The Demi-Monde: Winter (15 page)

But the most disturbing thing was that the Dupes populating the Demi-Monde looked so amazingly lifelike: they were indistinguishable from the real thing. This was all the more remarkable because, according to PINC, Demi-Mondians weren’t flesh and blood: although they had a skeleton, over this was layered stuff they called Solidified Astral Ether – SAE in DemiMonde-speak – a pale white organic matter which provided the musculature that allowed the Dupes to move and to think, equipped them with the five senses they needed to interact with the world about them, and gave them the means to take in nutrients and excrete waste products.

For Ella though, the saddest fact was, just like in the Real World, the colour of a Demi-Mondian’s SAE divided people. UnFunDaMentalism taught that the finest, the superior form of the human species was the Anglo-Slavic race – the Aryan race – because theirs was the only race whose external SAE colour matched the internal one. Because this white colour was adulterated in the other races of the Demi-Monde – the UnderMentionables – by UnFunDaMentalist thinking this signalled that all other races were unclean and inferior.

Racial prejudice was alive and well in the Demi-Monde.

Hardly daring to surrender the lee of the alleyway for fear of being swept away by a tide of faux-humanity, Ella took a moment to orientate herself. The Prancing Pig pub was off Sidney Street which lay on the opposite side of the Mile End and to get to the pub she’d have to cross the road. And that was a daunting prospect.

If the pavements were crowded, they were as nothing to the maelstrom of carts, omnibuses, cabs and steamers that were trying – ineffectually – in a storm of honking and shouting and swearing to force their way along the traffic-choked thoroughfare. God, it
was noisy: the Demi-Monde was a cacophony of ersatz humanity and all its works.

She shook her head; the thought of trying to lizard through the almost solid jam of vehicles most certainly did not appeal, especially as the road’s surface seemed to be covered by a thick compote of soot, mud, slush and horse shit. One slip and she knew her mission would be ended before it had begun, with her crushed under the wheels of a careless cart or the hoofs of a neglectful dray horse.

Then …

Suddenly the traffic paused as though taking a breath and grabbing her chance she ran, slipping and sliding as she went on the snow-slick cobbles, dodging between the carts of two costermongers parked at the side of the road, sidestepping the steel wheels of a steam tractor, ducking under the flicking whip of a carter as he urged his horses into a non-existent gap in the traffic, ignoring the obscene shouts of a cabby as she obliged him to rein up, swearing as she stepped into a puddle of ice-cold and very scummy water, and finally, with a sigh of relief, skipping – soiled, sweaty and shivering – to the sanctuary of the other side of the road.

For a moment she sheltered in the entrance of a haberdasher’s shop to get her breath back and still her jangling nerves. The Demi-Monde, she decided, was a nightmare. She had never felt so threatened or so endangered by a place in all her life: even Flatbush at its worst had nothing on the Rookeries. Everything about the Demi-Monde seemed designed, if not to kill her, then to make her wish she was somewhere else. She slumped back against the wall, then, cursing herself, stood straight up again: she’d forgotten that every vertical surface in the Rookeries was coated with slimy soot. Now her beautiful fur coat had a beautiful black line down the back.

Terrific.

With a resigned sigh Ella pushed herself back into the current of people, elbowing and shoving in what PINC told her was the direction of Sidney Street. She made it, though her bonnet was knocked askew in the mêlée and she thought her bustle would never be the same again. Here the street was jammed with swarms of people coming back from the ForthRight Union Day celebrations in Hyde Park. It seemed that any appearance by the Great Leader Reinhard Heydrich was an event that all loyal ForthRightists were expected to attend and, anyway, people seemed very taken with all the marching and community singing.

A crowd of laughing kids – their faces pinched tight with cold – swarmed past Ella, each of them holding a balloon decorated with the ForthRight’s motto ‘Two Sectors Forged as One’ in one hand and waving a paper flag emblazoned with the Valknut’s three interlocking triangles in the other. The ForthRight Party was big on balloons and flags.

One thing it wasn’t big on was Daemons.

It was that thought that persuaded Ella to pick up her pace. The sooner she got to the Prancing Pig the better.

Efforts by Occultists (also known by the archaic term Ocularists) are directed towards the resuscitating of the Third Eye and restoring the Aryans’ lost metaPhysical powers. All the metaPhysical powers of the Pre-Folk emanated from the Third Eye, the organ situated in the middle of the head and embedded in the Solidified Astral Ether. The Third Eye gave connection to ABBA and to the metaPhysical forces flowing through and around the Demi-Monde. After the Fall of the Pre-Folk, the Third Eye diminished in size to such an extent that it was presumed to have vanished; however, surgeon John Austen Hamlin has found vestigial traces of this wondrous organ in Aryan cadavers (‘Examination of the Cranial SAE of Aryan Soldiers Killed in the Troubles’,
The Lance It Magazine of Surgery,
Spring 1003).

– Rediscovering the Third Eye: Grigori Rasputin, Occult Books and Scrolls

‘A sorry?’ queried Vanka as he tried to stop the contents of his stomach from making a return visit. The stench from Burlesque’s fouled mouth as he whispered in Vanka’s ear was overpowering.

‘Yeah, that’s right. Like wot the Frogs in the Quartier Chaud ‘ave.’

‘Ah … a soirée,’ exclaimed Vanka as the penny dropped. The linguistic ability of all Anglos was appalling: they were famous for it … or actually for their lack of it. They were the only DemiMondians who couldn’t speak all five of the world’s languages. The rumour was they had never really mastered English.

‘Yeah, dat’s wot I said: a sorry,’ said Burlesque, proving the rumour correct. ‘A better class of people come to sorries, nice people who are dead keen on speaking wiv their loved ones wot inhabit the ovver side.’

Vanka concluded that Burlesque didn’t see the irony involved with anyone being ‘dead keen’ to attend a séance.

‘You’re a Licensed Physicalist, Wanker, you’re an occultist, so I wos wondering …’

So that was why Burlesque had been so pleasant. But when Vanka thought about it, it wasn’t that bad an idea.

Since the ending of the Troubles, and thanks to Crowley’s enthusiastic promotion of UnFunDaMentalism, attending séances had become very fashionable in the ForthRight. Business for Vanka – pre-Skobelev, that is – had been booming. Everyone, it seemed, wished to commune with the dead, and as the fighting during the Troubles had been so ferocious – or so Vanka had heard, he’d made a point of staying as far from the front line as possible – there were a great many dead to commune with. Not that Vanka believed in a life after death. Rather he believed in life before death … a luxurious and comfortable life before death.

Spiritualism – faux-Spiritualism, Vanka was nothing if not a realist – provided him with a handsome income. To put it at its most blunt, Vanka ran séances the true purpose of which was not so much to contact the dead, but rather to fleece widows out of their fortunes and, whenever possible, out of their knickers.

True, relieving the rich, the stupid and the credulous – and
Madam Andreyeva, Skobelev’s sister, had managed, miraculously, to be all three – of their wealth didn’t make for a pleasant way of earning a living, and true, Vanka had very few friends, but when it came to a choice between friendship and a full stomach he always came down on the side of dinner.

But still Vanka hesitated before replying. In truth he was beset by something of a dilemma. On the one hand he was so desperate for money that the prospect of holding a few séances for Burlesque to help refill his coffers was mightily appealing. On the other, the one place General Skobelev and his thugs were sure to be looking for him was at séances.

But without blood he was a dead man.

‘You’re correct, Burlesque,’ he said in a low, conspiratorial voice, ‘I am a Licensed Psychic and Occultist.’ He leant as close to Burlesque as the man’s novel ideas about hygiene would allow. ‘I have studied at the feet of a master who taught me the mysteries of Russian cosmology and now, as an adept, I am able to connect with the esoteric forces that tie the Past with the Present and the Present with the Future. But more: I am able to link the Living with the Dead.’

‘Blimey,’ gasped Burlesque.

‘Gor,’ said Sporting and with a shaking hand she drained her glass of five per cent Solution or, more accurately as this was the Pig they were sitting in, her glass of two and a half per cent Solution.

‘So, wot you is saying, Wanker,’ began Burlesque as he wiped a terminally filthy handkerchief across his flaccid mouth, ‘is that yous can speak wiv the dead?’

‘Certainly,’ said Vanka emphatically, ‘but you must realise that séances are difficult and expensive to run.’

As was his wont, Burlesque skipped over the word ‘difficult’ and homed in on ‘expensive’. ‘‘Ow expensive?’

‘Let’s say ten guineas a session.’

‘Let’s say something a damn sight less bleedin’ expensive.’

‘No … it’s ten guineas or nothing. I am sorry, Burlesque, but that is my price. You have no idea the amount of mental anguish conducting a séance entails.’

‘Yessen I does,’ protested Burlesque. ‘It’s abart the same as the mental anguish I experience when I ‘ave to part wiv ten guineas ov my ‘ard-earned loot. ‘Ow about we say five guineas a show for the first week, then let’s see how it goes.’

‘Okay … eight guineas for the first week and then ten thereafter.’

Burlesque thought for a minute, but Vanka knew he would agree. No Licensed Psychic worth his salt would perform for less than ten guineas, so Burlesque knew he’d got a good deal.

‘Done,’ he said at last, spitting on his hand and offering it to shake. Vanka looked at it with contempt; even from across the table he could smell whatever it was that Burlesque had been chewing and the last thing he wanted was to come into physical contact with it. In his opinion anything that came out of Burlesque’s mouth was a biological hazard. The only way he’d shake the man’s hand was if he was wearing a reinforced leather gauntlet.

‘Never mind the handshake, Burlesque, there’s one small problem.’

Burlesque scowled: he wasn’t a great fan of ‘problems’.

‘As I’m performing in the Rookeries, I want to use an Anglo name.’ Perform as ‘Vanka Maykov: Psychic’ and he would become, in very short order, ‘Vanka Maykov: Dickless Psychic’.

‘That’s fine wiv me, Wanker.’

‘And I need an assistant to help me commune with the Spirit World. I need a PsyChick. The girl I normally use, Svetlana, is nursing a sick relative in St Petes.’ Or more probably, if General
Skobelev had found her, she was nursing part of the foundations propping up the new railway bridge the ForthRight had just built over the Rhine. ‘I need to hire a new girl.’

‘There’s always Sportin’ ‘ere,’ suggested Burlesque. ‘I bet she’s a natural PsyChick, wot wiv the amount ov spirits that ‘ave manifested themselves in ‘er. An’ she’s always very willin’.’

Vanka gave Sporting a quick look: if ever there was a girl who could confidently be described as ‘willing’ it was Sporting.

‘I need a girl that can read.’

‘I can read,’ said Sporting hopefully.

‘I mean something other than your name.’

‘Oh.’

Burlesque took a huge drag on his cigar, and then pushed the bowler hat that was permanently planted on top of his grease-drenched hair back on his head. His nasty little eyes settled on Vanka and for a moment he was reminded of just what a vicious bastard Burlesque really was.

Be careful, Vanka, be very careful.

‘I’ve gotta idea, Wanker. I’m ‘aving an audition this evening. I’m looking for a chirp, see, a new singer: someone classy. I’m looking for a jad singer … a Shade jad singer. Why don’t cha stick around, Wanker, an’ see ‘oo turns up. Maybe you’ll find a PsyChick amongst that lot.’

Vanka sighed. He knew the sort of girls who came to auditions at the Pig: most of them had been around the block so many times they could only walk in right angles.

But Vanka needed a PsyChick. To pull off a séance he would need an assistant of such mesmerising loveliness that the men in the audience wouldn’t be able to keep their eyes off her. All good psychics knew that a pretty girl wearing not much more than a big smile was the ideal way to distract an audience’s attention, and distraction was the psychic’s most powerful
weapon. But there was more to it than that. The girl – mentally Vanka emphasised the word girl; she had to be young – also had to be intelligent enough to help Vanka work his tricks and, most importantly, be so terminally naïve that she didn’t realise that if they were caught running a bent séance they would both be for the high jump.

Not a chance … but then hope springs eternal.

Ella took a left down Bottomley Road, thankful that it was quieter here and that there were fewer people jostling her. With the noise of Sidney Street reduced to a background grumble, she took a moment to gather herself. The Prancing Pig was easy to spot at the end of the road: it was an oasis of light in the thickening gloom. But though it was well lit, judging from the expression on the face of the urchin swathed in an old army coat several sizes too big for him who was guarding the entrance, it wasn’t very welcoming. Crouched in the pub’s doorway out of the Winter wind, the boy looked about ten years old and was, rather incongruously, puffing on a pipe.

He glared out at Ella from under his tatty chapka as she tried the door and then spat into the gutter. ‘Yous one ov them singing tarts?’

‘I’ve come to audition,’ said Ella, tapping a finger against the soiled notice pinned to the door, ‘if that’s what you mean.’