Tik-Tok (GOLLANCZ S.F.) by John Sladek

Author:John Sladek [Sladek, John]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Science Fiction, Science Fiction & Fantasy
ISBN: 9780575110595
Amazon: B005OAHEHI
Publisher: Gateway
Published: 2011-09-28T11:00:00+00:00

George "Smilin' Jack" Grewney was one of the hijackers who stood there in the gloomy hold, watching the dreary rain of cowshit, listening to Lady of Spain. It was he who said, "No drink. I knew we should have hijacked a passenger ship."

"We couldn't afford the fares, remember?"

"We've hijacked nothing! Nothing! The ship itself isn't worth the cowshit on the floor here," said Grewney. "And now, no drink!"

"Ladies and gentlemen," said the voice of Captain Reo. He was trussed up and hanging from a ladder above us. "I have a few bottles of grog in my cabin. Please accept them with the compliments of the management. And now if you'll release me, I'll take you wherever you want to go.' I noticed that Captain Reo was wearing spurs.

When they'd collected the grog, someone said, "Hey you. Banjo. Show us where we can sit down and enjoy life."

I, Banjo, led them to the grand ballroom, whose pathetic decay only heightened the sense of unattainable grandeur. It reminded me of Tenoaks and the Culpeppers, and I realized that once more I was to be a proper servant to a new leisured class. The barbarian gentry made themselves right at home, and in no time were roasting a cow over a fire of gilt chairs.

The "Jord Family" were no family at all, merely a gang of cutthroat adventurers. While I could not approve of their methods, I could not help admiring their courage and gruff, good-natured camaraderie. In another time and place they might have been musketeers, privateers, Sherwood Foresters, winners of the West, mercantile bankers.

There was Vilo Jord himself, a former attaché of the Chilean consulate at Las Vegas until accused and recalled for various offenses—the least of which was impersonating an orthodontist. Jord was a tall, stooped man with a heavy moustache, which he dyed a bilious green.

There was George "Smilin' Jack" Grewney, a gum-chewing aristocrat with a ready grin and a glass eye. A former undertaker, Grewney had been convicted of three premature burials, also of numerous ashtray and lampshade crimes.

The apple-cheeked twins, Fern and Jean Worpne, claimed to be wanted in eight countries for the mercy-killing of judges.

The scholarly-looking Jack Wax, wanted for engaging in illicit sexual behavior with telephone poles, seemed harmless enough by comparison with Sherm Chimini, the "Armpit Rapist". Sherm's otherwise engaging smile was marred by the presence of one abnormal incisor, four inches long, curved and barbed.

He in turn was hardly as frightening in appearance as Jud Nedd, a fat, effeminate man with motionless eyes, a man who specialized in public animal explosions. He it was who sabotaged an international canine frisbee-catching contest by introducing frisbees of his own hellish design, set to explode when caught. Only the clumsiest dog survived.

Duke Mitty, an avuncular toad usually drunk and giggling, had begun as a salesman of tapeworm cures, but later turned to the disposal of unwanted infants to sausage factories.

Finally, Maggie Dial, known as the Bitch of Brownsville, had amassed her unlawful fortune in Texas by impersonating animals in an outlawed variety of psychodrama.

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