Mick Farren - Last Stand of the DNA Cowboys

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.