Last Stand of the DNA Cowboys (15 page)

The sorting out of the details took close to an hour. The Da
tron spelled out the specifics, and Reave, the Minstrel Boy, and the bureaucrat argued about them. Apart from the numbers, the only real sticking point was the insistence by the bureaucrat and the Datron that the Saab be impounded by the city for the DNA Cowboys' stay. Reave finally had to give in.

The bureaucrat looked to the Datron for the final figures. 'Please give their agreed credit levels.'

'The triad known as the DNA Cowboys have a level 0-34789-0. The woman calling herself Renatta de Luxe has a level of 0-211-0.'

The Krystaleit numerical system was a little strange.

The bureaucrat handed them their crys. They were microthin crystal disks in ceramic cases that carried the constantly updated record of their owners' financial status. They could be used in the transaction units throughout the city and totally superseded money. The DNA Cowboys reclaimed their weapons and then headed out for the interior of the city. Reave and the Minstrel Boy were jubilant.

'I think we actually stuck it to them.'

'It's a great credit base.'

'Pity about the battlewagon, though.'

'That couldn't be helped.'

Billy was a lot less happy. 'We also enlisted in their goddamn army. Is that sticking it to them?'

The Minstrel Boy dismissed his complaints with a wave. 'Only if the city's attacked. Do you really see even a bunch of warlords trying to tackle a place this size?'

Reave grinned. 'If they do, we can always desert. We've done that before.'

The Minstrel Boy looked around at Billy. 'Besides, you almost stuck us with that trick with the needler. Did you think they wouldn't have an m/d scanner?'

Billy glared and said nothing.

Renatta also had a beef. 'How come my credit is so much smaller than yours?'

'You're an unknown quantity with no declared skills. You've only been given a minimum flesh value.'

'Oh, great. That's wonderful. I'm minimum flesh.'

The Minstrel Boy put an arm around her. 'Don't worry about it. We'll push you some credit across so you don't hit the zero.'

'What am I, a charity case?'

The bickering stopped immediately as they came out of the access tube and had their first look at the heart of the city. Even Billy could not help but be awed by its shining grandeur.

'Just look at those lights.'

It was almost as though the city had been created from light and the levels of the physical structure were only a subordinate afterthought. Night and day were history, replaced by a ballet of massed luminance. There appeared to be a million of them, and optical tricks made it seem as if they went on to black infinity. Some pulsed, others shone steadily, and more danced in a complexity of designs. Projected images appeared on the facets of glittering diamonds. There was free leaping static, and an enclosed, cold fury of tall plasma towers soared through dozens of levels. To the Minstrel Boy, the splendor of Krystaleit was an energy net that he could easily imagine having some purpose of its own, way beyond just the visual gratification of mere mortals. Indeed, that could even have been the truth. At a number of points throughout the city, there were big and incredibly ancient power devices. Although their true function was lost in the mist of time, they still ran and were maintained solely for the silent sheets of contorted radiance that leaked from their interiors and cascaded through the spaces between levels. Many of them must have contained their own intelligences, unimaginable, deathless entities that passed the centuries contemplating chill abstractions and keeping vigil for god masters who had been slaughtered in the voids between distant stars.

To the newcomer, the most alien thing about Krystaleit was the way it so absolutely occupied three-dimensional space. Genetic memory balked at its sheer drops and the yawning chasms between structures. Even the old hands had to remind their ingrained fear of falling that gravity spirals in the open spaces would slide them to a safe, if bone-jarring, landing. Billy Oblivion pointed up the feeling by leaning over the unrailed side of the platform on which the four of them were standing and peering down at the apparently endless drop.

'I swear this place was built for birds.'

'Do you ever stop complaining?'

'I'll get around to it one day.'

Krystaleit offered a variety of methods for transporting humans and their goods from one level to the next. The crudest was the blowtube, which could shoot an individual or container
through many levels in a matter of seconds. The filament escalators and the more substantial peoplemovers, which angled between the buildings and platforms, offered a more sedate ride. The daring strapped on tiny dorsal rockets, miniature versions of Jet Ace's big thruster, while the wealthy owned their own flying cars, anything from a four- to twenty-eight-seater. By far the most comfortable means, open to everyone, was the float egg. The float egg was exactly what it sounded like, a large ceramic egg, three feet long, housing an elementary biode and a small koja engine that was hooked into the city's magnetic field. It was mounted with a saddle and handgrips. There were thousands of them throughout the city, and they operated on a simple but neatly effective system. When a person found one that was not in use, it was free for the taking. When it was no longer needed, it was left for the next user. There was a natural tendency for them to concentrate in the outer areas of the city, but a built-in homing instinct brought them back to the busy central areas if they remained idle for an extended period. At first Renatta and the three men were content to stroll. They stepped onto the wide surface strip of a peoplemover that spiraled upwards between two monolithic blocktowers. Like tourists, they were happy to stand and gape while regular citizens, inured to the spectacle all around them, hurried past, going about their business. The Minstrel Boy took a deep breath of air that was heavy with a cocktail of multiple scents. It was good to be in a place that was so big and cosmopolitan and sophisticated. He noticed Renatta studying the passersby. Her face showed a childlike delight. He suspected that she had been looking for a place like Krystaleit all her life. In the crowds around them there was an almost limitless variety of the styles and cultures of the Damaged World. On the peoplemover alone there were neoprimitives with gaudy peacock hair and spirit poles, flexing and strutting to the polyrhythrns coming from their sinujacks. At the other extreme a covey of stooped brain dwellers, with their stunted bodies and enlarged, hyperencephalic heads, were lost in the private tranceland of theii dreamhelms. Even with the help of insectoid servoskeletons, they moved at a painful snail's pace. A pair of perfectoz, a man and a woman, stepped around them with looks of bleak contempt. The couple had immaculately maintained bodies that were naked apart from rainbow body lube and implanted power
jewelry. The Minstrel Boy noted Reriatta's look of delight when a large gang of children came racing down the moving strip, whooping and yelling and dodging in and out among the adults. He did not want to be the one to tell her that quite likely at least half of them were arrestives who had probably been taking munchkin treatments since before she was born.

There was also a darker side to Krystaleit. The practical results of the city's economy that legitimized the seizure and ownership of people were all around them. A grossly fat, turbaned and robed slaver waddled down the strip in front of his own personal baggage train, a string of identical red-haired teens yoked at the neck, joined by lengths of chain, and guarded by burly minders. Two city epsilons with mindlocks clamped across their shaved heads loaded garbage bubbles onto a floatflat. Farther up the spiral, a diminutive lowlife in dark glasses and a flowershirt was trying to recruit a buyer for a glazed-out young woman who might have been his sister.

The four really displayed their tourist status when the bomb went off. It was only a small bomb as urban bombs went, and it probably did only minimal damage. It was also two levels away, but Renatta and the three men all ducked. To their embarrassment, no one else did. The citizens around them hardly gave a second glance to the column of smoke that billowed up. They just went on with whatever they were doing.

'What in hell was that?'

Reave watched the smoke cloud slowly dissipate. 'Probably Nulites at their devotions.'

A woman in high boots and a plastic bodyhug nodded as she walked by. 'Sure, mister, that was Nulites. Something ought to be done about those bastards. They're a menace.'

The explosion shocked them out of the holiday mood and tipped them into an examination of their situation.

'We really ought to get ourselves a place to stay.'

The Minstrel Boy opted for a touch of class.

'So, we've got credit. Let's stay at some decent place. Heaven knows, we could all use a little luxury.'

Nobody put up an argument. It was decided that they should head for one of the city's better hotels, the Leader, on the Krystalcolumn.

'I doubt we want to be taking the walks all that way.'

'We can take float eggs,' Billy said. 'There's a half dozen vacant on a rack just up the way.'

Sure enough, six float eggs rested on a plasticformed rack. The three men moved toward them as though it were the most natural thing in the world, but Renatta hesitated nervously.

'I don't know how to ride one of those things. I'm not even sure that I want to.'

Billy laughed. 'Don't worry about it — it's real easy.' Billy had become a good deal more cheerful since they had entered the city. It was beginning to look as though he was going to make a full recovery.

The Minstrel Boy started to explain. 'All you have to do in sit on it.'

Renatta gave him a withering look. 'Why don't you sit on it?'

'No, seriously. The egg is equipped with a single-function biode. All you have to do is sit on the saddle and grab the handgrips and think about where you want to go. The biode does the rest. The egg will take you there. It's as simple as that. The biode can read you through your contact with the saddle and your palms on the grip. The only thing you have to worry about is a single twist grip that regulates the speed.'

Renatta pulled a face. 'It can read you through your clothes?'

'Sure. You don't have to have actual flesh contact.'

'I've heard the phrase flying by the seat of your pants, but this is ridiculous. I'm not sure I want a biode looking up my ass. Can't we rent a car or something?'

'Cars are at a premium here. And anyway, you don't have to worry about the biode. All it knows is how to find its way around.'

Reave and Billy were already easing a pair of eggs out of their mounts.

'Come on and try it. You'll like it when you get used to it.'

The Minstrel Boy turned and started walking toward the other two. Renatta reluctantly followed. He humped an egg out of its stand and swung his leg over it. He took hold of the handgrips and the machine slowly rose until it was about nine inches from the ground. Renatta gingerly did the same.

Reave gestured to her. 'Fasten the straps across your thighs.'

Slowly at first but rapidly gathering speed, the four eggs lifted from the platform and swung out into empty air. Billy took to flying like a duck to water. Opening the grip to maximum speed, he ran wide, fast circles around the others. And despite herself, Renatta actually started to enjoy the experience.

Although the Leader Hotel was not the best in Krystaleit, it was definitely up there. As the DNA Cowboys walked through the mirror dome of the foyer, all three were reminded of just how good things could be in the big cities. The four rooms took up even more of their credit than they had expected, but they decided it was still worth it. It was a crash course in civilization that was more than welcome after their wandering in the extremities. The only thing that slightly marred the Minstrel Boy's pleasure was the fact that Renatta insisted on a room of her own. He could only assume that it was a signal. Their affair, if it still existed at all, had become decidedly nonexclusive.

The rooms were as lavish as the foyer. The Minstrel Boy's was up on the twelfth circle and was decorated in the manner of the Dyrian Empire with murals modeled after the classic Estarzo Temple paintings. The fittings were gilt, and the furniture was reproduction Jason XIII blueglass. The only unfortunate touch was that the body-fitted cleanse-and-massage machine looked too much like an ornate instrument of torture. As he broke down the foldaway and stashed his belongings, he realized that for the first time in almost as long as he could remember, he was alone with time to think. He lay back on the bed and stared up at the reflective ceiling. At least here he was beyond the reach of any fanatical would-be murderer. He could finally relax. There was, however, a nagging question.

'So what the hell do I do next?'

The ceiling replied with a soft feminine voice. 'I am not capable of advising you, sir, but the Leader Hotel does have a very efficient soothsay circuit on the seventeenth circle.'

The Minstrel Boy jumped out of his skin. After he had finished twitching, he snapped angrily at his own reflection. 'I didn't know you were on. Please deactivate.'

The voice of the room sounded a little miffed. 'I'm sorry I took you by surprise. I will deactivate now. If you need me, call me.'