The Demi-Monde: Winter

by Rod Rees

  But what he found most alarming was the way Burlesque’s thin, harsh lips pulled back to reveal his three remaining teeth, a consequence of his success in the entertainment business. There was a lot of competition in the entertainment business, competition that expressed itself in a very physical manner.

  ‘You wan’ anovver drink, Wanker?’ asked Burlesque, smacking his lips in anticipation of downing another glass of Solution.

  Vanka eyed Burlesque suspiciously. For Burlesque to be buying drinks meant he wanted something. Burlesque never bought people drinks. By reputation he had the shortest arms and the deepest pockets of anyone in the Rookeries.

  ‘Yeah, I’ll have a double b-and-t.’

  Burlesque scowled and then gave a reluctant wave to a scabrous waiter. When the blood and tonic had been served he leant towards Vanka in a conspiratorial sort of way. Vanka rather wished he hadn’t: the smell coming from his armpits was repellent.

  ‘So yous still in this psychical lark, Wanker?’ Burlesque asked casually.

  ‘Might be,’ answered Vanka cautiously. Whilst he was a Licensed Psychic, the way he had obtained said licence had been rather unconventional. Not wanting to trouble the busy-body officials of the Ministry of Psychic Affairs with having to squander their time examining and interviewing him, Vanka had negotiated his licence directly with the Chief Psychic Examiner. That he had possession of a set of daguerreotypes showing the Chief Psychic Examiner in congress with someone who most certainly wasn’t his wife had certainly helped the negotiations, as had the fact that that someone hadn’t even been of the same species as the Examiner’s wife.

  ‘Well, iffn you is, then I might ‘ave a job for you.’

  Vanka suppressed a shudder. The prospect of having Burlesque Bandstand as an employer made Vanka’s teeth itch… the ones he had left anyway. Burlesque was, as far as Vanka was concerned, the foulest individual to walk the Demi-Monde, and as Burlesque lived and worked in the slums of Whitechapel the competition for that title was fierce. Burlesque might be the biggest impresario operating on the Rookeries’ ‘Blood, Grub, Shrub and Pub’ circuit but he was still a horrible, disgusting man … near-man.

  But as Vanka was on the run and in four weeks would be destitute, he decided to put his aversions and olfactory prejudices against noisome and hydrophobic people like Burlesque to one side. Preferably the upwind side.

  ‘What’s the job?’

  ‘I’m trying to take the Prancing Pig upmarket, Wanker,’ said Burlesque, without a trace of irony in his voice.

  For a moment Vanka was speechless: the association of the words ‘Pig’, ‘up’ and ‘market’ was at best risible and at worst worrying, possibly implying that Burlesque had relinquished his grip on any vestigial trace of sanity he might once have had. He looked around the pub. Even in the gloom it was easy to see that the back room of the Pig – the ‘Best Room’ as Burlesque insisted on calling it – was dirty, careworn and, if the brown tracks covering the top of the scarred and chipped table Vanka was sitting at were any indication, vermin-infested. It was difficult for him to imagine how much shit someone’s life would have to be in for them to consider the Pig ‘upmarket’.

  ‘Burlesque, believe me, the only way you’d be able to take this place upmarket is by the use of a steam-powered hoist. The Pig isn’t so much downmarket as subMantle.’ Vanka shook his head and took a sip of his freshly delivered drink. As he had anticipated, it was so watered down fish could live in it. ‘Anyway, why would you want to do that? I thought you had found your niche’ – he nodded towards the motley collection of individuals making up the customers of the Pig – ‘fleecing those of diminished intellect.’

  ‘Because some bugger is trying to kill me, Wanker,’ answered Burlesque with a rather overtheatrical look around the pub.

  ‘I’m not surprised, Burlesque: I’ve seen the acts you’ve been putting out.’

  ‘Nah, I’m serious, Wanker, I’ve had two pot-shots taken at me in the past week and I got this today.’ He delved into the inner recesses of his voluminous black coat – well, it was black now, originally, as best Vanka could tell, it had been light grey – and pulled out a grubby piece of paper. ‘Scared the shit outta me it did.’

  Wishing he was still wearing his gloves, Vanka carefully unfolded the letter and read:

  For Burlesque Bandstand

  We know it was you who betrayed the Daemon.

  You are a malevolent individual who is using his Houses of Infamy to promote the subjugation of women and to propagate hedonism and dissolute living amongst the working classes. If you don’t abandon your pernicious and misogynistic ways within the next two weeks we will execute you.

  I am prepared to make you Suffer.

  A Friend

  Burlesque took a swig of his Solution. ‘It’s a poor world when a respectable businessman like wot I am ‘as to put up wiv bin threatened. Comes to somefink when an honest bloke like wot I am ‘as got to go around heeled.’ He pulled back the side of his frock coat to display the Webley revolver holstered on his belt.

  Vanka gulped, ignoring the pain in his damaged jaw. He didn’t like violence. He didn’t even like the thought of violence. So he decided not to think about it and just shrugged his broad shoulders dismissively. Anyway, he saw threatening letters like this virtually every day, usually sent to him by aggrieved husbands. ‘What’s all this about a Daemon?’

  ‘Nuffink important,’ murmured Burlesque in an offhand manner as he gnawed at a fingernail that had already been bitten down to the quick.

  Bloody liar.

  ‘Nothing important? Don’t come it, Burlesque, how can a Daemon be classified as nothing important?’

  ‘Look, Wanker, I can’t say nuffink abart it, okay? It’s confidential.’ Burlesque tapped the side of his nose.

  ‘But was it a real Daemon?’ Vanka persisted.

  Burlesque took a quick gander around the pub. ‘Yus.’

  Vanka looked at the fat man with something approaching admiration. Daemons – not that he believed in Daemons – were things only important people in the ForthRight got involved with.

  ‘Awful, ain’t it?’ whined Burlesque. ‘An’ it don’t make sense neither. Wot’s “misogynistic” mean, Wanker?’

  ‘It means you hate women.’

  ‘Well, that’s bollocks, ain’t it, Burlesque?’ scoffed Sporting. ‘Wot you an’ me wos doin’ this lunchtime …’

  ‘Never mind wot we wos doing,’ interrupted Burlesque, as ever worried that one of his wife’s cronies might overhear. ‘The important fing is that I’ve got to take it seriously, ain’t I, Wanker? It’s awful, ain’t it?’

  Vanka nodded sympathetically. The word ‘Suffer’ was the clue. Presumably this indicated that the author was a Suffer-O-Gette and Suffer-O-Gettes had to be taken very seriously indeed. From what he’d heard there was a whole army of LessBien terrorists ready to die for the cause of women’s rights and take people like Burlesque with them as they did so.

  Sensible of them.

  ‘More accurate than awful, Burlesque. I mean a man in your line of work is bound to accumulate a few enemies.’

  Burlesque wouldn’t be consoled. ‘The Suffer-O-Gettes ‘ave got it in for me.’

  ‘So what are you planning to do?’

  ‘Like I said: I wanna move the Pig upmarket – knock the filthy comics and the pawno-contortionists and the donkeys on the head and introduce a bit ov tone to the Pig.’ Burlesque ignored Vanka’s derisive snort. ‘I was finking of ‘aving a sorry,’ he said quietly.

  13

  The Demi-Monde: 40th Day of Winter, 1004

  Biological Essentialism is a cornerstone of the UnFunDa-Mentalist doctrine. It is predicated on the principle that the sexes occupy Separate Spheres of intellectual, economic and social functionality within the Demi-Monde, and that these Separate Spheres are ordained by ABBA and are thus natural, fixed and immutable. ABBA by making the sexes biologically, psychologically and intellectually different has equipped them for differe
nt tasks in life. UnFunDaMentalism teaches that the preservation of these distinctive Spheres of Activity is vital if social harmony is to be maintained and for women this means adherence to the mantra of ‘Feeding, Breeding and MenFolk Heeding’ given to them by ABBA.

  – Cogitations on the Superior Male Essence:Thomas Aquinas, Party Rules Publications

  Blink.

  Daylight …

  Blink.

  Cold …

  Blink.

  Noisy …

  Blink.

  Smelly …

  Blink.

  Confused …

  Ella staggered, her head spinning. Her mind seemed to be a whirling muddle of facts and information.

  Ill-ucinating …

  Her brain was struggling to come to grips with PINC and the mass of data it was trying to upload regarding the Demi-Monde. Only gradually did the torrent of information subside, allowing Ella a chance to reassert control over her thought processes. And as she did so, so PINC’s enthusiasm subdued: now it simply lurked at the back of her mind, waiting like some overeager puppy dog to tell her things she might need even if she didn’t want to know them.

  Happier now, Ella took a look around. She was standing in a filthy alleyway pressed between two filthy tenement buildings. It was cold, the pavement was covered with thick snow, and the wind, sharp and biting, cut at her cheeks: so cold that the light from the gas street lamps seemed to have taken on an almost crystalline clarity. She huddled deeper into the thick fur collar of her coat and tied her bonnet a little more securely about her ears, noting as she did so that ABBA had kindly replaced the hair that had been shaved off in the Real World. She wrinkled her chilled nose: the alley stank. It seemed to be the place where the back entrances of a couple of restaurants whose owners were careless about hygiene regulations let out. Waste and refuse overflowed the bins and, even as she stood there, Ella saw a couple of fat rats scurry around. She shivered from cold and disgust.

  But although it was an unappetising place, there was no denying that it was very, very real. If Ella hadn’t known that she was now occupying a computer-generated simulation there would have been nothing to suggest that this world wasn’t as real and as substantial as the one she had been inhabiting just a moment before. It even smelt right.

  But there were differences.

  The colours of the Demi-Monde were out of kilter with those of the Real World. It was as though she were looking through a filter that leached out some colour intensity but at the same time made the light just a little brighter. ABBA had obviously tinkered around with the spectrum: maybe the computer just wanted to add a sepia tone to the Victorianesque atmosphere of the simulation. It was meant to be 1870, after all.

  The fact that the gas lights were lit worried her. It seemed too dark to be five o’clock in the afternoon. But even as she pondered she felt herself being given a mental nudge from PINC (she knew it was PINC: it was as though a brand-new piece of information had elbowed itself eagerly into her consciousness) to check the fob watch pinned to the lapel of her coat. The watch showed six o’clock, an hour later than the time the Professor had told her she would be manifesting.

  That ABBA had gotten things a little wrong Ella found simultaneously worrying and reassuring. Worrying in that maybe the data held on PINC was similarly flawed and reassuring in that when all was said and done, ABBA was just a machine.

  Unfortunately ABBA’s screw-up over the time meant she’d have to go immediately to the audition. There was no time for ‘acclimatisation’, no time for her to chill out in her room: she’d have to jump straight in at the deep end. Taking a long, calming breath – noticing as she did so that the air, laden with soot from the belching chimneys, tasted foul – she marched towards the main street that ran at right angles across the mouth of the alleyway.

  She stood there for a moment gathering her courage. Truth be told, she felt just a little panicky: she really had no idea how to go about finding Norma Williams, never mind rescuing her. She was just a girl from the wrong side of the tracks being asked to do something that was way out of her league.

  Stop it … think positively.

  She adjusted the veil that covered her face. Now that idea of ABBA’s – equipping her bonnet with a veil – was a good one. There was no point in announcing her ethnicity: this was Heydrich-ville after all.

  She swallowed hard, trying to displace the lump that had formed in her throat.

  God, she was scared.

  Ella, baby, just what have you gotten yourself into?

  Getting a grip on herself, she stepped out of the alleyway.

  Not even PINC could prepare her for what she experienced when she emerged. It was one thing to talk about how congested the Demi-Monde was, about it being a Deep-Density Urban Environment, but it was quite another to experience it. The street – Mile End, according to the grimy sign set high above her head – was full to overflowing with humanity. Never could she have imagined that so many people could be compressed into so confined a place. Oh, she knew from PINC that the Mile End was an important road leading to and from the wharves and docks that lined the Thames on the east side of the Rookeries, but even so …

  The pavements were jam-packed with pushing, rushing, shouting, screaming people: bewhiskered men in sombre suits and towering top hats; workmen wearing cloth caps and sullen expressions; women in bonnets and skirts that scraped along the pavement; and children dressed in rags and oversized boots chasing through the press of the crowd. There were also a disproportionate number of soldiers – easily identifiable by their red coats – strutting around looking brave and arrogant.

  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.