Last Stand of the DNA Cowboys (29 page)

Food and wine were brought, along with a fuel charger for the metal men. Those of the seven who could were given a chance to bathe and to exchange their stained and dirty travel clothes for clean saris in various shades of watered silk. Their treatment left them in no doubt that the Elevated Palarch lived right on the top of the hog. The hot baths alone were a revelation. There were five of them, pale pink marble, each large enough for six people. They came with gold accoutrements and
a full complement of wet, naked, and exceedingly attentive house girls who frisked in the bubbling water like sleek brown seals. The house girls proved to be so attentive that Renatta started to complain about the fact that in Palamaque servitude appeared to be exclusive to the female gender.

'Seems like these bastards have built themselves a playboy paradise under the cover of their stupid religion.'

Clay Blaisdell's face broke into a smug and lazy grin. 'It don't seem too bad to me. Besides, there were plenty of men among the epsilons who were hauling away the airship. They didn't look half as cheerful as these water babes.'

When the DNA Cowboys, Renatta, and Blaisdell changed their clothes they also had to face the question of what they were going to do with their weapons. Although they were still adamant about not giving them up, it was plainly ridiculous for them to sit around hugging their guns to their chests. Accordingly, the weapons were stacked discreetly in a secluded corner of the courtyard where they were still in sight but hardly obtrusive.

Once his guests had been comfortably settled in, Dass-el-Hame again reminded them that for the moment his home was totally at their disposal, then made his excuses and left to return to the Great Pyramid. With the master gone, the atmosphere of the residence lightened considerably. The house girls splashed in the pool, and even the exotics seemed to take their poses less seriously. One of the painted women, whose body was an arrangement of tangerine and magenta swirls, came over and sat down next to Renatta.

'Perhaps you would like me to color you? I could get my paints. It must be strange to be so plain, so unadorned.'

Renatta raised an eyebrow. 'Honey, I've done some of my best work unadorned.'

'I didn't mean to give offense.'

'Don't worry about it; you didn't.'

'Should I fetch my paints?'

Renatta shook her head. 'Not right now. Maybe later. I just want to relax here and drink some more of this wine.'

'Do you mind if I talk to you?'

'Not in the least.'

'Do you really come from outside the Holy Reality?'

'You better believe it.'

'And you are concubine to all six of those men?'

Renatta laughed out loud. 'Concubine? I ain't no concubine, cutie. I'm a contract warrior just like the rest of them.'

The tangerine and magenta woman's mouth was a small O of surprise. 'A woman can be a warrior in other realities?'

Renatta gave her a long, hard look. 'I don't know how they've got things set up around here, but where I come from, a woman can do any damn thing she wants.'

'Must be very exciting.'

Two of the other painted girls had moved nearer. The Minstrel Boy grinned. Renatta had only just arrived, and she was already fomenting revolution.

'Sometimes it's exciting, but there are other times when it can be hard and brutal.'

Renatta de Luxe had come a long way since she had begged the Minstrel Boy to take her away from the Caverns in the gold submarine.

Dass-el-Hame did not return until past noon on the following day. A glorious pseudosun had come up in a blaze of gold, and the singing and the peals of bells from beyond the walls of the residence indicated that the festival of Cha'a was still in full swing. When the Elevated Palarch returned, he seemed anything but festive. He glared acidly at the half-clad contract warriors who lounged by the pool eating his fruit, drinking his wine, and progressively going native.

'Your employers can be very persuasive.'

Reave hitched up his sari and got to his feet, 'So what's the story? Is the meeting over? Are we staying here?' He was determined not to treat the man as anything other than an equal despite the grandiose title.

Dass-el-Hame sighed. He looked as though only exhaustion was stopping him from being exceedingly angry. 'In his wisdom, my beloved Master has granted the metaphysicians of Krystaleit sanctuary in this settlement. They will be free to remain here for as long as they like, and they will be provided with the resources to continue their research.'

Reave raised an eyebrow. 'You don't seem too happy about this. Worried they might cause a few changes in your snug little social system?'

For a moment it looked as if Dass-el-Hame was going to tell Reave exactly how worried and unhappy he was, but then a lifetime as a courtier, with all its complex intrigue and guarded
diplomacy, asserted itself. He contented himself with pursing his lips. He looked as though he were sucking a lemon. 'I don't question the wisdom.'

'And what about us? Have we been granted sanctuary, too?'

'You are still under contract. Your employers require that you remain.' The Elevated Palareh eyed the weapons stacked in the comer of the courtyard. 'They seem to feel that you are the temporal end of their leverage, the hard fulcrum, so to speak.'

Reave half smiled. So Showcross Gee and his bunch were not so spiritual that they wouldn't stoop to at least a covert threat of violence to get what they wanted.

Dass-el-Hame caught the smile and went quickly on. 'You will remain here as my guests until more permanent quarters can be arranged.'

From his expression, it was clear that the extended hospitality was something else that gave him no pleasure at all.

The first few days were a novelty, but as that wore down, time started to blur into the languidly sensual rhythm of lotus life. For the Minstrel Boy, it was like nothing more than the routine gratification of the Caverns from which he had fled what seemed like a century before. The only real difference was that Palanaque had days and nights, whereas the Caverns had been shrouded in a continuous soft gloom. Palanaque even had a little mock weather system. One afternoon a soft novelty rain had fallen over the city. Aside from minor interruptions of that kind, there was nothing but the slow torpor of mindless hedonism.

Initially the Minstrel Boy was not too bothered by the enforced idleness. After the ducking and diving they had been forced to go through since their reunion at the Voice in the Wilderness, a period of doing absolutely nothing was far from unwelcome. But the Minstrel Boy could not keep himself from thinking ahead. A time would come when the seven of them would become bored with the luxury and lethargy and start hankering for some action. The inclination would be to cut loose from Palanaque and move on. He wondered how the metaphysicians would take that when the time came.

Jet Ace was the first to chafe at the relentless ease. He still had his dreams of becoming a legendary hero. He took to flying by himself at the far end of the valley, away from the city. The Minstrel Boy would not have been the least bit surprised if one day he simply failed to come back from one of his solitary excursions, simply deserted into the nothings. Yet each day he returned. It
seemed that Jet Ace's sense of duty was stronger than his ambition. The Minstrel Boy had no
ambition at all. He simply played among the painted women and wondered what was going to happen next.

Billy was also showing signs of the strain of having nothing to do. The Minstrel Boy had noticed that Billy's mental condition seemed to worsen when he had too much time on his hands. In Palanaque there was one refinement that he had never seen in the Caverns, and Billy seemed increasingly to be turning to it as a cure for boredom. It was a kind of short-term discorporation, lasting from a few minutes to almost an hour, from which the subject emerged confused but euphoric. It was referred to as a spiritual outreach, but Billy Oblivion scoffed at that description.

'Hell, it ain't nothing but turning an inversion trick. Back in Utgard they called it doing the Valhalla, and out in the Dumps, it's known as reality jagging. You do whatever your particular thing is, you know? Lobe pressure, tantric exercise, drugs, mantra, whatever. Your body goes limp, and then you wake up sometime later, feeling great, with this stupid grin on your face. The damnedest part is that you can't remember why you feel so good, but you want to do it again real soon.'

Scoff as he might, Billy spent a lot of hours spiritually out-reaching. With a kind of inept junkie cunning, he tried to keep it from the others, but there was not one of the other six who had not come across him sprawled on a bench or propped up
against a wall, out there, dead to the world, with his eyes rolled back into his skull. Nobody had said anything, but each hoped that something would turn up to occupy Billy's mind and slow the downward drift.

It was only after five full weeks that something happened to break the perfumed monotony. It was late afternoon, and Dass-el-Hame was not expected to return to the residence until well after dark. While the seven remained his guests, he spent as little time there as possible. So it caused a good deal of consternation among the house girls when he suddenly, without warning, hurried in, flanked by two of his aides. He quickly rounded up the seven contract warriors.

'You will all come with me. Our detectors have picked up an object in the nothings that seems to be coming this way.'

— Pressdia Vishnaria

The Human Comedy, Volume 15:

You 're Dead and I'm Not

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

'SO WHAT DO YOU MAKE OF IT?'

'I'm damned if I know. These lizardbrain detectors are notoriously deceptive. On face value, it looks like either a very big vessel or a
mass of people with synced SGs.'

'It's moving very slowly.'

'That's what's making me lean toward the mass of people.'

'Like an army?'

'I didn't say that.'

Reave and the Minstrel Boy stood in front of the hemispheric 3D screen, staring intently at a small trailing blip of green light at the bottom left of the transparent bowl. Behind them, Parshew-a-Thar and a good part of his holy court looked on anxiously. The Minstrel Boy glanced back. That bunch became incredibly anxious when confronted by anything from the outside world. He could only assume that they were terrified that something would come along to rupture their elaborate fantasy. There was no missing just how elaborate their fantasy had become over the centuries. There were at least two dozen of the religious hierarchy crowded behind their beloved Master. Their costumes were little short of outrageous. Dass-el-Hame was among the most conservative in his white and gold. There were two who looked like ancient Aztecs in brilliantly multicolored robes made from hundreds of tiny iridescent bird feathers and plumed headdresses so tall that the wearers had to lower thdr heads to clear the ceiling of the communications center.

The communications center was another part of the fantasy. It was a cool, austere underground bunker that looked more liice a burial chamber than a vital link with the outside world. Its equipment was faced in ivory Bakelite with very few visible controls. It relied almost totally on prox panels that were activated by passes of the hands, which gave the normal working of the place a quasi-magical air. Even the screen in front of them was an oversized approximation of the traditional crystal ball. The Minstrel Boy hated the whole setup. He felt that only those who were spiritually insecure in the extreme needed to cloak honest hardware with mysticism.

In addition to Palanaque's religious hierarchy, Showcross Gee and three other metaphysicians also waited and watched. They looked almost as concerned as the Palanaquii, and their anxiety was a little more understandable. Having had one city shot out from underneath them already, it was hard for them to maintain the face of tranquillity when an unidentified something appeared in the nothings.

'So what is your considered opinion?'

Reave and the Minstrel Boy turned and faced Showcross Gee. 'It's not much to go on.'

'But you must have some ideas as to the nature of this object.'

'We have a couple of guesses, nothing more.'

'So tell us your guesses.'

The Minstrel Boy looked to Reave to do the talking, but Reave deferred to him. 'You're the one who knows all about this shit.'

The Minstrel Boy took a deep breath and faced the preposterous gathering. 'The way that we see it, it's most likely a mass of people, all with synced individual stasis generators, either moving on foot or riding lizards.'

Parshew-a-Thar's voice practically squeaked with anxiety. 'Isn't that the way the raiders travel?'

The Minstrel boy nodded. 'It is.'

'You think these are raiders?'

The Minstrel Boy shrugged. 'There's no way of telling. I tend to doubt it. We have to assume that the large force was destroyed when they blew up Krystaleit. It seems unlikely that another force could assemble so quickly.'

That did not do much to allay their fears.

'But it could be a raiding force?'

'Anything's possible.'

'What can we do if it
is
a raiding force?'

'Off the cuff, I'd say that we were screwed.'