The Demi-Monde: 55th Day of Winter, 1004
The greatest and most compelling aim of UnFunDa -Mentalism is to reclaim the racial purity of the Aryans (as the direct descendants of the Pre-Folk) lost during the Fall and to eliminate all contaminating UnderMentionable aspects from the population. Whilst modern Eugenical studies contend that, over ten generations, it will be possible to breed out the UnderMentionable impurities from the Aryan people, it will also be necessary to sup -plement these more considered aspects of Eugenical policy with Exterminationist strategies designed to eliminate – finally and totally – UnderMentionables from the breed -ing pool. This policy of Extermination I call the Final Solution.
– My Struggle: Reinhard Heydrich, ForthRight Free Press
It was bad enough when word came that Comrade Leader Heydrich would be personally interviewing the Daemon and that the interview would be taking place at Dashwood Manor. That, by itself, was enough to throw the household into panic.
It was the codicil to the message that had threatened to reduce Trixie’s governess to gibbering insensibility. The instruction that His Holiness Comrade Crowley was intent upon holding a seance in the Manor’s ballroom, a seance that the Leader and other notables would be attending, had been almost too much for the woman’s fragile constitution to bear, especially as it was to be, according to the note, ‘a seance designed to unlock the Daemon’s darkest secrets and to use whatever conjurations and adjurations are necessary to make said Daemon pliant and obedient’.
Trixie’s governess almost crumbled under this weight of responsibility and the thought that the Manor would soon be the venue for something as outre as a WhoDoo seance. To have her home playing host to a psychic and – so they had been warned – a Shade witch was intolerable. And when the gang of rather uncouth workmen had arrived to construct this mysterious thing called a hounfo in the Manor’s ballroom she became nigh on hysterical. But after a quiet word from the master and a glass of twenty per cent Solution, she rallied and turned all her nervous energy towards preparing Dashwood Manor for the Leader’s arrival.
Under Governess Margaret’s impassioned – and often tearful – instruction the servants polished and scrubbed, swept and tidied until the Manor was immaculate and smelt of beeswax and bustle. Never had the Manor been so clean and polished nor the wooden floors buffed to such a dangerously lustrous sheen. But for Trixie the most singular aspect of this premature Spring-cleaning was the servants being instructed to take down all of the mirrors that hung in the hallway and in the drawing room.
Her father noted Trixie’s confusion. ‘The Leader has an aversion to mirrors. He will not look into them,’ he said by way of explanation. This only fuelled her curiosity.
‘But why?’
A shrug from her father. ‘Who knows, Trixie? The Leader is different from the rest of us mere mortals. Perhaps,’ he added in a whispered aside, ‘he does not wish to see what he has become.’ This thought made the Comrade Commissar pause for a moment and then he edged closer to his daughter. ‘And we must be careful of what Reinhard Heydrich has become. As my daughter, Trixie, you will be introduced to the Leader, but it is doubtful whether he will deign to talk with you. But if he does, you must answer his questions correctly as a good Daughter of the ForthRight. No demurral and none of your famous sarcasm. You may be young, Trixie, but your youth will not protect you: just remember it is treason to express doubts about the rightness of what the Leader says or does. For a female to question the ForthRight’s ultimate victory over the other peoples of the Demi-Monde is HerEsy.’ He paused for a moment as though running through a mental checklist. ‘You know your UnFunDaMentalist catechisms? You may be asked to recite them by Heydrich; the man is a stickler for Party dogma.’
A nod from Trixie.
‘Excellent.’ He placed a hand on her shoulder. ‘And keep that Eyetie slave of yours out of sight. Heydrich hates the Medi races almost as much as he hates Shades and nuJus.’
Despite their having been advised that the Leader would not be arriving at the Manor until the evening, Heydrich’s cavalcade swept into the grounds a little after one o’clock that afternoon, the Leader’s Mercedes steam-limo set in the middle of a phalanx of armoured pantechnicons full of SS militia.
Captain Dabrowski had drawn up his company in front of the house to provide an honour guard, but he and his men were ignored by the four black-uniformed men who clambered out of the steam-limo and across the driveway’s swept gravel to the steps that led to the main doors of Dashwood Manor. Trixie knew them all; their engravings were forever on the front page of The Stormer. All were Heroes of the Revolution: Vice-Leader Comrade Beria; His Holiness Comrade Crowley; Colonel Clement, the head of the SS; and, of course, the Comrade Leader himself.
Trixie was beside herself with excitement: to be actually meeting the Leader in the flesh! It was the dream of every good member of the RightNixes – the ForthRight’s youth movement – to meet with the Great Leader face to face.
She tried to calm herself. The Leader’s arrival had been so unexpected that she and her father had had to rush to greet their distinguished guest, but now she stood with her presentation bouquet and dressed, a little uncomfortably it had to be admitted, in a stylised peasant’s dress – the Party was encouraging women to shun the ‘decadent’ styles coming out of Paris – embroidered with blue Valknuts. Trixie hated the dress, but her governess had insisted.
Her father gave the Party salute, intoned the Party oath and then bowed a greeting. ‘Good afternoon, my Leader, you do my home tremendous honour.’
‘You are not wearing a uniform, Dashwood,’ said Heydrich, who then proceeded to make a critical study of the garden, obviously assessing the defences. ‘I require all members of my government, when on official business, to wear their uniform. By wearing a uniform we signal that we are all of one accord. It demonstrates, Comrade Commissar Dashwood, that you have sublimated your individuality to the will of the Leader and of the Party.’ He tapped at the side of his highly polished boot with the riding crop he was carrying. ‘One day all men in the ForthRight will be obliged to wear uniform, and when they do it will signal that their identity is in the Party’s gift; that individuality and independence of thought are decadent and obsolete, that their only function in life is to obey.’
The Comrade Leader spoke very quickly, as though his mouth had to hurry to keep pace with his mind. Trixie was still musing on what he said – trying to memorise it for repetition at the Academy – when he moved to another subject. ‘I have come to interview the Daemon,’ said Heydrich abruptly. ‘You have a study I might use for this purpose?’
‘Why yes, Comrade Leader.’
‘Then have the creature brought there.’ Heydrich’s gaze drifted towards Trixie. ‘Is this your daughter, Dashwood? Is this the girl who has been assisting with the Daemon’s interrogation?’
‘Indeed, Comrade Leader, may I present my daughter, Lady Trixiebell Dashwood.’
Trixie curtsied and automatically recited the mantra of the RightNixes, ‘One Race Defines Us, One Party Unites Us and One Leader Commands Us.’ She held out the bouquet and one of the Leader’s flunkies took it.
‘Charming,’ murmured the Leader as he held out his hand to Trixie. ‘You are to be congratulated, Comrade Commissar, on siring such a perfect flower of Aryan womanhood. With girls as beautiful and as racially pure as this I am confident that the bloodstock of the ForthRight will soon be free of the contaminants of the UnderMentionable races.’ He smiled at Trixie. ‘You must always remember, Lady Trixiebell, that ABBA has given the women of the ForthRight the divine task of breeding out the racial impurities that defile our Aryan birthright. My advice is that you marry young and be fruitful.’
During the moment when the Leader had shaken her hand she had a chance to study him more carefully. He was tall, narrow-hipped and lithe – his svelte body wonderfully presented by his ink-black uniform – and his long face was dressed with an imperious nose and narrow-set, very pale eyes. He was a perfect specimen of the ‘ForthRight Man’, the Aryan male.
An impish, unpatriotic and decidedly dangerous thought popped into Trixie’s head: perhaps though he could even be considered too perfect. It might have been how soft his hand was when he had shaken hers. It might have been that his uniform was too immaculate or that his eyes contained no humour or humanity. There was something almost doll-like about him: as though she were meeting with an emotionless, soulless automaton.
The slap of the Leader’s riding crop against the black leather of his jackboot snapped Trixie out of her reverie. ‘So to work, Comrade Commissar; we cannot, through indolence or the squandering of time, allow the reins of government to slip from our grasp.’
As Heydrich and his party were shown into the house, Trixie and her father trotted after the Leader’s delegation. Trixie was just in time to see the Leader being shown into her father’s study and Crowley, with Clement at his heels, wandering off in the direction of the ballroom, presumably to check on the construction works being done in advance of the evening’s seance. As soon as the study door was shut, Beria began barking out orders, demanding that the Daemon be summoned.
Five minutes later the creature was escorted down from its room by two of Clement’s SS troopers. As Trixie watched it descend the staircase, she was amazed by how sanguine the Daemon seemed. It even bade her a jaunty ‘good afternoon’.
Didn’t the silly thing know it was going to meet the Leader?
Once the Daemon was shown into the study, Beria shut the door and stationed two large and imposing SS soldiers to guard it. As Beria forcefully reminded Dashwood, no one was, in any circumstances, to disturb the Leader whilst he was in conference with the Daemon.
The Dashwood household settled into a sort of hyperactive indolence: everyone ready at an instant to do the Leader’s bidding but not daring to do anything whilst they waited. Trixie decided to return to her embroidery, but as she was climbing her way up the staircase that led to the upper floors of the Manor and her bedroom, she saw Captain Dabrowski dodge back into one of the guest bedrooms on the first floor.
Odd…
But not as odd as what she saw when she peeked through the door’s keyhole. The Captain was kneeling next to the empty fireplace, apparently listening to the wind whistling up the chimney. She turned the doorknob and to her amazement found that the Captain had bolted the door from within. Perplexed and not a little aggrieved by his antics, she rapped on the door. A second later the bolts were pulled and the door was edged open. ‘Yes?’ said the Captain in a decidedly disrespectful and impatient tone.
‘What are you doing in there, Captain?’ Trixie demanded in a loud and imperious voice. ‘I know you have jurisdiction over this house regarding security but what I saw you doing…’
She wasn’t allowed to finish. The Polish Captain reached out, grabbed her by the wrist and hauled her into the room. Trixie gave a squeak of complaint but when she saw the revolver in his hand and noted that it was pointed in her direction she decided that any more squeaking might not be a good idea.
‘Be very quiet, Miss Dashwood, or I will be obliged to silence you.’ He shot the bolts to the door, then pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and stuffed it into the keyhole to deter any more would-be voyeurs.
‘Are you mad? My father…’
‘Miss Dashwood: shut up! I have been presented with an ABBA-sent opportunity to find out what that bastard Heydrich…’
Bastard? Trixie flinched away from the dangerous insult.
‘… is up to. If you are quiet and do what you are told, then I will leave here without harming you. But if you attempt to call out or to raise the alarm then I will silence you… permanently. Make no mistake, these are desperate times and I will not hesitate to sacrifice one life to save millions. Do you understand?’
The look in Dabrowski’s eyes convinced Trixie that he was in earnest. She nodded her agreement.
‘Very well,’ said the Captain, ‘if you will come and sit with me by the fireplace, I think we will hear history being made.’
‘What?’
‘The chimney at this side of the house runs up from your father’s study. By sitting quietly we can hear everything that is said in that room.’
‘You can’t eavesdrop on the Leader,’ Trixie protested.
But they could.
‘Good afternoon, Miss Williams, would you take a seat?’
For an uncertain moment Norma Williams stood by the door of the shadow-draped room. No one had told her who she was to meet, but from the panic that had enveloped the house she guessed it was someone important. She moved towards the desk and took the leather tub chair indicated. Closer now, she could see who her host was.
Oh, sweet Lord.
‘Perhaps I should begin by introducing myself…’
‘I know who you are. You’re Reinhard Heydrich. I’ve read about you.’
‘I am gratified that the exploits of my doppelganger in the Real World should still have resonance so long after my death. One does not wish one’s efforts in life to have no impact on history.’
‘Oh, you’re remembered all right: you’re remembered as one of the most evil, hateful men who has ever lived, as the perpetrator of the greatest crime ever committed against humanity, as the man who industrialised genocide. Yeah, history remembers you, Heydrich, remembers you as a mad, bad, psychotic mass murderer.’ A disturbing thought struck Norma. ‘But how do you know about having a doppelganger?’
Heydrich gave an arrogant smirk. ‘All in good time, Miss Williams, all in good time.’ He took a cigarette from the silver box set on Dashwood’s desk, tapped it absent-mindedly on a thumbnail and lit it using a gold lighter he tricked out of the top pocket of his uniform. For several seconds he smoked silently, as though cogitating on what to say next. Finally his attention returned to his guest. ‘I came here today because I wanted to see you for myself. You are a very remarkable young woman, Miss Williams, unique in fact. You are the first Daemon we have ever been able to draw from the so-called Real World into this, the Demi-Monde. All the other Daemons came here to play their sordid little war games but you are different. You were brought here to play a leading part in one of our games.’ He blew smoke idly towards the ceiling. ‘You, Miss Williams, are our hope for the Future.’
There was something about the way he spoke the last sentence that frightened Norma. Why, she wasn’t quite sure, but Heydrich gave the impression that he was laughing at her behind his hand, that he knew something that she didn’t. The feeling she had as he sat there smoking his cigarette and sipping his coffee was that he was toying with her.
‘And what future is that?’
‘A Future where the past is rerun, where mistakes of history are rectified and errors of judgement eliminated and where what should have been… is. A Future that will be reshaped and remodelled to match the template of that Aryan paradise envisaged by Adolf Hitler.’
‘Adolf Hitler?’ Norma tried to make her question sound as offhand as she could, but in truth she was really disturbed by a Dupe talking about a person who, as far as Norma knew, had never been recreated in the Demi-Monde.
‘Oh, come now, Miss Williams, let us not be coy or naive: we both know who Adolf Hitler is. The time for dissembling is over.’ He took a long, enjoyable drag of his cigarette. ‘You are wondering, perhaps, if I am feigning a knowledge of the Fuhrer, that I am on what Yanks like you so picturesquely call a fishing expedition. Perhaps you think that it is a name given to me inadvertently by one of the other Daemons we have captured and interrogated? But in this you would be mistaken. I knew the Fuhrer intimately and had the honour of serving him in many capacities, the final one being as Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia. It was in the Czech lands that my life in the Real World was so prematurely brought to an end. Yes, I knew Adolf Hitler. He was a great man, if emotionally flawed.’
‘Hitler wasn’t a great man: he was a monster. He was mad as they come. He was a homicidal maniac.’
Heydrich gimleted Norma with a savage look. ‘I really am not accustomed to being contradicted, Miss Williams, especially by those who do not have the intellectual capacity to appreciate the profundity of the Fuhrer’s teachings.’
Now it was Norma’s turn to be silent, to take a few moments to cogitate, to wonder if, perhaps, this Dupe sitting in front of her really did have knowledge of what his ‘real self’ had been when he was alive. But surely, she thought, that was impossible. As she understood it, one of the immutable programming instructions ABBA had been given was that none of the Dupes populating the Demi-Monde would have any remembrance of what they were – or in the case of the PreLived Singularities, what they had been – in the Real World.
An awkward thought struck her: she was a Dupe and she had a remembrance of what she was in the Real World. It was all rather confusing and very, very disturbing.
Norma decided to play it cool. ‘Okay, so you’ve heard of Adolf Hitler. Big deal. Okay, so you think that lunatic was the best thing since the wheel. The question is: so what?’
‘An apposite question, Miss Williams, a very apposite question. And I understand from the disdainful manner in which it is posed that you have little appreciation of my talents. Indeed, if I were a normal man possessed of normal abilities and normal ambitions the answer to your question would be “not much”. It would matter not a fig that I have knowledge of the Real World denied my fellow Demi-Mondians. But I am not a normal man, Miss Williams, I am one of the Ubermenschen, one of the Supermen whose destiny it is to rule the world. I am the Messiah sent to re-establish the hegemony of the Master Race – the Aryans – and to purify the world of the contamination of the lesser races. I am charged by Fate to enact the Final Solution. And being an Ubermensch, I am a quirk of Nature, Miss Williams. Oh, I do not allude here simply to my genius and my skills as a leader but to the fact that uniquely in all of the Demi-Monde, I am the only one with memories of what the man on whom I am modelled achieved. I remember who and what I was.’
That shook Norma up. It was easy to dismiss the inhabitants of the Demi-Monde as just figments of ABBA’s fevered quantum imagination but not so easy when the bastards started to talk about having memories of their previous existence in the Real World. That the Dupe of Reinhard Heydrich should somehow be all-aware seemed to be a dangerous occurrence. The son of a bitch was bad enough when his malignant, Luciferian personality was confined to the Demi-Monde, but when it seemed suddenly to have become Real World-perceptive…
‘How do you know all this?’
Heydrich gave a nonchalant wave of his hand. ‘Who knows? It might be that my personality – my will – is simply too powerful for ABBA to contain.’
ABBA? The bastard knew about ABBA.
‘ABBA?’ she asked, hoping against hope that Heydrich was talking about the Demi-Mondian deity rather than the supercomputer running the simulation she was trapped in.
Heydrich carelessly flicked the ash from his cigarette onto the carpet. ‘Please, do not play the naif with me, Miss Williams. ABBA is the immensely powerful difference engine that designed and created the Demi-Monde as a playground for the American military to train their soldiers and to test their pathetic little theories about urban warfare.’
Jesus.
‘Okay, so if you know about ABBA then you must know that you’re just a computer glitch, a ghost in the machine. How does it feel, Heydrich, to be nothing more than a computer programmer’s wet dream? How does it feel to know you can be edited out with one click of a mouse?’
Heydrich shrugged. ‘There is no difference between how I felt when I was active in the Real World and how I feel here, in the Demi-Monde. Cogito ergo sum: I think, therefore I am. In both realities my existence hangs on the whim of Fate. What difference does it make if I am killed by the bullet of a Czech terrorist or the whim of a computer programmer? In both existences I would still be very much dead. But’ – he gave a chuckle – ‘here in the Demi-Monde, I am very much alive.’
‘That still brings me back to my original question: so what?’ Norma gave Heydrich a careless smile, as though what he was saying had little import. The last thing she wanted was this lunatic to appreciate how unsettled he was making her feel.
‘Your problem, Miss Williams, is that you are unable to understand or appreciate what it is like to taste power and have it snatched from you. I sit here agonised by the thought of “what if?”. What if those Czech terrorists hadn’t succeeded in assassinating me? What if I had been on hand to wrest the levers of power from Hitler when he faltered and his will crumbled? What if I had become Fuhrer?’
‘You would have been hanged with all the other Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg, that’s what.’
‘Perhaps. But then, perhaps not.’
‘Unfortunately for you, Heydrich…’
‘You will address me by my title.’
‘And you can kiss my ass.’
There was a sour silence for a moment as the pair of them glared at one another. Finally Heydrich broke the silence. ‘No matter. Call me what you will. We are alone.’
‘Then I’ll tell you what you are: you’re a computer-drawn chimera. You’re a nothing, just a piece of digital doodling. And that being the case all of your psychotic “what if” scenarios will have to be played out here in the Demi-Monde. And you better enjoy it while you can because one day someone in the Real World is going to pull the plug on this shitty little world of yours.’
Heydrich laughed scornfully. ‘How pathetic you are. Do you really believe a person of my will, my genius, of my ambition, would be content to be imprisoned in this… nothing of a place? Do you really imagine I will be content to be condemned to live my life – my second life – in a world that is little better than a digital sandbox built for the education of military incompetents and the amusement of armchair generals?’ He shook his head. ‘Impossible: when man has feasted on steak he is no longer satisfied with mince.’
‘You don’t get it, do you, Heydrich? So let me spell it out: you ain’t real.’
‘If I had more time and more patience, Miss Williams, it might be interesting to debate how a sentient entity, as I undoubtedly am, can ever be considered not to be real. But unfortunately time is pressing and the interesting must yield to the important. We were talking about Adolf Hitler. Hitler believed that the principal aim of Germany’s foreign policy was to ensure that Germany’s living space was that necessitated by the size and needs of its population. This is the notion of Lebensraum that persuaded him to invade Czechoslovakia and Poland. During my exile here in the DemiMonde, I have had a chance to ponder upon this and I now believe that in this matter the Fuhrer was wrong. In my view the foreign policy adopted by a nation has nothing to do with the needs of the people; rather it must be designed to enable a nation to achieve a size that is consistent with the will, the genius and the energy of its leader. Nations wax and wane, grow and contract, not because of the needs of their people, nor because of that nation’s political, economic or military success but because of the scale of the ambitions of the one who leads it.’
‘Look, Heydrich, fascinating as all this is and much as I would just love to sit around here all day shooting the breeze…’
Heydrich ignored her. ‘I will be frank with you, Miss Williams, I wish to conquer the Real World.’
Norma laughed uproariously. ‘Your ambition runs ahead of itself, Heydrich, you haven’t yet gained mastery of the DemiMonde.’
‘That is just a question of time. My crushing of the DemiMonde is an historic inevitability. I have already initiated Operation Barbarossa…’
‘Unfortunate pick: Operation Barbarossa was the invasion of Russia that led to the downfall of Hitler in the Real World.’
Heydrich scowled. ‘There will be no such “downfall” in this world. Soon I will have conquered the Demi-Monde and then I will change it.’
‘Change it?’ ‘I will remake it in my own image. By the imposition of my Final Solution I will eliminate all the sub-races from this world. In the microcosm that is the Demi-Monde I will construct my world of the Ubermensch – of the Superman – who will, in turn, claim the Real World. That is my task here in the DemiMonde: the purification of the human race.’
‘You Nazis tried that once. Tried and failed.’
‘No, we did not fail, rather the Fuhrer failed us. Ultimately he was proven to be weak. He was a false Messiah. But I, Miss Williams, am not weak. And I have learnt from the failure of the Fuhrer. I will mould the Demi-Monde into a perfect Aryan world. All sub-races – the nuJus, the Poles, the Shades, the Orientals and the Arabs – will be scoured…’
‘Scoured?’
‘Eliminated. Shortly, in a matter of days, Operation Barbarossa will begin here in the ForthRight. The nuJus and the Poles – the scum of the ForthRight – have been packed together in the Warsaw Ghetto and soon I will unleash that madman Archie Clement and his SS-Ordo Templi Aryanis, their mission to destroy all of the Untermenschen gathered there. Clement will be my Eichmann.’
‘You will kill your own people?’
‘No, I will kill those of my own people who are inadequate or racially degenerate. Only the strong will be permitted to live in order that those who come after are stronger still.’
‘Why do you hate the Poles so much?’
‘It is an instinctive thing, a manifestation of the hereditary hatred of the Teuton for the Pole. Of all the people of the world – of this and the Real World – the Pole is one of the basest. After the Jew and the Black, the Pole is the lowest form of the species Homo sapiens. To eliminate such a vile creature is merely an expression of the Darwinian doctrine of the survival of the fittest. The Poles, the nuJus and the Shades are not fit to co-habit this – or any other – world with the Aryan people, and hence it is only logical and fitting that they be expunged.’
‘You are totally mad, you know, Heydrich.’
‘Not mad, Miss Williams, I am merely gifted with the ability to perceive the reality of Nature and with the force of will to act on that perception. Great men like Genghis Khan, Tamerlane and Alexander are not remembered for the millions they slaughtered but for the grandeur of their ambition. The eradication of the three million stupid and worthless Poles and nuJus cowering in the Ghetto will, in fifty years, barely warrant a footnote in the books recording the history of the Demi-Monde. And once the Poles have been dealt with it will be the turn of those degenerate and perverted LessBiens who inhabit the Coven.’
‘But to what end? All this suffering, but you and your Ubermenschen will still be marooned here in the Demi-Monde. You’re still just a Dupe like everyone else living in the DemiMonde!’
Heydrich gave a scornful laugh. ‘It is now time for you to meet, or should I better say, to remeet, a friend of yours, Miss Williams.’
Heydrich rang a handbell on Dashwood’s desk and immediately Beria entered the room accompanied by a girl whose identity was shrouded beneath a heavy veil that cascaded from the top of her bonnet, over her face, to pool at her shoulders.
After Beria had bowed out of the room, Heydrich made the introductions. ‘Miss Williams, I have the great pleasure in presenting my daughter, Aaliz.’ The girl drew back the veil and Norma found herself gazing at… herself.
She had to do a double take. To her amazement this Aaliz Heydrich was her perfect twin, her exact duplicate. But there was more to the girl’s mimicry than simple physical resemblance: with the exception of the colour of her hair, of the absence of body piercings and the lack of tattoos this girl was Norma. Every mannerism, every reaction, every nuance of expression was a precise match for those Norma saw every morning in her bathroom mirror.
But the most troubling thing was that she had met Aaliz Heydrich before in the Real World. Aaliz Heydrich had been the girl in the store, the girl who had coaxed and cajoled Norma into playing The Demi-Monde computer game.
And the tragedy was that Norma hadn’t recognised her… hadn’t recognised herself. Oh, she had known, instinctively, that there was something wrong about the girl but she had been so skilfully disguised that Norma hadn’t realised that she was looking at and talking with herself. What a fool she had been.
‘You’re the girl in the shop.’
When Aaliz Heydrich replied, she spoke in a voice that was identical to Norma’s, the thick New York accent she’d used in the Real World had vanished. ‘Yes. It’s amazing what a haircut, hair dye, glasses and rather outre make-up can do for one’s appearance, Norma.’
Heydrich chuckled at Norma’s confusion. ‘It would seem, Miss Williams, that the creators of the Demi-Monde had a peculiarly puckish sense of humour. They used as the digital jig for the creation of my daughter the image of the eldest daughter of the President of the United States. It was a piece of serendipity that has opened great possibilities for one as ambitious as I am.
He gestured his daughter into a seat and lit yet another cigarette. Maybe, Norma hoped, there was a chance that the bastard would smoke himself to death before much longer. But then, of course, as Demi-Mondians didn’t have lungs the chance of the maniac developing lung cancer was minimal.
‘Aleister Crowley has long been of the belief that the DemiMonde is surrounded and manipulated by a Spirit World, or, as you call it, the Real World. Although Crowley propounded his beliefs in magical terms, in essence he has been proven correct. You, the denizens of the Real World, Miss Williams, are Crowley’s Spirits and we know how mischievously you delight in testing and tormenting us poor Demi-Mondians. But there was one thing that seems to have been beyond the wit of the creators of the Demi-Monde and that was an appreciation of the psychic bond that would exist between the Dupes of the Demi-Monde and their Real World twins. Crowley, though, sensed this, and using his occult powers, he has striven to achieve a melding of the Demi-Mondian self and the Real World self.’
‘Look, Crowley’s out to lunch.’
‘The unfortunate thing from your point of view, Miss Williams, is that Crowley has succeeded in bridging the divide between the Demi-Monde and the Real World. Your presence here is proof of that. Admittedly, my daughter’s excursion into your world was Crowley’s first and, thus far, only successful attempt to manifest a Demi-Mondian in the Real World. And although the experiment highlighted certain limitations, it did enable us to lure you here to the Demi-Monde.’
‘But why?’
‘Initially to prevent your masters from destroying the DemiMonde. When I took power in the ForthRight my first task was to preserve the Demi-Monde from the threat you so eloquently describe as “pulling the plug”, and to do this I had to have a hostage, one of such importance that the Real Worlders would be deterred from closing the Demi-Monde. You are that hostage, Miss Williams. But having accomplished this, I then identified other opportunities arising from your presence amongst us.’
‘Other opportunities?’
‘Indeed. It came to me in a moment of inspiration,’ said Heydrich with a triumphant little smile. ‘All Demi-Mondians are exact replicas of persons in the Real World and that means that not only do people in the Real World have doppelgangers here in the Demi-Monde but Demi-Mondians have doppelgangers in the Real World. It’s a sort of digital quid pro quo. And as you Real Worlders, in your arrogance, imposed your personalities on the people of the Demi-Monde, I wondered whether it would be possible to reverse this process and have Demi-Mondians impose their personalities on their Real World doppelgangers.’
Norma gawped and then an awful, chilling realisation dawned. ‘You want to swap your daughter for me!’
‘That is the intention,’ said Heydrich blithely. ‘Aaliz here is to be my Trojan Horse. Of course, this Rite of Transference, as Crowley rather melodramatically calls it, is as yet unproven, but he is very confident that it can be made to work. We DemiMondians might not have the faculty of the Real Worlders in the manipulating of the digital universe but we are very adept at manipulating the psychic one. And once Aaliz is in the Real World – posing as the daughter of the most powerful man in the world – she will be able to lobby very effectively for the preservation of the Demi-Monde… amongst other things.’
‘I think you overestimate the influence I have.’
Now it was Aaliz’s turn to laugh. ‘And I think you underestimate how capable I am. I am my father’s daughter, Norma. Whilst you squander your intelligence and your time cultivating your image of anti-establishment emo, losing yourself to self-pity and self-loathing, I have applied my will to shaping this world. Here, in the Demi-Monde, I am leader of the Party’s youth wing: the RightNix.’
‘Oh, bully for you: I stopped being a Girl Guide years ago.’
‘More fool you. The work of the RightNix is vital in forming the attitudes and the beliefs of the young people of the ForthRight. I am alive to the fact that the youngster of today is the Party member of tomorrow. As leader of the RightNix I am responsible for inculcating a belief in the ForthRight’s children that to be true Aryans they must display an unquestioning obedience to the Leader. They are taught that denying the doctrine of UnFunDaMentalism as set out in the nuCommandments is a Betrayal of their FatherLand. They are taught that the Strong have command over the Weak, and that the Aryan Race is the Master Race. When my RightNixes come of age they will show no mercy to the ForthRight’s enemies: whoever blocks the ForthRight’s path to Purity and Oneness with ABBA will be destroyed.’ Aaliz stretched over and took Heydrich’s hand in hers. ‘My father has taught me well. And I think your father, Norma, will be delighted to have a daughter suddenly willing to take a more active, a more committed role in the running of America. He must be sick of your selfishness and your glowering introspection. Having an emo for a daughter is hardly an electoral asset, especially with your father struggling for support in the more conservative Midwest.’
It was a nightmare. It was bad enough for Norma to be stuck in the Demi-Monde, but to have a Dupe talking about taking over her body – taking over her life – was mind-blowingly awful.
‘You’ll never be able to pull off a stunt like that. You might look like me, you might talk like me, but you know squat about me and my life. It’s impossible. You don’t know anything about the Real World apart from what you learned serving behind the counter of a clothes shop. They’ll spot you as a fraud straight away.’
Heydrich gave Norma a crooked smile. ‘Unfortunately, Miss Williams, there is much in what you say: even someone as intelligent and as diligent as Aaliz will have difficulty in performing in a manner that does not arouse at least some suspicion. That is why, Miss Williams, we have had you kept here at Dashwood Manor in the hope that Comrade Commissar Dashwood’s daughter would be able to persuade you to speak about your life in the Real World.’
He paused to take another draw on his cigarette. ‘Unfortunately your intransigence defeated Trixiebell Dash -wood. I am not surprised: Comrade Commissar Dashwood is a Royalist recidivist and hence an Enemy of the People and as for his daughter…’ Heydrich laughed. ‘She is nothing more than a stupid, idle, vacuous non-entity. It will be better when the pair of them have been arrested and shot. I will have Beria purge the Dashwoods immediately after this evening’s seance is complete. He will enjoy that: Trixie Dashwood is a trim little piece.’
Heydrich stubbed out his cigarette. ‘Happily for us, Miss Williams, Fate has presented us with another, more certain means of unpicking your memories. Crowley has located a clairvoyant of immense power who will be able to delve into the deepest and most private recesses of your mind. Tonight, Miss Williams, we will drain you dry.’ He glanced at the grandfather clock ticking in the corner of the room. ‘Look at the time. I have other matters to attend to. You, Miss Williams, will spend the afternoon with Aaliz getting to know one another. After all, soon the pair of you will be inseparable.’