The Good, the Bad, and the Uncanny (23 page)

“You’re not exactly selling me on taking over,” I said. “What about Hadleigh? He was in charge before you. How did he cope?”

“Arguably, he didn‘t,” said Walker. “He gave it all up and ran away to the Deep School, and now he’s the Detective Inspectre. Whatever the hell that is. No-one gets to retire from this job, John. We go crazy, or get killed, or drop in our tracks. But ... it’s the only job worth doing. There’s nothing else like it.”

We were walking through Uptown now, where the very best and the very worst came to wine and dine, to see and be seen. Walker moved easily amongst the celebrities and the Major Players, greeting them all by name and putting them in their places if they got too familiar. All he had to do was murmur his wishes, and people jumped to obey. I never got that, for all my hard-won reputation.

“You see, John?” Walker said finally. “My job isn’t to punish the guilty or strike down the wicked. Or even to rescue and preserve the good. It’s all about maintaining the status quo. Dealing with all the stresses as they arise, playing one faction against another, encouraging this individual or slapping down that one. I keep the lid on, maintain a steady balance, so that the wheels of business can turn smoothly, and everyone who comes here can get everything they think they want. The Nightside exists to cater to and contain all the darker elements in the world; and it’s my responsibility to prevent any of it from spilling over into the unsuspecting everyday world.

“If it were up to me, I’d nuke the whole sick freak show and be done with it. But since the Powers That Be won’t let me, I walk the night and do my best to keep the freaks in their cages.”

I stopped, and Walker stopped with me. I gave him my best hard look.

“Enough. Enough, Walker. I don’t need to hear any more. And I’ve seen everything I need to see.”

He smiled briefly. “You haven’t seen anything yet. The Nightside is bigger than you know, bigger than you ever suspected, and so are my duties and responsibilities. I can’t hand this over to just anyone.”

“How many times do I have to say it, Walker? I don’t want your job! I don’t want it, don’t need it, and I wouldn’t be any good at it if I did. Let the new Authorities choose your successor.”

“You’d trust them to do that?”

“More than I trust you,” I said.

He smiled again. “Very good, John. You’re learning.”

“I’m not going any further. I have a case, remember? And you know something about Tommy Oblivion. Tell me what it is.”

“All right,” said Walker. “It was Mark. The Collector has finally lost it. He’s moved on from collecting things to collecting people. Famous, important, or interesting people; they’re all trophies to him now. Find his current lair, wherever it is, and there you’ll find Tommy Oblivion; and all the other missing people. But be careful, John. I can’t speak for Mark’s state of mind any more. Best of luck. Talk to you again later.”

He walked away, not at all tired or troubled, swinging his furled umbrella in a cheerful but dignified way. I watched him go, considering all the things he’d said and all the things he hadn’t. First, and most obvious, he didn’t know where the Collector was hiding himself these days, or he would have told me. Which was ... unusual. Where could the Collector have buried himself and his extensive collection that even Walker’s people couldn’t locate him? And second, why had Walker felt the need to bargain with me, trading his private knowledge for a walk in the Nightside? All right, the man was dying, and time was running out; but I’d never known Walker to deal from anything save a position of strength.

But that would have to wait. I had a case. I’d given my word. I had to find the Collector. I winced as an image of Tommy filled my head, pinned to a giant display card, like a captured butterfly.

Walker and the Collector had worked together, along with my father, during the Lilith War. The Collector had seemed to be improving then; less obviously crazy. What had happened since, to drive him over the edge? And why would Walker want me to lower the boom on the Collector, after tolerating his old friend’s nefarious exploits for so many years? Unless ... Could this be connected to the new time-travel apparatus the Collector had stolen? The one that could transfer his consciousness into another body ... Such a device would make the perfect escape route, so that the Collector could never be captured or punished, no matter what he did ... Walker couldn’t allow that.

So maybe he wanted me to take down the Collector because, while it had to be done, he couldn’t do it himself. Not to the one man who might be his only remaining friend.

That was the trouble with hanging around with Walker. You ended up thinking like him.

EIGHT

I’m Here, Mark

It was raining, a harsh, persistent drizzle, like the tears of some passing god. Just enough to make the night even more miserable. Pools and puddles everywhere, and even more splashed up across the pavements by passing traffic. I hunched my shoulders against the rain and looked around me. It didn’t take me long to realise that Walker had walked me round in a circle. I was right back at the Cheyne Walk approach. Larry Oblivion was standing right where I’d left him. Some people just can’t be left to get on with things on their own. I strode down the street and hailed him by name, and he looked round, startled.

“Taylor? I thought you were going walkabout with Walker?”

“I did,” I said. “We’ve been all over the Nightside. Why are you still here?”

He looked at me oddly. “You’ve only been gone a few moments.”

Of course. Typical of Walker, to have the last word when he wasn’t even there. I hadn’t known his personal Timeslip could play tricks with Time as well as Space, but it did explain a lot.

“Walker,” I said heavily to Larry, and he nodded. Sometimes that name is all the explanation you need.

“What did he tell you about Tommy?” said Larry, straight to the point as always.

“Apparently the Collector’s got him,” I said. “The man has gone totally loop the loop, and has taken up collecting people instead of things.”

“Why the hell would he want Tommy?” said Larry, honestly baffled. “Nobody wants Tommy. I wouldn’t if he wasn’t my brother.”

“Because of his special gift?” I said. “The Collector has always had a weakness for unique items.”

“If the Collector is holding Tommy against his will, then we go where he is and take Tommy away from him,” said Larry. “Whatever it takes.”

“The Collector is a very powerful personage,” I said carefully. “The only reason he’s not a Major Player in the Nightside is because he can’t be bothered. He’s dedicated his life to acquiring rare and valuable objects. To help him in his search, he mastered sciences and magics and a whole bunch of other disciplines most people have never even heard of. Also, he steals time machines. He’s a fanatic, and dangerous with it.”

“I know,” said Larry. “And I don’t care.”

The rain was getting heavier. I moved us under a candy-striped awning to continue our conversation. Being dead, Larry probably didn’t care about getting soaked, but I’ve always been susceptible to chills.

“Look,” I said, “he isn’t in it for the money. His collection is everything to him. So if he has taken to collecting people, you can be sure he won’t give Tommy up without a fight.”

“I know,” said Larry. “And I still don’t care. One of the few good things about being dead is that you only have to care about the things you choose to care about. Let him do his worst. He can’t hurt me.”

“Maybe not,” I said. “But he could destroy you. Or make you into one of his exhibits. Or do a hundred other awful things that death could not protect you from.”

Larry thought about it. “What are his protections like?”

“Top of the range, magical and scientific, and a few things we don’t even have a name for. Weapons and defences he’s collected from the past, the future, and any number of alternate realities. Plus his own private army of vicious little rococo robots. And let us not forget his latest acquisition, a time-travel device that apparently allows him to jump inside other people’s heads and look out through their eyes.”

“Ah,” said Larry. “Better kill him on sight, then.”

I had to smile at his confidence. “Better men than you and I have tried and failed. I’ve managed to outwit him on a few occasions, but only because he’s not too tightly wrapped. In his own way he’s just as dangerous as his old friend Walker.”

Larry looked at me sharply. “They know each other? I didn’t know that.”

“They started out together,” I said. “Thick as thieves and twice as tricky. And the fact that Walker is sending us, rather than facing the Collector himself, should tell you something.”

“Why is nothing ever simple?” said Larry, wistfully.

I shrugged. “It’s the Nightside. Everything’s complicated here, including the Collector. He wasn’t always crazy. He isn’t always the villain. For all his many sins, he did help save us all from Lilith during the War.”

“I don’t care,” Larry said stubbornly.

“What do you care about?” I said. I was honestly interested in the answer.

He didn’t hesitate. “I care about family, and friends. No-one else. Nothing else. We’re going to get Tommy back even if we have to do it over the Collector’s dead and lifeless body.”

“I seem to remember you saying something about Heaven and Hell seeming a lot closer, since you died,” I said. “Are you really ready to murder a man, before you know the whole story? He could be innocent in this.”

“No-one’s innocent in the Nightside,” said Larry. “Innocent people don’t come here. You know the Collector better than me; can you honestly say he hasn’t done anything to deserve being killed?”

“No,” I said. “I can’t say that. But that’s not a good enough reason to shoot him on sight. Let me try talking to him first.”

“Getting soft, Taylor,” said Larry.

I remembered meeting the Collector in a horrible, devastated future Nightside, the one I was supposed to bring about and had worked so hard to prevent. I remembered the horrible things the Collector did there, and the worse things he was prepared to let happen. I remembered how, long ago, he had found my mother for my father and put them together, and all the terrible things that came out of that. Including me. But I still wasn’t ready to see him dead. If only because he’d also been Uncle Mark, when I was a kid.

I used my gift to find the Collector’s current lair. He was always on the move, hiding his vast collection in more and more obscure locations, away from enemies and rivals and people like me. My inner eye snapped open as my gift manifested, and I shot up out of my head, my Sight soaring higher and higher into the night, sailing weightlessly in the star-filled skies, looking down at the twisting, turning streets of the Nightside.

So much light for so dark a place.

Street-lights and neon signs, and all the blazing multi-coloured come-ons from a town where sin is always in season. Scientific and magical glows, sputtering and flaring and detonating in the night, as a thousand forbidden experiments ran their inevitable courses. The dazzling streaks and smears of light from cars and trucks and other things as they roared endlessly along the Nightside roads, never slowing, never stopping. Neon illuminations, gleaming defiantly from clubs and bars and emporiums, beckoning on men and women with empty hearts and overburdened wallets. Let a thousand poisoned flowers bloom, pushing back the dark with their harsh glamour.

I sent my Sight flying over the Nightside, and it turned slowly beneath me, a city within a city, a world within a world. My Sight showed me the world as it really was and not as we would have it. Huge and transparent, their crowned heads scraping against the sky, the colossal Awful Ones went about their unknowable business, striding through solid buildings as though they weren’t even there. Long, sleek, bat-winged shapes soared through the chill upper air, flames leaping up from deep-set eyes and wide, fanged mouths. And wee-winged faeries came streaking through the night in shimmering flocks, speeding and darting back and forth in intricate patterns, leaving behind sparkling trails of sheer exuberance.

But no matter where I went or where I looked, I couldn’t See the Collector or his lair. I looked up into the frigid glow of the huge oversized Moon that dominated the Nightside sky. The Collector had a base there once, hidden away deep under the Sea of Tranquility; but he hadn’t gone back. It isn’t easy, to look at the Moon in the Nightside. There is no man in the Moon in that pallid, cratered sphere. It’s so big, so overwhelming, the whole thing seems like one great senile face. And if that face had ever known anything worth knowing, it had forgotten it long ago.

A thought occurred to me. Since the sun never has and never will shine in the Nightside, exactly what light is our oversized and eternally full Moon reflecting? A disturbing thought ... for another day.

I looked down at the Nightside, spread out before me like the most seductive whore in the world. Promising everything and anything, her wide smile and inviting eyes hiding the cold calculation in her heart. The Collector belonged in a place like this, where we all know the price of everything and the value of nothing. The Collector could be richer than anyone if he’d only sell the smallest part of his magnificent collection. He could give up running and hiding and settle down in comfort. But he’d never give up his collection. It was all he had.

The more I looked down, the more I could feel the Collector’s presence even if I couldn’t See him. He was there, somewhere. I looked down and down, and my Sight plunged suddenly through the packed streets and further on down, into the places below the Nightside. I ignored the World Beneath, and the subterranean galleries, and the worms of the Earth, following a trail I could sense, if not put a name to. My Sight led me on, like a hound hot on a scent. And all at once I knew where the Collector had gone to ground this time.

The many tunnels and platforms and stations of the Underground rail system spread out spiralling before me, an endless series of branching and interconnecting tunnels, twisting and turning through the bedrock, sometimes diving dangerously deep. I could See travellers on their platforms, and trains roaring through their tunnels, blinking on and off as they dropped in and out of other-dimensional short cuts, to take them to places that weren’t really places. And there, hidden quietly away in the heart of the system, deep in the insanely complicated mess of new and old stations, was the Collector’s new secret lair.