"I already have everything that matters," said Eamonn, his voice calm and even. "My wife and my children. How many times do I have to say this? I am happy, and content. Can you say the same, for all your wealth and power? Get thee behind me, Mr. Alexander; I will not sell my soul to your Corporation. You have nothing I want or need."
Mr. Alexander sighed heavily, leaning back in his chair as though suddenly bored with the whole business. "Well, if you won't do what's necessary of your own free will, I'll have to replace you with another you who will. Allow me to present my specialist-Count Video."
And just like that Count Video was there in the office with us, as though he'd always been there, but we hadn't noticed him. The man himself, wrapped in shifting plasma lights, tall and pale and ghostly in his tattered black leathers, his colourless skin studded with silicon nodes and sorcerous circuitry. Heavy black stitches and metal staples held his skin in place. Whoever had reattached it, after it was flayed from him during the angel war, had done a good job. Though his face did look a bit taut, his thin-lipped mouth pulled into a constant mirthless grin. His hands twitched at his sides, eager to weave binary magics and rewrite probabilities. He did so love to show off what he could do. Count Video had no natural gift for change magic; he'd made himself the way he was through dedicated research into the more insane areas of quantum physics, and a little help from a Transient Being.
He's supposed to have had sex with a computer. The things a scientist will do for knowledge.
And to further complicate things, the last time I'd seen Count Video had been in a vision of a possible future where I destroyed the Nightside. He had been one of the
Enemies trying to hunt me down and kill me here, in the Past, before I could do whatever terrible thing it was that brought about the end of the Nightside, and the world.
"Hello, Tristram," I said. "You're looking ... well, a lot better than the last time I saw you."
"Hello, John," said Count Video, sitting easily on one end of Mr. Alexander's desk. "Not many people get to see me these days. Everyone thinks I'm dead, and I like it that way. Operating in secret, in the shadows, behind the scenes. You see, after what happened to me during the angel war, I had something of an epiphany. No more messing around with magical theory and forbidden knowledge; I wanted all the good things the world has to offer, and I wanted them now, while I was still able to appreciate them. So now I work secretly, for the highest bidder, and I don't care what I do as long as it pays well. Does that make me sound shallow? Well, I find having your skin ripped off concentrates the mind wonderfully on what really matters."
"Tell me what you've been doing to Eamonn," I said. "You know you want to."
"Don't mind if I do," said Count Video, settling himself comfortably as he switched to lecture mode. "For everyone else, alternative timetracks are only theory. But to me, every time-line is as real as any other. I see them all, flowing past me like so many rivers, and I can dip a toe into any of them I please. Sometimes I go fishing, and pull out all kinds of strange and useful things. Like all those variant editions of Eamonn Mitchell. All the people he was and might have been, if only things had gone a little differently. I scattered them across the Nightside, armed them with wands charged by my probability magic, and sent them after your client. Most never got to him, of course. The Nightside is such a dangerous and distracting place."
"Yes, but why wands I said.
Count Video shrugged. "When dealing with amateurs, keep it simple."
"And there's no way I can persuade you to walk away from this?" I said.
"Not at what I'm being paid. And you needn't look at me that way, John. You're not powerful enough to stop me, and you know it. I have seen your futures, and in most of them you're dead."
"Most isn't all," I said. "And you really should have looked more closely at my past, Tristram. I'm not what everyone thinks I am."
He heard the threat in my voice and stood up abruptly, pulling his power about him. Plasma lights sparked and scintillated all around him, and the sorcerous circuitry embedded in his flesh glowed with an eerie light. Anyone else would probably have been impressed. But for all his magic, Count Video was really quite limited. All his power came from the terrible technology implanted in his body by the Transient Being known as the Engineer, and Tristram had never really appreciated its potential. He used it to see possible futures, like a video junky flipping endlessly from one channel to another. That was how he got his name. And with all those other Eamonns out there in the Nightside, draining his energy, he had to be running low on power by now. All I had to do was keep him busy, and his clockwork would run down.
Assuming he didn't manage to kill me first, of course.
He laughed suddenly, a happy, breathless sound. He flexed his hands, and the whole office disappeared in a moment, replaced by a craggy mountainside under an erupting volcano. The heat was overwhelming, the air almost too hot to breathe. Lava streams flowed down the cracked mountainside, cherry red and steaming, and blazing cinders flew through the air. But my gift was strong in me, too, and I could See the office behind the volcano. I found my way back to the office, and the volcano timetrack disappeared, snapped off in a moment, like the changing back of a channel. I took a step towards Count Video, and the office was gone again, and we were standing on a bare stone
plain, surrounded by huge iron monoliths. Lightning cracked down repeatedly from an overcast sky, and slow misshapen things emerged from behind the monoliths, dragging themselves across the grey plain towards us. But I found the office again, and the plain and everything on it disappeared. I took another step towards Count Video.
He actually spat at me, shaking with rage. "How dare you set your will against mine? I'll find a time-line where you have no gift! Where you were born crippled, or blind, or maybe never born at all!"
And while he was ranting I stepped forward and kicked him in the balls. His mouth dropped open, his eyes bulged, and he folded up and collapsed, to lie twitching on the floor.
"I guess they must have sewed those back on as well," said Tommy.
"It seemed likely," I said. "When we're finished, I think I'll drag him out of here and find a passing Timeslip to drop him into. That should keep him busy for a while."
"Still trying to be the Good Guy?" said Tommy.
And that was when Count Video reared up just long enough to fire one last blast of change magic at me. I threw myself to one side, and the crackling change flew on to hit Mr. Alexander squarely on the chest. There was a bright flare of light, and suddenly Mr. Alexander looked... different. Physically unchanged, he looked calmer and kinder and more relaxed with himself. He smiled at me, and it was a warm, generous smile. Somehow I knew he was a better person now, someone he might have been if things had gone a little differently.
"I'm so sorry," he said, and we could all tell he meant it. "How can I ever apologize to you all?" He came out from behind his desk and insisted we all help Count Video to his feet, then settle him into the expensive chair behind his desk. He even poured Count Video a stiff whiskey from a bottle of the good stuff he kept in a desk drawer. Finally, he
looked at me, and at Tommy, and finally Eamonn, before shaking his head ruefully.
"Please relax, all of you. It's over. The man who started this nonsense is gone, hopefully never to return. I intend to do things differently. I shall put a stop to this operation and see that none of you are troubled again. I feel... so much easier in myself now. You have no idea how much stress is involved in being the bad guy. Most of that man's memories are going, fading away like a bad dream, and I'm happy to see them go. Let me reassure you, Eamonn; I will make the Widow's Mite into the kind of Corporation we can both be proud of. And you are free to be ... whatever you want to be."
Tommy looked at me. "This is really spooky. I feel like I've wandered into A Christmas Carol."
Mr. Alexander patted Count Video fondly on the shoulder. "Take it easy, dear boy. You can leave whenever you want. Your work here is over."
"The hell it is," Count Video said painfully. 'This isn't over until I say it's over."
Mr. Alexander took a cheque from his wallet and gave it to Count Video. "Here. Payment in full, for services rendered."
Count Video considered the cheque in his hand, then looked at me. I raised an eyebrow, and he winced.
"All right, it's over."
He lurched to his feet, shrugging off a helping hand from Mr. Alexander, and walked painfully over to the door. He pulled it open, then looked back at me.
"I'm not finished with you, Taylor."
"I know," I said. In the future, you will be one of my Enemies, and try to kill me, for the good of the Nightside.
And that was it, really. We all had a nice sit-down and a chat with the new and improved Mr. Alexander, who
couldn't do enough for us. He even presented all of us with generous cheques of our own. Eamonn had to be persuaded to accept his, but Tommy and I had no problem with it. We certainly weren't going to be paid by anyone else.
"Don't you love a happy ending?" I said to Tommy.
"Well, it depends what you mean by happy, and by ending," the existential detective began.
"Oh shut up," I said.
We all said our good-byes to Mr. Alexander, and left the Widow's Mite building. Tommy and I escorted Eamonn back through the Nightside streets to the underground station, so he could finally return to London and his precious family. We did try to interest him in trying some of the Nightside's tamer delights, just for the experience, but he refused to be tempted. He was going home, and that was all he cared about. We finally stood together outside the entrance to the tube station.
"Well," he said. "It's been... interesting, I suppose. Thank you both for all your help. I don't know what I would have done without you. But I trust you'll forgive me if I say I hope I'll never see you again."
"Lot of people feel that way about me," I said, and Tommy nodded solemnly.
"It was strange," said Eamonn. "Seeing all those other mes, the people I used to be, and the men I might have become. They were all very passionate about who they were, and what they wanted, but none of them seemed particularly happy, did they? I'm happy, in my quiet little life. I have my Andrea, and my children; and perhaps that's what true happiness is. Knowing what really matters to you."
He smiled briefly, insisted on shaking hands one last time, then he went down the steps into the Underground, and in a moment he was lost to sight among the crowd-a man going home, like so many others.
"There goes, perhaps, the wisest of us all," I said to Tommy, and he nodded. I considered him thoughtfully. "I
am planning a trip through Time, all the way back to the very beginnings of the Nightside. We seem to work well enough together. If I can talk Old Father Time into this, would you like to come along?"
"What's the catch?" said Tommy.
I had to smile. "The catch? The catch is, it's hideously dangerous, and we'll probably end up killed!"
"Ah," said Tommy Oblivion. "The usual."
Five -
A Parade of Possibilities
The Nightside is a dark and dangerous place, but I've always felt at home there, like I belonged. If only as one more monster among many. So it came as something of a surprise to me when Tommy Oblivion and I went walking through the crowded streets and found the tenor of the times was definitely changing. The crowd was jittery, like cattle before a thunderstorm, and the air was hot and close as a fever room. The raised voices of the club barkers and the come-on men sounded that little bit more desperate, and everywhere I looked the Merchants of Doom-the shabby men with burning eyes, preaching and prophesying and bellowing their proclamations of Bad Times coming- were out in force. One man barged sullenly through the crowds, wearing a sandwich board with the message the end bloody well is nigh. I had to smile. Many of
the self-styled prophets recognized me, and made the sign of the cross at me. Some made the sign of the extremely cross, and shook hand-made charms and fetishes at me.
And then the crowd immediately ahead suddenly scattered, falling back every which way as a manhole cover slid jerkily to one side. Thick blue smoke belched up from underneath the street, lying low and heavy on the ground like early-morning mist. People recoiled from the stench, coughing and rubbing at smarting eyes. Even at a distance the smell was distressing, dark and organic, like dead things pushing their way up out of newly turned earth. And up out of the manhole squeezed and crawled a whole series of faintly glowing creatures, so twisted and misshapen it was hard to be sure they were even all the same species. Their flesh was a grubby white shot with raised purple veins, mobile and half-melting, slipping and sliding around their underlying structure. They might have been human once, long ago, but now the only real resemblance left was in their puffy faces, blue-white like spoiled cheese and speckled with rot. Their eyes were huge and dark, and they did not blink. More and more of them spilled out onto the pavement, and everywhere people pushed back to give them plenty of room. And every single one of these creatures headed straight for me.
I stood my ground. I had a reputation to maintain, and besides, it's never wise to turn your back on an unknown enemy. They looked too soft and squishy to do me any real harm, but I didn't underestimate them either. Defenceless things don't tend to last long in the Nightside, and these things looked like they'd been around for a while. The smell grew steadily worse as they slumped across the ground towards me. I gave them my best cold glare and slipped one hand into my coat pocket, where I kept several items of a useful and destructive nature. Tommy stood his ground, just behind me.
"Do you know what those things are?" he said quietly.
"Disgusting, with a side order of utterly gross," I said. "Otherwise, no."
"What do you suppose they want with you?"
"Nothing that involves getting too familiar, hopefully. I've just had this coat cleaned."
The glowing creatures lined up in ranks before me, bobbing and pulsating, their corrupt flesh oozing all over each other; and then, at some unheard signal, they all bowed their dripping heads to me.
"Hail to thee, proud Prince of Catastrophe and Apocalypse," said the creature closest to me, in a thick gurgling voice. It sounded like someone drowning in their own vomit, and close up the smell was almost overwhelming. "We hear things, in the dark, in the deeps, and so we come to pay homage. Remember us, we pray thee, when thou dost come into thy heritage."
They hung before me for a while, bobbing their raised heads and sliding across one another, as though waiting for some response. I said nothing, and eventually they all turned away, slithered back across the enslimed pavement, and disappeared back down the manhole. The last one pulled the manhole cover back into place over them, and the blue ground fog slowly began to disperse, though the rotten smell still lingered on the air. There was a pause, then the watching crowd dispersed, everyone going about their business as though nothing unusual had occurred. It's not easy to shock hardened Nightsiders. Tommy sniffed loudly.
"You know, old horse, I wouldn't work in the sewers here for any amount of money. What do you suppose that was all about?"
"I don't know," I said. "But it's been happening more and more recently. Word about my mother's identity must be getting around."
Tommy considered the manhole cover thoughtfully. "Is it possible they know something you don't?"
"Wouldn't be difficult. Let's go."
We walked on, leaving the smell and the blue mists behind us. Everyone seemed to be moving just a little faster than normal, and the pace of life seemed that little bit more frantic. As though everyone had the feeling time might be running out. The club barkers were out in force, striding up and down outside the entrances to their members-only establishments. Bouncers whose job it was to throw the customers in. They shouted their wares, tempting and cajoling the passing trade like there was no tomorrow. Come in and see the lovely ladies! one checker-suited man shouted at us as we passed. They're dead and they dance! I wasn't tempted. There were street traders, too, dozens of them, selling all kinds of goods at all kinds of prices. One particularly furtive specimen in a knockoff Armani jumpsuit was selling items from possible futures, all kinds of junk sold by people who'd blundered into the Nightside via a Times-lip and needed to raise some quick cash. I paused to inspect the contents of the open suitcase. I've always been a sucker for unique items.
I knelt and rooted through the stuff. There was a Beta-max video of the 1942 Cassablanca, starring Ronald Reagan, Boris Karloff, and Joan Crawford. A thick paperback gothic romance, Hearts in Atlanta by Stephanie King. A plasma energy rifle from World War IV. (Batteries not included.) A gold pocket watch with butter in the works, and a cat that could disappear at will, leaving behind nothing but its smile. It said its name was Maxwell, but not to spread it around.
And that was just the stuff I recognised. Many of the items acquired from future travellers turn out to be technology so advanced or obscure that what they're for or even what they do is anybody's guess. Buyer beware; but then that's business as usual in the Nightside.
There was a tiny armchair, backed by a big brass wheel, with a bent cigar sitting in it, some kind of glowing lens,
and a small black box that shook and growled menacingly when you tried to turn it on. The trader was very keen to hawk a philosopher's stone that could turn lead into gold, but I'd encountered it before. The stone could transmute the elements all right, but the changing atomic weight meant you ended up with extremely radioactive gold. A man kneeling beside me held up a phial full of a shimmering rainbow liquid.
"What does this do?" he challenged the trader, who grinned cheerfully.
"That, squire, is your actual immortality serum. One sip, and you live forever."
"Oh come on!" said the doubtful buyer. "Can you prove it?"
"Sure; drink it and live long enough to find out. Look, squire, I only sell the stuff. And before you ask, no, I don't do guarantees. I don't even guarantee I'll be here tomorrow. Now if you're not going to buy, make room for someone who will." He looked hopefully at me. "How about you, sir? You look like a man who knows a bargain when he sees one."
"I do," I admitted. "And I also know the Borealis Accelerator when I see it. One sip of that stuff will make you immortal, but I have read the small print that usually accompanies the phial. The bit that says, Drink me and you'll live forever. You'll be a frog, but you'll live forever."
The other customer quickly dropped the phial back into the suitcase, and hurried away. The street trader shrugged, not bothered. He knew there'd be another sucker along in a moment. "Well, how about this, squire? A jet pack you strap on your back. Fly like a bird, only without all that onerous flapping of arms. It glides, it soars, and, no, it doesn't come with a parachute."
A young man pushed forward, eager to try it out, and I made room for him. The trader haggled cheerfully over a
down payment, then strapped the hulking steel contraption to the young man's back. The two of them studied the complicated control panel for a while, then the young man shrugged and stabbed determinedly at the big red button in the centre. The jet pack blasted up into the night at speed, dragging the young man along with it, his legs kicking helplessly. His voice came drifting desperately down.
"How do I steer the bloody thing?"
"Experiment, squire, experiment!" shouted the trader, and he turned away to concentrate on his other customers.
One of them had already picked up a small, lacquered box, whose label boasted it could contain an infinity of things. I decided to step back. The customer opened the box, and, of course, it swallowed him right up. The box fell to the ground, and the trader picked it up again, scowling.
"That's the third this week. I do wish people wouldn't try things without asking." He held the box upside down and shook it hard, as though hoping the customer might fall out again.
Tommy and I decided to leave him to it. From some way down the street came a loud crash; the sound of a jet pack returning to earth. There's one born every minute, and a hell of a lot of them end up in the Nightside.
And then suddenly everyone was running and shouting and screaming. People streamed past me, pushing and shoving each other out of the way. It didn't take me long to see why; and then I felt like running and screaming myself. Walker had finally lost patience with me. In the growing empty space where the crowd had been, dark shapes were heaving and sliding across the street, flowing like slow dark liquid across the pavement and walls. Dark as midnight, dark as the gaps between the stars, dark as a killer's thoughts, the huge black shapes spilled silently down the street towards me. Two-dimensional surfaces sliding across the three-dimensional world, changing and expanding their
shapes from one deadly form to another. They had hands and claws and barbs, and horribly human faces. Anyone who didn't get out of their way fast enough was immediately swallowed up and absorbed in the dark depths of their bodies.
"What the hell are they?" asked Tommy, so shocked he actually forgot to sound effete.
"The Shadow Men," I said, looking around for an escape route, but the shadows had already cut us off, approaching now from all sides at once. "They're Walker's enforcers. You can't fight them, because they're not really here. That's just their shadows. They can swallow up anything and take it back to Walker. But you're never the same after you've been in that darkness. If the stories I've heard are true... I think I'd rather die than be taken by the Shadow Men."
"Why didn't Walker send the Reasonable Men after you?" said Tommy, sounding more than a little desperate. "I could have out-reasoned them." He tried to hide behind me, but the Shadow Men were coming at us from every direction. "This is not good, Taylor, this is seriously not good. I may have one of my turns. This isn't fair! I thought Walker always sent the Reasonable Men after people he was upset with!"
"Normally, he does," I said. "But I killed them all."
"Impressive," said Tommy. "But perhaps a little shortsighted. Do something, Taylor! These things really are getting terribly close!"
"Thank you, Tommy, I had noticed. Stop gripping my arm like that, you're cutting off the circulation. Now try and panic a little less loudly; I'm thinking."
"Think quicker!"
We were standing alone by then. Everyone else was keeping well back, giving the Shadow Men plenty of room to work in. No-one wanted to get involved, but many were
watching interestedly from what they hoped was a safe distance. Quite a few were placing bets. Everyone wanted to see what would happen when the infamous John Taylor went head to head with the appalling Shadow Men.
The dark shapes glided forward, not hurrying, now that they had their prey cornered. They could take on any shape, because they had no texture or substance, but they had a taste for the shapes that terrified. Their faces were blank, heads without eyes that could still see you, like childhood nightmares. Their more abstract shapes were designed to disturb and unsettle. Just looking at them for too long could make you feel sick, right down to your soul. They oozed forward, savouring our helplessness.
"What are they made of?" Tommy asked, as much for the comfort of the sound of his own voice as anything.
"They're living shadows," I said. "Anti-life. No-one knows exactly what they are, or how Walker bound them to his will, to serve the Authorities. Most likely rumour is that they came through a Timeslip from a far future, where the sun has gone out and an endless night has fallen over all the Earth. And the Shadow Men are all that live in that terrible dark."
"I wish I hadn't asked," said Tommy. "So? How do we fight them?"
"Actually, I was hoping you'd have some ideas," I said, glancing quickly around me. "I don't know anyone who's ever beaten a Shadow Man."
"Well try something, dammit!"
I looked at all the gaudy neon signs surrounding us, and muttered a few Words of Power under my breath. Immediately every sign flared up simultaneously, the bright letters and shapes blazing fiercely against the night. The signs sparked and buzzed loudly, the sheer force of the light driving back the dark like a Technicolor dawn, but it didn't even slow the advance of the Shadow Men. One by one the
signs overloaded, exploding or sputtering out in showers of sparks, shutting down all the length of the street. And the night that returned was even darker than before.
I reached into my coat pocket and pulled out three salamander eggs I'd been saving for a rainy day. I threw them at the nearest Shadow Men, and they exploded like incendiaries, blazing up with incandescent light and heat. The Shadow Men rolled right over them, swallowing them up in a second.
I breathed deeply, trying to steady myself, and looked at Tommy.
"I have an idea," he said, reluctantly. By now he was standing so close to me he was practically pushing me over. "But I have to say, it is rather ... risky."
"Do it," I said. "I'm not going into those Shadows alive."
Tommy frowned, concentrating, and I could feel his gift activating, as though suddenly there was a third person standing there with us. The Shadow Men were all around us now, almost close enough to touch us. I could feel my heart hammering in my chest, and I could hardly get my breath. Tommy spoke slowly, thoughtfully, as though saying the words aloud made them certain, incontrovertible.
"I deal in probabilities. In the nature of shifting reality. I persuade the world to see things my way. And since there is a small but very real chance that we could have got to Time Tower Square before the Shadow Men could find us ... I believe that is what really happened."
And in the blink of an eye, we were somewhere else. The dark street was gone, replaced by the quiet cul-de-sac that was Time Tower Square. Tommy let out his breath in a long, shuddering sigh.
"That's it. We are here. All previous possibilities are now redundant, never happened."
His gift shut down, like a dangerous animal reluctantly going to sleep. I looked carefully around me, but all the
shadows in the Square were only shadows. A few people were strolling up and down, intent on their own business. They hadn't noticed anything, because there had been nothing to notice. We'd always been there. I looked respectfully at Tommy Oblivion.
"You can persuade reality itself to go along with your wishes? That's one hell of a gift you've got there, Tommy. Why aren't you running things in the Nightside?"
"Because using my gift that way diminishes me," Tommy said tiredly. "Every time I use it, the less real I become. Less certain, less anchored in reality. Use the gift too much, and I'd become too unlikely, too impossible to exist."
It was clear from his voice that he didn't intend to discuss the matter any further, so I turned away and studied the Time Tower. It didn't look like much, just a squat stone structure of maybe three storeys, brooding ominously over a backwater square. The few people passing by gave it plenty of room, though. The Tower had serious layers of protection to ensure that only Old Father Time had control over Time travel. It was said by some, and believed by many, that you could blow up the whole world and the Time Tower would still be standing there, unaffected. Most people couldn't even find the place if they approached it thinking bad thoughts.
Just an old stone building, with no windows and only the one, anonymous, door. But the last time I'd been here, during the angel war, I'd seen an angel crucified against the stone wall of the Tower, with dozens of cold iron nails hammered through its arms and legs, and its severed wings lying on the ground beneath it. They play for keeps in the Nightside, and especially in Time Tower Square.
I'd never traveled purposefully in Time before. Just the thought of what I was planning to do unnerved me, but I had to do it. More and more I was convinced that all the answers to all my questions could be found at the very
beginning of the Nightside, in that moment when it was created by my missing mother, for reasons of her own. My mother, who might or might not be that Biblical myth known as Lilith. I only had her word for it, after all. I needed to know, to be sure.
The only thing I did know for sure, concerning my mother, was that she had been banished from the Nightside once before, long and long ago, thrown out of reality and into Limbo for centuries. Maybe I could learn how to do that again. I was sure I could learn all kinds of things by observing how and why my mother created the Nightside, all those millennia ago. If I could persuade Old Father Time to send me all the way back to that fateful moment, there had to be all kinds of useful information there, and maybe even weapons I could use against my mother. There had to be. I had to stop her bringing about that awful future I'd seen in the Timeslip, the future where I destroyed the Nightside and maybe all the world, too, because of who my mother was.
