The Black Opera Read Online Free PDF Page A

hard solidity of metal fitted around his neck, under his chin—
    The lock of a steel collar snapped closed.
    Cuffs and shackles are one thing. Human prisoners are subject to those. But dogs are collared and chained—!
    A hand thrust him to one side.
    Conrad caught himself and sat, jarred but free of physical pain.
    The hemicrania, now that he was not experiencing it, slipped out of his memory as severe pain always does. Knowing that fact was no consolation.
    Boiling with rage and shame, he snapped back at Viscardo. “‘Dignity’? Knowledge is dignity! That’s what you’d deny us. You’d rather we go to your god in our thousands from malarial fevers in Naples, say, than have one Natural Philosopher use observation and experiment!”
    The Canon-Regular snarled. “So, what, you’ll follow in the footsteps of that abomination Galvani, and his nephew Aldini the shame of Italy? Eviscerating frogs and stealing bodies from fresh graves?”
    â€œI hate to disappoint you, but most of science isn’t half so exciting as that.”
    Viscardo appeared likely to die of apoplexy, if his complexion was anything to go by.
    Conrad pulled at the collar’s animal touch. He shuddered, and forced himself to specifically human discourse:
    â€œI did see Signore Aldini perform his ‘Galvanic reanimation,’ when I was in London. Aldini did it with wires, and zinc and copper plates, and certainly the eyes of executed murderers opened, and their muscles jerked and twitched like Galvani’s frogs before them. But whether this means his theory of ‘animal electrical fluid’ causing life is correct, I can’t say. There are sciences that are in their infancy; you can’t expect everything to be known as yet.”
    â€œSeeking immortality—twitching severed limbs—creatures in the Arctic!” the Dominican Canon-Regular muttered, quickly and quietly enough that Conrad was not sure he caught the words correctly. “Infant science, indeed! It should have been aborted! Along with that Shelley bitch!”
    Viscardo got to his feet, staring down with an expression best suited to an entomologist. It was a considerable psychological disadvantage not being on his feet, Conrad thought. I know I’m a few inches taller than he is.
    â€œSignore Scalese, I would be false to the robes of my Order if I allowed you to walk around free. You are a dangerous plausible man, and the sooner your words are taken out of the public ear, the better.”
    â€œThat’s exactly my opinion of you!”
    Words are shimmering, enticing structures, and Conrad has built such structures in the past. Perhaps for this reason, his belief in them always has reservations.
    He choked on bitter laughter. “I may write operas, but I don’t pretend they’re anything but stories. Theology is just a matter of the mind getting drunk on the power of words!”
    Viscardo seemed caught by that, gazing down from between shining black wings of hair. “Not words, signore. The reality of the power behind the words, that we strain to express… Because how can short-lived mortal beings ever really understand the omnipotent God who is, was, and shall be?”
    â€œNow he’s the omnipotent deity who can’t be understood. A minute ago he was the father mourning the son he sacrificed. If I ask how he can be both incomprehensible and human at the same time, you’ll tell me it’s a mystery, right?”
    â€œWhat’s a mystery to me,” Luka Viscardo said tensely, “is how you have the Luciferan pride to think you understand everything about the universe, and can therefore tell me I’m wrong!”
    Conrad snorted. He managed to struggle up onto his knees. “I don’t need to know everything to know that a logical contradiction is a logical contradiction!”
    â€œThere’s your belief—the primacy of human reason. I think… that