Nightside 09 - Just Another Judgement Day

turned his attention away from Chandra to concentrate on me. “Mr. Taylor, what brings you at long last to the Gun Shop?”
    “You know why I’m here,” I said, keeping my voice cold and unmoved. “It’s your business to know things like that. I’m here for the Speaking Gun.”
    “Oh yes, sir,” said Mr. Usher, reverently. “Of course. A most remarkable weapon. Older than the Nightside, they say. Certainly older than I am. A gun that is so feared and worshipped it’s practically a god in itself.”
    “I destroyed it, not long ago,” I said.
    “Why bless you, sir, I don’t think so. Oh, you may have put an end to its story in the here and now, but it still persists, in other times and places. It will always exist somewhere, in the Past or some Future time-line.”
    “How can that be?” said Chandra, frowning.
    “Because it’s fished for,” I said. “It’s always being looked for, stalked, and possessed by various talented individuals with more ambition than sense. Like the Collector. You have heard of the Collector, Chandra?”
    “I am not a rube,” said Chandra, with some dignity.
    “Can you locate the Speaking Gun, either in the Past or some accessible Future time-line?” I asked Mr. Usher, and he gave me a polite but pitying smile.
    “Of course, sir. Wherever or whenever the Speaking Gun may be, it is still always on a shelf here somewhere. I am in constant contact with every weapon ever made or believed in. I have them all here, from Excalibur to the Despicable Word. Though, of course, you’d have to be particularly gifted, or cursed, to be able to use either of those two items. I can provide anyone with anything, but getting it to work is up to the client.” He smiled his mirthless smile. “Ah, many the customer I’ve known, with eyes bigger than his stomach, if you follow me, sir.”
    “I want the Speaking Gun,” I said. “I can make it work.”
    “Of course you can, sir.”
    He turned and started unhurriedly down his endless hall of weapons, leaving us to follow after. I stuck close behind him. It would be only too easy to get lost in a place like this. Chandra stared about him, almost hypnotised by the endless shelves of endless weapons. I could hear them calling out to me. Singing swords of legend, rings of power, future guns with AI interfaces, pieces of armour still haunted by their previous owners. All of them asking, pleading, demanding to be taken up and used.
    “You see,” said Mr. Usher, “I have it all. Everything from the first club, fashioned from a thigh-bone by some forgotten man-ape, right up to the Darkvoid Device, which wiped out a thousand star systems in a moment. I can provide you with anything your heart desires. All you have to do is ask.”
    “And pay the price,” I said.
    “Well, of course, Mr. Taylor. There is always a price to be paid.”
    I was beginning to have second thoughts. I had no doubt that if anything could stop the Walking Man in his tracks, it would be the Speaking Gun, but . . . I still remembered how the Gun had made me feel, still remembered what using it even briefly had done to me. Just to touch it was to dirty your soul, to burden yourself with almost unbearable temptation. And even more than that, I remembered seeing the Speaking Gun grafted on to the maimed arm of a future incarnation of Suzie Shooter, by my future Enemies. Sent back in time to kill me, to prevent the awful future world they lived in. The same people I was trying to save, now. Sometimes I swear the Nightside runs on irony.
    I had thought that by destroying the Speaking Gun, I’d saved my Suzie from that horrid destiny. Would bringing it back into the Present make that particular Future possible again?
    “What is the price?” I said abruptly to Mr. Usher. “What do you want for the Speaking Gun?”
    “Oh, no price for you, Mr. Taylor,” he said, not even looking round. “No price, as such, for a renowned and important gentleman such as yourself. No, just... a favour. Kill the Walking Man. He really is terribly bad for business, with his limited and inflexible morality. Even though both his wonderful guns came from here, if he only knew . . .”
    I decided not to pursue that. I didn’t think I really wanted to know. But still . . . kill the Walking Man? He had to be stopped, and stopped hard, but who was I to remove such a vital agent of the Good from this world? He did kill people who needed killing. Mostly. He was wrong about the new Authorities, but