‘It’s voyante,’ answered Vanka. ‘Look, Burlesque, I really think it would be better if I …’
Burlesque shooed Vanka’s protests away. ‘Elle est un beaucoup de important voyante. Vous savvy bon, Mon-sewer?’
Amazingly the GrandHarm did seem to ‘savvy bon’. ‘Une voyante? Comment s’appelle-t-elle?’ (‘A prophetess? What is her name?’)
‘The Lady IMmanual.’
The name obviously carried some resonance with the GrandHarm. ‘C’est la Dame IMmanual? C’est la fille qui a ouvert la Couche Limite?’ (‘This is the Lady IMmanual? This is the girl who opened the Boundary Layer?’)
‘Wee, wee, c’est vrai, Mon-sewer. Je suis elle’s manager. Elle est beaucoup de best Physicalist dans le Demi-Monde. Elle only puts art pour current guineas pour un sorry.’
Ella’s eyebrows arched in surprise: her price had gone up. Forty guineas for a soirée was a mighty advance on the ten guineas she’d been getting only a few weeks ago.
‘Son agent, vous? Vous mentez, Monsieur. Comment une aussi belle créature peut-elle avoir pour agent le gros porc que vous êtes?’ (‘Her manager? You are lying, Monsieur: how can such a beautiful creature as she have such a fat pig as you for a manager?’)
Burlesque paused for a moment as he interpreted what the GrandHarm had just said. ‘’Ere, ’oo are you callin’ a fat pig?’
‘D’you wont me to put wun on ’im, Burlesque?’ Rivets asked helpfully, as he rolled the sleeve of his jacket up over his forearm. ‘I always wanted to give wun ov these fairy Frog fucks a smack.’
Henri Aroca scuttled back to the checkpoint to report to the captain. He wasn’t quite sure what language the fat and very smelly vagabond had been speaking, but he had understood enough to know that out there was the Lady IMmanual. He also knew that pinned up on the noticeboard of the precinct headquarters was an instruction – signed by Grand Inquisitor de Torquemada no less – to the effect that all officers were to be on the lookout for the Shade girl known as the Lady IMmanual, and that if she was discovered she was to be immediately handed over to the Inquisition.
Poor cow.
Since the Great Schism with Venice, the CIA – the Central Inquisitorial Agency – of Tomas de Torquemada had been charged with bringing the Medi into the loving – and often very painful – grip of UnFunDaMentalism. The more liberal and, Henri had to admit, enjoyable pleasures of ImPuritanism had been banned by the Inquisition, and though some of the trappings of ImPuritanism – especially the wearing of masks and the sordid delights of Fleshtivals – were proving tenacious, there was no denying Torquemada’s efficiency in having any HerEticals, RaTionalists or zadniks found within the Quartier summarily exCommunicated.
ExCommunicated.
Now that was a word that chilled the SAE of Henri Aroca. ExCommunication was a punishment reserved for those who denied the Sacred Truth of UnFunDaMentalism. And as the Grand Inquisitor saw it, if you didn’t have your tongue then you were much less inclined to continue denying.
‘It’s the Lady IMmanual,’ squeaked a breathless Henri. ‘That’s who they’re praying to.’
‘The Lady IMmanual? You’re sure?’ The captain snapped open his telescope and examined the group of Anglo refugees again. ‘Which one is the Lady IMmanual?’
‘The good-looking Shade.’
The captain thought for a moment and closed the telescope. ‘Then you’d better go and arrest her.’
Henri Aroca’s eyes widened in astonishment at the stupidity of this order. He’d seen the way the dwarf, who seemed to be the bodyguard of the fat Anglo, had wanted to hit him. The fucker might be small but he’d looked very dangerous. And then there was the crowd of IMmanualists surrounding the girl; the thought of being torn apart by an enraged mob of religious fanatics did not appeal.
‘With all due respect, Captain, fuck that. I go out there to try to handcuff the Lady IMmanual, and my Current will have to reassemble me before I can be buried.’
‘I am giving you an order, Aroca.’
‘And I’m giving you the finger, Captain. I’d sooner be banged up in the Bastille than end my days as a human jigsaw puzzle.’ A thought struck Henri. ‘If you want her arrested, why don’t you go out there and do it?’
The captain obviously considered that a ridiculous suggestion; ridiculous and dangerous. ‘It would be undignified for a man of my rank to perform such a trivial duty,’ he answered stiffly. ‘So what do you suggest, Sergeant? We can’t just ignore her. The Grand Inquisitor says she is one of the foremost enemies of UnFunDaMentalism.’
‘Well, we could call up the Quizzies and let them do their own dirty work.’ A scowl from the captain showed what he thought of that idea: no one – no one sane anyway – wanted to have anything to do with Torquemada’s gang of maniacs. What they were rumoured to do with red-hot pokers was nobody’s business. ‘Or we could let all the refugees in, and nab her in the confusion.’
‘But that would be in violation of our orders to keep the refugees from entering Paris.’
‘Oh, I don’t think they’re refugees, Captain. I’m guessing that most of them are Quartier Chaudians who’ve been living and working in the ForthRight and who just want to come home now that war’s been declared. Anyway, it’s either that, Captain, or you go out there and let those Anglo bastards beat you to death with one of your own legs.’
The GrandHarm captain made a megaphone announcement that, by the unprecedented magnanimity and unparalleled charity of Senior CitiZen Maximilien Robespierre, the Government of the Free UnFunDaMentalist Medi had granted sanctuary to all refugees of good character now gathered beyond the walls of Paris. As the great doors were dragged open, the result was predictable. The thousands of people – all of whom deemed themselves to be of requisite ‘good character’ – gathered around the Porte immediately abandoned their devotions, leapt to their feet and, panic-stricken lest the captain change his mind, pushed and shoved their way towards what they saw as a safe haven from the ForthRight Army.
As the crowd degenerated into a shouting, screaming mob, Ella saw the GrandHarm sergeant, accompanied by five large and heavily armed colleagues, sneak out of a side exit and kick and bully their way towards her. It didn’t take a genius to deduce that they were intent on arresting her. For a moment she thought about making a run for it, but the GrandHarms were armed and she doubted she’d get very far before she took a bullet in the back. Anyway, if they started blasting, a lot of innocent people would get hurt. Better, she decided, to go quietly and wait for a chance to escape later.
‘I have a feeling, Vanka,’ said Ella quietly, ‘that everything is about to get a whole lot more difficult.’ She turned to the rest of her little party. ‘So, ladies and gentlemen, if things go pear-shaped and we become separated, I suggest we all meet up on the Bridge of Thighs in Venice. Go there at twelve noon every day.’
‘Mademoiselle,’ interrupted the red-faced sergeant, as he barged his way up to Ella. ‘Je vous arrête pour agitation religieuse. Je vous prierai de n’opposer aucune résistance à cette arrestation, sinon je me verrai dans l’obligation d’employer la force.’ (‘I must arrest you for being a religious agitator. I would entreat you not to protest this arrest, otherwise I am empowered to use force.’) And for emphasis he waved his pistol vaguely in her direction.
Ella smiled. ‘Employer la force ne sera pas nécessaire, Monsieur le GrandHarm,’ (‘Violence won’t be necessary, Monsieur le GrandHarm’) she replied in her flawless French. ‘Mes amis et moi allons venir tranquillement.’ (‘My friends and I will come peaceably.’) But when Ella turned around, she saw that Burlesque and Rivets had already vanished.
Then things really took a turn for the worse. As the GrandHarm sergeant moved to grab Ella by the arm, a group of infuriated IMmanualists began to hurl stones at him. Unfortunately, their aim didn’t match their piety. One of the stones they hurled missed the sergeant and instead hit Ella full on the forehead. Everything went black …
Rivets watched as an unconscious Miss Ella was carrie
d away, and Vanka and Norma were bundled into the back of a steamer. This had really aggravated the crowd, and for a minute it had looked like things might have really kicked off, but when the GrandHarms started shooting into the air everyone had quickly calmed down. Still, Rivets had the suspicion that abandoning his friends in their hour of need wasn’t a terribly noble thing to do.
‘Bit ov a coward’s way, ain’t it, Burlesque? Deserting our comrades and everyfing.’
‘Nah,’ said Burlesque, as he rammed his way past the swirl of humanity pressing around the gate giving access to Paris. If there was one person who was going to get into Paris, that person, Rivets reckoned, was Burlesque Bandstand. ‘You know the old saying, Rivets? “He ’oo fights and runs away …”’
‘“Lives to fight another day”?’ suggested Rivets.
‘Nah, “He ’oo fights and runs away don’t have a red-hot poker jammed up his jacksie, courtesy of the Quizzies.”’
5
Venice
The Demi-Monde: 2nd Day of Spring, 1005
PreScience describes and plots the irresistible cyclical trajectory of history; of how events roll through time with the power and the predictability of ABBA-inspired temporal avalanches. These avalanches are propelled by the big and muscular events of history: wars, the discoveries made by science, and the actions of crowds. These are the ‘macro’ events of history. As such, they are immutable and follow the tenets of Determinism … of Macro-Determinism, the philosophy that underpins preScience. There is no free will evinced here. A temporal avalanche is Macro-Deterministic in that it is a prisoner of its own momentum and its own historic inevitability.
A LayPerson’s Guide to preScience: Nikolai Kondratieff,
Future History Institute Press
In the humble opinion of Docteur Nikolai Dmitriyevich Kondratieff, the artist who had been responsible for the decoration of the ante-room of the Doge’s Palace, where he was currently standing, had either been possessed of an over-wrought imagination or had been smoking something decidedly illegal. The confection of overblown angels, cherubs – well, Kondratieff assumed they were cherubs, since his angelology was a little shaky – and ABBAs swirling around the walls and ceiling of the vast room was a trifle overwhelming.
But this, he supposed, was the point: the size of the room, the opulence of its furnishings and the artistically excessive nature of its frescos were all designed to place the Doge’s supplicants in a mood of awed humility.
Kondratieff judged himself to be summarily humiliated, but if he had been asked he would have admitted – and Kondratieff was a naïvely truthful man – that he found the expressions on the faces of the painted ABBAs more indicative of imminent flatulence than omnipotence, and that the state of undress of a number of the female angels was a tad excessive. He took a moment to polish his neat wire-framed spectacles, then popped them back on his long nose and made a careful scrutiny of a jar decorated with the image of a pair of naked angels struggling with a female Grigori blessed – if Grigori could be blessed – with a particularly impressive pair of mammaries.
As his nose came close to the jar he was enveloped by the stench of garlic. This was obviously a weapon against Grigori who, so tradition had it, were allergic to the stuff. Since coming to the Quartier Chaud, Kondratieff had been amazed by the natives’ obsession with vampyres; everywhere he went entrances were protected by garlands of garlic, hawthorn and wild roses and by seeds spread over doorsteps, and virtually every CitiZen wore a silver amulet of some description. Quartier Chaudians seemed obsessed by bloody Grigori. Most odd.
It was at the very moment when Kondratieff was bent in close examination of these diabolical tits, trying to discover how the stereoscopic effect had been contrived, that the Doge’s chamberlain chose to make his entrance. ‘Docteur Kondratieff? Her Most Reverend Excellency the Doge Catherine-Sophia will see you now,’ the flunky announced with a sniff, obviously having decided that Kondratieff’s interest in female anatomy was, even for an ImPuritan, excessive. Placing the jar back in its niche, Kondratieff dutifully trotted after the chamberlain into what he assumed was one of the Palace’s more informal reception rooms. Informal it might have been, but it still managed to be enormous in scale and decorated in a manner that was, if anything, even more frenzied than the antechamber. The room was a visual cacophony of cream and gold, and the number of tits and bums on display was, by any measure, overindulgent.
The Doge was sitting on a couch in the centre of the room, though it took a moment for Kondratieff to spot her. The room was bedecked with shadows and as the Doge was wearing her habitual widow’s weeds, she wasn’t so much dressed as camouflaged. But despite all her efforts to merge into the background, Kondratieff could still see that the Doge was a handsome woman. For a woman in her fifties – how far into her fifties was a state secret – she was still attractive, albeit in a somewhat excessive sort of way.
Excessive.
Yes, Kondratieff decided, excessive was an excellent adjective to apply to Doge Catherine-Sophia. She was, after all, excessively astute and possessed of an excessive appetite for both the pleasures of the flesh and for political intrigue, all of which made her an excessively able Doge. Correction: had made her. Sadly, since the death two years ago of her beloved Current, Grigori Alexandrovich Potemkin, the woman had gone into Solution-fuelled decline. The half-empty bottle that stood on the side table was mute testimony to how she was dealing with her bereavement.
The Doge roused herself and tried to sit up a little straighter. It was an awkward manoeuvre as the woman was drunk and the décolletage of her bodice was excessively … well, excessive.
‘Docteur Nikolai Dmitriyevich Kondratieff,’ announced the chamberlain in a loud voice, ‘Head of the Department of preScience at the University of Venice, and President of the Future History Institute.’
The Doge acknowledged Kondratieff’s bow with a fluttering wave of her hand, which she then directed towards her chamberlain. ‘You may leave uz now, Chamberlain, as I vish to have confidential discourse mit zhe good Docteur.’
Kondratieff almost laughed, but then the Doge’s accent was a standing joke in the Sector. It was an accent developed during the woman’s somewhat peripatetic childhood, which involved her father dodging around the Demi-Monde to avoid his many creditors. Whilst this had given the Doge fluency in all the languages of the Demi-Monde, it had also resulted in her acquiring a terrible accent in every one of them, even her native Anglo.
‘But, Your Most Reverend Excellency …’ spluttered the chamberlain in protest.
‘Oh, don’t fret yourzelf, Chamberlain, I have zhe most capable of protectors votching over me, should Docteur Kondratieff choose to attack my poor veak body.’ She gave Kondratieff a salacious wink, and then nodded towards a dark corner of the room.
Now this is a surprise, decided Kondratieff, and then cursed himself for using the word ‘surprise’. PreScientists were never ‘surprised’ … well, they never admitted to being anyway. The business of preScientists was divination, prognostication and 4Telling, and being able to accurately predict the future meant that ‘a surprise’ was another way of saying ‘a mistake’. But even Kondratieff had to admit to being – sod it – surprised to be meeting a Visual Virgin. They were, after all, semi-mythological creatures, and the girl who stepped out from the shadows wasn’t just any Visual Virgin. This was, unless he was very much mistaken, the most famous Visual Virgin of them all, Sister Florence, the Auralist who had identified the Gang of Three, who had discovered the nest of Dark Charismatics the Quartier Chaud had been nurturing in its bosom – or in its Senate, to be more accurate.
This is one to be very careful of, decided Kondratieff, especially today when he would have to be very economical with the truth.
As the chamberlain made his reluctant departure, the Doge effected the introductions. ‘Docteur Kondratieff, I have pleasure in introducing Zizter Florence, Zenior Auralist in zhe Zacred unt All-Zeeing Convent of Visual Virgins here in Venice.’<
br />
The Sister did not disappoint. Kondratieff guessed her to be in her late teens: though she was veiled it was obvious from her body that she was in the prime of life, and, being so very tall, there was certainly a lot of body to be primed. What was more, thanks to the transparent habit she was wearing, he had an almost uninterrupted view of all that wonderful body. The garment was made from a delicate red organza that didn’t so much cover her naked body as tint it.
The girl moved nearer to Kondratieff, her bare feet making nary a sound on the marble floor. As she approached him, the feeling of almost intoxicating eroticism that flowed around her grew stronger. Though never one to evince a particularly dynamic sexuality – most of his lovers had classed him as mezzo-piano or moderately capable – even he felt the unmistakable stirrings of lust. Sister Florence was that desirable. Deliberately desirable.
She’s reading me, decided Kondratieff, and to do this she was arousing him. He had heard that Visual Virgins were adept in fiduciary sex, the technique of being able to sexually arouse their subjects without touching them. This was a key weapon in an Auralist’s armoury: when a subject was aroused, their auras became easier to read and their innermost secrets more openly displayed.
Sister Florence bowed to Kondratieff, giving him a coquettish little smile as she did so, knowing damned well the effect she was having on him. ‘Verily, I am much pleased to meet with thee, Docteur Nikolai Kondratieff.’ The girl spoke in Old French, and Kondratieff presumed that that was how Visual Virgins conversed with each other behind the walls of their convents.
He took a moment to recover his inner calm. This calm didn’t last very long. The Doge patted the couch next to her, indicating that Kondratieff should sit beside her.
Oh dear …
‘I have brought you here, Kondratieff,’ the Doge slurred, ‘to discuss zhe Institute’s most recent 4Telling.’ She paused to take a sip of her Solution. ‘But first, perhaps, you could explain zhis preScience mumbo-jumbo ov yours to zhe good Zizter?’
Rod Rees - [The Demi-Monde 02] Page 6