Suzie was crashed out on her only piece of furniture, a long couch upholstered in deep red leather.
So it won’t show the blood,
Suzie had said when I asked, so I stopped asking. She ignored me as I entered the room, her attention fixed on the local news showing on her more modest television set. The room never ceased to depress me. It was bleak, and so empty. Bare wooden floor-boards, bare plaster walls, apart from a huge life-size poster of Diana Rigg as Mrs. Emma Peel in the old
Avengers
TV show. Suzie had scrawled
My Idol
across the bottom, in what looked suspiciously like dried blood.
Her DVDs were stacked in piles against one wall. Her Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan movies, her much-watched copies of
Easy Rider
and Marianne Faithful in
Girl on a Motorcycle.
She also had a fond spot for James Cameron’s
Aliens
and his two
Terminator
movies. Plus a whole bunch of Roger Cor-man’s Hells Angels movies, which Suzie always claimed were comedies.
She was wearing her favourite Cleopatra Jones T-shirt over battered blue jeans, and scratching idly at the bare belly between the two, while eating deep-fried calamari nuggets from a bucket. I sat down beside her, and we watched the local news together. The impossibly beautiful presenter was in the middle of a story about a proposed strike by the Nightside sewer workers, who were holding out for bigger flame-throwers and maybe even bazookas. Apparently the giant ants were getting to be a real problem.
Next, a new Timeslip had opened up in a previously unaffected area, and already members of the Really Dangerous Sports Club were racing to the location, so they could throw themselves in and be the first to find out where they’d end up. Nobody was trying to stop them. In the Nightside we’re great believers in letting everyone go to Hell in their own way.
And finally, a fanatical Druid terrorist had turned up in the Nightside with his very own backpack nuke wrapped in mistletoe. Fortunately, he had a whole list of demands he wanted to read out first, and he hadn’t got half-way through them before Walker turned up, used his commanding Voice on the Druid, and made him eat his bomb, bit by bit. People were already placing bets as to how far he’d get before the plutonium gave him terminal indigestion.
Without looking away from the screen, Suzie reached out and placed her left hand lightly on my thigh. I sat very still, but she took the hand away again almost immediately. She tries hard, but she can’t bear to be touched, or to touch anyone else in a friendly way. She was abused as a child, by her own brother; and it left her psychologically scarred. I would have killed the brother, but Suzie beat me to it, years ago. We’re working on the problem, taking our time. We’re as close as we can be.
So I was surprised when she deliberately put down her calamari bucket, turned to me, and put both her hands on my shoulders. She moved her face in close to mine. I could feel her steady breath on my lips. Her cool, controlled expression didn’t change at all, but I could feel the growing tension in her hands on my shoulders, the sheer effort she had to put into such a small gesture. She snatched her hands away and turned her back on me, shaking her head.
“It’s all right,” I said. Because you have to say something.
“It’s not all right! It’ll never be all right!” She still wouldn’t look at me. “How can I love you when I can’t touch you?”
I took her shoulders in my hands, as gently as I could, and turned her back to face me. She tensed under my touch, despite herself. She met my gaze unflinchingly for a moment, then lunged forward, pressing me back against the couch. She put both her hands on my chest and kissed me with painful fierceness. She kissed me for as long as she could stand it, then pushed herself away from me. She jumped up from the couch and moved away from me, hugging herself tightly as though afraid she’d fly apart. I didn’t know what to say, or do.
So it was probably just as well that the doorbell rang. I went to answer it, and there at my front door was Walker himself. The man who ran the Nightside, inasmuch as anyone does, or can. A dapper middle-aged gentleman in a smart City suit, complete with old-school tie, bowler hat, and furled umbrella. Anyone else you might have mistaken for someone in the City, some nameless functionary who kept the wheels of business or government turning. But you only had to look into his calm, thoughtful eyes to know how dangerous he was, or could be. Walker had the power of life and death in the Nightside, and it showed. He smiled easily at me.
“Well,” I said. “This is . . . unexpected. I didn’t think you did house calls. I wasn’t even sure you knew where we lived.”
“I know where everyone is,” said Walker. “All part of the job.”
“As a matter of interest,” I said, “how did you get past all the mines, man-traps, and shaped charges we put down to discourage the paparazzi?”
“I’m Walker.”
“Of course you are. Well, you’d better come in.”
“Yes,” said Walker.
I took him into Suzie’s living-room. He was clearly distressed by the state of the place, but was far too well brought up to say anything. So he smiled brightly, tipped his bowler hat to Suzie, and sat down on the couch without any discernable hesitation. I sat down beside him. Suzie leaned back against the nearest wall, arms tightly folded, glaring unwaveringly at Walker. If he was in any way disturbed, he did a good job of hiding it. Surprisingly, he didn’t immediately launch into whatever business had brought him to my home for the very first time. Instead, he made small-talk, was polite and interested and even charming, until I felt like screaming. With Walker, you’re always waiting for the other shoe to drop. Usually he speaks to me only when he absolutely has to—when he wants to hire me, or have me killed, or drop me right in it. This new friendly approach . . . just wasn’t Walker. But I played along, nodding in all the right places, while Suzie scowled so fiercely it must have hurt her forehead.
Finally, Walker ran out of inconsequential things to say and looked at me thoughtfully. Something big was coming—I could feel it. So I did my best to avert it with other business, if only to assert my independence.
“So,” I said. “Did you get all the Parlour’s patients safely back to their home dimension?”
“I’m afraid not,” said Walker. “Less than half, in the end. Many didn’t survive being separated from their life-support technology. Many more died from the shock of what had been done to them. And quite a few were in no fit physical or mental state to be sent anywhere. They’re being cared for, in the hope that their condition will improve, but the doctors . . . are not hopeful.”
“Less than half?” I said. “I didn’t go through all that just to save less than half!”
“You saved as many as you could,” said Walker. “That’s always been my job—to save as many people as possible.”
“Even if you have to sacrifice some of your own people along the way?” I said.
“Exactly,” said Walker.
“Why should you get to decide who lives and who dies?” said Suzie.
“I don’t,” said Walker. “That’s up to the Authorities.”
“But they’re dead,” I said. “We were both there when they were killed and eaten by Lilith’s monstrous children. So who . . . exactly . . . pulls your strings these days?”
“The new Authorities,” said Walker, smiling pleasantly. “That’s why I’m here. I need you to come with me and meet the new Authorities.”
I considered him thoughtfully. “Now you know very well I’ve never got on with authority figures.”
“These people . . . are different,” said Walker.
“Why now?” I said.
“Because the Walking Man has finally come to the Nightside,” said Walker.
I sat up straight, and Suzie pushed herself away from the wall. Walker’s voice was as cool and collected as always, but some statements have a power all their own. I would have sworn the room was suddenly colder.
“How do you know it’s really him and not just some wannabe?” said Suzie.
“Because it’s my business to know things like that,” said Walker. “The Walking Man, the wrath of God in the world of men, the most powerful and scariest agent of the Good, ever, has come at last to the Nightside to punish the guilty. And everyone here is either running for the horizon, barricading themselves in while arming themselves to the teeth, or hiding under their beds and wetting themselves. And every single one of them is looking to the new Authorities to do something.”
Suzie paced up and down the room, scowling heavily, her thumbs tucked in the top of her jeans. She might have been worried, or she might have been relishing the challenge. She wasn’t scared. Suzie didn’t get scared or intimidated. Those were things that happened to other people, usually because of Suzie. She sat down abruptly on the edge of the couch, next to me. Close though she was, she still didn’t quite touch me. I caught Walker noticing that, and he nodded slowly.
“So close,” he said. “In every way but one.”
I gave him my best hard look, but to his credit he didn’t flinch. “Is there anything you don’t know about?” I said.
He smiled briefly. “You’d be surprised.”
“It’s none of your business,” said Suzie. “And if you say anything to anyone, I’ll kill you.”
“You’d be surprised how many people already know, or guess,” said Walker. “It’s hard to keep secrets in the Nightside. I am merely . . . concerned.”
“Why?” I said bluntly. “What are we, to you? What have I ever been to you, except a threat to your precious status quo, or an expendable agent for some mission too dangerous or too dirty for your own people? And now, suddenly, you’re
concerned
about me? Why, for God’s sake?”
“Because you’re my son,” said Walker. “In every way that matters.”
He couldn’t have surprised me more if he’d taken out a gun and shot me. Suzie and I looked blankly at each other, then back at Walker, but he gave every indication of being perfectly serious. He smiled briefly, holding his dignity close about him.
“We’ve never really talked, have we?” he said. “Only shared a few threats and insults, in passing . . . or discussed the details of some case we had to work on together. All very brisk and businesslike. You can’t afford to get too close to someone you know you may have to kill one day. But things are different now, in so many ways.”
“I thought you had two sons?” I said. I didn’t know what else to say.
“Oh yes,” said Walker. “Good boys, both of them. We don’t talk. What could we talk about? I’ve gone to great pains to ensure that neither they nor their mother has any idea what it is I do for a living. They know nothing about the Nightside, or the terrible things I have to do here, just to keep the peace. I couldn’t bear it if they knew. They might look at me as though I were some kind of monster. I used to be so good at keeping my two lives separate. Two lives, two Walkers, doing my best to give equal time to both. But the Nightside is a jealous mistress . . . and what used to be my real life, my sane and rational life, got sacrificed to the greater good.
“My boys, my fine boys . . . are strangers to me now. You’re all I’ve got, John. The only son of my oldest friend. I’d forgotten how much that time meant to me, until I met your father again during the Lilith War. Those happy days of our youth . . . We thought we were going to change the world; and unfortunately we did. Now your father is gone, again, and you’re all I’ve got left, John. Perhaps the nearest thing to a real son I’ll ever have. The only son who could ever hope to understand me.”
“How many times have you tried to kill me?” I said. “Directly, or indirectly?”
“That’s family for you,” said Walker. “In the Nightside.”
I looked at him for a long time.
“Don’t listen to him,” said Suzie. “You can’t believe him. It’s Walker.”
“The words
manipulative
and
emotional blackmail
do spring to mind,” I said. “This is all so sudden, Walker.”
“I know,” he said calmly. “I put it all down to midlife crisis myself.”
“And where does all this leave us?” I said.
“Exactly where we were before,” said Walker. “We’ll still probably end up having to kill each other, someday. For what will no doubt seem like perfectly good reasons at the time. But it means . . . I’m allowed to be concerned. About you, and Suzie. And no, you don’t get a say in the matter.”