by Rod Rees
‘Actor?’
‘Ready!’ her hairdresser shouted back as he gave Sally’s blonde wig a final fluff.
And when Sally checked in the mirror she had to admit that she was indeed ‘ready’. Sally wondered if she should put the hairdresser down for a “thank-you fuck” but then he looked gay.
Too bad.
THE GATHERING, LAS VEGAS: THE REAL WORLD
Burl did his best to keep the truck edging forward but it was a delicate business. With so many people jumping and dancing around the pickup it was difficult to nudge his way through the crowd without running any of the buggers over. But somehow he managed it. With Oddie yelling instructions to him over the din of the cheering Fun/Funs he gradually manoeuvred the truck through the SuperBowl’s gates – giving the finger to the IB agent guarding it as he went – and then steered in the general direction of the stage. He gave another long toot on the truck’s air horn. He was beginning to enjoy himself.
Such was the press that it took him almost thirty minutes to drive the mile from the gate to the foot of the stage, and the nearer he got to the stage, the more impressed he became. Sure, he’d expected something grand and lavish, but this was almost beyond belief. It was a rock festival stage writ large, decorated by huge faux-Grecian columns and equipped with Flexi-Plexi screens bigger than any he’d ever imagined existed. And there standing in front of the stage was a huge pyramid, modelled on the Monument, that seemed to shimmer with a green glow under the arena’s floodlights.
Courtesy of the cameraBots hovering around the truck, his astonishment was shared with all of the millions of people pressed into the SuperBowl, his picture projected onto the giant Flexi-Plexis, showing him, mouth ajar, in fifty-foot-high 3D. An embarrassed Burl gave the crowd a wave, just grateful he hadn’t been caught picking his nose.
But if Burl was astonished, it was as nothing to the amazement of the singer who had been trilling away when Norma made her entrance. Immediately the singer realised who it was that was causing all the fuss, he waved to his band to stop and then pointed in Norma’s direction.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, it gives me enormous pleasure to announce that Norma Williams, leader of the Fun/Funs, has arrived. I ask you to give her the welcome she deserves.’
MOUNT YAMANTAU, BASHKORTOSTAN: THE REAL WORLD
Hel was an accurate description of Thaddeus Bole’s office: as the Norse netherworld had also been called Sleet-Cold, the parallels, Ella decided, were obvious. Walking into Thaddeus Bole’s office was like walking into an enormous refrigerator.
She shivered: refrigerators were not places to be standing in when all you were wearing was a smile and a load of goosebumps.
Blinking, she stepped further into the room, trying to adjust her eyes to the gloom but it was difficult. There was only a single low-powered reading lamp providing illumination, this sited on a desk on the far side of the room, the desk separated from the main part of the office by a floor-to-ceiling and wall-to-wall ImPeno-Glass security screen. With the room being so huge and the desk set so far back from the door, this timid illumination did little to lessen the darkness, the room’s shadows being sculpted rather than extinguished by the light.
Apart from the desk and an array of wall-mounted clocks, the room was almost bare: no bookcases, no filing cabinets and no pictures or ornamentation of any kind. As far as Ella could see in the half-light, the only other furniture was a pair of guest chairs arranged in front of the ImPeno-Glass screen, chairs which looked so uncomfortable that the impression they communicated was that Bole was determined his visitors’ stay in his sanctum would be brief. The thought flicked through Ella’s head that perhaps this choice of seating was as popular with Bole’s visitors as it was with the man himself.
Ella saw her host enter the office and sit himself down behind the desk. ‘Good morning, Miss Thomas,’ came the greeting from behind the screen. ‘My name is Thaddeus Bole. I am Grand Ipsissimus of the Most Secret Order of Grigori. Welcome, Lilith, to the home of my people.’
TERROR INCOGNITA: THE DEMI-MONDE
‘It is time,’ the priest said as he unlocked the cell where Trixie was being held. ‘The signal rocket has been fired by the Rebel Crockett indicating that the Polish workers are safe and now His Holiness expects you to fulfil your side of the bargain.’
A weary Trixie stood up from her bed. ‘My father made me swear an oath to raise the Column and we Dashwoods are nothing if not dutiful of oaths. There is, though, one thing—’
‘You are not in a position to make demands, Rebel Dashwood.’
Trixie laughed. ‘With six million people waiting for me to perform my miracle I don’t think there’s ever been a better time to make demands. I’m not going anywhere unless I have Major Wysochi by my side.’
‘His Holiness anticipated that this might be one of your requests.’ He stood aside to allow Wysochi – a somewhat bashed-about Wysochi – to be pushed into the cell.
‘Good evening, Colonel.’
‘I think, Feliks, that given the circumstances we find ourselves in, we can dispense with the honorifics. It’s so good to see you again.’ She bent forward and kissed him on the lips.
‘Enough,’ snarled the priest, and Trixie allowed him to lead her and Wysochi from the cell. It took her a moment to acclimatise herself to the scene that awaited her. There were so many people attending the Ceremony: it had been one thing to hear Crowley boast that six million people would be gathering on Terror Incognita but it was quite another to actually see them. It seemed to her remarkable that so many people could have been persuaded to make the trip, but then, as she looked up to the Pyramid that flickered with a strange shimmering light, she realised that this was a special night … a night when no one could refuse to be present. This was the night when the fate of the Demi-Monde would be decided … the night when the victor of Ragnarok would be crowned. It was then that the immensity of what she was doing was brought home to her, and for an instant she despaired. She had fought so hard against Heydrich, but now the struggle was over: she had been betrayed by love … her father’s love for her. He had been determined to save her and was willing to do anything to achieve that end, even if it meant surrendering the Demi-Monde to the ForthRight and to the corrupt creed of UnFunDaMentalism. That he could do such a thing was almost beyond belief, but he had.
What made it all the more depressing was that she was sure that as soon as she contrived to have the Column moved to the summit of the Great Pyramid, Heydrich would order her and Wysochi executed. Her father had been blinded by love and now she was trapped by her oath to him.
As always, Wysochi seemed to sense her dilemma. ‘Don’t worry, Trixie, your father was a clever man; he’d never ask you to do something that was wicked or senseless.’
Trixie nodded and then turned to the priest. ‘I will need the loan of a pocket watch … one with a second-hand.’
The priest frowned. ‘That will take a moment to procure, Rebel Dashwood.’
TIME FACILITY, NEVADA: THE REAL WORLD
Rivets could feel the sweat forming under his jacket and this despite the chilled ambience of TiME. He was sweating on Ella. He had tried to give her a TELEpath prompt but there had been no response, so all he could assume was that either she was dead or her PINC had been disabled. And without Ella it would be impossible to destroy the Grigori.
A distracted Rivets followed Madden and Dong E down the steel staircase to the floor of the chamber, only half-listening to what Madden was spouting.
‘TiME is, in essence, a device that compresses matter to impossibly small dimensions. It achieves this by the use of the solid iron Compression Spheres such as the pair you see standing before you, each covered with a wafer-thin sheet of Etirovac, the Etirovac activated by passing almost a million volts of electricity into the Sphere. When a Sphere is rotated at a velocity of two hundred thousand revolutions per second the activated Etirovac absorbs gravity and compresses it to nothingness.’
Rivets felt Madden loo
king at him, obviously expecting him to respond. ‘Surely there aren’t any bearings capable of withstanding those sort of mechanical loadings.’ Not that he gave a shit … all he was worried about was Ella.
‘The Compression Spheres are suspended on Cavorite Couplings,’ explained Madden, and here he pointed to a cylindrical node about a metre high and a metre in diameter standing on the floor directly beneath each Compression Sphere. ‘The anti-gravity force emitted by the coupling holds the Sphere aloft, which obviates the need for a mechanical connection, and hence there is no friction.’
Madden shepherded them nearer to the huge Compression Spheres, giving them a better appreciation of the enormous weight and size of the iron balls. Fortunately, Dong E seemed to sense how distracted Rivets was and took over the conversation. ‘How small will the Compression Spheres be … er, compressed to?’ she asked.
‘To nothingness. As a consequence of its ferocious rotation and its Etirovac coating, a Compression Sphere is condensed to a size so minute it is beyond the capacity of any instrument to measure. Suffice it to say, by my calculations, when the sphere is fully compressed it has a density of about 20 trillion trillion trillion tons per cubic inch, enough to distort space–time … enough to create a black hole. And when two of these rents in space–time are linked, they produce a bridge – a Duality – through which we transmit our Message Spheres.’
Madden directed their attention towards the ceiling. ‘Each floor-mounted Cavorite Coupling has its twin on the ceiling. By the careful positioning of these two couplings it is possible to configure the angle and direction of the black hole created by the Compression Sphere, this being necessary to ensure that the two black holes – the one we are making here in the present and the one already formed in the past – can be locked together to produce a Cavor Duality. The computers operating TiME automatically compensate for the movement of the Earth – its orbit around the Sun, its rotation, even continental drift – to ensure the synchronisation of the two black holes we are trying to mate.’
‘What’s the thing that looks like a ray gun up on the ceiling?’ asked Dong E.
‘By calling it a “ray-gun”, Dong E, you are much closer to the truth than you realise, though it would be better to call it a “rail-gun”. This is the Impellor Unit which injects the Temporal Projectile containing the Message Sphere into the centre of the Cavor Interface – the junction between the two black holes that make up the Duality. As a Projectile has to survive the rigours of traversing the Interface, the coating of Cavorite we give it must be almost an inch thick and, whilst the cost of producing so much Cavorite is simply colossal, without it the Message Sphere wouldn’t survive. When the Interface opens – and remember, it opens for just the briefest of moments – the Projectile is fired into its mouth, the Cavorite coating the Projectile bullying aside the gravitational elastic trying to close the Interface.’
‘How does it know when to fire?’ asked Dong E.
‘The merging of two black holes to form a Duality is signalled by a huge burst of light released when gravity is negated. The Impellor is fired the instant this luminescence reaches a certain level of intensity.’ Madden gave his two guests a smile. ‘Now let me show you the Control Room.’
MOUNT YAMANTAU, BASHKORTOSTAN: THE REAL WORLD
Even without the assistance of PINC Ella knew who Thaddeus Bole was, but more importantly she knew what he was. Thaddeus Bole was a Grigori. Not a pure Grigori, but pure enough that his Fragile aspect had been almost completely subsumed. He was very tall, had luminescently white skin and when he took off his shaded glasses Ella could see his snake eyes in all their repellent glory.
Determined to take the bull by the horns, Ella strode across the room, coming to stand a couple of feet shy of the yellow line and the ‘lethal defence mechanism’ Zolotov had spoken about. She plonked herself down on one of the chairs and then blew on her hands trying to generate some warmth.
Thaddeus Bole noted the action. ‘Are you cold, Miss Thomas?’
‘No, I’m not “cold”… I’m somewhat south of “cold”; I think I’m well into freezing my ass off territory. If I were being surveilled by people using thermal imaging equipment they’d be forced to conclude that I have no feet.’
‘Do I detect sarcasm?’ There was a note of peevishness in Bole’s voice.
‘Irony, Bole, irony.’
‘I am not an enthusiast of irony, Miss Thomas.’
‘Nor, it would appear, of central heating,’ Ella riposted.
‘And in this surmise you are correct. I prefer to occupy an environment held at a low ambient temperature in order that bacteria are not encouraged to breed.’
‘Ah, yes, the all-powerful Thaddeus Bole is forced to live in a microbiologically sterile atmosphere, otherwise he will be brought low by the smallest of pathogens. Do you never stop to think, Bole, that if Nature is so antagonistic towards you then, perhaps, you have no place in this world?’
‘Rather, I believe, it is indicative of my mastery of Nature that, despite these deficiencies, I still survive.’
‘So tell me, how many Grigori are there hiding away here?’
‘Pure-blooded Grigori … a little under a thousand.’
‘A thousand? So few? After so many thousands of years I’d have thought—’
‘You of all people, Miss Thomas,’ Bole interrupted, ‘must know that we Grigori were never the most … passionate of people and inbreeding has somewhat diminished our ability to sire offspring.’
‘Inbreeding also produced the albinism, heliophobia, argyria and alliumphobia that your type is afflicted with, Bole, and, of course, your need to regularly ingest blood. How does it feel to be a vampire?’
‘I find that epithet somewhat insulting, Miss Thomas. It is true that the Grigori have suffered some genetic diminishment during our time hidden here in Yamantau, but now, thanks to the Demi-Monde, we are on the brink of breaking free of these genetic shackles. The Grigori are poised to take command of this world. Unlike the Lilithi – of whom you are the last surviving representative – the Grigori have a very real future on this planet. Admittedly, we will have had to arrange things – rearrange things – so that we bring a little fresh blood into our breeding pool, but this is now well in hand. Of course, in the course of this rearrangement, the role of the Fragiles is to be the subject of some … amendment’ – Bole chuckled to himself – ‘but life as fodder is, I believe, one they will find infinitely preferable to one of extinction.’
TERROR INCOGNITA: THE DEMI-MONDE
It took Captain Roberts a couple of minutes to summon the courage to tap General Clement on the shoulder and the look he got persuaded him that he might have been better advised not to have disturbed the man. Clement seemed to be in very intimate conversation with the young lady to his right, a young lady who, from the amount of cleavage she was displaying, wasn’t particularly mindful of the more restrictive tenets of UnFunDaMentalism.
‘What the fuck do you want, Roberts, cain’t you see that ah’m a trifle engaged with Lady Agnes here?’
‘I apologise for my interruption, Comrade General, but I think there may be something wrong happening.’
‘The only thing “wrong”, Captain Roberts, is yo’ jabbering.’
‘General … I’m sorry … the ForthRight is in danger.’
Roberts’ desperation must have communicated itself. Clement pushed the doxy’s hand off his thigh and turned his full attention towards the captain. ‘In danger, Captain?’
‘I think His Holiness might have misinterpreted the Flagellum Hominum.’
Clement stared at the captain for several long seconds. ‘You sure, Captain? ’cos if you’re wrong, your nuts are gonna end up in a wringer that’s being cranked mighty hard.’
Roberts swallowed. ‘I’m very sure, Comrade General.’
‘Explain.’
And that’s what Roberts did.
THE GATHERING, LAS VEGAS: THE REAL WORLD
Norma had seen people crowd-sur
f before but had never imagined it would happen to her. She was lifted off the back of the truck, passed over the heads of the Fun/Funs, and then set gently down at the foot of the stairs leading up to the stage. She waited a moment for Burl and Oddie to join her and was just about to climb up on stage when Oddie put a restraining hand on her arm.
‘I think you could do with a little TLC,’ she advised and it took just one look at the huge Flexi-Plexi screens for Norma to judge that it was good advice. Riding on the back of a pickup truck through the Nevada desert wasn’t the greatest way of preparing for a performance that would be beamed to millions – billions – of Polly viewers. Signalling to the singer that he should carry on playing, she ducked into the wings.
TERROR INCOGNITA: THE DEMI-MONDE
The priest returned five minutes later and handed Trixie a rather fine Hunter pocket watch which, she was pleased to see, possessed a second-hand. She gave the stem a whirl to make sure that it was properly wound and then walked towards the Column. ‘Okay, Wysochi, we’re going to have to synchronise our movements.’ She leant closer to him so that the priest couldn’t hear what she said. ‘My father’s solution to the enigma that is the raising of the Column turned on the phrase in the Flagellum Hominum that says “progress the Column by seconds”. His belief is that the numbers on each of the nine platforms relate to the number of seconds they must be rested upon in order that they may be activated. The number on the first platform is two so it’s a quick two-second hop on and off.’
THE GATHERING, LAS VEGAS: THE REAL WORLD
Sally Summers wasn’t too sure what was going on. One moment she was standing there trying to get herself into the zone ready to perform as ‘Norma Williams’ and the next all hell had broken loose. People started running around, there were shouts of ‘Norma Williams is here’ and the whole backstage area descended into chaos. Sally wasn’t happy: as far as she knew, Norma Williams was in the Betty Ford Clinic so whoever was posing as her was a fraud, and more importantly a fraud who was intent on stealing her gig.
