Rod Rees - The Demi-Monde - Winter

‘You must be out of your tree. I ain’t going anywhere near your Demi-Monde or Reinhard-I’m-a-Motherfucking-RacistHeydrich and that’s final.’

The General ignored Ella’s protest. ‘We desperately need someone who is capable of posing as a jazz singer to go into the Demi-Monde, to rescue Norma Williams and to bring her out safely. As I think you might appreciate, we’re under a lot of pressure from the President to save his daughter.’

‘You’re assuming I’m willing to go, which believe me I ain’t. You’ve got the wrong girl, General. Let me sum up the offer you’re making me: I get to be jacked up to some uber-computer and sent to a truly fucked-up war zone populated by vampires and run by a bunch of most undeluxe and undelightful psychopaths who hate – sorry, HATE – black cats like me. And once I’m in there all I’ve got to do is track down the President’s daughter, rescue her and somehow find my way home. And if I foul up I get to spend the rest of my life plugged into a blood-sucking machine playing Brenda Blood Donor.’ Ella mimed being deep in thought. ‘Nah… I think I’ll pass.’

‘You must go, Miss Thomas! You are the only person available who fits all the selection criteria: you are a perfect physical match for the dormant Dupe; you are intelligent; you are healthy enough to endure the rigours of the Demi-Monde; and you are, according to the Captain, a talented jazz singer. You are ideal. You must go!’

‘Well, ideal or not, I ain’t going. You think I’m gonna let you drop me into the middle of Racism de Ville? Once those bastards spot my black ass I’m gonna have the life expectancy of a fruit fly. How do they dress in this ForthRight of yours: white robes and pointy hats? Do they have funny names like Mr Ku and Mrs Klux?’

‘This is a most unhelpful attitude, Miss Thomas.’

‘Well, General, it might be unhelpful, but I’ve got a shrewd idea that it’s a much more healthy one.’

‘I would remind you, Miss Thomas, that your life is currently a piece of shit.’

‘Well, that might be the case, General, but the prospect of spending the rest of my life pumping gas for Count Dracula and his pals makes it look like a mighty appealing piece of shit.’

‘Will five million dollars change your mind?’

It did.

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

ImPuritanism is a staunchly hedonistic philosophy – mainly practised in the Quartier Chaud – based on the belief that the pursuit of pleasure is the primary duty of all Demi-Mondians. The ultimate aim of all those practising ImPuritanism is the securing of JuiceSense: the experiencing of the extreme pleasure that comes from an unbridled sexual orgasm. To achieve JuiceSense requires that men and women are spiritually equal and that man’s proclivity towards MALEvolence is controlled and muted. Such rampant and unrestrained sexual activity is, of course, vile and unnatural and violates the notion – enshrined in the UnFunDaMentalist creed of Living amp;More – that sexual union should only be undertaken for the purposes of procreation.

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

The thing that Captain Dabrowski pushed snarling and protesting into her father’s study was to all outward appearances a normal and quite attractive girl of about eighteen years of age, but even without being told, Trixie would have known it for the Daemon it was. The girl – the Daemon – was different.

It was difficult for Trixie to quite put her finger on what made the Daemon look quite so wrong. It was modest in stature. Its hair was a raven black, which was unusual in the ForthRight but quite common in the Demi-Monde: it was the sort of hair colour sported by some of the lesser races like the Chinks and the Shades. The hairstyle the Daemon had adopted was odd too, pushing back its hair to leave its ears exposed, ears that were circled with studs. This affectation was really too disgusting for words: the studs were almost – she shuddered at the thought – ImPure.

The Daemon walked in quite a masculine way too. The fashion amongst ForthRight girls was to make small rapid steps, not the great hulking strides the Daemon took. Certainly the thing moved with a decided limp, but that only seemed to emphasise its strange and wholly unfeminine athleticism.

But for Trixie the thing that indicated that the Daemon wasn’t a real girl was the way it stared at everybody. There was no modest dropping of the eyes when a man looked at it: the Daemon glared angrily back. It might have hidden its daemonic ugliness beneath the form of a quite pretty girl – though Trixie thought its nose a trifle too long and its chin just a little too square for it to be really pretty – but there was no mistaking that it was most certainly not the coy and respectable ForthRight gentle-girl it was dressed as.

Yes, the Daemon was a determined-looking individual. It might have an ugly bruise on the side of its face, and its arms might be decorated with a huge number of cuts and scratches, but it carried itself in a decidedly haughty manner. The cuts and scratches were curious too. They appeared to be crusted with dried blood and this, more than anything, confirmed that the girl was, in fact, a Daemon. Cuts on Demi-Mondians – on real people – healed as thin white lines, not as ugly red welts.

And its decorum was as appalling as its appearance. Indifferent to the protocol that demanded a woman remained silent until addressed by a man, the Daemon spoke first.

‘Ah… Aleister Crowley, so we meet again. I wondered when you would come crawling out from under your rock. So how is the Wickedest Man in All the World? Still promoting your poisonous nonsense no doubt, still meddling in the forbidden arts.’

Trixie was aghast. No one spoke to Comrade Crowley like that: the man’s temper and his peevishness were legendary. But, astonishingly, Crowley seemed, if anything, to be cowed by the girl: he actually reddened a little.

‘I am unsure as to what I have done to deserve such an unflattering sobriquet,’ he said almost apologetically.

The Daemon laughed, revealing a set of the most abnormally – supernaturally? – white and even teeth. No one human had such perfect teeth… no one in the Rookeries anyway. ‘Perhaps I am just anticipating an honour yet to be bestowed upon you, Crowley. Perhaps you have yet to develop the full menu of brute appetites you were famous for. But I’m sure that together with that psychopath Heydrich you will be able to arrange things so that history will view you as the evil bastard I know you to be.’

By the Spirits, this Daemon really was intent on occupying an early grave.

But then presumably, as the Daemon occupied the Spirit World, it was already dead.

Dead or not, no one – no one sane, that is – openly criticised Comrade Leader Heydrich. Criticism of the Leader implied doubt and doubt signalled that the citizen was not convinced of the rightness of the Leader’s will. And a citizen who doubted the Leader relinquished all claims to be a citizen, they became non-citizens. And in the ForthRight a non-citizen was a nonNix, just like the nuJus and the Poles and the Shades… and Lillibeth Marlborough.

Amazingly Crowley simply shrugged off this slur on the Leader’s infallibility. He waved a heavily beringed hand in the direction of Trixie. ‘May I introduce Lady Trixiebell Dashwood, who will be your hostess for the next two weeks? Lady Trixiebell, this is Miss Norma Williams.’

Both the girls – well, the girl and the imitation-girl – stood examining each other from across the room. Truth be told, Trixie was unsure as to quite what was acceptable behaviour when being introduced to a Daemon. But the remembrance of her father’s request that she form a ‘friendship’ with this creature persuaded her to dispense with the niceties of etiquette. Trixie took a deep calming breath and walked across the room in order to allow the Daemon to curtsy to her. ‘Good afternoon, Miss Norma…’