Slide On The Run

Episode Five The Establishment of Mrs. Rosa Coote

The Establishment of Mrs. Rosa Coote turned out to be a pillared edifice at the end of a long drive, through wrought iron gates that stood wide open and were studded with electric sparkles. The house itself was lit by gas jets and radium bulbs, and glowed like some garish Las Vegas counterfeit of Victorian England. Patrons arrived by steam cab, Martian ornithopter, and ornamental flying belts that Yancey Slide would later learn were manufactured under Royal patent and went by the brand-name Equilibrimotors. As Slide walked up the driveway, he saw that, in front of the main entrance, a line of paired Pony girls waited with their Amazon drivers, secure in the traces of lightweight, skeletally A-frame chariots, ready to carry passengers on exotic excursions through the fabricated arbors of the wholly fabricated parkland. The girls were skittish and pouting, long legged in absurdly platformed and beribboned in their Dadaist sandals, and they turned high-held heads to stare at potential fares with ball-gag muted resentment, each pair knowing that as soon as a passenger climbed aboard, or a couple, or even threesome in the low Martian gravity, the stern-driving Amazon would mercilessly crack the whip, and, smarting and stinging, they would set off at a run, pulling the chariot, forced to prance, knees impossibly high, by the heels of their surreal shoes. In due course, when drinking in the back bar of the Ferret and Spectacles with some off-duty Pony girls, talkative before turning fighting drunk, he would learn that most of those who served under the lash and between the shafts were indentured servants, in the sex business rather than the diamond mines of Gathol, good-looking, but foul-mouthed, convicted dollymops loose without papers, but a few were incognito ladies of class who actually paid, or had their husbands pay, for the chastening servility of the harness.

As it had turned out, Slide had not been required to enter the city Extrosylvania, of which the Establishment of Mrs. Rosa Coote was a well known attraction, as buck naked as he had arrived on Mars. Once the decision had been made to head for the city, he and the crustacean Mahdjfb had walked in silence for a long time, following the slowly curving line of the Grand Canal, while the small tripod nervously scanned the horizon for the rising of the moons and the coming of the predator banths and the even more hideous corphals. As the wonder of the Grand Canal wore off, Slide found there was very little to look at until, way in the distance, he had spotted three objects on the other side of the canal where the peak of the huge volcano Olympus Mons rose from beyond the horizon. As best he could judge distance on this new planet, Slide figured the things had to be well over thirty feet high, and looked like giant three-legged relatives of Mahdjfb, clad in complex steel armor. Slide had glanced at the little crustacean. "What the hell are those things?"

Mahdjfb swivelled the stalks of his eyes, and his antennae vibrated with what Slide read as disgust. "They are a Trinity of Slimy Things fighting machines. Normally they don't come all the way to this side of Olympus Mons, but they must be feeling bold. Mercifully they never cross the Grand Canal. They have that problem with water."

"I thought the Slimy Things were the enemy."

"They are the enemy."

"But those things look exactly like you."

Mahdjfb's antennae shook angrily. "They do not!"

Slide, having no clothes was completely insensitive to Mahdjfb's feeling and laughed. "They do, man. They look just like you, only much bigger and metallic."

"No they don't."

"Sure they do."

"Don't say that."

"I'm offending you?"

"Of course you're bloody offending me. As if it wasn't bad enough to have had the Slimy Things steal your basic natural design for their damned machines, there are species who like to accuse us of collaboration in the theft. Goddamn it, man, my kind, the Fygglhgis, were here before any of them. There are some bastards, usually human, who try to blame the worst of the Slimy Things outrages on us just because we look like their walking weapons. Can you imagine how it feels to be held responsible by a gang of drunks for the heat-ray destruction of New Jersey?"

Slide now knew that he had touched a nerve in his new-found guide, and he

resolved to say nothing until Mahdjfb had cooled down, which was just as well because, a short time later, the answer to his clothing problem materialized in the form of a thoat and rider drinking at one of the crystal fountains that were provided at regular intervals along the banks of the Grand Canal for exactly that purpose. The meeting could only have been a happy paradigm of Idimmu Blind Luck; happy for Slide, at least, while somewhat disastrous for the mounted traveler. Slide obviously had nothing against this total stranger, but he still, and with hesitation, employed a high-test demon mindfuck to batter the unfortunate into unconscious helplessness. While ignoring Mahdjfb's indignant protests that what Slide was doing could not be considered anything but out-and-out daylight robbery, and a felony as well, Slide had stripped off the man's clothing, which, by another stroke of demon good fortune fitted him exactly. Except for the boots, that is, and the feet of his borrowed body had to be contracted somewhat to squeeze into them. In addition to the long duster coat, embroidered vest, riding breeches, and a very serviceable cotton shirt, the robbery yielded a fat purse of gold jimmy o'goblins, straight out of the 19th century British Empire, and a long barreled and very Martian radium revolver. Slide noticed the Victorian presence on Mars was already starting to get to him. He was already using phrases like "happy paradigm".

"You really ought not to be doing that."

But Slide was already dressing. "I rationalize it that my need was greater than his."

"From the look of those sunglasses, the belt buckle, and the triangular sideburns, he was a traveler on his way to where the Elvis People are carving that great ridiculous face out of the solid mountain."

"So?"

"So they have religious protection under the treaty."

Slide sighed. He had a few very minor qualms of his own about robbing the religious. There was always the chance that their god might prove real and wreck retribution. "I tell you what I'll do. I'll leave him his thoat, his skivvies, his sunglasses, and also his belt buckle, as a token of his faith. Then, when he awakes, his trusty, eight legged Martian steed would still be with him and, although his clothes, weapon and money will be gone, his underwear should leave him with a modicum of dignity. I sometimes think these religious assholes like being set on and victimized in their devotions."

Even at a distance, Slide could see that the City of Extrosylvania had its own weather; rain showers and Sherlock Holmes fog that struck Slide as an unforgivably profligate use of water on a desert planet, that could only have raised a sullen resentment among the natives, and as they came closer, he saw that it stood under a dome formed by some kind of force field. The Victorians could be close to unbelievable in the way that they felt compelled to make everything resemble their own less-than-precise memories of what they believed they had left behind.

"Once we get close to the city, it would probably be a good idea if we split up and made like we didn't know each other."

With this, Mahdjfb took Slide totally by surprise. Why should the tripod not want to be seen with him? Was it the robbery of the thoat rider? "What did I do now?"

"Nothing except look humanoid. We could run into humanoid groups like the Red Knights of Issus and the Silver Legion who are wholly dedicated to the idea of segregation. Better if, when we come to the walls of the city, you went in one gate, and I went in another."

Extrosylvania was smoothly mediaeval, with a touch of deco-futurism in the way that it was walled and gated, and, confirming what Mahdjfb had said before taking his leave, a group of surly toughs stood hard beside the circular city gate, holding picket signs that read "FYGGLHGIS, DON'T LET THE SUN SET ON YOU, SHELL-BOY!" Having been warned that this might not be the City of Brotherly Love, Slide did not do the obvious and follow the main axial boulevard that led to the eventual hub of the essentially circular city, where the Turquoise Tower, the home of Queen Mina rose to the heavens. Instead, sought the narrow and less than fragrant prole alleys of the outer city. Although a stranger, he recognized these roughneck passages from a thousand other cities of his acquaintance, and knew they were an ideal haven of anonymity. The long Martian night was falling, and the souks were filling with half-shilling doxies, and penny panhandlers, street arabs, ragamuffins and guttersnipes, roughnecks, rowdies and ruffians, all out for the cutter, and maybe some mischief and malarkey on the side. Yobboes in stripped jerseys loitered with plain intent, and slick silk-suited MacHeaths with diamond stick-pins, and Red Martian minders checked on their holding. Fakirs and Therns played their mystic sleight of hand, and through open arches and from behind closed doors, the underworld of the underclass pulsed with the rough rhythms of human weakness.

One blind pig offered absinthe and laudanum, a green door was calligraphed with the universal sign for an opium retreat, while a pub with dirty yellow light behind its windows made its more simple purpose known with a sign that read PENNY DRUNK - TUPPENCE BLIND DRUNK. He heard the roar of the crowd at a bare-fist boxing match where Norm "Pine" Norton was supposedly taking on all comers, and he passed a street corner political meeting at which a whey-faced young man with long lank cowlick and a pencil moustache harangued a hurly of burly totalitarians holding black and silver flags; presumably the Silver Legion of which Mahdjfb had spoken. A certain temptation gnawed at Slide to simply vanish into the namelessness of the lower orders. He could sure as shit hold his own among the footpads and cutpurses, and be relieved not to find himself constantly involved in high designs and conspiratorial machinations, or taking the rap for changes in the historical text over which, in reality, he had absolutely no control. He knew, however, that this was an impossibility. Slide was idimmu through and through and sooner or later he would do something rash and flashy himself framed as a sequel to Jack the Ripper. He had taken the measure of Skid Row, and now it was time to move up the social scale. Being flush with his stolen loot, he tossed a coin to a passing trollop and did his best to sound Victorian. "A moment of your time, my proud beauty."

The trollop, who would have cleaned up quite nicely, assayed the coin of the realm between her teeth and winked. "This here jimmy will buy you a bit more than a minute, guv."

"I just need some directions."

"I've never heard it put like that before."

"What's the toff's top knocking shop in this town?"

The trollop though for a moment. "Sophia's Cabaret is what you might call the class, but you need some real cutter to get in there. And may I ask what's wrong with me, milord? I could show you as good a time as any stuck up tart at Sophia's, and for a quarter the price."

"I'm sure you could, but I have other need's right now."

"Well fuck you too for la-dee-dah."

Slide ignored her pouting. "So Sophie's is the place?"

"Unless you count Mrs Coote's, but that's not really what you'd call a knocking shop. A bit more…what's the word? You know? Pony girls and the like?"

"Esoteric?"

"Esoteric. You're a fucking scholar, guv, and no mistake."

Slide nodded. "Rosa Coote's sounds like the place. How do I get there?"

"Gawd luv ya, that's the easy part. Helium Boulevard to Thark Lane. That brings you to Albert Park, and it's inside the park at the top of the hill. You can't miss it. Whether they'll let you in like that is another matter, though." And thus Yancey Slide arrived at the Establishment of Mrs Rosa Coote, and, after allowing himself a few moments of silent inspection, started up the driveway in the direction of the house that glowed and glittered like a twentieth century Christmas tree, and seemed to attract a passing crowd who indicated that a taste for the trollop had called "esoteric" was highly fashionable among the smart, wealthy, and well dressed of Extrosylvania. He walked in the wake of a short, squat, middle-aged man in top hat, white tie and tails, who walked with a silver topped cane, and sported a young, willowy and extremely expensive brunette on his arm. The couple moved to one side as a pair of pony girls, running under the lash, swept past with their chariot. The willowy brunette watched them go, and then turned to her companion. "I trust you don't desire me to so perform? Perhaps in private, but, out here for all to see…"

The squat man patted her hand. "Of course not my love. Although, inside Mrs Coote's much of what is normally so deliciously private is even more deliciously revealed."

Slide would have listened to their conversation further if two Red Martians, tall, muscular, and totally hairless humanoids, in para-military livery, had not placed themselves in front of him, barring his way.

"Can we help you, sir?"

"Do I present a problem?"

"There is a dress code, sir."

Slide had overlooked how Victorian snobbery was so much a matter of dress and manners. Amid all the eveningwear, he looked as though he had just ridden in from the wilds which, indeed, he had. Slide could only counter with attitude, some hastily palmed sovereigns, and whiff of idimmu suggestion. "I assure you, gentlemen, I do not present myself as a guest. I have urgent business with Mrs. Coote."

This combination seemed to be enough. The Red Martians pocketed their bribe with odd winks of their compound eyes. "Go round to the back door. They may give your story a listen."

The Red Martians on the back door proved a lot less receptive, even with their orange palms well-crossed with gold. "Sorry, sir. Mrs Coote isn't seeing anyone right now."

Slide might have been forced to resort to more serious persuasion had not a determined female voice echoed from inside. "Wait a moment. Did I hear aright the name of Yancey Slide?"

A formidable woman, voluptuousness in black satin over dangerous corsets, and who greatly reminded Slide of the notorious Mesalina, the wife of the Emperor Claudius, appeared in the doorway. "Mac me for a two-bob, it really is Yancey Slide."

"I fear you have the advantage of me, Mrs. Coote."

"Take a real good demon look, Mr. Slide."

In an instant, Slide knew, but before he could speak, Rosa Coote laid a warning finger on his lips. "Not here, my dear. Don't ever speak my real name in this place, or the walls really will come tumbling down."

On other timelines, and in other bodies, Rosa Coote had been a free roaming lilith, a friend of his long time succubus lover Nephradana, who had been mysteriously missing for some time, and Slide suspected was with Hassan IX. Clearly, like himself, Rosa had come to Mars in this ancient era of Victorian occupation to conceal her real nature and, he could only presume, find expedient refuge from some complication in the more mainstream dimensions. Of all Nephradana's galatrix running girls, the one now called Rosa Coote had always been a favorite of Slide's, and apparently the feeling was reciprocated, since she immediately whisked him into a private, wood paneled office where she poured him a brandy, them lit cigars for both of them. "Finest Red Cuban, darling. Complete with dear old Che on the band. Wrap your laughing gear around that. You look like you've been ridden hard."

Outside the half open door, a stairway parade came and went; ladies, gentleman, human harlots, and Green Martian hostesses of all three genders, in their traditional costumes and body paint, back and forth from the upper more intimate levels of the house, while, inside, Slide and Rosa Coote smoked their cigars and drank brandy, while Rosa explained how she had promoted herself to the Victorians of Mars as the ideal hot hostess for Extrosylvania high society, but she avoided any explanation of why she had come there in the first place. "I mean, it's not totally to my personal taste, all this. They put far too much emphasis on all the whips and girlishness." She glanced at a small diamond wristlet watch. "But I can't stay here chatting all night. Tonight's tableaux is already underway."

"Tableaux?"

"This evening's show is called The Beneficial Chastisement of Wayward Gentlewomen."

"No shit? Live action pornography?"

"They're Victorian's, Slide. What the fuck else do you expect? You should see them on Gentlemen's Smoking Night."

"Indeed."

"So come and watch."

"Your doormen seemed to think that I was dressed too cowboy."

"You're with me, ain't you, Yancey? Nobody is going to say a word while you're with Rosa."

She led Slide into a large, and crowded room, gaslight dim, and with a comfortable pall of cigar smoke, and vintage perfume. The men were dressed formally, but the majority of the women had not only come to see the show, but, as Ovid had once remarked, to make a show of themselves. Tantalizingly laced or suggestive in silk, with plunging decolletage, many were young trophies, mistresses and acquisitions, but a few were clearly more mature lady libertines, who smoked cheroots and gold tipped cigarettes with a knowing, heavy-lidded experience, and lace-gloved expertise. The deep, upholstered chairs and the roman style couches, and more conventional banquets, and the well fed reclining cushions endowed the place with a opulence that was part salon, part nightclub, and in part the lounge of one of the best appointed whorehouses Slide had ever visited. The tall water pipes on the tables among the brandy snifters, and martini glasses, the absinthe sets, vodka coolers, and chilling champagne, reminded Slide of the Le Club des Hachichins at the Hotel de Lauzun, in another time, but of an equally baroque decadence.

The tableaux de jour was in the center of the room, lit by a pair of electric spotlamps in the luxury gloom. A pale blonde, fragile of face, but with a bottom that made Slide's borrowed body sit up and take notice, despite all the reshaping and tetradetoxin, was being held naked and face down on a nightclub table by two of the burly Red Martians, who seemed to do most of Rosa Coote's muscle-work. They wore their livery britches and polished boots, but were stripped to the waist with crimson torsos theatrically oiled. They stood, one on either side of the nude woman, holding her arms outstretched. Heavy, twelve-fingered, Martian hands grasped her by the wrists and pinned down her shoulders. The Martians also made sure that they allowed enough room for a stern and muscular woman in traditional games-mistress attire to have a unimpeded arc of swing with a slim, ribbon-bound whip-bundle of gin-steeped birch boughs, with which she was resolutely beating the bare blonde. Each of the slow and measured strokes created a fresh addition to the crisscross pattern of welts on the white flesh of the pert, already noted bottom, that, with each fresh stripe, wriggled prettily, while she it's owner gritted her teeth, kicked her slender legs, and gasped. Her punisheress had loosened her narrow tie, removed the stud from her starched collar, and rolled back the sleeves of her man's white shirt, revealing that the powerful arm that administered the protracted and measured thrashing with such precise and meticulous effect was in fact a steel and copper prosthetic that, with a mechanical elaboration of pulleys, and pneumatic tubes and valves, seemed to operate quite as well, if not better than the real thing.

Rosa leaned close to Slide and whispered. "Our dear Miss Crabtree lost her arm in her wild youth when she went a bit native and ran off with the Black Pirates of Kamtol."

Slide puffed on his cigar. "Indeed." He was starting to believe that Extrosylvania might be a place where a demon could hide for a while, despite his misgivings back at Doc Zen's.

After a fifteen full and painful, stinging birch strokes, the squirming victim cried out with a high and lispingly theatricality. "Oh! Oh, Richard! I beg and implore you. I swear I will be a good girl in the future. Oh please, my love! My painful lesson is quite learned. Oh, tell the remorseless Miss Crabtree to stay the birch! Tell her to put up the instrument. Enough is enough. I am well whipped and abjectly repentant. I plead, Richard,…oh! for pity's sake…I plead to be flogged no more!"

The naked blonde's entreaties were a little too rehearsed to be altogether plausible, and certainly did not seem to evoke any pity in the tall dark aristocrat who sat at the other end of the table. He was a distinguished figure in frock coat, muttonchop side-whiskers, and a monocle, and as he took in the flagellation from what was clearly the best seat in the house, one hand held a cigar and a brandy glass, and the other caressed the velvet scalp of Green hostess who knelt at his knees and served him.

Rosa leaned close to Slide and whispered. "That's Captain Sir Richard Pendragon Barton, the Queen's Special Agent getting his joint copped by the Green, while the one getting her rump warmed is his current mistress Miss Harriet Marwood. Usually she has the whip hand, so to speak, but they must have contracted for some ringing of the changes tonight."

"This isn't how they normally carry on?"

Rosa shook her head. "Oh dear me no. I have it on good authority that, in the boudoir, it is the good Sir Richard who regularly bares his bum to the lash, arse-up, groveling, and loving it."

"On good authority?"

"Many a time I have sent girls over to assist in their tea-dance debauchery."

"And how does the Queen feel about her Special Agent being the bum-striped whipping boy in private life."

"She totally ignores it. Queen Mina is above such things. Fancies herself as a philosopher queen, she does. Even though she was once little better than Dracula's whore. Plus he's far too good at his trade, our Captain Dick, to have to contain himself in private. Barton may be a stone libertine and godless masochist, but don't underestimate him, Slide. There's some who say, despite being so deep into the now-track, and in the pay of the Turquoise Tower, and also tight with some of our nastier local upstarts like the Silver Legion and the Red Knights, he keeps a link to Imperial Intelligence, and might even be full IIA."

"The IIA has agents this far out?"

"All the things are relative."

Slide nodded. "I guess so." He pointed in the direction of two men sitting next to Barton, one who simply watched, while the other made sketches in a small note book. "And who are they? A couple of his operatives?"

Rosa shook her head. "All I know is that they are new in town and call themselves Mr. Moore and Mr. O'Neill."

"And what about the one behind, the big, bullnecked character with the slouch hat pulled down over his face?"

"I know even less about him. He only arrived today, a little before you did. He has a Italian accent, and goes by the name of Nightshade. And I could swear he smelled of vampire."

Before Slide could quiz Rosa further about either Nightshade or Mr. Moore and Mr. O'Neill, the birch once more swished and stung and Miss Harriet Marwood cried yet out again. "Oh Richard, my lord, my love. Say I have been punished enough. My tender extremity now throbs beyond endurance."

This time the melodrama was greeted by some chuckles from the crowd, and even Sir Richard Barton slowly smiled. "I'm sorry, my dear, but you know I have to be deaf to your entreaties, no matter how tearfully moving. That was part of the bargain."

Now a ripple of approval went round the room, and Barton clearly played to the crowd. "I would suggest you ask Miss Crabtree to lay on five more, five more stripes to the weave of your striations, as a penalty for speaking up too soon."

Harriet Marwood's voice completely changed. It dropped and octave and snarled more naturally. "Damn you, Richard. Do I have to bleed fo you, and in public?"

Barton sipped his brandy. "Such was the agreement when you lost the bet." He glanced towards where Rosa stood beside Slide in the back of the room. "I think Mrs Coote will confirm that."

Rosa Coote laughed, clearly happy to play the recognized referee in these evening sports of the upper orders. "That was the deal Captain Dick. All signed and sealing and on a paper in my safe. I believe 'thrashed beyond all sentimental mercy' were the words used and agreed."

For a moment, Barton looked directly at Slide and slight frown crossed his face, as though he had sensed something, but then Harriet Marwood snarled angrily, redirecting his attention. "Damn you again, Richard. Damn you to hell."

"Behave yourself, Harriet. You have an audience. The game must be played out."

"Oh very well." Marwood resumed the lisping theatre of the sweet girlish soprano. "Please Miss Crabtree, may I have five more, please?"

Miss Crabtree gestured curtly to the Red Martians, who had momentarily relaxed sufficiently for Marwood to raise her head, and speak. Again the bare shoulders were pressed down so her face was turned, cheek hard against the table. Miss Crabtree flexed her mechanical arm, then the flexible birch fell again causing the smarting recipient to jerk and squeal with a decided sincerity. Barton watched the next three cuts of the birch, but on the fourth he turned and again glanced in the direction of Rosa Coote and Slide, and, this time, his eyes lingered on him as though Slide posed a question, or presented something of a puzzle. The radium revolver under Slide's coat was a comfort, although perhaps not that much of one.

Story so far:Having deserted from the Battle of the Fifteen Armies, and with the backstory fast distorting around him, Yancey Slide, Idimmu Demon of the Tenth Continuum, arrives on ancient Mars via Doc Zen's Carter Machine, only to discover that a coterie of extraordinarily perverse neo-Victorians have established a faux-British Raj on the Red Planet.