Last Stand of the DNA Cowboys

CHAPTER THREE

Novice Wellblessed sat on the rail of the half bridge,only a matter of feet from the start of the nothings. He was eating a limon and tossing the pieces of green and yellow rind into the shimmering nonmatter, watching the way they smoked and vanished as they touched it. It would take only three steps and that was it. He had no portable stasis generator, and he, too, would be one with the non and all his troubles would be over.

The Half Bridge was one of the most disturbing pieces of architecture in all of the Sanctuary. Its name described it perfectly. It was a simple wooden footbridge that arched — or, more precisely, half arched — across the stream that marked one of the boundaries of the Sanctuary. On one side of the stream there was a serene normality; on the other there was the nothings. The water simply went to the edge of the Sanctuary's stasis field and stopped. The bridge did exactly the same thing. It reached its apex and stopped. Novice Wellblessed had yet to learn the secret of why the bridge did not just topple over with no far bank to support it. As it was, it gave the impression that over in the nothings there was some sort of spectral nonbridge that perfectly complemented it and held it in place. Novice Wellblessed knew that was impossible, but he still could not shake the idea. The novices were supposed to use it as a meditative aid, an idea made solid with which they might contemplate the transitory nature of the material world. All Novice Wellblessed used it for was to sit and stare and contemplate suicide.

Of all the novices in his admission group, Wellblessed had made the slowest progress. He retained little of the instruction that he received, and his masters constantly accused him of resisting enlightenment. He had spent more hours than he could remember assuming the Attitude of Submission and accepting the Penitential Ministry. Lately he had even been cutting classes. It was really no surprise that Wellblessed was doing so badly. He had no vocation. It had been only the direst necessity that had forced him to come begging to the Sanctuary to enroll as a novice. Back in another lifetime he had gone by the name of Billy Oblivion, and he had roamed the Margins and the stasis towns, the kind of footloose rover who managed to stay one step ahead of serious trouble. Eventually, though, serious trouble had caught up with him. Aledya, his longtime traveling companion and probably the only woman he had come close to really loving, was dead from an overdose of cyclatrol, and the Rat Gang had been hard on his heels. Right behind them had been a pair of homicidal treasury agents from the city of Litz called Lenk and Lu Yuan. Billy, in a moment of desperate stupidity, had robbed them of their graft money, and they intended to make an example of him. When, quite by accident, he had crawled on his knees into the reality of the Sanctuary with his SG all but burned out, the life of a novice had seemed the perfect answer. He would get a new name, a new identity, and three squares a day. How hard could it be? But that was before he had discovered the real meaning of soul-sick boredom. In the Sanctuary, all pleasure was canceled.

The gongs and horns had sounded from the onion domes of the minarets for the next task rotation, but Novice Wellblessed did not move. He had been thinking of himself as Billy Oblivion a lot lately. The identity of Novice Wellblessed had never sat well with him. Recently, it had not sat at all. He was supposed to be in the cubicle with his replica, learning to understand and respect himself, but he could no longer face those sessions. Soon after he had arrived at the Sanctuary, he had been templated; and when he had been deemed ready, a walking talking duplicate of himself had been created in the stuff receiver. The idea was that the time spent talking and being with his living double would eventually bring him to a degree of self-awareness that was transcendental. But in Wellblessed's case it had not happened that way. Wellblessed II had all the memories and emotions of the original. During the very first session he had wanted to know what would happen to him when Wellblessed had all the self-awareness he wanted. Wellblessed II becameincreasingly paranoid that he would be killed once he was no longer needed.

'I mean, I don't care how I got here. I'm here, and as far as I'm concerned, I'm alive. They can't just kill me. I'm not a thing, I'm a person.'

Wellblessed had compassion for his double, but there was one overwhelming problem. 'I know you're a person. The trouble is that the person you are happens to be me. The seat's already taken.'

They had talked about working out some sort of escape plan, but Wellblessed had very quickly realized that he had no intention of going through with anything of the sort. He really did not want a second Novice Wellblessed running around loose. Aside from the broad karmic considerations, there was also the very practical point that each of them was liable to get into all manner of trouble, and there was no guarantee that the right twin would take the rap for his own actions. Since their thought processes were absolutely alike, Wellblessed II realized exactly the same thing at almost exactly the same time. He became so glum that it was impossible to spend any time with him. From the way he looked at his original during those increasingly difficult sessions, he clearly was working on the theory that Wellblessed might be plotting to kill him. The idea had indeed passed through the novice's mind, but he had not actually taken it any further than toying with it as a possible way out of the dilemma. The process certainly was not what the Masters had in mind.

Novice Wellblessed continued to stare into the nothings until a voice from behind made him turn.

'I see once again that you have failed to attend the empathy session with your duplicate.'

It was Richthofen, the Master of Discipline. Wellblessed sighed. If Richthofen had come looking for him, he knew that he was deep in the shit again. He turned and faced Master Richthofen. 'That's right.'

'You have an explanation, perhaps?'

'I don't believe that the sessions are going anywhere.'

Master Richthofen stood ramrod-straight, a trim figure in his saffron bodysuit. There was a positive gloss to his closely shaved head, but his expression was sour and censorious. 'That's hardly something that a novice is qualified to decide for himself.'

'The duplicate's a psycho. He believes that we're all plotting to kill him.'

'If he's a psycho, then you must be a psycho, too. You are, after all, identical.'

Novice eyed master coldly. 'That's quite possible.'

'The duplicate empathy sessions are designed to give you a unique chance to work through this kind of self-directed hostility.'

Wellblessed was starting to lose patience with all the nonsense. The Billy Oblivion side of his personality could remember times when his hostility had been the only thing that had saved his ass in a tight corner. 'I'm telling you, it's not happening.'

Richthofen's eyes narrowed. 'Perhaps we have to make it happen.'

Wellblessed could feel cowboy hostility coming to the rescue. He was a grown man, damn it. He had wandered all over the Damaged World. He was sick of being treated like a recalcitrant schoolboy. He turned and faced the Master head-on.

'Listen, you can do what you like to me. You can have me crawling across a floor of cut-glass beads or whatever queer punishment you can think up, but sooner or later you're going to have to accept the fact that I'm just not novice material. I don't have a vocation. Dig?'

'Then perhaps you should leave us.'

Wellblessed had not expected that response. His eyebrows shot up in surprise. 'You're throwing me out?'

Master Richthofen shook his head. 'We don't throw people out.'

'But if I go, you won't stop me. Right?'

'Exactly.'

'Can I get my things?'

'Your things are gone. They were destroyed when you announced your intention to renounce the material world.'

That was bad news. The duster coat that he had been wearing when he had arrived had been cool.

'What about my guns? Are they still around? It can get savage out there.'

'There are no weapons in the Sanctuary.'

'So suppose I just use the Stuff Catalogue to get — '

Richthofen was already shaking his head. Wellblessed looked down at the shapeless novice's shift that was his only garment. Hell, they didn't even give out drawers in this place.

'I can't go out into the world looking like some cheesehead monk.'

'Then return to your empathy class.'

Wellblessed leaned back against the rail and slowly nodded. Okay, Richthofen, he thought. He knew when he was getting the shaft. 'So I go out looking like this? Don't I even get an SG?'

'You'll be given a stasis generator.'

'Don't do me any favors.'

Master Richthofen was clearly through with him. 'Try to be off the Sanctuary by nightfall.'

Nightfall came quickly, and with it a torrential downpour. By the time he had drawn a stasis generator, charged up, and scrounged a little food from the kitchens, the rain was coming down in straight gray sheets. Wellblessed had a sneaking suspicion that the weather conditions had been arranged for his benefit. Soaked and desolate, he trudged through the dripping ornamental garden. He was making for the Half Bridge. It seemed an appropriate way to go out. He was in the Place of Meaningful Boulders and getting close to the bridge when, for the second time that day, his thoughts were interrupted by a voice from behind.

'Billy Oblivion, wait up!'

It was strange to hear his own name spoken aloud after so long. The imprinted personality of Novice Wellblessed dropped away as though it had never been. For better or worse, he was Billy Oblivion again. Unfortunately, the return of his old personality came with a brand-new problem. The voice was hideously familiar. Billy turned and saw that his duplicate was coming after him.

'What do you want?' Billy demanded.

'I want to come with you.'

Billy halted. 'Don't be ridiculous. Two identical people can't go traveling together. There are places were they'd stone us to death as an abomination in the eyes of Zanthar.'

Oblivion II looked desperate. 'If I stay here, they'll run off another replica and put me in your place.'

Billy wiped the rain from his shaved head. 'I feel for you, but it ain't my problem anymore.'

The duplicate had a dangerous look in his eye. Billy had never thought he was capable of looking so mean. The two of them realized at the same moment that only one of them was going to walk away from that place. It might have been that Oblivion II was a fraction slower. Later Billy would come to believe that it was because the other was the copy. An original had to be just that bit better. In any case, Billy had the edge. He was the one standing next to a harmonic arrangement of fist-size chunks of uncut quartz. He grabbed one and swung. The replica tried to block the blow with his arm. Billy heard the snap of bone. He swung again and again, overcoming the problem of fighting someone who thought exactly as he did by resorting to mindless rage. He wanted to kill; he wanted to completely obliterate the interloper. He was not killing himself. He was killing a thing. He was killing a created thing. Nobody could blame him for that. It was him or it. If he did not kill it, it would usurp his life and his personality. He went on smashing at it. Die, you bastard!

The replica was down, but Billy kept beating it. He knelt beside it, hammering its face with the rock until it was a bloody pulp. Blood was every where. Blood was making the rock slippery and hard to grip. Blood stained his shift. There was blood all over the wet gravel. The rain running down his forearms was bloodred.

Finally he stopped. He was sobbing, totally spent. The body was unrecognizable. It was not him anymore. He found that he could not get up off his knees. He flopped onto his back, and the rain beat down on his face. The water tasted good as it ran into his mouth. He had killed himself and lived through it. After long minutes he found the strength to roll over and push himself up onto all fours. He started coughing and retching. The food that he had brought from the kitchen for the journey was scattered and trampled into the gravel. He forced himself to his feet and stumbled to the bank of the stream. In a daze, he stripped off his garment and tried to wash off the worst of the blood. As he wrung it out, he stared at the nothings on the other side of the water. What did they have in store for him? Shivering with cold and shock, he pulled on the wet shift and started toward the bridge.

At the top of the Half Bridge he stopped and briefly looked back at the rain-drenched Sanctuary. The three huge pods, like monster tulips on squat, thick stalks, and the taller spires of the minarets were all but obscured by a thick mist. Momentarily he had an impulse to run, to beg them to take him back. He knew that was impossible. He turned on his stasis generator and stepped into the nonmatter.

No matter how many times he crossed the nothings, nothing could stop the fear of that first step. It was more than just the flash that the SG might turn out to be malfunctioning. It was the truly primal terror of entering an environment that was so utterly alien that it was almost beyond comprehension. There was also a very practical reason to be afraid. Billy had no way to navigate. No lizardbrain for him: Aledya and the Minstrel Boy had had the transplants. Nobody had ever tampered with him. He was going in blind, hoping that he would stumble across a stable area before he died of hunger or thirst or his SG ran out of power.

The portable stasis generator, even running at full power, could not maintain stable reality much beyond the area immediately around its user. Billy had about ten inches of clear air in front of his face, and a patch of solid ground formed each time he put a foot down. He could breathe and he could move, and the temperature of his strictly limited reality remained constant, neither warm nor cold. There was nothing to do but continue to trudge on. There was no sound but his own breathing and absolutely nothing to look at but the bright swirling fog. Billy knew that one of the first dangers in the nothings was a crushing hypnotic boredom. The only things that punctuated it were the moments when his subjective gravity shifted through ninety degrees and pitched him onto his side us though he had been hit by a sudden pile-driving wind. It was painful and annoying, but at least it was something. There was also a strange, cold comfort in the way the SG was always able to produce enough solid ground for him to fall on.

In the nothings time quickly ceased to exist. Billy had no idea how long he had been walking. It could have been no more than a few minutes, or it could have been a day. He knew that he was hungry and that his mouth was very dry, but the nothings seemed to provide a certain kind of numbness. When everything around him was so dangerously strange, his own minor discomfortshardly seemed to signify. He simply plodded on. Walking became the core of his being. He helped maximize the numbness by making himself as mindless as he could. He behaved like a prisoner on a treadmill: one foot after the other; don't even think about it. If he thought about anything, it would open the door to the fear that he knew was waiting for him below the surface. Perhaps he was not going anywhere at all. Maybe he was just walking around in circles, if such a thing as a circle existed in the nothings. There were stories about people in his situation, people who had crossed the nothings without a lizard or a lizardbrain to guide them and had never come to stasis again. In the end they just gave up and turned off their SGs. Of course, those stories had to be pure speculation. How could anyone be there to know for sure? Even so, the stories were far from comforting.

In a place where the senses were so completely deprived, a small tactile change in the ground under Billy's feet was a major event. It felt like a small pebble under his big toe. He looked down, scarcely daring to hope. It was a pebble. The ground under his feet had taken on an uneven texture. There was dirt and small rocks, not just the flat colorless; basic matter that had been there previously. Had he really reached somewhere solid? He took two more paces — and he was out. The nothings were behind him.

The nature of the place he had reached was something else. The nothings were still all around him, but they were at a distance. He seemed to be in a tunnel of stability that had been driven straight through the nonmatter. The purpose of the tunnel seemed to be to enclose a wide, smooth six-lane highway that ran to distant perspective points in either direction. The rocks and gravel under his feet were the hard shoulder of the highway.

The road through the nonmatter was like nothing Billy had ever seen before. A muted light came from glowing spheres, almost like miniature, featureless moons that hung close to the curved roof formed by the edge of the nothings overhead. Billy's initial reaction was that the road was empty, but he quickly realized that he was wrong. A procession of faint, ghostly shapes moved along it. They were formless and indistinct. He could not make out any real details of their shape, but they were definitely there. It was as if they were something that was leaking through from another dimension, or maybe weird visual echoes of travelers who had gone before. Billy shivered. The shapes gave him the creeps; also, it was much colder in the tunnel than it had been in the nothings. The numbness was going, and his thirst and hunger were much more intrusive. He might have arrived somewhere, but it was an exceedingly minimal somewhere, and it looked as though he still had a long way to go before even his most basic needs could be satisfied. He supposed he should have been grateful, but it was hard as he stood beside the highway, wondering which way to go and without even a coin to flip.

After some pointless pondering, he made an arbitrary choice, turned to the right, and started walking. As far as he could estimate, he had been walking for maybe an hour and was deeply unhappy about it when he heard the noise behind him. It was the hum of a very real engine. He spun around. Was it really a vehicle? A solid, human vehicle? All he saw was a moving dot way off in the distance.

The dot was getting noticeably bigger, and the hum was growing louder. Whatever it was, it seemed to be moving at quite a speed, and in a short space of time he was able to make out some details. It was definitely a ground car, either red or orange, squatly streamlined and with some sort of greenhouse canopy in the front. Even though he did not have a clue as to what he might expect from whoever might be riding in the car, Billy stepped out into the road and started waving his arm. The car sped along the highway surface on a slickfield that was probably only millimeters thick. The thing was larger than he had first assumed — from base to roof, it was eight or nine feet high. Although built for minimum wind resistance, it was chunky and bulbous, like an egg lying on one flattened side. Gaudy, stylized flames were painted on its bodywork, and there was indeed a greenhouse canopy at the front for the driver and/or passenger. The whole thing ended in a set of stubby fins.

At first it looked as though the car was not going to stop. In fact, for a few moments Billy had the impression that it was deliberately going to run him down. Then there was the hiss of retrojets, and the garish machine slewed to a halt right beside him. A section of canopy opened, and a face peered out.

'You look a mess.'

A story came effortlessly to Billy. 'I was attacked and robbed. I've been wandering around in the nothings.'

'Where are you headed?'

'That's hard to say. I don't even know where I am.'

'You want a ride?'

'I'd be real grateful.'

The face, which had narrow blue eyes, sandy hair, and a spiky beard, grinned. The grin was not particularly pleasant. 'How could you be grateful if you was robbed? Strikes me you wouldn't have too much to be grateful with.'

Billy did his best to look honest, harmless, and pathetic at the same time. He had no trouble with the last part. 'If you could give me a ride to civilization, I'd owe you a big one.'

'In my experience, being owed a big one and getting a big one are two very different things.'

Billy made a helpless gesture. 'What can I tell you? I'm stranded.'

The face appeared to be thinking; then it made up its mind. 'Ah, what the hell. I can always toss you out again if you bug me.' A hatch to the rear of the canopy popped open. 'Climb aboard.'

Entering the vehicle was like crawling into a mobile womb. The walls were covered with quilted pink, tuck-and-roll leather. The floor was as soft as a mattress and was covered in a thick pile of shaggy pink fur. A hologram projection panel on the ceiling filled the rear of the vehicle with undulating abstract erotics. Billy was scarcely inside when the hatch sighed closed, the driver banged it into drive, and the machine accelerated away. Billy lost his balance and sprawled into the fur.

The driver glanced back. 'Come and sit up here.'

The driver occupied a contoured command chair in the nose of the ground craft. With a fast gesture he indicated the smaller contour berth beside him. Billy crawled forward and eased himself into the berth.

'Nice machine.'

'It'll do.'

The driver was short and thickset, with pale, almost transparent skin. He was dressed in a mylar jumpsuit with red and blue slogans on it written in a chunky script Billy could neither read nor recognize. He turned his head and grinned at Billy. He had a mouthful of bad crooked teeth.

'You know something? I almost ran you down.'

'I'm glad you didn't.'

'Thought you were a stinking priest. Can't stand priests. Always try to run them down if I find them in the road.'

'I'm no priest.'

'You look like one in that there dress.'

'It's all the robbers left me.'

'They left you your SG.'

Billy nodded.

The driver glanced at him suspiciously. 'Most of the boys I know would have taken the SG double fast. A guy who's one with the non can't come after you.'

'Maybe they had pity on me.'

The driver shook his head. 'Thieves with pity? What's the world coming to?'

He suddenly stuck out a hand. 'The name's Schook Jetstream.'

Billy briefly clasped the hand. 'Please to meet you. I'm Billy.'

Jetstream took another look at Billy. The suspicion was back. 'I knew a Billy once.'

'There are a lot of Billys in this world.'

Schook Jetstream nodded thoughtfuxxly. 'I guess there are.'

For the moment, at least, his worries seemed to be allayed. He fumbled in one of the many patch pockets of his reflective jumpsuit. 'You want a rubyjewel?'

He was holding out one of the clear, red, very powerful stimulant beads. If he lived on those things, Billy thought, it would account for the transparency of his skin.

'Sure, I don't mind if I do.' The rubyjewel would certainly stop the pangs of hunger.

Schook Jetstream seemed pleased by the response. 'Least you can't be no priest. No priest would take one of those.'

Billy put the bead in his mouth, but his throat was too dry to swallow. 'Do you have any water?'

Jetstream shook his head. 'I got a beer, though.'

He took one hand off the controls, reached down into a cooler beside the command chair, and produced a can. It was silver, with more of the indecipherable characters. Billy took it and popped the seal. It tasted wonderful. He could not remember how long it had been since he had tasted beer. He sank back in his chair as the bead began to work and stared out the greenhouse canopy. The highway looked no different from the way ithad been when he had climbed into Jetstream's machine, but judging from the way the globes of light were flashing past overhead, the ground craft was traveling at high speed. The phrase 'speeding to nowhere' flashed through Billy's mind.

Schook Jetstream opened a beer of his own. He took a long pull and once again showed Billy his crooked teeth. 'So you don't know where you are, right?'

He seemed to take quite a delight in Billy's supposed misfortune. Billy was not at all sure what to make of Jetstream. If the man had a rubyjewel habit, he could expect sudden, unpredictable shifts of mood.

'That's right, I'm totally lost.'

'And you don't know where you want to go?'

'I'll go anywhere, any place where I can get myself fixed up.'

'I'm probably going on through to Graveyard.'

'That would do me just fine.'

'So maybe I'll let you ride along with me.'

Billy nodded his thanks. He did not particularly like the way Jetstream had used the word 'maybe.' He turned back to the view. They were running straight through a cluster of the indistinct ghostly shapes. He looked at Jetstream. 'What are those things?'

Jetstream's face was blank. 'What things?'

Billy pointed through the canopy. 'Those things.'

Jetstream's head turned. His eyes were cold, the suspicion back in spades. 'You weirding on me? You been in the nothings too long?'

Billy realized that Schook Jetstream could not see the ghostly shapes. He lamely shook his head. 'It's nothing. Just my imagination.'

'You better not be weirding on me. I'll throw you out right now.'

Billy did his best to reassure the driver. 'Really, it's okay. I just thought I saw something. You know how it can get.'

'Do I? Do I? I'm not sure that I do.'

Things were starting to get difficult. 'Why don't we just forget it.'

'I'm not sure about you, Billy. I bring you in here and I give you a rubyjewel and a beer to wash it clown, and now you start weirding on me.'

If anyone was weirding, it was Schook Jetstream.

'I'm not weirding, I'm okay.'

Jetstream was thinking again. 'Billy. . Billy? I could swear.'

To Billy's alarm, Jetstream suddenly slammed a fist into the control panel.

'I knew I knew you! Billy! Just Billy, huh? I know who you are, friend. You're Billy Oblivion!'

Billy's heart froze. 'I. .'

He could swear that he had never met the man. Unless, of course, the nothings had time-warped him.

Schook Jetstream hit the retros, and the vehicle shuddered to a stop. Billy, who had not bothered to strap in, was thrown headfirst into the canopy. Jetstream was glaring at him with a look of pure hate.

'Out!'

Billy was dizzy and a little stunned. He had trouble getting his arms and legs untangled. Jetstream was throwing off his safety webbing. Billy was on his hands and knees, crawling back down the cabin. Jetstream aimed a kick at him.

'Out, I said! Out of here, you murderous bastard!'

Jetstream was smashing at Billy with boots and fists. As Billy tried to avoid the blows, he wondered desperately what he might have done to the man. He could not remember ever having set eyes on him before. He was well aware that there were plenty of people who might be more than justified in reacting to him like that. He just couldn't place Jetstream among their number. The other man had turned back to the control console. The hatch popped. Then Jetstream was coming at him again, brandishing a short black billy club.

'Out of here! Get out!'

Without thinking, Billy rolled through the hatch. He fell heavily to the road surface, grazing his knees and elbows. Above him, Jetstream was screaming.

'I hope you die out there! I hope you rot! Why don't you crawl into the nothings and be done with it, you bastard!'

The backwash rolled Billy over like a piece of discarded garbage as the red and yellow machine gunned away. He lay facedown on the cold, hard surface. So far, things were not going too well.