Agents of Light and Darkness

  Suzie and I exchanged a glance. If these were angels in a weaker form…“Excuse me, Sir Merlin,” I said, with all the politeness at my command, “Did you just say the Nightside was created for a specific purpose? Who created it, and why?”

  Merlin looked at me with his flame-filled eyes, and smiled unpleasantly. “Ask your mother.”

  Somehow, I’d known he was going to say that.

  “If some of these angels are agents of Heaven,” said Suzie, in the manner of someone who had a problem bone, and was determined to worry at it until she got an answer that satisfied her, “why have they been killing people, and turning them to salt, and blowing up perfectly good buildings?”

  “We only punish the guilty,” said the chorused voice in the light. “And so many here are guilty of something.”

  Suzie looked at me. “They have a point.”

  “Of course,” said Merlin, “here, all the angels are cut off from their Masters. Poor things, they’re not used to having to think for themselves. Which is why they’ve made such a mess. Decision-making isn’t really what you do best, is it, boys?”

  “We are here for the Unholy Grail,” said the light.

  “Do you dare stand against us?” said the dark.

  “Why not?” said Merlin. “It wouldn’t be the first time, would it? Now back off, all of you, or I’ll fry your pinfeathers.”

  The light faded back a little, and the darkness stopped spreading, but the sense of surrounding presences was as strong as ever.

  “Taylor,” Suzie said urgently. “Tell me there was more to your plan than just this…”

  “Not even half of it,” I murmured. “Hang in there. Sir Merlin, with your leave I think I can sort out this whole mess in a way that will please…well, nobody really, but it’ll be a solution we can all live with. Live being a relative term, of course. I don’t know where the Unholy Grail is, but I’m pretty sure I know someone who does. You see everywhere, Sir Merlin, so could you please grab the Collector and bring him here?”

  Merlin gestured languidly with a heavily tattooed hand, and suddenly the Collector was standing right there in the pentacle with us. He looked around, startled, and his eyes all but popped out of their sockets with outrage. He started to say something, then saw Merlin sitting on his throne and shut his mouth quickly before it could get him into even more trouble. The Collector was a podgy, middle-aged man with a thick neck and a florid face, wearing a white jumpsuit and cape, as popularised by Elvis in his later days. It didn’t suit him at all.

  “Wow,” said Suzie, sticking the barrel of her shotgun in the Collector’s ear. “Now that’s what I call service.”

  “Oh shit,” said the Collector.

  “Language!” said Suzie. “There are angels present.”

  “Hello, Collector,” I said calmly. “How’s the leg?”

  “Taylor! I might have known you were behind this!” The Collector started to say something else, but Suzie shoved her gun a little further into his ear, and he stopped himself again. He glowered at me. “I had to grow a new leg, thanks to your interference all those years ago. Put me right off time-travelling. Never was cost-effective. And besides, I kept bumping into myself, and I kept giggling at me, which was unnerving, to say the least. Now will someone please tell me why I have been transported here against my will!”

  “Because you’re needed,” I said, and then hesitated, because I just had to know. “Is that outfit you’re wearing the real thing?”

  The Collector pulled himself up to his full, not particularly impressive, height, and preened. It wasn’t a pretty sight. “Of course it’s real! Graceland hasn’t even noticed it’s missing yet.”

  I grinned. “Are you wearing the authentic nappy under it?”

  The Collector’s eyes narrowed so much they almost disappeared. “What…do you want, Taylor?”

  “The Unholy Grail. You’ve got it.”

  “Yes, and I’m keeping it. The dark chalice is a totally unique piece. It’s going to be the pride of my collection. The rest of the collecting fraternity will just die when they hear I’ve got it!”

  “We could all die if we don’t get this mess sorted out right now,” I said.

  “Starting very definitely with you,” Suzie growled, applying a little more pressure to the gun barrel in the Collector’s reddening ear.

  He slapped the gun aside and glared right back at her. “Don’t you threaten me, Shooter. I’m protected in ways you can’t even imagine.”

  “Unfortunately, he probably is,” I said. “So ease off a little, Suzie. Collector, in case it’s slipped your attention, we are currently surrounded by whole armies of angels, all of whom would be quite willing to take you apart, right down to the molecular level, while still keeping you alive and aware and screaming horribly if that’s what it takes to get you to hand over the Unholy Grail. Only Merlin’s power is holding them back, for the moment. You really think your protections are good enough to hold off a whole bunch of really angry angels?”

  He sniffed, but he was visibly weakening. “They don’t even know where my collection is.”

  “It’s on the Moon,” said Suzie, smiling smugly. “Under the Sea of Tranquility.”

  The Collector actually stamped his foot, he was so angry, and he waved his pudgy fists in the air. “I knew I couldn’t trust Razor Eddie…but he had me over a barrel, the bastard. It doesn’t matter. Let the angels try and take my prize away from me. They’ll discover I can summon up worse things than angels!”

  “You’re not fooling anyone, little man,” said Merlin, and his cold, rasping voice dismissed the Collector’s confidence in a moment. “Give up the sombre chalice, while you still can. It’s already corrupting your mind.”

  “It’s mine!” said the Collector. “You can’t have it! You just want it for yourself!”

  Merlin laughed briefly, and everyone winced at the awful sound. “Hardly, little man. I once held the true cup of the Christ in my hands. The Sangreal itself. Nothing less will ever tempt me again.”

  “I won’t give up the Unholy Grail!” the Collector shouted. His face was an unhealthy shade of purple. “I won’t, and you can’t make me! Not even you, Merlin Satanspawn. Not as long as you still want me to find your missing heart for you someday. Everyone else has failed you. I’m your last hope.”

  Suzie looked at me, and I sighed. “Okay, very quick précis of a very long and complicated story. Merlin lost his heart to a young witch called Nimue, back when the world was a lot younger. She then lost it in a card game. Without his heart, Merlin’s power is only a fraction of what it once was. The heart’s been through almost as many hands as the Unholy Grail, down the centuries, and is currently…missing in action.”

  “Couldn’t you find it for him, with your gift?” said Suzie.

  “Perhaps. That’s why Merlin’s helping us now. Right, Sir Merlin?”

  He smiled and nodded, the flames leaping in his eye sockets. What I didn’t tell Suzie was that I had absolutely no intention of ever trying to find Merlin’s heart. Nobody in their right mind wanted Merlin to regain his full powers. Even dead, he’d be more trouble than the angels…

  “You can’t keep the Unholy Grail,” I said bluntly to the Collector. “You don’t have anything strong enough to hold off angels, and you can bet they’d be ready and willing to destroy your entire collection, fighting each other over possession of the Unholy Grail.”

  The Collector pouted sullenly. “They would too, wouldn’t they? Bloody winged philistines. All right, you can have it! Ugly damned thing anyway. Merlin? Back to the Moon. Please.”

  “With a little company, to keep you honest,” said Merlin.

  I looked at Suzie resignedly. “Hang on to your aura,” I said. Suddenly Suzie and I and the Collector were somewhere else.

  EIGHT

  Cats and Robots and One Last Vicious Truth

  Every time I get teleported anywhere, I end up watching my whole life flashing before my eyes. Or at least, edited highligh
ts. Most of it seemed to make some kind of sense at the time. I live in fear that someday Someone will find a way to slip in commercials.

  Suzie and the Collector and I materialised out of nowhere, surrounded by thick clouds of noxious black smoke. Merlin learned his magic in the Old School, and still believed in traditional effects. Suzie batted at the smoke with her hand, swearing harshly in between racking coughs, while I checked to make sure I still had two of everything I should have. You can’t be too careful with other people’s teleport spells. Hidden extractor fans soon sucked most of the black smoke away, and we were able to take a clear look at our surroundings. We’d arrived in an almost blindingly technicolour reception area, with bright hanging silks for walls, dyed in every colour of the rainbow, and twice as gaudy, while thick chequer-board padding covered the floor and the ceiling. My feet sank deeply into the cushioned floor, and walking across it I rose and fell so suddenly that I almost felt seasick. The air smelled strongly of something very like pine. Suzie glared about her suspiciously, the shotgun in her hands, but there were no obvious threats.

  The Collector brushed aside one hanging silk to reveal a small high-tech console, all gleaming steel and crystal displays. He stabbed at the controls with his podgy fingers, ignoring everything else, while muttering something to his console that sounded suspiciously like Daddy’s home. I was more concerned with the fact that I couldn’t see a door anywhere. Suzie finished her coughing by hacking up what sounded like half a lung, and then spat viciously on the padded floor.

  “I wish Merlin would get over his need for flashy special effects,” she growled. “That smoke always plays hell with my sinuses.”

  “Boys and their toys,” I said. “We have to allow Merlin his little eccentricities. Because if we don’t, he’ll probably turn us into frogs. Collector, what are you doing?”

  “Shutting down some of my internal security systems,” he snapped, without looking round. “I have all kinds of hidden protections here, and I don’t want them all opening fire on you the moment you enter my warehouse. Some of my collection might get damaged. I have to be careful. There are always people trying to break in and steal my precious things. Bastards!”

  “The nerve of some people,” I murmured. “Thinking they could steal some of the many things you’ve stolen.”

  The Collector said nothing, still hunched over his console. I bounced a few times on the padded floor, checking my weight. If we really were somewhere under the Sea of Tranquility on the Moon, someone had gone to a lot of trouble to make things feel like home. The gravity, air, and temperature all seemed perfectly normal. Which suggested that the Collector must have a lot more high-tech hidden away somewhere else. Suzie prowled restlessly back and forth in the confined space, poking at the hanging silks with the barrel of her gun. She jabbed at the padded floor with one bootheel and sniffed loudly.

  “I always said you belonged in a padded cell, Collector.”

  “I believe in being comfortable and indulging myself,” he said, finally turning away from his console. “The padding is there to protect me in the event of sudden, unexpected fluctuations in the artificial gravity. Most of the tech that keeps this place running comes from a possible future I visited, and I have to admit I’m not fully sure how all of it works. I know which buttons to push, but the minute anything goes wrong, I have to fall back on trial and error. Mostly I let my robots run things. You’ll meet them later.”

  “That’s the trouble with looting,” I said. “There’s so rarely enough time to grab the instruction manual as well.”

  “I do not loot! I collect and preserve!”

  “So where is this famous collection?” said Suzie. “Don’t tell me we came all this way to hang around what looks suspiciously like a tart’s boudoir? We are on something of a tight schedule, remember?”

  “Right through here,” said the Collector, a little sullenly. “Follow me.”

  He ducked past a deep puce hanging silk and opened a concealed door. He gestured for Suzie and me to go first, but neither of us was having any of that. We made him go first, then followed quickly on his heels as he led us into the biggest damned warehouse I have ever seen. It seemed to stretch away forever, the walls so far off I couldn’t even see them. There was no ceiling, just a bright unfocussed glow from somewhere up above. And filling this gigantic warehouse; thousands upon thousands of wooden crates, in every size you could think of. They were stacked in towering piles, each marked with a stencilled number. Narrow aisles ran between them. I looked around, trying to get some idea of the size of the collection, but the sheer number of crates numbed my brain. There was nothing on display, nothing to admire or examine. Just crates.

  “This is it?” said Suzie, wrinkling her nose.

  “Yes it is, and don’t touch anything!” the Collector said severely. “I’ve shut down the hidden guns, but my robots are still programmed to protect my collection from any and all harm. I may have to allow your presence for a while, but that’s as far as I’ll go. You’re here for one object only, and I will get that for you. Luckily I was only just packing it up when Merlin grabbed me. I can see I’m going to have to upgrade my security again.”

  “Somehow, I’d always pictured something more impressive,” said Suzie. “Don’t you ever put any of the good stuff out, so you can play with it?”

  The Collector winced. “It’s much safer this way. I don’t encourage visitors, and for me, owning an item is everything. All right, when I first obtain a piece, I do get a certain satisfaction out of holding it, examining it, enjoying all its many qualities…I do like to examine every detail…close-up…”

  “If he starts to drool, I may puke,” said Suzie, and I had to nod in agreement.

  The Collector scowled at both of us. “But, once the initial thrill is over, I immediately pack it safely away in here. It’s the thrill of the chase I really enjoy. That, and the knowledge that I’ve done my rivals dirt, that I’ve got my hands on something, and they haven’t. I do so love to crow and preen in all the best newsgroups…And, of course, everything is computer-scanned before it’s put into storage, so I can visit it again at my leisure in virtual mode. After all, some of the more delicate items aren’t up to too much…handling. And it’s so much easier to find an item on a computer menu than try to dig through all this lot looking for one particular item.”

  That was when the first of the robots made its appearance, and Suzie and I immediately lost all interest in what the Collector was saying. The metal figure came striding down the narrow aisle towards us on impossibly slender legs, a tall and spindly thing of shining steel and brass, its clean lines the very definition of art deco. It advanced on us smoothly, unhurriedly, its every movement impossibly graceful. The robot was vaguely humanoid in shape, though the squarish head had been cast to resemble a stylised cat’s features, right down to jutting steel whiskers and glowing slit-pupilled eyes. The long-fingered hands ended in vicious claws. More robots appeared silently out of the many interconnecting aisles, until we were faced by a small army of cat-faced automatons. I thought I could detect a faint humming from them, so high it was only just in the range of my hearing. They seemed to be talking to each other. The Collector smiled on them fondly. Suzie’s shotgun moved restlessly back and forth in her hands, seeking a target.

  “Relax, Suzie,” said the Collector. “They’re only looking you over. Getting used to your presence. Strangers make them nervous. I had them programmed that way. Nothing like a spot of paranoia to keep a guard on his toes. I picked this lot up in a particularly good deal from another possible future. They have basic limited AIs, built around polymerised cat’s brains. Simple, obedient, and marvelously malicious when they have to be. They do so enjoy a good chase…and the torture afterwards. The purr-fect protectors for my collection. They built this whole place for me and run it in my absence. Far better than any fallible human guards, and besides, I don’t care for company these days. I prefer to be alone, with my things. My lovely things.”

/>   “No offence, Collector,” said Suzie, “but you are seriously weird, even for the Nightside.”

  “For someone who wasn’t trying to offend, I thought you did awfully well,” I said.

  “Is all well, master?” said one of the cat-faced robots, in a thrilling female contralto that made Suzie and me look at the Collector in a whole new way.

  “All is well,” the Collector said grandly. “You may all return to your regular duties. My guests will not be staying long. I’ll call if I have need of you.”

  “As you wish, master,” said the robot, then they all turned smoothly on their steel heels and disappeared back into the many narrow aisles of the warehouse. Suzie watched carefully until they were all gone, then turned back to the beaming Collector.

  “Do they all have to call you master?”

  “Of course.”

  “Doesn’t that get creepy after a while?”

  “No. Why should it?”

  “Don’t go there, Suzie,” I said. “We really don’t have the time.”

  The Collector led the way down a narrow aisle that to the untrained eye looked exactly like all the others, and Suzie and I followed after him, pulling faces behind his back. We stuck close; the hundreds of interconnecting passageways made up a maze it would clearly be only too easy to get thoroughly lost in. I let my eyes drift over the many crates and cases we passed; a few were labelled as well as numbered. One label said Antarctic Expedition l936; Do not open till the Elder Ones return. The exterior of the crate was covered in frost, despite the uncomfortable warmth of the warehouse. A much larger crate was labelled simply Roswell l947. It had air holes. Something inside the crate was growling, in a thoroughly pissed off way. And one crate standing on its own levitated proudly a few inches off the floor. I don’t know what was inside that crate, but it smelled awful. Suzie drew my attention to a smaller box that was juddering fiercely, almost shaking itself apart. I tapped the Collector politely on the shoulder, and indicated the box.