by Mark Teppo
The new woman, an Earth Sister, looks shaken. Despite her height—she is taller than Pietro and wearing flats—she holds herself to look small and meek, digging her shoulders into herself, her back tightly constricted. "Pardon the intrusion, Your Highness, but there have been new developments." Her voice, at odds with her body language, is steady and emotionless, neither cold nor warm. The flash of anger on the High Countess’s face is not directed at the newcomer but at what she expects her to say. "New body parts, Sister Agnes?"
Sister Agnes swallows before answering. This time, her voice betrays a hint of fear. "The question is, Your Highness—from what kinds of bodies?"
5. Detective-Lieutenant Dovelander Investigates
"Isn’t anyone going to arrest that man?"
"Why?" Sister Agnes responds to Detective-Lieutenant Pietro Dovelander. In a stationary boat on the Primadonna Canal, the duo is supervising the work of collecting the body parts from the water. Nine Sisters, three per boat, are doing the grunt work with nets.
Earlier, a squad of Earth Sisters had scattered the crowd of curious onlookers, but now a tall man walks along Via Bellarossa, which borders the waterway. His gait is punctuated by random fits and starts. In a loud voice, he grunts unintelligible words and phrases, gesticulating wildly. Occasionally, he bumps into walls, or trips and falls, immediately picking himself up as if nothing had happened.
"For one thing, he shouldn’t be here. Is no one guarding the perimeter?" But that’s not what really bothers the detective. The intruder is entirely naked, all body hair shaved off, save for his unruly mane of dark hair and his long, wispy, charcoal beard. His whole body is covered in tattoos of occult symbols. Both nipples are pierced. His long semi-erect penis flaps against his thigh; the tip of the stretched foreskin almost reaches his knee. "And for another . . ."
Sister Agnes raises her eyebrows and looks the detective in the eye, the hint of a smirk crossing her features. Dovelander feels challenged, tested. Under his shirt, the small crucifix drags on his neck and shoulders like a heavy burden.
"Never mind," he says, defeated, turning his attention back to the monstrous body parts of disquieting morphology the Earth Sisters are pulling in from the water.
Doctor Sam Tuturo is not a medical examiner, but there is no ME to be found anywhere in Venera. Tuturo is a surgeon working at the ER of Venera’s only hospital. Unlike every other hospital Dovelander has ever visited, this one is remarkably quiet. "Where are all the patients?"
"There are a dozen or so on the third floor. Doctor Mandola is in charge of resident patients. Doctor Landau is supervising the ER in my absence." Tuturo has been assigned to assist Dovelander for the duration of the investigation. The doctor doesn’t seem overly pleased by this.
Samuel or Samantha? Tuturo, like everything else in this damned city, confounds Dovelander. At first glance he’d assumed the doctor to be a man, but that was partly because Sams are usually men. The cut of the doctor’s eyeglasses seem unquestionably masculine, yet the doctor’s delicate wrists and smooth, fey jawline hint strongly at femininity. The doctor’s androgynous voice offers no definite clue.
Dovelander estimates the doctor’s height at 165 centimetres, shorter than the detective by a hand. Short for a man, but not necessarily so for an Asian man, and Tuturo is at least partly Asian, probably Japanese. The doctor sports an expensive-looking trim haircut and a slick, artfully unkempt metrosexual style that, again, betrays no specific gender identity.
The handshake, though, is female, or perhaps simply effeminate. The doctor’s hand lies in his like cold, limp, dead fish. And the doctor has made no move to remove it; they’ve been clasping hands for nearly a minute now. Dovelander can’t tell if it’s passive-aggressive flirtation or passive-aggressive, well, aggression. Maybe both. Anyway, again, it feels like a challenge. Like he would lose face if he were the one to let go.
You can tell a lot about a man by his handshake. Men learn to express their entire personality in the way they clasp another man’s hand. In women, though, handshakes can be misleading. Women don’t reveal their identity through their handshakes but more from their posture, including the tilt of their heads—a few degrees of angle can tell entire life stories.
This overlong and clammy handshake, though—Dovelander can’t conclude anything from it, save for the already obvious fact that he himself is an alien here and, apparently, an unwelcome one.
Forcing his thoughts back to the subject of the near-empty hospital, the detective comments, "But the population of Venera exceeds five hundred thousand."
The doctor doesn’t respond, which further irritates Dovelander. He tries not to show it, but he’s exhausted. Having to put up with passive-aggressive cooperation doesn’t make him angry at this point, it just makes him want to collapse.
The doctor finally terminates the handshake and offers the detective coffee. "Come on. I could use one, too."
Coffee! At least this damnable place doesn’t ban that as well.
Mugs in hand, the two proceed to the doctor’s office, which turns out to be by far the most conventional room the detective has seen yet. Save for a few ornamental details, this could almost be the office of any doctor or researcher back home.
Tuturo motions the detective to sit and hands him his report, which includes photographs.
Quickly leafing through the folder, Dovelander’s eye catches a detail. "The flesh was tattooed?" And, "Were the previous body parts also tattooed? With similar markings?"
Back at the Mother House, a gargantuan Earth Sister is on night duty. She is by far the fattest person Dovelander has seen yet in Venera. He had begun to suspect that fashionable slimness was mandatory in this demented, decadent city.
He’s astonished at the elegance with which Sister Bettina, as she introduces herself, rises from her armchair. It’s a mythic moment, like the Leviathan emerging from the depths. Venera tends to imbue the simplest of acts with gratuitous gravitas.
There’s something straightforward about the Sister that immediately endears her to Pietro. That, plus the fact the she responds to his urgent request without any hesitation or obfuscation.
"I’ll be but a moment fetching Sister Agnes, Detective."
While he waits, Pietro tries to understand the layout of the lobby, but, despite himself, his eye keeps being distracted by the sexual acts painted onto the floor. Couldn’t they have chosen Moriano for this job? He’s both an atheist and a degenerate. He’s not too bad a detective, either. So what if the High Countess had asked for Dovelander? Both his captain and his commissioner know him well enough to know that he’s not the right man for this job. Or at least, for this place.
"What’s the news, Detective?" Sister Agnes’s long hair is dishevelled, and her shirt is tucked crookedly into her pants. She’s still wiping the sleep from her eyes.
"We should have held that man for questioning."
It takes a moment for Agnes to understand. "You mean Amore?"
"Is that his name? That crazy naked man with the tattoos?"
"Yes. Magus Amore. Once a brilliant writer, now one of our most renowned eccentrics."
Magus Amore. Even Dovelander, who reads at most two or three novels a year, knows the name. Twenty years ago, Amore had been the darling of the international literary world. Winner of the Booker, the Nobel, and numerous other awards. Dovelander had tried to read one of his books, The League of Anarchy. A thriller, the cover blurb had said. Impenetrable nonsense, filled with deranged sex and cruelty, pagan mumbo-jumbo, and subversive rants, was more what Dovelander thought of it, although he’d given up on it after a few dozen pages.
"Do you have any photos of him on file? Especially of his tattoos?"
6. The Garden of the Goddesses
In the lush garden of the Goddesses, naked, prepubescent sycophants tend to their every need. It is the night of Belinda’s initiation, her ascension to godhood; for the occasion she once more wears the body of a sixteen-year-old. Her cunt grows moist as the Goddesses’
gazes fall on her once-more ripe breasts.
An insistent ringing interrupts the proceedings. No one else seems to notice the jarring sound. Belinda’s concentration is shattered. Her body regains its true age. The Goddesses laugh. A loud thumping joins the ringing. Belinda grows even older, so old that all her hair falls out. Her shrivelled tits hang down to her waist.
As the skin begins peeling off her bones, she wakes up. The doorbell is ringing. Someone’s beating hard on the door.
She forces herself out of bed. Picking up her nightgown, she sees her forty-five-year-old body in the bedroom mirror and yearns for firmer years. She wraps herself in the nightgown to find out what the commotion is about. She’s certain it’s about Magus. What’s her crazy old darling done this time?
At the door, she finds a tall man in a worn, grey raincoat. He fidgets too much with his hands, and he’s scowling. At his side, a tall, nervous Earth Sister avoids her gaze.
Without greeting or preamble, the man says, "We need to talk to Magus Amore."
"And you would be . . . ?"
"My name’s Detective-Lieutenant Pietro Dovelander, and this is Sister Agnes from the Mother House." The detective reaches into his raincoat. "We’re on official business, acting with full authority from the High Countess." He shows Belinda an official document, with the holographic seal of the Church, granting him full emergency powers. "Are you Belinda Gerda?"
"Yes. And I haven’t seen Magus for days. It’s not unusual for him to disappear for long stretches."
The detective seems somewhat less tense when he addresses her again: "I apologize for the intrusion at this inconvenient hour, but this is truly urgent. May we come in?"
7. The Automata of Hemero Volkanus
No edifice better illustrates the fact that most buildings are machines than the home of Hemero Volkanus. The guts of the building are turned inside out, so that the plumbing and wiring are all visible, albeit protected by plexiglass. In addition, the house moves. The many windows of various sizes are all built with photosensitive transistors that guide their frames to rotate so as to best capture the sunlight, or avoid it, depending on weather and temperature. It’s also a noisy house, as the various gears and parts are constantly in subtle motion.
There is no doorbell and no doorknob, and Belinda knows better than to knock. Within a few seconds the door slides open to reveal one of the Kourai Khryseai, as Hemero calls his chillingly lifelike female automata, after the mechanical servants the god Hephaestus created to help him in his Olympian smithy.
The gynoid greets her in the nonsense language the machines have been programmed to speak. Nonsense, perhaps, but undeniably beautiful, ethereal in its musical beauty. Sometimes, Belinda is tempted to accept Hemero’s claims that it is indeed the language of the gods, unintelligible to mere mortals. Magus, who grows ever more desperately credulous, takes everything Hemero says at face value. Magus believes Hemero’s story that he did not invent these beautiful machines but found them buried deep in the bowels of Venera, among the ruins of the forgotten civilizations that once prospered on the archipelago’s main island, that they are in fact the true Kourai Khryseai of myth. The inventor may be brilliant, but his penchant for tall tales doesn’t fool Belinda.
The gynoid guides Belinda through the house. They reach the workshop of Venera’s self-styled Hephaestus as he tinkers on a pair of mechanical legs.
"Trying to improve on the current model, Hemero?" Volkanus, who was born in Italy, lost both his legs in a childhood automobile accident.
"You know that for years I’ve been trying to reverse-engineer the Kourai Khryseai," computer screens on his work table displays schemata of a robot designed to look like a human female, "but I still haven’t cracked Hephaestus’s technology."
"Save it for Magus, Hemero. I’m not buying today." Despite herself, her voice breaks a bit.
Volkanus turns to look at Belinda. "Always the skeptic, eh?" Then he falls silent and scrutinizes her so intently that Belinda squirms.
Finally, she asks, "Is Magus here?"
"Magus? . . . No. I haven’t seen him for . . . two weeks, I think. What’s the matter, Belinda?"
It cascades out of her: "I haven’t seen Magus either. For nearly three days. And I was just interrogated at the Mother House. They’ve called in a foreign detective, and he thinks that Magus is involved with those body parts that have been popping up in the waterways. They’ve taken my passport. They’ve confiscated my latest painting because of the tattoos, and—"
"Belinda. Slow down. Let’s move to the parlor. One of the Kourai Khryseai can serve us tea, and you can tell me exactly what—"
The house interrupts Volkanus: "Magus Amore has arrived."
Volkanus raises his eyebrows, looking amused and curious, while Belinda gasps, "Magus . . ."
The madman bursts naked into the room: "Belinda! I’ve come from your studio. Where’s The Thirteenth Goddess? The time has come. Venera needs your sacred masterwork."
8. Revelations
Every time Sister Agnes comes close to sleep, as she closes her eyes, she is visited by visions of the goddess from Belinda Gerda’s painting and is almost instantly shocked awake. She can scarcely understand what happens in these phantasmagorias: they are populated by technobiological creatures whose morphology defies her understanding of animal life; these creatures all tend, in some manner beyond Agnes’s ken, to the goddess.
What is the connection between Amore, Gerda’s artwork, and the severed body parts?
Detective Dovelander had wanted to store Gerda’s painting at his embassy, but Sister Agnes was under orders to monitor what he could or could not take out of Veneran jurisdiction. There was no doubt in Agnes’s mind that the High Countess did not want that piece of evidence to leave Venera proper. Agnes requisitioned the use of a large storage closet at the Mother House, a twenty-four-hour guard, and a padlock whose only two keys were in the hands of herself and the High Countess.
Agnes gives up on sleep. She dresses and heads to the ad hoc evidence room. The gargantuan Sister Bettina—on guard duty, sitting by the door—acknowledges Agnes with a bored nod.
Inside, instead of darkness, Agnes finds the small room bathing in vermilion-red glow, emanating from Belinda Gerda’s painting.
Her painting of a goddess . . .
. . . of the Goddess.
The Goddess, who now talks to her in a language she should not understand but does. The Goddess, who bestows upon her revelation. Agnes begins to see the outline of an iridescent whirlpool, enveloping her and the painting, when an insistent knock on the door breaks the spell, returning the storage closet to darkness and leaving only wisps of the Goddess’s divine language in her conscious memory.
When Sister Agnes emerges from the storage closet, Sister Bettina introduces an attaché from Dovelander’s embassy. Exuding pompousness and impatience, the too-handsome young man asks, "Where is the detective-inspector?"
"I haven’t seen him since late afternoon, after we finished examining some new evidence. He told me he was heading back to the embassy."
"You let him wander Venera unescorted? I’m certain your superior instructed you otherwise. Should anything happen to the detective-inspector, my government shall hold you directly responsible."
The revelations of the Goddess recede ever farther from Agnes’s consciousness. She’s annoyed at this bureaucratic troll and concerned for Dovelander, with whom she has quickly developed an amiable and respectful camaraderie. Without a word, she hurries away while the attaché is still addressing her. She knows the city. She’ll find Dovelander.
9. The Kourai Khryseai
During the age of fable, when Hephaestus built the four Kourai Khryseai, he imbued them with attributes of his fellow Olympians. Hemero Volkanus knows this, and so does Magus Amore, who can speak the language of the gods.
After Gerda tells him of the painting’s confiscation, Amore addresses the Kourai Khryseai in the divine tongue, overriding Volkanus’s reprogramming.
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In a flash, two of the gynoids zoom out of sight, with the speed and cunning of Hermes.
Belinda opens her mouth, as if on the verge of speaking, but stays agape.
Answering her unspoken query, Amore says: "They’ve gone to fetch the likeness of the Goddess. Your painting. The Thirteenth Goddess."
10. Urban Myth
Tales are told around the world of people getting lost within the labyrinthine streets of Venera, of the city transforming itself with malignant sentience, obliterating any recognizable points of reference, rearranging its complex grid of streets and waterways and transmogrifying its buildings, warping time and geography, so as to capture and consume those foolish enough to be tempted by its surreal decadence.
Dovelander had long dismissed these ridiculous tales as urban myths, or as an obvious metaphor for the spiritual dangers of this blasphemous metropolis.
But, on his walk from the Mother House to his embassy, the detective-inspector lost all sense of time and place. Now, he does not recognize any of the buildings, which look even more deranged than usual. The city appears entirely deserted. The sky has become otherworldly—no: infernal, of an oppressive rust-red tinge. He can smell the brine of the sea, but he never manages to escape the ever-tighter grip of the city streets and vegetation. Sometimes, the plants whisper to him, but he cannot decipher the language they speak.
11. Venera Rising
Less than a minute elapses, and the Kourai Khryseai return to Hemero’s parlor with The Thirteenth Goddess and hand it to Magus. The madman sets it on the floor and chants to it in the same language he used when speaking to the automata. The painting shimmers with otherworldly light, and the image within acquires a barely tangible three-dimensionality.
Belinda gapes in wonder: I painted that?
On the extended palm of the ethereal thirteenth goddess, an iridescent whirlpool, vermilion in color, takes shape, growing until it engulfs Magus, Hemero, the Kourai Khryseai, and Belinda.
Belinda is momentarily blinded. Before her vision returns, she feels the wind in her hair. When she can see again, she recognizes where she has been transported: the roof garden of the Venera Church of Mother Earth, lush with vermilion plant.