quality.
Renatta looked concerned. 'Is that drive going to last?'
The Minstrel Boy nodded. 'It'll go; it's just cranky.'
He grasped the control levers but did not merge with the biode. He wanted the old-fashioned pleasure of actually driving the tank. He made a neat three-point turn and started down the terrace, away from the main building. For something so bulky, the Saab was easily maneuverable.
'Unless anyone has a better idea, I was going to go into the nothings, get beyond the backwash, and let the lizardbrain see what it can come up with.'
'Do we have any idea where we want to go?' Renatta asked.
The Minstrel Boy observed that she still was not grasping the basics of travel in the nothings. 'It's not where we want to go, it's where we can go. We see what stasis we can lock to and then assess the situation.'
'So we play it by ear?'
'There never was any other option.'
They slid into the nothings. The Saab began bucking and rolling as if it were going through a simulation of rough terrain. The Minstrel Boy went into the biode and discovered that the previous owners had deliberately programmed it that way.
'What the hell were they? Gluttons for punishment?'
The biode did not condescend to provide him with an answer. The Minstrel Boy wrote in an adjustment on the ride illusion. In a matter of moments they were running as smoothly as a luxury limo.
As soon as they entered the nothings, a tension started growing inside the tank's cramped cabin that was more than just the normal unease at being so close to the completely alien environment. It was the realization that they had embarked on something new, with no idea what direction it might take or how it would come out in the end. There was no turning back. Billy's mind kept morbidly returning to the earlier talk of going out in a blaze of glory: Eventually the time came when there was nothing else to do but die.
They did not even have an answer to the most immediate question. How were they going to relate to each other through long hours cooped up in the Saab? The Minstrel Boy wondered what was going to become of his sexual liaison with Renatta.
Were they going to travel celibate, or did she intend to spread her favors to all three of them? With Renatta, the Minstrel Boy couldn't hazard a guess, and he did not particularly want to discuss it with her in front of the other two. He glanced at where she was curled up in the forward gun position. She didn't seem about to volunteer anything. He decided that he would drive the tank and let nature take its course.
'I'm scoping on the lizardbrain. You want to see what I got?'
Everyone nodded. The Minstrel Boy stroked a control glove, and a display pseudosurface curved around the driver's berth. Three points of light hung in the air. One was much brighter than the other two.
Reave swung down from the rear gunner's chair and ducked behind the Minstrel Boy. 'What's the bright one?'
'That's a place called Santa Freska — it ain't very big, but it's extremely relative to us. I don't have a make yet on the other two. I just know that they're there.'
'What's this Santa Freska? I've never been there.'
'Sun bunnies, Cobalt 90s, a few local bandidos, and a lot of rock bathers. It's hot enough to bake your brain. Big pseudosun and desert terrain. Focal point is an oasis settlement, Santa Freska Town.'
'You want to go for it?'
'I don't see why not. We may be able to strike out for somewhere larger. I'd be a lot happier if we were in a largish city with plenty of action and natural color. These isolated realities are getting too damn weird.'
Reave nodded. 'I think you're probably right.'
'I am right.' The Minstrel Boy turned in his seat. 'You two want to go into Santa Freska?'
Neither Billy nor Renatta seemed particularly concerned.
'Sure, whatever.'
'I never heard of it.'
Billy's mind had seemed to come and go since they had left the Voice in the Wilderness. Right at that moment he seemed to be completely normal, but there was no telling when he would suddenly distance out into a self-created trance.
The Minstrel Boy concentrated. 'I'm locking on to it.'
They came out of the nothings onto flat scrub desert. They were following a poorly maintained dirt road that had been plowed and furrowed by dozens of wheeled vehicles. The Minstrel Boy spread the treads to make it a less rocky ride. He opened the armored covers on the windshield and dogged back the side ports. Hot, dry air poured into the Saab. It was something of a shock, but it did help blow away the smell of confinement. At first there was nothing except flat, featureless desert with dry brush, stunted yucca trees, and outcrops of red ocher rock that glittered with deposits of crystal.
'So where's this oasis?'
The Minstrel Boy shrugged. 'I guess we'll get to it eventually. They seem to have a lot of area stabilized here.'
Billy looked at the scenery with distrust. 'Who in their right mind would go to all the trouble of stabilizing a stinking desert?'
'Some people like this shit.'
Billy shook his head as though still amazed at the things people could like. 'I'm with you, Minstrel Boy. The sooner we get to a nice big city, the better I'll like it.'
'You were run out of Litz, weren't you?'
'If you remember, we were all run out of Litz.'
'There are plenty of other cities.'
Renatta was hanging out of the side port, squinting ahead into the slipstream. 'There's something up there.'
'What is it?'
'I can't quite see. It looks like a mast or some kind of antenna. . oh, God! I don't believe this.'
Now everyone could see it. The Minstrel Boy slowed the Saab to a stop. It was a body hanging from a tall pole, a man who had been creatively mutilated.
'This is not a good start.'
'He doesn't look like a native.'
What garments remained on the hanged man were more appropriate to a neoprimitive warrior than to the kind of mind-roasted sun worshiper the Minstrel Boy had expected to find in Santa Freska. His hair was plastered up into a coxcomb of high spikes, and he wore ceramic chest and shoulder guards; the tattered black loincloth was stiff with dried blood, as was the streaming horsehair sporran that hung between his legs.
'You telling me that this is what they do to strangers?'
The Minstrel Boy engaged the drive again and started forward down the road. Billy immediately protested.
'What the hell do you think you're doing?'
'Heading in to see what's going on here.'
'Do we want to know what's going on here? The stiff on the gibbet clearly wasn't intended to encourage tourists, so why don't we take them at their word? Why don't we just turn around and go back the way we came?'
'Because I think this is Santa Freska Town coming up now.'
The Saab was cresting a low hill. In front of them, a circle of palms and a tangle of smaller vegetation was a flourish of cool green against the drab desert.
'It looks like someone trashed the place.'
Black smoke poured from a blue dome in among the trees. Flames flickered from a gaping hole in the side. One end of a low flat-roofed structure had fallen into rubble. A burning ground car lay on its roof beside the road. As they got closer, it was possible to see the bodies on the ground in the shade of the palms and the black, flapping shapes that moved in among them. The Minstrel Boy once again halted the Saab before actually entering the town. Reave effortlessly assumed command.
