The Demi-Monde: Winter (11 page)

The General didn’t look happy. ‘I know it sounds a little farfetched, and believe me we have made efforts to remedy the situation, but the simple answer to your question, Miss Thomas, is … yes.’

‘But didn’t you try to rescue them?’

The General sighed. ‘Yes, we did but the Dupe leaders were too quick for us. All the Sectors closed the access ports – the Portals – that lead to and from the Real World. As a result of this debacle we now have seventeen of our men trapped in the Professor’s little simulation.’

Ella shook her head. ‘Look, I don’t wish to seem brutal, but this Demi-Monde of yours sounds like a most trippy place. Why don’t you just cut bait and close it down?’

‘Well, apart from the fact that it would cost the lives of seventeen good men, there is another consideration. Somehow, Norma Williams, the daughter of the President, has become lost in the Demi-Monde.’

Ella couldn’t believe what she was hearing. ‘Norma Williams? Just what the fuck were you doing letting Norma Williams into this hellhole?’

The General nodded towards Professor Bole for an explanation. At least the Professor had the good grace to look awkward. ‘As I have said, the Demi-Monde is a self-governing and self-supporting cyber-environment. It is also self-protecting. The leaders in the Demi-Monde – crazed and paranoid as they are – concluded, correctly as it happens, that we in the Real World were a threat to them and so they moved to abduct someone we would be unable to sacrifice: the President’s daughter.’

‘But how did they do that?’

‘We don’t know,’ admitted the Professor. ‘We believe the abduction was organised by Aleister Crowley but how he did it, we just don’t know. What we do know is that Norma Williams is active inside the simulation.’

‘Well, send in another rescue squad.’

‘As I have told you,’ intoned the General gloomily, ‘the DemiMondians have closed all access Portals: we can’t get anybody in. Fortunately there is still one exit Portal working but that’s in the middle of NoirVille Sector and NoirVille is a very dangerous place.’

‘So, if there is no way into the Demi-Monde, why are we sitting here talking? You’re screwed.’

The General and the Professor exchanged looks.

‘Not entirely screwed, Miss Thomas,’ answered the General. ‘It would seem that Professor Bole here is of a whimsical turn of mind. In the early days of designing the Demi-Monde he persuaded one of his designers to create a Dupe jig that was never utilised. It was to serve, in the argot of the computer world, as a “back door” into the Demi-Monde.’ The screen on the side wall changed to show the picture of an alleyway. ‘This is an alley in the Rookeries, the Anglo-Saxon Sector of the Demi-Monde.’ The scene shifted, the view focusing on a doorway at the end of the alley illuminated by a red gas lamp.

‘Gas lights?’ queried Ella. ‘Why are they using gas lights?’

‘We locked the Demi-Monde’s technology at that which existed around the year eighteen seventy. The US Military insisted that the simulation displayed a fairly primitive technological modality, such as would be available to belligerents in Real World Asymmetric Wars. So it was agreed that the technology in the Demi-Monde be held at a Victorian-era level. That’s why they’re still using gas lights: they haven’t yet figured out how to harness electricity.’

Yeah, right.

As the camera zoomed in on the doorway, Ella saw the sign over the door which read ‘The Prancing Pig’.

‘The Prancing Pig is a pub in the slum area of the London docklands,’ advised the Professor. ‘A horrible pub in a horrible place.’

The zooming didn’t stop there; it kept going until it had tightly focused on a hand-written notice – rain-stained and tatty – nailed to the pub’s door. The notice said:

‘A “chirp” is …’ began the Professor.

‘I know what a chirp is. A chirp is a female jazz singer.’ Ella shook her head. ‘Oh, you must be joking.’

‘I should explain,’ said the General evenly. ‘When the DemiMonde was originally being populated, the good Professor here thought it would be a great joke to advertise for a thing that could never be: to wit, a black jazz singer performing in a rabidly white Sector. And he created a Dupe to match.’

Once again the General nodded to the Captain and once again the screen shifted, this time showing the picture of a Dupe. The girl shown was tall, had tawny black skin, was slim, big-eyed and – ignoring the Victorian-style gown and bonnet the Dupe was wearing – looked a lot like Ella. It was almost as though ABBA had been expecting her.

‘You must be out of your tree. I ain’t going anywhere near your Demi-Monde or Reinhard-I’m-a-Motherfucking-RacistHeydrich and that’s final.’

The General ignored Ella’s protest. ‘We desperately need
someone who is capable of posing as a jazz singer to go into the Demi-Monde, to rescue Norma Williams and to bring her out safely. As I think you might appreciate, we’re under a lot of pressure from the President to save his daughter.’

‘You’re assuming I’m willing to go, which believe me I ain’t. You’ve got the wrong girl, General. Let me sum up the offer you’re making me: I get to be jacked up to some über-computer and sent to a truly fucked-up war zone populated by vampires and run by a bunch of most undeluxe and undelightful psychopaths who hate – sorry, HATE – black cats like me. And once I’m in there all I’ve got to do is track down the President’s daughter, rescue her and somehow find my way home. And if I foul up I get to spend the rest of my life plugged into a blood-sucking machine playing Brenda Blood Donor.’ Ella mimed being deep in thought. ‘Nah … I think I’ll pass.’

‘You must go, Miss Thomas! You are the only person available who fits all the selection criteria: you are a perfect physical match for the dormant Dupe; you are intelligent; you are healthy enough to endure the rigours of the Demi-Monde; and you are, according to the Captain, a talented jazz singer. You are ideal. You must go!’

‘Well, ideal or not, I ain’t going. You think I’m gonna let you drop me into the middle of Racism de Ville? Once those bastards spot my black ass I’m gonna have the life expectancy of a fruit fly. How do they dress in this ForthRight of yours: white robes and pointy hats? Do they have funny names like Mr Ku and Mrs Klux?’

‘This is a most unhelpful attitude, Miss Thomas.’

‘Well, General, it might be unhelpful, but I’ve got a shrewd idea that it’s a much more healthy one.’

‘I would remind you, Miss Thomas, that your life is currently a piece of shit.’

‘Well, that might be the case, General, but the prospect of spending the rest of my life pumping gas for Count Dracula and his pals makes it look like a mighty appealing piece of shit.’

‘Will five million dollars change your mind?’

It did.

ImPuritanism
is a staunchly hedonistic philosophy – mainly practised in the Quartier Chaud – based on the belief that the pursuit of pleasure is the primary duty of all Demi-Mondians. The ultimate aim of all those practising ImPuritanism is the securing of JuiceSense: the experiencing of the extreme pleasure that comes from an unbridled sexual orgasm. To achieve JuiceSense requires that men and women are spiritually equal and that man’s proclivity towards MALEvolence is controlled and muted. Such rampant and unrestrained sexual activity is, of course, vile and unnatural and violates the notion – enshrined in the UnFunDaMentalist creed of Living&More – that sexual union should only be undertaken for the purposes of procreation.

– Religions of the Demi-Monde: Otto Weininger, University of Berlin Publications

The thing that Captain Dabrowski pushed snarling and protesting into her father’s study was to all outward appearances a normal and quite attractive girl of about eighteen years of age, but even without being told, Trixie would have known it for the Daemon it was. The girl – the Daemon – was different.

It was difficult for Trixie to quite put her finger on what made the Daemon look quite so wrong. It was modest in stature. Its hair was a raven black, which was unusual in the ForthRight but quite common in the Demi-Monde: it was the sort of hair colour sported by some of the lesser races like the Chinks and the Shades. The hairstyle the Daemon had adopted was odd too, pushing back its hair to leave its ears exposed, ears that were circled with studs. This affectation was really too disgusting for words: the studs were almost – she shuddered at the thought – ImPure.

The Daemon walked in quite a masculine way too. The fashion amongst ForthRight girls was to make small rapid steps, not the great hulking strides the Daemon took. Certainly the thing moved with a decided limp, but that only seemed to emphasise its strange and wholly unfeminine athleticism.

But for Trixie the thing that indicated that the Daemon wasn’t a real girl was the way it stared at everybody. There was no modest dropping of the eyes when a man looked at it: the Daemon glared angrily back. It might have hidden its daemonic ugliness beneath the form of a quite pretty girl – though Trixie thought its nose a trifle too long and its chin just a little too square for it to be really pretty – but there was no mistaking that it was most certainly not the coy and respectable ForthRight gentle-girl it was dressed as.

Yes, the Daemon was a determined-looking individual. It might have an ugly bruise on the side of its face, and its arms might be decorated with a huge number of cuts and scratches, but it carried itself in a decidedly haughty manner. The cuts and scratches were curious too. They appeared to be crusted with dried blood and this, more than anything, confirmed that the girl was, in fact, a Daemon. Cuts on Demi-Mondians – on real people – healed as thin white lines, not as ugly red welts.

And its decorum was as appalling as its appearance. Indifferent to the protocol that demanded a woman remained silent until addressed by a man, the Daemon spoke first.

‘Ah … Aleister Crowley, so we meet again. I wondered when you would come crawling out from under your rock. So how is the Wickedest Man in All the World? Still promoting your poisonous nonsense no doubt, still meddling in the forbidden arts.’

Trixie was aghast. No one spoke to Comrade Crowley like that: the man’s temper and his peevishness were legendary. But, astonishingly, Crowley seemed, if anything, to be cowed by the girl: he actually reddened a little.

‘I am unsure as to what I have done to deserve such an unflattering sobriquet,’ he said almost apologetically.

The Daemon laughed, revealing a set of the most abnormally – supernaturally? – white and even teeth. No one human had such perfect teeth … no one in the Rookeries anyway. ‘Perhaps I am just anticipating an honour yet to be bestowed upon you, Crowley. Perhaps you have yet to develop the full menu of brute appetites you were famous for. But I’m sure that together with that psychopath Heydrich you will be able to arrange things so that history will view you as the evil bastard I know you to be.’

By the Spirits, this Daemon really was intent on occupying an early grave.

But then presumably, as the Daemon occupied the Spirit World, it was already dead.

Dead or not, no one – no one sane, that is – openly criticised Comrade Leader Heydrich. Criticism of the Leader implied doubt and doubt signalled that the citizen was not convinced of the rightness of the Leader’s will. And a citizen who doubted the Leader relinquished all claims to be a citizen, they became non-citizens. And in the ForthRight a non-citizen was a nonNix,
just like the nuJus and the Poles and the Shades … and Lillibeth Marlborough.

Amazingly Crowley simply shrugged off this slur on the Leader’s infallibility. He waved a heavily beringed hand in the direction of Trixie. ‘May I introduce Lady Trixiebell Dashwood, who will be your hostess for the next two weeks? Lady Trixiebell, this is Miss Norma Williams.’

Both the girls – well, the girl and the imitation-girl – stood examining each other from across the room. Truth be told, Trixie was unsure as to quite what was acceptable behaviour when being introduced to a Daemon. But the remembrance of her father’s request that she form a ‘friendship’ with this creature persuaded her to dispense with the niceties of etiquette. Trixie took a deep calming breath and walked across the room in order to allow the Daemon to curtsy to her. ‘Good afternoon, Miss Norma …’

Norma? What a stupid name, even for a Daemon.

‘… I’m Lady Trixiebell Dashwood. My friends call me Trixie.’

To Trixie’s astonishment the Daemon didn’t curtsy, instead it merely took Trixie’s hand in its own and shook it in an alarmingly familiar fashion.

To be touching a Daemon!

‘Hi.’

High?
What in the Demi-Monde was this salutation ‘high’? ‘I’m Norma Williams and my friends call me Norma.’ The Daemon paused. ‘But you, my little fifth columnist, may call me Miss Williams.’

Though Trixie was somewhat nonplussed by both the Daemon’s grossly impolite behaviour and her confusion as to just what exactly a ‘fifth columnist’ was, she did, however, take the opportunity to smell the Daemon. The journals had it that Daemons could be recognised by their stench: the tang of their
blood was, apparently, unmistakable. Disappointingly Trixie couldn’t smell anything untoward in the room except the pong coming from Archie Clement’s boots.