‘Let’s get the fuck out of here. I don’t like this.’
‘Yeah, you’re right, but take it easy. We want to do it with class. If we run, they’ll probably come after us.’
Billy leaned back in his seat, took a small thin cigar out of his pocket and lit it. He signalled to Reave.
‘Okay, let’s go.’
Slowly, they both stood up and walked carefully towards the revolving doors. Just as they reached them, one of the wheelfreaks sounded off behind them.
‘Will you guys just look at those sweet things!’
Billy and Reave were left in no doubt as to who was being talked about. They hurried through the swing doors and out on to the lot. The white sky was still as bright and shining as it had been when they’d first come out on to the highway. They were both tired and Reave began to wonder if there was any day or night in this truckers’ paradise. Billy put on his dark glasses, and they walked across the lot.
***
A.A. Catto hadn’t slept at all that night and now watched the sun come up through the clear bubble of the roof garden. It was only fitting that the Con Lec tower generator could produce day and night. It was a pity that after a while even that became tedious. She turned her back on the view and trailed her silver nails in the water of the fountain.
It was very quiet in the roof garden. The only sound that could be heard was that of the dying party in the mirror room. Somewhere in that party was De Roulet Glick. He was aching to have her again, and as far as she was concerned he could ache. She had made the mistake of sleeping with him once, about a year earlier, and he disgusted her by talking too much and coming too quickly. She had no reason to suppose a second time would be any improvement.
The sounds from the party increased, it seemed as though they were coming out into the roof garden. A.A. Catto retreated towards the rose bushes that concealed the lift entrance, and pressed the call button. The voices grew louder. She thought she heard Glick. The lift doors opened with a hiss, and she stepped inside. Behind her Glick called out.
‘A.A., wait a moment.’
She laughed as the lift doors closed on his stupid, eager face.
Inside her apartment she unsnapped the metallic dress she had worn for the party and stepped into the shower. The needle jets seemed to wash the tiredness out of her body, and after the warm air vents had dried her, she stepped out and looked at herself in the full-length mirror.
There was no mistaking the fact that her body and face were almost perfect. It was little wonder that fools like Glick fell over themselves to try and get to her. The only trouble with her perfection was that no one man in the five families could in any way match her desirability. She was wanted, but for the most part she didn’t want. Even the guests that arrived from the other citadels usually amounted to little more than a temporary exploration. A brief period of amusement that usually proved to be indistinguishable from all the others.
She pulled on a robe and debated with herself whether to remain awake for the rest of the day, or to sleep until evening. She picked up a small ornate case from a side table and looked at the two injectors; dormax, which would guarantee her eight hours’ uninterrupted sleep, and altacaine, the alternative shot that would see she remained lively and talkative until late the following night.
The problem was that if she did decide to use the altacaine and stay up all day, what exactly was there to stay awake for? She walked over to the entertainment console and punched up the day’s social programme. It was the usual round of talk, consumption of drink and drugs, and sexual assignations. Nobody was even putting on any kind of show or amusement, not even so much as bringing up a pair of sturdy L-4s to fight or copulate with each other. It looked like a blank day. Nobody seemed to have any imagination left.
Idly she wondered if anything was going on in the outside world, and reset the console to the newsfax channel. It was mainly concerned with the firestorm. That had been amusing a few days earlier when it had actually threatened Akio-Tech, but now that it was confined to L-4 dwellings it was no longer the least bit interesting.
She left the console chattering to itself and stepped out into the perspex blister that served her as a balcony.
Far beneath her was the ugly mess of shacks and ancient buildings that were the warrens of the L-4s. Maybe if they caught fire it would brighten up the day, but at the moment, the city looked safe and tranquil under its blanket of filth.
The outside had once filled her with fascination, there had been the abortive plan that she had hatched with Juno Meltzer to disguise themselves as L-4 prostitutes and slip out into the city, but the details became too complicated, and the plan had been abandoned. With the dropping of that scheme, most of her interest in life among the L-4s had faded.
She wandered back into her day-room. The console was now muttering about population figures and she cut it off. In the act of turning the switch she came to a decision. If nothing was going to happen that day, the best solution was to shut it out. She picked up the dormax injector and walked into the bedroom. She adjusted the circular bed to a light vibration, slipped out of her robe, turned the temperature setting to sleep and lay down. She pressed the injector against her thigh, and squeezed the release. There was a cold tingling as the minute droplets penetrated the pores of her skin, and then consciousness began to fade.
***
We’ve all heard the legends that have grown up around the Minstrel Boy. Now the troubles are over, and the natural laws have been brought back, we tend to think of him as the romantic figure of the movies, off on his journey singing stories and telling poems through the length and breadth of the troubled lands.
Of course, the Minstrel Boy did exist, and he was even something like the artists depict him, the blue jeans and the black fur-trimmed jacket, the pale intense face with its sunken cheeks and large, penetrating eyes. When Billy and Reave first saw him in the parking lot at Graveyard, he looked more scuzzy than romantic. His clothes were dirty rather than funky, and his mouth, so sensitive in the paintings, was weak and petulant. He did have the dark glasses, though, much the same as Billy’s, and the halo of light brown hair. He had the legendary silver guitar, too, slung over his shoulder, but even that caused confusion.
He was always telling people that it was an original National Steel, which would have made it incalculably old, whereas in fact it was only a Stuff Kustom Kopy, like Billy’s and Reave’s pistols. It was immediately clear from looking at the guitar that it couldn’t be an original. It had a porta-pac built into the back.
The problem with the Minstrel Boy was that he was an inveterate liar, who generated legends about as quietly as he generated songs.
When Billy and Reave first saw him he was standing beside an electric blue metalflake monster trying to hustle the driver for a lift. The wheelfreak wasn’t having any, and replied with an obscene gesture. The Minstrel Boy shrugged and wandered away. Reave and Billy caught up with him.
‘You trying to get out of this place?’
The Minstrel Boy looked suspicious.
‘Yeah, it ain’t healthy, but what’s that to you?’
The Minstrel Boy was also very paranoid. Billy and Reave fell into step beside him.
‘We were just asking because we’ve got to split too. We just got run out of Vito’s Cozy Drop-In.’
The Minstrel Boy twitched.
‘You should have known better than to go in there in the first place.’
There was a short awkward silence while they stood on the lot and wondered what to say next. Billy felt strangely drawn to the pale, desperate young man. He also felt challenged by the apparent lack of interest in either him or Reave. He didn’t know it was one of the Minstrel Boy’s most successful techniques for getting people under his influence. Finally Reave waved his hand in the direction of the line of parked trucks.