The Demi-Monde: Summer

by Rod Rees

  ‘That, if I’m not mistaken, is a quote from that pile of pseudo-intellectual effluent entitled Dealing with the Infestation of nonFemmes: The Decontamination of the Demi-Monde and written by that bulldyke LessBien bitch Dr Barbara Agemedes. It’s horse-shit: I was so disgusted with the book that I used its pages to wipe my arse. It was the only thing they were good for.’

  ‘I refuse to stand naked at the top of a ladder debating HerEticalist dogma with you, NoN Xi.’ There was another grunt and the candle the girl was holding quivered in the darkness. ‘You are fortunate that I have found the book you are searching for.’

  ‘Originally,’ began NoN Xi, as he lolled back on his cot and watched Dong E dress herself, ‘Confusionism was developed as a confrontational religion. The Master who wrote the philosophical work that underpins Confusionism – the BiAlects – believed that only through open and fervent debate and argument would the ultimate truth of the Kosmos be revealed. It is the aim of all Confusionists to reconcile the two diametrically opposed voices of Wun Zi and Too Zi, and by doing so to discover the harmony of all knowledge and thought, and to merge Yin and Yang. This merging will create the Sublime Harmony called Ying, and the achieving of Ying will bring peace and tranquillity to the Kosmos.’

  Dong E frowned: Mao had mentioned Ying in connection with the Daemon. ‘I’d never heard of this Ying of yours before today.’

  ‘Of course not. The last thing Wu wants is for people to appreciate that there was an alternative to MostBien … Ying.’ He smiled. ‘Tell me, what is the full title of the iChing?’

  ‘The iChing: The Book of Small Change.’

  ‘And the “Small Change” refers to what?’

  ‘The three coins used in consulting the iChing, which when tossed reveal the NonaGram leading to the Epigram which answers the question posed.’

  ‘Total bollocks. The “Small Change” actually refers to the ability of most NonaGrams to exist in two forms … to change between the WunZian and the TooZian form of the NonaGram and hence reveal both the Yin and the Yang aspect of the relevant Epigram. And that’s just what we are going to do now: look at the alternative TooZian answers to the questions posed by that incompetent cow TongJi Fu Shi.’ He flicked through the crisp pages of the book Dong E had brought down from the bookcase. ‘The most important Change is the one pertaining to Epigram five hundred and twelve. This converts, in its Yang form, to Epigram one, the Harmony, which reads as follows:

  To end, we must begin

  Guided, but unguided.

  Free, but bound by the Harmony of wu wei,

  The Peaceful Anger of the Truth.

  There will always be Darkness,

  But the Flower that Delights shows the Other Way.

  She turns our eyes from the Water and towards the Sun

  And saves the Messiah sent by ABBA,

  Who would lead us to the glory that is Ying.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘No one fucking understands. Most TooZians think the Master wrote it when he was pissed. But now, its meaning is obvious.’

  ‘Not to me.’

  ‘I doubt that. You might be a whore with a body that would inflame the dead, but you are a clever little thing … for a Femme, that is.’

  ‘I still don’t understand.’

  ‘Very well, let me explain. It seems that your Daemon is the Messiah – and you’ve got no idea how distasteful it is for an atheistic TooZian like me to say those words – who has been sent by ABBA to lead HumanKind to a state of Perfect Harmony that fuses Yin and Yang in Ying. The Messiah is in peril and it is incumbent on you to save her.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘The Epigram couldn’t be more precise: “But the Flower that Delights shows the Other Way.” That is obviously a reference to you – a Fresh Bloom is a flower, isn’t it? – and having seen you naked, if ever there was a “Flower that Delights”, it’s you. As for the “Other Way”, well, that must be the spurning of the perverted misandry of HerEticalism, the rejection of MoreBienism and the embracing of Ying.’

  ‘I can’t do that.’

  ‘You must: it goes on to say that you will be the one who “turns our eyes from the Water and towards the Sun”, you will be the one who turns her eyes from the Yin of HerEticalism to the Ying of understanding.’

  ‘But I can’t betray the Empress on the say-so of one Epigram.’

  ‘I thought you might be reluctant. That’s why I had you bring down this volume, Daemons, Messiahs and Other ABBArational Beliefs. I think you should read it and then decide. It’s a load of bollocks but it’s quite persuasive bollocks.’

  ‘I’ve never heard of it. Who wrote it?’

  ‘I did,’ said Xi Kang.

  ‘Oh,’ said a surprised Dong E as she eyed the thick book warily. ‘But much as I would like to read it, I can’t: books are banned in the Pavilion of Delicious Delights.’

  ‘Then let’s make it simpler,’ and with that NoN Xi Kang ripped a dozen pages out of the book. ‘Try the abridged version.’

  17

  The Forbidding City

  The Demi-Monde: 2nd Day of Summer, 1005

  The favourite pupil, Too Zi, asked the Master, ‘Why does Man have such an affinity to violence?’

  And the Master replied, ‘Man’s big problem is having a surfeit of Qi, and his stupid behaviour is the result of his desperate attempts to rid himself of this superfluity. When he is young, he does this by trying to fuck anything with a ticking body clock, and when he is in his prime, he does it by fighting other Men. Of course, by the time he reaches old age and his Qi is depleted, he is so desperate to reclaim his youth that he still goes around fucking and fighting.’

  ‘And what is the answer to this dilemma?’ asked Too Zi.

  ‘Wanking,’ replied the Master as he disappeared into the bathroom.

  The Fifth Book of BiAlects, Verse 37

  Life with the rest of the Empress’s concubines in the Pavilion of Delicious Delights was not one that Dong E found conducive to private study and reflection. Every moment of every day was confined and encoded by Li. Li informed them what it was appropriate to wear, which songs it was most propitious to sing, and which board games it was permitted to play. Li told them when to wash, when to eat, when to rest … everything. And to ensure that Li was meticulously adhered to, there was always the hateful presence of NoN Mao ZeDong noting and punishing every indiscretion and every violation of protocol committed by the Fresh Blooms.

  In this monitoring Mao was enthusiastically aided and abetted by Noble Consort Yu Lang, the most senior of all the Empress’s concubines and hence her favourite, and being the favourite, she was permanently worried that her position would one day be usurped by a younger and fresher rival. She was suspicious of any Fresh Bloom who seemed to be finding favour with the Empress and hence Dong E’s invitation to attend the Rite of 4Telling had been very badly received.

  The interrogation commenced immediately Dong E returned from her adventure in the Gallery of Literary Profundity. ‘You were summoned to an audience in the Hall of Supreme Harmony, Fresh Bloom Dong E. This is a rare honour for one so low. Come, tell me what occurred.’

  Dong E bowed. ‘You must forgive me, Noble Consort Yu Lang, but I have been pressed most earnestly by Her Majesty to remain silent regarding what I saw and heard in her presence.’

  Yu Lang bridled and slapped her fan angrily onto the palm of her hand. She beckoned to her GuardianNoN, the repulsive Wang Jingwei. ‘NoN Wang Jingwei, this nothing of a Fresh Bloom refuses to divulge what happened this morning when she was called to the Hall of Supreme Harmony. Have you ever heard such insolence?’

  The fat NoN shook his head so hard that his jowls wobbled. ‘Never! It is the duty of all Fresh Blooms to be obedient to those placed above them and, if I may say so, there are none more elevated in the Imperial Seraglio than yourself, Noble Consort Yu.’

  Servile bastard.

  ‘Come, no more of this nonsense, Fresh Bloom Dong E, tell Noble Consort Yu
Lang what transpired this morning.’

  Again Dong E bowed. ‘With the deepest and most profound regret, Revered GuardianNoN Wang Jingwei, I must decline to tell you. I am bound by oath to remain silent on these matters. It grieves me most earnestly to refuse your commands, but my pledge to Her Imperial Majesty cannot be denied.’

  They beat her. Using a cane, they beat her. But no matter how hard they slashed it across her bottom, she refused to speak and eventually Wang Jingwei called a halt – obviously concerned about the trouble there would be if the Empress called for Dong E that night and she was unable to walk – and he and Yu Lang left her sobbing and alone locked in an ante room with only a candle for company.

  Which was what Dong E had planned all along.

  As soon as she heard the key turn in the lock, Dong E stopped crying, dried her eyes and took a few moments to regain her composure. She had deliberately antagonised Yu Lang knowing that as punishment she would be condemned to a couple of hours of solitary confinement, and this, she had learnt, was the only way she could achieve privacy. She retrieved the sheets of paper Xi Kang had given her from where they were hidden down the back of her kimono – where their presence had saved her from the worst of the caning – and settled back to read.

  Then, just as quickly, stopped reading.

  No wonder Daemons, Messiahs and Other ABBArational Beliefs was a banned book. In the first few lines Xi Kang denied the existence of ABBA, and as this, in turn, denied the divinity of Empress Wu it was an opinion that was punishable by death. To be caught reading such seditious material would lead to a very swift and very painful Plucking. Dong E took a quick – and totally unnecessary – look around the room before allowing curiosity to drag her eyes back to the page.

  She read for ten minutes and the more she read the more she came to understand why Xi Kang – TooZian radical that he was – had been banished to the Gallery of Literary Profundity, especially when he opined that once the amount of Qi within the Demi-Monde rises to a Critical Level (nineteen years from now in the year 1005 AC) …

  This year!

  … then the world will self-destruct in an orgy of violence, an event which I named the Big Bang … or, as those of a religious bent prefer to call it, Ragnarok. A study of the religious tracts indicates that Ragnarok will signal a shift from Yin/Yang dualism to a merging of Yin and Yang, creating a harmonised Demi-Monde suffused with Ying. It will be at this moment when the Messiah – whose manifestation is foretold in all Demi-Mondian religions – will arrive to lead the faithful to ABBAsoluteness.

  This was sacrilege of the most pernicious kind. It was the bedrock of HerEticalism that the Demi-Monde was about to enter the Second Age of the Femmes, the Millennium when Femmes would achieve mastery – MISStery – of the world and nonFemmes, with their passion for violence and mayhem, would be removed from power. But what Xi Kang was suggesting was that there was another interpretation of the movement of the Kosmos, that the Age to come was not one dominated by Yin – the female essence – but one that would usher in the Time of Perfect Harmony, of Ying, the elegant and perfect merging of the female and the male essences, the combining of Yin and of Yang. And again Dong E was struck by the similarity this concept had with Normalism, the non-violent creed of the Daemon Norma Williams.

  Worse was to come with Xi Kang arguing that there would be a Messiah sent by ABBA to lead the people of the Demi-Monde to ABBAsoluteness … to oneness with ABBA. Again this was a disturbingly heretical suggestion. Whilst the coming of a Messiah was fundamental to many of the religions of the Demi-Monde, it was strenuously denied by HerEticalism. How could it be, HerEticalism asked, that ABBA would need to send a Messiah to the Demi-Monde when She already had a representative in this world in the guise of the ABBA-blessed Empress Wu? It was Empress Wu, all Covenites were taught, who was the Messiah. It was she who would bring Femmes to the precious state of MostBien and who would drive MALEvolence from the world.

  But if Dong E was to believe Xi Kang, the message was clear: the Messiah would be a Daemon … just like this Norma Williams.

  Astonishing though this was, it was a paragraph towards the end of the extract that turned her astonishment into incredulity.

  It is the struggle between the Messiah and the Beast that forms the basis for the Final Conflict. But the Messiah will not fight alone, having the help of PaPa Legba (sometimes called the Trickster, or the Wily Fox), the Warrior (sometimes called the Battle-Maiden or grim Surt) and, finally, the Fresh Bloom, destined by Fate and her Ancestors to come to the Messiah’s aid when all have deserted her.

  A Fresh Bloom was destined by Fate to come to the Messiah’s aid!

  For a moment Dong E sat stunned. Then she checked the imprint date shown on the fly of the mutilated book. The book had been printed long before she had come to the Forbidding City, long before she had been named a Fresh Bloom. It was a strange and a very upsetting coincidence.

  Dong E sat for long minutes in silent consideration of what she had read trying to attain wu wei. Once she had accomplished this she delved into her pocket and drew out the three coins she used when consulting the iChing, settled her body and mind, voiced her question – What is to be my role with regard to the Daemon? – and then with a dexterity honed by much practice threw the three coins nine times.

  The NonaGram created gave her considerable pause. Like all Fresh Blooms, she had committed the five hundred and twelve Epigrams of the iChing to memory so she knew what the sixty-sixth one said, and as she sat in that dark and dank room, she felt the heavy hand of Fate on her shoulder. Now she understood that she was the girl destined to save the Messiah.

  So like an island

  Alone in a raging sea,

  Like a lamp

  Shining in the darkest night,

  So Good must resist Evil.

  Know you this:

  To deny is to surrender,

  To kowtow is to submit,

  You, the Superior Soul, must Stand.

  ‘Why me?’

  ‘Why not?’ countered Xi Kang.

  ‘But I’m a nothing. I’m just a Fresh Bloom and a not very important Fresh Bloom at that.’

  ‘ABBA moves in mysterious ways.’ Xi Kang stopped himself. ‘Bollocks, I must be going senile. We TooZians don’t believe in ABBA so it’s impossible for Her – or perhaps Him – to move at all. So let’s just say that you have been ordained by Fate to do this great task.’

  ‘That’s a cop-out: Fate is just another name for ABBA.’

  Xi Kang took another long gulp from the bottle of Solution Dong E had brought as a gift. ‘You got me there. I always thought the Master, when he was writing the BiAlects, never really had his heart in it when he was composing the parts relating to the non-existence of ABBA. What did you think of my book?’

  ‘Disturbing … infuriating.’

  ‘Excellent! I have always been of the opinion that a book that doesn’t infuriate at least half of its readers isn’t a book at all, it’s a brochure. So which bits did you find especially troublesome?’

  ‘Well … the part that says a Fresh Bloom will come to the Messiah’s aid when all have deserted her. Is my Celestial name really used in ancient mythology?’

  ‘Frequently.’

  ‘It might be just a coincidence.’

  ‘Could be, but somehow I don’t think so. Rather I’m inclined to think a prophecy made at a distance of two thousand years that turns out to be true smacks of divine guidance … fuck … smacks of Fate. It seems, my deliciously beautiful wanton, that you have a great role to play in deciding the destiny of the Messiah and hence of the Demi-Monde.’

  ‘And it is the Daemon who is the Messiah?’

  ‘That’s what the iChing says.’

  ‘Well, it’s one thing to be tasked with saving the Messiah, it’s quite another to actually do it. She’s being kept incommunicado in an apartment in the Pavilion of Silent Repose, an apartment guarded twenty-four hours a day by GuardNoNs.’

  Xi Kang shrugged. ‘And
now we come to the payment I can demand for providing you with the insight into the Changes. This Daemon, after all, has got to eat and to have her laundry done, and you are a very pretty little trollop …’

  Part Three

  The Column of Loci

  18

  Venice

  The Demi-Monde: 8th Day of Summer, 1005

  Little has come down to us from the days before the Confinement. In the chaos that accompanied the final defeat of Lilith, efforts – misguided, but eminently understandable – were made by the new rulers of the Demi-Monde to eradicate all records of those terrible days. It is said that the smoke from the pyres made of the books of Lilithian lore blotted out the Sun. Miraculously, one book survived the conflagration: the infamous Flagellum Hominum: The Scourge of HumanKind. This epic work, supposedly written by Lilith herself, is believed to contain all the knowledge and the enchantments of the Lilithi – the followers of Lilith – but even here there is uncertainty. Most of the book is written in the – as yet – undeciphered Pre-Folk A script and hence the vast majority of what it contains is unintelligible.

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

  ‘I wish to see the Column.’

  Nikolai Kondratieff bowed, using it as a means of hiding the apprehension he felt sure was reflected on his face. The sudden appearance of the Marquis de Sade – or, as he was now, Senior Prelate de Sade – was a disturbing event. But what made his appearance all the more disconcerting was that he was accompanied by Grand Vizier Selim the Grim and Doge IMmanual’s twin brother, Duke William, both of whom, if the scuttlebutt was to be believed, were mad, bad and dangerous to know.

  Having met Selim before at the unveiling of the Column, Kondratieff was prepared for how intimidating the man was but nothing could have prepared him for how threatened he felt to be in the presence of Duke William. The boy brought the darkness with him.