Venus Preserved (Secret Books of Venus Series) (20 page)

“
WE
ARE THE fallen angels.”

India, her words, there in the boat upon the water.

As Flayd wrote them in the book, end to end:

This is not Hell, yet Hell is here, nor are we out of it.

You must understand this. The story of a rebellion in some upper sphere is a mistranslation current everywhere. God is not rebelled against, for God is all things, even rebellion. So how would it be possible?

It was a departure then, not a rebellion, which drove us out. A
decision
. Our own, which naturally was allowed us, since God is also freedom and we are free to choose.

So then, some of us came to live in the world. Not where we fell, for the Kingdom of Heaven is not above any sky, but, as we are told,
within
us. (Which, while we are here, is no more explicable than to explain the shape of the wind.)

In this way, those who live in the flesh, as they have chosen to do, carry their muddled memory of a fall from grace or from sky, which is untrue, but inevitable, for symbolically we have
descended
.

Also, you will recognize angels, if ever they are seen. How could it be otherwise? Although their form, on earth, even if etheric, is changed, yet they are analogous to what they are when elsewhere. And this other
actual
image is that which
belongs to all of us, when we have left the flesh behind. And of course, they appear winged, too, for how else can they fly?—except that, there, they and we need no
wings
to fly, and so that as well is the
translation
of a truth, its analogy.

You must understand …

Among our kind, yours and mine, there are two races.

There are those who come out to the earth often, and enter in, are born, grow, live, and die, in the flesh.

And there are those who seldom come to the earth save in invisible ways, to solace those who, living their earthly lives, so often fail to see us, or, without physical sight of us, to remember.

To that first category, the three of you, mostly, belong.

To the second category, I.

But sometimes, my kind do come here in the flesh, are born and grow and live a selected time as human—almost as human, for special abilities remain to us, though at a glance we seem the same as any fleshly other.

For myself, I was born here to be with the woman we call Cora. I did not want her to live all her earthly lives without me, for she and I are like two unmatched twins, in that other place I cannot begin to describe to you, since there are no words for it.

So Cora was born, and so was I, and I lived as a baby in the very apartment that lay next to Cora’s own. When Cora baby cried, India baby cried. When Cora child began to play, India child went to play beside her. There was never any need to tell her who or what I was. She always knew me. Even at her life’s end, when I had walked up the walls, slid through the pipes of the air-conditioning, when I had reached her—I had only to be seen by her and she knew. She went from me smiling, back to the lands within. Where all of us go, where all go, all. And though I must wait now in this body, until my day comes to return, I know her to be safe. I am glad that I was here. Glad, for I have seen so many die that think they are alone, and in terror, but they are not.

There are others of my kind, among your kind.

Our kinds are the same, in the end, when we are gone from here. And
there
, our powers, of your kind and mine, are those of angels.

But among our two races also, there is
another kind
.

They too have come down in flesh. And they have learned to love that better than all else, even better than the other worlds beyond. The pleasures of the physical sphere ensnare them. They are tempted not by demons, but by their own demonic greeds. And so, they
become
demons, to fulfill their wants.

The man we call Picaro, listen now. Your mother was one of these, the woman we call Simoon. A fallen angel in the truest sense, for she dashed herself to earth and took on a physical life, while refusing to forego her spirit powers. And it has never usually been the aim of physical life to live by the magical powers of spirit—or why else are mankind born to and limited by flesh? But these others, they wish the most to combine flesh with uncanny
power
, and enter this world to
play
here, like greedy and cruel children.

Even so, the action of birth, infancy, childhood; of confinement and growing in the flesh, still constrain them nevertheless. They are kept by it
small
. It curbs their liberty and their sorcery. Rarely do they recall they are unhuman. Even the woman we call Simoon did not. And for this reason, their abilities, although sometimes supernatural and very great, are ultimately rendered down, as Simoon’s were rendered down. Indeed, they turned upon her and became disease. And since her body itself could also die, death threw her away, back to her own country—which is also ours. Though if you were to compare them, her homeland with mine and yours, though they
are
the same, they would seem as unlike as light to shadow. (And from this recollection come the two notions of a Heaven and a Hell.) For her kind
color
what surrounds them. Just as that one, who is lying in the upper dome, colors the make-believe sky.

You must understand …

Never before have any come here, into flesh, who did not have first
to be born
. Who did not have to
grow into flesh
, constrained by it, and kept within bounds, so even Simoon, a spirit of vast and cunning malignity, as she—
it
—has come to be, was held in chains by her body, and could not do even seven sevenths of what otherwise she might have done. While, when in purely
etheric
form, none of us, we, or her kind, beyond a given effect, can tamper with the physical world. It is less we must
not
than that we
do
not, not even the ones like Simoon. If you like, it is a law of balance, God’s law, for God is also balance, as God is everything.

Yet now, your people have themselves made flesh in this world. They have
made
it, like a cup. Not born, nor grown through a time of years, with the angel which is called Soul inside it, but instead created
fully
grown, adult, strong, and
unoccupied
. And to this vacant casket, an invitation issued.

You must understand that never before has such a thing ever been.

Now I will tell you this. To the full-grown body of the woman who fights, and that we call Jula, her own soul, which is her angel, came back. It came freely, since it was not elsewhere here in the flesh. The woman Jula has lived many lives in the world between the time of her first incarnation as a gladiatrix, and these, a little, she recalls now in fragments, as many do. Although the life
between
lives remains always generally unknowable. So she has secured her own body, for a second term, as is proper and lawful, in the sense of True Law. Also she brings back to it all that was learned since by her, recovering it piece by piece, as she becomes accustomed to her flesh, gained in such a sudden and preempted way.

Jula, and the man we call Flayd, know too the legend of Lethe, whose water is drunk to take away the memory of our other life in Elysium. Though Lethe is a cipher, still to forget is
necessary, for without forgetfulness, what human would otherwise stay in the physical world until their purpose was accomplished? Only my race, when we are here, linger in partial recollection, which makes us sometimes sad. But such is our payment to ourselves, for giving up the greater worlds to be with those we love.

For this world that is the world, is required. See it how you will, as the only paradise, as exile from a garden, as a harsh school or a battleground, we come to it for our own purposes, and of our own choice, and for this it was created.

Now as with Jula, if that soul too, which had been the man we call Cloudio, if that, as I say, had been enabled to re-enter its former body, no awful harm would have come of it. But that soul is engaged elsewhere in this world. And therefore, the flesh of that made body stood empty. Then that which fell, or came outward, it went into the man we call Cloudio, whose other name is Nero, But Cloudio it was not. That one which came is one like the mother of Picaro. It is of her same type, though less wicked than she. For it was more curiosity, more a selfish, grasping
innocence
, which drew it in, irresistibly, to assume the body of Cloudio, and to pretend to itself and others a while that it was he, even as it forgot, and so
remembered
what truly it was.

For the flesh could not restrain it. It had not
grown
to and
with
the flesh. Had not selected the flesh, only been offered it and tempted in. It was as if a night-flying moth beheld a candle, and must rush into the flame. But in this case it is the flame that flies, and the candle that is the moth and is burned up.

It is, in the terminology of the earth,
air
, this thing, sheer air from the worlds beyond worlds. Air like fire, like radiation, and like everlasting night.

It has played that it is human, as do we all, but it is unrestrained and has come to relish, more than usually, the
being
of itself as a man, adoring to eat and drink, to sleep. But more than all else,
to make music
.

For in the physical brain of Cloudio, which had been the brain of a genius, this angel found great skills, and learned them in a second. How it loves to make
his
music—but the music which it makes is also its own, a music translated in this instance in
absolute exactitude
from the music that is not music, but the essence of its own supernal elements.

You must understand …

It is as if a sea were poured into a jar, or the whirlwind poured there. And the jar bursts to let out the tidal wave and storm.

And now it lies overhead, resting because Cloudio would rest after a performance, readying itself the while to play once more, out of itself, the detonation of its melody, its harmony, the symphonic of the power of a soul made just barely present in the physical world through
flesh
, and made also
fatal
by its raw link to the psychosmal Heart. An angel-soul that has no empathy with mortal man, and does not see the horror it has unleashed. It will not stop.

There are so many stories of this. Babel fell, Phaethon plunged into the sun. Semele was consumed. It is not possible for human things to look on the face of God unless that Face itself is shielded from them by the mask of human flesh. Nor to
hear
the
Voice
of God, unless it speaks in a wind, or a lightning-bolt, or from the made-mortal lips of messiahs.

And now, a splinter of that Voice is
heard
.

Do not suppose it spells destruction solely for this city. It spells the destruction of all the physical world.

Nothing human or animal can stand against this thing. Only my kind can stand, and I, because I am of the second race, may not, for my kind, beyond a certain point, must never actually engage in war.

However …

The man we call Flayd, who believes always in conspiracy, may perhaps observe that a psychic conspiracy has also been at work, to bring to this place at this time the three of you.

Jula, the fighter, who has come back as others do not, equipped with forethought from many lives. Flayd, the guide and anchor, whose mother was a psychic, and who is able to write down now, therefore, what I say. And Picaro, who is the half-child of the demon-angel Simoon.

Picaro must closely listen again, now.

That which is above the sky has recognized, in turn,
him
.

By which I mean the angel loves Picaro, as brother loves brother, or father loves son. For Picaro, to this thing, is partly of its own kind.

And to this end, it has scaled off some of the weakness of humanity from Picaro.

Picaro will remember, perhaps, how it touched him with its burning hand, and gave him to drink from its cup. And how, when first he heard its changing music, he was made ill. Picaro may recall the act of immunizing against a disease by means of giving a little amount of that disease itself. The illness which then assailed him is the last one he will know in this body he now inhabits. The angel we call Nero has
immunized Picaro against itself
.

How else has he survived?

Only my race can survive, and we must stand by.

Now Picaro too is armed, as we are, and without our restriction.

You must understand … for this too has been misread.

It is Picaro who is to be the black knight, hungry for his life, consecrated by his half birth. As Jula is the fiery white knight, consecrated by that which she has begun to recall. And Flayd is the great knight, also hungry to be filled, who opens the way and holds earth and air together by his weight and strength.

But the fourth knight is still death, the changeable and pale with being hidden, who is also pestilence, the secret spy, the air that kills.

Understand me, for you must.

It is the hour, and the gates are undone.

The prophecy has been centuries read, and so will be fulfilled as it is seen to be, and by those symbols. As all things have become what they were taken or mistaken for, since first men darkly saw with mortal eyes.

F
LAYD HAD HEARD
I
NDIA
speak in his own native language. He had spontaneously written her words, however, in a slightly different format—though still in English. He understood, without discussion, that Picaro meanwhile had heard her speaking in Italian, and Jula either in Latin, or (who knew?) her own original Gallic tongue.

When he looked up from the notebook, (which he had filled with huge erratic writing, readable by him, but unlike his own) he saw that India was gone.

Something made him squint over the side of the boat.

Was she walking under the water—or merely
on
it?

Neither, perhaps.

She had simply, modestly, vanished.

Her
kind kept such abilities, so she had warned them.

But even so, they were
all
, ultimately—
her
kind.

Was it
possible
?

J
ULA THOUGHT HOW THE
manipulative element, whatever it had been, which had kept from her all those who might have been, here, forerunners of Picaro, and so sensitized her to him so highly in the wake of the man she had killed—Jula thought that this in the end was
irrelevant. It was a fate that had bound them, taut as a rope of steel.

She began talking softly.

She was speaking of the catacomb under the Capitolium Hill in Rome. About the old man who had placed his hand on her head.

“They called him Cephus. Of course that meant nothing to me. I could hardly understand their Latin. But I remember it now, and know what they said, and how they named him. He had another name too, which was Petrus.”

Jula glimpsed Flayd, frowning across at her.

Flayd said, “Those two names were given to the Apostle Peter.”

She nodded. “Yes, that may have been it. He was a man of great importance to them.”

“Peter was crucified at least thirty years before you say you met him,” Flayd paused. He added, “Unless that was only a story. Some other guy took his death, died instead—and it was allowed because Peter was of such vital significance to the Christians. My God, Jula—he’d been touched by Jesus Christ.”

Jula half smiled. She said, “The old man was over ninety years of age, yet he had the face of someone, lined and
old
, but
young
. And wise. I’ve seen children like that. Except then their faces were full of pain. His face was full of something better. It was so clear.”

Picaro said nothing. Flayd, now, was also silent.

Jula said, “I have heard of the Apostle Peter—some other time when I—somewhere else—not in Rome or this City as it used to be. I think he blessed me. That was it, what the water and the hand on me meant. And I forgot the blessing. But I see now it was part of what made me able to
live
. Naturally, if he created me a Christian,
dedicated to peace, I should never have fought or killed—but I didn’t know any of that. Yet my strength—perhaps I took it from him with his blessing, when he gave me to his Christos. And that was what they meant, the Roman couple, when they said they couldn’t free me of actual chains but would try to free me another way.

“And does—the body you’ve been returned to—”

“Yes,” she said. “The blessing has grown back, like the memory. Like one more scar. A
beautiful
scar.”

Picaro sighed.

Jula noticed India was gone.

Then they looked, the three of them, toward the abject shore. When Flayd moved along the boat and restarted the motor, no one protested or asked foolish questions.

P
ICARO HAD WATCHED
, uninterested, India turn sideways in at a doorway in the air and vanish. Next he found himself thinking as if he hadn’t thought for many hours, days, months. He thought, without an iota of incredulity, about how all his life seemed wasted, or at least warped and
forced
towards this moment. This Now.

Jula had been made sacrosanct by some ancient supernatural contact. And he by his demonic half-blood.

And India—was an angel.

But Flayd, with a psychic knack he had never known, was the medium in which everything of theirs now took place, a kind of walking petrie dish.

Meanwhile the real petrie dish was the dome. That was how they had used it, whoever they were that had wanted to pilot this particular research. Live subjects had abounded here, and the environment was safely closed. Of course, all other dome environments were already
directly connected to governmental projects thought to be of use. Only Venus was a holiday area, finally dispensible, a superb test tube, sealed tight, so nothing of the disaster which had been made, so wantonly, could escape.

Except, it was apparent, now it
could
. The dome couldn’t contain a being of the sort that Nero was, any more than the magna-optecx screens had shut away his music.

Picaro thought:
Simoon sent me here
.

He thought, I didn’t die, but now I shall. Soon, over there, somewhere in the dying City.

E
VERYWHERE, ALONG THE
walls above the canals, or those that ran about the buildings and beside the alleys, the shattered pieces of a CX message fluttered, came and went.

There were fewer empty boats—here and there you saw one that had been staved in and was going down. There
were
emergency crews in motorized boats. These men and women were overalled and suited-up, belying the story of the “explosion” having been “clean.” But there weren’t many even of these. They signaled to the boat Flayd had brought in, told him, through loudspeakers, he and his companions should get out and immediately return to their apartments. Flayd by signs assured them that this was exactly where they were headed. No one stopped long enough, or got close enough, to argue, or demand ID checks and details.

Barriers had been erected at certain points to prevent any but official vessels from going through to the Rivoalto district or beyond. The barriers were of the old kind, mesh, and generator-powered, no longer seen save in the remotest parts of the Amerias, the Africas, or the sub-Antartic.

The sirens had fallen entirely quiet, exhausted.

A great stillness lay, heavy and necrotic, split only now and then by some far-off, unbearable cry you prayed wasn’t human or animal.

Groups of people stared out from windows. They looked anxiously down at the boat, but without any comprehension or apparent urge to ask of it questions. All doors and windows were shut fast. On the terraces, banks, squares, in gardens, under the arcades of the palazzos, no one stood. In one spot only did they see a solitary woman, positioned, seeming petrified, her hands up to her mouth as if to hold in a scream—which never broke from her solely because she could never lower her hands to let it out.

Flayd wanted to go over to this woman. Jula shook her head. “She won’t hear you. Let her be.”

Flayd thought Jula, even in her one acknowledged life (evidently she had recalled episodes from
others
) had probably come across such casualties. (He recollected her burned village and the military massacre she had detailed in the Roman town.)

This world, this bloody world. It had always been Hell, would continue to be—despite its painted-over beauty—till everything ended.

And then a numbed and bitter almost-relief laved him, for very soon that end might have arrived. All this horror and struggle would be finished.

But even in that instant he thought of their words—India’s,
Jula’s, his own mother’s—the necessity of this venue, which human things had chosen and themselves created, (obviously they themselves, for it was full of mistakes a true God never would, or could, make) even though they soon forgot their part in that. The battleground.

They were going toward the University. By mutual consent, he believed, though they hadn’t discussed it. UAS might have answers. However, he’d seen none of their personnel to recognize among the police launches and ambulance craft.

As they came around into the shipping lane, behind the apron of water under the Primo Square, Flayd, Jula and even Picaro glanced up. Above the tilted, dulled colors of sails, birds were flying in, and around and around on the dead sky, in a thick maelstrom of black, blue, and pearl—pigeons, gulls, doves, some duck with mottled wings.

Down on the square stood a small group of white-suited men, and one, his facemask raised, was blowing through a soundless bladderlike object.

It must provide some other-frequency signal that attracted the birds. Flayd supposed it would normally have been CX operated but had a manual back-up. The man was red in the face from his efforts, but now the birds were swooping down and landing in the open cages Flayd noted standing ready on the square.

“Yeah,” Flayd said. “They’ve always had emergency plans to get the animals out. They’re valuable. Birds, lions, horses—and bureaucrats—first to the subvenerines. Only I doubt if anyone can work the dome locks. Try the emergency escape hatches, maybe, they can be blown—use good old antique gelignite. Which won’t help the rest of us much.”

Picaro, surprising Flayd, who had reckoned him in a trance, said, “The dome can stand up to a small atomic strike.” He laughed quick and deathly. “It was in the ‘literature.’”

“Sure,” said Flayd, “but if they can blow the emergency locks, which is possible, they’re designed for that, the lagoon levels in here will fill up from below. Take about three hours before it gets hectic. Maybe give some people time to get out, but there aren’t enough subvens for everyone, not the entire City at once.”

“Outside the dome, is it possible to swim up to the surface?” said Jula.

“Could be. We’re not down so far. Better with oxygen and a suit. They’ve got some of those at the University. One of the reasons we’re going there.” (And hearing himself say this, Flayd thought, But that won’t be any use. Nothing will be. There’s going to be nowhere to run to.)

The Primo, as the birds flew past it, down into the cages, seemed like a model in a kid’s paperwight, after you shook the glittery snowstorm and watched it settle. The great white dome of the basilica came gradually back into view, this second dome, with its internal message—still clearly to be read, unlike the failing CX jargon on the walls—Apocalypse and Terminus.

They had to leave the boat. Some women in white plascords, with flecxs, (presumably in working order) came and told them to get out.

“Where are you going? Haven’t you seen the announcements? Hurry to your hotel or apartment. Wait there. There’s no danger now, but there will be an evacuation. Hold yourself ready. Stay calm. Listen for voice-relay instructions.”

Flayd almost said,
Sure, since Phiarello’s is shut
. Actually
he said, “Just where we’re going. Thanks. That’s what we’ll do.”

They marched briskly and obediently across the square. Another two women, in suits and helmets, were leading up a chain of horses. The animals were restive, not docile and deceived like the birds trained to a whistle and rewarded with food. The horses rolled their eyes inside their blinders, frisked and snorted, and the women called to them uselessly through the now-distorting helmet microphones.

The Primo Square seemed set as the point of departure.

Flayd and Jula glanced along the ready-to-be-loaded boats that were gathered there.

They had passed the Primo, and were under the great bell tower (named for an angel) which cast no shadow from the lightless sky. (Sun into darkness. Moon into blood.)

Right across the Blessed Maria Canal was a barrier, five meters high. There was no other sign of life. These facts combined were indicative.

“Christ—shit—I hadn’t
thought
—they had a direct relay from the Orpheo—Jula, do you know how to swim?”

“Yes.” She did not add she had never learned when she was Jula.

Picaro was, changed so much, already diving off into the canal.

The water, which was not water, was full of chemicals, weird irritants, but so what, the whole of the City had been poisoned.

Flayd lumbered last into the canal, and like a hippo—unknowing—became instantly graceful and coordinated.

They swam, the three of them, deep under the barrier, and came up by an acacia growing down from the walls almost to the water. The tree was still alive. And on the arch
beyond, the hyacinth-blue wisteria still fronded. Not so bad here then, despite the barrier and the desertion.

Seemingly unobserved, certainly unchallenged, they pulled themselves onto the steps, and walked up into the University Building.

H
AVING GOT OUT OF THE
worst area, (the so-called ZMI) perhaps not expecting to meet this again …

The dead were concentrated in one place. They had died cruelly, like the people just outside the edges of the Orpheo Square, or the people in the lower rooms of the Shaachen Palace. The corpses were less physically astonishing and fearful, but their longer-lasting agonies were also more apparent.

The center here had been the room with the relay-screen. CX and optecx glass lay everywhere and the windows had imploded, raining in not out.

But not everyone had died.

Some had been stronger, in varying degrees.

They were wandering about, several only like the shocked and internally, invisibly mutilated survivors of a bomb-blast, persistently shaking their heads, staring without sight at all things and themselves, their eyes wide open. Others crawled, or ran. But there was little noise. It was as if they had absorbed all the sound they could ever take or know. As if the
music’s
noise, heard in the fraction of a minute, heard sometimes better (worse) or longer—or through earphones, or from some way off—heard like a glimpse, had deprived them, too, with everything else, of the ability to make a sound themselves.

Sometimes there were, about the corridors and lifts and stairs, rustling notes, or thumps or notes of falling, or a note like a kind of breath rushing out forever. That was all.

There had not been, Flayd thought, so many people present in the University that night. Perhaps most had gotten out, sane and alive.