‘Then we must devise a test which eliminates chance entirely.’ The Lady leant over to the fruit bowl, considered for a moment, and then selected two small black grapes. ‘If we were to repeat the trial using these grapes, and one of us was successful in making a hit and the other not, would you concede it to be a triumph of skill over luck, Patrician Dandolo?’
A snort of derision from Dandolo. ‘What you are suggesting is impossible. To hit such a small target with the lunge of a sabre would require …’
‘The help of ABBA?’ suggested the Lady IMmanual, impishly. ‘So I ask you again: if I were to succeed and you were to fail, would that not show that I am blessed by ABBA, and therefore divine?’
As de Sade watched from his lofty position, he saw Dandolo’s eyes skittering around the room. He was now a very unhappy man. ‘Yes,’ he agreed reluctantly, ‘if you were to perform such an amazing feat, then I would have to concede that you were truly blessed by ABBA.’
A hushed silence fell on the hall as the Lady handed the grapes to de Sade, and announced that as she was the winner of the first round, then Patrician Dandolo was obliged to go first again. This he did with much bad grace, but much determination. His determination did him no good: his lunge missed the falling grape completely, the effort sending him sprawling to the floor. The ripple of laughter that accompanied his fall brought a flush of embarrassment to his face and a snarl of hatred to his lips.
De Sade eyed Dandolo nervously. He was an angry man, and in de Sade’s experience angry men could easily be provoked into doing something stupid.
Using his sabre as a makeshift walking stick, Dandolo got back to his feet and brushed the dust off the knees of his trousers. ‘I am pleased I amuse you, witch,’ he sneered. ‘Could we now have the opportunity of seeing if you can do any better?’
For de Sade, the outcome was almost inevitable. The Lady took up her position; he counted one, two, three; he dropped the grape; the sabre flashed; and there was the grape skewered on the tip of the sword. But expected or not, his mouth still flopped open in astonishment, amazed that anyone could do what he had just seen done. The rest of the audience was similarly dumbfounded. It was one thing to applaud skill and talent; it was quite another to celebrate what they instinctively knew to be impossible. No one, absolutely no one, could have done what the Lady IMmanual had just done. Such a combination of speed, accuracy and hand–eye coordination was inhuman. No, it was more: it was superhuman, and as such it was more frightening than it was awe-inspiring.
Out of loyalty to the Lady, de Sade clapped his hands and shouted ‘Bravo’, but the rest of the audience refused to be roused. Instead they stood there immobile … awestruck.
The Lady IMmanual seemed oblivious to the dazed condition of the gathered patricians. ‘So, Patrician Dandolo, it would appear that I have won, and therefore you must acknowledge me for what I am, an emissary of ABBA.’
‘What you did was impossible,’ stammered Dandolo. ‘You are no disciple of ABBA. Rather you are a witch in the employ of Loki.’
‘Now, now, Patrician Dandolo, it does not do to show what a bad sport you are. Take defeat like a man, and all that.’ She gave a showy swish of her sabre. ‘As you say, it is all down to the strength of one’s wrists.’
‘It is impossible for a woman to be stronger than the man. It is … unnatural.’ Dandolo growled, and his peevish frown darkened with black anger. ‘You are Loki’s whore.’
The Lady IMmanual’s eyes flashed with anger. ‘Perhaps there is another reason for my mastery over you. Perhaps some other affliction is the cause of the weakness of your wrist, and hence of your defeat?’
Like a man who had been slapped in the face, Dandolo stepped back, his face red with anger. Even de Sade – who judged himself indifferent to insults – realised that for a man as splenetic as Dandolo to be accused of masturbation was a grievous insult and one to which he would retaliate.
Dandolo struck.
It was a lunatic move. If Dandolo’s sabre had landed, it would have decapitated the girl. But faster than the eye could see, the Lady raised her own blade to parry the stroke and then, in a twinkling, had sliced the tip of her sabre across Dandolo’s neck. The Venetian dropped his sword and sank gasping to his knees, his hands desperately clutching at his throat. It was a fatal wound: there was a rattle in his throat, and then he collapsed twitching across the stage. Finally, with one last gasp, he was still.
With a disdainful shake of her head, the Lady IMmanual turned to the audience. ‘Let this be a warning, patricians,’ she called out, imperiously, ‘that even though I am a woman, that does not mean I am unable to defend myself and my followers from wickedness. All those who take up arms against me will perish. Know me, I am the Lady IMmanual, I am the Messiah. Follow me and I will lead you to victory against the Beast that rises in the North. Follow me and I will lead you safely through Ragnarok. Follow me and I will lead you to Revelation. Together we will destroy the ForthRight. Together we will conquer the Demi-Monde and unite it under the blessed creed of IMmanualism. Hear me and know that if any oppose me, I will bring ABBA’s fury down on their heads. I will destroy them.’
She paused dramatically and then raised the sabre high above her head. ‘I now make this pledge to Venice: I will not allow your city to be ravaged by the ForthRight. I swear to you that not one ForthRight soldier will cross the Grand Canal. ABBA will smite the enemies of IMmanualism and cast them into the waters. I am the Messiah, and I give you this pledge.’
For a long moment she gazed around the hall, and when she spoke again her voice was, if anything, louder and more compelling. ‘I have a personal slogan, one given to me by ABBA, that will be adopted by all who accept me as the Messiah: “Unite, Follow, Crush”.’
‘Unite, Follow, Crush!’ was the shout that echoed through the Sala del Maggior Consiglio, and as the cheering of those gathered there rocked the hall, de Sade hopped down from the table, already wondering which whore he would squander his winnings on. He would need something to take his mind off what he had just witnessed. He had never imagined that the Messiah would be quite such a brutal bitch.
Alone of all the people in the hall, only Norma and Vanka didn’t join in the applause. Like Vanka, Norma was too shaken – sickened – by what she had seen and heard. This wasn’t the Ella she knew. Ella didn’t kill people. Ella didn’t incite the mob to crush people.
The pair of them standing there, looking bemused and bewildered in that sea of cheering people was what made Ella notice them, and though they were masked, this didn’t prevent her recognising her erstwhile friends. Norma saw her turn and point Vanka out to one of her Signori di Notte bodyguards, the look of pure hatred on her face persuading Norma to grab Vanka by the arm and try to hurry him to the exit. Oh, he protested that he had to speak to Ella but when he saw the Signori pushing and shoving their way towards them, even he realised that now wasn’t the time to chat. And as the pair of them scuttled out of the hall the question kept nagging at her: why did Ella suddenly hate Vanka – hate her – so much? Why was Ella suddenly their enemy?
29
The Future History Institute: Venice
The Demi-Monde: 28th Day of Spring, 1005
Temporal Intervention is a delicate matter. Even the most nugatory of changes to the TimeStream can, over the course of Future History, have unforeseen and unwelcomed consequences, this being referred to as Temporal Noise or, more whimsically, as the Butterfly Effect. Temporal Interventions must be the minimum actions required to achieve the designated OutCome and must be conducted in total secrecy. If we imagine Future History as a pool of still water and Temporal Interventions as pebbles tossed into that water, then by adhering to the Precept of Minimalism, the changes made must create the lowest amplitude and duration of ripples. Additionally, all Temporal Interventions must be enacted as close (both temporally and spatially) to the desired OutCome as is possible.
Future History Institute Standard Procedure 017: Rules
Governing
Temporal Interventions
It was a shaken Norma who followed an even more shaken Vanka into a nearby bar. Neither of them spoke until Vanka had downed several large glasses of Solution, and Norma had knocked back decidedly more cognac than was good for her.
Eventually, her shock suitably anaesthetised, Norma looked over to Vanka. ‘What the fuck was all that about? Did I or did I not just see Ella Thomas murder a man in cold blood and get cheered to the rafters for her efforts?’
Vanka sat gazing blankly at the wall for several moments before he answered, ‘I’m not sure what you mean by “in cold blood”, Norma, but the answer to your question is, yes, Ella just killed a man without so much as turning a hair.’ He gave a mirthless little chuckle. ‘Though, as she’s now shaven-headed, that’s pretty much what you might expect.’
‘I don’t really think this is much of a time for levity, Vanka,’ snapped Norma. ‘And it wasn’t just what Ella did to that poor sod Dandolo either—’
‘She was defending herself,’ interrupted Vanka.
‘No, she wasn’t! She goaded him into fighting her. She knew what she was doing all along, knew that she’d end up killing him. Fuck it, she wanted to kill him!’
‘No, I can’t believe that. Maybe she’s playing some sort of political game we don’t really understand. Maybe that guy Dandolo was a bad hat, an UnFunny crypto or something? Maybe—’
‘There aren’t any maybes about it, Vanka. She killed Dandolo just to make a political point, just to show how strong and tough she is … just so she could take her turn at the trough.’
‘No, Ella’s not like that.’
‘Well, the Lady IMmanual sure as hell is. And what I heard her spouting in there was pretty chilling, too. She was talking about bringing down ABBA’s fury on her enemies’ heads and destroying people. All this “Unite, Follow, Crush” crap she was mouthing is scary stuff. That’s the sort of bile I’d expect to hear from Heydrich, not from Ella Thomas.’
Vanka took another long swig of Solution. ‘Look, Norma, I was with Ella every minute of every day in Warsaw, and she always abhorred the violence and the misery of war. I can’t believe that’s the same girl who was pontificating in front of the Council of Ten. Maybe being tortured back in the Bastille has sent her loopy …’
‘Yeah, she’s loopy all right.’ She drained her glass. ‘I’ve gotta tell you, Vanka, what Ella did to Dandolo was the last straw. I’ve had it with violence, I’ve had it with war and I’ve had it with killing.’ She pulled the Cloverleaf out from her purse and pushed it across the table to Vanka. ‘No more violence for me, Vanka. Violence is the oxygen of hatred and I’m having nothing more to do with it.’
‘Norma …’
Vanka never got to finish his sentence. He was interrupted by the arrival of a breathless newcomer. The man – young, bespectacled and utterly nondescript – leant over the table and, in a conspiratorial voice, whispered a warning. ‘My friends, I am Nikolai Kondratieff, and I have been sent to save you. The Signori di Notte dispatched to find and arrest you are only two blocks away from this bar. If you wish to live, you must follow me.’
Kondratieff led Norma and Vanka via a zigzag path through the labyrinthine back alleys of Venice, until, finally, utterly bewildered, they were brought to the rear entrance of a large and imposing building that bordered the Grand Canal.
‘I must apologise for the somewhat convoluted route I took to reach the Future History Institute,’ Kondratieff explained, as he led them deeper and deeper into the vast building, ‘but you will be safe here. This is the most important and most heavily protected building in the whole of Venice, more so even than the Doge’s Palace. Housed here is the most precious commodity, after blood, in the whole of the Demi-Monde: information.’ He stopped in front of a pair of huge doors and handed a warrant to one of the brutally big guards standing there. Satisfied, the guard gave him a crisp salute, and then levered open the doors.
The hall they entered was enormous. It was at least five hundred feet long by five hundred feet across, but it still gave the impression of being too small. Every square inch of the floor was crammed with rows and rows of clattering machines and rows and rows of shirt-sleeved clerks – hundreds of them – bent over what looked like crude typewriters, stabbing diligently at the keyboards. To Norma it was like a scene from some demented Metropolis and the noise was simply overpowering. The machines – spiderlike contraptions made of brass and steel – whirred and rattled as they absorbed the piles of punched cards the white-coated clerks pushed into them from one side, and then, seconds later, collected when the machine spat the cards out on the other side.
She felt a tap on her arm. ‘Let’s repair to one of our soundproofed suites,’ Kondratieff shouted, as he pointed to a circular room set in the middle of the hall. ‘We’ll be able to talk more easily there.’
The room Kondratieff ushered them into might have been quieter but it stank like the very devil, the atmosphere dank with the stench and the smoke of shag tobacco. And the cause of the fug was sitting at a desk littered with papers, sporting an amazingly long beard and puffing away on a clay pipe.
The bearded man appeared not to notice that his room had been invaded, and it took several moments before he finally tossed the paper he was reading aside and, with the words ‘Plagiarised crap’, raised his gaze and nodded a greeting to his guests.
‘Ah, Kondratieff, at last. I am delighted you have successfully evaded the attentions of our secret police.’
He gave a casual wave of his hand, indicating that the arrivals should seat themselves around a large conference table. As Norma shifted the papers that littered the chair Kondratieff had pulled out for her, she felt herself the subject of careful scrutiny by the bearded man.
‘And good evening to you, Mademoiselle Williams, this is a signal honour,’ said Beardy.
‘You know my name?’
‘Of course. I probably know more about you than you know yourself.’
‘Then why is my being here a “signal honour”?’
‘Why? Because, amongst other things, it isn’t often a girl as beautiful as you deigns to accept an invitation to join me in my parlour. There are rumours circulating amongst the Institute’s female undergraduates, to the effect that, though I am somewhat ancient, my sexual powers have not yet fully dissipated. It seems that girls will only attend me if they are chaperoned.’ The man gave a wry chuckle and nodded towards Vanka. ‘And very sensibly you have followed this advice. Which is unfortunate, of course, as it does somewhat curtail my natural inclination to indulge in all the pleasures made available by an ImPure society.’
‘And who do I have the pleasure of avoiding the advances of?’ asked Norma.
‘My name is Professeur Michel de Nostredame, President of the Future History Institute,’ and, with a groan, he levered himself up from behind his desk and came to sit at the head of the table. As he did so, Norma took the opportunity to study her host more carefully. He might be trying to portray himself as some sort of antediluvian buffoon, but Norma suspected he had a penetrating intellect, and the set of his mouth showed him to be a very determined individual. Determined but vague: his grey hair was only vaguely combed, his battered suit was only a vague fit and his cravat – what she could see of it behind his bushy beard – was festooned with the vague spots of the various soups he’d eaten in recent months. And he was old: very, very old.
‘I am delighted to welcome you both to the inner sanctum of the Institute.’ De Nostredame gestured towards a window set in one wall of the room, indicating the rows of machines beyond. ‘You should consider yourselves privileged; only a very few outsiders ever have the opportunity to see the DAEmon at work.’
‘Daemon?’ queried Norma.
‘Data Analysis and Evaluation machinery … DAEmon for short. It’s the collective name we have given to the array of Mr Babbage’s analytical engines working out there in the hall, engines which allow us to process the vast quantity of data necessary to run our Fut
ure History program, HyperOpia.’
Their host took a moment to rekindle his pipe before continuing. ‘So, my friends, to business. You will be wondering why I have had Kondratieff bring you here to the sanctuary of the Future History Institute.’
‘It might be useful to begin by explaining why we are being sought by the Venetian secret police,’ suggested Vanka.
‘Ahhh, you must be the famous Vanka Maykov, faux-occultist, survivor extraordinaire and erstwhile companion to the Lady IMmanual.’
‘Erstwhile?’
‘It would seem, Monsieur Maykov, that your position at the side of – and, presumably, on top of – the Lady IMmanual has been usurped by the Marquis de Sade. Indeed, so precipitous has been your fall from grace that you and your oh-so-attractive colleague are now viewed by the powers that be as malignant political dissidents. It seems that, at the prompting of the Lady IMmanual, you have now been elevated to the rank of a major threat to the quietude of Venice. The streets, as they say, are now being combed.’
‘She has so much power?’ queried a genuinely shocked Norma.
‘You haven’t been keeping up with events, Mademoiselle. According to HyperOpia, after today’s performance by the Lady IMmanual in the Sala del Maggior Consiglio, she is now the power behind the throne in Venice.’
‘Ella isn’t interested in power,’ protested Vanka.
‘Tush-tush, your sentimentality is really quite touching, Monsieur Maykov, but your Ella no longer exists, her place having been taken by the much more ambitious and belligerent Lady IMmanual. And that is why Nikolai and I had to move with such rapidity to ensure the pair of you stayed out of the grasp of those nasty Signori di Notte.’
‘And why did you do that, Professeur?’ asked Vanka. ‘Presumably, helping us to evade the police is traitorous behaviour.’
De Nostredame paused and then proceeded to spend several seconds restuffing the bowl of his pipe with glutinous black tobacco and then making several futile attempts to ignite it. Eventually, having coaxed his pipe to combust, he continued, ‘All in good time, Monsieur Maykov, but first I would ask for your indulgence whilst I ask a question of my own.’ He turned to Norma. ‘You are a Daemon, Mademoiselle Williams, so I would be interested to hear if in the Spirit World you have the concept of preScience.’
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