Last Stand of the DNA Cowboys (17 page)

The Minstrel Boy hesitated before following him. There had been a time when he had drawn crowds at the Victory Café, and now he did not even play. He was not sure that he wanted to
see what was going on in there. But in the instant of the thought, he knew that he was being neurotic. 'Aah . . . what the hell.' The Victory Café was packed, and they had to forcibly push their way through to the bar. For the Bluecat district, the place was uncharacteristically well lit. It was a utilitarian barn with cheap drinks, rubyjewel dispensers along the wall, and dull stainless-steel surfaces that no doubt could be hosed down after a particularly wild night. The focal point was the stage that took up one end of the big room. It was fitted with plastic screens that protected the performers from flying mugs and pitchers, although these particular musicians did not sound as though they could ever move the crowd to the kind of fury that might end with flying missiles. They had the mass of people who romped and stomped in front of the stage eating out of their hands.

Broken statue, now you are pieces

You can no longer speak

You have fallen from your pedestal

You could have been a genuine antique.

The singer's hands danced over the pressure angles of a midnight blue Maxim chromacon, while a percussionist and taira player sweated behind him. Limp blond hair hung over his face, the top half of which was hidden by a huge pair of faceted insectspecs. A large diamond flashed on the pinkie of his left hand.

The Minstrel Boy shook his head. 'Clay Blaisdell. I never thought I'd see him again.'

Reave nodded in time to the music. 'He's real good.'

'He's the man when it comes to the chromacon.'

'Is he better than you?'

The Minstrel Boy avoided Reave's glance. 'I don't play anymore, so the question doesn't really come up.'

The Minstrel Boy clearly wanted to drop the subject, but Reave was not about to let it go. There was a wicked glint in his eye. 'So were you better than him when you did play?'

The Minstrel Boy shrugged. 'I don't know, it was close. Playing music isn't exactly like being the fastest gun alive, you know.'

They had maneuvered their way through the crowd in front of the bar and were standing there, clutching beakers of the
rough local joona. The
Minstrel Boy was looking at the ruby-jewel dispensers, wondering if a handful of beads might help the evening along. The piece that the trio was playing came to a ringing finish. The mob around the stage went crazy, stamping and hollering. Blaisdell took a bow and then raised his hands in smiling acknowledgment.

'Thank you. Thank you all. We love you, but me and the boys are going to take a little break right now. Don't go away now, though. We'll be back in a half hour.'

The Minstrel Boy took a long hit on his drink. 'He may be an angel on the chromacon, but he's got a lousy line in fake sincerity.'

There were shouts of protest from the crowd, but the band picked up their instruments and left the stage. Clay Blaisdell, with the Maxim under his arm, pushed his way determinedly toward the bar, surrounded by a knot of backslapping admirers. The bartender already had a drink set up for him. Just as he was reaching for it, he spotted the Minstrel Boy.

'Mother of God!'

The Minstrel Boy raised a hand. 'How are you doing, Clay?'

'What hole did you crawl out of?'

'I've been a lot of places since I saw you last.'

They were face to face. Clay Blaisdell drained his beaker and wiped his mouth.

'So what are you doing here?'

'Just passing through.'

There was a definite tension between the two men. It was hardly the reunion of old friends, much more a chance meeting between onetime rivals.

'These are strange times,' Blaisdell said.

'You're right about that.'

Blaisdell got himself a second drink. 'Is it true what I've been hearing?'

'It depends on what you've been hearing.'

'That the three of you are back together again.'

The Minstrel Boy made a deprecating gesture. 'A chance meeting. We decided to travel together. Old times and all.'

'So where's Billy?'

'Back at the Leader with a woman.'

Blaisdell looked surprised. 'The Leader? You're traveling in style.'

'We thought a little comfort might make a change.'

Blaisdell pushed his hair back out of his eyes. 'Got to be strange times if the DNA Cowboys are staying at the Leader Hotel.'

One of Blaisdell's admirers spit on the floor. 'DNA Cowboys? They're history. Fucking dinosaurs.'

Reave took one step forward. The admirer noticed him for the first time and choked on his drink.

Reave's smile hinted at murder. 'You want to watch who you're calling a dinosaur, laddybuck.'

Still coughing, the admirer backed away, and when Reave did not press the point, he melted into the crowd. Blaisdell, who had watched the exchange with amusement, turned back to the Minstrel Boy.

'So, are you going to get up and do a tune with us?'

The Minstrel Boy quickly shook his head. 'I don't think so.'

'Why in hell not? Think you're too good for this joint?'

Again the Minstrel Boy shook his head. 'You know it's not that.'

Blaisdell grinned. 'Maybe you think that we're too good for you?'

The Minstrel Boy sighed. 'I've been traveling a lot. I haven't been playing too much.'

'Then it's a great time to start up again.'

'No.'

Blaisdell looked at him in blank astonishment. 'Are you seriously telling me that you've hung it up?'

'I'm just not playing at the moment.'

There was an awkward pause that Blaisdell did his best to cover. 'Let me buy you a drink. You'll surely say yes to that?'

'I always say yes to a free drink.'

Blaisdell handed the Minstrel Boy a freshly filled beaker. 'You hear what happened to old Abu Christmas?'

The Minstrel Boy made an effort to look interested. 'No, I never did.'

While the Minstrel Boy and Clay Blaisdell were talking, Reave thought he saw someone he recognized — and preferred to avoid — on the other side of the room. He muttered an excuse to the Minstrel Boy and slid through the crowd to take a better look. Carefully, he eased closer to his quarry. It was no mistake. Although the man was not wearing the helmet with the blade welded
to the top, it was Menlo Welker beyond a doubt, the swordsman who had ridden beside him in Baptiste's army. What the hell was he doing there? He seemed to be in the company of two other individuals whom Reave did not know, but their hard eyes and visible scars marked them as warriors cut from the same cloth. Menlo started to turn, and Reave ducked back behind a pillar. As he watched, his ex-comrade pushed through the crowd, apparently headed for the bathrooms downstairs. Reave followed as closely as he could, hoping that his man would not look back. Menlo was rolling as if he had a load on. The stone stairwell was like a cave — the light was dim, the air was heavy with the stench of urine, and the walls were covered with boldly obscene graffiti.

Menlo went into a stall but did not bother to close the half door behind him. He seemed to be having trouble unfastening his pants. Reave pushed in behind him and pulled the door shut. Before his old companion could react, Reave had his left forearm across Menlo's throat. From his back pocket his right hand drew the lightslicer he had taken from the dead urthugee back at the Voice in the Wilderness. He pulled back Menlo's head, and the weapon flared into glowing green life.

'I'm going to give you exactly one minute to think up a good reason why I shouldn't carve your head off.'

Menlo stood very still, and when he spoke, his voice sounded suddenly sober. 'What is this? What do you want?'

'Don't you recognize me, Menlo?'

Reave allowed him to swivel his head around slightly. Menlo Welker let out a gasp,

'Reave? Reave Mekonta? Is that really you? What is this? We were buddies, goddamn it. I never did you any harm. Don't tell me you've sunk to robbing people while they piss.'

'I'm a deserter, Menlo. I deserted from Baptiste, and I want to know how you feel about that.'

'Hell, Reave, I don't care. It's no skin off my back. I've thought about it myself more than once. Things have changed some since you took off.'

'So you wouldn't think of turning me in to Baptiste for a reward or anything?'

The ribbon of light was so close to Menlo's throat that it cast strange green shadows across his face. He swallowed hard.

'You ought to know me better than that. Besides, I couldn't tell Baptiste about you if I wanted to.'

'Why not?'

'Because I'm not going to see him until he arrives here with the whole army.'

'He's headed this way?'

'Damn right he is. Now, are you going to take this thing away from my throat?'

Reave removed his arm from Menlo's neck. He lowered the lightslicer but let it go on burning. The two men faced each other. Menlo was breathing deeply.

'You're fucking crazy, Reave Mekonta. You know I wouldn't turn you in.'

'I'm sorry, but a man can't be too careful where Baptiste is concerned. I've seen the way he can get weird with recaptured deserters. For all I knew, he sent you after me. That may sound paranoid, but stranger things have been happening.'

Menlo nodded vigorously. 'You should have stuck with us. You'd believe anything by now. I got to tell you, sometimes I truly believe that the world is coming to an end. You know there are seven thousand of us now. Seven thousand mounted or mechanized guns, plus God knows how many moon-baying neoprimitives with bones in their hair. We had to give them a separate camp where they can cook dogs and do all the other grustuff they get up to.'

Reave flicked off the lightslicer. The stall was suddenly dark.

'Seven thousand? You've got to be putting me on.'

'I kid you not, old friend. We're the downfall of civilization.'

'How do you stick with this madness?'

Menlo shrugged. 'What did civilization ever do for me?'

'So who's leading this horde from hell?'

'At the moment it's what's called the Council of Four. There's Baptiste, Taraquin, Redrim Protexus, and a newcomer, calls himself Max Zero. He rode in with nine hundred tailored replicas. Big ugly green mothers, over nine feet tall and homicidal crazy. Must have found himself some hellaciious template writer to create those bastards. They do kind of fall apart under stress, but when you're nine foot four and green, sporting four-inch fangs, how much stress do you get?'

Reave looked thoughtful. 'How long can this Council of Four last? The suckers got to be at each other's throats all the time.'

'Sure. It'll get whittled down to one in the end.'

'Maybe their falling out is Krystaleit's only hope.'

Menlo shook his head with great finality. 'Krystaleit doesn't have any hope. It's the big prize. Even if the four of them wiped each other out the army would still come here. It's the jewel in the crown in this section. I wouldn't make any long-term commitments in this burg.'

'How long have we got?'

'There are a hundred or more of us in the city already.'

'You're the fifth column?'

'Fifth, sixth, and seventh. There could be as many as a thousand of us in the city by the time the main force gets here. All ready to hit them from behind. Those local militia boys don't stand a chance.'

Reave watched Menlo as he talked. The mercenary had changed. A real madness, something dark and deep, was riding herd on him.

'So when do they hit us?'

'It'll be a while. This new army moves very slowly. You wouldn't recognize it from the old days. They're actually dragging a big SG with them, so now the army marches through the nothings on its own continuous environment. They cannibalized the primary generator out of Idleberg. It must weigh twenty tons. They've got it mounted up on these huge plastic rollers, and there're a couple hundred slaves hauling it along on ropes. A dozen or more drop dead every day. Baptiste has to keep on going out raiding for replacements.'

Reave could hardly believe what he was hearing. How could things possibly have escalated so swiftly? It was starting to look as though all of reality was caught up in one vast destructive momentum that, like a mountain avalanche, was rapidly gathering speed.

Menlo derailed Reave's train of thought before it could go any further. 'We'd better get out of here. My partners will think I've fallen in a blowhole. I wouldn't like to have to explain you to them.'

As they stepped out of the stall, a man who could only just manage to piss against the wall looked at them and sneered. 'Stinking can fuckers!'

Without a word Reave and Menlo grabbed him, an arm and a leg each, and dumped him in the nearest blowhole.

'Nobody calls us names, right?'

'Right.'

The two men laughed. For a moment, the old sense of camaraderie was back. Then Menlo glanced up the stairs.

'I've got to go.'

Reave did not immediately tell the Minstrel Boy what he had learned from Menlo Welker. The Minstrel Boy seemed preoccupied, even depressed, after his conversation with Clay Blaisdell. Reave could tell that there was something very messed up about the Minstrel Boy and his attitude to his music, but he had no idea what the problem was. Blaisdell's trio took the stage again, but after a couple of pieces, the Minstrel Boy started to get restless and he and Reave left the Victory Café'. They walked deeper into the Bluecat in glum silence, each man completely absorbed in his own thoughts, seemingly oblivious to the antics of all those around them. They, however, were certainly noticed. It was hard to miss the Minstrel Boy with his brand-new belt of knives and Reave with his brace of prominently displayed pistols. People stepped out of their way, and the night had yet to take the rowdy path that they had originally planned for it. Their only encounter was with a mimic in a skin-tight spectra-stocking and reflective makeup, who dogged their footsteps for the distance between two intersections. At first he tossed color shimmers after them; then, getting bored with that, he had himself glow an angry orange and stalked behind them, aping their grim stride. Finally Reave noticed him and turned and glared. The mimic paled to blue and white and scuttled away.

After two more intersections the Minstrel Boy pointed ahead. 'Oysters.'

'Oysters?'

'There's an oyster bar up on the corner.'

A short, plump, red-armed woman wearing a white sarong was splitting oysters and serving them on the half-shell with lemon, hot sauce, and glass mugs of black porter. Reave and the Minstrel Boy walked toward her.

'Did you ever think about the first man to eat an oyster?' the Minstrel Boy mused. 'Now, there was an innovative thinker. Just imagine, he goes to all the trouble of smashing open something that looks like a rock and then eats the slime that he finds inside.'

Reave looked at the Minstrel Boy as though he were nuts. 'As far as I'm concerned, he needn't have bothered. I hate oysters. I got to tell you, I find them disgusting.'

'I love them. I haven't had an oyster since I don't know when.'

'I would have thought they'd have needed oysters in the Caverns.'

'The lack of them was a bad oversight.'

The Minstrel Boy ordered himself a dozen while Reave got by on a couple of mugs of porter.

'So what do we do next?'

The Minstrel Boy slurped down his second oyster and began to prime a third.

'Hell, I don't know. We ain't having too much fun yet. Maybe we should go over and see the girls at the Rising Sun.'

'If that doesn't work, nothing will.'

The Minstrel Boy was on his ninth oyster when he noticed some thing out of the corner of his eye. At first he thought it was a child I coming through the crowd, but as it came closer, he saw the incredibly wizened face. The diminutive figure was either a true dwarf or a munchkin treatment that had gone wrong. Suddenly it darted forward. It was coming straight at the Minstrel Boy, wielding a weird ceramic razor with a mythological beast carved in the blade. The creature swung at the Minstrel Boy's throat.

Reave was looking in the other direction and had not even noticed the tiny killer. The Minstrel Boy jerked back from the arc of the razor. It missed him by a bare inch. His hand went to the knives at his belt. The wrinkled munchkin had turned. He switched the razor to the other hand and slashed again. The Minstrel Boy threw underhand. His old training held good. The flat blade caught the attacker in the throat. It staggered back gagging, ripped the knife out, and hurled it to the ground; then it turned and sprinted to where a platform projected out into empty space. It vaulted the rail and vanished.

The Minstrel Boy ran to the edge and looked over. The body had been caught by a gravity spiral and had dropped heavily to the hard stone of the level below. A crowd started to gather around the small, still figure. The Minstrel Boy stepped back from the railing. Reave was beside him, pistol in hand. His mug of porter was smashed on the ground.

'What was that all about?'

'Another total stranger took a crack at me.' The Minstrel Boy stooped down and picked up the razor. 'What do you make of this?'

'Never seen anything like it.'

'Looks kind of ceremonial, doesn't it?'

They were starting to attract a crowd of their own. Reave nudged the Minstrel Boy. 'Let's get out of here before the militia shows up.'

As they hurried away, the Minstrel Boy went into a delayed reaction. 'This can't be connected to the last one, can it? I mean, can it?'

Reave was at a loss. 'I'm damned if I know.'

The Minstrel Boy scowled.

They turned a corner. Halfway down the block was the sun-moon sign of a soothbooth. The Minstrel Boy marched purposefully toward it.

'Well, I'm going to damn well try and find out.'

Reave hurried after him and grabbed him by the arm. 'You ain't going to find out anything in one of those places.'

Anything that had even a nodding acquaintance with the supernatural filled Reave with instant mistrust. Even though the soothbooth operators claimed a scientific basis for their predictions, as far as Reave was concerned fortune-telling was fortune-telling, and no matter how many wires were grafted into the seer's nervous system, it was still worthless unumbo jumbo.

The Minstrel Boy angrily shook himself free. 'I've got to start somewhere,'

'Not in a soothbooth, for God's sake.'

The Minstrel Boy glared at his partner. 'I'll take all the help I can get. I don't intend to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder, waiting for someone to snuff me.'

They had reached the soothbooth, and despite Reave's protests, the Minstrel Boy ducked through the door. Outside, the walls were covered with silk hangings emblazoned with mystical symbols, but the interior was not unlike the sanctum of the Datron. The soothsayer was a similar deformed being with the same huge, lopsided potato head and tiny atrophying body. It lay in a similar bath of saline solution. But the soothsayer wore heavy makeup and a bright plastic wrap around the hyperencephalic head, hiding the feedlines and implants. The hardware was less extensive than the complexity that had surrounded the Datron, the biode was smaller, and the tubes and cables that ran into the soothsayer's head were not the same draped festoons, but the equipment was equally ancient. The soothsayer might well have had the same unnatural high-pitched voice, but electronic modifiers made its tones warm,
feminine, and authoritative, clearly designed to set the client at ease.

'You are a seeker after knowledge?' it asked.

'I suppose so.' The Minstrel boy had his own doubts about the value of the soothbooth, but he was driven by desperation.

'Please make a donation of credit.'

The Minstrel Boy dropped his crys into the booth's transaction unit. The unit deducted the standard fee.

'The volunteering of a gratuity can speed the process.'

The Minstrel Boy added a ten percent tip. The soothsayer's eyes, which had been swiveling uncontrollably from side to side, focused on the Minstrel Boy.

'How can I help you?'