Nightside 10 - The Good the Bad and the Uncanny

their saint and guardian angel, Sister Morphine. Razor Eddie still slept there as often as not, keeping the vultures at bay, and, of course, they still had Jacqueline Hyde. She came lurching out of the shadows to block our way, wrapped in the grimy tatters of what had once been an expensive coat. Walker and I stopped, to show respect for her territory. Everyone knew Jacqueline’s story. This grim, bedraggled figure had once been a debutante and a high flyer, until she made the mistake of experimenting with her grandfather’s formula. Now she’s one of the Nightside’s sadder love stories. Jacqueline is in love with Hyde, and he with her, but they can only ever meet briefly, in the moment of the change.
    She snarled at Walker and me, and her body exploded suddenly into muscle and bulk. Hyde stood swaying and growling before us, his huge hands clutching at the air, eager to rend and tear, break bones, and feast on their marrow. He towered over us, his brute face flushed with the hatred he felt for all Mankind. Jacqueline Hyde: two souls in one body, together and separated at the same time.
    “Easy,” said Walker. “Slow and easy, that’s the way. You don’t want to hurt us, Hyde. It’s Walker. You remember Walker.”
    If anyone else had tried the calm and reasonable routine, Hyde would have turned him into roadkill. But Walker was using the Voice, in a calm and soothing way, rather than his usual abrupt commands. Hyde’s great head swayed slowly back and forth, deep-set eyes blinking confusedly under heavy eye-brow ridges, then he turned away suddenly and was gone, back into the shadows.
    “I didn’t know you could use your Voice like that,” I said.
    “Lot you don’t know about me, John,” Walker said cheerfully. “I could write a book. If I only had the time.”
    He moved easily among the soggy cardboard boxes and the piles of blankets, stepping carefully past and over the filth that covered the cobbled square. He greeted many of the homeless by name, as one by one they emerged from their shelters and hiding-places to crouch uneasily before him, like a pack of suspicious wild dogs. Most didn’t want to get too close, but others fawned openly, begging for food or spare change, or a kind word—some sign that they had not been entirely forgotten by the real world. Walker murmured soft words and let them sniff his hands, and they quickly lost interest and retreated back to their own private little worlds. Walker smiled easily about him, in the last place you can fall to before the grave claims you for its own.
    “This used to be Peter Pendrake,” said Walker, gesturing at a bundled-up figure pressed up against the rear of its mould-covered box. “You used to work for me, didn’t you, Peter? Until I caught you with your hand in the till.”
    “Long time ago, Henry,” said a dry, ghostly voice from the shadows at the back of the box. “I’m a different person now. You could take me back. I could still do the job.”
    “That wasn’t all I caught you doing, was it, Peter? You really were a very bad boy. But I’ll tell you what; keep your eyes open and keep reporting in, and I’ll think about it.”
    A painfully thin man, stained and filthy, in the ragged remains of a futuristic pressure suit, huddled against the cold under a very basic lean-to. He clutched possessively at his bottle and hugged it to his chest, glaring at Walker with sullen defiance.
    “This was the famous Jet Ace Brannigan,” said Walker. “Air hero from some alternate time-line. Flew a supersonic jet of his own design, fighting crime in the skies. Then he flew through a Timeslip and ended up here. You used to work for me, too, didn’t you, Ace? Hunting dragons in the night sky? Until the drink got to you, and you crashed your jet on a main street, killing one hundred and twenty-seven people. You walked away with hardly a scratch; but I couldn’t let you fly again, after that.”
    “I never used to drink,” said Ace. “Until I met you.”
    The last person Walker wanted me to see was a shivering wreck of a man, trying to keep out the cold and the damp with a single thin blanket. He looked a hundred years old, his face the colour of bleached bone, his features hidden behind heavy wrinkles. He turned his head away, not wanting to be seen. Walker considered him for a long moment.
    “This pathetic wreck used to be Somerset Smith, Gentleman Adventurer,” he said finally. “Worked for Hadleigh, then for me, taking care of