Paths Not Taken

Seven - Some Unpleasantness at the Londinium Club

Only those personages of extreme power, prestige, or parentage can hope to gain admittance to the oldest private members' club in the world. Just fame, wealth, or knowing the right people won't do it. The Londinium Club was and is extremely exclusive, and the merely heroic or significant need not apply. There are those who say Camelot operated on a pretty similar principle. All I know for sure is that neither establishment would let me in without a fight.

We found the Londinium Club easily enough. It was a large, dignified building in a much more salubrious area of the Nightside. The traffic was quieter, the pedestrians were of a much-better-dressed class, and there wasn't a brothel anywhere in sight. Still a hell of a lot of shit in the street, mind. I stopped before the front door of the Club, and looked the place over. The exterior looked pretty much the

same as the last time I'd seen it, back in my Present. Old, old stone decorated with sexually explicit Roman bas-reliefs, surrounding a large and very solid oak door. And when I say sexually explicit, I'm talking about the kind of images that would have made Caligula blush, and maybe dash for the vomitorium. Suzie regarded the designs calmly, while Tommy started searching his pockets for a paper and pencil, to make notes.

Standing in front of the main entrance was the Doorman, a solid and immovable presence whose function and delight it was to keep out the unworthy. He was protected against any form of attack, by Powers known and unknown, was strong enough to tear a bull in half, and was, supposedly, immortal. Certainly he was still around in my time, large as life and twice as obnoxious. The Doorman was a snob's snob, and he gloried in it. He was currently a short, stocky man in a purple Roman toga, with bare muscular arms folded firmly across an imposing chest. I half expected him to be wearing a sash saying they shall not pass. He stood proudly erect, nose in the air, but his eyes missed nothing. He'd already noticed us.

"I could shoot him," said Suzie.

"Don't even think it," I said quickly. "The Doorman is seriously protected. And besides, we already know you didn't kill him, because I already met him, back in the Present, during my last case."

"I hate circular reasoning like that," said Suzie. "Let's shoot him anyway and see what happens."

"Let's not," I said, very firmly. "This is the kind of place where they have you impaled for being late with your membership dues. For once, our usual tactics of brute force and ignorance will not win the day. We're going to have to talk our way past him."

"Get to the front, Tommy," said Suzie. "You're on."

"I knew you were going to say that," said Tommy.

We approached the front door, and the Doorman actually

stepped forward to block our way, one meaty hand held out in warning.

"All right, that's as far as you go. You three are not at all welcome here. Ever. I still remember you from the trouble you caused the last time you were here, some two hundred years ago."

"Guess where we're going next," murmured Tommy.

"Shut up," I hinted.

"We must have made a pretty big impression on the man," said Suzie.

"You always do, Suzie," I said generously. I smiled at the Doorman. "Look, I know we're not actually Members, but we only want to pop in for a moment and maybe ask a few questions. Then we'll be gone and out of your life. Won't that be nice?"

"Members only means Members only," growled the Doorman. "Leave now. Or I will be compelled to use force."

Suzie started to reach for her shotgun. "No!" I said urgently. "When I said the Doorman was protected, I meant by everyone who's a Club Member. And that means he can draw on the powers of sorcerers, elves, and minor godlings to stop us."

"Ah," said Suzie. "So shooting him wouldn't work?"

"No."

"I've got these special grenades ..."

"No!" I turned to Tommy. "You're up. Mess with the man's head."

Tommy Oblivion stepped forward, smiling confidently. The Doorman considered him warily.

"We're not from around here, old thing," Tommy said easily. "You probably already noticed that. In fact, we're not from this place, or this time. We're from the future. Some sixteen hundred years from now, to be exact. And in that future, my friends and I are Members of your Club."

"What?" said the Doorman. Whatever he'd been expecting to hear, that clearly wasn't it.

"We are Members, where and when we come from. Which means, technically speaking, we are also Members here and now. Once a Member, always a Member, right?"

The Doorman frowned as he thought about that. Thinking clearly wasn't what he did best. He brightened up as an idea came to him.

"If you're a Member," he said slowly, "you know the secret handshake."

Tommy raised an eyebrow. "There is no secret handshake, dear fellow. But there is a secret password, which I have written down on this piece of paper."

He showed the Doorman his empty hand. The Doorman looked at it closely, moving his lips as though reading, then nodded reluctantly and stepped back to let us pass. He was frowning heavily, as though his head hurt. The oak door swung open before us, and I led the way into the lobby beyond. Once the door was safely shut behind us, I looked at Tommy.

"You made him see something that wasn't there."

"Of course," said Tommy. "It's my gift to be convincing. Besides, in some alternate time-line we probably are Members. Or at least, I am."

I sniffed. "I still didn't get to do anything."

"You will, you will," Suzie said soothingly. 'This place is bound to be packed with all the kinds of people you detest the most. I'm sure you'll find someone worth upsetting in some thoroughly appalling and vindictive way."

I sniffed again, unconvinced, and looked around the Club lobby. It still had some of the old Roman magnificence I remembered from my last visit, with gleaming tiled walls and marble pillars, but instead of thick carpeting on the floor there were only trampled rushes, strewn here and there in clumps, and the high ceiling had been covered in

thick Druidic designs that looked like they'd been daubed with woad. The only lighting came from oversized oil-lamps, and the perfumed air was hot and flat and a little stale. There was a sense that the Club had declined somewhat from its original glory days in Roman times and had yet to develop its own style. Certainly the Romans would never have put up with this much mess. The rushes on the floor looked like they hadn't been changed in days, and there were smoke and soot streaks on the walls above the oil-lamps. Stains here and there suggested spillages of all kinds.

A servant, or more probably a slave, given the iron collar bolted around his neck, came forward hesitantly to greet us. Something about us clearly upset him because he stopped dead in his tracks, and yelled Security! at the top of his lungs. A panel slammed open in one of the walls, revealing a hidden alcove, from whose dark depths a hideous crone emerged, spitting and cackling. She was clearly some kind of witch, with stray magics sputtering and discharging around her clawed hands. She was a twisted figure in rags and tatters, with a heavy iron chain leading back into the alcove from the slave collar around her scrawny throat. She lurched towards us, her eyes wide with madness and thwarted rage. I could feel the power building around her as she muttered ancient words in a deep guttural voice, and I knew that as soon as she oriented on us, we'd be in deep shit.

So I raised my gift only long enough to find the spell that kept her from breaking her chain and slave collar, and removed it. The collar snapped open, and the chain fell away from her. The witch broke off in mid spell, and lurched to a halt. She kicked tentatively at the chain on the floor, and it rattled helplessly. The witch grinned slowly, revealing a handful of yellowed teeth, then she turned to look at the slave who'd called her out of the alcove. He turned and ran, but he was a grease spot on the floor before he'd made half a dozen steps.

The witch raised her clawed hands and howled a ululating shriek of triumph and vengeance long desired. Vicious spells detonated on the air all around her, blasting holes in the walls and floor. Armed men came running from all directions, and the witch turned to face them with vindictive glee on her shrivelled face. Fires started, gale winds blew, and the armed men started exploding, blowing apart in showers of bloody gobbets.

"Happy now you've done something?" said Suzie.

"Very," I said.

Unnoticed in the general chaos, we strolled across the lobby and let ourselves into the dining room. We shut the door firmly behind us, and the din of the pandemonium shut off immediately. No-one looked up as we came in. Whatever the noise was, that was slaves' business and nothing to do with the Members. Most of them were reclining on couches to eat, in the old Roman style, giving their full attention to excellent food and drink, and good company. And probably paying more for that one meal than most people in the sixth century made in their entire lives.

Some of the diners still wore the old-fashioned Roman toga, but most wore simple tunics, with or without leather armour and trappings. The majority of the diners were human, but there were also quite a few elves, looking studiedly disdainful of their surroundings even as they gorged themselves on human delicacies, and a handful of gargoyles eating live mice and playing with their food in a quite distressing manner. The diners were being served by male and female slaves, some barely more than children, all of them wearing fixed, empty expressions. They were naked save for the iron collars round their throats, and all of them carried scars and whip marks.

"Slavery," said Tommy, his voice full of revulsion. "I knew about it, knew there were slaves even in King Arthur's time, but I never really ... some of them are just kids!"

"This is the way things were," I said. "And will be, for centuries after. And get that look out of your eye, Tommy. I only freed that witch to provide a distraction. We start freeing slaves on a grand scale, and you can bet all the Powers here will rise up against us. We can't change a whole culture. That's not why we're here. And besides, we don't dare make any big changes if we want to return to our own Present, remember?"

"I remember," said Tommy. "But I don't have to like it."

There was an edge in his voice, a cold anger that hadn't been there before. I liked him better for it.

"Join the club," I said.

"I don't see any sign of Merlin," said Suzie, all business as usual. "And I'm pretty sure he'd stand out, even in this crowd. Want me to grab somebody and shake some answers out of them?"

"I think it might be better if I was to ask a few polite questions," I said. "On the grounds that I have at least heard of diplomacy."

A tall, elegant, and distinctly supercilious type was already heading in our direction, threading his way gracefully between the couches, bestowing smiles and sweet nothings on the people he passed. He wore a blindingly white tunic and no iron collar. He came to a halt before me, dismissing Suzie and Tommy with a mere flick of the eyes, and raised a painted eyebrow a carefully calculated fraction of an inch.

"I am the Steward," he said. "And you are very definitely not Members. Not ever likely to be. I don't know how you got in here, but you will have to leave immediately."

I smiled at him. "You know all that chaos and destruction that's currently going on in your lobby? All the fires and explosions and parts of deceased security people flying through the air? I did that."

"Take a couch," the Steward said resignedly. "I suppose you'll be wanting something to eat, before security

can put together a big enough force to restore order and throw the three of you out of here? Today's specials are larks' tongues in aspic and baby mice stuffed with hummingbird tongues."

Tommy winced. "Do you have anything that doesn't involve tongues?"

"Don't sit down, Suzie," I said. "We're not staying for dinner."

"You might not be," said Suzie. She'd already snatched a breaded drumstick from a nearby diner and was chewing it with a thoughtful look on her face. The diner sensibly decided not to make a fuss.

"We're looking for the sorcerer Merlin," I said to the Steward. "Merlin Satanspawn. He is a Member here, isn't he?"

"Only because nobody dared blackball him," said the Steward, his lip curling. "But even so, he doesn't dare show his face here any more. Not since the King and most of his knights fell in battle, in the last great contest against the bastard Mordred's forces; and all because Merlin wasn't there to support his King. The pretender died, too, his forces scattered, but still the age of Logres is over. Camelot is simply a castle now, with an empty Throne and a broken Table, and the ideals of the Court are already falling apart. The end of an age; and all because one man wasn't where . he should have been. You want Merlin Satanspawn? Try a tavern. Any tavern."

There was just enough bitterness in his voice to make him convincing. I gathered Suzie and Tommy up with my eyes and led them back out of the dining room. And as I left I raised my gift, found the spell that held the iron collars around the slaves' throats, and undid it. The collars sprang open, and the magic that had kept the slaves docile fell away in a moment. Some of the slaves attacked the diners, while others ran for their lives and their freedom. The dining room quickly descended into chaos.

"You big softie," said Suzie.

"There's some shit I just will not put up with," I admitted.

We strolled back through the lobby, most of which was on fire. There was no sign of the witch anywhere, but a great crevice had opened up in the middle of the floor, belching out soot and cinders and smoke that smelled strongly of brimstone. My work here is done, I thought, a little smugly. We nodded cheerfully to the Doorman as we passed him, then stood together in the street wondering where we should try next. God alone knew how many taverns, inns, and hole-in-the-wall drinking dives there were in the sixth-century Nightside, and I really didn't feel like searching them all. On the other hand, I also didn't feel like using my gift again. I'd been using it far too often, almost casually, and that was dangerous. Flare up often enough in the dark, and my Enemies would be bound to notice me, no matter how far I was in the Past. From their future vantage point, I was always in the Past.

"Strangefellows," I said suddenly. "That's where Merlin will be. Or whatever the oldest bar in the world is currently called. I remember the Merlin of our time telling me that he often drank there, to get away from the overbearing niceness of Camelot. That's probably why he chose to be buried in the bar's cellars, after he was killed. Yes. That's where we'll find him." I looked at Suzie. "You're frowning. Why are you frowning, Suzie?"

"Lilith brought us here, right?" said Suzie. "Had to be a reason. Could be because she wanted us to meet with Merlin. He is the leading major player in this Nightside. And if that's so, do we want to do what she wants us to do?"

"I'm past caring," I said. "All this guessing and double-guessing. I want to get this over with and get out of here. I want to witness the creation of the Nightside, so I can get my answers, so I can finally be rid of Lilith's influence in my life. I want this to be over!"

"Easy, John, easy," said Tommy, and it was only then that I realized my voice had risen to a shout.

"It'll never be over, John," said Suzie, as kindly as she could. "You know that."

"I can't believe that," I said. "I can't afford to believe that."

There was a long pause, then Tommy said, "If we can't find Merlin here in the Nightside ... could we please try Camelot? I've always dreamed of visiting that legendary Castle, seeing the famous Round Table, and-"

"You heard the Steward," I said, perhaps a little roughly. "It's a mess there right now. All the heroes are dead, and the dream's over. We'll find Merlin in Strangefellows. Where else could such a disgraced man go to drown his sorrows in peace?"

"All right," said Tommy, resignedly. "Fire up your gift and point us in the right direction."

"There's an easier way," I said. I looked back at the Doorman. "The oldest bar in the world. What's it called, and where is it?"

He gave me a withering look. "Give me one good reason why I should assist you?"

"Because," I said, "if you don't, my companions and I will hang around here for hours and hours, acting cranky and lowering the tone."

"The bar you're looking for is called Avalon," said the Doorman. And he provided us with very clear and distinct directions, just to be sure we wouldn't have to come back and ask him again.