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

stilted, guided by the UAS personnel—the 1906 man and two others—who had taken Picaro down.
    It hadn’t been an interesting conversation, either. Or productive. Or—only once. Picaro had said little. And the man—del Nero—also little. He spoke with the accent of a previous time, and in somehow different phrases, but any accomplished actor who had studied del Nero’s century could surely have managed that. Perhaps Cloudio del Nero then, was as much a fake as all the rest of it. And if he
was
real, he was of course rebuilt, like the City, and not as he had been. Not the same.
    For God’s sake—what did he think, behind that gracious and polished veneer? How did he think he was here? That there had been some mistake—he’d merely been unconscious a moment from drowning (they said he had died partly, too, of that) and then come to his senses and now was healthy, and well—
    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 thecolored 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