by Rod Rees
‘Where’s the Banking Hall?’ Ella yelled at Vanka, who nodded and led her crawling to the back of the Commercial Centre and through a pair of wide double doors into the huge Banking Hall beyond. It was identical in size and layout to the one in Berlin, the only difference being that this room was silent, all the chattering screens were still. As she scuttled into the vast hall all she could hear was the snap of the hobnails of her boots on the Mantle-ite floor and the rattle and crack of rifle fire coming from the Commercial Centre. It was an eerie, desolate place – the green fluorescent glow of the Mantle-ite seemed more intense than she remembered from Berlin.
She strode over to the nearest Transfusion Booth and placed her hand on the indented shape to the left of the keyboard. Immediately the screen came to life, the rotating symbols clattering around.
THE BANK OF WARSAW WELCOMES
ELLA THOMAS
PLEASE ENTER YOUR PASSWORD
There was a tremendous explosion, big enough to send a shock wave shuddering through the hall that almost knocked Ella off her feet. ‘You’d better get a move on,’ urged Vanka. ‘I think the SS are a little annoyed about our taking the Bank. That was heavy artillery. Trixie Dashwood’s little band of desperadoes ain’t gonna last long against that.’
As quick as she was able, Ella typed in her password and accessed ABBA’s IM Manual, shuffled through to AMEND CYBERMILIEU CHARACTERISTICS, and then pressed ENTER.
WHICH ASPECT OF THE CYBER-MILIEU DO YOU WISH TO AMEND?
Ella typed ‘OPTIONS?’.
AMENDMENT OF CYBER-MILIEU CHARACTERISTICS
PARAMETERS THAT MAY BE AMENDED INCLUDE:
1. BLOOD SUPPLY
2. CLIMATE
3. COMMODITY SUPPLY
4. DEMOGRAPHY
5. ENVIRONMENTAL AND PHYSICAL CONSTRAINTS
6. FLORA AND FAUNA
7. GEOGRAPHY
8. HUB, THE
9. INDUSTRIAL ZONE, THE
10. IRRIGATION
11. PORTALS
12. RIVERINE CHARACTERISTICS
13. RUNES
14. SCALAR CHARACTERISTICS
15. TERROR INCOGNITA
16. TOPOGRAPHY
17. URBAN BAND, THE
18. WASTE MANAGEMENT AND THE SEWERAGE SYSTEM
Ella looked at the screen dumbfounded. There was no mention of the Boundary Layer. She felt panic well up inside her. What if she couldn’t do what she had said she could? What if all these brave WFA fighters were dying for nothing?
Think, Ella, think.
What was the Boundary Layer?
It was the means by which ParaDigm’s programmers had confined the population of the Demi-Monde. Therefore it was a ‘constraint’. She typed in ‘5’. Immediately the tiles that made up the screen began to clack around.
ENVIRONMENTAL AND PHYSICAL CONSTRAINTS
PARAMETERS THAT MAY BE AMENDED INCLUDE:
1. BOUNDARY LAYER
2. DEPTH OF SOIL LAYER
3. DISTRIBUTION AND VORACITY OF NANOBITES
4. THE MANTLE
Thank the Spirits!
She typed ‘1’.
BOUNDARY LAYER
PARAMETERS THAT MAY BE AMENDED INCLUDE:
1. DISTANCE FROM CENTRE OF THE DEMI-MONDE®
2. HEIGHT
3. PENETRABILITY
4. TACTILITY
5. TRANSPARENCY
Desperately trying to keep her hands from shaking, she typed in ‘3’.
BOUNDARY LAYER
YOU HAVE CHOSEN TO AMEND: PENETRABILITY
IS THIS TO BE A LOCAL AMENDMENT? Y/N
Yes, for the love of God, yes!
PLEASE USE THE MUTOSCOPE VIEWER
Ella did as she was asked and saw a map of the Demi-Monde displayed there. At the outer circumference of each District the Boundary was designated with a code, the code for the Warsaw District’s Boundary being WBL-1. Ella typed in the reference code.
DO YOU WISH THE BOUNDARY LAYER WBL-1 TO BE MADE PENETRABLE? Y/N
Yes, yes, yes …
IN WHAT TIME-FRAME (DEMI-MONDIAN REFERENCE) DO YOU WISH THIS AMENDMENT TO BE EXECUTED?
Frantically Ella typed ‘IMMEDIATE’.
CONGRATULATIONS ELLA THOMAS IN ACCORDANCE WITH PROTOCOL 57 YOU HAVE MADE AN EMERGENCY ONE-HOUR AMENDMENT TO THE PENETRABILITY OF THE BOUNDARY LAYER AT WBL-1. THIS AMENDMENT IS SUBJECT TO RATIFICATION BY THE DEMI-MONDE® STEERING COMMITTEE. IF SUCH RATIFICATION IS NOT RECEIVED THE AMENDMENT TO THE CYBER-MILIEU WILL BE ANNULLED IMMEDIATELY THE ONE-HOUR EMERGENCY PERIOD HAS ELAPSED.
DO YOU REQUIRE ANY OTHER SERVICES? Y/N
Ella typed ‘Y’. This was her chance to find out where the SS were going to take Norma Williams after Wewelsburg Castle, to find out where Crowley would conduct his Rite of Transference.
THE DEMI-MONDE® IM MANUAL
OPTIONS:
1. LOCATE DUPE
2. ADD DUPE
3. DELETE DUPE
4. AMEND DUPE CHARACTERISTICS
5. AMEND DUPE PERCEPTIONS
6. AMEND CYBER-MILIEU CHARACTERISTICS
She pressed ‘1’ and immediately she was asked:
NAME OF DUPE TO BE LOCATED?
It was then that she remembered that because she was a renegade Dupe, ABBA wasn’t able to track Norma Williams.
Think …
She had a stroke of inspiration.
‘AALIZ HEYDRICH’, she typed.
The Transfer Screen whirled.
DUPE AALIZ HEYDRICH IS LOCATED AT EXTERSTEINE. DEMIMONDIAN COORDINATES SECTOR 1/N5°W/6.5MILES
Ella quizzed PINC regarding ExterSteine but again it let her down: it had no knowledge of the place.
But even as she desperately tried to memorise the coordinates of ExterSteine there was another tremendous explosion from the front of the Bank, and Trixie, followed by her bedraggled fighters, staggered into the Banking Hall. She looked across to Ella. ‘Have you done it?’ she shouted.
‘Yes,’ replied Ella. ‘Just one more minute.’
Trixie shook her head. ‘There are no more minutes. There’s nowhere to go and the SS are advancing. We’re trapped here. This is where we die.’
‘Perhaps not.’ Ella turned back to the Transfusion Booth.
‘It appears the rebels have ceased firing, Comrade Colonel.’
Archie Clement frowned. That wasn’t like the Rebs. As he’d seen over the past few weeks, these bastards fought like madmen, digging into every ruin, every cellar, every pothole and then fighting to the last man. Even his SS had been taken aback by their fanaticism and by how readily they were prepared to sacrifice their lives for their ridiculous cause. And it was all the fault of that bitch Trixie Dashwood.
But who could have thought it would have been a seventeen-year-old girl who would stiffen Dabrowski’s spine? Even Beria hadn’t seen that one coming. Without her the Poles would have folded in a fortnight, just as they had planned they would. That bitch had a lot to answer for.
‘How long?’ he asked.
‘They haven’t fired a shot for ten minutes.’
‘We got the steamers here yet?’
‘Just one, Comrade Colonel, the other was ambushed on Leshno. A couple of kids with firebombs …’
Clement nodded grim acknowledgement and spat out a wad of tobacco. These Rebs were fucked more ways that a ten-bob whore but still the diehards fought on. Fucking suicide bombers: it was impossible to defend against Rebs who were prepared to sacrifice their lives to blow up steamers. And the attrition rate had been fearful: more than half the steamers employed in the Ghetto had been lost to booby-traps and to incendiaries. The cost was ferocious and Horatio Bottomley was already sending letters of complaint to Crowley. Bottomley would just love it when he heard that the Rebs had retaken the Bank.
Clement lifted his cap and ran a hand through his blond hair. Why the Rebs had attacked the Bank was beyond him: they must know that he would never allow them to leave with any blood, they must know it was all pointless. All they had succeeded in doing was making him l
ook foolish.
He kicked at a shell case, sending it skittering over the cobbles: that bastard Bottomley should get his fat arse down here to the Ghetto and help fight these lunatics, then he’d stop moaning about what the war was doing to his budget.
He just hoped Beria’s ruse worked.
‘Get a squad together to advance under cover of the steamer.’
‘Shall I make sure they’ve got a flamer with them, Comrade Colonel? Might be best to burn the buggers out. They could just be lying doggo in there, waiting for a chance to ambush us. You know how sneaky these Polaks are. They’ve no honour. They’re just fucking animals.’
What the SS Captain was saying made sense. It was standing operating procedure that once a Ghetto building was taken it should be packed full of straw, the straw doused with lamp oil and the whole lot set alight, burning up the building and any Rebs hiding in it. But not the Bank: incinerate a Blood Bank and Bottomley would really lose his rag.
‘No, Comrade Captain, no burning. This has gotta be done real delicate. Damage the Transfusion Booths in the Bank and you’ll be busted down to private quicker than a goose shits beans.’
The Captain shouted his orders and ten minutes later the steamer rumbled up. After weeks of fighting steamers were unrecognisable as the sleek machines that had begun the campaign: extra armour had been bolted around the vulnerable boiler, the driver’s cabin had been swathed in mesh to stop firebombs, and the body was covered in barbed wire to deter suicide bombers from leaping aboard. Now they looked what they were: ugly and brutal killing machines.
‘Number Five Troop: get ready to let it rip,’ yelled the Captain. ‘Stay to the left side of the steamer. That’s the side furthest away from the Reb bastards who will be trying to blow your damn fool heads off.’ He signalled the driver and with a lurch the steamer began to crunch toward the Bank.
Clement clicked his fingers and his aide handed him his telescope. He made a careful study of the Bank but apart from the tattered curtains drifting aimlessly in the breeze and a broken front door flapping backwards and forwards there was no movement and certainly no sign of Rebs waiting to open fire. An uneasy feeling drifted down his spine. Could the bastards have escaped? He dismissed the idea: it was still two hours to dusk, there were no sewers running under the Bank and his forces had a complete view of the whole circumference of the building. It was impossible for the Rebs to escape without being seen.
Maybe they’d simply decided they’d had enough. Maybe they’d committed suicide. Death before dishonour and all that.
The steamer was already halfway to the Bank and nary a shot had been fired.
Where were they? Maybe they were holed up in the Banking Hall. They’d know that the SS would be reluctant to fire in there.
The steamer smashed into the side of the Commercial Centre and as it scrabbled for grip its huge studded wheels gouged ruts into the granite pavement. For a minute or so it bucked and shoved in a futile demonstration of brute ignorance, then the drive shaft was disengaged and it stood huffing and puffing in disgruntled impotence.
Clement turned his telescope towards the crouching figure of the Captain, watched him make a signal and his SS StormTroopers race around the stalled steamer firing as they went. There were no answering shots and after a few seconds the shooting petered out in an embarrassed sort of way.
Silence.
They couldn’t all be dead, could they? Maybe the place was booby-trapped. The Rebs were experts at that: every bloody door, every staircase, every body of a dead SS trooper was wired to a grenade. He’d lost hundreds of men that way. And the ones who survived knew to be cautious. He just hoped the Captain was one of them.
Apparently he was. The Captain emerged from the Bank and signalled the all-clear.
Clement frowned: it had been too easy. He gestured to his bodyguards, and once they had flanked him began to walk across the square. He didn’t normally risk himself at the front line but in the case of a Bank he was prepared to make an exception. When he got to the Bank he saw that the front of it was a mess, with six bodies of Reb fighters lying on the ground amidst all the other detritus of war. The Captain was standing sheepishly in the corner of the Commercial Centre. ‘How many bodies, Comrade Captain?’
‘Just the six, Comrade Colonel.’
‘Six? So how many Rebs you reckon were holding this bombproof?’
‘I’m not sure, Comrade Colonel. They lost a hundred during their assault.’
Clement used the toe of his boot to nudge the arm of one of the dead rebels. The red lettering on the white armband tied around it read ‘WFA-D’. The ‘WFA’ Clement knew stood for ‘Warsaw Free Army’ so the ‘D’ presumably stood for ‘Dashwood’. Little Trixie Dashwood appeared to be becoming very full of herself.
‘The WFA-D is the Polaks’ best regiment, Comrade Colonel. We believe they were responsible for the seizure of the two barges that precipitated the attack on the Ghetto.’
Clement nodded. ‘Any bodies in the Banking Hall?’
The Captain ushered Clement through to the huge hall, which, apart from a couple of shattered candelabra and the haze of cordite that had drifted through from the front of the building, was undamaged. And there wasn’t a soul – dead or alive – to be seen. ‘So where are all the Rebs, Comrade Captain?’
‘They’re not here, Comrade Colonel.’
‘I can fucking see that!’ snarled Clement. ‘You trying to tell me that six Rebs held off five hundred SS StormTroopers for the most part of half an hour?’
‘Er … yes, Comrade Colonel.’
‘That’s real hard mouthing, Comrade Captain. You go around saying that one Reb is worth ninety-odd SS StormTroopers and you’re gonna earn yourself an invitation to a necktie party. That’s heresy.’
The unfortunate thing from Clement’s point of view was that though it was heresy it was also the only logical explanation, unless of course the Rebs had a witch working for them, a witch who was very adept at making fighters disappear into thin air.
Even Ella was astonished when she managed to conjure – literally – a manhole in the middle of the floor of the Transfer Hall. Everyone in the Demi-Monde knew that Mantle-ite was impenetrable.
‘How?’ Vanka asked as he stood open-mouthed, staring at the manhole.
‘I’ve altered the configuration of the Demi-Monde’s sewer system so that one comes up here under the floor of the Bank. But we’ve got to be quick: I programmed the amendment to last just twenty minutes. That’s enough time for us to get out, but hopefully not enough time for the SS to get here and discover how we escaped.’ Ella addressed the surviving members of Trixie Dashwood’s WFA-D regiment. ‘If we go now, there’s a chance we can get out of here with our lives.’
They didn’t need a second telling. The manhole cover was off in an instant and the hundred and ninety-odd survivors followed her through the sewers back to the Industrial Zone. It took twenty minutes of wading through shit and slime before they emerged and then, ever cautious, Ella insisted that it was she who was the first to climb the steps of the sewer pipe and push open the cover. When she poked her head out she was relieved to find that PINC hadn’t let her down: she was slap bang in the middle of Warsaw’s Industrial Zone amid a very boisterous crowd of Varsovians. There were shouts of greeting and then Delegate Trotsky bustled over to meet the returning troops.
‘Ah, the great thaumaturgist herself,’ he chortled as he helped haul Ella out from the sewer. ‘You have performed an amazing feat of magic, young lady.’
‘Is the Boundary Layer open?’ asked Ella as she tried to brush some of the worst of the sewer’s muck from her overalls.
‘It opened just as you said it would.’
‘When?’
‘Twenty … thirty minutes ago.’
‘Have you gotten everybody through? The opening in the Boundary Layer will close after one hour.’
‘All those Pilgrims …’
Pilgrims? ‘
… who wish to go are now
on the other side of the Boundary. But please come and see for yourself; there are those who would like to thank their Saviour personally before the Boundary closes.’
Exhausted and filthy though she was, Ella allowed herself to be led through the streets of the Industrial Zone towards the Boundary, and an amazing sight awaited her there. It was as though a five-mile-long curtain of the sheerest blue chiffon had been pulled back to reveal the vast, seemingly endless plains of the Great Beyond, and there, standing silent and uncertain in that great sea of grass and woodland, were the people of Warsaw. There were millions of them: men and women laden with their bundles and their cases, children sitting on carts holding their dolls and their toys, families surrounded by their horses and by baskets full of squawking chickens. Certainly they looked worried – many of them looked just plain terrified – but there was a resolve about them that Ella found strangely uplifting. Gazing out on this huge exodus, Ella had never imagined that people could be possessed of such an indomitable spirit that they could endure and survive all the hate and fury that the ForthRight had thrown at them and still have the strength and resolve to take on a new adventure.
Colonel Dabrowski was there with the migrants, leaning on the shoulder of a young woman. He saluted Ella as she passed. He looked spent but happy enough: perhaps, she thought, that was what Dabrowski needed, a fresh start away from all the killing and the violence.
As she walked towards the open Boundary, the crowd parted before her, the men and women of the WFA following Dabrowski’s lead and saluting her. It was a surreal moment and not one she particularly enjoyed; it was too embarrassing for that.
Trotsky brought Ella to a halt at the very edge of the Boundary and then in a loud voice addressed the people of Warsaw. ‘Lady IMmanual …’
Lady IMmanual? Where had that come from?
‘… you have revealed yourself to be our most Revered Messiah, sent by ABBA to lead the people of Warsaw from the jaws of death to a new life in a new world. For that we give thanks and the assurance that you will never be forgotten.’ With that he knelt before her and kissed her hand. As one, everyone else knelt.
All Ella could do was stand and shuffle her feet un -comfortably.