Free Nightside 05 - Paths Not Taken by Simon R. Green

steps into the Underground, and in a moment he was lost to sight among the crowd-a man going home, like so many others.
    "There goes, perhaps, the wisest of us all," I said to Tommy, and he nodded. I considered him thoughtfully. "I am planning a trip through Time, all the way back to the very beginnings of the Nightside. We seem to work well enough together. If I can talk Old Father Time into this, would you like to come along?"
    "What's the catch?" said Tommy.
    I had to smile. "The catch? The catch is, it's hideously dangerous, and we'll probably end up killed!"
    "Ah," said Tommy Oblivion. "The usual."

Five
    A Parade of Possibilities
    T he Nightside is a dark and dangerous place, but I've always felt at home there, like I belonged. If only as one more monster among many. So it came as something of a surprise to me when Tommy Oblivion and I went walking through the crowded streets and found the tenor of the times was definitely changing. The crowd was jittery, like cattle before a thunderstorm, and the air was hot and close as a fever room. The raised voices of the club barkers and the come-on men sounded that little bit more desperate, and everywhere I looked the Merchants of Doom-the shabby men with burning eyes, preaching and prophesying and bellowing their proclamations of Bad Times coming- were out in force. One man barged sullenly through the crowds, wearing a sandwich board with the message the end bloody well is nigh. I had to smile. Many of the self-styled prophets recognized me, and made the sign of the cross at me. Some made the sign of the extremely cross, and shook hand-made charms and fetishes at me.
    And then the crowd immediately ahead suddenly scattered, falling back every which way as a manhole cover slid jerkily to one side. Thick blue smoke belched up from underneath the street, lying low and heavy on the ground like early-morning mist. People recoiled from the stench, coughing and rubbing at smarting eyes. Even at a distance the smell was distressing, dark and organic, like dead things pushing their way up out of newly turned earth. And up out of the manhole squeezed and crawled a whole series of faintly glowing creatures, so twisted and misshapen it was hard to be sure they were even all the same species. Their flesh was a grubby white shot with raised purple veins, mobile and half-melting, slipping and sliding around their underlying structure. They might have been human once, long ago, but now the only real resemblance left was in their puffy faces, blue-white like spoiled cheese and speckled with rot. Their eyes were huge and dark, and they did not blink. More and more of them spilled out onto the pavement, and everywhere people pushed back to give them plenty of room. And every single one of these creatures headed straight for me.
    I stood my ground. I had a reputation to maintain, and besides, it's never wise to turn your back on an unknown enemy. They looked too soft and squishy to do me any real harm, but I didn't underestimate them either. Defenceless things don't tend to last long in the Nightside, and these things looked like they'd been around for a while. The smell grew steadily worse as they slumped across the ground towards me. I gave them my best cold glare and slipped one hand into my coat pocket, where I kept several items of a useful and destructive nature. Tommy stood his ground, just behind me.
    "Do you know what those things are?" he said quietly.
    "Disgusting, with a side order of utterly gross," I said. "Otherwise, no."
    "What do you suppose they want with you?"
    "Nothing that involves getting too familiar, hopefully. I've just had this coat cleaned."
    The glowing creatures lined up in ranks before me, bobbing and pulsating, their corrupt flesh oozing all over each other; and then, at some unheard signal, they all bowed their dripping heads to me.
    "Hail to thee, proud Prince of Catastrophe and Apocalypse," said the creature closest to me, in a thick gurgling voice. It sounded like