back from the ForthRight Union Day celebrations in Hyde Park. It seemed that any appearance by the Great Leader Reinhard Heydrich was an event that all loyal ForthRightists were expected to attend and, anyway, people seemed very taken with all the marching and community singing.
A crowd of laughing kids – their faces pinched tight with cold – swarmed past Ella, each of them holding a balloon decorated with the ForthRight’s motto ‘Two Sectors Forged as One’ in one hand and waving a paper flag emblazoned with the Valknut’s three interlocking triangles in the other. The ForthRight Party was big on balloons and flags.
One thing it wasn’t big on was Daemons.
It was that thought that persuaded Ella to pick up her pace. The sooner she got to the Prancing Pig the better.
14
The Demi-Monde: 40th Day of Winter, 1004
Efforts by Occultists (also known by the archaic term Ocularists) are directed towards the resuscitating of the Third Eye and restoring the Aryans’ lost metaPhysical powers. All the metaPhysical powers of the Pre-Folk emanated from the Third Eye, the organ situated in the middle of the head and embedded in the Solidified Astral Ether. The Third Eye gave connection to ABBA and to the metaPhysical forces flowing through and around the Demi-Monde. After the Fall of the Pre-Folk, the Third Eye diminished in size to such an extent that it was presumed to have vanished; however, surgeon John Austen Hamlin has found vestigial traces of this wondrous organ in Aryan cadavers (‘Examination of the Cranial SAE of Aryan Soldiers Killed in the Troubles’, The Lance It Magazine of Surgery, Spring 1003).
– Rediscovering the Third Eye: Grigori Rasputin, Occult Books and Scrolls
‘A sorry?’ queried Vanka as he tried to stop the contents of his stomach from making a return visit. The stench from Burlesque’s fouled mouth as he whispered in Vanka’s ear was overpowering.
‘Yeah, that’s right. Like wot the Frogs in the Quartier Chaud ‘ave.’
‘Ah… a soiree,’ exclaimed Vanka as the penny dropped. The linguistic ability of all Anglos was appalling: they were famous for it… or actually for their lack of it. They were the only DemiMondians who couldn’t speak all five of the world’s languages. The rumour was they had never really mastered English.
‘Yeah, dat’s wot I said: a sorry,’ said Burlesque, proving the rumour correct. ‘A better class of people come to sorries, nice people who are dead keen on speaking wiv their loved ones wot inhabit the ovver side.’
Vanka concluded that Burlesque didn’t see the irony involved with anyone being ‘dead keen’ to attend a seance.
‘You’re a Licensed Physicalist, Wanker, you’re an occultist, so I wos wondering…’
So that was why Burlesque had been so pleasant. But when Vanka thought about it, it wasn’t that bad an idea.
Since the ending of the Troubles, and thanks to Crowley’s enthusiastic promotion of UnFunDaMentalism, attending seances had become very fashionable in the ForthRight. Business for Vanka – pre-Skobelev, that is – had been booming. Everyone, it seemed, wished to commune with the dead, and as the fighting during the Troubles had been so ferocious – or so Vanka had heard, he’d made a point of staying as far from the front line as possible – there were a great many dead to commune with. Not that Vanka believed in a life after death. Rather he believed in life before death… a luxurious and comfortable life before death.
Spiritualism – faux-Spiritualism, Vanka was nothing if not a realist – provided him with a handsome income. To put it at its most blunt, Vanka ran seances the true purpose of which was not so much to contact the dead, but rather to fleece widows out of their fortunes and, whenever possible, out of their knickers.
True, relieving the rich, the stupid and the credulous – and Madam Andreyeva, Skobelev’s sister, had managed, miraculously, to be all three – of their wealth didn’t make for a pleasant way of earning a living, and true, Vanka had very few friends, but when it came to a choice between friendship and a full stomach he always came down on the side of dinner.
But still Vanka hesitated before replying. In truth he was beset by something of a dilemma. On the one hand he was so desperate for money that the prospect of holding a few seances for Burlesque to help refill his coffers was mightily appealing. On the other, the one place General Skobelev and his thugs were sure to be looking for him was at seances.
But without blood he was a dead man.
‘You’re correct, Burlesque,’ he said in a low, conspiratorial voice, ‘I am a Licensed Psychic and Occultist.’ He leant as close to Burlesque as the man’s novel ideas about hygiene would allow. ‘I have studied at the feet of a master who taught me the mysteries of Russian cosmology and now, as an adept, I am able to connect with the esoteric forces that tie the Past with the Present and the Present with the Future. But more: I am able to link the Living with the Dead.’
‘Blimey,’ gasped Burlesque.
‘Gor,’ said Sporting and with a shaking hand she drained her glass of five per cent Solution or, more accurately as this was the Pig they were sitting in, her glass of two and a half per cent Solution.
‘So, wot you is saying, Wanker,’ began Burlesque as he wiped a terminally filthy handkerchief across his flaccid mouth, ‘is that yous can speak wiv the dead?’
‘Certainly,’ said Vanka emphatically, ‘but you must realise that seances are difficult and expensive to run.’
As was his wont, Burlesque skipped over the word ‘difficult’ and homed in on ‘expensive’. ‘‘Ow expensive?’
‘Let’s say ten guineas a session.’
‘Let’s say something a damn sight less bleedin’ expensive.’
‘No… it’s ten guineas or nothing. I am sorry, Burlesque, but that is my price. You have no idea the amount of mental anguish conducting a seance entails.’
‘Yessen I does,’ protested Burlesque. ‘It’s abart the same as the mental anguish I experience when I ‘ave to part wiv ten guineas ov my ‘ard-earned loot. ‘Ow about we say five guineas a show for the first week, then let’s see how it goes.’
‘Okay… eight guineas for the first week and then ten thereafter.’
Burlesque thought for a minute, but Vanka knew he would agree. No Licensed Psychic worth his salt would perform for less than ten guineas, so Burlesque knew he’d got a good deal.
‘Done,’ he said at last, spitting on his hand and offering it to shake. Vanka looked at it with contempt; even from across the table he could smell whatever it was that Burlesque had been chewing and the last thing he wanted was to come into physical contact with it. In his opinion anything that came out of Burlesque’s mouth was a biological hazard. The only way he’d shake the man’s hand was if he was wearing a reinforced leather gauntlet.
‘Never mind the handshake, Burlesque, there’s one small problem.’
Burlesque scowled: he wasn’t a great fan of ‘problems’.
‘As I’m performing in the Rookeries, I want to use an Anglo name.’ Perform as ‘Vanka Maykov: Psychic’ and he would become, in very short order, ‘Vanka Maykov: Dickless Psychic’.
‘That’s fine wiv me, Wanker.’
‘And I need an assistant to help me commune with the Spirit World. I need a PsyChick. The girl I normally use, Svetlana, is nursing a sick relative in St Petes.’ Or more probably, if General Skobelev had found her, she was nursing part of the foundations propping up the new railway bridge the ForthRight had just built over the Rhine. ‘I need to hire a new girl.’
‘There’s always Sportin’ ‘ere,’ suggested Burlesque. ‘I bet she’s a natural PsyChick, wot wiv the amount ov spirits that ‘ave manifested themselves in ‘er. An’ she’s always very willin’.’
Vanka gave Sporting a quick look: if ever there was a girl who could confidently be described as ‘willing’ it was Sporting.
‘I need a girl that can read.’
