Modem Times 2.0 - Michael Moorcock [21]
“Mo?”
He turned. He had been on his feet long enough to understand his bit as he fell onto the carpet. Buggered.
He could still hear. “Of course it’s not curare.”
Jerry was wistful as he watched Mitzi Beesley drag the little fellow into the hedge. “But then again it’s not chocolate, either!”
“I wouldn’t personally be talking about sweets,” Didi Dee murmured. She had become shy. Flirtatious. Weak. Self-righteous. Religious.
Why was she searching out his contempt?
This whole thing was altogether too retro for Jerry. He cleared his throat, spat on the ground. Where was his 1954? Surely earlier? What numbers had she offered him?
Should he get into the spirit of the times? Feeling guilty. Finding places to hide. Telling lies? You needed a voice. He couldn’t muster a voice on top of everything else.
Somewhere up there in the diminishing hills he heard an engine. Jimmy van Dorn’s awful old Rolls-Royce.
Time to be shunting along. He kissed Didi on her dimpled cheek. “Tee tee eff en.”
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE
1. GUNS IS GUNS
Everyone will be wealthy, living like a lord, Getting plenty of things today they can’t afford But when’s it going to happen? When? Just by and by! Oh, everything will be lovely, when the pigs begin to fly!
—Charles Lambourne, Everything Will Be Lovely, c. 1860
During the tour you will visit many of the key sites connected to these infamous “Whitechapel Murders.” You will retrace the footsteps of Jack The Ripper and discover, when, where and how his five unfortunate victims lived and died. You will also discover why the Ripper was never caught and what life was really like for people living in the London’s notorious East End.
FREE Jack The Ripper starts and finishes at Mary Jane’s, named after the Ripper’s fifth and final victim, Mary Jane Kelly, where from 6pm you have access to 2-4-1 house cocktails, 2-4-1 bottles of Kronenbourg, £8.90 bottles of house wine, £8.90 cocktail jugs and 3-4-2 on all small plates of food … what a killer offer!!!
—Celebrity & Pop Culture Tours of the Planet, Celebrity Planet 2010
“I ADMIRE A MAN who can look cool on a camel.” Bessy Burroughs presented Jerry with her perfectly rounded vowels. Born in Kansas, she had been educated in Sussex, near Brighton. Regular vowels, her dad had always said, were the key to success, no matter what your calling. “God! Is it always this hot in Cairo?”
“It used to be lovely in the winter.” Jerry jumped down from his kneeling beast and came to help Bessy dismount. Only Karen von Krupp preferred to remain in her saddle. Shieldingher eyes against the rising sun, she peered disdainfully at a distant clump of palms.
Bessy had none of her father Bunny’s lean, lunatic wit. Her full name was Timobeth, a combination of those her parents had chosen for a girl or a boy. Bunny believed that old-fashioned names were an insult to the future. They pandered to history. Her parents still hated history. A sense of the past was but a step on the road to nostalgia and nostalgia, as Bunny was fond of saying, was a vice that corrupts and distorts.
Jerry remembered his lazy lunches at Rules. Bunny had loved Rules. But he had come to hate the heritage industry as “a brothel disguised as a church.” Jerry wasn’t sure what he meant and had never had a chance to find out. If he turned up, as promised, by the Sphinx, perhaps this would be a good time to ask him.
“Dad loves it out here.” Pulling her veil from her hat to her face, Bessy began to follow him across the hard sand towards the big pyramid. “Apart from the old stuff. He hates the old stuff. But he loves the beach. The old stuff can crumble to dust for all he cares.” She paused to wipe her massive cheeks and forehead. That last box of Turkish delight was beginning to