Venus Preserved (Secret Books of Venus Series) (5 page)

Or, if he understood—if they had told him a
quarter
of it, they had not made clear to Picaro—did del Nero grasp that he had
died
? Had been
dead
?

Probably, back then, he had believed in God, and resurrection through Christ. So where did Cloudio believe this was—
Heaven
?

The storm edifices of the sky gave way, and lightning billows pulsated. The audience up here, everywhere, screamed in terror and thrill.

Were their lives otherwise so devoid of such things that it needed
this
to wake them up?

And Cloudio—how,
how
had they woken
him
?

Picaro hadn’t asked them anything.

He had thought, anyway, they would lie.

Cora clung to him. He turned and kissed her, and she opened like a flower. But elusive India never looked away from the sky, and in her stone-cool profile was the masked face of the ancient Indra.

They walked through the dry tempest, down the Gardens, past statues of other gods, by the lion groves, where the beasts prowled snarling among the trees, their manes bristling.

On the canal the wanderlier poled Picaro and the women through the shatterings of dark light, the whole world exploding. He didn’t sing, this wanderlier, seeing Picaro and Cora were occupied with each other, and India scholastically with the storm.

At the Palazzo Shaachen, in the apartment with the
colored bottles and the skull, (the windows flashing green, black, lilac) Picaro spread Cora out on the low bed and fucked her. The galvanics of the afternoon made her insatiable and him tireless. She became the only woman on earth, and then every woman—almost—he had ever had. He did not care what he was for her. He gave her pleasure to please himself.

Outside, India, who evidently did not want him in this way, and perhaps not Cora either, sat listening to his music on various decx. She had said that was what she was there for. To please himself too, he let her.

It wasn’t the first occasion he had indulged in sex to the background score of his own compositions. But sometimes India sang, he heard her behind the thunder, and the pounding in his head, her dark voice mingling with Cora’s soprano moans and cries.

“Cora e ’Caro,” Cora said. “’Caro, Cora …”

“I too,” said Cloudio del Nero, “have tried my hand at a little composition. The City was kind to them, these slight pieces. A song or two.” (He had been the son of a ducca.)

“You’re too modest, signorissimo,” said the 1906 man. “One song of yours was all the rage.”

“Once,” said del Nero. “But perhaps Signore Picaro will tell me something of his own work.”

“I don’t talk about my music,” Picaro said. He added, coldly, “Signorissimo.”

“Ah.” Del Nero nodded. He stayed chivalrous and bland. “Then I respect your reticence.”

And then, the one question Picaro had asked. He asked it effortlessly, as if he were a fool.

“Do you think of her, now you’re back?”

That was how he put it—“her,” and “now you’re back?” Deliberately obtuse before the obscenity of it,
whether fake or actual, this situation, of one of the dead
returned
.

But del Nero had himself asked politely, “
Her
, Signore Picaro?”

“Eurydiche.”

The UAS men didn’t stir. Yet the silence lasted.

Then del Nero had done something strange (if anything could be reckoned separately strange in such an environment). He had looked intently into Picaro’s eyes. That was, he looked in a frank, quite unguarded way.

But, in those eyes, in that instant, Picaro had seen—had seen a terrible unspeakable thing, had seen—that there, in the eyes of the reliving dead, was to be glimpsed
the place he had come from
—death itself, Nihil, nothing—a
gap
—it was unreadable, not to be comprehended, yet
there. It was there
.

And in that moment of horror more horrible than fear, the aristocrat had said gently to him, “But I understand, signore, the lady named Eurydiche is gone.”

S
HE HEARD HER MOTHER’S VOICE
, which called her by another name. There was the dish of a flower, pink, speckled with a darker color. But then the flower, and the name, and the voice, were gone.

A sliding like stones and fine shale down the face of a cliff, shapes, noises, scents and images, an old man’s face with closed eyes—a horse running—a man bent to an anvil in a gush of sparks—night on a town and the pine-tree sound of the sea.

Then she heard, instead of all that, the tibia horns mooing from the arena.

She had been dreaming. Yes, she had dreamed she had died. Was that an omen for her fight today? It might be. It might always be. Or it might mean nothing, except that the food yesterday evening, at her master’s house, had been too rich and plentiful.

Strange, however, that she should be fighting today, when she had already fought yesterday. Normally she was not put out to fight more than two or three times a month, and even the enthusiastic crowd, lauding her as the best of her kind, did not demand more.

Jula stood up. The hot rectangular room in the sub-arena was packed with other combatants. Many saluted her. But there were always a couple who would
mock, though it was unlucky, and someone—as always—cuffed them.

At the end of the up-sloping stone passage, she stood waiting behind the doors. Through the splits and slats of them she saw the afternoon gold of the stadium, and her ears were filled by the shrieks of the crowd— “He has it! He’s taken it—Kill! Kill!”

She had never questioned any of it, since to question was not helpful. Yet now she felt a sudden strong antipathy to the multitude. She had never wanted to delight them, only to survive—and they—disgusted her.

The tibias groaned again, and she put all ideas of disgust from her mind. She thought of the first teachers, in Julus’s school: “Empty your mind like your night pot. Rinse it with clean water. Then, and then only, pick up your sword and go to work.”

Out there, the fight finished. One gladiator, a popular swordsman, had slaughtered his opponent, who was being carried off. The winner stalked around the length of the arena, showered with small gifts from the stands. Victory palm branch in hand, he strode away. The sand was being refreshed. Jula waited, tense, her mind rinsed clean.

The doors opened.

Never had the stadium seemed so huge. Modeled after the colossal Flavian amphitheater in Rome, this provincial miniature could still seat many thousands. Light struck down on it from a white summer sky, save for the patrician areas of the seats, the places of the priestesses and the higher military, which were shaded by extended, dark blue awnings.

The gladiatrix walked on to the sand, and the crowd boomed. It chanted the pun which pleased it so—
Jugula Jula! Jula jugula!—kill, Jula, kill
.

Jula raised her arm in salute, turning to all the terraces. As if she honored them. Was happy to be there.

She thought,
I could be another. How would they know, now
?

For though she walked bare-faced like the others in the Pompa before the afternoon bouts, now she was helmeted in the secutor’s helm they called the “Fishhead,” that closed off the entire skull and left only the round eyeholes to the front, and the tiny slits above the ears. It was
her
helmet certainly, bronze, skinned over with silver. But until she undid it at the end of the match, to reveal her face and her red hair flattened by its pressure and her sweat, they could not know.

Of course, she was a woman, they could always see that. Her breasts were firmly bound by leather straps, ornamented, like her belt, with beaded snakes. The greave on her left leg was Jula’s, light bronze, marked with a figure of Minerva. Her arms were encircled by Jula’s leather and bronze protection. The shield, painted scarlet, had as its central boss the face of Venus, goddess of love—but paramour of the war god Mars: Jula’s shield. And her feet were bare. Perhaps the connoisseurs sitting in the nearer seats could even recognize her feet, the left one with its narrow purple scar.

So, she was Jula enough for them.

Her opponent was coming out from the other set of fighter’s doors. Today it was to be the Neptuni Retiarius—Neptune’s Fisherman.

She, a secutor, did not always fight a retiarius. In Rome it was more a custom than here. But today …

Curious, this man, barefaced and bareheaded, armed only with light greaves, armlet, net, and trident, (deceptively almost naked—it was the net that was so deadly) this man seemed to her familiar—not by mere
sight, for he was from another school (Talio’s?) but as if she had fought him before. And as if—she had
killed him
then.

Jula, behind the round fish eyeholes of her silver helmet mask, blinked. For a moment the arena swam. Then it was steady again.

The sticklers had positioned themselves, hitching up their robes to leave their legs free for running interventions or goadings with their sharp sticks—traditional, for nothing like that would be needed when Jula fought.

The boards had been held up, too, for the most distant seats, mostly unneeded, naming Jula in large letters, Jula who was famous, and the retiarius of Neptune who might come to be.

These things seemed to take too long, as if the world had unaccountably slowed its pace.

Jula stepped forward, and through the yowling of the crowd, the throb of blood,
inside
the helmet heard the voice of a man say intimately, quietly—something in an unknown tongue.

But she had emptied and cleansed her mind.

Nothing could get in. She was now only a machine.

Jula broke into a run. Despite her plating, she was agile, fast.

She glimpsed the retiarius had not expected this from her so immediately. Whatever else,
he
did not know
her
.

She slammed against him with the edge of her shield, even as he struggled to let out his net, and sprang away before he could aim the trident.

The man staggered. The crowd jeered.

The last retiarius she had fought on a showy constructed bridge over the lake of seawater they had brought in to flood part of the arena. There had been a make-believe sea fight, (with genuine casualties) and the
wreckage of the little ships floated there, and she had not had to kill the retiarius because he fought so well. He had earned Walking Dismissal from the arena.

The net came swirling. Jula was gone.

Before the fisher collected himself, she was back at him again, and now her short pointed sword bit in, piercing his side.

And she—
remembered
it. This.

It had happened before. The red blood, and somehow the blood should be like wine, like the blood of grapes—but the retiarius was not black. He was a tallish fair-haired Northerner.

Her father might have looked somewhat like that. So many million years before.

She emptied her mind.

The net came in, and she bounced it off shieldwise, deflected it, the iron and bronze weights of it ringing as they smote on the ground. But he had not lost his grip.

Now he was crouching.

This was too soon—because exactly at this moment it would happen—and surely they had fought a greater time—that
first
occasion—and he had almost had her once—and she him, before this—but no—

No, here he was, the blinding sun-spangled arc of the net and the black-tipped trident of the god—Fisherman and Fish.

She moved one way, and the net came over for that Jula, who was no longer there, who had become the other Jula who was
here
, again beside him, and in that instant she felt one point of the trident slide deep into her thigh, which meant
her
blood, a weakening, and she must not delay any longer. And, as she recalled, his foot was turning on her own blood in the sand, he lost balance, and was wide before her. She stabbed in just above
his belt. It reminded her, as in the beginning it so often had, of stabbing into the cattle carcasses the school had provided. The thunk of the gladius passing through the density of meat, skidding on bone, splintering it, blood-spray, and a darker blood from the liver. But it was a human scream ringing against her, so near. Nearer than the blood, this screaming.

He could not live now, not after that blow. So she carved upwards through him, strong, a butcher, knowing where to go. The gladius blade found his heart and he was dead.

He lay at her feet, his net with rubies on it.

And the wheezing water organ was playing at the rim of the arena, and the horns mooing, and somehow it was dark—she was in the stone passage, and the doors had still to open, and they opened.

They opened into a light she did not know.

The crowd howled. But their noise faded. It was a murmur now, civilized and low. She could feel the gilded palm branch in her hand.

Above her was not the sky, but a vaulted ceiling, painted palest blue.

Again a man said something in her head.

Her head would not move. So she turned her eyes and found he was not there, but out by her side, leaning forward a little.

He spoke in Latin, but clumsily, with an unknown accent and inflection, and not quite the proper words. It was not like the foreign tongue he had used before, yet still entirely alien to her.

“Are you able,” he said, “to say your name? Don’t try to move, just try to say your name.”

But she learned she was not able to do this. She was lying flat on some sort of bed, under a sky blue ceiling,
in a new light, dumb and almost immobile. She could not any more feel the victory palm in her hand.

Jula was afraid. She did not yet know why she should be.

F
LAYD LOOKED AWAY
from the screen. As the lights came up, he rose to his feet.

The others were already upright, jabbering, exclaiming.

Oh wasn’t it wonderful? It was
wonderful
.

“What do you think, Flayd?” said Leonillo.

“Yeah. Remarkable,” said Flayd. He scowled and pushed back his mane of hair, which was coming loose from its tie. “But she doesn’t speak and she can’t move.”

“Quite the contrary. That piece of film was long ago, two or three months.
Now
she can move perfectly, I assure you. And she can speak modern Italian quite well. Better, dare I venture, than you do.”

“Ain’t hard, buddy,” snarled Flayd. “So she’s bright.”

“Of course. And with present day hypno-tutor techniques, and linguisticx—”

“What about her Latin? That was what she had taught her first, I guess.”

“Her Latin is fascinating. Not anything you’d find in a classical text. Although, when pressed, she can speak like something out of Ovid or Pliny—she was educated up to a certain standard for her master’s amusement. He liked to show her off.”

The others were crowding around, goggling. Bubbling over with praise and amaze like badly corked bottles.

Leonillo smiled, a kind uncle taking the kids on a treat. His long, pale face reminded Flayd, as it had from the first, of a shelled monkeynut. The clothes, circa 1900,
fit him too well. There was not a single bulge in Leonillo’s below-neck shape, not a roll of fat, a muscle, a penis, or a heart.

“Now I think we should call on our protégée. I think we should see her face to face.”

“Is that
possible?
”

“Yes, Flayd. Why not?”

“You’ve grown her back—you say you have—from tissue and bone standard to the first century
A.D
. She’ll have no immune system ready to cope with anything we might be carrying around—”

“Come, Flayd. I know you detest science, but are we so stupid?”

“Sure I am.”

“She is completely immunized against any current or potential virus. Besides which, I can assure you, the
A.D
. 1 immune system, in a well-nourished adult, was if anything far tougher than our present properties.”

“So you’ve taught her language skills and pumped her full of vaccines, and she can move about and she can talk. What the hell does she say to you? Has she
asked
you anything? What for godsakes does she
think
?”

“Come and see,” said Leonillo, nearly jocular.

As he went out, the others swarmed after him.

Flayd walked slowly to the rear. But after all, she—
Jula
—she was used to moronic mindless crowds.

T
HEY HAD BUILT HER A
Roman place, there under the surface of the dome streets and canals, exactly as they’d made a suitable eighteenth-century apartment, apparently, for the other one, Cloudio. Both these bolt-holes were halfway-houses, of course. Flayd already knew they were soon to be decanted, each of them, back into the outer world.

In many ways the dome environment was fortuitous for this. And for del Nero, the
unexplained
Venus under-dome truly should not offer too great a trauma—nothing much later than 1890 obtained there. But no Roman remains were left in Venus outside the virtuality museum, which in any case stood on the mainland. For Jula Flammifer, culture shock par excellence it was going to be.

For now, there was a colonnade, and then a courtyard, open to an apparent summer sky. Vines grew up the walls, and myrtle in a red Samian pot.

She was exercising in the middle of the court with two youngish men in gray tunics. Her tunic was white. They were using wooden practice swords, no shields.

As the small crowd billowed out to the edges of the yard, Jula executed what was just recognizable as a flawless parry, lunge, riposte, moves that came from nowhere any of them had ever seen—a barbaric, classic sequence from some sixty years after the death of Christ.

She was beautiful, Flayd thought, dismayed. Not so much her face or body, as her tanned physical absoluteness. She had the grace of an animal, a dangerous one you wouldn’t turn your back on, no sir, unless you were cracked as that bloody fake Samian pot.

Another whiplike flash of the practice sword. One of the gray tunics went sprawling. The other laughed—then had to dodge as she came for him.

She didn’t look as if she had been dead a long while and had only been back (walking, talking) for a month or so. Yet she looked young as the morning. The morning of the world.