by Rod Rees
‘Swell ’ere, innit, George?’ commented his companion, a trollop by the name of Delores.
It took an instant for Shelley to realise that the girl was addressing him. He had used so many aliases of late that he was damned if he could keep track of them. Then he remembered: his current nom erroné was George Rowley, the name of the scoundrel who had had him expelled from university. His hope was that by using this sobriquet and rogering Delores in as unconventional a manner as his imagination could conjure, he would ruin Rowley’s reputation as a devout UnFunDaMentalist.
‘It is indeed, Comwade Delowes.’ He waved a careless hand to encompass the crowds of ne’er-do-wells and nonentities who sat in the stalls stretching below him. ‘Gathered here tonight are the most weviled members of our Sector’s population: the idle, the stupid and the vicious. But it behoves us to wemember that this wiff-waff, given an education and a change of clothes, could be pwesidents, genewals, empwesses … even pwiests if they were degenewate enough, there is such little diffewence between the awistocwacy and these miscweants. Those of the cwiminal class have their own codes of honour, their own argot, their own uniform and their own mowals … just as their supposed betters do.’ Shelley took a sip of his champagne. ‘Indeed, my obliging little stwumpet, I would suggest that the one thing necessawy to be both an awistocwat and a cwiminal is the espousing of an amowal attitude towards your fellow man.’
Delores laughed. ‘Gor, George, you toffs dun ’alf talk funny. Iffn I didn’t know better I’d ’ave you down as a versifier or some such.’
Now that comment came as something of a straightener and Shelley determined he’d have to be a damned sight more considered in his speechifying if he wished to continue to be a free man. With this in mind he sat further back into his chair in order that he was more completely shrouded in the shadows that bedecked the box and raised his opera glasses to make a thorough study of the audience, searching their faces for clues that might alert him to the presence of Checkya agents. His perusal came to a sudden halt when his gaze settled upon a girl sitting in the box on the opposite side of the theatre.
It couldn’t be!
Though the girl’s features were half hidden by a veil and his sight of her was somewhat obscured by her two beefy companions, he was certain it was Norma. The way she held her head with just a touch of arrogance, the strength of the chin that peeped so enticingly out from beneath the veil, and the gestures she made with her delicate, artistic hands … these were the things that no artifice could mask.
It was her!
Norma Williams … his Delightful Daemon … the most Blithe of all the Spirits … his True Love. In that instant his mind drifted back to those heady days when she had first come to the Demi-Monde, of his being enraptured by her independent spirit and spritely beauty, of their madcap escapades. Yes … and his efforts to keep her out of the clutches of Crowley which had led to him being branded an Enemy of the People.
A love thought lost but now retrieved … So astonished was Shelley by this wonderment that before he quite knew what he was about he had leapt to his feet, knocking over the champagne in the process.
The squawk from Delores brought him out of his trance. ‘’Ere, George, wot’s wrong wiv yous? That’s expensive bubbly you’s tipping on the floor.’
Shelley laughed. ‘What of it? Tonight, I have dwunken deep of joy and will taste no other wine.’
‘Is yous all right, George? Gor, you looks as iffn you’ve seen a ghost.’
‘Not a ghost … an angel. An angel who will twansport me on gossamer wings to a heaven here in the Demi-Monde.’ He delved into his pocket and tossed a few guineas into Delores’ lap. ‘This will weward you for your inconvenience, Comwade Delowes. Now I must away: I have an assignation with perfection.’
Delores was not impressed. ‘Yous can’t leave like this, George. I thought yous and me were gonna be bouncing the mattress later.’
‘Think of this as an escape, my dear, think of it as Fate pwesewing you from an evening of such sordidness that I doubt even your cowwoded soul would wecover.’
He moved to open the door of the box and then stopped when he felt the cold certainty of a derringer pressed against his neck.
‘I would be obliged, Mr Shelley,’ said the soft voice, tinged with a Yank accent, ‘if you would resume your seat. Even as we speak Checkya agents are en route to arrest you.’
Slowly Shelley turned his head. The dull expression had gone from Delores’ face, replaced by one of steely determination: looking at the girl, Shelley had no doubt that if push came to shove she would have no hesitation in plugging him.
‘My dear Delowes, disappointed though you undoubtedly are that you will not be pleasured by Percy’s pintle, there is no weason for you to wesort to menaces. I ain’t at me best when I am scwewing at gunpoint.’
‘Enough, Shelley! I am Special Branch agent Bella Boyd, assigned to the task force charged with bringing Enemy of the People Percy Bysshe Shelley to book.’ She pressed the muzzle of the derringer more fiercely into his neck. ‘I am aware, Mr Shelley, of your espousal of the creed of non-violence that is Normalism, but please understand that I suffer no such scruples. If you fail to resume your seat I will shoot you down like the cur you are.’
Bella Boyd was perfectly correct, Shelley did have an aversion to violence, but unfortunately his aversion to spending the rest of his life hanging by his bollocks from a meathook was even greater. ‘Ah, Miss Boyd, I pity you and your ilk; so keen to wound with sharpened swords or, as in this case, with bwutal bullets. Yes, I will sit …’
Despite his somewhat peripatetic lifestyle of late, Shelley had still managed to indulge his passion for gymnastics and hence his body was in prime fettle. He moved quickly and with the agility of a dancer, pirouetting away from the pistol whilst simultaneously smashing an elbow into Miss Boyd’s face. She hit the floor like a sack of potatoes. Reaching down, he prised the derringer from her hand and then glanced around to check the scuffle had not alarmed any in the audience. It seemed it had not.
He was out of the box and into the corridor beyond in a trice, fate having ensured that his departure was timed to perfection. Even as he looked about, trying to establish which direction led to the exit, he heard a shout from his left.
‘There! There’s the scallywag. That’s Shelley.’
Shelley took to his heels, racing along, dodging between the latecomers scuttling to take their seats before the curtain went up, barging into hapless waiters carrying bottles and glasses …
Then he had an inspiration. ‘Fire! Fire!’ he bellowed and as though by magic the corridor was suddenly full of panicked theatre-goers desperate to establish if their lives were in danger. This swarm of perplexed people was sufficient to form a very effective barricade between him and the pursuing Checkya, so much so that – breathless and horribly dishevelled though he was – Shelley emerged from the theatre still a free man.
1:03
Cairo, NoirVille
The Demi-Monde: 85th Day of Summer, 1005
The teachings of HimPerialism are enshrined in the HIM Book, the most sacred book in the NoirVille religious corpus, which contains the inerrant and infallible Word of ABBA. The text of the HIM Book was translated by the great mage and scholar Arthur Aristotle from Pre-Folk manuscripts destroyed during the Great War of 512.
A Fool’s Guide to HimPerialism: Selim the Grim, Bust Your Conk Publications
The way Corporal Jake Massie of the 5th US Combat Training Regiment saw it, the mission had been a total waste of fucking time … a dangerous waste of fucking time.
The intelligence they’d received that Norma Williams was active in the Quartier Chaud had been just so much baloney. By the time he’d gotten to Paris the girl was long gone and now the word was she had been kidnapped by the Empress Wu and taken to the Coven. Soldier though he was, Massie had decided to give the Coven the go-by. No way was he going to Wu-ville. Wu-ville was bad fucking news for guys who had an affection for their nuts.
Anyway, he was low on money, low on inclination and to cap it all he had a fucking lowbrow in tow. Yeah, his orders might be that he should ‘seek, secure and protect Norma Williams in order that she might be returned safely and expeditiously to the Real World’ but he was fucked if he would do that at the risk of spending the rest of his natural being sucked dry by a blood-hungry Dupe or castrated by a LessBien. And wandering around the Demi-Monde with a Neanderthal like Tommy Holder as his wingman was a sure-fire way of making one – or possibly both – of those happen.
NeoFight 3rd Class Tommy Holder was a walking fucking disaster area.
Which was the main reason Massie had had them make their move back to the JAD during the day, slipping out of Barcelona just after dawn. Holder got confused in the dark – presumably that was when the solar battery working his one and only brain cell went into shutdown mode – and began muttering about the night being Satan’s time and other religious shit. So a dawn escape it had been: they’d stolen a rowboat, sculled across the Nile and then dodged through the crowded, stinking backstreets of Cairo in the direction signposted ‘Safety’. It had been a good decision: the way Massie saw it, it was better to be lost in the heaving mass of virtual humanity pushing and shoving its way along Saliba Street than trying to skulk down the deserted street at night. Skulking got you noticed by the HimPeril, the NoirVillian secret police. So, like pieces of human flotsam, Massie and Holder allowed themselves to be borne along by the crowd, trying as best they could to keep to the shadows.
It was tough going and, even after over three hundred days’ service in the Demi-Monde, Massie was still stunned by the febrile, desperate energy of this part of Cairo and by its poverty. Most of the people living and working here were the fellahin dispossessed when the nuJus had taken over the JAD, sold down the financial river by their fellow Shades. These were the poor bastards untouched by the pixie dust of riches brought to town by NoirVille’s burgeoning blood trade. They were a forgotten class of people: the ‘never hads’ … the ‘never would haves’.
And the streets were as noisy as they were depressing. Every one of the crowd of people who swirled around Massie and Holder seemed to be shouting, singing, screaming, crying, cursing or, in the case of one lunatic, banging on a drum. Even the ABBA-generated familiarisation cyber-constructs they had had to study before entering the Demi-Monde hadn’t prepared him for this level of madness.
But somehow they made it through the maze of narrow streets and alleys and, three hours south of noon, the pair of them found themselves standing in the lee of a doorway with just the Khan al-Kalili souk separating them from Checkpoint Bravo, the second major gateway through the JAD wall – the twenty-foot-high concrete wall that circled the nuJu homeland, sealing it from the rest of NoirVille. And once through there, they were only half a mile from the sanctuary of the Portal.
So close … but so very far.
The problem was that the souk was watched and guarded by the HimPeril, who would spot them for certain. Sure it was market day and sure the plaza was abuzz with people but most of them were Shades and he and Holder were white.
Very white.
Even as he watched, he saw a trio of the black-uniformed HimPeril agents strutting between the market stalls, swinging their steel batons in an arrogant, casual manner and shouldering aside any poor bastard who got in their way. Instinctively Massie checked the M-29 he had slung under his coat.
‘When we gonna make our move, Corporal?’ whispered Holder.
‘When I’m fucking ready,’ Massie snarled back, ‘and don’t call me “Corporal”. It’s a sure way of tipping off the Dupes that we ain’t kosher. You gotta try not to act so fucking stupid, Holder, otherwise you’re gonna get us both fucked over.’
Holder flinched back as though he’d been slapped and immediately Massie cursed himself for overreacting. But Holder was stupid; fuck, he could barely read and write and as a consequence hadn’t properly grasped how much fucking danger they were in. His big, dopey blue eyes blinked back embarrassed tears. They were funny eyes, staring out at the world with an odd mixture of imbecility and pent-up violence.
‘Okay, Holder, take it easy, just try and remember that we’re operating undercover. This is a plain-clothes operation.’
He almost laughed. In the Demi-Monde ‘plain clothes’ necessitated him wearing a ridiculous stovepipe hat and thunder-and-lightning red-and-blue-striped trousers with a matching frock-coat. He looked a complete prick, but then so did every other man in Cairo.
‘Just keep quiet. We’re only a couple of blocks away from the Portal. All we’ve got to do is get through the Wall and we’re home free.’
Holder looked at him with the dumb-fuck expression that Massie had come to hate. As Massie saw it, the US Army must be really fucking desperate if it had been reduced to accepting fuckwits like Tommy Holder into its ranks.
But the real problem Massie had was that Holder was both stupid and nervous. After the run-ins they’d had with the Signori di Notte in Venice, Holder had the jumps real bad, so bad that the guy had started praying to himself and in the Demi-Monde that wasn’t a great idea.
Massie smiled ruefully to himself: maybe he should start praying too. Holder wasn’t the only one shitting himself. He had the shakes too and he was meant to be the guy with all the battle-mileage. But then the Demi-Monde was scary enough to give anyone the frights, even pros like him. He hated the fucking Demi-Monde. He hated the fucking Dupes and the weird way they dressed and acted. He hated their weird fucking religions. But most of all he hated being continually worried that they’d spot that he was a Daemon. If that happened then the shit would really hit the fan.
Silently, Massie berated himself for being such a wuss. Maybe he was just going stir-crazed, maybe he’d been holed up in the Demi-Monde for too long. Being spotted as a Daemon was a stupid thing to be worried about. There was no way the Dupes could suss he was a Daemon, not unless he got cut or he bumped into a Visual Virgin.
‘Fucking zadnik Hamites,’ he heard Holder mutter.
‘What’s that, Holder?’
‘Fucking homosexual niggers,’ the boy said in a louder voice and then nodded towards the people swarming around the marketplace. ‘All these black bastards are unclean in the sight of the Lord. Ham, Cain’s son, violated his grandfather, Noah, when Noah lay naked and drunk in his tent, and in punishment God caused his skin to turn from white to black. That is the origin of the black races … and that is why all Hamites are cursed by God … why they all indulge in obscenities of the flesh.’
‘You don’t really believe that shit, do you, Holder?’
Holder glanced towards his corporal and frowned. ‘Yeah. The Bible is the inerrant word of God, so it’s got to be true. That’s what the Last Prophet said.’
Massie shook his head. This was getting surreal. Here he was standing in a fucked-up virtual world debating the Bible with a religious fascist – a Believer – possessing the IQ of a turnip. The Last Prophet, Frank Kenton, had a lot to answer for.
Frank-fucking-Kenton. The fucking fanatic who, back in ’47, had convinced himself and most of what was left of the electorate that the Plague had been visited upon America as punishment by God for the country’s dissolute and sinful ways. And once elected, President Kenton and the rest of the Klan who had followed him into the White House had imposed sixty years of religious bigotry, censorship, intolerance and guilt about sex on the USA. Sure, the Kentonite ReDeemed Republicans had been booted out of office in the elections of 2014, but there were still a lot of people who believed in the fundamentalist shit that Kenton had spouted and Holder was obviously one of them.
‘Well, fuck what the Last Prophet said, just keep your voice down. The last thing we want is to draw attention to ourselves. Okay, Holder, time to rock and roll, and if we get challenged by any of the Brothers, just stay mute and let me do the talking. Stay cool, Holder, just stay cool.’
With Holder at his heels, Massie pushed out of the shadowed doorway and strode a
cross the sunlit plaza, the cobbles glinting from the wash of recent rain. It was lucky he was such a big man and was able to bully his way through the press of people swarming through the plaza, elbowing past the burqa-swathed woeMen haggling over yams and chickens, ignoring the entreaties of the peanut vendors squatting next to their piles of nuts and sweets, ducking away from the snake-charmers and the HimPerialist fakirs, flinching back from the stench of the boys selling odd-smelling sweetmeats and the perfumed sheMen clustering excitedly around the stall selling dyes and cosmetics. The one good thing was that it seemed impossible for the HimPeril to spot them in this maelstrom of humanity.
But they did.
He and Holder were only fifty yards away from Checkpoint Bravo when there was a shouted challenge. ‘Hey, yo’ dere, yo’ Blank boys. Ah’s wanna see yo’s papers.’
There were three HimPeril agents, big guys carrying steel batons and a grudge against Blanks.
‘Where’s yo’ going, man?’ asked the biggest agent as he came to a halt in front of Massie.
‘Going to the JAD. Fixing on having ourselves a little R and R.’
‘Hmm, hmm, dat’s nice, dat is. Ah likes it when Blanks make wiv de exit powder, it sorta raises the tone ob NoirVille when dere are fewer whiteniks in de place. Trouble is, ah gets to thinkin’ yo’s might be nuJu badniks looking to get back to yo’ pigsty.’ His tone hardened. ‘Okay, lemme see yo’s papers and suchlike.’
Massie did as he was asked and nodded to Holder to do the same. As the boy handed the papers to the HimPeril agent, his hand was shaking.
‘Yo’ look like yo’s shittin’ yo’self, white boy,’ observed the agent. ‘Yo’ bin doing sumting ungodly. Yo’ bin a baaad mother?’
Holder shook his head and then looked imploringly towards Massie.
‘Yeah, an’ de way yo’ keep makin’ dem puppy eyes at yo’ Man here, ah’m thinking yo’ might be a sheMan.’ The agent stretched out a hand to caress Holder’s cheek. ‘Yo’ sure look like a sheMan wot wiv yo’ skin bin so smooth and tender.’ He winked at Holder and gave him a smile. ‘So’s how ’bout yo’s and me making wiv a little ob de private Man2naM action?’