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

the reburial laws of the early 2000s—he was DNA identified. Reburied. Accorded an ornamental tomb, one of the few remaining plots on San Fumo—the graveyard island, before it too went under the water.” Flayd poured the Seccopesca into its peach-tinted Venusian glasses. “But somebody kept back—illegally—one splinter of bone. And that’s all it takes. Ever heard of
E.S
. DNA? No? I won’t bore you. But
that
is all it takes. So they tell me.”
    “To bring him back.”
    “
Regrow
him—
them
. It isn’t cloning. I don’t understand
what
they’ve done. I’m into the past, not all this scientific crap.”
    “But you’re useful to them because you
are
into the past.”
    “Yeah. That’s it.”
    “They want you on this—project.”
    “Me and a few others. God you shoulda’ seen them, my
colleagues
. They were all blushing and dewy with enthusiasm. It’s so
exciting
. I think the whole thing yerks. I think it won’t
work
. To make a human thing over, someone that’s been dead for centuries—bring them back—bring them back out of
what
? Yes, it can’t work, can it? But they say it already has.”
    “They give you any proof?”
    Flayd shook his head. “No one’s allowed to see, not yet. But all the rest of it—cutting off the call-phones, shutting up the dome—
telling
us. I mean, Picaro, who is going to make all that up?”
    Two Victorian waiters, greatly laden, came and set out the dishes—pasta,
brodo di pesce
, a rose-pink lobster that hadn’t ever swum in the dome lagoon—When they were alone again, the two men sat staring at their feast, as if not knowing what on earth to do with it.
    “Who is the other one?” Picaro eventually asked. “You keep saying, there are two.”
    “A woman. That’s worse.”
    “Because of the gender?”
    “No. Because she is much older. Not in age, I mean in the centuries between. Del Nero—what’s that?—a handful of hundred years ago. But she—she’s first century AD .”
    “There was nothing much here then, was there? You said they were both from Venus.”
    “There was something here back then.
Rome
was here, like it was most everywhere, then. There used to be a Laguna Aquila, named for the Roman’s Eagle Fort, and for the Roman town built round it. Not Venus. They called it Stagna Maris, for the sea lagoons. They had astadium—a circus—out where the marshes and the sea moved in later. It was forests and woodland then—hence the name of the area, Silvia. All under the ocean now, washed away.”
    “So she was a Roman.”
    “A Gaul.”
    “You sound partisan,” Picaro remarked. The drink had loosened his tongue, and his mind. He had lifted up above it, everything else, and become only a young man again, sitting at a table under a false moon, taking an interest in current affairs. Tomorrow none of this would matter. But tonight—tonight was a kind of holiday from himself.
    “I’m partisan all right,” said Flayd. He cracked the lobster open after all. “I can aquadive. I helped locate and excavate her tomb, in the undersea mud near the drowned circus. She was quite a find. A true rarity.”
    “Why?”
    “She’d been one of the Ludicae—the Games Girls—a gladiatrix. A damn good one—she’d fought regularly in the local amphitheater for five years, before she died. And they buried her like royalty.”

4
    Y OUNG GIRLS DANCED , with garlanded, whipping hair.
    The guests barely looked at them, their quick feet and quivering breasts, the dark-skinned flute girl playing, and her sleepy, cunning eyes.
    Later there would be a battle from
The Iliad
of the Greeks, enacted by five male dancers with genuinely sharpened blades and little bows. Probably they would incur some injuries, despite their skill.
    The second course was still in progress. After the eggs, snails and lettuce, the olives and white figs, the roast hares had come in, the peacock skewered in his brazen skin, the slices of goose liver and tubs of venison and architectures of