The Unnatural Inquirer (8 page)

“Vain, obsessive, and very dangerous,” I said.

“Oh, that is so cool. I never get to meet any legends. I just write about them.”

“Best way,” I said. “They’d only disappoint you in person.”

“Like you?” said Bettie.

“Exactly.”

The window display did its best to show off odd bits of future technology, most of which might or might not have been entirely complete, along with oddly shaped things that might have been Objects of Power, alien artifacts or relics of lost histories. Carpets that might fly, eggs that might hatch, puzzle-boxes that might open if only you could find the right operating Words. No price tags on anything, of course. Bargaining was everything, in a place like this.

The sign on the door said CLOSED. I tried the door, and it opened easily. No bell rang as we entered. There was no sign of any shop assistant, or customers, and the state of the place suggested there hadn’t been any for some time. The gloomy interior was so still and silent you could practically hear the dust falling. I called out, in case anyone might still be skulking somewhere, but no-one answered. My voice sounded flat in the quiet, as though the nature of the place discouraged loud noises. Bettie dubiously studied some of the things set out on glass shelves, wrinkling her perfect nose at some of the more organic specimens, while I went behind the counter to check out the till. It was the old-fashioned type, with heavy brass push keys, and pop-up prices. It opened easily, revealing drawers empty save for a handful of change. Beside the till was a letter spike with piled-up bills. I checked through them quickly; they weren’t so much bills as final demands, complete with threats and menaces. Clearly the shop had not been doing well.

A man with this kind of economic pressure hanging over him might well see a way out through fabricating an Afterlife Recording, and then lose his nerve when the time came to actually present it to the Unnatural Inquirer.

I found a set of stairs at the back, leading up to the overhead apartment. I insisted on going first, just in case, and Bettie crowded my back all the way up. The bare wooden steps creaked loudly, giving plenty of advance warning, but when we got to the apartment the door was already slightly ajar. I made Bettie stand back and pushed the door open with one hand. The room beyond was silent and empty of life. I stepped inside and stood by the door, looking around thoughtfully. Bettie pushed straight past me and darted round the place, checking all the rooms. No-one was home. Pen Donavon’s apartment was a dump, with the various sad pieces of his life scattered everywhere. There were no obvious signs that the place had already been searched. It would have been hard to tell.

The furniture was cheap and nasty, the carpet was threadbare, and the single electric light bulb didn’t even have a shade. And yet the main room was dominated by a huge wide-screen television, to which had been bolted a whole bunch of assorted unfamiliar technology. The additions stood out awkwardly, with trailing wires and spiky antennae. Some of it looked like future tech, some of it alien. Lights glowed here and there, to no apparent purpose or function. Presumably it had all been brought up from the shop downstairs. I approached the television and knelt before it, careful to maintain a safe distance. Metal and mirrors, crystal and glass, and a few oily shapes that looked disturbingly organic. Up close, the stuff smelled…bad. Corrupt.

Bettie produced a camera from her embroidered purse and took a whole bunch of photos. She wanted to photograph me, too, and I let her. I was busy thinking. She finally ended up bending down beside me, sniffing disparagingly.

“Isn’t this an absolutely awful place? There’s underwear soaking in the bath, and no-one’s cleaned up in here for months. Some men shouldn’t be allowed to live on their own. You don’t even want to know what I found in the toilet. This television is very impressive, though. Have you ever seen anything like it?”

“No,” I said. “But then future and alien technology isn’t my speciality. This could be genius, or it could be junk.”

“Could it have enabled the television to look in on a broadcast from the Afterlife?”

“Who knows? But I wouldn’t touch any of it, if I were you. It looks…unhealthy.”

“Trust me, darling. I wouldn’t touch that if it offered to buy me champagne.”

I straightened up, and she straightened up with me. Her knees didn’t creak. I looked round the apartment again. For all the clutter, the room was still basically characterless. No paintings or posters on the walls, no personal touches like photos or prized possessions, nothing to show Donavon had ever thought of this place as home. No; it was more like a place to stay while he was passing through on his way to better things. Once he got his lucky break…I was beginning to get an idea of who Pen Donavon might be, one of those desperate dreamers, always chasing that big break, that lucky find that would make him rich and famous and change his life forever. And maybe, this time he had…

I tried my gift again, hoping to pick up a ghost image of Pen Donavon’s past, so I could follow it as he left…but once again the force from Outside slammed my inner eye shut the moment it started to open. I grimaced and shook my head slowly, waiting for the pain to settle. I was going to find out who was behind this, then do something about it. Something really nasty and violent.

“So, what do we do now?” said Bettie, who, despite everything I’d said, persisted on looking at me like I had all the answers.

“When faced with serious questions of a religious nature, there’s only one place to go,” I said. “And that is the Street of the Gods. If only because they always have the best gossip.”

We took the Underground train. There are other ways of getting to the Street of the Gods, but the train is by far the safest. Bettie and I descended into the Underground system and strode through the cream-tiled tunnels covered in the usual graffiti, not all of it in human languages. CTHULHU DOES IT IN HIS SLEEP, was a new addition, along with THE EYES OF WALKER ARE UPON YOU. Bettie went to pay for our tickets, and I stopped her.

“It’s all right, darling!” she said. “When you work for the Unnatural Inquirer, we pay for everything!”

“I don’t pay,” I said. I gestured at the ticket machine, and it opened obediently to let us pass. I smiled just a little smugly at Bettie. “Payment for an old case. One of the trains had gone rogue; people got on and then it wouldn’t let them get off again. You could hear the trapped passengers beating helplessly on the walls, screaming for help.”

“What happened?” said Bettie, her eyes wide. “What did you do?”

“I frightened the train,” I said. “And it let everyone go.”

“I shall never look at a train in the same way again,” said Bettie.

We went down to the platform, giving the various buskers a wide berth. Especially the one singing four part harmonies with himself. It’s one thing to drop a few coins in a hat, because the wheel turns for all of us, but it isn’t always wise to listen to the music they play. Music really can have charms in the Nightside.

The platform was crowded, as usual. Half a dozen members of the Tribe of Gay Barbarians, standing around looking tough with their leathers and long swords, complete with shaved legs, pierced nipples, and heavy face make-up. A silverback gorilla wore an exquisitely cut formal suit, complete with top hat, cane, and a monocle screwed firmly into one eye. A Grey alien wearing fishnet stockings and suspenders, passing out tracts. And a very polite Chinese demon, sipping hot steaming blood from a thermos. The usual crowd.

The destination board offered the usual possibilities: SHADOWS FALL, HACELDAMA, STREET OF THE GODS. There are other destinations, other possibilities, but you have to go down into the deeper tunnels for those; and not everyone who goes down that far comes back up again.

A train roared in, right on time. A long, silvery bullet, preceded by a blast of approaching air that smelled of other places. The carriages were solid steel tubes, with only the heavily reinforced doors standing out. No windows. To get to its various destinations, the train had to travel through certain intervening dimensions; and none of them were the kinds of places where you’d want to see what was outside. The door hissed open, and Bettie and I stepped into the nearest carriage. The seats were green leather, and the steel walls were reassuringly thick and heavy. No-one else wanted to get into our carriage, despite the crowd on the platform.

The trip to the Street of the Gods was mostly uneventful. The few things that attacked us couldn’t get in, and the dents in the steel walls had mostly smoothed themselves out again by the time the train pulled into the station. Bettie was still laughing and chattering as we made our way up the elevators to the Street of the Gods. You learn to take such things in your stride in the Nightside.

On the Street of the Gods, you can find a Church to pretty much anything that anyone has ever believed in. They stretched away forever, two long rows of organised worship, where the gods are always at home to callers. Prayers are heard here, and answered, so it pays to be careful what you say. You never know who might be listening. The most important Beings get the best spots, while everyone else fights it out for location in a Darwinian struggle for survival. Sometimes I think the whole Nightside runs on irony.

Most of the Beings on the Street of the Gods didn’t want to talk to me. In fact, most of them hid inside their churches behind locked and bolted doors and refused to come out until I’d gone. Understandable; they were still rebuilding parts of the Street from the last time I’d been here. But there are always some determined to show those watching that they aren’t afraid of anyone, so a few of the more up-and-coming Beings sauntered casually over to chat with me. A fairly ordinary-looking priest who said he was the newly risen Dagon. Stack! The Magnificient; a more or less humanoid alien who claimed to be slumming it from a higher dimension. And the Elegant Profundity, a guitar-carrying avatar from the Church of Clapton, who was so laid-back he was practically horizontal. The small and shifty God of Lost Things hung around, evasive as always. None of them professed to know anything about a broadcast from the Afterlife, let alone a DVD recording. Most of them were quite intrigued by the thought.

“It can’t be authentic,” said Dagon. “I mean, we’re in the business of faith, not hard evidence. And if there had ever been a broadcast from the Hereafter, we’d have heard about it long before this.”

“And just the idea of recording one is so…tacky,” Stack! said, folding his four green arms across his sunken chest.

“But it could be very good for business,” said the Elegant Profundity, strumming a minor chord on his Rickenbacker.

The group went very thoughtful.

“There’s money to be made here,” said Dagon. “Serious money. And there’s nothing like business success to bring in bigger congregations. Everyone loves a winner.”

“But…if this recording should prove real, and accurate, it would provide proof of What Comes After,” Stack! said. “And the last thing anyone here wants is hard evidence of that. We derive our power from faith and worship. A true and actual Afterlife Recording could drive a lot of us out of business. Besides, most of Humanity isn’t ready for the truth.”

I regarded him thoughtfully. “Are you saying you know What Comes Next?”

Stack! squirmed uncomfortably, which given his rather fluid shape was a somewhat disturbing sight. “Well, no, not as such. I may be from a higher dimension, but not that high.”

“You have to have faith,” said the Elegant Profundity. “Solid evidence of the true nature of Heaven or Hell would only screw up everyone’s life. It’s one thing to suppose, quite another to know.”

“This whole situation raises more questions than I’m comfortable with,” I said. “What exactly is the DVD a recording of? Have there always been broadcasts from Heaven and Hell, and we never knew? And who were the broadcasts aimed at?”

“Each other?” said Bettie. “Maybe they just like to…keep in touch.”

“But then why has no-one ever intercepted one of these broadcasts before?” I said. “Why should it suddenly turn up on someone’s television set, no matter how much work’s been done to it? And if anyone here so much as mentions moving in a mysterious way, I shall get cranky. Quite seriously and violently cranky.”

“If there were such communications, on a regular basis, we would know about it,” Dagon said firmly. “It’s our job to provide mysteries and wonder, not grubby little facts.”

“But what if it is true,” Stack! said wistfully. “Was this interception of the broadcast a mistake, or deliberate? Are we supposed to know, at last? And who or what is behind it; and what could they hope to gain?”

“Money, probably,” said the Elegant Profundity, and everyone nodded solemnly.

“Maybe we should all do our own DVDs,” Stack! said. “Can’t risk falling behind…Let’s face it, you can’t have too much publicity.”

“Sure,” said the Elegant Profundity. “I’ve been releasing CDs on a regular basis ever since I got here. Rock and Roll Heaven won’t build itself, you know.”

“Yes, yes!” said Bettie Divine. “The Unnatural Inquirer could give away a new DVD every week, with the Sunday edition! Build your own collection!”

“We don’t want the faithful sitting at home in front of their televisions,” Dagon said firmly. “We want them here, in our Churches.”

“We already sell religious statues, and reliquaries, and blessed artifacts,” Stack! said reasonably. “DVDs are the future. For now. Does anyone here know about this Extra Definition thing?”

“New formats are the invention of the Devil,” said the Elegant Profundity. “He’s always been big on temptation. But people would pay through the nose for teachings direct from their God! And even second-hand faith is better than none.”

“Royalty cheques outweigh collection plates any day,” Stack! said. “I want you all to concentrate on one word: franchise…”

“Oh, come on!” said Dagon. “Where’s that going to lead, the McChurch? You’ll be talking about bringing in image consultants and focus groups next.”

“Why not?” Stack! replied. “We have to move with the times. Faith is fine, but wealth lasts longer.”