The Demi-Monde: Summer (7 page)

He opened the door. Selim wasn’t alone, he had two women with him, though as they were swathed from head to toe in black burkas Billy couldn’t dig whether they were young or old, fit or fugly.

‘Good evening, Duke William, and my apologies for calling on you at such a late hour.’

It took a second for Billy to dig that the ‘Duke William’ Selim was talking about was him. Ella had laid the title on him on account of him being her brother. He shrugged the guy into his room and shut the door.

‘I bring greetings from His HimPerial Majesty Shaka Zulu, who wishes me to ensure that all your desires are being catered for.’

‘Why’s this Shaka cat worried ‘bout me?’

‘You are the twin brother of Doge IMmanual, Your Grace, the twin brother of the Messiah. The same blood that flows in her body flows in yours. Our holy men believe that your coming is divinely inspired, after all, according to HimPerialism’s most sacred book, the HIM Book, the Messiah cannot be a woeMan but
must
be a Man. They see you as the Man to fulfil that prophecy.’

‘No shit?’ mused Billy as he poured two healthy glasses of cognac. Cognac was the only thing that had kept him sane since he’d touched down in the Demi-Monde. ‘From what I hear, yo’
guys in NoirVille are really big on male supremacy and all that shit, right?’

Or more exactly, what PINC told him. It was neat having an encyclopedia stuck in his head.

‘That is correct, Your Grace. HimPerialism teaches us that the Fall of Man was brought about by Lilith, the first woeMan, when she tempted Adam to eat the fruit of Yggdrasil, the sacred tree. This ended the Time of Maximum Coolness, the state of Harmony that existed before Lilith’s betrayal. As punishment for Lilith’s connivance in the Fall, ABBA decreed that henceforward woeMen would be required to conduct themselves according to the precepts of subMISSiveness, that is, they must be at all times Mute, Invisible, Subservient and Sexually Modest.’

‘You wanna try telling that to Ella. I don’t think she’s in the market for submissiveness.’

Selim smiled and took a sip of his cognac. ‘And that is why, Your Grace, the powers that be in NoirVille are so pleased that you have come to the Demi-Monde. Although pragmatism has prompted us to put aside our natural aversion to allying ourselves with a people ruled by a woeMan, we live in hope that one day it might be the true Messiah – a
male
Messiah – who sits on the throne of Venice.’ He paused. ‘You, perhaps?’

‘Yeah, well, where I come from, Selim, we kinda see things the same way: with guys on top and bitches underneath, if yo’ get my meaning.’

‘I am pleased that our opinions have so much commonality. But it would not do for us to get ahead of ourselves. Doge IMmanual is very powerful and has an aversion to having this power challenged. It would be better if, for the moment, we feigned obedience.’

‘I’m reading yo’, bro.’

‘Excellent. Lord Shaka has commanded that I give you this.’ Selim clapped his hands and immediately one of the woeMen
oiled across the room and placed a small silver bowl on the table to the side of the chair where Billy was sitting. When she removed the lid he saw that it was full to the brim with blue powder.

Billy eyed it suspiciously. ‘So what’s this shit, man?’

‘It is a powder called Dizzi, Your Grace. It’s a drug that the NoirVillians are very enamoured of; it is a powerful aphrodisiac much favoured for its ability to stimulate sexual performance.’

PINC had no information regarding Dizzi, which was odd, but this didn’t deter Billy. Without thinking, he took up a spoon, dug it deep into the bowl and snorted back the powder long and hard. The effect was both immediate and incredibly stimulating; the fug in his brain caused by the excess of cognac he’d been chugging cleared instantaneously and his senses sharpened. He felt enlivened, energised and his skin tingled. He hadn’t felt this charged since he’d come to the Demi-Monde. His prick was already doing the flag salute.

‘Wooo-weee … the store is open! Fuck, that’s bumpin’.’

As was his wont, Billy immediately went back for a second dose, but the spoon didn’t make it to his nose, Selim placing a restraining hand on his. ‘With regards to Dizzi, it is better to proceed with caution. It takes several weeks to develop a tolerance of its more … unusual side effects.’

Billy brushed the hand away and snorted the spoonful up his nose. ‘Don’t fuss and fret about me, bro. There ain’t no chemistry known to man that I cain’t handle.’

‘I can see you are a man of superhuman strength and tolerance,’ said Selim equitably, ‘but then, of course, you are the Messiah. And that is why Lord Shaka has seen fit to provide you with a means of slaking these appetites.’

He clapped his hands and immediately the woeMen removed their burkas to reveal that they were young, attractive and very naked. ‘These are a gift to you, Your Grace, to do with what you
will. Understand they have been well educated with regards to subMISSiveness and will obey your every command.’

Billy got to his feet and wandered across to where the girls were standing. ‘My every command?’ he asked. ‘I gotta tell yo’, Selim, ma man, I can get real inventive when it comes to fucking bitches as sleek as these two honeys.’

‘Their only duty is to obey, Your Grace.’

Billy felt his spirits rising, along with his dick. Maybe the Demi-Monde wasn’t gonna be so bad after all.

Vanka pushed the money through the window and waited while the malignant sod of a Border Guard enjoyed himself by counting it. Finally, with a shrug, the guard pulled the lever that opened the large metal gate set into the high wall surrounding the JAD – the infamous ‘JAD Wall’ – built by Shaka
to keep his people away from the corrupting influence of the nuJus. The guard motioned Vanka through.

It was quite a feeling to pass through the gate. For the first time since he’d escaped Venice, Vanka felt just a tad more optimistic about life. Despite the best efforts of the Signori di Notte
and
the HimPeril, he had made it to the safety of the JAD. Not that the JAD seemed to be an overly inviting place.

It was only when the heavy steel gate clanged shut behind him and the guard turned off the gaslights that he noticed how dark it was. There were no street lights – apparently Shaka refused to allow enough gas to be piped into the JAD for it to be squandered on such fripperies – and there were no lights in any of the windows of the heavily grilled storefronts he wandered past. The streets were deserted too.

Luckily, there was still one diehard pedicab driver waiting for those unfortunates entering the JAD. ‘You for hire?’ Vanka asked hopefully.

‘
Feh!
You think I’m sitting here just for zhe good of my health? You think I vanna sit here vaiting for
yolds
like you to come unt ask me zheir stupid questions? Of course I’m for hire, even got a permit to operate so it’s all
kosher
. You must be a real
putz
to ask such a question. Vot are you, a NoirVillian, or something?’

‘Yeah,’ Vanka lied.

The nuJu pedicab driver sniffed and leant back beneath his huge umbrella. Obviously everyone in NoirVille believed that leaving their customers standing in the rain was a great negotiating tactic. He was right.

‘It’s raining again,’ the driver noted, which Vanka decided, as the rain seeped down his neck, was one of the most obsolete observations ever made. ‘
Azoy
, it’s another night most dank unt dismal. Not a night for valking: zhe drains unt zhe sewers can’t cut it no more unt every strolling cat’s vading ankle-deep in zhe thick brown lotion de motions.
A klug
. Zo, vhere’s a
goyisher kop
like you headed?’

‘Hotel Copasetic,’ answered Vanka. That was the name he had been given by Josie. It was one of the Code Noir’s safe houses.

‘
ABBA zol ophten!
’ said the driver with a mournful shake of his head. ‘God forbid! Zhat’s in JuGrad, man, zhe most shitful part of zhe whole JAD. Some real nasty
parekhs
strut zheir stuff in JuGrad.’ He gave Vanka an unhappy smile. ‘If zhe JAD is zhe arsehole of the world, man, zhen JuGrad is half a mile up it. Nah … I wouldn’t wanna go valking up zhere on my lonely; I’d wanna go up zhere in a nice dry pedicab mit a big mean fucker like me riding shotgun.’ And to emphasise the point, he patted a huge blunderbuss strapped to the side of his pedicab.

Fucking Hel
, thought Vanka,
if the pedicab drivers are using street howitzers, what are the
real
badniks in the JAD armed with?

‘How much?’ asked Vanka, who was fast coming to the conclusion that if he stood out in the rain much longer he’d be in danger of shrinking.

‘One hundred Guineas.’

‘I think I’ll walk,’ he said, yanking up the collar of his waterlogged coat.

‘
Zei nit a nor!
It’ll be your funeral, man. But dig zhat in zhe late black zhere is gonna be a load of zadnik-inclined scumboids on zhe prowl around JuGrad looking for action. Lotta zadniks come into the JAD cruising for fresh meat unt zhey gonna really love turd-tumbling zhat soft Blank ass of yours. Jah, a
pisher
like you is gonna be cluster-fucked all vays to Sunday before you’ve padded a mile. You dig?’

Vanka dug. ‘I’ll give you fifty Guineas,’ he offered, remembering Josie’s advice that everything in the JAD required haggling over.

‘Fifty Guineas! You vont zhat my children starve? Vot are you, some sort of
gonif?
You trying to svindle me, man?’

‘Sixty,’ Vanka countered.

‘Feh! Vot a
karger!
Okay … sixty.’

Vanka clambered into the cab and, thankfully, if a little belatedly, out of the rain.

As he was driven through the dark streets, he decided that the JAD fully deserved its reputation for being a shitheap. A busy shitheap: whilst streets near the JAD Wall were empty of traffic and pedestrians, the deeper they drove into JAD the busier it became. Everywhere Vanka looked there were gangs of navvies building pillboxes, erecting huge steel anti-steamer obstacles and garlanding hoops of barbed wire along the sides of the roads. Every intersection was barricaded and every barricade was manned by heavily armed militia. The JAD was a city getting ready for war.

But it hadn’t always been like this. Vanka remembered the JAD as it was when the nuJus had first inherited it. Then it had been a part of NoirVille rich with large and ornate buildings, buildings bedecked with domes and cupolas, all arranged so that they faced the direction of the Sphinx, the HimPerialists’ holiest monument. Unfortunately three years of being sucked dry by Shaka had left precious little money spare to invest in municipal maintenance. Whereas NoirVille was – thanks to the near-monopoly it had of the blood trade – the richest of all the Sectors in the Demi-Monde, the JAD was poor and this poverty was reflected in its state of decay.

Yeah, a lot had changed since the nuJus had taken over, mainly the image the nuJus had had of being soft touches. They had proved themselves to be tough fuckers, willing to fight to protect their newly acquired homeland.

But what Vanka found even more disturbing than the preparations being made for war was the anti-NoirVillian, anti-Him-Perialist graffiti that decorated the place. As the pedicab bumped and crashed over the smashed-up roads, Vanka was astonished to see the amount of graffiti that crawled over the walls they pedalled past. Shaka might have agreed – in exchange
for a regular supply of Aqua Benedicta – to allow the nuJus to settle in the JAD, but there was no disguising what the nuJus thought of him.

The nuJus and the NoirVillians hated one another: the NoirVillians hated the nuJus because they rejected HimPerialism and granted refuge to woeMen fleeing their fathers or husbands, and the nuJus hated the NoirVillians for being obscene, disgusting, misogynistic homosexual bastards.

But like many unhappy marriages, the partners managed to make it work. So when the NoirVillians who liked to walk on the wild side visited the JAD for a little off-HimPerial R & R, they were made to pay. And Vanka in his role as fun-seeking NoirVillian began paying when the pedicab driver pulled up outside his hotel and demanded the fare for the journey. Sixty Guineas was extortion, but having seen some of the no-brows prowling the pavements and having heard the crackle of two firefights, Vanka decided to pay. Anyway, the pedicab driver was a big guy.

‘No tip?’

Vanka looked at the guy as though he was demented. ‘Yeah … don’t live in the JAD,’ he said quietly and then turned towards his hotel.

He had had high hopes for ‘the Copasetic’: apparently, in reBop – the lingua franca of NoirVille – the word copasetic meant ‘excellent’. But whatever the hotel was, it wasn’t ‘excellent’. The Copasetic was, according to Josie, a ‘family-run’ hotel, though quite what species the family belonged to she hadn’t said. ‘Family-run’, Vanka decided as he eyed the hotel’s crumbling frontage, must be a euphemism for ‘shitty’.

Once – a long, long time ago – the building had been truly impressive. Then it had been a wonderful baroque confection of flowing curves and stylised arches, but now it was a flaking, dilapidated remembrance of times past. That somebody had had the bright idea of painting its sandstone exterior a lurid
red colour did nothing to raise the tone of the building: it looked like a whorehouse, which presumably was the point.