Winter Page 2

  Matthew Hopkins—the Witchfinder—used his cane to point to the Celtic cross Norma had tattooed on her shoulder. “See, Comrade Colonel, she wears Loki’s Mark and that is as sure a sign as any that she be a witch. And note how she has colored her hair black and made many strange and unholy perforations in her face. Only those in thrall to Loki mutilate themselves in such a Lilithian way.” He stooped down beside Norma and taking her chin roughly in his callused fingers turned her face toward the light.

  “And look you too, Comrade Colonel, sir, she openly flaunts her otherworldliness with the profane baubles she wears.” The Witchfinder wrenched off the “I ♥ Blood” necklace Norma was wearing, sending the glass beads skittering over the frost-hard cobbles.

  The Witchfinder chuckled. “Indeed . . . ’tis the Daemon, Comrade Colonel; that I can say with all assurance. The Daemon disports itself in the form of the wench I saw in the Prancing Pig not yet an hour ago when she did dance in a most lewd and lascivious manner, in flagrant disregard of the teachings of UnFunDaMentalism.” He ran a hand through Norma’s hair, his thick, filthy fingers fondling her scalp in a truly repulsive manner. “You’re right though, Comrade Colonel Clement, sir: the Daemon has no horns. But that don’t signify, these Daemons being masters and mistresses of deceit.” He moved his hand down to her knee and began to slide her skirt up over her legs. He looked up at Clement and licked his lips. “Shall I examine this creature of Loki to see if it possesses a tail, Comrade Colonel?”

  Please, God, don’t let him touch me.

  Clement gave an embarrassed laugh. Like many men in the ForthRight he was awkward around women: UnFunDaMentalism wasn’t big on promoting caring, loving relationships between men and women. “Ah think you oughtta give that a go-by, Witchfinder. You start delving under them calicos there’s no telling what you might find snapping at your fingers.”

  “As you will, Comrade Colonel, but see she seeps blood from the wounds on her knees. Only Daemons from the blackest depths of Hel can do that.”

  Clement studied the cuts for a moment then slowly raised his gaze until his mad eyes were staring straight into Norma’s. “Got you, ain’t we, Daemon? You led me and mah crew a merry dance, so you did.” He gave her another kick. “But Daemon though you be, you couldn’t bamboozle Colonel Archie Clement.”

  Norma glared courageously back. Weakness and fearfulness were not virtues celebrated in the Demi-Monde: here strength, courage and viciousness were vital talents in the everyday task of surviving. But her playacting had little effect on Clement: all she saw staring back at her was insanity. The man was certifiably nuts.

  “See there, Comrade Colonel,” observed the Witchfinder, “how this Daemon declines to lower her gaze as a respectable female should. And see how she openly flaunts her charms and her female allure. She seeks to beguile us, to lead our thoughts to the carnal and to the unholy. Is it not so, Comrade Colonel?”

  “Sure is, Witchfinder, sure is. Church tells us that these here Daemons are real mischievous, them being sent to the Demi-Monde by Loki to torment and tempt us poor souls who labor to do ABBA’s work.” Clement pointed to Norma’s ruined knees. “Know this, Daemon, despite your cunning form and your saucy smile, your body betrays you. Ah knows you for the trickster you is, a lickspittle to that most insidious of masters, Loki.” He paused to spit a wad of tobacco into the gutter. “But even with your devilish arts and your seductive wiles, you couldn’t outsmart Archie Clement. No, sirree; battling the forces of Loki is the sacred responsibility of me and mah boys in the SS, the Soldiers of Spiritualism. You should know ABBA has commanded us to use all our strength to uproot from the Demi-Monde the pernicious arts of sorcery and malefice invented by Loki and propagated by Daemons such as you.”

  The Witchfinder came to stand beside Clement. Hopkins had obviously enjoyed the hunt; his tight black SS uniform was stained with sweat and excitement. “I trust you will remember my assistance in the capturing of the Daemon, Colonel Clement, sir, when you speak with His Holiness Comrade Crowley. ’Twas my agent, Burlesque Bandstand, who sent us word of her manifestation.”

  “Sure will, Witchfinder, this was a mighty smart piece of work.” Clement took a swig from a silver flask he conjured from a pocket in his coat. “And ah don’t doubt that you’ll be rewarded mighty well. His Holiness ain’t one to be miserly when it comes to paying for a job well done.” He offered the flask to the Witchfinder. “Here, try a shot of Solution to put some warmth back in your bones.”

  The Witchfinder took a long pull on the flask. “My reward shall be the destruction of the Daemons who torment the ForthRight, and those foul and HerEtical Sisters of Suffer-O-Gettism who serve the witch Jeanne Dark.” He made the sign of the Valknut—the sign of the three interlocked triangles that was the symbol of the Party, of the ForthRight and of UnFunDaMentalism—across his chest to ward off the evil evoked by pronouncing Dark’s name. “That and the destruction of those conniving vermin, the nuJus and the damnable Shade zadniks who call themselves Blood Brothers.”

  Norma shivered, but not through cold. There was something fanatical in the way Hopkins talked. His hatred of anybody he did not perceive to be white or male bordered on mania. No wonder the racist, sexist son of a bitch had risen so far and so fast in the Party.

  UnFunDaMentalism celebrated hatred.

  Clement pulled his cloak tight around his slim shoulders; he was obviously beginning to feel the cold. “Well, enough of this jawing, Witchfinder, let’s be away with this Daemon before any of her ilk come a-galloping to her rescue. The Red Gold pumping in her veins is worth a wonderment of Blood Money. She’d make a grand prize for the Zulus or the Chinks.”

  “It might be better to finish her now,” said the Witchfinder quietly.

  Once again Archie Clement hawked and spat into the gutter. “No, Witchfinder, ah have been ordered by His Holiness Comrade Crowley to return with the Daemon alive, so best we be away before the crows start to circle. Chances are that witch Mata Hari will be all of a lather to rescue the Daemon.”

  The Witchfinder saluted. “As you will, Comrade Colonel, sir.” He turned and stabbed a grimy finger toward two of his men. “You there, take up the Daemon, and be sharp about it. And shut your ears to her blabbing. This one is a temptress, adept in the Lilithian skills that ensnare the hearts and minds of the unwary and of the weak.” The Witchfinder paused as though struck by a thought. “Indeed, it may be best if the Daemon was rendered dumb.” He stepped forward; Norma saw him twirl his cane in the air and slam the knobbled handle hard against the side of her head. She felt a searing pain, then everything went black.

  Part One

  Auditioning

  Chapter 1

  The Real World: June 12, 2018

  The Demi-Monde® is the first simulation product ever to be platformed on and operated by the ABBA quantum computer. ABBA is a Quanputer-based system developed and operated by ParaDigm CyberResearch Limited. ABBA, by utilizing an Invent-TenN® Gravitational Condenser incorporating an Etirovac Field Suppressor®, is the only computer to achieve a full SupaUnPositioned/DisEntangled Cyber Ambiance. As a consequence ABBA is capable of prodigiously rapid analysis (a fully tethered 30 yottaQuFlops) to give the bioNeural-kinetic engineers at ParaDigm access to almost unlimited processing power.

  —THE DEMI-MONDE® PRODUCT DESCRIPTION MANUAL: JUNE 14, 2013

  Tap, tap, tap, went the general’s pencil.

  Jeez, that’s a habit that could get right up your ass.

  The guy was obviously mega-tense, which was odd because it was Ella who was being interviewed for the gig. It was Ella who had exactly twelve dollars in her pocket and rent of fifty dollars due tomorrow. It was Ella who would be living on air pie for the rest of the week.

  And more to the point it was the general who was asking all the questions. But oddly he was the one who was uptight. So uptight that by Ella’s reckoning if she shoved coal up his ass, a week later the guy would be shitting diamonds.

  Tap, tap, tap.

&nb
sp; The oracle spoke. “You sing, Miss Thomas . . . ?”

  Dumb Question #1.

  It was a weird thing to ask, decided Ella, especially as singing was all she had been doing for the last week. That and being tested all ways and sideways. Tested physically and tested mentally. She had had blood tests, genetic tests, sight tests, hearing tests, initiative tests, aptitude tests, fitness tests, Rorschach tests, IQ tests, MBTI tests and that test the doctor had done with the endoscope that she didn’t really wanna think about. Most of all she had had her patience tested.

  But she’d made it through to this, the last interview. She was so close to success she could smell it. Ella Thomas took a long steadying breath; now was not the time to freak or to make waves.

  Gotta stay cool.

  This might have been the weirdest audition she’d ever been through and it sure as hell had been the most frustrating, but she needed the gig.

  Boy, she really, really needed the gig.

  The rent was due tomorrow.

  She gave the general her sweetest smile and batted her big brown eyes. “Yeah, I sing, General. The captain over there has been listening to me doing that all week.”

  All week . . .

  They’d warned her that the army’s recruiting procedures, in the wake of 9/11 and 12/12 and all the other terrorist outrages, were protracted and rigorous but this was ridiculous. If they hadn’t been paying her to undergo the battery of auditions and the multitude of other checks she’d have cut bait a long time ago.

  Tap, tap, tap.

  Ella gave the general an impish grin. “Would you like to hear me?”

  The general shook his head. As he did so his perfectly coiffed gray hair didn’t move. He had probably ordered it not to move; the general looked like the sort of guy who when he ordered something done expected it to be done. “That won’t be necessary, Miss Thomas. Captain Sanderson is the U.S. Army’s expert on all things musical.”

  The general’s eyes drifted back to the report positioned exactly square in the middle of his immaculate desk.

  “Do you sing jazz, Miss Thomas?” he asked.

  Dumb Question #2.

  Of course I sing jazz.

  It was just that nobody wanted her to sing jazz. Not anymore. Jazz was old-school. Jazz was so unhip it had a limp. Maybe, Ella wondered, this general character dug all the old stuff? He sure looked antique enough but somehow he seemed a mite too uptight and buttoned-down to be a jazzer.

  Nah . . .

  Ella couldn’t see him in a beret and bebop glasses ready to fall in and dig the happenings.

  “Yeah, I sing jazz. Jazz is my first love. My dad was a really neat horn player so he taught me everything there is to know about jazz. So yeah, General, I sing jazz, but mainly in the shower. There ain’t a lot of interest.”

  Captain Sanderson intervened. “Miss Thomas has a wonderful voice, sir, with a good range and an interesting timbre. Her timing is excellent. I think Miss Thomas will make a fine jazz singer.”

  Ella preened and shot the captain a smile. She liked compliments; she liked good-looking guys like the captain telling her she had a keen voice. And now that she thought about it she realized that the captain was cute, albeit in a tightly wrapped, cramped and stamped kinda way. She wasn’t big on crew cuts.

  The general nodded his understanding, then went back to the silent perusal of Ella’s file. “The health checks seem satisfactory,” he mused to no one in particular. He looked up and studied her for several silent seconds. “And she’s certainly pretty enough.”

  It might have been a compliment but the way he said it made her feel like a cow at market. People didn’t talk about other people in such an offhand way. It wasn’t polite. Anyway, she wasn’t “pretty,” she was more than just “pretty”; she was tall and slim and beautiful. Eat your heart out, Halle Berry.

  “And she is an African-American,” observed the general absentmindedly.

  What does that have to do with the price of beans? Haven’t these guys heard of racial discrimination?

  “Miss Thomas is in first-class physical condition and, as you rightly observe, she has the correct racial antecedents,” agreed the captain, who made it sound as though they were discussing a secondhand car. “The rigors of the Demi-Monde shouldn’t pose her any problems.”

  Demi-Monde? wondered Ella. Weird name for a club.

  “Psychological assessment?”

  “Excellent,” confirmed the captain. “Her profile is an almost perfect match for the psychological template developed by PsychOps. She has a robust psyche, is flexible minded and quite pragmatic. Phlegmatic, I suppose the word is. Phlegmatic with just a dash of rebelliousness.”

  Phlegmatic?

  Now there was a word Ella didn’t hear every day. That was a ten-dollar word and she went to a two-bit school. To the guys she hung with “phlegmatic” was what you did when you spat on the sidewalk. She flicked through her synonyms. Phlegmatic, a.k.a. cool.

  Yeah, she was cool. So cool she was straight from the freezer, man.

  “Miss Thomas has almost optimum levels of both serotonin receptors and p-eleven . . . she should have no difficulty in coping with the stress levels extant in the Demi-Monde. She also scored very highly in both the leadership and the initiative tests . . . very highly.”

  Yeah, if the army ever wanted someone to organize the building of a raft from a couple of old oil drums, some driftwood and a length of rope and use it to float across a river then Ella was their girl.

  The things they’d made her do over the past week.

  Ella looked to check out the two men who were discussing her in such an impersonal way but neither of them met her gaze. She had the distinct impression that they had started to talk around her, as though she wasn’t there with them in the room. It took an effort to still a feeling of irritation. She took another deep breath, reminding herself as she did of how much she needed the gig.

  The rent was due tomorrow.

  “She also scored well in the IQ tests,” added the captain encouragingly. “Very well. At the upper end of the top quartile.”

  The general looked up from the report and spent several long seconds silently examining Ella. He didn’t say a word; it was as though he was reluctant to speak. Finally he let out a long, doleful sigh and turned to the captain. “Miss Thomas is your preferred candidate? She is very young, only eighteen last birthday.”

  “Miss Thomas is old beyond her years, sir. She’s by far the most impressive of all the candidates, and her resemblance to Professor Bole’s Dupe is uncanny.”

  She’d gotten the gig!

  Though this Dupe shit wasn’t strumming her strings.

  The captain noted her confusion. “A Dupe is our term for a cyber-duplicate of a real person.” The general looked across the desk toward Ella, his expression hugely serious; the shadows under his eyes seemed suddenly to have gotten deeper and darker.

  There was another long silence. Finally, reluctantly, he spoke. “Miss Thomas . . . how would you like to earn a million dollars?”

  Chapter 2

  The Demi-Monde: 40th Day of Winter, 1004

  UnFunDaMentalism is an array of political, racial, metaPhysical, sexual and social ideas and philosophies relating to the purification of the Demi-Mondian race, the triumph of the Aryan people and the rehabilitation of the semi-mythological Pre-Folk. Adopted as the state religion of the ForthRight, the ultimate aim of UnFunDaMentalism is, by a process of selective breeding and measured culling, to eliminate the contamination of the UnderMentionable races from the Demi-Monde’s Aryan stock (Aryans are generally considered to be the Anglo-Slavic races) and by doing so to return the Aryan people to the racial perfection they possessed before their ancestors—the Pre-Folk—fell from ABBA’s Grace.

  —RELIGIONS OF THE DEMI-MONDE, OTTO WEININGER, UNIVERSITY OF BERLIN PUBLICATIONS

  Comrade Commissar Dashwood made a point of arriving at his ministry before seven. He knew that only by working fourteen hours a day would he be
able to ensure that the deadline for the building of the new railway lines would be met. And as Comrade Leader Heydrich had decreed that the railway lines were vital to the success of the ForthRight’s imminent invasion of the Coven, missing the deadline would make it very much a dead line: Comrade Leader Heydrich rewarded failure in a very uncompromising fashion.

  But even as the slave driver brought his steamer to a wheezing halt in front of the Ministry building, Dashwood knew that there was something unexpected taking place at the Ministry of Transport, that today wasn’t going to be a normal day. He had an unmistakable feeling in his water that signaled him to be extra-careful.

  It might have been that the Militia officers patrolling the top of the steps leading to the Ministry’s great double doors were decidedly less sleepy than they usually were at this time of the morning. It might have been that their salute was a trifle crisper and more enthusiastic than he was used to. Tiny things but important—important to notice, that is, if you wanted to stay alive in the internecine bedlam that was the ForthRight.

  Oh, please don’t let it be another purge. Surely enough of us have died already?

  As Dashwood strode imperiously across the great marble floor of the Ministry he tried to distract himself from these disturbing thoughts by adding up all those who had died in the Cleansing.

  A hundred thousand? Two hundred thousand?

  No . . . the Party had arrested and executed nearly a quarter of a million persons after the Troubles, accusing them of being Royalists, Counter-Revolutionaries and Enemies of the People and sending them (Dashwood was disgusted that it had been he who had cravenly signed the transportation dockets) to the Warsaw Ghetto and to the death camps in the Hub. Overnight—and the arrests had always been made at night or when thick smog had enveloped the Rookeries—Dashwood had seen many of his friends, his relatives and members of the Court disappear into the Checkya’s black-painted steamers, never to be seen again.