Rod Rees - The Demi-Monde - Winter

‘Very well, but Preferred Male Wysochi should understand that he is to walk behind you and never address a Femme without being addressed first.’

The First Deputy turned and led Trixie and Wysochi from the bridge.

As the night floated past, Norma felt the air in the temple become heavier, almost syrupy. Sounds were muffled as though they were coming to her from far, far away. She felt distanced not just from the music but from reality. With every passing moment her world contracted. She seemed to be falling into herself.

As she and Aaliz Heydrich knelt face to face and hand in hand through the long night, she experienced a growing sensation that she was merging with the girl. It was almost as though she and Aaliz were beginning to inhabit the same body… the same consciousness… the same soul.

She saw a bead of sweat trickle from Aaliz’s brow and felt the identical one course over her own forehead.

In an apathetic sort of way Norma sensed the tempo of the ritual become more frenzied. The rhythm of the unrelenting music was becoming faster, the stench wafting from the incense burners more pungent, and the ululations and the cavortings of Crowley and his adepts more fervent. The cavern was heavy with magic, and inside the pentagon strange and nebulous forms manifested themselves.

Ghosts and spectres… the Intangible… floated… through the thickening air, their gossamer fingers drifting over… through Norma and Aaliz. The Spirits had come, and their coming announced that the moment of Transference was imminent. There would be no time for anyone to rescue her now.

From what she had seen of balloon rides on television, Ella had thought them to be tranquil, calm, almost beatific experiences, with the balloonists drifting high and silent in a sun-kissed sky. But as she quickly discovered, balloons were in fact noisy affairs, with the wicker basket and the cordage creaking and groaning, and the fabric of the balloon rippling and flapping in the wind.

The balloon stank too: the dubbing that waterproofed the canvas canopy had a rancid smell. And all the while the Winter blizzard that swooped around the basket pushed and pummelled the balloon, making it slip and slide through the air in an unsettling way, as though she were riding a pendulum. It was also bitterly cold floating around in the night sky, so cold that she was forced to duck down beneath the side of the basket to get away from the freezing wind.

She didn’t stay there long. The noise, the smell, the cold and the continual swaying of the basket in the air currents meant that they had barely floated a couple of miles from the Balloon-O-Drome before she was obliged to get back to her feet to retch over the side of the basket.

‘Good shot,’ observed Rivets. ‘There’s a coupla thousand of them ForthRight soldiers below us an’ now one of ‘em’s got a faceful of vomit.’

Ella wiped her mouth and then – cautiously, she hated the way the basket tipped when she shifted her weight – peered down to the ground below. In the darkness it was easy to see the lanterns the ForthRight Army had placed to light their way along the newly opened Hub spur of the Trans-ForthRight Railway. The flickering snake of trains coiled and twisted along the railway line that connected the ForthRight with Hub Bridge Number 4.

No… not Hub Bridge Number 4. They were advancing towards Hub Bridge Number 2!

A frown creased her brow: the ForthRight Army was going the wrong way. All the trains and the steamers and the marching soldiers were advancing in the direction of the Quartier Chaud.

‘The ForthRight’s attacking the Medis,’ she gasped and even as the words tumbled out of her mouth she realised that that was what she hadn’t been able to read in Crowley’s mind the last time they’d met. Somehow Crowley’s – Heydrich’s – duplicity had been hidden from her and PINC.

But how? And why?

Vanka shrugged. ‘Doesn’t surprise me: Heydrich’s a crafty sod. All that stuff he fed Baron Dashwood and Dabrowski was obviously moonshine. Probably just playing silly buggers to keep everybody off balance.’ He laughed. ‘The funny thing is that the non-aggression pact he signed with the Coven was probably genuine: it’ll go down in history as the only pact Heydrich ever honoured in his whole rotten life.’

‘But what about the WFA? They’ve been offered sanctuary by the Coven.’

‘I don’t think you need worry too much about them: by the look of things there’s been some hard fighting in the Ghetto.’ He pointed to the smudge of flames that lit up the night in the direction of the Boundary. ‘No, I don’t think too many of the WFA are going to get out of that Hel-hole.’

Vanka was right: even from a height of – Ella guessed – two thousand feet and a distance of two or three miles, the sound of the armies fighting it out in the Ghetto was plainly audible.

Despite Vanka’s confidence that the east wind would drive them towards ExterSteine, progress was agonisingly slow. The balloon seemed caught in a vortex of wind, spinning indecisively over the Rhine where the Reinhard Heydrich Railway Bridge crossed the river, giving the three passengers a marvellous view of the frantic efforts of the railway engineers who were trying to clear the carcass of the train derailed by Baron Dashwood’s men.

At first their sedate progress didn’t trouble Ella, but as time slipped by and the balloon refused to move at anything more than the aeronautical equivalent of a snail’s pace she became increasingly anxious. Vanka was obviously as worried as she was: he began to drum his fingers on the side of the wicker basket.

‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.

‘There’s so much snow on the top of the balloon that it’s slowing us down. I’m worried that if we aren’t on the ground by dawn the wind will shift to the south and that will take us towards the centre of the Demi-Monde.’ He passed Ella his telescope. ‘If you look to your right, you can just see Mare Incognitum.’

Ella peered through the snow-drenched night, and sure enough, glinting in the moonlight was a large lake – at least two miles across, by her estimation – set slap bang in the middle of the Demi-Monde. She checked PINC, but all the information it had was that the centre of the Hub was an undeveloped area off-limits to Demi-Mondians and allocated to ABBA for future cyber-development. Rather disturbingly PINC named this area Terror Incognita.

‘Is that a problem?’

‘I don’t know how long this balloon is going to stay airborne: I think we’ve got a leak. And the last thing I want to do is come down in Terror Incognita.’

‘Why’s it called Terror Incognita? What’s there to be terrified of?’

‘The Terror’s full ov monsters an’ lots ov ovver horrible fings-’ began Rivets.

‘No one knows,’ Vanka interrupted. ‘Explorers have crossed the Wheel River but none of them has ever come back. And this Winter the ForthRight sent in a regiment of SS to have a look around and they were lost too. All we really know about the place comes from the drawings Speke made during his balloon ascent last year.’

‘And that is?’

‘Not much. We know that it’s heavily forested and that it’s home for one of the Wonders of the Ancient Demi-Monde. You can just see the Great Pyramid now, it’s almost directly south.’

Ella swung the telescope around and examined the horizon. PINC had made no mention of any pyramid but there, nevertheless, illuminated by the moonlight was a structure that looked for all the world like Khufu’s Great Pyramid. But it wasn’t the eroded and corroded monument Ella remembered from her history books; this one was white, sharp-sided and pristine. She didn’t remember Khufu’s pyramid having a hexagonal platform at its very summit either.