Winter

by Rod Rees

  “What? You’re telling me that you’re a real clairvoyant?”

  “Exactly. Please don’t ask me how, but I have an instinctive knowledge about everybody I meet in the Demi-Monde. It seems that the closer I am to them the more powerful my reading becomes and if I touch them—”

  “Oh, fiddlesticks. Don’t try and gull me, young lady. Come on, admit it, you already knew this Sergeant Stone, didn’t you? Maybe he’s interviewed you before, maybe you saw his name somewhere on his uniform.”

  “Then how did I know about Arthur?”

  “A lucky guess. Arthur is a pretty common name. Maybe he had it engraved on his watch chain or something.”

  “I’m sorry to disappoint you, Vanka, but there was no lucky guessing and no engraved watch chain, just insight.”

  “Twaddle. Look, Miss Thomas, I’ve been around the Demi-Monde too long to believe in this sort of nonsense. Maybe Crowley and his sorcerers are the real magicians they claim to be, but for my part I’ve never seen anything magical about the Demi-Monde.”

  “But aren’t you a Licensed Psychic and Occultist? So you must have powers.”

  Vanka looked around the coffee shop to make sure no one was eavesdropping on their conversation, then leaned closer to Ella. “As you so rightly observed, Miss Thomas, Spiritualism is just flimflam. It’s Party-inspired sleight of hand to have people believe that there is some point in enduring the sorry excuse of a life they have here in the ForthRight. All Spiritualism does is give the poor and gullible the belief that their horrible, mundane, painful lives are not meaningless and random, that there is some purpose to human existence, that there is a better life after death. So don’t tell me you’re a medium or a clairvoyant or a bloody sensitive, Miss Thomas, because I can’t—I won’t—believe you.”

  “What you will or won’t believe, Vanka, is immaterial. The fact remains that I have such powers.”

  “Very well, tell me about me. Give me some insight about myself that only I could know.”

  Ella shook her head. “I can’t. I don’t know why but I can’t read you. You’re a mystery to me.”

  “Hah! Typical.”

  “Ask me something else. Ask me something about Burlesque Bandstand. When I shook his hand I learned an awful lot about him, and some of it, I freely admit, was bloody awful. The man is a walking bag of corruption.”

  “All right, Burlesque had a fling with someone, just before Winter set in. He kept it very hush-hush. So who was it?”

  “Oh, that’s easy. Burlesque Bandstand and Julie the Jug Juggler were an item for nearly two weeks. Burlesque got quite spoony over her. He really liked her jugs.”

  Vanka’s face took on an expression a little like the one on the face of a cat who has been presented with a very large bowl of cream. “Now that is amazing. I thought I was the only one who knew about Julie.” He fell silent, lighting one of the pungent French cigarettes he favored. She was about to object when she noticed that virtually all the other men in the café were smoking. Puffing contentedly on his cigarette, Vanka studied Ella carefully. “Maybe, Miss Thomas, I might be able to do a bit better than three guineas a séance.”

  Chapter 18

  The Demi-Monde: 47th Day of Winter, 1004

  The two-year Civil War which beset Rodina and the Rookeries between 1000 and 1002 (“the Troubles”) saw the revolutionary forces of UnFunDaMentalism—led by that visionary genius Reinhard Heydrich—triumph over the Royalist faction fighting in support of Henry Tudor and Ivan Grozny. With the establishment of the ForthRight on the 40th day of Winter, 1002, all religions other than UnFunDaMentalism were banned and those religious dissidents and counterrevolutionaries who failed to secure refuge in neighboring Sectors were executed. All UnderMentionables were declared nonNix and relocated to Warsaw, where they are held pending a “Final Solution” being found to the problems they pose. The victory of the Party over the reactionary, atheistic forces of RaTionalism during the Troubles is a vindication of the belief that ABBA is on the side of UnFunDaMentalism.

  —WITH ABBA ON OUR SIDE: THE FINAL VICTORY OF THE REVOLUTION IN THE FORTHRIGHT, LAVRENTII BERIA, PARTYRULES PUBLICATIONS

  Trixie gazed in a disinterested way over the manor’s ruined garden that stretched so forlornly beyond her bedroom window. Fortunately for her—and the sensibilities of the Dashwoods’ head gardener—the garden wasn’t at its worst: it had snowed heavily during the night and the white covering conspired to make the earthworks and the gun positions look almost attractive. But she knew it was a transient beauty that would be destroyed just as soon as the Checkya detachment roused themselves, shook off the indolence caused by a cold night spent under canvas and began patrolling and marching in earnest. Then the pure white snow would be churned to a disgusting khaki color.

  She glanced at the grandfather clock ticking away in the corner of the room; it was still not yet seven o’clock.

  For Trixie this was the perfect time of the day. It was the only time when she could be alone and untroubled, the only time when she was free of the obligation to “do something” about or with the Daemon, when she could stop worrying.

  A movement at the side of the house caught her attention. She scrubbed the window free of the ice that had formed on the inside of the glass overnight. What she saw irritated her: Captain Dabrowski and the Daemon were taking their early morning constitutional. Every morning since it had been a guest in the Dashwoods’ house the Daemon had insisted on being allowed to walk around the gardens for half an hour, and as it was unthinkable that the creature would be allowed to do this unguarded, the Polish captain had been given the task of accompanying it. To Trixie’s mind there should also have been an older gentlewoman accompanying the pair to act as chaperone, but, as they walked in full view of the house and as this Norma Williams creature wasn’t a real girl, etiquette had been abandoned.

  As she watched, the Daemon stumbled—it was using a walking stick; apparently it had injured its leg when attempting to escape the SS—and held out a hand to grab the captain’s arm. It was an obvious piece of coquettish dalliance and Trixie was aghast that the captain would be so naïve as to fall for it. The Daemon, it seemed, was not above using its faux-feminine wiles to have the captain forget she—it—was an Enemy of the ForthRight. Trixie gave a disdainful sniff, picked up the journal she had been keeping regarding the Daemon and made a note in her large, precise handwriting.

  DAEMON ENJOYS EARLY MORNING CONSTITUTIONAL WITH

  CAPTAIN DABROWSKI, COMMENCING 06.27 AND ENDING . . .

  She checked back through the journal; the pair’s walks were becoming lon.ger and they were certainly talking more during them. During the first few days of the Daemon’s stay the couple had hardly exchanged two sentences when they made their promenades, but now they seemed to converse nonstop.

  It had been a real puzzle for Trixie to understand what they could find to talk about. Her own attempts to chat with the Daemon had been rebuffed in a most impolite manner. It had said that it would under no circumstances answer questions regarding where it had come from and what it was like there. It would not, the Daemon had said sternly, act as a quisling. Trixie had no idea what a quisling was but it sounded quite revolting.

  As a consequence their time together—and they were obliged to endure ten hours a day in each other’s company—was spent with Trixie sewing and the Daemon reading. Daemons, it appeared, were avaricious readers. That was another thing to note in her journal.

  In the end, taking her pride in both hands, Trixie had sought Captain Dabrowski’s advice regarding possible subjects of conversation. He had smiled that aggravatingly condescending smile of his and said that he simply let the Daemon ask him questions. The Daemon, it seemed, had an unquenchable thirst for information about the Demi-Monde.

  “But how does that help our understanding of it?” Trixie had asked.

  “Quite a lot, in an indirect sort of way,” the captain had replied. “The questions it asks me give an indication of what the Daemon is
interested in and the extent of its knowledge of the Demi-Monde. When it interrogates me its main topics of inquiry relate to the functioning of the Demi-Monde . . .”

  Maybe all Daemons are RaTionalists? Trixie had wondered, but as RaTionalists denied the existence of a Spirit World from which the Daemons like this one supposedly came, this was a contradiction in terms.

  “ . . . and the role of women in the running of the ForthRight.”

  That, Trixie decided, must make for a short conversation. The role of women in the running of the ForthRight was precisely nil.

  “And what have you gleaned from these question-and-answer sessions, Captain?”

  “That the Daemon is perplexed that we in the ForthRight are content to live in what it calls a ‘totalitarian regime’ and that it is disgusted that women here are so ‘disenfranchised.’ ”

  Although it would never do to admit it openly, Trixie knew what the word “disenfranchised” meant; overcoming women’s disenfranchisement was the watchword—the rather-too-long watchword in Trixie’s view—of the Suffer-O-Gettes. Nevertheless she thanked the captain when he defined the word for her; in the company of “outsiders” she had, after all, to play the dutiful and politically correct young woman of breeding. RaTionalism was a dangerous belief for a ForthRight woman.

  According to the captain the Daemon thought that everybody, both men and women, should have a say in the running of the ForthRight, that the Leader should be elected by the adult population of the two Sectors. The Daemon called this “democracy.”

  To Trixie’s mind this was a ridiculous idea. Nowhere in the Demi-Monde (except, perhaps, in the nuJu Districts, and everybody knew nuJus were naturally perverse creatures) had there been a challenge to the concept that the Sectors should be ruled by a Leader, who by dint of his—and more often than not it was a “his”—genius and energy rose through political osmosis above the rest of the population. Certainly in the ForthRight and NoirVille they embraced a more primitive notion that their leaders were, somehow, ABBA-ordained, but the concept was the same, as was their belief that the success and the well-being of a Sector’s citizens rested on the shoulders of the man who led them.

  Trixie had shaken her head. “But surely under this democracy of the Daemon’s anyone could be Leader . . . even men who are unsuited to lead. All that democracy would result in is a Sector being led by someone who is not up to the job. As Comrade Leader Heydrich says, great men are the rarest thing that can be found in the Demi-Monde, and they certainly are not a thing to be discovered by the haphazard voting of the hoi polloi.”

  “Oh, I agree with you, Lady Trixiebell, the idea is outrageous,” the captain replied, “but the very fact that the Daemon asks about it gives us an indication of how the Spirit World functions.”

  That conversation with the captain had taken place yesterday and, ever diligent, Trixie had noted it in her journal.

  Another ten minutes dragged past before she saw the captain and the Daemon turn back toward the house. It was a signal that she should be stirring herself; breakfast would be being served and her father was a stickler for punctuality. And since the Daemon had been in residence, breakfasts had become amusing events—amusing but quite testing. It was one thing to debate current affairs over the breakfast table with her father, it was quite another to do it in front of a Checkya agent like Dabrowski.

  When Trixie bustled into the dining room, she found her father already seated at the breakfast table. He grunted a “good morning” in response to Trixie’s greeting, then retreated back behind his paper. Captain Dabrowski and the Daemon joined them shortly afterward, having removed their valenkis and changed into their indoor shoes.

  “I have persuaded Cook to provide you with a better selection of fruits this morning, Miss Williams,” Trixie announced as the Daemon seated itself. “I am assured that the dates and the apricots are quite edible and that the apples are of passable quality.” Here she could barely conceal her revulsion; the thought of anyone eating the rather desiccated apples that Cook had retrieved from the cold store was disgusting.

  And then there was the way the Daemon ate the fruit.

  “You are very kind, Lady Trixiebell, to go to all this trouble on my account,” murmured the Daemon as it took one of the apples onto its plate.

  “Not at all, Miss Williams, but you must be aware that consuming so much fruit is liable to give you colic.”

  The Daemon laughed. “I don’t think we’ll ever agree about what constitutes a healthy diet. I don’t have your penchant for dairy products and fried foods.”

  “Vital if one is to survive the Winter,” sniffed Trixie’s father from behind his paper. “Everyone needs a covering of fat. It helps keep out the cold.”

  “Well, where I come from, Comrade Commissar—”

  “And where might that be?” inquired Captain Dabrowski as he ladled bacon and kidneys onto his plate.

  “Never you mind, Captain Dabrowski,” replied the Daemon lightly and rather too teasingly in Trixie’s opinion. The creature was actually flirting with Captain Dabrowski! “As I was saying, where I come from there is a belief that a surfeit of fat can raise cholesterol, which in turn can lead to a blockage of the circulatory system.”

  Circulatory system? What in the Demi-Monde is a circulatory system? Another note for the journal.

  “Stuff and nonsense,” muttered Dashwood as he brusquely turned the page of The Stormer.

  Unperturbed, the Daemon proceeded to slice the apple neatly into quarters and to eat each piece in turn. This was the part of breakfast that Trixie found most upsetting. That the Daemon didn’t peel and core the apple first was disgusting and potentially very dangerous to the maintenance of a healthy astral ether: everyone knew that the eating of pips and skin led to the most profound constipation.

  “Coffee, miss?” inquired the maid, and the Daemon nodded.

  “Black, please.”

  A shudder of revulsion from Trixie. Black coffee, as she had been taught in her Living&More lessons, had a most deleterious effect on a young woman’s complexion. There had been studies done that suggested that it could even darken the complexion. Trixie never drank coffee; the prospect of having a skin color that could be mistaken for that of a Shade filled her with horror.

  “I see the headlines in The Stormer continue their criticism of Empress Wu and the Coven. It’s pretty belligerent stuff. Is there going to be war?” It was another idiosyncrasy of the Daemon that though it had manifested in the form of a young woman it conducted itself in a peculiarly masculine manner. Trixie felt a moment’s envy; the Daemon was lucky to come from a world where it was possible for a young woman—even an ersatz young woman—to express an interest in matters outside the home.

  Ever the gentleman, Trixie’s father didn’t allow himself to be distracted by the Daemon’s rudeness. He lowered his paper and smiled at it. “Unfortunately, Miss Williams, my position in the Party precludes me from commenting publicly on articles carried in newspapers. Suffice it to say that, although there are immense religious and political differences between the Coven and the ForthRight, I have every confidence in the abilities of Comrade Beria to bring the negotiations currently being held with Empress Wu to a successful conclusion.”

  Immense religious and political differences: now that, to Trixie’s mind, was an understatement. Crowley was always banging on in his speeches about the “unnatural” and the “perverse” practice of LessBienism promoted by the HerEtical Church. He hated the Covenites.

  The Daemon was, as ever, impertinently persistent in its questioning. “And what, from the point of view of the ForthRight, would constitute a ‘successful conclusion’?”

  “Well, as that discussion is in the public domain,” answered Dashwood with a sigh, “I suppose there is no harm in answering your question. The ForthRight requires that the Coven cease its harboring and support of those LessBien terrorists the Suffer-O-Gettes, and that it hand over Royalist fugitives who sought sanctuary in the Coven after t
he Troubles.” He took a sip of his tea. “The ForthRight also requires that its ration of coal be doubled.”

  Coal.

  After blood, coal was the most precious commodity in the Demi-Monde. Without coal the steamers stopped, without coal people went cold in Winter. And the Coven controlled the world’s supply of coal.

  “And what is the ForthRight offering in return for these concessions?”

  “The precise details are, of course, confidential, but it is common knowledge that the restoration of diplomatic relations is one of the many things being discussed.”

  “That doesn’t sound terribly generous,” observed the Daemon.

  “The Coven has also been lobbying hard for the supply of M4s.”

  “M4s?”

  Dashwood laughed. “Your compatriot Daemons, when they came to the Demi-Monde, were armed with rifles far superior to those then available to our own soldiers. When the Daemons were captured these weapons were taken, studied, and ForthRight engineers managed to replicate them. Only the ForthRight engineers have been able to do this and hence only the ForthRight is able to manufacture these M4s.”

  “And will the ForthRight supply them to the Coven?”

  With another, louder, sigh, Dashwood closed his newspaper, folded it carefully and placed it beside his plate. “Who knows, Miss Williams? Diplomacy is designed to achieve a resolution of differences between two Sectors such that both are, to a greater or lesser extent, content with the outcome. That, I am sure, is the objective of Comrade Beria in his discussions with the Coven.”

  “There is a saying where I come from”—the Daemon made an impish glance at the captain—“that war is diplomacy pursued in a more physical manner. The Stormer is being very antagonistic toward the Coven and as it’s the mouthpiece of Heydrich I can only assume that it’s preparing the people of the ForthRight for war.”

  “The ForthRight is a peace-loving state. Comrade Leader Heydrich signed a nonaggression pact with Empress Wu only last Autumn.”

  “Pacts are made to be broken. Are the two railway lines you are building part of this pact, Comrade Commissar?”