He leaned close to Lo Yuen and dropped his voice.
‘Seeing how we don’t know too much about the currency we were wondering if you might help us sell it. I mean, we’d be happy to give you a percentage on the sale.’
The little man looked a good deal happier.
‘It sounds like very admirable proposition. Where is fine vehicle?’
Billy gestured towards the door.
‘Right outside, honoured friend.’
He led Lo Yuen out of the inn and into the street.
‘There it is. What do you think?’
‘It very … colourful.’
‘Yeah, well, apart from that.’
‘I think maybe some men in parlour might want. Hold on, I talk with them.’
He went back inside the inn, and a few moments later he came back with one of the men in combat gear.
‘This Zorbo. He want to talk about buying vehicle.’
‘Yeah?’
Billy faced the mercenary.
‘You headed for the war zone?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Rather you than me, friend.’
‘You been there?’
‘Sure, we just got out of it.’
‘Bad, huh?’
‘Bad.’
Zorbo shrugged.
‘We’re fighting men. What else can we do?’
‘Don’t ask me, friend. It took us all our time to get away from it. You want to buy this machine?’
The mercenary stroked his chin.
‘Looks like the kind of thing that we need to get us across the desert. How much you want for it?’
Billy glanced at Lo Yuen.
‘What would be a fair price, mister innkeeper?’
Lo Yuen went through a pantomime of patting and inspecting the buggy.
‘Look like two thousand crowns’ worth to me.’
Zorbo poked the buggy with his finger.
‘I’ll give you a thousand.’
Billy looked down at his boots.
‘It ain’t more than two days old. Eighteen hundred.’
‘I’ll make it twelve and not a crown more.’
‘Sixteen?’
‘Fourteen.’
‘Fifteen hundred.’
‘Done.’
The mercenary gave Billy a heavy canvas bag of coins, and went inside to fetch his friends to look at their purchase. Billy dipped in the bag, and gave Lo Yuen a hundred and fifty crowns. The little man smiled and ushered them back into the parlour of the inn.
‘We do good business, hey gentlemen?’
Billy clapped the little man on the shoulder.
‘Good business, Lo Yuen.’
The two of them ate, and then spent the rest of the afternoon lounging at a corner table working their way through a bottle of tequila. Sailors and drifters passed in and out of the place, and as the day wore on, Billy and Reave picked up various snippets of information. It appeared there was a river boat going down to Arthurburg in a couple of days, and also that Port Judas could be quite an easy place to live in if you stuck to the outlanders’ quarter. They also discovered that the thirteen fifty they had from selling the buggy was more than enough for them to buy a passage all the way down the river. For the first time in a long time, life looked pretty good.
The afternoon drew into evening, and the sky outside the inn parlour’s narrow windows became dark. Lo Yuen built up the log fire in the huge stone fireplace, and the room became a cosy recess of warm light and deep shadows. Bright highlights glinted on the polished wood, the brasswork and the ranks of bottles.
The parlour began to fill up and Lo Yuen put three waitresses to work, who moved between the tables serving drinks, collecting glasses and bandying ribald chat with the customers. A fiddler and an accordion player struck up beside the fireplace, and the laid-back atmosphere of the afternoon dissolved into a jumping jollity. Reave, already half drunk from the afternoon’s tequila, laughed and nudged Billy.
‘Only one thing we need now, old buddy.’
‘What’s that, man?’
‘We need us some broads, old buddy. That’s what we need.’
‘Amen to that, buddy.’
Word began to spread round the parlour that Billy and Reave were big-spending travelling men. A couple of card hustlers cruised by to check them out, but they made it clear that they didn’t want to know. Girls also began to hover round their table. Not only the waitresses, but two or three other girls who seemed to be employed by Lo Yuen to keep the customers happy and drinking.
Reave stretched out his arm and grabbed one of the girls by the wrist. She was a pleasant plump brunette whose ample figure couldn’t be disguised by the sober grey dress, particularly as she wore it considerably less buttoned than the good women of Port Judas.
‘You want to dance, honey?’
‘I don’t know about that, sir. Dancing ain’t really allowed in public inns.’
‘Fuck that shit. I want to dance.’
He climbed to his feet and started jigging about with the girl.
‘Thou art a one, young sir.’
A circle was formed in the middle of the room. Reave swung the screaming and giggling girl round and round, while the accordion player and the fiddler stamped their feet.
The dance whirled faster and faster, then, abruptly, the music stopped. The door had opened, and in the doorway stood two blue-coated officers. Reave collided with the girl and they both fell in a heap on the floor. The officers stood looking down at them.
‘What do ye, herein?’
Reave scrambled to his feet. Billy stayed seated at the table, but his hand slid down beside his gun. Reave grinned sheepishly at the officers.
‘We, uh, fell over.’
‘Ye fell. Art thou sure it wasn’t public dancing?’
‘Public dancing?’
‘Aye, fellow. Public dancing.’
Lo Yuen hurried from behind the bar.
‘There no public dancing in this inn, gentlemen officers. That would be against law.’
He took each officer by the arm, and after a muttered conversation they all went outside together. A couple of minutes later Lo Yuen returned on his own. He went straight up to Reave and the girl.
‘If gentleman want to sport with girl, then he must take her to own room.’
Reave grinned, and slapped the girl’s bottom.
‘That suits me, brother.’
He grinned at her.
‘You coming then, gorgeous?’
She pouted.
‘If that’s what would please thee, good sir.’
‘Let’s go then.’
He took her by the hand and led her towards the stairs. Lo Yuen caught him by the arm.
‘One moment, my friend. Officers took twenty crowns of persuasion before they leave.’
Reave dropped the coins into his hand, and then hurried up the stairs with the laughing girl. Billy relaxed in his seat and poured himself another drink. He was beginning to like Port Judas despite its absurd laws. A girl dropped into Reave’s empty chair. She had red hair and large green eyes. There were freckles on the section of her ample breasts that were presented to Billy. She smiled at him slyly.
‘My friend’s gone upstairs with thy mate.’
Billy laughed.
‘You want to do the same?’
‘I might. If thou wast specially nice to me.’
***
‘It would be productive to gather data from the static module.’
‘It is unfortunate that we lack the time.’
‘We are injured and unable to delay our search for a naturally occurring stasis point where we may heal our wounds’
‘We must continue.’
‘We must continue.’
The spherical form of Her/Them detached Her/Their self from the dead hulk of Wilbur and floated free. She/They maintained the form until She/They was some distance from the silent disrupter, and then resumed the triple form. The two identical women carrying the injured third in their arms. She/They turned so that She/They faced away from the broken disruption module, and once again began Her/Their steady progress.