“You haven’t changed a bit, Julien,” said the Sun King. “All these years, and you still look exactly the same as I remembered you.”
“I could say the same of you,” said Julien, grinning broadly. “I waited for you, you know.”
“Of course you did,” said the Sun King. “I wouldn’t have expected anything else.”
Julien slowly stopped smiling. He let go of the Sun King and stepped back. “You look the same; but you’ve changed. The man I remember never once gave me any cause to fear what he might do.”
The Sun King shrugged easily. “I never meant to be away so long. I never meant . . . that you should all have to wait so long. For my return. Time passed differently inside the Tower, while I communed with the Entities. They had so much to teach me . . . But Julien, I have to ask. What the hell happened? To the Dream, to everything we believed in? Why did it all fall apart without me? I was only ever the messenger, not the message! I was expecting all of you to take up where I left off and carry on. To make the new and glorious world we promised ourselves.”
“You were the Miracle Man,” Julien said steadily. “When you left, you took the miracles with you. There was never anyone else like you. We fought our battles, day by day, inch by inch, and we did achieve many of the things we believed in. If not always in the ways we expected. But day by day, and inch by inch, the world wore us down.
“The miracles were never the point!” snapped the Sun King. He wasn’t smiling any more. He didn’t even try to hide his anger, but he made himself nod respectfully to Julien. “When I came back, you were the first one I thought of. Took me a while to track you down—in the Nightside, of all places. You always said you’d never come back here after the light you found in San Francisco. But here we both are. I knew you’d want to see me, so I put all this in your head. So you’d come here. And here I am. You are still my oldest and dearest friend, Julien; even if neither of us is who we were when we first met. Even if it appears . . . we no longer care about the same things.”
“You’ve been messing with my mind?” said Julien. His voice would have made anyone else beware.
“I always did,” the Sun King said complacently. “I changed the way people thought just by being near them. You saw me do it; but you never gave a damn as long as I was changing minds you disapproved of. You still believe you can talk me out of what I intend to do, don’t you? But be honest, Julien. This world you live in, this brave new modern world, this marvellous scientific twenty-first century . . . Is it the future we hoped for, the world we wanted to make? Where have all the beautiful people gone?”
“You were supposed to come back and save the world, not destroy it,” said Julien.
“Save, destroy; it’s all in the way you look at it,” said the Sun King.
“What happened to you?” said Julien, his voice rising despite himself.
“What happened to you?” said the Sun King. “The Great Victorian Adventurer? I was so proud to have you as my friend, back in good old San Fran. The hero of one age, who became the hero of another. Who gave up God and Empire for something better, something finer. We walked in glory through the streets of Haight-Ashbury, Julien. Walk with me now, through the streets of the Nightside. It can be like it used to be, when we were young and had the world at our feet.”
“I can’t,” said Julien Advent. “You’re not the man I remember.”
“I haven’t changed,” said the Sun King. “Not really. You only think I have because you’ve got old, inside. Look at you, Mr. Suit and Tie man. You wear that cloak like you’re ashamed of it. I still wear my colours, proudly nailed to my mast.”
“You would have loved the New Romantics,” I said, to remind them I was still there. And then wished I hadn’t as the Sun King turned his tinted glasses and fierce gaze in my direction. Having the Sun King look right at you was like being punched in the head by a spotlight. His presence was overwhelming; you couldn’t think of anything or anyone else. So I deliberately looked away and made a big deal of adjusting my white trench coat, so it fell comfortably about me.
“I know you,” said the Sun King, smiling. “John Taylor. The good man in a bad world. The cold knight in tarnished armour, doing good in dangerous ways. You should support me and what I intend to do.”
I made myself glare right back at him and matched his smile with my best unsettling grin. “Not a hope in hell. This is my home. My people.”
“What people?” said the Sun King. “All I see are broken men with shop-soiled souls, and women selling everything they have, just to get by. I see false gods and pathetic monsters, sin and corruption and blood in the gutters. This is where the lost souls come to hide, because no-one else will have them.”
“You think I don’t know that?” I said. “You think Julien doesn’t? We’re here because we’re needed. Because not all the world’s troubles can be solved with simple, unrelenting concepts like Good and Evil, Law and Chaos, Light and Dark. The world needs us to see outside the box.”
But the Sun King wasn’t listening. He shrugged and looked away. “If you’re not part of the solution, John Taylor, you’re part of the problem.”
I almost collapsed when he looked away, from the relief of not having to fight off his overwhelming presence. The Sun King didn’t notice, all his attention focused on Julien.
“You betrayed the Dream, Julien. Gave up being an adventurer to work in an office. Mr. Nine to Five. Like all the other spineless drones.”
“I woke up,” Julien said steadily. “I stopped indulging myself, playing hero for the applause of the crowds, and changed tactics. So I could achieve more.”
“You got old!” said the Sun King. “Work from within, to change the system? That was a specious argument, even in my day. You can’t work within the system without supporting the system; and whatever small changes you do achieve will inevitably be cancelled out by everyone else.”
“I wanted to change the Nightside in useful ways!” Julien said stubbornly. “Ways that would last!”
“And have you? All these years you’ve been trying to save and redeem the Nightside, and what have you actually achieved? What’s really changed?”
“I am part of the new Authorities,” said Julien. “The old order is dead and gone, and their way of doing things. Your way only worked because of you! And you weren’t there any more. I had to find a new, practical way. And I did.”
“Dreams aren’t supposed to be practical,” said the Sun King. “All these years you wasted your life, Julien. The Nightside is the way it is because it likes it that way. And because vested interests make a lot of money out of keeping it that way. From squeezing dirty profits out of all the sad, pathetic losers who come here, to do the things they wouldn’t be allowed to do anywhere else. How can you defeat that? It’s only night here so people can hide what they’re doing.”
“It’s not as simple as that,” said Julien.
“Yes, well, you would say that, wouldn’t you?” said the Sun King. “I don’t see any of the things you say you see here.”
“Doesn’t mean they aren’t there,” I said.
I was confused by the Sun King. He was everything Julien had said, and more, and yet . . . there was something off about him. A living god, but with strangely limited perspective. He could only see what he wanted to see, only think in terms of the man he used to be, forty-odd years ago. It was as though he wanted to be a good man . . . if only he could remember how. If only he could concentrate.
I’m not sure he really heard what we were saying. There was something . . . out of focus about him, for all his blazing presence. I have met living gods, and men who were so much more than human; and none of them had ever seemed as dangerous as this man because he gave every impression of being someone who might sweep the whole world away with a gesture, in a moment, on a whim. Because he couldn’t think of anything better to do.