Venus Preserved (Secret Books of Venus Series) by Tanith Lee Read Free Book Online Page A

achieved. Simply, perhaps, he’s saved us all a little time. But only that, of course, if you will concede you know.”
    “I forget. I was pissed out of my skull.”
    “Very well.” The 1906 man shrugged. He had a long sallow face.
    Using its thin mouth, the long face told Picaro quickly and deftly much of what Flayd had already told him last night. At least, the things to do with the one, (the
dead
one) named Cloudio del Nero.
    “We do think he, not the man Furiano, is your true bloodline antecedent. Of course, the genetic comparatives aren’t quite conclusive. At a distance of centuries they rarely are, despite the propaganda. But even so. There are close similarities—the female ancestress remains the same, however, Eurydiche. I hope you’re not offended by this change in circumstance.”
    “Furian wasn’t supposed to be my father.”
    “Naturally not. But some people do take these matters very earnestly. Now, we have a great favor to ask of you, Sin Picaro. A great favor which will also be, for you, a great favor bestowed on you, and, I trust, an exciting, astonishing event.”
    T HERE WAS AN ELEVATOR . It was Victorian, but not in its mechanism. They descended into the subsurface warren beneath the University. And so came to another room.
    The room was full of sunlight, and the sunlight appeared as entirely real as it did above in the City, and was equally false.
    This
man sat in a carved chair, before a window that looked out on eighteenth-century palaces lining a long canal—a virtuality without recx. But a virtuality so superlative that breezes blew up from it. And they smelled, if only faintly, of an earlier time, fetid with summer water.
    He wore, this man, pale, elegant silk clothes fashionable among the rich in 1701. There were rings on his fingers.
    He had long, dark hair. His eyes were dark, and his face pale. Sitting so stilly, it was all—he, the room, the view—a painting.
    Then he turned his head and saw them, and he rose graciously to his feet—and he smiled the smile. That was, he smiled as Picaro did, for the decent, irrelevant strangers who passed like shadows through his life.
    “Signorissimo del Nero,” said the 1906 man, bowing, “may I present to you Signore Picaro, the musician?”
    A S PROMISED, THE STORM began at 15 VV .
    Picaro watched it, from a terrace in the Equus Gardens.
    He was surrounded by tourists.
    “Ooh!” they shrieked, as the show intensified.
    Pink sudden flutters of light spasmed through the cloud banks, slender forks slit the dark masses of a cumulus that resembled the smoke from volcanoes. Then the sky went white. A laser-web of fires surged from the horizon’s hem to the treed summits of the park, and beyond. Every tower and dome of Venus became a cutout of bleached paper. A rogue silver bolt hit the apex of the Primo’s Angel Tower. Though harmless, it did notlook it. Then the thunder bellowed, and the angry roaring of the park lions was silenced. A wind blew, smelling of ozone and electricity.
    Everywhere people stood, watching.
    Beside Picaro, Cora, holding fast to his arm, gazed in bacchic ecstasy at the sky.
    He had found the two young women—or they had found him—as he entered the Gardens. They were today in eighteenth-century garb, (he seemed the only one in Venus in contemporary clothes) their dark hair powdered, and each wearing, though it was not either of the carnival times, sequinned half-masks. Picaro had looked at them, and when they turned toward him, held out his hands to both.
    India did not speak. Cora did not say much. India was not demonstrative. Cora snuggled close, and never moved further away than the length of their arms.
    He had not meant to annex them, but they were always there.
    As he too watched the storm display, and the Gardens rocked as if to the wildest music and drums, he would not think about the man he had met in the subsurface room.
    In any case, Picaro had not been given very long with him. The dialogue had been