The Quest of the DNA Cowboys (4 page)

The problem was that if she did decide to use the altacaine and stay up all day, what exactly was there to stay awake for? She walked over to the entertainment console and punched up the day’s social programme. It was the usual round of talk, consumption of drink and drugs, and sexual assignations. Nobody was even putting on any kind of show or amusement, not even so much as bringing up a pair of sturdy L-4s to fight or copulate with each other. It looked like a blank day. Nobody seemed to have any imagination left.

Idly she wondered if anything was going on in the outside world, and reset the console to the newsfax channel. It was mainly concerned with the firestorm. That had been amusing a few days earlier when it had actually threatened Akio-Tech, but now that it was confined to L-4 dwellings it was no longer the least bit interesting.

She left the console chattering to itself and stepped out into the perspex blister that served her as a balcony.

Far beneath her was the ugly mess of shacks and ancient buildings that were the warrens of the L-4s. Maybe if they caught fire it would brighten up the day, but at the moment, the city looked safe and tranquil under its blanket of filth.

The outside had once filled her with fascination, there had been the abortive plan that she had hatched with Juno Meltzer to disguise themselves as L-4 prostitutes and slip out into the city, but the details became too complicated, and the plan had been abandoned. With the dropping of that scheme, most of her interest in life among the L-4s had faded.

She wandered back into her day-room. The console was now muttering about population figures and she cut it off. In the act of turning the switch she came to a decision. If nothing was going to happen that day, the best solution was to shut it out. She picked up the dormax injector and walked into the bedroom. She adjusted the circular bed to a light vibration, slipped out of her robe, turned the temperature setting to sleep and lay down. She pressed the injector against her thigh, and squeezed the release. There was a cold tingling as the minute droplets penetrated the pores of her skin, and then consciousness began to fade.

We’ve all heard the legends that have grown up around the Minstrel Boy. Now the troubles are over, and the natural laws have been brought back, we tend to think of him as the romantic figure of the movies, off on his journey singing stories and telling poems through the length and breadth of the troubled lands.

Of course, the Minstrel Boy did exist, and he was even something like the artists depict him, the blue jeans and the black fur-trimmed jacket, the pale intense face with its sunken cheeks and large, penetrating eyes. When Billy and Reave first saw him in the parking lot at Graveyard, he looked more scuzzy than romantic. His clothes were dirty rather than funky, and his mouth, so sensitive in the paintings, was weak and petulant. He did have the dark glasses, though, much the same as Billy’s, and the halo of light brown hair. He had the legendary silver guitar, too, slung over his shoulder, but even that caused confusion.

He was always telling people that it was an original National Steel, which would have made it incalculably old, whereas in fact it was only a Stuff Kustom Kopy, like Billy’s and Reave’s pistols. It was immediately clear from looking at the guitar that it couldn’t be an original. It had a porta-pac built into the back.

The problem with the Minstrel Boy was that he was an inveterate liar, who generated legends about as quietly as he generated songs.

When Billy and Reave first saw him he was standing beside an electric blue metalflake monster trying to hustle the driver for a lift. The wheelfreak wasn’t having any, and replied with an obscene gesture. The Minstrel Boy shrugged and wandered away. Reave and Billy caught up with him.

‘You trying to get out of this place?’

The Minstrel Boy looked suspicious.

‘Yeah, it ain’t healthy, but what’s that to you?’

The Minstrel Boy was also very paranoid. Billy and Reave fell into step beside him.

‘We were just asking because we’ve got to split too. We just got run out of Vito’s Cozy Drop-In.’

The Minstrel Boy twitched.

‘You should have known better than to go in there in the first place.’

There was a short awkward silence while they stood on the lot and wondered what to say next. Billy felt strangely drawn to the pale, desperate young man. He also felt challenged by the apparent lack of interest in either him or Reave. He didn’t know it was one of the Minstrel Boy’s most successful techniques for getting people under his influence. Finally Reave waved his hand in the direction of the line of parked trucks.

‘What are the chances of getting a lift?’

‘Slightly worse than the odds against getting your head broke for asking. I been trying for hours and I’m still here.’

‘Is there any other way out of Graveyard except for riding a truck?’

The Minstrel Boy scratched his ribs, and pulled a face.

‘I was coming round to thinking that maybe I was going to have to walk.’

Billy looked surprised.

‘Walk? Walk where? I thought there was only the road, down to no man’s land.’

‘Well, I sure as hell don’t want to go there, and even if I did, I sure wouldn’t walk that far. No, you been talking to truckers. They always forget about the old road. They can’t hold it together, and they can’t run down it, so they don’t think about it.’

Billy frowned.

‘You mean the wheelfreaks didn’t make the road?’

The Minstrel Boy looked at Billy as though he was looking at an idiot.

‘ ‘Course the wheelfreaks didn’t make the road. The road’s been there for ever. They just hold it together. There’s this other bit of road that goes on from here, it ruptures in places, but it goes right through to the plain.’

‘The plain? What’s the plain?’

The Minstrel Boy shuddered.

‘Don’t even talk about it. The only good thing about the plain is that the town of Dogbreath is in the middle of it, and you can get a stage from it. That’s only a good thing, though, because everything else is bad.’

Reave looked anxious.

‘Could we make it that way?’

The Minstrel Boy stared at the two of them speculatively.

‘Maybe. I doubt if anyone could do it on their own, but three of us might, particularly when you’ve got those fancy guns. Can you use them?’

‘Sure.’

Billy whipped out his gun, spun it and dropped it back into its holster. The trick made Billy feel that he was back on to a level with the Minstrel Boy. He might know more than Billy, but Billy was armed. It was Billy’s turn to look speculative.

‘Maybe the three of us should travel together?’

He turned to Reave and winked.

‘You want to travel with this guy, brother?’

Reave shrugged.

‘Maybe. I don’t see no reason why we shouldn’t.’

The Minstrel Boy’s eyes flickered from Reave to Billy and back again.

‘Who says that I want to travel with you guys?’

‘You said one man couldn’t do it on his own.’

‘I never said whether I wanted to make it.’

‘You don’t want to get stuck inside of Graveyard.’

‘Okay, okay. We’ll travel together. There’s no other way, we all know it. What are you two called, anyway? If I’m going to cross the plain with you, I might as well know your names.’

Billy grinned.

‘I’m Billy, and he’s Reave.’

‘Glad to know you.’

‘And what’s your name?’

‘People call me the Minstrel Boy.’

‘So now we know each other, shall we get started?’

They walked across the parking lot and down the slip road. Billy walked slightly in front, while Reave walked with the Minstrel Boy, telling him about life in Pleasant Gap, and their walk through the nothings.

They started down the road, and after about a mile, Billy stopped and looked at the Minstrel Boy.

‘How long before the Graveyard field stops?’

The Minstrel Boy tried to explain.

‘It ain’t like it actually stops. This ain’t like the nothings. It kind of holds together in a way, only there are sort of holes in it. You know? You could maybe get right through without any kind of stasis machine, but it would be better to turn them on now, to be on the safe side. It’ll save anyone who falls in a hole.’

They all halted, turned up the gain on their porta-pacs, and then walked on. After about another mile, they came across an elliptical hole in the surface of the highway. It was about four feet across, although the edges shimmered and fluctuated slightly. There didn’t seem to be any bottom to the hole, and it was filled with a thin blue mist. Billy walked across and peered down into the hole. He glanced back at the Minstrel Boy.

‘Is this how the road starts to come apart?’

The Minstrel Boy nodded.

‘There’s more and more of them as you go on.’

Billy carefully placed one foot above the hole, and a piece of highway surface obediently appeared to receive his foot.

‘Lumps of the same nothing.’

They walked on, and the holes became more and more numerous. At times they had to thread their way along a flimsy network between a mass of openings. Despite their porta-pacs, they all tried their best to avoid stepping on the empty spaces.

After walking for a long time they came to a fairly clear section of road. The sky had changed from brilliant white to a dull metallic grey, and they found they were walking through a dim twilight. Reave stopped and dropped his bag.

‘I’m exhausted, for Christ’s sake let’s stop here for the night. It’s almost dark.’

Billy and the Minstrel Boy also stopped. The Minstrel Boy put down his guitar, and pushed his hair out of his eyes.

‘We might as well stop here, but don’t think it’s nightfall, it ain’t. That light the truckers use goes on twenty four hours a day, we’re just moving out of range of it. It’s always dark along this stretch.’

Reave shook his head.

‘I don’t care anymore. Let’s just stop here and sleep, I’m going to cave in any minute.’

Billy looked at the Minstrel Boy.

‘What’s the best way to sleep in this kind of country?’

The Minstrel Boy laughed.

‘You boys’d be lost without me. It’s simple. We hook up our three pacs in a series. That’ll give us a field big enough to sleep inside of.’

They coupled up the power pacs, piled up their belongings, and unstrapped their belts. Billy tucked his gun inside his jacket and lay down on the grass of the central island. It was hard and cold, and he drew his knees up to his chest. Just as he was convincing himself that it was impossible to sleep in those conditions, his consciousness drifted away.

Billy wasn’t sure what had woken him. He raised his head and looked around and saw to his surprise that the road was filled with people. He sat up in alarm, but none of them seemed to notice him.

It was a long column of people, men, women and children, hobbling and stumbling through the twilight. There were young and old, grandfathers limping on crutches, and young mothers holding clinging babies. Every one of them looked sick and exhausted. Their clothes were ragged and torn. They moved on and on past where Billy crouched, coming from the same direction as he and the others had come.

They looked neither left nor right. They just trudged on, staring at the ground. They made no attempt to avoid the holes, but walked straight over them as though they didn’t exist. Some pushed prams or carried suitcases, while others were bent under bundles on their backs. They came on and on in a never-ending, sluggish stream.

At intervals along the lines were armed guards on tall horses. They wore dark uniforms, and their faces were hidden by their steel helmets. Even the guards seemed bowed in their saddles, as if they too had travelled a terrible distance. Each time one of them passed him, Billy tried to make himself as small as possible, but although even in the twilight he must have been clearly visible, none of the guards seemed to notice him. The thing that really scared him was that both guards and prisoners seemed to have a strange, unnatural, ghostly translucence. Billy felt a cold sweat begin to trickle down his face and body. He stretched out a hand and shook the Minstrel Boy.

‘What’s happening?’

‘Ssh!’

Billy put a finger to his lips and pointed at the awful procession.

‘Look.’

‘Dear god.’

‘What is it?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t think I want to know.’

‘They don’t seem to be able to see us.’

‘Thank Christ for that.’

For what seemed like hours, Billy and the Minstrel Boy crouched shivering as the inhuman column moved past them.

When it was finally past, they waited a little longer and then woke Reave. He was reassuringly human as he bitched and complained, and gathered up his things.

The three of them divided up the rations from Eli’s Store, and washed them down with the last of Reave’s beer. Billy and the Minstrel Boy didn’t eat too much, but Reave appeared not to notice.

They disconnected the porta-pacs from each other, and hitched them back on their belts. The Minstrel Boy shouldered his guitar, Billy and Reave picked up their bags, and in single file they started down the gloomy highway.

Uttering a strange high sound like the keening of high-tension cables, She/They gathered up Her/Their fallen third in Her/Their arms, and slowly began to move forward.

‘Grief.’

‘Gather data, it is a unique situation.’

‘We are wounded.’

‘We are wounded.’

The wooden buildings of the township began to fade, and the multi-coloured mist flowed in its place. She/They noted that there was a greater density to the mist where there had been ground.

‘Chaos below total.’

‘Willeffort.’

The ground-mist became thicker, and the air-mist grew thinner. She/They continued to move slowly forward. The oppressive silence jangled with the presence of chaos. Even the words that filled it were blurred and indistinct. With a gesture of what might have been reluctance in a being of different form, the right-hand figure raised the energy wand. The mist around the figures was bathed in an orange glow. It twisted and swirled, and then began to fold in on itself, coiling into thick viscous strands that sluggishly settled to produce ground and air around the space where She/They hung suspended.