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"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," Joa
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. Joa
"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. Joa
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 u
You can't step in petrol fumes.
Many of the sleek and gleaming vehicles darting through the Nightside had to be new to Joa
"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 Joa
I looked back at Joa
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 pere
Joa
"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."
"Oh, I wouldn't do that," I said solemnly. "You never know what might walk in."
She gave me a hard look. "I can never tell when you're joking."
"Neither can I sometimes, in the Nightside. It's that kind of place. Life, death and reality are all flexible concepts here."
A street gang came whooping and hollering down the street towards us, shouldering people out of their way, and playfully pushing some out into the road to dodge the traffic, which didn't even bother with horns, let alone slowing down. The gang members laughed and elbowed each other and drank heavily from bottles they passed back and forth between them. They were loud and obnoxious and loving