The Bride Wore Black Leather (21 page)

Just so I wouldn’t feel too threatened.

They were all of them graduates of the Fortress, that heavily fortified refuge for people who had been abducted by aliens and were determined never to let that happen again. The Fortress contained more big guns, high explosives, and really nasty booby-traps than anywhere else in the Nightside. They have security cameras in every room and corridor, heavy-duty gun emplacements on the roof, and you’re never more than ten feet from a panic button. They have a stuffed and mounted Grey on display in their lobby, and you don’t even want to think about what they’ve done to the reptiloid on display.

(No relation to the Royal Family. None at all. Trust me on this.)

Of course, it turned out that Julien knew many of them by name, and they all relaxed a bit as he stopped to chat with them. I had heard the Fortress supplied security for the Hospice, but I hadn’t expected there to be quite so many of them. Or that they’d be so well-armed. A lot of them had attended the Hospice as patients—for psychiatric help, removal of implants, and the occasional bit of exploration to make sure no alien had left anything where the sun doesn’t shine. They’d been so impressed by the help and sympathy they’d received, they set up a rota for people to volunteer to help. They made very loyal, very dangerous guards. Exactly what the Hospice needed.

Julien asked a few vague questions about how the shift was going, and if they’d seen anything or anyone . . . unusual. He didn’t mention the Sun King by name, on the grounds of not wanting to start a panic if he didn’t have to. None of them had seen anything out-of-the-ordinary unusual. It was a quiet night, for once. The officer in charge turned up, an ex–sergeant major in the paratroops, with silver-grey hair and a thousand-light-year stare. He wore a battered flak jacket topped off with a bandolier of incendiary grenades. Any alien who tried to take him again was in for a really nasty surprise. He also wore a pair of specially tinted sunglasses, which he assured us allowed him to detect aliens trying to pass as human. I didn’t argue the point. This was the Nightside, after all, and he was holding the biggest gun I’d ever seen. In one hand.

“Why are there so many of you here?” I asked, to make it clear I was part of the conversation.

The ex-SM shrugged briefly. “Always some scumbag trying to break in, sir. Looking for drugs, equipment, magical shit. We show them no mercy. The good doctors keep telling us we’re allowed to bring them in alive; but we don’t believe in taking chances. Besides, the staff here have enough work on their hands without us adding to it with wounded scumbags. So we shoot their legs out from under them, double-tap them in the head, and everybody’s happy.”

“Keep up the good work,” I said, for want of anything else to say.

“Thank you, sir. Would you like an escort to the front doors?”

“We don’t want to draw attention,” Julien said smoothly.

“Then you shouldn’t have brought John bloody Taylor,” said a voice from the back. There was a certain amount of laughter in the ranks, until the ex-SM glared them all into silence. Julien and I made our way carefully through the security people and headed for the front doors. Some of them bowed to Julien, and some of them nodded to me, and they all kept a careful eye on us right up to the point where we reached the doors, in case we might get lost, on the way. I also heard the name Suzie Shooter mentioned, in quiet mutterings, followed by a lot of nervous looking about. The Fortress had bad memories of Shotgun Suzie’s occasional forced entrances into their building, on the trail of some runaway bounty. Nowhere was off limits to Suzie.

I slowed down as we approached the doors, and Julien looked at me questioningly. “I used to know someone who used to work here,” I explained. “Sister Morphine . . .”

“Ah yes,” said Julien. “I remember her. I wrote a few pieces about her, back in the day. She worked here for several years as a nurse before she had her crisis of faith, and decided it was more important to heal wounded souls than wounded bodies. You knew Sister Morphine, John? I didn’t know that.”

I nodded slowly. “She was there, in Rats’ Alley, when I was there. When I was down and out, just another of the homeless she tried to protect.”

“You don’t talk much about that part of your life,” said Julien.

“Would you?” I said. “Sister Morphine . . . was the kindest woman I ever knew. She looked after us all when we couldn’t look after ourselves, when no-one else gave a damn. She never preached, never held the Bible over us; but she was a great one for stories and parables. She lived with us, amongst us, as one of us. Sometimes we had to force her to eat, when what we could salvage from the Dumpsters and the back doors of restaurants wasn’t enough to go round. She always thought our needs were more important than hers.”

I didn’t tell Julien that when I thought of Sister Morphine now, mostly I thought about her death. A mob killed her, during the Lilith War. I saw it happen. I could have saved her, but I had other people to protect that I thought needed saving more. Because their lives were more important than hers. War does things like that to you. I’m sure she would forgive me, but that didn’t matter. I didn’t forgive me.

•  •  •

As we entered the Hospice lobby, it quickly became apparent that this was yet another of those places that was bigger on the inside than the outside. It comes as standard in most of the Nightside, these days. The lobby was huge, breathtakingly so, stretching away before us. Julien and I stopped inside the doors to take a good look around. Everyone else ignored us, intent on their own problems.

“I am moved to wonder,” said Julien. “Given all the pocket-dimension buildings we have these days, whether there is in fact an upper limit to how much Time and Space can be contained within the Nightside, without something . . .
giving
.”

“We’d better hope not,” I said. “If all the containment spells were to let go at once, and all the space within the Nightside broke its barriers and rolled out into the standard three dimensions . . . the end result would probably cover most of London Proper. Always assuming, of course, that we’re actually contained within present-day London.”

“You don’t think we are?” said Julien.

“Look at the size of the moon,” I said.

“I’ve got something more immediately worrying for you to think about,” said Julien. “Before we can get to see Dr. Benway, we have to get past the receptionist.”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I have a way with receptionists.”

“You can’t kill her!” Julien said immediately. “It would make a very bad first impression.”

“Oh ye of little faith,” I said.

I took a little more time to look around while I considered the situation. The lobby was white-walled, brightly lit, and spotlessly clean. And actually quite peaceful. Probably the only place in the Nightside that was. Marble pillars broke up the open space, and there were rows of comfortable chairs and couches for patients and visitors to sit on. Food and drink dispensers seemed to be providing food and drink of a kind that people were actually happy to consume, and pleasant classical music issued from concealed speakers. The air smelled of freshly cut grass and the scent of new-mown hay, all the sweet scents of a summer’s day. A nice change from most hospitals’ use of heavy disinfectant. Though, of course, both sets of smells were only there to cover up the same things: namely, the underlying, ever-present smells of blood and sickness, misery and mortality. Large notice-boards contained a great many overlapping messages, pleas and demands, and stern reminders that anyone who overstayed their welcome in the car-park could end up with several of their more important inner organs clamped.

The rows and rows of chairs were packed with people waiting to be seen. Men and women and children, and here and there some individuals who were none of the above and never would be. All of them troubled with wounds and fevers, exotic STDs and partial transmogrifications. A man with his hand stuck somewhere very embarrassing, a hunchback whose hump had slipped, a cyborg with Tourette’s who kept shouting out long strings of binary numbers, and someone whose grip on reality was so weak he kept fading in and out. Half a dozen winged monkeys dressed as cleaners pushed mops and buckets around, labouring to deal with the usual spills of blood, urine, and vomit, and one small but worrying pool of molecular acid.

Typical night, in the Nightside A&E. I even overheard the traditional interplay between a nurse and a patient.

Patient: Nurse, it hurts when I do this.

Nurse: Then don’t do that.

Patient: I am going to have to kill you now.

Nurse: I quite understand.

It’s good to know some people are still ready to keep up the old traditions.

Right over to one side was a miraculous spring, a large pool of murky water contained within a low stone wall. It was supposed to have amazing curative properties, but only as long as you had faith, real faith, enough to make it work. And real faith has always been hard to come by in the Nightside. One very determined mother was holding her son by the ankle and dunking him in the pool, over and over again. Between a lot of sputtering, the boy could be heard saying;
I feel much better! Honest! Look will you please stop this I think I’m developing gills!

Interesting and entertaining as all this was, Julien and I finally had no choice but to give our full attention to the receptionist at the desk. It was a really pleasant-looking reception desk, with vases of fresh flowers, neat and tidy in and out trays, and an absolute minimum of clutter . . . but I wasn’t fooled. I could See the industrial-strength magical protections hanging on the air, and the built-in weapons systems.

The receptionist herself was a large matronly figure in a spotless white uniform (that reminded me immediately of the Very Righteous Sisters). She had a pleasant face, cold and unsympathetic eyes, and a mouth like a steel trap. You know the sort; mother was a pit bull, father was a velociraptor. Don’t ask me what they ever saw in each other; but it can get very foggy on the moors. She waited to the very last moment to look up from her form-filling and stop Julien and me in our tracks with a stern warning gaze. She recognised Julien Advent immediately and favoured him with a brief nod. And then she looked at me, recognised me, and one hand moved quickly to a large red emergency button. She gave me a brief, meaningless smile.

“Tell me where it hurts, don’t bleed on the floor, fill in these forms, and take a number.”

“You don’t understand,” said Julien. “Neither of us is in need of medical attention. We are here to speak with Dr. Benway.”

“I’m afraid that’s not possible,” the receptionist said immediately. “Not without an advance appointment. Dr. Benway is very busy, and I won’t have her bothered. I can book you in for an appointment, but I should warn you there’s a three-week waiting gap. Minimum. If that’s not acceptable, take a number and get to the back of the queue, like everyone else.”

“I am Julien Advent, representing the Authorities. This is John Taylor, the new Walker. It is vital that we see Dr. Benway immediately!”

The receptionist indulged herself with a harsh sniff, to show how unimpressed she was. “No queue-jumping. We don’t care who you are, here.”

“But this is urgent!” said Julien. “Vital, I tell you! The safety of the entire Nightside itself is at risk!”

“Save your breath,” said the receptionist. “I’ve heard it all before. Are you actually dying? Bleeding out? Missing a major organ?”

“We’re not,” I said. “But you could be. You know me; you know what I can do. So stop pissing me off, or I’ll send your spleen to Mars.”

I gave her my most cheerful smile. The receptionist opened her mouth to say something, looked me in the eye, then thought better of it. Her hand hovered over the red button, then moved away. She sighed, in her best put-upon way, and reached for the phone.

“If you two gentlemen will give me a moment, I’ll ask Dr. Benway if she can make time to see you. But I’m not promising anything!”

“Of course not,” I said. “Why break the habit of a lifetime?”

“Stop it . . .” murmured Julien. “She’ll turn nasty in a moment.”

The receptionist got through to Dr. Benway, spoke quietly for a moment, and listened. She nodded, put the phone down, and gave Julien and me a wintry smile.

“Dr. Benway will see you; but she is very busy right now. So you’ll have to wait. With everyone else.”

Julien grabbed me forcefully by the arm and hauled me away from the reception desk. It took a while to find a couple of seats together, in the very crowded waiting area, and as far away from the more obviously infectious and messy people, but when we finally sank down into the chairs, they really were very comfortable.

“I think we won that encounter on points,” I said. “All right, we still have to wait, but we didn’t have to take a number.”

“Would you really have . . . ?” said Julien.

“Almost certainly,” I said. “I have deep-seated problems with authority figures.”

“But you are one!”

“I know! I can only assume the universe has a really mean sense of humour.”

•  •  •

We sat, and waited. People came and went, many sobbed and whimpered and read out-of-date magazines, but the size of the waiting crowd never seemed to change much. Julien stared patiently off into the distance, tapping one foot in a thoughtful manner. I recognised the signs. He’d already decided exactly how much time he was going to allow Dr. Benway; and then he was going to go and look for her himself. And God help anyone who got in his way. I’d never seen Julien walk right over a receptionist before. I was quite looking forward to it. Reassured at the prospect of loud and nasty unpleasantness in the near future, I killed time by studying the long list of wards, and their particular areas of expertise, laid out on an old-fashioned wooden wall plaque. They were all carefully numbered, but a lot of the descriptions were in Greek and Latin. I nudged Julien in the ribs and drew his attention to the dead languages. He gave me a long-suffering look.

“In my young days, we were all taught Latin and Greek at school.”