such a heavily armored unit. Up close, the battle armor looked as old as the hills. The Minstrel Boy wondered what kind of men were inside the metal suits. The legends claimed that back in the olden days, the armored troopers had been virtual cyborgs, tank-grown semimen who were grafted into their armor for the entirety of their lives. He supposed that if someone was prepared to have the kind of surgery that had created Jet Ace, there surely could be individuals willing to be throwbacks to the war with the Draan.
Back in Litz the Minstrel Boy had watched tapes of that conflict. At the siege of Bergman's Asteroid, wave after wave of those hulking troopers, maybe a hundred thousand in all, had been thrown at the Draan emplacements, but each time they had been driven back by the batteries of huge particle cannons the methane- based invertebrates had built into the bedrock of the planetoid. The scope of the carnage had been so vast that even as he had watched the ancient images of what looked like some hell for aliens flicker across the screen, he had found it nearly impossible to believe.
The face of a militiaman appeared at the port. He was unshaven and had the look of a man who had been on duty much too long. The standard questions came out like a tired rote.
'What is the purpose of your visit to Krystaleit?'
'We just came to see the big city.'
'You always travel in a fighting vehicle?'
'Things have been getting a little hairy out in the boonies.'
'How many passengers are aboard this vehicle?'
'Four, including myself.'
'We are going to have to examine your vehicle.'
The Minstrel Boy nodded. 'Sure, no problem.'
The militiaman pointed at an area just beyond the barrier, where the road surface was painted with a yellow grid. 'You see that yellow marked section?'
'Right.'
'Pull your vehicle over there and await inspection.'
'Anything you say.'
The barrier was raised, and the Minstrel Boy moved the Saab forward.
Reave crouched beside him. 'You think this means trouble?'
'I don't know. It could just be a routine check. Not everyone turns up in a fully armed battlewagon.'
'I hope you're right.'
The Minstrel Boy maneuvered the Saab onto the yellow grid and shut down the drive. One of the armored troopers had crunched along behind them and stood covering them with his MEW.
The militiaman reappeared at the port. 'Will you all please step down from your vehicle?'
At a slight nod from Reave the Minstrel Boy opened the hatch. As they clambered out, they found that in addition to the armored trooper who was covering the Saab, there were also a half dozen militiamen pointing their sidearms at them.
'You will now please follow the flashing red line to the door indicated. Once inside, you will surrender all weapons you may be carrying to the desk officer and await questioning.'
At their feet there was a set of color-coded guide brights setin the floor. They followed the red flashing strip as instructed and were in turn followed by the militiaman and his squad. The designated door led to a nondescript room with all the worn grime that inevitably accompanies the downside of authority. The gray steel walls were plastered with routinely ugly warning notices printed in the dour Gothic script that was used exclusively by officialdom in the city. The desk officer sat behind a transparent plasteel shield. There was a small heat cannon close to his right hand, its purpose clearly to ensure full and fast cooperation in the surrender of weapons. With great reluctance the DNA Cowboys passed their guns through a security slit in the plasteel. When that was done, the desk officer glanced down at a mass/density scanner. He did not look pleased.
'The one in black has a needler concealed in his sleeve.'
Two militiamen moved in on Billy and relieved him of it. He made a helpless gesture.
'I swear to God, I clean forgot it was there.'
The one who had originally presented himself at the port looked wearily reproachful. 'This isn't a good start.'
'I'm telling you, I'd forgotten I had it.'
A tall man in a purple robe trimmed with black fur walked into the room. The militiamen came to halfhearted attention, and the desk officer acknowledged him with a limp salute. The Minstrel Boy did not know what rank of title went with the robe, but it was clear that he was from the middle levels of the civil bureaucracy.
'Are these the ones from the tank?'
'Yes, sir.'
'Let's have the Datron take a look at them before we go any further.'
The four of them were moved to a smaller, dimly blue-lit chamber that was almost completely filled with a tangle of very old hardware. Plasma conduits and thick ropes of power cables hung in dangling festoons; the pulsing and crackling vacuum columns that were the source of blue light took up an entire wall. They looked as if they were as old as time. Only the biomass, in its soft, shapeless dermal, looked as though it might have been made by contemporary technology. And in the center of it all was the tiny human in the saline tank — the Datron itself. It looked like a huge child, with an oversized, deformed head and sad, pale saucer eyes. Much of its body was obscured bythe mass of contacts that were grafted to it. Just one arm was free of leads and webbing. The hand was raised, and the stunted baby fingers fluttered ceaselessly in what seemed to be an unconscious spasm. The Minstrel Boy shuddered. He did not want to think about what went on in that mind. By normal standards, the Datron had to be insane, although normal standards hardly applied. It was a living cognizant, jacked into nearly infinite banks of data. In that, the Datron was as much a throwback as were the armored troopers outside. Both had their origins in the long-dead age when the giant starships had gone out to do battle with the Draan, except in those days the Datron would have found its way between galaxies and dimensions, whereas now it merely maintained the personal records of the city's population. Old Gridghast, in his introduction to Krystaleit, had told the Minstrel Boy how most of the equipment that he was now facing had actually, long ago, even before the founding of the city, been cannibalized from the navigation systems of one of the last two surviving starships. Krystaleit was famous for its continuing, if greatly scaled down, use of ancient artifacts. But the Datron in particular seemed an absurd corruption of its original grandeur.
The bureaucrat spoke directly to the Datron. 'Please scan these people.'
The Datron blinked and regarded each of the three in turn. Its eyes seemed to water continuously. In a fraction of a second it had analyzed the form and contour of their faces and located the corresponding records. Where once it had been one with the stars, it was now nothing more than a vast collection of mug shots. The Minstrel Boy wondered if the being was aware of how mightily it had fallen.
The Datron's voice was a piping castrate. 'The three males are known to me. From left to right they are Billy Oblivion, Reave Mekonta, and the one who is simply called the Minstrel Boy. All three have extensive criminal records, although no charges have ever been brought against them in this jurisdiction. Collectively they have been called the DNA Cowboys, and inflated stories still circulate about their alleged exploits. I have no data regarding the female.'
The Datron blinked again. The bureaucrat inspected the four of them himself.
'So you're the famous DNA Cowboys. You don't look like much to me.'
Nobody took up the challenge. They were all well aware of the precariousness of their position.
The bureaucrat paced in front of them. 'So what are you doing now? Taking the pay of one of the warlords? We have methods of dealing with hostile infiltrators.'
The Minstrel Boy was genuinely outraged. 'What are you talking about? We're not hired on with anyone.'
'You deny that you're all in the pay of Protexus, or maybe Taraquin and Baptiste?'
'Taraquin and Baptiste are the reason that we're here.'
'So you admit it?'
The Minstrel Boy was becoming aware that the bureaucrat was dogged but not terribly bright. He did not know what to think about the Datron. If it knew that Reave had ridden with Baptiste, it was not volunteering the information. Perhaps it only answered direct questions, like some cybernetic oracle.
'No, we don't admit it. What I'm saying is that we're here because the raids on the stasis towns have made
