The Demi-Monde: Winter (20 page)

That conversation with the Captain had taken place yesterday and, ever diligent, Trixie had noted it in her journal.

Another ten minutes dragged past before she saw the Captain and the Daemon turn back towards the house. It was a signal
that she should be stirring herself: breakfast would be being served and her father was a stickler for punctuality. And since the Daemon had been in residence, breakfasts had become amusing events: amusing but quite testing. It was one thing to debate current affairs over the breakfast table with her father, it was quite another to do it in front of a Checkya agent like Dabrowski.

When Trixie bustled into the dining room, she found her father already seated at the breakfast table. He grunted a ‘good morning’ in response to Trixie’s greeting, then retreated back behind his paper. Captain Dabrowski and the Daemon joined them shortly afterwards, having removed their valenkis and changed into their indoor shoes.

‘I have persuaded Cook to provide you with a better selection of fruits this morning, Miss Williams,’ Trixie announced as the Daemon seated itself. ‘I am assured that the dates and the apricots are quite edible and that the apples are of passable quality.’ Here she could barely conceal her revulsion: the thought of anyone eating the rather desiccated apples that Cook had retrieved from the cold store was disgusting.

And then there was the way the Daemon ate the fruit.

‘You are very kind, Lady Trixiebell, to go to all this trouble on my account,’ murmured the Daemon as it took one of the apples onto its plate.

‘Not at all, Miss Williams, but you must be aware that consuming so much fruit is liable to give you colic.’

The Daemon laughed. ‘I don’t think we’ll ever agree about what constitutes a healthy diet. I don’t have your penchant for dairy products and fried foods.’

‘Vital if one is to survive the Winter,’ sniffed Trixie’s father from behind his paper. ‘Everyone needs a covering of fat. It helps keep out the cold.’

‘Well, where I come from, Comrade Commissar …’

‘And where might that be?’ enquired Captain Dabrowski as he ladled bacon and kidneys onto his plate.

‘Never you mind, Captain Dabrowski,’ replied the Daemon lightly and rather too teasingly in Trixie’s opinion. The creature was actually flirting with Captain Dabrowski! ‘As I was saying, where I come from there is a belief that a surfeit of fat can raise cholesterol, which in turn can lead to a blockage of the circulatory system.’

Circulatory system? What in the Demi-Monde was a circulatory system?
Another note for the journal.

‘Stuff and nonsense,’ muttered Dashwood as he brusquely turned the page of The Stormer.

Unperturbed, the Daemon proceeded to slice the apple neatly into quarters and to eat each piece in turn. This was the part of breakfast that Trixie found most upsetting. That the Daemon didn’t peel and core the apple first was disgusting and potentially very dangerous to the maintenance of a healthy astral ether: everyone knew that the eating of pips and skin led to the most profound constipation.

‘Coffee, Miss?’ enquired the maid and the Daemon nodded.

‘Black, please.’

A shudder of revulsion from Trixie. Black coffee, as she had been taught in her Living&More lessons, had a most deleterious effect on a young woman’s complexion. There had been studies done that suggested that it could even darken the complexion. Trixie never drank coffee: the prospect of having a skin colour that could be mistaken for that of a Shade filled her with horror.

‘I see the headlines in The Stormer continue their criticism of Empress Wu and the Coven. It’s pretty belligerent stuff. Is there going to be war?’ It was another idiosyncrasy of the Daemon that though it had manifested in the form of a young woman it conducted itself in a peculiarly masculine manner.
Trixie felt a moment’s envy: the Daemon was lucky to come from a world where it was possible for a young woman – even an ersatz young woman – to express an interest in matters outside the home.

Ever the gentleman, Trixie’s father didn’t allow himself to be distracted by the Daemon’s rudeness. He lowered his paper and smiled at it. ‘Unfortunately, Miss Williams, my position in the Party precludes me from commenting publicly on articles carried in newspapers. Suffice it to say that, although there are immense religious and political differences between the Coven and the ForthRight, I have every confidence in the abilities of Comrade Beria to bring the negotiations currently being held with Empress Wu to a successful conclusion.’

Immense religious and political differences: now that, to Trixie’s mind, was an understatement. Crowley was always banging on in his speeches about the ‘unnatural’ and the ‘perverse’ practice of LessBienism promoted by the HerEtical Church. He hated the Covenites.

The Daemon was, as ever, impertinently persistent in its questioning. ‘And what, from the point of view of the ForthRight, would constitute a “successful conclusion”?’

‘Well, as that discussion is in the public domain,’ answered Dashwood with a sigh, ‘I suppose there is no harm in answering your question. The ForthRight requires that the Coven cease its harbouring and support of those LessBien terrorists the Suffer-O-Gettes, and that it hand over Royalist fugitives who sought sanctuary in the Coven after the Troubles.’ He took a sip of his tea. ‘The ForthRight also requires that its ration of coal be doubled.’

Coal.

After blood, coal was the most precious commodity in the Demi-Monde. Without coal the steamers stopped, without coal
people went cold in Winter. And the Coven controlled the world’s supply of coal.

‘And what is the ForthRight offering in return for these concessions?’

‘The precise details are, of course, confidential, but it is common knowledge that the restoration of diplomatic relations is one of the many things being discussed.’

‘That doesn’t sound terribly generous,’ observed the Daemon.

‘The Coven has also been lobbying hard for the supply of M4s.’

‘M4s?’

Dashwood laughed. ‘Your compatriot Daemons, when they came to the Demi-Monde, were armed with rifles far superior to those then available to our own soldiers. When the Daemons were captured these weapons were taken, studied and ForthRight engineers managed to replicate them. Only the ForthRight engineers have been able to do this and hence only the ForthRight is able to manufacture these M4s.’

‘And will the ForthRight supply them to the Coven?’

With another, louder, sigh, Dashwood closed his newspaper, folded it carefully and placed it beside his plate. ‘Who knows, Miss Williams? Diplomacy is designed to achieve a resolution of differences between two Sectors such that both are, to a greater or lesser extent, content with the outcome. That, I am sure, is the objective of Comrade Beria in his discussions with the Coven.’

‘There is a saying where I come from’ – the Daemon made an impish glance at the Captain – ‘that war is diplomacy pursued in a more physical manner. The Stormer is being very antagonistic towards the Coven and as it’s the mouthpiece of Heydrich I can only assume that it’s preparing the people of the ForthRight for war.’

‘The ForthRight is a peace-loving state. Comrade Leader
Heydrich signed a non-aggression pact with Empress Wu only last Autumn.’

‘Pacts are made to be broken. Are the two railway lines you are building part of this pact, Comrade Commissar?’

‘No, that is a wholly ForthRight initiative. Comrade Leader Heydrich is of the opinion that railway lines connecting Hub Bridge Number Two and Hub Bridge Number Four will enable the ForthRight to open up the economic potential of the Hub.’

‘I thought the nanoBites precluded anything being built in the Hub.’

Trixie decided to join in the conversation. ‘My father has developed a novel means of laying railway tracks on “floating” sleepers so that no part of their construction ever goes below six inches and hence they are immune to nanoBite attack. It’s very clever.’

‘But won’t the lines also enable the ForthRight to make war on the Coven? Won’t they make it easier for the ForthRight to manoeuvre its soldiers?’

The Comrade Commissar stood up from the table. ‘You seem determined to malign the motives of the Great Leader, Miss Williams. I think that is enough political chit-chat for one day. Young ladies should not, in my opinion, concern themselves regarding the machinations of the ForthRight’s leadership. I am confident that, as ever, Comrade Leader Heydrich is intent on leading the ForthRight in a manner consistent with the needs and aspirations of his people.’

Trixie smiled. Her father was a great man. No one else she knew would be able to announce such twaddle and still be able to keep a straight face.

As Aryans are largely of superior Pre-Folk stock they have evolved more rapidly and further than the Under-Mentionable races. This, in turn, has caused their more primitive instincts (of which sexual desire is one) to wither. Eugenical science (see Francis Galton: Eugenics: The Final Solution) informs us that as a race evolves, these primitive powers – so readily seen in the instinctive behaviour of animals – atrophy because they are no longer necessary to enhance the survival of the species. That is why UnderMentionables (especially Shades, who are considered the most primitive of all the races of the Demi-Monde) excel in such fields as athletics, dancing, WhoDoo and in all matters of the flesh, these Lilithian abilities being known as Atavistic Animal Talents.

– Why Shades Run So Fast: A Study in Atavistic Anatomy:Nathan Bedford Forrest, ForthRight Publications

Despite what he’d told Sergeant Stone, Vanka wasn’t staying at the Metropolitan Hotel. Actually he was camped out in a couple of rooms provided, at an eye-watering rent, by Burlesque. Anonymity didn’t come cheap.

It was in truth a pretty miserable pair of rooms, positioned in the attic of a pretty miserable house located down a pretty
miserable backstreet just around the corner from the depressingly miserable Prancing Pig. The rooms were also dark and cold. Dark because a number of the glass panes in the windows were broken and had been replaced by plywood, and cold because the putty had fallen out from around the remaining panes, allowing the frigid Winter wind to whistle in.

Ella was sure it was colder in the rooms than outside in the street.

Vanka was totally unapologetic. ‘You’ve got the couch in the living room,’ he said, pointing to the lumpy sofa resting in front of the fireplace. ‘If you get cold at night …’

Here it comes, thought Ella, this is when he hits on me.

But he didn’t.

‘… you can light the fire but you’ll have to lump your own coal up from the coal cellar.’

As Vanka went on with his description of their domestic arrangements, Ella didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed.

‘You empty your own pan.’ He used the toe of his boot to nudge a rust-stained bedpan in Ella’s direction. At least she hoped it was rust. ‘If the Checkya come calling then it’s out of the window and over the rooftops. Under this veneer of wood the front door’s got a solid steel core.’ He gave the door a hefty kick and it hardly quivered. ‘It’s strong enough to give us a ten-minute head start. Other than that my only advice is for you to stay in the rooms as much as possible. We don’t want the neighbours complaining about Zulus moving in and giving the district a bad name, now do we?’

Fortunately for Vanka, Ella sensed he was being sarcastic.

It seemed straightforward enough, but after a couple of days’ confinement she began to feel herself going a little stir-crazy. Her worries about the Checkya gave way to nagging doubts
about her ability to find Norma Williams. She had a sneaking feeling that hiding out in a couple of slum rooms wasn’t the ideal solution to that particular problem.

It was all very discouraging but this, the seventh day of her self-imprisonment, seemed to promise a break in the boring routine she had settled into: Vanka had taken an interest in cooking and had been labouring over the stove all morning. Unfortunately whatever it was he was cooking up was horribly noisome.

‘What’s that smell, Vanka?’ she asked warily, not quite certain if she wanted an answer.

‘Which smell?’

Ella was just about to give a pointed riposte when she realised that it was, in fact, a pertinent question. There were any number of repulsive smells competing for her attention and it was an indication of how adapted she was becoming to life in the DemiMonde that now the odours of damp, of urine, of boiling cabbage, of overflowing drains and of horse shit that were wafting up from the streets below warranted hardly a mention. No, what unsettled her was the new and distinctly chemical fragrance drifting from a cooking pot resting on a table at the back of the room.

‘That chemical smell. You’re not cooking up crack, are you?’

‘What’s crack?’ Vanka asked. Then, following the direction in which her nose was pointing, he realised what she was talking about. ‘Oh, that. I’m making the luminous paint I use in manufacturing my ectoplasm.’

Now it was Ella’s turn to play the naïf. ‘What’s ectoplasm?’

‘The magical stuff that forms around mediums when they go into a trance. No good psychic can perform without being able to materialise oodles of ectoplasm.’ The look on her face persuaded Vanka to expand his explanation. ‘When mediums
are in communion with the Spirit World they produce a luminous aura which the audience at a séance can see glowing in the dark. Ectoplasm signals that the medium is at one with the Spirit World, that they have been possessed by their Spirit Guide.’

‘Can you do that, Vanka?’

‘I’m surprised at you, Miss Thomas. Of course I can’t, but then no one can. Ectoplasm, like everything else to do with Spiritualism, is total and utter bollocks. Unfortunately ectoplasm has become so famous that if customers at a séance don’t see it drifting around they start asking for their money back.’

‘So how do you make it?’

He looked at her suspiciously; the recipe for ectoplasm was obviously one of his trade secrets. ‘It’s simple really. You cut the heads off a boxful of matches and drop them into a pan of water, which you bring up to a gentle simmer. The phosphorus dissolves off the match heads, and if you give the solution a good stir, the phosphorus mixes in with the water. All you do then is strain off the match stems and, hey presto, there you have it: phosphorescent paint. If you soak a couple of lengths of calico in that and let them dry you’ll find that they glow yellow in the dark. Wave the calico around in a séance and everybody goes away happy.’