R. Garcia y Robertson: Fair Verona

The Canal Regio ran right into the Canalazzo, the Grand Canal, a magnificent S-shaped waterway that cut sweeping backward curves through the heart of Venice, following the bed of an ancient river now buried beneath wharves, palazzi, and granaries. Barges and pleasure boats crowded the city’s greatest thoroughfare, grand showpiece, and primary sewer. Merchant princes could walk out of their doors onto a gangway and not step ashore again until they were in Marseilles or Alexandria.

Antonio got off at the Rialto, in the city center, beside the only bridge spanning the Grand Canal. Cogs and trading galleys unloaded in the shadow of the silent and empty San Giacomo, disgorging wares from around the world—wheat, figs, frankincense, almonds, Byzantine glass, and slaves from the East. Proteus caught up with him at a stall selling perfumed lace and dyed wax. “Tonight she’ll be at the Court of a Million Lies, attending a fête in her honor.”

Antonio nodded. He knew this type of commercial soiree stocked with overfed ignoramuses and flirtatious women. Ordinarily, he found them as inviting as the plague.

“And on the morrow,” Proteus added, “she will be gone.”

“Gone? Where?” Would she ever stop running?

“A merchant galley is waiting at San Marco to take her to the East.”

“In God’s name, why? ”

“She is heiress to Visconti lands in the Levant worth millions of ducats. Word is she wants a new life.”

What woman did not? Antonio aimed to give her one.

“If you are to succeed with her, it must be tonight, at the Court of a Million Lies.”

“Of course I’ll succeed.” Antonio never failed.

“Naturally.” His manservant made a mocking bow. If Proteus weren’t irreplaceable, Antonio would have booted him into a canal.

The Court of a Million Lies, just north of the Rialto on the outskirts of Cannaregio, was really two courts: the Court of the First Million Lies, and the Court of the Second Million Lies. Both were owned by the Polo family, Venice’s most notorious merchant adventurers. A villainous-looking Tartar, with dark slanted eyes and a devil’s leer, greeted guests at the door. He wore Polo livery and had been christened “Peter” after the doorman to Heaven.

Inside, the crowd was equally mixed. Antonio saw brown, black, and tan faces, beneath fur hats, damask turbans, and scented peacock feathers. He heard Greek, Spanish, Arabic, and every type of Italian—mostly in male tones. Venice took after the East, where good wives stayed at home and only whores walked the streets. But Silvia was there, attended by old Marco Polo’s own daughters, acting the gracious guest of honor. (A Visconti Pope had blessed the Polo mission to Kublai Khan.) She had exchanged her mask for a gold half-veil. Blue eyes flashed Antonio a greeting as he came in.

He hastened to present himself to Master Marco, who was busy spinning tales of the East to drunken skeptics. An Italian scoffer waved a wine cup, asking if the holy yogis of India really went about buck-naked, “With their members hanging out. They sound as shameless as Dominicans.”

“So they do,” Marco assured him. “But by living in abstinence, they do not use the male member for sin. They say it is no more sinful to show it than your hand or your face.”

Someone snickered, “And what about those who sin with hand and face?” The skeptic still looked doubtful, “With all this abstinence, how can there be so many of them?”

Marco shrugged. “The East is vast, with multitudes of people and customs. In some provinces in Cathay, they care so little for chastity that wives take in strangers off the road. If a husband finds a traveler’s cloak hanging by the door, he stays away, even for days at a time.”

Men laughed. Stories like this had earned him the name Marco of the Million Lies. “Sounds like France,” someone suggested. “The poor sods. Our wives at least have the Christian decency to do it behind our backs!”

“That’s not the way they see it,” Polo protested. “The traveler leaves the wife some token payment, a trinket, or bit of cloth. Both husband and wife see him off, waving the token. ‘This was yours,’ they say. ‘Now it is ours. What are you taking away with you? Nothing at all!’ ”

A woman’s favors might well be nothing, but Antonio had ridden halfway across Italy for one particular woman. Thanking his host, he strode across the court to where Silvia waited alongside a fountain whose demi-god faces spit wine into a silver basin. He could see her lively eyes above the veil. The same eyes that laughed at him in Verona at Carnival. He bowed. “Silvia Lucetta Visconti.”

“Bold Antonio, you have caught me at last.”

“Not without effort,” he admitted. It was the first time he had heard her voice, but already it sounded famihar—as familiar as the form he had been chasing for days.

“Are you ready to lift my veil, and claim your reward?”

“More than ready.” Antonio had never seen a minx so secure in her mystery. He reached out, seizing her veil, triumphantly drawing it aside. When he saw her face, his hand froze. He stared speechless. Beneath the gold veil and blonde wig was the face of Pandora—Gracchus’ junior wife—last seen at the site of the Wyvyrn attack. Her lips parted. “Save me,” she whispered. “Save me, bold Antonio.”

Toni jerked off his headset, staring at the walls of the sanitary unit. This was way worse than any flashback. Virtual junkies got used to being dumped into the middle of a street brawl at Carnival or having long dead friends tap you on the shoulder. But nothing topped a whiff of reality invading your dreams. He punched PROTEUS.

An answer flashed back: PROGRAM ERROR—PLEASE WAIT-FREE FOUR HOUR UPGRADE.

Four free hours. Wow! How generous. Way too generous for some little program glitch. Upgrades usually came measured in minutes. PROTEUS was going to great expense to get him to sit tight and not ask questions, waiting for his reward like one of Pavlov’s dogs.

Toni leapt up, jerking the glucose drip out of his arm, shutting down his life-support pack, pulling on his pants. He might be an addict, but he wasn’t an idiot. Toni knew what happened to lab dogs when they were no longer needed.

Tucking his deck and his life-support pack under his arm, he hit the release on the sanitary unit door. He hated leaving the exercise bike. Bright slanting sunlight nearly blinded him. Half-blind and wobbly on his feet, he steadied himself against the open door, getting his eyes in focus. “Elvis Saves,” was scrawled above the words OUT OF ORDER.

Peeling OUT OF ORDER off the door, he put the letters in his pocket to use later—if he ever got the chance. Then he set off at a stumbling run down a wooded path. The sanitary unit sat in a little-used part of a public park. Kilometer-tall trees soared overhead. Brightly colored flying eels snaked between vine-covered trunks.

For the first time in days, Toni had to move under his own power. He did not find it easy. Or comfortable. Were it not for Ariel’s .5 gravity, he would have had to do it on all fours. He tottered up a side trail leading to a cargo field on the shoulder of Mt. Beanstalk. Above him towered the peak, with the razor-straight Beanstalk disappearing into the deep blue stratosphere.

Toni did not see the spark falling from orbit, but he heard the blast as it hit. Shock waves rattled the foliage, showering him with twigs. Scratch one sanitary unit. Alarms rang across the cargo field. Cargo handlers in mint-striped coveralls raced over, peering into the vegetation, though there was nothing left to see. Whoever offered him FOUR FREE HOURS had not even waited two minutes before blowing his dingy cubicle to bits. They must have assumed he was a moron. Hopefully, they now assumed he was a dead moron.