Rod Rees - [The Demi-Monde 02]

by Spring (v5. 0) (epub)

  ‘To do this, we must employ a most subtle seducer, my Doge, one who is much blessed by ABBA in the arts of amatory allurement. A fortissimo-class love-maker. Might I suggest Giacomo Casanova?’

  Though there was still an hour remaining before dawn, a large and hushed crowd waited patiently as the Lady IMmanual and de Sade climbed the huge stairway leading to the bank’s massive front doors, the word having gone out that the Lady was to perform her promised miracle and save the city from destruction. De Sade was surprised there were so few Signori di Notte agents on hand to protect the Lady but then he supposed that nowadays she didn’t need protection. Anyone moving against the Messiah would be torn apart by the mob. Not a pretty way to die and he shuddered at the thought of it.

  Inside, the bank was eerily silent: all the screens in the transfusion booths were still and the only sound, as the couple walked into the hall, was the echoing clack of their footsteps reverberating around the colossal chamber.

  ‘This is one big bank.’

  ‘Indeed, my Lady, it is the biggest bank in all of the Demi-Monde, bigger even than the banks in Warsaw and in Berlin.’ De Sade pointed towards the domed ceiling far, far above their heads. ‘It’s so big that clouds have been known to form in the bank’s cupola.’

  The Lady IMmanual shivered in the chilled air. ‘Which booth shall we use?’

  De Sade laughed. ‘Any you wish. We’re the bank’s only customers.’

  The Lady wandered over to the nearest booth and placed her hand into the indented shape to the left of the booth’s keyboard. Immediately the screen set into the wall in front of her began to operate, the sound of the symbols as they rotated filling the hall with their clattering.

  THE BANK OF VENICE WELCOMES

  ELLA THOMAS

  PLEASE ENTER YOUR PASSWORD

  The Lady IMmanual typed her answer too quickly for de Sade to see what her password was, but whatever it was, it worked.

  PASSWORD ACCEPTED

  Immediately the screen prompted:

  WHICH SERVICE DO YOU REQUIRE?

  1. WITHDRAWALS

  2. DEPOSITS

  3. TRANSFERS

  4. OTHER

  The Lady hit the ‘4’ button and then typed:

  IM MANUAL

  The response from the screen was instantaneous. The letters twirled again.

  PLEASE BE ADVISED ELLA THOMAS THAT YOU HAVE GRADE 8 (CAPTAIN OR ABOVE) STATUS. IN ACCORDANCE WITH PROTOCOL 57 THIS ALLOWS SUCH INDIVIDUALS, WHEN DEPLOYED IN THE DEMI-MONDE® AND FACED BY MORTAL DANGER, TO MAKE EMERGENCY ONE-HOUR CHANGES TO THE DEMI-MONDE’S CYBER-MILIEU. IN ORDER TO PRESERVE THE DUPES’ PERCEPTION OF THE LOGICALITY OF THE DEMI-MONDE® SUCH CHANGES MAY NOT VIOLATE THE NATURAL LAWS PREVAILING IN THE DEMI-MONDE®. ALSO NOTE THAT BEFORE SUCH CHANGES ARE MADE PERMANENT THEY MUST BE RATIFIED BY THE DEMI-MONDE® STEERING COMMITTEE. IF SUCH RATIFICATION IS NOT RECEIVED BEFORE ONE HOUR HAS ELAPSED, THE AMENDMENT TO THE CYBERMILIEU WILL BE ANNULLED.

  PLEASE ENTER ‘YES’ IF THESE CONDITIONS ARE UNDERSTOOD AND ACCEPTED.

  The Lady IMmanual pressed ‘YES’, and de Sade was surprised to see her give a sigh of relief. It was as though she had been half-expecting that ABBA would deny her, and she would no longer be able to work her magick, but she quickly recovered her equanimity. A list of choices relating to the AMENDMENT OF CYBER-MILIEU CHARACTERISTICS spun up on the screen, from which the Lady selected:

  14. SCALAR CHARACTERISTICS

  A moment later came the instruction:

  PLEASE USE THE MUTOSCOPE VIEWER

  The Lady IMmanual leant forward and spent several seconds looking into the viewer, then, sensing de Sade’s curiosity, she beckoned him to take her place. Peering through the viewer, de Sade saw that ABBA had displayed a map of the Demi-Monde which showed the world’s principal topographical features.

  ‘Look at the Grand Canal,’ he heard the Lady IMmanual whisper in his ear, and out of the corner of his eye he saw her fingers roll a ball set into the keyboard. Immediately the map shown in the mutoscope viewer changed, the viewer focusing in on a smaller and smaller area. It was as if he was tumbling down from the heavens towards the Demi-Monde beneath – tumbling until he found himself looking at an area that encompassed just the Grand Canal, the detail so precise and so wonderfully rendered that he might be looking down from a balloon.

  The Lady IMmanual worked the ball again, and immediately the edge of the Grand Canal was highlighted.

  ‘Now watch,’ the Lady ordered, then once again she flexed her fingers over the ball and, magically, the Grand Canal was shown wider. Astonished, de Sade stood away from the viewer and watched as the letters rolled.

  WHEN IS THIS SCALAR AMENDMENT TO THE GRAND CANAL TO BE INITIATED?

  The Lady checked her watch and then her fingers worked the keyboard:

  IN 47 MINUTES

  Dawn!

  CONFIRMED

  ‘It’s done, de Sade, and soon the guns threatening Venice will be lying at the bottom of the Grand Canal.’

  De Sade smiled. ‘Now that, my Lady IMmanual, is something I have just got to see.’

  And so, it seemed, did the rest of Venice.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Captain Jeremiah Greene, as he scanned the walls of Venice shortly before dawn.

  ‘What don’t you understand, Captain?’ asked Major Borissov as he finished his first cigarette of the day and flicked the butt away, the sparks flaring pink in the pre-dawn darkness.

  ‘I don’t understand, Major, what all those Venetians are doing standing along the top of the walls.’

  ‘All what people?’ said the major, as he snapped open his own telescope and used it to examine the walls that ran along the far bank of the Grand Canal, some half-mile or so away.

  Atop the walls there were thousands of Venetians standing, gazing towards the ForthRight Army making its final preparations to bombard the city. They made a disturbing sight: it was as though they were waiting for something special to happen but what that special something was, Greene didn’t have a clue. All he knew was they really put the wind up him.

  ‘What are they looking at?’ asked Major Borissov, as he made a surreptitious check that his fly was firmly buttoned. ‘They must be mad.’

  ‘Maybe they think it’ll be safer up there on the wall than in the city proper,’ suggested Greene. ‘Maybe they know that our mortar shells will clear the wall.’ He made another quick study of the spectators through his telescope. ‘It’s bloody spooky, if you ask me.’

  It was a sentiment shared by most of the other ForthRight soldiers gathered on the bank of the Canal. There were mutterings about ‘witches’ and ‘miracles’, and the men began to cluster more closely behind the gabions. One or two of them made the sign of the Valknut across their chests, to ward off the evil eye.

  Major Borissov looked around and obviously didn’t like what he was seeing. He pulled out his watch to check the time. Thankfully it was only a few minutes to dawn.

  ‘Prime mortars,’ he shouted, and the gun crews scurried to their weapons, stuffing pieces of ragged cotton into their ears as they ran: mortars were noisy brutes. Once there, they hauled the tarpaulins from their guns, made sure that the firing charges were in place and then loaded the guns with shells. Then the gunners took hold of their firing ropes and turned to the major, waiting for his instruction to fire.

  ‘Prepare to fire!’

  Major Borissov raised his arm and the gunners drew the slack from their firing ropes.

  ‘Four!’ shouted the major. ‘Three! Two! O …’

  It was a peculiar sensation. One moment Captain Greene was standing on a hard-paved surface and the next … he wasn’t. Instead, he found himself splashing around in the middle of the Grand Canal. But he was in good company. The rest of the ForthRight Army, and their guns and their horses and their steamers, seemed to have joined him in enjoying an early morning dip.

  How peculiar, he mused, as he heard the cheers of the Venetians drifting across to him from the other side of the
Canal. Perhaps I should have learned how to swim.

  Part Five

  Walpurgisnacht

  THE EDDIC OF LOCI 5: THE COMING OF THE MESSIAH

  PLATE 5

  36

  New York Hospital’s Drug Dependency Center: New York

  The Real World: 3 October 2018

  The attack on Edinburgh was carried out in order that the citizens of the decadent and anti-Christian countries led by Babylon Britain were punished for having spawned the Great Beast. This abomination, which the infidel British call ABBA, was foretold in the Seventh Prophecy of Prophet Kenton the First. The Beast seeks to control and conquer the peoples of the world, and to do this in the name of Satan. We, Christ’s Crusaders, will not rest until the Beast and its Master, the AntiChrist, have been destroyed and cast back into the Pit from whence they came. This is our First Act.

  Transcript of the Polly broadcast made by Christ’s Crusaders

  immediately following the execution of the ‘Dirty Nuke’ terrorist

  attack on the city of Edinburgh, Scotland on 12 December 2014

  As Joyce Taylor described it, Aaliz’s Polly confrontation with Clare Collins had ‘kicked up a shit storm’, with celebrity PollyMorphing becoming the number-one topic of searches on the Polly and any number of ‘before and after’ outings of PollyCelebrities taking place. Norma Williams became simultaneously the most popular and the most reviled Polly personality on the planet, but as Joyce Taylor observed, ‘as long as they’re talking about you, it really doesn’t matter what they’re saying’. But, fortunately for Aaliz’s peace of mind, when Septimus Bole had ABBA make an examination of the Polly chatter, it seemed that the words most often used in connection with Norma Williams were ‘honest’, ‘upfront’ and ‘ballsy’, and that, as far as Aaliz was concerned, was a fine result.

  So it came as no surprise that a veritable herd of reporters, accompanied by a swarm of hovering CameraBots, were waiting for Aaliz when she arrived at New York Hospital’s Drug Dependency Center two days later.

  She was greeted by the head of the hospital, a miserablelooking man going by the name of Milton Lord. ‘The hospital isn’t used to suffering this sort of mayhem, Miss Williams,’ he said as he pushed his way through jostling reporters, ‘and I trust that the hospital board hasn’t been duped into cooperating in some cheap publicity stunt.’

  ‘Oh, believe me, Dr Lord, this is all deadly serious. Do you have your candidate patients ready?’

  ‘Yes. ParaDigm’s lawyers have had them sign their disclaimers and your friend Septimus Bole has sent the indemnity I asked for, so everything is in order. You have some powerful friends, Miss Williams.’

  ‘Just as long as I’m able to operate under controlled conditions. I don’t want there to be any dispute as to the validity of the results.’

  ‘I am afraid you are being a little disingenuous, Miss Williams. We could have Jesus Christ and all of heaven’s angels supervising your little experiment, and there would still be those who refuse to believe. But having said that, the way things have been organised should keep scepticism to a minimum.’

  The doctor described how this would be achieved at the press conference. ‘The hospital was asked to provide an environment whereby the ability to eradicate addictive behaviour claimed by Miss Williams could be tested under controlled, scientific conditions – conditions which precluded cheating or connivance. To ensure this, twenty patients were selected by lot from the hospital’s inmate population and given the chance to participate in this trial. All, I am happy to say, volunteered.’

  Hardly surprising, Aaliz mused, considering how much they were offered by ParaDigm.

  ‘The names of these volunteers,’ the doctor went on, ‘were withheld from Miss Williams and her representatives until one hour ago, when certain legal formalities had to be finalised. Since that time the volunteers have been held incommunicado, supervised by the hospital’s own eyeSpies. It is my intention to have one of the members of the press corps gathered here today draw a number which will correspond with the patient to be treated by Miss Williams. I will now place counters inscribed with the numbers one to twenty into this bag.’ Having done this, Dr Lord held the bag out at arm’s length towards the audience of media hacks. ‘Would one of you care to select the patient who will assist Miss Williams in her experiment?’

  It was one of the younger and prettier of the assembled journalists who was finally persuaded to draw one of the lots. ‘Fourteen,’ she announced, before returning to her chair and to media obscurity.

  Dr Lord turned to the Flexi-Plexi behind him and activated his Polly. ‘Please display the details of patient number fourteen.’ Immediately a 3D image of a man – thirtyish, quite podgy and with a face that had a bashed-about look to it – appeared on the wall. ‘This is patient Burl Standing, six-month resident of our intensive care wing. Part of Standing’s sentence for pimping and drug dealing was commuted on condition that he received treatment for his Zip addiction, but unfortunately he has failed to respond to counselling, therapy or medication. Whilst disappointing, this is not unexpected. Zip addiction is particularly tenacious, and Standing – emotionally, physically and neurologically – is hi-dependency-profiled. He volunteered for “treatment” by Miss Williams in an attempt to avoid transfer to prison.’

  Aaliz ignored the clamour of questions that followed, and instead just sat gazing at the image of Burl Standing. The man seemed vaguely familiar, and she racked her brain as to when and where she might have met him in the Demi-Monde. And as Septimus Bole had ensured that the NowLived selected for duplication in the Demi-Monde were all ‘hi-dependency-profiled’, the chances were that she had met him.

  Aaliz had never been inside a prison hospital before and she decided, very soon after her entry into its sealed environment, that she never wanted to be inside one again. Everything was so confined, which, she acknowledged as she walked along the corridor, was pretty much to be expected.

  Not that there was anything else particularly objectionable about the New York Hospital’s Drug Dependency Center. They had done their best to disguise the functionality of the building, but inevitably it was decorated in the creams and whites that seemed de rigueur for all such institutions, whether they were in the Real World or in the Demi-Monde. It was also very quiet; the whole atmosphere was hushed and thoughtful. The hospital seemed to be holding its breath, which Aaliz didn’t find altogether surprising: the smell pervading the place was pretty intense, urine and disinfectant seemingly locked in a battle for supremacy, with urine ahead by a nose.

  The orderly accompanying Aaliz stopped in front of a door indistinguishable from the myriad of others lining the corridor. ‘This is it, Miss,’ he announced. ‘Just to remind you: your conversation with Standing will be monitored and recorded and should the subject matter of this conversation be deemed, at any time, prejudicial to the rehabilitation or the quiescence of the patient, the conversation will be terminated.’

  The orderly placed his hand, palm down, on the wallmounted scanning pad. Immediately the heavy steel door clicked open.

  Taking a deep, calming breath, Aaliz assumed the look of benign understanding she thought most appropriate for her role as saviour and then walked through the open door into the interview room. By agreement with Dr Lord, she was to meet with the patient alone, so when the door closed behind her, she found herself standing in the room with just Burl Standing, five CameraBots and one GuardBot for company.

  Burl Standing was lounging on a chair set behind the Impeno-Glaz screen that bifurcated the room. He looked up at Aaliz and smiled. ‘Well, bugger me wiv a pineapple, but they didn’t tell me that you’d be quite so tasty. Fings is looking up. Nice tits, luv.’

  ‘I didn’t realise that you were British, Mr Standing.’

  ‘Burl, call me Burl. And yeah, I’m a Brit, but don’t let that put you off.’ He smiled a gappy smile. ‘So wot do I call you?’

  ‘You can call me Norma.’

  ‘Norma? I like th
at. You must be the bird wot’s come to save me?’

  ‘I’ve come to help you conquer your addiction to Zip, if that’s what you mean, Mr Standing.’

  ‘Burl.’

  ‘Burl.’

  ‘Well, luv, all I can say is that wiv a chassis like yours you can experiment on me any time you fucking well like.’

  Aaliz studied Standing carefully. She had expected him to be a dull-witted wreck of a man but instead he seemed almost too sharp and alert. There was an intelligent twinkle in his eye that Aaliz found a little disconcerting. This Burl Standing fellow wasn’t as stupid as he liked to pretend he was.

  Aaliz nodded to the Get-Me-Straighter Meter that sat on the table in front of the Impeno-Glaz screen. ‘Shall we begin?’

  Standing rapped his knuckles on the armoured screen. ‘I think there’s something coming between us. Yous gonna have to raise this, luv, iffn you want me to use that box ov tricks ov yours.’

  Aaliz nodded towards the GuardBot hovering at her shoulder. ‘Before I do that, Burl, you should be aware that I am protected by one of ParaDigm’s new GuardBots. It is constantly scanning you for changes in micro-expressions, in pheromonic activity and in skin temperature. Should these changes indicate that you are preparing to assault me, the GuardBot will make a preemptive strike, injecting you with a potent but non-lethal sedative.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah. Shall we get on with it?’

  Aaliz blinked towards her Polly, and the Impeno-Glaz screen sighed up into the ceiling. ‘You have been prepped, Burl?’

  ‘If you mean those drops they put in me eyes, then yes, I ’ave.’

  ‘Excellent. The drops will dilate the pupils to make you more visually receptive to the modifications I will make to your life force.’ Standing gave a careless nod, and Aaliz breathed a silent prayer of thanks to ABBA. With the PINC implant in place, Standing was now amenable to behavioural modification. This was the real secret of the Get-Me-Straighter Meter: the use of advanced and highly illegal implants designed not just to supplement the functioning of the brain but to alter it.