Nightside 10 - The Good the Bad and the Uncanny

servants, topped with stylised cat faces, complete with jutting steel whiskers and slit-pupilled eyes that glowed bright green in the gloom. They moved with an eerie grace, tap-tapping along on their tiny metal paw-like feet. Now and again, one of the robots would flex its steel-clawed hands, as though considering what it would like to do if it wasn’t bound by the Collector’s commands.
    It was dark all around us now, the only illumination spilling out from the Collector’s spotlight.
    “I have to be careful,” the Collector said abruptly. “There are people out there who would stop at nothing to rob me of my lovely treasures. Other collectors, rogue traders—thieves, the lot of them!”
    “Indeed,” I murmured. “How dare they steal the things you stole first?”
    “I appreciate them!” the Collector said haughtily. “And I never give up anything that’s mine. My lovely things.”
    Light flared up around us, and Lud’s Gate Station was gone. A new warm, golden glow revealed a huge warehouse, sprawling away in all directions. Massive glass display cases held all the wonders of the world, arranged in rank upon rank for as far as the eye could see, along with shelves and shelves of curios and collectables, the popular trash of decades past and future, everything rare and valuable from every period of Time. It was a maze, a labyrinth, of rarities and marvels, toys and trinkets, objets d‘art and objets trouvés ... If it was bright and shiny, the Collector had an eye for it.
    “You can look,” the Collector said grudgingly. “But don’t touch! Every time I let you in, Taylor, things get broken. But see for yourself: there are no people here! Unless someone’s tried to break in again. I haven’t checked the traps recently.”
    I looked at Larry and had to grin. His dead face finally held an emotion, and it was as much shock as awe. Like many people, he’d heard about the Collector’s legendary hoard, but the reality was so much bigger. The Collector had promised us half an hour, but you couldn’t manage a proper look around in under a month. Not that I felt the need to examine everything. If the Collector had started picking up people, they’d have been set out on prominent display, in pride of place, so he could gloat over them. And there weren’t any.
    I wandered down the aisle before me, Larry stumbling along behind. I pointed out a few things of particular interest. A stuffed waterbaby, covered in thorns; a frozen water ghost in a refrigerated container; and the original sketches for the Turin Shroud. Two of the cat robots followed us at a respectful distance, ready to tell on us to the Collector if we got too close to anything. After a while, I stopped before a diorama of stuffed giant albino penguins and looked at Larry.
    “Walker lied,” I said.
    “It would appear so,” said Larry. “But why would he lie about my brother?”
    “The devil always lies,” I said. “Except when a truth can hurt you more. But you’re right; why would he lie about this?”
    The Collector laughed harshly, and we both looked around. He was watching from a safe distance, surrounded by his cat robots.
    “If you’ve started trusting Walker, you’re really letting the side down, Taylor. He always has a plan inside a scheme inside an agenda, and he’ll tell you whatever he needs to tell you to get you to do what he wants you to do. Face it, Taylor; he sent you on a wild goose chase to get you out of his way; and you fell for it.”
    “Looks like it,” I said. “Sorry to have troubled you. Show us the way out, and we’ll be going.”
    “No,” said the Collector. “I don’t think so.” He leaned casually against an old-fashioned grandfather clock, with a cobwebbed human skeleton propped up inside it. His gaze was clear and cold, and he didn’t seem nearly as out of it as he had before. “I’ve been thinking, Taylor, and it seems to me ... that you owe me far more than I owe you. I lost my leg to those giant insects at the end of Time, all because of you.”
    Larry looked at me. “You do get around, don’t you?”
    “I’ve replaced the leg a dozen times,” said the Collector, still glaring at me. “I’ve used machines, cloned tissues, even regrown it using a lizard serum; but it never feels right. I still have nightmares about the insects eating my skin and burrowing into my flesh, while you stood by and did nothing.”
    “Is that right?” said Larry.
    “Sort of,” I said. “There