The Demi-Monde: Winter

by Rod Rees

  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.

  14

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

  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.’

  ‘Don’t get shirty wiv me, luv,’ admonished the boy with an angry puff on his pipe. ‘Sos yous sing jad, right?’

  Ella referenced PINC. Jad was the swing music popular in the JAD – the nuJu Autonomous District of NoirVille – and it was widely thought in the Demi-Monde that only Shades could sing jad in anything approaching an authentic manner.

  ‘Yeah, I’m a jad singer.’

  ‘Burlesque ‘as left me ‘ere to tell yous chirps that yous is to go round to the back room.’ He nodded down an alleyway that flanked the Pig.

  She flipped the boy a penny for his advice and trudged down the dark alley. Twenty yards along she came to a pair of red doors. Ella had never been in a real – well, as real as anything could be in the Demi-Monde – English pub before and she was taken aback by the concoction of smells she was subject to: the sweet stench of rancid sweat, the tart aroma of spilt Solution and the undercurrent of damp and decay. And if her nose took a moment to adjust to the Pig so too did her eyes. She had to squint against the glare of the dozens of gas lights that illuminated the place, the light reflected, in turn, by the huge mirrors that decorated the walls.

  As it was early in the evening there were only about thirty or forty people in the pub. Most of the clientele seemed to be workmen enjoying an after-work pint and taking the opportunity to chat up the somewhat fly-blown girl idly polishing glasses behind the bar. There was also a circle of five or six heavily made-up women in rather risqué costumes drinking Solution – pinkies held out from the glass in an imitation of refined behaviour – around a table on the far side of the room. A trio of musicians were setting up on the low stage to the front of the bar.

  When she walked in every eye in the room turned in her direction.

  A quick reference to PINC told Ella that Burlesque Bandstand was the fat and scruffily dressed man seated at the table near the stage. He had a rather too well-endowed blonde girl – a floozy called Sporting Chance – by his side and a long-haired man sitting across from him. Long-haired or not, unfortunately – and worryingly – PINC couldn’t tell her anything about him. He was a mystery: a tall, lean mystery with a big bruise on the side of his face. Despite the bruise she thought Mr Mystery to be rather good-looking and she liked the careless way he had draped himself over his chair: the word that came to Ella’s mind to describe him was ‘louche’, closely followed by ‘rascal’.

  She strode across the sawdust-strewn floor of the pub and presented herself at the booth.

  ‘Excuse me, Sir, but would I be correct in thinking that I am addressing Mr Burlesque Bandstand?’

  15

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

  nuJuism is the religion practised by the Demi-Monde’s Sectorless nuJu community. nuJuism is an unrelentingly pessimistic religion which teaches that suffering and hardship is life-affirming and necessary to prepare nuJus for the rigours to be experienced during the Time of Tribulation (aka the End of Days). It is a central tenet of nuJuism that there will arise a Messiah who will lead the nuJu people safely through Tribulation and to the Promised Land. As with everything to do with the nuJus this is, of course, pernicious nonsense.

  – Religions of the Demi-Monde:

  Otto Weininger, University of Berlin Publications

  Vanka looked up. It was difficult to see the girl who was addressing Burlesque as she had a light directly behind her and she was wearing a veil. All he could make out was a silhouette. It was a very nice silhouette though, without any of the usual humps and bumps that were de rigueur for women who frequented the Pig. From what he could see, the woman – girl! – was everything he had ever dreamed of in an assistant. Okay, she was a bit scrawny, but still …

  He shuffled his chair around to get a better look, hoping, as he did so, that she didn’t have a beard. He held his breath as she pulled back the veil that so completely covered her face. She didn’t have a beard. She was quite lovely. Young, slim and lovely: perfect.

  Except that she was black. Well, not black exactly: she was a wonderful light caramel colour. But there was no denying she was a Shade and this was the Rookeries.

  And if any of Archie Clement’s SS thugs ever saw her, there would be Hel to pay: Shades weren’t popular with the SS, who were liable to deal with them pretty viciously. As far as they saw it the ForthRight was a Shade-free zone and they would fight to keep it that way. But as a PsyChick the girl would be perfect. Even her colour would be useful: it’d bring a touch of the exotic to the proceedings. He could bill her as a WhoDoo mambo. It’d hide the bruising too, if the SS ever caught up with her.

  Burlesque didn’t seem to notice the girl’s skin colour, in fact as Vanka remembered it he had specifically wanted a Shade singer. The punters liked Shade birds: they were sexier that the fat Anglo items Burlesque usually employed. In fact this girl was so sexy that even Burlesque was persuaded to be pleasant. ‘Good evening, m’dear,’ he crooned as his eyes made a professional inventory of the girl’s body. ‘I am indeed Burlesque Bandstand: purveyor of alcoholic beverages an’ fine victuals, an’ impresario extraordinaire. An’ to ‘oo do I ‘ave the pleasure of introducing myself?’ Burlesque used a boot to shove a chair out from under the table and gestured the girl into it. She sat down and now, illuminated by the candle that sputtered in the middle of the table, Vanka could see her better.

  She wasn’t lovely.

  She was more than lovely. She was beautiful and very, very clean. He couldn’t remember when he had seen anybody that clean before or who smelt so … nice. The bouquet of violets and strawberries that shrouded the girl reminded him of days in the park and walks in the woods, which was remarkable because, as far as he could remember, he had never been in a park nor had he ever walked in a wood. She was so clean that he had to resist the urge to stretch out a hand and touch her shimmering black hair. The girl smiled – revealing the whitest teeth he had ever seen – and thrust out a slim, elegant hand in the direction of Burlesque, each finger adorned by a beautifully manicured and varnished nail.

  Burlesque looked at the hand in bemusement and then, reluctantly, took the girl’s fingertips in his own mitt and gave the hand a cautious shake. Vanka could understand Burlesque’s trepidation: when people shoved a h
and in your direction in the Rookeries it was usually wrapped around the handle of a knife.

  ‘My name’s Ella Thomas,’ the girl said softly.

  ‘An’ I’m Sportin’ Chance,’ said Burlesque’s girlfriend, sticking out a hand whilst simultaneously giving her beau a filthy look. Sporting obviously wasn’t keen on competition, especially good-looking competition.

  ‘Delighted to meet you, Miss Chance.’

  ‘An’ I’m delighted to meet yous, Miss Thomas,’ interrupted Burlesque. ‘An’ this is my mate, Wanker.’

  ‘Colonel Vanka Ivanovich Maykov: Licensed Occultist,’ Vanka corrected as he took the girl’s hand and shook it. He cursed himself as he did so: he had been so smitten by her beauty that he had forgotten to use an alias, and for all he knew she could be an agent of Skobelev. But gazing into those wonderful limpid eyes, he didn’t think so: no one so lovely could be so venal. As he shook the girl’s hand his cold reading techniques came into play. Her skin was so soft that he knew she’d never done a decent day’s work in her life: she was either a gentlewoman fallen on hard times or an expensive hooker. Unfortunately his instincts told him to put his money on her being the former.

  Shame.

  ‘‘Ow may I ‘elp you, Miss Thomas?’ smarmed Burlesque. ‘I’ve come to audition as a jad singer.’ The girl’s voice tinkled like a bell through the room.

  ‘A jad singer?’ Burlesque almost choked.

  A frown creased the girl’s perfect forehead. ‘Yes, you’ve a notice on the door of your pub. It says you’re looking for a chirp… a jad singer. I understand the auditions are being held here.’ ‘Well, forgive my surprise but yous don’t look much like a jad singer. They tend to be bigger than wot yous is.’

  The girl smiled her wonderful smile. ‘Well, I guess I’m one of the new generation of less-big jad singers.’ She thought for a moment. ‘People tell me, Mr Bandstand, that I’ve got a good voice and I can sing just about anything, so why don’t you try me out?’