I nodded, looking the General over. Condor was a tall, straight-backed military type, in a surprisingly old-fashioned bottle-green uniform, complete with peaked cap. Even sitting down, he looked like he was still at attention. His face was deeply lined, scarred here and there, but his blue eyes were cold and piercing under bushy white eyebrows. He had to be in late middle age, but there didn’t look to be an ounce of give in him.
I’d run into him a few times, here and there. He didn’t approve of me, or people like me, but then it would be hard to find anyone or anything he did approve of in the Nightside. Our free trade in vice and depravity and damnation appalled him. A good man, perhaps, and no doubt brave enough standing on the poop-deck of his star-ship, facing terrible odds; but his stark black-and-white philosophy had no place in the Nightside. On the one hand, he was desperate to return to his own time and his own people, and take up the battle again, but on the other he was realistic enough to know he might never get back. And so he had decided to take on the Nightside, as a challenge. As an evil to be overcome. He now led, or at least represented, all those various interests inside the Nightside who wanted to clean the place up, for their own philosophical, financial, or political reasons.
General Condor liked to talk about redemption, and potential, and all the things we might achieve, if only we could control our darker urges and learn to work together. He couldn’t seem to understand that people only came here to indulge their darker urges. He was a good man, in the wrong place. And the Nightside does so love to break a hero.
“How about the slug in the ill-fitting dress jacket?” I said.
“Easy. Everyone knows Uptown Taffy Lewis,” said Bettie. She made brief retching noises. “He owns most of the prime real estate in the Nightside, now the Griffin is finally dead and gone. He has enormous economic leverage and isn’t shy about using it to get his own way. Word is he can’t get any richer, so now he wants power. He maintains his own private army of bully-boys, enforcers, and leg-breakers, and anyone who speaks out against Taffy tends to find out why terribly quickly. He wants to be the new Griffin, the new king of the castle, and have us all bow down to him. He has pretensions to style and elegance and gentility, but wouldn’t recognise them if he fell over them in the gutter. The man was born a cheap thug, and he’ll never change. The Inquirer’s run any number of exposés on him and said all kinds of nasty things, but he’s rich enough that he doesn’t care. Hateful man. They say he ate his brother.”
“Completely accurate,” I said.
Uptown Taffy Lewis was a large man, in all the wrong ways. The expertly cut suit couldn’t conceal his many rolls of fat, any more than his current polite expression could hide his cold piggy eyes or cruel mouth. Taffy didn’t just want to be big man at the trough, he wanted to keep everyone else out, simply because he could. Own it all, control it all, and have the power to destroy it all. And then use that power to make everyone else beg for the scraps from his table. Probably had a really small penis. Uptown Taffy Lewis wanted the Nightside because it was there.
He’d tried to have me killed on several occasions. I didn’t take it personally. For Taffy, it was always just business.
“And ex-Queen Helena?” I said to Bettie.
“Nasty piece of work, by all accounts.” Bettie curled her perfect upper lip. “Powerful, talented, and dangerous in all sorts of unpleasant ways, though it’s hard to say whether her power derives from science or sorcery. She can kill with a look or a touch, and they say she can enslave a man by whispering his name. The official word is that she arrived here via a Timeslip from some far future time-line, where the sun is going out and the ice covers everything. A cold woman from a cold world. But you can take that with as many grains of salt as you like; people who turn up through Timeslips tell all sorts of tales, and there’s rarely any way of checking. She claims to have been the Queen of the whole world, and she has the way of royalty about her, but…Odd that a Queen should be travelling alone, don’t you think? Anyway, she’s certainly single-minded enough about becoming royalty again, either back in her own time or right here in the Nightside. She has a lot of followers here; people who like to think they know a real monarch when they see one. She’s been selling titles to anyone who can raise the money.”
I nodded. I knew the type. (Ex-)Queen Helena was a disturbing sight. Tall, regal, haughty, and more impressive than God, she sat on her chair as though it was a throne fashioned from the bones of her enemies. She wore thick white furs, a diamond tiara, and her long flat hair was so blonde as to be practically colourless. Her deathly pale skin was tinged with blue, and her face and bare arms were covered with intricate patterns of painted-on circuitry. There were subtle bulges here and there under her skin, suggesting concealed high-tech implants. They raised and lowered themselves, apparently according to her moods.
“Well done, Bettie,” I said. “Very accurate descriptions, nicely succinct and more than usually informed. There are investigative journalists on the Night Times who wouldn’t have been able to tell me that much. You’re not just a pretty face, are you?”
She smiled easily. “I was wondering how long the wide-eyed act would fool you. You don’t get to be one of the Unnatural Inquirer’s top reporters by batting your eyes and simpering at people. Though you’d be surprised how far that can get you, even with important people. Men are such simple, basic creatures, bless them. For the others, it’s amazing how many weak spots and vulnerabilities good research can turn up. I smile, I watch, I listen, I draw conclusions, and I write it all up afterwards. You weren’t fooled by the act for one minute, were you?”
“It’s a good act,” I said, generously. “Now hush and observe Walker at work. See how he influences and manipulates people, without them even realising.”
“Things have got to change,” General Condor was saying heavily. He leaned forward across the table to glare at Walker, who seemed entirely unperturbed. The General’s voice was slow and deliberate, used to giving orders and having them obeyed. He had the air of a man people would follow: bluff, experienced, sure, and certain. A man who knew what he was doing. He jabbed a heavy finger in Walker’s face. “The Nightside can’t continue as it has—a haven for all human depravity and weakness. It’ll tear itself apart with the Griffin and the Authorities gone. The signs are clear for everyone to see, first the angel war, and then the Lilith War…Left to its own devices, the Nightside will inevitably tear itself apart.”
“There have always been wars, and destruction, and changes at the top,” Walker said calmly. “But the Nightside goes on. It has survived for thousands of years, and I see no reason why it shouldn’t continue as it is for thousands more. The world has always had a taste for freak shows.”
General Condor scowled. “That might have been true while the Authorities were running things and supporting the Nightside in the same way a farmer looks after the goose that lays golden eggs; but they’re gone now. Along with their blinkered preoccupation with trade and profit. It’s time for someone to take the longer view and make the Nightside into something better.”
“Nothing wrong with making money,” Uptown Taffy Lewis said immediately. His voice was soft and breathy, his great chest and belly rising and falling as though every breath cost him something. “The Nightside exists to provide people with the pleasures and pursuits they can’t get anywhere else. The things civilised people aren’t supposed to want, but do anyway. And they’ll pay through the nose for it, every time. Keep your rigid morality to yourself, General. We don’t need simpleminded do-gooders coming in from outside and meddling with a system that’s worked fine for thousands of years.”