Krokodil Tears

'I've got you some clothes,' said the Doc. 'Your desert gear was more holes than hide. Magda ze Schluderpacheru had something surplus down at the Silver Shuriken.'

He indicated a neat pile of drab-coloured garments.

'The Silver Shuriken?'

'It's the local saloon. A yakuza operation, naturally.

They're the only people who can keep anything open out in the sand, and not be closed down by the gangcults. Magda is a honey. You should meet her.'

'I'd like to. It's been so long since,..'

The Doc grinned. '…since you saw anything but my ugly mug, I understand. It's time you got out of the house. You must be stir crazy.'

She wandered over to the chicken-wired window, and looked out. It was a clear night. The constellations twinkled.

'You should be with young people your own age, get yourself back into the swing of society.'

'Uhh?' She had been distracted, looking out the chicken-wired windows at the half-disc of the moon. 'I'm sorry. You're right. I need to…to do something.'

She felt funny, as if things were happening inside her.

'I meant to tell you about that. Your body is like an engine. If you don't turn it over regularly, it will complain. With all the alterations you've had. you'll need to take vigorous exercise for several hours a day. I'd prescribe running, dancing, fighting, healthy eating and athletic sex.'

'You could get to be very popular back in the city-states, Doc.'

Doc Threadneedle smiled sadly. 'Yes, but not with the right people.'

Jessamyn picked up Buzzsaw, and felt the tingle of static from the cat's fur. It was like a mini-rush in itself. She realized she was down from the morph-plus, and that her senses were sharper than they had ever been before.

'Suck your finger and stick it in a light-socket sometime,' the Doc said. 'You'll be surprised.'

She stroked the cat. It squealed and struggled from her grip. It disappeared upstairs.

'You don't know your own strength yet. You'll have to be careful. Here, try one of these.'

He tossed her a thick yellow-covered book. She held it between her forefingers and thumbs and neatly tore it in half.

'I lose more telephone directories that way.'

IV

Dead Rat, Arizona. What a place for an Englishman to end up, don't ch'know? Bloody buggering ha-ha-ha, eh what? Of course, Sarn't Major James Graham Biggleswade couldn't exactly go back to Blighty and expect them to hang out the welcome mat in Fulham, not after that tricky bit of bloody buggering business down in the Falklands —oh, excuuuuse meeee, the Mal-bloody-buggering-vinas—back in '81. Bit of a blooming sodding disgrace really, in actual fact, eh? These fakenham days, nobody hupped, frupped and trupped when the older Mastsarge yelled. Fact was, nobody knew who James Graham Buggered-to-bejaizus Biggleswade was. The sandrats just called him Jitters. His hands sometimes stopped shaking long enough for him to light a fag or give his teeth the once-over with Pepsodent, but that was every other Scumday in a month with a zed in it.

He sat in the corner of the Silver Shuriken, as far away from the bleeding video jukebox and bleeping zapper games as possible, sipping the foul antifreeze that passed for beer in the U.S. of Bloody A. He would have cut off his left doughnut and sold it to Johnny Galtieri for a pint of Six X Wadsworth, two bacon-and-cheddar sarnies and a packet of crisps with a blue twist of salt in them.

Mrs ze Schluderpacheru had taken pity on him, and gave him some sweeping-up chores in return for room and board and the occasional session with Fat Juanita. The old lady was like that, big-bloody-hearted. Jitters knew she was doing two people a favour, because Fat Juanita got depressed when the johnny-passing-throughs left her downstairs in the parlour with her knitting and gave all the custom to Gretchen, Connie Calzone, Margaret Running Deer and the Games Mistress. Fat Juanita was too bloody old, fat and stinky for the Game really. Not exactly prime camp-follower material. Bloody buggering lovely personality, though. If Jitters didn't have a wife and kids back in the old country—which, come to think of it, he probably didn't these days—he might just have dragged Fat Old Stinky Juanita up before the padre and tied the old knot. A soldier should be married, gave him a sense of what he was fighting for. Difficult to get the old fire up for the Greater Glory of flag, Empire and Prime Minister Ian Paisley, but hearth, home and humping still meant something in this godrotten hellhole khazipit of a world.

Just now, the Silver Shuriken was pretty quiet. Mrs ze Schluderpacheru was doing the accounts on her musical wrist-calculator, working how out much of her take would have to go to the yaks this quarter. Gretchen, the new girl, was putting up the Christmas decorations, replacing the black crepe around the crush velvet portrait of Wally the Whale with sparkly tinsel. The rest of the professional ladies were slumped around the telly in see-through armchairs, watching some kids' show called Cyclopaths, about a bunch of motorsickle chappies who went around slaughtering people they didn't think much of. That was one thing about America, the telly was crap.

Jitters missed the good old BBC, with the Light Programme and the Home Service. It might not be in strain-on- your-meat-pies Trideocolor or go on all night like America's bloody buggering 119 channels, but at least some nice bint like his old French teacher came on at ten-thirty and said good night as you drank your bloody buggering Ovaltine and waited for the shipping forecast. He missed the classic serials, with Great British actors in adaptations of the works of Great British writers like G. A. Henty, Dornford Yates, Sapper, Dennis Wheatley and John Buchan. They were on the Home Service, along with all the programmes about how to make do in the kitchen what with the rationing, and the fireside chats from the Prime Minister. That had been old Ian Paisley last time he was in the old country, but he had popped his clogs of apoplexy while explaining the Fall of Port Stanley to Robin Day on Nationwide and it was that upstart Jeffrey Archer now. And on the Light Programme there was The Black and White Minstrel Show, where Benny Elton and Ricky Mayall had got their big break; The Archers, with Richard Burton and Joan Collins as Dan and Doris, saving the Ambridge enclave from gypsies and travellers; Doctor Who, with Barry Humphries visiting Great Moments of British History; The Muffin the Mule Hour… Most of all, he missed Jack Warner as the old-fashioned robocopper in Dixon of Dock Green, zapping the Frenchies with his bio-implant bazookas.

Should have had PC George Dixon at Port Stanley back in '81, Jitters thought. Johnny Argie wouldn't have seen off the task force so bloody buggering easy if the old 'evenin' all' had been on the South Atlantic beat.

Gretchen was up a ladder now, sticking Bethlehem stars over the bulletholes on the ceiling. She was wearing a meshfoil microskirt, a Miss Piggy wig and strawberry pasties, her usual uniform.

The swing-doors swung open, and Curtius Kenne ambled in, chewing tobacco. He looked up at Gretchen, and spanged the spittoon with a jet of brown film.

'Nice view,' he drawled. 'Haw haw haw!'

Curtius was a cowboy builder. His van was painted up with pictures of Gene Autry and Hopalong Cassidy, and he called his firm the Boot Hill and Laredo Double Glazing Company. He guaranteed his windows against everything up to a BlastMaster minimissile, but you were usually too dead to complain if he supplied you with defective merch. He loped across the bar, swinging his hips to show off his twin Colts, and got his polished pseudoleather boot up on the bar.

'Any chance of a belt of Shochaiku Double-Blend, Magda?' he asked Mrs ze Schluderpacheru.

The owner looked up from her calculations and raised an eyebrow. Her feathered hat bobbed.

'Now, Curtius, honey, you know I keep that stuff only for my special customers.'

Magda ze Schluderpacheru was Romanian, originally. Like Jitters, she had knocked around the world a bit and wound up in Dead Rat. Bloody buggering shame if you asked him. Nice people ending up clogging this plughole when the PZs were full of undeserving wankers, wallies, wasters and wooftahs.