The Quest of the DNA Cowboys (7 page)

‘Could stay here and tromp roaches.’

‘I’ll go and get Reave.’

They found that Mohammed had turned off all the lights on his way back down to the foyer, and the return trip on the stairs was a series of near disasters.

Mohammed reappeared as they walked back through the foyer, and beckoned furtively to them.

‘Hey, boys. Come over here, I got something to show you.’

Reave, Billy and the Minstrel Boy looked at each other questioningly. Without saying a word they seemed to settle it and strolled over to the desk.

‘Okay, Mohammed, what have you got to show us?’

The little man put a plastic cube on the counter.

‘Filthy tri-di?’

Inside the clear cube was a miniaturized scene. Tiny doll-like figures performed within its substance. It was two blonde girls in short pink uniforms beating a third who was bound and naked. The naked one squirmed a little in mock pain, but all three showed distinct traces of boredom. After a matter of seconds it became clear that the cube had been produced on a loop system, and there was only a single, short action which went on repeating itself. Mohammed grinned and looked sideways at Reave, Billy and the Minstrel Boy.

‘Pretty hot stuff, eh?’

Billy slowly shook his head.

‘No.’

Mohammed looked disappointed.

‘You no like?’

‘No.’

‘I got others, maybe you like them better.’

‘No.’

Mohammed began to look as though he might burst into tears. He tried again.

‘You boys going out to find some girls, maybe?’

‘Maybe.’

‘I can get you nice girls, they come right here, right to your room.’

‘We’ll find our own girls.’

They started to walk towards the door, but Mohammed came round the counter and stopped them.

‘Listen, maybe you want to buy some hashish?’

The Minstrel Boy began to look annoyed. He took hold of one of Momammed’s lapels between two fingers.

‘Why should we want to buy hashish off you? They sell as much as we could want right across the street at the store.’

‘I sell much cheaper.’

Still holding him by the lapel, the Minstrel Boy walked Mohammed across to the reception desk.

‘Your hustling is beginning to annoy me. Let’s have a look at this wonderful hashish.’

The little man reached under the counter and produced a piece of black dope, about the size of a matchbox. The Minstrel Boy picked it up and sniffed it.

‘How much?’

‘Twenty.’

‘Do the cops know that you’re selling dope without a licence?’

‘Fifteen.’

‘I’ll give you ten.’

‘You’ll break me.’

‘Ten.’

‘All right, all right. I was a fool to try and help ingrates like you.’

The Minstrel Boy pocketed the piece of hash and slapped a ten on the desk. He turned and made for the door. In the doorway, he turned and glanced back at Mohammed.

‘If you’ve been through our bags when we get back, I’ll kill you. Got it?’

Out in the street, things seemed to have slowed down a little. The crowds had thinned and a high proportion of drunks leaned against walls and lay in the gutter. The three strolled into the first saloon they came to. It was quieter and more peaceful on the inside as well. A poker game was in deep session in one corner. Beyond that the only signs of life were by the bar, where a number of men stood around, morosely drinking. About half the tables were taken up by drunks, their heads cradled in their arms, sleeping soundly. A string band was playing tired music on a small bandstand.

Reave went to the bar to get some drinks, while Billy and the Minstrel Boy sat down at a vacant table. The arrival of three new customers, apparently with money to spend, had an immediate effect on the bar girls. Within seconds three had closed in on the table, strutting and smiling.

‘You gentlemen mind if we sit with you?’

Reave waved his arms in an expansive gesture.

‘Go right ahead, be our guests.’

The ones who sat with Reave and the Minstrel Boy were attractive enough, but they could have easily come from Miss Ettie’s. The one who sat beside Billy was the most amazing thing Reave had ever seen.

Her skin was a pale blue, and seemed to be made up of tiny reptilian scales. As far as he could see, she was completely without hair, but this enhanced, rather than detracted from her appearance.

The back of her head was covered by a kind of skull cap of multi-coloured sequins. Her long skirt was made of the same material, and slit up to her thigh. Apart from the cap, skirt and a pair of satin mules with ultra-high heels she was naked. A kind of necklace made of rows of much larger sequins hung in front of her small firm breasts, but did little to obscure them.

Billy put a hand on her arm.

‘Is your skin real? I mean, really real?’

The girl laughed.

‘That could cost you money to find out.’

‘Is that a promise?’

She patted his cheek.

‘No, honey. It’s a profession.’

‘What’s your name, babe?’

‘Angelina.’

One of the other girls giggled.

‘Angelina the whore. No limit.’

Angelina flashed round on her.

‘You shut that come-inside mouth of yours, bitch, or I’ll set Ruby to tear your face off.’

She turned back to Billy.

‘Take no notice of her, honey, she don’t have any idea of how to behave. She can’t leave the grease gun alone.’

The Minstrel Boy, his silver guitar in one hand and his girl in the other, went over to sit in with the string band. A few minutes later Reave also stood up and, with a wink at Billy, followed his girl up the stairs at the back of the saloon. Billy sent over for a bottle of mescal, and he and Angelina began to get acquainted.

The operation was going very well when a commotion started on the other side of the room. One of the sleeping drunks had woken up, and was wildly staring round the place.

‘Where’s that goddamn pig with my money? Where’s the blue-skinned bitch gone with my fucking money?’

He caught sight of Angelina, and staggered across the room towards where she and Billy were sitting.

‘I paid you for time, bitch, and I ain’t had nothing yet.’

Angelina looked at him coldly.

‘You busted out, buddy. I can’t help that you fell asleep.’

The drunk grabbed Angelina by the wrist.

‘I aim to get what I paid for.’

Billy jack-knifed to his feet.

‘Take your hands off her.’

The drunk kept hold of Angelina, but swung round to look blearily at Billy.

‘Butt out, sonny. I’m getting what’s righteously mine.’

‘I’m warning you. She’s with me.’

‘Fuck off, kid, or I’ll rip your arms off.’

Billy swung at the drunk, and to his surprise he went down in a crash of overturning chairs. He came again, though, almost straight away, with a polished black tube in his hand. There was a shout from the bar.

‘Laser!’

Everyone who was still awake hit the floor. A thin pencil of bright blue light flashed silently from the tube and swung down at Billy. Billy ducked and twisted, and it sliced through the table behind him. Billy found he had his own gun in his hand, and before the drunk could swing the laser back at him again, the gun exploded. There was a loud, frozen silence. A look of surprise came over the drunk’s face. The laser slid from his fingers, and, almost in slow motion, he crumpled to the floor. The saloon seemed to breathe out. The bartender came across to where Billy was standing over the drunk with his smoking gun still in his hand. He knelt beside the body and put an ear to its chest.

‘You killed him.’

‘He went for me with a laser.’

The bartender held up his hands.

‘It’s nothing to me, kid. I’m just saying that he’s dead. You could leave a twenty for the cleanup crew, though.’

Billy dropped his gun into its holster, and took a hit from the bottle of mescal. He tossed a twenty on to the table, and turned to Angelina.

‘I’ve got to get out of here.’

She picked up her bag.

‘Want me to come with you?’

‘How much is that going to cost?’

She ran a pointed tongue round her blue lips.

‘You just killed a man, honey. You can have me all for free.’

She/They moved forward, the two units carrying the fallen third cradled in her/their arms.

Forward, along the blue bridge that cut such a perfect line through the swirling kaleidoscope mists.

Forward, seeking a place of stasis where Her/Their power could be concentrated on healing Her/Their wounds.

Forward, creating the bridge in front of Her/Them.

Forward, with the bridge behind Her/Them smoking and boiling, finally becoming one with the swirling, shining, coloured chaos as Her/Their area of power moved on.

She/They had been alone from the beginning. It was Her/Their choice. The other beings who had, on occasion, used the order that She/They created for their own purposes had been so contaminated with the seeds of chaos that if they appeared too often, She/They had always moved on, removing the field of influence and leaving the area to disruptors and the shimmering mists. There could be no serenity and order where other beings came with their scattering influence. Since the beginning Her/Their being and purpose had been concentrated on creating an order sphere wherein She/They could find the real satisfaction.

She/They had devoted Her/Their infinite existence to that world of white sky, smooth surface resolved into perfect squares of alternate black and white, total density of the solid ground and total purity of clear air.

Her/Their being found its only satisfaction in the poetry of ultimate symmetry, in a purity of form that had been destroyed by the coming of the disruptors.

Her/Their memory of Her/Their life before the disruptors raged across the levels of the finite world was old and clouded. The most She/They could recall from that time was a longing for a cloistered, patterned existence. It came to Her/Them as indistinct fragments of pale contentment. She/They had long abandoned any hope that She/They might regain Her/Their place in that ordered work. The order that now maintained Her/Their being was the single purpose to reconstruct as much as She/They could of that which the disruptors had ruined and destroyed.

Her/Their wounds, the bridge across which She/They travelled, and most particularly the circling, twisting mists that insinuated, attacked and sought to engulf Her/Their sole symbol of order caused Her/Them pain and horror that were unique in Her/Their experience.

Although She/They used the entire residue of energy that was left from Her/Their creation of the bridge to break down, analyse and catalogue these impulses, She/They was intensely aware that the very existence of such phenomena as fear, pain and the awareness of danger had introduced disorder into the heart of Her/Their consciousness.

She/They loathed and hated the impulses that attacked Her/Them, but in that loathing She/They knew that She/They was Her/Their self producing disorder. The silence She/They prized so much was flawed with a high static sound, and the words that formed in it glowed a garish, ugly red, ‘Irregular spiral.’

‘Estimate product to be destructive.’

‘Energy drain approaches critical.’

‘Active destruct move at spiral results in tightening the circuits.’

‘Emergency.’

‘Willeffort fails to negate trend.’

‘Passive acceptance reduces trend but increases spiral motion.’

‘Paradox.’

‘Paradox is not.’

‘Paradox exists therefore is.’

‘Contradiction produced.’

‘Warning warning.’

‘Reduce trend or increase speed.’

‘Solve paradox.’

‘Energy drain.’

The words were burning with a hideous brightness, crackling against themselves. The silence began to break up under the strain of gusts of white noise.

‘Attempt order production by mathematic route out’

‘Product of wave form.’

‘Prime.’

‘Root of wave form.’

‘Prime.’

‘Numerical escape blocked by prime number groups’

‘Out, out, out.’

‘Negative.’

The bridge began to turn, it assumed an elliptical and downward form. Inexorably it started to corkscrew.

‘Class A emergency.’

‘Disorder in terminology.’

‘Terminology by definition is a factor for order.’

‘Disorder as term becomes factor of definition.’

‘Reject.’

‘Rejection tightens spiral.’

‘Stop.’

She/They stopped.

‘Paradox flow up four points’

Cracks appeared in the bridge.

‘Prepare passive state.’

‘Wounds preclude total passivity.’

Her/Their form became spherical, but gradually one side began to flatten and streaks of colour began to creep across Her/Their reflective surface.

‘Wounds render passivity partial.’

She/They resumed the triple form. A large section of the bridge fell away into the mist. Slowly She/They raised the energy wand. It glowed a dull red. She/They stood on the flat side of a blue hemisphere.

Slowly it began to rise, and the silence broke into a scream.

If Billy’s mind hadn’t been blown by the killing, it certainly was after Angelina had finished with him. She did everything that Miss Ettie’s girls had ever done to him, and then took him into places that he had never been before.

Her blue skin was strangely cold. Afterwards, he told Reave that it was like fucking an energetic corpse. Fucking was, by no means, the end of it. It was little more than a beginning. After she’d sucked him and brought him on, she rushed him through to a series of numbers that took him higher and higher until he finally blew apart. That wasn’t the end of it, either. She pulled a little induction coil from her bag. It didn’t generate more than maybe ten volts, but it was sufficient to do alarming things to their nerves when each of them held a terminal and their bodies came in contact. Her arms slid round him like blue snakes, and they started again. This time with the added electric jolt.

Billy’s head was spinning and his body was exhausted by the time they’d worked out all the possibilities of the shock machine. He lay on his back and stared at the ceiling while Angelina ran her fingernails over his chest.