The Demi-Monde: Winter Read Online Free Page A

the Aryan people to the racial perfection they possessed before their ancestors – the Pre-Folk – fell from ABBA’s Grace.
    – Religions of the Demi-Monde: Otto Weininger, University of Berlin Publications
     
    Comrade Commissar Dashwood made a point of arriving at his ministry before seven. He knew that only by working fourteen hours a day would he be able to ensure that the deadline for the building of the new railway lines would be met. And as Comrade Leader Heydrich had decreed that the railway lines were vital to the success of the ForthRight’s imminent invasion of the Coven, missing the deadline would make it very mucha dead line: Comrade Leader Heydrich rewarded failure in a very uncompromising fashion.
    But even as the slave-driver brought his steamer to a wheezing halt in front of the Ministry building, Dashwood knew that there was something unexpected taking place at the Ministry of Transport, that today wasn’t going to be a normal day. He had an unmistakable feeling in his water that signalled him to be extra-careful.
    It might have been that the Militia officers patrolling the top of the steps leading to the Ministry’s great double doors were decidedly less sleepy than they usually were at this time of the morning. It might have been that their salute was a trifle crisper and more enthusiastic than he was used to. Tiny things but important; important to notice, that is, if you wanted to stay alive in the internecine bedlam that was the ForthRight.
    Oh, please don’t let it be another purge. Surely enough of us have died already?
    As Dashwood strode imperiously across the great marble floor of the Ministry he tried to distract himself from these disturbing thoughts by adding up all those who had died in the Cleansing.
    A hundred thousand? Two hundred thousand?
    No … the Party had arrested and executed nearly a quarter of a million persons – individuals – after the Troubles, accusing them of being Royalists, Counter-Revolutionaries and Enemies of the People and sending them – Dashwood was disgusted that it had been he who had cravenly signed the transportation dockets – to the Warsaw Ghetto and to the death camps in the Hub. Overnight – and the arrests had always been made at night or when thick smog had enveloped the Rookeries – Dashwood had seen many of his friends, his relatives and members of theCourt disappear into the Checkya’s black-painted steamers, never to be seen again.
    And he had been complicit in their destruction.
    That had been the price the Party had demanded for his survival and that of his family: complicity in mass murder. Maybe now it was his turn to be purged? As he walked through the Ministry he racked his mind, trying to identify what infraction he might have committed that would have persuaded Beria – the head of the ForthRight’s dreaded secret police, the Checkya – to sign his death warrant. He had been so very careful.
    He stopped for an instant.
    Maybe Trixiebell …
    Oh please, not Trixiebell. Not his precious little Trixie.
    For a second he was tempted to turn on his heel and scuttle off home, collect Trixie, jump on a barge heading for the Hub and seek exile in … in where exactly? The sad truth was that there was nowhere to run to in the Demi-Monde.
    The Checkya had a long reach, and, from what he had heard yesterday at the PolitBuro meeting, by the Summer the ForthRight Army would have conquered the Coven and would, in all probability, be turning its malignant attention towards the Quartier Chaud. Maybe he and Trixie should try NoirVille? Somehow though he didn’t think Trixie was cut out for a life in purdah. HimPerialism was a harsh regime and very antagonistic towards women, especially independently minded women like Trixie. No, there was nowhere to run to, and, anyway, he had other things to do, other things to organise.
    Dashwood stopped before the great oak door of his office and took a moment to brush a few errant steamer cinders from his