The Demi-Monde: Winter (6 page)

Sketches complete, Trixie scribbled down a brief summary of the tests she had conducted. Tomorrow she’d hire one of the steam-driven drop-hammers she’d seen being used to break rocks at the docks, get it hauled to the site, erected down here in her excavation pit and then she’d see just how tough the Mantle really was.

But she’d have to be careful. To be caught using a steam hammer to smash a way through the Mantle would create a real scandal, one even her father wouldn’t have enough influence to cover up.

And as for her governess …

No, she didn’t even want to think of the hissy fit Governess Margaret would throw if she was Censured again. Then Trixie really would be unmarriageable. No respectable man in the
ForthRight – now there was a contradiction in terms – would marry a Ratty. No respectable man would come near her.

Thrusting this unpleasant thought to the back of her mind, Trixie climbed to her feet and brushed the dirt off her knees. Her stockings were ruined but that wasn’t a concern: she would blame her maid for that. Better a slave got a whipping than her governess discovered that her one and only charge was a closet RaTionalist who was conducting secret and very illegal experiments designed to overturn the supposedly inviolate beliefs of UnFunDaMentalism. RaTionalists weren’t popular with the Party. Only dead RaTionalists were popular with the Party.

Lost in her cogitations, Trixie leant back against the Boundary Layer, feeling it yield just a little as she did so. She had had Luigi dig the pit in an abandoned warehouse owned by her father that butted hard up against the Boundary. Digging her excavation pit here gave her the opportunity simultaneously to examine both the Mantle and the Boundary Layer.

The Boundary Layer.

If the Mantle was a Mystery, then the ninety-four miles of Boundary Layer that circled the Demi-Monde was the Big Mystery, the Mystery at the heart of the enigma that was the Containment. More learned men (men, hah!) had studied the Boundary Layer than any other of the Phenomena in the DemiMonde. And what had their studies revealed?

Nothing.

Oh, after much deliberation and head-scratching the Party in the shape of His Holiness Aleister Crowley had officially classified the Boundary as a Selectively Permeable Magical Membrane, but that was just a fancy way of saying that neither the Party nor Aleister Crowley had a clue what it really was. All they – or anybody else, for that matter – knew was that the Boundary Layer was the transparent wall that surrounded the
Demi-Monde and prevented Man from moving into the Great Beyond.

And as such the Boundary Layer was at the centre of the schism that had divided the religions of the Demi-Monde and kept them at each other’s throats. Was – as the UnFunnies had it – the Boundary Layer there to keep nasty things like Daemons out, or – as Ratties believed – was its purpose to keep DemiMondians in? That, in a nutshell, was the dilemma that was the Containment, the key philosophical question that had bedevilled thinkers since time immemorial: was the DemiMonde a sanctuary or a prison?

Whatever the Boundary Layer’s purpose, it was a wall that the harder you pushed against it, the harder it pushed back. The only things that seemed to be able to traverse the Boundary Layer were light, air and the waters of the five Spoke Rivers.

Nothing else.

It was an invisible and impenetrable wall that extended thirty feet below ground level where it made a seamless join with the Mantle and extended up … well, no one knew quite how far up into the sky the Boundary stretched. That daredevil Speke had ridden one of the new hydrogen balloons to an altitude of over six thousand feet and the Boundary had still been there, so it was anybody’s guess how high it really went.

Trixie drew a hand lovingly over the surface of the Boundary, feeling it ripple slightly as she did so. The thirty feet of topsoil of the Great Beyond was clearly seen through the Layer … so close and yet so very far away.

The strange thing was that – as far as Trixie could tell – the nanoBites that inhabited the soil of the Great Beyond never got closer than twenty feet to the surface. That was why there were so many great trees in the forests of the Beyond: there weren’t any nanoBites nibbling at their roots. Not like here in
the Demi-Monde’s Urban Band. There weren’t many trees in the Urban Band as the nanoBites came within five feet of the surface and made short work of their roots. Luigi had only been able to dig the pit because it was Winter and the nanoBites were hibernating.

One day, Trixie was determined, she would penetrate the Boundary Layer and understand the mysteries of the Great Beyond. One day she would understand all the mysteries of the Demi-Monde. One day she would be the most famous of all RaTionalists.

‘It really gettin’ awful, awful late, Miss Trixie. We gotta be home real soon.’

Luigi’s whining voice cut through Trixie’s reverie. With a sigh she dragged her fob watch out of her pocket.

Dancing Daemons!

‘Why didn’t you tell me that was the time, Luigi?’ Trixie demanded as she scrabbled up the ladder leading to the top of the pit. ‘You stupid, stupid man! If I’m late it will be your fault. I’ll have Governess Margaret tan the astral ether off your useless Eyetie arse!’

An α-Class Singularity (aka Dark Charismatic, Hi-Level Psychotic) may be defined as an individual demonstrating such distorted and aberrational force of personality and such singularity of purpose that they have the ability and the inclination to wrest power from existing governments, to overturn the politico-social status quo and to irreparably change existing cultural, moral and religious mores.

– The Demi-Monde® Product Description Manual: 14 June 2013

Captain Sanderson led Ella out of the General’s office and back along Fort Jackson’s labyrinthine corridors. Being out of the General’s presence helped the Captain relax: he chatted quite amiably to her as they walked. He even called her Ella. She didn’t object: the Captain was good-looking if a little on the small side, but then compared to her near six foot most men came up a little short. ‘You’re going to be meeting two disturbing people, Ella,’ he said as they strode through the building, ‘but don’t let either of them distract you too much. Everybody is a little upset by their first meeting with the Professor, and as for Heydrich …’

They walked for about five minutes and then descended – Ella had no idea how many floors – in a high-security elevator.
When the elevator’s steel doors finally opened they were met by a man who was excessively lanky and thin, his emaciated body clad in an exquisitely cut – if a tad old-fashioned – suit made from worsted wool of an uncompromising black. He looked like an undertaker, though his long, Roman nose, his dark button eyes that snarled out at Ella from behind shaded glasses and his oiled black hair made him an extremely aggressive-looking undertaker.

Weird.

Captain Sanderson effected the introductions. ‘This is Professor Septimus Bole, who developed the Demi-Monde. Professor, this is Miss Ella Thomas, our first-choice candidate for Operation Offbeat.’

Operation Offbeat?

Ella held out her hand. The Professor looked at it warily, then with what appeared to be extreme reluctance shook it. The man’s fingers were cold and clammy and her feeling of revulsion was heightened when he squirmed them hurriedly out of her grasp. It was as though he was disgusted by her touch.

‘I am delighted to meet you, Miss Thomas. I hope what you see today will persuade you to help us.’ This little announcement was made, unexpectedly, in an English accent, which had a strange mechanical cadence to it. The Professor noted Ella’s surprise. ‘Yes, Miss Thomas, I am a Brit, though I trust you won’t hold that against me. I, for my sins, am head of ParaDigm CyberResearch’s Demi-Monde Project Team, ParaDigm being the company behind the Demi-Monde. I am here on secondment from ParaDigm to help the US Army sort out its problems.’

Problems?

Introductions made, Captain Sanderson slotted his ID tag into a scanner set on the wall by the side of the elevator and placed his palm on the reader next to it. Immediately a door
in the steel wall sighed open and Sanderson nodded Ella and the Professor through to the conference room beyond. The door slid shut behind them.

The room they entered was small, cold and impersonal, and, rather disconcertingly, reminded Ella of a hospital waiting room. The only furnishings were a line of five very uncomfortable-looking plastic chairs set in front of a low stage which had a lectern standing at its centre. At a sign from the Captain, Ella took the middle chair. Professor Bole sat next to her, and after taking an age to coil his long body into the seat and ensure that the immaculate creases in his trousers weren’t being compromised he turned to Ella.

‘As I think the General will have explained to you already, Miss Thomas, the Demi-Monde was designed to replicate the chaos and anarchy associated with an Asymmetric War Environment. The demonstration you are about to see will, I hope, inform you of two things. The first and most obvious will be to convince you of the realism of the Dupes populating the Demi-Monde, a realism so profound that they are as close to real life as makes no difference.’

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ella kept her face bland: she would believe this when she saw it. There was no way she was ever going to believe that a computer-concocted Dupe was a real person.

‘The second point,’ the Professor continued, ‘which to my mind makes the Demi-Monde such a triumph, is that it accurately conjures up the type of people who rise to leadership positions in Asymmetric Warfare Environments. For the leaders in the Demi-Monde we have selected individuals from history famous for their brutality and their barbarism, and have mimicked their aberrational personalities using state-of-the-art DNA-mapping techniques. As a consequence these PreLived
Dupes look, think and act just as their real-life equivalents did. I tell you this not to frighten you, but to prepare you.’

The Professor flicked a switch on the remote control he was holding. ‘I’ll just dim the lights, Miss Thomas, and then I think our guest will be ready to present himself.’

Even before the lights had fully faded a tall, slim man dressed in a perfectly fitting black uniform of an officer in the Nazi SS strode out of the right-hand wall. His jackboots shone, his leather belt and holster sparkled and the silver death’s-head badge on the brow of his tall peaked hat twinkled under the room’s fluorescent lighting. That the man was a Dupe, Ella had absolutely no doubt – no one she knew of could walk through a solid steel wall – but …

But in all other respects the man who came to stand on the stage behind the lectern was a perfect representation of a living, breathing human being. Ella stared at him, awed by the way in which the man’s body – the Dupe’s body – so precisely imitated the shadows and highlights that would have been seen if it had been rendered from solid flesh and blood. In sum, it was an amazing, disturbing display of computing power; a display of verisimilitude such as Ella had never imagined could be achieved. It was impossible to distinguish the Dupe from the real thing.

‘Perhaps you would be so kind as to introduce yourself?’ Captain Sanderson asked quietly.

The Dupe turned his bleached, narrow-set eyes towards the Captain and smiled the most chillingly arrogant smile Ella had ever seen. And as he smiled he seemed to suck all the heat and goodness out of the room. She shivered in cold and fear: the man standing before her was the very personification of evil.

‘As you wish.’ The man gave a sharp click of his heels and a slight bow of his head. This done, he took his cap from his head,
placed it precisely to the left of the lectern, and slowly and deliberately ran a hand over his short, sleek blond hair. He wasn’t a handsome man, decided Ella, but he was striking, what with his prominent nose and his long, narrow face. But what she particularly disliked was the way his cold, cold eyes didn’t seem to look at her but into her.

‘I am Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich, SS-Ober gruppenführer, Chief of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt, the Reich’s Main Security Office, and Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia.’

Jesus.

Ella sat open-mouthed in amazement. The nuances of speech were so astonishingly correct that she was having trouble remembering that the man standing not six feet away from her was a piece of computer fabrication. Even the tone and resonance of his voice – a little too light and effeminate, she thought, for a man of his size – by its very wrongness added an authenticity to the masquerade.

She turned to the Professor. ‘Just who is this Heydrich of yours? Is he a fiction?’

The Professor tapped a button on his control pad and immediately a red sign illuminated over the Dupe:
.

The figure of Heydrich froze in mid-gesture.

Professor Bole smiled in a disdainful, condescending way. ‘I had thought the teaching of history in British schools was the worst in the Western world but …’ He shook his head sadly. ‘No matter. Whilst Reinhard Heydrich has, as a consequence of his assassination by Czech resistance fighters in May 1942, not generated quite the public disdain and infamy of other leading Nazis such as Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels and Goering, Heydrich was, in my humble opinion, the most evil, the most callous and the most dangerous of the whole pack of them. The man so wonderfully represented here in this room is the individual
whose organisational genius, superhuman capacity for hard work and total and utter disregard for human suffering made the triumph of the Third Reich possible. The man standing before you, Miss Thomas, masterminded the Holocaust. He was the man who enabled the Nazis to send six million Jews to their death.’ He smiled bleakly at Ella. ‘Shall we continue?’

‘I must congratulate you, Herr Obergruppenführer,’ said the Professor in a ridiculously conversational tone, ‘on your recent promotion to Reichsprotektor.’

The Dupe nodded his appreciation of the compliment.

‘Perhaps,’ the Professor continued, ‘you would be so kind as to describe your career for my young friend here? She is quite an admirer of yours.’