Last Stand of the DNA Cowboys (9 page)

Reave took another step, closing the gap between them. The Minstrel Boy tensed. Suddenly Reave Mekonta's face cracked, and he let out a loud guffaw. The Minstrel Boy also started laughing, letting the tension flood out of him. Renatta shook her head as the two men fell into each other's arms. After a lot of hugging and backslapping they finally separated, holding each other at arm's length.

'How in the hell have you been doing, Minstrel Boy?'

'I've been doing okay. How about you? You're looking good, pal o' mine.'

'Well, I had a little trouble recently, but what else is new? I seem to be doing all right as of now.'

Arms around each other's shoulders, they headed for the bar. The crowd opened up to let them through. The spectators went back to whatever they had been doing. Some seemed relieved, but others were definitely disappointed at being deprived of a free show. With drinks in their hands, the two old friends started catching up on what each had been up to.

'So after that you started running with Vlad Baptiste?'

'I guess so. I was kind of shell-shocked around that time, shell-shocked and shocking, if you know what I mean.'

'Baptiste's a homicidal schizo.'

'That's why I deserted.'

Renatta positioned herself between the two of them. 'Is this a private romance or can anyone join in?'

Reave looked her up and down and then grinned at the Minstrel Boy. 'She with you? She don't wear much, does she?'

The Minstrel Boy grinned back. 'She rode down here from the Caverns with me. And you're right, she doesn't wear much.'

Renatta scowled at the two of them. 'I'd wear more if someone would help me get some clothes.'

The Minstrel Boy smiled genially. 'We will, we will, but join us for a drink first. Let's have a couple of drinks.'

Drinks were ordered. The Voice in the Wilderness had everything they could have wanted. Reave and the Minstrel Boy ordered two more malts, while Renatta opted for a dry martini. The men returned to their discussion.

'So you were laying up in the Caverns all this time.'

The Minstrel Boy nodded. 'Living was pretty easy until the hunting season started.'

Drink followed drink, and the stories became taller and taller. After a while Renatta tired of listening to the two men lie to each other and wandered away. Neither Reave nor the Minstrel Boy noticed that she had gone. It was only when the Minstrel Boy decided that he really had to get a room before he got any drunker that he discovered her absence.

'Now, where the hell did she go?'

Reave looked around Wearily. 'Beats me, pal.' He continued to squint across the room. 'Is that her?'

The Minstrel Boy had some difficulty focusing. 'Where?'

Reave pointed. 'Over there, watching the rope and chain act.'

'That's not her, that woman's wearing clothes.'

The woman at whom Reave was pointing was dressed for luxury travel in a white full-length fur and matching cossack hat, a black latex bodysuit, and long red boots. A pair of small onyx chandeliers hung from her ears.

'Look at the face. That's her, isn't it?'

She was even wearing makeup.

The Minstrel Boy nodded. 'So it is.'

'She said she was cold.'

'Where the hell did she get those clothes from?'

Reave grunted. 'I could hazard a guess.'

The Minstrel Boy waved and shouted. 'Hey, de Luxe, come over here. Where did you get the brand-new outfit?'

Renatta de Luxe sauntered up to the bar, clearly enjoying the effect of her new costume, which had almost as much impact on the crowd as her previous seminudity had. Her attitude was decidedly truculent. 'I was getting tired of standing around freezing my ass off with every man in the place staring at my tits. Since you guys wouldn't take pity on me, I decided to find someone who would.'

The Minstrel Boy looked at her with new respect. 'You got all that in this short a time?'

'It's quality, not quantity, that counts. I can be quite amazing when I want to be.'

'I can believe it.'

'You'd better. I could have stayed with the guy. By the time I'd finished with him, he would have taken me anywhere.'

'But you decided to come back to us?'

'I figured you'd probably be more fun.'

The Minstrel Boy handed her a fresh drink. 'I guess we should be flattered.'

Renatta sipped her martini and nodded. 'Damn right you should be flattered. I'm a prize.'

They were distracted from Renatta's prizeworthiness by a disturbance at the other end of the bar. A bum in filthy rags was about to be ejected by the keepers.

Reave's jaw dropped. 'I don't believe it.'

The Minstrel Boy was confused. 'You don't believe what?'

'Will you look who that is.'

The Minstrel Boy looked. His eyes widened in shock. 'Good God, that's not possible.'

Renatta, who had expected to be the center of attention for a good deal longer, was miffed and confused

'What's all the fuss about? The two of you look like you've seen a ghost.'

'Billy Oblivion.'

'Billy Oblivion?'

Reave moved quickly. 'I'd better spread some money around and get him out of that.'

While Reave was handing bills to the keepers who wanted to bounce Billy, the Minstrel Boy turned and ordered another round of drinks, including a large cognac for Billy, who looked as if he needed one.

Renatta was all but stamping her feet. 'What's going on here? You actually know that bum?'

'The three of us were a team a long time ago.' He smiled wryly. 'The goddamn DNA Cowboys.'

'And you're getting spooked because you've all turned up in the same place at the same time?'

'I don't like it.'

'Damn it, boy, don't go primitive on me. Coincidences happen.'

The Minstrel Boy's face was grim. 'I fear it's synchronicity, and I hate synchronicity.'

— Pressdra Vishnaria

The Human Comedy, Volume 14:

The Damaged Perception

CHAPTER FIVE

RENATTA LEANED BACK IN HER CHAIR AND CROSSED HER LONG
booted legs. 'So the DNA Cowboys are back together?'

Reave and Billy watched the movement. The Minstrel Boy shook his head with a wince. He hated the tag that had been stuck on them through a good part of their career as a trio of all-for-one, one-for-all freebooting partners. He hated it even more than the others did because, inadvertently, it had all been his fault.

'We never called ourselves that, even at the height of the craziness,' he said.

Reave dragged his eyes away from Renatta's legs. 'That was all the work of the people who made up the stories. I swear, we couldn't have done half the stuff that we got blamed for. It wouldn't have been humanly possible.'

It had been years earlier, more years than the Minstrel Boy cared to recall. They had been very young and bold and dumb. At the time of the accidental christening they had been robbing the beer hall at M'Urzank. Despite their weapons, a hard-bitten bartender had decided to act recalcitrant. He had glared at the three of them.

'You think you can walk in here and tell everyone what to do?'

The Minstrel Boy, who had been full of piss, vinegar, and a considerable quantity of gin, had snarled right back at him. 'Sure we can tell you what to do. We're the Cowboys of Instruction.'

For the rest of his days the Minstrel Boy had wondered how those words had free-associated into his head. Maybe it had had something to do with the fact that, at the time, he had been fancying himself a poet.

The bartender had stared at him in disbelief. 'The Cowboys of Instruction?'

The Minstrel Boy should have left it there, but he had been young, and he had plowed right ahead with the gag. He waved his gun with a flourish. 'Right, bubba, we're the DNA code in this cell.'

It had been a drunk in the back of the hall who had roared it our first. 'Shee-it! It's the DNA Cowboys.'

Despite their guns and their intentions of robbery, the whole crowd took up the cry, roaring with laughter and bawling it out.

'Shee-it! It's the DNA Cowboys.'

It was clear that there was now no way that they were going to rob the M'Urzank beer hall without shooting holes in a lot of people just to regain their credibility. Their collective nerve failed them, and after putting a few blasts into the ceiling they had fled the place. Unknown to the other two, however, Billy had gone back the same night with a Nulite incendiary and torched the beer hall. Despite their ignominious retreat, the name had stuck and the legend had been born.

Billy's head was drooping toward the table top. He was on his fifth brandy. His eyes were sunken, his cheeks were hollow, his skin was gray, and his previously shaved hair had grown in only to thick dark stubble. They had tried to clean him up, but he: still looked like an escaped convict with the plague.

'I don't feel so good.'

Reave was clean out of sympathy. Billy had done nothing but whine since they had rescued him from the keepers and legitimized his presence at the Voice in the Wilderness by promising to be responsible for his upkeep. Diamenti and his men gave short shrift to beggars.

'Of course you don't feel so good. You've spent God knows; how long living on plankton and water and talking to your duplicate until you got so crazy, you beat him to death. Before: that, you were on the run. In the last few days you've been tossed out of a road runner on your head. You wind up in Graveyard, and you mug a guy. You take a load of rubyjewels and only just get out of town with your life. Give us a break, buddy. You deserve to feel bad. It's a natural healthy reaction.'

Billy's head hit the table. 'Oh, Mother of God.'

The four of them had retired to a small private dining room, and they sat one on each side of a square wooden table. Billy,
Reave, and the Minstrel Boy were all drinking cognac; Renatta had a bluefrost coldpitcher filled with martinis. It was a plain stone room. It might have looked like a prison cell if the grim effect of the stone had not been softened by the burgundy velvet curtains that covered the narrow window. There was a cast-iron bellpull with which to summon a steward. The room was a good deal more comfortable than the bar, and they were able to talk without being overheard. After Billy's arrival they had no longer been quite so welcome in the Great Hall. Renatta de Luxe had come with them. Without anything actually being said, she seemed to have been accepted into their company for the duration. The duration of
what
was the question that did not seem to have any immediate answer. The conversation kept dragging itself back to the reason they had all shown up in the same place at the same time. Of the three men, the Minstrel Boy was by far the most suspicious, but that had always been the way of it.

'Listen, we've all been around the block enough times to at least keep an open mind about the possibility of there being either a prime or secondary manipulation in the affairs of men.'

Reave did not look terribly impressed. "The affairs of men"? You're starting to sound like a metaphysician, Minstrel Boy.'

The Minstrel Boy smiled despite himself. 'You know me better than that.'

Billy levered himself upright. 'So why bother us with all this prime manipulation crap? Shit just happens.'

Reave laughed. 'It certainly seems to happen to you.'

Billy scowled. 'That's kind of rich, Reave. Where do you get off taking the moral high ground? How many raids did you go on with Baptiste before you discovered that riding into town and murdering the population wasn't as much fun as it had seemed at first?'

Reave snarled, and if Renatta had not laughed, he might have made a grab for Billy Oblivion. Instead, he rounded on her. 'What's so goddamn funny, lady?'