Last Stand of the DNA Cowboys

CHAPTER FIVE

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.

'Listen, we've all been around the block enough times to at least keep an open mind about the possibility of there being either a prime or secondary manipulation in the affairs of men.'

Reave did not look terribly impressed. 'The affairs of men'? You're starting to sound like a metaphysician, Minstrel Boy.'

The Minstrel Boy smiled despite himself. 'You know me better than that.'

Billy levered himself upright. 'So why bother us with all this prime manipulation crap? Shit just happens.'

Reave laughed. 'It certainly seems to happen to you.'

Billy scowled. 'That's kind of rich, Reave. Where do you get off taking the moral high ground? How many raids did you go on with Baptiste before you discovered that riding into town and murdering the population wasn't as much fun as it had seemed at first?'

Reave snarled, and if Renatta had not laughed, he might have made a grab for Billy Oblivion. Instead, he rounded on her. 'What's so goddamn funny, lady?'

Renatta was not in the least intimidated. 'I was just thinking what a kick it is, sitting here with the legendary DNA Cowboys while they bicker like small boys. I mean, there was a time when I used to regard you guys like some sort of big deal, but look at you now. One of you's been locked up in a monastery, the other's been in a sexual trance, and the third's been out committing mass murder. You've been out there on the edge withimmortality, sex, and violence, respectively, and when you finally get back together again, all you can do is sit around and bitch at each other. Isn't that enough of a joke?'

Reave leveled a finger at her. 'You didn't ought to talk that way. At best, you're here in the capacity of a rookie, perhaps just a mere concubine.'

Renatta curled her lip right back at him as she poured herself another martini from the coldpitcher. 'Concubine yourself, Jack. It's pathetic. The great adventurers? You're a triple burnout. About the only adventure you seem capable of is the kind that ends up with you running out of the bank into the guns of the entire Bolivian National Guard.'

'The Bolivian National Guard? What in hell are you talking about?'

The Minstrel Boy sipped his brandy. 'It's an arcane cultural reference. I think she's suggesting that there's nothing left for us to do except go out and die in a blaze of glory.'

Billy stared glumly into his drink. 'She might be right.'

Reave scowled. 'Screw that. I'm not ready for a blaze of glory quite yet.'

The Minstrel Boy sat back in his chair and reflected on the others. Already he, Billy, and Reave were falling back into the old patterns. Billy complained, the Minstrel Boy worried, and Reave was the headlong swashbuckler who pulled the other two along with his last enthusiasms. The Minstrel Boy was not even sure he liked the other two. Individually they struggled and scuffled, but when they operated together there was a special chemistry. As far as he could see, that chemistry was at work again. The Minstrel Boy would not be happy, though, until he knew why it was at work. There was also the matter of Renatta. There had always been women, of course, but very few of them had wanted to be part of the team in the way she appeared to. The drunker she got, the more she goaded them, as though trying to shame them back to some imagined state of past glory.

'So what are we ready for?' the Minstrel Boy asked.

'Still looking for the cosmic motivation?'