666.
I dropped the paper back onto the table, went to wipe my inky fingers on my coat, and then realised that’s not a good idea when you’re wearing a white trench coat. I took out a handkerchief and rubbed briskly at my fingers. I hadn’t realised how much I knew about the paper. The tabloid had insinuated itself into the Nightside so thoroughly that pretty much anything you saw or thought of reminded you of something that had appeared in the Unnatural Inquirer. For a while there was even a rumour going around that the Editor had a precog on staff, who could see just far enough into the future to view the next day’s edition of the Night Times, so that the Unnatural Inquirer could run all their best stories in advance. I had trouble believing that. First, I knew the Editor of the Night Times, and he wouldn’t sit still for something like that for one moment, and second, the Unnatural Inquirer had never been that interested in news stories anyway. Not when there’s important gossip and tittle-tattle to spread.
Not that the Unnatural Inquirer gets everything its own way. The Editor once sent a reporter into Rats’ Alley, where the homeless and down-and-outs gather, to dig up some juicy stories on rich and famous people who’d been brought low by misfortune and disaster. Razor Eddie, Punk God of the Straight Razor, and defenders of street people everywhere, rather took exception to such hard-heartedness. He sent the reporter back to the Editor in forty-seven separate parcels. With postage owing.
“The Sub-Editor is ready to see you now,” said the Receptionist. “He’s sending a copy-boy to escort you in.”
“Does he think I’ll get lost?” I said.
She smiled coldly. “We don’t like people wandering around. Personally, I think all visitors should be electronically tagged and stamped with time codes so they’d know exactly when their welcome was wearing out.”
The door to the inner offices opened, and out shambled a hunched and scowling adolescent in a grubby T- shirt and jeans. His T-shirt bore the legend FUCK THEM ALL AND LET THE DOCTORS SORT THEM OUT. He flicked his long, lank hair back out of his sullen face, looked me over, grunted once, and gestured for me to follow him inside. I felt like giving him a good slap, on general principles.
“Let me guess,” I said. “Everything’s rotten and nothing’s fair.”
“I’m nineteen!” he said, glaring at me dangerously. “Nineteen, and still a copy-boy! And I’ve got qualifications…I’m being held back. You just wait; there’ll be some changes made around here once they finally see sense and put me in charge…”
“What’s your name?” I said.
“I’m beginning to think it’s Hey you! That’s all I ever hear in this place. Like it would kill the old farts that work here to remember my name. Which is Jimmy, if you really care, which you probably don’t.”
“And what do you want to be when you grow up?” I said kindly.
His glare actually intensified, and veins stood out in his neck. “To be a reporter, of course! So I can dig up the secrets of the rich and powerful, and then blackmail them.” He looked at me slyly. “I could always start with you. Get a good story on the infamous and mysterious John Taylor, and they’d have to give me my own by-line. Go on; tell me something really shocking and sordid about you and Shotgun Suzie. Does she really take the gun to bed with her? Do you sometimes swap clothes? You’d better give me something, or I’ll just make up something really juicy and extra nasty anyway. I’ll say you said it, and it’ll be just your word against mine.”
I looked at him thoughtfully, and he fell back a step. “Jimmy,” I said, “if I see one word about Suzie or me in this rag with your name on it, I will use my gift to find you. And then I’ll send Suzie to you, who will no doubt wish to demonstrate her extreme displeasure. Suddenly and violently and all over the place.”
He sniffed dismally. “Worth a try. Follow me. Sir.”
He led me into the inner offices of the Unnatural Inquirer. The air was thick with cigarette smoke, incense, sweat, and tension. People bustled importantly back and forth around the various reporters, who were all working with furious concentration at their desks, hammering their computer keys like their lives depended on it. They kept calling out to each other, mostly without looking up from what they were doing, demanding information, opinions, and the very latest gossip, like so many ravenous baby birds in a nest. They all sounded cheerful enough, but there was a definite undercurrent of malice and cut-throat competition. The general noise level was appalling, the air was almost unbreathable, and the whole place seethed with talent and ambition.
It was everything I’d hoped it would be.
The copy-boy slouched down the main central aisle with me in tow, and everyone ostentatiously ignored me. There was a definite bunker atmosphere to the inner offices; probably because most people really were out to get them, for one reason or another. The industrious men and women of the Unnatural Inquirer drank and smoked like it was their last day on Earth, because it just might be. Their readers might love them, but nobody else did. For the staff here it was always going to be Us versus Them, with everything and everyone fair game. There were always lawsuits, but the Editor & Publisher could afford the very best lawyers and took pride in keeping cases in court forever and a day. The paper might never have won a case, but it had never lost one either, mostly because the paper outspent or outlived the litigants. The Unnatural Inquirer had never once apologised, never printed a retraction, and never paid a penny in compensation. And was proud of it. Which was why the staff had to hide away in a bunker and take out special insurance against assassination attempts.
There was a prominent sign on one wall. YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE VICIOUS, PETTY-MINDED, AND MEAN- SPIRITED TO WORK HERE; BUT IT HELPS. Anywhere else, this would have been a joke.
Jimmy the copy-boy finally brought me to the Sub-Editor’s office, knocked on the door like he was announcing the imminent arrival of the barbarian hordes, and pushed the door open without waiting for a reply. I followed him in, shutting the door carefully behind me, and Scoop Malloy himself stood up from behind his paper- scattered desk to greet me. He was a short, dumpy figure, with a sad face and a prematurely bald head, wearing a pullover with the phrase SMILE WHEN YOU CALL ME THAT embroidered over his chest. He popped a handful of little purple pills from a handy bottle, dry-swallowed them in one, and came out from behind his desk to give me a limp, almost apologetic handshake. I shook his hand gingerly. Partly because I was remembering where his nickname came from, and partly because his hand felt like it might come off in mine.
He glared at the copy-boy. “What are you still doing here? Isn’t there some important tea you should be making?”
“Fascist!” Jimmy hissed, slamming the door behind him on his way out. Then he opened it again, shouted, “I’m nineteen! Nineteen!” and disappeared again.
Scoop Malloy sighed deeply, sat down behind his desk, and gestured for me to take the visitor’s chair. Which was, of course, hard and uncomfortable, as visitor’s chairs always are. I think it’s supposed to imply you’re only there on sufferance.
“Puberty’s a terrible thing,” said Scoop. “Particularly for other people. I’d fire him if he wasn’t someone’s nephew…Wish I knew whose…Welcome to the salt mines, Mr. Taylor. Sorry to drag you all the way in here, but you see how it is. The price of freedom of the Press is eternal vigilance and constant access to heavy-duty armaments.”
“I was given to understand that the matter was urgent,” I said. “And that the pay would be quite staggeringly good.”
“Oh, quite,” said Scoop. “Quite.” He looked at me searchingly. “I understand you’ve done some work for Julien Advent, at the Night Times.”
“On occasion,” I said. “I approve of Julien.”
Scoop smirked unpleasantly. “I could tell you some things about him…”
“Don’t,” I said firmly. “First, I wouldn’t believe them; and second, if you were to insult my good friend Julien Advent, I would then find it necessary to beat you severely about the head and shoulders. Quite probably until your head came off, after which I would play football with it up and down the inner offices.”
“I never believed those stories anyway,” Scoop said firmly. He leaned forward across his desk, trying hard to look business-like. “Mr. Taylor, here at the Unnatural Inquirer we are not in the news business, as such. No. We print stories, entertainment, a moment’s diversion. We employ a manic depressive to write the Horoscopes; to keep our readers on their toes, we run competitions with really big prizes, like Guess where the next Timeslip’s going to appear; and we’re always first with news about what the rich and famous are up to. Even if that news isn’t exactly accurate. We print the stories people want to read.”
“And to Hell with whether they’re true?” I said.
