Last Stand of the DNA Cowboys (18 page)

'Can you identify an object and give me its history?'

'All things are possible. Do you have the object with you?'

The Minstrel Boy pulled out the ceramic razor that had come so close to cutting his throat. 'It's here.'

'Please hand it to me.'

The soothsayer stretched out its functioning arm toward the Minstrel Boy, who placed the razor in the trembling hand. The soothsayer's eyes began to swivel again. It was silent for a long time. When it finally spoke, its voice had totally changed. No longer soft and feminine, it was harsh and masculine.

'It is a very old thing. It is an evil thing. There has been much blood . . .'

Another entity seemed to have taken over the soothsayer. The Minstrel Boy could not tell whether the effect was an example of genuine channeling or merely an electronic trick.

'Where does it come from?' he asked.

'It is the high sacrificial razor of the Zos Kia Cultus.'

'The what?'

The soothsayer paused again before answering.'The Zos Kia Cultus await the coming of Abraxas.'

'What's Abraxas?'

'Abraxas is a god of true antiquity. He is the whip-wielding rooster god with serpent feet in whom light and darkness arc both united and transcended. His worshipers believe that he will free them from the agony of time. They believe that he is the third possibility of the eternally available timeless moment.'

The Minstrel Boy was completely mystified. 'What does this Abraxas have to do with me?'

The soothsayer reverted to its original feminine voice. 'You asked me to identify the object. Further knowledge will require another transaction.'

The Minstrel Boy knew that the bite was being put on him. At that moment Reave, who had been waiting outside, ducked into the booth.

'You're not buying this garbage, are you?'

'I've gone this far. I might as well get the rest.'

The Minstrel Boy dropped his crys into the transaction unit a second time and added a second gratuity. The soothsayer's eyes focused on him again.

'Give me your hand.'

The Minstrel Boy, with some reluctance, grasped the soothsayer's hand. It was cold, limp, and moist. After a further pause, the masculine voice was back.

'You are a designated victim.'

'That was back at the Caverns. What does it have to do with this Abraxas cult?'

'You have been touched by the wafer.'

'The wafer?'

'The crystal wafer of the Hunters. You accepted it.'

'I smashed that thing.'

'But you touched it.'

Reave leaned close to the Minstrel Boy. 'Get out of here before you make yourself crazy.'

The Minstrel Boy shook his head. He concentrated on the soothsayer. 'Why should the fact of me touching the crystal make some mad munchkin want to slash me?'

'You are tainted by the crystal wafer. The homicides recognize this. They know that you are not only fair game but that if they kill you, they will also gain grace with the Presence. Already a follower of nu-Kali has tried to slay you.'

The Minstrel Boy raised an eyebrow. How had the soothsayer gotten that bit of data? 'Are you telling me that any mad killer can sniff me out?'

'Only the ones who have a spiritual frame of reference.'

'Is there any way I can get rid of this taint? I can't have religious maniacs stalking me like dogs after a bitch in heat.'

'You can no more lift the taint than you can remove radiation contamination.'

'Are you telling me that I'm doomed?'

'We are all doomed.'

'Yeah, but I'd like to know how doomed I am.'

' Do you wish to know the day and hour of your death?'

'No, but . . .'

'Very well.'

There was a pause before the Minstrel Boy asked the next question.

'Will this taint ever pass?'

'All things will pass.'

'That's not the answer I was looking for.'

'We live in the hour of the great upheaval. There will be more things to occupy your time than just this threat.'

'That's hardly a comfort.'

'You didn't come here looking for comfort, Minstrel Boy.'

'I didn't? So what did I come in here for?'

Reave muttered under his breath. 'That's the first intelligent question you've come up with.'

The soothsayer ignored Reave. 'You came in here looking for understanding, and now you understand.'

'I do?'

'You will.'

Reave snorted contemptuously. 'This is double-talk.'

The Minstrel Boy was thinking. 'I have one more question.'

'Ask it.'

'How can it be that all these old gods are suddenly expected to materialize? I mean, we've already had brushes with the kali-rouge and now this Abraxas. And it all seems to be hooked in to the Presence. What's going on?'

Reave sighed. 'You're asking some freak who lives in a bath of saline solution to explain what's going on?'

Again he was ignored.

'These are the final days of man. It is natural that some should turn to the old gods and the ancient unseen forces.'

'The final days of man?'

'That's what I said.'

'These are the final days of man?'

'Do you doubt that?'

Before the Minstrel Boy could reply, the soothsayer's eyes started to swivel. He had clearly had his money's worth.

— Pressdra Vishearia

The Human Comedy, Volume 15:

You 're Dead and I'm Not

CHAPTER NINE

B
ILLY OBLIVION WAITED IN THE LOBBY OF THE LEADER HOTEL
.
Billy hated to wait for anything. Patience was not among his virtues. The other two were well overdue, and for what had to be the seventy-third time, he was asking himself where the hell they were. A waitress approached. Billy eyed her balefully. The waitresses at the Leader Hotel were too goddamn clone-perfect. They had no blemishes. In fact, they looked practically sterile. A fantasy of her torrid degradation flashed in front of his inner eye, but he was too tense and anxious to pursue it. When he had first arrived in Krystaleit, he had felt considerably better than he had in a very long time. The waiting, however, was getting to him. Something was slipping back. There were scrabblings in his mind.

The waitress was standing over him. 'Can I get you something, sir?'

Billy stared up at the woman's outstanding breasts. There was something gravity-defying about the way they swelled against the stretch silk of her formal cheongsam. He imagined ripping away the material, but then he sighed and nodded. 'You can get me the same again.'

Reave and the Minstrel Boy had been gone for more than twelve hours and were probably lying drunk in some whorehouse down in the Bluecat. Their absence was creating a problem. Renatta had vanished, and if they did not put in an appearance soon, he would have to deal with her disappearance on his own. He was not sure that he was in any shape to be going out solo to look for the woman. Waiting in the lobby was enough of a strain. He was starting to twitch at shadows. On the other side of the lobby, right by the gilt check-in desk, a gray middle-aged man and an attractive young woman seemed to be staring in his direction. He started
to curl down into his chair. His memory had deteriorated so badly over the last couple of years that he could no longer trust himself to recognize faces before they recognized him.

The serious damage to Billy's nervous system, as opposed to the routine recreational damage, had started back in that room in the Pale Rooster, back there in Stowellberg when Haun Geep and the Griddling brothers had caught up with him. They had tied him down on the bed and shot lyrnphane straight in through his eye sockets. The convulsions had lasted for fifty-four hours, and after that he had never again been able to perceive the color green. Grass was now a wholly new color that did not have a name and, as far as he could tell, was known only to him. The times he had wandered in the nothings with no guidance, no sense of time, and loaded to the gills on cyclatrol had compounded the mess inside his head, and the varying levels of spiritual stress that had been inflicted on him during his sojourn at the Sanctuary had set the ruins of his mind into bizarre and disturbing patterns. It could only be a matter of time before the other two realized just how bad his condition really was. And where the hell were they, anyway?

To his relief, he spotted two figures stumbling through the main revolving doors. He quickly stood up and went to meet them.

'We have a problem,' he announced,

Reave and the Minstrel Boy were leaning on each other for support. They stared at him, blank and drunk.

'We do? Tha's terrible.'

Reave began vehemently shaking his head. 'We don't have no problems. We drunk, which is exactly how we wants to be.'

Billy noticed that the Minstrel Boy had a brand-new knife belt strapped across his hips. One of the knives was already missing. A hotel houseman in gold and white livery was
drifting in their direction, and some of the other guests were giving the three of them nervous looks. With Reave as drunk as he was, with pistols jutting aggressively from his belt, the situation had the potential for an explosion. Billy decided to give it to them straight.

'Renatta's gone.'

Reave and the Minstrel Boy looked at him with blank alcoholic eyes. They did not seem in the least concerned.

'So?'

'So she went out three hours ago and hasn't come back.'

'So she's gone. So what?'

The Minstrel Boy nodded solemnly. 'She's had all three of us, and now she's moved on. Shit happens. She's probably fulfilled a childhood ambition. She's laid the DMA Cowboys. I hope it sits well with her.'

Reave put a fatherly arm around Billy's shoulder. 'Listen to me, Billy boy. Listen to your old buddy Reave. You don't want to worry about it. There'll be another one along in a minute, and in the meantime, there's always the whores.'

Billy impatiently shook himself free. 'You don't understand. She went out to look around, but I don't think she knew that she was all but out of credit after last night. If she tried to buy anything more than a couple of drinks, she'd hit the zero and make the indigent roster. Shit, any slaver could have picked her up by now.'

Reave pushed back his hat and scratched his head. 'That's like a really fucking stupid thing to do. Why didn't you warn her?'

'I was too hung over.'

The Minstrel Boy abruptly sat down. 'I feel awful.'

The hotel houseman was hovering closer. Billy tried to ease the others toward the elevators.

'I really think that we should do something about finding her. Why don't we go upstairs and see if she's shown up on any of the lists?'

It was the Minstrel Boy's turn to shake his head. 'Not me, Billy. I'm too sick to go rescuing damsels in distress, and besides, I've got half the world's death cults looking to kill me. Renatta's going to have to take care of herself.'

Billy turned on him angrily. 'You can't be that cold.'

The Minstrel Boy knew that he was being childish, but he didn't care. His speech was slurred and petulant. 'Sure I can. She was that cold with me.'

Reave agreed with him. 'Yeah, screw her. She'll have to look after herself. She dumped me, too.'

Billy's voice turned hard and quiet. 'She hadn't dumped me.'

The Minstrel Boy's laugh was mocking and unpleasant. 'So you just want to go save her because you think you can get some more of that good loving.'

'She became our partner, damn it.'

Reave scowled. 'Did she? Or was she just a bimbo along for the ride?'

The houseman chose that moment to say his piece. 'Are you gentlemen guests of the hotel?'

Billy tried to head off the houseman before Reave noticed him. 'Yes, of course we are.'

'Then perhaps you'd be more comfortable somewhere less-'

'Somewhere less what?' Reave growled. He had the expression of a man deciding whether he should throw an offending individual through a gold mirror.

The houseman stood his ground, and his hand dropped to his discreet, gold-plated sidearm. 'You're starting to distress some of the other guests. I'm sure you understand. Perhaps one of the small bars . . .'

Reave's temperature seemed to be rising toward boiling. Billy looked around for some kind of help from the Minstrel Boy, but the Minstrel Boy was sunk in his chair, leaning forward with his head in his hands. Then Reave did an abrupt mood shift. He suddenly grinned at the houseman.

'You're the cutest little soldier I ever seen.'

'I really don't want any trouble, sir.'

Reave blinked. 'Trouble? Little man, you don't even know what trouble is.'

Billy quickly took him by the arm. 'Come on, Reave. Let's get out of here. We've got a lot to talk about.'

To his surprise and relief, Reave did not argue. 'Yeah, what the hell. Let's get out of here.'

Billy looked down at the Minstrel Boy. 'What about you? Are you going to come with us?'

The Minstrel Boy looked up. 'Yeah, I guess so.' He struggled to his feet and stood swaying. 'I ain't rescuing no damsels, though.'

Back in his room the Minstrel Boy stirred a whole package of alcopeak into a glass of water. Within seconds of drinking the foaming mixture, he was sledgehammered by a blinding headache. It felt as though his eyes were going to drop out, but he was coming off the drunk. He stripped off his clothes and sought refuge in the cleanse-and-massage. While he was in there, his newfound sobriety started him regretting the way he had behaved over the loss of Renatta.

He dressed in clean clothes and headed for Billy's room. When he arrived, Reave was already there, also having apparently undergone a gruff change of heart.

'So what are we going to do about this damn woman?'

'Let's find out if she's got herself listed.' Billy looked up at the mirror ceiling. It was a deep bottle-green. When he had first seen it, he had felt that getting a green room had been something of a dirty trick. It was certainly in line with his current luck. 'Room intelligence, please activate.'

'How can I serve you?'

Billy ran down Renatta's vital codes, which were scanty, to say the least. After about five seconds a head-and-shoulders hologram of a particularly sullen-looking Renatta appeared in midair.

'Renatta de Luxe. Credit count 0-0. Indigent. Claimed by Buzznoose Enterprises, who paid minimum flesh value to city for title.'

'Damn.'

'The slavers have got her already.'

The Minstrel Boy regarded the hologram thoughtfully. 'I don't see exactly what we can do.'

Billy waved the image away. 'We can go and get her back.'

'Not legally.'

'Did that ever bother us before?'

Reave shrugged. 'I guess we could buy her back.'

The Minstrel Boy was still pessimistic. 'I doubt that we've got the credit, unless we're going to run ourselves into trouble. These slavers can pretty much ask what they want for her.'

Reave nodded. 'You're probably right. She's good-looking, and they'll sure as shit want a fortune for her.'

Billy was starting to look a little desperate. Saving Renatta had started to take on the proportions of a test of his continuing ability to cut it.

'We can lean on them, can't we?' he asked. 'I mean, are the DNA Cowboys going to back down to a bunch of stinking slavers?'

'I thought we didn't call ourselves that.'

'You know what I mean.'

The Minstrel Boy's face was chilly. 'I know you're getting crazy over this woman.'

Billy and the Minstrel Boy glared at each other. Reave made a time-out sign.

'Okay, okay, there's no reason why we shouldn't give it a shot. Get the address of the slavers, and we'll go and see what they're all about. There's always the chance that they'll be sailing close to the law and we'll be able to make a deal with them.'

The warehouse that provided premises for
Buzznoose Enterprises was on Tepper Lane, a back street in a faceless, twilight part of the city near the spot where the big exhaust tubes vented the city's waste products out into the nothings. The air smelled of sulfur, and the light was dim and greenish yellow. It was a grimy, nondescript windowless building. The only thing that showed that Buzznoose occupied the place was a tiny hand-lettered sign. The DNA Cowboys stared around cautiously.

'It looks sleazy enough.'

'Isn't that what we want?'

Billy hit the door chimes. At first nothing happened. Then a peephole in the door slid open, and a pair of furtive eyes looked out.

'You want something?'

Billy answered for the three of them. Despite an ongoing squirreling behind his eyes, he was making every effort to keep a semblance of control over the situation. Rescuing Renatta had been his idea, after all.

'We're looking for Buzznoose Enterprises.'

'Well, you found it.'

'We want to talk to someone about making a deal.'

'You want to make a purchase?'

'Maybe. If we see the right item.'

'You have to lodge a refundable deposit before you can inspect the merchandise.'

Billy looked outraged. 'That's absurd.'

'It keeps out the weirds looking for a cheap thrill.'

'Do we look like weirds?'

The eyes beyond the peephole were impassive. 'Weirds come in all shapes and sizes. If you want to come inside, you pay the deposit. It's as simple as that.'

Billy scowled. 'Okay, okay, we'll pay the deposit.'

The man behind the door was a swarthy individual with gold earrings and a scar down his cheek that told of a past checkered by violence. A pair of pistols, not unlike Reave's, were thrust into a wide studded belt. He indicated a chipped transaction unit set up behind the door. 'You make your deposit here.'

Reave placed his crys in the unit and slowly surveyed the place. 'So where do we find the boss? The headman?'

The swarthy individual shook his head. 'You don't talk to the boss; you talk to me.'

Reave leaned very close to him. 'Listen, sonny boy. I didn't come here to talk to the help.'

The man's hand moved toward his pistol, but Reave was quicker. His fingers locked around the man's wrist. He applied leverage and pressure.

'Do you understand me? I only talk to bosses. I have a rule about that.'

The man's jaws clenched as he tried not to flinch. Reave increased the pressure. Finally the pain was too much.

'Okay, you win. You're breaking my wrist.'

In a few moments Mempha Buzznoose himself arrived, flanked by four burly minders, hard-eyed men wearing pachuco hair nets and lots of gold jewelry. They were slapping power-down electric clubs against their hands.

Buzznoose had a mouthful of gold teeth. 'You wanted to see me?'

The Minstrel Boy was certain that the slaver was the same one they had seen with a string of sad, red-haired duplicate teenagers just after they had arrived in town. Buzznoose was fat and oily, swathed in a blue silk kaftan and carrying a short, gold-topped swagger cane under his right arm.

Billy looked the man up and down, all too conscious that the other two were waiting to see what he would do. It was time to pull himself together and prove that there was still something left of him. He had to create an aura around himself. He pushed the squirreling into one of the side tracks of his mind and took a deep mental breath; then he snapped his cuffs and squared his shoulders. The gesture helped a lot.

'We'd like to inspect your inventory,' he said.

His voice had not quite come out as strong, smooth, and authoritarian as he might have hoped, but Buzznoose's eyes were instantly watchful.

'You would, would you?'

Billy tried for cold and patrician and almost made it. The squirreling was actually quiet. 'Isn't that what you're here for? I mean, you sell slaves, don't you?'

'We don't like to use that word.'

'You can use whatever euphemism pleases you. We are here to make purchases, and we want to see what you've got.'

Buzznoose was still cagey, but he seemed to be buying the act. He was unconsciously rubbing his hands together. His fat fingers were encrusted with turquoise and gold rings.

'What exactly did you have in mind?'

Billy looked down his nose with contemptuous superiority, all the while warning himself not to overdo it. He felt stronger. He was warming into the performance. Damn it, but he could feel his aura growing. He could pull it off if he did not lose his concentration.