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.
4
FLAYD HAD HEARD INDIA 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?
JULA 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.
PICARO 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.
EVERYWHERE, 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.
Please—has been—explosion—no need—alarm—residue—clean—all keep inside—further—will be—
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 he
r 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.
HAVING 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.
But the sights they saw—
The sights they saw, Jula, Picaro, Flayd, were now anyway so terrible and terribly familiar—that they did not hesitate—save only once or twice to hasten death for what must have death hastened, since it had now no chance but to die.
Each of them was able to do this. Jula because she had been trained to do it. Flayd because he had been trained, long ago, to know how to do it. Picaro because he had killed once before; but more because death itself had lived with him so very long, he had learned its ways, he had learned its inevitable and utter omnipresent banality.
There is, too, in the heart, always that dread, that what is seen must afterwards always be carried, just as what’s done must be. And
now—how short a distance they would have to carry it. Any of it. Anything.
FLAYD FOUND LEONILLO in his private rooms. The security-laced door gave at a push. Leonillo had not managed what he had tried to do, his easy barbiturate death—the evidence of the attempt lay everywhere. Along with its failure.
But Flayd spent no time on that. He searched for and found a computer wafer with codes, code-keys, and official overrides. He had known such things must be here. The thing might be useful. But again, this dichotomy. For Flayd was simply acting something out, as if escape were feasible, or mattered.
JULA STOOD ALONG THE passage, by a window. She looked across the inanimate roofs, out to the Primo’s pinnacles. And beside them, the crown of the Tower called Angel.
She recognized the Tower.
Not from having lived here, or from any picture ever seen in whatever other life.
The Torre dell’ Angelo was a symbol, and to a mind once Roman-trained, along with the stuff of the arena, to an everyday sensitivity to omens and portents, the Tower, with its fateful name, rose sharp as a sword on the flatness of the sky.
And even as Jula watched the Angel Tower, there came a spurt of dazzling daffodil light, a lightning flash, across the smoky nothingness above. Nero had stirred again in his sleep. Turning on his bed of human-educated dreams, the flesh-formed demon was, as would a human man, slowly preparing to wake up.
PICARO HEARD SIRENS, a burst of them, somewhere. Then they too became dumb.
He thought of the ambulanza which had borne Omberto away, his arm closed in a sort of half-bubble; the rush of a city night, and they in its midst, outcast in calamity, and held static as if already ended.
He thought of his father’s dead body, lying motionless among the musical instruments.
Then Picaro went through a door in the here and now, in Venus, what was left of it. And he saw musical instruments, hung up on the wall of this chamber in the University. And one of them was a s’tha.
It had been, he’d believed back then, like her.
Like Simoon.