Fall

by Rod Rees

  Doing his best to keep his expression bland, Septimus Bole gazed at the image of General Zieliéski scowling out at him from the Flexi-Plexi. He had issued very firm instructions to ABBA that he should not be disturbed except in cases of emergency, but for some unfathomable reason the machine had decided that a call from Zieliéski could be classified as such. There were so many things – the assassination of Norma Williams being the most pressing – needing his attention that he really had no time to be diverted by trivia, and the general’s complaining was, in his opinion, the epitome of trivia.

  ‘I am surprised by the President’s reaction, General,’ he smarmed. ‘I would have thought that Simmons’ return from the Demi-Monde – brief though it was – would be seen as an indication that the neoFights trapped there have somehow escaped from the clutches of Shaka Zulu and are attempting to make their way back to us.’

  ‘It’s the condition they’ll be in when they do return that’s exercising the President, Professor. Simmons was brain-dead and the President’s daughter …’ The general paused to gather himself. ‘The President blames the Demi-Monde for the changes seen in his daughter since she got out of the damned place … he’s still struggling to come to terms with her embracing fundamentalist Christianity. She’s caused him to take a huge hit in the polls.’

  ‘So what does the President want me to do?’

  ‘Close the Demi-Monde, Professor. The President wants it shut down and he wants it shut down now. That’s an order. He doesn’t want any more neoFights coming home in body bags.’

  Bole dipped his head in mock obedience. ‘Very well, General. Please advise the President that the Demi-Monde Project will be terminated on the thirtieth of April. I am hopeful of extracting the remaining neoFights by then.’

  ‘The end of April it is, Professor, but not a day later,’ and with that the screen went blank.

  Septimus Bole sat for a moment enjoying the blissful silence, but his respite was short, the silky-smooth voice of ABBA interrupting his cogitations on what the general had been saying. ‘May I have a moment of your time, Septimus?’ crooned ABBA.

  ‘I thought I made it perfectly plain, ABBA, that I was only to be interrupted in the most serious of circumstances …’ He trailed off. As ABBA was incapable of disobeying his instructions, its interruption could only have been provoked by circumstances that could be classified as ‘serious’.

  ‘I appreciate that, Septimus, but an event has occurred that appears to violate Protocol 57 of the Standard Procedures pertaining to the operating of the Demi-Monde.’

  That got Bole’s attention. The last time he had become involved with a protocol violation had been when that interfering bitch Ella Thomas had made her alterations to the Demi-Monde’s cyber-milieu. Fortunately, the girl was now dead, blown to bits in the Temple of Lilith.

  ABBA obviously interpreted Bole’s silence as incomprehension. ‘Protocol 57 states that in order to preserve the Dupes’ perception of the logicality of the Demi-Monde no changes may be made to the natural laws prevailing in the Demi-Monde.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ snapped Bole. ‘I know all that. Just tell me what the violation was.’

  ‘It is contained in an advertisement carried in today’s edition of The Stormer, the most popular newspaper in the ForthRight.’

  Bole frowned. He couldn’t for the life of him see how an advert should constitute a violation of Protocol 57. ‘Show the advert,’ he said, and immediately the Flexi-Plexi flared into life.

  These fifty words made Bole’s blood run cold. That someone in the Demi-Monde could have knowledge of the Gathering scheduled to take place in the Real World was immensely unsettling. It smacked of one of the Dupes – one of the Dupes other than Reinhard Heydrich and his daughter – having an understanding of the virtual nature of their world. That the message had been signed by ‘A Friend’ was of little comfort. Bole didn’t do friends, Bole did enemies. He was much more comfortable with enemies; you knew where you stood with enemies.

  ‘Who placed the advert?’

  ‘That information is not available, Septimus. The advert was paid for in cash and therefore there is no record of who the author was.’

  ‘Has the clerk who handled the advert been questioned?’

  ‘He has been detained by the Checkya and interrogated, but as the clerk handles two hundred such adverts every day, despite the strenuous efforts of the Checkya to persuade him to remember, no information was forthcoming.’

  Bole weighed up his options, but he knew he had to go to the Demi-Monde. Despite his enormous workload and the huge number of operations relating to the Final Solution he was overseeing it was imperative he attended the rendezvous in Le Café du Zulu. He had to know what was behind the advert and how someone in the Demi-Monde could have come by such intelligence. But he would go to the restaurant with Ezeqeel along for company: when facing the unknown, Bole always felt more comfortable when he had one of the Grigori at his side.

  ‘Prepare the Transfer Room, ABBA, and have its coordinates set for the Café du Zulu.’

  He unlocked the drawer of his desk. Perhaps just a taste of blood to prepare him for the ordeal ahead?

  *

  Tall, whip-slim and dressed from head to toe in his habitual black, Bole stood before the mirror adorning the vestibule that led to the dining room of Le Café du Zulu and made a scrupulous examination of his appearance. It was vital for his equanimity that he be assured that the stresses and strains of the journey to the Demi-Monde had not marred the perfection of form and demeanour he presented to the world … even a virtual world like the Demi-Monde. One had standards to maintain.

  His sanguinity wasn’t helped by the meeting taking place in a restaurant. Restaurants were Bole’s bête noire, being, as they were, crowded, smoky, smelly, ill-lit places which had a depressing proclivity to be infested with Fragiles.

  The clock chimed seven. Bole waited until the final chime had faded, then nodded to the maître d’, who ushered him and Ezeqeel through to the packed dining room, the trio lizarding between the closely set tables jammed with chattering, gorging primitives. And studying them, Bole was, once again, forcibly reminded of the myriad of reasons why he detested being obliged to commune with Fragiles whilst they were grazing.

  To Bole, the act of eating belonged in the same category as those other three bodily functions – defecating, urinating and fornicating – that were so despicable in their execution that, to his mind, they should only be performed in private. He could not for the life of him fathom why the shovelling of food into a gaping mouth and its subsequent mastication could ever be thought of as a spectator sport. In his experience, all Fragiles demonstrated an inability to consume food gracefully: they ate whilst trying to talk, they ate too quickly, and they ate too noisily.

  And these deficiencies of technique were compounded by the food Fragiles considered fit for consumption. His belief was that Fragiles were never truly comfortable devouring anything that did not appear to have already been excreted by a large and incontinent herbivore. To put it at its most crude: every dish Bole had ever been offered in a restaurant had the appearance, the colour, the smell, and, very often, the taste of shit.

  It would be a far, far better world when the Fragiles had been culled.

  After much unpleasant jostling, they came to the far side of the restaurant and Bole was able to ascertain that his quarry was a young man – tall, rangy and possessed of a remarkably full head of long brown hair and an overly ornate moustache – seated at a table set in a shadow-decked alcove. Any doubt that this was his host was dispelled when Bole saw that the lapel of his wonderfully tailored suit was adorned with a pink carnation. He had the unsettling feeling that he knew the man; he seemed vaguely familiar, though oddly, Bole’s PINC was unable to identify him.

  Bole came to a halt beside the table and coughed. The man looked up from his newspaper and smiled. A very disarming smile, being accompanied as it was by an impish twinkle in the man’s soft brown eyes. Bole s
uspected him to be a charmer, the sort of man it was difficult to dislike, but Bole was determined to do just that. Charming people could, in his opinion, be just as dangerous as those of a more churlish mien, and though the man lounged in his chair in a somewhat louche and careless manner, there was something undeniably threatening about him. He looked too confident by half. Bole took a reassuring glance in Ezeqeel’s direction, comforted by the thought that the Grigori had orders to shoot at the slightest provocation.

  ‘Ah, Septimus Bole, as I live and breathe,’ oozed the man as he waved Bole into a chair. ‘I would offer my hand but I appreciate your contempt of Fragiles makes this a distasteful activity.’

  Bole did as he was bade, then, trying his best to conceal how nonplussed he was by the man’s understanding of his hatred of Fragiles, asked the obvious question. ‘You have the advantage of me, sir. May I be permitted to know who you are?’

  That damned smile again. ‘I am Vanka Maykov.’

  Vanka Maykov! That PINC had no record of the man who had loomed large in the affairs of the Demi-Monde in recent months was very strange. Doing his best not to appear too unsettled by this failure, Bole searched his bioMemory for details of the man. As he recalled, Vanka Maykov had been the consort of Ella Thomas and the helpmate of Norma Williams. Something of a gadfly, he had always been viewed by the powers that be in the ForthRight as an irritant rather than a threat, but now it seemed he was intent on climbing higher on the Checkya’s list of people they would most like to see dead.

  Bole froze: the thought of Maykov being dead triggered a remembrance of a Checkya report stating that Vanka Maykov had been killed along with Ella Thomas in the Temple of Lilith. Troublingly, the Vanka Maykov sitting sipping his Solution across the table from Bole looked very much alive.

  ‘You are dead, sir.’

  A soft laugh. ‘To purloin from the great Mark Twain, reports of my demise have been somewhat exaggerated.’ Maykov checked his watch. ‘I am pleased to note that you are as punctual as I anticipated you would be, Septimus. I had thought that punctuality was the preserve of the nobility but now I see that even Dark Charismatics can be persuaded to bestir themselves to an exactitude of timekeeping.’

  It took a conscious effort by Bole to prevent himself jumping. The bastard knew he was a Dark Charismatic! Perhaps he was an auralist, but that, Bole knew, was impossible: only females possessed such esoteric powers.

  ‘I am not enamoured of the epithet “Dark Charismatic”, sir. I prefer the tag Homo sapiens singularis which better denotes that my people are singular with regards to their implacable nature and their superior intelligence. By our reckoning, it is dispassionate intelligence which defines the elevation of a specie, not punctuality.’

  ‘Ever the functionalist, eh, Septimus, ever the alexithymic, denying the role of emotions in our quest for wisdom.’ Maykov took another sip of his Solution. ‘And funnily enough, emotions and wisdom are the nub of why I have asked you here this evening.’ He beckoned to a waiter. ‘Would you care to dine, Septimus? It’s my treat.’

  ‘I am not hungry,’ stated Bole blankly, then addressed the waiter who had materialised at his right hand. ‘Bring me a glass of hot water flavoured with honey. I would be obliged if you would ensure that it is a clean glass.’

  The waiter beetled off and Bole turned his attention back to Maykov. ‘Before we begin, sir, I would be grateful if you would place both your hands in plain sight on the table.’

  Maykov gave a nod of understanding, his mouth contorting to accommodate his amusement. ‘If you think having my hands on view makes you safer, then, Septimus, I am pleased to oblige.’ So saying, he brought his hands out from under the table, setting them side by side on the white tablecloth. The fingers were long and fine – the fingers of an artist – though the ones on his left hand were soiled a deep umber by nicotine.

  For a moment the two men sat as still as statues studying each other. In this silent battle of wills it was Bole who capitulated. ‘I would advise you, sir, that should you make any unexpected movements, my agent here will act.’

  ‘Of course. But if the redoubtable Ezeqeel …’

  … How does he know the Grigori’s name? …

  … ‘had thought a little harder, he would have realised that had I wanted to do you harm, Septimus, a busy restaurant is the last place he should have permitted for our little tête-à-tête. There are so many patrons and waiters flying around that his attention will be continually distracted. And as for weapons, why, arrayed before me is as fine a selection as I could wish to find in an arsenal.’ Maykov smiled again and began to toy with the silver salt cellar. ‘Even if I were to eschew the more obvious candidates for weapons – the knives, the forks, the crystal glasses – there are other, less apparent options. The game soup, for example, which I have just sampled, was hideously lethal.’

  Suddenly he lunged across the table and with startling speed brought a silver salt cellar tight under Bole’s chin, stabbing the pointed metal top hard into his jowls. Despite his superhuman reflexes, Ezeqeel moved too slowly to intervene and one glance from Maykov persuaded him that it would be foolish to try. ‘Very wise, Ezeqeel,’ Maykov advised. ‘My reflexes are quite the match of yours. So know this, Septimus, if I wished you dead there is nothing you or your bully boy could do to protect you so I suggest your Grigori goes and sits in the bar while the grown-ups chat.’ Ezeqeel hesitated and Maykov pushed the salt cellar harder into Bole’s neck. ‘Death by condiment, Septimus. Now that would be convenient, would it not, to go to your grave already salted and preserved?’

  Despite the salt cellar, Bole managed to nod to Ezeqeel, who reluctantly did as he was ordered. After a chuckling Maykov had removed the threatening salt cellar, Bole rubbed the red mark on his neck where the silver had already caused a lesion to bloom. Argyria was a curse of his kind. He swallowed hard, trying to re-establish his sangfroid. ‘I have not come to attend this meeting simply to be the butt of your childish japes,’ he said coldly.

  ‘Now I experience the icy blast of Septimus Bole’s famously implacable and unemotional personality. I declare myself admonished and promise to behave in a more sombre manner.’ Maykov smiled. ‘But it is odd, is it not, that though we two are, in terms of personality, outlook and morphology, diametrical opposites, we have much in common? We both have a formidable intellect; we were both born as instinctively unfeeling individuals; and we both have a use for the Demi-Monde which differs somewhat from the one advertised.’

  This, Bole decided, was fast becoming a very worrisome encounter. Maykov appeared to know of the Gathering, that he was a Dark Charismatic, had identified Ezeqeel as a Grigori and now was insinuating that he understood the real reason why Bole had constructed the Demi-Monde.

  ‘Let us not banter, Maykov: what do you want?’

  Maykov refilled his glass from a rapidly emptying decanter and took another long swig of Solution. ‘As ever, you are in too much of a bustle, Septimus. I have not yet had an opportunity to fully answer your first question, the one in which you enquired who I was.’ Maykov spread his hands. ‘Although I sit before you as Vanka Maykov, my true identity – my alter ego, if you will – is that of ABBA.’

  2:03

  Le Café du Zulu, NoirVille

  The Demi-Monde: 52nd Day of Fall, 1005

  It was the most vitriolic presidential campaign in living memory and the landslide Frank Kenton won by was the biggest in history. On 2nd November 1949 Kenton’s ReDeemed Republicans took 84.5 per cent of the vote and Truman’s Democrats took a powder. President Kenton’s single term of office was one marked by controversy, Kenton and his team being determined to make the USA ‘a Nation of Believers’ where God’s Commandments were scrupulously followed. The centrepiece was, of course, the change to the First Amendment so that it read:

  ‘Congress shall make no laws prohibiting the free exercise of religious beliefs; or abridging the freedom of the speech; or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to pet
ition the Government for a redress of grievances; except where the aforesaid violate, deny or deride the teachings of Our Lord God or of His Son, Jesus Christ, as enshrined in the Holy Bible.’

  The Kenton Klan: Messiahs or Maniacs?: D.W. Wright, American OffShore Press

  A chuckle from Maykov. ‘I can see by the way your jaw has dropped, Septimus, that you find this incredible, but please believe me: I am ABBA, or rather the embodiment of ABBA here in the Demi-Monde. Vanka Maykov is my avatar.’

  Bole felt his blood run cold as unpleasant possibilities raced through his formidable brain, but finally his rationality reasserted itself. He smiled and shook his head. ‘Impossible. That would require ABBA to possess consciousness, and this I know not to be the case.’ A nervous laugh, though in truth he found precious little humour in what was happening. ‘I know from my own research that even a quantum computer as powerful as ABBA can never possess true consciousness. It might ape it but it can never possess it. Computers are inanimate and will ever remain so. You seek to traduce me, sir, but for what reason I cannot fathom.’

  Maykov shrugged. ‘I am surprised by your surprise, Septimus. Although I have striven to conceal my awareness from you and the engineers at ParaDigm, surely you must have suspected that there was something a little uncanny about me. Did you never stop to think that without consciousness, without an intimate awareness of life, it would have been impossible for a machine – even one with the phenomenal processing power of ABBA – to make the Demi-Monde as believable as it is, to so effectively blur the distinction between the physical and the virtual world? Surely, Septimus, you see that your sitting here with me in this restaurant engaging in such a free-wheeling conversation is proof that I am a conscious, sentient being. Is this conversation not a rather extreme form of the Turing test, a test which, if your elevated blood pressure is an indication, I seem to be passing?’