Last Stand of the DNA Cowboys (7 page)

He took one hand off the controls, reached down into a cooler beside the command chair, and produced a can. It was silver, with more of the indecipherable characters. Billy took it and popped the seal. It tasted wonderful. He could not remember how long it had been since he had tasted beer. He sank back in his chair as the bead began to work and stared out the greenhouse canopy. The highway looked no different from the way it
had been when he had climbed into Jetstream's machine, but judging from the way the globes of light were flashing past overhead, the ground craft was traveling at high speed. The phrase 'speeding to nowhere' flashed through Billy's mind.

Schook Jetstream opened a beer of his own. He took a long pull and once again showed Billy his crooked teeth. 'So you don't know where you are, right?'

He seemed to take quite a delight in Billy's supposed misfortune. Billy was not at all sure what to make of Jetstream. If the man had a rubyjewel habit, he could expect sudden, unpredictable shifts of mood.

'That's right, I'm totally lost.'

'And you don't know where you want to go?'

'I'll go anywhere, any place where I can get myself fixed up.'

'I'm probably going on through to Graveyard.'

'That would do me just fine.'

'So maybe I'll let you ride along with me.'

Billy nodded his thanks. He did not particularly like the way Jetstream had used the word 'maybe.' He turned back to the view. They were running straight through a cluster of the indistinct ghostly shapes. He looked at Jetstream. 'What are those things?'

Jetstream's face was blank. 'What things?'

Billy pointed through the canopy. 'Those things.'

Jetstream's head turned. His eyes were cold, the suspicion back in spades. 'You weirding on me? You been in the nothings too long?'

Billy realized that Schook Jetstream could not see the ghostly shapes. He lamely shook his head. 'It's nothing. Just my imagination.'

'You better not be weirding on me. I'll throw you out right now.'

Billy did his best to reassure the driver. 'Really, it's okay. I just thought I saw something. You know how it can get.'

'Do I? Do I? I'm not sure that I do.'

Things were starting to get difficult. 'Why don't we just forget it.'

'I'm not sure about you, Billy. I bring you in here and I give you a rubyjewel and a beer to wash it clown, and now you start weirding on me.'

If anyone was weirding, it was Schook Jetstream.

'I'm not weirding, I'm okay.'

Jetstream was thinking again. 'Billy . . . Billy? I could swear.'

To Billy's alarm, Jetstream suddenly slammed a fist into the control panel.

'I knew I knew you! Billy! Just Billy, huh? I know who you are, friend. You're Billy Oblivion!'

Billy's heart froze. 'I . . .'

He could swear that he had never met the man. Unless, of course, the nothings had time-warped him.

Schook Jetstream hit the retros, and the vehicle shuddered to a stop. Billy, who had not bothered to strap in, was thrown headfirst into the canopy. Jetstream was glaring at him with a look of pure hate.

'Out!'

Billy was dizzy and a little stunned. He had trouble getting his arms and legs untangled. Jetstream was throwing off his safety webbing. Billy was on his hands and knees, crawling back down the cabin. Jetstream aimed a kick at him.

'Out, I said! Out of here, you murderous bastard!'

Jetstream was smashing at Billy with boots and fists. As Billy tried to avoid the blows, he wondered desperately what he might have done to the man. He could not remember ever having set eyes on him before. He was well aware that there were plenty of people who might be more than justified in reacting to him like that. He just couldn't place Jetstream among their number. The other man had turned back to the control console. The hatch popped. Then Jetstream was coming at him again, brandishing a short black billy club.

'Out of here! Get out!'

Without thinking, Billy rolled through the hatch. He fell heavily to the road surface, grazing his knees and elbows. Above him, Jetstream was screaming.

'I hope you die out there! I hope you rot! Why don't you crawl into the nothings and be done with it, you bastard!'

The backwash rolled Billy over like a piece of discarded garbage as the red and yellow machine gunned away. He lay facedown on the cold, hard surface. So far, things were not going too well.

— Pressdra Vishnaria

The Human Comedy, Volume 14:

The Damaged Perception

(a footnote)

CHAPTER FOUR

RENATTE DE LUXE AND THE MINSTREL BOY HAD BEEN MAKING
love, so they had ignored the warning tone from the submarine's biode. Sex between the passenger chairs was an amazingly athletic challenge. When the tone had come informing him that the lizardbrain had locked to a menu of possible destinations, they were so entwined that the Minstrel Boy probably would not have been able to reach the control to make the selection command if he had wanted to. Now a display glowed in the air.

LOCK LOST.

The Minstrel Boy untangled himself from Renatta. 'Damn!' Renatta's breath was still coming in short, labored gasps. 'So much for the afterglow.'

LIZARDBRAIN SWEEPING FOR RANDOM PROXIMITY.

'What does that mean?'

'It means that we can't pick our spot. The lizardbrain is casting around for the nearest stable area that has a water approach. Whatever 'nearest' means in the nothings.'

'Does it really matter where we go?'

'There are places where I'd rather not go.'

'But we missed being able to choose?'

'The one good thing about coming in by water is that you usually have a chance to take a look and back out if you don't like it.'

STABLE POINT LOCATED.

'All we can do is keep our fingers crossed.'

They came out of the nothings at periscope depth in dark water. The Minstrel Boy raised the scope and made a slow 360-degree sweep.

'We seem to be at the mouth of a very large river.'

'Do you recognize it?'

The Minstrel Boy leaned on the handgrips in the traditional submarine commander pose, although the traditional submarine commander was not normally bareass naked.

'I don't know. I've seen a couple of places where there are sections of wide river.' He stopped the sweep and turned the periscope back again. 'Will you look at that!'

'What?'

'There seems to be a war going on.'

Renatta, also naked, moved up beside him. 'We've come out in the middle of a war?'

The Minstrel Boy slapped the handgrips into the upright position and retracted the periscope. 'I'm going to surface and take a better look.'

'Isn't that dangerous?'

The Minstrel Boy was pulling on his pants. 'We're quite some distance out.'

He swung into the pilot chair and manually brought the vessel to the surface. He set the controls to maintain their current position, then ducked back toward the hatch. Dressed only in his old leather pants, he opened the hatch and began to climb out. Renatta made no move to follow him.

'Be careful.'

As the periscope had shown, they were well out from the mouth of a wide river. It was night, but a pair of phony moons made it almost as bright as day. To one side of the river there was dark green jungle; to the other, a stately mansion with a classic columned portico dominated a low headland. The mansion was burning like a torch, flames streaming from the windows and being reflected in the black mirror of the water. As the Minstrel Boy watched, the roof collapsed in a galaxy of sparks. Farther upriver a red dirigible with skull insignias on its side was dropping incendiaries on a second target while small monoplanes made strafing runs. From the way the airship hung motionless in the air, it was clearly meeting no resistance from the ground. The audible chatter of gunfire must have been coming exclusively from the planes.

The Minstrel Boy leaned into the body of the submarine. 'You should come up here and take a look at this.'

'Is it safe?'

'We're a good way out. I don't think anyone's going to notice us.'

Renatta, dressed once again in her lace shift, emerged from the hatch. She let out a low whistle. 'Pretty spectacular. Why are those planes doing that?'

The Minstrel Boy put an arm around her shoulder. The air was not particularly warm out on the water.

'Anybody's guess. They're probably air pirates. Those guys will hit a target just for the fun of it.'

'People have strange ideas of fun.'

'That's the first thing you learn.'

'We can't land here, can we?'

The Minstrel Boy shook his head. 'It doesn't look as though it would be a very good idea.'

'So what do we do?'

'Quietly go back the way we came.'

As he spoke, one of the monoplanes broke off the attack and made a high turn toward the open sea. It began trailing flares from its wing tips in an obvious signal.

The Minstrel Boy cursed. 'I think that plane's telling the others that it's spotted an unarmed submarine coming in from the sea. We're not going to leave here quietly. Quickly, get below.'

Renatta de Luxe needed no second urging. The Minstrel Boy was pleased that she did not waste time asking redundant questions. He swung down through the hatch right behind her. As he quickly dogged the cover, he gave verbal commands to the biode.

'Take control. Crash dive. We are under air attack. Run for the nothings in a high-speed evasive pattern. I waive stasis protocol and relinquish all participation.'

In such a situation, the biode was much smarter and a hundred times as fast as he was. It was only human vanity that made men involve themselves in the world of machines. As he ducked into the pilot seat, he gestured to Renatta.

'Strap in! The g-comp will only make a dent in what's about to happen. It's going to be a roller coaster until we hit the nothings.'

A Klaxon blared, and warnings hung in the air.

CRASH DIVE!

CRASH DIVE!

The gold submarine made a bucking plunge and started to run for the nothings like a minnow trying to outmaneuver a hungry shark. There were explosions of bubbles on either side
of them. The monoplane was dropping mines of some kind. The Minstrel Boy clutched the inoperative control levers with his shoulders hunched protectively around his ears and his eyes tightly shut. If he was going to be blown to pieces, he saw no reason to watch it coming. The boat rolled and twisted. The whole framework was vibrating, and the noise of the drive was a deafening anguish. The biode had taken him at his word and was pushing firmly at the envelope. When it abruptly stopped, he almost believed that he had died. With absolutely no feeling of deceleration, all noise and motion ceased. There was nothing but the ticking of the clock, their own still-labored breathing, and the small internal sounds of the submarine.

'The nothings,' the Minstrel Boy announced.

'That was something.'

The Minstrel Boy unstrapped. 'You liked that?'

'One way to work up an appetite.'

The Minstrel Boy blinked. 'You're hungry?'

'Threats to my life take me that way.'

'I think we should find a destination before we do anything else. I don't like to
be
in the nothings for any longer than need be.'

'It'll be better than the last one?'

'I'll merge with the biode and watch while the lizardbrain takes a look around.'

He grasped the control levers and settled into the intelligence cushion. Almost immediately there was an image. A building stood on its own isolated, mist-shrouded hill. It was a strange, uneven asymmetrical structure that looked as if it had been built in relays without a coherent plan. There were buttresses and turrets and sloping batwing roofs. Spires rose from the granite complexity like seedlings desperately reaching for a light that had failed. The place might just as well have grown there. It had that older-than-the-rocks-on-which-it-sat permanence. The most applicable word was "pile." The overall effect was brooding Gothic, but style was joined to style with total abandon. Although there was something very forbidding about its towering bulk, the bright lights shining from its irregular doors, windows, and terraces were warm and welcoming.

'The Voice in the Wilderness.'

'What?' Renatta asked.

'I suppose you could call it an inn. A lot of travelers pass
through there, and you can get pretty much anything you might want. It's the domain of an individual called Ramilles Diamenti, who's as old as God.'