Mean Streets

ONE

It was three o'clock in the morning, in the oldest bar in the world, and I was killing time drinking with a dead man. Dead Boy is an old friend, though he's only seventeen. He's been seventeen for some thirty years now, ever since he was mugged and murdered for the spare change in his pockets. He made a deal to come back from the dead and take his revenge on his killers; but he should have read the small print. He's been (rapped inside his dead body ever since, searching for a way out. He's surprisingly good company, for a man with so many strikes against him.

I'm John Taylor, private investigator. I don't do divorce work, I don't chase after the Maltese Falcon, and I am most definitely not on the side of the angels. Either variety. I do, however, wear a white trench coat, get in over my head more often than not, and get personally involved with my female clients far more often than is good for me. I have a gift, for finding things and people. I'd just finished a case that hadn't ended well. A man hired me because his imaginary friend had gone missing, and he wanted me to find out why. Apparently this man's imaginary friend had been his constant companion since childhood, and had never gone off on his own before. The client got quite tearful about it, so I gave him my best professional look, and my most reassuring smile, and promised him I would waste no time in tracking down his imaginary friend. As cases go, it wasn't that difficult. I found the imaginary bastard in the first place I looked. He was having an affair with the client's wife. I put the three of them together in the same hotel room, and left them to it, knowing there was no point in even sending in my bill.

It was all the client's fault, really. Far too imaginative, except when it came to his wife.

And there I was, consoling myself with a large glass of wormwood brandy, while Dead Boy made heavy going of something that heaved back and forth, and looked like it was trying to eat its way through the glass. Being very thoroughly dead, though not in the least departed, Dead Boy doesn't need to eat or drink, but he likes to pretend. It makes him feel more real. And since his taste buds are quite definitely damaged, it takes more than the usual hard stuff to hit his spot. Dead Boy knows this appalling old obeah woman who whips up pills and potions especially for him, potent enough to make a corpse dance and a ghoul show you her underwear. God alone knows what it would do to the living; certainly I've never been tempted to find out. For the moment, Dead Boy was drinking a graveyard punch, made with ingredients from real graveyards. I just hoped it was no one I knew.

For once, Dead Boy was in a better financial state than me, so he was paying for the drinks. He'd just started a new job, as doorman for Club Dead, the special club for zombies, vampires, mummies, and all the other forms of the mortally challenged. (Club motto: We Belong Dead.) I didn't see the job lasting. Dead Boy has all the social graces of a lemming in heat or a sewer rat with bleeding hemorrhoids. But, since he was in the money, I was ordering the best of everything, in a big glass.

The oldest bar in the world is called Strangefellows, these days. You get all sorts in here, the living and the dead and those who haven't made their minds up yet, along with gods and monsters, aliens and shapeshifters, and a whole bunch of things that shouldn't exist but unfortunately do. Something from a Black Lagoon was sitting slumped in one corner, big and green and mossy and stinking of brine, drinking whiskey sours one after the other and mourning over the one that got away. The Tribe of the Gay Barbarians, tall muscular fellows resplendent in fringed leather chaps, nipple piercings, and tall ostrich feather headdresses, were challenging all comers to a game of Twister. A dancing bear was giving it his best John Travolta moves. He looked pretty silly in the white jacket, but given his size no one felt like telling him. And a group of rather disreputable-looking dwarves were selling tickets to see The Incredible Sleeping Woman. (I'd seen her. Forty years of catatonia had not been kind, which was why the dwarves were no longer allowed to bill her as The Incredible Sleeping Beauty.)

One of Frankenstein's female creations was singing a torch song, the transvestite superheroine Ms. Fate was reading a gossip tabloid with great concentration, to see if he was in that week, and Harry Fabulous was doing his rounds, selling chemical adventures, knockoff Hyde formula, and short-time psychoses, for really quite reasonable prices.

Just another night, at Strangefellows.

Hut while the oldest bar in the world has few rules and even fewer standards, we do draw the line at weeping women. So when the tall slender brunette in the expensive outfit came stumbling into the bar, crying her eyes out, everyone fell quiet and turned to look. Weeping women always mean trouble, for someone. She lurched to a halt in the middle of the room and looked about her, and I quickly realized that she was crying hot angry tears of rage and frustration, rather than sorrow. The tears ran jerkily down her cheeks, the sheer force of them shaking her whole body. Something about her gave me the feeling she wasn't a woman who often gave in to tears. She sniffed them back with an effort, and glared about her as defiantly as her puffy eyes and streaked makeup would allow. And then she looked in my direction, and my heart sank as she fixed her attention on me. She pushed her way quickly through the packed tables, and marched right up to me. The bar's normal bedlam resumed, as everyone celebrated someone else getting hit by the bullet. I sighed inwardly, and turned unhurriedly on my bar stool to nod politely to the woman as she crashed to a halt before me and fixed me with dark, haunted eyes.

She was good-looking enough, in an undemanding way, her long lean body positively burning with thwarted nervous energy. Her clothes were expensive, though somewhat disheveled. She was clutching a white leather shoulder bag as though she would never let it go, and her whole stance screamed stress and tension. Her mouth was compressed into a thin dark red line, and she held herself very stiffly, as though she might fall apart if her control lapsed for just one moment. And yet, behind the clear anger in her eyes, I could see an awful, unfocused fear.

"Hi," I said, as kindly as I could. "I'm John Taylor."

"Yes," she said jerkily, the words coming out clipped, in sudden bursts. "I know. You were described to me. The man in the white trench coat. The knight in cold armor. He said you'd help me. Sorry. I'm not making myself clear… I've had something of a shock. My name is Liza Barclay. I'm lost. I don't know what I'm doing here. I've lost all memory of the last twenty-four hours of my life. I want you to find them for me."

I sighed again, still inwardly, and handed her my glass. "Take a sip of brandy," I said, doing my best to sound kind and helpful and not at all threatening.

She grabbed the brandy glass with both hands, took a good gulp, and immediately pulled a face and thrust the glass back into my hand.

"God, that's awful. You drink that for fun? You're tougher than you look. But then, you'd have to be. Sorry. I'm rambling."

"It's all right," I said. "Take your time, get your breath back. Then tell me how you got here. This isn't an easy place to get to."

"I don't know!" she said immediately. "I've lost a day. A whole day!"

I slipped off my bar stool and offered her a seat, but she shook her head quickly. So I just leaned back against the long wooden bar and studied her openly as she looked around Strangefellows, making it very clear with her face and body language that not only had she never seen anything like it, but that she was quite definitely slumming just by being there. I was impressed. The oldest bar in the world isn't for just anyone. Most people take one look and run away screaming, and we like it that way. Strangefellows is a place of old magic and all the very latest sins and indulgences. This is not the kind of bar where everyone knows your name; it's the kind of bar where you can wake up robbed and rolled in someone else's body.

Liza Barclay deliberately turned her back on the disturbing sights and the appalling patrons, and fixed her full attention on me. I did my best to look tall, dark, and handsome, but I couldn't have been that successful because after only a moment she nodded briskly, as though I'd passed some necessary test, but only just. She switched her gaze to Dead Boy, who smiled vaguely and toasted her with his glass. The graveyard punch made a valiant attempt to escape, and he had to push the stuff back in with his fingers.

Dead Boy was tall and adolescent thin, wrapped in a long purple greatcoat spotted with various food and drink stains, and topped with a fresh black rose on his lapel. Scuffed black leather trousers over muddy calfskin boots completed the ensemble. He let his coat hang open, to reveal a bare torso covered with old injuries, bullet holes, and one long Y-shaped autopsy scar. Dead Boy might be deceased, but he still took damage, even if he couldn't feel it. He was mostly held together with stitches and staples and superglue, along with a certain amount of black duct tape lashed around his middle. His skin was a pale gray, and dusty-looking.

He had the face of a debauched and very weary Pre-Raphaelite poet, with dark fever-bright eyes, a sulky mouth with no colour in it, and long dark curly hair crammed under a large floppy hat. He didn't smile at Liza Barclay. He didn't care. Her tears hadn't touched him at all.

Liza shuddered, but didn't look away. She was impressing me more and more. Most people can't stand being around the dead, and that goes double for Dead Boy. Liza glanced around the bar again, at its various strange and unnatural patrons, and rather than being scared or appalled, she just sniffed loudly and turned her back on them again. They were no help to her, or her problem, so they didn't matter. Liza Barclay, it seemed, was a very single-minded lady.

"How can you stand being in a place like this?" she said to me, quite seriously.

"What, Strangefellows?" I said. "There are worse places to drink in. The ambience isn't up to much, I'll grant you, but…"

"I don't mean just here! I mean… everywhere! This whole area!" A tinge of hysteria had entered her voice. Liza heard it, and clamped down hard on it. She hugged herself suddenly, as though a cold wind had blown over her grave. "I've been walking back and forth in the streets for ages. This terrible place. I've seen things… awful things. Creatures, walking right out in the open, with normal people, and none of them batted an eye! Where am I? Am I dead? Is this Hell?"

"No," I said. "Though on a good day you can see Hell from here. As far as I can tell, you are a perfectly normal woman who has had the misfortune to somehow find her way into the Night-side."

"The Nightside." She grabbed on to the word, considered it, and then looked to me for more information. And it wasn't a request; it was a demand. I was liking her more and more.

"The Nightside," I said, "the dark secret hidden in the heart of London. The longest night in the world, where the sun has never shone and never will. Where it's always three o'clock in the morning, and the hour that tries men's souls. This is where all (he secret people come, in search of forbidden knowledge and all the pleasures people aren't supposed to want, but still do. You can pursue any dream here, or any nightmare. Sell your soul or someone else's. Run wild in the streets and satisfy any fantasy you over had. As long as your credit holds out. This is the Nightside, Liza Barclay, and it is not a place for normal people like you."

"It's not an easy place to find your way into," said Dead Boy. "How did you get here?"

"I don't know! I can't remember!" Her shoulders slumped, and her strength seemed to seep out of her. I understood. She was having to take in a lot at one go. And the Nightside does so love to break people… I thought for a moment she might start crying again, but her chin lifted, her eyes flashed, and just like that she was back in control again. "I live in London, have done all my life. And I never heard of the Nightside. I just… came to, and found myself here. Lost, and alone."

"And now you're among friends," I said.

"More or less," said Dead Boy.

"I am John Taylor," I said, ignoring Dead Boy with the ease of long practice. "And I'm a private eye. Yes, really."

Her mouth twitched in a brief smile. "I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, to find one more mythical creature, among so many."

"And my appalling friend here is Dead Boy. Yes, really."

"Hi," said Dead Boy, leaning forward and offering a pale dead hand for her to shake. "Yes, that is formaldehyde you're smelling, so get used to it. I'm dead, I'm wild and exciting and extraordinarily glamorous, and you're very pleased to meet me."

"Don't put money on it," said Liza. "What's it like, being dead?"

"Cold," said Dead Boy, unexpectedly. "It's getting hard for me to even remember what being warm feels like. Though I think I miss sleep the most. Never being able to just lie down and switch off. No rest, no dreams…"

"Don't you get tired?" said Liza, fascinated despite herself. "I'm always tired," Dead Boy said sadly. "Cut it out," I said firmly. "You think I don't know you mainline that synthetic adrenaline when no one's looking?" I shrugged apologetically at Liza. "Sorry, but you mustn't encourage him.

He's not really as self-pitying as he likes to make out. He just thinks it makes him more attractive to women."

"Never dismiss the pity factor," Dead Boy said easily. "Suicide girls go crazy for dead flesh."

"That's disgusting," said Liza, very firmly.

He leered at her. "You haven't lived till you've rattled a coffin with someone on graveyard Viagra."

"Changing the subject right now," I said loudly. "Tell me about your memory loss, Liza. What's the last thing you do remember, before waking up here?"

She frowned, concentrating. "The last twenty-four hours are just gone. A whole day. The last thing I'm sure of, I was in London. The real London. Down in Tottenham Court Road Underground station… though I can't quite seem to remember why… I think I was looking for someone. The next thing I knew, I was here. Running through the streets. Crying as though my heart would break. I don't know why. I'm not the crying kind, usually. I'm just not."

"It's all right," I said. "What happened next?"

"I was attacked! They came out of nowhere… Tall spindly men in top hats and old-fashioned clothes, with great smiling faces, and… knives for hands."

"Scissormen," I said. "Always looking for someone weaker to prey on. They can home in on guilt and horror like sharks tasting blood in the water."

"I haven't done anything to feel guilty about," said Liza.

"As far as you know," said Dead Boy, reasonably. "Who knows what you might have done, in the missing twenty-four hours? It's amazing how much sin a determined person can cram into twenty-lour hours. I speak from experience, you understand."

"Ignore him," I said. "He's just boasting."

"But… Scissormen?" said Liza.

"Everything comes to the Nightside," I said. "Especially all the bad things, with nowhere else to go. Still, it's always a shame when childhood characters go bad. How did you get away from them?"

"I didn't," said Liza, her eyes and her voice becoming uncertain again as she remembered. "They were all around me, smiling their awful smiles, opening and closing their… scissorhands, chanting something in German in shrill mocking voices. They cut at me, always drawing back at the very last moment, and laughing as I jumped this way and that to avoid them. Scuttling round and round me, always pressing closer, smiling and smiling… And nobody did anything! Most people didn't even stop to watch! I was screaming by then, but no one helped. Until this… strange man appeared out of nowhere, and the Scissormen stopped, just like that. They huddled together, facing him like a pack of dogs at bay. He said his name, and the Scissormen just turned and ran. I couldn't believe it."

"What was his name?" I said.

"Eddie. He was very sweet, though he looked like some kind of vagrant. And from the smell of him, he'd been sleeping rough for some time. I tried to give him some money, but he wasn't interested. He listened to my story, though I don't know how much sense I made, and then he brought me here. Told me to look for you. John Taylor. That you'd be able to help me. Do you know this man?"

"Oh, sure," said Dead Boy. "Everyone here knows Razor Eddie. Punk God of the Straight Razor. No wonder the Scissormen cut and ran. Most people do."

Liza looked at me, and I nodded. "Eddie's a good man, in his own disturbing way. And he's right; I can help you. I have a gift for finding things."

"Even missing memories?" Liza managed a real, hopeful smile for the first time.

"Anything," I said. "But I have to ask… are you sure you want to remember? A lot of the time, people forget things for a reason."

She looked at me steadily. "Of course I want to remember. I think I need to. I think… something bad happened."

"In the Nightside? I can practically guarantee it," said Dead Hoy.

"You're really not helping," I said. "Liza, you're sure you've never even heard of the Nightside before? It's not unheard of for innocents to wander in by accident, but usually you have to want it pretty bad."

"I never knew places like this existed," Liza said stubbornly. "I never knew monsters were real."

"The world is a much bigger place than most people realise," I said. "Magic still exists, though it's grown strange and crafty and maybe just a bit senile."

"Magic?" she said, raising one perfectly plucked eyebrow.

"Magic, and other things. Time isn't as firmly nailed down in the Nightside as it might be. We get all sorts turning up here, from the Past and any number of alternate Futures. Not to mention all kinds of rogues, adventurers, and complete and utter scumbags from other worlds and dimensions, all looking for a little excitement, or a nice bit of sin that isn't too shop-soiled." I stopped, and considered her thoughtfully. "You really don't care about any of this, do you? It doesn't interest or attract you in the least."

"No," said Liza. "I don't belong in a madhouse like this. I have no business being here."

"I could just take you home," I said. "Back to the safe and sane London you've always known."

"No," she said immediately. "There's a whole day of my life missing. It's mine, and I want it back."

"But what if you've done something really bad?" said Dead Boy. "Most people come to the Nightside to do something really bad."

"It's always better to know," Liza said firmly.

"No," I said. "Not always. And especially not here. But if that's what you want, then that's what you get. The client is always right. Now, the odds are you came here looking for something. Or someone. So let's take a look in that shoulder bag of yours. The way you've been clinging to it since you got here, it must hold something important."

She looked down at the bag as though she'd honestly forgotten it was there. And when I reached out a hand to take it, she actually shrank back for a moment. But once again her stern self-control reasserted itself, and she made herself hand over the bag. But there was a subtle new tension in her that hadn't been there before.

I hefted the bag. It wasn't that large, and it didn't feel like there was that much in it. Nothing obviously special about it. Expensive, yes; white leather Gucci without a mark on it. I opened the bag, and spilled the contents out onto the wooden bar top. All three of us leaned in for a closer look. But it was just the usual feminine clutter, with nothing out of the ordinary. Apart from a single colour photograph, torn jaggedly in two. I fitted the pieces together as best I could, and we all studied the image in silence for a while. The photo showed a somewhat younger Liza Barclay in a stylish white wedding dress, hugging a handsome young man in a formal suit. They were both laughing at the camera, clearly caught a little off guard. They looked very happy. As though they belonged together, and always would. Someone had torn the photo fiercely in two, right down the middle, as though trying to separate the happy couple.

"That's Frank," said Liza, frowning so hard her brow must have ached. "My husband, Frank. That's our wedding day, just over seven years now. I was never so happy in my life, the day we got married. Poor Frank, he must be worried sick by now, wondering where I am. But… this is my favourite photo ever. I must have worn out half a dozen copies, carrying it around in my bag and showing it to people. Who could have torn it like this?"

"Maybe you tore it," said Dead Boy. "Been having problems recently, have you?"

"No! No…" But even as she objected, I could practically see the beginnings of memories resurfacing in her. She concentrated on the two pieces of the photo, speaking only to them. "We were always so much in love. He meant everything to me. Everything. But… I followed him. All the way across London, on the Underground. He never saw me. He'd been so… preoccupied, the last few months. I could tell something was wrong. I was worried about him. He'd been keeping things from me, and that wasn't like him. There were letters and e-mails I wasn't allowed to read, phone calls he wouldn't talk about. He'd never done that before. I thought he might be in some kind of trouble. Something to do with his business. I wanted to help. He was my love, my life, my everything. I was so worried…"

"Sounds like another woman," Dead Boy said wisely, and was genuinely surprised when I glared at him. "Well, it does."

But Liza was smiling, and shaking her head. "You don't know my Frank. He loves me as much as I love him. He's never even looked at another woman."

"Come on," said Dead Boy. "Every man looks at other women. When he starts pretending he doesn't, that's when you know he's up to something."

"You followed Frank through the Underground," I said to Liza, ignoring Dead Boy. "What happened then?"

"I don't know." Liza reached out to touch the photo, but didn't, quite. "The next thing I remember, I'm here in the Nightside, and there's no sign of Frank anywhere. Could we have been kidnapped, dragged here against our will, and I somehow escaped?"

"Well," I said diplomatically, "it's possible, I suppose."

"But you don't think so."

"It's not the way I'd bet, no. But at least now we know you're not here alone. If you're here, then the odds are Frank is too. I can find him with my gift, and see if perhaps he holds the answer to your missing memories."

"No!" said Liza. "I don't want my Frank involved in all this… madness."

"If he's here, he's involved," said Dead Boy. "If only because the Nightside doesn't take kindly to being ignored."

She shook her head again, still smiling. "You don't know my Frank."

"And you don't know the kind of temptations on offer here," said Dead Boy. "Sex and love and everything in between, sweet as cyanide and sprinkled with a little extra glamour to help it go down easier. Sin is always in season in the Nightside."

"And you followed him here," I said.

She glared at me. "How could he know the way to a place like this?"

"Because he'd been here before," said Dead Boy. "Sorry, but it's the only answer that makes sense."

Liza glared at him, and then looked me right in the eye. "Find him. Find my Frank for me. If only so he can tell us the truth, and throw these lies back in your faces."

"I'll find him," I said. "Anything else… is up to you, and him."

I picked up the two pieces of the photo, holding them firmly between thumb and forefinger, and held them up before me. I took a deep breath and concentrated, reaching deep inside myself for my gift, my special gift, that allowed me to find anyone or anything. I concentrated on the photo until I couldn't see anything else, and then slowly, my inner eye opened; my third eye, my private eye… from which nothing can hide. With my inner eye all the way open, I could See the world as it really was, every last bit of it. All the things that are hidden from Humanity, because if we could all See the true nature of this world, and the kinds of things we share it with, Humanity would go stark staring mad with horror.

I can only bear to See it for a little while.

I sent my Sight soaring up out of my body, shooting up through the roof of my skull and the roof of Strangefellows, until I was high in the star-speckled sky, looking down on the Nightside spread out below me, turning slowly, like the circles of Hell. Hot neon burned everywhere, like balefires in the night. Sudden bright glares detonated in this place or that; as souls were bartered, great magical workings rewrote the world, or some awful new thing was born to plague Mankind. There were great Voices abroad in the night, and terrible rumblings deep in the earth, as Powers and Dominations went about their unknowable business.

Ghosts howled in the streets, trapped in moments of Time like insects in amber. Demons rode their human hosts, whispering in their ears. And vast and powerful creatures walked the night in majesty, wonderful and terrible beyond human ability to bear.

I dropped down from my high vantage point, sending my Sight flashing through the packed narrow streets, slamming in and out of buildings with the quickness of thought, following a trail only I could See. The photo of Frank Barclay had let me sink my mental hook in his consciousness, if not his soul, and I could See the ghost of him still striding purposefully through the streets. Semi-transparent and fragile as a soap bubble, the mark he'd made in the Nightside was still clear, his imprint on Time itself, still walking the streets that he had walked not so long ago… and would do until the last vestiges of it faded away.

Frank Barclay showed no interest in any of the usual pleasure joints or temptations. The open doors of nightclubs where the music never ends, the heavy-lidded glances from dark-eyed ladies of the twilight, had no attraction for him. He never hesitated once, or paused to check directions. He knew where he was going. And from the increasingly intense, almost desperate anticipation in his face, wherever he was going promised something none of the usual temptations could hope to satisfy. I could See him clearly now, and he was smiling. And something in the smile chilled me all the way to my soul.

I pulled back, as I realised where he was going. There are some places you just don't go into with your spirit hanging out. Some parts of the Nightside are hungrier than others. I slowly closed my third eye, my inner eye, until I was safely back inside my own head again. And then I dropped the two pieces of the photo back onto the bar top as though they burned my fingers. I looked at Liza.

"Good news and bad news," I said. "I've found him. I've found husband Frank."

"Then what's the bad news?" said Liza, meeting my gaze unflinchingly.

"He's in the badlands," I said. "Where the really wild things are, and hardly anyone gets out alive. You only go into the badlands in search of the pleasures too sick, too twisted, and too nasty for the rest of the Nightside."

"If that's where he is," Liza said steadily, "then that's where I have to go."

"You can't go there alone," I said. "They'd eat you up and chew on the bones."

"But I have to know!" said Liza, her chin jutting stubbornly. "I have to know what's wrong with him, what could possibly bring him to an awful place like this. And I have to know what, if anything, this has to do with my missing memories. I have to go there."

"Then I guess I'll have to take you," I said.

"I… don't have much money on me, at the moment," said Liza. "Is my credit good?"

"Put the plastic away," I said. "No charge, this time. Razor Eddie owes me a favour, for dumping you on me, and that's worth more than you could ever pay."

I leaned over and nudged Dead Boy, who'd lost interest in all this long ago. His eyes snapped back into focus.

"What is it, John? I have some important existential brooding I need to be getting on with."

"I'm taking Liza into the badlands in pursuit of her missing husband, and her missing memories," I said briskly. "Bound to be some trouble. Interested?"

"Oh, sure," said Dead Boy. "You can't get too much excitement, when you're dead. How much are you offering?"

"Tell you what," I said. "You can have half of my fee. But only if we can use your car."

"Done! "said Dead Boy.

"Why do we need his car?" said Liza.

"Because we have to travel all the way across town," I said. "And the rush hour can be murder."

TWO

She'd never seen the sky before. Preoccupied with so much new sin and strangeness right before her, it had never even occurred to her to stop and look up. Now, on the rain-slick pavement outside the oldest bar in the world, LizaBarclay followed my pointing finger and stood very still, held to the spot by awe and enchantment, quite unaware of all the people, and others, hurrying by on every side. In the Nightside, the sky is full of stars, thousands and thousands of them, burning bright and sharp in constellations never seen in the outside world. And the moon… ah, the moon is big and bright indeed in the Nightside, unnaturally luminous and a dozen times larger than it should be, hanging over us all like a great mindless eye, like an ancient guardian that has quite forgotten its duty and purpose. Seeing all, judging nothing.

I often think that it isn't a matter of where the Nightside is, so much as when.

Meanwhile, all kinds and manner of Humanity, and many things not in any way human, pushed past with brisk impartial haste, intent on their own personal salvations and damnations. No one got too close, though. They might not give a damn about Liza, clearly just another starstruck tourist, but everyone in the Nightside knows me. Or knows enough to give me plenty of room. Liza finally tore her gaze away from the overcrowded heavens, and gave her attention to the crowds bustling around us. The street, as always, positively squirmed with life and energy and all manner of hopes, the pavements packed with desperate pilgrims come in search of sin and temptation and the kinds of love that might not have a name but most certainly have a price. Hot neon blazed and burned up and down the street, gaudy as a hooker's smile, signposts to all the most succulent hells. If you can't find it in the Nightside, it doesn't exist.

Liza clung to my arm like a drowning woman, but to her credit she never flinched or looked away. She took it all in, staring grimly about her, refusing to allow the strange sights and tacky glamour to overwhelm her. She pressed a little more closely to me, as a bunch of eight-foot-tall insect things paused to bow their devilish heads before me. Bones glowed through their flesh, filmy wings fluttered uncomfortably on their long chitinous backs, and their iridescent compound eyes didn't blink once. Their absurdly jointed legs lowered them almost to the ground as they abased themselves, speaking in unison with urgent breathy children's voices.

"All hail to thee, sweet prince of a sundered line, and remember us when you choose to come into your kingdom."

"Move on," I said, as kindly as I could.

They waited a while, antennae twitching hopefully, until they realised I wasn't going to say any more, and then they moved on. Liza watched them go, and then looked at me.

"What the hell was that all about? Who… what were they?"

"They are all that remains of the Brittle Sisters of the Hive," I said. "They were just being polite."

"So you're… someone special here?"

"I might have been, once," I said. "But I abdicated."

"So what are you now?"

"I'm a private investigator," I said. "And a bloody good one."

She favoured me with another of her brief smiles, and then looked out at the traffic, thundering ceaselessly through the Nightside. There was a lot of it to look at. Vehicles of all kinds and natures flashed past, never slowing, never stopping, jockeying endlessly for position and dominance. Some of them carried goods and some of them carried people, and many of them carried things best not thought about at all. Most were just passing through, on their way to somewhere more interesting; mysteries and enigmas, never to be understood.

A horse-drawn diligence from the eighteenth century clattered past, overtaken by a lipstick red Plymouth Fury with a dead man grinning at the wheel. An articulated rig bore the logo of a local long-pig franchise, while a motorcycle gang of screaming skeletons burning forever in hellfire chased something very like a tank crossed with an armadillo. The Boggart On Stilts, one of the Lesser Atrocities, strode disdainfully down the middle of the road, while smaller vehicles nipped in and out of its tall bone stilts. A great black beauty of a car cruised past, driven by an Oriental in black leathers, and the man in the back in the green face mask and snap-brimmed hat nodded respectfully to me in passing. Liza turned and looked at me speechlessly, demanding an explanation.

"In the Nightside, the traffic comes and goes, but not every-thing that looks like a car is a car," I explained patiently. "Here, ambulances run on distilled suffering, motorcycle couriers snort powdered virgin's blood for that extra kick, and sometimes the bigger vehicles sneak up behind the smaller ones and eat them. Pretty much everything passes through the Nightside, at one time or another and sometimes simultaneously, and it's always in a hurry. Foot down, everything forward and trust in the Lord, and Devil take the hindmost. That isn't traffic out there; that's evolution in action. Which is why we can't get where we're going by just hopping on the crosstown bus. We are waiting for Dead Boy, and his marvelous car of the future."

"The sky, the traffic, creatures and demons walking openly in the street…" Liza shook her head just a bit dazedly. "Where is this place, John?"

"Good question," I said. "Of this world, but not necessarily in it. Halfway between Heaven and Hell, but beholden to neither. A place of infinite jest and appalling possibilities. But don't let it get to you. The Nightside is just a place where people go, in search of all the things they're not supposed to want. Forbidden knowledge, forgotten secrets, and all the nastier kinds of sex. A place where the shadows are comfortably deep, and the sun never rises because some things can only be done in the dark.

"It's the Nightside."

Liza looked at me. "You do like the sound of your own voice, don't you?"

"You asked," I said.

Perhaps fortunately, Dead Boy arrived at that moment in his fabulous futuristic car, and Liza had something else to stare at. Dead Boy's car is always worth a good look. It glided silently to a halt before us, hovering a few feet above the ground. A car from the future, so stylish it didn't even bother with wheels anymore. It originally arrived in the Nightside through a Timeslip, from some future time line, and adopted Dead Boy as its driver. Bright gleaming silver, long and sleek and streamlined to within an inch of its life, the car hovered arrogantly before us, looking like it ran on distilled starlight. The long curving windows were polarised so no one could see in, and the mighty engines didn't so much as deign to murmur.

The driver's door swung open, to reveal Dead Boy lounging languidly behind the steering wheel. He had a half-empty bottle of vodka in his hand.

"All aboard for the badlands, boys and girls! Feel free to admire my beautiful ride's elegance and style. This is what every car would be, if they only had the ambition."

"You're late," I said sternly.

"I'm always late. I'm the late Dead Boy." He sniggered at his own joke, and took a healthy pull from his vodka bottle.

"I am not getting into that!" Liza said firmly. "It hasn't got any wheels. It looks like something from a bad seventies sci-fi movie."

"Hush, hush, my beauty!" Dead Boy said soothingly to his car. "She is an uneducated barbarian, and doesn't mean it." He appeared to listen for a moment. "All right, yes, she probably did mean it, but you mustn't take it personally. She is a mere tourist, and knows nothing of cars. Please let her in. And please don't activate the ejector seat, no matter how annoying she gets."

There was a pause, and then the other doors opened, slowly enough to express a certain reluctance. Liza looked at me.

"Does he often have conversations with his car?"

"Oh, yes," I said. "Only he can hear her, though."

"I see. And does this car really have an ejector seat?"

"Oh, yes. More than powerful enough to blast you into a whole different dimension."

"I'll be more polite to the car from now on," said Liza.

"I would," I said.

"But I'm still not sitting next to Dead Boy."

So we both got in the back. Liza jumped just a bit as the door shut itself behind us. The seats were bloodred leather, and very comfortable. There was a faint perfume of crushed roses on the slightly pressurised air. There were no seat belts, of course. Their very existence would have been an insult to the car's driving skills. Liza leaned forward and stared openly at the frankly futuristic display screens where the dashboard dials should have been. In fact, there were enough screens and displays and flashing lights to suggest anything up to and including warp speed.

"Can you get warp speed on this thing?" said Liza, proving that great minds think alike.

"Only in emergencies," said Dead Boy. He didn't seem to be kidding.

Liza took in the whiskey, brandy, and gin bottles lined up on top of the monitor screens, all of which showed signs of extensive sampling, and sniffed loudly. Dead Boy took this as a hint, and gestured generously at the bottles, and the open dashboard compartment full of honeyed locusts, spiced potato wedges, and assorted chocolate biscuits.

"Help yourself," he said, around a mouthful of chocolate hobnob. Liza declined. Dead Boy shrugged, finished his biscuit, knocked back a handful of glowing green pills, finished off the last of the vodka, and slung the bottle through the window, which didn't happen to be open. The bottle passed right through the glass without stopping. They really have thought of everything, in the future.

"Where to, John?" Dead Boy said easily. "My car requires directions. She is powerful and lovely and full of surprises, but she is not actually prescient. Apparently that only came as an optional extra."

"Head for the badlands," I said. "I should be able to provide more specific directions once we get there."

"I love mystery tours," Dead Boy said happily. "Off you go, girl."

The futuristic car moved smoothly out into the vicious traffic, and absolutely everything slammed on the brakes or changed lanes in a hurry, to give us plenty of room. Everybody knew Dead Boy's car, and the awful things it could and would do if it got even slightly annoyed.

"I can't help noticing you're not even touching the steering wheel," Liza said to Dead Boy.

"Oh, I wouldn't dare," he said. "My sweetie's a much better driver than I'll ever be. I don't interfere."

Liza leaned back in her seat, watched the traffic for a while, and then looked thoughtfully at me. "Why are you helping me, John? It's not like I'm even paying you for your services."

"I'm curious," I said honestly. "And… I don't like to see an innocent caught up and crushed under the Nightside's wheels. There's enough real evil here, without adding cruel and casual stuff. Good people shouldn't end up here, but if they do, they need to be protected. Just on general principles."

"If this is such a bad place," she said, "what are you doing here?"

"I belong here," I said. She settled for that, and went back to watching the traffic. I took out the two pieces of her photo, fitted them together, and concentrated on the image of her husband. My gift barely stirred, manifesting just enough to keep a firm hold on Frank's location. Husband Frank. He'd better be worth all this trouble. Liza clearly loved him with all her heart; but women have been known to fall for complete bastards before now. His face in the photo didn't give anything away. The smile seemed genuine enough, but I wasn't so sure about the eyes.

Frank hadn't moved since I first sensed his location, and I got the feeling he hadn't moved in some time. As I concentrated on his image, I began to get a feel for his surroundings, and the first thing I felt was the presence of technology. Advanced, future tech, not from this time and place. Frank seemed to be surrounded by it, fascinated by it… and the more I concentrated, the more my images of this future technology were tainted by distinctly organic touches.

Sweating steel and cables that curled like intestines; lubricated pistons rising and falling, and machines that murmured like people disturbed in their sleep. Strange nightmare devices, performing unnatural tasks, with hot blood coursing through their systems.

What had Frank got himself into?

I was beginning to get a really bad feeling about this. Especially when Frank's image in the photo suddenly turned its head to look right at me. His face was drawn, tired, and burning with a strange delirium. His eyes were dark and fever-bright… and he never even glanced at his wife, Liza, sitting right next to me. He locked his gaze onto mine, and his faraway voice sounded in my head.

Go away. I don't want you here. Don't try and find me. I don V want to be found.

"Your wife's here," I said silently to the photo. "Liza's here, in the Nightside. Looking for you. She's very worried about you."

I know. Keep her away. For her sake.

And just like that, the photo was only a photo, and his face was just an image from the past. I didn't tell Liza what had just occurred. It didn't matter to me whether Frank wanted to be found or not; I was working for his wife. And she wanted to know what her husband was up to, even if she hadn't actually put it that way. This is why I don't do divorce work. No matter what the client says, they never really want the truth. Still, the unexpected contact with Frank, brief as it was, had given me a more definite fix on his position.

"I've found Frank," I announced, to Liza and Dead Boy. "He's on Rotten Row."

"Ah," said Dead Boy, sucking noisily on his whiskey bottle. "That is not good."

"Why?" Liza said immediately. "What happens on Rotten Row? What do people do there?"

"Pretty much everything you can think of, and a whole lot of things most people have never even contemplated," said Dead Boy. "Rotten Row is for the severely sick and disturbed, even by the Nightside's appalling standards."

Liza turned to me. "What is he talking about?"

"Rotten Row is where people go to have sex with the kind of people, and things, that no sane person would want to have sex with," I said, just a bit reluctantly. "Sex with angels, or demons. With computers or robots, slumming gods or other-dimensional monsters; worms from the earth or some of the nastier versions of the living dead. Rotten Row is where you go when the everyday sins of the flesh just don't do it for you anymore. Where men and women and all the many things they can do together just don’t satisfy. Sex isn't a sin or a sacrament on Rotten Row; it's an obsession."

Liza looked at me, horrified. "Sex with… how is any of that even possible?"

"Love finds a way," Dead Boy said vaguely.

Liza shook her head stubbornly, as though she could prove me a liar if she was just firm enough. "No. You must be wrong, John. My Frank would never… never lower himself to… He just wouldn't! He's always been very… normal. He'd never go to a place like that!"

"We all find love where we can," said Dead Boy.

"You're talking about sex, not love!" snapped Liza.

"Sometimes… you have to go a little off the beaten path to get what you really need," said Dead Boy philosophically. "There's more to life than just boy meets girl, you know."

And that was when all the car's alarms went off at once. Flashing red lights, followed by a rising siren, and the sound of an awful lot of systems arming themselves. Dead Boy sat bolt upright, tossed his whiskey bottle onto the passenger seat, and studied his various displays with great interest. Dead Boy lived for action and adventure.

"All right, car, turn off the alarms, I see them. Proximity alert, people. We are currently being boxed in by three, no four, vehicles. In front and behind, left and right. Look out the windows, see if you can spot the bastards."

It wasn't difficult; they weren't being exactly furtive about it. Four black London taxicabs were forcing their way through the crowded lanes of traffic to surround us on every side, positioning themselves to cut off all possible exits and escapes. The cabs bore no name or logo on their flanks, just flat black metal, like so many malignant beetles. They all had cyborged drivers, human only down to the waist. The head and torso hung suspended in a complex webbing of cables, tubes, and wires that made them a part of their taxis. The car was just an extension of its tech-augmented driver, so it could manoeuvre as fast as they could think. Human consciousness given inhuman control and reaction times. By the time I'd finished peering out of every window, there were black cabs speeding in perfect formation all around us.

And long machine-gun barrels protruded from each and every one of them, covering us.

"Put your foot down," I said to Dead Boy. "Try and lose them."

"You go, girl, go!" said Dead Boy, and the futuristic car surged forward.

The back of the taxicab in front of us loomed up disturbingly fast, and for a moment I thought we were going to ram it, but the taxi accelerated too, maintaining its distance. The other cabs swiftly increased their speed too, suggesting the cyborged drivers and the protruding machine guns weren't the taxis' only special features. These black cabs had been seriously souped up. We were all moving incredibly fast now, hurtling through the Nightside at insane speed, streets and buildings just gaudy blurs of colour. All around us, traffic hurried to get out of our way. Vehicles that didn't, or couldn't, move quickly enough were slammed and shunted aside by the taxis. Cars ran careering off the road, into defenceless storefronts, or smashed into one another, crying out like living things. Screams and shouts of outrage rang briefly behind us, Dopplering away into the distance.

The cabs decided enough was enough, closed in on us from every side, and slammed on their brakes simultaneously. We had to slow clown with them or risk a collision, and the futuristic car was clearly cautious enough not to want to risk direct contact until it had to. Just because they looked like cabs, it didn't mean they were. Protective camouflage is a way of life in the Night-side.

Why do you think I work so hard to look like a traditional private eye?

Dead Boy beat on the steering wheel with his pale fists, hooting with the excitement of the chase and shouting helpful advice that the car mostly ignored. Liza peered out of one window after another, her small hands unconsciously clenched into fists. I wasn't that worried, yet. The car could look after itself.

One cab pressed in from the left, trying to pressure us into changing lanes. The cyborged driver wasn't even looking at us. The other cabs gave way a little, to entice us, trying to persuade us away from the badlands exit, some way up ahead. To keep us away from Frank… and probably to herd us into a previously chosen killing zone where they'd have all the advantages. The futuristic car swayed back and forth, looking for a way out between the cabs, but they constantly manoeuvred with their more than human reflexes to block our way. And then, without warning, all four sets of machine guns opened fire on us. The sound was painfully loud, as bullets raked our car from end to end, and slammed viciously into front and back. Liza cried out, but quickly calmed down again as she realised I wasn't even ducking. The machine-gun fire roared and stuttered, but none of it could touch us. Whatever Dead Boy's car was made of, it wasn't just steel. Bullets ricocheted harmlessly away in flurries of sparks and metallic screeches, but the futuristic car didn't even shudder under the impact. The gunfire continued, as though the taxis thought they could break through our defences through sheer perseverance.

"Time for Puff the Magic Dragon, I think," Dead Boy said cheerfully, entirely unmoved by the massed firepower aimed at him from all sides.

"What?" said Liza. "What did he just say? He's got a bloody dragon in here somewhere?"

"Not as such," I said. "More of a nickname, really. Because it breathes fire and makes problems disappear. Go for it, Dead Boy."

Lights gleamed brightly all across the display screens, and there was the sound of something large and heavy moving into position. To be exact, a large gun muzzle was slowly protruding from the car's radiator grille. Puff the Magic Dragon fired two thousand explosive flechettes a second, pumping them out at inhuman speed and with appalling vigour. Puff is a gun's gun. The futuristic car opened up on the taxicab in front of us, and the whole back of the cab just exploded, black steel disintegrating under the impact, throwing ragged shrapnel in all directions. The cab surged wildly back and forth, but Puff moved easily to follow it, tearing the cab apart with invisible hands. The cab burst into flames, and was thrown this way and that by a series of explosions, before the endless stream of explosive flechettes picked the cab up and threw it end over end across several lanes of traffic, leaving a trail of blazing debris and drifting smoke behind it. I caught a brief glimpse of the cyborged driver, trapped behind his wheel in his ruptured webbing, screaming horribly as he burned alive in the wreckage.

I couldn't bring myself to care, much. He would have done worse to us, if he could.

The taxi to our left accelerated wildly, forcing its way in front of us to block our escape, machine guns blazing fiercely from its rear. A brave and determined move, but the driver really shouldn't have taken his eyes off the main threat. The other traffic. A long dark limousine with dull unreflective black windows moved effortlessly in beside the cab, having sneaked up in the driver's blind spot while he was concentrating on us. I winced, despite myself. I'd seen the limousine in action before. It moved in beside the taxicab, matching speeds perfectly until it was right opposite the driver's window; and then the black window surface erupted into dozens of long grasping arms with clawed hands. Hooked fingers sank deep into the steel side of the cab, holding it firmly in place, while powerful black arms smashed through the window to get at the cyborged driver. The limousines can smell human flesh, and they're always hungry. The cyborged driver screamed horribly as a dozen clawed hands gripped him fiercely, long barbed fingers sinking deep into flesh and bone, and then they hauled the driver right out of his webbing, tearing the human torso free from its rupturing tubes and cables. They dragged the screaming head and torso out through the shattered window, and into the interior of the limousine. The driver's mouth stretched wide in an endless howl of horror, his eyes almost starting from his head at what he saw waiting for him. He disappeared inside the limousine, there was a brief spurt of blood out the window, and then the black arms snapped back in, the window re-formed itself, and the dark limousine accelerated smoothly away. The empty taxicab shot across the lanes, traffic diving every which way to avoid it, until finally it ran off the road and crashed.

That left just two taxicabs, running now on either side of us, still firing their guns and trying to herd us away from the badlands.

Puff the Magic Dragon had fallen silent. At two thousand rounds a second, it runs out of ammo pretty fast. The taxi guns fell silent too, either because they'd realised their inventory was getting low as well, or perhaps because they'd finally realised the guns weren't doing any damage. The taxis pressed in close on either side, and a dozen long steel blades protruded from the sides of the cabs, aimed right at our windows. Long blades, with strangely blurred edges, and a chill ran through me as I realised what they were.

"Dead Boy," I said, doing my best to sound calm and concerned and not at all like I was filling my trousers, "do you see what I see?"

"Of course I see them," he said, entirely unconcerned. "The car's computers are already running analysis on the blades. Mono-filament edges, one molecule thick. Cut through anything. Someone really doesn't want us going wherever it is we're going. Which means… they must be protecting something really interesting, and I want to know what it is more than ever. We're going to have to do something about those blades, John. The car says her exterior is no match for them, and while she does have a force shield, maintaining it for any length of time will put a serious strain on the engines. I think we're going to have to do this old school. In their face, up close and personal. Just the way I like it. Sweetie, lower the window, please."

His window immediately disappeared, and Dead Boy calmly climbed out the window. It took a certain amount of effort to force his gangling body through the gap, and then he braced himself in the window frame before throwing himself at the taxi-cab. It jerked away at the last moment, as the cyborged driver realised what Dead Boy was planning, but the unnatural strength in Dead Boy's dead muscles propelled him through the air, across the growing gap, until he slammed into the side of the cab, and his dead hands closed inexorably onto the cab's steel frame. He clung to the side of the cab as it lurched back and forth, trying desperately to shake him off. His purple greatcoat streamed out behind him, flapping this way and that in the slipstream. I couldn't hear Dead Boy above the roar of the traffic, but I could see he was laughing.

He drew back a gray fist, and drove it right through the cab's window. The cyborged driver cried out as the reinforced glass shattered, showering him with fragments. The cab was all over the place now, trying to throw Dead Boy off, but he held his balance easily, the fingers of one hand thrust deep into the steel roof, his feet planted firmly on the wheel arch. He leaned in through the empty window, and punched the cabdriver repeatedly in the head with his free hand. Bone shattered and blood flew, and the driver screamed as the force of the blows slammed him all around the cab's interior. Dead Boy grabbed a handful of tubes and cables and pulled them free. Sparks flew and hot fluids spurted, and the driver's face went slack and empty. He collapsed forward across the jerking steering wheel, and Dead Boy threw the cables aside. He checked to make sure he'd done all the damage he could, and then backed out of the cab window. He turned and braced himself, his back pressed against the empty window frame. The cab was a good ten feet away now, but he jumped the increasing gap like he did it every day, and landed easily on the futuristic car's roof. I heard the thud above me, followed by whoops and cheers as Dead Boy applauded himself and challenged all comers to come and have a go, if they thought they were hard enough.

The futuristic car was still driving itself. It didn't need Dead Boy, and it certainly didn't need me, so I gave my full attention to the one remaining taxicab, closing in really fast from the right. Its vicious steel blades were now only a few inches away. One good sideswipe and those blades would punch right through the car's side and gut Liza and me. We'd already retreated as far back as we could, pressed up against the far door; but those blades looked really long… Dead Boy came suddenly swinging in through the driver's window, and dropped back into his seat. He grinned widely, and started to beat a victorious tattoo on the steering wheel before he realised one hand still had bits of glass sticking out of it. So he leaned back in his seat, and set about removing them one at a time from his unfeeling flesh.

"Hi!" he said cheerfully. "I'm back! Did you miss me?"

"You're a lunatic!" said Liza.

"Excuse me," Dead Boy said coldly. "But I wasn't talking to you." And he spoke loving baby talk to his car until I felt like puking.

I did point out the nearness and threat of the remaining taxi, but Dead Boy just shrugged sulkily, suggesting through very clear body language that he felt he'd done his bit, and it was now very definitely my turn. So I very politely asked the car to lower the window facing the taxi, and it did. I peered out into the rushing wind, concentrating on the distance between us as the rushing wind blew tears from my eyes. We were still both moving at one hell of a speed, but the taxi was having no trouble keeping up. The blurry-edged blades were almost touching the car. The cyborged driver glared at me, his lips pulled back in a mirthless grin. His tubes and cables bobbed around him as he stuck close to the futuristic car, despite all it could do to lose him. I leaned out through the car's window and smashed the driver's window with the knuckle-duster I'd slipped on my fist while he wasn't looking.

I always make it a point to carry a number of useful objects in my coat pocket. Because you never know…

The taxi window shattered, glass flying everywhere, and the cyborged driver ducked, yelling obscenities at me as I leaned farther through the empty window and grabbed on to his door frame. I hung in midair between the two vehicles, very much aware that if they pulled apart, I'd very probably be torn in two. And I would have overbalanced and fallen, if Liza hadn't been clinging desperately to my legs in the back of the car. I hauled myself inside the cab, and the taxi driver pointed his arm at me. A dull gray metal nozzle protruded from his wrist, pointing right at my face. I really hadn't expected the driver to have an energy gun implant, but I still knew one when I saw one, and my mind raced for something to do. Time seemed to slow right down, to give me plenty of time to consider the possibilities; but since they all seemed to end with my face being shot off, that didn't help much. I was just about to try a really desperate lunge, when Liza let go of my legs.

I could feel myself sliding out of the car, only a few moments from falling and almost certainly dying, when Liza appeared suddenly beside me, forcing herself into the remaining gap in the car window. The cyborged driver hesitated, as surprised as I was, and while he tried to decide which of us to shoot first, Liza surged forward and grabbed his arm, forcing it to one side. She was more than half out of the car now, and only our two bodies wedged in the car window stopped her from falling.

The cabdriver struggled to bring his gun hand to bear on either of us, while Liza fought to control his flailing arm. I tried to reach him with my knuckle-duster, but I was too far away, and I couldn't risk trying to wriggle farther out the window. And all the time the taxicab and the futuristic car were hurtling through the Nightside at terrible speed, the ground rushing by only a few feet below us.

"Whatever you're planning on doing," Liza yelled to me, "now would be a really good time to do it!"

So I gave up trying to reach the driver, and wriggled back through the car window. Liza clung fiercely to the driver's arm, as she started to fall. He brought his energy gun to bear on her. And I pulled a small blue sachet from my coat pocket, ripped it open, and threw the contents into the driver's face.

Vicious black pepper filled his eyes, blinding him in a moment, shocked tears streaming down his face. He was just starting to sneeze explosively as I pulled Liza away from him, and both of us wriggled back through the window into the backseat of the futuristic car. We sprawled together on the bloodred leather seat, breathing harshly as we struggled to get our breath back.

The taxicab swayed away from us, the driver utterly blind and unable to control his cab for the force of his sneezing. The cab fell away behind us, and a fifty-foot articulated rig ran right over it from behind.

And that was very definitely that.

Liza looked at me speechlessly for a long moment, and then…

"Pepper? That was your great idea? Pepper?"

"It worked, didn't it?" I said reasonably. "Condiments are our friends. Never leave home without them."

Liza shook her head slowly, and then sat up straight, pushing herself away from me, and adjusting her clothes as women do. "Was that… All that just happened, was that normal for the Nightside?"

"Not really, no," I had to admit. "Most people have the sense to leave Dead Boy's car strictly alone. And they certainly should have known better than to take on Dead Boy and myself. We have… reputations. Which can only mean it has to do with your Frank. Someone knows we're coming. Someone who really doesn't want us to know what's happened to Frank. And to justify this kind of open attack… whatever's going on, it must be something really out of the ordinary."

"Which means," Dead Boy said cheerfully, "it must be something new! And I'm always up for something new! On, my lovely car, on to Rotten Row!"

"You're weird," said Liza.

THREE

And so we headed into the badlands. Where the neon gets shoddier and the sins grow shabbier, though no less dangerous or disturbing. If the Nightside is where you go when no one else will have you, the badlands is where you go when even the Nightside is sick of the sight of you. The badlands, where all the furtive people end up, pursuing things even the Nightside is ashamed of… because some things are just too tacky.

The traffic thinned out more and more as we left the major thoroughfares behind, dying away to just the occasional tattooed unicorn with assorted piercings and a Prince Albert, a stretch hearse with the corpse half out of its coffin and beating helplessly against the reinforced windows, and a headless bounty hunter on horseback. The flotsam and jetsam of the Nightside, all hot in pursuit of their own private destinies and damnations. The streets grew narrower and darker, and not only because maybe half the streetlights were working. The shadows were darker and deeper, and things moved in them. More and more buildings had boarded-up windows and broken-in doors, and where lights did sometimes glow in high-up windows, strange shadows moved behind closed blinds. The neon signs remained as gaudy as ever, like poisonous flowers in a polluted swamp. A few people still walked the rain-slick streets, heads down, looking neither left nor right, drawn on by siren calls only they could hear.

Homeless people lurked in the shadows, broken men in tattered clothes. Mostly they moved in packs, because it was safer that way. There are all kinds of predators, in the badlands. And a few good people, fighting a losing battle and knowing it, but fighting on anyway, because they knew a battle is not a war. I saw Tamsin MacReady, the rogue vicar, out in her rounds, determined to do good in a bad place. She recognised Dead Boy's car, and waved cheerfully.

The night grew quieter and more thoughtful, the deeper into the badlands we went, a shining silver presence in a dark place. Working streetlights grew few and far between, and the car cruised quietly from one pool of light to another. Dead Boy tried the high beams, but even they couldn't penetrate far into the gloom, as though there was something in this new darkness that swallowed up light. The roar and clamour of the Nightside proper seemed far away now, left behind as we moved from one country to another. The few people we passed ignored us, intent on their own business. This wasn't a place to draw attention to yourself; unless, of course, you had something to sell.

A tall and willowy succubus, with dead white skin, crimson lingerie, and bloodred eyes, loped along beside the futuristic car for a while, easily matching its speed. She tapped on our polarised windows with her clawed fingertips, whispering all the awful things she would let us do. Liza shrank back from the succubus, her face sick with horror and revulsion. When the succubus realised we weren't going to stop, she increased her speed to get ahead of us and then stepped out into the middle of the road, blocking our way. Dead Boy told the car to put its foot down, and the car surged forward.

The succubus ghosted out, becoming immaterial, and the futuristic car passed right through her. A spectre, tinted rose red and lily white, the succubus drifted at her own pace through the car, ignoring Dead Boy, her inhuman gaze fixed on Liza. A succubus always has a taste for fresh meat. She reached out a ghostly hand to Liza, but I grabbed her wrist and stopped her. It was like holding the memory of an arm, cold as ice, soft as smoke. The succubus looked at me, and then gently pulled her arm free, the ghostly trace passing through my mortal flesh in an eerily intimate moment. She trailed the fingertips of one hand along my face, winked one bloodred eye, and then passed on through the car and was gone.

The badlands grew grimly silent, abandoned and forsaken, as we closed in on Rotten Row. We had left civilisation behind, for something else. Here buildings and businesses pressed tight together in long ugly tenements, as though believing there was strength, and protection, in numbers. Windows were shuttered, doors securely locked, and none of these establishments even bothered to look inviting. Either you knew what you were looking for, or you had no business being here. Enter at your own risk, leave your conscience at the door, and absolutely no refunds.

Welcome, sir. What's your pleasure?

Few people walked the gloomy, desolate streets, and they all walked alone, despite the many dangers, because no one else would walk with them. Or perhaps because the very nature of their needs and temptations had made them solitary. And though most of the figures we passed looked like people, not all of them walked or moved in a human way. One figure in a filthy suit turned suddenly to look at the car as it drifted past, and under the pulled-down hat I briefly glimpsed a face that seemed to be nothing but mouth, full of shark's teeth stained with fresh blood and gristle. It's all about hunger, in the badlands.

Glowing eyes followed the progress of the futuristic car from shadowy alley mouths, rising and falling like bright burning fire-flies. They didn't normally expect to see such a high-class, high-tech car in their neighbourhood. They could get a lot of money, and other things, for a car like ours. And its contents. In the quiet of the street, a baby began to cry; a lost, hopeless, despairing sound. Liza leaned forward.

"Stop. Do you hear that? Stop the car. We have to do something!"

"No, we don't," said Dead Boy.

"We keep going," I said, and turned to Liza as she opened her mouth to protest. "That isn't a baby. It's just something that's learned to sound like a baby, to lure in the unsuspecting. There's nothing out there that you'd want to meet."

Liza looked like she wanted to argue, but something in my voice and in my face must have convinced her. She slumped back in her seat, arms folded tightly across her chest, staring straight ahead. I felt sorry for her, even as I admired her courage and her stubbornness. She was having to take an awful lot on board, most of which would have broken a weaker mind, but she kept going. All for her dearest love, Frank. Husband Frank. What kind of man was he, to inspire such love and devotion… and still end up here, in Rotten Row? I would see this through to the end, because I had said I would; but there was no way this was going to end well.

Interesting, that Dead Boy hadn't even slowed the car. Perhaps — his dead ears heard something in the baby's cry that was hidden from the living.

"This is it, people," he said abruptly, as the car turned a tight corner into a narrow, garbage-cluttered cul-de-sac. "We have now arrived at Rotten Row. Just breathe in that ambience."

"Are you sure?" Liza said doubtfully, peering through the car window with her face almost pressed to the glass. "I can't see… anything. No shops, no businesses, no people. I don't even see a street sign."

"Someone probably stole it," Dead Boy said wisely. "Around here, anything not actually nailed down and guarded by hellhounds is automatically considered up for grabs. But my car says this is the place, and my sweetie is never wrong."

Someone in the tattered remains of what had once been a very expensive suit lurched out of a side alley to throw something at the futuristic car. It bounced back from the car's windscreen, and exploded. The car didn't even rock. There was a brief scream from the thrower as the blast threw him backwards, his clothes on fire. He'd barely hit the ground before a dozen dark shapes came swarming out of all the other alleys to roll his still twitching body back and forth as they robbed him of what little he had that was worth the taking. They were already stripping the smouldering clothes from his dead body as they dragged it off into the merciful darkness of the alley shadows. Liza looked at me angrily, more disgusted than disturbed.

"What kind of a place have you brought me to, John? My Frank wouldn't be seen dead in an area like this!"

"The photo says he's here," I said. "Look."

I held up the two jaggedly torn pieces, pressed carefully together, and concentrated my gift on them. The image of Frank jumped right out of the wedding photo, to become a flickering ghost in the street outside. He was walking hurriedly down Rotten Row, a memory of a man repeating his last journey, imprinted on Time Past. His palely translucent form stalked past the car, his face expectant and troubled at the same time. As though he was forcing himself on, towards some long-desired, long-denied consummation that both excited and terrified him. His pace quickened until he was almost running, his arms flailing at his sides, until at last he came to one particular door, and stopped there, breathing hard. The badly hand-painted sign above the door said simply Silicon Heaven.

Frank smiled for the first time at the sight of it, and it was not a very nice smile. It was the smile of a man who wanted something. men are not supposed to want, not supposed to be able to want. This was more than need, or lust, or desire. This was obsession. He raised a trembling hand to knock, and the door silently opened itself before him.

The doors of Hell are never bolted or barred, to those who belong there.

Frank hurried inside, the door closed behind him, and our glimpse into Time Past came to an end. I busied myself putting the torn pieces of photo away, so I wouldn't have to see the disappointment and betrayal of trust in Liza's face. Dead Boy turned around in his seat to look at us, calmly munching on a chocolate digestive. He didn't care about where we were, or what we were doing here. He was just along for the ride. Apparently when you're dead you only have so much emotion in you, and he doesn't like to waste it. He would go along with whatever I decided. But this wasn't my decision; it was Liza's.

"We don't have to do this," I said, as gently as I could. "We can still turn the car around, and go back."

"After coming all this way to find Frank?" said Liza. "Why would I want to leave, when all the answers are in there waiting for me? I need to know about Frank, and I need to know what happened to my memories."

"We should leave," I said, "because Frank has come to a really bad place. Trust me; there are no good answers to be found in Silicon Heaven."

Liza looked from me to Dead Boy and back again. She could see something in our faces, something we knew and didn't want to say. Typically, she became angry rather than concerned. She wasn't scared and she wasn't put off; she wanted to know.

"What is this place, this Silicon Heaven? What goes on behind that door? You know, don't you?"

"Liza," I said. "This isn't easy…"

"It doesn't matter," she said firmly, resolutely. "If Frank's in there, I'm going in after him."

She wrestled with the door handle, but it wouldn't turn, no matter how much strength she used.

"No one's going anywhere, just yet," Dead Boy said calmly. "We are all staying right here, until John has worked out a plan of action. This is not your world, Liza Barclay; you don't know the rules, how things work, in situations like this."

"He's right, Liza," I said. "This is a nasty business, even for the Nightside, with its own special dangers for the body and the soul."

"But… look at it!" said Liza, gesturing at Silicon Heaven, with its boarded-up window and its stained, paint-peeling door. "It's a mess! This whole street would need an extreme make- over before it could be upgraded enough to be condemned! And this… shop, or whatever it is, looks like it's been deserted and left empty for months. Probably nobody home but the rats."

"Protective camouflage," I said, when she finally ran out of breath. "Remember the baby that wasn't a baby? Silicon Heaven set up business here, because only a location like this would tolerate a trade like theirs; but even so, it doesn't want to draw unwelcome attention to itself. There are a lot of people who object to the very existence of a place like Silicon Heaven, for all kinds of ethical, religious, and scientific reasons. We like to say anything goes in the Nightside, but even we draw the line at some things. If only on aesthetic grounds. Silicon Heaven has serious enemies, and would probably be under attack right now by a mob with flaming torches, if they weren't afraid to come here."

"Are you afraid?" said Liza, fixing me with her cold, determined eyes.

"I try very hard not to be," I said evenly. "It's bad for the reputation. But I have learned to be… cautious."

Liza looked at Dead Boy. "I suppose you're going to say you're never afraid, being dead."

"There's nothing here that bothers me," said Dead Boy, "but there are things I fear. Being dead isn't the worst thing that can happen to you."

"You really do get off on being enigmatic, don't you?" said Liza.

Dead Boy laughed. "You must allow the dead their little pleasures."

"Talking of fates worse than death," I said, and Liza immediately turned back to look at me, "you have to brace yourself, if we're going in there. Just by coming to an establishment like this, Frank is telling us things about himself, and they're things you're not going to want to hear. But you have to know, if we're going in there after him."

"Tell me," said Liza. "I can take it. Tell me everything."

"Silicon Heaven," I said carefully, "exists to cater to people with extreme desires. For men, and women, for whom the ordinary pleasures of the flesh aren't enough. And I'm not talking about the usual fetishes or obsessions. You can find all of that in the Nightside, and more. In Silicon Heaven, science and the unnatural go hand in hand like lovers, producing new forms of sexuality, new objects of desire. They're here to provide extreme and unforgivable outlets for love and lust and everything in between. This is the place where people go to have sex with computers."

Liza looked at me for a long moment. She wanted to laugh, but she could see the seriousness in my face, hear it in my voice, telling her that there was nothing laughable about Silicon I leaven.

"Sex… with computers?" she said numbly. "I don't believe it. How is that even possible?"

"This is the Nightside," said Dead Boy. "We do ten impossible things before breakfast, just for a cheap thrill. Abandon all taboos, ye who enter here."

"I won't believe it until I see it," said Liza, and there was enough in her voice beyond mere stubbornness that I gave the nod to Dead Boy. We were going to have to go all the way with this, and hope there were still some pieces left to pick up afterwards. Dead Boy spoke nicely to his car, and the doors swung open.

We stepped out onto Rotten Row, and the ambience hit us like a closed fist. The night air was hot and sweaty, almost feverish, and it smelled of spilled blood and sparking static. Blue-white moonlight gave the street a cold, alien look, defiantly hostile and unsafe. I could feel the pressure of unseen watching eyes, cold and calculating, and casually cruel. And over all, a constant feeling that we didn't belong here, that we had no business being here, that we were getting into things we could never hope to understand or appreciate. But I have made a business, and a very good living, out of going places where I wasn't wanted, and finding out things no one wanted me to know. I turned slowly around, letting the whole street get a good look at me. My hard-earned reputation was normally enough to keep the flies off, but you never knew what desperate acts a man might be driven to, in a street like Rotten Row.

The futuristic car's doors all closed by themselves, and there was the quiet but definite sound of many locks closing. Liza looked back at the car, frowning uncertainly.

"Is it safe to just leave it here, on its own?"

"Don't worry," said Dead Boy, patting the bonnet fondly. "My sweetie can look after herself."

Even as they were speaking, a slim gun barrel emerged abruptly from the side of the car, and fired a brief but devastating bolt of energy at something moving not quite furtively enough in the shadows. There was an explosion, flames, and a very brief scream. Various shadowy people who'd started to emerge into the street, and display a certain covetous interest in the futuristic car, had a sudden attack of good sense and disappeared back into the shadows. Dead Boy sniggered loudly.

"My car has extensive self-defence systems, a total lack of scruples about using them, and a really quite appalling sense of humour. She kept one would-be thief locked in the boot for three weeks. He'd probably still be there, if I hadn't noticed the flies."

In his own way, he was trying to distract Liza and make her laugh, but she only had eyes for Silicon Heaven. So I took the lead, and strolled over to the door as though I had every right to be there. Liza and Dead Boy immediately fell in beside me, not wanting to be left out of anything. Up close, the door didn't look like much; just an everyday old-fashioned wooden door with the paint peeling off it in long strips… but this was Rotten Row, where ordinary and everyday were just lies to hide behind. I sneered at the tacky brass doorknob, sniffed loudly at the entirely tasteless brass door knocker, and didn't even try to touch the door itself. I didn't want the people inside thinking I could be taken out of the game that easily.

I thrust both hands deep into my coat pockets, and surreptitiously ran my fingertips over certain useful items that might come in handy for a little light breaking and entering. A private investigator needs to know many useful skills. In the end, I decided to err on the side of caution, and gave Dead Boy the nod to start things off, on the grounds that since he was dead, whatever happened next wouldn't affect him as much as the rest of us. He grinned widely, and drew back a gray fist. And the door swung slowly open, all by itself. I gestured quickly for Dead Boy to hold back. A door opening by itself is rarely a good sign. At the very least, it means you're being watched… and, that the people inside don't think they have anything to fear from you entering. Or it could just be one big bluff. The Nightside runs on the gentle art of putting one over on the rubes.

"Are we expecting trouble?" said Liza, as I stood still, considering the open door. “Always," Dead Boy said cheerfully. "It's only the threat of danger and sudden destruction that makes me feel alive."

"Then by all means, you go in first and soak up the punishment," I said generously.

"Right!" said Dead Boy, brightening immediately. He kicked the door wide open and stalked forward into the impenetrable darkness beyond. His voice drifted back to us: "Come on! Give me your best shot, you bastards! I can take it!"

Liza looked at me. "Is he always like this?"

"Pretty much," I said. "This is why most people won't work with him. Personally, I've always found him very useful for hiding behind when the bullets start flying. Shall we go?"

Liza looked at the open doorway, and the darkness beyond, her face completely free of any expression. "I don't want to do this, John. I just know something really bad will happen in there; but I need to know the truth. I need to remember what I've forgotten, whether I want to or not."

She stepped determinedly forward, her small hands clenched into fists at her sides, and I moved quickly to follow her through the doorway. My shoulder brushed against hers, and I could feel the tension in her rock-hard muscles. I thought it was something simple: fear or anticipation. I should have known better.

The darkness disappeared the moment the door closed behind us, and a bright, almost painful glare illuminated the room we'd walked into. Solid steel walls surrounded us, a good forty foot a side, and even the floor and the ceiling were made from the same brightly gleaming metal. Our own distorted images stared back at us from the shining walls. Dead Boy stood in the middle of the room, glaring pugnaciously around him, ready to hit anything that moved or even looked at him funny, but we were the only ones there. There was no obvious way out, and when I looked back, even the door we'd come through had disappeared.

"I don't understand," said Liza. "This room is a hell of a lot bigger than the shop front suggested."

"In the Nightside, the interior of a building is often much bigger than its exterior," I said. "It's the only way we can fit everything in."

There was no obvious source for the sharp, stark light that filled the steel room. The air was dry and lifeless, and the only sounds were the ones we made ourselves. I moved over to the nearest wall, and studied it carefully without touching it. Up close, the metal was covered with faint tracings, endless lines in endless intricate patterns, like… painted-on circuitry. The patterns moved slowly, changing subtly under the pressure of my gaze, twisting and turning as they transformed themselves into whole new permutations. As though the wall was thinking, or dreaming. I gestured for Dead Boy and Liza to join me, and pointed out the patterns. Dead Boy just shrugged. Liza looked at me.

"Does this mean something to you?"

"Not… as such," I said. "Could be some future form of hieroglyphics. Could be some form of adaptive circuitry. But it's definitely not from around here. This is future tech, machine code from a future time line… There are rumours that Silicon Heaven is really just one big machine, holding everything within."

"And we've just walked right into it," said Dead Boy. "Great. Anyone got a can opener?"

He leaned in close to study the wall tracings, and prodded them with a long pale finger. Blue-gray lines leapt from the wall onto his finger and swarmed all over it. Dead Boy automatically pulled his finger back, and the circuitry lines stretched away from the wall, clinging to his dead flesh with stubborn strength. They crawled all over his hand and shot up his arm, growing and multiplying all the time, twisting and curling and leaping into the air. Dead Boy grabbed a big handful of the stuff, wrenched it away, and then popped it into his mouth. Dead Boy has always been one for the direct approach. He chewed thoughtfully, evaluating the flavour. The blue-gray lines slipped back down his arm and leapt back onto the wall, becoming still and inert again.

"Interesting," said Dead Boy, chewing and swallowing. "Could use a little salt, though."

I offered him some, but he laughed, and declined.

Liza made a sudden pained noise, and her knees started to buckle. I grabbed her by one arm to steady her, but I don't think she even knew I was there. Her face was pale and sweaty, and her mouth was trembling. Her eyes weren't tracking; her gaze was fixed on something only she could see. She looked like she'd just seen her own death, up close and bloody. I held her up, gripping both her arms firmly, and said her name loudly, right into her face. Her eyes snapped back into focus, and she got her feet back under her again. I let go of her arms, but she just stood where she was, looking at me miserably.

"Something bad is going to happen," she said, in a small, hopeless voice. "Something really bad…"

A dozen robots rose silently up out of the metal floor, almost seeming to form themselves out of the gleaming steel. More robots stepped out of the four walls, and dropped down from the ceiling. It seemed Silicon Heaven had a security force after all. The robots surrounded us on every side, silent and implacable, blocky mechanical constructs with only the most basic humanoid form. Liza shrank back against me. Dead Boy and I moved quickly to put her between us.

For a long moment the robots stood utterly still, as though taking the measure of us, or perhaps checking our appearance against their records. They were roughly human in shape, but there was nothing of human aesthetics about them. They were purely functional, created to serve a purpose and nothing more. Bits and pieces put together with no covering, their every working open to the eye. There were crystals and ceramics and other things moving around inside them, while strange lights came and went. Sharp-edged components stuck out all over them, along with all kinds of weapons, everything from sharp blades and circular saws to energy weapons and blunt grasping hands. They had no faces, no eyes, but all of them were orientated on the three of us. They knew where we were.

Many things about them made no sense at all, to human eyes and human perspectives. Because human science had no part in their making.

They all moved forward at the same moment, suddenly and without warning, metal feet hammering on the metal floor. They did not move in a human way, their arms and legs bending and stretching in unnatural ways, their centres of gravity seeming to slip back and forth as needed. They reached for us with their blocky hands, all kinds of sharp things sticking out of their fingers. Buzz saws rose out of bulking chests, spinning at impossible speeds. Energy weapons sparked and glowed, humming loudly as they powered up. The robots came for us. They would kill us if they could, without rage or passion or even satisfaction, blunt instruments of Silicon Heaven's will.

I've always prided myself on my ability to talk my way out of most unpleasant situations, but they weren't going to listen. Dead Boy stepped forward, grabbed the nearest robot with brisk directness, picked it up and threw it at the next nearest robot. They both had to have weighed hundreds of pounds, but that was nothing to the strength in Dead Boy's unliving muscles. The sheer impact slammed both robots to the steel floor, denting it perceptibly, the sound almost unbearably loud. But though both robots fell in a heap, they untangled themselves almost immediately and rose to their feet again, undamaged.

Dead Boy punched a robot in what should have been its head, and the whole assembly broke off and flew away. The robot kept coming anyway. Another robot grabbed Dead Boy's shoulder from behind with its crude steel hand, the fingers closing like a mantrap. The purple greatcoat stretched and tore, but Dead Boy felt no pain. He tried to pull free, and snarled when he found he couldn't. He had to wrench himself free with brute strength, ruining his coat, and while he was distracted by that, another robot punched him in the back of the head.

I'm sure I heard bone crack and break. It was a blow that would have killed any ordinary man, but Dead Boy had left ordinary behind long ago. The blow still sent him staggering forward, off balance, and straight into the arms of another robot. The uneven arms slammed closed around him immediately, forcing the breath out of his lungs with brutal strength. But Dead Boy only breathes when he needs to talk. He broke the hold easily, and yanked one of the robot's arms right out of its socket. He used the arm as a club, happily hammering the robot about the head and shoulders, smashing pieces off and damaging others. But even as bits of the robot flew through the air, it kept coming, and Dead Boy had to back away before it. And while he was concentrating on one robot, the others closed in around him.

They swarmed all over him, clinging to his arms, beating at his head and shoulders, trying to drag him down. He struggled valiantly, throwing away one robot after another with dreadful force, but they always came back. He was inhumanly strong, but there were just so many of them. He disappeared inside a crowd of robots, steel fists rising and falling like jackhammers, over and over again, driving Dead Boy to his knees. And then they cut at him, with their steel blades and whirring buzz saws and vicious hands.

While the majority of robots were dealing with Dead Boy, the remainder closed in on me, and Liza. She'd frozen, her face utterly empty, her body twitching and shaking. I gently but firmly pushed her behind me, out of the way. Our backs were to the nearest wall, but not too close.

I was thinking furiously, trying to find a way out of this. Most of my useful items were magical in nature, rather than scientific. And while I knew quite a few nasty little tricks to use against the living and the dead and those unfortunate few stuck in between… I didn't have a damned thing of any use against robots. Certainly throwing pepper into their faces wasn't going to work. I don't carry a gun. I don't usually need them.

I backed up as far as I dared, herding Liza behind me, and fired up my gift. My inner eye snapped open, and immediately my Sight found just the right places for me to stand, and where and when to dodge, so that the robots couldn't touch me. Their blocky hands reached for me again and again, but I was never there, already somewhere else, one step ahead of them. Except the more they closed in, the less room there was for me to move in. I managed to be in the right place to trip a few and send them crashing into one another, but all I was doing was buying time.

I knew what was happening to Dead Boy, but there wasn't a damned thing I could do. One robot aimed an energy weapon at me. I waited till the very last moment, and then sidestepped, and the energy beam seared past me to take out the robot on my other side. It exploded messily, bits and pieces flying across the room. They ricocheted off the other robots harmlessly, but one piece of shrapnel passed close enough to clip off a lock of my hair. Liza didn't react at all.

The robots had discovered they couldn't hurt Dead Boy, so they decided to pull him apart. They grabbed him by the arms and legs, stretched him helpless in midair between them, and did their best to tear him limb from limb. He struggled and cursed them vilely, but in the end, they were powerful machines and he was just a dead man.

Liza darted suddenly forward from behind me, grabbed up the robot arm that Dead Boy had torn off, and used it like a club against the nearest robot. She swung the arm with both hands, using all her strength, her eyes wide and staring, lips drawn back in an animal snarl. She wasn't strong enough to damage the robot, but I admired her spirit. We weren't in her world anymore, but she was still doing her best to fight back. But she still couldn't hope to win, and neither could Dead Boy, so as usual it was down to me.

I concentrated, forcing my inner eye all the way open, till I could See the world so clearly it hurt. I scanned the robots with my augmented vision, struggling to understand through the pain, and it didn't take me long to find the robots' basic weakness. They had no actual intelligence of their own; they were all receiving their orders from the same source, through the same mechanism. I moved swiftly among the robots, dancing in their blind spots, yanking the mechanisms out, one after another. And one by one the robots froze in place, cut off from their central command, helpless without orders. They stood around the metal room like so many modern art sculptures… and I sat down suddenly and struggled to get my breathing back under control, while my third eye, my inner eye, slowly and thankfully eased shut.

I have a gift for finding things, but it's never easy.

Dead Boy pulled and wriggled his way free from the robots holding him, looked in outrage at what they'd done to his purple greatcoat, and kicked some of the robots about for a bit, just to ease his feelings. Liza looked about her wildly, still clutching her robot arm like a club. I got up from the floor and said her name a few times, and she finally looked at me, personality and sanity easing slowly back into her face. She looked at what she was holding, and dropped it to the floor with a moue of distaste. I went over to her, but she didn't want to be comforted.

A voice spoke to us, out of midair. A calm, cultured voice, with a certain amount of resignation in it.

"All right, enough is enough. We didn't think the security bots would be enough to stop the famous John Taylor and the infamous Dead Boy… or should that be the other way round… but we owed it to our patrons to try. You might have been having an off day. It happens. And the bots were nearing the end of their warranty… Anyway, you'd better come on through, and we'll talk about this. I said Liza Barclay would come back to haunt us if we just let her go, but of course no one ever listens to me."

"I've been here… before?" said Liza.

"You don't remember?" I said quietly.

"No," said Liza. "I've never seen this place before." But she didn't sound as certain as she once had. I remembered her earlier premonition, just before the robots appeared, when she'd known something bad was about to happen. Perhaps she'd known be-cause something like it had happened the last time she was here. Unless she was remembering something else, even worse, still to come…

A door appeared in the far wall, where I would have sworn there was no trace of a door just a moment before. A section of the metal just slid suddenly sideways, disappearing into the rest of the wall, leaving a brightly lit opening. I started towards it, and once again Dead Boy and Liza fell in beside me. You'd almost have thought I knew what I was doing. We threaded our way through the motionless robots, and I held myself ready in case they came alive again; but they just stood there, in their stiff awkward poses, utterly inhuman even in defeat. Dead Boy pulled faces at them. Liza wouldn't even look at the robots, all her attention focused on the open door, and the answers it promised her.

We passed through the narrow opening into a long steel corridor, comfortably wide and tall, the steel so brightly polished it was like walking through an endless hall of mirrors. It occurred to me that none of our reflections looked particularly impressive, or dangerous. Dead Boy had lost his great floppy hat in his struggle with the robots, and his marvellous purple greatcoat was torn and tattered. Some of the stitches on his bare chest had broken open, revealing pink-gray meat under the torn gray skin. I keep telling him to use staples. Liza looked scared but determined, her face so pale and taut there was hardly any colour in it. She was close to getting her answers now; but I think, even then, she knew this wasn't going to end well. And I… I looked like someone who should have known better than to come to a place like Rotten Row, and expect any good to come of it.

The corridor finally took a sharp turn to the left, and ushered us into a large antechamber. More steel walls, still no furnishings or comforts, but finally a human face. A tall, slender man in the traditional white lab coat was waiting for us. He had a bland forgettable face, and a wide welcoming smile that meant nothing at all. Slick, I thought immediately. That's the word for this man. Nothing would ever touch him, and nothing would ever stick to him. He'd make sure of that. He strode briskly towards us, one hand stretched out to shake, still smiling, as though he could do it all day. The smile didn't reach his eyes. They were cold, certain, the look of a man utterly convinced he knew important things that you didn't.

Fanatic's eyes. Believer's eyes. Such men are always dangerous.

He dropped his hand when he realised none of us had any intention of shaking it, but he didn't seem especially upset. He was still smiling.

"Hi!" he said brightly. "I'm Barry Kopek. I speak for Silicon Heaven. I'd say it's good to see you, but I wouldn't want to start our relationship with such an obvious lie. So let's get right down to business, shall we, and then we can all get back to our own lives again. Won't that be nice?"

He tried offering us his hand again, and then pulled it back with a resigned shrug, as though he was used to it. And if he was the official greeter for Silicon Heaven, he probably was. Even a ghoul in a graveyard would look down on a computer pimp like him.

"Come with me," he said, "and many things will be made clear. All your questions will be answered; or at least, all the ones you're capable of understanding. No offence, no offence. But things are rather… advanced, around here. Tomorrow has come early for the Nightside, and soon there'll be a wake-up call for everyone. Slogans are such an important part for any new business, don't you agree? Sorry about the robots, but we have so many enemies among the ignorant, and our work here is far too important to allow outside agitators to interfere with it."

"Your work?" I said. "Arranging dates for computers, for people with a fetish for really heavy metal, is important work?"

He looked like he wanted to wince at my crudity, but was far too professional. The smile never wavered for a moment. "We are not a part of the sex industry, Mister Taylor. Perish the thought. Everyone who finds their way here becomes part of the great work. We are always happy to greet new people, given the extreme turnover in… participants. But they all understand! They do, really they do! This is the greatest work of our time, and we are all honoured to be a part of it. Come with me, and you'll see. Only… do keep Mrs. Barclay under control, please. She did enough damage the last time she was here."

Dead Boy and I both looked at Liza, but she had nothing to say. Her gaze was fixed on the official greeter, staring at him like she could burn holes through him. She wanted answers, and he was just slowing her down.

"All right," I said. "Lead the way. Show us this great work."

"Delighted!" said Barry Kopek. I was really starting to get tired of that smile.

He led us through more metal corridors, turning this way and that with complete confidence, even though there were never any signs or directions on the blank steel walls. He kept up an amiable chatter, talking smoothly and happily about nothing in particular. The light from nowhere became increasingly stark, almost unbearably bright. There was a sound in the distance, like the slow beating of a giant heart, so slow you could count the moments between each great beat, but they all had something of time and eternity in them. And there was a smell, faint at first, but gradually growing stronger… of static and machine oil, ozone and lubricants, burning meat and rank, fresh sweat.

"You said Liza's been here before," I said finally, after it became clear that Kopek wasn't going to raise the subject again himself.

"Oh, yes," he said, carefully looking at me rather than at Liza. "Mrs. Barclay was here yesterday, and we let her in, because of course we have nothing to hide. We're all very proud of the work we do here."

"What work?" said Dead Boy, and something in his voice made Kopek miss a step.

"Yes, well, to put it very simply, in layman's terms… We are breaking down the barriers between natural and artificial life."

"If you're so proud, and this work so very great, why did you send those cyborged taxis to attack us?" I said, in what I thought was really a quite reasonable tone of voice. Kopek's smile wavered for the first time. He knew me. And my reputation.

"Ah, yes," he said. "That. I said that was a mistake. You must understand, they were some of our first crude attempts, at melding man with machine. Those men paid a lot of money for it to be done to them, so they could operate more efficiently and more profitably in Nightside traffic. We were very short of funds at the beginning… When they found out you were coming here, Mister Taylor, well, frankly, they panicked. You see, they relied on us to keep them functioning."

"Who told them I was coming?" I said. "Though I'm pretty sure I already know the answer."

"I said it was a mistake," said Barry Kopek. "Are they all…?"

"Yes," I said. He nodded glumly. Still smiling, but you could tell his heart wasn't in it. "I'm not surprised. Your reputation precedes you, Mister Taylor, like an attack dog on a really long leash. It's a shame, though. They only wanted to better themselves."

"By having their humanity cut away?" said Dead Boy, just a bit dangerously.

"They gave up so little, to gain so much," said Kopek, just a bit haughtily. "I would have thought you of all people would appreciate…"

"You don't know me," said Dead Boy. "You don't know anything about me. And no one gets away with attacking my car."

"Being dead hasn't mellowed you at all, has it?" said Kopek.

"Is Frank here?" I said. "Frank Barclay?"

"Well, of course he's here," said Kopek. "It's not like we're holding him prisoner, against his will. He came to us, pursuing his dreams, and we were only too happy to accommodate him. He is here where he wanted to be, doing what he's always wanted to do, happy at last."

"He was happy with me!" said Liza. "He loves me! He married me!"

"A man wants what he wants, and needs what he needs," said Kopek, looking at her directly for the first time. "And Mister Barclay's needs brought him to us."

"Can we see him? Talk to him?" I said.

"Of course! That's where I'm taking you now. But you must promise me you'll keep Mrs. Barclay under control. She reacted very badly to seeing her husband last time."

"She's seen him here before?" I said.

"Well, yes," said Kopek, looking from me to Liza and back again, clearly puzzled. "I escorted her to him myself. Didn't she tell you?"

"No," Liza said quietly, though exactly what she was saying no to, I wasn't entirely sure. She was all drawn up in herself now, looking straight ahead, her gaze fixed, almost disassociated.

The corridor finally ended in a flat featureless wall, in which another door appeared. Kopek led us through, and we all stopped dead to look around, impressed and overwhelmed despite ourselves by the sheer size of the glass-and-crystal auditorium spread out before us. It takes a lot to impress a native of the Nightside, but the sheer scope and scale of the place we'd been brought to took even my breath away. Bigger than any enclosed space had a right to be, with walls like frozen waterfalls of gleaming crystal, set so far apart the details were just distant blurs, under tinted glass ceilings so high above us clouds drifted between us and them. Like some vast cathedral dedicated to Science, the auditorium was so enormous it had generated its own weather systems. Kopek's smile was openly triumphant now, as he gestured grandly with outstretched arms.

"Lady and gentlemen, welcome to Silicon Heaven!"

He led the way forward, between massive machines that had shape and form, but no clear meaning or significance. So complex, so advanced, as to be incomprehensible to merely human eyes. There were components that moved, and revolved, and became other things even as I watched; strange lights that burned in unfamiliar colours; and noises that were almost, or beyond, voices. Things the size of buildings walked in circles, and intricate mechanisms came together in complex interactions, like a living thing assembling itself. Gleaming metal spheres the size of sheepdogs rolled back and forth across the crystal floor, sprouting tools and equipment as needed to service the needs of larger machines. Dead Boy kicked at one of the spheres, in an experimental way, but it dodged him easily. Kopek led the way, and we all followed close behind. This wasn't a place you wanted to get lost in. It felt… like walking through the belly of Leviathan, or like flies crawling across the stained-glass window of some unnatural cathedral… So of course I strolled along with my hands in my coat pockets, like I'd seen it all before and hadn't been impressed then. Never let them think they've got the advantage, or they'll walk all over you. Dead Boy seemed genuinely uninterested in any of it, but then he died and brought himself back to life, and that's a hard act to follow. Liza didn't seem to see any of it. She had a hole in her mind, a gap in her memories, and all she cared about was finding out what had happened the last time she was here. Did she care at all about husband Frank, anymore? Or was she remembering just enough to sense that her quest wasn't for him, and never had been, but only to find the truth about him and her, and this place…

There was a definite sense of purpose to everything happening around us, even if I couldn't quite grasp it, but I was pretty sure there was nothing human in that purpose. Nothing here gave a damn about anything so small as Humanity.

"I was here before," Liza said slowly. "There's something bad up ahead. Something awful."

I looked sharply at Kopek. "Is that right, Barry? Is there something dangerous up ahead, that you haven't been meaning to tell us about?"

"There's nothing awful here," he said huffily. "You're here to see something wonderful."

And finally, we came face-to-face with what we'd come so far to see. A single beam of light stabbed down, shimmering and scintillating, like a spotlight from Heaven, as though God himself was taking an interest. The illumination picked out one particular machine, surrounded by ranks and ranks of robots. They were dancing around the machine, in wide interlocking circles, their every movement impossibly smooth and graceful and utterly inhuman. They moved to music only they could hear, perhaps to music only they could hope to understand, but there was nothing of human emotion or sensibility in their dance. It could have been a dance of reverence, or triumph, or elation, or something only a robot could know or feel. The robots danced, and the sound of their metal feet slamming on the crystal floor was almost unbearably ugly.

Kopek led us carefully through the ranks of robots, and at once they began to sing, in high chiming voices like a choir of metal birds, in perfect harmonies and cadences that bordered on melody without ever actually achieving it. Like machines pretending to be human, doing things that people do without ever understanding why people do them. We passed through the last of the robots and finally… there was Frank, beloved husband of Liza, having sex with a computer.

The computer was the size of a house, covered with all kinds of monitor screens and readouts but no obvious controls, with great pieces constantly turning and sliding across each other. It was made of metal and crystal and other things I didn't even recognise. At the foot of it was an extended hollow section, like a large upright coffin, and suspended within this hollow was Frank Barclay, hanging in a slowly pulsing web of tubes and wires and cables, naked, ecstatic, transported. Liza made a low, painful sound, as though she'd been hit.

Frank's groin was hidden behind a cluster of machine parts, always moving, sliding over and around him like a swarm of metallic bees, clambering over themselves in their eagerness to get to him. Like metal maggots, in a self-inflicted wound. Thick translucent tubes had been plugged into his abdomen, and strange liquids surged in and out of him. Up and down his naked body, parts of him had been dissected away, to show bones and organs being slowly replaced by new mechanical equivalents. There was no bleeding, no trauma. One thigh bone had been revealed from top to bottom, one end bone and the other metal, and already it was impossible to tell where the one began and the other ended. Metal rods plunged in and out of Frank's flesh, sliding back and forth, never stopping. Lights blinked on and off inside him, briefly rendering parts of his skin transparent; and in that skin I could see as many wires as blood vessels.

The computer was heaving and groaning, in rhythm to the things going in and out of Frank's naked body, and the machine's steel exterior was flushed and beaded with sweat. It made… orgasmic sounds. Frank's face was drawn, shrunken, the skin stretched taut across the bone, but his eyes were bright and happy, and his smile held a terrible pleasure. Cables penetrated his skin, and metal parts penetrated his body, and he loved it. One cable had buried itself in his left eye socket, replacing the eyeball, digging its way in a fraction of an inch at a time. Frank didn't care. He shuddered and convulsed as things slid in and out of him, changing him forever, and he loved every last- bit of it.

Liza stood before him, tears rolling silently and unheeded down her devastated face.

I turned to Barry Kopek. "Is he dying?"

"Yes, and no," said Kopek. "He's becoming something else. Something wonderful. We are making him over, transforming him, into a living component capable of being host to machine consciousness. A living and an unliving body, for an Artificial Intelligence from a future time line. It came to the Nightside through a Timeslip, fleeing powerful enemies. It wants to experience sin, and in particular the hot and sweaty sensations of the flesh. It wants to know what we humans know, and take for granted; all the many joys of sex. Together, Frank and the computer are teaching each other whole new forms of pleasure. He is teaching the machine all the colours of emotion and sensuality, and the very subtle joys of degradation. In return, the machine is teaching him whole new areas of perception and conception. Man becomes machine, becomes more than machine, becomes immortal living computer. A metal messiah for a new Age…"

Kopek's face was full of vision now, a zealot in his cause. "Why should men be limited to being just men, and machines just machines? Human and inhuman shall combine together, to become something far superior to either. But like all new life, it begins with sex."

"How many others have there been?" said Dead Boy. "Before Frank?"

"One hundred and seventeen," said Kopek. "But Frank is different. He doesn't just believe. He wants this."

"Oh, yeah," said Dead Boy. "Looks like he's coming his brains out."

Liza collapsed, her knees slamming painfully onto the crystal floor. Her face was twisted, ugly, filled with a horrid knowledge, as all her repressed memories came flooding back at once. She pounded on the floor with her fist, again and again and again.

"No! No, no, no! I remember… I remember it all! I came here, following Frank. Following my husband, into the Nightside, and through its awful streets, all the way here… Because I thought he was cheating on me. I thought he had a lover here. He hadn't touched me in months. I thought he was having an affair, but I never suspected this… Never thought he wanted… this. "

"She talked her way in, yesterday," said Kopek. "Determined to see her husband. But when we brought her here, and showed her, she went berserk. Attacked the computer. Did some little damage, before the robots drove her off. We wouldn't let her hurt Frank, or herself, and after a while she left."

"And she blocked out the memories herself," I said. "Because they were unbearable."

"How could you?" Liza screamed at Frank. "How could you want this} It doesn't love you! It can't love you!"

Frank stirred for the first time, his one remaining eye slowly turning to look down at her. His face showed no emotion, no compassion for the woman he'd loved and married, not so long ago. When he spoke, his voice already contained a faint machine buzz.

"This is what I want. What I've always wanted. What I need… And what you could never give me. I've dreamed of this for years… of flesh and metal coming together, moving together. Thought it was just a fetish, never told anyone… Knew they could never understand. Until someone told me about the Night-side, the one place in the world where anything is possible; and I knew I had to come here. This is the place where dreams come true."

"Including all the bad ones," murmured Dead Boy.

"What about us, Frank?" said Liza, tears streaming down her face.

"What about us?" said Frank.

"You selfish piece of shit!"

Suddenly she was back on her feet again, heading for Frank with her hands stretched out like claws, moving so fast even the robots couldn't react fast enough to stop her. She jumped up and into the coffin, punched her fist into a hole in Frank's side, and thrust her hand deep inside him. His whole body convulsed, the machines going crazy, and then Liza laughed triumphantly as she jerked her hand back out again. She dropped back down onto the crystal floor, brandishing her prize in all our faces. Blood dripped thickly from the dark red muscle in her hand. I grabbed her arms from behind as she shouted hysterically at her husband.

"You see, Frank? I have your heart! I have your cheating heart!"

"Keep it," said Frank, growing still and content again, in the metal arms of his lover. "I don't need it anymore."

And already the machines were moving over him, mopping up the blood and sealing off his wound, working to replace the heart with something more efficient. While the computer heaved and groaned and sweated, Frank sighed and smiled.

It was too much for Liza. She sank to her knees again, sobbing violently. Her hand opened, and the crushed heart muscle fell to the crystal floor, smearing it with blood. She laughed as she cried, the horrid sound of a woman losing her mind, retreating deep inside herself because reality had become too awful to bear. I gave her something to breathe in, from my coat pocket, and in a moment she was asleep. I eased her down until she was lying full length on the floor. Her face was empty as a doll's.

"I don't get it," said Dead Boy, honestly puzzled. "It's just sex. I've seen worse."

"Not for her," I said. "She loved him, and he loved this. To be betrayed and abandoned by a husband for another woman or even a man is one thing, but for a machine? A thing? A computer that meant more to him than all her love, that could do things for him that she never could? Because for him, simple human flesh wasn't enough. He threw aside their love and their marriage and all their life together, to have sex with a computer."

"Can you do anything for her?" said Dead Boy. "We've got to do something, John. We can't leave her like this."

"You always were a sentimental sort," I said. "I know a few things. I'm pretty sure I can find a way to put her back the way she was, when she came to us, and this time make sure the memories stay repressed. No memory at all, of the Nightside or Silicon Heaven. I'll take her back into London proper, wake her up, and leave her there. She'll never find her way back in on her own. And in time, she'll get over the mysterious loss of her husband, and move on. It's the kindest thing to do."

"And the metal messiah?" said Dead Boy, curling his colourless lip at Frank in the computer. "We just turn our back on it?"

"Why not?" I said. "There's never been any shortage of gods and monsters in the Nightside; what's one more would-be messiah? I doubt this one will do any better than the others. In the end, he's just a tech fetishist, and it's just a mucky machine with ideas above its station. Everything to do with sex, and nothing at all to do with love."

You can find absolutely anything in the Nightside; and every sinner finds their own level of Hell, or Heaven.