The Demi-Monde: Winter by Rod Rees

Author:Rod Rees [Rees, Rod]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 0062070347
Amazon: B004XVN1B2
Publisher: William Morrow
Published: 2011-12-27T08:00:00+00:00

Part Three

Warsaw

Chapter 25

The Demi-Monde: 55th Day of Winter, 1004

“UnderMentionable” is the ForthRight term for an individual who has—because of supposed racial deficiency or religious, political or sexual deviancy—been illegally stripped of all rights and protection he or she formerly enjoyed as a citizen of the ForthRight. However, the deprivations suffered by the ForthRight during the Troubles—it is estimated that over two hundred thousand fighters died during this vicious and senseless civil war—has resulted in the relaxing of certain of the criteria normally used in determining whether an individual is or isn’t an UnderMentionable. The major concession made was with regard to the GoldenFolk—a highborn sector of the Polish race—who have been retrospectively reclassified as Aryan.

—AN EXERCISE IN FUTILITY: A PEACENIX’S ASSESSMENT OF THE HUMAN, ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL COSTS OF THE TROUBLES, WILLIAM PENN, WARSAW UNDERGROUND PRESS

It took a few moments for Trixie to pull herself together.

The realization that with every passing second the steam-limo was trundling her ever further from the life she had enjoyed in Dashwood Manor and toward an uncertain and dangerous future was an unsettling one. And that, coupled with the chilling thought that she might never see her beloved father again, meant that she sat silent and pensive in a corner of the steam-limo’s cabin.

She took a surreptitious look at her companions. They were a strange bunch. In the driver’s seat was the huge and intimidating Sergeant Wysochi and sitting next to him, cradling a rifle on his lap, was a very nervous Captain Dabrowski. The Daemon was huddled in the opposite corner of the steamer’s cabin, looking very unhappy and very piqued by everything that had happened. Beside the Daemon sat the two people Trixie hadn’t yet been introduced to: the rather dashing young man with the long brown hair, and the Shade dressed in a most inappropriate and very revealing costume. These two, she guessed, were the psychic and his assistant, the PsyChick, who had been performing for the Leader. What they were doing involved in this little escapade, Trixie had no idea. It was an ill-met group and, as she was to discover, a particularly fractious one.

The problem, she decided later, was that there had been just too many would-be leaders in the steam-limo, just too many people who were determined to get their own way. The arguing began even before they had put a mile between themselves and Dashwood Manor.

“We have perhaps ten minutes before the Checkya realize what’s happened and semaphore an alert to all the CheckyaPoints in the ForthRight,” advised Dabrowski as the steamer puffed and panted its way onto one of the Sector’s new autobahns. “We’ll abandon this steamer maybe a mile from the Rhine, walk from there to the river and then bribe our way across the Oberbaum Bridge. That’s the quickest way to the Ghetto.”

Although she was too lost in her worries about her father to take much of an interest in what was being said, even a distracted Trixie bridled a little at Captain Dabrowski’s rather arrogant assumption that he was in command of their group.

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