if you wanted it badly enough. It’s like Rorschach ink-blots, where people see shapes that aren’t really there. You hear what you want to hear. Was that a Church blowing up?”
“It’s the pillars of salt that worry me,” I said. “Just keep walking and talking.”
“Then there’s psychic imprinting,” said Bettie, staring determinedly straight ahead. “You know, when a person stares at a blank piece of film and makes images appear. I did this marvellous piece on a man who could make naughty pictures appear on bathroom tiles, from two rooms away! The paper did a full colour supplement on most of them. You could only get the full set by mail order, under plain cover.”
“Psychic imprinting is more common than most people like to think,” I said. “That’s where most ghost images come from. And genius loci, where bad things happening poisons the surroundings, to produce Bad Places. Like Fun Faire.”
“Wait just a minute, darling,” said Bettie. “I heard about what just happened there! Was that you?”
I simply smiled.
“Oh, poo! You’re no fun at all sometimes.”
“That augmented television set bothers me,” I said. “Could Pen Donavon have accidentally invented something that allowed him to Listen In, however briefly, on something Humanity was never supposed to know about? Stranger things have happened, and most of them right here in the Nightside. This place has always attracted rogue scientists and very free thinkers, come here in pursuit of the kinds of knowledge and practices that are banned everywhere else, and quite properly, too. Walker has a whole group of his people dedicated to tracking these idiots, then shutting them down, with extreme prejudice if necessary. Unless what they’re doing looks to be unusually interesting, or profitable, in which case their work gets confiscated for the greater good. Which means the scientists get to work exclusively for the Authorities, somewhere very secure, for the rest of their lives.”
“Except there aren’t any Authorities, any more,” said Bettie. “So who do these scientists work for now?”
“Good question,” I said. “If you ever find out…”
“You’ll read about it in the Unnatural Inquirer.” Bettie smiled cheerfully. “I love the way you talk about these things so casually. I only get to hear about stuff like this at second or third remove, and there’s rarely any proof. You’re right there in the thick of things. Must be such fun…”
“Not always the word I’d use,” I said. “And you are not to quote me. I don’t care what you print, but Walker might. And he’d be more likely to come after you than me.”
“Let him,” Bettie said airily. “The Unnatural Inquirer looks after its own. John, you’re frowning. Why are you frowning? Should we start running?”
“If Pen Donavon had found a way to Listen In and got noticed,” I said slowly, “he might have attracted the attention of Heaven or Hell. Which is rarely a good thing. They might send agents to silence him, and destroy the Recording.”
“Oh, dear,” said Bettie. “Are we talking angels? The Nightside’s still putting itself back together after the last angel war.”
“I wish people would stop looking at me like the angel war was all my fault,” I said.
“Well, it was; wasn’t it?”
“Not as such, no!”
“You can be such a disappointment, sometimes,” said Bettie Divine.
FOUR
When Collectors Go Bad
Back in the Nightside proper, I headed for Uptown, that relatively refined area where the better class of establishments and members-only clubs gather together and circle the wagons, to keep out the riff-raff. People like me, and anyone I might know. I had a particular destination in mind, but I didn’t tell Bettie. Some subjects need to be sneaked up on, approached slowly and cautiously, so as not to freak out the easily upset. Bettie clearly thought she’d been around and seen it all, but there are some people and places that would make a snot demon puke, on general principles.
“Where exactly are we going?” said Bettie, looking eagerly about her.
“Well,” I said, “when you’re on the trail of something rare and unique, the place to start is with the Collector. He’s spent the best part of his life in pursuit of the extraordinary and the uncommon, often by disreputable, underhanded, and downright dishonest means. He’s a thief and a grave-robber, a despoiler of archaeological sites, and no museum or private cabinet of curiosities is safe from him. He’s even got his own collection of weird time machines, so he can loot and ransack the Past of all its choicest items. If there’s a gap in