In front of the Inn was a broad forecourt. The entrance to it was through a high arch of neon lights. Beyond that there was only the road and a narrow strip of bare ground surrounding the whole area. After that the nothings started.
The road to the Inn had been long and hard. When Billy and the Minstrel Boy had joined the stream of refugees, they quickly discovered that they broke down into two very distinct groups: the sheep and the wolves, the prey and the predators. The Minstrel Boy wasn’t in the least surprised.
Their first survival plan among the refugees was to hire on with sheep to protect them from the wolves. They were, after all, well armed, not easily messed with, and Billy did draw the line at out and out violent mugging.
The particular sheep who employed Billy and the Minstrel Boy were a merchant and his family from Port Judas. Their name was Inchgrip, and like all the solid citizens of Port Judas they were hard, humourless and meanly religious. Port Judas had, however, been reduced to smoking rubble by A.A. Catto’s bombers, and the Inchgrips found themselves on the road with the rest of the frightened throng.
When Billy and the Minstrel Boy had gone touting for a job, the Inchgrips had snapped up the two drifters to guard their lives and their wagonload of goods.
Not that the Inchgrips exactly took to Billy and the Minstrel Boy. They looked on them as filthy, sinful, foulmouthed heathens who would surely burn in the particularly nasty hell envisaged by the Port Judas strain of evangelists. They especially disliked their habit of getting drunk every night. Nevertheless, they were more than anxious to put them to work. The Port Judas religion said nothing against one man exploiting another. As it came to pass, the exploitation turned out to be mutual.
The deal with the patriarch, the grey bearded Rameses Inchgrip, was that Billy and the Minstrel Boy were to be given one gold piece per day or the equivalent in kind, plus all they could eat. Billy had spent a good while arguing with Rameses Inchgrip over whether they should also get all they could drink. The Minstrel Boy finally stopped the wrangle by reminding Billy that Port Judas was teetotal.
The situation had maintained itself reasonably well for twelve days on the road. Billy and the Minstrel Boy had been paid, and they’d more or less done their job.
There had of course been petty irritations on both sides. Rameses Inchgrip had been exceedingly obstructive about his two teenage daughters. He had threatened Billy and the Minstrel Boy with earthly torment and spiritual damnation if they so much as looked at them. He also kept his daughters so closely confined to the inside of the wagon that the Minstrel Boy began to suspect that they were chained to the floor.
On the thirteenth day, Rameses Inchgrip had an even more sour expression than usual. After a long preamble, he informed Billy and the Minstrel Boy that there wasn’t enough left to either pay or feed them. The Minstrel Boy told him that they’d settle for his daughters. Inchgrip hit him, and Billy had to restrain the Minstrel Boy before he retaliated by knifing him.
After they parted company with the Inchgrips, they fell in with a madame and a party of whores who were making their escape from the war zone and providing a service for the other refugees on the road. It seemed to Billy that, come what may, they always ended up in a brothel of one sort or another.
On a normal day, before the invasion from Quahal had started, the forecourt of the Inn usually contained not more than a dozen or so ground cars, a string of lizards, one or two elaborately designed motorcycles and maybe a single huge wheelfreak’s truck. When Billy and the Minstrel Boy arrived it was choked with people and vehicles. The road for at least two kilometres from the Inn was jammed with backed up traffic. Refugees who had been unable to find a room at the Inn were camping in the forecourt and even on the road itself.
The filth and confusion were alarming. Even more alarming were the contrasts between the conditions of different groups of people. The rich, with their teams of guards and collections of valuables, either lived in the Inn itself or camped in some comfort in the forecourt. At the other end of the scale were the dozens of beggars, people who had lost everything on the road, who barely existed on what scraps they could find. Every few minutes a fresh body would be pitched out into the nothings.
The closeness to the nothings solved the refugees’ sanitation problem. If it hadn’t been so easy to pitch waste and the dead into an area where all matter simply vanished, the refugees would almost certainly have had to add disease to their already extensive catalogue of troubles.
The Minstrel Boy and Billy picked their way through the crowds towards the Inn itself. Beggars swarmed up to them in droves.
‘For pity’s sake, I haven’t eaten in five days straight.’
Billy was about to dig into his pockets and distribute a few coins when the Minstrel Boy grabbed him by the arm.
‘Don’t be more of a dummy than you can help.’
‘But they’re starving.’
‘Yeah, and there are hundreds of them, are you going to feed the lot?’
Billy shook his head.
‘No, but …’
‘Then don’t give nothing to none of them. If you do, we won’t be able to move. We’ll be swamped by beggars wherever we go.’
The Minstrel Boy turned and aimed a swift kick at one of the more persistent supplicants who was tugging at his jacket, then turned back to Billy and shrugged.
‘It’s the only way to treat them and, besides, if the muggers hear that you’ve got money to throw at beggars we’ll be in real trouble.’
Billy scratched his head.
‘I’m wondering how long money will hold up.’
The Minstrel Boy sneered at the frantic milling crowds all around.
‘It’ll hold up as long as they believe in it. While they’re still killing each other for it, money’s cool. The whole thing’s pretty well ingrained.’
Billy sadly shook his head.
‘You’ve got a strange way of looking at things.’
The Minstrel Boy sniffed.
‘I’ve got a sane way of looking at things. Let’s see if we can get ourselves a drink.’
They continued to shoulder their way through the mob. They got within about twenty metres of the Inn. A group of men stepped up and barred their way.
‘Where do you think you’re going?’
The Minstrel Boy took a step back and looked at the four men in front of him. The tallest was a corsair from the fringes. He had the typical dark complexion and the plastered down ringlets that hung stiffly almost to his shoulders. He wore the traditional costume of gaudy silks and high leather boots. He was extensively tattooed. Under his arm, he carried a primitive pipe cannon that fired a flesh tearing blast of old nails and scrap metal.
His companions were no less flamboyant. Two were small stunted wheelfreaks in their individually styled custom jump suits. They had that unique pinched look that comes from excessive use of stimulants coupled with generations of inbreeding on the camp sites and trailer parks at the junctions of the major truck roads.
The fourth was a far more effeminate figure. He wore a gold brocade tunic and matching knee breeches. His whole costume was hung with falls of now slightly dirty lace, and his bleached hair streamed down to his waist. But there was no mistaking, from the way his purple nailed hand gripped an evil looking needle gun, and the determined expression on his painted face, that he should in no way be underestimated.
The Minstrel Boy looked at each of them in turn. Billy’s hand moved towards his gun.
‘Who’s asking?’
‘We’re asking.’