The Demi-Monde: Winter (7 page)

The dead eyes of the German settled upon Ella and a contemptuous smile flickered over his full, fleshy lips. ‘I am wondering why I should be obliged to discuss my career with one such as her.’

‘One such as me?’ asked Ella, unable to keep the tremor out of her voice.

‘A black … a negro … a member of a more primitive race.’

Ella was jolted back in her seat by the scorn in the Dupe’s voice. Struggling to remember that Heydrich was just digital make-believe, she did her best to hide how upset she was by what the bastard had just said. Taking a deep, calming breath she continued the conversation in as equable a manner as she was able.

‘I am student president at my high school. I have achieved a SAT score which places me in the top one per cent of all students in the USA. I am intent on reading genetics at university. I am a skilled musician. Surely that gives the lie to your proposition that I am a member of an inferior race?’

Heydrich slid a silver cigarette case from his jacket pocket and with infuriating slowness went through the pantomime of selecting and lighting a cigarette. He drew heavily on the cigarette then breathed out, snaking a stream of perfectly imitated virtual smoke into the room. A miasma of malevolent vapour, ashen and feathered, settled around his head like a diabolical halo. ‘That you are capable of rote learning merely confirms the inferiority of your race. You are the exception that proves the rule. And anyway, I have seen chimpanzees performing in the circus. Even apes can, through diligent training, be made to perform tricks surprisingly well.’ He sneered. ‘Perhaps that is what you are: a trained ape.’

If this guy had been for real Ella would have given him a real mouthful. But he wasn’t for real: he was just a Dupe imitating the attitudes of a racist who had died almost eighty years ago.

Stay cool, Ella. Try to get yourself into this jerk’s mindset. Play the psychologist.

‘I understand you are an officer, Herr Heydrich. Then surely your duty as an officer is to help those of lesser ability? If you scorn me as an African-American, perhaps you can assist me as a woman … as one of the weaker sex?’

The feminist in Ella almost gagged when she uttered this last phrase.

She felt those terrible eyes studying her, Heydrich slowly sliding his gaze over her body. She had the distinct impression that the Nazi liked what he saw … more than liked what he saw. In fact the way he was looking at Ella persuaded her to pull the hem of her short skirt further down her long legs. Heydrich’s crystal-cold eyes watched her as she did so, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. She shivered again; there was something infinitely unsettling about the man … about the Dupe, she quickly reminded herself.

‘Very well. As you are not a pure black, there being something of the Mischling – a person of mixed race – in your appearance, I am prepared to speak with you. May I be permitted to know the name of my interrogator?’

Ella looked to Professor Bole, who merely shrugged his assent.

‘My name is Ella Thomas.’

‘And you are intent on becoming a geneticist?’

‘That’s correct.’

‘Ah, most apt, the study of genetics is much favoured by the Untermenschen, by the lesser races, by the Jews.’ He paused to enjoy his cigarette, all the time watching Ella as a cat might watch a mouse.

Eventually he deigned to continue. ‘Yes, the explanation must be that you wish to study genetics in order to appreciate why your race is so inferior to mine. I am told that self-knowledge can lead to improvement.’ He sniggered dismissively: he obviously found the idea of blacks being capable of improving themselves risible. ‘Regarding my career, I have recently been elevated to the position of Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia. This I take as a signal from the Führer that he holds me and my talents in high regard.’

‘So you are well thought of by Adolf Hitler?’

‘Whilst I am loath to discuss the thought processes of the Führer with one such as you, Miss Thomas, I will say that this is an asinine question. I have served both the Führer and my immediate superior, Reichsführer Himmler, to the very limits of my abilities and would say with no little pride that these efforts have contributed mightily to the success the Vaterland has enjoyed in its struggle to bring order to the lesser nations of the world.’

‘And which of these successes has given you the most satisfaction, Herr Obergruppenführer?’ asked Ella, slightly
perplexed to be having such a free-wheeling question-and-answer session with what was, after all, just a computer-driven Dupe.

Another sneer from Heydrich and another arrogant puff on his cigarette. ‘There have been so many. In the early days of my career I would cite the snuffing out of the protests planned by enemies of the Nazi Party at the time of the Berlin Olympics of 1936 as a signal achievement. Later I took a great deal of satisfaction in organising the forging of the documentation which persuaded that animal Josef Stalin to liquidate so many of his most able officers on the eve of war.’

‘Heydrich speaks fluent Russian,’ Professor Bole added as an aside to Ella.

‘You will not speak until you are spoken to!’ snarled Heydrich and smashed his fist hard against the wooden lectern. The sound of the blow caused Ella to flinch back in alarm.

Jesus! How the hell did they program that?

‘And I am to be addressed by my titles and rank, not simply as “Heydrich”. Do you understand?’ His gaze flickered around the room, touching on each of the three members of his audience in turn. ‘Do you all understand?’ The hatred and the contempt were redolent in every word the German uttered.

In the midst of the stunned silence an almost beatific calm drifted across Heydrich’s face. ‘Now, what were we discussing, young lady? Ah, yes, my achievements. Another major success was my bringing of the Czech workers back to full production and the gaining of their support for the war against the Bolsheviks.’ A self-satisfied grin tugged at the corners of his mouth. ‘But I suppose my lasting memorial will be the freeing of Europe from the pernicious contamination of the Jews.’

‘It was you who organised the extermination of the Jews?’ asked Ella incredulously, stunned by how casually Heydrich
could talk about his involvement with the Holocaust.

‘No, I am organising their transportation to the east, where they will contribute to the success of the German Reich by building roads and laying railway tracks. The work will be … exacting and certainly many will die, but it is not my intention to “exterminate” them as you so crudely put it. It would be too expensive of bullets to shoot, what, ten million people. In my opinion, bullets would serve a greater use if they were employed to kill Russians and other enemies of the Reich rather than being squandered in the dispatching of Jewish offal.’

‘You should realise, Miss Thomas,’ explained the Professor, ‘that the Heydrich you are speaking with is the Heydrich of February 1942. He has no perception of what will be the future course of the war. At that moment everything in the Nazi garden was coming up roses: they had rolled back the Soviet armies and seemed to be on the brink of conquering Russia as easily as they had conquered mainland Europe. The “Final Solution” to the Jewish problem as Heydrich perceives it is the shipping of every single Jew east and working them to death creating a German Garden of Eden in the lands of Belarus and the Ukraine. The mass execution of Jews in gas chambers hadn’t yet been adopted as Nazi policy, though Heydrich had already set up gas chambers in Poland and Czechoslovakia. He had already initiated the Holocaust.’

‘It will be an amazing logistical exercise to move ten million yids east,’ Heydrich continued, seemingly unaware that he had been interrupted, ‘and to accommodate and to feed them … well, to feed them after a fashion anyway. But at least in this way they will be of some economic value to the Reich rather than just an expense. This is the proposal I made and had
accepted at the Wannsee Conference of just a month ago. Within two years we will be living in a Jew-free world, ten million people moved out of the Reich and resettled somewhere where they can be of benefit rather than simply being a burden.’ Heydrich smiled a secret little smile. ‘A Jew-free world: that will be my greatest achievement.’

Ella shook her head. ‘Don’t you ever have sleepless nights about conniving to destroy the lives of millions of people? Do you never stop to consider whether what you are doing is right?’

Heydrich studied Ella carefully, as though he had difficulty understanding her question, as though perplexed by her obtuseness. Suddenly he began to laugh. It was an unnaturally high-pitched laugh, which reminded Ella of the braying of a goat. ‘Right? Morality is a mutable, a subjective thing. It is not whether a thing is right that matters, my dear Miss Thomas; all that matters is victory. Victory makes all that you do correct: success is the only criterion by which we judge what is right and what is wrong.’

‘But what you are doing is barbaric … uncivilised.’

Heydrich shrugged nonchalantly. ‘As the Führer said, “Why should Man be less barbaric than Nature?” You call me “uncivilised” but the chief characteristic of civilised behaviour is cruelty. So, let history judge me’ – he laughed sardonically – ‘and as I am making history I have every confidence that I will receive excellent reviews.’

‘Have you seen and heard enough?’ asked Professor Bole quietly.

‘More than enough. It’s terrifying.’ Ella felt empty inside … nauseous. Oh, she had met racists and rednecks before but their hatred had been playground stuff compared to what she had just heard. This man – this monster – didn’t only hate those
he considered his racial inferiors but was intent on destroying them.

The image of Reinhard Heydrich flickered and faded.

Ella took a handkerchief from her sleeve and wiped her sweat-sheened brow. ‘That was really freaky. The guy was totally and utterly off his head.’

The Professor nodded. ‘Heydrich was a classic psychopath: a man unable to form any friendships and utterly socio-apathetic except where it was necessary to further his personal ambitions and the desires of the two monsters who were his role models, Hitler and Himmler. He was a man who showed no remorse or regret, indeed this complete absence of any humanity was his defining characteristic. Reinhard Heydrich was, like all other psychopaths, damaged goods.’

Just like Billy.

The Professor rose from his chair. ‘But as Heydrich’s psychosis was conjoined with a genius for administration and organisation, his madness and his talent makes him one of the most fearsome of his kind, an über-psychopath … what we call an α-Singularity.’

‘I thought Heydrich had been classified as a β-Singularity?’ interrupted the Captain.

‘In the light of developments in the Demi-Monde since the OutSet of the simulation we have had to reclassify Reini. He has, after all, taken control of two of the five Sectors of the Demi-Monde. A remarkable achievement. We have now flagged him as an α-Singularity, and when chaos and disorder are the order of the day, then α-Singularities like our friend Reini here come out to play their horrible little games.’

‘How many Singularities like Heydrich do you have loose in the Demi-Monde?’

‘At the last count? Eighteen.’

Jesus … eighteen of the bastards … eighteen like Heydrich.

Ella just hoped the cyber-walls they had built around the Demi-Monde were strong enough to contain that amount of evil.

HerEticalism
is a Covenite religion based on female supremacy and the subjugation of men. Rabidly misandric in nature, the HerEtical belief is that Demi-Mondian-wide peace and prosperity – an unfeasibly idyllic outcome given the tag ‘MostBien’ – will only be realised when men (‘non-Femmes’ in Coven-speak) accept a subordinate position within society. HerEticalism has a more aggressive sister-religion known as Suffer-O-Gettism (a contraction of Make-Men-Suffer-O-Gettism) which espouses violence as the only means of bringing change in the Demi-Monde. Suffer-O-Gettes are of the opinion that the removal of the male of the species from the breeding cycle is a vital concomitant to the securing of MostBien. Such are the unnatural and obscene sexual activities of HerEticals that they are lampooned throughout the Demi-Monde as ‘LessBiens’.

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

Trixie barely had a chance to unpin her bonnet before Crockett, the Dashwoods’ butler, attended her. ‘The master asked that you join him in his study immediately you returned home, Miss Trixiebell.’

‘Why the urgency, Crockett? Why does my father want to see me?’

‘The Comrade Commissar has not seen fit to apprise me of the answers to those questions, Miss Trixiebell. I would simply observe that he seems a trifle agitated.’

‘Well, agitated or not, he’ll just have to wait. I have to go and change …’

The butler sidled his considerable bulk between Trixie and the staircase. ‘The master emphasised the word “immediately”, Miss Trixiebell. He was most insistent upon this point.’

‘But look at me. I can’t be presented looking like this.’

‘The word was “immediately”, Miss Trixiebell.’

Her father, decided Trixie when she flounced into his study, looked decidedly unwell. His handsome face was pale and his curly hair, usually so strictly regimented by a thick dressing of macassar oil, was dishevelled. There was even – and here Trixie couldn’t believe her eyes – a spot of blood on the lapel of his high-neck frock coat.

Something must be really amiss if the unbending Comrade Commissar Algernon Dashwood had felt the need to indulge in a little Solution so early in the day. He made it a rule never to imbibe until the sun was set.

Trixie took a seat on the couch to one side of the study, tucking her grimed shoes under her skirt as she did so: the less said about the expedition she’d been about that morning the better. Unfortunately her attempted subterfuge did her no good. ‘Where have you been?’ her father asked suddenly.

When lying, Trixie had long ago come to the conclusion that it was better to stick as close to the truth as possible. ‘I went down to the docks to do some sketching.’