“Fishing,” Slip replied, “now you can definitely go fishing.”
Dink looked down at his new hand. The rod (or broom handle) had been fused to his wrist bone, and where he once had fingers, he now had fishing wire (electrical flex) covered in scraps of mutilated kitten. He was really very upset with this whole new arrangement of hand, and as he clocked Slip beaming at him, clearly delighted with his work, it was almost unconscious as he lashed out with it, catching Slip neatly on the chin.
“Ow,” whimpered Slip, “what was that for?!”
“What do you think it was for, you idiot?!” he shouted back, “look what you’ve done to my hand!”
“Yeah,” shrugged Slip, “now you never have to not be fishing again! Shoot, you can even fish in your sleep!”
“BUT WHY?!”
“Erm,” thought Slip for a moment, “well it beats being an evil galactic overlord!”
“You’re all insane,” said Dink altogether too calmly, “being around you people is wrong.”
“Aw don’t be like that Dinkle,” said Pete, “we just wanna be pals, don’t we gang?”
Crinkle and Slip nodded uneasily at this.
“Okay,” put in Pete, “Slip may have been heavy handed with his approach… “
Dink grimaced.
“… But you’ve gotta believe that what he did, he did because of you.”
He was turning a shade of angry purple now.
“We just want to help you to help yourself,” put in Crinkle, which she had heard preached before on the AA channel.
“You call this help?!” he fumed, waving his fishing hand about, “I’ve never even met you people and you decide all of a sudden to interrupt a very delicate transplant operation by forcing a broom handle into the grafting machine!”
“Fishing rod,” corrected Slip.
“And your reason for doing this is so that rather than become some kind of evil space overlord, I can instead vent all of my frustration by going fishing?!”
“Exactly!” they agreed, nodding in approval.
“Even though my planet has not got any fish, or indeed any oceans!”
The Renegade team were silent.
“Well,” resumed Dink calmly again, “I think I ought to be leaving now before I murder you all.”
“Don’t you want to do the other hand?” asked Slip, who had somehow got hold of set of skis and was now waving them cheerfully at him.
“NO,” he shouted, before leaving the room hurriedly, and locking the door behind him as he went.
Dink left the hospital like a man on fire leaving a sauna, once outside, he hailed a transportable, and in doing so, hooked himself an empty crisp packet.
“Where to sir?” asked the driver CPU.
“Rikorn offices,” he growled back.
“Excellent day for it.”
“For what exactly?”
“Fishing of course,” answered the driver CPU.
“I’m not going fishing,” he said, trying to contain his anger.
“Of course sir.”
Dink could not be sure, but he was almost certain he detected a hint of mockery in the computer’s tone. He thought for a moment about getting out of the transportable and slamming the door really hard, before realizing, he was really very late for work now, and his boss Mr Framer was already going to be a cross Co-leen, without him adding yet further delay.
“Step on it,” he told the driver CPU.
“Consider it stepped on sir.”
***
“Well,” began Pete, “that’s just brilliant!”
“I know,” shrugged Slip, “I really was rather, wasn’t I.”
“No, you oaf, I was being sarcastic!”
“Yeah,” Slip replied, “well I was being cat-tastic! Nice work with that by the way.”
“How was I to know I had mutilated a kitten?! It was you who failed to mention there’s no fish on this planet!”
“Yeah, well your face doesn’t have a fish on it!” Slip shouted back angrily.
“That doesn’t even mean anything you donkey!”
“I’ll give you donkey!”
“Boys, boys, boys,” interrupted Crinkle, “let’s just calm down a bit shall we.”
“Yeah maybe Mister redundant species here should make like a banana, and bend!”
“It’s split you mule, make like a banana, and split!”
“Bend, split, whatever,” she interrupted again, playing the mediator, “that’s not really helping matters is it?”
“No,” replied Pete after a moment.
“I’m hungry,” said Slip in a small voice.
“Okay, so why don’t we forgive and forget, and start to work on a way to get us outta here?” she suggested amicably.
“Agreed,” agreed Pete and Slip.
“Very unreasonable of him to have locked us in here after all we did with his new hand and everything,” said Slip.
“Slip,” replied Crinkle bluntly, “don’t.”
“So what’s next?” asked Pete.
“Fear not my little monkey, I have a plan.”
“Well tell us then Slip, what is this devastatingly cunning plan?” coaxed Crinkle mockingly.
“Okay my little renegade revellers,” began Slip, “how about we dress Pete up as a patient and claim he’s sick, so sick in fact that no known cure exits. I then pretend to be his partner and you Crinks play the role of his accountant. We call for a doctor and as he is being examined, we use the opportunity to inject the attending physician with a fast-acting paralysis tonic. I then take the doctor’s clothes and Crinkle pretends to crack under the pressure of her long hours of doing the books. I then escort her from the premises as a mental patient of mine, while Pete climbs out the window and waits at the front of the hospital holding a sign saying, “peace of mind sale – today only”. Seeing the sign Crinkle, who is quite clearly mad, starts attacking you and I am forced to intervene and call the police. The police then arrest both of you and lock you up, where later today I will appear as your solicitor and pay your bail. Both of you are then released, and we are free again. Fool proof.”
The room was silent.
“How about we go out the other door?” suggested Pete.
“Works for me,” replied Crinkle as they all followed her out through the other door.
36.
“But my Liege,” began Pete, “how was I to know that the giant diver man was only a plastic statue!”
“Enough serf,” replied King Slip, “your words displease us.”
“Indeed,” agreed Queen Crinkle.
“You shall be executed immediately and your twitching body thrown from the king-tank!”
“But sire,” grovelled Pete, “I will pay for any damages.”
“You will pay with your life!”
“Okay,” he said thinking quickly, “I bring news on Ben!”
The hall was silenced.
“That is a name we do not mention in this castle,” replied King Slip sternly.
“Well I better get on then,” he said turning to leave, “gotta see an executioner about an execution sorta thing, bye then.”
“Wait,” commanded the King, “we will hear what you have to say.”
“Well it’s like this,” he began, “there I was going through my warm up exercises, preparing as I was, to attack and slay the villainous diver giant, when all of a sudden, there he was!”
King Slip and Queen Crinkle gasped.
“At first, through the bubbles, all I could make out was two enormous red eyes, hungry for fish, and then I could make out those teeth, like two rows of mountain ranges sharpened to incredible points. Of course, I hid, for my fight was not with him, you see a fish has to pick his battles, not have his battles pick him.”
King Slip nodded approvingly.
“I was concealed in some algae,” he went on, “and he swam right by me, it was then that I heard him chanting to himself.”
“He was chanting?!” asked Queen Crinkle, quite taken aback.
“He was my Queen,” replied Pete, “the same word over and over again, as though in some type of magical trance!”
“Well come on then, out with it!” demanded the king, though his tone suggested that he already knew what was to come.
“Just one word, over and over and over,” he teased, before answering suddenly, “Salamaloo!”
Queen Crinkle shuddered at this, and King Slip seemed to age ten years all in one go at this revelation.
“So he knows,” said the King to himself, though all present could hear his words, before declaring defiantly, “so what of it! He may know of their existence, but he will never learn of their whereabouts!”
“Oh well that’s just fab,” said Pete, “I’ll see myself out shall I?”
“I’m not finished with you,” growled the King, in so far as a fish can growl.
“Your fishiness, how can I further be of assistance?” he asked awkwardly.
“You wish to serve your king and king-tank yes?”
“I do.”
“And you consider yourself to be somewhat of a swordfish?” probed the King further.
“Indeed sire, my first words were said to be “you have insulted my honour, prepare to meet thy maker”,” he lied quite unconvincingly.
“Excellent, then I have a task for you,” declared King Slip, “it appears you have already had a run in with the shark known as Ben.”
“Yes sire.”
“He is, as you may or may not already know, a royal pain in the fin.”
“Indeed my Lord.”
“I task you… “
“Pete,” he interjected.
“…Pete, to find the shark known as Ben and… “
“Issue him with an official warning,” suggested Pete in an ever increasingly tiny voice.
“Kill him,” finished the King dramatically.
“Oh right,” he said, almost physically deflating, “typical.”
“Off you go then,” he said dismissing Pete from the palace, “now let us have some entertainment, call for the Fendels!”
At this, a door to the palatial hall swung ceremoniously open, and out swam Fendel, as a fish. Just a catfish’s whiskers behind him, swam a much smaller Fendel, as a small fish. The larger Fendel fish opened his mouth to speak.
“Your grace,” he began, “it is our terrific delight and quite magnificent pleasure to entertain his liege and guests present, with an evening of watery wonder! I am Fendel the illusionist, sometimes known as Fendel the Fabulous, or the Fantastic Fendel, sometimes as Fendel the Blower of Minds, and sometimes as Fancy Fendel the Maker of Mystery! And this is my brother, Fendel the Tiny.”
“Hello,” said Fendel the Tiny.
“I ask only one thing of those of you who are present tonight, that each if you suspend just one thing, your disbelief!”
“Get on with it,” ordered King Slip.
“Of course your worship, if getting on with it is what you want, then getting on with it is what we shall undoubtedly do. Nay I would go as far as to say, that even if the mere suggestion of getting on with it was but a whisper on the wind, we will have already have quite literally actioned, reactioned, and laid down in semi—solid stone, the fact of having quite completely, got on with it already.”
The King cast Fendel a daggered glance.
“Very well,” continued Fendel, getting the message, “if I can ask for a volunteer from the audience.”
“Do your worst conjurer,” cajoled the King, stepping forward.
“Ah, no less than the King himself, we are deeply honoured,” he declared, bowing down as King Slip approached.
“Now,” he went on, “my brother here, Fendel the Tiny...”
“Hello,” interrupted Fendel the Tiny.
“…Will tonight, in front of all you present, twist the most dearly held concepts of reason, bend the very nature of reality, and altogether smash the preconceptions of the self, by… “
The audience waited on fish tenterhooks.
“…Reading the King’s mind!”
“Codswallop!” rebutted the King.
“I assure you not your excellence,” replied Fendel, “if you may indulge my brother and I, and think of a number anywhere between one and a million.”
“Fine, but only to bring this nonsense to an end,” said King Slip, thinking of the number four hundred and sixty eight thousand, nine hundred and nineteen.
“Terrific,” he replied, “now watch my brother very carefully, and do not try to resist.”
That said, Fendel the Tiny then swam steadily up to the King, stopping only when he was mere inches from his face. He then locked eyes quite completely with the King and for a moment or so they held there, not making a single sound or movement. King Slip then felt himself fall as though in a dream, and memories, long-held and since forgotten, flashed through his mind. He remembered his teenage years and his assent to the throne and betrothal to his Queen; then further back as a mere tiddler prince and exploring the fish tank that was now his kingdom; then even further back, when he was the main macdaddy and disc jockey on the most listened to radio station in the universe, Renegade TM.
“Fendel!” yelled Fendel the normal-sized, deep into his brother’s eardrum.
“Renegade TM,” muttered Fendel the Tiny coming round from his mind reading trance.
“What the cod was that!” stated the King also coming round now, “disc jockey, Renegade TM, nonsense, utter nonsense!”
“The number brother,” asked Fendel frantically, keenly aware something had gone wrong.
“Four hundred and sixty eight thousand, nine hundred and nineteen,” declared Fendel the Tiny with complete confidence.
“Well was it?” interrupted the Queen, clearly eager to know.
“Yes,” replied King Slip bemusedly, “actually it was.”
“Well bravo,” declared Queen Crinkle with delight, “truly you are a maker of mystery!”
“Thank you your delightfulness,” replied Fendel, before locking eyes with his brother and saying quietly only for his benefit, “truly I am.”
And so we leave King Slip and Queen Crinkle to their astonishment, the Fendels to their bafflement, and Pete to his murderous task, and as the sun set on another day in the King-tank, so all seemed well with their fishy fates. However, the term Renegade TM refused to leave our tiny friend, and much later that night, when most of our fishy friends were fast asleep, Fendel the Tiny floated there, resolutely awake, trying to dispel the events of earlier by reasoning it out, and talking aloud.
“But it was all so real,” he said to himself, “King Slip as a space disc-jockey, Queen Crinkle his number two, Pete was there as some abhorrent apelike species!” he sighed, before adding, “well what of it anyway, if nobody else gives fig, why should I?!”
And on that rhetorical question, he closed his eyes and began to fall asleep.
37.
Dink arrived at the Rikorn offices at demi hour past middy, three entire cycles late. After dismissing the transportable in what he considered to be a suitably gruff and under-satisfied manner, he marched his way through the front doors, preparing himself for what he imagined would be a particularly unpleasant meeting with his boss, Mr Framer.
“Mr Mormid?” chirped the cyber-secretary on the front desk.
“Yes,” he replied back testily, barely slowing his gait.
“Mr Framer wants to see you.”
“I know.”
“That was three cycles ago,” she went on unhelpfully.
“I know!”
“Oh Mr Mormid.”
“What is it,” he said back angrily, “I’m late!”
“There’s strictly no fishing allowed on the premises.”
“Oh right,” he replied sarcastically, “thanks for informing me.”
Dink stuffed his fishing rod/broom handle hand as best he could into his coat pocket and pushed the button for the levi-lift. As he waited, he decided that honesty was going to be the best policy, and m
ade up his mind, to be completely frank and open in his meeting with Mr Framer. As the door to the levi-lift closed behind him, three conspicuous characters made their way into the atrium.
“We tried being completely frank and open with him,” began Crinkle, “and that didn’t work at all.”
“Sure didn’t,” agreed Slip, “so what are you saying?”
“We lie,” she replied flatly.
“Hang on Crinks,” put in Pete, “we can’t lie to the guy. I mean, Dink’s okay, he’s got the patience of a saint, we all saw him earlier and how he dealt with his psychotic girlfriend.”
“He’s okay now,” she replied, “are you forgetting what he becomes Pete?”
“Yeah, yeah, I know, evil galactic Co-leen overlord,” he answered, wishing he could do more to help the luckless Dink, with whom he felt a shared past and unlikely kinship with.
“So we’re agreed then,” she continued, “teethy grins everyone, we’re about to lie through them.”
Dink arrived at Mr Framer’s office and knocked hesitantly on the door. Mr Framer was not of Co-leen origin and actually came from the Jolsta Nebula. Entirely unhumanoid in appearance, (as Pete would say), Mr Framer was more like a blob of jelly which hovered in the air with the aid of a levi-chair. Utterly incapable of any physical movement, its words and actions were conveyed through the use of a very technical piece of equipment called a mind-beanie. It was then quite remarkable that he had risen through the ranks of the Rikorn hierarch, and was currently his immediate superior.
“Come,” Mr Framer heralded from within.
“Okay, here goes,” he said to himself, opening the door and making his way inside.
Renegade T.M. Page 16