The Demi-Monde: Summer (56 page)

Immediately behind the Grand Mufti strode a very tall, a very muscular and a very arrogant-looking man. Vanka supposed
that this was Doge William in his guise of the Messiah. It was a reasonable supposition: from what he had heard, Doge William was enormously tall – as this man was – and even though he was swathed in a golden robe and his skin heavily decorated, it was still possible to see he was a Shade.

And a dozen or so paces behind him came two priests escorting a woman. It took Vanka a moment to recognise her: her body was covered with a red oil and she walked with the stumbling gait of someone who had been drugged, but then she raised her head to look defiantly around at the gathered crowd. Vanka’s body clock skipped a beat: it was Ella.

He tried to stay calm. Now was time for him to get nearer to the altar ready to rescue her and to do that he had to move from where he was hiding on the high balcony, down the staircase to the floor of the Temple and then across to the altar. And he had to do all this without being seen or challenged. This he judged to be impossible. There were simply too many people milling around in the Temple; someone was bound to spot him.

In the end it was the Grand Mufti who came to his aid. The man gave a sign to his congregation that they should stand and, taking advantage of the movement of the crowd and every eye being concentrated on the would-be Messiah that was Doge William, Vanka scuttled towards the staircase. He was down it in a trice, amazed by the vigour that fear could put in a man’s stride.

The oil that the Grand Mufti had used to anoint her must, Ella supposed, have been drugged. She felt so very cold and so very weak. Hardly of this world, she allowed herself to be brought to the altar.

Standing there, she heard the Grand Mufti chant a long
complex incantation over her, then saw through misted eyes the man turn to the congregation. ‘We gather tonight on Lammas, the night when Man reigns supreme, the night when the powers of Men are at their height. We gather to sacrifice this Lilithi and by the drinking of her blood ensure that the One True Religion of HimPerialism rules the Nine Worlds.’

Although she had been made sluggish by the oil that covered her body, Ella determined that she would meet death with her head held high. She glared back at the audience that had gathered to witness her sacrifice and she was pleased that not one of them had the courage to meet her gaze.

And it was then that she noticed the Column standing next to the altar waiting to be lowered onto its plinth. At the sight of it she sensed Lilith stir deep inside her, telling her that the Column was wrong … that someone had replaced the original with an imitation. She suppressed a smile. Tonight, she suspected, it wouldn’t only be her who would be merging with the Nothingness that was death.

The
Heydrich
’s pilothouse might have been a confusion of smoke, steam and screams, but at its centre His Holiness the Very Reverend Aleister Crowley remained unnaturally calm; the knowledge that, even as he stood there, the FSS
Beria
was manoeuvring to take the drifting pontoon under tow made him impervious to the carnage around him.

He had done it! He had captured the Column. Now there was nothing to prevent the triumph of the Aryan people … of UnFunDaMentalism.

‘I would be obliged, Comrade Captain, if you would provide me with a gig and a crew in order that I might transfer to the
Beria.’

An astonished Worden – his face blackened by smoke, his uniform in tatters and one arm hanging useless at his side –
glared at Crowley and made to protest. ‘With the greatest of respect, Your Holiness, my first duty as a naval officer is to my ship and my crew. I have no time—’

There was the sound of a Luger automatic pistol being cocked and Worden felt the cold brush of its muzzle against the side of his head.

‘This is an operation commanded by the SS-Ordo Templi Aryanis, Comrade Captain, and if you do not obey my orders, I will have SS Captain Morant shoot you. The prime imperative of this mission is to seize the Column and then transport it to Terror Incognita. This I will do. Hero of the ForthRight you might be, Worden, but I am careless whether you are dead or alive when the medal is awarded.’

As he cowered in his new hiding place behind the Column, it seemed to Vanka that the ceremony was now moving into a more serious and dangerous phase. The music rose in volume as Doge William came to stand just in front of the altar, each step he took accompanied by the rhythmic chanting of the crowd and the beat of timpani. There he paused for a moment, then turned and in a voice that resonated through the whole Temple, addressed his congregation.

‘You know me as the Doge William, but now I stand before you as the Messiah, the one who will bring ABBAsoluteness to the Demi-Monde. I have invited you here tonight to witness the rising of a new race of Man, each of whom will be confirmed as one of the Sixty, as one of the Chosen, as one of those who will form the first of the ABBAsoluti … the Perfect. It is they who will sire the species that will come after HumanKind. It is they who will give life to
Homo perfectus:
the Perfect Man.’

Now he turned to address the sixty priests standing alongside the altar. ‘You are the Men who will bring Perfection to
HumanKind. Tonight, by drinking the blood of a Lilithi, all the latent power that resides within you will be released.’

He pointed towards Ella. ‘Prepare her for sacrifice!’ and immediately two priests grabbed the girl by her arms and forced her down onto the altar.

Knowing the difficulties they’d had manoeuvring the
Wu
on their journey from St Petersburg, Trixie realised that there was little chance of them being able to circle around to pick up the pontoon. At the best of times the ship took an age to execute a full turn, and with the damage sustained when it had rammed the Monitor, she had become even more reluctant to answer the helm. The other consideration was, of course, that there were other Monitors out there … other Monitors that were now, no doubt, steaming in the Wu’s direction. The one course Trixie saw open to her was to run – or rather limp – for it.

‘What now?’ yelled Wysochi as he directed fire crews towards the blaze that was threatening to engulf the engine room. ‘Lookouts report seeing a second Monitor steaming to bring the pontoon under tow, so it’s a penny wins a pound that the UnFunnies will be taking the Column to Terror Incognita.’

‘Then that’s where we’ve got to go. Steer a course to Terror Incognita.’

Watching as his priests dragged the woeMan who had been Doge IMmanual to the altar, the Grand Mufti sensed the ceremony building to its climax in a most satisfactory manner. If he was not very much mistaken, the sheen that swathed the Mantle-ite walls of the Temple had begun to glow a deeper green, pulsing with occult energy, the energy he would unleash on the stroke of midnight.

He looked towards the priest he had placed in charge of the wheel that governed the lowering of the Column, making sure that the Man was alert and ready. At midnight the Column would be set in its final position on its plinth and once this was done, the awesome power of the Temple would be activated. Then none would be able to prevent the triumph of HimPerialism, none would be able to dispute that Man was the master of the Demi-Monde.

In Norma’s opinion, Sporting sang even better than she had done at the Canterbury Theatre and the sound of thousands of voices joining in on the choruses made for a thrilling experience. The remarkable thing was that Sporting had done it without making a single joke at the expense of Heydrich or any of his cronies. For once the Naughty Nightingale had been a good girl.

But now, as the final chords of ‘Falling in Love Again’ died away, Norma knew this was her moment of truth. She patted her blonde wig and made a final check of her dress, a dress which she and Odette had spent hours agonising over, debating whether to err on the side of the risqué or on the side of the conservative. In the end, the white lace number she was wearing fell somewhere between the two: it was tight enough to show off her figure, but not reckless enough to distract from the seriousness of what she would be saying. She looked, according to Odette, like an angel.

‘And now, lads and lasses,’ she heard Sporting bellow into her microphone, her amplified voice booming out to every corner of the huge hall, ‘I ‘ave a special treat for yous. This lovely little lady ‘as come a long way to be wiv us tonight, so I want you to give a right big ForthRight welcome to … MISS AALIZ HEYDRICH!’

Heydrich jumped, spilling Solution over his immaculately pressed trousers. He hardly noticed: all his attention was riveted on the girl who stepped out from the wings to stand centre stage, the light behind her making her blonde hair glow like a halo around her head. With a trembling hand he raised his opera glasses.

It
was
Aaliz. Her blonde hair was the same, her gait was the same … everything was the same. And when she opened her mouth to speak into the microphone, she used the identical and oh-so-refined Anglo accent his daughter had used.

But it
couldn’t
be her. Aaliz’s spirit was in the Real World and her body was being cared for in Wewelsburg Castle. It
had
to be the Daemon, Norma Williams, a supposition confirmed when the bitch spoke.

‘I am Aaliz Heydrich and I stand here tonight to implore all you brave soldiers of the ForthRight to lay down your weapons and refuse to fight for those scoundrels who have taken control of Rodina and the Rookeries.’

‘Switch off that microphone and arrest the bitch!’ Heydrich screamed as he sprang to his feet. Minions scuttled off to do his bidding, leaving the Great Leader standing red-faced and near-apoplectic as he stared in impotent rage across the vastness of the Crystal Palace at his faux-daughter.

There was no reaction to what Norma had said; it was as though everyone in the vast hall had been stricken mute. Swallowing her terror, she moved closer to the microphone and began to speak in a louder voice. ‘I stood beside my father when he issued his orders to destroy the poor people of Warsaw; I listened to him when he demanded that the CitiZens of the Quartier Chaud be decimated for having the temerity to oppose him; I witnessed
the bile he uttered when he condemned the people of the Coven to destruction; and I know the contempt in which he holds all of you when he sends you to your death.’

The audience began to stir. Mutterings rippled through the packed ranks of the audience and though sergeants screamed at the soldiers to be quiet, with every second that passed the grumbling grew in volume.

‘But how can it be otherwise when we live in a Crowocracy?’ Norma paused to allow the word to sink in. ‘A Crowocracy, you ask? Remember your collective nouns: a group of crows is a murder of crows, therefore, by my lexicon, a Crowocracy is government by murderers. A government like the one that rules the ForthRight, a government to whom a life is as nothing, to whom a life can be stubbed out on a whim.’ She pointed up to the balcony where Heydrich was sitting. ‘As our leaders gaze down from their Olympian heights, they don’t see people with hopes and feelings … they see nothings, nothings that can be erased with no more thought and no more compassion than they would give to stepping on an ant. In a Crowocracy, the world is awash with nothings.’ Here she gestured to the audience. ‘We are all, in the view of my father and his disciples, nothings.’

‘Stop her! Silence her! Shoot her!’ screamed Heydrich. Von Sternberg jumped up from his chair and began to frantically organise his Checkya agents, yelling orders and pushing and shoving his men to the front of the balcony where they could get a better shot at the girl. Unfortunately even while he was doing this, ‘Aaliz’ kept right on speaking.

‘Reinhard Heydrich wishes to conquer the Demi-Monde, a conquest to be bought with your deaths. So I ask you: why? Why can’t the peoples of the Demi-Monde live in peace? Why must
there be continual war? Why must we celebrate the power of the strong and the subjugation of the weak? I, Aaliz Heydrich, reject my father and his foul philosophy of UnFunDaMentalism and I ask you to do the same. I stand before you as a convert to the creed of non-violence that is Normalism and as a Normalist I tell you that by turning to violence as a solution to their problems Demi-Mondians have become one with the beasts … become one with the Beast.’

What the girl was saying obviously had a resonance with the audience. Even as he watched goggle-eyed, Heydrich saw soldiers begin to climb onto the stage to show their support for the girl, milling around her as makeshift bodyguards.

‘Shoot the bitch!’ Heydrich screamed at the Checkya marksmen who were rushing to take up position.

‘We can’t get a clear shot, Great Leader,’ protested von Sternberg, ‘there are too many people standing—’

‘Shoot them, shoot everybody, just kill the girl!’

‘We must resist evil without becoming evil; we must resist violence without becoming violent; we must resist the Beast without becoming like the Beast. Normalism is on the march: already Empress Dong E has proclaimed it to be the new religion of the Coven and our comrades in the Quartier Chaud have flocked to the Church of Normalism. So I ask the soldiers of the ForthRight to lay down your weapons.’ She paused, then threw her arms wide as though embracing all her audience. ‘I ask the soldiers of the ForthRight, are you with me?’

As the Crystal Palace reverberated to the cheers of the soldiers, the Checkya marksmen fired.