Last Stand of the DNA Cowboys (11 page)

'Are you telling me that, right at a point when the whole
Damaged World seems to be on the edge of another round of violence, you three suddenly turn up in the same place at the same time, quite by accident?' It was the Minstrel Boy's argument almost word for word.

'You can believe it or not. It's what happened.'

Diamenti shrugged. 'It doesn't really matter if I believe it or not. Everybody else believes it, and I figure that you're going to have to go along with it.'

He had a point there. General perception was a powerful force. Billy, who had been staring morosely into his drink, suddenly looked up at Diamenti. There was an odd light in his eye. 'Yeah, but do you believe it?'

Diamenti looked at Billy curiously. 'Is it important?'

'You really think that another cycle of violence is coming?'

'Haven't you felt it for yourself?'

Billy's hands made an awkward gesture. 'I've been on a bit of a vacation myself.'

'Then the answer is yes, Billy Oblivion. Yes, there is another round of violence coming. The moods of civilizations change, even in a fragmented civilization like ours. It's the inevitable turnaround, day and night, summer and winter. All we can do is weather it.'

The Minstrel Boy raised a questioning eyebrow. 'Doesn't it seem like this is shaping up to be a particularly hard winter?'

Diamenti nodded. 'It does rather look like that.'

'Maybe we won't weather it.'

Diamenti smiled. 'Maybe we won't. I'm something of a fatalist in these things. After all, there's only one death per customer.'

At that moment Heet returned with a bottle of very good cognac and cut short the philosophy. It must have come from Diamond's private stock. Despite all the trouble they were in, the Minstrel Boy examined it admiringly. 'This is excellent.'

Heet was not alone. Axel was with him. He whispered something to Diamenti and then handed him two small objects. Diamenti placed them on the table where everyone could see them.

'These were on the body. Do they mean anything to you?'

The Minstrel Boy felt his blood chill. One was a small gold insignia — a tiny sword. The other was a wafer of transparent crystal. He glanced quickly at Renatta. She also looked frightened.

'The sword is the insignia of the Hunters in the Caverns,'
he replied. 'The crystal is one of the wafers they give to their designated victims.'

'And you were a designated victim?'

'They hit on me just as I was leaving.'

'They seem to have followed you here.'

The Minstrel Boy did not believe what he was seeing. 'This isn't possible. The Hunters are just a bunch of localized sickos. They couldn't track me across the nothings, let alone employ an urthugee.'

Billy Oblivion was stunned. 'An urthugee?'

Diamenti shot him a hard look. 'We're trying to keep that to ourselves.'

Billy nodded. 'I can understand that. What I
don't understand is how come an urthugee is working for these Hunters. Like the Minstrel Boy says, they're just localized sickos.'

Diamenti's face was grave. 'Things change. The kali-rouge Yuba is supposed to last 200,000 years before Shiva is finally slain by the goddess and chaos takes over. Perhaps the goddess has done a deal with the Presence. You can pick up a lot of strange allies in 200,000 years.'

Reave was shaking his head. 'That's ridiculous. All this is legend.'

'What isn't these days?'

'Hell, I don't know.'

'The evidence is on the table.'

Billy picked up the tiny gold sword and turned it between his fingers. 'The immediate question is what you're going to do about this. It's your place — you call the shot.'

Diamenti poured a sizable shot of cognac into his sampling cup. He seemed to be thinking. 'You'll all have to leave here. That goes without saying.'

Billy started to protest. 'Why do Reave and I have to leave? It's only the Minstrel Boy that's in trouble.'

'Can you be sure of that? The world sees you as a trio. All for one, one for all, and the rest of the male bonding rituals.'

'It's those words again.'

Diamenti went on. 'I'm not going to argue about it. I want the three of you out of here inside of forty-eight hours. You're trouble, and that's all the cause I need. If you'll take a piece of good advice, though, I'd stick with each other for the moment. Times are getting rough, and you three always do well in rough
times. You may not like the idea anymore, but you'll find that you're a lot less vulnerable as a triad.'

The DNA Cowboys were silent. The reunion was beginning to look inevitable.

Diamenti finished his brandy. 'Forty-eight hours. It'd be better if you kept away from the public halls during that time. I don't want any young hopeful trying to score a rep by taking a crack at one of you. To make things easier, I'm going to detail Heet to keep an eye on the three of you, just to make sure there's no more trouble.'

Reave looked Heet up and down. 'I'll feel a whole lot safer.'

Heet grinned. He appeared to have stainless-steel teeth. 'I'll take good care of you boys. There is one thing, though.'

'What's that?'

The grin broadened. 'Don't get me excited. I tend to get lycanthropic fits when I get excited.'

With that, Diamenti and his henchmen left them. The three stared at each other in glum silence.

The Minstrel Boy was the first to speak. 'I'm not sure that I can handle this.'

Reave wearily massaged his temples. 'You were the one who kept saying that it was preordained, that dark forces were at work.'

Billy glared at both of them. 'He knew that he was in the shit, and he wanted to enlist our help to save his ass. Trouble was, he couldn't just come out and say it. He came out with all this mystic crap instead.'

The Minstrel Boy came half out of his chair. 'That's a fucking lie and you know it. How in hell could I know that you two would be here?'

Reave interposed. 'Hold it! Hold it!'

Billy, who had been ready to take on the Minstrel Boy, fell back in his chair. 'All I know is that there ain't no urthugees after me.'

'Can you be sure of that?'

Renatta could not hold back her laughter any longer. 'Will you guys look at yourselves? When are you going to accept that, like it or not, you're back in business?'

Reave sighed. 'She's right. There's no fighting it.'

The Minstrel Boy slowly nodded. Billy Oblivion was the last to give in. Finally he sagged in surrender.

'Damn.'

— Pressdra Vishnaria

The Human Comedy, Volume I:

Behold the Man

CHAPTER SIX

T
HE MINSTREL BOY'S WRISTS AND ANKLES WERE TIED WITH
silk scarves, and his face was covered in makeup. First she had tied him, and then she had very carefully painted his eyes and lips. She had even outlined his nipples in red and purple. She had laughed when he had become a little impatient.

'I'm just making you beautiful for me.'

It was almost like being back in the Caverns. Renatta was straddling his stretched-out body. With total control, she rode him like a trained animal, flicking him with her long, gold false fingernails when he failed to please her. He let out a long, deep-throated gasp, part pain and part pleasure. The bodysuit and the cossack hat had gone, but she had retained the long red boots and the earrings, and the white fur was draped around her shoulders. Her mass of black curly hair hung down over her face, although it was still possible to see her eyes sparkle and her teeth gleam white in the diffused glow. When the Minstrel Boy opened his eyes, he could see multiple reflections of himself in the faceted dome overhead. He watched as Renatta languorously crawled down the length of his torso. He extended his tongue, running it over any part of her that presented itself.

Although Ramilles Diamenti had ordered them out of his realm, for the short time that they had left to them they had been given carte blanche to order the best of everything. Reave and Billy had been introduced to a partying group of very attractive women and had retired to their individual chambers. Renatta had insisted that the Minstrel Boy take the best, specialty equipped love suite that the Voice in the Wilderness had to offer It was in the Round Tower, a large circular chamber with a feeler bed and a bubbling steam pool under a dome of hexagonal mirrors. Something seemed to have really aroused Renatta. Then
was a razor edge to her sexual hunger that night. The Minstrel Boy could not quite believe that it was just his animal magnetism, and he wondered what exactly it was that had so excited her. Could it be that the idea of making love to one of the famous — and now reunited — DNA Cowboys drove her crazy? A much more sinister idea was that the heat was being generated by the knowledge that he had just killed a man. He had been involved before with women who were turned on by killers. He was never able to quite relax around them. There was always the nagging fear of role reversal.

The Minstrel Boy had no difficulty relaxing on this particular night. The chamber was geared to total creature comfort. There was soft, silver mossfur beneath him, perfume wafted through the air, and the bubbling of the water in the pool blended with high harmonic chimes like the calling of electronic birds. Sleep, as opposed to relaxation, was a different matter. It was a number of hours before Renatta was finally sated and he was able to doze. It was in the middle of that dozing, while he was uneasily dreaming about being hunted across fields of stone by dark figures waving gold swords, that the entry buzzer started sounding impatiently.

Renatta sat bolt upright. 'What the hell is that?'

'Quickly, untie my hands.'

She fumbled with the silk scarves. When he was loose, he slid across the bed and scooped up his gun. He pointed it at the hexagonal door that he estimated would take only minimal effort to break down. 'Who's there?'

A familiar voice came from without. 'It's me, Reave. Billy's with me.'

The Minstrel Boy lowered the Colt. 'Come on in.'

He hit the door response, and it slid back. As the other two ducked through the low entrance, Renatta wrapped the fur around herself.

'This is a weird time to come calling.'

Billy looked at her and shrugged. 'I'm sorry, Renatta, but Reave and I got to talking, and we decided that it was a good idea to leave as soon as we could.'

Billy looked considerably better. He was freshly shaved, except for his darkening scalp. He had found himself a somewhat somber black travel suit with polymesh facing, which gave him a strangely ecclesiastical air that the Minstrel Boy decided must
be some emotional hangover from the Sanctuary. It placed a new twist on his traditional role as the con man and manipulator of the trio. Was Billy going to be the mad vicar of the troupe?

The Minstrel Boy sat down on the bed. 'Leave? You mean leave here? I assume we're going together just like everyone wants us to?'

Reave and Billy were stiff and awkward, almost formal.

'That's right.'

The Minstrel Boy slowly nodded. It really was inevitable. 'But why leave now? Diamenti gave us forty-eight hours.'

'That's why we thought it might be a good idea to get going as soon as we can.'

The Minstrel Boy blinked. 'I'm not following this. I'm half-asleep. Has someone else been killed?'

'No, nothing like that. We just thought it might be wise to get a jump on anyone who was thinking about laying for us.'

Billy picked up the explanation. His voice sounded together and rational. 'It's like this. Everyone here knows that Diamenti has given us forty-eight hours to get out of town. They're going to expect us to wait around drinking it up until the deadline. That would be the time when anyone who wanted to take a crack at us would try it. This way we just drift off into the night, and if they come to look for us, we'll be gone.'

The Minstrel Boy stretched. He wondered if Billy's seeming recovery was permanent. 'It does make a certain kind of sense.'

'So?'

'Sure, let's get going. How are we going to travel, and where are we going to head for?'

'That's what we wanted to talk to you about.'

'We heard you had a submarine.'

The Minstrel Boy sat down again. 'I sold it.'

'Damn.'

'Maybe you could buy it back again.'

The Minstrel Boy scowled and shook his head. 'I doubt I've got enough money, and anyway, a submarine isn't exactly the most flexible means of transport.'

'So what do we do?'

Reave hitched up his pants. 'If you're talking flexible, there's nothing more flexible than a lizard.'

Billy grimaced. 'That's really doing it the hard way.'

For once the Minstrel Boy agreed with him. 'Yeah, Reave, you may be callused and saddle sore, but I came down here with an ass as soft as a baby's.'

Reave was not convinced. 'I've already got a lizard in the stables, and I'm sure we could get
two
more out of Diamenti.'

There was a sudden awkward silence. Everyone looked at Renatta sitting cross-legged on the circular bed.

'So you finally remembered about me?'

The Minstrel Boy was embarrassed. 'You want to come with us?'

'I don't want to stay here.'

'It could get rough.'

'It's been real easy up to now, hasn't it?'

'Okay, so we ask Diamenti for three lizards.'

The Minstrel Boy was not sold on the idea of trekking on lizardback. 'Maybe we could do better than lizards. Wasn't Heet supposed to be keeping an eye on us?'

'He's outside waiting.'

The Minstrel Boy started pulling on his pants. 'So let's bring him in. I assume that he knows about this plan to split right now.'

'Oh, sure. I think he and his boss can't wait to see the back of us.'

'Maybe we can get a deal on something.'

Heet ducked through the entrance. He looked at the Minstrel Boy and Renatta and the messed-up bed. His expression was disapproving. The Minstrel Boy grinned, wondering how a Puritan managed to survive in a place like the Voice in the Wilderness.

'Greetings, Heet, I hope the old lycanthropy isn't acting up.'

Heet bared his steel fangs. 'You're a funny guy, Minstrel Boy. You wanna watch someone don't rip your sense of humor out.'

'Listen, Heet, you can speak for your boss, right?'

Heet nodded suspiciously. 'In most things.'

'So we need transportation out of here, and we were wondering if we could get a deal on some sort of rough-country ground vehicle.'

The yellow man tugged at a pointed ear. 'What you got to pay for it with?'

'I've got the balance on my submarine, and Reave could throw in his lizard.'

Heet gave him a baleful look. 'The sub was stolen from the Caverns.'

'That never bothered Diamenti in the past.'

'The lizard's probably stolen, too.'

'Can you make us a deal or not?'

Heet was thoughtful. 'There might be something I can do for you.'

'Yeah?'

'There's an old Saab battlewagon parked out on the terrace that might be in your price range. The previous owners died in a card game.'

Reave was suddenly interested. 'A Saab?'

'I'll even throw in the heat ray.'

Heet was turning into a bizarre salesman. The DNA Cowboys took the bait. Billy grinned.

'It sounds like us.'

Reave nodded. 'It does rather.'

The Minstrel Boy cinched the deal. 'I've seen it, and it looks okay.'

Reave faced Heet. 'You'll give it to us for the balance on the submarine and the lizard?'

Heet flashed the steel. 'Boss'll go along with that.'

He stuck out a hand. They shook in turn.

Renatta was dressing, pulling up her long red boots and smoothing them to the contours of her legs. 'So we're riding in a tank?'

'You have a problem with that?'

She ran a finger down her thigh. 'Hell, no. It seems sort of apt, and it's certainly better than riding a lizard.'

The deal done, they moved quickly. First there was the inspection of the battlewagon. While Heet was around, they complained bitterly about flaws, defects, and worn parts. And indeed they had some reason. When they started the drive, it crackled with plasma and leaked fluids. The biode was taciturn and easily irritated, and the previous owners had been far from fastidious. The interior of the vehicle was filthy, surfaces were thick with grime, and corners were solid with compacted garbage. The cabin stank of urine and decay. It was sufficiently bad that when Renatta insisted that the inside be cleaned out before they accept
the craft, Heet did not complain and went off
to find a couple of house epsilons to do the job. Once he was out of earshot there was a great deal of jubilation.

Reave was grinning. 'The DNA Cowboys have their own goddamn tank!'

Renatta was not altogether sold on the tank 'I thought you didn't call yourselves that.'

Reave was too pleased with their acquisition to pay her any mind. 'Whatever. We still got our own tank.' He climbed inside. 'The rest of it may look like shit, but the weapons systems have been perfectly maintained. The dead guys may have been pigs, but they were also heavy pros.'

The Minstrel Boy was drawing patterns in the dirt on the Saab's bodywork. 'If they were such heavyweights, how come they got killed over a card game?'

'Maybe they were playing with each other.'

Reave was going over the weapons, checking each gun port in turn, swiveling on the jockey stool, getting the feel of the twin particle throwers.

'Whoever looked after these babies really loved their work. We're talking firepower here. With something like this at the point, you could easily put a sizable raiding force behind you.'

The Minstrel Boy, who was getting his own feel of the biode, raised an eyebrow. 'I thought you'd had enough of that sort of thing.'

Reave looked torn. 'Yeah, I don't want to go off burning no towns. It just seems that everything's got so antsy out there that aggression's sometimes the only answer. There's always some bastard who wants to pick on you, so why not pick first? Besides, with all this firepower, it'd be good to have something to shoot at.'

Billy sighed. 'That's one way of looking at it.'

The Minstrel Boy turned in his seat. 'There's a difference between copping an attitude and sinking into barbarian twilight.'

Reave grunted. 'I'm not so sure that barbarian twilight ain't the next thing on the menu.'

Billy was already strapping himself into a passenger berth. 'Are we going to spend the next few hours talking philosophy, or are we going to get going?'

The Minstrel Boy engaged the drive. Blue smoke drifted through the cabin. Its hum had a harsh arrhythmic quality.

Renatta looked concerned. 'Is that drive going to last?'

The Minstrel Boy nodded. 'It'll go; it's just cranky.'

He grasped the control levers but did not merge with the biode. He wanted the old-fashioned pleasure of actually driving the tank. He made a neat three-point turn and started down the terrace, away from the main building. For something so bulky, the Saab was easily maneuverable.

'Unless anyone has a better idea, I was going to go into the nothings, get beyond the backwash, and let the lizardbrain see what it can come up with.'

'Do we have any idea where we want to go?' Renatta asked.

The Minstrel Boy observed that she still was not grasping the basics of travel in the nothings. 'It's not where we want to go, it's where we can go. We see what stasis we can lock to and then assess the situation.'

'So we play it by ear?'

'There never was any other option.'

They slid into the nothings. The Saab began bucking and rolling as if it were going through a simulation of rough terrain. The Minstrel Boy went into the biode and discovered that the previous owners had deliberately programmed it that way.

'What the hell were they? Gluttons for punishment?'

The biode did not condescend to provide him with an answer. The Minstrel Boy wrote in an adjustment on the ride illusion. In a matter of moments they were running as smoothly as a luxury limo.

As soon as they entered the nothings, a tension started growing inside the tank's cramped cabin that was more than just the normal unease at being so close to the completely alien environment. It was the realization that they had embarked on something new, with no idea what direction it might take or how it would come out in the end. There was no turning back. Billy's mind kept morbidly returning to the earlier talk of going out in a blaze of glory: Eventually the time came when there was nothing else to do but die.

They did not even have an answer to the most immediate question. How were they going to relate to each other through long hours cooped up in the Saab? The Minstrel Boy wondered what was going to become of his sexual liaison with Renatta.

Were they going to travel celibate, or did she intend to spread her favors to all three of them? With Renatta, the Minstrel Boy couldn't hazard a guess, and he did not particularly want to discuss it with her in front of the other two. He glanced at where she was curled up in the forward gun position. She didn't seem about to volunteer anything. He decided that he would drive the tank and let nature take its course.

'I'm scoping on the lizardbrain. You want to see what I got?'

Everyone nodded. The Minstrel Boy stroked a control glove, and a display pseudosurface curved around the driver's berth. Three points of light hung in the air. One was much brighter than the other two.

Reave swung down from the rear gunner's chair and ducked behind the Minstrel Boy. 'What's the bright one?'

'That's a place called Santa Freska — it ain't very big, but it's extremely relative to us. I don't have a make yet on the other two. I just know that they're there.'

'What's this Santa Freska? I've never been there.'

'Sun bunnies, Cobalt 90s, a few local bandidos, and a lot of rock bathers. It's hot enough to bake your brain. Big pseudosun and desert terrain. Focal point is an oasis settlement, Santa Freska Town.'

'You want to go for it?'

'I don't see why not. We may be able to strike out for somewhere larger. I'd be a lot happier if we were in a largish city with plenty of action and natural color. These isolated realities are getting too damn weird.'

Reave nodded. 'I think you're probably right.'

'I am right.' The Minstrel Boy turned in his seat. 'You two want to go into Santa Freska?'

Neither Billy nor Renatta seemed particularly concerned.

'Sure, whatever.'

'I never heard of it.'

Billy's mind had seemed to come and go since they had left the Voice in the Wilderness. Right at that moment he seemed to be completely normal, but there was no telling when he would suddenly distance out into a self-created trance.

The Minstrel Boy concentrated. 'I'm locking on to it.'

They came out of the nothings onto flat scrub desert. They were following a poorly maintained dirt road that had been plowed and furrowed by dozens of wheeled vehicles. The Minstrel Boy spread the treads to make it a less rocky ride. He opened the armored covers on the windshield and dogged back the side ports. Hot, dry air poured into the Saab. It was something of a shock, but it did help blow away the smell of confinement. At first there was nothing except flat, featureless desert with dry brush, stunted yucca trees, and outcrops of red ocher rock that glittered with deposits of crystal.

'So where's this oasis?'

The Minstrel Boy shrugged. 'I guess we'll get to it eventually. They seem to have a lot of area stabilized here.'

Billy looked at the scenery with distrust. 'Who in their right mind would go to all the trouble of stabilizing a stinking desert?'