltered, in the hills? That you didn’t know what to do in the city? Will you tell them that you had no magic to face down simple, direct lies? That the truth and sunlight were not enough?”

        “Yes,” said Tirene, and then louder, “Yes! Of course, what else should I tell them? That I was a hero, that I fought off an army of manticores, that I won the regard of a duke and a prince and a grand vizier but I alone managed to escape a swarm of mist dragons to tell the tale? Yes. I will take the clove pomanders and this handful of mercenaries back to the house of my father, and I will give them the truth.”

        The shadow lady stepped back, and Tirene could see the city again. “See, you can do it if you like,” said the shadow lady. “It might have been nicer. It would have been more fun. But I’ll come with you anyway.”

        “Charmed, I’m sure,” growled Tirene. She thrust the pomander full of cloves into the shadows, but though her hand disappeared, the shadow lady did not react.

        Yelen had not spent all their coin on mercenaries, and the shadow lady did not interfere with the contracts, merely watched as though they were a curious foreign custom. “I don’t know what we’re to do with her,” Tirene said, speaking freely. “Even cloves in her belly did nothing.”

        “You clove her belly?”

        “Cloves. The scent balls. They—”

        “Why should you do anything with me?” the shadow lady said.

        Yelen regarded her wearily. “Why indeed. She might bring us dash. She might annoy our enemies.”

        Tirene remembered an old story her father had told. “The horse might fly.”

        So Tirene and Yelen’s mercenary troop rode forth with a shadow at its side and pomanders around each neck, not proof against the stench of the rose hills but armed as best they could be.

        Tirene did not feel victorious as they approached home, though her mission was as complete as it could be. She felt only tired, and glancing over at the shadow lady as they rode did nothing to rest her.

        “I’ve been thinking,” said Yelen. “What if it’s not only her?”

        “What do you mean?”

        “What if—” He looked around the rose hills. “What if it’s the place? What if it generates them? What if there’ll be more of them trailing behind us when we reach home? What if we’re bringing a whole army of them into the city? Each mercenary side by side with a shadow?”

        Tirene squared her shoulders. “I went out to find something to change the balance for Mother and Father, Yelen.”

        “A shadow army is not what you meant.”

        “They’re not organized enough to be an army.”

        “Is that going to be enough?”

        Tirene gave him a long, weary look over her pomander. “The first day we set out, I had a question for you. If your answer has changed, we can turn back, just as we could have turned back then: have you got any better ideas?”

        Yelen nodded curtly. “Maybe.”

        Tirene gestured sarcastically in backhanded circles for him to continue.

        “A troop of shadows loosed on the city would certainly bring chaos to our enemies, if the shadows behave anything like her.”

        Tirene looked at their unwanted companion riding beside them, looked back at Yelen, and began to laugh as loud as her exhaustion would allow. “Oh, my lands!” she choked. “Shadow soldiers in the midst of enemy troops. They’ll be trying to scale a wall, and they’ll find a shadow offering them the power of flight in exchange for—in exchange for what? I don’t even know. Or offering that they can become the Long-Lost Prince with the Seven-League Boots, if they betray their sergeant, or— Earth and sky, it’s too much! The stories they will tell, the choices they’ll offer—”

        Yelen nodded. “It’s worse than sabotage—or better—because we couldn’t control it if we tried. There’s no way the houses besieging your parents will be able to retain control if we show up with the likes of her, in force. And at least some of the enemy are likely to say yes where we said no, and who can even guess where that will lead—”

        “Ghosts,” Tirene finished for him. “Nearly every soldier tale is a haunting. The shadows will be offering them the reality of their familiar ghosts. Some of them will take that reality and run with it, or run away with it. Or the Land of Plenty, every private a king out beyond the hills. There’ll be no keeping ranks if anyone catches wind of a shadow with that tale. And shadows know all the tales, don’t they, lady?”

        The shadow lady looked at them blandly. “Would I do something like that? I, your faithful companion? I, who have ridden with you through these hills? Would I cause such trouble in the streets of your home?” There was the hint of wry fluttering of eyelashes in the shadows of her face, something about it that suggested a sardonic quirk of mouth.

        Tirene giggled, coughed, tried to get control of herself. She hiccuped and relapsed into laughter, clinging to her bewildered horse’s mane for support. The long light of the end of the day cast shadows all around them, and she fancied she could feel them coalescing into a more maddening tale of victory than she had ever heard told, as their horses’ feet left the rose hills.

Copyright © 2015 Marissa Lingen

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Marissa Lingen lives in the Minneapolis area with two large men and one small dog. Her work has appeared in Tor.com, Lightspeed, Apex, and multiple times previously in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, among others.

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THE PUNCTUALITY MACHINE, OR, A STEAMPUNK LIBRETTO

by Bill Powell

SETTING: The Arcadian hamlet of Fork-in-the-Heigh, many miles from London, on the eve of historic havoc.

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

WHITLOCK CARTWRIGHT (a Young Inventor-cum-Geometry-Tutor, Chronically Late)

LADY CADENCE (a Young Beauty, Apparently Devoted to Geometry)

JACQUENETTE (Personal Automaton to Lady Cadence. French. Mobility Somewhat Restricted by the Hose Providing her Steam Power.)

VILLAGER 1 (a Villager)

CHORUS of Villagers (Other Villagers)

VRIL (a Charismatic Potentate of Extremely Alien Origin)

CHORUS of Vrillians (Vril’s Devoted Vassals)

First produced at the Opera Comique, London, on 1 April 1882.

* * *

ACT 1

SCENE 1

(WHITLOCK CARTWRIGHT, wearing his least-patched TWEED, rushes onto the empty stage at L. before the closed curtain. Panting, he consults a hissing, steam-powered POCKETWATCH.)

WHITLOCK (aside): Ha! A full ninety-seven seconds remain at my disposal. For once, I shall honour Lady Cadence with the punctuality befitting a fortnightly tutor in the Euclidean arts, particularly one who dares to harbour a passion so presumptuous that I dare not breathe it aloud, alone though I be in an antiquated alley of this charming but rusticated hamlet. (He approaches the CENTRE of the curtain.) Now I need only cross our sole plaza, which is, of course, perpetually deserted.

(The CURTAIN opens.)

(Scene: The central PLAZA of the hamlet Fork-in-the-Heigh. The VILLAGE CLOCK shows TWO minutes to TEN. A MOB of arguing VILLAGERS fills the entire PLAZA, completely OBSTRUCTING WHITLOCK’s path to the TOWN HOUSE of LADY CADENCE, which stands on the far side of the plaza at R. of stage.)

WHITLOCK: Brass tacks! What’s all this?

VILLAGER 1: (slaps WHITLOCK’s face) Watch your language, sirrah! Though I suppose even a man of science can be forgiven a smidgen of profanity, given the morning’s outrageous events.

WHITLOCK: What events? Never mind, I’ve no time! (He attempts to push past, but the VILLAGERS lock ARMS around him in CONCENTRIC CIRCLES. As they GYRATE with WHITLOCK as their unwilling MAYPOLE, VILLAGER 1 addresses them ALL in SONG.)

SONG—VILLAGERS

(emphatic, even thumping)

VILLAGER 1:

What’s all this? How remiss! What a social abyss!

Our enamoured inventor in ignorant bliss!

VILLAGERS:

A momentous event he has managed to miss!

We’ll ensure he remains here as we reminisce.

VILLAGER 1:

For in this very place, from the reaches of Space,

We have coolly conferred with an alien race!

VILLAGERS:

Yes, in this very place, with a grin on our face,

We have cravenly cringed to an alien race.

WHITLOCK: (speaks) I say, did you call me enamoured? How dare you imply—

VILLAGER 1:

(sings) I confess, these are news I expected to stun,

But I solemnly swear by the nose of a nun,

It’s the truth, or my name isn’t ‘VILLAGER 1’.

VILLAGERS:

It’s the truth! (Though he wishes the name were undone.

What kind of a mother would saddle her son

with a grave appellation like ‘VILLAGER 1’?)

VILLAGER 1’s MOTHER: (popping up at the back of the crowd) Me!

WHITLOCK: (to VILLAGER 1) Why on Earth should I be stunned by an ‘alien race’? A few foreigners on holiday—

VILLAGER 1: Foreigners? These ‘foreigners’ ain’t from Earth at all! Why, in this very place, among our very own fields (now much tramplified), we have entertained and intervened a star vessel from another world.

WHITLOCK: What?

(The VILLAGE CLOCK begins to gong TEN O’CLOCK. LADY CADENCE opens her front door, but WHITLOCK, his back to her, babbles on.)

WHITLOCK: How could a vessel voyage across the gulf of Space? And why ever would it disembark at the hamlet of Fork-in-the-Heigh? Why not London? Paris? Anywhere?

(The VILLAGERS scowl and mutter in OFFENCE.)

VILLAGER 1: Well, sir, it seems they hadn’t your Baedeker to plan their tour. They just landed, that’s all, and after we’d made their acquaintance, we considered it prudential to return them starward.

WHITLOCK: You sent them away? Imagine what wonders they might have bequeathed us! What advancements in knowledge! Instrumentation! Evening dress! (He spares a rueful GLANCE for his doubtful TWEED.) How could you? Brass—

LADY CADENCE: Mr. Cartwright.

WHITLOCK: Lady Cadence!

(The VILLAGERS scatter with murmurs of ‘Fine day, Your Ladyship’, ‘Beg pardon, Your Ladyship’, ‘Do avert your eyes from my plebeian squalor, Your Ladyship’, etc.)

LADY CADENCE: Once again, Mr. Cartwright, you have preferred the company of your contraptions to my own.

WHITLOCK: I beg your indulgence! I had come unto the very gates of the paradise of promptitude when I found myself entangled, nay, ambushed, by the greatest discovery of our age!

LADY CADENCE: Kindly spare us your elaborate excuses.

SONG—LADY CADENCE, WHITLOCK

(quick and strident)

LADY CADENCE:

Every man with rationality,

Must acknowledge the centrality

And immerse his personality

In the joy of punctuality!

WHITLOCK:

But a tragic street fatality,

Or a passing principality,

Or the slightest technicality

Can obstruct one’s—

LADY CADENCE: Enough! Mr. Cartwright, I shall no longer require your services.

WHITLOCK: But, Lady Cartwright—I mean—Lady Cadence—

LADY CADENCE: How can I learn the intervals of Geometry from a man so consistently unfamiliar with the intervals of the clock? Good day, Mr. Cartwright.

(JACQUENETTE, personal automaton to LADY CADENCE and dressed in the latest French fashion, appears at the door. At her back, the HOSE providing her STEAM POWER emerges modestly from a pink satin FLOUNCE above her BUSTLE.)

JACQUENETTE: (with a small, unintentional HISS of STEAM) Milady!

(LADY CADENCE silences her with a gesture.)

WHITLOCK: (deflated) Good day. (He stumbles away towards L. of stage.)

JACQUENETTE: Ah! What a scene to arouse the sympathy! If only my eyes had the ducts of tears!

(LADY CADENCE turns her back to the retreating WHITLOCK, SIGHS, and CLASPS her HANDS.)

LADY CADENCE: (slowly) If he only knew.

SONG—LADY CADENCE

(slow and lilting)

LADY CADENCE:

His discovery’s long overdue

Of the passions so deep and so true

That within me abide and accrue—

Alas, if he only knew!

With the feminine diligence due,

I have offered him clue after clue.

JACQUENETTE:

Then milady, do tell him what’s true!

LADY CADENCE:

I say! Let the man pursue!

(LADY CADENCE sighs, glides down her steps into the deserted plaza, and PINES at R. of stage. JACQUENETTE loops her excess HOSE over one arm and follows.)

JACQUENETTE:

(still singing) Perhaps he thinks your sympathy

Is only geometric?

LADY CADENCE:

He can’t believe I care for Math

So useless and eccentric.

JACQUENETTE:

Perhaps he fears your firm farewell

Is meant to be forever?

LADY CADENCE:

Not true! He knows he must pursue

And win me by endeavour!

(WHITLOCK, meanwhile, at far L. of stage, rests an ELBOW on an abandoned PITCHFORK STALL marked ‘SOUVENIRS’. He sings.)

WHITLOCK:

There’s no deed that I doubt I would do—

I’d acquire a minor tattoo!

I’d consume a bucolic fondue!

Alas, she would still eschew.

(As he CONTINUES to SING, JACQUENETTE turns sharply and STRIDES towards him, to the full length of her HOSE. The MUSIC swells.)

LADY CADENCE:

Thus I trust he’s preparing to woo.-

WHITLOCK:

With disgust, she has bid me adieu.

JACQUENETTE:

By my rust! Now Monsieur’s singing too!

ALL:

Alas, if he (she) only knew!

(LADY CADENCE and JACQUENETTE withdraw into the HOUSE.)

WHITLOCK: Brass tacks! How shall I ever regain her esteem?

Shall I confess my true feelings? Impossible! She could never accept a man so wanting in punctuality.

If only I could somehow re-live the last few minutes...

Wait! Of course! If a vessel can voyage through the gulf of Space, why not the River of Time?

Ha! I’ll invent a Punctuality Machine! How could I have missed a solution so simple? I’ll construct such a device in no time at all! To my workshop! Huzzah!

CURTAIN

* * *

ACT 2

SCENE 1

(Scene: The PLAZA, now empty. The VILLAGE CLOCK shows a QUARTER to TEN. An EXPLOSION sounds off-stage. WHITLOCK is thrown on at L. of stage. He staggers up, his TWEED SINGED and SMOULDERING.)

WHITLOCK: Quarter to ten! It worked! Francis Bacon and eggs, my invention actually worked! I have traversed the boundaries of Space and Time! And more than that—I’m early!

(WHITLOCK jaunts across the PLAZA and knocks on LADY CADENCE’s DOOR. JACQUENETTE answers, followed by LADY CADENCE.)

JACQUENETTE: Monsieur Cartwright! Early? It cannot be! Help! The impostor!

LADY CADENCE: Nonsense. No human agency could replicate that tweed.

WHITLOCK: Lady Cadence, if I might draw your attention to the time.

LADY CADENCE: Mr. Cartwright, this is unprecedented! I commend you.

WHITLOCK: I accept your commendation, my lady.

LADY CADENCE: I acknowledge your acceptance, Mr. Cartwright.

WHITLOCK: I savour your acknowledgement, my lady.

LADY CADENCE: Savour! Mr. Cartwright, let us keep our metaphors within the bounds of propriety.

(Off-stage, concealed behind the SHOPPES that line the PLAZA, STRANGE VOICES cry, ‘Vril, Vril, Vril!’)

WHITLOCK: The alien race! I’m early! Great Scott!

(A platoon of VRILLIANS enters from back-stage, marching in single file into the PLAZA. These BEINGS from ANOTHER WORLD wear hip-high silver BOOTS, sparkling white EVENING SUITS, and matching CAPES with towering COLLARS and silver TRIM. Their fantastical SKIN glares in strident STRIPES of PURPLE and YELLOW. Their leader, VRIL, stops to sing, brandishing a tall STAFF.)

SONG—VRIL

(a bombastic march)

VRIL:

Vril! Vril! Vril!

VRILLIANS:

Vril!

VRIL:

We cry in voices shrill!

VRILLIANS:

Shrill!

VRIL:

And in tender mem’ries drill!

VRILLIANS:

Drill!

VRIL:

That we are the Vrillians,

Belovèd by millions,

The Vrillians, the fellows of Vril!

VRILLIANS:

Huzzah!

The Vrillians, the vassals of Vril!

(As the VRILLIANS form in RANKS around VRIL, the VILLAGERS spill out after them from back-stage.)

VRIL: I am Vril. Am I not splendid?

VRILLIANS: You are!

VRIL: I was addressing our new friends.

(The VRILLIANS hush each other with cries of ‘Quiet!’ ‘Hold your tongue!’ ‘Shut up your garret!’ etc.)

VILLAGER 1: (stepping forward) I believe I speak for everyone, sir, when I say that you are definitely splendid.

VILLAGERS: (cheering) Splendid!

(JACQUENETTE, all aflutter, produces a steam-powered LADY’s FAN. Even LADY CADENCE seems MESMERIZED by VRIL, and WHITLOCK notes her FASCINATION.)

VRIL: (to VILLAGER 1) By ‘everyone’, I trust you do mean everyone?

VILLAGER 1: Indeed, sir! Every last one!

VRIL: On this entire celestial sphere?

VILLAGER 1: Absolutely, sir! There’s naught but our humble hamlet on all this verdacious Earth.

WHITLOCK: (aside) What means this audacious deception?

VRIL: How fortunate we happened to land so near!

VILLAGER 1: Fortunate indeed! You’ve captured every heart our Earth’s got for the taking, sir, and you’ve still got time to astound your next world before tea. Three cheers for Vril!

VILLAGERS & VRILLIANS: Huzzah! Huzzah! Huzzah!

VRIL: My Vrillians! Once again, we have journeyed to a faraway sphere and discovered kindred spirits. Like you, they all rejoice in my irresistible magnificence.

VILLAGERS: We do!

WHITLOCK: (to VILLAGER 1) Why is everyone so smitten by this revolting creature?

VILLAGER 1: (to WHITLOCK, sotto voce) Smitten? Not in the least! It’s all bunkum! Flam! Titotular bosh!

WHITLOCK: You fail to clarify.

VRIL: (to VRILLIANS) Now let us return to our star vessel!

VILLAGER 1: (to WHITLOCK) See? Off they go!

LADY CADENCE: (murmurs) Star vessel!

VRIL: And continue our quest throughout the heavens! What an appropriate moment for one final, spontaneous gesture of affection!

(VRIL extends a gleaming silver BOOT, which two VILLAGERS rush forward and begin to LICK. As VRIL turns to march up-stage, they scrabble to follow on their KNEES while still performing their ABLUTIONS. But VRIL sees LADY CADENCE, gasps, halts his procession, and STARES. LADY CADENCE modestly averts her EYES.)

VRIL: What is this? What strange admixture of desire, wonder, desire, fear, desire, and desire now wells within my muscular breast?

(WHITLOCK steps forward, but VILLAGER 1 clutches his arm.)

VILLAGER 1: Wait, Mr. Cartwright! You haven’t seen what he can do!

WHITLOCK: I can see what he’s doing!

VRIL: How can these feelings be? She’s pink!

LADY CADENCE: I beg your pardon?

SONG—VRIL

(slow, almost reflective)

VRIL:

Neither purple nor yellow, but pink!

Yet she’s somehow detected a chink

In the guard of my heart, where she sinks

And seeps, like a staining ink.

Can a purplish prince really think

Of begetting a permanent link

With a species so specially pink?

Alas, wouldn’t Mother blink?

(As VRIL lazily repeats his first stanza, the original, pre-time-traversal WHITLOCK (henceforth, ‘WHITLOCK 1’) enters from L. of stage and gasps at the scene. The time-traversed WHITLOCK (henceforth, ‘WHITLOCK 2’) spots him.)

WHITLOCK 2: Great Scott! It’s my original self! If Lady Cadence sees him, all is lost! She will easily deduce that my apparent punctuality is a mere time-traversing trick!

(WHITLOCK 2 hurries around the serenaded LADY CADENCE to confront WHITLOCK 1 at L. of stage.)

WHITLOCK 1: (seeing WHITLOCK 2) Brass tacks! (WHITLOCK 2 slaps him.) Ow! Who are you? A long-lost twin?

WHITLOCK 2: Don’t be ridiculous. I’m you.

WHITLOCK 1: I beg to differ.

WHITLOCK 2: You do differ—by several hours. I, having lived those hours, have returned to this temporal juncture via Punctuality Machine.

WHITLOCK 1: Nonsense! I’ve never heard of such a preposterous device.

WHITLOCK 2: Naturally. You haven’t invented it yet.

WHITLOCK 1: Then where is it?

WHITLOCK 2: The machine puts me through time. I didn’t manage to enable the machine itself to travel.

WHITLOCK 1: Why not?

WHITLOCK 2: There wasn’t time! Besides, I knew you would invent it again shortly.

WHITLOCK 1: I most certainly will not! I have an appointment to keep! What’s more—

WHITLOCK 2: Quiet! They’re stopping!

(VRIL completes his song and takes the hand of LADY CADENCE.)

VRIL: O pinkish delight, my mind is settled. You shall voyage with me through the heavens and reign as my Salmon Queen. (VRIL grips her ARM. LADY CADENCE cries out in dismay. Both WHITLOCKS rush forward, but WHITLOCK 2 knocks WHITLOCK 1 down with a blow to the HEAD, then gasps and touches his own SCALP gingerly.)

WHITLOCK 2: (to VRIL) Stop at once, you star-smearing narcissist!

VRIL: I beg your pardon, you cannot be directing that offensive tone towards myself?

WHITLOCK 2: I am indeed, you delusional, despicable, undesirable—

VRIL: Undesirable! Alas, now who is delusional? Am I not belovèd by every rational creature on this entire orb?

VILLAGERS: Huzzah!

RECITATIVE

(fast, rhythmic speech)

VILLAGERS:

Huzzah for the Vrillians,

Adorèd by millions!

We humble civilians

All weep that they go!

WHITLOCK 2:

(to VRIL) In my humble opinion,

Be off to oblivion!

Their tears crocodilian

Will dry here below.

Your act is vaudevillian,

Your faults are octillion!

Your manners reptilian

Would shock a Brazilian!

Alas, but a Vrillian’s a pitiful beau!

A despicable, fickle, unprintable foe!

LADY CADENCE: (still in the grip of VRIL) Mr. Cartwright, my most mannered acquaintances hail from Brazil.

WHITLOCK 2: My apologies, Your Ladyship. It’s a difficult rhyme.

VRIL: And where, pray tell, is Brazil?

WHITLOCK 2: Oh dear.

VILLAGER 1: ‘Brazil’? Ha! Ha ha! What a fancy! This ‘Brazil’ ain’t any place at all, sir! And it’s criminal expensive! Or my name isn’t Villager—

VRIL: Silence!

(VRIL aims his STAFF, an EXPLOSION sounds, and VILLAGER 1 DISTINTEGRATES into a PUFF of VAPOUR. VRILLIANS seize WHITLOCK 2.)

VRIL: Mr. Cartwright, you must have missed my earlier demonstration. And in your ignorance, you have revealed the minor detail that your entire civilisation does not consist of one hamlet named ‘Fork-in-the-Heigh’! No, you must have thousands, millions of pink brethren, all awaiting the chance to adore me or die! Well. I presume I have your answer?

WHITLOCK 2: Quite.

(VRIL points his STAFF at WHITLOCK 2.)

LADY CADENCE: No! Not Whitlock! He is my... Geometry tutor.

VRIL: Mathematics, my peach, are useless and eccentric. However, anything to develop your diverting simulation of a mind. He shall have time to reconsider.

WHITLOCK 2: (as two VRILLIANS DRAG him up-stage, STOMPING in concert) She called me Whitlock!

VRIL: (to LADY CADENCE) Come, my rosette coquette.

LADY CADENCE: You cannot hope to rule an entire world with a single staff.

VRIL: No. That would be rash.

(Each VRILLIAN produces a STAFF, which they SLAM in unison. JACQUENETTE faints. LADY CADENCE frowns. Deeply.)

CURTAIN

* * *

SCENE 2

(Scene: A cell in the VILLAGE PRISON. WHITLOCK 2 sits on a bench under a BARRED WINDOW.)

WHITLOCK 2: She called me Whitlock...

(The DOOR opens softly, and LADY CADENCE enters.)

WHITLOCK 2: Lady Cadence!

LADY CADENCE: Hush! Your gaoler is somniferously indisposed, having sampled, at my urging, a beverage of lamentable potency. You must fly!

WHITLOCK 2: Then come with me! Let me atone for my abominable lapse in judgement! Without my confounded meddling, this evril villain—that is, this evil Vrillian—would have departed at once with his violet Vermilions—I mean, violent Vrillians—

LADY CADENCE: No, Mr. Cartwright, the lapse in judgement was entirely my own. I am not vain, but a realistic assessment of my personal charms should have dictated caution in an encounter with a strange male of alien origin.

WHITLOCK 2: (aside) Too true. (to LADY CADENCE) But a small miscalculation must not dictate a lifetime of misery!

LADY CADENCE: Perhaps ‘misery’ would be too strong a word.

WHITLOCK 2: Too strong? For entering wedlock with an alien creature who disintegrates the helpless on a whim? Who traverses the aether seeking new celestial spheres solely to terrify the inhabitants into the falsest pretence of adulation?

LADY CADENCE: I don’t deny that he has his faults.

WHITLOCK 2: You—you have feelings for this monster!

LADY CADENCE: Because this ‘monster’ has feelings!

WHITLOCK 2: So did Caligula! Bad feelings!

LADY CADENCE: Oh, Mr. Cartwright...

SONG—LADY CADENCE and WHITLOCK 2

(with feeling)

LADY CADENCE:

How can woman resist him? He broods!

The mysterious hues of his moods

And the energy which he exudes

All compel an analysis shrewd.

(LADY CADENCE sweeps past WHITLOCK 2 to soloize at the BARRED WINDOW. WHITLOCK 2 withdraws to sing in the DARKEST CORNER.)

LADY CADENCE:

To a prude, all his ardour is poorly construed—

WHITLOCK 2:

Has he wooed her so quickly with cravings so crude?

LADY CADENCE:

I conclude that at last I am truly pursued—

WHITLOCK 2:

She eludes me, she’s his, and I shouldn’t intrude..

LADY CADENCE:

Though a tutor’s attentions may yet be renewed.

WHITLOCK 2:

I’ll occlude my desires and never intrude.

WHITLOCK 2: (speaks) I wish you every happiness, Your Ladyship. Surely your civilising influence will avert many a disintegration, as it has averted mine.

LADY CADENCE: O masculine race! You can build a machine to traverse the corridors of time, but you fail to learn the most elementary dynamics of conversing with a woman!

(LADY CADENCE storms out, leaving the DOOR open.)

WHITLOCK 2: What? Lady Cadence! I meant no offence! Alas, I’ve lost her again, for the last time.

Wait. Time! (He PACES, pivoting with each new THOUGHT at a rate commensurate with the diminutive dimensions of his CELL.)

I can prevent her ever meeting that monster!

But no. How could I? She loves him. A simulated punctuality might be forgiven, but what man of honour can woo a woman who is fated to find True Love with another?

Although one could argue that Vril is hardly harmless...

Bah! Can I sacrifice the happiness of the woman I love on the pretext of averting global annihilation? Begone, false virtue! Under thy clerical cloak lurks the foetid ghoul of Selfishness!

And yet... poor Villager 1. There must be a way...

Brass tacks! (He stops.) There is. (He sighs, then STRIDES out the DOOR into DARKNESS.)

CURTAIN

* * *

ACT 3

SCENE 1

(Scene: VILLAGE PLAZA, as before. The VILLAGE CLOCK shows TWENTY minutes to TEN. All is empty, save an OLD BEGGAR WOMAN shrouded in a heavy black shawl. An EXPLOSION sounds off-stage, and WHITLOCK (henceforth, ‘WHITLOCK 3’) is thrown on-stage as before, his TWEED AFLAME and BILLOWING with SMOKE. )

WHITLOCK 3: (as he SLAPS out the FLAMES) Cursed machine! (He sees the OLD BEGGAR WOMAN.) Ah! Forgive my lack of charity, grandmother, but I seem to have left my pocketbook in the future.

OLD BEGGAR WOMAN: Forgiven, sir, and well expungified. I’ll make my beseechments to Lady Cadence.

WHITLOCK 3: As will I. (He climbs LADY CADENCE’s steps, then halts.) (aside) Great Scott! I remember no such beggar present at either iteration of my interview with Lady Cadence. By what cause does she appear now, before my earliest arrival? Have I incited alterations which flow backwards in the River of Time? Are these the tremors of a coming cosmic cataclysm? Alas... such speculations only squander time so dearly won. (He knocks at the DOOR. JACQUENETTE answers.)

JACQUENETTE: Monsieur Cartwright! Early?

WHITLOCK 3: (aside) An identical response! Perhaps free will is a mere illusion. On the other hand, she’s an automaton.

(JACQUENETTE slaps him.)

JACQUENETTE: How dare you employ such a term for a lady!

WHITLOCK 3: How dare you eavesdrop on an obvious aside!

(LADY CADENCE appears at the DOOR. Coughing, she WAVES away the SMOKE which continues to issue from WHITLOCK’s TWEED.)

LADY CADENCE: Mr. Cartwright? Are you quite extinguished?

WHITLOCK 3: Lady Cadence! Come, we haven’t much time. (He takes her ARM and ushers her into the PLAZA. JACQUENETTE follows, PROTESTING in FRENCH.)

LADY CADENCE: I demand to know the meaning of this impertinence!

WHITLOCK 3: In a few moments, your one true love will enter this plaza.

LADY CADENCE: Mr. Cartwright! You’re raving! I assure you, that is quite impossible.

(An EXPLOSION sounds, and WHITLOCK 2, only MODERATELY SINGED, is thrown on-stage as before. LADY CADENCE gasps.)

WHITLOCK 2 & 3: (together) Great Scott!

WHITLOCK 3: I forgot that you would be barging in.

WHITLOCK 2: (aside) Brass tacks! I appear to be preceded by my future self! But perhaps I can yet conceal from Lady Cadence the secret of my punctuality. (to WHITLOCK 3) I know thee not, foul foreigner flambé! Unhand that lady at once!

WHITLOCK 3: Silence, you pompous idiot! You’re about to enslave mankind to an alien race!

LADY CADENCE: (to WHITLOCK 3) You are raving! (She WRENCHES free of his GRASP and steps back from both WHITLOCKS.)

WHITLOCK 2: I haven’t enslaved anyone! The alien race has already embarked!

WHITLOCK 3: Not yet! Not after they meet you!

LADY CADENCE: I utterly fail to comprehend.

WHITLOCK 3: I invented a machine, Your Ladyship. A machine to traverse the corridors of time.

LADY CADENCE: Impossible! But why?

WHITLOCK 2: Don’t say it!

WHITLOCK 3: To repair my frequent lapses in punctuality.

JACQUENETTE: Milady!

(LADY CADENCE silences her with a gesture.)

LADY CADENCE: The effort seems excessive.

WHITLOCK 3: Alas, the cure has proven worse than the disease. But in my travels I have learned that your path to happiness lies with this creature from the stars... Vril.

(Off-stage, as before, are heard rhythmic cries of ‘Vril, Vril, Vril!’)

LADY CADENCE: Why do they chant his name?

WHITLOCK 3: Because he annihilates all who dislike him.

LADY CADENCE, JACQUENETTE, and WHITLOCK 2: What?

WHITLOCK 3: He believes our village is the whole of our Earthly race! If we assure him he is universally belovèd, Your Ladyship, he will depart once more to the heavens. With you.

LADY CADENCE: How can you sacrifice me to this monster?

WHITLOCK 3: Sacrifice? On the contrary! You love him! He has feelings! He broods!

LADY CADENCE: He broods? A loathsome reversion to adolescence!

WHITLOCK 3: That’s not what you said twelve hours from now!

WHITLOCK 2: You’re mad, Whitlock. Lady Cadence would never stoop to greet such a fiend, much less grant him her affection.

WHITLOCK 3: You haven’t heard her after she meets him!

WHITLOCK 2: But that hasn’t happened yet!

WHITLOCK 3: It’s happened to me!

LADY CADENCE: Stop talking to yourself!

WHITLOCK 2: I won’t be tyrannized by time, Whitlock-from-twelve-hours-hence! I have conquered time for her sake. (WHITLOCK 2 takes her HANDS.)

RECITATIVE

(triumphant chant)

WHITLOCK 2:

My lady, if indeed a fiend will soon, by some preternatural power, darken your heart, allow me to use these last few moments of light to offer you my own.

(WHITLOCK 2 kneels before LADY CADENCE.)

JACQUENETTE: (chants) Oh, milady!

LADY CADENCE: (chants) I accept.

WHITLOCK 3: (speaks) What? But you said—that is, you will say—

(The VRILLIANS march on-stage, as before, followed by the VILLAGERS and led by the singing VRIL.)

SONG—VRIL

VRIL:

Vril! Vril! Vril!

VRILLIANS:

Vril!

VRIL:

We cry in voices—

(He sees LADY CADENCE and shrieks in surprise.)

VRIL: What is this? What strange admixture of desire, wonder, desire...

WHITLOCK 3: (aside) Not again.

VRIL: (frowning at WHITLOCK 2) ...and what minion dares to obstruct the object of my attraction?

WHITLOCK 3: Your pardon, sir. Allow me to introduce... myself. (He gestures to WHITLOCK 2.)

VRIL: A duplicator! What foul sorcery is this?

WHITLOCK 3: (aside) A ‘duplicator’? A-ha!

WHITLOCK 2: It’s not a ‘duplicator’, you purple prince of preposterous—

WHITLOCK 3: What perspicacity, Your Excellency! A ‘duplicator’ indeed! And imagine if my humble device were employed upon... yourself.

WHITLOCK 2: (aside to WHITLOCK 3) What are you doing?

RANDOM VRILLIAN: Our joy would be doubled!

RANDOM VRILLIAN 2: Squared!

VRIL: No, you cretins! Swayed by my duplicate’s overpowering rhetoric and charisma, the multitude might prefer him!

VRILLIANS: Never!

VRIL: Silence! I cannot risk such a loss to all the worlds! Come, my Vrillians! Let us leave this dangerous orb at once!

VILLAGER 1: (aside) O rapture!

WHITLOCK 2: (to WHITLOCK 3) We’re brilliant!

WHITLOCK 3: (to LADY CADENCE) Quick! I insist you go with him!

VRIL: As do I.

LADY CADENCE: Mr. Cartwright! I have canonically and definitively requited your love!

WHITLOCK 3: But only because I circumvented the truer passion you would have conceived for Vril under the correct conditions!

VRIL: For instance, seeing me.

LADY CADENCE: Spare me this torturous paroxysm of conscience! Do you love me or not?

WHITLOCK 3: Of course! I already told you!

WHITLOCK 2: No, I did!

WHITLOCK 3: But how can you enter wedlock with a Whitlock when a Vrillian grips the key to your heart? You told me! You love him!

OLD BEGGAR WOMAN: (in a younger voice) To be frank—I may have exaggerated my affection.

(The OLD BEGGAR WOMAN throws off her shawl, revealing LADY CADENCE (henceforth, ‘LADY CADENCE 2’). At the sight of a second LADY CADENCE, VRIL cries out and recoils, only to behold WHITLOCK 1 entering from L. of stage with his customary tardiness.)

VRIL: Vrillians! To me! Already their vile duplicator vomits forth additional insidious spawn!

SONG—VRIL

(urgent)

VRIL:

I’ll gather my Vrillians,

And leave these civilians,

Whose world makes me wince with concern.

Within our own vessel,

We’ll cosily nestle,

To leave and to never return!

(VRIL and the VRILLIANS exeunt with dispatch.)

VILLAGERS: Huzzah!

WHITLOCK 3: (to the CADENCES) But why have you both forsaken your brooding prince?

LADY CADENCE 2: As it happens, O most insufferable Whitlock—

LADY CADENCE 1: (to LADY CADENCE 2) My dear, before you begin, a wisp of that dreadful cloak still clings to your hair. (She brushes away the offending DETRITUS.)

LADY CADENCE 2: Thank you, my dear. (They KISS each other’s CHEEKS.)

WHITLOCK 1: Lady Cadence, you’re calling me ‘Whitlock’.

LADY CADENCE 2: My dear man, you have already professed your love multiple times, in both the past and the future. I believe I am entitled to your praenomen.

WHITLOCK 1: (stunned) Take it. With my compliments.

WHITLOCK 3: When did I profess my love in the future? You professed your love for that alien potentate!

LADY CADENCE 2: How you do harp on that minor misunderstanding! The correct question is not when in the future but in which future.

WHITLOCK 1: Which future?

WHITLOCK 3: I confess, Lady Cadence, I share my confusion. Perhaps you could use an analogy from Geometry?

LADY CADENCE 2: Once and for all, I loathe Geometry.

(All three WHITLOCKS gasp.)

LADY CADENCE 1: Quite.

JACQUENETTE: (aside) But the mathematics are such the delight!

LADY CADENCE 2: However, one could conceive us each as traversing an independent, though often intersecting, ‘vector’ of chronology.

ALL WHITLOCKS: Ahh!

LADY CADENCE 2: Do you recall when Vril’s minions dragged you to prison?

WHITLOCKS 1 and 2, LADY CADENCE 1, and JACQUENETTE: Prison?

WHITLOCK 3: Indeed.

LADY CADENCE 2: Your original vector led not to release at my hands, but to a final appearance at the Court of Vril.

WHITLOCK 3: His Court?

LADY CADENCE 2: Due to redecorations of his star vessel, necessitated by our impending nuptials, he had temporarily established his Court in my parlour, to the great detriment of my ancestral carpet.

JACQUENETTE: Ah, no!

LADY CADENCE 2: When he gave you one last chance to grovel, you instead professed your love for me.

WHITLOCK 3: I have no memory of this.

LADY CADENCE 2: I shall never forget it! It was most affecting. A woman could scarcely ask for a more romantic declaration. Of course, you were promptly disintegrated, which somewhat lessened my elation.

WHITLOCK 3: How unfortunate!

LADY CADENCE 2: That night, seeking some appropriate and tasteful memento of your person, I slipped out to your workshop. There, I discovered your device. With it, I returned to the past, intersected your vector several hours before your execution, and released you from your cell.

WHITLOCK 3: Of course! In the prison, you spoke of my machine! But why the pretence of such a monstrous affection?

LADY CADENCE 2: Since I had precluded your future declaration in the face of death, I felt that a certain... urgency... might encourage a similar declaration in your cell. Alas, I miscalculated, and I fled in confusion. But on consideration, I resolved that, if I could not win your open affection, I could at least return to this temporal juncture and ensure the departure of those odious Vrillians.

(WHITLOCK 3 takes the hands of LADY CADENCE 2.)

WHITLOCK 3: Oh, Your Ladyship.

LADY CADENCE 2: (softly) Cadence.

LADY CADENCE 1: Yes?

(WHITLOCK 3 bends to kiss LADY CADENCE 2. WHITLOCK 2 kisses LADY CADENCE 1.)

WHITLOCK 1: And what of me?

JACQUENETTE: Monsieur Cartwright—

WHITLOCK 1: Not a chance.

(The VILLAGERS lock ARMS around the COUPLES and sing.)

FINALE

(with finality)

VILLAGERS:

Osculation confirms that these Loves must be True!

With relief, we’ll avert this device’s début—

WHITLOCK 3: (to LADY CADENCE 2) But if no one invents the Punctuality Machine in the future, we won’t be together now!

WHITLOCK 2: You’re already together now! If a full repetition of events is required, what of your disintegration?

WHITLOCK 3: You were the one disintegrated—

(Both CADENCES kiss their WHITLOCKS quiet.)

WHITLOCK 1: (aside) Ah! What man of honour can but rejoice, to see his lady doubly beloved? And by suitors so superb!

(With a happy SHRUG, he joins the CIRCLE of spinning VILLAGERS as they finish the SONG.)

VILLAGERS:

For cantankerous chaos will always ensue

When attempting a tempting temporal redo!

FINIS

Copyright © 2015 Bill Powell

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Bill Powell lives in the scenic Shenandoah Valley of not-quite-Northern Virginia, where he eats and breathes regularly. He's currently writing comedy masquerading as a self-help blog at RichSkinnyWise.com. Visit him online at billpowell.org.

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COVER ART

“Twisted Mountain Valley,” by Christopher Balaskas

Christopher Balaskas is an instructor at Infinity Visual and Performing Arts and a freelance traditional / digital conceptual artist. He was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, and is currently based in Jamestown, New York. View more of his work at deviantArt and artstation.

Beneath Ceaseless Skies

ISSN: 1946-1076

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