The Neural Atrocity

The Neural Atrocity

Mick Farren

Mayflower

Granada Publishing Limited

First published in 1977 by Mayflower Books Ltd Frogmore, St Albans, Herts AL2 2NF

A Mayflower Original

Copyright (c) Mick Farren 1977

Made and printed in Great Britain by Richard Clay (The Chaucer Press) Ltd Bungay, Suffolk

Set in Linotype Plantin

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

This book is published at a net price and is supplied subject to the Publishers Association Standard Conditions of Sale registered under the Restrictive Trade Practices Act, 1956.

CYN 256 felt one of those tiny surges from the wild, unruly, faraway depths of his mind. He didn’t have a name for the small bursts of feeling. He had heard the word rebellion, but he scarcely knew what it meant. The only positive analysis he had of his situation was that somewhere, beneath all the layers of orderly conditioning, was a dark sub-mind that refused to be controlled.

He had no real knowledge of this area. A few clues floated up into his consciousness like the occasional bubbles in a stagnant pool that burst with a tiny whiff of strange, volatile gas. They told him that somewhere there was a part of him that wasn’t totally adjusted. It wouldn’t accept the life that limited him to his work cubicle, his sleep cubicle, and the bright curved corridor that he walked twice a day from one to the other.

It was on these walks that the disturbing thought came more frequently. As he paced the familiar route from, in this instance, work to sleep, he glanced covertly at the fellow operatives walking beside him. He wondered if they too suffered these small but nagging disturbances. If they did, they showed no signs of it. It wasn’t a subject that he could discuss at the fantasy session. If he was alone in his attitudes he would be treated as a malfunction. That was the thing he was most afraid of.

He walked on along the corridor, looking fixedly at the grey metallic floor with its slight downward curve. He was careful not to let his pace vary from that of the other operatives around him. He knew the Computer monitored the behaviour of all its human operatives. It was quick to act on a deviation from the norm. This too made him afraid.

He was acutely aware that this fear itself was by far his most serious deviation. He knew that once such thoughts become detectable he would be removed for immediate therapy. Therapy was something else he feared. What made this whole thought process even more disturbing was that he knew it went against the very core of his conditioning. For as long as he could remember he had loved the Computer. It was all powerful, all knowing and all caring. The never failing monitoring was the ultimate source of personal safety and comfort. The small black shiny sensors that studded the corridors at regular intervals, and unfalteringly watched over the human operatives from the ceiling of each cubicle, were his guards and protectors. The sensors were the technological expression of the Computer’s love for him.

The therapy unit was the greatest manifestation of that love. All his life it had been the ultimate point of solace. Once in therapy all pain and abnormality would be gently washed away. In therapy he would be cleansed, all the pain and troubles removed from his mind and body, totally forgotten.

And yet he was afraid. He knew the fear only occupied a small section of his brain. Most of him still functioned in the same way as always. The tiny part that had changed, however, was enough to make him reject therapy and deceive the sensors. He knew that in so doing, he was setting himself apart from the Computer’s merciful love, but the found he was unable to help himself.

CYN 256 came to the door of his sleep cubicle. His number was printed on the grey steel door in bold black letters. Although all the doors that lined the corridor were identical, he didn’t need to check the number. He stopped automatically and, without thought, pressed the stud. The door silently slid open and he stepped inside.

The interior of the little cubicle was a soft pale blue. It was a restful contrast to the hard grey of the corridor. The sleep cubicles of C-class operatives provided no luxuries and excess space. There was a narrow bunk, a small bench, a sanitation unit, and a small strip of floor that was just big enough to turn round in. He opened the dispenser on the wall and, as always, there was the evening food tray. He removed the tray from the recess in the wall and set it down carefully on the table top next to the styrofoam box that contained his standard set of personal possessions. He was proud of the multi-faceted lumps of coloured plastic. They were the nonfunctional objects that the Computer, in its grace and wisdom, allowed its operatives to keep for their pleasure.

CYN 256 picked up the five pills from the food tray. He washed them down with a mouthful of liquid from the beaker, and began to munch mechanically on the thick, brownish grey wafer. When he’d finished the food he dropped the tray and empty containers into the disposal vent. He pulled off his shapeless yellow coverall and stuffed it in after them. There would be a fresh coverall in the dispenser after he had slept.

Naked, he settled on the bunk in a cross-legged squat. He knew he had only a short space of time to think before the sleep gas was released into the cubicle. There was no way to resist the gas. Once it came, the next thing he would know would be waking for another work period.

He tried to think his way towards an analysis of the disturbances in his mind. It was hard. He had so little information. He was a C-class. The C-class work function was carried out on an instinctive level below that of conscious thought. Printouts came into his work cubicle from the feeder, he read them and punched out other sets of figures on his console. He had no rational idea of why he did it.

He even knew very little about his environment. He knew that beneath him, four levels down, were the living circuits of the Computer in their own world of absolute cold, moving imperceptibly in the atmosphere of liquid nitrogen. The cold circuitry that CYN 256 always somehow imagined to be a place of green silence was the heart of the vast, metal walled sphere that housed the various sections that made up the entirety of the Computer.

The next levels out from the core housed the electronic and mechanical parts of the Computer. Beyond them were the three human levels. First there was the A-class, the elite who performed complex rational exercises, next came the B-class, who guarded, maintained and repaired all functions of the Computer, and finally, next to the outer shell, were the C-class levels. The C-class provided unthinking link functions. Of all the Computer’s operatives, they were the most expendable.

Far back in its history the Computer had taken over the humans who had created it. It had rechannelled their energies, eradicated the parts of their makeup that it considered superfluous and integrated them into its own construction.

CYN 256 knew nothing of this. He only had the dimmest idea of the construction of the sphere. He knew the C-class level was immediately beneath the outer shell. He had no idea that this was a 30 cm skin of spun thermo plastic and steel, with its own remote control weapons system for protection.

He had little idea, either, of what was beyond the outer shell. He knew there were other things. He had a vague idea of the complex of stuff plants that supplied the rest of what existed with its material goods. He knew that the Computer controlled the stuff plants, coordinating the monstrous logistics of production and ordering. But he had no conception of what that rest of existence was.

For the first time ever, his lack of knowledge caused him pain. He had no data to apply to his problem. He knew no precedents and had nothing to relate it to. He had to struggle to stop his body revealing the frustration. The only thing that stood out in his mind were the figures.

It had happened some ten work periods previously. He had been in his work cubicle, scanning the printouts and instinctively hitting the keys on his console, when his eye had stopped at a single line of figures. He had broken out in a sweat, and something had knotted in his stomach. He didn’t know how or why, but there seemed to be something terribly wrong with them. He had to make a considerable effort to go on punching out the corresponding figure. It had all felt so out of place. It was after that his disturbances had started.

CYN 256 felt helpless. It was inconceivable that the Computer had made an error. It had to be he, and yet he didn’t feel defective. He could think of no reason why he should react strangely to a set of figures. That thought took him full circle. If it was the figures that had affected him, then the error must be in the Computer, and it was inconceivable that the Computer could make an error.

Before he could go any further, there was a soft hissing sound. The sleep gas was being pumped into the room. CYN 256 lay down and prepared for unconsciousness.

***

A.A. Catto paced one of the high terraces of the ziggurat. It was a restless, stiff legged pacing. She bounced slightly on the balls of her feet, giving off waves of impatient energy. Every few steps she would clench her fists, digging her silver nails into the palms of her hands. She still looked about fourteen years old with a slim, hardly developed body. For a long period she had maintained the appearance of a twelve year old, but then, for a while, she had stopped using the growth retarder, and her body had matured slightly.

It was only her face that gave away the fact that she had seen and done far more than any fourteen year old. The large eyes had a cold liquidity that seemed capable of anything. Her mouth, too, had a fullness that was at the same time cruel and sensual.

She halted and snapped her fingers at Lame Nancy.

‘Cheroot.’

Nancy silently handed A.A. Catto a thin black cheroot and then lit it for her. Nancy had been standing quietly by while A.A. Catto performed her caged animal pacing. Nancy was almost as thin as A.A. Catto, but she looked her natural age. Her hair was bleached white and cropped very close to her head. She wore a white, skin tight, one piece fighting suit. A.A. Catto was dressed in exactly the same garment, except that hers was black with a discreet gold trim. Nancy’s left leg was withered. It was supported by a black steel brace decorated with damascened curlicue patterns.

Nancy had been a successful madame in the city of Litz until she joined A.A. Catto’s headlong band wagon. Now she was A.A. Catto’s confidante, companion, lover and servant. She was consort to A.A. Catto’s absolute ruler.

A.A. Catto exhaled sharply.

‘Why does it have to take so long?’

Nancy shrugged.

‘Preparations always take time.’

A.A. Catto stared across the broad valley that was dominated by the ziggurat. A wide sluggish river meandered through the valley. Its banks were lined with squat, dark green, amphibious assault craft. Lines of fighting men in black suits and helmets moved slowly towards them like dark tributaries. Soon, however, they would all be crowded aboard the waiting boats, and like a grim armada the fleet would move out towards the nothings.

The nothings were the grey drifting areas of unstable matter. Since the breakdown most of the world had been like that. In the nothings the natural laws of energy, motion and gravity had ceased to exist. The huge stasis generators were the only thing that maintained a tenuous normality. They provided human beings with a few small areas on which they could live.

Quahal was one of these areas. A.A. Catto had come to it as a fugitive seeking sanctuary, but had overthrown its previous rulers and altered it to suit her own tastes and desires. In this redesigned Quahal, where her every whim had become brutal and inflexible law, she had found the environment to nurture her ultimate dream. Now she stood on top of the high black ziggurat and watched as her dream became reality.

A.A. Catto was about to conquer an unsuspecting world.

Nancy moistened her lips, hesitated and then spoke.

‘Shouldn’t we go down to the bunker? The assault craft will be moving off soon.’

A.A. Catto dropped her cheroot and ground it out with her foot.

‘In a moment.’

She turned and stared out once again at the men beneath her. The huge multiple stuff receivers had been rigged on the plain beside the ziggurat. They crackled softly as the fighting men of A.A. Catto’s custom built army came down the beam.

Each of them was bio-tailored to A.A. Catto’s specific design. She had been surprised that Stuff Central had delivered quite such a vast order for men and equipment, but the Computer had started delivering without comment, and had continued to do so ever since. Very soon A.A. Catto would command the largest army that had ever existed in the damaged world.

She turned and looked at the sinister, cloud-covered mountain looming at the end of the valley, then she abruptly turned and walked quickly towards the terrace entrance. Nancy fell in behind her.

Originally the interior of the ziggurat was a black stone warren of passages, ramps and stairs. A.A. Catto had installed a system of high-speed lifts. One waited at the end of a short corridor, A.A. Catto and Nancy stepped into it. Nancy punched out the combination for the bunker, and the lift dropped through the many levels of the ziggurat and continued deep underground.

The lift came to a cushioned stop, and the doors slid silently open. Just outside the lift stood a pair of A.A. Catto’s personal guards. They were two of the wild horsemen who had first aided her to seize power in Quahal. They still wore their traditional winged helmets, fur tunics and armour covering their arms. Instead of lances, however, they were now armed with deadly, full load fuse tubes.

They stepped aside to let A.A. Catto pass. Beyond them a pair of steel doors slid back. She walked through them. Nancy followed. The doors closed behind them, and they were inside the huge underground war room.

Even though she had supervised every detail of its construction, A.A. Catto still experienced a thrill of excitement when she entered the war room. Its floor and high, vaulted roof were made of the same black stone as the rest of the ziggurat. Three of the four walls were taken up by screens that gave instant graphic representation of the state of the war.

The entire room was dominated by the big board that gave an immediate overall picture. It was flanked by smaller screens which gave details of individual campaigns. On the floor, directly in front of the board, sat five rows of red-suited aides hunched over individual monitors and battle control consoles.

Behind the aides, on a raised dais, sat A.A. Catto’s six white-suited advisers. Their totally bald heads and flat expressionless faces were all identical. They were the set of specially cloned superminds whose job it was to make A.A. Catto’s fantasies become reality.

In the middle of the line of advisers were two empty chairs. A.A. Catto walked briskly across the war room, mounted the dais and sat down. Nancy dutifully followed. As A.A. Catto sat down the advisers rose and bowed. Once the formalities were over A.A. Catto’s attitude became businesslike. She turned to the adviser next to her.

‘Is the assault craft force ready to move?’

The adviser nodded.

‘They are loaded, and waiting for the final order.’

‘They’re netted in with the lizards?’

Another clone answered.

‘They’re hooked into the net, my leader.’

A.A. Catto smiled.

‘Good. Start to move them out. Once they’re under way I want to inspect the lizard installation.’

She issued a fast series of orders. The advisers’ fingers flew over the touch panels on the desk in front of each of them.

‘Check guidance system.’

‘Checked, my leader.’

‘Bring up the task force on the big board.’

A yellow arrow glowed into life beside the symbol that represented Quahal.

‘Activate scanner on forward craft.’

One of the smaller screens flickered into life. It showed the view of the river from the leading assault craft. A.A. Catto looked satisfied.

‘Right, move them out now.’

The advisers’ hands moved across the touch panels. The picture moved as the craft swung into the centre of the river. The yellow arrow began to move very slowly across the big board. A.A. Catto sighed.

‘They’re on their way.’

She looked round at her advisers.

‘Will the air support be ready when we need it?’

The advisers nodded.

‘Yes, our leader.’

She placed her hands flat on the desk and stood up.

‘We’ll move the second wave immediately the men have come off the beam. Now I want to check the lizards. If they fail, we will lose everything.’

The advisers rose and bowed, and then settled back to their work. A.A. Catto, followed, as ever, by Nancy, hurried out of the war room and into the lift. The lift dropped two more levels to the very deepest of the underground structure.

The lift doors opened to reveal six soldiers in black fighting suits and black helmets guarding the entrance. As A.A. Catto stepped out of the lift they saluted smartly. Two sets of thick steel doors led to a room almost as large as the war room. The air was thick with the acrid smell of big lizards kept in a confined place. The animal stench contrasted sharply with the gleaming electronic equipment that lined the walls of the room.

As A.A. Catto entered, the dozen or so red-suited aides stopped what they were doing and came to attention. A.A. Catto waved them back to work and walked quickly to the lizards. There were four of them, lying on their sides apparently unconscious. A large number of electrodes were attached to their heads. Wires led away to the various electronic units. A.A. Catto frowned. The animals’ breathing sounded laboured and uneven. She beckoned to one of the aides.

‘Are these animals alright?’

The aide nodded.

‘They are as healthy as can be expected.’

‘What about their breathing?’

The aide pointed to the feeder tubes that were embedded in the beasts’ shoulders.

‘They are being fed with a mixture of nutrients, tranquillizers and cyclatrol. The cyclatrol heightens their wayfinding ability, but the combination of the drugs does appear to impair their breathing a little.’

A.A. Catto looked at the lizards doubtfully. They were the cornerstone of her entire existence. They had an instinctive grasp of the relationship between different places in the damaged world. They could find the way from one point to another. They knew where they were, and humans didn’t.

All, that is, except a very few random freaks who were born with the power of wayfinding. They were, as a rule, difficult and unmanageable. Lizards were much safer.

The electrodes in the lizards’ heads fed their brain patterns into the computer complex. There they were analysed and finally fed to A.A. Catto’s armies as they moved through the nothings in the form of detailed course instructions. It was a crude set-up but incredibly effective. It meant that A.A. Catto could wage war across the nothings. It meant her armies could descend on target cities with a certainty of absolute surprise. It was vital that nothing should go wrong with the system. A.A. Catto glanced sharply at the aide.

‘What happens if one of the lizards dies?’

‘If the signals from one lizard fade, the system switches instantly to one of the other animals. We only use one at a time. In addition we have a herd of prepared beasts. We can change lizards in a matter of minutes.’

A.A. Catto still wasn’t satisfied.

‘If we broke contact for even a few seconds it would be a disaster. My armies would be lost in the nothings. What happens if all four should die at the same time?’

‘The advisers have calculated, my leader, that the probability of that occurring is 1 in 278 unless, of course, Quahal itself is under attack.’

A.A. Catto looked hard at the aide.

‘There must be no failure. You’d suffer horribly before you died.’

The aide bowed.

‘There will be no failure, my leader.’

A.A. Catto snapped her fingers at Nancy.

‘It has started. There is nothing else I can do until the army reaches Feld and is ready to attack. I shall go to my suite. You can come with me.’

Nancy took a deep breath and smoothed down her already form fitting white suit.

‘I’m coming, sweetie.’

***

The teacher raised his head. It was a silent signal that the period of meditation was over. The line of black-robed monks who sat facing him, cross-legged on their rush mats, also looked up. The silence seemed to deepen as they waited for him to speak. A mass of candles flickered in the big multiple candelabra. They threw a soft fitful light on the bare stone walls of the brotherhood meeting room. The teacher took a deep breath.

‘We face a very grave situation.’

The monks’ faces showed no emotion. There was a certain uniformity about their features. They all had the same prominent cheekbones, slightly flattened noses and large dark eyes. Their straight black hair was trimmed just above their shoulders. The teacher, however, was a very different figure. He wore the same black robe, but his whole appearance was frail and ancient. His skin was pink and soft like a baby’s. It was terribly wrinkled, and totally without hair. Only his eyes seemed to be still young. They had the same purposeful calm as the rest of the brothers.

‘It is so grave that the very survival of what is left of the world is threatened.’

One of the monks controlled himself with a supreme effort of will. Every fibre of his being wanted to shift uncomfortably, but he managed to remain motionless. It was only appropriate for a brotherhood executive. His name was Jeb Stuart Ho. He sat about halfway down the row of monks. He was aware that part of the gravity of the situation was his direct responsibility.

Over the centuries since the natural laws had ceased to be consistent and human life had clung to areas where artificial stasis could be generated, the brothers had worked single-mindedly on their never ending task. They observed and recorded the smallest event in the hundred thousand communities that had survived in the grey nothings. Everything that happened was recorded in their graphs, from the major to the insignificant. The graphs charted the passage of past events. They were fed to the huge bio-cybernetic brain. From them, the brain projected the course of the future. When disaster appeared to threaten, the brotherhood made adjustments. This was the role of the executives.

Jeb Stuart Ho had been given such a task. His assignment had been the elimination of A.A. Catto. Her killing would have been a surgical operation to avoid a catastrophe, but Jeb Stuart Ho had failed. When he returned to the brotherhood temple with his mission uncompleted he had expected some kind of punishment. Nothing had happened. No one even referred to the matter. It didn’t take Jeb Stuart Ho very long to realize that his own guilt and self-reproach were the worst punishment.

‘I have called thirty of you together because we must complete the task that lies in front of us. If we should not succeed, the disaster would prove almost total.’

The teacher’s expression didn’t change, but Jeb Stuart Ho felt the urge to squirm increase.

‘You have been trained since your birth for executive action. You have explored the deepest corridors of your beings. You have fought and meditated. You have studied the martial skills until no man can best you in combat. You can walk without disturbing the air, and move without being seen. Yet, the task in front of us may even put you to an awesome test.’

The teacher paused, and a monk at the end of the line raised his hand.

‘Teacher?’

The teacher slowly turned his head.

‘Na Duc Rogers?’

‘Has not the failure of Jeb Stuart Ho cast a shadow over our capabilities?’

The teacher smiled.

‘The wise man holds his dish level after once he has spilled the soup.’

Na Duc Rogers frowned.

‘Surely we can no longer have faith in our invincibility? That could hang over us like a blight.’

The teacher’s eyes twinkled.

‘The humble man who dwells in the barn with his cow very quickly learns to like the smell.’

Jeb Stuart Ho could contain himself no longer. He raised his hand.

‘Teacher?’

‘Jeb Stuart Ho?’

‘Would you outline what this task is to be?’

The teacher looked hard at Jeb Stuart Ho.

‘The foolish man summons the river to come nearer so he may cross it the sooner.’

Jeb Stuart Ho silently accepted the rebuke. The teacher waited for a while, then he spoke.

‘What would you do, Jeb Stuart Ho?’

Jeb Stuart Ho took a deep breath. The question was obviously a test. He answered quickly without faltering.

‘The city of Feld is already under attack, and A.A. Catto’s legions are moving centrewards on a broad front. In my estimation there must be some kind of guidance system that enables her armies to move through the nothings. I would strike at Quahal in force, and destroy this system and her whole base of operations.’

The teacher permitted himself a discreet grin.

‘That is a good analysis, Jeb Stuart Ho.’

‘Thank you, teacher.’

‘However, you strike at the branches, not the roots.’

Jeb Stuart Ho did his best to disguise his discomfort.

‘I do, teacher?’

‘You do, Jeb Stuart Ho.’

Another monk, Dwight Luang, raised his hand.

‘What then is the correct mode of action, teacher?’

The teacher bowed his head.

‘Young men hasten so swiftly towards their truths. They flee from ignorance as though a tiger was at their heels. What would you do, Dwight Luang?’

‘I would suggest the same as Jeb Stuart Ho.’

The teacher looked slowly along the line of monks.

‘I imagine you all think the same?’

The monks sat still and silent. The teacher nodded.

‘I too would concur with Jeb Stuart Ho, except for one factor. Tell me, Dwight Luang, did A.A. Catto raise her array among the population of Quahal?’

‘No, teacher. Quahal’s only inhabitants are a few hundred special function cloned servants and primitive warriors. She ordered her army from Stuff Central.’

‘A large army was delivered to her in a very short time?’

Dwight Luang nodded.

‘Yes, teacher.’

The teacher looked at Jeb Stuart Ho.

‘So, do you now have reason to change your analysis?’

Jeb Stuart Ho was confused.

‘I’m sorry, teacher. I do not yet grasp your argument.’

The teacher nodded.

‘Let us go further, then. Stuff Central provided the army without comment, is that not correct, Jeb Stuart Ho?’

‘Yes, teacher.’

‘And yet this army provides a tangible threat to many of the stasis settlements. A war on this scale could disrupt huge areas by the destruction of their generators. Our computer predicted that the loss of stable land area could be as high as 65.79 per cent. It is inconceivable that the Stuff Central computer would not make the same calculation on receipt of such a huge order.’

The teacher paused.

‘Perhaps Jeb Stuart Ho would remind us of the Prime Term of Reference of the Stuff Central computer?’

Jeb Stuart Ho recited parrot fashion.

‘The-Stuff-Central-computer-will-coordinate-the-manufacture-and-supply-of-material-goods-for-the-surviving-communities-to-the-benefit-and-wellbeing-of-those-communities.’

The teacher nodded.

‘In-the-same-way-as-the-brotherhood-analyses-events-and-predicts-future-patterns-for-the-benefit-of-those-communities. Is that not correct, Jeb Stuart Ho?’

‘That is our Prime Term of Reference, teacher.’

‘Then would you not say that the Stuff Central computer was in breach of its own Prime Term in supplying A.A. Catto’s army?’

Jeb Stuart Ho bowed.

‘Yes, master, it is in error regarding the benefit and wellbeing of the communities.’

‘But the Stuff Central computer does not make errors.’

‘No, master.’

‘So what do you deduce from this set of facts?’

Jeb Stuart Ho felt himself go cold.

‘The Stuff Central computer is allowing a potentially disastrous war to take place.’

He hesitated. The teacher looked at him sharply.

‘So?’

Jeb Stuart Ho moistened his lips.

‘The Stuff Central computer has gone psycho.’

There was a long pause while the terrible fact was digested. The silence was finally broken by the teacher. His voice was very soft.

‘Would you now change your analysis, Jeb Stuart Ho?’

Jeb Stuart Ho took a deep breath.

‘An executive operation must be carried out against the Stuff Central computer, either to cure its capacity for error, or to isolate and destroy the sections of its chain of reason that are malfunctioning and creating the error.’

The teacher beamed.

‘You have done well, Jeb Stuart Ho. That is, in simple terms, the task that is to be assigned to all thirty of you.’

There was another long silence. Some way down the line of monks from Jeb Stuart Ho, Edgar Allan Piao raised his hand.

‘What about the attack on Feld, teacher? Surely we cannot allow this slaughter and destruction to take place?’

The teacher shook his head sadly.

‘Our concern must be with the cause, not the symptoms. Our computer directs us that we cannot intervene or take sides in the siege of Feld, or any of the other battles that will undoubtedly take place.’

A look of pain passed across Edgar Allan Piao’s face.

‘But teacher …’

The teacher cut him off sharply.

‘Your directives are very clear.’

***

‘We’ve picked some bummers before, but this must beat all.’

Billy Oblivion winced as a stick of bombs exploded on the other side of the city, rattling the glasses on the table and shaking down lumps of plaster from the ceiling of the gin house. The Minstrel Boy continued to stare morosely into his mug. There was another series of explosions and Billy took a hasty drink.

‘They’re going to bomb the whole fucking city to rubble. I wish we could find a way out of here.’

The Minstrel Boy looked at him with an expression close to boredom. He pulled his wide-brimmed hat further over his sunken eyes.

‘If there was some way out of here, we’d be long gone by now. There’s no way. The whole city’s surrounded.’

Billy’s head dropped and he looked bitterly at his drink. He pulled his fur jacket tighter around him. The log fire in the stone hearth had begun to go out.

‘We’re going to be blown up for sure.’

The Minstrel Boy shrugged.

‘Maybe, maybe not.’

‘Huh?’

‘I said maybe, maybe not.’

Billy’s face tightened.

‘I heard you, goddamn it. What’s that supposed to mean?’

The Minstrel Boy sighed. His thin, pale face, framed by the mass of curly black hair, looked tired and ravaged.

‘I would have thought it was obvious. They’re just playing with us. They’re using dive bombers and H.E. bombs. It’s a cat and mouse game. If they really wanted to level the city, they’ve got at least two divisions of shock troops armed with fuse tubes who could take the whole place out in less than an hour.’

Billy scowled.

‘You could be right.’

‘I’m usually right.’

‘What I want to know is why? Who are these people? What do they want to attack the city for? There ain’t nothing worth having.’

The Minstrel Boy poured the last of the gin gourd into his mug. He was three parts drunk and felt prepared to accept anything.

‘Who knows? There’s always someone who wants to have a war.’

Carmen the Whore, who was sitting at the same table with them, snorted loudly.

‘What I want to know is why can’t the nobles and the guild get their shit in gear to surrender?’

The Minstrel Boy lit a small, black cigar and inhaled deeply.

‘How should I know? You’re in a guild. Why can’t the hookers push it through?’

Carmen grimaced.

‘Don’t make me laugh. The hookers got a guild because in this city everyone from beggars to surgeons got a guild. It don’t mean we got a voice on the council. You got to have mucho credits for that.’

Billy gave a wry smile.

‘You gotta have a few credits, Carmen baby.’

‘Bullshit!’

Carmen’s usual blowsy, dumb-blonde bonhomie was getting threadbare from the bombing.

‘You need more than we got to make a noise on the council.’

Olad the Siderian fingered the carved butt of his long barrelled .68 spiral magnum. He was a freebooting mercenary who made up the four at the table. He wore the usual rover’s leather breeches, a tunic decorated with brass studs, and heavy bracelets round his wrists. His powerful arms were covered in tattoos, and his head was shaved. An old scar ran down one side of his face, partly covered by his full beard.

‘I wish I could face them. I’d show them how a man fights.’

Like most of the inner fringe rovers, he was overly concerned about his courage and manhood. The Minstrel Boy’s lip curled.

‘Yeah?’

‘Sure, if they’d come out and fight like men.’

The Minstrel Boy grinned crookedly.

‘I’ll lay odds that as soon as they enter the city, you’ll be worming your way out like the rest of us.’

‘I’ll die like a man.’

‘Why?’

‘Huh?’

The Minstrel Boy brushed ash from his black velvet frock coat.

‘I said why will you die fighting?’

Olad puffed out his barrel chest.

‘A man’s got to do …’

The Minstrel Boy nodded.

‘What a man’s got to do. Yeah, I heard it. That ain’t no reason. I mean, it ain’t your city.’

Olad ran a hand across his shaved head.

‘That’s true,’

He grinned and snapped the clay neck of a fresh gin gourd.

‘I tell you one thing, we still got booze. That can’t be bad.’

In fact, the Court of Angels, the square where the gin house was situated, not only had booze, but functioned very much as normal. The Court of Angels was the centre of Feld’s criminal underworld. It lay where a number of narrow twisting streets converged between the ducal palace and the north wall of the city. It was a run-down, dirty, bustling area, crowded with brothels, gin houses and gambling dens. It provided sanctuary for the brigands, whores, pickpockets, gamblers and drifters who passed through the city. There would be the occasional raid from the pikemen of the Watch. A few thieves would be dragged away summarily to lose their right hands, and some prostitutes would find themselves on the bad end of a flogging. The real authority in the Court of Angels was the robbers’ guild. They protected the bordellos and the gin houses, regulated the level of crime in the city, ran off maverick, independent operators and took a cut from everything that went on. There were smaller guilds for the whores, pickpockets and beggars, but it was the robbers’ guild that wielded the power.

The system had been in operation almost since the foundation of Feld. It had history and tradition, and ensured an amicable coexistence between the burghers and the villains of the city.

When the vast army had appeared out of the nothings, with its advanced weapons and horde of black clad, highly trained shock troops, the system had still held together. When the dive bombers had dropped like hawks on the city, the nobility had retired to the inner sanctums of stone palaces, and the merchants had retreated to the cellars of their comfortable thatched houses. In the Court of Angels there was nowhere to hide. By necessity life went on almost as normal. The whores weren’t overworked, and it was a slow time for robbery, but the taverns found themselves packed as the inhabitants of the Court found there was no escape except to get drunk.

Heine, the blind beggar, walked into the gin house, removed the rag that covered his eyes while he plied his trade, and looked anxiously round. Carmen the Whore beckoned to him.

‘What’s new, Heine?’

‘It’s terrible, terrible.’

Olad looked up.

‘What’s terrible?’

Heine shook his head.

‘The shame of it.’

Olad grabbed him by the arm.

‘The shame of what?’

‘I can hardly bring myself to speak of it.’

Olad started to twist Heine’s arm.

‘You’d better speak of it, or I’ll break your scrawny arm.’

‘Alright, alright. I’ll tell you, just let me go.’

Olad released him.

‘Well?’

‘I was on the wall watching the invaders.’

Olad guffawed.

‘I thought you were blind.’

Heine looked at him contemptuously.

‘Don’t be so dumb.’

Olad scowled.

‘Get on with it.’

‘Alright, alright! I was on the wall and the Duke’s cavalry moved out against the enemy. The Duke’s own guard. We’ve seen them so often, riding through the city on their white horses with the plumes tossing and their breastplates shining.’

Olad belched.

‘Cut the fancy talk, get on with it.’

Heine shot him a vicious look.

‘They moved out against the enemy. It was a splendid sight. They started at a walk. Then they broke into a trot, and finally into a full charge. It was a magnificent sight for as long as it lasted, I can tell you.’

The Minstrel Boy’s lip curled.

‘I didn’t realize that you were such a patriot.’

Heine pulled a hostile face.

‘I may be just a beggar, but I’m a loyal subject of the Duke.’

Olad glared menacingly at him.

‘Sure, sure. What happened next?’

Heine shook his head from side to side as though trying to shut out the memory.

‘It was horrible. They were all cut down. A few of them reached the first line of armoured ground cars. They just rode around until they were killed, as though they didn’t know what to do. The enemy didn’t suffer any casualties at all.’

The Minstrel Boy grunted.

‘What do they expect if they throw cavalry at armour and fuse tubes?’

Heine shot him a poisonous look.

‘It was a valiant charge.’

‘It was stupid.’

‘What else could we do? We don’t have weapons like the enemy. We don’t have ground cars or flying machines or those terrible light guns. Why can’t the enemy fight like men with cavalry and pikes?’

The Minstrel Boy began to look bored,

‘Because they’re smart.’

‘It’s not fair.’

‘It’s war.’

‘What else can we do?’

‘Surrender.’

Heine puffed out his narrow chest.

‘The Duke will never surrender.’

Carmen snorted.

‘You can say that twice.’

Another series of explosions shook the gin house. Everyone involuntarily ducked. They seemed nearer this time. Billy shook the plaster out of his long hair and looked hard at the Minstrel Boy.

‘How the hell are we going to come through all this?’

The Minstrel Boy swallowed his drink in one jaundiced gulp-

‘We ain’t.’

‘No chance?’

‘We could score a load of yage from the apothecary and go out laughing.’

More bombs rocked the building. Billy rubbed sweat from the palms of his hands.

‘I can’t take much more of this.’

The Minstrel Boy looked at him. His eyes were bored and hooded.

‘Figure you’re going to have to.’

Olad spat in disgust.

‘You two are cowards and weaklings! How can you talk like this?’

‘We just open our mouths and it comes out.’

‘You are impossible. When the fighting starts we’ll see who the men are.’

The Minstrel Boy slowly turned to face him. His voice became quiet and lazy.

‘Bullshit.’

Olad reddened. His hand moved slowly towards the gun on his hip.

‘You’ll take that back, or I kill you.’

Before the Minstrel Boy could reply, another, different explosion rattled the walls. Flashes of intense white light were visible through the narrow mullioned windows. Carmen jumped to her feet.

‘What the hell is happening now?’

There were two more of the new kind of explosions, and a barrage of white flashes. The people in the bar looked fearfully from one to the other. Heine swallowed hard.

‘Those flashes. They come from the enemy’s strange guns. They must be inside the city.’

Carmen’s eyes widened and she turned pale.

‘The walls couldn’t have fallen so fast! It’s not possible!’

The Minstrel Boy sat very still, calmly regarding his hands.

‘It’s quite possible with the weapons they have.’

Everyone except Heine stared round in disbelief. There were more flashes and explosions. The flashes seemed to be accompanied by a strange, high pitched crackle. The door suddenly burst open, and Carmen screamed. A halberdier of the Ducal Guard stood swaying in the doorway. His eyes had the vacant look of one in shock. His weapons were gone, and his once magnificent red and gold uniform was blackened and charred. His mouth moved in silent convulsions. Finally he was able to speak.

‘They burned away the Goldsmiths’ Gate. The white fire cut through the wall … They’re inside the city. Nothing can stop them!’

He pitched forward on his face. The Minstrel Boy took a deep breath.

‘Now we’ll find out what kind of survivors we are.’

***

After his initial fear and trepidation had passed, CYN 256 was surprised at how quickly he developed an attitude of watchful cunning in his dealings with the Computer. Of course, he still lived with fear, but it was a new, more exhilarating kind of fear. Instead of being afraid of something that might be wrong inside himself, his fear now was that the Computer might detect the change that had taken place in his character.

The turning point had come when, after many work periods spent translating figures with one part of his mind and pondering the problem of the increasing anomalies in the printouts, he had finally come to the conclusion that the errors lay not with him but with the Computer.

The realization had been an intense shock at first. In an instant his lifelong faith had melted away. He had slipped out of the Computer’s all-embracing love and become a renegade. Although the word was not a part of his severely limited vocabulary, he had become a secret outlaw, pitting his meagre resources against the Computer’s infinite power.

CYN 256 quickly developed techniques of deception. During his work, his walks to and from his sleep cubicle and the few waking moments he had to himself, he hid behind a blank, negative appearance that masked the heretic thoughts that were racing through his mind. He knew if the Computer ever detected those thoughts he would either be taken to therapy or have his memory burned out and his thoughts realigned. He began to suspect that the Computer might even possibly kill him.

The excitement of his new state of consciousness was coupled with an intense feeling of frustration. His lack of real, positive knowledge meant that all his efforts had to be a mixture of guesswork and intuition.

The first puzzle he felt he had to solve was whether the anomalies were the product of a fault in the Computer’s makeup, or whether they were being deliberately created for some dark mysterious purpose. He had initially attempted to memorize all the figures that felt wrong, but as they started to come with greater frequency he discovered that this was beyond him.

He had worked out a crude system of categorizing the figures that rolled out on the printout. It appeared that one set referred generally to the stuff output. Another set seemed to cover the intake of raw matter for the manufacturing process. There was also a third set. CYN 256 wasn’t too sure what they were. He worked on the assumption that they were somehow involved in the internal processes of the Computer. He started to call them carrier figures, but he had no real idea of what their function was.

He watched and made mental notes for a dozen work periods and it began to appear that stuff turnover was climbing to a far higher peak than ever before. He did his best to keep all his data and observations catalogued in his mind, but gradually he had to face the fact that this was beyond him. He realized that he had to make some kind of material record.

For another three work periods he totally avoided the problem. He refused even to think about it. His research and observation stopped altogether. He considered abandoning all his plans. The only thing that stopped him was the knowledge that he could never go back to what he had been before. There was no returning to the passive, unthinking contentment of the Computer’s love.

In the last moments before the sleep gas came to take away his awareness, he finally made up his mind. There was nothing to do but go on. He had to face the danger and somehow preserve a record of the figures.

He woke feeling strangely calm. The blast of cold air circulated through his cubicle, and he climbed from his bunk. He was vaguely surprised that it was exactly like the start of any other work period. He took his fresh coverall from the dispenser and pulled it on. He swallowed the pills, and gulped down the beaker full of warm, thick, tasteless liquid. Then the chime sounded, calling him to work, and the door automatically opened. He dropped the beaker and food tray into the disposal vent. He stepped out into the corridor and joined the others of his shift walking calmly to the work section.

He spent the first part of the work period hiding the overpowering feeling of tension and excitement while he waited for his chance. Finally, when it came, he sat paralysed for a few moments. The printout had stopped and a blank length of paper was rolling off the feeder spool. He quickly ripped it off and in one fluid motion hid it inside his clothing. He waited, fearful and breathless, for some kind of retribution. None came. The figures began to appear on the printout again, he bent over his keyboard and went back to work. At the end of the period, he took the scriber from beside his keyboard. Instead of dropping it into the cubicle vent as he normally would, he quickly palmed it and slipped it into his coverall beside the strip of printout paper.

He walked down the corridor back to his sleep cubicle. Every now and then he glanced round at the dull eyed, green clothed figures that plodded along beside him. If only they could know what he had achieved. He had deceived the Computer and survived. The Computer was not infallible. CYN 256 savoured a feeling he had never felt before. It was a sense of power.

He pressed the stud, and stepped inside the cubicle. He covertly looked round. He needed somewhere to hide his writing materials. He began slowly to eat his after-work meal, all the time scanning the small room for a possible hiding place in a way that wouldn’t be detected by the sensor in the ceiling. He opened the disposal vent and began to drop the containers down the chute. It was then that he noticed the narrow rim around the edge of the vent. He examined it carefully. It was just wide enough to take the scriber and the strip of paper. He began to strip off his coveralls. He had to restrain himself from an illogical glance towards the sensor, just to see that everything was okay.

Under cover of pushing the clothes into the vent, he carefully placed the scriber and paper on the ledge. Then he slowly closed it, and went to his bed. He had only just enough time to lie down and get comfortable before the cubicle began to fill with sleep gas.

During the subsequent work periods he pondered his next move. Now he had materials to keep a record he had to find a way of using them without the sensors catching him. It took four periods of heavy thinking before he found a solution. When it happened, it came to him purely by chance. He was using the sanitary unit, and toying with one of his polished lumps of plastic. In his new-found state of mind, having something to play with aided his thinking. When he first caught himself toying with them, he had been afraid that he might have given himself away, but when nothing came of it, he assumed that the Computer allowed its C-class operatives a few marginal idiosyncrasies.

He found that if he allowed his hand to drop to his side, he couldn’t see the sensor reflected in the polished surface of the block. He checked from a number of angles, but it seemed as though there was a blind spot in the sanitary unit that the sensor wasn’t able to monitor. CYN 256 smiled inwardly. The Computer was proving more fallible each time he tested its powers.

He spent two more work periods discreetly making absolutely certain that the spot in the sanitary unit really was unmonitored. Then he took seven more to devise a system to get the writing materials from the disposal vent into the unit so he could make his notes, and back to their hiding place in the vent. He tried to make the whole process appear to be nothing more than a slight variation in his regular behaviour pattern. He realized that as he moved deeper into his campaign he was developing a hard streak of patient cunning. It seemed to be proving successful. The Computer had, so far, detected nothing wrong.

With his test completed, CYN 256 began to keep his record. After each work period he returned to his cubicle, and furtively noted down all the figures that had come up during the day that didn’t seem right.

He divided them into his three arbitrary categories, and did his best to divine some meaning from them. Once again he was filled with an overpowering frustration at how little he knew. There were moments when he despaired of ever finding any sense in the figures, let alone doing something about what might be wrong inside the Computer.

The only idea he had, and that a matter of instinct rather than logic, was that the Computer was somehow running out of control. CYN 256 wasn’t sure. It was all so complex. It did seem, however, that the intake/output figures were escalating like never before. Where once the workings of Stuff Central had been finely regulated, they now speeded up without any kind of check.

A new idea began to flourish in the depths of his mind. It was loaded with danger, and he kept trying to push it away. But the more he tried, the faster it returned, gradually becoming the only possible direction for him to follow.

If he couldn’t learn anything from the figures, perhaps if he fed them back into the Computer he might learn something from its reaction. He was also well aware that if he put such a plan into action the Computer might just simply kill him.

***

A.A. Catto and Nancy lay on the huge circular bed that dominated A.A. Catto’s private suite in the underground bunker. They lay with their legs entwined and their bodies at right angles to each other. They lay with the stillness of total exhaustion. They were both naked, except Nancy still had the steel brace on her leg.

The bed cover was made from a metallic gold covered velvet that sparkled in the subdued light. The rest of the room was white. Being deep beneath the earth there were no windows. One wall was filled with a mass of different sized view screens. On one medium sized one two women, a small boy in lavish makeup, and an iguana acted out a silent, pornographic fantasy. The rest flickered on hold.

On the floor by the bed were two discarded, beaten silver goblets and a number of empty bottles. Some thick purple wine had been spilled, and it stained the carpet in a couple of places. There was a table beside the bed made from a cube of dark mirrored glass. A small jade box had been knocked over spilling a small pile of white powder.

Dumped in the corner of the room like a forgotten bundle was the body of one of A.A. Catto’s personal guards. He was naked and his wrists and ankles were handcuffed together. His torso was covered in ugly and very recent scars. He was dead. A.A. Catto’s personal guards were programmed to obey her absolutely without question. A.A. Catto had been exploiting this one’s unswerving devotion to have a little fun. A.A. Catto had exhausted herself, and the guard had died. Later she would call the clean-up crew to get the body taken away and the stains removed from the carpet.

A.A. Catto stirred and made a contented sound, halfway between a groan and a purr. Without appearing to wake, Nancy stretched out her hand and stroked A.A. Catto’s hair. A.A. Catto opened her eyes and raised her head languidly. She stretched out a lazy hand to a touch panel set in the glass table. One of the larger screens on the wall flickered into life and was filled with the expressionless face and bald head of one of her six advisers. A.A. Catto propped herself up on one elbow and regarded him.

‘Is the invasion going according to plan?’

‘Everything is right on schedule.’

‘Good. Patch the big board through to me here.’

The porno movie flickered, and was replaced by a miniature representation of the big board in the war room. A number of yellow arrows were moving inwards towards the centre. A.A. Catto picked up a little of the spilled white powder on one of her long metallic fingernails, put it delicately to her nose and sniffed.

‘What is the prevailing status at Feld?’

‘Our shock troops are in control of the entire city. We are about to move in occupation police prior to withdrawing the combat units.’

A.A. Catto raised an eyebrow.

‘There is no continuing resistance?’

‘Only a handful of ill equipped aristocrats. They are a problem more suitable to law enforcement than military action.’

‘Good. You can move in the occupation police straight away. Once they are in control they can start conscripting local volunteers, and selecting suitable subjects to form a satellite government.’

‘Yes, Miss Catto.’

‘Oh, and make sure the police squads take an adequate number of civilian hostages. According to our projections it’s an ideal safeguard against breaches of discipline among the local population.’

‘It is a priority order with all police squads.’

A.A. Catto smiled.

‘Excellent. Now, hook me into a camera on one of the leading police vehicles.’

Another screen came to life. The camera jiggled as though it was mounted on the front of a fast moving ground car. It was racing through streets of picturesque and, to A.A. Catto’s mind, painfully whimsical thatched houses. A few of them were on fire, but the majority seemed relatively undamaged. On either side of the street, lines of troops in black helmets and fighting suits moved on foot in the opposite direction.

They had the battle weary confidence of victorious soldiers who have been given the order to withdraw.

The ground car swung round a corner and screeched to a halt. Another machine was parked right across the road. Its armoured bodywork was a dull grey, and it carried the orange insignia of the occupation police. Orange helmeted figures in black suits were holding a group of civilians at gun point. These were A.A. Catto’s occupation forces. One, with the tags of an officer on his suit, was questioning the civilians. The sound from the small video unit was distorted and A.A. Catto couldn’t make out what he was saying. She saw to her satisfaction that the civilians seemed cowed and broken.

More orange helmeted figures came past the camera from the car it was mounted on. A large, flat sided, grey personnel carrier pulled up, and the police began to herd the civilians inside it. The administrative takeover of Feld seemed to be progressing quickly and efficiently. A.A. Catto reached for the touch panel and killed all four screens. Her hand moved again, and the music of Cole Porter came from hidden speakers.

Nancy opened her eyes.

‘Have you been awake long?’

A.A. Catto lay face down on the bed with a sigh of contentment.

‘I’ve been checking on the war.’

‘Is everything okay?’

A.A. Catto closed her eyes.

‘Perfect.’

Nancy ran her fingers down A.A. Catto’s smooth back. A.A. Catto stretched and made a soft moaning sound.

‘That feels nice.’

Nancy reached down beside the bed and produced a narrow cylindrical object. It was rounded at the end, and transparent. Nancy pressed a stud on the side and it started to hum and vibrate. A violet light glowed inside it. Nancy rubbed it against her cheek and grinned. A.A. Catto heard the noise and opened one eye. Nancy slowly began to rub the vibrator up the soft skin on the inside of A.A. Catto’s thigh. She sighed and rolled over on to her back.

***

She/They had interwoven the extremes of Her/Their control zone with a semi-stable fold of matter. It created a blue, faintly translucent hemisphere in the rolling, grey, flickering storm of chaotic, unordered matter.

In a more normal situation She/They would have extended Her/Their control to the optimum of Her/Their perception. Chaos was totally familiar to Her/Them. Her/Their earliest memories of the time of peace and order, before the disruptors had torn through the levels of the finite world, were old and clouded. The most She/They could recall was a longing for a secure patterned existence. It came to Her/Them as pale fragments of contentment.

She/They had long abandoned all hope that She/They might regain that ordered world. The most that She/They could do was extend Her/Their personal environment as far as possible. For a long time, it had worked very well. She/They had existed under a white sky, amid a smooth, flat landscape of even black and white chequers, in a clear cold silence, all of Her/Their own creating.

She/They might have maintained these conditions almost to infinity if it hadn’t been for the encroachments of the disruptors. The sound sluglike entities ripped through the few areas of stasis, sucking in the stable matter and leaving a broad wake of grey, shimmering chaos.

The disrupters had grown more numerous and more voracious. They seemed drawn by a unique hunger towards the energy that She/They generated to maintain Her/Their control area. It had become impossible to erect a full control area any longer. She/They now expended the minimum energy, contracting Her/Their whole environment to the single blue hemisphere. She/They calculated that there would not be sufficient power circulating to attract disruptors and this would give Her/Them time to contemplate Her/Their future course of action.

She/They floated a few inches above the flat upper surface of the hemisphere. She/They had adopted Her/Their most regular form, the triple. The three identical women, who looked as one and moved as one. The slim erect figures were concealed by the while ankle length cloaks that fell in exactly the same folds. Her/Their heads were encased in silver helmets with high crests and curving side plates that covered Her/Their nose and cheek bones, leaving only dark slits for Her/Their eyes.

Her/Their senses were all turned inwards, directed solely at the problem of the disruptors. She/They saw nothing of the grey waste all around. She/They had already been damaged once by a disrupter. It was imperative that She/They reached an ultimate solution.

‘Data.’

The word hung in the air above Her/Their heads. It was the same blue as the hemisphere.

‘Data source on the disruptor is confined to my/our observation.’

‘The disruptors are semi-sentient entities of an animal/machine origin.’

‘They are dark grey with occasional red identification marks unique to the individual object.’

‘They range in size from one to one hundred metres, although it is conceivable that they may achieve even greater dimensions.’

‘They take in stable matter through a front aperture and expel disordered space from another opening at the rear.’

‘They appear to be attracted by any emission of stable energy.’

‘That is the limit of our observation.’

She/They paused. The words faded and vanished.

‘Speculative projections from the given data.’

‘The disruption process takes place within the body of the entity.’

‘It is a process of breaking the matter-energy links that maintain the state of stasis.’

‘The disruptors absorb these matter-energy links. It would appear they feed on them.’

‘Their speed of movement and rate of growth indicate that they consume in excess of their individual requirements.’

It is possible they have the faculty to transmit this excess to some second entity.’

‘This entity could be a more complex form that utilizes the excess for a purpose of its own.’

‘This entity could be the origin of the disruptors. They could simply be matter-energy receivers for the said entity.’

‘This hypothetical entity has been making increasing matter-energy demands.’

‘Such an intake would be hard to account for if it was simply being absorbed.’

‘The hypothetical entity must be converting its matter-energy intake and projecting it in another form.’

‘Such a projection will be subject to detection.’

‘Option.’

‘To locate the hypothetical entity by its projection of converted mass-energy.’

‘Designation.’

‘Such a search must be our primary task.’

***

Billy stirred in his sleep, and abruptly came awake. His head hurt from the previous night’s drinking. He moved slightly and felt Carmen the Whore’s full body beside him. It was warm and comforting. He opened his eyes and looked across the pillows at her. Her head turned away from him. Her unnaturally yellow hair was spread out across the coarse material of the sheet. Billy was aware of the way her hair began to turn dark, down towards the roots.

Billy sat up. He blinked as an instant of dizziness hit him between the eyes. He reminded himself of how he kept promising to cut down on the local gin. It was the second week he and the Minstrel Boy had been hiding in the brothel known as the Tarnished Flowers on the Court of Angels. He knew they had to take the risk of getting out of the occupied city.

There were no windows in the small attic room, although a few beams of dull light filtered through a half dozen chinks in the roof. Two weeks in the same room was beginning to get on Billy’s nerves. In their routine searches of the building, the occupation police hadn’t found the little room. Despite that, Billy was beginning to feel as much of a prisoner as if he had been picked up by the Ocpol.

He shivered and pulled the blankets up round his chin. The air felt damp and cold. One of the first moves of the occupation forces had been to turn down the city’s generators so the weather was set at a perpetual grey drizzle.

Billy leaned back against the wall and stared down at the still sleeping Carmen. He knew he was getting tired of her. She was beginning to treat him like her private property. She got mad when any of the other girls came up to visit him in his hiding place. And Carmen was making too many demands on him. Primarily sexual demands. The occupation had all but shut down business at the Tarnished Flowers. The only customers who came to the house were a few, furtive afternoon callers who dodged the police patrols to slip inside for a piece of quick satisfaction, and groups of swaggering, high placed thieves who had been made part of the new puppet government. They could afford to ignore the curfew, and came and went as they pleased.

It meant that Carmen was left with a lot of time on her hands, and most of this she spent with Billy in the tiny attic. She had a full soft body, and, as far as Billy was concerned, full hard needs.

At first, Billy had thought the occupation would be a time of action and breathless excitement. He soon found out that it was actually a period of boredom and nagging fear.

It had started out exciting enough. When the enemy had burned their way into the city, Carmen had taken control of the situation. She had led Billy, the Minstrel Boy and Olad the Siderian through the panicking crowds to the Tarnished Flowers and found them secure hiding places. At the time, Billy had thought she was going a bit far in insisting that they stay locked up in the tiny, undetectable hiding holes. When the Ocpol started rounding up all the male population, either for labour gangs or impressment to what they called the Volunteer Legion of the enemy army, Billy had been grateful for her caution.

After that first rush, the excitement had stopped. The only exception had been when a group of resisting aristos had holed up in a gin house across the square and tried to shoot it out with the police. Even that hadn’t amounted to much. The aristos had started shooting. The Ocpol had withdrawn to bring up regular troops with fuse tubes. They had simply burned the building to the ground. The aristos, and everyone else inside, burned with it.

From then on, the population of the Court of Angels had nothing more to do with the aristocratic resistance, despite their romantic rhetoric, their elegant manners, their rapiers, their muzzle loading pistols and their plumed hats.

Apart from the short siege of the gin house, life had settled down to a constant round of sex, drinking and boredom. Ordinarily Billy wouldn’t have objected, but he knew deep down that, as fugitives, they ought to be moving on. Every day they remained in Feld increased their chances of being caught by the police.

Another thing that had started to annoy him was a feeling that he was getting the worst of the deal. The Minstrel Boy was in another part of the attic. Olad had a room in the depths of the cellar. Right then the Minstrel Boy had two girls with him. Lola, a small fiery girl with dark flashing eyes and a coffee coloured complexion, and Chloe, a slim redhead with pale, almost transparent skin. Olad had two more girls with him. They could change their partners whenever they liked. On the few occasions that Billy had spoken to them, they had shown little inclination to risk the escape from the city. They seemed more than content to spend as long as possible screwing and drinking. All Billy wanted was to get away.

He leaned over the side of the bed and picked up his shirt. He swung his feet on to the floor, and quickly pulled it on. He padded across the floor and looked out through a small chink in the outside wall. The Court of Angels, which once had been busy and bustling, was now empty, deserted and dismal. A thin drizzle fell steadily on the cobbles. Billy shook his head and turned away.

Carmen had woken. She sat up in bed and rubbed her eyes.

‘What are you doing?’

Billy shrugged.

‘Just stretching my legs.’

Carmen let the sheet drop, revealing her full breasts with their dark red nipples.

‘Why don’t you come back to bed and stretch them here?’

Billy looked sullen.

‘It’s kind of early.’

Carmen smiled blandly.

‘Nothing like a fuck to start the day.’

‘And finish it, and after lunch, and most of the night. Really, I don’t feel like it right now.’

Carmen’s eyelids dropped, and she gave Billy a hard look.

‘You don’t feel like it, huh?’

‘Not right now.’

Carmen began to get angry.

‘And what if I feel like it?’

Billy sighed.

‘Surely I’m not the only man about.’

Carmen’s voice became coaxing.

‘It’s you I want, Billy.’

‘Don’t I know it.’

Carmen’s eyes flashed.

‘There are men who’ve paid me fortunes for what you’re getting free.’

Billy started to get waspish.

‘They ain’t paying you now.’

Carmen scowled.

‘You building up for one of your moods?’

‘I don’t have moods, goddamn it.’

‘You’ve been having moods for the last five days. I’ve been more than surprised they haven’t turned into tantrums.’

Billy abruptly sat down on the bed and looked deflated.

‘I realize you’ve been good to me, Carmen. It’s just that I got to get out of here. I can’t stand being cooped up any longer.’

Carmen stared at him calculatingly.

‘Your friends don’t seem to mind so much.’

Billy said nothing.

‘Of course, they swap women much faster.’

Billy still said nothing.

‘I guess it’s me that you’re fed up with.’

‘I didn’t say that.’

Carmen snorted.

‘Fuck you, Billy, you don’t have to. It’s written all over your face.’

Billy tried to placate her.

‘I just want to get out of here.’

Carmen wasn’t about to be placated.

‘What am I supposed to do about it, go out and get you a set of travel documents from the Ocpol?’

Billy let his head drop into his hands.

‘I don’t know. Just get the other two up here. We’ve got to work something out.’

Carmen leered at him.

‘Come back to bed first.’

Billy shook his head.

‘I ain’t ready for it.’

‘Come back to bed.’

Carmen’s voice changed slightly. It left no room for argument. She did, after all, have the whip hand. She could always turn him over to the Ocpol. Bill reluctantly pulled off his shirt and obediently climbed in beside her. Carmen smiled sweetly at him in triumph.

Billy had discovered on about the eighth day of hiding that he was able to make love to Carmen virtually by numbers. She liked to be kissed on the mouth. She liked to have her breasts rubbed, and then she liked Billy to spend a long time working on his knees with his face between her legs. The order rarely changed. She was so experienced that she never allowed him either to alter the sequence, speed things up, or switch one of the sections. It would always end with Billy slipping inside her, and working up to orgasm with slow steady strokes. Carmen knew exactly what she wanted and made sure that she got it. Occasionally, by way of a variation, she would turn over before Billy moved inside her and lie face down with her knees drawn up beneath her so Billy could take her from behind. Once in a while, she would condescend to suck him off.

The whole performance took about forty minutes. Billy had no means of telling for sure, but he was almost certain each session ran pretty much to split second schedule. After it was over there still remained another twenty minutes of lying quietly in each other’s arms.

Once the ritual had been completed, Billy pushed himself into a sitting position. He put on the best no-nonsense expression that he could muster.

‘Will you get the other two up here now?’

Carmen stretched languidly.

‘Now?’

‘Really, please, now.’

She sat up and absentmindedly caressed her left breast.

‘You sure you wouldn’t like to go again? We could do something perverted. I could even fetch a crock of gin.’

Carmen was pushing hard, but she realized that Billy had the advantage. She knew it was almost impossible to turn him on just twenty minutes after they had finished screwing. She doubted that even obscene chatter would work.

Billy firmly shook his head.

‘I can’t do nothing.’

She ran her hand down his stomach.

‘You don’t have to do nothing. I’ll do it, lover. Just lie back.’

Billy shook his head even harder.

‘No way. It’s no good, I’m far too tense. Please, Carmen. Get the other two up here. Okay?’

Carmen exhaled ponderously.

‘Yeah - okay!’

She got slowly out of bed, giving Billy the maximum display of her naked body. Billy looked somewhere else. He had, after all, seen it so often before. She pulled her dress over her head and brushed her hair out of her eyes. The gesture suddenly threw up another facet of her character: the slatternly whore. She smiled thinly at Billy.

‘Okay. I’ll fetch them. Don’t go away, will you.’

It took Carmen half an hour to collect the Minstrel Boy and Olad. Neither looked overjoyed at the summons. They were both only half dressed. The Minstrel Boy was barefoot. His coarse weave white shirt was dirty, and half stuffed into his pinstripe stovepipe trousers. He hadn’t shaved for at least four days. The stubble heightened his air of sickness and decay. Olad was naked to the waist. He had obviously simply pulled on his black leather breeches when Carmen had come to collect him. But he hadn’t neglected to strap on his gun. They both looked at Billy with some impatience. The Minstrel Boy yawned.

‘Okay, sunshine, what’s the trouble?’

Billy took a deep breath.

‘I want out. Now.’

The Minstrel Boy raised an eyebrow.

‘Now?’

Billy’s voice shook just a fraction.

‘Now.’

The Minstrel Boy sensed the tension.

‘Okay, how?’

Billy stared at the floor.

‘I can’t see no easy way. I figure we just have to dodge the patrols as best we can, get out of the city and hit the nothings.’

The Minstrel Boy pulled a sour face.

‘I suppose I’m expected to guide you.’

‘It’s your gift, buddy. You’ve got the wayfinding.’

The Minstrel Boy became even more sour.

‘Thanks for reminding me.’

Billy waved his hands in front of him.

‘I know it hurts, but what else can we do? We can’t stay here much longer.’

The Siderian, who’d been quiet all through the exchange, suddenly butted in.

‘I ain’t too sure I want to leave.’

Billy turned on him in amazement.

‘You want to stay here? You want to get picked up by the Ocpol? You got to be fucking crazy.’

Olad scratched the matted hair on his chest.

‘I didn’t say I wanted to stay for ever. I just don’t think there’s any great hurry. I mean, nobody’s bothered us’

‘Yet.’

The Minstrel Boy rubbed the stubble on his chin.

‘Billy’s right. We can’t lay around here drinking and screwing indefinitely. We’re bound to get picked up in the long run.’

Olad stroked the top of his shaved head and scowled.

‘I still don’t see why we have to go right now. Shit, I’m having the best time I’ve had in a long while.’

Billy started to get angry.

‘You want to risk getting picked up just because you’re getting your ashes hauled? Goddamn it, it can’t be that hard for you to get laid.’

The Siderian hooked his thumbs in his gunbelt.

‘If you’re so scared of the Ocpol, why don’t you just get out on your own? I ain’t ready to hold your hand. Anyway, what’s so bad about being picked up? It might be rough at first, and I wouldn’t go out looking for it, but I’ve been in wars before. One side’s as good as the other in the long run.’

The Minstrel Boy slowly shook his head.

‘Nobody wants to fall into the hands of this lot.’

Both Billy and Olad looked at him in surprise.

‘What do you know about them? They’re weird, but nobody’s sure where they came from.’

The Minstrel Boy glanced at Billy.

‘I thought even you ought to have worked it out by now.’

‘Huh?’

‘Where the invaders come from.’

Billy looked bewildered.

‘How the hell should I know where they come from?’

‘You were there when A.A. Catto ordered the prototypes.’

‘Son of a bitch! From Quahal!’

That’s right.’

Billy shook his head as the information struck home.

‘You mean that whole goddamn army’s hers?’

The Minstrel Boy nodded.

Billy looked puzzled.

‘How the fuck did she get so many of them?’

‘From Stuff Central, same as those first ones that took out Jeb Stuart Ho.’

Billy still looked confused.

‘I don’t get it. I don’t get it at all. Stuff Central ain’t about to beam out a whole army to one chick, whoever she is.’

The Minstrel Boy shrugged.

‘I don’t know. It happened. Maybe she had a chat with the computer. Maybe she offered it her body.’

‘Oh, come on.’

The Minstrel Boy looked annoyed.

‘Shit, man. I don’t know, but those troops are modifications of A.A. Catto’s original six. That’s for sure.’

Billy became thoughtful.

‘How do we know they ain’t from the brotherhood?’

‘It’s not the brotherhood style. They wouldn’t pull something like this. If they wanted to change things in Feld, they’d take out the duke or something like that. They’d never stage an invasion. It’d be against all their principles. It’s got to be A.A. Catto.’

Billy pulled a wry face.

‘If she gets us, she’ll kill us.’

Olad suddenly had enough of being left out of the discussion.

‘I don’t know what the fuck you two are talking about.’

The Minstrel Boy turned and faced him.

‘We just made up our minds. We’re going to leave.’

The Siderian nodded.

‘I was afraid of that.’

‘Are you coming with us?’

He hesitated, looking from Billy to the Minstrel Boy and back again. Finally he took a deep breath.

‘Yeah, I guess so. I’ve always been dumb.’

Carmen sat up on the bed and took notice.

‘So you’re going? All three of you?’

The Minstrel Boy seemed to take control now the decision was made.

‘That’s right. We’re grateful for you looking after us, but we’re going.’

‘You don’t ask me if I want to come.’

‘Do you?’

Carmen paused and looked at Billy.

‘No, I don’t think so.’

Billy moved towards the bed.

‘You sure about that? You’re welcome to come with us if you want to.’

Carmen sadly shook her head.

‘I don’t know nothing but this city. I’ll stay here. It ain’t going to be that bad.’

Olad turned to the Minstrel Boy.

‘When do we leave?’

‘We might as well leave tonight, as soon as it’s dark.’

Olad grinned wryly.

‘It’s lucky they didn’t change the day and night when they changed the weather.’

The Minstrel Boy shrugged.

‘It’s easy to change the weather. Altering the day cycle needs heavy modification work on the generator.’

Olad grunted.

‘You sure know a lot.’

The Minstrel Boy smiled politely and nodded.

The hours until darkness hung heavily on Billy. Carmen kept trying to get him into bed one last time. Finally he gave in. He found, unexpectedly, that it was both a tender and exciting interlude. They lay together for a long time. Finally he got up. The move was like the first step into a new, unknown stage of his life.

He pulled on his calfskin pants and tucked in his thick, dark blue shirt. He struggled with his scuffed cowboy boots, and stood up. Carmen brought him some hot water, and he carefully shaved. He looked at his face in the dark, cracked mirror. There were still traces of thin boyishness, but his eyes were harder than they’d been when he left home. He brushed his long wavy hair back and dried his hands. Then he buckled on his belt with the compact .70 recoilless hanging from it.

He slipped into his fur jacket and stooped down and kissed Carmen on the top of the head.

‘I’ll see you again, babe.’

‘No, you won’t.’

‘I’ll try.’

Carmen said nothing. Billy took his dark glasses out of the pocket of his jacket, looked at them, and put them away again.

The Minstrel Boy and Olad were waiting for him, just inside the rear door of the whorehouse. The Minstrel Boy looked even more thin and angular in his travelling clothes. His pinstripe trousers were tight on his thin legs and stuffed into high riding boots. His black velvet frock coat flapped a little in the draught from the badly fitted door. A belt holding a set of five matched throwing knives was strapped round his waist. His wide brimmed black hat with the silver band was pulled down over his eyes. It hid most of his face. His movements were tense and nervous.

It was dark outside. Ocpol patrols cruised through the wet, empty street. Their loudspeakers announced that it was eighteen minutes after curfew and anyone out without authority would be shot. Billy suppressed a shudder. The Minstrel Boy took a deep breath.

‘Alright. If anyone approaches us, kill them. Try and do it without any noise. There’s supposed to be a hole blown in the wall just behind the duke’s palace. We’ll head for that. If any of us get hit, the others must on no account stop. Just keep on going. Got it?’

Olad checked his gun.

‘Will there be guards on this gap in the wall?’

The Minstrel Boy avoided looking at him.

‘I don’t know.’

There were a few moments’ silence, then the Minstrel Boy jerked his shoulder.

‘Okay, let’s go.’

They slipped out into the darkness and the rain.

***

The gong sounded. Jeb Stuart Ho sprang down from the gallery. He bounced lightly on the sprung trampoline floor of the training room, and moved watchfully towards his opponent. He wore his form fitting black fighting suit with padding over the vulnerable parts of his body. The striking edges of his hands and feet were reinforced with flexible steel plates. He carried a thirty kilo weight pack strapped to his back, and his face and head were protected by a cushioned helmet.

He grasped a long rubber baton with both hands, and swung it as Na Duc Rogers bounced tentatively in his direction. Rogers dropped into a crouch and sprang upwards, gaining height with the help of the floor springing. He swung his own baton at Jeb Stuart Ho, but Ho twisted suddenly and he missed him. The two men passed each other in mid air. They hit the floor again, and immediately leaped upwards. Rogers again lashed out at Jeb Stuart Ho, but Ho parried with his own baton and turned the blow. The two men’s bodies collided and they dropped to the elastic floor.

Jeb Stuart Ho made a better landing than Na Duc Rogers. He saw an opening and hit quickly at his opponent’s head. The baton caught Rogers on one side of his padded helmet, and he staggered slightly. Jeb Stuart Ho sprang away, pleased that he had scored the first point in the sparring contest.

The two men bounced on the sprung floor, almost in time with each other, a few metres apart. Each one watched carefully for an opening. Jeb Stuart Ho knew that Rogers would be using every part of his energy and perception after he had lost the first point. Although humility, meekness and obedience were the normal rule of the temple, in the training room, the executive brothers were expected to develop the aggressive and competitive facets of their beings. These, coupled with perfectly developed reflexes, were the core of the executive brothers’ makeup.

Their teachers often described the executive section as the gardeners of the brotherhood. They tended and, when necessary, pruned the growth of cultures in the damaged world. Their tools were mayhem and death.

Ho and Rogers continued to bounce facing each other. Jeb Stuart Ho noticed that Rogers was gaining a fraction more height on him with each leap. He knew he was preparing to make another move. The next time Ho hit the floor he swiftly raised his feet and let himself fall on his knees. This time the tension of the trampoline only tossed him half a metre into the air. Simultaneously Na Duc Rogers launched a powerful flying swing kick at where he expected Ho to be.

As Rogers passed above him Jeb Stuart Ho locked his arm round his opponent’s leg and slammed him hard into the floor. Jeb Stuart Ho felt a boost of elation. The second point. His pride was short lived. As he sprang clear, Na Duc Rogers slashed at Jeb Stuart Ho with his baton. He caught him hard behind the knees and Ho fell awkwardly to the mat. Na Duc Rogers had scored his first point.

They continued their practice on the sprung floor. Each man’s score slowly mounted until Jeb Stuart He’s stood at fourteen, and Na Duc Rogers’s just two behind. Then the gong sounded for the end of the session. The two men bowed to each other, and jumped up to the gallery. As they removed their packs and padded helmets and hung their batons in the rack, another two black suited figures took their places on the floor.

They moved towards the door of the training room to take the ritual shower and then return to their individual cells for a period of meditation. In front of the doorway, however, they found the teacher waiting for them. His young eyes in the incredibly old face twinkled as he smiled at each man in turn.

‘You feel prepared to tackle a computer, my little ones?’

Jeb Stuart Ho averted his gaze. His satisfaction at defeating Na Duc Rogers on points was overshadowed by the shame he still felt over his failure in the field. The teacher laughed.

‘You are downcast at your success in training, Jeb Stuart Ho?’

Ho didn’t look up.

‘Training is with rubber batons and a padded head piece, teacher. It is no gauge of how we may fare when our weapons are swords, guns and lasers.’

The teacher stared at him blandly.

‘It is not the shining weapon that fights the battles but the warrior’s spirit.’

‘I pray my spirit will not be found wanting on this occasion, teacher.’

‘I have every faith in you, Jeb Stuart Ho. In any case, the time of your testing will not be long now. Your wait will soon be over.’

Both Jeb Stuart Ho and Na Duc Rogers looked up eagerly.

‘We leave soon, teacher?’

The teacher’s expression became mischievous.

‘Spirit must be tempered with patience. The sheep will stray from a fold erected in haste.’

The two young men fell silent. The teacher waited for a while, then he spoke again.

‘You had best know that you leave at 20.00.’

‘So soon?’

The teacher nodded.

‘You have time to shower, to meditate and a short while to fulfil any personal needs. Then you sleep.’

‘Surely we must prepare our equipment? There is much to do before we can depart for this task.’

‘Your equipment is right now being readied by your own pupils. At 19.00 you will be awakened. You will assemble at the primary transport bay. A J-class flightcraft has been adapted for this task. You will mount in time for a 20.00 lift.’

Jeb Stuart Ho looked puzzled.

‘How will we navigate through the nothings? We have no wayfinder at the temple at this time.’

The teacher gave him a long sombre look.

‘We will use the temple’s own stuff beam as a constant fix.’

Jeb Stuart Ho’s eyes widened, despite all his control.

‘What you’re saying is that we’ll be reversing the stuff beam and using it as a transit path through the nothings.’

The teacher nodded.

‘That is correct.’

‘But surely we might burn out our own stuff receivers? It could leave us with no material supply input.’

‘That contingency has been included in the projections of the mission.’

‘The risk …’

‘The projections are not your speciality.’

Jeb Stuart Ho inclined his head.

‘Yes, teacher.’

‘We must all go now. There is much still to do.’

Na Duc Rogers hesitated.

Teacher …?’

‘You have something else to ask, Na Duc Rogers?’

‘I wondered, teacher, what the probability is of our returning from this task.’

The teacher looked quizzically at him.

‘You wish to see all the projection figures on this task? You wish to spend the remaining time studying them?’

‘No, teacher.’

‘You think the knowledge of one particular figure will aid you in the completion of your task?’

Na Duc Rogers slowly shook his head.

‘It would not aid me, teacher.’

‘Then there is nothing else to say.’

‘No, teacher.’

Jeb Stuart Ho and Na Duc Rogers both bowed. The teacher returned their salute. They walked past him and down the echoing, black stone corridors until they reached the cleansing chamber. The two men removed their fighting suits, handed them to the attendants and walked naked, side by side, into the first compartment. Steam rose from small vents in the floor. The two men began to perspire freely. They made an effort to close down their conscious minds and centre their beings on the heat that surrounded them.

As they moved through the series of compartments that made up the cleansing chamber, the heat progressively increased until it was almost intolerable. In the final compartment there was a clear pool of ice cold water. Ho and Rogers dived simultaneously. They swam for a few minutes and then climbed out as the attendants at the other end moved forward with soft warm towels. Once they were dry and dressed in their black robes, the two men bowed to each other, and went the separate ways to their own cubicles.

The cell in which Jeb Stuart Ho lived was tiny and very plain. A straw mat was folded neatly on a small raised dais. This was where Jeb Stuart Ho both slept and conducted his private meditation. The only other piece of furniture was a carved wooden chest. A banner with an inspirational inscription hung on the wall.

Another black robed figure sat cross legged on the floor. A white silk sheet was spread out in front of him. Laid on it, in a formal arrangement, was the heavy duty battle equipment of a brotherhood assassin. There was a black fighting suit identical to the one Jeb Stuart Ho had worn in the training room, only the reinforced padding on this one was heavier and there were metal plates on the knees and elbows. Beside it was a clear, spherical, armoured plexiglass helmet and breathing unit. There was also an array of weaponry: a three section nunchak, its lengths of steel joined by two short chains; a .90 magnum in its carrying case that also held the ammunition and extension barrel; a variable laser set and a flat case of six matched throwing knives. In addition to the arms there was a miniature stasis generator and a combined food and water container.

The man sitting on the floor was polishing a long double handed sword. The blade already reflected the light of the single candle like a mirror, but he continued running the soft cloth up and down its length. The man was younger than Jeb Stuart Ho, a teenager. His name was Milhouse Yat Sen and he was Jeb Stuart Ho’s pupil and servant until the first stage of his brotherhood training was complete. He had been assigned to Ho after Ho’s return from the abortive task in Quahal.

As was the normal custom among the brotherhood, they had rapidly become lovers.

Jeb Stuart Ho sat down cross legged on the dais. He didn’t speak to Milhouse Yat Sen. The young man glanced up briefly, and then went back to his work.

Ho altered his breathing and began to move into a state of intermediate trance. He was practised in the art of the full deep trance that was the physical equivalent of near death. The preparations, however, were far too long. An intermediate state was the only mental preparation that he had time for before the 20.00 lift.

His eyes followed his pupil’s hand moving up and down the gleaming blade. His eyelids slowly drooped. Finally his eyes closed altogether. The young man stopped polishing the sword. He looked carefully at Jeb Stuart Ho. Ho didn’t move. He put down the cloth and carefully slid the sword into its sheath, and laid it beside the other weapons.

He shifted so he could look directly at Jeb Stuart Ho. He assumed a posture of meditation. His eyes, unlike Ho’s, remained open and staring fixedly at his teacher’s face. It was a very long time before Ho came out of his trance. Milhouse Yat Sen remained steadily watching him.

Finally Jeb Stuart Ho’s eyes opened. For some moments the younger and older man sat watching each other. Then Jeb Stuart Ho smiled.

‘You have prepared everything?’

‘Everything, my teacher.’

There was a long pause. Jeb Stuart Ho slipped silently out of his robe. He remained cross legged and naked on the dais. Milhouse Yat Sen frowned.

‘Are you going to put on your equipment, my teacher?’

Jeb Stuart Ho shook his head.

‘I am going to sleep.’

‘Do you wish me to leave you, my teacher?’

Jeb Stuart Ho laughed softly.

‘I would like you to stay with me, Milhouse Yat Sen.’

The young man solemnly stood up. He let his own robe fall to the floor. His slim body was pale in the candlelight.

‘I would like to stay with you, Jeb Stuart Ho.’

He knelt on the dais beside Jeb Stuart Ho and ran his fingers across the scars on Jeb Stuart Ho’s broad chest.

***

A.A. Catto had worked unrelentingly for three solid days. Her armies had taken Feld and a dozen other cities. They were now regrouping for the next major centreward thrust into the heart of the more closely packed stasis towns. It was not, however, the problems of military strategy that had absorbed A.A. Catto’s time and energy. Those burdens had fallen almost entirely on the shoulders of her six advisers, the war room aides and the lizard installation. A.A. Catto had been planning a dinner party. It was no ordinary dinner party. This was to be a very special celebration of the success of the first stage of her conquest.

Even though she said it herself, the party was turning out to be a glittering success. Not that there was any reason why it shouldn’t be. A.A. Catto had given her most careful personal attention to every detail from the decor and the menu to the after dinner drugs and the ordering of the guests.

She was particularly pleased with the ordering of the guests. The result that she now surveyed from her high backed chair at the head of the long banqueting table was a tribute to her imagination and ingenuity.

In a time of war, it had seemed inadvisable to invite genuine individuals from outside. Thus she had had to resort to ordering custom built dinner guests from Stuff Central. A.A. Catto had scoured the history tapes for details of suitable personalities that could be programmed on to units from the Stuff Central pool of human blanks.

On the left of A.A. Catto sat Nancy, who was the only other natural human in the room. On her right sat a reproduction of a poet and playwright called Oscar Wilde. She had dug him out from some extremely ancient records. His constant chatter was amusing, and he could be relied on to fill any lapses in the flow of conversation with witty, if archaic, anecdotes.

A.A. Catto found he had a few minor drawbacks. For one thing, he was grossly overweight, a failing that A.A. Catto did not forgive easily. He tended to talk with his mouth full and drop food on the front of his silk dinner jacket. He was also rabidly homosexual, which ordinarily wouldn’t have bothered A.A. Catto at all, except that he kept switching his attention from her and casting covert glances at the guest opposite him.

This was a replica of a character called Presley. The original for him came from much the same period as Wilde. He was reputed to have been an entertainer and local sex symbol. A.A. Catto had picked him for his sullen good looks. He was not proving very entertaining, although A.A. Catto did have plans for him later. Through the first courses he sat slumped in his chair, the fringes from his white spangled suit falling across the table, becoming more sullen each time Wilde turned the stream of his wit in Presley’s direction.

Further down the table was Jeremy Atreides, a splendid figure in pale blue robes and festoons of jewellery. The Atreides copy was thin and good looking in a rather sick, epicene way, and had the scintillating kind of vicious, decadent humour that can only be found in the last of very long and inbred lines of late period god-emperors. A.A. Catto considered Atreides an overwhelming success, particularly as he seemed constantly able to top Wilde’s somewhat set-piece epigrams.

Beside him, laughing without fail at all his jokes and occasionally placing a tentative hand under the robes, was a reproduction of Patty Maison, a notably obscene dancer from the Age of Decline.

At the far end of the table were a clutch of big league courtesans whom A.A. Catto had picked for their reputed adaptability. She had also included the notorious Fila Fern-flower, a few particularly bestial tyrants, and Job Yok, a necromancer whose private life had so disgusted his swarm of faithful disciples that in the end they had felt compelled to eat him.

The only real failure was a Yaqui Indian shaman called Paha-Sapa who, before the dinner had even started, had smeared himself with datura paste and gone into immediate trance. A.A. Catto was aware that she would shortly have to deal with him.

With the exception of the shaman, the guests were on their best and most energetic behaviour. It was understandable, in view of the fact that A.A. Catto had informed them, during the hors d’oeuvres, that anyone who failed to please would be shot. They may have all been custom built reproductions with impressed personalities, but they were also mortal, with a mortal’s inbuilt aversion to violent death. To reinforce A.A. Catto’s warning, two armed guards stood silently behind her chair. At first the warning had cast a shadow over the festivities, but by the time the larks’ wings in aspic arrived, the party was in full, if desperate, swing.

A.A. Catto had, if anything, underplayed her own part in the proceedings. She was there to be amused. She didn’t feel obliged to contribute unless she wanted to. She wore a kind of black djellabah, slit on one side up to the thigh. One leg, encased in a black leather boot, dangled across the arm of her chair. A small cherub stood beside her chair stroking the inside of her thigh with a peacock feather. The cherub was less than a metre tall, pink and chubby with small gold wings grafted on his back.

The table in front of A.A. Catto sparkled with cut glass and fine silver. It was spread with spotless damask and white linen. Teams of young men and women, uniformly blue eyed and blond haired, continually replaced the dishes and decanters. They wore white tunics and were garlanded with vine leaves and flowers.

A.A. Catto sat silently in her chair and watched the entire circus with a half smile that revealed nothing of what she was thinking. Her exquisitely made-up eyes moved from one man to the other as Wilde started on Presley again.

‘Why so sullen, sweet boy, it hardly becomes you?’

Atreides raised his head from nuzzling Patty Maison and glanced at Presley.

‘I would have thought it became him admirably. Why, at times he positively smoulders.’

Presley remained silent. He glared from beneath his eyelids, and his upper lip curled into a sneer. Wilde clapped his hands in delight.

‘He surely becomes more beautiful by the moment. He is delightful when he’s angry.’

Presley slammed his glass down on the table.

‘Why don’t you faggots get the hell off my back?’

Atreides laughed.

‘He must be talking about you, Oscar. I’m sure Miss Maison will confirm that I can’t be categorized by such a narrow definition.’

His hand seemed to have vanished inside her dress. Patty Maison giggled shrilly and nodded. Wilde pursed his lips.

‘A combination of the arrogant and the omnivorous in one individual seems positively vulgar.’

He beamed at Presley.

‘Wouldn’t you agree, dear boy?’

Presley looked up sharply.

‘Ah don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.’

Atreides smiled sardonically.

‘He doesn’t have your experience, Wilde.’

Wilde slowly turned to look at the replica of the god-emperor.

‘Experience is the name that everyone gives to their mistakes.’

He glanced back at Presley.

‘It’s said that anyone who can dominate a dinner table can dominate the world.’

Presley half rose from his seat. He held up a tense, semi-threatening hand.

‘Ah’m warning you, brother, Ah’ve had about enough of your mouth.’

The conversation round the long table stopped dead. The servants halted, and even the harp player in the filthy coat, battered top hat and red wig on the small platform in the corner of the room ceased to play. Then Wilde broke the silence with a brittle giggle.

‘Come now, sweet boy, no one as pretty as you should behave quite so dreadfully.’

Everyone’s eyes turned to Presley. A.A. Catto leaned forward in her chair. Presley sat hunched up looking down at his hands. Wilde spoke again.

‘Nothing to say, dear boy?’

Presley suddenly snapped to his feet and flashed around the table before anyone else could move. He swung two wide, vicious punches at Wilde’s head, and then followed them up with a savage jab into the fat man’s stomach. A.A. Catto’s guards started to move towards Presley but, at a signal from her, remained still.

Wilde fell to his knees, sobbing and trying to protect his face with his hands. Presley leaned forward, grabbed him by the lapels of his dinner jacket and hauled him to his feet.

‘Ah warned you, faggot.’

He slammed Wilde hard against the wall three times. Then he let go of him. Wilde’s head sagged on to his chest. He slid slowly to the floor. Presley turned to face A.A. Catto. He stood awkwardly, brushing his hair back out of his eyes.

‘Ah’m sorry to mess up your party, ma’am. Maybe it’d be better if Ah was to leave?’

A.A. Catto smiled.

‘On the contrary, it was very entertaining. You must come and sit by me.’

Presley sat down beside her. She motioned to her guards, and they dragged the unconscious figure of Wilde out of the room. Paha-Sapa the shaman chose that moment to fall off his chair, and he too was dragged away. The servants began to circulate with brandy, mints, small porcelain bowls of cocaine and opium pipes.

The conversation started again. Atreides began groping Patty Maison in a more serious manner. The courtesans and the tyrants also began to get acquainted. Job Yok, the necromancer, tried to catch A.A. Catto’s eye. He had a plan for the reorganization of her armies according to a cabbalistic system of numerology. A.A. Catto wasn’t buying. She was more interested in the Presley reproduction.

Only Nancy seemed set apart from the general festivities. She sat back in her chair and watched as A.A. Catto started to move in on Presley. Nancy wondered if he’d survive the night. Nancy had been there too often when A.A. Catto had fun with one of her custom built males. Nancy knew that only a small percentage lived through it.

Nancy looked carefully at her friend and leader. She was suddenly very aware that she was the only natural human who came anywhere near A.A. Catto. Everyone else around her was custom built to her fantasy. At the start, the idea of conquest had seemed like a game. Now it was becoming reality, Nancy was filled with misgivings. She had never been on anything more than nodding terms with any kind of morality, but she was beginning to have grave doubts about what world A.A. Catto thought she was going to create, and, more particularly, how long Nancy would last if A.A. Catto ever got tired of her.

A.A. Catto seemed to have no doubts at all. She was leaning on the Presley reproduction and running her fingers across his chest.

‘I’ve got a feeling that I’m going to be pleased I ordered you.’

‘Thank you, ma’am, it was great to be designed.’

‘You’re glad that I picked out this personality for you?’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘I expect you feel lucky to be beamed out to someone like me.’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘You do know who I am, don’t you?’

‘Sure Ah know who you are, ma’am. Ah was tol’ when Ah beamed out.’

‘And you know what I do?’

‘No, ma’am, not for certain sure.’

A.A. Catto’s voice became very soft and coy.

‘I’m conquering what’s left of the world.’

Presley nuzzled her ear.

‘That’s very impressive, ma’am.’

‘Isn’t it just?’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘I’ve conquered a good deal of it already.’

‘That’s a very fine achievement, ma’am …’

He slid his left hand inside her djellabah.

‘… Specially for a cute little girl like you.’

A.A. Catto lay back as his hand cupped her breast. She smiled up at him, and ran her fingers through his greasy hair.

‘You think I’m cute, do you?’

‘Ah think you’re the prettiest thing Ah seen.’

A.A. Catto began to undo his shirt.

‘I suppose you could say that I’m building an empire …’

She sighed and wriggled her hips.

‘… the like of which the world has never seen.’

The Presley reproduction ran his tongue round A.A. Catto’s left nipple.

‘That’s a fine thing to say, ma’am. Ah never met no woman with an empire.’

A.A. Catto’s voice became deep and husky.

‘It will stand for a thousand years.’

‘That’s one hell of an empire, ma’am.’

A.A. Catto propped herself up on one elbow and looked around the room. The rest of the guests had fallen into a tangled squirming heap on the floor. The harp player bounced up and down in the middle of it all. Only Job Yok the necromancer still sat at the table staring disconsolately at his empty plate. A.A. Catto nibbled at the Presley reproduction’s ear.

‘I think we should go somewhere more private. I want to tell you all about what I’m going to do to the human population. I’ve got some fantastic plans for them.’

‘It’d be a blast.’

A.A. Catto disentangled herself from the Presley replica and stood up.

‘Let’s go.’

Presley also stood up, straightening his clothes. A.A. Catto looked at him and shook her head.

‘There’s one thing wrong with you custom mades.’

Presley looked at her in surprise.

‘Huh?’

‘You’re all so goddamn docile. You have the built in anxious to please factor.’

‘Ah’m sorry, ma’am.’

‘According to the tapes, the real Elvis Presley would never have said anything like that.’

She turned to Nancy.

‘You better come too. I’ve decided to wrap up this dinner. I’m bored with it.’

The other guests were still squirming on the floor. A.A. Catto nodded to the guards.

‘You can go ahead, I’ve finished with them.’

She walked briskly out of the room with Nancy and the Presley replica obediently following her. As the doors closed behind them, the gunfire started.

***

Billy, the Minstrel Boy and Olad moved silently through the shadows of blacked out Feld. The drizzle fell in a continuous veil. At regular intervals, an Ocpol ground car would cruise past and they would have to freeze in a doorway or the entrance to an alley. Slowly they made their way towards the city wall, following the directions that Carmen the Whore had given them.

They kept to the inside of the wall until they could see the jagged hole blasted in it by the Quahal army, silhouetted against the dim skyshine. When they were about thirty metres from the gap, the Minstrel Boy halted and motioned to the other two to do the same. Billy leaned against the wall trying to keep his teeth from chattering. He was soaked to the skin.

‘Can you see any guards?’

The Minstrel Boy shook his head.

‘There’s nothing moving, but it’s too dark to tell for sure.’

The three of them strained their ears for any telltale sound. All they could hear was their own breathing and the drip of water as it fell from walls and roofs. The Minstrel Boy shivered.

‘I don’t see how they’d be dumb enough to leave a gap in the wall like that unguarded. Let’s move up a little way. Take it real slow and quiet.’

They moved another ten metres towards the gap, keeping close together and hugging the cover of the wall. Again the Minstrel Boy stopped. Billy put his hand down to his gun.

‘See anything now?’

The Minstrel Boy peered into the darkness.

‘I ain’t sure. Wait a minute … Yeah, I think there’s someone moving up there.’

He began to edge closer. The other two followed. The Minstrel Boy dropped behind a pile of rubble. Billy crouched down beside him. The Minstrel Boy slowly raised his head.

‘There’s definitely one guard out there. He’s standing right in the gap.’

‘Just the one?’

‘That’s all I can see.’

‘You figure there’s any more?’

The Minstrel Boy looked at Billy impatiently.

‘How the hell should I know?’

Olad pulled his gun from his holster.

‘I’ll go deal with him.’

The Minstrel Boy grabbed his arm.

‘You stay right where you are. You’d wake up the whole goddamn army.’

‘So what do we do?’

The Minstrel Boy grimly took two of his knives from his belt.

‘I’ll take care of this. You two’d only fuck up.’

He scrambled over the pile of rubble and vanished into the shadows. Olad looked at Billy.

‘Think we should follow him?’

Billy shook his head.

‘We’ll just stay put.’

They waited, holding their breath. For a long time nothing happened. No sound came from the darkness. There was no sign of movement. Olad drew his gun.

‘He’s gone and got himself killed.’

‘He ain’t. We would have heard something.’

‘Maybe he’s selling us out.’

‘He wouldn’t do that.’

Olad peered dubiously into the night and rain.

‘Wouldn’t he?’

Billy suffered an instant pang of doubt. Perhaps the Minstrel Boy was betraying them. He put it on one side.

‘He wouldn’t do that.’

Still nothing happened. Then they heard a sound in front of them. They both crouched down with guns held tensely in their hands. The Minstrel Boy appeared over the pile of rubble. He was carefully wiping his knives. He slipped them back into his belt.

‘We’d better get through the gap before anyone comes.’

‘How many guards were there?’

‘Just one.’

‘Did you kill him?’

The Minstrel Boy’s hat hid his face, but his voice was filled with contempt and revulsion.

‘I said I’d take care of it, didn’t I?’

They started forward again. As they moved through the gap in the wall they had to step over the body of a black helmeted guard. His throat had been neatly cut, almost like a surgical operation.

On the other side of the wall the view was like something out of a nightmare. Spotlight towers dotted the wide flat plain, illuminating line upon line of small hemispherical inflatable tents and hundreds of fighting machines marshalled in straight, orderly lines. There were tanks, ground cars, aircraft of all sizes, light and heavy artillery, earth moving and traction equipment, and trucks of every kind. Huge dirigibles came down on cleared areas picked out with coloured marker lights. Gangs of men swarmed over them unloading mountains of supplies and munitions. Thousands of black suited troops moved around the huge camp like swarms of ants. The cold lights reflected in the rain heightened the effect of implacable evil. The three escapees stopped and stared.

‘God, just look at that!’

‘There must be thousands of them.’

‘Hundreds of thousands.’

‘Nothing’s going to stop an army like that.’

Billy looked at the Minstrel Boy.

‘How did she get hold of all this? Stuff Central must have gone crazy.’

The Minstrel Boy nodded grimly. He looked thoughtful.

‘That could be an answer.’

Olad looked round nervously.

‘Let’s get the fuck out of here before we’re spotted.’

‘Which way do we go?’

An expression of pain passed across the Minstrel Boy’s face. He shut his eyes and concentrated. After a few seconds he opened them again and sighed.

‘We’ll follow the outside of the wall, round to the other side of the city. Then we’ll strike out into the nothings.’

The other two nodded. They moved off in single file, with the Minstrel Boy in front. Again they stuck to the shadows close to the wall. They’d been walking for about twenty minutes, and were about halfway round the city, when they heard the distinctive sound of a patrol vehicle.

‘Down!’

The Minstrel Boy hit the ground, and the other two did the same. They swivelled round and snatched out their guns. The patrol came nearer. It was moving very slowly, scanning the wall with a searchlight. It seemed to be doing a routine check. The three men pressed themselves hard into the damp ground. The car crawled closer. It stopped only a few metres from where they lay. Olad slowly raised his gun. The spotlight played on the wall above their heads. It moved slowly downwards. Billy took careful aim at the patrol vehicle. He held his breath. The searchlight stopped just short of where they lay. It remained still for a few moments and then swung sideways. The car rolled on. Billy let out a deep breath.

‘That was too damn close.’

The Minstrel Boy slowly stood up. He watched the patrol car vanish into the rain.

‘They’ll find the body of the guard pretty soon. We’d best get the fuck out of here.’

They hurried along for another ten minutes. The Minstrel Boy stopped every now and then as though trying to get his bearings. The other two didn’t speak to him. They knew the faculty of wayfinding had unpleasant side effects. What these were, they couldn’t guess at. The simplest thing was just to leave him alone.

They approached one of the ruined gates of the city. The Minstrel Boy halted.

‘We should move out towards the nothings,’

He pointed to the road that ran out from the wreckage of the gate.

‘We can follow the road. It used to link up with a stable wheelfreaks’ highway across the nothings. I expect that’s started to break up now. You both got porta-pacs?’

Billy and Olad nodded, and patted the portable stasis generators on their belts.

‘Okay, let’s go.’

They started across country. When they were a little way from the city they headed for the road. They’d only just set foot on it when a siren went off on the other side of Feld. It was quickly joined by the sound of two or three more. Olad looked round.

‘What do you think that is?’

The Minstrel Boy shrugged.

‘They’ve probably found the body,’

Billy stared back into the drizzle.

‘If they have, they’ll come looking for us.’

Olad quickened his pace.

‘Let’s get into the nothings. They won’t find us there.’

They broke into a jog. The three of them managed to keep going for about fifteen minutes. Then Billy stopped, gasping for breath.

‘I can’t keep this up. Two weeks in that whorehouse have put me right out of condition.’

Olad suddenly pointed back down the road.

‘Look!’

They all turned. Lights were moving around the city.

‘They’re looking for us. That’s for sure.’

‘Maybe they’ll think it’s a resistance killing.’

The Minstrel Boy grunted.

‘Maybe. Let’s just keep going, and keep our eyes open.’

They hurried on. The lights and sirens continued to circle the city. For a while Billy thought the search was being confined to just that area. It looked as though they’d got away. Then lights started coming down the road towards them. Billy looked round wildly.

‘Get off the road!’

There was a ditch running along the side of the road. The three men hit it almost simultaneously. There was about fifteen or twenty centimetres of water in the ditch. Billy, Olad and the Minstrel Boy were forced to lie in it. It didn’t matter all that much, they were already soaked to the skin.

Three patrol vehicles roared past at top speed with their lights flashing and sirens screaming. They were going too fast to notice the huddled figures.

The three refugees moved cautiously along it. Walking in water up to their ankles made the going slow and difficult. Both Billy and Olad tripped more than once, and measured their length in the muddy water. Patrol cars kept howling past on the road. Each time they approached, the three men were forced to crouch down in the wet.

After a long time, the patrol cars stopped moving up and down the road. Billy listened carefully. It seemed as though the search had returned to the city. He emerged cautiously on to the highway. Olad and the Minstrel Boy followed him. The only moving lights were way behind them. Up ahead was dim grey luminescence. As they walked on it grew brighter. Billy grinned at the Minstrel Boy.

‘It’s the nothings. We’re there. We made it.’

The Minstrel Boy pushed back his hat with a gesture of relief.

‘It does look …’

A pair of searchlights snapped on, bathing the trio in blinding white light. The black shape of a patrol car was standing by the side of the road. A metallic voice crackled from a speaker.

‘Stand right where you are. Raise your hands and do not move.’

The three of them slowly raised their hands. Two orange helmeted Ocpol dismounted from the vehicle. They walked slowly towards Billy, Olad and the Minstrel Boy. Their guns were pointed unerringly at the three men.

***

She/They moved into a new, different zone. Her/Their senses were extended to the very limit in the search for the entity that was destroying and converting basic mass and energy. She/They had detected some form of carrier beams stretching out through the chaos of the nothings. She/They had concluded that it was possible that these beams emanated from the entity that She/They sought.

She/They had followed the path of the beams. They flowed through the swirling grey confusion like lines of clear pulsing light. She/They began to perceive that they converged, and obviously emanated from a single distant point. Her/Their hopes rose that, as She/They had first suspected, it would be at this point that She/They would locate the thing that She/They was hunting.

Following the beams had not been easy. Plotting their course was not difficult. They shone through the nothings like a beacon to Her/Their sensors. It was their inflexible straightness that created the problems. They sliced unfailingly through every part of the chaos. She/They was forced to follow whereever they led.

The zone She/They was entering was one of strangely disarranged matter. It appeared to have been torn up by the disrupters, but not totally destroyed. It was like a fold in the nothings, an eddy that was filled with fantastic debris created by an unknown intelligence.

She/They floated about a metre above an expanse of dark red viscous liquid. Huge insect-like creatures were crowded together, half submerged. They jostled and scrabbled at each other. There was the click of claws on carapaces and the crack of powerful mandibles. Occasionally one would snap up at Her/Their feet, but She/They managed to keep out of the creatures’ reach.

The red liquid slowly gave way to a strange kind of swamp. Clumps of spiky purple vegetation poked up through the surface. The huge swimming insects were left behind, and replaced by much smaller flying ones. They flew at Her/Their face but, at the last minute, they would veer away, and none of them actually touched Her/Them. Above Her/Them saffron clouds sped across a threatening magenta sky. She/They, however, felt no motion at the level She/They was on.

All at once, Her/Their sensors began to jangle.

‘Disrupter.’

The word hung in front of Her/Them like a flashing warning sign. She/They stopped abruptly, and shut down as much of the flow of energy through Her/Their being as possible. She/They hung in space, still and almost dead. Only Her/Their visual sensors were still operating.

The most distant clouds seemed to be being sucked down, and the surface of the swamp lifted up to meet them. Then the disruptor appeared over a kind of false horizon between the two.

The disruptor was solid, cylindrical and half buried in the surface of the swamp. It sucked in matter through the gaping maw in its forward end. Behind it, it left a trail of sparkling grey chaos, suffused with rainbow patterns that gradually faded as it moved away.

The thing came towards Her/Them. She/They cut Her/Their energy circulation to the absolute minimum. Her/Their perception of colour began to fade. One moment, the smooth sides of the disruptor were an intense metalflake blue, then they changed to a flat grey as the power to Her/Their visual sensors decreased.

She/They hung limp and immobile. The disruptor seemed unaware of Her/Their presence. It continued on a straight course that, unfortunately, lay in Her/Their direction. For moments it seemed as though She/They might be sucked into its squat reptile mouth simply by accident.

Then it passed Her/Them. It was close enough for Her/Them to perceive the markings on its smooth metallic sides. It was obviously some kind of graphic script, but in Her/Their low energy state She/They was unable to decipher it.

The disruptor continued to move away. She/They cautiously raised Her/Their energy level enough to turn one of Her/Their three heads and watch it go. The disruptor didn’t seem to notice the slight fluctuation. She/They moved Her/Their energy rate even higher to allow Her/Them to consider the problem. Colour returned to Her/Their vision.

‘Hypothesis. The disruption module’s energy detectors only operate on higher patterns.’

‘Inoperative. We have positive information to the contrary.’

‘Hypothesis. The carrier beam generates its own field that repels the disruptor module. Such a field could mask our own energy trace.’

She/They conceded.

‘A possible option.’

She/They allowed Her/Their energy level to move back up to maximum. She/They began to move again, carefully following the course of the beam.

***

Jeb Stuart Ho sat in the J-class flightcraft with the twenty-nine other brotherhood executives. Their bubble helmets were sealed shut, and umbilical lines ran from the side walls of the craft’s sparse interior to the front of their suits, When the time to jump came, these would be disconnected and they would rely on the suits’ own life support systems. Until then, while they were still in transit, they remained hooked into the ship.

There was no conversation. The suit to suit communicators were only used for messages of the utmost importance. The task force were seated in pairs, on two-man padded benches. Over half of them had assumed postures of meditation. Jeb Stuart Ho wasn’t one of them. He had tried for a while to make his mind go blank. He had given up when he realized he was too keyed up by the task even to achieve the most minimal state of trance. Instead, he just let his thoughts wander where they might.

The speaker in his helmet crackled into life, and brought him back to reality. He heard the flat metallic voice of the auto pilot.

‘Drop zone approaching. E.T.A. ten minutes. Forward scanner is being relayed to bulkhead screen.’

The large screen at the end of the passenger area came on. In the centre of it was a small pale blue sphere. It slowly but steadily grew larger until it filled half the screen. There were no markings on it of any kind. Jeb Stuart Ho felt a twinge of disappointment. He had expected Stuff Central to be a little more impressive. The speaker crackled again.

‘Drop to target minus ninety and counting.’

Jeb Stuart Ho took a deep breath and made a final check on his equipment. Everything was perfect. On the screen, the blue sphere continued to increase in size. It almost filled it.

‘Minus sixty and counting.’

Jeb Stuart Ho swallowed. The dryness of excitement made his tongue feel thick and sticky. Inside the gloves of his fighting suit, his palms began to perspire slightly.

‘Minus fifty and counting.’

The screen was now totally filled with an expanse of blue. Jeb Stuart Ho tensed in his seat.

‘Minus forty and counting. We have now entered the stasis area of the target. Outside conditions are a perfect vacuum. Minus thirty-five and counting.’

Jeb Stuart Ho shifted in his seat. He tugged at the straps on his laser unit to make sure it was securely attached to his suit. The speaker continued to chatter.

‘Minus thirty. Equalizing interior conditions with outside.’

There was a faint hiss as the craft atmosphere escaped into the vacuum surrounding Stuff Central.

‘Minus twenty-five. Switch to individual life support.’

Jeb Stuart Ho pulled the umbilical line from the front of his suit. His own life support cut in automatically. A thin trickle of condensing gas flowed from the open end of the tube.

‘Minus twenty and counting. We are now orbiting the target.’

On the screen, the blue sphere had shifted to form a slightly curved blue horizon. The surface still looked smooth and unblemished. Jeb Stuart Ho was only now beginning to realize the vastness of the sphere.

‘Minus fifteen. Going down to surface on target; twelve, eleven, ten, nine, eight; stand by, releasing jump hatches.’

Three wide sections of panelling fell away from either side of the flightcraft.

‘Prepare to jump.’

The thirty black suited figures moved to the open hatches. They stood in front of them, five to a hatch.

‘Five, four, three.’

Jeb Stuart Ho tensed all his muscles.

‘Two, one, JUMP!’

In perfect unison, the executives rolled out of the flightcraft into empty space. There was a fall of about five metres to the surface of the sphere. Jeb Stuart Ho twisted in midair and landed heavily on all fours. His training prevented him from suffering any kind of injury. He lay flat on the smooth, blue, metallic surface and looked around. The rest of the force was spread out over a wide area, but they all seemed to have landed safely.

Jeb Stuart Ho was about to activate his communicator and make contact with his companions, when a small trapdoor flipped open in the surface of the sphere. A short antenna emerged from it. At its tip was what looked like a bundle of sensor lenses. Jeb Stuart Ho glanced round. A small forest of these antennae had sprouted all over the area in which the task force either lay or crouched. The scanners slowly revolved, moving as one. The intruders had been spotted and were obviously being inspected.

After two complete rotations, the antennae withdrew and the trapdoors closed again. For a few moments nothing happened. Jeb Stuart Ho looked at his companions. He spoke into his communicator, but nothing happened. Either it had been damaged in the fall, or something inside the target was interrupting the signal.

He stood up. The rest of the force were unhooking their laser units to start cutting through the outside shell. Abruptly another set of larger trapdoors snapped open. Telescopic stands flashed into position. Mounted on top of them were wide barrelled projectile throwers.

They opened fire, silently flashing in the airless silence. Each one of them turned briskly, spraying self propelled shells through a 360 degree arc. Jeb Stuart Ho tried to push himself down into the unyielding metal. He waited to be hit. After a while, the gunfire stopped. It seemed as though the weapons didn’t have a low enough elevation to hit anyone lying flat on the surface. Jeb Stuart Ho assumed that if that was the case, the rest of the task force would also be unharmed.

The projectile throwers were still in position. Jeb Stuart Ho carefully turned his head. The guns didn’t start firing again. Jeb Stuart Ho suddenly felt like he’d been kicked in the stomach. He saw how wrong he had been. More than three quarters of the brotherhood executives were dead, They hadn’t hit the ground as fast as he had.

The dead were strewn all around him. On one side of him Quang Howard was almost cut in half. On the other lay a figure he could no longer recognize. The clear globe of his helmet was slowly filling up with bloody pink foam. Jeb Stuart Ho looked beyond them, trying to make contact with the survivors. Na Duc Rogers was lying some ten metres away. At first Jeb Stuart Ho thought he was dead, then he saw his head move inside the bubble helmet.

Na Duc Rogers spotted Ho. He raised his hand. A single weapon opened fire. The projectile neatly ripped off his arm just below the elbow. Jeb Stuart Ho watched in horror. The worst thing about it was the all enveloping silence. Na Duc Rogers slowly rolled over and lay still.

Jeb Stuart Ho saw another survivor moving carefully towards him. He was worming his way along the surface, pressing his body flat to avoid triggering the projectile system. It was Lorenzo Binh. He touched helmets with Jeb Stuart Ho so his voice could be heard.

‘The communicators are out.’

Ho nodded.

‘I know that.’

‘What do we do now?’

Jeb Stuart Ho looked at him grimly.

‘We must go on with the task.’

‘But we’re pinned down.’

‘We’re safe as long as we remain flat.’

‘Can we cut through the outer shell in this position?’

‘We can try. Are there no other survivors?’

‘There are two more brothers moving towards us. They’re right behind you, you won’t be able to see them from the position you’re … Oh no.’

Lorenzo Binh’s face contorted in an expression of horror and pain. Jeb Stuart Ho looked at him sharply.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘Edgar Allan Piao got it. He raised his head a little and a projectile punctured his helmet.’

Jeb Stuart Ho turned his head grimly. Tom Hoa crawled up beside him. He touched helmets with the other two.

‘Are there just the three of us?’

‘It would appear so.’

Lorenzo Binh glanced round.

‘Wait, there’s someone else coming.’

Lee Harvey Thot joined the other three. Sweat was standing out on his forehead.

‘We are the only ones left. We’re stranded here. We’ve failed before we even started.’

Tears began to stream down his face. Jeb Stuart Ho reached out and gripped his shoulder.

‘Get a hold on yourself, we’re going on with the task.’

‘We can’t, we can’t move.’

‘We will start cutting through the outer shell.’

‘We’ll be killed.’

‘That’s quite possible.’

Jeb Stuart Ho looked round at the other two.

‘We must move round so we are all facing each other.’

They cautiously did as he suggested. Lee Harvey Thot seemed to be more in control of himself. When they were in position, Jeb Stuart Ho unstrapped his laser unit and placed it in front of them.

‘If you each support one side of it, we can keep the cutting aperture pointed at the shell.’

The others nodded and took hold of the squat grey metal unit. Once Jeb Stuart Ho was confident it was in position, he nodded.

‘I’ll switch on now. We’ll have to keep moving round to cut out a section we can crawl through. Is everything clear?’

It was the others’ turn to nod. Jeb Stuart Ho slowly raised his hand to the controls of the laser. The Stuff Central defence system remained silent. He set the laser to maximum cut. Then he pressed the trigger. A pencil of violet light flashed out from beneath it and struck the surface of the blue metal. The metal turned black, then red. Finally it began to smoke and melt. The four black suited figures looked tensely at each other. They had started to cut into Stuff Central.

***

CYN 256 was unaware of the conflict taking place on the outside of the sphere that was Stuff Central. He had no way of knowing. His world was too prescribed, and his sources of information too scanty.

CYN 256 was fully occupied by his own conflict with the Computer. For some twenty work periods he had collected all the sets of figures that had shown up on the printout in his work cubicle, and not felt right to him.

He had gone on carefully dividing them into the three arbitrary categories that he had invented, the ones that seemed to relate to stuff output, to energy and mass intake, and internal operations of the machine. He copied them carefully on to his stolen scrap of paper with the stolen scriber, out of sight of the sensor, in the sanitary unit of his sleep cubicle.

His collection of figures got larger and larger until it threatened to fill up both sides of his paper. CYN 256 knew that he couldn’t simply go on collecting figures for ever. He realized that eventually he would slip up. He would either be detected by the sensors, or his hiding place in the disposal vent for paper and scriber would be discovered.

CYN 256 had expected that if he kept on collecting the figures for long enough, some kind of revelation would come upon him. He would discover meaning in the ambiguities that he sensed instinctively.

He’d collected the figures from twenty work periods, and nothing had become any clearer. He realized that he had to do something drastic. He only had one option left. The only thing he could think of was to feed the material back into the Computer through his work cubicle console, and see how it reacted. CYN 256 realized that there was one major drawback with this plan. The Computer might react by simply killing him.

He delayed the final act for two whole work periods before he could summon up the courage to face the Computer. All his lifelong programming screamed out against it. For as long as he could remember he had been enveloped in the Computer’s all embracing love. His small gesture of rebellion and deceit had been hard enough. To go directly against the intelligence that had always been the central core of his whole existence was almost impossible.

As he walked down the corridor on the third period since he’d decided to feed the figures into the Computer, he knew there was no turning back. It was the start of a new work session. He had to do it before the time came for him to return to his sleep cubicle. He had been tempted simply to drop the paper and scriber into the disposal vent and forget the whole act of rebellion.

He was tempted, but deep down, he knew he had gone too far. There was no return to the secure happy ignorance of the other human operatives who walked to work beside him.

He came to his own work cubicle. He sat down and pressed the stud that activated the console. The printout immediately began to feed figures at him. His conditioning told him that his fingers should move to the console and begin to respond. Instead, he sat rigid. A light flashed above the console. Still he did nothing. He knew his inactivity had been recorded as a malfunction. The therapy squad would already be on their way.

He took the list from where he’d hidden it in his coverall. His fingers flew, copying the groups of figures. The light went out. The printout stopped. The strip continued to unwind but there was nothing on it. CYN 256 went on working at the console. Another light came on. It was red and it rapidly flashed on and off. The printout started again.

0I0I0I0I0I0I0I0I0I0I0I0I0I0I

CYN 256 looked at it in horror. The Computer was responding to what he had done, but he didn’t, understand it. The printout was meaningless. He had revealed himself but he had achieved nothing. He knew no more now than when he had started the whole insane scheme.

His hands fell away from the console. A set of tiny vents opened in the ceiling. A steel door slid out from the wall and sealed the entrance to the cubicle. CYN 256 knew it was his end. There was a faint hiss as pink, poisonous gas billowed from the vents.

CYN 256 closed his eyes, took a deep breath and died.

***

Billy, Olad and the Minstrel Boy stood very still as the three Ocpol patrolmen walked slowly towards them with their guns raised. They let their hands hang loosely at their sides, and made no threatening move. Billy edged carefully towards the Minstrel Boy.

‘What do we do now?’

‘Fuck knows.’

The three Ocpol halted a few paces from their captives. The one in the middle, who had what appeared to be the insignia of an officer on the front of his helmet, gestured with his gun.

‘You will place your hands on your head.’

Billy, Olad and the Minstrel Boy did as they were told. The officer glanced at the patrolman on his right.

‘Search them for weapons.’

The patrolman moved towards Olad. He walked round behind him. He carefully patted him down. When he reached the gun and the heavy knife at Olad’s belt, the patrolman leaned forward and hooked the gun out of the belt. As he reached again for the knife, Olad pivoted on his toes, grabbed him by the throat and spun him round. The other Ocpol fired. Olad had the patrolman in front of him. The first two shells hit him in the chest. The force of the impact knocked both of them to the ground.

Billy snatched out his own gun and fired a burst at the officer. He spun round and fell. Billy turned his attention to the last of the Ocpol. He was already staggering round in circles, tugging vainly at one of the Minstrel Boy’s knives that was buried in his throat. He sank to his knees, coughing blood, and then sprawled forward face down in the damp earth. Billy looked at the Minstrel Boy.

‘Do you think there are any more inside the ground car?’

The Minstrel Boy started quickly towards the car.

‘We can only find out.’

Billy followed him. They reached the car without anything happening. They pressed themselves against its dark grey armour plated side. The Minstrel Boy’s hand went to the door handle.

‘When I nod, go.’

‘Okay.’

The Minstrel Boy twisted the handle and jerked the door open. Billy thrust his gun into the interior of the ground car. It was empty. The Minstrel Boy grinned.

‘It looks like we’ve even got transport.’

Billy looked around. A grey dawn was starting to show through the unrelenting drizzle. Olad was on his feet walking unsteadily towards them. Billy shouted.

‘Hey Olad, come on over here. We got ourselves a car.’

The Minstrel Boy frowned.

‘He looks like he’s hurt.’

They hurried towards the Siderian. Before they could reach him, he staggered and pitched forward. Billy and the Minstrel Boy ran to where he lay. Olad was face down in the mud. He didn’t appear to be breathing. The Minstrel Boy gently rolled him over. His studded leather tunic was smeared with blood. The Minstrel Boy felt for his pulse.

‘He’s dead.’

Billy’s eyes widened.

‘Dead? How? The Ocpol took those two shots.’

The Minstrel Boy slowly stood up.

‘The shells went right through the Ocpol, and got Olad as well.’

Billy went pale.

‘Shit.’

The Minstrel Boy nodded.

‘It’s a hard world.’

‘Is that all you got to say?’

‘What else do you want?’

Billy began to get angry.

‘What are we supposed to do with him? You just want to leave him lying there?’

‘What else do you figure we can do? Bury him maybe? That’d just give a few more Ocpol ground cars the time to catch up with us.’

‘We can’t just leave him like this. He was our buddy.’

The Minstrel Boy looked down at the body.

‘He was someone we met on the road.’

Billy looked at him in horror.

‘Is that all you’ve got to say? The man’s dead. He saved us.’

The Minstrel Boy nodded.

‘I know. He’s dead, and I’m cutting out. Are you coming with me, or do you want to honour your buddy’s memory by waiting around to get picked up?’

The Minstrel Boy turned on his heel and walked quickly towards the car. After a few moments’ hesitation Billy followed. The Minstrel Boy slid behind the wheel. Billy had hardly got the passenger door closed before the Minstrel Boy roughly jammed the car into drive. It took off with a lurch.

They drove in silence for a long time. It was only broken as they approached the nothings. The Minstrel Boy glanced at Billy.

‘Look around, see if you can find a stasis unit in this heap.’

Billy stared sullenly straight ahead.

‘Find it yourself. You’re so fucking smart. You know everything.’

The Minstrel Boy stamped on the brakes and the car slewed to a stop. He reached over and grabbed Billy by the lapels of his coat. He pushed his face very close to Billy’s.

‘Listen, either we try and get out of this together or you can stay right here. You either cooperate, or I dump you. Which is it going to be?’

Billy looked at him. He closed his eyes and sighed.

‘Okay, okay. I’ll do what you want.’

The Minstrel Boy pushed the car into drive again.

‘Find the stasis generator. We’re going to need it.’

Billy hunted around. He looked beside the seats, on the control panel and in the back of the vehicle. Eventually he looked at the Minstrel Boy with a frown.

‘There doesn’t seem to be one.’

‘You’ve looked everywhere?’

‘Yeah. It don’t seem likely that they’d hide the stasis generator.’

‘Shit! Isn’t there any kind of point where we can plug in our own porta-pacs and extend their field to include the car?’

Billy shook his head.

‘There’s nothing. It must have been designed for use in stable areas only.’

Outside, the landscape was already starting to break up. Large holes of grey emptiness were honeycombing the previously solid plain. Billy looked out of the narrow side window. He turned anxiously to the Minstrel Boy.

‘Should we dump the car and go on on foot?’

‘No, we’ll drive till it disintegrates. You’d better turn on your porta-pac.’

The road became increasingly dotted with pits of nothing. The surrounding plain virtually disappeared. Soon they were driving on an incomplete road surrounded by the nothings. The Minstrel Boy kept throwing the car into screaming swerves to avoid touching any of the holes in the stable matter of the road. He managed to maintain this kind of erratic progress for quite a while. Then the offside front set of wheels hit a circular pit in the road, about a metre across. They smoked, disintegrated and vanished. The front of the car hit the road with a scream of metal on stone.

The Minstrel Boy lost all control. The ground car slid along the road for about fifty metres, then it hit an even larger space of disorganized matter. A good third of its bodywork simply disappeared. What was left of it fell apart. Billy found himself skimming down the road on a section of the chassis. He crossed another disrupted pit and that too ceased to exist. Billy hit the surface of the road. He was bruised, but otherwise complete inside the field of his porta-pac.

He painfully picked himself up and looked around. The Minstrel Boy was sprawled a short distance ahead of him. As Billy walked towards him, he got up. He too seemed to have escaped any serious injury. He stared gloomily at the few remnants of the ground car.

‘I guess that’s the end of that.’

‘So now we walk?’

‘Unless you got a better idea.’

‘We’ve got no food, no water and no money. We might as well give up right now.’

Despite his pessimism the Minstrel Boy had started walking. Billy fell in beside him. Already he was beginning to feel the sad desolation he always experienced when he was out in the nothings. His sense of time was starting to go. He tried to maintain his grasp on reality by keeping a conversation going. It wasn’t an easy task. The Minstrel Boy was depressed and unwilling to talk.

‘How long do you figure we’ll be on this road?’

The Minstrel Boy grunted,

‘Till we get to the end.’

‘What’s at the other end?’

‘Another road, I hope. If I’m right, it should be the main one into Litz.’

‘How far’s that?’

The Minstrel Boy looked at Billy scornfully.

‘Don’t you know by now that in the nothings distance and time don’t mean shit?

‘But I …’

‘But what?’

‘Nothing. I don’t know. I don’t understand these roads.’

‘Who’s asking you to?’

‘I mean, they’re straight, they seem to go from one place to another. They ought to have some length that a man could figure out.’

‘Who says?’

‘It stands to reason.’

‘What’s reason got to do with it?’

‘I guess I thought …’

The Minstrel Boy stared at him bleakly.

‘Has it ever occurred to you that you think too damn much?’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘So don’t understand. Just accept. Don’t always try to define everything. It only gets you confused.’

Billy tipped back his hat and scratched his head.

‘These roads sure look straight to me.’

The Minstrel Boy sniffed.

‘Things ain’t always what they seem, particularly in the nothings.’

‘Yeah, but …’

The Minstrel Boy took a deep breath.

‘Just walk, will you.’

After that, there seemed to be nothing else to say. They walked in silence, each one enclosed in his own thoughts. Billy’s perception of time slipped away altogether. He found it impossible to judge how long he’d been on the road. Sometimes it felt like a matter of minutes. At other times it seemed like days.

His ideas of distance also started to play tricks. One moment the Minstrel Boy would be right beside him, the next, the two of them would be separated by a wide expanse of road.

For a while it seemed that the simplest thing to do was to stare at the ground and trudge on. Even that, however, had its drawbacks. Billy found it acutely disturbing to look down into the pits of nothing that broke the road like pock marks. When he stepped on one, the field of his porta-pac provided a solid, if invisible support for his foot where the road should have been. Billy began to hate the depressing journey.

Just as Billy was about to decide that they were trapped in a warp that would keep them on the barren, disintegrating road for ever, the Minstrel Boy clapped him on the shoulder.

‘We’ve got somewhere.’

Billy looked up. Another, wider, more complete highway was crossing theirs up ahead. It swept past at right angles like a vast bridge, some thirty metres above the level of their road. There appeared to be no supports holding it up anywhere. Billy stared dully at the Minstrel Boy.

‘It’s just another road. Even if it is up in the air.’

‘Yeah, but see what’s on it.’

Billy looked again. A sluggish tide of humanity was moving slowly along the strange elevated highway for as far as the eye could see.

‘Who are they?’

‘Refugees I guess, making for Litz. At least they’re people.’

Billy still couldn’t raise any enthusiasm.

‘So?’

‘Where there are people, there’s a way to survive.’

Billy cast a dubious eye over the empty space between the two roads.

‘Can we get up there?’

The Minstrel Boy grinned. It was the first time he’d looked happy since they left Feld.

‘Sure. No problem.’

***

A.A. Catto moved around the deep underground bunker in a state of dangerous excitement. She wore a severely tailored black uniform, complete with a long skirt and polished riding boots. A combination of drugs and nervous energy kept her pacing the echoing corridors of her subterranean headquarters. Nancy and a procession of aides did their best to keep up with her tense, erratic progress. The Presley replica slouched along at the rear of the party, sullenly resplendent in a gold leather suit.

Nancy was a little surprised that the Presley replica was still around. Lately A.A. Catto had run through her custom built playthings at an alarming rate. They normally didn’t last a single night, and Nancy had become increasingly apprehensive of the time when she might become a victim of A.A. Catto’s homicidal concepts of pleasure.

In many ways, Nancy found the survival of the Presley replica very reassuring. As long as he was there, she felt that she was safe from becoming the principal in one of A.A. Catto’s ultimately sadistic love games.

For reasons known only to herself, A.A. Catto had adopted the Presley replica as a kind of pet. She treated him with an offhand benevolence, and had given him the run of virtually the whole bunker. For a couple of days he had wandered about, getting under the feet of the aides, and taking a retarded delight in playing with the gleaming technology, pressing buttons and watching things light up.

In the end, Nancy had taken upon herself to warn him that should he cause the slightest detail to go wrong in any of A.A. Catto’s elaborate battle plans by his childish meddling, she might no longer find him charming, and would have him painfully disposed of.

The Presley replica had accepted the warning with ill grace. He had, however, ceased to meddle with the war room control boards. He now just tagged along behind A.A. Catto and became increasingly surly. Nancy began to feel that maybe his days were numbered.

A.A. Catto not only paced, she also talked. She poured out a non stop stream of plans and ideas that the nervous aides struggled to record and add to the growing volume of strategic orders. Some of A.A. Catto’s newest schemes filled Nancy with a sense of foreboding. She had become inured to A.A. Catto’s general savagery and megalomania, but some of the latest ideas had the ring of terminal madness.

‘Immediately Litz has fallen we will commence the programme of Population Rationale.’

The aide with a memo unit scurried to keep pace with A.A. Catto, at the same time juggling with the unit’s pick-up so it remained always focused on her. To miss one of her pearls of wisdom was to court instant death.

‘It seems to us that if we simply allow our captive peoples to go on much as before, the whole idea of conquest loses its essential beauty.’

The aides nodded frantically.

‘Yes, our leader.’

‘We feel that the captive population must be reorganized to fit in with our pattern of empire.’

Again the aides nodded and chorused. Nancy noted silently that A.A. Catto had begun to refer to herself in the plural. She took the responsibilities of an empress very seriously.

Without warning, A.A. Catto turned right down a side corridor. The aides collided with each other in their frantic efforts to keep pace with her.

‘This is basically the core of the Humanity Problem.’

One aide, bolder than the rest, smiled ingratiatingly at her.

‘You have a solution to this problem, our leader?’

A.A. Catto halted and looked at him menacingly.

‘Do you really think we might be seeking your advice on the matter?’

The aide made fluttering, bird-like motions.

‘Of course not, our leader. I would never presume.’

The other aides edged away from him, fearful they might fall into disfavour by association. A.A. Catto resumed her brisk march. She carried a short whip, which she rhythmically tapped against her leg.

‘We have decided that the most beneficial policy would be to clear all stable areas of random humanity. A single area will be allocated so they can be concentrated in one spot. Make a note. We require a brain analysis of the most suitable location. Once that has been decided we can start to move the population. It will make our empire so much more tidy. Human populations can be replaced by clones as and when needed.’

A.A. Catto’s expression became almost holy.

‘Once the human population has been concentrated in this one spot, a complex can be created to carry out experimental work on individuals and groups as to their suitability for either reprogramming or extermination.’

The aide who had incurred A.A. Catto’s wrath attempted to regain favour.

‘The plan has an elegant symmetry, our leader.’

The Presley replica glanced up and wondered if he ought to have said that. He decided it wasn’t his style, and therefore was not expected of him. He resumed staring at his legs, admiring the tightness of his gold pants. Nancy was struck by the innate absurdity that seemed to hover around absolute power. A.A. Catto simply nodded in curt acknowledgement.

‘The human population will, of course, be put to work on the construction of the experimental establishment.’

A.A. Catto looked thoughtful.

‘We have been considering a name for this place. We are torn between the Humanity Centre and the Catto Institute. We have been giving much thought to names lately. We consider them to be of paramount importance. We have been thinking about our own name.’

She glanced at Nancy.

‘How does Catto the First grab you, sweetie?’

Nancy forced a brittle smile. At least she was still sweetie, although the word had an acid bite to it.

‘It has a ring to it, my love.’

A.A. Catto nodded absently.

‘That’s what we thought. Very well, a number of problems still do remain. Take note. Firstly, it is safe to assume that a percentage of the human population will die in transit to the concentration area. We will require an accurate prediction of what this percentage will be. Second, we will need a profile of the survivors and those unable to survive. Third, we require a schematic brief of the precise operation of an establishment whose primary purpose is the elimination of free will and random action on the part of humans.’

Nancy was struck by the fact that A.A. Catto no longer considered herself human. A.A. Catto continued.

‘Lastly, we will need detailed plans for the design of buildings and hardware outlined in the answer to the previous request, and the logistics of their construction.’

She looked round at the aides.

‘Have we made ourself clear?’

The aides fell over themselves to show they understood.

‘Of course, our leader.’

‘Good.’

The boldest of the aides ventured another question.

‘Will there be anything else, our leader?’

A.A. Catto’s face darkened. She slapped the whip hard into her palm. The aide went white with terror. A.A. Catto regarded all the aides with an icy expression. Her voice went very quiet.

‘There is one more thing.’

There was a deathly hush. A.A. Catto’s voice rose hysterically.

‘We want Litz taken! Taken now, with no more delay! Now go!’

The aides scurried away, and she let out a deep breath. She snapped her fingers at Nancy and the Presley replica.

‘You two, Nancy and Elvis. You will come with us to our suite. If we don’t relax we are liable to become insane.’

***

Of all the towns and cities attacked by A.A. Catto’s legions Litz had the most warning. For many days before the first Quahal storm troopers reached its stable areas, thousands of refugees had been pouring into the city.

Not that Litz actually had days. The sections of its generators that controlled the climate and the passing of light and dark were set permanently at warm pleasant nighttime. Litz was completely a city of night. The bars, the clubs, the sex shows and the brothels made the soft blackness a world of adventure for those who had the credits to pay for it.

Litz had been designed as a sleazy, sensual wonderland. It was a tinsel city where anything could be had for a price. A million lights illuminated the sky. Skyscrapers towered in floodlit magnificence. Coloured searchlights lanced into the heavens. The street lamps and the lights of the hundreds of ground cars turned the wide streets into glittering rivers. Airships and ornithopters drifted between the tall buildings, adding their own spots and riding lights to the general radiance.

Not all was pleasure and light in Litz. It also had its sinister shadows. Behind the shining façades were the grim back alleys. These were the haunts of the winos, the muggers and the homicidal juve gangs. It was the territory of half starved human debris who competed with the huge rats, the wildcats and the semi-savage dogs that treated the maze of narrow alleys and claustrophobic yards as their personal hunting grounds.

Litz had changed. The looming war had put the city through more changes than ever before in its history. The first of these was the flood of refugees. The ones who had brought credit or acceptable goods out with them had installed themselves at the gleaming hotels. Those who hadn’t had swelled the ranks of the back alley dwellers.

Litz had adapted to war amazingly fast. Anywhere that was so corrupt must have that facility. Corruption always adapts.

Litz, after all, had its foundations in the highest principles of human greed and operated on a finely honed interlocking system of bribes and expediency.

Almost instantly an array of fanciful uniforms had appeared in the bars, the nightclubs and the foyers of the whorehouses. Patriotic posters had quickly appeared on the walls of the city. Stirring martial parades had snarled traffic on the main streets. A thriving black market had mushroomed into being. It was, however, largely unnecessary as all the material goods needed by the city continued to come in on the stuff beam. One thing A.A. Catto had been unable to achieve, despite threats and pleading, was to persuade Stuff Central to discontinue service to cities under attack.

The city administration had done its part, though. It had sufficiently restricted the flow of supplies to create an inspirational feeling of scarcity. It was this move that gave the black market the space to flourish.

In all ways, Litz seemed ready to face the invaders.

And then they arrived. As usual, the dive bombers of A.A. Catto’s crack Vulture Legion went in first. The rapidly organized owners of Litz’s private aircraft took to the skies to face them in machines that had been hastily converted to a military role. The Litz air corps met the attacks with swaggering, if poorly organized, bravado. To their surprise, the Vulture Legion was totally routed, and retired to lick its wounds. A.A. Catto’s air force had never encountered resistance and had no contingency plans to deal with it. The flying cowboys from Litz quickly made mincemeat of the sinister black dive bombers.

On the ground, things were far more grim. An army of flamboyant defenders had gone out to meet A.A. Catto’s ground troops. They had been deftly massacred. The city was swiftly encircled. The only thing that stopped the armies of Quahal moving in for the kill was the desperate fight put up by a less picturesque but more efficient force drawn primarily from the Litz Department of Correction. Even so, both sides were well aware that it was only a matter of time before the city finally fell.

One of the cops turned soldier was Section Commander Bannion. He was in charge of a three kilometre strip of the city’s perimeter. Bannion, like the rest of the Litz Defence Corps, was feeling himself being crushed under the knowledge of eventual certain defeat.

Bannion sat in the rest room of the defence HQ. It had originally been the drunk tank of the hastily converted L.D.C. downtown station. The tank and cells were being used as accommodation for the soldiers.

Bannion sat with his thick set body hunched. He stared vacantly at the dirty white tiles of the opposite wall. He was totally withdrawn into himself. He hadn’t bothered to shave for three days. His olive drab battle fatigues were creased and filthy. He rubbed a hand over the stubble on his chin. His eyes looked dark and sunken in the harsh glare of the naked tubes. The only clean object was the 27 mm automatic carbine propped up beside him.

Most of the men in the Defence Corps had started letting themselves go. They’d stopped washing and shaving. Defeat and almost certain death were too close to make it worth bothering any more.

Bannion cursed quietly to himself. The sound of a man crying came from one of the cells. It was all breaking down so fast. Bannion had just come back from a patrol. He had gone out with twenty men and come back with twelve. He felt impotent and helpless. It was a feeling that he couldn’t adjust to. In the Department of Correction he had always taken pride in being on top of things. His major pleasure had been the certainty of his power.

A weary looking orderly came into the tank. He didn’t bother to salute.

‘The captain wants to see you.’

Bannion noted dully that the orderly had reverted to the old police ranks. They’d all been given smart new titles when the Defence Corps had been formed, but these seemed to be dropping away. Bannion slowly stood up.

‘Is he up in his office?’

The orderly nodded.

‘Yeah.’

‘Okay.’

Bannion picked up his carbine and followed the orderly out of the tank. He took his time climbing the stairs. When he reached the captain’s office he pushed open the door without knocking.

‘You wanted me?’

Captain Dante Schultz sat hunched over a battered steel desk. He looked as rough as Bannion. The only light came from a single desk lamp. It illuminated some papers, a map and a half empty bottle of whisky. Schultz rubbed his eyes and nodded at a rickety upright chair.

‘Siddown.’

Bannion glanced round the small dim office. He briefly thought of all the nights he had sat with Schultz, consuming whisky, coffee, delicatessen sandwiches and pills. It seemed like those days had gone for good. He dropped into the chair. It creaked under his weight. Schultz grinned crookedly at him.

‘You want to hear the latest from the city administration?’

Bannion shook his head.

‘Not particularly.’

Schultz shuffled his papers.

‘You’re going to, anyway.’

Bannion grunted. Schultz picked up a bundle of buff sheets.

‘I won’t read it all to you.’

‘Thanks.’

‘I’ll just give you the main points.’

Schultz paused. Bannion raised a tired eyebrow.

‘You looking for a response, already?’

Schultz sighed.

‘The city fathers are surprised at our lack of success in containing the invaders’ ground forces. They are setting up an investigation.’

Bannion spat.

‘They’re surprised, are they? They should send their fucking investigators on patrol with my outfit. They’ll find out how come we ain’t “containing the invaders’ ground forces”. We’re outnumbered and outgunned. They’ve got the numbers and the fire power.’

Schultz shrugged.

‘I know that.’

‘So tell the city fathers to go screw.’

‘They also want us to carry out a retaliatory strike against the home base of the enemy.’

Bannion stared at Schultz in disbelief.

‘Tell them to doubly go screw. It’s not possible.’

Schultz looked down at the papers on his desk.

‘We’re going to do it.’

‘You’re out of your mind.’

‘In fact, you’re going to do it.’

Bannion’s eyes narrowed. He leaned forward across the desk. His voice was very soft.

‘Just what the fuck are you talking about, Schultz?’

‘Captain Schultz.’

‘Just tell me about it, will you?’

Schultz sighed.

‘According to our intelligence reports this invasion is being directed from an area known as Quahal.’

‘So what’s Quahal?’

‘Precisely, Quahal is a mountain and a river valley. In the valley there is a ziggurat.’

‘What the hell is a ziggurat?’

‘It’s a kind of pyramid.’

‘And that’s where this invasion is being controlled from, a kind of pyramid?’

Schultz nodded.

‘From a deep bunker built underneath it, to be totally accurate.’

‘And what am I supposed to do about all this?’

Schultz took a deep breath.

‘The plan is that you take a small force directly to Quahal. Fight your way into the bunker, destroy as much of the control equipment and kill as many of the command staff as possible.’

‘Simple as that?’

‘Right.’

‘That’s just dandy.’

‘I can go into details.’

Bannion looked at Shultz bleakly.

‘Before you do, let me ask you one question.’

‘What?’

‘Supposing we actually do all this, how do we get away afterwards?’

‘That’ll be up to you.’

Bannion smiled grimly.

‘So it’s a suicide mission?’

Schultz looked evenly at him.

‘I didn’t say that.’

Bannion’s face twisted into a sneer,

‘You’re a chintzy bastard.’

‘Bannion, I’m warning you …’

‘Work it!’

‘Bannion!’

‘Okay, okay. Just don’t jive me. I don’t need it.’

‘This mission could be our only hope.’

‘So tell me the details.’

‘Where do you want to start?’

‘How do we get there?’

‘There’s an airship from one of the rental companies being armed and specially equipped for a journey through the nothings.’

‘What do we do when we get there? Have you got plans of this bunker? The defence system? The entrances? That kind of thing?’

Schultz sadly shook his head.

‘I’m afraid we don’t have anything like that. We’ve only the barest information that the place exists at all. Beyond that we know nothing.’

Bannion looked amazed.

‘Couldn’t you have given some prisoners the full treatment?’

Schultz uncomfortably avoided Bannion’s questioning stare.

‘We did. The mercenaries had been picked up in other cities that had fallen. They’d never been near the place. The ones who actually came from Quahal just clammed up and died on us. We couldn’t get a thing out of them.’

Bannion sagged back in his chair. It creaked dangerously.

‘That’s just great.’

‘You’ll have to play it by ear.’

‘Wonderful.’

‘Listen, I never said it was going to be easy.’

‘You never said anything, did you?’

Schultz ignored Bannion’s flash of temper.

‘Is there anything else you want to know?’

‘Yeah, how do we find our way there? Do we just cruise off into the nothings and hope we strike lucky?’

Schultz pursed his lips and played with his papers.

‘We found you a wayfinder.’

Bannion grinned sarcastically.

‘You’re too good to me.’

Schultz scratched his neck awkwardly.

‘Listen, Bannion, get off my back, will you? I’m only doing the best I can.’

‘Sure, sure.’

‘Someone has to do it.’

‘And Bannion’s the sucker, right?’

‘Will you cut it out?’

‘Okay, okay.’

Bannion thought for a moment.

‘How do we know we can trust this wayfinder? How do you know he ain’t running a con on the chance of getting out of the city?’

‘You want to see him?’

Bannion waved an expansive hand.

‘Sure, what do I have to lose?’

Schultz punched the talk button on his desk intercom.

‘Sapristien.’

A muffled response came from the speaker.

‘Bring in the old guy, will you?’

Another muffled response. After a few seconds the door opened and an elderly man was pushed inside. He was short, and on the heavy side. His head was bald, but he had bushy eyebrows and a flowing beard. His hard bright eyes and wrinkled face seemed to indicate a keen intelligence. He wore a dirty white smock that hung down to his sandalled feet. He regarded Bannion and Schultz with a total lack of interest.

Bannion rose lazily from his chair. He walked round the old man, taking slow deliberate paces, examining him from every side. It was one of Banriion’s favourite opening gambits for putting a suspect in an uncertain frame of mind. His exchanges with Schultz had brought Bannion back to something like his old Department of Correction form. He halted in front of the old man, and stared at him for a full minute.

‘And what do you call yourself, grandad?’

The old man didn’t seem the least fazed by Bannion’s performance. He smiled pleasantly.

‘Most times I generally call myself me. Mind you, other people tend to call me the Wanderer, on account of how I roam from town to town.’

Bannion’s eyes narrowed. His voice became a purr.

‘And you claim to be a wayfinder?’

The Wanderer nodded.

‘That’s right. I may not be the best, you understand, but I got enough of the gift to get by.’

The old man leaned towards Bannion confidentially.

‘Between you and me, I wouldn’t like to be one of the best. Too many people getting on your ass, all wanting something.’

‘You look more like a feisty, lying old bum to me.’

The Wanderer looked resigned.

‘You got a right to think what you like.’

Bannion put his hands on his hips.

‘You sound kind of indifferent.’

‘That’s pretty close to where I’m at.’

Bannion pounced. In a flash he’d grabbed the old man by the front of his smock and hauled him on to tiptoe.

‘If you’re going to be working with me, grandad, you’re going to change your attitude. You’re going to have to be pretty damned different, you dig? If you fuck me around I’m going to kill you, right?’

The old man blinked.

‘You’re the boss.’

Bannion abruptly let go of him. The Wanderer staggered back a few paces. Bannion levelled a threatening finger at him.

‘You just keep that in mind.’

He turned to Schultz, who had remained seated during the whole miniature drama.

‘How did you dig him up?’

‘He was pulled in on a forged credit card. It’s a mandatory death sentence under the emergency powers.’

Bannion looked at the old man with fresh interest.

‘What was he doing?’

‘He booked into a penthouse at the Albert Speer Hotel with a couple of hookers. He was paying with a homemade credit card.’

Bannion’s eyebrows shot up.

‘Two hookers? At his age?’

‘At his age.’

Bannion chuckled.

‘He may or may not be a wayfinder, but he’s sure got some secret, and that’s a fact. Tell me, old man. How do you manage it at your age?’

The Wanderer smiled blandly.

‘I live a pure life.’

Bannion grunted.

‘So it seems.’

He switched his attention back to Schultz.

‘I suppose I’ll have to use him?’

‘There aren’t any others.’

Bannion nodded thoughtfully.

‘When do we leave?’

‘How fast can you pick and brief a squad?’

‘How many do I get?’

‘Twenty.’

‘We could be ready in a couple of hours, if you want us to leave that fast.’

‘The ship’ll be fitted out when you’ve got your squad together.’

Bannion took the Wanderer by the arm.

‘You’d better come with me, grandad. I’m not letting you out of my sight.’

The Wanderer put on an expression of innocence.

‘I’m completely in your hands.’

Bannion snorted.

‘You just remember that.’

***

The laser unit had made a circular cut in the steel surface of Stuff Central about a metre across. As far as Jeb Stuart Ho could tell the loose piece in the middle of the cut was only held in place by a thin tongue of metal. He touched helmets with the other three brotherhood assassins.

‘I think we could push it in now.’

Lorenzo Binh turned his head slightly.

‘Shall we use physical strength or psi pressure?’

Ho turned off the laser.

‘We’ll try psi first. It would be best to make as few movements as possible. We have no way of knowing when we may trigger another part of the auto-defence. Attempt to move the cut out section on the count of three.’

Jeb Stuart Ho glanced carefully to make sure the other three were ready.

‘One, two, three.’

They all concentrated. The piece of metal didn’t move. After a few minutes Jeb Stuart Ho shook his head.

‘We can’t do it. We just don’t have the power.’

Tom Hoa looked at Ho.

‘We should use physical force?’

‘Yes, but don’t make any unnecessary movements.’

The four assassins slowly slid their hands on to the top of the cut out section of metal. They pushed with all their strength. The section began to bend inwards. Then something snapped and fell into the inside of the sphere with a loud crash.

‘Okay, go! Don’t get in range of those auto guns!’

Tom Hoa slid into the hole and disappeared from sight. Lorenzo Binh went swiftly after him. Lee Harvey Thot followed, but as he swung his body into the empty space, he raised his head a fraction too much. One of the automatic projectile throwers flashed into life. Lee Harvey Thot’s helmet was instantly shattered. His body tumbled through the hole.

Jeb Stuart Ho could see no way that he couldn’t be dead.

Ho eased himself through the hole. He let himself drop. He fell about three metres and hit a floor. He landed on his feet. He was in a corridor. It was lined with doors that looked as though they led to cubicles of some description. Lee Harvey Thot lay on the floor dead. Tom Hoa and Lorenzo Binh crouched with their guns at the ready.

The corridor ran absolutely straight for about two hundred metres. Then it disappeared over a kind of horizon as it followed the curve of the outside of the sphere. A number of small, yellow clad figures were just disappearing over it. As far as Jeb Stuart Ho could judge, they were only about half his height. It looked as though the computer had done something drastic to the growth pattern of its human operatives.

Jeb Stuart Ho turned round. A series of coloured lights had begun to flash on and off. The sound of wind rushing past his helmet indicated that the sphere’s atmosphere was rushing out through the hole that they’d cut. He looked at the other two and spoke into his communicator.

‘Can you hear me?’

‘Yes, whatever was jamming the communicators has cut out.’

‘We’ll move thirty metres down the corridor. It’s obvious that some alarm has been triggered. Even if our presence hasn’t been detected, I estimate that some kind of emergency repair on the hole will be made.’

They moved watchfully down the corridor. Suddenly Tom Hoa shouted.

‘Look.’

Ho and Lorenzo Binh spun round. Two steel partitions were sliding across the corridor on either side of the hole. They locked into place, effectively sealing off the leak. The alarm lights went out.

Tom Hoa looked at Jeb Stuart Ho.

‘Could it be that we have not been detected?’

Jeb Stuart Ho looked thoughtfully down the corridor with its long line of doors.

‘It would be a great advantage if that was the case, but I do not think it is so. I have a feeling that the computer may be observing us and waiting for us to reveal more of what our purpose is.’

Lorenzo Binh looked round cautiously.

‘You think that we are being observed, Jeb Stuart Ho?’

‘I think that it is most probable.’

‘Could it be possible that we survived the automatic defences on the outside by some design of the computer?’

‘The possible is immense.’

‘What would you calculate as being our next move, Jeb Stuart Ho?’

Jeb Stuart Ho didn’t answer immediately. He was somewhat disconcerted by the way the other two seemed to be looking to him for leadership. He scarcely felt worthy, particularly as he had failed in his only previous mission. He realized, however, if that was the way it was going to be he would have to accept it.

‘I think we should first ascertain the nature of our immediate surroundings.’

All the doors along the corridor had symbols on them. Jeb Stuart Ho looked at the one nearest to him. The characters on it read CTA 102. He pressed a stud just under the inscription. The door slid smoothly and silently open to reveal a small bare cubicle. In some ways the starkness of the little room reminded him of his cell in the brotherhood temple.

The bed in the cubicle was tiny, scarcely larger than for a child. Again Jeb Stuart Ho wondered what had happened to the Stuff Central humans. He stepped back, into the corridor, and looked at the other two.

‘This seems to be a dormitory area. We will have to go on.’

The others fell into step behind him with their guns at the ready. They had only gone a dozen paces when another, different coloured set of warning lights began to flash on and off. Lorenzo Binh swung round in alarm.

‘What can this mean?’

Jeb Stuart Ho remained calm.

‘We will doubtless find out in time.’

They assumed a defensive position. As a group they covered both ends of the corridor. Jeb Stuart Ho half crouched in the open doorway of a cubicle. He examined the grey metallic wall, and found that the panelling was almost as thin as foil. It would offer hardly any protection against projectiles. The illusion of cover was still somehow comforting.

They waited. For long tense moments nothing happened. Then tiny vents opened in the ceiling of the corridor. Thick pink gas began to pump out of them, and rolled down the corridor in billows.

‘Poison gas?’

‘Perhaps. We’ll be safe inside our helmets.’

‘It could simply be a smoke screen.’

The gas was certainly obscuring their vision. Jeb Stuart Ho smiled dourly.

‘I think we can be certain that we’ve been detected.’

They strained to see through the thick clouds. Visibility was reduced to just under a metre. Then a tight hail of steel needles sliced through the wall above Jeb Stuart Ho’s head. He threw himself flat on the floor, yelling into his communicator.

‘We’re under attack!’

More needles slashed into the thin metal. They hit the very spot where Jeb Stuart Ho had crouched just a moment before.

‘Communicator silence. They may be using locator equipment.’

He rolled over and another hail of deadly steel slivers scored the floor where he’d been lying. It was plain that whatever was attacking them was relying on some kind of sound picture. He controlled his breathing. He fired at the approximate source of the attack, and immediately dodged. More needles sprayed the corridor.

Ho wondered if the attackers were men or simply another automatic system. He didn’t have to wait long for an answer. A helmeted figure appeared out of the smoke hefting a large, heavy duty spiral needle gun.

For an instant, Jeb Stuart Ho saw the figure very clearly. It wore a pale green belted coverall with a black letter B printed on the chest, heavy white combat boots and a white helmet. Its face was covered with a fitted gas mask that gave it the look of a huge eyed, bizarre insect. Jeb Stuart Ho snapped off a shot and the figure crumpled.

Four more similar figures came out of the gas fog. Ho sprang to his feet. Face to face with an enemy he could fight, he felt far more confident. He whipped out his sword and in a single, lightning sweep took out two of them. Tom Hoa shot the third and Lorenzo Binh leaped at the fourth and tore away its gas mask. Before the creature stumbled back clutching its throat and coughing blood, Jeb,Stuart Ho caught a glimpse of a flat, brutal, dead white face. It was human, but strangely sexually neutral.

For a moment, no more attackers came. The three brotherhood assassins stood alone surrounded by the clouds of gas. Jeb Stuart Ho looked at the other two. At last they were fighting like a team. He experienced a moment of grim satisfaction. He knew it was the sensation of a warrior’s true reward.

It faded when he looked down at one of the bodies at his feet. He noted that it was at least a head taller than he, with a massive muscular frame. These things were very different to the tiny, yellow suited beings that lived in the corridor.

He realized that these must be the specially tailored defenders of Stuff Central. They may have once been human, but the computer had adapted and altered them until they were simply the antibodies in the machine’s complex system, protecting it from outside intruders and internal malfunction.

Jeb Stuart Ho knew they wouldn’t be easy to fight. They’d be guided by the computer’s monstrous intellect, and, beyond the cloud of gas, there could be any number of them.

***

Billy and the Minstrel Boy arrived at the Inn. The Inn was a single building with its own stasis field. It dominated a strange midpoint in the peculiar road system that wove in and out of the nothings like a tangled, convoluted, hideously complex Mobius strip.

The Inn was about as small as a stable area could get. Its generators didn’t run to luxuries like sky, scenery or even day and night. There was air, warmth, solid matter and gravity. That was it.

The Inn was a strange ramshackle affair. Wings and extensions had been added to the central, slab sided stone building with no attempt at any kind of continuity in style. There were flying buttresses, turrets, thatched roofs, domes and even a geodesic annexe.

In front of the Inn was a broad forecourt. The entrance to it was through a high arch of neon lights. Beyond that there was only the road and a narrow strip of bare ground surrounding the whole area. After that the nothings started.

The road to the Inn had been long and hard. When Billy and the Minstrel Boy had joined the stream of refugees, they quickly discovered that they broke down into two very distinct groups: the sheep and the wolves, the prey and the predators. The Minstrel Boy wasn’t in the least surprised.

Their first survival plan among the refugees was to hire on with sheep to protect them from the wolves. They were, after all, well armed, not easily messed with, and Billy did draw the line at out and out violent mugging.

The particular sheep who employed Billy and the Minstrel Boy were a merchant and his family from Port Judas. Their name was Inchgrip, and like all the solid citizens of Port Judas they were hard, humourless and meanly religious. Port Judas had, however, been reduced to smoking rubble by A.A. Catto’s bombers, and the Inchgrips found themselves on the road with the rest of the frightened throng.

When Billy and the Minstrel Boy had gone touting for a job, the Inchgrips had snapped up the two drifters to guard their lives and their wagonload of goods.

Not that the Inchgrips exactly took to Billy and the Minstrel Boy. They looked on them as filthy, sinful, foulmouthed heathens who would surely burn in the particularly nasty hell envisaged by the Port Judas strain of evangelists. They especially disliked their habit of getting drunk every night. Nevertheless, they were more than anxious to put them to work. The Port Judas religion said nothing against one man exploiting another. As it came to pass, the exploitation turned out to be mutual.

The deal with the patriarch, the grey bearded Rameses Inchgrip, was that Billy and the Minstrel Boy were to be given one gold piece per day or the equivalent in kind, plus all they could eat. Billy had spent a good while arguing with Rameses Inchgrip over whether they should also get all they could drink. The Minstrel Boy finally stopped the wrangle by reminding Billy that Port Judas was teetotal.

The situation had maintained itself reasonably well for twelve days on the road. Billy and the Minstrel Boy had been paid, and they’d more or less done their job.

There had of course been petty irritations on both sides. Rameses Inchgrip had been exceedingly obstructive about his two teenage daughters. He had threatened Billy and the Minstrel Boy with earthly torment and spiritual damnation if they so much as looked at them. He also kept his daughters so closely confined to the inside of the wagon that the Minstrel Boy began to suspect that they were chained to the floor.

On the thirteenth day, Rameses Inchgrip had an even more sour expression than usual. After a long preamble, he informed Billy and the Minstrel Boy that there wasn’t enough left to either pay or feed them. The Minstrel Boy told him that they’d settle for his daughters. Inchgrip hit him, and Billy had to restrain the Minstrel Boy before he retaliated by knifing him.

After they parted company with the Inchgrips, they fell in with a madame and a party of whores who were making their escape from the war zone and providing a service for the other refugees on the road. It seemed to Billy that, come what may, they always ended up in a brothel of one sort or another.

On a normal day, before the invasion from Quahal had started, the forecourt of the Inn usually contained not more than a dozen or so ground cars, a string of lizards, one or two elaborately designed motorcycles and maybe a single huge wheelfreak’s truck. When Billy and the Minstrel Boy arrived it was choked with people and vehicles. The road for at least two kilometres from the Inn was jammed with backed up traffic. Refugees who had been unable to find a room at the Inn were camping in the forecourt and even on the road itself.

The filth and confusion were alarming. Even more alarming were the contrasts between the conditions of different groups of people. The rich, with their teams of guards and collections of valuables, either lived in the Inn itself or camped in some comfort in the forecourt. At the other end of the scale were the dozens of beggars, people who had lost everything on the road, who barely existed on what scraps they could find. Every few minutes a fresh body would be pitched out into the nothings.

The closeness to the nothings solved the refugees’ sanitation problem. If it hadn’t been so easy to pitch waste and the dead into an area where all matter simply vanished, the refugees would almost certainly have had to add disease to their already extensive catalogue of troubles.

The Minstrel Boy and Billy picked their way through the crowds towards the Inn itself. Beggars swarmed up to them in droves.

‘For pity’s sake, I haven’t eaten in five days straight.’

Billy was about to dig into his pockets and distribute a few coins when the Minstrel Boy grabbed him by the arm.

‘Don’t be more of a dummy than you can help.’

‘But they’re starving.’

‘Yeah, and there are hundreds of them, are you going to feed the lot?’

Billy shook his head.

‘No, but …’

‘Then don’t give nothing to none of them. If you do, we won’t be able to move. We’ll be swamped by beggars wherever we go.’

The Minstrel Boy turned and aimed a swift kick at one of the more persistent supplicants who was tugging at his jacket, then turned back to Billy and shrugged.

‘It’s the only way to treat them and, besides, if the muggers hear that you’ve got money to throw at beggars we’ll be in real trouble.’

Billy scratched his head.

‘I’m wondering how long money will hold up.’

The Minstrel Boy sneered at the frantic milling crowds all around.

‘It’ll hold up as long as they believe in it. While they’re still killing each other for it, money’s cool. The whole thing’s pretty well ingrained.’

Billy sadly shook his head.

‘You’ve got a strange way of looking at things.’

The Minstrel Boy sniffed.

‘I’ve got a sane way of looking at things. Let’s see if we can get ourselves a drink.’

They continued to shoulder their way through the mob. They got within about twenty metres of the Inn. A group of men stepped up and barred their way.

‘Where do you think you’re going?’

The Minstrel Boy took a step back and looked at the four men in front of him. The tallest was a corsair from the fringes. He had the typical dark complexion and the plastered down ringlets that hung stiffly almost to his shoulders. He wore the traditional costume of gaudy silks and high leather boots. He was extensively tattooed. Under his arm, he carried a primitive pipe cannon that fired a flesh tearing blast of old nails and scrap metal.

His companions were no less flamboyant. Two were small stunted wheelfreaks in their individually styled custom jump suits. They had that unique pinched look that comes from excessive use of stimulants coupled with generations of inbreeding on the camp sites and trailer parks at the junctions of the major truck roads.

The fourth was a far more effeminate figure. He wore a gold brocade tunic and matching knee breeches. His whole costume was hung with falls of now slightly dirty lace, and his bleached hair streamed down to his waist. But there was no mistaking, from the way his purple nailed hand gripped an evil looking needle gun, and the determined expression on his painted face, that he should in no way be underestimated.

The Minstrel Boy looked at each of them in turn. Billy’s hand moved towards his gun.