Nightside 04 - Hex and the City

its best bib and tucker, and tarts itself up for the travelling trade. All the gaudiest establishments and tourist traps, where sin is mass-produced, and temptation comes in six-packs. In short, I was heading for the Nightside's one and only shopping mall. Mass brands and franchises from the outside world tended to roll over and die here, where people's appetites run more to the unusual and outre, but there's always the exception. The Mammon Emporium offers brand-name concessions and fast-food chains from alternative universes and divergent timetracks. There may be nothing new under the sun, but the sun never shines in the Nightside.
    I strolled between the huge M and E that marked the entrance to the mall, and for once nobody crossed themselves, or headed for the nearest exit. The Mammon Emporium was one of the few places where I could hope to be just another face in the crowd. Shoppers from all kinds of Londons came here in search of the fancy and the forbidden, and, of course, that chance for a once-in-a-lifetime bargain. People dressed in a hundred different outrageous styles called out to each other in as many different languages and argots, crowding the thoroughfares and window-shopping sights they'd never find anywhere else. Brightly coloured come-ons blazed from every store, their windows full of wonders, and countless businesses crammed in side by side in a mall that somehow managed to be bigger on the inside than it was on the outside. Apparently space expands to encompass the trade involved.
    To every side of me blazed signs and logos from far and distant places, MCCAMPBELL'S DOLPHIN BURGERS, STAR-DOCK'S SNUFF. WILL DIZZY'S MORTIMER MOUSE. BAPTISMS R US. PERV PARLOUR, SOUL MARKET; new, used and refurbished. And of course the NOSFERATU BLOOD BANK. (Come in and make a deposit. Give generously. Don't make us come looking for you.) A dark-haired Goth girl in a crimson basque gave me the eye from the shadowy doorway. I smiled politely and continued on my way.
    Right in the middle of the mall stood an old-fashioned wishing well, largely ignored by the crowds that bustled unseeingly past it. The well didn't look like much. Just a traditional stone-walled well with a circle of stunted grass around it, a red slate roof above, and a bucket on a rusty steel chain. A sign in really twee writing invited you to toss a coin in the well and make a wish. Just a little bit of harmless fun for the kiddies. Except this was the Nightside, which has never gone in for harmless fun. Most oracles are a joke. The concept of alternate timetracks (as seen every day in the Nightside's spontaneously generating Time-slips) makes prophecy largely unprofitable and knocks the idea of Fate very firmly on the head. But this particular oracle had a really good track record in predicting the present; in knowing what was going on everywhere, right now. I suppose specialisation is everything, these days. I leaned against the well's stone wall and looked casually about me. No-one seemed to be paying me or the well any special attention.
    "Hello, oracle," I said. "What's happening?" "More than you can possibly imagine," said a deep, bubbling voice from a long way below. "Bless me with coin of silver, oh passing traveller, and I shall bless thee with three answers to any question. The first answer shall be explicit but unhelpful, the second allusive but accurate, and the third a wild stab in the dark. The more you spend, the more you learn."
    "Don't give me that crap," I said. "I'm not a tourist. This is John Taylor."
    "Oh bloody hell; you're back again, are you?" The oracle sounded distinctly sulky. "You know very well your whole existence makes my head ache."
    "You haven't got a head."
    "Exactly! It's people like you that give oracles a bad reputation. What do you want? I'm busy."
    "What with?" I asked, honestly curious.
    "Trust me, you really don't want to know. You think it's easy being the fount of all wisdom, when your walls are covered with algae? And I hate Timselips! They're like haemorrhoids for an oracle. And speaking of pains in the arse; what do you want, Taylor?"
    "I'm looking for the man called Madman."
    "Oh God; he's even worse than you. He'd turn my stomach, if I had one. What do you want with him?"
    "Don't you know?"
    The oracle sniffed haughtily. "That's right, make fun of a cripple. At least I can see where he is, unlike you. But this answer will cost you. No information for free; that's the rule. Don't blame me, I just work