Mick Farren - Last Stand of the DNA Cowboys

The Minstrel Boy handed her a fresh drink. 'I guess we should be flattered.'

Renatta sipped her martini and nodded. 'Damn right you should be flattered. I'm a prize.'

They were distracted from Renatta's prizeworthiness by a disturbance at the other end of the bar. A bum in filthy rags was about to be ejected by the keepers.

Reave's jaw dropped. 'I don't believe it.'

The Minstrel Boy was confused. 'You don't believe what?'

'Will you look who that is.'

The Minstrel Boy looked. His eyes widened in shock. 'Good God, that's not possible.'

Renatta, who had expected to be the center of attention for a good deal longer, was miffed and confused

'What's all the fuss about? The two of you look like you've seen a ghost.'

'Billy Oblivion.'

'Billy Oblivion?'

Reave moved quickly. 'I'd better spread some money around and get him out of that.'

While Reave was handing bills to the keepers who wanted to bounce Billy, the Minstrel Boy turned and ordered another round of drinks, including a large cognac for Billy, who looked as if he needed one.

Renatta was all but stamping her feet. 'What's going on here? You actually know that bum?'

'The three of us were a team a long time ago.' He smiled wryly. 'The goddamn DNA Cowboys.'

'And you're getting spooked because you've all turned up in the same place at the same time?'

'I don't like it.'

'Damn it, boy, don't go primitive on me. Coincidences happen.'

The Minstrel Boy's face was grim. 'I fear it's synchronicity, and I hate synchronicity.'

Renatta leaned back in her chair and crossed her long booted legs. 'So the DNA Cowboys are back together?'

Reave and Billy watched the movement. The Minstrel Boy shook his head with a wince. He hated the tag that had been stuck on them through a good part of their career as a trio of all-for-one, one-for-all freebooting partners. He hated it even more than the others did because, inadvertently, it had all been his fault.

'We never called ourselves that, even at the height of the craziness,' he said.

Reave dragged his eyes away from Renatta's legs. 'That was all the work of the people who made up the stories. I swear, we couldn't have done half the stuff that we got blamed for. It wouldn't have been humanly possible.'

It had been years earlier, more years than the Minstrel Boy cared to recall. They had been very young and bold and dumb. At the time of the accidental christening they had been robbing the beer hall at M'Urzank. Despite their weapons, a hard-bitten bartender had decided to act recalcitrant. He had glared at the three of them.

'You think you can walk in here and tell everyone what to do?'

The Minstrel Boy, who had been full of piss, vinegar, and a considerable quantity of gin, had snarled right back at him. 'Sure we can tell you what to do. We're the Cowboys of Instruction.'

For the rest of his days the Minstrel Boy had wondered how those words had free-associated into his head. Maybe it had had something to do with the fact that, at the time, he had been fancying himself a poet.

The bartender had stared at him in disbelief. 'The Cowboys of Instruction?'

The Minstrel Boy should have left it there, but he had been young, and he had plowed right ahead with the gag. He waved his gun with a flourish. 'Right, bubba, we're the DNA code in this cell.'

It had been a drunk in the back of the hall who had roared it our first. 'Shee-it! It's the DNA Cowboys.'

Despite their guns and their intentions of robbery, the whole crowd took up the cry, roaring with laughter and bawling it out.

'Shee-it! It's the DNA Cowboys.'

It was clear that there was now no way that they were going to rob the M'Urzank beer hall without shooting holes in a lot of people just to regain their credibility. Their collective nerve failed them, and after putting a few blasts into the ceiling they had fled the place. Unknown to the other two, however, Billy had gone back the same night with a Nulite incendiary and torched the beer hall. Despite their ignominious retreat, the name had stuck and the legend had been born.

Billy's head was drooping toward the table top. He was on his fifth brandy. His eyes were sunken, his cheeks were hollow, his skin was gray, and his previously shaved hair had grown in only to thick dark stubble. They had tried to clean him up, but he: still looked like an escaped convict with the plague.

'I don't feel so good.'

Reave was clean out of sympathy. Billy had done nothing but whine since they had rescued him from the keepers and legitimized his presence at the Voice in the Wilderness by promising to be responsible for his upkeep. Diamenti and his men gave short shrift to beggars.

'Of course you don't feel so good. You've spent God knows; how long living on plankton and water and talking to your duplicate until you got so crazy, you beat him to death. Before: that, you were on the run. In the last few days you've been tossed out of a road runner on your head. You wind up in Graveyard, and you mug a guy. You take a load of rubyjewels and only just get out of town with your life. Give us a break, buddy. You deserve to feel bad. It's a natural healthy reaction.'

Billy's head hit the table. 'Oh, Mother of God.'

The four of them had retired to a small private dining room, and they sat one on each side of a square wooden table. Billy, Reave, and the Minstrel Boy were all drinking cognac; Renatta had a bluefrost coldpitcher filled with martinis. It was a plain stone room. It might have looked like a prison cell if the grim effect of the stone had not been softened by the burgundy velvet curtains that covered the narrow window. There was a cast-iron bellpull with which to summon a steward. The room was a good deal more comfortable than the bar, and they were able to talk without being overheard. After Billy's arrival they had no longer been quite so welcome in the Great Hall. Renatta de Luxe had come with them. Without anything actually being said, she seemed to have been accepted into their company for the duration. The duration of what was the question that did not seem to have any immediate answer. The conversation kept dragging itself back to the reason they had all shown up in the same place at the same time. Of the three men, the Minstrel Boy was by far the most suspicious, but that had always been the way of it.