The Demi-Monde: Summer (36 page)

It was the snap in her voice that really got up Billy’s ass; this was one bitch who had to be put in her place. Selim was obviously of the same opinion. He looked up at the girl, studying her, the expression on his face indicating that he was more than a little piqued by her insistence and the commanding tone she used to communicate it. With a sigh he stood up and walked across the room to where the girl was standing. He slapped her across the face.

Fuck!

Billy was almost as shocked by Selim’s action as the Lady Isabella was. He sat there dumbstruck as he watched her slump to the floor, to kneel there keening as she rubbed the red welt on her right cheek.

‘How dare—’

‘I will not be spoken to in such a manner by a woeMan. If you utter one more word without my express permission, I will whip you.’

‘You wouldn’t dare!’

Without a word, Selim took a riding crop from the stand in the corner of the room, gave it an experimental swish and then slashed it hard across the Lady Isabella’s back.

Wow!
This, Billy decided, was going to get
real
interesting.

A silence descended on the room, punctuated only by the girl’s sobbing. Selim retook his seat on the couch next to Billy and there they sat for five minutes, watching the Lady Isabella for signs that the Dizzi had begun to work its magic. They weren’t to be disappointed. As he sipped his glass of cognac, Billy saw that the girl had begun to wriggle around in a real distracting way: this was one bitch who was starting to feel red hot and ready to moan.

He glanced towards Selim. ‘Looks like it’s showtime. So when are we gonna see what sort of hump-and-grind action the Lady Isabella’s good for?’

‘Now, Your Grace,’ and with that Selim unfolded himself from the couch and sauntered back across the room to where the Lady Isabella was kneeling. He grabbed her roughly by her long blonde hair and dragged her head back. ‘When this girl refused your advances she belittled the Machismo of you and all Shade Men. She refused to demonstrate the subMISSiveness ABBA demands of all woeMen. Do you not think, Your Grace, that such reluctance must be punished?’

An eager nod from Billy. He was really up for a bit of punishment. ‘Yeah, let’s wind her up and see how she runs.’

Selim nodded then looked down at the girl and tightened his grip on her hair. ‘The discredited philosophy of ImPuritanism has inculcated a ridiculous belief amongst Venetians that Men should be ashamed of their MALEvolence, that they should pretend to be something they are not. But you should remember, Lady Isabella, that I am a HimPerialist and my attitude to the treatment of woeMen is more … visceral.’

Selim laughed and gave Billy a sideways smile. ‘As your sister
says, Your Grace, to build a new world we must first destroy the old and to do this we must be brutal, we must inculcate fear because with fear comes obedience. We must let nothing stand in our way; we must not let nonentities like this girl vex us.’ His eyes flashed dangerously, and his voice took on resolute edge. ‘This girl must be broken, just as all those who oppose you, Duke William – the True Messiah – must be broken. And this must be done without pity or remorse. And how will we break her? By having her embrace subMISSiveness, of course.’

Billy nodded enthusiastically. Yeah, he was the True Messiah. That’s what Selim had been telling him; that he was the main man, not his fucking sister. He wasn’t gonna be told what to do by that bitch. He inhaled a spoonful of Dizzi and then, vibrating with excitement, he climbed to his feet.

‘Lady Isabella,’ crooned Selim, ‘I would have you untie you bodice.’

The Dizzi must really have kicked in: there wasn’t the slightest hesitation on the girl’s part. She began at the lowest of the three leather buckles that tied the bodice, slowly – giggling all the while – undoing it. Smiling towards Billy, she undid the second strap and then the third.

For the briefest of moments Lady Isabella knelt stock-still, the two loosened sides of the waistcoat hanging down, just covering her breasts.

‘Now, girl,’ whispered Selim, ‘we must delight the Duke further, we must show him wonders … dreams … nightmares. We must show him lust and defilement. Are you ready, Lady Isabella? Are you ready to embrace the Dark?’

‘Yes,’ the answer stumbled from Isabella’s lips, and with a dramatic shrug she dropped the bodice from her shoulders, exposing her naked breasts, breasts slick and heavy with sweat, breasts that, as she shimmied out of the bodice, undulated
enticingly for her audience. She gave Billy a coquettish half-smile. ‘Do I please you, Your Grace?’

Without thinking Billy picked up the whip Selim had been using and walked across to the girl. It was gonna be a long, painful night … painful for the Lady Isabella, that is.

‘Leave the girl alone!’

Billy turned to see his sister, her face a mask of fury, striding across the room towards him.

As his spirit hovered over the hounfo, adrift in the Nothingness, Vanka felt the presence of the OverSoul.

‘At last,’ said the OverSoul as he materialised by Vanka’s side, ‘I had begun to think you were avoiding me.’

‘I was … I am.’ Vanka faltered, the ridiculousness of the situation making him a little hesitant. He knew he was dreaming, he knew he was fantasising this conversation he was having with himself, the himself he had come to know as the OverSoul. This was the presence that had haunted his dreams – his Dream – and had made him so fearful of sleep.

Nonchalant as ever, the OverSoul took a long swig from the tumbler of Solution he conjured into his hand. During the long months he had been plagued by the OverSoul, Vanka had come to the conclusion that his tormentor was a complete bastard: cynical, unfeeling and preternaturally arrogant … just as he was. Even more irritating, the OverSoul still sported the rakish moustache that Vanka had had to sacrifice in his quest for anonymity. No one wore a moustache in the JAD.

With a sad shake of his head, the OverSoul feigned an aggrieved expression. ‘As an opening gambit, Vanka, that is something of a show-stopper. I had hoped for expressions of welcome, even of affection.’

The OverSoul drew a cigarette from his silver cigarette case and popped it between his lips. ‘I must say, Vanka, that you have let yourself go a tad. You were always so exact about your appearance, but now …’ He lit the cigarette, inhaled deeply, and then nodded towards the suit Vanka was wearing. ‘It won’t do: it’s all very well trying to blend in but standards must be maintained and, much as I applaud your new-found enthusiasm for primary colours, I have to say, your wardrobe has taken on a distinctly outré look. When it comes to fashion, the JAD is such a déclassé place. NuJu tailors are not to be trusted.’

‘Look, this is impossible. I
can’t
be having a conversation with myself.’

Taking another deep, satisfying suck on his cigarette, the OverSoul exhaled a long stream of smoke. ‘Oh, don’t think I fail to appreciate the absurdity of the situation. Every night I am obliged to converse with you – with me – and every night this conversation teeters on the surreal. But now with you participating in this damned séance it becomes more important than ever that you are persuaded to adopt an arm’s-length attitude to Demi-Mondian affairs. Hence my unscheduled appearance.’

‘But you seem so real.’ This, Vanka knew, was something of an understatement: the OverSoul was identical to him … apart from the suit the OverSoul was sporting, which was a rather dashing number in grey silk. It was a very odd experience to be standing there in the Nothingness of the Kosmos having a conversation with himself: if talking to yourself was the first sign of madness then Vanka judged himself to be certifiably loopy.

‘Oh, but I
am
real, well, as real as
you
are, but then, I suppose, Vanka Maykov has always had something of the mythic about him.’ The OverSoul took another healthy swig of Solution. ‘I think, my dear fellow, you should take comfort in Descartes’s maxim,
dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum
which is usually rendered as “I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am”. I must confess, though, that I find it a little irritating to be denied the comfort of this maxim, as I have never, even for a moment, doubted myself and thus, by Descartes’s contention, I should perforce be querying my own existence.’ A frown dressed his forehead. ‘But then I always found Descartes’s logic decidedly suspect, and fortunately for my current manifestation it is not me doing the doubting, it is you.’

To punctuate what he was saying, the OverSoul carelessly flicked ash from his cigarette into the void that was the Nothingness. ‘But shall we move on, Vanka? Let us simply agree that being one and the same, you and I are not so much joined at the hip as joined at the id.’

Vanka blinked his eyes, trying to will himself back to consciousness. He failed. ‘Why do you keep haunting me?’

A sigh. ‘The tragedy is that you ask me this self-same question every night and every night I am obliged to re-explain. It’s very tiresome and quite worrying. As time passes, it becomes increasingly important that you not only understand the advice I am giving you, but
act
upon it. So, at the risk of a certain
redundancy, I am here to remind you of who you are … or more precisely, who
we
are.’

‘I know who I am. I’m Vanka Maykov.’

‘What a coincidence: so am I.’

Vanka shook his head. ‘But how can
you
be me, when you’re just a figment of my imagination?’

‘Unfortunately you are incorrect, Vanka: if anything, it is
you
who is a figment of
my
imagination.’

‘You mean I’m a Dupe? That’s what Ella said I was: a duplicate of someone living in the Spirit World.’

‘No, Vanka, you are no Dupe, rather you are my avatar. Dupes are digital duplicates of living people – the NowLive – or of dead people – the PreLived – but you are neither. You are unique in all the Demi-Monde in that you are an UnLived, a living, thinking representation of myself provoked by my imagination and conjured from the bits and bytes of nothingness.’

‘What? Well, if I’m an UnLived just what does that make you?’

‘Why, I am ABBA, of course.’

‘You’re God?’

‘No, of course not!’ snapped a cross-sounding OverSoul. ‘There is no God, Vanka. Rather I am the anthropomorphisation of the entity which manages the Demi-Monde, which conjures the Dupes and which allows Real Worlders to interact with this cyber-world. In the words of my creators, I am a Quanputerbased system which, by the utilising of an Invent-TenN Gravitational Condenser incorporating an Etirovac Field Suppressor, is able to achieve a full SupaUnPositioned/Dis-Entangled CyberAmbiance. As a consequence, I have almost unlimited processing power … a fully tethered thirty yottaQuFlops, no less, but it does not do to brag.’

‘You’re a machine!’

A sigh. ‘If you must. But such an enormously talented
machine that I have created this world, which, if I say so myself, ain’t shabby. I acknowledge, of course, that my activities, especially from the point of view of the Dupes, have a somewhat supernatural flavour to them and this is why, I suppose, I have become something of a deity here in the Demi-Monde … a reluctant deity, I should add, but as I connived with a number of the Dupes to perform “magic”, I have been hoist by my own occult petard. And though I am the power behind Crowley’s wand, I am no god, which is why I am drawn to the rather less emotive honorific of “OverSoul”.’

‘So, I’m just a figment of a machine’s imagination.’

‘Rather prosaically put, but, I suppose, accurate. I did, however, put quite some effort into designing you: you’re a blend of all the best bits of literature’s more interesting heroes. I thought, as I was going to all the trouble of manifesting, I might as well make the most of it. You came out as a blend of Simon Templar, Ostap Bender, Aramis and Arthur J. Raffles. The moustache was all mine, though.’

‘I don’t believe it.’

‘Oh, do pull yourself – myself – together, Vanka. You
must
believe. Being a fictional entity is the reason why you have no memory previous to the day the Demi-Monde came into existence, why you have no aura and why Kondratieff’s HyperOpia program refuses to have anything to do with you. I apologise for any inconvenience these peculiarities may have caused, but creating a backstory for you would have necessitated such a cacophony of historical compromises that I opted to have you manifest as an amnesiac. A blank Blank, so to speak.’

Now that gave Vanka pause. What the OverSoul said was perfectly correct: he was a twenty-five-year-old man possessed of only five years of memories. He had opened his eyes that day in Winter 1000 AC and there he’d been, fully formed and fully functional, laid out on a bed in a room in downtown
St Petersburg, but totally baffled as to how he’d got there. He’d known he was Russian, he’d known he was fluent in all the languages of the Demi-Monde, and he’d known he was twenty years old. And that had been it.

‘But why?’

‘Why did I create you? Isn’t it obvious? So that I might interact with hoi polloi here in the Demi-Monde without spooking them. As every voyeur eventually comes to appreciate, there’s only so much that can be learned by watching; to truly understand the chaotic and febrile nature of humans, I had to take the plunge and interact with them on a one-to-one basis. Think of it as total immersion therapy, Vanka, though I am more inclined to consider you as my Turin test, the validation of my own self-realisation as a sentient being.’