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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
countrymdashwhich, come to think of it, he probably didn't these daysmdashhe
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 aboutAmerica , 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
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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 atPort 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 theSouth Atlantic beat.
Gretchen was up a ladder now, stickingBethlehem 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
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