‘Could you get a steward up here?’
He reddened a little.
‘A steward?’
A.A. Catto nodded.
‘That’s right, a steward. My friends and I would like some drinks, and maybe a snack of some kind.’
The first officer began to inflate with indignation.
‘Am I to understand that you want to turn my bridge into some sort of cafeteria?’
‘Yes. Why not? We’re going to wreck it shortly, so I don’t see how a little change in your routine would matter.’
The first officer grabbed a hand mike off the chart table as though he was going to hit A.A. Catto with it, then he checked himself and bellowed into it.
‘Get a steward to the bridge. On the double.’
The drinks, when they came, didn’t really help too much.
A.A. Catto, Billy, Reave and Nancy formed their own four-person cocktail party, which, if anything, made them feel even more self-conscious. The crew of the airship went on pointedly ignoring them.
The presence of A.A. Catto and the others couldn’t be ignored for ever. A thin strip of blue-grey light appeared on the horizon. It looked like a strange cold dawn. In fact, it was the nothings. Gradually it rolled nearer. It was like a growing wall of sparkling cloud. The airship drifted closer and closer. The first officer straightened up and faced A.A. Catto.
‘Are you sure you won’t call off this madness?’
A.A. Catto tapped her fingernails on the porta-pac. She switched it on. The others did the same.
‘There’s no other way. Keep going, or Billy here will shoot you.’
Billy tightened his grip on the gun. His stomach started to knot. He hated the nothings and the things they did to his mind. The steersman turned to the first officer.
‘We’ll hit the nothings any minute, sir.’
The first officer looked as though he was about to panic. He moved towards A.A. Catto.
‘Won’t you let me change course before we’re all disrupted?’
Billy stepped between them and levelled his gun at the first officer’s chest.
‘Hold it right there.’
The officer halted. There were dark patches of sweat under the armpits of his uniform.
‘At least let me issue the crew with porta-pacs and give the order to abandon ship.’
Billy looked at A.A. Catto.
‘It can’t do any harm.’
A.A. Catto thought for a moment.
‘Yes, yes. Give the order, but don’t attempt to alter course.’
The officer swung round to the steersman.
‘Lock on present heading, break out a porta-pac and prepare to abandon ship.’
The steersman saluted and hurried to the locker that held the personal stasis generators. He clipped one to his belt and stood waiting. The officers began to do the same. The first officer picked up the hand mike.
‘Attention all crew. Now hear this. This is an emergency. I repeat, this is an emergency. We are entering the nothings. All crew will break out porta-pacs and prepare to abandon ship. Good luck to you all.’
He repeated the message and then clipped a generator to his own belt. He came to attention, and A.A. Catto giggled. The wall of sparkling, shifting light was almost upon them. Suddenly Billy turned to the other three.
‘It might be a good idea if we held on to each other. That way, we have a chance of coming out of the nothings in the same place.’
Nancy’s face grew tight.
‘If we come out.’
They linked hands. Above them, the front of the gas bag smoked and began to vanish as it nosed its way into the nothings. The plexiglass vanished as its fabric was scattered into time and space. The front half of the cabin vanished. The wall of mist reached the four of them clinging together. Concepts like up and down melted away. They were swallowed in the shifting grey and roaring silence. They seemed to be falling in all directions at once.
***
They injected the Minstrel Boy with the maximum dose of cyclatrol. Afterwards his eyes glazed over and he began to scream. He screamed non-stop for two hours. They had to shut him in a sub-basement cell until he stopped. Bannion wouldn’t let him leave the LDC building until he’d calmed down. Bannion was very sensitive about accusations of police brutality. In the meantime he and Jeb Stuart Ho concluded a deal whereby Chief-Agent Bannion on behalf of the Litz Department of Correction would sell the brotherhood a lightweight armoured car that would enable Jeb Stuart Ho to pursue A.A. Catto. The Litz Department of Correction charged a grossly inflated price, which Jeb Stuart Ho paid after a polite period of ritual haggling.
When the Minstrel Boy finally became quiet, two patrolmen brought him up from the depths of the lock-ups. They had to support him on either side. His movements were uncoordinated, his eyes were vacant and his mouth hung open, Jeb Stuart Ho was alarmed at his condition.
‘How can he lead me anywhere like that?’
Bannion smiled and tapped the side of his noise with his forefinger.
‘He’ll do what you want.’
‘Yes. Are you sure?’
‘Sure I’m sure. You’ll see.’
Bannion ordered the car brought round to the front of the building. He and Jeb Stuart Ho went out to inspect it. It was a squat, ugly, square-sided machine. It had long armoured engine housing, and a small three-seat cab. The windscreen and side windows were mere slits of toughened glass, and the whole vehicle was covered in dull grey, bullet-proof steel. It was supported on six balloon-tyred wheels, four at the rear and two at the front. Bannion opened the passenger door.
‘Get in.’
Jeb Stuart Ho was confused.
‘Surely I will have to drive the machine?’
‘Just get in.’
Jeb Stuart Ho got in. Bannion signalled to the patrolmen who were holding the Minstrel Boy just inside the building. They hurried down the steps. Bannion opened the driver’s door. They pushed the Minstrel Boy inside and strapped him in. He hung there with his mouth half open. Bannion poked his head in the window beside Jeb Stuart Ho.
‘Okay. Tell him what you want.’
Ho looked dubiously at the slack-jawed Minstrel Boy.
‘Will he understand?’
‘Just tell him.’
Jeb Stuart Ho took a deep breath.
‘We have to pursue and catch A.A. Catto.’
The Minstrel Boy didn’t respond. Bannion grinned at Ho.
‘Tell him to drive.’
Jeb Stuart Ho felt a little ridiculous. He couldn’t imagine what kind of obscure joke Bannion was attempting to involve him in. He raised his voice a little,
‘You will start the car and drive.’
Like a man in a dream, the Minstrel Boy placed his hands on the wheel. Bannion withdrew his head. The Minstrel Boy put on the power. The engine came to life. The Minstrel Boy dumped it into gear with a crash. The car lurched forward. They swerved drunkenly away from the kerb. Bannion laughed. They began to pick up speed. Bannion yelled after them.
‘Don’t come back.’
The drive through the traffic of downtown Litz was like a drawn-out suicide bid. A dozen times Jeb Stuart Ho could see no way out of a fatal collision, but at the very last minute the Minstrel Boy somehow managed to avoid disaster. As they had begun to move, his jaws had clamped together and he appeared to stare fixedly along the length of the bonnet. Jeb Stuart Ho wasn’t certain whether he could actually see, or whether he was steering the car by some other sense produced by the cyclatrol. On a comparatively clear stretch of road, Jeb Stuart Ho looked in the glove compartment to check that the little black case of refills of the drug was still there. It was.
When Bannion had given it to him, he’d told Jeb Stuart Ho to give the Minstrel Boy a shot every twelve hours. He hadn’t told him how long the Minstrel Boy would survive under those conditions.