Getting control of his laughter, Gabriel dragged himself to his feet. He noticed that his black leather gloves had circular holes cut in the backs, and there was metal glinting on his skin. A closer examination revealed that he had two metallic implants that looked something like headphone jacks, one on the back of each hand. He rubbed at one and felt the metal moving around deep within his hand between the bones, causing a shiver to run up his spine.
“What in the hell are these,” Gabriel mused aloud. “Cyborg implants?”
The horse-cat looked at him again over a mouthful of purple grass.
“Can you say Star Trek?”
Chewing its purple grass, the horse-cat looked past him with something nearing mild interest. Following its line of sight, Gabriel could see dust rising from the horizon.
After a few minutes a figure riding a horse-cat materialized in the dust. It moved with a strange grace, a combination of a horse galloping and a cat stalking.
It occurred to Gabriel that the person might not be altogether friendly. There had to be a reason for the guns and knife on his belts, right? He also noticed a shotgun large enough to put a hole clean through an elephant in a saddle holster and pulled it out. He was familiar with guns. It was a yuppie pastime to go to the shooting range where he came from. Some of his associates thought themselves manly because they owned a gun and could hit a target. Gabriel made sure that the shotgun was loaded and cocked it one-handed in the way he’d seen John Wayne do it as a child, and more recently the Terminator. Holding it at ready, he did not aim at the approaching rider, but it was an easy motion away from it.
Slurring drunkenly, the voice of his father rose up to taunt him again in the back of his mind, telling him he didn’t have the guts to shoot someone, much less take a life.
His temples began to ache with an impending headache. Snarling, Gabriel pushed the voice away and turned his attention back to the incoming rider.
The rider pulled up to a stop and her horse-cat reared. Its massive paws flashed claws the length of Gabriel’s forearm. Pushing back a fedora, the rider lowered a dirty bandana to reveal her ugly face.
“You’re Gabriel Reeve,” she asked in a voice so gravelly that she must have been chain smoking from the cradle. As Gabriel nodded she pulled out a hand rolled cigarette and lit it from a match that she struck on the heel of her palm.
“Oh put that thing away! Mister big time lawyer, you’ve probably never seen a real gun before.”
“Hey! I’ll have you know—“
“Oh shut up,” the woman snapped over him. She leaned down from her saddle to
spit a long stream of black fluid at his feet.
Gabriel took a step back to keep from getting any on his heavy leather boots. She was chewing tobacco while smoking? That was a new one. Double the pleasure. Double the fun. Her breath had to be atrocious!
“I don’t like having to come all the way out here, so you listen good, because I’m not going to repeat myself,” she grated. “I’m Millie, and the Northern Sage sent me.”
Gabriel lowered the shotgun, but did not reholster it.
“You’ll find two jewels in the pocket inside your coat,” Millie said.
Gabriel reached into the pocket he’d been unaware of until then and pulled out two hexagonal, faceted jewels about as big around as a quarter, one red the other blue.
There was a long spike on the underside of each that he could see circuitry inside of.
“Plug them into the jacks in the backs of your hands,” Millie ordered. “Red left, blue right.”
Gabriel grimaced and did as told. As the jewels slid into the metallic holes in the backs of his hands he felt a very strange and generally unpleasant sensation of something being stuck deep within his flesh. They clicked into place and glittered in the red sunlight and purplish light from the planet above.
“Those are called Sa’Dhi,” Millie explained. “They’re like flash drives. Verbal commands will trigger them to load information directly into your brain. The blue one contains all of the knowledge and skills of a gun and knife fighter, and its keyword is wingless. The red one is a field log, something that what passes for law enforcement around here uses to record evidence. Say halo, and everything you see and hear will be recorded on it. You can also record copies of skill sets from the blue one with keywords to be used at later times onto it, a sort of last resort, one time use sort of thing. There should be an instruction book on how to do that in your saddlebags somewhere. You have to build an affinity for them through use. As a beginner, you’ll get maybe ten minutes at the maximum. As you use them more you’ll be able to handle them for longer and longer.”
“I’m trapped in an RPG,” Gabriel muttered. “Am I tripping on acid?”
“No,” Millie replied.
“Are you?”
“I’m afraid this is really happening,” Millie said. “Now for your quest.”
“Fine, what does the slave driver want me to do?”
“Go to the Spires of Infinity,” Millie said.
“And?”
“Find a girl named Allie. She’s been informed of your impending arrival and is quite excited. She hasn’t had a visitor in a very long time. She’ll fill you in on the rest of what you’re supposed to do.”
“And, uh, where are the Spires of Infinity?”
Millie shrugged and pointed. “Not my problem. Have fun. There’s a town about a half-day’s ride in that direction. Someone at the Hunter’s Guild might be stupid enough to go traipsing around the Red Zone with you, looking for the Spires, for a large enough handful of chits, but I sure as hell won’t.”
When it became clear Millie was done speaking, Gabriel walked over to his
horse-cat and holstered the shotgun. He put a foot in the stirrup and tried to throw his leg over the saddle, but it moved away from him, causing him to hop to keep from falling over. He tried again, and again, but the horse-cat always moved away from him.
Millie was laughing at him.
“You’re mounting the wrong side, dumbass,” she said as she reined her horse-cat to face the direction she’d come from. “Oh, I should probably warn you. Things on this world are a little different from what you’re used to. Women who want children seek out men with pure DNA, no mutations or genetic drift, and take what they need to conceive whatever the man wants. The ladies will be after you if they find out you’re one hundred percent human. If anyone asks, you’ve got twenty-one percent drift and for god’s sake don’t let any of them get a blood sample. Women in this world will gang up when they find a man with pure DNA. It’s amazing how many women a single man can impregnate in a relatively short time given the proper incentive, like being allowed to continue breathing. Now, I never want to see you again. Goodbye.”
With that she kicked her horse-cat to speed and was off in a cloud of dust.
“Trying to mount the wrong side dumbass,” Gabriel mimicked in her grating
smoker’s voice as he walked around to the other side of his own beast. This time it let him mount with no problems. There was nothing within sight resembling civilization in the direction Millie indicated.
“Now how the hell do I get you to move,” he asked the animal. “God, what am I even doing here? Packs of women that rape men? I’m in hell, or the best sex fantasy ever. This has to be a dream!”
Looking up at the spectacular sky, Gabriel sighed deeply. He would have given anything to be taken here as a child, if only to get away from his father, but now that he was here, all he could think about was going back to the comfort, fame and luxury of his old life.