‘These ImPuritans have really got their heads screwed on,’ mused Norma.
Vanka smiled. ‘Screwed being a very apposite description, especially if you like masks and Fleshtivals and … well, never mind. You’ll see for yourself soon enough. Anyway, all was sweetness and light in the Quartier Chaud until a few years ago, when a chap called Michel de Nostredame announced that he’d found the cause of MALEvolence, of why men are so beastly. According to de Nostredame, it’s because men are prone to being led astray by really horrible characters called Dark Charismatics. They’re these mysterious people who rise to power every now and again, and lead the world to ruin. They’re the ones who are the root cause of MALEvolence: people like—’
‘—Heydrich, Beria, Shaka Zulu and Selim the Grim.’ It was Ella who finished the sentence.
‘Yeah, that’s right. How did you know?’
‘Where I come from, Vanka, they’re called Singularities. They’re classified as high-performing psychopaths.’ What Ella declined to add was that the Singularities had been deliberately seeded into the Demi-Monde for the express purpose of making sure that the place was a cauldron of bigotry, hatred and violence.
‘Yeah, well, de Nostredame’s work would have remained just a piece of academic curiosity except for the discovery that Visual Virgins could identify Dark Charismatics by their auras.’
‘I ask this question with the greatest of trepidation,’ began Norma, ‘and I certainly don’t want Potty-mouth at the front answering it’ – Burlesque blew her a kiss – ‘but could you tell me what a Visual Virgin is?’
‘They are virgins,’ began Vanka, ‘who can read auras. The Doge uses them to identify liars and criminals. Apparently Dark Charismatics have a distinctive aura that’s a real giveaway when they’re examined by Visual Virgins.’
‘Virgins reading auras? Only in the Demi-Monde.’
‘And once she learned that Dark Charismatics could be identified, then Doge Catherine-Sophia—’
‘Mad as a box ov bolts, she is, an’ always pissed, to boot,’ commented Burlesque helpfully, as he gave another toot on the horn. He was thoroughly enjoying himself.
‘—ordered that all male Dark Charismatics living in the Quartier Chaud be castrated—’
‘Ouch,’ from the front seat.
‘—as castration negates their MALEvolent inclinations. The Covenites use the practice a lot too. They call their eunuchs “NoNs”.’
‘Wot? They chop your willy orf?’ This question came from Rivets, who seemed to have gone very pale.
‘Yus, they’ve got this special machine, see. First ov all, they—’
‘That’s enough, Burlesque,’ snapped Ella, having seen how bilious Rivets looked. The last thing she wanted was to have the boy vomiting down her back.
Vanka continued with his explanation. ‘Unfortunately, three of the Dark Charismatics identified were senior senators in the Quartier Chaud.’
‘Maximilien Robespierre, Tomas de Torquemada and Godfrey de Bouillon.’
‘Good guess, Ella.’
‘I wasn’t guessing.’
‘Anyway, these men – the Gang of Three – told the Doge that they weren’t inclined to go through the rest of their lives singing falsetto and holed up in the Senate building in Paris where they declared UDI.’
‘UDI? Wot’s that?’ asked Rivets. ‘Sounds nasty.’
‘It stands for Unilateral Declaration of Independence.’
‘You’re right, Wanker, that’s wot this is all abart. Them three ’ave organised a cup de tea.’
‘A coup d’état,’ corrected Norma.
‘Yeah, that as well. I betcha anyfing that these three bastards ’ave thrown in their lot wiv Heydrich, opened up the Hub Bridge an’ sold Venice darn the river as part ov the bargain.’
A silence descended in the steamer’s cabin, as everyone pondered on what Burlesque had just said. Unlikely though it seemed, it was the only logical explanation for what they were witnessing. The Medi had apparently surrendered to the ForthRight without a shot being fired.
‘But we can’t go to the Quartier Chaud now,’ observed Norma, ‘Heydrich and his crew will be waiting for us there.’
‘Well, we can’t go back—’ began Vanka.
‘We’ll go to Venice,’ announced Ella after a quick scan of PINC. ‘I’ve always wanted to go to Venice.’
Burlesque nodded and shifted the steamer down a gear, almost demolishing the gearbox in the process. ‘Good idea! Once we’re over the Thames, we’ll ’ead for the Rialto Gate in the ’ubLand Wall. Wiv a bit ov luck, we’ll get there before the ForthRight Army.’
They were helped in their escape from the ForthRight by no one wanting to impede the progress of a Checkya steamer, especially a Checkya steamer flying Beria’s pennant, especially a Checkya steamer that didn’t seem to have any brakes. But still, such was the press of men and matériel trying to cross Hub Bridge Number Two that it took them hours and a great deal of shouting and swearing just to get over the river and into the HubLand that bordered the Quartier Chaud. Once they were there, exhausted and drained from their adventures of the night before and the excitement of Burlesque’s driving, they decided to rest for a couple of hours and to make for Venice as soon as night fell.
It was a bad decision.
By the time darkness came, they found their path to Venice blocked by the cordon sanitaire the ForthRight Army had thrown up along the wall separating the Quartier Chaud from the Hub, with hundreds of armoured steamers standing between them and Venice. Worse, all the refugees streaming into the Sector from the ForthRight – and by Ella’s guess, several thousand had crossed the Thames during the day – were being bustled towards Paris, and away from Venice. They had no choice now: they had to take a chance on getting to Venice through Paris.
They abandoned the steamer about a mile from the wall itself, after the crowd of refugees became so dense that it was impossible even for someone as homicidally inclined as Burlesque to drive it any further. When they arrived at Porte Saint-Martin – the main gate giving access to Paris from the HubLand – the scene that greeted them was like a madhouse, with hordes of displaced people trying to enter the city, and the Quartier’s GrandHarms being equally resolute in their determination not to let them in. Not even Vanka’s guineas, Burlesque’s bluster or Rivets’s pleading could get them through the gate, and it was a tired and dispirited Ella who found herself standing in the middle of the crowd, leaning on Vanka and trying to think how they might connive their way into Paris.
And that was when Fate took a hand.
‘Look, look,’ came a shout from the edge of the crowd, ‘it’s the Lady IMmanual!’
It took a moment for Ella to register that she was the ‘Lady IMmanual’ being referred to, and when she belatedly looked around, standing there not twenty-five yards away from her was William Penn and the rest of the disciples who called themselves ‘the Twelve’.
‘Bollocks,’ whispered Vanka in her ear, ‘I thought we’d lost that lunatic back in the ForthRight.’
Ella smiled and bowed towards William Penn, who went bright red with excitement. ‘This, ladies and gentlemen,’ he shouted as he spun around to address the crowd, ‘is the Messiah. This young girl is the divine saviour sent by ABBA to save the poor souls trapped in Warsaw by that personification of evil Reinhard Heydrich. This is the Lady IMmanual who performed the Miracle of the Boundary. I entreat you, ladies and gentlemen, to kneel before the Messiah.’
There must have been a fair few people fleeing Warsaw in the crowd, because when William Penn dropped to his knees, two or three hundred others in his immediate vicinity did the same. Ella and her four colleagues were left standing, very self-consciously, amidst a sea of genuflecters.
‘Shit, Ella, this is really heavy-duty,’ said an awestruck Norma Williams. ‘Just what the fuck have you been doing since the last time I saw you?’
‘It’s all a ridiculous misunderstanding, Norma. I pulled a stunt back in the Ghetto and now everybody thinks I’
m some sort of Messiah.’
And if Ella felt embarrassed by what was happening, it was an embarrassment tinged with apprehension. She really didn’t like the way the GrandHarms who were patrolling the HubLand Wall were staring at her.
4
Paris
The Demi-Monde: 2nd Day of Spring, 1005
From whence Dark Charismatics came, we might never know. For my part I would postulate that H. singularis is a product of a micro-evolutionary event that took place in the comparatively recent past. Indeed, by my reckoning, H. singularis may have first appeared in the Demi-Monde at the time of the Fall. I have referred this perplexity to theologians, one of whom – Mage Thomas Aquinas – has opined that H. singularis may be an echo of the meddlements performed by Lilith when she sought to usurp ABBA and to remake HumanKind in her image.
Letter dated 53rd day of Spring, 1002, from Professeur Michel
de Nostredame to Doge Catherine-Sophia
Unlike the vast majority of the GrandHarms working in his precinct, Henri Aroca enjoyed night duty. He wasn’t a superstitious man and he wasn’t afraid of the goolies, beasties, vampyrs, Grigori or any of the other horrible creatures that were rumoured to infest the streets of Paris when the sun went down.
Whilst his comrades on the force found much to complain about when they were ordered to spend a night patrolling the wall that separated Paris from the HubLand, Aroca was of a different view. He found that invariably there was little work to do other than to rattle gates and test locks, to ensure that the various apotropes – the devices Quartier Chaudians used to dissuade and dispel the daemons of the night – were in place, and to accept the refreshment heaped on him by owners of the various late-night kiosks he visited during his perambulations. Even the blood-drunks he was called upon to deal with were, by and large, more merry than dangerous. Having his good friend Pierre Maigny as his partner on these nocturnal tours of duty helped, and many were the pleasant nights they enjoyed sauntering along the dark, deserted pavements of the Border arrondissement, discussing their principal passion in life: fishing.
Night duty also kept him out of the clutches of his shrewish Current, but this was one advantage Henri Aroca kept to himself. If she was ever to suspect that Henri volunteered for every night duty available in order to avoid having to share a bed with her, there would be Hel to pay. Maybe, Henri thought, there was something in what Senior CitiZen Robespierre was saying. Maybe ImPuritanism had gone too far, maybe it was time for men to assert themselves. Maybe he should have put his foot down harder with his daughter, Odette, and told her she wasn’t to go on her stupid demonstrations.
It was an interesting thought, but one Henri decided that he would delay implementing. He would do his asserting when he was out of arm’s reach of both his Current and his daughter. They were both big women with fists the size of puddings.
Anyway, he didn’t know where Odette was any more. Since she’d got involved with the UnScrewed-Liberationists, she’d become a little distant – which he supposed was the best place to be when the Quizzies were after you.
With a doleful shake of his head, Henri brought his attention back to his duty as a GrandHarm rather than as a father. He pushed his eye up against the peephole that allowed GrandHarms to see what was going on outside the city walls, and what he saw did not make a pretty sight. The onslaught of the UnFunnies and their army meant that a whole swarm of refugees from the ForthRight was now attempting to enter Henri’s beloved Paris. As he had been so forcefully advised by his ridiculously stupid commander, Captain Lefevre, these refugees had any number of Suffer-O-Gette assassins, WhoDoo saboteurs and HimPeril agents provocateurs hidden in their ranks, so it was necessary for the GrandHarmerie to refuse them all entry. It had been distressing for Henri, a naturally warm-hearted type, to deny these anguished and destitute people sanctuary, but what else could he do? Orders were orders, and if Henri wasn’t a particularly effective GrandHarm, he was at least a dutiful one.
Now, finally, after three hours of shouting, screaming, shoving and general unpleasantness, the crowd surrounding the Porte Saint-Martin checkpoint had settled down into a sort of discontented stupor. Exhaustion and cold had triumphed over desperation.
But even as he watched the crowd, something very strange happened. At the very moment Henri was about to abandon his surveillance and sample the wine and the oven-hot pastries that Pierre had brought to sustain them during their vigil, the crowd had fallen to its knees and begun to worship a small group of bedraggled people who were standing rather awkwardly a hundred metres or so from the gate. What the crowd was doing made Henri nervous: ImPuritanists like him weren’t big on worshipping and grovelling – unless, of course, the worshipping and grovelling was part of some ImPure sexual ritual. And that, as best he could judge, was not the case with these people.
His nervousness was such that he pulled his revolver out of its holster and checked that it was loaded. At the start of their watch, the captain had insisted that the GrandHarms be armed, which at the time had seemed to Henri to be a trifle excessive. But now, as the mood of the crowd became more intense, Henri was glad that he had heeded his captain’s orders. The people worshipping beyond the walls were becoming more febrile by the minute, so much so that Henri was obliged to send a runner to persuade their captain to abandon the cosy bar he was occupying, and do some work for a living.
When a grumbling Captain Lefevre arrived five minutes later, he took Henri’s place at the peephole and spent almost a minute studying the scene developing beyond the wall. ‘You … Sergeant Aroca,’ the captain shouted towards him, ‘what’s happening out there? Why are all these people praying?’
‘I don’t know, Captain.’ Henri shrugged. ‘One minute they were just standing there, and the next they were on their knees. I think they’re praying to that Shade girl wearing the LessBien trousers.’
Cautiously the captain edged open one of the gates, pulled a spyglass out of his jacket pocket and used it to survey the scene. Then, with a frown, he snapped the telescope shut and bellowed at Henri: ‘Go out there, Aroca, and tell them to stop this nonsense. It is an affront to UnFunDaMentalism.’ Automatically Henri’s eyes checked the right lapel of the captain’s jacket. Sure enough there was a small, gold Valknut badge pinned there announcing that the captain was a newly converted UnFunny. ‘Don’t you know that there’s a new law in the Medi that bans all non-UnFunDaMentalist rites and rituals being performed within the borders of the Quartier?’
Henri did know: it had been one of the first things Robespierre had done after the Great Schism with Venice. But he also knew that there were a couple of thousand desperate people gathered around the Shade girl, and he had a sneaking suspicion that they would be mighty pissed off if he tried to interrupt their devotions.
‘Me stop them? I don’t think they’ll want to stop, Captain. They might get nasty.’
‘Order them! Do your duty as a GrandHarm, Sergeant Aroca.’
You rotten cowardly bastard, thought Henri Aroca, as he reluctantly snuck through the checkpoint’s gate and, with the ever-faithful but bloody frightened Pierre Maigny at his side, began to lizard his way through the kneeling throng towards the girl and her companions.
Ella watched nervously as the gate, set in the wall protecting Paris from incursion from the Hub, swung open and a fat GrandHarm sergeant, brandishing a huge pistol in his right hand, and his equally tubby companion armed with an enormous rifle stood for a moment under the famous sign over the gate – ‘Liberté, Egalité, Fornication’ – and then walked towards them. The two GrandHarms were wearing rather jolly uniforms made from a material that alternated broad stripes of lemon and fuchsia, but from what Ella could see of the sergeant’s face under his half-mask, he looked far from jolly. His florid face was dressed with a dour expression that showed he was a very resolute and very unhappy, man. She had a sneaking feeling that unless the discussions with him were conducted in a diplomatic manner, the situation could rapidly degenerate into violence.<
br />
‘Why’s this twerp wearing a mask?’ asked Norma. ‘Who does he think he is: the Lone-fucking-Ranger?’
Ella shook her head; PINC had already given her the answer. ‘Everyone in the Quartier Chaud wears a mask when they’re out in public, Norma. It’s an ImPuritan custom designed to help people more readily assume a sexually enfranchised personality. The idea is that when their real identity is hidden, CitiZens won’t feel embarrassed or awkward when they’re indulging in casual sex.’
Norma made a moue. ‘Sounds like a good idea. Some of the guys I’ve dated would have looked better masked … but then, some of them would have looked better decapitated.’ She leant forward to get a better view of the GrandHarm. ‘And isn’t his codpiece a little large?’
‘Not if Beria’s bin banging on his nuts, it ain’t,’ commented Burlesque, with real feeling.
A smiling Vanka stepped forward to deal with the glowering GrandHarm sergeant but he was elbowed aside by Burlesque. ‘I’ll deal wiv this Frog, Wanker. I spraken their lingo bon.’
Vanka made a desperate grab for Burlesque’s arm to stop him, but it was too late.
‘Bon jour, Mon-sewer le Frog. Je suis Burlesque Bandstand, purveyor de beverages alcoholiques et impresario extraordinaire.’ Burlesque thrust out a filthy hand, which caused the GrandHarm to flinch back in alarm.
The sergeant peered down his long nose at Burlesque and Ella saw his nostrils tweak as though he was offended by a bad odour, which was, of course, the case. Burlesque stank of cordite, neglect and several other unmentionable – even unimaginable – substances.
Only when he had regained his composure, and presumably his sense of smell, did the GrandHarm deign to address Burlesque. ‘Pourquoi toutes ces gens sont-elles à genoux devant cette fille?’ (‘Why are all these people bowing down to this girl?’) He nodded in Ella’s direction.
‘Par ce que elle est une … prophetess.’ Burlesque glanced towards Vanka. ‘Oi, Wanker, wot’s Frog for “prophetess”?’
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