Rod Rees - [The Demi-Monde 02]

by Spring (v5. 0) (epub)

  Jim Kenton’s eyes widened. He obviously took God’s criticism personally, especially as the majority of the presidents since the Great Plague had been Kentons.

  ‘Yes,’ Aaliz went on, ‘America has betrayed its Protestant legacy, and by doing so has betrayed God. The unjust terms imposed by those hateful British in reprisal for the 12/12 destruction of Edinburgh were God’s way of punishing Americans because their faith faltered. This was the Second Punishment, suffered when we allowed ourselves to be led astray by presidents who were nothing more than false prophets, claiming they were God’s messengers when in reality they were nothing more than charlatans.’

  Jim Kenton twitched, which was hardly surprising given that Aaliz had just dismissed the work and the divinity of all of the Kenton clan for the past sixty years. He began to object, but Aaliz would have none of it. Before Kenton could get another word out, she had moved on. ‘God has told me that we must now plan for the future and to do this we must expunge doubt and addiction from America’s youth. In this way we will forge a nation which is united by one blood, one nationality, one language, one religion, and by a government blessed by God.’

  There was an awkward silence, and Aaliz took the opportunity to pour herself a fresh cup of coffee. Neither Jim nor Marsha seemed to have touched theirs.

  Jim Kenton shuffled nervously on his chair. ‘Miss Williams … Norma, whilst I am always reluctant to dampen anyone’s enthusiasm for doing God’s work, I don’t think you quite understand the enormity of the task facing you. Sure you are an attractive, intelligent young woman. Sure you have a certain celebrity. But it will take more than that to establish these Fun/Funs of yours. That your father is one of the most liberal presidents in living memory and an avowed atheist will make people suspicious of your motives. They’ll think this is just a madcap scheme to make him more popular in the Bible Belt … after all, there’s an election due in two years. And then there’s the more prosaic problem of money. To set up and promote an effective youth league, you’ll need a minimum of a hundred million dollars of seed money—’

  ‘Two hundred million,’ interjected Marsha Kenton helpfully.

  ‘Two hundred million.’ Jim Kenton shook his head. ‘No, Norma, better that you take on something a mite less ambitious. Fund-raising for the poor and the destitute, perhaps? That sort of thing.’

  Aaliz gave a dismissive wave of her hand. ‘Oh, God’s got much bigger plans for me than just being involved in charity work. He’s content to leave that in the hands of less able people like you, Marsha.’ Marsha Kenton went bright red but, to give her credit, she did manage to bite her tongue. ‘This brings me to the second thing that God’s been telling me,’ continued Aaliz. ‘In His opinion, the other problem with existing youth movements is their lack of miracles.’

  ‘Miracles?’ prompted Jim Kenton, a baffled look on his face.

  ‘That’s right, miracles. The reason why Christian youth movements have been so uniformly unsuccessful – apart from having poor leadership, that is – is that they have not been able to convince their target audience that they are truly backed by God. What they palpably lack is the ability to perform miracles.’

  ‘Miracles?’ murmured Jim Kenton again. He was obviously having difficulty in assimilating what Aaliz was saying. She decided to make it simpler.

  ‘Miracles are important, Jim, because they prove that you’ve been endorsed by God. It’s a little perplexing for Christians when they are obliged to stop to ask why God isn’t a little more hands-on, isn’t more out-and-about, so to speak, raising the dead, curing the infirm or feeding the hungry. It’s all very well moving in mysterious ways, but if there is a distinct lack of divine involvement, then the people in the cheap seats tend to get a trifle restless. God has recognised this and has asked me to take up the slack.’

  ‘You’re going to perform miracles?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What sort of miracles?’

  ‘I will dispel addiction.’

  ‘Addiction?’

  ‘Addiction is the root cause of all the corruption in the world, Jim, and I will dispel it.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘By using a Get-Me-Straighter Meter.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A Get-Me-Straighter Meter,’ Aaliz repeated. ‘It’s a device which allows me to realign a soul. God has told me how the soul residing within a human being flows through spiritual pathways that criss-cross the body and unify all its parts. It is akin to the Japanese concept of Qi, the life essence that permeates our bodies and maintains our mind and our soul. When a boy or a girl is caught in the grip of an addiction, these pathways become twisted and blocked. God has shown me how to straighten them out using my GMS Meter.’

  ‘Does it work?’

  ‘Of course it works!’ said Aaliz indignantly. ‘It’s God-inspired, after all.’ She gave her guests an innocent smile. ‘Shall I demonstrate it on you, Jim and Marsha? Shall I show how it can eradicate your addictions?’

  ‘I don’t have any addictions,’ objected Jim Kenton.

  ‘Oh, I think we both know that’s a lie,’ said Aaliz quietly. ‘ABBA, I would be grateful if you would show the footage taken by moteBot in the bedroom of Jim Kenton yesterday evening.’ The screen covering the side wall of the conference room ignited into a swirl of colours, and then settled down to show a highquality eyeVid of Jim Kenton leaning over the glass top of his wife’s dressing table snorting two very long lines of cocaine.

  ‘How?’

  ‘How did I get a moteBot past your Sentinels? God only knows, Jim.’

  ‘But … but … but that’s a violation of the privacy assurances contained in the Patriot Protection Act,’ spluttered Jim Kenton. ‘It’s illegal to use moteBots to violate an individual’s Domestic Curtilage.’

  ‘Absolutely correct, Jim, and absolutely fucking irrelevant. If I was to have ABBA post this on the Polly, the violation of your human rights would be the least of your concerns, you’d be too busy defending yourself against charges of rampant hypocrisy. It’s one thing to fulminate against drugs, Jim, and it’s quite another to be caught using them – especially when I have footage of you undergoing surgery in Brazil to repair a rather large oro-nasal perforation caused by your excessive snorting.’

  Jim Kenton slumped back in his chair, all colour drained from his face.

  ‘And, of course, Marsha, you have your own demons to wrestle with, don’t you? What does the Christian Women’s Forum, of which you are chairperson, say about lesbianism? That it’s an abomination and a vile affectation, I believe.’

  The next footage ABBA ran was remarkable both for its clarity and its graphic content. Indeed, it was so clear and so graphic that for a moment Aaliz worried that Marsha Kenton might be about to suffer a coronary. ‘You’re right to be worried, Marsha,’ Aaliz oozed. ‘This could be an enormous Polly hit! I especially like the tuxedo you’re wearing, very Dietrichesque. It demonstrates a certain equivocality in your sexuality which explains what Congresswoman Samples is doing to you with that … object.’

  ‘What do you want?’ asked Jim Kenton, in a whisper.

  ‘I want to save you.’ Aaliz stood up and walked across to the table standing in the centre of the room. With a theatrical flourish, she drew back a sheet from a black and very purposeful-looking machine. ‘This is a GMS Meter, and I’m going to use it to rid you of your addictions. After all, Jim and Marsha, it won’t do for my new partners-in-God to be flawed.’

  ‘Your partners?’

  ‘Yes, tomorrow you will announce that I have been appointed as the new leader of your Young Believers movement, which we’ll then rechristen the Fun-Loving Fundamentalists. There’s a PollyPress release already being prepared, so you won’t have to worry about any of the nasty little administrative details. Then you’ll make the two hundred million dollars you have stashed away in that oh-so-private bank account in the Grand Caymans over to the Fun/Funs to pay for its launch.’ She smiled. ‘God tells me the Fun/Funs will be a gr
eat success. He’s already given me the eyeMail addresses of thirty million new members.’

  22

  Paris

  The Demi-Monde: 25th Day of Spring, 1005

  Consider individuals as you would the stones and the rocks that constitute the detritus of our temporal avalanche. These stones and rocks – Nature’s quantum elements – move and tumble in a seemingly haphazard and chaotic fashion, and hence could be said to possess Quantum-InDeterminism, which is akin to free will. However, an overly bright young philosopher named Nikolai Lobachevsky working in the Coven has shown us that the quantum world is not random, it is merely so complex that we had been unable to discern the patterns underpinning its behaviour. By discovering that pattern, Lobachevsky demonstrated that there is order within all chaos and gave support to Laplace’s notion that we live in a Clockwork Universe.

  A LayPerson’s Guide to preScience: Nikolai Kondratieff, Future History Institute Press

  Beria hated to be away from the ForthRight, but since the debacle in the Bastille, Heydrich had been very insistent that he take a more hands-on approach to the pacification of the Quartier Chaud.

  Being away from the centre of power, Beria felt cut off, out of touch and very vulnerable. Although he had a myriad of cryptos and informants squirrelled away within the White House, none of them was able to communicate to him the feel of the place; none of them could sense, as he could, the mood of the Great Leader or the way the political wind was blowing. Who knew what schemes and betrayals his enemies – and Beria had so many enemies – were plotting behind his back? And since that little shit Archie Clement had returned from the Coven – wounded but unfortunately still breathing – Beria’s most formidable rival had the Leader’s ear. How that cow Trixiebell Dashwood could have missed from such close range was astonishing.

  But he had needed to come to Paris. Whilst Comrade General Skobelev, the Commander of the ForthRight army, was quite capable of blasting down the city’s gates and marching the army around to terrify the population, the more subtle arts of diplomacy and realpolitik were beyond him. And anyway, since the Lady IMmanual’s escape from the Bastille, the Leader had become somewhat agitated, so agitated, in fact, that Beria thought it wise to keep certain intelligence hidden from him. He saw no reason why the Great Leader should be burdened with the news of Zolotov’s failure to kill the bitch. This was something that he would deal with personally and quietly: it didn’t do to admit to failure in the ForthRight.

  Absent-mindedly, Beria gazed out at the streets of Paris streaming past the window of his armoured steamer and was pleased to note that it had the appropriately hushed and fearful feel of an occupied city. And the Parisians had every right to be fearful because after the outrage of the Bastille, Beria’s Checkya – aided and abetted by the Inquisition – had gone to work with a vengeance, weeding out the counter-revolutionaries and the rest of the reactionary scum that polluted the Medi. Weeding them out and then hanging them by piano wire from the lamp-posts that lined the Champs-Élysées. Beria was a great believer in advertising.

  But whilst he was relatively satisfied with the security situation in the Medi, he was less sanguine about the progress made in achieving the secondary objective of the occupation, to wit, stripping the Sector of all its wealth. These economic adjustments were fast becoming urgent economic adjustments, otherwise by the Summer the ForthRight would be bloodrupt. War was an expensive business.

  On the very day the ForthRight Army had entered the Quartier Chaud, Doge Catherine-Sophia had decreed that all trades handled by the Rialto Bourse with respect to the ForthRight be summarily suspended. Immediately the Bourse had frozen all ForthRight assets, including a sizeable proportion of its out-of-Sector blood reserves. Overnight the guinea had come off the Blood Standard and been hit by intense nuJuinspired speculation. The ForthRight had been reduced to having to pay for its imports blood-on-the-nail.

  And of course, the misery hadn’t stopped there. Ever eager to kick a man – especially a man – when he was down, those bastard LessBiens in the Coven had demanded an ever higher blood-price for their coal. The ForthRight had, reluctantly – very reluctantly – been obliged to accede to this bloodmail as without coal its steamers would stop, its engines would grind to a halt, and its people would go cold. The ForthRight had paid up, and the consequence was that its blood reserves were being fast depleted.

  So, to keep the ForthRight’s war machine running, the order had gone out to confiscate every last drop of blood from the Blood Banks of Paris, Rome and Barcelona.

  Lost in these unhappy thoughts, Beria hardly noticed that his steamer had arrived at the Élysée Palace where he was to have his audience with Senior CitiZen Robespierre. Robespierre, as was right and proper, was standing on the palace steps, waiting to greet his distinguished visitor. It was the first time Beria had met the man, and for someone with such a formidable reputation as a dispenser of firm government he was a disappointment. Beria – a sometime student of physiognomy – studied Robespierre’s face carefully as he climbed the steps, and silently declared himself less than impressed. The man’s eyes were set too far apart – denoting stupidity; his nose and mouth were small – denoting pettiness and a love of detail; and his skin and hair colour were almost albino-pale – denoting that his mother hadn’t been too picky about who she slept with.

  ‘Three sectors Forged as One,’ declared Beria as he made the party salute.

  In reply Robespierre made a grandiloquent bow, sweeping the polished marble floor with his top hat as he did so. ‘Comrade Vice-Leader, may I welcome you to Paris and assure you that my city stands ready to embrace both the liberating forces of the ForthRight and the True Religion, UnFunDaMentalism.’

  Beria smiled and decided not to begin this encounter by quibbling over Robespierre’s claim that Paris was his city. With five divisions of the ForthRight’s RedCoats currently marching through its streets, there was only one person who could be said to be in control of Paris … him. ‘I bring fraternal greetings from Comrade Leader Heydrich, who congratulates you on your success in leading the people of the Quartier Chaud out of the shadows of ImPuritanism and into the uplands lit by the light of UnFunDaMentalism.’ Beria hated all this diplomatic shit, but he knew it went down well with the peasants.

  Then followed an interminable ten minutes posing for daguerreotypists from the press, after which Robespierre led Beria to his private offices.

  As was his wont, Beria got straight down to business. ‘I understand that the decrees regarding the pacification of the Medi made after the unfortunate events at the Bastille have been successfully promulgated.’

  There was silence from Robespierre.

  Perhaps the fool needed prompting. ‘These included a duskto-dawn curfew, the banning of gatherings of more than four people, the reduction of the blood ration, the closure of all ImPuritan temples, and the prohibition of Fleshtivals and of the wearing of masks.’

  ‘I am familiar with the content of the decrees, Comrade Vice-Leader …’

  Beria took a self-satisfied sip of his Solution. If there was one thing he was skilled in, it was cowing a recalcitrant population.

  ‘… but …’ continued Robespierre.

  Beria looked up: he wasn’t a great lover of ‘but’s.

  ‘… but, unfortunately, these measures have caused a great deal of unrest.’

  ‘Unrest?’ queried Beria.

  ‘It is the edict regarding the wearing of masks that the people have found most irksome, Comrade Vice-Leader.’

  ‘Masks?’ asked a decidedly baffled Beria.

  ‘Yes, Comrade Vice-Leader, there is a feeling that the removal of masks will stifle the amatory pursuits of the Medis.’

  Beria began to feel a little confused. He had been expecting a discussion regarding how best to deal with rebels and malcontents, yet here they were discussing trivia. ‘Amatory pursuits?’ he ventured.

  ‘You should understand, Comrade Vice-Leader, that the wearing of masks in the Quarti
er Chaud is a tradition of many hundreds of years’ standing. It is something of an idée fixe with the hoi polloi. They believe masks to be an indispensable aspect of recreational lovemaking, which in turn is seen as vital in sustaining a CitiZen’s sexual animus. Without his or her mask, a Medi feels somewhat neutered.’

  Beria sensed that his grip on the conversation was starting to slip. What is this idiot talking about?

  ‘But casual sex is anathema to UnFunDaMentalism,’ protested Beria, who for the first time in his life wished that clown Crowley was with him to debate this sort of theological claptrap. ‘The creed of Living&More teaches us that sexual relations with a woman who is not your wife lead to a diminishing of the bodily humors and a depletion of potency.’

  ‘Of course, of course,’ agreed Robespierre hurriedly. ‘To intellectuals such as you and me, Comrade Vice-Leader, the denial of the urges of the body is recognised as being essential in the quest to attain oneness with the Supreme Being …’

  Robespierre was a fool, decided Beria: he actually believed all this Living&More twaddle. Real politicians saw it for the nonsense it was, merely a means by which the masses could be controlled and their animal urges directed to more constructive ends.

  ‘… but for the man and woman in the street, accustomed to being guided by their loins rather than their logic, it is a matter of some moment. Medis like wearing masks.’

  Beria sighed. He could not believe, with the thousand and one urgent issues he had confronting him, that he was squandering time discussing masks. ‘Comrade Senior CitiZen, please, we are trying to pacify a Sector. We are trying to eradicate all the numerous malcontents and seditionists that oppose our great work. To do this we have to be able to identify those who are our enemy, and then shoot them. Now, I may be being a little obtuse, but I think this process is not helped by everyone in the Sector wandering around wearing a fucking – and I use this adjective deliberately – mask.’