Rod Rees - [The Demi-Monde 02]
Page 39
The dancers from the ForthRight ballet company were pleasant enough. The piece they performed was apparently called ‘An Ode to UnFunDaMentalism’ which promised to be deathly dull, but as the middle part showed girls clad in nothing much at all – supposedly representing ‘ImPuritanism’ – being chased around by a gang of lusty lads – supposedly representing ‘UnFunDa-Mentalism’ – it turned out to be a rather jolly affair. So much so that Beria made a mental note to have the entire chorus line – the girls, not the boys, since there seemed to be a dash too much of the zadnik about them for his liking – brought back to the Élysée Palace, where he would personally initiate them into the less publicised wonders of UnFunDaMentalism.
It was while Maurice Chevalier was yodelling to the gathered throng that Beria’s urinary problems became almost unmanageable. He had never been overly fond of ‘crooners’ and what other, meagre, virtues this Chevalier item had as an entertainer were lost on Beria as he struggled to stop from wetting himself. He wondered if he might be able to slip away before the speeches began, but the stand in which the grandees were sitting was packed. To squeeze his way out in an unobtrusive manner was almost impossible, so his only alternative was to cross his legs and pray to ABBA that Chevalier got a move on.
After Chevalier came the speeches … the very long speeches.
Beria listened to the Leader’s speech, with one hand in the pocket of his trousers. He hoped it made him look suitably stylish, but the real reason he did this was that it enabled him to use his thumb and forefinger to squeeze his penis, inflicting such pain on the organ that it persuaded his bladder to stop its moaning. Admittedly it did funny things to his voice, and when he replied to the inane questions being asked by the superannuated woman seated next to him, his answer came out abnormally high-pitched. But that was a small sacrifice to make: he was wearing light grey uniform trousers, and the prospect of the colour changing from grey to black in front of thirty thousand people – never mind hundreds of newspaper daguerreotypists – did not appeal.
Then Robespierre got up to speak.
17.35: The Quai d’Orsay
It was the proudest day of Captain Jenkins’s life. The regiment’s steamers had never looked better. The teams of cleaners, painters, panel-beaters and polishers delivered by Kruchkov’s forewoman had done a marvellous job and now, as the one hundred and fifty steamers chugged their way along the Quai d’Orsay on their way to the Awful Tower, they shone and sparkled in the evening sunshine. The crowds standing on either side of their route had been enthusiastic too, but this he put down to the presence of a flag-waving Liberté perched on the front of each steamer. It was a shame that the flag-makers hadn’t been able to deliver the new ones in time, but he guessed no one would notice the absence of the Valknut on the tricolores the girls were waving.
As the first steamer passed Avenue de Robespierre, he gave a toot on his whistle, a signal for the girls to insert the coloration tablets into their steamers’ boilers. Within moments, the three columns of vehicles were shrouded in a haze of red, blue and green steam. And then the girls did something quite unrehearsed: they jumped down from the steamers and ran off into the crowd. As Jenkins was puzzling this over, the first of the steamers exploded.
18.05: The mansion of M. Claude Poisson, Bois de Boulogne
In anticipation of the fortune that would soon be his, Claude Poisson had secured – with the help of an unbelievably expensive mortgage – the much coveted mansion on the Bois de Boulogne. Into this he had installed – at unbelievable expense – Naughty Nancy. Now, with a glass of vintage Solution in his hand, he stood on the mansion’s top-floor balcony, gazing out at the Awful Tower, ready to salute the edifice’s last glorious act, before it was demolished tomorrow. In less than twenty-four hours the Awful Tower would be no more.
If he had been asked, Poisson would have admitted to just a little confusion regarding the authorities’ attitude towards the Tower. On the one hand, all week the newspapers had been trumpeting that the Tower – tall, strong, imperious and very masculine – was the perfect symbol of UnFunDaMentalism. But on the other was the oh-so-pragmatic attitude evinced by the ForthRight’s Monsieur Vanka Kruchkov, which would see it toppled and converted into weapons destined to help the war effort.
But in a way, he supposed, it made a sort of garbled sense. As Monsieur Kruchkov had explained, from tomorrow the Tower would become the embodiment of the sacrifice the ForthRight would be demanding of its citizens during the struggles to come.
Poisson took a sip of his Solution and turned to check the clock ticking so ponderously in the salon. The firework display would be starting in just a moment. ‘Nancy,’ he called, ‘they’ll be setting off the fireworks soon.’
He watched, lost to lust, as the girl oozed out of the salon, slowly and artfully unbuttoning her red blouse as she walked. As she shucked the blouse from her shoulders to display her magnificent breasts, Poisson decided that, expensive though she was, Nancy was worth every fucking – a very apt adjective – franc she was costing him. She came to stand next to him on the balcony, where she unfastened her skirt, letting it flutter to the floor and pool around her feet. Now, save for her stockings, she stood absolutely naked before him.
‘The fireworks are about to start,’ Poisson uttered in a strangled voice.
Nancy smiled. ‘There’s only one banger I’m interested in setting off, Claude,’ and with that she dropped to her knees and began to untether the laces holding Poisson’s red-and-pink-striped codpiece.
18.09: An apartment on the Champs-Élysées
Alain Brun arrived early at the address the wonderful Mademoiselle Norma Cartwright had given him for their tryst, his eagerness to partake of her succulent body overcoming the objections of his Current that he should be taking her to see the firework display. When the girl finally responded to Brun’s impatient tapping on her door, she rewarded all his fervent imaginings by being dressed in a disturbingly tight and revealing gown of the deepest, most lascivious purple. Barely had the door closed before he was grappling with her, nuzzling at the copious amount of flesh she had on display, whilst simultaneously muttering confessions of undying love and lust.
But tease that the girl was, she would have none of it, insisting that their lovemaking must wait until she had seen the firework display. After all, she explained, her brother had contributed to its creation, had he not? And hadn’t Alain himself told her what a spectacle it would be?
It was thus a sour Alain Brun who allowed himself to be manoeuvred over to the window, which gave a splendid view of the Champ de Mars. His irritation was somewhat assuaged by Mademoiselle Norma making no objection to him fondling her splendid derrière while they waited for the show to commence.
18.10: The Champ de Mars
The twenty-five minutes that Robespierre spoke were without doubt the longest and most uncomfortable minutes of Beria’s entire life, and during that time he developed an abiding hatred of the man. Indeed, in the course of Robespierre’s seemingly never-ending speechifying the only way he could take his mind off the increasingly painful protests coming from his groin was to daydream about how he would torture the fucker if and when he ever stopped talking. He had just decided that death by asphyxiation via the use of molten lead being poured down the bastard’s throat was his preferred option when, miraculously, Robespierre ended his speech.
‘I would now like to call upon Comrade Leader Reinhard Heydrich and Vice-Leader Lavrentii Beria to sign the Declaration of Unification that will meld our two great Sectors together.’ Robespierre looked towards Beria. ‘Comrade Vice-Leader … if you would join me and the Comrade Leader here on the podium.’
Beria stood awkwardly. The pain in his penis was excruciating and he was sure that his face had gone bright red with the effort required to keep himself from pissing down his leg. He squeezed even harder on the tip of his cock, damming the urine and, by so doing, inflating the bloody thing to bursting point. But somehow he found the will to smile, and tak
ing the pen he was offered by Robespierre, he scrawled his name at the bottom of the document.
‘And now,’ announced Robespierre in his horrible, piping voice, ‘I will present Comrade Vice-Leader Beria with the three keys to the city-states of Paris, Rome and Barcelona. I hand them over so that you may hold them in your safe keeping, as a symbol of our Union and our unity.’
Robespierre picked up a velvet cushion on which lay three golden keys, and thrust it towards Beria. Beria looked at the cushion as a rabbit might look at a fox. There was no way he could take it with only one hand: if he did that, he would undoubtedly drop the cushion, and that would be a diplomatic faux pas of cataclysmic proportions. Taking a deep, deep breath, and trying to stand sideways-on to the crowd, he released his grip on his penis and held out both hands to accept the proffered keys, wondering, as he did so, if he was the first man in the history of the Demi-Monde to take possession of three city-states while piping hot piss streamed down his leg. Further embarrassment was saved by the detonation of the fireworks.
18.16: The Champ de Mars
Senior CitiZen Maximilien Robespierre felt himself suffused by a glow of almost beatific satisfaction. The whole event – the procession, the marching, the dancers, Maurice Chevalier’s singing and the speeches – had gone off perfectly, but the fireworks were a masterpiece. As he stood at the dais acknowledging the ‘ooh’s and the ‘ahh’s of the crowd – and one unfortunate ‘arghhh’ when a VIP was struck by an errant rocket – he knew that this ceremony would truly mark the moment when the Medi took UnFunDaMentalism to its bosom. If the ForthRight could conjure an event of such scale and of such stupendous spectacle, and manage it with such exactitude and efficiency, then none would be able to stand against it.
He was more than ever convinced that harnessing the fortunes of the Medi to the rising star that was the ForthRight was the best thing for him to have done. Certainly, there were some wrinkles still to be ironed out in the relationship, but that was only to be expected. Once he’d had a longer tête-à-tête with Reinhard Heydrich, things would get sorted – not least of which would be putting this oaf Beria firmly in his place. The man stank: if Robespierre wasn’t mistaken, there was a distinct whiff of urine about him. And the way he had scuttled off just as the fireworks were starting … the man was a boor!
A huge shower of sparkling lights erupted from all sides of the Tower as the firework display moved towards its crescendo. Feeling altogether satisfied with life, Robespierre waved benignly to the crowd and basked in the glory of their adulation.
18.18: A second apartment on the Champs-Élysées
In the apartment above the one occupied by Norma and Monsieur Alain Brun, Vanka, Burlesque, Odette and Rivets stood by the window, each taking a moment to enjoy a bumper of Solution.
‘Good work, all of you.’ said Vanka, raising his glass in a toast. ‘We’ve helped strike a blow for Normalism, and we’ve done it without costing anyone their life.’
Burlesque said nothing, his eyes glued to the Tower. A quiet smile of satisfaction dressed his lips.
18.19: The Champ de Mars
Tomorrow, Beria decided – as he eased off his clammy and soaking-wet trousers and accepted the fresh pair his valet handed him – he would make Havelock suffer for the oversight of not providing toilet facilities for the VIPs. The only privacy he had been able to find in order to change was under the VIP Stand, and he was convinced that by tomorrow the gossip going around the ForthRight would have it that Comrade Vice-Leader Beria had been seen skulking beneath the stand while attempting to look up the skirts of the female dignitaries.
As he did up the final button of his flies and eased his way into a clean jacket, Beria was just grateful that the whole palaver was now coming to an end. Soon he would be back at the Élysée Palace, teaching a troupe of ballet dancers the real meaning of the expression ‘reverse turn’.
18.20: The Champ de Mars
The Chef de Batterie breathed a sigh of relief as he came to the final four fuses. Lighting them, he gave himself a mental pat on the back: everything had gone amazingly well – almost too well. The fuses flared and he stood back to watch the grand finale.
And then things went terribly, terribly wrong.
The twin explosions that took out the left-hand pair of the four giant legs at the base of the Awful Tower were so enormous that they blew him off his feet and deposited him in a clump of rose bushes almost twenty metres from where he’d been standing. It took him a moment to recover from the shock and to wipe the dust and debris from his eyes. And what he saw when he’d done this was terrifying. From his seat in the bush, he watched in horror as the Awful Tower shuddered and then began to pivot gradually, gracefully, en route to destruction.
It was the second pair of explosions that ultimately did for the Chef de Batterie. These took out the two remaining legs of the Tower, shaking the ground sufficiently to send chunks of paving slabs flying through the air. It was a piece of pavement hitting him square between the eyes that caused the Chef de Batterie to lose any further interest in life.
18.21: The mansion of M. Claude Poisson, Bois de Boulogne
‘Merde,’ said Claude Poisson, watching in awed trepidation as the Awful Tower crumpled towards the ground twenty-four hours earlier than was planned. Even the ministrations of Naughty Nancy’s marvellous mouth were insufficient to prevent him going flaccid with fear.
18.21: An apartment on the Champs-Élysées
‘Merde,’ said Alain Brun, shocked and stunned by the way the Awful Tower began to pitch forward. Instinctively he knew that this bitch Mademoiselle Norma had something to do with what was happening, but when he turned around she had vanished.
18.21: The Champ de Mars
‘Merde,’ breathed Senior CitiZen Robespierre, watching the great and supposedly indestructible Awful Tower shake for a moment under the impact of the explosions, and then begin to topple towards him. As best he could judge, it was going to land dead centre across the stand full of dignitaries. He was a dead man.
18.21: The Champ de Mars
Beria heard the sound of pounding feet above him as the panicking VIPs struggled to descend the stairs on either side of the stand. He knew instinctively that something bad was happening, but even he didn’t expect that that something would be the arrival of 10,550 tons of premium-grade steel on top of his head. The last words Lavrentii Beria uttered, as he pissed himself for the second time that evening, were ‘Yob tvoiu mati.’
18.21: A second apartment on the Champs-Élysées
Oh fuck, thought Vanka, realising how pissed off Norma was going to be. The Awful Tower was toppling the wrong way: it was toppling towards the VIP Stand rather than away from it. This, he decided, was hardly passive resistance. Burlesque must have got the fuses muddled up.
18.21: A second apartment on the Champs-Élysées
Fucking great, thought Burlesque Bandstand, watching 10,550 tons of steel complete its descent onto Comrade Vice-Leader Beria’s head. He raised his glass to salute the fucker’s demise. Nobody fucked with Burlesque Bandstand and got away with it.
35
The Grand Canal: Barcelona/Venice
The Demi-Monde: 70th and 71st Days of Spring, 1005
Copy of PigeonGram message sent by Doctor Jezebel Ethobaal
on 70th day of Spring, 1005
Comrade General Mikhail Dmitrievich Skobelev’s reputation within the army was that of being the bravest of the brave. Not the sharpest of blades, admittedly, but certainly the most courageous man in the whole of the ForthRight. But today Skobelev felt anything but brave. Watching the Leader stalk backwards and forwards across the floor of his office in the Élysée Palace, he knew that his life hung in the balance, and that the manner of his demise could be extremely messy. He had learnt, during his time as a member of the PolitBuro, that it was possible to gauge the Leader’s state of anger by how loudly he spoke, and contrarily, the quieter he was, the angrier he was. And this morning Reinhard Heydrich was very qui
et indeed: quiet and ghastly-looking.
The Leader had survived the fall of the Awful Tower by mere inches, but the debris that had showered down on him had left its mark. Even now, ten days after the attack, his head was still bandaged, his left arm was still supported by a sling, and deep bruising still covered most of the left side of his face. It had been a miracle he had survived, and that was exactly how it was being played in The Stormer: ‘Great Leader Spared by Intervention of ABBA’.
Of course, the newspapers in the other Sectors had been rather less generous in their comments. A headline Skobelev had seen in the Venetian Visualiser still rankled: ‘ForthRight Humbled as IMmanualists Bury Beria’.
Bastards. Inaccurate and inflammatory! It had been the Normalists who had done for Beria, not the IMmanualists.
‘So, Skobelev,’ the Leader began at length, in a voice barely more than a whisper, ‘let me see if I correctly understand what happened during the Ceremony of Unification. Despite the best efforts of the Checkya, terrorists managed to infiltrate bombs into the Awful Tower, one of the most closely guarded structures in the entire Demi-Monde, and to detonate those bombs at the culmination of the ceremonies. Those explosions caused the Tower to collapse onto a stand packed with two hundred and fifty dignitaries especially invited to witness this demonstration of the ForthRight’s strength. Am I correct thus far?’