The Quest of the DNA Cowboys (5 page)

A bridge began to form in front and behind Her/Them, a plain, stark structure without decoration or parapet. It was made of a dark blue material, and as it formed, the energy wand glowed brighter, its light shifting from orange to yellow. The bridge extended, not to the horizon, but a considerable way into the mist that still swirled in the distance. The bases of its piers were also obscured by the shimmering fog, but around Her/Them it was absolutely solid, and She/They floated above its surface, casting a slight shadow. Even the silence was most pure, and the words that formed in it were sharp and clear.

‘All potential reduced proportionally.’

She/They drifted along the bridge, gathering momentum. As She/They approached it, the mist receded.

‘Problem of continued existence.’

Despite the burden of the fallen third, She/They seemed less bowed by the weight.

‘Problem necessitates an external stasis source. It is not possible to maintain control zone and heal. Insufficient power potential.’

The words flipped rapidly through the silence.

‘Seek external source.’

The road abruptly stopped and the plain was in front of them. It was like a wide lake that had solidified and become a hard, smooth, but glowingly translucent material. The sky above it was pitch black, apart from an edging of the deepest blue where it met the horizon. All light came from beneath from the plain itself. To look at everything in a soft cold light that came from below was disconcerting. It was like being in some huge, ghostly ballroom. Billy and Reave hesitated before stepping off the last broken fragments of the road, and on to the surface of the plain. The Minstrel Boy, however, went straight ahead.

‘You don’t have to worry, it’s quite safe to walk on. You can even shut your porta-pacs off. Stasis is the least of our worries.’

Doubtfully, Billy and Reave went ahead, and found that they could, in fact, walk on the plain’s surface. Billy caught up with the Minstrel Boy.

‘So what do we have to worry about?’

‘Reaching Dogbreath. It’s a fair distance.’

‘Ah, come on now. You keep talking about this plain as though it was dangerous.’

‘It can be.’

‘So what do we have to look out for?’

‘That’s the trouble, you never know. You can’t ever tell.’

‘You must have some idea.’

‘Maybe I have, and then again, maybe I haven’t.’

Billy’s temper snapped. He swung round and grabbed the Minstrel Boy by the lapels of his frayed velvet jacket.

‘Listen smartass, tell me all you know and don’t fuck around.’

‘Let go of me or I ain’t saying nothing. Okay?’

‘Okay.’

Billy relaxed his grip. The Minstrel Boy stepped back and dusted himself off. Billy looked hard at him.

‘I’m still waiting.’

‘Okay, okay. You know what an anomal is?’

‘Sure I know what an animal is.’

‘No, no, an anomal.’

He spelled the word for Billy. Billy frowned.

‘I think so. It’s something that appears where it doesn’t belong.’

The Minstrel Boy nodded like he was a teacher talking to a backward pupil.

‘And it would seem that this plain is a high-density point for them.’

‘So we’ve got to watch out for them?’

‘That’s the problem. Nobody knows where they come from. It’s been suggested that people produce them themselves.’

Billy frowned.

‘I don’t understand.’

The Minstrel Boy pursed his lips impatiently.

‘Look at it this way. Say you’re walking down the road, thinking about elephants, and this herd of elephants shows up where no elephants ought to be, that’s a self-produced anomal. Right?’

Billy nodded.

‘Right. I get it. If we cross this plain with our guns drawn, looking over our shoulders all the time, the thing we fear is more than likely to jump out at us.’

‘Something like that.’

Billy glanced round nervously.

‘Surely if we blank out our minds, nothing’s going to happen to us.’

The Minstrel Boy shook his head.

‘It’s not as easy as that. Try looking at it this way. Say you’re walking down the road, and you ain’t thinking about nothing ‘cept where your next meal’s coming from, and then a herd of elephants jump out on you where no elephants ought to be. How about that?’

Billy fiddled with his belt.

‘I don’t know. That just don’t fit.’

‘Well, according to the self-production theory, those elephants are left over from somebody else thinking about them. Somebody who might have passed by years before.’

Billy looked uncomfortable.

‘So what you’re trying to tell me is that we can expect anything, but it’s dangerous to expect too hard.’

The Minstrel Boy nodded.

‘That’s about it.’

‘You think we should tell Reave about it?’

The Minstrel Boy shrugged.

‘You want to?’

Billy glanced at Reave plodding across the glowing plain.

‘No. I guess what he don’t know won’t hurt him.’

They both hurried to catch up with Reave.

The next hour or so was completely uneventful, and Billy began to think that maybe the Minstrel Boy had just been trying to make him paranoid. They were approaching a rocky growth, a kind of jagged mesa that jutted up through the surface of the plain. Billy had just started to relax when a figure darted from around the rock and began running towards them. Billy jerked out his gun, but the Minstrel Boy signalled him to wait.

‘I don’t think he’s anything to do with us.’

As the figure got closer Billy saw that it was a small fat man, naked, terrified, and obviously out of breath. As soon as he saw Billy, Reave and the Minstrel Boy, he shot off in a different direction.

‘What I’d like to know is what he’s running away from.’

They stood perfectly still, and waited. They didn’t have to wait long; almost immediately a horde of naked, howling children came charging round the rock. They carried crude spears with fire-hardened tips, and their only garments were multi-coloured stocking caps or head bands.

Billy and Reave both had their guns out, but the wild children seemed to ignore them, and raced off in pursuit of the little fat man. They chased him for maybe a hundred yards, and then a well-flung rock brought him down. In an instant, the wild children were all over him. His screams were suddenly cut off short.

The Minstrel Boy swung round on Billy and Reave.

‘Quick, let’s get out of here.’

Reave continued to stare as the children milled round the man.

‘What are they doing to him?’

The Minstrel Boy grimaced.

‘Playing a game of tag. They play the terminal kind. Let’s get out of here.’

The three of them broke into a run, their bags bumping against their hips. Their single purpose became to put as much distance between themselves and the children as possible while they still had the chance.

They ran as fast and as long as they could, but eventually had to stop for breath. The three of them stood together, their heads down and their hands on their knees, gasping for air. Finally Reave straightened up and pushed his long straight hair back from his forehead.

‘Christ. Where in hell did those kids come from?’

The Minstrel Boy spread his hands.

‘Who can tell? There’s supposed to be hundreds of them roaming these plains.’

Reave shuddered, and hitched up his pack.

‘Let’s keep moving. The sooner we reach this here town, the better.’

The other two fell into step beside him. In the next hour of walking they saw a herd of huge misshapen apes plod across their path. They were well off in the distance, however, and didn’t bother them. Later a monstrous flying thing swooped down ahead of them. Reave took a shot at it, but he missed. The thing croaked and flapped away. Finally, when they were just beginning to believe they were really lost, they saw the lights of Dogbreath. Honest yellow lights that shone out against the eerie glow of the plain.

As they came closer, they could make out the shapes of buildings, and finally they heard the sounds of people, laughter, shouting, a dog barking and a fiddle scraping.

Dogbreath was little more than a single main street. Down one side was a saloon, a bar, a slot arcade, another saloon, a whore house, another slot arcade, and a general store. Down the other side was a saloon, a slot arcade, another saloon, the Leon Trotsky Hotel, the town hall and the jail. Tucked away at the back of the main street were some dwelling houses and an abattoir. Dogbreath would have been a paradise of fun if it hadn’t been so broken down and ratty.

Whoever had erected the predominantly wooden buildings seemed to have been incapable of constructing a right angle. They staggered, and looked in imminent danger of collapse. The decorations on the outside had been done with an amazing lack of either skill or taste. The only redeeming feature was that the crude, garish paintwork had, at least, chipped, peeled and mellowed to a kind of uniformity.

Electric light bulbs had been strung along the fronts of the saloons and slot arcades to lend them some kind of glamour and excitement. The effect was rather spoiled by at least half of them being blown and dead.

Despite the air of decay and dilapidation, the place was alive with people, hustling and jostling, scuffling through the sand and garbage that covered the street and helped to block out the light from inside the plain.

Billy, Reave and the Minstrel Boy slowly made their way down the street, looking around at the passing crowds.

‘Sure are some weird people in this town.’

The Minstrel Boy took Reave by the arm.

‘You want to keep those kind of remarks to yourself, Reave, old buddy. People here don’t like to be talked about as weird.’

Reave pointed back down the street.

‘I just saw a guy with orange hair, and six fingers on each hand. There sure wasn’t nothing like that back in Pleasant Gap.’

‘That’s as maybe, but there are a lot of weird folk in this town. They more than constitute a majority, and they’re very touchy about strangers pointing fingers and calling names. If you go on the way you’re going you’re quite liable to get yourself lynched.’

Reave shrugged.

‘Okay, okay. But some of these folks are sure strange looking.’

‘Yeah, sure they are, but just keep it to yourself. Okay?’

‘Okay.’

They stopped in front of one of the saloons. Billy wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

‘I sure could use a drink after all that walking.’

The Minstrel Boy glanced at him.

‘You happen to have any money?’

Billy grinned.

‘Sure, we got a bit left.’

‘Let’s go then.’

They pushed through the swing doors and a wave of noise, smoke and the smell of booze hit them like a slap in the face. They elbowed their way through the crowd and up to the bar. Reave’s eyes were popping, but he kept his mouth shut. He had never seen such a diversity of skin colours, not only black, white, brown and yellow but green, blue, red and orange. There was an unimaginable variety of dress, style and even strange anatomical variations. Reave did his best to look straight ahead and show no surprise.

Billy hammered on the bar.

‘Can we have some drinks over here?’

‘Okay, okay, what do you want?’

‘Three beers to start off with.’

‘Three beers coming up.’

The bartender banged their mugs on the counter.

‘Twenty-one.’

Billy fumbled in his pocket, and handed him three Pleasant Gap tens. The bartender looked at the bills blankly.

‘What the fuck are these?’

Billy looked surprised.

‘Money, of course. There’s thirty there.’

The bartender began to look ugly.

‘What kind of money do you call this?’

‘Pleasant Gap money.’

‘Then I suggest you fuck off back there and spend it. It ain’t no good around here, we only take Dogbreath money.’

He signalled to two men on the other side of the room.

‘Milt, Eddie. Throw these bums out of here.’

The three of them were grabbed by burly bouncers, hustled through the crowd and thrown out into the street. As the Minstrel Boy picked himself up, he looked at the other two and shook his head.

‘You two really don’t know nothing, do you?’

A.A. Catto came out of the deep, total, dreamless sleep that came from dormax. She looked around the soft glow of the dimmed room, and stretched out a hand to the bedside console. The lights came slowly up, and she blinked again. The small clock on the console read 21.09. She became aware that she was hungry, and wondered if that was because she had become aware of the time. Did she feel hungry because she knew she ought to be hungry?

She slid off the bed and stood up. Through the perspex of the balcony, she saw that the sun was setting, turning an angry red through the shifting air, a romantic, Wagnerian sky looming like some terrible vengeance over the dark shadows of the ruined buildings and squalid shacks. A.A. Catto hoped her brother Valdo was watching. It would fit so well, particularly if he was still into his Nazi craze. She wasn’t sure if he was, though. She hadn’t seen him for a month or so.

She stared for a while at the screen of the entertainment console, tapping her silver nails on the plastic coating. She made a mental note that the silver would need redoing in a couple of days. Maybe she should have something different this time, maybe metalflake.

She punched a button, and a show sprang into life. It was the fight games. Four naked L-4 children, with the numbers one to four tattooed on their backs in different colours, were struggling on the sandy floor of a small walled area. A commentary drawled out of the speakers.

‘… And don’t forget, the combatants have all been starved for two days and then given massive injections of dinamene to make them fierce and aggressive. Right now they are struggling over the piece of meat, and so far, none of them have noticed that there is a heavy steel bar in one corner of the arena …. And yes, number three has the meat, and one and two are both on him. You’ll notice that the combatants have their heads shaved to stop …’

A.A. Catto flicked the channel selector round and came up with two fixed smiling Hostess-1s attempting intercourse with a bored-looking donkey while gales of canned laughter roared from the speakers. She scowled at the screen and punched the off button.