“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.