Mick Farren - Last Stand of the DNA Cowboys

STABLE POINT LOCATED.

'All we can do is keep our fingers crossed.'

They came out of the nothings at periscope depth in dark water. The Minstrel Boy raised the scope and made a slow 360-degree sweep.

'We seem to be at the mouth of a very large river.'

'Do you recognize it?'

The Minstrel Boy leaned on the handgrips in the traditional submarine commander pose, although the traditional submarine commander was not normally bareass naked.

'I don't know. I've seen a couple of places where there are sections of wide river.' He stopped the sweep and turned the periscope back again. 'Will you look at that!'

'What?'

'There seems to be a war going on.'

Renatta, also naked, moved up beside him. 'We've come out in the middle of a war?'

The Minstrel Boy slapped the handgrips into the upright position and retracted the periscope. 'I'm going to surface and take a better look.'

'Isn't that dangerous?'

The Minstrel Boy was pulling on his pants. 'We're quite some distance out.'

He swung into the pilot chair and manually brought the vessel to the surface. He set the controls to maintain their current position, then ducked back toward the hatch. Dressed only in his old leather pants, he opened the hatch and began to climb out. Renatta made no move to follow him.

'Be careful.'

As the periscope had shown, they were well out from the mouth of a wide river. It was night, but a pair of phony moons made it almost as bright as day. To one side of the river there was dark green jungle; to the other, a stately mansion with a classic columned portico dominated a low headland. The mansion was burning like a torch, flames streaming from the windows and being reflected in the black mirror of the water. As the Minstrel Boy watched, the roof collapsed in a galaxy of sparks. Farther upriver a red dirigible with skull insignias on its side was dropping incendiaries on a second target while small monoplanes made strafing runs. From the way the airship hung motionless in the air, it was clearly meeting no resistance from the ground. The audible chatter of gunfire must have been coming exclusively from the planes.

The Minstrel Boy leaned into the body of the submarine. 'You should come up here and take a look at this.'

'Is it safe?'

'We're a good way out. I don't think anyone's going to notice us.'

Renatta, dressed once again in her lace shift, emerged from the hatch. She let out a low whistle. 'Pretty spectacular. Why are those planes doing that?'

The Minstrel Boy put an arm around her shoulder. The air was not particularly warm out on the water.

'Anybody's guess. They're probably air pirates. Those guys will hit a target just for the fun of it.'

'People have strange ideas of fun.'

'That's the first thing you learn.'

'We can't land here, can we?'

The Minstrel Boy shook his head. 'It doesn't look as though it would be a very good idea.'

'So what do we do?'

'Quietly go back the way we came.'

As he spoke, one of the monoplanes broke off the attack and made a high turn toward the open sea. It began trailing flares from its wing tips in an obvious signal.

The Minstrel Boy cursed. 'I think that plane's telling the others that it's spotted an unarmed submarine coming in from the sea. We're not going to leave here quietly. Quickly, get below.'

Renatta de Luxe needed no second urging. The Minstrel Boy was pleased that she did not waste time asking redundant questions. He swung down through the hatch right behind her. As he quickly dogged the cover, he gave verbal commands to the biode.

'Take control. Crash dive. We are under air attack. Run for the nothings in a high-speed evasive pattern. I waive stasis protocol and relinquish all participation.'

In such a situation, the biode was much smarter and a hundred times as fast as he was. It was only human vanity that made men involve themselves in the world of machines. As he ducked into the pilot seat, he gestured to Renatta.

'Strap in! The g-comp will only make a dent in what's about to happen. It's going to be a roller coaster until we hit the nothings.'

A Klaxon blared, and warnings hung in the air.

CRASH DIVE!

CRASH DIVE!

The gold submarine made a bucking plunge and started to run for the nothings like a minnow trying to outmaneuver a hungry shark. There were explosions of bubbles on either sideof them. The monoplane was dropping mines of some kind. The Minstrel Boy clutched the inoperative control levers with his shoulders hunched protectively around his ears and his eyes tightly shut. If he was going to be blown to pieces, he saw no reason to watch it coming. The boat rolled and twisted. The whole framework was vibrating, and the noise of the drive was a deafening anguish. The biode had taken him at his word and was pushing firmly at the envelope. When it abruptly stopped, he almost believed that he had died. With absolutely no feeling of deceleration, all noise and motion ceased. There was nothing but the ticking of the clock, their own still-labored breathing, and the small internal sounds of the submarine.

'The nothings,' the Minstrel Boy announced.

'That was something.'

The Minstrel Boy unstrapped. 'You liked that?'

'One way to work up an appetite.'

The Minstrel Boy blinked. 'You're hungry?'

'Threats to my life take me that way.'

'I think we should find a destination before we do anything else. I don't like to be in the nothings for any longer than need be.'

'It'll be better than the last one?'

'I'll merge with the biode and watch while the lizardbrain takes a look around.'

He grasped the control levers and settled into the intelligence cushion. Almost immediately there was an image. A building stood on its own isolated, mist-shrouded hill. It was a strange, uneven asymmetrical structure that looked as if it had been built in relays without a coherent plan. There were buttresses and turrets and sloping batwing roofs. Spires rose from the granite complexity like seedlings desperately reaching for a light that had failed. The place might just as well have grown there. It had that older-than-the-rocks-on-which-it-sat permanence. The most applicable word was "pile." The overall effect was brooding Gothic, but style was joined to style with total abandon. Although there was something very forbidding about its towering bulk, the bright lights shining from its irregular doors, windows, and terraces were warm and welcoming.

'The Voice in the Wilderness.'

'What?' Renatta asked.

'I suppose you could call it an inn. A lot of travelers passthrough there, and you can get pretty much anything you might want. It's the domain of an individual called Ramilles Diamenti, who's as old as God.'

'What's he like, this Ramilles Diamenti?'

'He's about as big as God, too. A huge man, and he rules his kingdom with a rod of iron. You can get rowdy at the Voice in the Wilderness, but if you step over the line and cause real trouble, Ramilles Diamenti will break you in half.'

'You've been there.'

'Sure, I've been through there a dozen times.'

'You think it's the place for us?'

'If it's still the way it used to be, it'd be a good start. There is one small snag, though.'

'There is?'

'It works on a money system, and you don't have any.'

'Why should anybody bother with money when everything comes from Stuff Central?'

'Some places just like to do it that way. Nostalgia, maybe. It's also a matter of control. Diamenti's nothing if not a control freak.'

Renatta looked at the Minstrel Boy with calculating eyes. She clearly had her own sense of nostalgia where money was concerned. 'Do you have any money?'

'I've got some gold coins that I can use in an emergency. I was also planning on selling the submarine.'