The Complete Roderick

by John Sladek

  ‘That’s not what it –’

  ‘No, you’ve had your say, how about letting me have mine? How does it affect you, playing God like this – creating man all over again? How does it make you feel? Touch of hubris? More than a touch of arrogance, I’ll bet.’

  ‘Arrogance? Just because I said it’s important? Damn it, it is important, if we didn’t believe that why would we be working on it? Roderick’s important, a model of human learning –’

  ‘Take it easy now, Lee. Remember, I’m on your side. I just want to know how it feels, playing God – sorry, but there’s no other word for it, is there? Playing God, how does it feel?’

  Fong opened his mouth and took a few deep breaths before replying. ‘I wouldn’t know. Not unless God’s got a bad stomach. Got a bleeding ulcer myself – I feel that, all right.’

  ‘I’m s –’

  ‘With Leo Bunsky it was his heart. Just worn out, he should have retired years ago. Finally had to quit, but you should have seen him, dragging himself in to work with his legs all swollen up like elephantiasis – maybe you should have asked him how it felt.’

  ‘Let’s be fair now, Lee, I –’

  ‘Too late now, he’s dead. And Mary Mendez, she’s as good as dead. Started working eighty hours at a stretch, piled up her car one night on the way home. Now she’s over there in the Health Service ward where they feed her and change her diapers and she doesn’t feel a damned thing.’

  ‘No, listen, this is tragic of course, but it’s got nothing to do with –’

  ‘What we feel? Sure it does, it’s all you want, right? The grassroots feelings, the opinion sample. The others are pretty much okay, as far as I know, but you could always ask them. Only Dan Sonnenschein, he’s started living in the lab, eating and sleeping in there – when he eats, when he sleeps – so he can keep on, pushing Roderick through one more test, just one more before they take it all away from us. Dan doesn’t have time to feel.’

  ‘Now take it easy, I know you all work hard, that’s not –’

  ‘What the hell are we supposed to feel? Arrogant? With the whole thing, our work for four years, washed out by some NASA bureaucrat? With the whole thing up before you and your committee of boneheads, all ready to pull the rug out from under us? That doesn’t make me feel arrogant at all. I feel like crawling and begging for another chance, just enough money for a few more months, weeks even – only the trouble is, it wouldn’t do a damned bit of good. Would it?’

  ‘I’m on your side, Lee, believe me. I’ve got faith in –’

  ‘Why don’t you go away? I don’t know what you want here, but we haven’t got it. Go on back to your opinion polls and your charts, your showing how many people brush their teeth before they make love, how many sports fans voted for Nixon. Social science, you call that science! Christ, what do you think? Science is some kind of opinion poll too?’

  Rogers stood up. ‘I’m not sure I like that imputation. Okay, it’s late, you’re upset. But –’

  ‘You just came to check the trend, right? Science is just like any other damned opinion poll, right? How many think Jupiter has moons? You think Galileo took a damned straw vote on it? Think he worked it up in a few histograms, tested the market reaction? Damn you, certain things are true, certain things are worth finding out, and it doesn’t matter what you or I or Dan or anybody else – So just go away, will you? Just go and, and vote the way you feel, and to hell with your committee and to hell with you!’

  Rogers fumbled for the door-handle behind him. His smile was pulling slightly to one side. ‘You’re overwrought, tired. Maybe we can rap again some time, before the committee meeting. Some time when you’re more yourself.’ But he couldn’t resist an exit: ‘Some time when you’re not Galileo, I mean.’

  The door was already closed when Fong’s bottle of Quink crashed against it. He sat quietly for some time, staring at the Permanent Blue splash from which a few dribbles worked their way down. A shape like that could be anything. Could be the silhouette of an old Bell transistor.

  Before dawn the blizzard blew itself away. One or two constellations put in a brief appearance in the fading sky, though of course there was no helmsman on the stiff white sea below who could name them. The star-gazing had vanished from the earth, leaving only his name to be derived from Greek into cybernetics and from Latin into a name for petty State officials. Computers steered ships and charted invisible stars, while men had grown so unused to looking at the sky that fourteen hundred citizens each year mistook Venus (rising now naked from the white foam) for a flying saucer.

  II

  Men will live according to Nature since in most respects they are puppets, yet having a small part in the truth.

  Plato, Laws

  49 GOROD

  ‘A different black, and a different ping …’

  RESET. 50 GOROD

  ‘Okay. Okay Dan, I’ve got it now. It’s a face, a face only with nobody inside. Is that possible? … Well, well, a face. What’s this in back, a string? Does it control – see I thought for a minute it was like another string puppet like you showed me last time only this is a loop – self-control? I don’t get it, could you turn it around again? Okay, I give up. A face with a loop of string in back, right? No answer … Why don’t you answer me? No answer … I could give myself no answer, that’s no answer. Neither is that. Neither is that …’

  RESET. 51 GOROD

  ‘… face with nobody inside. The eyes are just holes! If I had a face like this I’d cut my throat. If I had a throat …’

  RESET. 52 GOROD

  ‘Okay, the face. Whatever it is, I call it a face. White and black, mostly white. Hole-eyes. A black nose. The nose looks like a black ping-pong ball, does that make sense? Come to think of it, the ears – if they’re ears – on top look like two ping-pong paddles, also black. I call them Ping and Pong, and one day they were walking through the deep dark forest and …’

  RESET. 53 GOROD

  ‘… But I don’t have a throat or anything because I’m not real, I’m just a, what you called a data construct, a, something that’s not even any place, a rough sketch you said, you could erase me any time. So this is like my face, nobody inside. Nobody by himself. He’s forgotten that he’s forgotten. Looking out these empty hole-eyes at the emptiness outside, there’s no, no …’

  RESET. 54 GOROD

  ‘… when you told me this person Skinner, what he did with pigeons, taught them to play ping-pong, remember? And I asked you what playing was? If they make you do it, is it playing? And you said …’

  RESET. 55 GOROD

  ‘Because conditioning leads to self-control, right? That’s the goal we’re … the ping we’re ponging towards, only only only how do I get self-control without a self? Otherwise it’s just a pigeon hitting the old ball out into the darkness, over and over and it never comes back … You don’t answer me, Dan. Okay, that’s because I’ve conditioned you not to answer. You’re the string puppet and I make all the decigeons. Decisions. That’s what I said. And that’s what I said. And that …’

  3939 INTROSP TEST SW ENDS

  Woopa! Dr Fred McGuffey’s sneeze went to join the Brownian dance of dust-motes in a sunbeam.

  ‘Pardod be. I seeb to be catchigg this flu bug that’s goigg aroudd. The Sprigg, you see, briggs all thiggs to life. The great Ptoleby called it the begiddigg of the Sud’s life cycle. Quote, Id all creatures, the earliest stages, like the Sprigg, have a larger share of boisture add are ted-der add still delicate, udquote.’ He blew his nose mightily. ‘Today is the first day of Spring. Now who can tell us what that means?’

  No hands went up; they were as sullen and silent as so many Mafia victims (Nobody knew nuttin’). He could talk himself blue in the face, he would never succeed in dinning even the simplest facts of Introductory Astrology into these young – these young robots. Day-dreaming girls who never heard the questions. Sneering boys who’d only enrolled in his class to grab an easy three credits. At times like these (10:48 and th
ree seconds by Dr Fred’s pocket watch) he wondered if he hadn’t been born with a retrograde Mercury or something, talk about a failure to cobbudicate!

  He blew his nose again. ‘Anyone? The sign of Spring?’ He knew what it was: these kids just couldn’t think for themselves. Couldn’t add 2 and 2 without the almighty computer. Dr Fred wouldn’t touch one of them machines with a ten-foot (3.048 metres, he recalled) pole. No sir, he worked every calculation out on paper for himself, so he could see what he was doing and have the satisfaction of doing it. Quality horoscopes with a human touch. Let all these young upstart astrologers fiddle with their computers – you couldn’t hardly call that astrology at all! No sir, when Dr Fred erected a horoscope, people knew it came from a human brain, and not from a doggone tinkertoy machine!

  ‘Aries,’ he said, putting disgust into it. ‘The Ram. I see I’d better go over this again on the board. Now the ecliptic …’ One young fool had actually asked him if Ram stood for Random Access Memory, like in a computer. Oh, these cybernetics boys had indoctrinated the young, all right. They would have plenty to answer for, come Judgement Day (Dr Fred had also calculated its date). Like that bunch over at the Computer Science Building now – mostly foreigners, he noticed – actually asking the University to give them money for ‘artificial intelligence research’. Artificial fiddlesticks! Fred McGuffey, D.F.Astrol.S., had not lived seventy-odd years, most of them as a practising astrologer and roofing contractor, without learning to smell a rat, artificial or otherwise. A robot, that’s what they were building in their infernal labs, a robot! Could anyone imagine a more ignoble work for the mind of man? No one could. Why couldn’t they work on something worth while – cancer cures, a plan for lowering taxes – anything was better than this. But no. No, all they could think of was making a tin man go clanking up and down the halls of this institution of so-called higher learning! Over his dead body. This term Fred had a seat on the Emergency Finance Committee. By jing, this term they could expect a scrap! Yes sir, yes sir …

  ‘Sir, sir?’ The raised hand belonged to Lyle Tate, a young smart-alec with a hideous birthmark, mentality to match. Sniping, always sniping. ‘Sir, how come this Ptolemy doesn’t mention the Southern hemisphere? Because down there Aries can’t be a sign of Spring exactly, can it? Becau –’

  ‘The great, the great Ptolemy, true, says nothing of the Southern hemisphere.’ Dr Fred coughed. ‘Why? Because it’s not important.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘Kindly let me finish? You see, all great civilizations began North of the Equator. Babylon, Egypt, China, India, Aztec Mexico, Rome – all Northern places. I’m glad you brought this up, Lyle, because –’

  But the bell prevented further development of this, Dr Fred’s favourite theory: that Northernness was a necessary precondition of civilization. The cause, he felt, was magnetism: just being closer to the North Pole seemed somehow to elevate human brain waves to produce higher thoughts. Without this magnetic boost, man remained primitive and uncreative. Thus the Southern hemisphere produced crude mud huts instead of great cathedrals; witch doctors instead of penicillin; wooden gods instead of philosophy; cannibals instead of vegetarians; boomerangs instead of ICBMs – though perhaps he would not develop his theory quite that far.

  ‘Before you go,’ he shouted over the sound of slamming books, ‘I have your practice horoscopes marked and corrected here. I’ll leave them on the table, you can pick them up on your way out. Not bad, most of them, though I suppose you all ignored my hint and used computers.’ He slapped down the pile of papers and buttoned his overcoat, glad as any student to be getting out of here, to be clearing his mental decks for some real action.

  Now, on to Disney Hall, to see this Professor Rogers who seemed to think robots were such a grand idea. Like all the other so-called professors around here, Rogers was probably just another brainless young nincompoop with a fancy degree and no experience of life. Dr Fred hadn’t lived nearly 915 lunations without learning a few hard facts, and he meant to impart them to this Rogers fellow right now: you can’t cram a human brain – the highest form of creation – into a metal box! No sir!

  Bill something, his name was, a real jerk, a zero. He sat next to Dora in Intro Astrol, where she’d noticed his notes for the entire hour:

  Arsie, the suds cycle

  Now he was only following her into the corridor. God, he wanted to talk about his horoscope. What could she do but nod and smile, and meanwhile watch the passing faces hoping to spot a friend? You couldn’t just put someone down, even a zero like this.

  ‘Jeez, I failed,’ he began. ‘An F, and I mean’

  ‘How could you get an F? We all got Cs, he gave everybody a C. Because we all used computers, what happened to you?’

  ‘I used a computer, too. Jeez, it must of gone wrong or something, look, he changed everything. Like I didn’t get a single one of my planets right or nothing – Jeez!’ He showed her the birth chart, covered with red marks. ‘And here he says “It’s very important for the would-be astrologer to be able to erect his own birth chart. Note that your Sun opposes Pluto. With the Moon conjunct Mars in –” Anyway, he says I oughta beware of explosives and accidents.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ She looked away. Little old Dr Fred came out of the classroom and pottered off down the corridor, mumbling to himself.

  Jeez, all that math and stuff, it’s not fair.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘I mean this is supposed to be a snap course. I’m already flunking Business Appreciation and Applied Ethics from last term, this was my big hope, this and Contemp Humanities. But I mean I’m doing terrible, I’m pulling down the grade point average for the whole fraternity.’

  Fraternity. She swallowed a yawn. No one went by but Muza, she wasn’t speaking to him, he was another zero. Good-looking guy, but all he did was bellow about political prisoners in his homeland. Big deal, most people couldn’t even find Ruritania on a map, he still expected her to stand around while he bellowed bad breath in her face, well no thanks. Thanks but non merci. And now Mr Zero here, what was he saying?

  ‘… only pledged me because my old lady’s on the faculty, they figured I had to be a brain or something, boy, were they wrong. And otherwise nobody would even notice me because …’

  Because you’re a zero. ‘I’m thinking of cancelling Intro Astrol myself. I’m not getting much out of it, with this Dr Fred, he’s kind of a, a zero, know what I mean? I mean –’

  ‘All this friggin’ math and stuff –’

  ‘The math’s easy, only with him that’s all it is, I’m not interested in just signs and numbers.’ Still no rescuer in sight. ‘What I’m interested in, au fond, is people. You know?’

  He nodded, dull eyes still on his birth chart. ‘I might as well give up,’ he said. ‘I even thought of playing Russian roulette …’

  ‘Uh-huh’ Wasn’t that Allbright by the bulletin board?

  ‘… dead now if I wasn’t waiting for my grades in Contemp Humanities, it’s like my last chance …’

  She felt like saying something reassuring, a spontaneous Kind Word to buck him up, even for a moment. ‘You probably did all right in that, I wouldn’t worry. I had it last year, nobody failed. How do you think you did in the final?’

  The zero actually grinned. ‘Hey, you know I got lucky there on that one question, the one on Tolkien. I didn’t even know he was on the syllabus, you know? Only it just so happened I was reading Lord of the Rings the week before and –’

  Allbright seemed to be alone as he’d been alone at that awful party where she’d caught him stealing books from the host. Of course poets who wore railroad work clothes had a different morality, she realized that now. ‘Tolkien? Tolkien was never on the syllab – Look, I’ve got to go.’

  ‘Wait, sure he was. I remember the question: discuss humour in Lord of the Rings comparing Mark Twain and contrasting –’

  ‘Just seen a friend, gotta go. Auvoir, uh, Bill.’ She took a step towards Allbright and turned back. ‘You
musta misread that question, you know? It was Ring Lardner.’

  And she was gone, her orange coat moving off to become one spot in the jiggling kaleidoscope of coats and caps and mufflers crowding their colours towards the bulletin board. Bill Hannah lost sight of her before he could even ask who wrote Ring Lardner, Jeez.

  Ben Franklin lit another cigarette and settled back in one of Fong’s creaky Morris chairs. ‘Looks like a Daddy Longlegs to me. Sort of. Must have been quite a scrap.’

  ‘Scrap? No, he wasn’t even – look, I just lost my temper, that’s all. Just got sick and tired of Rogers and his significant questions, that’s all. His, always hanging around like some kind of – science groupie.’

  ‘Wish I’d been here, though. Kind of an historic moment. Like Luther flinging his inkpot at the devil, a performance not to be missed.’ Ben smoothed his perfectly even moustache and performed a smile. ‘Know how you feel, though. Felt like heaving a handball at him yesterday myself, he started all that crap with me. Hubris, Christ he can’t even pronounce it … I lent him a book instead, Learning Systems. Figured if he could read a little, sort of slip sideways into some kind of understanding of what we’re doing here – not that he’ll open it. Doubt if he’s read anything since his own dissertation, probably had to look up half the words in that.’

  Fong’s red-rimmed eyes gleamed behind the gleam of his glasses. ‘You loaned him that? But I was, I –’

  ‘Your copy, as a matter of fact. I borrowed it last week.’

  ‘But I, if I’d known – this whole scene was pointless, I –’

  ‘Sure.’ Ben was studying the door again, readying another perfect, even smile. ‘Could be a study for an action painting, too. Probably how the whole thing started, exorcism: take that, Daddy Longlegs! Yes sir, when an irresistible force such as you, meets an old immovable Rogers – but hell, Fong, we needed his vote.’