Nightside 08 - The Unnatural Inquirer

crashing into the hush. “I want him.”
    I stood up. “Get in line,” I said. “I’m busy.”
    He looked me over, then surprised me by smiling briefly. If anything, it made him look even more dangerous. “I need to talk to you, Taylor. And you need to listen.”
    I looked at him, then at the body-guards, and then at the reporters, all staring at us with wide eyes, impressed out of their minds. That settled it. I couldn’t let them down. I nodded to the General, who gestured stiffly at a corner booth. The young man and woman sitting in it got the message, and vacated immediately, leaving their drinks behind. The General sat down stiffly in the booth, and I went over to join him. Bettie wanted to come with me, but I was firm. She pouted and stamped her little foot, but she did stay put. I sat down facing the General, and his body-guards moved quickly to form a defensive barrier between the booth and the rest of the bar, their hands resting on the butts of their guns. The reporters turned up their noses at them and ostentatiously went back to their own conversations.
    I looked thoughtfully at the General. “I’m not sure I want to hear anything you have to say, General. I’m not the military type, I have problems with authority figures, and I don’t play well with others.”
    “A lot of people don’t want to hear what’s good for them. The order of things in the Nightside is changing. The Authorities are gone, and someone has to replace them before this whole place tears itself apart fighting over the spoils. I can put the Nightside on the right course, John. Make it a place to be proud of. I have support from many fine and influential people, but I could use you on my side.”
    “Why me?” I said, genuinely curious.
    “Don’t be disingenuous.” General Condor sighed tiredly and leaned forward across the table. “You’ve been a force for good in the Nightside. You help people. You’ve even been known to dispense your own kind of justice when necessary. Help me to save the Nightside from its own excesses.”
    “You can’t force change in the Nightside,” I said. Something in me warmed to the General’s blunt honesty, if not his cause, so I gave him the truth, and not what he wanted to hear. “The Nightside is what it wants to be. It’s fought wars with Heaven and Hell for the right to go its own way. The best you can do, the best any of us can do, is encourage change for the better, one small step at a time.”
    “The Nightside has had thousands of years to grow up,” said the General. “If it was capable of saving itself, it would have done so by now. It needs a firm hand on the tiller, it needs control and discipline imposed from above, like any military unit that’s gone bad. Walker tried, but he was only ever the Authorities’ puppy. He can’t run things on his own. He must be replaced.”
    “Good luck with that,” I said.
    He smiled again. “If I thought it would be easy, I wouldn’t be here talking to you.”
    “He has the Voice,” I said.
    “It doesn’t work on you,” said the General.
    I raised an eyebrow. “You want me to kiss him on the cheek while I’m there?”
    “I want you to do what’s right. What’s best for everyone.”
    “Even I don’t know what that is,” I said. “And I’ve been looking for it a lot longer than you have.”
    “If you’re not with me, you’re against me,” General Condor said flatly. “And if you don’t choose a side soon, one may be chosen for you.”
    I smiled. “Good luck with that, too.”
    He laughed briefly, quietly. “I could have used a man like you on my flagship, John. You won’t bend or yield for anyone, will you?”
    “Why is this so important to you?” I said, seriously. “You haven’t been here long. Why this need to save the Nightside from itself?”
    “I have to do something,” said the General. “I couldn’t save my Fleet. I couldn’t save my men. I have to do something…”
    He got up from the table, and I stood up with him. He offered me his hand, and I shook it. The General left the Printer’s Devil with his body-guards, and I went back to join Bettie Divine.
    “Well?” she said, almost bouncing up and down in her seat. “What was that all about?”
    “Just politics,” I said. “Nightside style. Anything new or useful come up, while I was gone?”
    “But John…!”
    “Move along,” I said.
    “You need to talk to the Collector,” said Rick Aday.
    “Been there, done that,” said