The Quest of the DNA Cowboys

Mick Farren

The Quest of the DNA Cowboys

Mayflower

Granada Publishing Limited

First published in 1976 by Mayflower Books Ltd Frogmore, St Albans, Herts AL2 2NF

A Mayflower Original

Copyright (c) Mick Farren 1976

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.

It was inevitable that they should up and leave Pleasant Gap. The most the people could say, and they said it often, was that Pleasant Gap was a good old town.

Good old town really summed it up. Pleasant Gap was built on one of the most stable points in the fabric, it nestled in a fold of the grey elevations that the people of Pleasant Gap liked to call the hills. There were maybe fifty houses, frame buildings with wooden shingles, front porches and neat front gardens with well-tended lawns and flowers. Then there was the church, Eli’s Store, Jackson’s Repair Shop, and down at the end of the main street, a couple of bars and, although nobody mentioned it in polite company, Miss Ettie’s Sporting House, which must have been visited by every man in town at one time or another.

Beyond Miss Ettie’s was the railroad track. Of course, the railroad didn’t go anywhere, just ran around a fold in the hills and came back again. The main use of the railroad, apart from reminding people what time it was, was that the two boxcars concealed the faraday cages that hooked into the transporter beam from Stuff Central.

Pleasant Gap had a consumer contract with Stuff Central which gave them just about everything they needed, but the trouble was that a lot of people in town didn’t like to see their cans of dog food, bolts of cloth, and new work shoes appear out of nothing in a flash of static. It reminded them too much of the wild things that happened in other places. And so, every morning the train chugged out of town empty, and every afternoon it chugged back in full of supplies.

These supplies were unloaded and delivered to Eli’s Store where people then went and bought what they wanted with the money they picked up from the Welfare Bank.

This system worked fine, except that every year, when the Stuff contract had to be renegotiated, Stuff Central kept putting pressure on the town council to take more and more stuff. Eli would bitch and complain about how he would have to reduce prices and how that would be bad for business, and then the citizens would complain about the amount of stuff that they were expected to use up. Jed McArthur and his cousin Cal would sit on Eli’s porch and complain to each other about just how many motor mowers a man was expected to keep in his tool shed.

That was about the extent of the troubles of Pleasant Gap, and the calm, placid life was due mostly to the huge stasis generator, as big as two city blocks, which stood, hidden by a grove of pines, down below the railroad track. It drew power straight from the fabric, and hummed away to itself all day and night keeping things in Pleasant Gap as they ought to be.

There hadn’t been any trouble in Pleasant Gap for a long, long time. No disruptor had come near them in living memory, and the even pattern of life was rarely interrupted. Occasionally a small rupture would appear in a garden or the main street, but nothing worse than you could maybe catch your foot in. Once, a few years back, an ankylosaurus had wandered down Yew Street, but Ma Hoffman had chased it with a broom, and it had lolloped off into the hills. Apart from these little anomalies, the generator kept things pretty much as the people of Pleasant Gap wanted them.

Life in Pleasant Gap was safe, well regulated, but, to some, crushingly monotonous, and it was more than likely the monotony that started them having thoughts of moving out.

It was Billy who first brought it up. Billy liked people to call him Captain Oblivion, but most people called him Billy. It was a great disappointment. He felt his thin good looks and hard penetrating eyes merited a better tide. Billy was secretly very vain.

He and his buddy Reave were lying in the back room of McTurk’s Bar with the alphaset cranked up past euphoria. Reave was the stockier, more solid of the two. In another age he would have been a farmer. It was the middle of the day, nobody was about, and Billy was bored.

‘I’m bored.’

His voice was slurred. It was very hard to talk against an alphaset running at full power. Reave rolled over slowly, and pushed his long greasy hair out of his eyes.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘I’m bored.’

‘Bored?’

‘Bored.’

‘So let’s go down to the tracks, and watch the train come in.’

‘We must have watched the train come in maybe a thousand times.’

‘So? Let’s go watch it again.’

‘Who needs it?’

Reave shrugged and said nothing. Billy was always having these fits of discontent, it didn’t pay to take them too seriously. After a while another thought struck him.

‘We could go down to Miss Ettie’s.’

‘Why?’

‘I dunno, have a few drinks, get laid. It’s something to do.’

‘Maybe.’

There was another long silence, and then Billy stretched out and hit the off button on the alphaset, and their nervous systems came down with a bump.

‘Shit, what did you do that for?’

Billy sat up. He had that kind of crazy look that people get when they’ve been soaking up alphas for too long.

‘Let’s split.’

Reave scratched his leg.

‘That’s what I said. Let’s go down to Miss Ettie’s.’

‘I don’t mean go to Miss Ettie’s or the railroad track. Fuck Miss Ettie’s and the railroad track. I mean split the town, leave Pleasant Gap and go somewhere else.’

Reave frowned and scratched his head.

‘Yeah? Where? A man can get himself killed or lose his mind out there in the wild lands.’

Billy walked over to the window and stared out.

‘A man could lose his brain hanging out in a town, like this.’

Reave shrugged.

‘It’s easy enough, living in Pleasant Gap.’

Billy looked at Reave’s placid, easygoing face and began to get annoyed.

‘Sure it’s easy. It’s just that nothing happens. It just goes on, day after day.’

‘So what do you want to do about it?’

‘I want to get out of here.’

‘Why?’

‘There’s got to be something out there that’s better than this.’

Reave looked doubtful.

‘What?’

Billy shrugged.

‘How the fuck should I know until I find it?’

‘So you want to set off looking for something, and you don’t know what it is?’

‘Right.’

‘And you want me to come with you?’

‘If you want to.’

‘You’ve got to be crazy.’

‘Maybe. Are you going to come?’

Reave hesitated for a moment, hitched up his dungarees and grinned.

‘When do we leave?’

They spent the rest of the day going round town telling their friends and buddies that they were leaving. Their friends and buddies shook their heads and told them that they were crazy. After they’d left, the friends and buddies all shook their heads and told each other that Billy and Reave had always been no good.

Billy and Reave finally wound up at Miss Ettie’s Sporting House, saying a special goodbye to some of the whores. The whores looked at them thoughtfully, but didn’t shake their heads and say they were crazy.

The next morning saw them bright and early inside Eli’s Store, clutching their final payments from the Welfare Bank. Eli shuffled out from behind the counter rubbing his hands together.

‘Hear you boys are leaving town.’

‘That’s right, Mister Eli.’

‘Nobody leaves this town, can’t recall anybody leaving in years.’

‘We’re going to do it, Mister Eli.’

‘Rather you than me, boys. It’s supposed to be pretty dangerous out there. You wouldn’t catch me going out into the wild lands. A couple of years ago a drifter came in on the train …’

Billy interrupted.

‘The train doesn’t go anywhere, Mister Eli. It just goes round in a circle.’

Eli appeared not to hear. Nobody in town was sure whether Eli was deaf, or just didn’t want to listen to anything that conflicted with his own ideas.

‘This old boy came in on the train, and the stories he told. You can’t count on nothing out there. If you drop something you can’t even count on it falling to the ground, you won’t even know if the ground is going to be there from one minute to the next.’

Billy grinned.

‘We’ll take a chance on it, Mister Eli.’

Eli stroked his bald head.

‘That’s as maybe, but I can’t stand here all day chatting with you boys. Did you want something?’

Billy nodded patiently.

‘We want some stuff, Mister Eli, we want some stuff for our trip.’

Eli shuffled vaguely round the store.

‘Plenty of stuff here, boys. That’s what I’m here for. Stuff’s my business.’

Billy and Reave wandered up and down the shelves and displays, picking things up and dumping them on the counter.

‘One leather jacket, two pairs of jeans, two shoulder bags, a pair of cowboy boots.’

‘You got any camping rations?’

The old man stacked a pile of packets on the counter.

‘How about stasis machines? You got a couple of porta-pacs?’

Eli peered at a high shelf.

‘Don’t have much call for them.’

Billy began to get impatient.

‘Have you got any?’

‘Don’t take that tone with me, lad. I think I’ve maybe two of them somewhere.’

He picked up two chrome boxes about the size of a half pound box of chocolates, and blew the dust off them.

‘I knew I had some somewhere. Is there anything else?’

‘Yeah. You got any guns?’

‘Guns? I haven’t been asked for a gun in a long time. I’ve got some shotguns, and a couple of sporting rifles.’

Reave glanced at Billy.

‘I don’t much fancy toting a rifle all over the place.’

Billy looked at Eli.

‘You got any hand guns?’

Eli scratched his head.

‘I think I’ve got a couple of reproduction Navy Colts somewhere in the back.’

The old man shuffled out. Billy looked round the store. Its dark, dusty, cluttering interior seemed to stand for everything that was driving him to leave Pleasant Gap. Old Eli came back holding a pair of long-barrelled revolvers from another age. He placed them on the counter beside the other things. He reached under the counter.

‘I’ve got two belts here. They have holsters that will take the guns, and some sort of do-hickey that will hold the porta-pacs. Reckon you’ll need them.’

Billy picked up one of the belts, strapped it round his hips, and picked up one of the pistols. He spun it on his index finger, dropped it into the holster, and drew it in a single fluid motion. He grinned at Reave.

‘Neat, huh?’

Reave nodded.

‘Neat.’

Billy turned back to Eli.

‘Okay old man, how much is all this stuff?’

Eli stood calculating under his breath.

‘Three hundred and seventeen, boys.’

Billy pulled a roll of notes out of his shirt pocket.

‘We’ll give you three hundred. Call it a cash discount.’

Eli grunted.

‘You’d make a poor man of me, but I’ll do it, seeing as how you’re leaving.’

Billy handed the old man three one hundred bills.

‘Nice to do business with you, old man.’

They stuffed the food, spare clothes and ammunition into the shoulder bags and strapped the gun belts round their hips. Billy pulled on his new cowboy boots, and shrugged into his leather jacket.

‘How do I look, Reave old buddy?’

‘Heavy.’

Billy pushed his fingers through his curly black hair.

‘Just one more thing, old man. You got any sunglasses?’

Eli placed a pair of dark glasses on the counter.

‘You can have those, son. Call them a going away present.’

Billy grinned.

‘Thanks, Mister Eli.’

He put the glasses on. They seemed to make his pale face look even sharper under the mass of black hair.

‘I guess we’re about ready.’

Reave nodded.

‘It looks like it.’

‘So long, Mister Eli,’

Eli shook his head.

‘You boys have got to be crazy.’

***

She/They floated free across the smooth chequered plane of Her/Their control zone. The light, ordered by Her/Their passing, shone brightly but without apparent source, casting no shadows except for a pale smudge below where Her/Their feet hung over the smooth surface.

Slowly She/They drifted forward, and although no other being heard, the motion was silent, and although no one watched, She/They adopted the regular triple form. The Trinity. The three identical women, who looked as one and moved as one. Their slim erect figures were concealed by the white ankle-length cloaks that swayed gently with their motion, each in identical folds to the other two. Her/Their heads were encased in silver helmets with high crests and plates that curved round to cover the nose and cheek bones, leaving dark slits through which Her/Their eyes glittered steadily.

The control plain stretched, in regular dividing squares, uniformly to the horizon. Overhead the sky was bright, cloudless and a perfect white. Only a faint, tumbling, distant haze where sky and plain met gave evidence that Her/Their power to control was finite, limited by distance, and around the zone were the twisting chaos fringes.

She/They halted and appeared to gaze intently at a point on the dark, twisting fringe. At the point of Her/Their gaze the dark area appeared to expand, stretch out into the plain and rise a little into the sky.

‘Disruption.’ The word seemed to hang in the air displacing the silence.

‘Possible rupture,’ a phrase took its place.

‘Freudpheno possible.’

The structure of the turbulence at the horizon changed; it began to revolve forming an almost regular circle. The centre of the circle began to assume spatial depth. The silence that had resumed after the passing of the word was filled by a low hum that seemed to originate from the growing tube on the horizon.

More words cut across the hum.

‘Freudpheno imminent.’

The hum grew louder, became a roar, and suddenly, straight from the mouth of the tunnel rushed a herd of rhinoceroses, close packed and charging straight for the triple form of Her/Them. The surface of the plain trembled under the rhinos’ armoured weight. In their wake the fabric of the zone rose in boiling moiré patterns.

The centre unit of Her/Them raised the hand that held the energy wand. A yellow stinger of light flashed towards the rhinoceroses, who slowed to a halt and stood for a moment blinking, and then turned and trotted back the way they had come.

She/They lowered the energy wand, and watched as the animals disappeared back into the fringes. More words occupied the silence of the zone.

‘Freudpheno returns.’

‘Disruption at fringe still gains level.’

‘Suspect proximate disturb module.’

The frenzied churning on the horizon continued to grow and even gradually advance into the zone. In the centre of the turbulence a solid cylindrical object appeared. Slowly it began to advance into the zone.

‘Confirm disturb module.’

The module moved out into the zone, its blue metalflake body half buried in the surface of the plain. Its front end was an open intake that sucked in the fabric of the zone as it slid towards Her/Them. Behind it, it left a trail of swirling chaos that stretched back to merge with the fringes.

She/They again raised the energy wand. The module came steadily towards Her/Them, like an open-mawed reptile cutting through the surface of the plain, its smooth, shining sides reflecting the swirling colours of its wake. The stinging of yellow light flashed again, but had no appreciable effect on the machine. The thin path of light widened to a broad band. The metalflake skin of the module changed from blue to a pale green, but it still kept on coming. The yellow band of light hardened into a deep flaming red. The module became a shining grey/white, but still maintained its steady forward motion.

She/They experienced the novelty of horror as the band of light from the energy wand was forced, inexorably, up through the spectrum. Yellow, green, blue and finally violet, then fading and vanishing altogether.

The module was upon Her/Them.

As its gaping mouth engulfed Her/Them, the zone twisted and became unrecognizable. She/They was sucked into the interior of the module, losing form as Her/Their structure flowed and twisted, falling simultaneously in any number of directions, down through tunnels that squirmed in downward Möbius patterns, glowing with shifting pink, and faced with a soft cosmic tuck and roll.

She/They had never before been caught in the path of a module, and found Her/Their self fighting against patterns that threatened to destroy the integration of Her/Their fabric.

Desperately She/They pulled into a rough sphere to best withstand the pressures. As She/They managed to retain a grasp on Her/Their structure, the tunnels abruptly vanished, and, in total darkness, waves of hard energy washed over Her/Them. The environment seemed to contract and there was a sensation of falling, then suddenly everything mapped, and a phrase filled Her/Their consciousness.

‘Folksymbol.’

She/They was standing in a hot dusty street which was lined with wooden buildings. She/They was in a male structure and wearing a rough cotton shirt, denim trousers and heavy boots. Facing Her/Them was a man, similarly dressed, his eyes shaded by a wide-brimmed black hat. His arm hung loosely beside a heavy gun that was strapped to his right thigh.

‘Reach, stranger!’

Her/Their hand, a man’s hand, calloused and sunburned, clutched for the similar weapon that hung from Her/Their belt.

The male’s gun was already in his hand, there was a roar as it fired. She/They tried desperately to rearrange Her/Their fabric as the metal projectile tore through it. The experience of pain clouded Her/Their consciousness, preventing the energy buildup needed to shift out of the collective illusion of a Folksymbol. The shift was impossible, but the wooden buildings did begin to fade, and the blue of the sky took on the swirls of chaos. The male figure that She/They had been forced into began to dissolve.

In its place, amid the pale ghost of the Western township, She/They reverted to the triple form. Two standing erect, while one lay crumpled in the dust.

***

Billy and Reave stepped off the railroad track and started up the bare grey hillside. It was easy to see where the field of the Pleasant Gap generator stopped. All along a curved line the ground boiled and fell away into a blue-grey smoke. The clear air inside the field also became a swirling, multi-coloured mist. Billy and Reave walked up to the line and hesitated.

‘Do you just step into it?’

‘It’s like stepping off the edge of the world.’

‘I don’t like it.’

‘We can’t go back now. The porta-pacs should hold things together.’

They turned up the gain of the machines on their belts and, side by side, stepped into the shimmering fog.

The porta-pac doesn’t hold things together much beyond the area immediately around the carrier, even when it’s turned up. Billy and Reave found that the fog in front of their faces turned into about a foot of clear air, and a patch of solid ground formed each time they set a foot down. They could breathe, walk and even talk to each other, although their voices sounded muffled and distant. Reave looked at Billy in alarm.

‘How the hell do we know where we’re going?’

Billy looked round at the shimmering fog and shrugged his shoulders.

‘We don’t know where we’re going so we can only go on until we find something else.’

‘Suppose we don’t find anything?’

‘Then we’ll just walk round for ever.’

Reave was about to call Billy crazy, but then he thought better of it and shut his mouth.

They trudged through the bright flickering mist. There was no sense of time, and no indication that they were going anywhere. For all they knew, they might have been walking on a treadmill. The only changes in the total sameness were occasional shifts in the direction of gravity, which pitched them on their side like a sudden pile-driving wind. It was painful and annoying, but comforting in the way that the porta-pacs always seemed to be able to produce enough solid ground for them to fall on, even though it wasn’t sometimes in exactly the right place.

Although they might have no sense of time, Billy and Reave realized they were progressively collecting an array of bruises and small cuts. Reave sucked his barked knuckles and spat into the haze.

‘I sure wish I was leaning at the bar in Miss Ettie’s. I’ll tell you that for nothing.’

Billy plodded on.

‘Miss Ettie’s ain’t even open yet.’

Reave looked at him in amazement.

‘What do you mean, not open? We’ve got to have been walking all day. It must be about evening.’

‘I don’t figure we’ve been walking for more than an hour.’

Reave looked round bitterly at the changing colours.

‘A day or an hour, what’s the difference in this stuff? I don’t figure there’s anything else at all. Pleasant Gap’s the only place left anywhere.’

Billy turned and scowled at him.

‘What about Stuff Central, what about that, huh? That’s got to exist somewhere.’

‘Stuff Central? Is that what you’re looking for?’

‘Course it ain’t, but it proves there’s something else besides Pleasant Gap. Right?’

‘It don’t guarantee that we’ll find it, though.’

Billy looked at Reave in disgust, and plodded on. Reave spat again, and hurried after him. They plodded on and on. The reality of their life began to look like a half-remembered dream. It was as though they’d been walking through the nothings for ever.

Just as despair was starting to edge its way into Billy’s mind, he put his foot on something that was uneven. He looked down, and saw blades of green grass. He stopped and bent down. It was grass. He grinned up at Reave.

‘It’s grass, man! It’s grass, growing on the bit of ground around my foot.’

‘You’ve cracked up.’

‘No, no, it’s real.’

Billy picked one of the short blades, and passed it to Reave, who turned it over slowly between his fingers.

‘Sure looks like grass.’

‘It is fucking grass. Listen, here’s what we do, take two more steps forward, kind of carefully, and I’ve got a feeling we’ll find something.’

Hand in hand, they took the first step. There was more grass at their feet, extending out for maybe four feet. They took a second step, and then a third, and they came out of the coloured nothings.

They were standing on a grassy slope that rose in front of them. Billy fell to his knees and rolled on the ground.

‘We made it! We made it!’

Reave sat down and pulled at the straps of his bag.

‘Want a beer?’

‘You got some beers?’

‘Sure, I nicked a six-pack while old Eli was out back.’

‘That was sharp. Yeah, I’d really like a beer.’

Reave pulled out two cans of beer, and passed one to Billy. Billy turned it over, looking at the label - Tree Frog Beer, the fat green frog squatting under the red lettering, grinning at you. For the first time Billy knew there was something called homesickness.

After a couple of moments, though, he snapped out of that particularly unique depression, pulled the ring on the can and gulped down the beer. When it was finished he wiped his mouth and flung the can at the wall of nothing. As it hit the mist the can melted, smoked and became nothing itself. Reave grunted.

‘That’s what’d happen to us if we didn’t have no stasis generators.’

‘Better not get caught without one.’

Billy stood up.

‘Guess we better find out where we are.’

The sky above them was a uniform shining white without either sun or clouds. The air was warm, clear and still. The grass slope ran upwards for a matter of yards and then stopped at some kind of summit. Billy scrambled up it and, once at the top, turned and shouted down to Reave.

‘It’s a road, man. A goddamn road!’

‘A road?’

Reave scrambled up to join him. The road ran flat and dead straight as far as they could see in either direction, a wide, six-lane highway. It was made out of a smooth composition material with a grassy central reservation. On either side were more banks of grass, like the one that Reave and Billy had stumbled upon. Beyond that there were the walls of shimmering nothing.

After prowling around for a few minutes, Billy and Reave came back to the central strip of grass.

‘So what do we do? Start walking?’

Billy stared down the seemingly endless strip of highway.

‘It looks a mite far to walk.’

‘What do we do then?’

Billy sat down on the grass, and tilted his dark glasses forward.

‘Just sit here a while, take it easy and wait. I reckon somebody’s got to use this road, and when they come by, we’ll try and beg a ride.’

Reave looked doubtful.

‘We could wait a good long time.’

Billy shook his head lazily.

‘I don’t think so. Nobody builds a big old road like this, and then doesn’t use it. That stands to reason.’

‘Maybe.’

Reave sat down on the grass but still looked uncomfortable. Billy punched him on the arm.

‘Come on, man. Relax, it’s warm, we’re out of that fucking fog, what more do you want? This is an adventure and we ain’t in any hurry to get anywhere.’

He rummaged in his bag and pulled out a ration bar, snapped it in half and handed one of the halves to Reave.

‘Have something to eat and take it easy. Something’ll come by sooner or later.’

Reave munched on the food bar and stretched out on the grass beside Billy, feeling a bit more comfortable. Just as the two men were drifting off to sleep, they heard a humming way off in the distance. Billy sat up and shook Reave by the shoulder.

‘Something’s coming.’

Reave rubbed his eyes and looked around.

‘Which way’s it coming from?’

Billy listened intently.

‘I don’t know, it’s hard to tell. It must be a good way off.’

Gradually, the humming grew louder, and a tiny speck appeared far off in the distance. The hum became a high whine which took on more body as it came closer. From a small speck, the object got bigger until Billy and Reave saw it was a huge truck bearing down on them. They jumped about and waved frantically, but the truck sped past them in a flash of chrome exhausts and black and white paint job. Then huge red warning lights flashed at the back and it screeched to a stop, about two hundred yards down the road. Billy and Reave started running and the truck started to back up. They met each other halfway, and a skinny little guy with a shaggy crewcut, long sideburns and a face like a shifty lizard, leaned down from a small door high up in the cab.

‘Wanna lift?’

The truck was a huge semi, with an immaculate matt black paint job on the cab and huge bonnet, it was trimmed in white. Huge chrome blowers reared from the top of the hood, and all the accessories, the wind horns, the military spots mounted high on the cab, the headlights on the fenders were also chrome. The sides of the trailer were of matt finish aluminium, and JETSTREAM WILLIE was lettered on the cab door.

Reave and Billy climbed up the steel ladder on the side of the truck and ducked inside the cab. The driver sat in a high bucket seat behind a huge steering wheel. The dash panel was a mass of instruments. A pair of rabbit’s feet on a thin silver chain dangled from the top of the windscreen. There was a long bench seat, upholstered in white leather with black piping, beside the driver’s seat. Reave and Billy sat down on it. Billy grinned up at the driver.

‘Some truck.’

The little lizard guy threw the truck into gear.

‘Sure is. Seven speed, four pod 5-0-9, blown through. Hits three hundred when I floor her.’

He went through the gears like a master, and was soon at a speed that made Billy and Reave dizzy. Billy swallowed and grinned again.

‘Is that your name painted on the side?’

‘Sure is. Jetstream Willie, that’s me.’

He swivelled round in his seat to show them the same lettering on the back of his black leather jump suit, and the truck swerved so alarmingly that Reave and Billy grabbed for the edge of their seats. Jetstream Willie laughed and accelerated even more.

‘Where you boys from?’

‘Pleasant Gap.’

‘I never heard of a place of that name, not on the road.’

‘It’s not on the road.’

‘Whadda you mean it’s not on the road? If it ain’t on the road, then how the fuck did you get here?’

Billy pointed out to the side of the truck.

‘We walked through the grey stuff.’

‘Through the nothings? That ain’t possible.’

Billy held up his porta-pac.

‘Had these.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Miniature generator.’

Jetstream Willie shook his head in disbelief.

‘You two got to be crazy.’

Without waiting for an answer, he punched a button on the dash, and country and western music blared from concealed stereo speakers.

‘ “Ring of Fire” by Johnny Cash. Finest music the world ever known.’

Billy and Reave both nodded. They didn’t know what the hell he was talking about. The truck seemed to be going at a suicidal speed, but Jetstream Willie held the wheel with one hand and went right on talking.

‘So where are you crazy guys headed?’

‘Anywhere. We’re just drifting.’

‘Drifting, hey? Long time since I picked up any drifters. I can take you as far as Graveyard.’

Reave looked puzzled.

‘What’s Graveyard?’

He found he had to shout to make himself heard abave the roar of the engine, and the country music. Jetstream Willie looked amazed.

‘You don’t know what Graveyard is? You must have come out of the nothings. Graveyard’s the end of the road, It’s the truck stop. It’s the wheelfreaks’ paradise. That’s where I got my camper, and that’s where my little woman is, just a-waiting for me to come back. A-waiting in that them transparent neglig-ay that she got from the Stuff catalogue. A-waiting to give me something hot with my dinner, or, at least, she better be, or I’ll kill the bitch.’

Reave waited until the tide of poetry had stopped.

‘What’s a wheelfreak?’

Jetstream Willie looked shocked.

‘You asking what a wheelfreak is? You don’t know nothing. You’re looking at one. Us wheelfreaks are the lords of creation. We’re the boys who ride these rigs, we’re the only ones who got the balls. We haul them from Graveyard clear down to no man’s land.’

‘What do you carry in these trucks?’

‘Carry? We don’t carry nothing. Ain’t nothing in the back of here ‘cept one ol’ big generator. How else do you think we keep this road together, wouldn’t stop turning into nothing for an hour if we weren’t gunning these ol’ boys up and down.’

He fumbled in the pocket of his leather jacket and produced a green plastic box, and popped a little white pill into his mouth.

‘Yes sir, there wouldn’t be no road or nothing if it wasn’t for us, I can tell you.’

He offered the box to Reave and Billy.

‘Have a benny.’

Each of them dutifully took a pill and settled back in his seat. They didn’t want to ask any more fool questions, and risk upsetting a lord of creation.

Another truck flashed past in the opposite lane, going in the other direction. Briefly, as it passed, all its lights came on, and it shone like a Christmas tree. Jetstream Willie hit buttons on the dash, and his own lights came on in reply.

‘That’s Long Sam. He’s a good ol’ boy.’

Jetstream Willie cut the lights, and pointed to a set of sockets on the dash panel.

‘If you want to recharge them portables of yours, you could try plugging them in there, takes power from the engine.’

Reave and Billy unclipped the pacs from their belts and did as he indicated. Willie seemed to have lost interest in them because he now stared straight in front of him, and sang along with the music. It consisted of the same song, over and over again.

After an hour of this, by the dash panel clock, he swung the truck on to a slip road. Without apparently slackening speed, he jockeyed the truck up a steep ramp and out on to a huge expanse of flat, smooth, concrete. He cut the engine and let it roll to a stop at the end of a line of about a dozen other huge baroque vehicles. They were of the same general shape and massive size, but each was unique in its elaborate design and paintwork.

Jetstream Willie caught them staring at a vast gold monster with black trim and enormous balloon tyres.

‘That’s Dirty Marv’s, sure is a fine-looking machine, but it’s all show and no go. I can shut him down with a ten minute head start before he’s even hit the quarter line.’

They unplugged the porta-pacs, gathered up their bags and swung down from the cab. The truck still seemed to hum slightly, and Reave looked at it curiously. Jetstream Willie provided the answer.

‘Always leave the generator on, all helps to keep things straight.’

At first sight Graveyard looked like one huge parking lot surrounded by buildings, and that, in fact, was what it was. Far over on one side was a row of trailers, with smoke curling up from chimneys and lines of washing hanging out to dry. They were dwarfed by the odd truck that was parked among them. On the other side of the lot, right by where Jetstream Willie had parked, was an immensely long single-storey building made of glass and chrome that stretched for a whole side of the roughly square lot. On its flat roof was mounted a huge replica of an ice-cream soda, which rose into the air for sixty or seventy feet. The cherry on the top was illuminated from inside, and it flashed on and off like a beacon. Flashing in time with the cherry was a red and yellow neon sign that occupied most of the rest of the roof, and spelled out the words Vito’s Cozy Drop-In in twelve-foot letters. It was towards this structure that Jetstream Willie led. As they pushed through the revolving glass door, Willie looked at them warmly.

‘You better keep yourselves to yourselves in here, some of the boys might not take too kindly to the way you look.’

The Cozy Drop-In was decorated in black and orange plastic. There were lines and lines of tables and seats. A bunch of men, all with similar suits and cropped haircuts to Willie’s, queued at a long counter waiting to be served by a team of blonde girls with jutting breasts and short yellow tunics. Willie pointed at a table away over in the corner.

‘You best go and sit yourselves down there, and I’ll bring you something over.’

Reave and Billy did as they were told, while Jetstream Willie joined the other men in a flurry of back slapping and hee-haw laughter. Like their trucks, the wheelfreaks’ suits were all basically similar, but each one had its own colour and design.

While they waited for Willie to come back, Billy and Reave looked cautiously round the room. One end of it was dominated by a vast juke box, as tall as a man and maybe eight feet across. Coloured lights kept changing the patterns of reflections on its elaborate chrome face and it seemed to be playing the same ‘Ring of Fire’ record that Willie had had in the truck. Another wall was filled by a row of pinball machines, but again they were much larger than anything that Billy and Reave had ever seen. Instead of standing in front of it, the player sat in a kind of pilot’s chair that had complex flipper controls set in the arms.

Jetstream Willie came back with a tray of coffee and donuts. He banged them down on the orange plastic top of the table.

‘Here you go, get some of that down you.’

He jerked his thumb towards the waitress who had served him.

‘There’s a hot little number. Sure like to crawl into her jeans.’

He winked and pushed a hand into the leg pocket of his suit.

‘Might as well put a kick into this here coffee.’

He produced a bottle wrapped in brown paper. Reave looked at it curiously.

‘What’s that?’

Willie grinned and touched the side of his nose with his index finger.

‘Good ol’ crank-case gin. Put hairs on your chest.’

He topped up each coffee cup, and Reave and Billy both took a tentative sip. They coughed as the raw spirit hit their throats.

‘Strong stuff that.’

Jetstream Willie winked.

‘Sure is.’

He gulped down his coffee in one, took a bite at a donut, and then a hit from the bottle.

‘Listen, boys, can’t hang round here all day. Got my little woman waiting there at home.’

He stood up.

‘See you both later.’

‘Yeah, thanks for the lift.’

‘That’s okay, see you all.’

They watched him walk away. It was strangely sad, somewhere beneath the wheelfreaks’ frenetic confidence there seemed to be something doomed. Billy and Reave looked at each other, and there was a long silence. Then Reave let out his breath.

‘So what do we do now?’

Billy shrugged.

‘Hang round Graveyard and see what turns up. I don’t have any ideas.’

As it happened, something turned up before they’d even finished their coffee.

A huge fat man in a scarlet leather suit with blue and white stars and the words Charlie Mountain in white across the back, sauntered over and placed a heavy boot on the seat beside Reave.

‘You the boys that came in with Jetstream Willie?’

They both nodded.

‘Yeah, what of it?’

Charlie Mountain put two huge hands on the table and leaned forward threateningly.

‘It’s lucky that you came in with Willie, else we’d be doing something about you right now. As it is, I wouldn’t stay too long if I was you. You don’t fit in around here, we don’t need your kind in Graveyard. You know what I mean?’

Billy and Reave said nothing, and Charlie Mountain straightened up and strolled away. They looked round and saw that every eye in the place was on them. Reave leaned close to Billy.

‘Let’s get the fuck out of here. I don’t like this.’

‘Yeah, you’re right, but take it easy. We want to do it with class. If we run, they’ll probably come after us.’

Billy leaned back in his seat, took a small thin cigar out of his pocket and lit it. He signalled to Reave.

‘Okay, let’s go.’

Slowly, they both stood up and walked carefully towards the revolving doors. Just as they reached them, one of the wheelfreaks sounded off behind them.

‘Will you guys just look at those sweet things!’

Billy and Reave were left in no doubt as to who was being talked about. They hurried through the swing doors and out on to the lot. The white sky was still as bright and shining as it had been when they’d first come out on to the highway. They were both tired and Reave began to wonder if there was any day or night in this truckers’ paradise. Billy put on his dark glasses, and they walked across the lot.

***

A.A. Catto hadn’t slept at all that night and now watched the sun come up through the clear bubble of the roof garden. It was only fitting that the Con Lec tower generator could produce day and night. It was a pity that after a while even that became tedious. She turned her back on the view and trailed her silver nails in the water of the fountain.

It was very quiet in the roof garden. The only sound that could be heard was that of the dying party in the mirror room. Somewhere in that party was De Roulet Glick. He was aching to have her again, and as far as she was concerned he could ache. She had made the mistake of sleeping with him once, about a year earlier, and he disgusted her by talking too much and coming too quickly. She had no reason to suppose a second time would be any improvement.

The sounds from the party increased, it seemed as though they were coming out into the roof garden. A.A. Catto retreated towards the rose bushes that concealed the lift entrance, and pressed the call button. The voices grew louder. She thought she heard Glick. The lift doors opened with a hiss, and she stepped inside. Behind her Glick called out.

‘A.A., wait a moment.’

She laughed as the lift doors closed on his stupid, eager face.

Inside her apartment she unsnapped the metallic dress she had worn for the party and stepped into the shower. The needle jets seemed to wash the tiredness out of her body, and after the warm air vents had dried her, she stepped out and looked at herself in the full-length mirror.

There was no mistaking the fact that her body and face were almost perfect. It was little wonder that fools like Glick fell over themselves to try and get to her. The only trouble with her perfection was that no one man in the five families could in any way match her desirability. She was wanted, but for the most part she didn’t want. Even the guests that arrived from the other citadels usually amounted to little more than a temporary exploration. A brief period of amusement that usually proved to be indistinguishable from all the others.

She pulled on a robe and debated with herself whether to remain awake for the rest of the day, or to sleep until evening. She picked up a small ornate case from a side table and looked at the two injectors; dormax, which would guarantee her eight hours’ uninterrupted sleep, and altacaine, the alternative shot that would see she remained lively and talkative until late the following night.

The problem was that if she did decide to use the altacaine and stay up all day, what exactly was there to stay awake for? She walked over to the entertainment console and punched up the day’s social programme. It was the usual round of talk, consumption of drink and drugs, and sexual assignations. Nobody was even putting on any kind of show or amusement, not even so much as bringing up a pair of sturdy L-4s to fight or copulate with each other. It looked like a blank day. Nobody seemed to have any imagination left.

Idly she wondered if anything was going on in the outside world, and reset the console to the newsfax channel. It was mainly concerned with the firestorm. That had been amusing a few days earlier when it had actually threatened Akio-Tech, but now that it was confined to L-4 dwellings it was no longer the least bit interesting.

She left the console chattering to itself and stepped out into the perspex blister that served her as a balcony.

Far beneath her was the ugly mess of shacks and ancient buildings that were the warrens of the L-4s. Maybe if they caught fire it would brighten up the day, but at the moment, the city looked safe and tranquil under its blanket of filth.

The outside had once filled her with fascination, there had been the abortive plan that she had hatched with Juno Meltzer to disguise themselves as L-4 prostitutes and slip out into the city, but the details became too complicated, and the plan had been abandoned. With the dropping of that scheme, most of her interest in life among the L-4s had faded.

She wandered back into her day-room. The console was now muttering about population figures and she cut it off. In the act of turning the switch she came to a decision. If nothing was going to happen that day, the best solution was to shut it out. She picked up the dormax injector and walked into the bedroom. She adjusted the circular bed to a light vibration, slipped out of her robe, turned the temperature setting to sleep and lay down. She pressed the injector against her thigh, and squeezed the release. There was a cold tingling as the minute droplets penetrated the pores of her skin, and then consciousness began to fade.

***

We’ve all heard the legends that have grown up around the Minstrel Boy. Now the troubles are over, and the natural laws have been brought back, we tend to think of him as the romantic figure of the movies, off on his journey singing stories and telling poems through the length and breadth of the troubled lands.

Of course, the Minstrel Boy did exist, and he was even something like the artists depict him, the blue jeans and the black fur-trimmed jacket, the pale intense face with its sunken cheeks and large, penetrating eyes. When Billy and Reave first saw him in the parking lot at Graveyard, he looked more scuzzy than romantic. His clothes were dirty rather than funky, and his mouth, so sensitive in the paintings, was weak and petulant. He did have the dark glasses, though, much the same as Billy’s, and the halo of light brown hair. He had the legendary silver guitar, too, slung over his shoulder, but even that caused confusion.

He was always telling people that it was an original National Steel, which would have made it incalculably old, whereas in fact it was only a Stuff Kustom Kopy, like Billy’s and Reave’s pistols. It was immediately clear from looking at the guitar that it couldn’t be an original. It had a porta-pac built into the back.

The problem with the Minstrel Boy was that he was an inveterate liar, who generated legends about as quietly as he generated songs.

When Billy and Reave first saw him he was standing beside an electric blue metalflake monster trying to hustle the driver for a lift. The wheelfreak wasn’t having any, and replied with an obscene gesture. The Minstrel Boy shrugged and wandered away. Reave and Billy caught up with him.

‘You trying to get out of this place?’

The Minstrel Boy looked suspicious.

‘Yeah, it ain’t healthy, but what’s that to you?’

The Minstrel Boy was also very paranoid. Billy and Reave fell into step beside him.

‘We were just asking because we’ve got to split too. We just got run out of Vito’s Cozy Drop-In.’

The Minstrel Boy twitched.

‘You should have known better than to go in there in the first place.’

There was a short awkward silence while they stood on the lot and wondered what to say next. Billy felt strangely drawn to the pale, desperate young man. He also felt challenged by the apparent lack of interest in either him or Reave. He didn’t know it was one of the Minstrel Boy’s most successful techniques for getting people under his influence. Finally Reave waved his hand in the direction of the line of parked trucks.

‘What are the chances of getting a lift?’

‘Slightly worse than the odds against getting your head broke for asking. I been trying for hours and I’m still here.’

‘Is there any other way out of Graveyard except for riding a truck?’

The Minstrel Boy scratched his ribs, and pulled a face.

‘I was coming round to thinking that maybe I was going to have to walk.’

Billy looked surprised.

‘Walk? Walk where? I thought there was only the road, down to no man’s land.’

‘Well, I sure as hell don’t want to go there, and even if I did, I sure wouldn’t walk that far. No, you been talking to truckers. They always forget about the old road. They can’t hold it together, and they can’t run down it, so they don’t think about it.’

Billy frowned.

‘You mean the wheelfreaks didn’t make the road?’

The Minstrel Boy looked at Billy as though he was looking at an idiot.

‘ ‘Course the wheelfreaks didn’t make the road. The road’s been there for ever. They just hold it together. There’s this other bit of road that goes on from here, it ruptures in places, but it goes right through to the plain.’

‘The plain? What’s the plain?’

The Minstrel Boy shuddered.

‘Don’t even talk about it. The only good thing about the plain is that the town of Dogbreath is in the middle of it, and you can get a stage from it. That’s only a good thing, though, because everything else is bad.’

Reave looked anxious.

‘Could we make it that way?’

The Minstrel Boy stared at the two of them speculatively.

‘Maybe. I doubt if anyone could do it on their own, but three of us might, particularly when you’ve got those fancy guns. Can you use them?’

‘Sure.’

Billy whipped out his gun, spun it and dropped it back into its holster. The trick made Billy feel that he was back on to a level with the Minstrel Boy. He might know more than Billy, but Billy was armed. It was Billy’s turn to look speculative.

‘Maybe the three of us should travel together?’

He turned to Reave and winked.

‘You want to travel with this guy, brother?’

Reave shrugged.

‘Maybe. I don’t see no reason why we shouldn’t.’

The Minstrel Boy’s eyes flickered from Reave to Billy and back again.

‘Who says that I want to travel with you guys?’

‘You said one man couldn’t do it on his own.’

‘I never said whether I wanted to make it.’

‘You don’t want to get stuck inside of Graveyard.’

‘Okay, okay. We’ll travel together. There’s no other way, we all know it. What are you two called, anyway? If I’m going to cross the plain with you, I might as well know your names.’

Billy grinned.

‘I’m Billy, and he’s Reave.’

‘Glad to know you.’

‘And what’s your name?’

‘People call me the Minstrel Boy.’

‘So now we know each other, shall we get started?’

They walked across the parking lot and down the slip road. Billy walked slightly in front, while Reave walked with the Minstrel Boy, telling him about life in Pleasant Gap, and their walk through the nothings.

They started down the road, and after about a mile, Billy stopped and looked at the Minstrel Boy.

‘How long before the Graveyard field stops?’

The Minstrel Boy tried to explain.

‘It ain’t like it actually stops. This ain’t like the nothings. It kind of holds together in a way, only there are sort of holes in it. You know? You could maybe get right through without any kind of stasis machine, but it would be better to turn them on now, to be on the safe side. It’ll save anyone who falls in a hole.’

They all halted, turned up the gain on their porta-pacs, and then walked on. After about another mile, they came across an elliptical hole in the surface of the highway. It was about four feet across, although the edges shimmered and fluctuated slightly. There didn’t seem to be any bottom to the hole, and it was filled with a thin blue mist. Billy walked across and peered down into the hole. He glanced back at the Minstrel Boy.

‘Is this how the road starts to come apart?’

The Minstrel Boy nodded.

‘There’s more and more of them as you go on.’

Billy carefully placed one foot above the hole, and a piece of highway surface obediently appeared to receive his foot.

‘Lumps of the same nothing.’

They walked on, and the holes became more and more numerous. At times they had to thread their way along a flimsy network between a mass of openings. Despite their porta-pacs, they all tried their best to avoid stepping on the empty spaces.

After walking for a long time they came to a fairly clear section of road. The sky had changed from brilliant white to a dull metallic grey, and they found they were walking through a dim twilight. Reave stopped and dropped his bag.

‘I’m exhausted, for Christ’s sake let’s stop here for the night. It’s almost dark.’

Billy and the Minstrel Boy also stopped. The Minstrel Boy put down his guitar, and pushed his hair out of his eyes.

‘We might as well stop here, but don’t think it’s nightfall, it ain’t. That light the truckers use goes on twenty four hours a day, we’re just moving out of range of it. It’s always dark along this stretch.’

Reave shook his head.

‘I don’t care anymore. Let’s just stop here and sleep, I’m going to cave in any minute.’

Billy looked at the Minstrel Boy.

‘What’s the best way to sleep in this kind of country?’

The Minstrel Boy laughed.

‘You boys’d be lost without me. It’s simple. We hook up our three pacs in a series. That’ll give us a field big enough to sleep inside of.’

They coupled up the power pacs, piled up their belongings, and unstrapped their belts. Billy tucked his gun inside his jacket and lay down on the grass of the central island. It was hard and cold, and he drew his knees up to his chest. Just as he was convincing himself that it was impossible to sleep in those conditions, his consciousness drifted away.

Billy wasn’t sure what had woken him. He raised his head and looked around and saw to his surprise that the road was filled with people. He sat up in alarm, but none of them seemed to notice him.

It was a long column of people, men, women and children, hobbling and stumbling through the twilight. There were young and old, grandfathers limping on crutches, and young mothers holding clinging babies. Every one of them looked sick and exhausted. Their clothes were ragged and torn. They moved on and on past where Billy crouched, coming from the same direction as he and the others had come.

They looked neither left nor right. They just trudged on, staring at the ground. They made no attempt to avoid the holes, but walked straight over them as though they didn’t exist. Some pushed prams or carried suitcases, while others were bent under bundles on their backs. They came on and on in a never-ending, sluggish stream.

At intervals along the lines were armed guards on tall horses. They wore dark uniforms, and their faces were hidden by their steel helmets. Even the guards seemed bowed in their saddles, as if they too had travelled a terrible distance. Each time one of them passed him, Billy tried to make himself as small as possible, but although even in the twilight he must have been clearly visible, none of the guards seemed to notice him. The thing that really scared him was that both guards and prisoners seemed to have a strange, unnatural, ghostly translucence. Billy felt a cold sweat begin to trickle down his face and body. He stretched out a hand and shook the Minstrel Boy.

‘What’s happening?’

‘Ssh!’

Billy put a finger to his lips and pointed at the awful procession.

‘Look.’

‘Dear god.’

‘What is it?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t think I want to know.’

‘They don’t seem to be able to see us.’

‘Thank Christ for that.’

For what seemed like hours, Billy and the Minstrel Boy crouched shivering as the inhuman column moved past them.

When it was finally past, they waited a little longer and then woke Reave. He was reassuringly human as he bitched and complained, and gathered up his things.

The three of them divided up the rations from Eli’s Store, and washed them down with the last of Reave’s beer. Billy and the Minstrel Boy didn’t eat too much, but Reave appeared not to notice.

They disconnected the porta-pacs from each other, and hitched them back on their belts. The Minstrel Boy shouldered his guitar, Billy and Reave picked up their bags, and in single file they started down the gloomy highway.

***

Uttering a strange high sound like the keening of high-tension cables, She/They gathered up Her/Their fallen third in Her/Their arms, and slowly began to move forward.

‘Grief.’

‘Gather data, it is a unique situation.’

‘We are wounded.’

‘We are wounded.’

The wooden buildings of the township began to fade, and the multi-coloured mist flowed in its place. She/They noted that there was a greater density to the mist where there had been ground.

‘Chaos below total.’

‘Willeffort.’

The ground-mist became thicker, and the air-mist grew thinner. She/They continued to move slowly forward. The oppressive silence jangled with the presence of chaos. Even the words that filled it were blurred and indistinct. With a gesture of what might have been reluctance in a being of different form, the right-hand figure raised the energy wand. The mist around the figures was bathed in an orange glow. It twisted and swirled, and then began to fold in on itself, coiling into thick viscous strands that sluggishly settled to produce ground and air around the space where She/They hung suspended.

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

‘All potential reduced proportionally.’

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

‘Problem of continued existence.’

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

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

The words flipped rapidly through the silence.

‘Seek external source.’

***

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

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

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

‘So what do we have to worry about?’

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

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

‘It can be.’

‘So what do we have to look out for?’

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

‘You must have some idea.’

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

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

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

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

‘Okay.’

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

‘I’m still waiting.’

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

‘Sure I know what an animal is.’

‘No, no, an anomal.’

He spelled the word for Billy. Billy frowned.

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

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

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

‘So we’ve got to watch out for them?’

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

Billy frowned.

‘I don’t understand.’

The Minstrel Boy pursed his lips impatiently.

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

Billy nodded.

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

‘Something like that.’

Billy glanced round nervously.

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

The Minstrel Boy shook his head.

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

Billy fiddled with his belt.

‘I don’t know. That just don’t fit.’

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

Billy looked uncomfortable.

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

The Minstrel Boy nodded.

‘That’s about it.’

‘You think we should tell Reave about it?’

The Minstrel Boy shrugged.

‘You want to?’

Billy glanced at Reave plodding across the glowing plain.

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

They both hurried to catch up with Reave.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Minstrel Boy swung round on Billy and Reave.

‘Quick, let’s get out of here.’

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

‘What are they doing to him?’

The Minstrel Boy grimaced.

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

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

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

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

The Minstrel Boy spread his hands.

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

Reave shuddered, and hitched up his pack.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Sure are some weird people in this town.’

The Minstrel Boy took Reave by the arm.

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

Reave pointed back down the street.

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

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

Reave shrugged.

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

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

‘Okay.’

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

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

The Minstrel Boy glanced at him.

‘You happen to have any money?’

Billy grinned.

‘Sure, we got a bit left.’

‘Let’s go then.’

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

Billy hammered on the bar.

‘Can we have some drinks over here?’

‘Okay, okay, what do you want?’

‘Three beers to start off with.’

‘Three beers coming up.’

The bartender banged their mugs on the counter.

‘Twenty-one.’

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

‘What the fuck are these?’

Billy looked surprised.

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

The bartender began to look ugly.

‘What kind of money do you call this?’

‘Pleasant Gap money.’

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

She lay back down on the bed and rang for her personal Hostess. Moments later an almost too pretty blonde in tight pink covers stood in the doorway.

‘You rang, Miss?’

‘I’m hungry.’

‘You’d like to be served dinner here?’

‘Screw dinner, I only just woke up. I want breakfast.’

‘Shall I dial you a breakfast menu?’

A.A. Catto sat up and shook her head.

‘No, no. I’ll have orange juice, three poached eggs, wholemeal toast and coffee.’

The girl nodded.

‘Yes, Miss.’

A.A. Catto liked to order her food directly through servants rather than dial it for herself. She knew that the only time the girl would taste any of the menu would be if she stole her leftovers. The girl turned to go, but A.A. Catto called her back.

‘Tell me, girl, did you notice that I was naked?’

The girl coloured slightly and nodded.

‘Yes, Miss.’

‘You could hardly miss the fact?’

‘No, Miss.’

‘Do you like my body, girl?’

The girl blushed more.

‘Yes, Miss.’

‘Do you think it’s a beautiful body?’

‘Yes, Miss.’

‘More beautiful than your body?’

‘I think so, Miss.’

‘Yes? Why?’

‘Because you’re one of the directorate, Miss. The directorate are the most beautiful people in the whole citadel.’

A.A. Catto smiled. This girl had been well trained.

‘Tell me girl, would you like to touch my body? Would you like to handle it, play with it?’

The girl began to look frightened.

‘I think so, Miss. I think that would be a wonderful experience.’

Her training went deep. A.A. Catto laughed.

‘Well, you won’t get the chance. Go and get my breakfast.’

The girl hurried from the room. A.A. Catto stood up and reached for her robe. As she slipped into it, she smiled to herself. She really should try to resist baiting the servants, but it did relieve a few moments of boredom. She went back to the main console and punched for information. The screen flickered into life with the image of another pink uniformed Hostess-1. This time she was a brunette.

‘Information. May I help you?’

‘What’s happening?’

‘Tonight, Miss Catto?’

‘Not next year.’

‘Tonight the Glick family are giving a formal dinner for Cynara Meltzer at 22.00.’

A.A. Catto scowled at the screen.

‘Forget that. The Glicks are tiresome, Cynara Meltzer is tiresome, and the dinner will be tiresome. What else?’

‘At 24.00 there is to be a party given by Juno Meltzer.’

A.A. Catto raised an eyebrow.

‘Yes? Do you have any information as to what attractions she’s providing?’

‘No, Miss Catto, only that they are to be a surprise.’

A.A. Catto smiled. Juno Meltzer could be exceptionally wild at times. The surprises might even be surprising.

‘Anything else?’

‘I can get you the vu-screen schedules if you require them.’

A.A. Catto shook her head.

‘If that’s all, don’t bother.’

‘There is one thing, Miss Catto.’

‘What?’

‘I’m instructed to remind all callers that there is a full meeting of the directorate at 10.00 tomorrow.’

‘Yeah sure, you reminded me.’

She snapped off the screen, and wandered idly to the entrance of the balcony. It was almost dark outside, and the perspex blister gave a distorted reflection of herself and the lighted room.

There was a hiss behind her as the door slid open, and her Hostess-1 came in with the breakfast tray. She hesitated inside the doorway.

‘Would you like it here or in bed, Miss?’

‘Oh, I’ll go back to bed.’

The Hostess-1 nodded.

‘Yes, Miss.’

She carried the tray through into A.A. Catto’s bedroom, and A.A. Catto followed. She picked up the glass of orange juice and curled up on the bed.

‘Run my bath.’

‘Yes, Miss.’

‘And then come back to attend me. You can help me bath, it’ll be another chance for you to look at my body. You might even get the chance to touch it.’

‘Thank you, Miss.’

A.A. Catto laughed.

‘You’re very well trained.’

‘Miss?’

‘Never mind, attend to the bath.’

The girl disappeared into the bathroom, and A A. Catto pushed a finger of toast into one of the eggs. The problem that remained was what to wear to Juno Meltzer’s party.

She finished toying with breakfast, and lit a cigarette. It was one of her personal blend, a lovingly reproduced mixture of Turkish tobacco and ground Nepalese hashish. As she smoked it, she reflected on the time and trouble it must have taken to obtain the contents of the cigarette. She flicked the ash over the remains of the meal. A.A. Catto took a primitive delight in spoiling food.

The Hostess-1 returned to tell her that the bath was ready, and A.A. Catto crossed the bedroom, slipped out of her robe and stepped into the sunken tub.

After she was dry again and the Hostess-1 had massaged her and done her hair, she asked for the peacock cape outfit to be laid out. She had had it hand made from an archaic print that she had discovered one bored afternoon in the directorate library. She had added some modifications of her own, and it seemed suitably perverse for Juno Meltzer’s party.

For a while she sat naked in front of the pink glass mirror, studying her face and body. It pleased her to think how many of the sub-class women in the citadel took their idea of beauty from her vid-lounge image.

She had herself made-up, and then stood up so the Hostess-1 could perfume and dress her. Once finally dressed, she turned.

‘What time is it?’

‘23.35, Miss.’

‘Damn, that means I have an hour to kill, I can’t possibly turn up on time. Switch the screen to an entertainment channel.’

The girl hurried to the console, punched buttons, and a bloody battle with tanks and infantry sprang into roaring life. Four men crouched behind a rock were incinerated by a burst of flame that lashed from the turret of a tank.

‘Change the channel.’

A dozen or more couples writhed and squirmed in a tank of black oily liquid, to a background of electronic music.

‘God no, try another.’

A comedian appeared, going through some sort of rapid-fire patter.

‘Forget the channels.’

‘What would you like, Miss?’

‘A fast burst of 91 k.’

After the quick, pleasant radiation bath, she dismissed the girl and, careful not to crush her dress and cape, she sat for half an hour watching an ancient movie. Then she shut down the console and picked up the box that held her injectors. She gently pulled up her long black skirt and pressed the one marked altacaine against her thigh, and gasped with pleasure as the first rush of the drug rocketed round her system. She pressed the button twice more. That would see her flying for at least twenty hours.

She was ready for the party.

***

They stood in the main street of Dogbreath and looked at each other.

‘How the fuck was I supposed to know they didn’t take Pleasant Gap money?’

The Minstrel Boy mimicked Billy.

‘How the fuck was I supposed to know? How the fuck are you supposed to know anything? Oh yes, I’ve got some money, let’s have a drink, and you pull out that funny money and we get the bum’s rush.’

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know.’

‘No, you never fucking know.’

‘Okay, okay. You made the point, what do we do now?’

‘What do we do now? Nothing, man! We’re fucking broke! We can’t get a room, we can’t get a meal and we can’t get a drink. We can’t even get the stage out of here.’

Billy and Reave fell silent. There didn’t seem to be anything they could say. A drunk staggered out of the saloon, across the boardwalk and collapsed in the shadows. The Minstrel Boy grinned.

‘I think we just fell on our feet.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah. Follow me.’

The Minstrel Boy crossed to where the drunk was lying mumbling to himself, and crouched beside him. He started to go through his pockets. Reave looked at him in surprise.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Rolling a drunk, what do you think? Quick, come and help me.’

Billy and Reave knelt down beside the drunk. The Minstrel Boy gestured impatiently.

‘Quick, go through his boots.’

They both pulled off a boot each, turned them upside down and shook them. The drunk protested feebly and then started giggling. A small package fell out. The Minstrel Boy leaned across and grabbed it.

‘What’s this?’

He unwrapped it.

‘Fucking lucky day. Good quality heroin. We’re doing all right, boys. Hundred and ten in coin, and about an ounce of smack in his boot. We can live with class for the next couple of days.’

They stood up and moved away from the drunk who was now snoring. Reave and Billy looked at the Minstrel Boy.

‘What happens now?’

‘Well, it’d be good to keep the scag and have ourselves a time, but we can’t afford it. We’ll take it down to the store and see what they’ll give us for it.’

‘Won’t they want to know where we got it from?’

‘Nah, they won’t give two fucks. The only law and order in this town is dedicated to protect the mayor’s interests and the police chief’s interests. It doesn’t extend to drunks on the street.’

They hurried down to the store. A small furtive man gave them a thousand in coin on the heroin, and they went off laughing. They avoided the saloon they’d been thrown out of, and in front of one of the others, the Minstrel Boy divided up the money.

‘Remember to save at least a hundred for the stage, or we’ll never get out of here.’

They pushed their way into the saloon. It was almost identical to the one they’d been thrown out of. This time they made their way through to the bar, ordered drinks with a flourish, and paid in coin. The beers tasted good. The raw spirit that followed tasted even better.

A trio of girls walked past their table, pretending not to notice them. One of them, a tall black girl in shorts and halter of a metallic purple material, let her thigh brush against Reave’s hand for a moment, before walking away with an exaggerated sway of her hips.

Reave began to get up to follow her, but the Minstrel Boy put a restraining hand on his arm.

‘Hold on, man. Before you start having yourself a party, we ought to get ourselves a room at the hotel.’

Reave scowled.

‘You sound like my mother.’

‘You boys need a fucking mother, the way you handle things.’

Reave sat down again.

‘Yeah okay, you told us already.’

They finished their beers, left the saloon and made their way down the street to the Leon Trotsky Hotel. It looked dim and deserted in comparison with the bustle of the saloons. Billy pushed open the door. Reave and the Minstrel Boy followed him into a dim foyer. The hotel smelled of dirt and decay, and their boots echoed in the hollow silence.

The only light was a small yellow bulb above the dusty reception desk, and as their eyes got used to the darkness they saw that the only furniture was two beat-up sofas and an aspidistra that drooped sadly in its pot. Everything was covered in a thick layer of dust that looked like it hadn’t been disturbed for centuries.

‘Can I help you, gentlemen?’

The three of them started and turned to see that a figure had emerged from a bead-hung doorway behind the reception desk.

‘We’re looking for some rooms.’

He was a small man with narrow shoulders and a pot belly. His large, pale, watery eyes watched from rimless glasses. His skin was a sallow olive colour, and he wore a dirty white suit, a rumpled black shirt and thin white tie. On top of his limp black hair he wore a dark red fez. He smiled ingratiatingly and rubbed his hands together. ‘Three?’

Billy nodded.

‘How long do you want them for?’

Billy looked at the other two.

‘How long do we want to stay here?’

The Minstrel Boy glanced at the man.

‘When does the next stage leave town?’

The little man consulted a yellowing timetable.

‘Tomorrow, at midnight.’

‘What time is it now?’

‘Just after eleven.’

‘Night or morning?’

‘Night.’

‘So we’ve got to wait twenty-five hours?’

‘That’s right.’

‘That’s how long we’ll be staying.’

‘That’ll be twenty each. In advance.’

They all tossed coins on to the counter, and the little man scooped them up.

‘My name’s Mohammed. I’m your host.’

He picked three keys off a board behind him.

‘If you follow me, I’ll show you to your rooms.’

He came out from behind the desk and led them towards a flight of stairs that wound up towards pitch-dark upper floors. At the foot of them he stopped and turned on another dim yellow bulb on the first landing. A fat black cat that had been asleep on the third step raced past them and out of sight under one of the sofas.

They followed him up the first flight of stairs and along the landing. At the foot of the second flight he stopped, turned on another light, again dim and yellow, up on the second floor.

They went up four flights in this fashion. Stairs, landing, stop, click, and up again. On the fourth floor, Mohammed stopped and unlocked a door to a room. Billy let himself be ushered inside. He dropped his bag on the floor and Mohammed turned on the light.

‘You like?’

‘Uh … yeah.’

Mohammed slid out of the door and went to unlock the next two rooms for Reave and the Minstrel Boy.

Billy looked round the room. The kindest thing you could say about it was that it was minimal. Mohammed’s slow burning light bulb shed its sickly glow over a plain iron single bed with two grey blankets and a slightly less grey sheet. On the floor was a yard square strip of worn carpet. There was a chipped washstand and a wooden chair, and that was it, apart from a small sepia photograph of a camel that hung above the bed in a black frame.

Billy kicked his bag under the bed, and walked down to the next room. The Minstrel Boy was looking out of the window. Billy sat down on the bed.

‘Some hotel.’

‘I’ve been in better jails.’

‘Are we going out?’

‘Could stay here and tromp roaches.’

‘I’ll go and get Reave.’

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

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

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

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

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

The little man put a plastic cube on the counter.

‘Filthy tri-di?’

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

‘Pretty hot stuff, eh?’

Billy slowly shook his head.

‘No.’

Mohammed looked disappointed.

‘You no like?’

‘No.’

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

‘No.’

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

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

‘Maybe.’

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

‘We’ll find our own girls.’

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

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

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

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

‘I sell much cheaper.’

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

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

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

‘How much?’

‘Twenty.’

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

‘Fifteen.’

‘I’ll give you ten.’

‘You’ll break me.’

‘Ten.’

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

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

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

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

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

‘You gentlemen mind if we sit with you?’

Reave waved his arms in an expansive gesture.

‘Go right ahead, be our guests.’

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

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

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

Billy put a hand on her arm.

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

The girl laughed.

‘That could cost you money to find out.’

‘Is that a promise?’

She patted his cheek.

‘No, honey. It’s a profession.’

‘What’s your name, babe?’

‘Angelina.’

One of the other girls giggled.

‘Angelina the whore. No limit.’

Angelina flashed round on her.

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

She turned back to Billy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Angelina looked at him coldly.

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

The drunk grabbed Angelina by the wrist.

‘I aim to get what I paid for.’

Billy jack-knifed to his feet.

‘Take your hands off her.’

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

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

‘I’m warning you. She’s with me.’

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

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

‘Laser!’

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

‘You killed him.’

‘He went for me with a laser.’

The bartender held up his hands.

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

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

‘I’ve got to get out of here.’

She picked up her bag.

‘Want me to come with you?’

‘How much is that going to cost?’

She ran a pointed tongue round her blue lips.

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Estimate product to be destructive.’

‘Energy drain approaches critical.’

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

‘Emergency.’

‘Willeffort fails to negate trend.’

‘Passive acceptance reduces trend but increases spiral motion.’

‘Paradox.’

‘Paradox is not.’

‘Paradox exists therefore is.’

‘Contradiction produced.’

‘Warning warning.’

‘Reduce trend or increase speed.’

‘Solve paradox.’

‘Energy drain.’

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

‘Attempt order production by mathematic route out’

‘Product of wave form.’

‘Prime.’

‘Root of wave form.’

‘Prime.’

‘Numerical escape blocked by prime number groups’

‘Out, out, out.’

‘Negative.’

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

‘Class A emergency.’

‘Disorder in terminology.’

‘Terminology by definition is a factor for order.’

‘Disorder as term becomes factor of definition.’

‘Reject.’

‘Rejection tightens spiral.’

‘Stop.’

She/They stopped.

‘Paradox flow up four points’

Cracks appeared in the bridge.

‘Prepare passive state.’

‘Wounds preclude total passivity.’

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

‘Wounds render passivity partial.’

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

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

***

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

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

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

He was drifting in a half sleep when there was a furious pounding on the door. Billy woke with a start and reached towards the gun in his belt.

‘Who is it?’

‘Never mind who it is, open up.’

Billy carefully got up, and draped a blanket over his shoulder.

‘Hold on, I’m coming.’

Holding his gun in one hand, he opened the door a tiny crack with the other.

It was immediately kicked open and the barrel of a huge .70 calibre recoil-less pistol was shoved under his chin.

‘Police Department, freeze.’

Billy stood perfectly still as a huge beer gut of a man removed his gun, while his equally huge partner held the pistol at his throat.

The Dogbreath Police Department took pride in their appearance. They wore yellow metalflake helmets with a red star on the front and black visors. Their bodies were encased in black PVC one-piece suits with padding on the shoulders, ribs, elbows, crutch and knees, and decorated with a wealth of badges and insignia.

They were also well prepared. From a wide belt around their waists hung a riot stick, tear gas canisters, a stock prod, handcuffs and a narrow beam laser. All this was in addition to the .70 calibre recoil-less that each of them held in their pudgy hands.

The pistol was taken away from Billy’s throat.

‘Okay, relax, but don’t try nothing or I’ll blow your head off.’

The cop holding Billy’s gun looked at his partner.

‘Is he the one that shot the guy?’

The one holding the gun on Billy grinned.

‘Must be, Angelina’s up here with her shock box.’

Angelina sat up in bed.

‘Screw yourself, pig.’

‘Shut your mouth, honey, or we’ll book you for L and F.’

The one with the gun prodded Billy in the stomach.

‘So you’re the gun-happy kid?’

Billy tried to explain.

‘Listen, he pulled a laser on me …’

The cop slapped Billy across the face.

‘We’ll tell you when to talk.’

He pointed with his gun to the upright chair.

‘Sit.’

Billy sat. The two cops stood in front of him.

‘So you’re the killer who blasts down citizens of Dogbreath with his fancy reproduction pistol.’

The one with his gun spun it on his finger. Billy tried again.

‘He was roughing up Angelina, I hit him and he pulled a laser.’

‘So?’

‘It was self defence.’

‘So?’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘What makes you think Dogbreath has got any laws about self defence?’

‘It wasn’t my fault.’

‘No? You shot him, didn’t you?’

‘But …’

‘It’s lucky for you, kid, that Dogbreath don’t have no laws about killing, or you’d be in trouble.’

Billy looked bewildered.

‘So what are you here for?’

‘We don’t like gun-happy kids in town.’

‘But you said there was no laws …’

‘We kill who we don’t like. The stage leaves at midnight. Don’t miss it.’

Billy shook his head vigorously.

‘I won’t.’

The cop pulled a pad of printed forms from a pouch on his belt.

‘Sign here.’

‘What is it?’

‘Statement exempting the People’s Metropolis of Dogbreath from all claims by agents or relatives of the deceased.’

Billy signed.’

‘Okay, that’ll be …’

The cop counted on his fingers.

‘Conveyance Fee ten, Mortification Duty twenty, Disposal Fee twenty, and Law Enforcement Charge fifty. That’s a round hundred altogether.’

‘You mean I have to pay to go through this?’

‘You better learn, kid. Nothing comes free.’

They gave him his gun back.

‘Be on the stage.’

They left. Billy looked round at Angelina.

‘What was that all about?’

‘They shook you down for a hundred. You got taken, honey.’

‘So what was I supposed to do?’

She licked her lips with a swift, lizard-like flick of the tongue.

‘You could have killed them, and run.’

‘Wouldn’t that have been overdoing it?’

‘You don’t have any sense of class. No drama, no romance.’

Billy started to get into bed, but Angelina pushed him away.

‘I’ve gone off you, honey. I don’t think I want you anymore.’

‘What’s the matter with you?’

‘The way you handled those cops, you’re just no good, babe.’

Billy began to get annoyed.

‘I was good enough to handle your buddy with the laser.’

Angelina thought about it, and then slowly rubbed her thighs together.

‘Yeah, I guess you were at that. Come on back to bed.’

After another strenuous hour with Angelina and the induction coil, Billy passed out.

He woke up with Reave shaking him.

‘Wake up, old buddy. The stage leaves in an hour.’

Billy yawned.

‘Have I been out for that long?’

‘You have indeed.’

Billy sat up rubbing his eyes.

‘Got a smoke?’

Reave handed him a cigar, and then struck a match. Billy inhaled and coughed.

‘Did you have a good time last night?’

Reave grinned and winked.

‘I’ll say.’

Billy got out of bed and struggled into his clothes. Reave laughed.

‘You look rough, did you have a heavy night?’

Billy pulled on one of his cowboy boots.

‘Heavy.’

‘Yeah? What happened? Did you come back here with that blue chick? She looked weird.’

‘She was weird.’

Reave poked him in the ribs with his elbow.

‘Come on Billy, it’s me, Reave. What happened? Don’t be so cagey.’

Billy took another cigar from Reave and sat down on the bed. He began reluctantly to tell him about the killing in the saloon and the scenes that followed.

‘… And then, to top it all, the fucking cops took a hundred off me.’

The atmosphere of all boys together telling tales dropped away. Reave stroked his chin and looked worried.

‘How much money have you got left?’

‘About eighty, why?’

Reave looked guilty.

‘I don’t have more than that left myself.’

‘So? We’ve got a hundred and sixty between us, and the Minstrel Boy must have some more money.’

There was an awkward silence. Reave walked across to the window and looked down at the street.

‘That’s the trouble. I haven’t seen him for hours.’

‘You mean he hasn’t been back?’

‘There’s not a sign of him, and the stage goes soon. I mean, if he don’t show up in the next few minutes we’re in trouble. We don’t even know where the fucking stage goes to.’

Billy stuffed the last of his things into the bag and did up the straps.

‘We don’t need the Minstrel Boy to nursemaid us.’

He strapped on his gun belt.

‘We’ll go down to the stage, and if he doesn’t get on it, we’ll just ride it down to the next town and see what happens there.’

Reave slung his own bag over his shoulder. He still looked unhappy.

‘I don’t like it, Billy.’

Billy turned in the doorway.

‘What’s the matter with you? We’ve done okay so far. We don’t need anyone to look after us.’

Reave shrugged, and followed Billy out of the door.

‘Maybe you’re right.’

In the foyer Mohammed stood behind the counter and watched them walk to the door.

‘Good luck on your journey, boys.’

Billy glanced back at him.

‘Yeah, right.’

Whatever Billy and Reave had expected, the stage was a total surprise to them. It was like something out of a legend. Billy had seen pictures of things like it, back in Pleasant Gap. The battered wooden coach with its high spoked wheels, small square windows, three on each side, and the brass rail round the luggage rack on the roof. None of the pictures had shown anything like the four huge green lizards that were harnessed to it, and squatted on their haunches, waiting for the journey to start.

On the boardwalk, beside where the stage waited, there was a signboard. Overland Hollow City and Dogbreath Stage Co. - Passengers Wait Here. Only one man stood beside the sign. He wore a wide-brimmed bat hat with a band of silver and turquoise links, and an ankle-length, dirty yellow duster coat. His pin-stripe trousers were tucked into high black boots. As Billy and Reave approached, he turned and they saw he had a weather-beaten brown face with a blond drooping moustache and short pointed beard. A strap across his chest, outside his denim work shirt, indicated that he was wearing a shoulder holster. He looked Billy and Reave up and down.

‘Well now, two more for the stage. Where you boys headed?’

Billy shrugged.

‘Anywhere, we’re just drifting along.’

The man stroked his beard.

‘You better stay on the stage right through to Hollow City. This here stage only stops at two other places. Sade and Galilee. Galilee is bad, and Sade you don’t even want to talk about in broad daylight.’

Billy and Reave looked at each other.

‘Looks like it’s Hollow City for us.’

Two men came down the boardwalk. Both wore peaked caps and heavy fur coats. One carried a long whip, while the other cradled a wicked-looking riot gun in the crook of his arm. The one with the gun climbed up on to the driver’s box of the stage, while the other stopped in front of Billy, Reave and the man in the hat and long coat.

‘Stage is leaving, let’s have your fares.’

The man dropped some coins in the driver’s hands and climbed into the coach. Billy was the next in line.

‘How much to Hollow City for the two of us?’

It didn’t look as though the Minstrel Boy was going to show.

‘Two hundred.’

Billy felt an empty feeling hit his stomach.

‘How far can we get on seventy-five each?’

‘Galilee.’

Billy thought about what the man in the hat had just said. Then he thought about what the police had said the night before.

‘I guess it better be Galilee then.’

They paid the driver and climbed inside the coach. The man in the hat looked at them inquiringly.

‘Thought you were going to Hollow City?’

Billy scowled.

‘We were, but we found we only had enough money to make it as far as Galilee.’

The man shook his head.

‘That’s too bad, boys. Rather you than me.’

Reave looked at him.

‘What’s wrong with Galilee?’

‘They don’t like strangers.’

Billy was about to ask him to go into more detail when the coach gave a lurch and then slowly began to rattle down the main street of Dogbreath. Once out of the town, the driver whipped up the lizards and soon they were bouncing over the plain at a merry pace. Reave grinned at Billy.

‘Sure beats walking.’

Billy sighed.

‘I guess it does.’

The man took off his hat, and laid it on the seat beside him. He fished a flask out of his coat, took a hit from it and offered it to Billy. Billy accepted the flask and took a healthy swig. It felt as though his mouth and throat were on fire. His eyes watered, and he coughed.

‘What in hell is this?’

The man winked.

‘You know what they say. Don’t ask no questions.’

Billy passed the flask to Reave, who, despite a little more caution, went through the same performance. He handed the flask back to the man, who took another swallow, put the cap back on the flask and pocketed it.

‘If we’re going to be travelling together, I’d best introduce myself. People call me the Rainman.’

He stuck out a hand. Billy and Reave both shook it.

‘I’m Billy, and he’s Reave.’

‘Pleased to know you.’

The stage rattled on, and Billy wondered if he ought to ask the Rainman what exactly was wrong with Galilee. Before he could say anything, Reave started a conversation with him.

‘If you don’t mind me asking, why do people call you the Rainman?’

The Rainman laughed.

‘Because I bring on the rain.’

‘Huh?’

‘These stasis towns, you know, they get bored and they hire me on. Ain’t you never heard my slogan?’

Reave shook his head.

‘Can’t say I have.’

The Rainman recited.

‘Change your weather, change your luck. Teach you how to … find yourself.’

‘Neat slogan.’

‘I think so.’

‘What I can’t figure Is why these people want the weather changed. Nobody grows nothing since Stuff Central set up in business,’

The Rainman grinned knowingly.

‘They don’t. Not until I get to town.’

‘So what happens?’

‘Well, I just ramble into town, hang around for a couple of days, tell a few people about how the weather used to be in the ancient days. I tell them about rain, clouds, sunshine, showers, thunder and hurricanes, and pretty soon they get to thinking about how dull it gets with the old white sky and even temperature, and that’s the time I make them an offer.’

‘An offer for what?’

‘An offer to lay on some weather.’

Reave looked impressed.

‘You can really do that?’

‘Sure can.’

He glanced up at his bag on the rack.

‘Got me this little old limited-field disrupter, trapped it myself out in the nothings a few years back, and I ain’t been short of a meal or a drink or a woman since.’

‘So what exactly do you do?’

‘It’s simple, son. I just set up that disrupter in the middle of those bored old stasis towns and give him a couple of kicks to get him going, and bingo. They got weather. Rain, snow, heatwave, lightning, fog, as much weather as they could want. Of course, it ain’t exactly like it was in the old days. They don’t have the same weather for more than ten minutes at a time, and now and then things get a bit out of hand, and they maybe get a hurricane or an earthquake or something like that that they didn’t exactly bargain for. When that happens, I find myself leaving town in a hurry, but it works out okay in the end.’

Reave scratched his head.

‘What happens when these people get all this weather? We never had anything like that in Pleasant Gap.’

The Rainman laughed again.

‘Son, you should see them go. They just about go crazy. Dancing about, singing and shouting. And the women, oh boy, you should see those women get it on. And me, well, I started it all and that puts the good old Rainman right at the front of the line.’

‘Sure sounds like a good life.’

The Rainman nodded.

‘It is. ‘Cept most towns get tired of weather after a few days and begin to hanker after everything getting back to normal. That’s when they pay me off and I shut off Wilbur, that’s the pet name I call the disruptor, and it’s time to move on. Like you say, though, it ain’t a bad life.’

Billy started to take an interest in the conversation. He looked at the Rainman.

‘You sound as though you don’t have too much regard for these stasis towns.’

The Rainman shook his head.

‘I don’t, and I must have seen a hundred of them since I got hold of old Wilbur.’

‘What’s wrong with them?’

‘Oh, nothing really. It’s just that they’re so goddamn self-satisfied. You know, they sit there, inside the field of their generator, everything they need coming in on a stuff beam. After a while they seem to fold in on themselves, refuse to believe there’s anything different from their little world. They start to get so fucking narrow, some then really turn weird.’

‘Weird?’

‘Yeah, these little towns all get caught up on some stupid detail and build their whole lives round it.’

Billy looked interested.

‘Is Galilee like that?’

‘Yeah, they’re all crazy.’

‘Crazy?’

‘Yeah, they have this thing about work. I mean, everything they need comes in on a stuff beam, but they have this kind of religion thing about work. They work all the time at these pointless jobs, hard physical work for maybe ten hours, a day. They have this mad priesthood which keeps everybody hard at it. It’s a terrible place to get busted for vagrancy. They’ll have you breaking up rocks with a goddamn hammer. You wouldn’t believe the way they carry on around Galilee.’

Reave looked alarmed.

‘And this is the place we’re heading for?’

The Rainman nodded sombrely.

‘If I was you, I’d get the hell out of it as quick as possible. It’s no place for freewheelers and ramblers.’

They rode on in silence for a while. All of them were lost in their own thoughts. Outside the coach, the glowing plain seemed to go on for ever. After about two hours, the driver leaned down and yelled.

‘We’re hitting the nothings, better switch on your generators.

Billy punched the on button on his porta-pac and glanced at the Rainman.

‘Doesn’t this coach have its own generator?’

‘Sure it does, it’s under that canvas sheet at the back, but it’s an old beat-up bunch of junk and it ain’t too reliable.’

‘Why are we going into the nothings at all?’

The Rainman looked at him as though he was an imbecile.

‘If you don’t go into the nothings, how the fuck do you get anywhere?’

‘But how does the driver know where he’s going?’

‘He don’t.’

Billy and Reave were beginning to get confused.

‘Then how do we get anywhere?’

‘The lizards.’

‘The lizards?’

‘Sure, them old lizards seem to know where to head when they get into the nothings. Leastways, they usually come out where they’re supposed to.’

‘Usually?’

Billy thought about his life being in the hands of the huge lumbering green monsters that had sat scratching themselves in the street at Dogbreath. The Rainman shrugged.

‘A few stages don’t turn up. That’s why people don’t move around much.’

Billy stared out of the window at the swirling colours that flashed and blended and faded back into the ever-present grey. Apart from the occasional lurch, there was no indication that the coach was moving in any direction at all. Looking out into the nothings Billy was filled with a deep depression that he could find no logical reason for. He began thinking about what the Rainman had told him about Galilee. It seemed as though they’d really made a mess of things by losing the Minstrel Boy. Billy didn’t want to wind up on some religious nut’s chain gang.

Then they were out of the nothings and running on a strip of barren dusty desert. The only things that grew under the hot red sky were twisted thorns and stunted cacti. In the distance Billy could make out what looked like a walled city.

As they drew near, the city revealed itself to be a grim, forbidding place. It had high white walls, behind which Billy could make out the pointed tops of dark buildings. The coach seemed to be heading towards a pair of sinister gates made of some kind of embossed black metal. It was then that Billy saw something that made his stomach twist.

Outside the walls and a few yards from the gate was an enormous gibbet. It stood like a huge angular tree, or the mast of an ancient sailing ship that had sunk into the sand. There must have been a full fifty bodies hanging from it, men, women and children. Evil-looking crows circled the ghastly structure, picking choice titbits from the dead.

The driver didn’t take the coach into the city, however. Before the trail reached the gate, it crossed another that ran parallel with the walls. At the intersection a figure was waiting. It had a broad black hat that flopped to hide its face, and a black cloak that concealed its body. The driver halted the coach beside it and hollered out.

‘Sade.’

The figure opened the door of the coach and climbed inside. Billy had a brief flash of a deathly white hand with purple nails and heavy silver rings. Then it vanished beneath the cloak. The figure seated itself in the corner, as far as possible from Billy, Reave and the Rainman.

The Rainman held out his hand as he’d done to Billy and Reave.

‘Howdy stranger. People call me the Rainman, maybe we should get acquainted seeing as how it’s a long ride to Hollow City.’

The stranger gave a sharp hiss, and moved even further into the corner. The Rainman shrugged.

‘Suit yourself, just trying to be sociable.’

He settled back into his seat and stared out of the window. The coach was still rushing through the same parched landscape with its baleful red sky.

It was about then that the stage hit a rock or something and was jolted a foot into the air. The Rainman’s bag crashed to the floor. As he reached down to pick it up, it began to smoke and dissolve. He looked at Billy and Reave in alarm.

‘Wilbur’s woken up, and he’s mad. Grab hold of me, there’s no knowing what can happen - and you, stranger.’

He reached out towards the figure in black, but it twisted violently away from him. The sudden movement tipped its hat, and for an instant showed the pale face of a beautiful but incredibly evil woman.

Then Wilbur started to move and everything shimmered and dissolved.

***

A.A. Catto walked at a suitably stately speed down the moving corridor that led to the Velvet Rooms. She looked at herself in a small pocket mirror. Her features were perfect, the straight aristocratic nose, the large pale blue eyes and the sensuous mouth with its trace of cruelty.

A.A. Catto was extremely satisfied with herself.

The Velvet Rooms were an ideal place for a party. Their floor, walls and ceiling were covered in purple velvet, and the main floor was hydroelastic and sections could be made soft or rigid by the touch of a control. Jutting out of the main floor was a broad terrace of pure white marble, with a baroque balustrade and a wide staircase that swept down to the floor.

It was on the terrace that A.A. Catto made her entrance. Directly she stepped inside the Velvet Rooms, the familiar atmosphere of opium smoke, incense and chatter swirled around her, and she looked across the party. Bruno Mudstrap and his yahoo friends already had the floor at soft and were rolling round, pawing each other. A.A. Catto decided to stay on the terrace. A Hostess-1 came up behind her with a tray of drinks and A.A. Catto took one. She took a careful sip. She was always careful with drinks at Juno Meltzer’s parties. There was no knowing what pleasant concoctions Juno might serve to her guests.

A.A. Catto was attempting to guess the ingredients of the drink when she heard a languid voice from behind her.

‘A.A. Catto, you came. How nice. I believe your brother’s here somewhere.’

Juno Meltzer had spared no effort to be the most noticed person at her party. She was completely naked apart from her jewellery, and her body had been treated so the flesh had become transparent. It was as though she was made of clear plastic, inside which was the red and blue tracery of veins and arteries, the white moving muscles and pink candy-stick bones. Her hair had been dressed so it looked like spun glass. A.A. Catto regarded her with frank admiration.

‘You look very impressive, Juno.’

Juno Meltzer smiled.

‘I thought I ought to make an effort for my own party.’

‘Isn’t it awfully dangerous?’

‘I don’t really care. What are a few cells, one way or another? And anyway, it’s so exciting. Whoever I have tonight will be able to watch what happens inside me. That ought to do something for them.’

A frowned creased A.A. Catto’s smooth forehead.

‘It could be a little undignified.’

Juno Meltzer waved her hand in rejection of the idea.

‘My lovers have seen me in every kind of position, darling, but I think I have enough breeding never to be undignified.’

Both women allowed themselves a brittle laugh, and then Juno Meltzer steered A.A. Catto to a long buffet table.

‘Perhaps you’d like to eat something?’

The table was full of the rarest and most exotic delicacies, arranged in elaborate constructions. The centre piece of the whole buffet was a huge dish of chilled and crushed strawberries, upon which a beautiful young L-4 girl, she couldn’t have been more than fourteen, lay perfectly still, her body providing a unique receptacle for all manner of sweetmeats. A.A. Catto picked up a silver spoon and took some chocolate ants that were heaped where the girl’s pubic hair should have been. Then she put down the spoon and with her fingers took a morello cherry from one of the girl’s nipples and pepped it into her mouth. She turned to Juno Meltzer.

‘Is the girl dead?’

It was hard to read Juno Meltzer’s transparent face, but A.A. Catto thought she detected a trace of disappointment.

‘Of course not. She’s fully conscious. All we did was to have her pre-frontals radiated out. She does exactly what she is told without a thought. Bruno and his gang will have a great time with her once all the food’s been consumed.’

The two women parted and began to circulate, making the small talk with people they really didn’t want to know that was the traditional preliminary to every party. A Hostess-1 presented A.A. Catto with a blue glass opium pipe, and when she finished it she felt ready to move into second gear. She sought out Juno Meltzer.

‘When does the fun begin, darling? I hope the human plate wasn’t the big surprise.’

Juno Meltzer shook her head most mysteriously.

‘Any moment now the entertainment will start.’

The end section of the floor became rigid, and formed a low semi-circular stage. Some Hostess-1s politely persuaded Bruno Mudstrap and his cohorts that maybe they’d like to move back and watch the show.

A.A. Catto slowly descended the marble staircase and sank into a reclining position on the soft part of the velvet floor. De Roulet Glick spotted her, and hurried to her side.

‘A.A. Catto, it’s so wonderful to see you. I wonder …’

‘Get lost, Glick. I find you loathsome.’

‘But …’

‘Loathsome, Glick.’

De Roulet Glick slunk away like a whipped puppy.

Hostesses moved among the guests with drinks and opium, and then the music faded and the lights dimmed. A troup of tiny people appeared from a concealed door and the lights focused on the impromptu stage.

They were L-4s who had been reduced to a height of not more than sixty centimetres by some kind of DNA adjustments. They played miniature instruments, sang and did acrobatics. A.A. Catto yawned. What kind of cornball idea was this? The transparency treatment must have damaged Juno Meltzer’s brain.

The Hostess-1s moved among the guests again and, along with the others, A.A. Catto found herself handed an ornate, leaf-blade knife. The midgets continued with their absurd pantomime.

Gradually A.A. Catto found her mood was changing, she was becoming irritable. The irritability turned to anger, and the anger to a cold hate. She realized that there was a wideband alphaset being used. Juno Meltzer’s surprise was about to be sprung. It was the midgets that cracked first. One of them, a comparatively tall male, cried out in a high trilling voice.

‘Now, brothers and sisters! Slay the oppressor!’

Squeaking, they rushed at their audience. Before A.A. Catto could get to her feet a tiny woman had struck at her with a small sword. As the blow fell it became clear that the sword was only painted balsa wood. It snapped and A. A. Catto swung her own inlaid steel blade at the L-4 and cut her practically in two. Leaping to her feet she hacked at the little people, cutting off heads and limbs in a savage fury. The rest of the guests were joining in with relish. In five minutes it was all over. The L-4s had all been slaughtered.

A.A. Catto felt her emotions change. Someone had adjusted the alphaset, and a feeling of wellbeing crept through the Velvet Rooms. A team of Hostess-2s cleared away the tiny corpses and removed the blood. A.A. Catto sank back to the floor.

She felt positively good. So good, in fact, that she was actively pleased when her brother Valdo pushed up her black skirt and began to caress her thighs.

***

Reave, Billy and the Rainman clung desperately together. There were no words to describe what they were going through. Disruption patterns filled the sky, and glowing things flashed past them.

Their sense of down kept shifting, and in their minds they seemed to be falling in constantly changing directions. In a similar way to when they had walked through the nothings, the idea of time became warped and twisted. One moment they floated through a curving, ribbed pink tube, and the next they were dropping past glowing perspective lines. The paradox was that although they seemed to slip rapidly from one plane to the next, while they were actually experiencing a phenomenon it was as though it had been going on for ever.

After what seemed like both an eternity and a few moments, they hit something. Billy fell heavily and twisted his shoulder. Painfully, he picked himself up and looked for the others. Reave and the Rainman were sprawled beside him, but there was no sign of the strange woman in black.

The three of them climbed to their feet and looked around. They were in a narrow stone-flagged alley, on each side of which were high, windowless granite walls. The place had a hard, forbidding atmosphere.

‘So where are we?’

‘Somewhere, and that’s a comfort in itself.’

‘Think we ought to take a look round? It’s a gloomy kind of place.’

Grey seemed to be the key note of everything they could see. The sky was the colour of slate, the granite buildings and flags echoed the same theme, and dark, dirty water trickled down a gutter in the middle of the alley. Reave shivered.

‘It’s none too warm.’

Billy nodded.

‘This place gives me the creeps.’

The Rainman shrugged.

‘We ain’t going to improve matters by standing round complaining.’

He flipped a coin to see which way they should go. It came up tails, and they started down the alley. They’d only gone a few paces when men appeared at both ends of the alley. Calling them men was rather stretching the point. They had coarse, ape-like features and their arms hung nearly to their knees. They wore black tunics and leggings, and leather helmets with an iron strip that hung down to protect the nose. On the front of the tunics was a design that consisted of an eye surrounded by stylized flames. In their hands they held dull iron tubes that Billy assumed were guns of some kind.

‘Halt!’

Billy started to run, but there was a deafening bang and a hail of nuts, bolts, nails and assorted lumps of metal whistled over his head. Billy stopped, and stood very still. A group of the men surrounded him. They were shorter than either Billy, Reave or the Rainman, but they had massive chests, shoulders and arms. A hand covered in warts and thick bristles was thrust under Billy’s nose.

‘Papers!’

‘Papers?’

‘Papers, snaga, papers!’

‘I don’t have any papers.’

‘No papers? No papers? Everyone has papers, filth.’

‘I don’t have any papers. I just fell out of the nothings.’

One of the creatures punched Billy hard in the mouth, and Billy was knocked to the paving stones. The creature who had hit him roared down at him, showing sharp yellow teeth.

‘The nothings are forbidden, worm. You are a prisoner of the Shirik.’

Billy was hauled roughly to his feet, his arms were dragged behind him, and a pair of manacles snapped round his wrists. Reave and the Rainman received similar treatment, and surrounded by the creatures who called themselves the Shirik, they were marched down the alley.

They turned into a wider street that was paved with the same granite as the alley and surrounded by the same high, menacing buildings. It was Billy’s first chance really to look at the sinister new city. As far as he could see it was built from the same sombre grey stone, topped by steeply sloping roofs of darker grey slate. The total lack of colour touched Billy with an edge of fear. Another feature that seemed to be absent from the high dour buildings was windows. Billy could see no openings near the ground, and it was only high up under the roofs that he could make out some narrow slits. The most frightening thing about the city was that it was completely silent. Apart from the strange apemen that surrounded him, there was nobody in the streets, no birds fluttered round the roof tops, and the city looked totally deserted.

After walking for some three hundred yards, the party came to a doorway with writing over it in some strange script. Billy, Reave and the Rainman were bundled inside, pushed down a corridor and into a stone-floored room where another of the apemen sat behind a high wooden desk. He looked up as the room filled with people, and barked at Billy’s captors.

‘What’s this? What’s this?’

‘Prisoners, Uruk sir. Wandering without papers.’

‘No papers? No papers?’

He climbed down from his stool and came out from behind the desk. He jabbed at Billy with a thick stubby finger.

‘Where’s your papers, filth?’

‘I don’t have no papers. I only just arrived in the city.’

The finger jabbed again.

‘Arrived? Arrived? How you arrive? You couldn’t pass Black Gate without papers.’

‘We came out of the nothings, a disrupter got us and we finished up here. We don’t even know where we are.’

The Uruk’s small red eyes narrowed and he peered intensely at Billy. He paced up and down. One of the group that had brought in Reave shuffled his feet and coughed.

‘The Eight. P’raps we should report this to the Eight.’

The Uruk sprang across the room and punched the one who had spoken.

‘Eight? Eight? I’m the Uruk for this section. I say what gets reported to the Eight.’

The Shirik wiped blood from his mouth and spat.

‘You won’t be Uruk for long if one of the Eight found out you’d not been telling things they wanted to know, you’d have the skin taken off you, and the flesh, too.’

The Uruk flashed round and kicked the Shirik hard in the groin. With a scream, the Shirik dropped to his knees. The Uruk swung his ironshod boot at the Shirik’s head and the Shirik rolled over and lay still. The Uruk faced the other Shiriks.

‘See that? See that? That’s what’ll happen to any others of you filth who talk fancy.’

He turned back to Billy, Reave and the Rainman.

‘No papers, come from the nothings. What tale you scum trying to give me? The Eight going to hear about you. They’ll deal with your tales.’

He swung round on the Shiriks.

‘Six of you process them, and the rest back on patrol. Jump, I said!’

Billy, Reave and the Rainman were released from their manacles and hastily stripped. Their clothes and possessions were stacked on the Uruk’s desk. He prodded the heap.

‘We keep this for the Eight. Take them down.’

The three of them had their manacles replaced, this time with their arms in front of them instead of behind their backs, and were marched naked into another corridor. The guards in front of them stopped at an arched doorway, and one of them unlocked a huge door of dark wood studded with iron nails.

They descended a winding stone staircase with guards in front of them and behind. Narrow corridors radiated out from the foot of the stairs, and the three were pushed and kicked down one of them. The leading guard unlocked another door, this time a steel one with a small peephole in it, and they were all thrown into the same narrow cell.

The cell was about six feet wide and ten feet long. Its walls were made of the same granite, and in places it ran with slimy dampness. There were no windows in the cell, and the only light came from a yellow globe high up in the door. The floor was covered with damp straw, and an open drain ran along the far wall. Reave flopped to the ground.

‘We really did it this time.’

Billy and the Rainman sat down as well. Billy tugged in frustration at his manacles, and winced as the metal bit into his wrists.

‘If we only knew where the hell we were.’

He glanced at the Rainman.

‘You got any idea what this place is?’

The Rainman shook his head.

‘I never seen anything like this. It’s not the usual stasis town. This looks like something different, something I ain’t even heard about before. We’re in trouble, boys.’

Reave slumped against the wall.

‘You can say that again.’

A rat scuttled down the drain, and wriggled through the little opening where the drain continued into the next cell.

‘We’ve really got to get out of here.’

‘Yeah, but how?’

‘Fuck knows.’

They lapsed into thought, and Billy’s attention kept going to the hole through which the rat had gone. He stooped over, and knelt down beside the foul smelling gutter.

‘Hello, hello in there.’

There was a grunt from the other side of the hole, and then a blunt hairy hand was thrust through the space. It grabbed one of Billy’s hands and tried to drag it into the next cell. Billy tugged it free, and looked round at the others.

‘Don’t look as though we’re going to get any help from that direction.’

A glum silence fell over Billy, Reave and the Rainman. They slumped on the damp straw. The chill began to get to them. Reave watched his legs slowly turn blue, and very soon, all three’s teeth had begun to chatter uncontrollably.

‘Dear god, how long do we stay stuck in here?’

Billy jumped to his feet and hammered on the door with his fists.

‘Hey out there. What the fuck’s happening?’

His fist made little more than a dull thud on the thick wood of the door, and no sound came from the outside. Frustratedly he beat on the door and then sank to the floor.

‘We’ve fucked up good.’

The other two shuddered and nodded.

The gloomy silence descended again. Only the occasional rustle of the straw punctuated their paranoia. Reave remembered Miss Ettie’s. It was worlds away.

The lights of memory dimmed as the blackness of cold and despair closed around Reave. They wouldn’t be wandering heroes. They’d blown it and wound up in a filthy cell. They’d lost the bet for fortune, adventure and experience.

Just as Reave had decided that he was a loser, a familiar voice echoed from outside the cell.

‘… And you, shiteater, under para 4, section 1, a registered minstrel gets himself into all and any public administration buildings. Here’s my fucking card, so open the door, Got it?’

Billy’s and Reave’s heads both snapped up.

‘The Minstrel Boy, here?’

They jumped up and stood by the door. More voices came from outside.

‘Not possible. No one goes into cell till Ghâshnákh come to interrogate.’

‘And it says in the Code that I go anywhere.’

‘Not possible.’

‘Shirik Precinct Houses come under the public administration order of the Ghâshnákh. Right?’

‘Yes?’

‘So Shirik Precinct Houses are public administration buildings? Right?’

‘Yes?’

‘So minstrels, and namely me, gets to go where I like in public administration buildings. That means Shirik buildings, so open up.’

‘It’s against regulations.’

‘If you don’t, it’s against the Code, and I’ll report it.’

‘Code?’

‘Code.’

‘But regulations …’

‘Look at it this way, scumbag. If you break the Code it’s a hanging deal, and that’s it. The regulations, the worst thing that can happen to you is a flogging. Know what I mean? Make it easy on yourself.’

‘But …’

‘Ever thought about it, piggio? Hanging, I mean, how it must feel and all, swinging away and choking, your hands tied behind your back, and just nothing you can do about it.’

There was a reluctant scraping of keys in the door, and it swung inwards. It was a very different Minstrel Boy who stepped into the cell.

The thin white face was hidden behind huge black multi-faceted glasses that made him look like he had the eyes of some grotesque insect. The halo of hair was still there, but it had been dyed white. He wore a dark green lizard-skin frock coat over a black ruffled shirt, velvet trousers and high black boots with silver fastenings. The silver guitar hung from a heavy strap inlaid with coloured stones.

Billy and Reave bombarded him with questions.

‘Where are we, man?’

‘How the hell did you get here?’

‘How do we get out of here?’

The Minstrel Boy held up his hands.

‘Hold it! Hold it! Dumbo behind me might suddenly decide that there’s nothing in the regulations says I get to talk to you. So listen. If you can just hold on a while longer I’ll try and get you out of here. Okay?’

‘How soon?’

‘I don’t know. It ain’t easy. You won’t be going anywhere.’

‘Where are we?’

‘Dur Shanzag.’

‘Dur Shanzag?’

‘I can’t talk now. Don’t worry, I’ll swing it. I don’t know how you could get into any more shit if you worked at it.’

‘Okay, okay. We know, just try and get us out.’

‘I told you, don’t worry.’

He stepped back out of the cell and the door was slammed shut. Briefly it opened again.

‘What’s the other guy called?’

‘The Rainman.’

‘Okay, I’ll see what I can do for him.’

The Minstrel Boy ducked out, and again the door was slammed. Billy and Reave looked at each other.

‘What the hell. Did that happen?’

‘Seemed to.’

‘But his clothes and everything?’

‘Who knows?’

The Rainman stood up.

‘Who was your friend?’

‘The Minstrel Boy, a guy we met on the road back in Graveyard.’

‘Some useful friend to have in a strange city.’

‘I sure hope so.’

‘And me, boy, I can tell you. Say you met him in Graveyard?’

‘Sure, we travelled with him from there to Dogbreath. You know Graveyard?’

‘Graveyard, sure I know Graveyard. Jived up many a thunderstorm for them guys to slide their old rigs through.’

He looked at them intently.

‘What did he look like, back in Graveyard?’

‘Much the same, only with dirty blue jeans instead of those fancy clothes, and his hair was dark. Why?’

The Rainman shook his head.

‘It’s nothing. One of those things stuck in the back of your mind that you can’t quite bring out. Maybe it’ll come to me later.’

They waited, straining their ears for any possible footfall, but nothing happened. It had long ago become impossible to gauge the passage of time. Billy and Reave had lost that skill altogether when they first stepped into the nothings. The sudden appearance of the Minstrel Boy receded and became confused. They began to think it was an absurd way of snapping their minds. To add to their problems, they had begun to get ravenously hungry, and thirsty too. Nobody was ready to drink the foul trickle that ran along the guttering. At one point there was a commotion of voices a long way away, and they held their breath to see if it came nearer. Then the sounds died, and hope of immediate release faded.

It was just when any faith in the Minstrel Boy’s return had all but disappeared that the door creaked open, and he walked in.

‘I’ve done it, you’re free.’

‘Free?’

‘Well, almost free. I’ve got a release order, and you don’t have to be interrogated by the Ghâshnákh. You could say that you were substantively free.’

‘We can get out of here?’

‘Sure, right now.’

‘That’s great. Where do we go?’

The Minstrel Boy frowned.

‘That’s one of the problems, but I’ll tell you about it when we’re out of here.’

Billy shrugged.

‘Just as long as we’re out of this filthy cell.’

Again surrounded by guards, they walked out of the cell, along the corridor, and up the stairs. Groans and snarls came from the other cells as they walked past. The release of a prisoner seemed a great novelty.

They were again pushed into the stone-flagged room where the Uruk sat behind his high desk. Billy, Reave and the Rainman were lined up in front of him, and he scowled at them with distaste.

‘Release orders? Release orders? You scum have friends in high places. They won’t help you if I ever get my hands on your filthy bodies again.’

Two of their guards were dispatched to fetch their clothes, and the three of them hastily dressed. Their bags, porta-pacs, and even their guns were returned to them, and then the Minstrel Boy initialled a sheaf of forms. Finally they were released, and they followed, the Minstrel Boy out into the street. Once outside, Billy caught up with him.

‘Where are we going now?’

‘To the barracks.’

‘Barracks? What barracks?’

The Minstrel Boy avoided Billy’s eyes.

‘That was one of the things I had to do to get you out. In order to get the release papers, I had to enlist you in the Free Corps.’

‘The Free Corps? What in hell is that?’

‘It’s … uh … part of the army.’

Billy stopped dead in the street.

‘The army? Are you trying to tell us that we’ve joined the goddamn army in this place?’

He swung round to Reave and the Rainman.

‘This idiot’s gone and got us into the army.’

The Minstrel Boy took Billy by the arm.

‘Keep moving, you don’t want to get arrested again. There was no other way, Billy. It was a case of jail or the Free Corps.’

They walked on, Billy shaking his head.

‘I don’t understand any of this. You better start from the beginning.’

‘Okay, listen. This is Dur Shanzag, and it’s a long way from Graveyard or Dogbreath.’

***

She/They rose slowly through the threatening mists. Her/Their mind was not required to continue the upward motion, and She/They allowed it to retreat into the memories of the almost infinite past. It drifted back to Her/Their hardly remembered birth, the fusion of shapes and colours that had condensed and blended and produced Her/Their triple form. She/They could go back no further than the triple form. Before that there had been something, an order that had enabled Her/Them to transcend and escape the chaos that had overtaken everything else.

The achievement of the triple form had been followed by centuries of contemplation while She/They had ordered and stabilized the space that She/They occupied. It was a long period of calm that had been savagely brought to an end by the arrival of the first disruptors.

The arrival of the disruptors had started the long battle that She/They had waged against the encroaching mists of the twisting chaos.

It was the start of a hateful, searching period in which She/They had moved across the fabric, attempting to stabilize the sectors She/They covered.

She/They had become the continual prey of the disruptors, and, for a very long time, She/They had directed Her/Their intelligence at the problem of what they were, and where they originated. It had never been possible to come in close proximity of the thing without Her/Their objectivity being damaged by the disruption process. All Her/Their observations led towards the assumption that the disruptors were some strange halfway point between animal and machine.

She/They had never solved the problem of their coming. Before the disruptors Her/Their triple form had not existed. There had been form and there had been consciousness, but beyond that, all memory was hazy and tattered. Her/Their creation was inexorably linked with their arrival. It was almost as though they had given Her/Them birth as they first tore into the fabric of reality.

She/They was produced out of the disruption. The logical opposite to disrupters and the wake of chaos. By the same logic it should follow that She/They was their equal. That would only be disproved either when they shattered Her/Them and diffused Her/Their form into the clouds of unstable fabric, or when She/They extended a state of unchanging order throughout Her/Their entire area of experience.

She/They, over the millennia of Her/Their struggle, had watched the behaviour of the disrupters, and the pattern that seemed to lie behind their attacks. She/They had, at times, entertained the proposition that an intelligence was directing the disruptors. For a few long periods, the movements of the disruptors had seemed regular as though they moved according to a directing logic. During other periods, their actions had become completely random, and the idea of an overall intelligence had been rejected by Her/Them as a product of chaos-induced paranoia.

She/They returned Her/Their mind to the present. The mist had taken on a more even quality, and was starting to glow a deep electric blue. Her/Their upward motion ceased. Her/Their two heads turned slowly. Deep in the blue mist something solid seemed to be moving.

***

‘Dur Shanzag is the city of the Presence. Nobody seems to know any more exactly where the Presence came from. Seems as though he or it has been around for thousands of years.’

‘He or it?’

Billy walked along with the Minstrel Boy, a confused look on his face.

‘They say he was a man once, but, by all accounts, he’s not any more. He’s … well, he’s the Presence. They say he’s burned up with the idea of being the master. The lord of everything. They say he’s had four or five empires, way back over hundreds of thousands of years.’

Billy shook his head.

‘How does one man get to live a hundred thousand years? It just isn’t possible.’

The Minstrel Boy shrugged.

‘I’m just telling the story. I don’t have to account for inconsistencies. The story goes that he ain’t a man any more. It could be that he ain’t the original one who built those empires, maybe he’s just another crazy living out some fantasy that he got from some old book. I don’t know, there’s a whole lot of things that it doesn’t pay to look too closely at. When it comes down to it, all I know is that there’s a thing called the Presence, and this is his city.’

‘What about those things that threw us in jail? This Presence was like one of those once?’

The Minstrel Boy shook his head.

‘The Presence wasn’t ever an apeman. Those things are his slaves. He created them. He bred them down through the centuries to serve him. The Shirik, they’re the workers, soldiers and watchdogs of his citadel. The smarter ones are Uruks. They boss the Shirik, and pass on his orders.’

‘What about the Ghâshnákh? What are they?’

‘The Ghâshnákh? They’re the next level of power after the Uruks. They’re men, but slaves just the same. They’re his officers, civil servants and secret police. They hate and fear him but are all loyal to him. I suppose each, in his own way, shares the same desire for power and conquest. His whole massive bureaucracy runs on a balance of greed and fear. It’s not efficient, but I don’t think he cares. It seems like he gets a kind of twisted pleasure out of watching it fuck up.’

‘But surely that’s not going to help him conquer the world?’

‘I don’t think he cares. The rumours say that all his concentration is fixed on the disrupters, He thinks that the way to power lies in the control of the disrupters. That was why I had so much trouble getting you out. You told the Uruk that you’d been hit by a disrupter, and disrupter cases are always interrogated by the Ghâshnákh. That’s why I had to sign you into the Free Corps, in order to get your release papers. You’ll still get questioned by the Ghâshnákh, but it’ll only be a stage three. The Uruk would have handed you over for a stage one. There ain’t too many who live through a stage one.’

‘What’s the Free Corps, then? What have you gotten us into?’

‘Don’t be like that about it. I did the best I could.’

Billy nodded.

‘Yeah, yeah, I know. I’m sorry. Tell me about this Free Corps.’

‘The Presence is at war. He’s always at war. This time it’s with the Regency of Harod. It’s been going on for years. The Harodin will lose in the end, the neighbouring cities have all lost in the end.’

‘I thought the Shirik did all the Presence’s fighting. I don’t see what he needs us for.’

‘The Shirik make killer infantry, but they’re too dumb to operate anything complicated. He needs mercenaries to man his fighting machines, and operate the big guns. That’s the Free Corps. They’re the crew of mercenaries who do the Presence’s dirty work for him.’

‘How does he treat them?’

‘It ain’t too bad. The Ghâshnákh make sure they have enough women and enough booze. They’re the elite troops and they get treated that way. They’re a rough mean bunch, though.’

‘How long have you signed us on for?’

‘Two years.’

‘Jesus.’

‘That’s the minimum period, nothing else I could do.’

‘What happens then?’

‘You get paid off, and a free passage to the limits of the zone. Of course, they put the arm on you to re-enlist, but in the end, they let you go.’

‘What about escaping?’

‘Should be quite easy once you get to the front. It’s up to you. I’ve done all I can.’

The Minstrel Boy halted, and pointed at a huge granite block, larger, but otherwise identical to the Shirik House.

‘That’s the barracks. Go in and tell the guard that you’re the new recruits. I’ll see you later, okay?’

The Minstrel Boy started to walk away, but Billy called him back.

‘Just one question, Minstrel Boy. How did you get here? And the way you’re dressed up?’

The Minstrel Boy shook his head sadly.

‘Don’t ask, Billy. Just don’t ask.’

‘But …’

‘We all got to survive, Billy. Remember that.’

The Minstrel Boy turned on his heel and walked away. His boots echoed hollowly on the paving stones of the deserted street. Billy watched him go, and then followed the others inside the cold, forbidding building.

A huge man with a full black curly beard lounged behind a desk similar to the Uruk’s. He wore an olive green combat suit and a peaked fatigue cap. A cigar was clenched between his teeth, and a huge pair of combat boots were propped on the desk. The peak of his cap hung down over his eyes, and when Billy, Reave and the Rainman walked in, he raised it lazily with his forefinger. He stared at them for a while, and then lazily shifted the cigar to the side of his mouth.

‘Whatcha want?’

‘Recruits.’

‘Recruits? Where the hell did you come from?’

‘Our friend got us out of jail on the promise that we’d enlist.’

Billy thought it was best to keep quiet about the disrupter.

‘Get lost in the nothings and wind up here?’

‘Yeah, that’s right.’

‘That’s how most of them get here. No one comes here from choice.’

‘It’s bad?’

‘You’ll see.’

He swung his legs off the desk, and his boots hit the floor with a crash. He stood up, and yelled towards a door behind him.

‘Hey Skipper, there’s three recruits out here. Wanna take a look at them?’

A man emerged from the doorway. He was a little wiry man with a clipped moustache. He wore a sheepskin jacket and dark blue trousers tucked into scuffed riding boots. On his head, he had a light blue cap with the same eye and flames badge that the Shirik wore. He looked the three of them up and down.

‘Recruits?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Just got out of jail?’

‘That’s right.’

‘You better get signed in.’

He walked over to the desk and picked up a clipboard.

‘Okay.’

He pointed at Reave.

‘You, come over here.’

Reave sauntered over to him and stood in front of him with his hands in his pockets.

‘I’m Sperry, kid. Master of Warriors. You train with me and I get to choose whether you train easy, or you train hard. You got that?’

Reave straightened his back and took his hands out of his pockets.

‘I got it.’

‘I got it, sir.’

‘I got it, sir.’

‘Okay, name?’

‘Reave.’

‘Place of origin?’

‘Pleasant Gap.’

‘Do-you-solemnly-swear-to-serve-in-the-Army-of-the-Sovereign-State-of-Dur-Shanzag-for-a-period-of-not-less-than-seven-hundred-days-in-accordance-with-the-Code-and-military-regulations-of-that-said-state? Say “I do”.’

‘I do.’

Sperry handed Reave the clipboard and pen.

‘Make your mark here.’

Reave scrawled his name and handed them back. Sperry looked towards Billy.

‘Next.’

Billy stepped up.

‘Name?’

‘Billy Oblivion.’

‘Place of origin?’

‘Pleasant Gap.’

‘Do you solemnly swear what he just did?’

‘I do.’

‘Okay, make your mark and stand over there with him..’

Billy made his mark and stood by Reave.

‘Next.’

The Rainman stood in front of Sperry.

‘Name?’

‘People call me the Rainman.’

‘Ain’t you got a proper name?’

‘It’s the only one people use.’

‘Okay, Rainman. Place of origin?’

‘Hell, how should I know? That’s a helluva question to ask a travelling man.’

‘Where was the last place you stopped? You remember that?’

‘Why, sure I do, it was Dogbreath.’

‘Okay, Dogbreath. I gotta put something. Do you swear too?’

‘Sure, I ain’t got no choice.’

‘You should remember that. Make your mark and get over with the others.’

Once the Rainman was in line with Billy and Reave, Sperry came over and inspected them.

‘You got any weapons?’

Billy nodded.

‘We all got handguns.’

‘Okay, fetch ‘em out.’

He looked at Billy’s and Reave’s reproduction Colts and sniffed.

‘They’ll have to do.’

He seemed more impressed with the Rainman’s spiral needler on .75 frame.

‘Yeah, okay, put them away again. Your clothes are all right too.’

Reave looked surprised.

‘You mean we don’t get uniforms?’

‘Only when the things that you got wear out.’

He jerked his thumb towards the door he’d come out from.

‘Go through there, and tell the guy inside that you’re reporting for training.’

Training consisted of an intense ten days of being run around and shouted at by veterans who had been wounded at the front. Billy and Reave flopped into their bunks exhausted each night, and, all too soon, were roused out by Simp the one-eyed trooper, who seemed to be primarily in charge of them.

The command structure of the Free Corps was loose and haphazard. The only thing that Billy and Reave knew for sure was that they were very definitely the lowest of the low. The only group beneath them in the pecking order were the Shirik, who seemed universally loathed by the Free Corps mercenaries.

Surprisingly, the Rainman appeared very little worried by the hard training regime. He went through everything at the same leisurely pace, and treated the yelling officers with smiling contempt.

The final night, after they had completed the course, the three of them were given a recreation pass. This entitled them to spend an evening in yet another granite building, drinking flat beer and raw spirits in the company of a small group of depressed whores.

The next day they were due to leave for the front. Billy was rudely awakened by Simp shaking him.

‘Come on out of it.’

‘It ain’t time yet.’

‘Sure it is. You want to die in bed?’

‘Would suit me fine.’

Simp tugged at the blankets.

‘Come on, start moving. Inspection in half an hour. Got it?’

Billy dragged himself out of his bunk and staggered across to the stone wash-trough. His head was splitting from the bad booze that he’d poured down himself the night before. He splashed cold water on his face and neck, and struggled into his shirt. He was pleased that the Free Corps barracks didn’t run to mirrors. He felt that that particular morning he really couldn’t face the sight of himself.

After a breakfast of grey porridge, Simp assembled the next recruits on the windswept expanse of stone that served as a parade, ground. Sperry made a short preliminary speech, and then moved down the line giving the recruits their assignments to the front. He stopped in front of Billy, Reave and the Rainman. He stared at them for a moment with one eyebrow raised.

‘For reasons unknown, the powers have decided to keep you sorry trio intact. As of now you’re a machine crew. You’ll pick one up from motorpool and join the Seventeenth Gorbűkh at Hill 471.’

He handed Billy an envelope.

‘Here’s your written orders, you’re off my hands now.’

The Rainman grinned.

‘Ain’t you gonna wish us luck … sir?’

Sperry sneered.

‘Why bother. You’re past help.’

The three of them were dismissed, and they walked to pick up the fighting machine.

The Dur Shanzag fighting machine was a squat iron construction. Its square box-shaped body, with riveted plates and tiny slit windows, housed the crew of three. Mounted on top was a small circular turret from which the gunner could direct fire from either the flamer or the repeating bolt gun. At each end were the huge spiked rollers which, driven by a low gear flutter engine, carried the dull grey monster along the ground at something like the speed of a man running.

The Rainman signed out the machine from a motorpool orderly with a bald head and thick, horn-rimmed glasses. As they climbed inside it, the orderly waved.

‘Don’t scratch the paint now.’

Reave gave him the finger, and slammed the iron door. Crouched inside, the Rainman grinned round at the others.

‘Either of you mind if I drive this here rig for a while?’

Billy and Reave shook their heads.

‘Go right ahead. It’s okay by us, we’ll just take it easy.’

The Rainman brought the motor to life, and the cabin reverberated with a teeth-jarring hum. The fighting machine wasn’t built for comfort. He guided it through the empty streets of Dur Shanzag to the Black Gate, and then they were out of the city and running along a road that stretched out into the bleak desert. The Rainman gave the machine full power, but it was incapable of going any faster than the stage that had carried them out of Dogbreath. It seemed that the fighting machines weren’t built for speed either.

The journey across the desert very soon became monotonous as they clanked and rattled along the desert road. Occasionally they would pass columns of Shirik heading for the front at a last, loping trot, and once they passed a train of wagons pulled by scrawny mules, returning to Dur Shanzag loaded with Shirik wounded.

Reave pointed out of the narrow slit window.

‘They must lose millions of those dumb brutes, the rate they seem to be sending them out to the front.’

The Rainman grimaced.

‘I hope they don’t lose millions of us dumb brutes as well.’

The three of them fell silent, and Billy stared cut at the endless dull brown dust. The only break in the desert was the odd clump of thorn trees. Apart from that, it was completely barren. Only the continuous jolting of the machine stopped Billy from falling asleep.

After riding for hours they began to hear the rumble of distant gunfire above the noise of the engine. Very soon, they could see a pall of smoke along the horizon and they knew that they were entering the battle zone.

At a fork in the road an Uruk appeared to be directing traffic. Billy pressed his face to the window and shouted.

‘Hill 471?’

‘Hill what? Hill what?’

‘4-7-1’

The Uruk stared at the ground frowning, and then jerked an arm towards the right.

‘Straight down. Can’t miss it.’

The Rainman swung the fighting machine down the right-hand fork.

After a series of false trails and a dozen wrong turnings, they finally pulled up at a low hill that was crisscrossed with trenches and coils of barbed wire. One side of the hill was honeycombed with foxholes and bunkers. The Shirik were swarming over it like a colony of burrowing ants. Billy spotted an Uruk who was standing over a squad of Shirik labouring on a trench. Every so often he encouraged them with a knotted rope.

‘Hey! Hey you! Uruk. This Hill 471?’

‘Who wants to know?’

Billy pushed his pistol through the slit.

‘We want to know, shiteater.’

The Uruk responded happily to threat and abuse.

‘Sure, sure. This 471.’

‘Where do we find the Free Corps command post?’

The Uruk pointed.

‘Down that way.’

The Rainman put the machine in motion and swung it down a deeply rutted track. They were now in the heart of the Dur Shanzag lines. The snouts of light cannon and mortars poked from foxholes. Shell craters dotted the landscape, and all round them squads of Shirik sappers sweated with picks and shovels enlarging the foxholes and dugouts.

They passed a Shirik stripped of his uniform, suspended by his hands from a wooden frame that had been erected beside the track. He was obviously undergoing some kind of punishment. Around his neck hung a placard on which was a single word in the strange script they had seen used throughout Dur Shanzag.

A ditch ran for some distance along the side of the track, and every so often Billy noticed huddled shapes, the bodies of men and mules that lay half in and half out of the muddy water, where they had been pushed off the road and left to rot. They rolled past crisscrossings of tangled barbed wire and Billy saw to his horror that in the middle of a particularly thick section, a skeleton was hanging with shreds of clothing still adhering to it. It seemed as though the war had crossed this area and moved on.

Eventually they found what they were looking for. A huge dugout where a collection of olive green tents huddled under the protection of sandbagged ramparts. In front of the tents and tunnel entrances, a group of humans lounged round a huge black field piece. Three fighting machines, similar to their own, were parked beside it.

The Rainman pulled in beside the other machines, and the three of them climbed down and walked over to the men squatting round the cannon. They were all unshaven and filthy, and wore a motley assortment of combat suits and work clothes. At their belts they carried a vicious array of knives and side arms. None of them looked up as Reave, Billy and the Rainman approached. They seemed totally to lack interest in anything that went on around them. Billy stopped and cleared his throat.

‘Where can we find whoever’s in charge?’

A big man with blond hair and a black eye patch spat a stream of tobacco juice in the dust.

‘I am, I’m Axmann, M of W for this section. You replacements?’

Billy nodded, and gave him the envelope.

‘These are our orders.’

Axmann seemed to have no interest in opening them.

‘You better get settled in.’

He glanced back at the men beside the gun.

‘You, Duck. Show these replacements where to bunk, and explain the facts of life to them.’

A little bald man with a rodent’s face and extremely short legs scrambled to his feet. Axmann turned back to Billy, Reave and the Rainman.

‘Duck will show you round. Oh, just one thing. You boys don’t plan to be heroes, do you?’

‘It’s not our greatest ambition.’

‘Good. The last thing we need is heroes.’

Duck led them inside the bunker. It stretched way back inside the hill, and housed the command post, stores and sleeping quarters. The roof was low, scarcely four feet high in places, and they had to move in a half crouch. The walls of the excavation were shored up with an assortment of scrap timber and here and there someone had stuck a pin-up. These served to highlight rather than disguise the appalling squalor. Duck pointed at three empty wooden bunks.

‘You can take them three. The guys they belonged to took a direct hit. They won’t be needing them any more.’

They dumped their gear on the beds, and Duck led them out of the bunker and up the hill a little way.

‘If you keep your heads down you’ll be okay. You can see the whole battle zone from here.’

The plain beneath them was gouged with craters and scarred by trenches. At irregular intervals a boom and an eruption of dust would mark a shell landing. Small figures would scamper out of a trench, and rush into the section of no man’s land that ran between the lines of either side. Inevitably, before they’d gone very far, the figures would fall and lie still. Overhead, off in the distance, two clumsy flying machines, cigar-shaped objects with a collection of umbrella-like repulsors on their top sides, circled each other warily. One carried the eye and flames markings of Dur Shanzag, while the other bore the seven-pointed star of Harod. Billy watched in appalled fascination.

‘How long has this been going on?’

Duck shrugged.

‘Who knows? Maybe a generation. Maybe more.’

‘But I thought the Presence was winning.’

‘Sure he’s winning, We’ve gained maybe a hundred yards this year. I guess another twenty years will see us at the gates of Harod.’

‘Twenty years.’

Duck dug the heel of his boot into the dirt.

‘Twenty, maybe twenty-five. Attrition’s the name of the game. The only thing that could prevent it was if the Shirik stopped breeding. The Shirik do most of the fighting. They’re sent up the line. They rush the enemy, most of them get slaughtered, but they keep coming, and we keep gaining little bits of ground. If they start losing too many of them, we have to take our tin cans in and sort it out. Beyond that we try and keep out of the fighting and stay healthy.’

‘Doesn’t anyone want to fight?’

Duck scowled.

‘Who needs it? Except the Shirik, who can’t get enough. Occasionally one of our boys goes kill crazy, but when that happens they usually start on the Shirik, and we have to go down and fuse them before they do too much damage. Beyond that, it’s like I said, we do our best to keep out of it. We all hate this goddamn war.’

Billy scratched his head.’

‘I don’t see why any of us go on with it.’

Duck looked at Billy in contempt.

‘Did you ask to come here?’

‘Nah, we were in jail. We didn’t have no choice.’

‘Neither did anyone else, sonny boy. Get stuck inside of Dur Shanzag and you wind up at the front before you know it’

‘What are the enemy like?’

‘I ain’t seen ‘em close to ‘cept maybe a few times. They looked like regular guys to me. Just like us, ‘cept they’re fighting for their lives. You’ll get called out soon enough, and then you’ll see for yourselves.’

***

A.A. Catto came home from the party in another artificial sunrise. Once again, she was bored. Juno Meltzer had done her best, but when A.A. Catto finally came down to it, nothing new really happened. It was yet another party where she had finished up with her brother. It was an indictment of the lack of stimuli that someone like Valdo was superior to most of the other available men.

She made a mental note that she really should stop doing it with him, particularly in public. People were beginning to label them, and there was nothing more tiresome than being labelled.

Inside her apartment A.A. Catto tore off her black Art Nouveau party dress and flopped on the bed in her underwear. She grinned at how her silk stockings and basque corset had come from the pornography of a slightly later period, but nobody had even noticed. With the exception of Valdo, she decided, the people she knew were exceedingly ignorant, She kicked her legs and stared at the ceiling. It was the morning problem again. Sleep or stay awake. It was a choice between dormax or altacaine. A.A. Catto rolled over and watched the sunlight begin to filter through the perspex of the balcony. She glanced at the clock. It was 08.15. She reached out and punched up Information. The blonde in the pink uniform flickered into life and smiled.

‘Information. May I help you?’

‘What’s going on this morning?’

‘There is a full directorate meeting at 10.00. All family members are expected to attend, Miss Catto.’

‘Don’t tell me what to do.’

‘I’m sorry, Miss Catto. I’m only relaying information.’

‘All right, all right.’

She hit the off button. The directorate meeting would wipe out anything happening for most of the day. She might as well sleep right through it. She was reaching for the dormax when a thought struck her. Maybe it would be fun to go to a meeting once. If Valdo was there to back her up, between them they might throw some shocks into those old fools. She punched Valdo’s combination, and another pink-clad Hostess-l appeared.

‘Mr. Catto’s residence.’

‘Is Valdo conscious?’

‘If you’ll wait one moment, please, Miss Catto, I’ll find out.’

The screen dissolved into a pattern of neutral colours. It stayed that way for almost a minute, and A.A. Catto tapped her silver nails impatiently on the console. Finally Valdo’s image appeared on the screen.

A.A. Catto had often thought that the reason she liked her brother so much was that he resembled her so closely. He had the same straight nose and large blue eyes. He even had the same full mouth. It was something that didn’t quite fit on a male. Valdo revelled in the fact that he was definitely borderline.

The image on the screen was far from Valdo at his best.

He still had on the pale blue wig that he had worn the night before, and his makeup was smudged and streaked.

‘What do you want, sister? I thought you’d be dormaxed out by now.’

‘You look awful, brother. What do you plan to do this morning?’

‘Sleep. There’s nothing happening except a directorate meeting.’

A.A. Catto pretended to be scandalized.

‘You mean you’re going to miss a directorate meeting?’

Valdo scowled.

‘What are you talking about? We always miss directorate meetings.’

‘I thought we ought to go to this one.’

‘You’re joking?’

‘I thought it would be a good idea if we went to the meeting.’

‘Have you gone mad, sister? Directorate meetings are boring, tedious, and, very positively, no place to be.’

‘Think about it, brother. If we took on maybe three pay-loads of altacaine, and then went along and caused trouble for the parents, I thought it would be fun.’

‘Aren’t you rather scraping the barrel?’

‘I thought if we worked on it, we might be able to force through some dictates that could make life more amusing.’

Valdo looked unconvinced.

‘Like what, sister?’

‘Maybe we could have a war.’

‘There’s no one worth having a war with.’

A.A. Carto waved his objections aside.

‘I only just thought of it. We can work out details later. Say you’ll come.’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘Listen, sister, I’d rather sleep than spend the day with those boring old farts.’

‘But we could take it over, brother. We could really put them through.’

‘It still seems like a waste of time. A whole day spent in pursuit of the tiresome. It almost seems an insult to good drugs to take on a load and then sit with awful, OLD people.’

‘It’s because we never go to meetings that these old awful people have it their own way. That’s the reason that the entertainments are so wretched.’

‘My dear sister. Is it that you’ve become a concerned citizen?’

A.A. Catto’s eyes flashed with anger.

‘Don’t be disgusting.’

‘It does rather sound like it. I never thought I’d see my dear sister wanting to go to a meeting. Perhaps you’re getting old.’

‘You can be very insulting when you try.’

‘That kind of remark isn’t going to persuade me to come with you.’

‘Then will you come?’

‘I’ll consider it. You haven’t tried to bribe me yet.’

‘What do you want?’

‘I don’t know. There’s very little that you have that I want.’

A.A. Catto’s mouth twisted.

‘You didn’t say that four hours ago, brother.’

‘I was simply accommodating you, sister dear.’

‘Then accommodate me now.’

‘Will you promise to come back here and allow me to use you in a cruel and original manner for a whole hour if this meeting’s as boring and loathsome as I fear it will be?’

A.A. Catto nodded quickly.

‘Yes, yes, anything you like. Say you’ll come?’

‘I’ll come.’

‘Wonderful. I’ll see you at 10.00 outside the Boardroom.’

Valdo grimaced.

‘Oh god, sister, don’t say you want to be punctual.’

‘Sorry, make it 10.45.’

‘That’s a little better.’

‘Thank you, brother. You won’t be disappointed.’

Valdo yawned.

‘Anything to amuse my little sister.’

***

Like a wave of coarse flesh the Shirik poured out from trenches and dugouts and charged howling towards the Harodin lines. The enemy immediately opened a withering fire and dead Shirik fell one on top of another. Some dropped like stones while others fell twisting and snarling, clawing at their wounds. Although they died in their hundreds, still more came on, clambering over the bodies to get at the enemy.

One small group actually made it across no man’s land and reached the opposite trenches. They discharged their single shot scrap guns and then fell on the remaining defenders, clubbing, hacking and biting. They were shot down, but the Harodin line was breached and more Shirik poured into the gap. A horrible slaughter began in the narrow confines of the Harodin trenches.

Billy wiped the sweat from his face. It was their first time in action. They had hung round the dugout for five days, and then, along with two other machines, they had been ordered to back up and consolidate the Shirik assault.

As he watched, a handful of Harodin leaped from, the forward trenches and tried to run away. They had only gone a few yards when they were cut down by blasts of scrap metal from Shirik guns. The men who had run seemed indistinguishable from the mercenaries. Duck had been right when he’d described them as being regular guys.

From the driver’s seat, the Rainman grunted.

‘Looks like we’ll be moving up soon.’

Billy swivelled the turret a little to look at the other two fighting machines. Sure enough, a red flag appeared through the turret hatch of the lead machine. Billy glanced at the Rainman.

‘Okay, here we go, roll it.’

The Rainman eased the machine into gear and it began to move forward in formation with the either two. Billy licked his dry lips and glanced down at Reave, who crouched in the standby position, ready to move if anything happened to either of the other two. Billy grinned tensely at him.

‘This is it, kid.’

Reave shook his head.

‘How the fuck did we get ourselves into this?’

‘Don’t ask, man. Just don’t ask.’

The fighting machines crossed the Shirik trenches and started across no man’s land, towards the huge gap the apemen had carved in the Harodin defences. The wheels crunched over the thickly littered Shirik bodies, crushing them into the dust. Billy fought to keep himself from being sick. He dropped a burst of bolts on a section of the forward trench, but saw that it was already in Shirik hands and stopped firing. There seemed to be nothing left for them to do.

A Harodin machine gun opened up on them from an isolated foxhole, and bullets clanged against the machine’s armour. Billy swung the flamer round. As he fired he saw the gun was manned by two haggard, bearded men in dirty blue tunics. They looked surprised as the tongue of flame lanced towards them. It was the same look of surprise that had crossed the face of the man he’d shot in Dogbreath. The next instant the flame caught them, and they turned into blazing inhuman things. Billy lost sight of them as the machine dipped and lurched across the first enemy trench. His stomach twisted but he managed not to be sick.

The formation stopped just beyond the Harodin advance trench and took up a defensive position. The Shirik mopped up the last of the defenders. Once the trench was cleared it was their job to guard against a possible counter attack, while Uruk engineers reconstructed the newly won fortifications.

No counter attack came, and at nightfall the mercenaries dismounted from their machines and made a temporary camp. The killing was too strong in Billy’s mind to allow him to sit and relax with the other crews. He wandered along the trench, until he came to a group of Shirik huddled round a small fire. Without going too close he watched the strange subhuman creatures and listened to their grunted conversation. The Shirik seemed to have been issued with fresh meat, possibly as a reward for their victory. They snuffled and grunted over large bones.

‘Fight huh? Fight?’

‘Some fight. Some fight.’

‘Plenty kill huh?’

‘Listen …’

‘Huh?’

‘Listen … I fight.’

‘I fight, I fight.’

‘I fight, I hit ‘em, I kick ‘em an’ bit ‘em. I had t’ fight huh?’

‘They get on top of you?’

‘Nah … I fight. I kill ‘em.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Yeah.’

‘All fight.’

‘All attack.’

‘Hey.’

‘Wha’?’

‘I … fight.’

‘Sure, all fight.’

‘No, no, I remember …’

‘Wha’?’

‘I remember.’

‘Wha’?’

‘I … I don’t remember.’

‘You forget.’

‘It was before, before.’

‘Didn’t we surround ‘em?’

‘Kill ‘em.’

‘Plenty good killing, huh?’

One of the Shirik waved his bone in the air.

‘Good killing, good eating.’

He wined his mouth with a strip of blue uniform, and in a flash Billy realized. The fresh meat was human. The Shirik were eating the bodies of the Harodin. He backed away in silent panic, and as soon as he was well away from the Shirik, he bolted along the trench towards where the machine crews were camped. He stumbled across a figure lying in the darkness.

‘Fuck off, I’m trying to sleep.’

It was Reave.

‘It’s me, it’s Billy. Listen, I just saw …’

The words stuck in his throat.

‘I … I …’

Reave looked at him in alarm.

‘What’s wrong, man? You look like you seen a ghost.’

‘It’s worse than that, man. Much worse.’

‘What is it, Billy? You look terrible.’

‘You remember how Duck told us about the guys who went kill crazy. How they always attacked the Shirik?’

Reave nodded.

‘Sure, I remember.’

‘Reave …’

Billy’s hysteria was holding off by only a fraction.

‘… I found out why. The Shirik, man. Those fucking animals eat the dead! They’re out there, eating the men they killed today!’

Reave closed his eyes.

‘Jesus! You saw this? You saw it happening?’

‘I saw it, Reave. I saw it and heard them talking. It was horrible. We got to get out of here.’

He clutched at Reave and sobbed into his jacket. Reave put an arm out and stroked Billy’s hair.

‘It’s all right, kid. We’ll get away from this place. We did in Dogbreath, and we can do it here.’

Billy said nothing, and for a long time they clung together in silence. A figure emerged out of the darkness.

‘What’s the matter with you two? Never had you tagged as queers.’

Reave looked up, and saw Axmann standing over him. Axmann had been in command of the lead tank.

‘My partner cracked up when he saw the Shirik eating the dead.’

‘Didn’t Duck warn you what it was like?’

‘He didn’t tell us they were cannibals.’

Axmann scratched the stubble on his chin.

‘That’s too bad. It must have been a shock to just stumble on to it. We all stay close to camp after a victory. Nobody wants to get close to the Shirik,’

Billy looked up at him.

‘It’s okay for you to talk. You’ve got used to it.’

Axmann put a hand on Billy’s shoulder.

‘Nobody gets used to that. I’ve been here for five years, and I never got used to it. The best you can hope for is to be able to close off your mind to it.’

He fumbled in the pocket of his combat coat, produced a small bottle and shook some of the contents into his hand. He handed Reave two flat white pills.

‘Give him these, they’ll put him out for the rest of the night.’

Axmann turned and walked away. Reave gave Billy the pills and some water to wash them down with. A few minutes after Billy had swallowed them, he fell into a deep dreamless sleep.

The next thing that Billy remembered was being shaken awake by Reave.

‘Come on, man, move. We’re under attack.’

There was an explosion close by, and Billy shook his head to make his brain work.

‘What’s going on?’

‘The Harodin are counter attacking. There’s thousands of them. I guess they want to get their own back on the Shirik.’

There was another explosion, and Billy scrambled to his feet.

‘Get inside the machine. It’ll be safer than out here in the open.’

Billy and Reave climbed out of the trench and sprinted towards the parked machines. Bullets spattered around their feet. Bearing down on the Dur Shanzag lines was a wall of blue uniforms. The air was filled with snarls and howls as the Shirik prepared to meet the enemy.

They reached the fighting machine, and Reave tugged open the door.

‘Quick, inside.’

They dived inside.

‘Where’s the Rainman?’

‘Dunno, I ain’t seen him.’

Reave pointed out through the observation slit.

‘There. There he is. He’s coming.’

The Rainman was ducking and weaving towards the machine, attempting to dodge the crossfire from the Shirik and the Harodin. He was only ten yards from the machine when he stumbled, spun round and hit the ground. Reave looked at Billy in alarm.

‘He’s been hit. He’s gone down.’

The Rainman was on his hands and knees, slowly crawling towards the machine. Reave reached for the door.

‘I’m going out to get him.’

There was the clang of bullets hitting the side of the machine. Billy grabbed Reave by the arm.

‘Don’t be a fool. You’ll get killed out there.’

‘I can’t leave him lying out there wounded.’

As he spoke, more bullets hit the Rainman, he jerked convulsively and lay still. Reave pulled away from Billy and began opening the door.