Last Stand of the DNA Cowboys (14 page)

Reave must have also been remembering. 'You have to watch your ass here in the big city. Krystaleit can be a lot of fun, but it can also get deeply weird. You have to be ready for it.'

The Minstrel Boy engaged the Saab's drive and slowly followed in the wake of the returning funeral. The platform, despite its size, was more crowded than the Minstrel Boy ever remembered seeing it before. Hundreds of people and all manner of vehicles came out of the nothings in a constant stream. A high proportion of the incoming travelers looked scared and exhausted, as though they were on the move not for the fun or adventure of it but from force of circumstance.

'What the hell are all these folks? Refugees, or what?' Reave asked.

They were passing a ragged family of four with pinched, depressed faces who appeared to be lugging all their worldly goods with them.

Billy peered through the port. 'Refugees for sure. There have got to be a lot more of these raider warlords causing trouble out there, more than just the two we've happened across.'

'I suppose you could call us refugees. I mean, we're avoiding the raiders just like everyone else.'

'Yeah, but we've got class.'

'Let's hope we've got enough class. All these refugees may make it hard to get into the city.'

The Minstrel Boy grunted. 'Looks like we're going to find out soon enough.'

The nearest way off the platform was through a high hexagonal arch. The funeral party was heading that way, and the Minstrel Boy saw no reason why they should not do the same. The only snag was that the entrance was guarded. It was flanked by two giant figures in ancient suits of powered battle armor that must have dated back to the Thousand Years War. The suits were scarred and battered, with crude welded patches and areas discolored by old, old blast wounds. The MEWs built into their right forearms were more than capable of vaporizing the Saab without leaving a trace. Any weapon with that kind of capability had to date back to before Stuff Central.

The Minstrel Boy frowned.

'This is looking kind of serious,' the Minstrel Boy commented.

The hulking metal troopers only stood and intimidated, watching the shuffling lines through impassive visor slits. The real business of vetting the new arrivals was conducted by a half dozen militia men in drab gray uniforms toting much more modest sidearms. A movable barrier restricted the free flow of vehicles and pedestrians through the arch and into the city itself. As the funeral party approached, the barrier was raised and the people in white were quickly waved through. Once they were inside, though, the barrier came down again, warning lights flashed, and the laborious process of questioning every arrival resumed. A long line immediately formed, and inside the Saab everyone settled down for a long wait.

'Okay, listen up.' Reave seemed to be falling more and more into the leadership role. Since he did it so well, Billy and the Minstrel Boy were content to let him. 'There are a couple things we all ought to remember about Krystaleit. The most important thing is their credit system. Everything here is based on that.'

Renatta frowned.

'Credit? Why do they need credit when everything comes from Stuff Central?'

'Control. Always someone who wants to control everyone else.'

'So we don't have any credit. What's going to happen to us?'

Billy took up the story. 'In normal times, credit was granted to most new arrivals. You were assessed on the value of your vehicle and whatever you might have brought with you, credited accordingly, and issued with a temporary crys.' He glanced out the port. 'Unfortunately, they seem to have raised the basic qualification level.'

Outside, almost half the people who approached the barrier were being turned away.

'There's one other kicker in the system. Something called the Personal Value Minimum. When they first figure out your credit, you're given what's known as a base number. It's like your real bottom-line value, calculated on your age, skills, physical condition, sexual utility, how smart you are, all that sort of thing. A biode can work that stuff out real fast. The trouble starts if you ever run through that last line of credit and hit the zero. That makes you an indigent, and indigents become property of the city. They literally own your ass.'

'And what can they do with your ass once they own it?'

Billy smiled grimly. 'Anything they like. Anything from impressed servitude to dumping you straight into the nothings without an SG. Of course, they have to catch you first, and there are a lot of places to hide in Krystaleit.'

'You sound like you know this from firsthand experience.'

Billy laughed. 'I came close, but I never quite hit the zero.'

Renatta was not convinced. 'Why the hell did we come here? I don't want to become property of the city.'

'There's drawbacks to every deal. It's a good place to be if you don't screw up. Always something going on.'

The line to the barrier was moving at a snail's pace. The Minstrel Boy remembered the other times he had come into Krystaleit when there had been no lines or barriers or armored men who looked like the incarnation of sudden death. The first time had been with Old Gridghast. The old man had taken some trouble to explain the city to him:

'You don't come here looking for logic or any real social organization. It's got some of the names that go with social organization, but that's about all. It's much easier to get along in the city if you think about it as one huge organism, and a
pretty unhealthy organism at that. Take the credit system. It's a perfect example. On an economic level it's a joke. There's no need for it except that it maintains the Ruling Elite like the organism's atrophied brain.'

The Minstrel Boy remembered how he had protested. 'Surely the Great Biode has to be the city's brain?'

Old Gridghast had laughed. 'More like some alien implant.'

'So what about all the cops and militia that you see every where? Isn't that social organization?'

'I find them much easier to handle if I think about them as the organism's immune system, the antibodies that attempt to protect it against destructive parasites. All you have to do is keep your head down and don't look like a disease.'

The Minstrel Boy decided not to share those particular memories with the others. Old Gridghast would be hard to follow for someone who had not been there.

They were just two cars away from the checkpoint. Reave cautioned them all. 'Here we go. Let the Minstrel Boy do the talking.'

The Minstrel Boy raised his eyebrows. 'Why me?'

'Because you're glib, and you're also in the driver's seat.'

Then they were at the head of the line. The Minstrel Boy eased the Saab up to the barrier and popped the port beside him. The armored troopers had turned to face the tank. They clearly were not taking any chances with such a heavily armored unit. Up close, the battle armor looked as old as the hills. The Minstrel Boy wondered what kind of men were inside the metal suits. The legends claimed that back in the olden days, the armored troopers had been virtual cyborgs, tank-grown semimen who were grafted into their armor for the entirety of their lives. He supposed that if someone was prepared to have the kind of surgery that had created Jet Ace, there surely could be individuals willing to be throwbacks to the war with the Draan.

Back in Litz the Minstrel Boy had watched tapes of that conflict. At the siege of Bergman's Asteroid, wave after wave of those hulking troopers, maybe a hundred thousand in all, had been thrown at the Draan emplacements, but each time they had been driven back by the batteries of huge particle cannons the methane-based invertebrates had built into the bedrock of the
planetoid. The scope of the carnage had been so vast that even as he had watched the ancient images of what looked like some hell for aliens flicker across the screen, he had found it nearly impossible to believe.

The face of a militiaman appeared at the port. He was unshaven and had the look of a man who had been on duty much too long. The standard questions came out like a tired rote.

'What is the purpose of your visit to Krystaleit?'

'We just came to see the big city.'

'You always travel in a fighting vehicle?'

'Things have been getting a little hairy out in the boonies.'

'How many passengers are aboard this vehicle?'

'Four, including myself.'

'We are going to have to examine your vehicle.'

The Minstrel Boy nodded. 'Sure, no problem.'

The militiaman pointed at an area just beyond the barrier, where the road surface was painted with a yellow grid. 'You see that yellow marked section?'

'Right.'

'Pull your vehicle over there and await inspection.'

'Anything you say.'

The barrier was raised, and the Minstrel Boy moved the Saab forward.

Reave crouched beside him. 'You think this means trouble?'

'I don't know. It could just be a routine check. Not everyone turns up in a fully armed battlewagon.'

'I hope you're right.'

The Minstrel Boy maneuvered the Saab onto the yellow grid and shut down the drive. One of the armored troopers had crunched along behind them and stood covering them with his MEW.

The militiaman reappeared at the port. 'Will you all please step down from your vehicle?'

At a slight nod from Reave the Minstrel Boy opened the hatch. As they clambered out, they found that in addition to the armored trooper who was covering the Saab, there were also a half dozen militiamen pointing their sidearms at them.

'You will now please follow the flashing red line to the door indicated. Once inside, you will surrender all weapons you may be carrying to the desk officer and await questioning.'

At their feet there was a set of color-coded guide brights set
in the floor. They followed the red flashing strip as instructed and were in turn followed by the militiaman and his squad. The designated door led to a nondescript room with all the worn grime that inevitably accompanies the downside of authority. The gray steel walls were plastered with routinely ugly warning notices printed in the dour Gothic script that was used exclusively by officialdom in the city. The desk officer sat behind a transparent plasteel shield. There was a small heat cannon close to his right hand, its purpose clearly to ensure full and fast cooperation in the surrender of weapons. With great reluctance the DNA Cowboys passed their guns through a security slit in the plasteel. When that was done, the desk officer glanced down at a mass/density scanner. He did not look pleased.

'The one in black has a needler concealed in his sleeve.'

Two militiamen moved in on Billy and relieved him of it. He made a helpless gesture.

'I swear to God, I clean forgot it was there.'

The one who had originally presented himself at the port looked wearily reproachful. 'This isn't a good start.'

'I'm telling you, I'd forgotten I had it.'

A tall man in a purple robe trimmed with black fur walked into the room. The militiamen came to halfhearted attention, and the desk officer acknowledged him with a limp salute. The Minstrel Boy did not know what rank of title went with the robe, but it was clear that he was from the middle levels of the civil bureaucracy.

'Are these the ones from the tank?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Let's have the Datron take a look at them before we go any further.'

The four of them were moved to a smaller, dimly blue-lit chamber that was almost completely filled with a tangle of very old hardware. Plasma conduits and thick ropes of power cables hung in dangling festoons; the pulsing and crackling vacuum columns that were the source of blue light took up an entire wall. They looked as if they were as old as time. Only the biomass, in its soft, shapeless dermal, looked as though it might have been made by contemporary technology. And in the center of it all was the tiny human in the saline tank — the Datron itself. It looked like a huge child, with an oversized, deformed head and sad, pale saucer eyes. Much of its body was obscured by
the mass of contacts that were grafted to it. Just one arm was free of leads and webbing. The hand was raised, and the stunted baby fingers fluttered ceaselessly in what seemed to be an unconscious spasm. The Minstrel Boy shuddered. He did not want to think about what went on in that mind. By normal standards, the Datron had to be insane, although normal standards hardly applied. It was a living cognizant, jacked into nearly infinite banks of data. In that, the Datron was as much a throwback as were the armored troopers outside. Both had their origins in the long-dead age when the giant starships had gone out to do battle with the Draan, except in those days the Datron would have found its way between galaxies and dimensions, whereas now it merely maintained the personal records of the city's population. Old Gridghast, in his introduction to Krystaleit, had told the Minstrel Boy how most of the equipment that he was now facing had actually, long ago, even before the founding of the city, been cannibalized from the navigation systems of one of the last two surviving starships. Krystaleit was famous for its continuing, if greatly scaled down, use of ancient artifacts. But the Datron in particular seemed an absurd corruption of its original grandeur.

The bureaucrat spoke directly to the Datron. 'Please scan these people.'

The Datron blinked and regarded each of the three in turn. Its eyes seemed to water continuously. In a fraction of a second it had analyzed the form and contour of their faces and located the corresponding records. Where once it had been one with the stars, it was now nothing more than a vast collection of mug shots. The Minstrel Boy wondered if the being was aware of how mightily it had fallen.

The Datron's voice was a piping castrate. 'The three males are known to me. From left to right they are Billy Oblivion, Reave Mekonta, and the one who is simply called the Minstrel Boy. All three have extensive criminal records, although no charges have ever been brought against them in this jurisdiction. Collectively they have been called the DNA Cowboys, and inflated stories still circulate about their alleged exploits. I have no data regarding the female.'

The Datron blinked again. The bureaucrat inspected the four of them himself.

'So you're the famous DNA Cowboys. You don't look like much to me.'

Nobody took up the challenge. They were all well aware of the precariousness of their position.

The bureaucrat paced in front of them. 'So what are you doing now? Taking the pay of one of the warlords? We have methods of dealing with hostile infiltrators.'

The Minstrel Boy was genuinely outraged. 'What are you talking about? We're not hired on with anyone.'

'You deny that you're all in the pay of Protexus, or maybe Taraquin and Baptiste?'

'Taraquin and Baptiste are the reason that we're here.'

'So you admit it?'

The Minstrel Boy was becoming aware that the bureaucrat was dogged but not terribly bright. He did not know what to think about the Datron. If it knew that Reave had ridden with Baptiste, it was not volunteering the information. Perhaps it only answered direct questions, like some cybernetic oracle.

'No, we don't admit it. What I'm saying is that we're here because the raids on the stasis towns have made life out then intolerable.'

The bureaucrat's mouth twisted into a sneer. 'Are you telling me that the notorious DNA Cowboys are refugees?'

The Minstrel Boy regarded him coldly. If they were going to have to put up with so much nonsense about the 'notorious DNA Cowboys,' they might as well make use of it. He drew himself up to his full height, assumed the expression of a big time desperado, and started to enunciate very carefully.

'Of course we're not refugees. We're moving on, and we decided that we'd pass through Krystaleit. We like it in Krystaleit. We have friends here. We've always kept our noses clean and we're far from indigent, so are you going to let us pass, or do we have to move on and find a place that may not be quite so celebrated but does know how to extend its hospitality to travelers?'

As he stared at the bureaucrat, the man started to wilt just a little. Perhaps it had occurred to him that if these guys were carrying such a heavyweight reputation around with them, they might just have done one or two things to deserve it. He was not, however, about to cave in completely.

'I have to be assured that you are not fifth columnists working
for some warlord. There are all kinds of potential hostiles streaming into the city, and it's my job to keep down those numbers. God knows that it's difficult enough in normal times, what with Nulites blowing things up and these fools discorporating all over the place. In a situation like this it becomes impossible. These damn raiders are becoming organized, and if they attack us with half an army already inside the city, we'd be hard pressed to defend ourselves.'

The bureaucrat was almost defending himself. The Minstrel Boy sensed that they had him on the ropes. Reave came in with his own argument.

'Perhaps we could do a deal that would set your mind at rest.'

'A deal?'

Reave laughed. 'Sure, a deal. Why not? Isn't this Krystaleit? Aren't you guys the masters of deal cutting?'

What Reave had said was perfectly true. The people of Krystaleit prided themselves on their powers of negotiation. The bureaucrat appeared to be no exception. He stroked his chin. 'What kind of deal did you have in mind?'

'Suppose you structured something like this. We agree, say, under penalty of personal foreclosure, that in the event of an attack by any combination of warlords, we will enlist as irregulars in the defense of the city. In return for this, we'd be credited as a triad of master warriors and given free access.'

The bureaucrat thought about the proposal. 'What you're saying is that the city should buy your loyalty.'

'Not buy it, only take out a credit future on our skills. The problem only arises if there's an attack. Seems to me that you could use a few of the likes of us around.'

'It's still a matter of us trusting you.'

Reave started to get a little impatient. 'Look, the worst that you've accused us of is being mercenaries, and if we do this deal, you'd have a contractual lien on us. We'd be fools to renege on that.'

The bureaucrat looked at the Datron. 'Please evaluate.'

The Datron blinked twice. Its eyes still streamed with tears. 'The logic of the transaction is sound.'

'Would you codify it for us, please?'

'Gladly.'