The Parodies Collection

by Adam Roberts

  ‘Well, to do that I’d have to remove my helmet,’ explained the Sterntrooper. ‘And I’m not allowed to do that on duty. I’ll save it ’til later. But thanks anyway.’

  ‘Let’s gooo Bony, pleeease—’ begged Luke.

  ‘Just a minute. I tell you what, Mr Sterntrooper. You know what I think? I think you’re an Arcturan Chicken. Aren’t you?’

  ‘A chicken,’ repeated the soldier, dubiously.

  ‘That’s right. A chicken. You really should be clucking, don’t you think?’

  ‘Cluck,’ said the soldier cautiously, as if humouring the old man.

  ‘I’d say it sounds more,’ said Bony, encouragingly, ‘like b’KAH-hk kluk kluk kluk!’ He flapped his elbows up and down a little. ‘You know – more chickeny.’

  ‘You can go about your business,’ said the Sterntrooper, waving them on. ‘Go about your business. Please.’

  They parked outside a rundown and dodgy-looking bar. A neon light of tremendous length had been twisted and shaped to spell the words Bada Big-Bang Bar, and might have been illuminated, or not illuminated; it was difficult to tell in the piercingly bright sunlight of the Tatuonweiner morning.

  ‘In here,’ said Bony, ‘we’ll find a pilot in here to fly us to Ya!Boo! Now be careful . . . This is where the scum of the galaxy come to drink and eat nuts and play bar-billiards. And chat to their friends. And to put coinage in the fruit machines. The very scum of the galaxy. You’ll need your wits about you.’

  ‘I’m ready.’

  ‘We’ll leave the droids in the van.’

  Together they stepped through the low door.

  Inside it was dark, and nearly deserted. The bar smelt of those things a bar smells of at eleven in the morning: stale smoke, old beer, yesterday’s fun. A baralien was sitting on a stool behind the bar. In one corner alcove a good-looking human man was sipping beer. Beside him was a huge yeti-like creature slumped over the table, apparently asleep. The bar was otherwise deserted.

  ‘There’s nobody in here but that man,’ Luke said.

  ‘Let’s hope he’s a pilot,’ said K’nobbli. He creaked and shuffled his way over to them and took a seat.

  ‘Hello there,’ said the attractively-featured fellow. He really was a very good-looking chap; clear manly features, beautiful feathery hair layered perfectly and with not a single split end. ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘I hope so,’ said K’nobbli. ‘We’re looking for a pilot.’

  ‘I’m a pilot,’ said the man. ‘My name is Hand Someman, and I’m at your service. This is my co-pilot, Masticatetobacco. Don’t disturb him; he’s hibernating right now.’

  ‘I’m Bony K’nobbli,’ said K’nobbli. ‘This is Luke Seespotrun.’

  ‘What we need to know,’ said K’nobbli impatiently, ‘is, can we hire you and your ship to fly us off this world without the Imperial Empire of the Imperium capturing us?’

  ‘Sure thing,’ said Hand. ‘How much you paying?’

  ‘Ten thousand Imperial Credits,’ said K’nobbli, with the air of a man who has no experience at all of money plucking a sum out of the air.

  ‘That would come in very handy,’ said the man. ‘Because, as it happens, I’m in hock to a local gangster for precisely that sum. Do you know him? Pizza the Hutt, the disgusting alien creature shaped like a huge fluke, covered in revolting red pus and blotches, who rules this town with ruthless and violent cruelty?’

  ‘I’ve never heard of him,’ said Luke. ‘But then again, I’m a nice middle-class lad. What’s your ship like?’

  ‘It’s called the Millennium Bug,’ said Hand Someman. ‘Not a very good name, I know. I wanted to call it the Millennium Wasp, but that name was already registered. The same was true of Millennium Butterfly, Millennium Preying Mantis and Millennium Fly.’

  ‘Pleasant though it is to chat like this,’ said K’nobbli, ‘I really think we should be going. Time being of the essence, and everything.’

  ‘Right,’ said Hand Someman. ‘We’ll have to carry my co-pilot.’

  ‘Carry him?’ said K’nobbli, freezing in the process of getting to his feet.

  ‘Didn’t you hear me? He’s hibernating. He’s a Woozie, from the planet Wooz. He hibernates for six months of the year. And a year on Wooz only lasts seven months. For the extra month he is awake, but not very with-it. Mind you, it’s not surprising that he’s tired during his month awake. He’s got to cram everything into that one month – it’s pretty exhausting.’

  K’nobbli cast a rather aspersive glance at the snoozing hairy figure. ‘What is he?’ he asked. ‘Some breed of giant dog?’

  ‘Something like that,’ said Someman. ‘Come on, I’ll get under one armpit – you – Luke, did you say your name was? – you get under the other.’

  There was an unpleasant surprise waiting for them outside.

  ‘Hello,’ said the Imp-Emp-Imp Sterntrooper. ‘Remember me? It turns out I’m not a chicken. And that apple you gave me tasted horrible.’

  ‘Ah,’ said K’nobbli. Behind the Sterntrooper was a squad of soldiery. Behind that squad was another squad. All had laser rifles, and none looked unready to use them.

  ‘You’re nicked,’ said the first Sterntrooper. ‘Frankly. And we’re confiscating your droids.’

  ‘Quick,’ panted Hand Someman, seriously weighed down and straining under half the weight of his sleeping companion. Luke, similarly burdened, had gone very red in the face. ‘To the hovervan.’

  ‘Fear not!’ cried K’nobbli. ‘I shall fight them off with my lightsword. You all get in my hovervan and escape – drive rapidly away, and get to Mr Someman’s spaceship. Go!’

  Before Luke’s astonished eyes K’nobbli pulled a long, narrow glass tube from his gown. A moment’s fumbling with a switch somewhere at the bottom of this object transformed it into a beaming, gleaming shaft of light, flickering slightly. As the Sterntroopers stepped back in amazement, K’nobbli wielded this gleaming object with practised sweeps, and took up a sword-fighter’s stance.

  ‘En guard!’ said Bony. ‘Watch yourself – middle guard! Left guard. Right gua – or, actually, not that last one. Have at you!’

  He swung the gleaming blade right around his head and finished up with it held horizontally before his chest, his bony elbow poking out by his ear, and a menacing expression in his eyes.

  The foremost Sterntrooper recovered himself and unholstered his laser pistol.

  With a swiftness at odds with his apparently old and decrepit body, K’nobbli darted forward and brought the lightsword sharply down, to cleave the hapless soldier’s shooting arm from his shoulder.

  The lightsword collided with the upper arm of the armoured Sterntrooper. There was a loud cracking sound. The light went out, and the top of the glass tube broke away. Glass splinters scattered. The Sterntrooper’s armour was unmarked.

  ‘Um,’ said Luke.

  ‘Oh dear,’ said K’nobbli, examining the shattered device. ‘Actually, truth to tell, it’s more of a ceremonial device.’

  The Sterntrooper raised his laser pistol and fired. A bolt of red throbbing energy sped through the air, deadly, although it travelled, oddly, slowly enough for K’nobbli to move his head slightly such that the shot missed him by millimetres and instead struck Hand Someman in the chest. The pilot cried out ‘agh!’ and tumbled to the ground. Masticatetobacco collapsed on top of him, pulling Luke down too. When he came to rest, Luke’s face was awkwardly close to a large wound in Hand Someman’s chest: it was bleeding badly, and steaming a little. ‘Oh no,’ he said.

  Hand Someman only groaned.

  The next thing that Luke knew, he was being lifted by more-than-organic strength and tossed unceremoniously in the back of the open hovervan. K’nobbli was at the wheel, as C3U-πP-HOL hauled the supine forms of first Masticatetobacco and then Hand Someman into the car. ‘It takes a robot to save the day,’ he said. ‘Away we go.’

  ‘Go where?’ demanded K’nobbli. Laser bolts from the many weapons of the Sterntroopers were flying th
rough the air over their heads.

  ‘Spaceport Hangar 337,’ gasped Hand Someman, clutching his wound, his face a rictus of agony.

  ‘Right ho,’ said K’nobbli; and the van sped away, rocking as laser bolts collided with its sides and flew dangerously close to their heads.

  Chapter Seven

  Aboard the ISS Order Through Fear and Obedience XVII in orbit around Tatuonweiner (Dum Dum Dum, Duhm d’dum, Duhm d’dum)

  High above, in polar orbit around the planet, Dark Father was in his extensive but minimally decorated quarters. He brooded. He had received reports from the Death Spa. He had communicated with the Imperial Emperor, who had foreseen that there was no further need to pursue the droids on the planet’s surface below. There were new orders; to go to the planet Gregbare, the world amongst whose naked inhabitants the Rebelend command centre had been located.

  But Dark Father brooded. All was not still in his mind. He summoned the Destroyer’s Commander to his quarters, and with promptitude motivated by loyalty and terror, the Commander came.

  ‘COMMANDER,’ wheezed Dark Father, doomily.

  ‘Yes, Lord Father,’ said Commander Regla Onzedcars, standing to attention and tucking his arms behind his back. The trick, he had decided after much thought, was to stare not quite directly at Dark Father’s faceplate. To stare right into his big black cyborg eyes would be to give the impression of an insolent subordination, which would be tantamount to asking to have a reef knot tied in one’s trachea. But to look pointedly away from Dark Father, as if he were too hideous to behold (as, obviously, he was) would likewise be courting disaster. Indeed it would be doing more than courting disaster. It would be plying disaster with drink and pressuring it to come home with you tonight. It would be actively stalking disaster, sending disaster persistent erotic emails and hanging around outside her front door trying to engage her in conversation as she dashed to the bus stop. Regla Onzedcars put all his energy into striking the exact balance between these two dangerous courses of action. He stood, motionless, at attention.

  ‘YOU ARE TO BRING THE FLEET TO THE PLANET GREGBARE,’ said Dark Father.

  ‘Immediately, Lord Father.’

  ‘THE DEATH SPA WILL FOLLOW.’

  ‘Of course, Lord Father.’

  There was an awkward silence, broken only by the wheezy rasping that emanated from Dark Father’s helmet. Commander Onzedcars waited, trying to maintain an absolute, respectful motionlessness. Fourteen of his predecessors had died because this same Dark Lord of the Psmyth, annoyed, had turned their gullets into cat’s-cradles. He waited. It was not easy. There was a tickle right in the end of his nose that threatened to grow, as tickles will, into a full-blown sneeze if he wasn’t careful. What with the recycled air in the starship-destroyer, and the fact that the thermostat always seemed to be turned up just a touch too high, Commander Onzedcars found himself sneezing quite frequently. That, and the constant coughing. He contemplated what Dark Father would do to one of his subordinates who had the temerity to sneeze upon his perfectly black cloak. He would be unlikely to be understanding. The fleet, after all, was three thousand light years from the nearest reputable dry-cleaners.

  ‘COMMANDER . . .’ said Dark Father, eventually.

  Commander Onzedcars’ heart gave a little stumble. He recognised that tone of voice. It was still doomy, profound, freighted with darkness and death, but added to that was the slight trace of . . . ANXIETY. When Lord Father was being murderously ruthless he was at least being PREDICTABLY murderously ruthless. But when he got into these sorts of moods, Commander Onzedcars felt an ontological terror yawn within him. And not yawn because it was tired and about to nod off; oh no. Yawn because it wanted to devour him – to swallow him whole and digest him in an agony of acid and crushing constricting muscles, to – actually, on second thoughts, perhaps ‘yawn’ wasn’t the right word to use there in the first place. Gape. Open wide its grisly jaws and flash its razor teeth in the sunlight.

  ‘Yes, my Lord?’

  ‘COMMANDER . . . THE MEN . . .’

  ‘The men, my Lord?’

  ‘DO THEY . . . DO THEY EVER SAY THAT . . . THAT I HAVE NO SENSE OF HUMOUR?’

  This was a tricky one. Onzedcars took a quick breath. ‘The men are too terrified and loyal ever to talk about you, my lord – in any way.’

  ‘GOOD,’ said Dark Father. He turned his back on his Commander. ‘GOOD. BECAUSE, YOU KNOW, I DO HAVE A SENSE OF HUMOUR. A VERY GOOD SENSE OF HUMOUR, AS IT HAPPENS.’

  ‘Of course you do, my Lord,’ said Onzedcars, praying that Father would dismiss him now, or failing that, kill him quickly and put an end to his misery.

  ‘WHY, ONLY THE OTHER DAY,’ Dark Father wheezed in a doomy imitation of a lighthearted offhand interjection, ‘ADMIRAL DADINT’ OXO-FAMILY SAID TO ME, “DARK FATHER”, HE SAID TO ME, “I FIND THESE REPORTS OF REBEL ACTIVITY IN THE HAMILTON QUADRANT VERY HARD TO SWALLOW”, AND I REPLIED, “OH YOU DO, DO YOU? HARD TO SWALLOW, IS IT?” AND I CRUSHED HIS ENTIRE OESOPHAGAL AND TRACHEAL AREA USING ONLY THE POWER OF THE FARCE, AND AS HE LAY CHOKING AND DYING ON THE DECK I SAID “HOW’S ABOUT THAT FOR HARD TO SWALLOW?” EH?’

  ‘Very amusing, my Lord,’ said Commander Onzedcars. Sweat was creeping down the sides of his face, but he held himself motionless.

  ‘I SAID IT IN A VERY COOL, SUAVE SORT OF WAY,’ Dark Father added.

  ‘I’m sure you did, my Lord.

  ‘LIKE A YOUNG SEAN CONNERY. WITH A CONNERY SORT OF INFLECTION.’

  ‘Yes, my Lord.’

  ‘NOT A SUPERCILIOUS ROGER MOOREISH MANNER. I SAID IT IN A SUAVE-BUT-DEADLY WAY.’

  ‘Yes, my Lord.’

  ‘THAT’S FUNNY, WOULDN’T YOU SAY?’

  ‘Very funny indeed, my Lord.’

  Dark Father paced, with long strides, to the massive circular porthole that gave his suite of rooms so impressive a view of the khaki-coloured planet below. ‘YOU SAY THAT,’ he wheezed. ‘BUT YOU AREN’T LAUGHING.’

  ‘Ha,’ said Onzedcars, slightly mad-eyed. ‘Ha. Ha-ha-ha-ha.’

  ‘COMMANDER, I FEEL YOU UNDERSTAND ME. YOU APPRECIATE THE DIFFICULTIES OF A MAN IN MY POSITION. OF COURSE I HAVE A SENSE OF HUMOUR. I HAVE A VERY WELL DEVELOPED SENSE OF HUMOUR. I WAS WATCHING NIGHT AT THE OPERA AGAIN ON MY 3D HOLORECORDER ONLY LAST NIGHT.’

  ‘A comic classic, Lord Father.’

  ‘ISN’T IT, THOUGH? I MEAN, ISN’T IT? EVERYBODY SAYS SO. AND THE FUNNY ONE – HE’S VERY FUNNY, ISN’T HE?’

  ‘The funny one, my Lord?’

  ‘ZEPPO, IS IT? HE’S VERY FUNNY.’

  The heart within Onzedcars’s chest was like a hummingbird having an epileptic fit as he said, ‘Zeppo, my Lord?’

  ‘ZEPPO, YES. HE’S THE FUNNY ONE, ISN’T HE?’

  ‘Er, well my Lord . . . that’s as to say, many people consider, er, Groucho to be . . .’

  ‘GROUCHO?’ bellowed Father with a wheezy and doomy intensity.

  ‘Or Harpo . . .’

  ‘HARPO? BUT HE DOESN’T EVEN SPEAK. WHAT’S FUNNY ABOUT NOT SPEAKING?’ Father seemed to be contemplating for several moments. ‘PLAYING THE HARP?’ he asked, eventually. ‘WHAT’S FUNNY ABOUT THAT?’

  ‘Funny about a harp, my Lord?’

  ‘YES.’

  ‘. . . nothing, my Lord.’

  ‘I THOUGHT NOT.’ Father seemed to contemplate this essential and universal truth for a while. Then, as if noticing that Onzedcars was still there, he said: ‘YOU ARE DISMISSED, COMMANDER.’

  ‘Very good, my Lord. Oh – Lord Father? There was one more thing.’

  ‘YES?’

  ‘I just thought I should report that our troops on the surface have located the two droids, together with a number of organic life forms we take to be members of the Rebelend. Shall we capture them and bring them aboard before departing for Gregbare?’

  ‘YES, COMMANDER. THAT IS INDEED EXCELLENT NEWS.’

  ‘Might I . . . er, might I leave, my Lord?’

  ‘YES, YES,’ said Dark Father, preoccupied with his own th
oughts.

  Gratefully Regla Onzedcars stepped smartly from Dark Father’s quarters. Once in the corridor outside he started running.

  Chapter Eight

  Back on Tatuonweiner

  But though Imp-Emp-Imp Commander Onzedcars was confident of capturing the droids, and the various humans who accompanied them, they themselves had not given up hope of escaping. Were they to escape, of course, they would be putting the Imp-Emp-Imp Destroyer Commander in a very awkward position: he would have to go back to Dark Father and admit that he had spoken too soon, which might have very unpleasant consequences for him. But it is a mark of the essential selfishness of the Rebelend forces that they neither knew nor cared about the fate of Regla Onzedcars. What can you say?

  ‘If we can just get aboard the Millennium Bug,’ gasped Hand Someman. ‘If we can just get to my ship, we can fly out of here and get clear away.’

  ‘Hold on,’ said Luke, trying to take a look at Someman’s wound. In the wildly rocking, veering and lurching van it wasn’t easy. ‘It looks nasty,’ he concluded, leaning over the injured man’s chest. ‘If I remember my first aid training correctly we may need—’ At this point the van turned sharply left and braked hard. The sleeping body of Masticatetobacco fell on Luke and knocked him over.

  ‘We’re here,’ called K’nobbli, from the front. ‘Come on everybody, let’s get aboard. The Sterntroopers are only moments behind us.’

  It took several minutes to transfer everybody aboard the battered-looking frisbee-shaped spaceship in the open-roofed hangar. Luke helped Hand to the cockpit. Everybody crowded in behind them. Through the cockpit windscreen they could see white-armoured Sterntroopers pouring into the hangar.

  ‘Kid,’ said Hand Someman, clutching the wound in his chest. ‘I’m too shot up to pilot. You’re going to have to fly the Millennium Bug owdda here.’

  ‘“owwda”?’

  ‘—out of.’

  ‘I see. But wait,’ Luke cried, ‘I’ve never flown an interstellar spaceship! I’ve barely had time to practise on my uncle’s flying golf cart. What does this lever do?’