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

walls faded. The great Angel Tower lifted its russet arm to the sky-that-wasn’t. Even this basilica had gone under the sea, before the rescue operations began. Parts of the building, both inside and out, like so much here, were architectural recxs, and parts exact reconstructs in the original materials. But you would never know. It was as real, composite and eternal as any human thing felt itself to be, in the beginning.
    Pigeons and doves flew back and forth to theirroosts. They were, mostly, living birds—only some of the more exotic species of Venus-creatures were mechanical recxs. And the dome had fooled the pigeons and the doves. They thought the sun had set now, and it was time for bed.
    Everyone was fooled. They strolled across the square arm in arm, or took off in wanderers, heading for the Bridge of Lies—which had lost its true legend of torture victims who lied to stay alive, and gained a romantic legend instead of the lies that lovers told. They stared, the people, up at the hardening stars, and waited to swoon at the moon.
    At the square’s margin, the water of the laguna, seldom now called Fulvia, shone phosphorescent and darkly green. Fulvia was the last and only lagoon. The others had passed away, returned into the outer, upper sea, which now, invisible, surrounded all this, beside, below, above.
    Flayd had ordered antipasto and grappa.
    Once they’d stepped into the boat, even after they’d reached the square, he had talked only generally, pointing out churches and palaces and canals. He was a mine of information. Picaro scarcely listened to him.
    Now the drinks and food arrived. Flayd started to pick about through his olives and coils of ham and prawns, fastidious as a greedy stork.
    Picaro tasted the grappa. Bitter and perfumed, different in this place. He waited.
    Flayd said, “We’re fine out here. Probably. I guess it won’t matter anyhow. No one can do a damn thing. They’ve sealed us in and cut communications. And pretty soon some of these innocents are going to realize that, and the questions’ll start. Of course they’re letting out anyone with prior arrangements due to leave today. Lastsubvenerine out the locks at midnight. After that, anyone in here stays put.”
    Picaro ate an olive. He said, “If that’s true, why?”
    “Because something they’ve been trying to do down here has finally gotten done. They’re all over it. But until they know what happens next, nobody leaves to spread the word. And no one phones home either. It’s our—what did they say to me?—our
privilege
to be in on the act.”
    Picaro looked outward at the water. The slender wanderers plied to and fro. A weightless ship with sails moved further out, at the limit of the horizon. The moon was rising on the lagoon. Others saw it too. Look, look, the moon, the moon, on the lagoon, the lagoon.
    It resembled precisely the world’s moon upstairs. Better, maybe. But then it was younger and more new.
    “So do you want to know what they’ve done?” asked Flayd. “God, you’re one helluva non-curious guy.”
    “Tell me first why you want to tell me.”
    “I need to
talk
to someone, pal. I really do. They sprung this on me. I didn’t know, and this afternoon, soon as I dropped by, they called me in that office and, Well, Flayd, what do you think of
this
? And I goddamn don’t know what I think of it. My mother was a Hindic Buddhist. Christ knows what she’d say.”
    Picaro laughed.
    Despite his apparent anxiety, Flayd grinned, seeming delighted to cause a response.
    “Why should it matter to a Hindic Buddhist?”
    “It could matter to anyone thinks there’s more to life than—life.”
    Picaro said nothing. He drained his glass and poured another.
    Flayd was eating prawns and ham neatly and ferociously.
    Across the square, Picaro spotted the two autograph girls from earlier, Cora and India, strolling like others arm in arm. Tonight they wore replica renaissance dresses with high waists, respectively