"Come out, come out, whatever you are," said the chorus of a single voice. "Come out, and play with us. Or let us in, let us in, and we will play with you till you can't stand it anymore. We want to stir our sticky fingers in your gene pool, and sculpt your wombs with our living scalpels ..."
"Make them shut up," Joanna said tightly. "I can't stand their voices. It's like they're scratching at my brain, trying to get in."
I looked at the Russian and the Punk, but they
were resolutely minding their own business. I looked up at the roof of the carriage.
"Go away and stop bothering us," I said firmly. "There is nothing for you here, by terms of Treaty and sacrifice."
"Who dares address us so?" said the many voices in one, almost drowned out by the constant clattering of their taloned feet on the steel roof.
"This is John Taylor," I said clearly. "Don't make me have to come up there."
There was a long pause. They were all very still, until eventually the inhuman chorus said "Then farewell, sweet prince, and do not forget us when you come into your kingdom."
A scurrying of insect feet and they were all gone, and the train rocked on its way in silence. The Russian and the Punk looked at me, and then looked quickly away before I could meet their gaze. Joanna was looking at me too. Her gaze was steady, but her voice couldn't quite manage it.
"They knew you. What did they mean?"
"I don't know," I said. "I've never known. That's always been my problem. There are a great many mysteries in the Nightside, and much against my will, I'm one of them."
No-one else had anything to say, all the way to the Nightside.
THREE - Neon Noir
We came up out of the Underground like souls emerging from the underworld, with chattering throngs of people surging endlessly past in both directions. The train was already long gone, hurrying off as though glad to be leaving. The slow-moving escalators were packed with new travellers and supplicants, all carefully not looking at each other. No-one wanted to draw attention to themselves until they'd got their bearings. The few cold-eyed souls who looked openly about them were the predators and chickenhawks, picking out their prey for later. No-one looked openly at me, but there were a hell of a lot of sidelong glances, and not a few whispers. So
much for a quiet visit. The only thing that moves faster than the speed of light is gossip in the Night-side.
Still, the crowd was much as I remembered. Boys, girls, and a few others, all looking for a good time. Business as usual on the dark side of the city. Up on the street, they spilled out of the train station, sniffing freedom and opportunities on the crisp air, and scattered into the endless night, hot on the trail of their own salvations and damnations. Joanna stumbled to a halt inside a dozen paces; wide-eyed, shell-shocked, transfixed by the wonders and strangeness of a whole new world.
This vibrant new city was almost overpoweringly alive; all fever-bright colours and jet-black shadows, welcoming and embracing, frightening and intimidating, seductive and hateful, all at once. Bright neon gleamed everywhere, sharp and gaudy, shiny as shop-soiled tinsel; an endless come-on to suckers and victims and all the lonely souls. Enticing signs beckoned the unwary into all kinds of clubs, promising dark delights and unfamiliar pleasures, drinking and dancing with strangers in smoke-filled rooms, the thrill that never ends, life in the fast lane with no crash barriers anywhere. Sex licked its lips and cocked a hip. It was all dangerous as Hell and twice as much fun.
Damn, it was good to be back.
People surged up and down the street, in all their
many variations, from the unnatural to the unlikely, all of them intent on their own pursuits, while the roar of traffic never stopped. Every vehicle moved at great speed, stopping for nothing, in stark and noisy contrast to the packed city streets of everyday London, where the general speed of traffic hasn't changed much in centuries; thanks to the appalling congestion it still averages out at around ten miles an hour. No matter how important you think you are. Though at least these days the streets stink of petrol fumes rather than horse shit.
You can't step in petrol fumes.
Many of the sleek and gleaming vehicles darting through the Nightside had to be new to Joanna; shapes and sizes and even concepts that had never known the light of day; some of them powered from sources best not thought about too much, if you wanted to sleep at night. Taxis that ran on debased holy water, limousines that ran on fresh blood, ambulances that ran on distilled suffering. You can turn a profit from anything, in the Nightside. I had to take Joanna by the arm as she drifted unrealisingly too close to the edge of the pavement.
"Careful!" I said loudly in her ear. "Some of those things aren't really cars. And some of them are hun-
gry."
But she wasn't listening to me. She'd looked up at the sky, and her upturned face was full of wonder and awe. I smiled, and looked up too. Deep deep black,
the sky, falling away forever, blazing with the light of thousands and thousands of stars, far more than you'd ever seen above any earthly city, dominated by a full moon a dozen times larger than the poor pallid thing Joanna was used to seeing. I've never been sure whether the moon really is bigger in the Nightside, or whether it's just closer. Maybe someday someone with serious money will hire me to find out.
I looked back at Joanna, but she was still clearly struggling to find her equilibrium, so I just stood there and looked mildly about me. It had been five years, after all. But it all seemed much as I remembered it. The same quietly desperate people, hurrying down the same rain-slicked streets, heading eagerly into the same old honey traps. Or perhaps I was just being cynical. There were wonders and marvels to be found in the Nightside, sights and glories to be savoured and clutched to your heart forever; you just had to look that little bit harder to find them, that was all. The Nightside is really just like any other major city, only amplified, intensified, like the city streets we walk in dreams and nightmares.
There was a kiosk beside the station entrance selling racks of shrink-wrapped T-shirts. I studied some of the legends on the shirtfronts. Good boys go to Heaven, bad boys go to the Nightside. My mother took thalidomine, and all I got was this lousy hammer toe. And the perennial Michael Jackson died for our sins. I snorted quietly. The usual tourist stuff.
Joanna turned suddenly to look at me, her mouth snapping shut as though she'd only just realised it was hanging open.
"Welcome to the Nightside," I said, smiling. "Abandon all taste, ye who enter here."
"It's night," she said numbly. "What happened to the rest of the day? It was only just starting to get dark when we left."
"I told you; it's always night here. People come here for the things they can't find anywhere else; and a lot of those things can only thrive in the dark."
She shook her head slowly. "We're really not in Kansas any more, are we? Guess I'll just have to try and keep an open mind."