The Reproductive System (Gollancz SF Library) (31 page)

‘I do,’ said Mary Junes Beele Brioche, in Las Vegas (Nuevas), at the Church of the Psychedelic Saviour.

‘Then I now prounce you,’ intoned His Sacred High Worship, The Very Venerable Kevin Mackintosh, ‘—or
pronounce
you—astronaut and wife.’ He began the countdown.

Cal and Aurora had already received tons of cards and telegrams and letters of congratulations, which the System was sorting for them and inserting into the ceremony itself. Now it presented the warmest regards of Elwood Trivian, Ph.D., who announced also the opening of his new School for Steam Locomotive Engineers in Miami (above the dry cleaner’s).

Another telegram read:

‘MILLFORD, UTAH
10 35
AM. NOT DEAD OF SNAKEBITE AFTER ALL. HAVE BEEN IN SUSPENDED ANIMATION OR SOMETHING FOR PAST SIX WEEKS. CONGRATULATIONS TO I HOPE HAPPY COUPLE. MY HEALTH FINE BUT FOR HOARSENESS FROM EXCESSIVE DICTATION POST-TRANCE. HAVE YOU ANY IDEA WHAT A SIX-WEEKS’ TRAIN OF UNBROKEN THOUGHT CAN BE LIKE QUERY. I HAVE INVENTED A NEW ECONOMIC CALCULUS AND HAD A FEW INTERESTING IDEAS ABOUT TRAVELLING FASTER THAN LIGHT. BELIEVE ME, SUSP. ANIMATION IS GOING TO BE THE NEXT DRUG KICK.

‘HITA.

‘P.S. TELL LOUIE HE IS OFFICIALLY BLACK SCISSORS.’

Having delivered this telegram, the QUIDNAC waited until its contents were digested and then typed cautiously:

‘I NOW PRONOUNCE YOU MAN AND WIFE, UNLESS YOU HAVE MADE ANY FALSE STATEMENTS IN YOUR APPLICATIONS.’

A chute opened and dispensed to them a bag of gold and the ownership of a milkwhite palfrey which awaited them outside, the gifts of a grateful populace.

Cal could not ride, but he helped Aurora up on the horse and led it down Fifth Avenue. All the bells of the City of New York pealed out the glad tidings, while from the office buildings there were released bright-coloured balloons and flocks of snowy doves.

At the Battery, they boarded a barque for a distant land, while all the citizens of New York wept and munched candy and cheered and held up babies to look at them. But for three old men in faded uniforms, who did not look up from their game of Go to the Dump, there was no one in the crowd who did not wish Cal and Aurora happiness, as the barque’s white sails filled with wind and it slid silently away from the pier and out to sea.

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Novels

The Reproductive System
(1968) (aka
Mechasm
)

The Muller-Fokker Effect
(1970)

Roderick
(1980)

Roderick At Random
(1983)

Tik-Tok
(1983)

Bugs
(1989)

Wholly Smokes

Collections

The Steam-Driven Boy
(1970)

Keep The Giraffe Burning
(1977)

Alien Accounts
(1982)

The Lunatics Of Terra
(1984)

Maps: The Uncollected John Sladek
(2001)

TO P.Z.

John Sladek (1937 - 2000)

John Sladek was born in Iowa in 1937 but moved to the UK in 1966, where he became involved with the British New Wave movement, centred on Michael Moorcock’s groundbreaking
New Worlds
magazine. Sladek began writing SF with ‘The Happy Breed ’, which appeared in Harlan Ellison’s seminal anthology
Dangerous Visions
in 1967, and is now recognized as one of SF’s most brilliant satirists. His novels and short story collections include
The Muller Fokker Effect
,
Roderick
and
Tik Tok
, for which he won a BSFA Award. He returned to the United States in 1986, and died there in March 2000.

A Gollancz eBook

Copyright © The Estate of John Sladek 1968

All rights reserved.

The right of John Sladek to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This eBook first published in Great Britain in 2011 by Gollancz

The Orion Publishing Group Ltd

Orion House

5 Upper Saint Martin's Lane

London, WC2H 9EA

An Hachette UK Company

A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 0 575 11057 1

All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

www.orionbooks.co.uk

¹
Yet semantics vs. syntax arguments cast such doubts on these experiments as to make their results puzzling and amusing rather than significant. Thus while a computer saw the answer to ‘spear : ? : : narrow : arrow’ was ‘pear’, it could not see why ‘head : bed : : ? : chair’ should be ‘back’ and not ‘hair’. Also a computer diagrammed the following sentence two ways : ‘She bears each cross patiently.’ ‘She’ may be the subject and ‘bears’ the verb; or ‘She bears’ the subject and ‘cross’ the verb.

²
Failure due to unstable ambient temperatures, causing shock.

³
Failure due to unforeseen corrosion, by sea-water, of steel.

⁴
Successful, but of questionable military value. Results published separately as
MIL
-
P
-980089,
PROSTHETIC TAILS
.