Venus Preserved (Secret Books of Venus Series) Read Online Free

in the stadium precinct. There was nothing else she could do. He would not even be given burial rites, for he had lost his first fight. With the bodyguard swaggering behind her, she strode down the track towards the lamplit villa, and the wine and feasting of her glamorous, victorious slavery.

3
    E LEVEN MINUTES AFTER P ICARO had shut the balcony window, fists hammered heavily on the reinforced wood of the apartment door. He knew who it was. He did not respond. The hammering of the fists stopped.
    Presently Flayd called through the door.
    His voice was muffled somewhat by the noise-conditioning, but that was mainly in the walls; the door necessarily would let sounds through.
    “Picaro—listen—this is serious—” on and on.
    Picaro flung open the door.
    In the dimming of the daylight, unlit, he confronted Flayd who burned there in the corridor like the last of sunset.
    “
What
?”
    Flayd shook his head and raised one hand in a pacific gesture. “Sorry. But let me borrow your wristecx, will you.”
    “Why?”
    “I need to call the mainland.”
    “Use your own wristecx, on your wrist.”
    “She don’t work, Picaro.”
    “Then find a public CX—”
    “Just—just let me try and make this call.”
    Picaro relaxed. He was bored with the rage, it nowseemed meaningless. He let it go, snapped off the wristecx and held it out to Flayd, no longer caring very much what he did with it.
    As Picaro walked off across the dark red floor, Flayd stepped into the apartment and shut the outer door. Then he activated the call reflex. Leaning on a wall, Flayd tried for some while to make a call with the wristecx. (He must otherwise be agile with CX—he’d fixed the one on the palace’s main door and got in.)
    Picaro watched, sitting now on a table in one corner of the wide vestibule, drinking water from the emerald flagon.
    Eventually Flayd left off tapping combinations.
    “Yours is the same as the rest. You can’t call out. Did you know that?”
    “No.”
    “Only in-dome calls either way. Nothing to or from anywhere else.” Flayd heaved a sigh. “Same with the three public CX I tried. All of them I guess.”
    Picaro said, “So what.”
    “So, this is new, Picaro. Last month,
yesterday
, anyone could call out-dome if they wanted. And now none of us can.”
    Picaro raised his head. Lazily he said, again, “So what.”
    “I gotta talk to you,” said Flayd. “The rest of them—shit, I can’t. But let’s get out of here first.”
    “There is a conspiracy,” said Picaro flatly, “and the CXs are wired to pick up what we say.”
    “Yeah, I know. To people like me there is always some conspiracy. Come out,” said Flayd. “Let me tell you about this one.”
    “Why would I want to know?”
    Flayd said, “Why the hell wouldn’t you?”
    Picaro shrugged.
    Flayd opened the door again. “Last chance.”
    Picaro sat on the table. Then slowly he got up. For a moment, he saw it in Flayd’s eyes, the Amerian thought he had finally gone too far, and Picaro might leap suddenly for his throat like a cat. Flayd could handle himself, so much was obvious. But Picaro was the unknown quantity.
    When Picaro did not attack him, Flayd moved off along the corridor. By the time they reached the stone stair, they walked side by side, and Flayd was saying, “I took your call number from the coder at the University. It registers everyone in the City. Like the archives. You should see those. Room after room. Everything, dating back to tribal times here.”
    Outside, the wanderer Flayd had brought waited on the water. Evening stars were threading in chains across the long lingering of fake sunset.
    P HIARELLO’S LAY TO ONE SIDE of the Primo Square. In the dusk, outdoor tables under candy-striped umbrellas surrounded the restaurant, full of tourists and locals, who had come to drink alcohol and coffee, and eat dinner, or the strawberry or damson or mint ice cream.
    The Primo’s lunar dome floated above the square as the goldwork of its