CHAPTER TEN
There was someone beating on the door. The Minstrel boy struggled out of an ocean of deep sleep and dreams that were filled with unfocused rushing. The beating on the door continued. He was suddenly very awake. His hand was under the pillow, snakelike, closing around the Colt. He deliberately kept his voice slurred and blurred. 'Who is it? What do you want?'
'Will you please open this door — right now!'
Goddamn it to hell. It was official. The Minstrel Boy threw back the covers. Had that bastard Buzznoose lodged a complaint? He swung his legs over the side of the bed with a groan. Officialdom was beating on the door again.
'Open this door or we'll break it down.'
The Minstrel Boy stood up, fighting off what had the makings of a blinding headache. 'Okay, okay, I'm coming, I'm coming. Don't go nuts.'
The suite was a disaster area. Some hours earlier it had seen the final throes of a very bizarre celebration of Renatta de Luxe's regained freedom, so bizarre, in fact, that he still could not really believe a lot of what had happened. It had started with Renatta demanding, after a few drinks, to know why they had not rescued at least two of the duplicates that the slaver had made of her. 'Then you could have had one of me each.' That had produced the obvious comment that one of her was quite enough. From then on, through the rest of the night, things had escalated as Renatta had determinedly sought to prove that one of her was indeed quite enough for all three of them. The affair had culminated with the ingestion of a gourmet pyschedelic with the fanciful name Infamy. That had been followed by a prolonged bout of erotic contortions that spanned most of the spectrum of what could be achieved by three men and one woman acting in harmony. It appeared to be a new phase or at least a new interlude in the already complicated relationship between Renatta and the DNA Cowboys. As far as the Minstrel Boy was concerned, it was a development that only deepened the mystery of what exactly it was she wanted from them.
Fresh pounding on the door brought him forcibly back to the present.
'Give me a break, will you?'
The Minstrel Boy placed the gun out of sight but within easy reach; then he unlocked and opened the door. Three militiamen and a purple-robed bureaucrat were standing there. The militiamen were armed with lightweight bolt throwers and looked hair-trigger nervous. The Minstrel Boy was certain that they were there to arrest him.
'What do you want? I was sleeping.'
The bureaucrat looked past him at the wreckage of the suite with disapprovingly pursed lips. 'Are you the one who goes by the name of Billy Oblivion?'
'No.'
The bureaucrat frowned. 'Are you the one they call the Minstrel Boy?'
'Do you have a warrant?'
'Why should I have a warrant? I'm here to serve a Notice of Demand.'
'What in hell is a Notice of Demand?'
'A Notice of Demand for Contracted Services.'
'What does that mean?'
'Are you the Minstrel Boy?'
The Minstrel Boy was suddenly impatient with all the fencing. 'Yeah, yeah, that's me. Now, tell me what's going on.'
'By the powers that are vested in me by the Ruling Elite of the city of Krystaleit I formally serve notice that your contractual services are demanded herewith.'
'And what does all that mean?'
'The city's defense forces have gone to readiness. You are under contract as a master warrior, and you will report to your unit within the next twenty-four hours.'
'I don't have a unit. All I have is a contract.'
The bureaucrat looked worried. 'You should have been assigned a unit when you entered contracts.'
'I wasn't assigned a damn thing.'
The bureaucrat took an ornate ivory showdata from his sleeve. What he saw did not appear to please him. 'You're right, there's no assigned unit filed on your chart.'
The Minstrel Boy started to close the door. 'So let me know when you sort it out.'
'I'll have to do that. You should still hold yourself in readiness, though.'
'I will, don't worry.'
'Can you tell me where I can find Billy Oblivion?'
'I've never heard of him.'
The Minstrel Boy leaned against the closed door. Even with the reprieve of an administrative screw up, it was very bad news. The defense forces being put on readiness had to tie in with what Reave had heard from his old raiding partner, the one he had met in the toilet of the Victory Cafe. Someone in the city government must have received warning of the approach of the overwhelming force of raiders.
The Minstrel Boy knew that he had to talk to Billy and Reave straightaway. The last thing they needed was to become involved in a war, particularly a war in which they were on what was sure to be the losing side. Once again he quickly cleaned himself and dressed. He could not remember when he had last enjoyed the luxury of idling over breakfast. Twenty minutes saw the three of them, plus an exhausted-looking Renatta, gathered in Reave's suite.
Billy tackled the problem head on.
'If you ask me, I think it's high time to desert.'
Reave wasn't so sure.
'We'll never make a reputation by running away.'
The Mistrel Boy laughed.
'We always did before.'
Despite the jokes and despite an afterglow of devil-may-care that lingered from the minor victory of the street fight, they knew that their predicament was serious. It took Reave to voice what everyone else was thinking.
'There's no two ways about it. We're going to have to sneak away from this fight. If Baptiste and the other warlords really do have over seven thousand troops in the field, plus a fifth column inside the city, the defense forces are going to becreamed. I certainly don't intend to be creamed along with them. This is definitely not our fight.'
Sneaking away required no strategy or finesse. They simply packed the belongings they wanted to take with them, checked out of the Leader Hotel, and started off in a direction that would take them to the platforms leading to the nothings. As they walked, it became all too clear that Krystaleit had gone on military alert. The whole tone of the city had changed. It was somber. The lights seemed dimmer, and there was a tension in the air as though the very structures themselves were waiting for the coming of a terrifying unknown. Everywhere there were people on the move. Squads of militia, in their forage caps and drab gray uniforms, bolt throwers slung over their shoulders, marched through the streets and rode the ribbon escalators up and down. Hastily mustered civilians drilled in the open spaces They had no uniforms, and each man and woman was decked out in his or her own idea of what a fighting yeoman should wear. For the most part, the outfits, heavy on plumes and swirling capes, were hopelessly impractical for actual combat. The only things that identified them as an even marginally unified military force were the blue scarves they wore around their necks, the rifles and electroguns they carried, and the bandoliers; of spare bolts and power slugs across their chests. Someone in authority appeared to have taken it into his head to equip one section of the militia with bronze body armor and crested helmets. As far as Reave could tell, the armor was foil-thin and quite useless for anything but ceremonial display.
'One whiff of a heat ray and that shit will burn on their backs.'
Reave continued to shake his head at each example of defensive preparation that they passed.
'This is worse than I imagined. These people don't have a clue. They're just playing at soldiers. Baptiste's
