“I’ve never been to the Museum of Unnatural History,” Bettie said finally. “I always meant to go and take a look at what they’ve got there. I understand they have some really interesting exhibits. But it’s not really me. I don’t do the educational thing.”
“They’ve got a Tyrannosaurus rex,” I said.
Bettie threw away her stick and looked at me. “What, the complete skeleton?”
“No, in a cage.”
Her eyes widened. “Wow; a real T. rex! I wonder what they feed it…”
“People who litter, probably.”
The Museum of Unnatural History is very modern-looking. The French may have a glass pyramid outside the Louvre, but we have a glass tesseract. An expanded cube that exists in four spatial dimensions. A bit hard on the eyes, but a small price to pay for style. The tesseract isn’t merely the entrance to the Museum, it contains the whole thing inside its own very private and secure pocket dimension. The Museum needs a whole dimension to itself, to contain all the wonders and marvels it has accumulated down the years; from the Past, the Present, and any number of Future time-lines.
I walked steadily forward into the glass tesseract, Bettie clinging firmly to my arm again, and almost immediately we were standing in the Museum’s entrance lobby. I say almost immediately; there was a brief sensation of falling, of alien voices howling all around, and a huge eye turning slowly to look in our direction…but you tend to take things like that in your stride in the Nightside. The lobby itself was quaintly and pleasantly old- fashioned. All polished oak and brass and Victorian fittings, marble floors with built-in mosaics, and any number of wire stands packed with books and pamphlets and learned volumes on sale, inspired by the many famous (or currently fashionable) exhibits. Once again the ticket barrier opened itself for me, and Bettie looked at me, impressed.
“This is even better than having an expense account. Did you do something important for the Museum, too?”
“No,” I said. “I think they’re just scared of me.”
The uniformed staff were all Neanderthals—big and muscular, with hairy hands, low brows, and chinless jaws filled with large blocky teeth. The deep-set eyes were kind, but distant. Neanderthals performed all the menial work in the Museum, in return for not being exhibits. They were also in charge of basic security, and rumour had it they were allowed to eat anyone they caught. I asked one to take us to the Director of the Museum, and he hooted softly before beckoning us to follow him. He had a piercing in one ear, and a badge on his lapel saying UNIONISE NOW!
He led us deep into the Museum, and Bettie’s head swung back and forth, trying to take in everything at once. I was almost as bad. The Museum really does have something for everyone. A miniature blue whale, presented in a match-box, to give it some scale. I wondered vaguely how it would taste on toast. More disturbingly, half of one wall was taken up with a Victorian display of stuffed and mounted wee winged fairies, pinned through the abdomen. Only a few inches tall, the fairies were perfectly formed, their stretched-out wings glued in place and showing off all the delicate colours of a soap bubble. They had many-faceted insect eyes, and vicious barbed stingers hung down between their toothpick legs. In the next room there were tall glass jars containing fire-flies and iceflies, mermaids with monkey faces, and a display of alien genitalia through the ages. Bettie got the giggles.
On a somewhat larger scale, one whole room was taken up with a single great diorama featuring the fabled last battle between Man and Elf. The dozens of full-sized figures were very impressive. The Men, in their spiked and greaved armour, looked brave and heroic, while the Fae looked twisted and evil. Which was pretty much the way it was, by all accounts. There was a lot of blood and gore and severed limbs, but I suppose you need that these days to bring in the tourists. Another huge diorama showed a pack of werewolves on the prowl, under a full moon. Each figure showed a different stage of the transformation, from man to wolf. They all looked unnervingly real; but up close there was a definite smell of sawdust and preservatives.
Another group of figures showed a pack of ghouls, teaching a human changeling child how to feed as they did. The Museum of Unnatural History presented such things without comment. History is what it is and not what we would have it be.
There were a fair number of people around, but the place wasn’t what you’d call crowded, despite all the wonders and treasures on display. People don’t tend to come to the Nightside for such intellectual pleasures. And tourism’s been right down since the recent wars. The Museum is said to be heavily subsidised, but I couldn’t tell you who by. Most of the exhibits are donated; the Museum certainly didn’t have the budget to buy them.
The uniformed Neanderthal finally brought us to the Museum’s current pride and joy, the Tyrannosaurus rex. The cage they’d made to hold it was huge, a good three hundred feet in diameter and a hundred feet high. The bars were reinforced steel, but the cage’s interior had been made over into a reconstruction of the T. rex’s time, to make it feel at home. The cage contained a primordial jungle, with vast trees and luxurious vegetation, under a blazing sun. The illusion was perfect. The terrible heat didn’t pass beyond the bars, but a gusting breeze carried out the thick and heavy scents of crushed vegetation, rotting carrion, and even the damp smells of a nearby salt flat. I could even hear the buzzing of oversized flies and other insects. The trees were tall and dark, with drooping serrated leaves, and what ground I could see was mostly mud, stamped flat.
But it was all dominated by the tyrant king himself, Tyrannosaurus rex. It towered above us, almost as tall as the trees, much bigger than I’d expected. It stood very still, half-hidden amongst the shadows of rotting vegetation, watching us through the bars. There was a definite sense of weight and impact about it, as though the ground itself would shake and shudder when it moved. Its scales were a dull grey-green, splashed here and there with the dried blood of recent kills. It panted loudly through its open mouth, revealing jagged teeth like a shark’s. The small gripping arms high up on the chest didn’t seem ridiculous at all, when seen full size. I had no doubt they could tear me apart in a moment. But it was the eyes that troubled me the most; set far back in the ugly wedge- shaped head, they were sharp and knowing…and they hated. They looked right at me, and they knew me. This was no mere animal, no simple savage beast. It knew it was a prisoner, and it knew who was responsible; and it lived for the moment when it would inevitably break free and take a terrible revenge.
“How the hell did they get hold of a T. rex?” said Bettie, her voice unconsciously hushed.
“You should read your own paper more often,” I said. “There was a sudden invasion of dinosaurs through a Timeslip, earlier this year. Some fifty assorted beasts got through, before Walker sent in an emergency squad to shut down the Timeslip. Most of the creatures were killed pretty quickly; the members of the Nightside Gun Club couldn’t believe their luck. They came running with every kind of gun you can think of, and the dinosaurs never stood a chance, poor bastards. The only reason the T. rex survived was because the big-game hunters spent too long squabbling over who had the right to go first. Walker claimed it for the Museum before they started a shooting war over it.”
“How did they get it here?” said Bettie, standing very close to me. “I mean, look at it; that is big. Seriously big. There can’t be that many tranquilliser darts in the world.”
“Walker had one of his pet sorcerers put the thing in stasis while the Museum got its accommodations ready. Then the sorcerer transported it right into its cage. The Japanese have been pouring in to have their photographs taken with it ever since.”
While we were watching the T. rex, and it was watching us, the uniformed Neanderthal had gone off and found the Museum’s Director. He turned out to be one Percival Smythe-Herriot, a tall spindly figure in a shiny suit, with some of his breakfast still staining his waistcoat. He stamped to a halt before me and gave both Bettie and me a brief, professional, and utterly meaningless smile. He didn’t offer to shake hands. He had a lean and hungry look, as though he was always ready to add a new exhibit to his beloved Museum and was already wondering how I would look stuffed, mounted, and put on display.
“John Taylor,” he said, in a voice like someone trying to decide whether snail or octopus would make the least distressing starter. “Oh, yes; I know you. Or of you. Trouble-maker. Or at the very least, someone trouble follows around like a devoted pet. Tell me what it is you want here, so I can help you find it, then escort you quickly to the nearest exit. Before something goes horribly and destructively wrong in my nice and carefully laid-out Museum.”
“Are you going to let him talk to you like that?” said Bettie.
“Yes,” I said. “I find his honesty and grasp of reality quite refreshing.” I gave Percival my own professional smile and was quietly pleased to see him wince a little. “Walker sent me. I need to talk to the Collector.”
