by John Sladek
Fest said, ‘Boy, pick up those forms and put ’em on Miss Borden’s desk.’ He unlocked the cabinet. ‘Boy this could use some organizing too, half the labels you can’t even read, what’s this, Element. P. Psychology? Physics?’
‘Hey Mr Fest you know these here grade forms, they –’
‘Not now, Geo. W. has to be George Washington, here they got it stuck in with all the global studies stuff.’
‘Yeah but how come everybody gets the same grade, like Norma Lee Dunne here, she’s real good at math and –’
‘Don’t read that stuff, just put it back on the desk. Now what’s this reel supposed to be the shelf label says Homecraft and the reel label says G. Stars, what the heck here – oh.’ He opened the box to release a shower of gold stars. ‘Damn woman couldn’t organize a cathouse on a Sunday morn –’
‘But shouldn’t she get a better grade than like Jimmy Rittle, he’s never even at school, he’s been sick every day but one.’ Roderick caught his eye. ‘Okay, I’m, look I’m putting ’em right here on the desk.’
‘Here we are, F. S. Key, Francis Scott Key composer of the Star-Spangled Banner, boy. Can’t learn too much about your own count – hmm, Lincoln? Naw, think we’ll leave the old hair-splitter for now, get some basics. No use you getting the idea all our forefathers looked like a buncha damn hairy hippies, eh? Come on.’
‘Lincoln.’ said Roderick, ‘is the capital of Nebraska, population –’
‘Yes, well fine.’ Fest locked the cabinet and looked for a place to put the key. ‘But don’t just uh learn this stuff like a parrot, eh? It’s gotta come from the heart.’
‘I don’t have a heart.’
‘Don’t get cute with me, boy, I’m warning you. Crippled or not, I don’t have to stand for no, any crud. Now get upstairs to your post and stand by for Francis Scott Key. On the double: Move! LEFT RIGHT LEFT RIGHT …’
The telephone receiver began making crackling noises as they left, and continued until Miss Borden, carrying a pile of green forms under one arm and a file in her hand, came to rescue it.
‘Yes sir, yes I have it here, Roderick Wood, hello? Why no one, Dr Froid, no one just one of the teachers looking up some training aids, teaching aids.’
‘– kind of an office you run there, Miss Borden, sounded like a roomful of stormtroopers doing callisthenics. I’m not at all surprised if your teachers behave like –’
At recess Chauncey and the gang had a new one for him.
‘Okay now, no means yes and yes means no. You want me to hitcha with these brass knucks? Yes or no?’
‘No,’ said Roderick, and got hit. Nat, he noticed, was hiding away on the other side of the playground, pretending to watch some younger kids playing Frying Pan, as though it were the most fascinating game he’d ever seen.
‘You want me to hitcha again? Yes or no?’
‘Yes,’ said Roderick and got hit.
‘Hahaha, gotcha again, you want me to hitcha again? Yes or no?’
‘LOOK OUT!!!’ Roderick screamed and pointed at the sky just at the back of Chauncey’s head. The flinch gave him time to get away to a safe distance from which he could call ‘I meant, don’t look out.’
‘Hello,’ said Roderick, but suddenly Hank Thoro II had no time for small-talk. The screen flared up:
‘Fundamental Systems Key 42. A programme for storing, reading, altering, re-addressing or deleting data system DC/4633333808824. File call?’
It seemed to be a question. Roderick pressed Y. (means N?)
‘No file Y. File call?’
N was no better, nor was any other single letter; after a while he tried typing words at random: ‘Indica’, ‘abacus’, ‘bishop’, ‘car chase’, ‘jispsy’, ‘robot’, ‘kale’, ‘sip’, ‘thud’. Finally he tried numbers, and when he happened to hit 42, the screen reacted:
‘Incorrect call. For systems key use FSKEY 42. Call?’
‘FSKEY 42,’ he typed.
‘Fundamental Systems Key 42. A programme for storing, reading, altering, re-addressing or deleting data system DC/746 information using 333 and 338 subroutines and/or manual file call.
‘System security is maintained by use of (I) User passwords, (2) System level match codes …’
By the end of the day, Roderick was able to call up more interesting stuff, like:
‘Wood, Roger Rick. Grade: 2. Med: No file. Assessmt: Schiz. tendencies. Teacher: Fest. Comment: Difficult adjustment, due to handicap. May need psy. couns. IQ:NR.’
He decided to change a few things.
On the way home from school, Chauncey beat him up. Nat went by on the other side of the street, pretending not to notice.
‘Look, a deal’s a deal, okay? I always help you, so –’
‘Yeah only we’ll be late to school. I mean sure I wanted to help you only I hadda get home early. My ma gets real mad –’
‘A deal’s a deal. Blood and oil and you never helped me once. Cripes some blood-oil brother you turned out to be. If you don’t look out I’ll delete you.’
‘Yeah? You’re not so tough – what’s delete?’
‘Like I take your name off the files, like the school don’t even know your name, how’d you like that?’
Nat picked up a twig and pretended to smoke it, blowing out steam in the cold air. ‘How come you can do that? You’re just kidding.’
‘No really, Mr Fest gave me this program, it’s supposed to be all about the guy who wrote the flag see, this Francis somebody –’
‘That’s a girl’s name! Anyway nobody writes flags, you’re just dumb.’
‘I don’t care, it’s what he said, and it’s not, it’s all about us it’s like files see, like it’s got your name and your picture and what grade you’re in, and like mine says I got the shits –’
‘Ha ha. Ricky’s got the shee-its, Ricky’s got –’
‘That’s all you know, I deleted that. I can delete stuff all over the place, I can do anything I want with anybody’s file. So you better come across on our deal, that’s all.’
‘Hey look, there’s Chaunce and Billy – and they got can-opners!’ Nat began to run. ‘I’m gonna be late, see you.’
The electric can-openers were nothing against the invincible strength of the Steel Spider, who managed to bloody Chauncey’s nose and send him fleeing for his life, then turned with a deep-throated snarl on the other bully:
‘You just wait till recess, boy. I’ll fix you.’
But at recess Chauncey and Billy had a couple of friends, one of whom was Nat. They followed him all over the school playground, telling everyone how he shit his pants, until the enraged man of steel turned on them and lashed out with:
‘Okay that’s it, you’ve had it, boy, I’m gonna fix your files.’
He hurried back to the janitor’s closet and flicked on the machine. ‘Bangfield, Chauncey,’ became ‘Bangfield, Piggy Dirty Bastard,’ and the accompanying picture, through the magic of a light pen, developed missing teeth, a bandit moustache and glasses. Under ‘Comments’ he listed every mean thing he could remember (or invent) and then went on to deal likewise with Nat, Billy, all his enemies … and what the heck, why not get old Pesty Festy while he was at it?
On Friday afternoon suddenly old Pesty ripped open the door. ‘Gotcha! Red-handed! And don’t try to bullshit me, son, that ain’t American history on that screen is it? IS IT?’ He grabbed Roderick’s neck and forced his face close to the screen which read: ‘Call allfile faculty allfile pupil delete …’
‘Well no it’s –’
‘Shut it off, just shut it off NOW! MOVE!’ But as Roderick moved, he said: ‘Wait, don’t touch it. Do it myself, I’m not gonna trust a little bastard like you to do any more dam –’
‘Yeah but if you … no if you push that STOP button it doesn’t stop it, not in this mode, it –’
‘Shuttup you. There.’
‘Yeah but it just means you finished the command, now it’s gonna delete all –’
‘Shut. Up. And come with me. Buddy,
you’re up shit creek and I got the lawnmower – think you can fuck around with my pay check do you?’
‘Your pay –?’ For the first time, Roderick began to understand that the ‘files’ were not just stuff in the machine. Fest was waving a blue piece of paper at him. He had forgotten the latest name until he saw it:
There were other teachers in Miss Borden’s office; they could hardly squeeze in the door. Fest hoisted him up and set him on the desk.
‘I wondered what in the world,’ said Ms Russo through her teeth. ‘When I went to call the roll, here were all these names, Pig Bottom and Horse Dork, but I mean they were printed right out on the magnetic cards so I – I just called them.’
Mrs Dorano said, ‘Well I certainly did not, and I’m keeping my cards as evidence! No child ever thought up all by himself such filth, such –’
Mr Goun shook his head hard, as though trying to straighten the drooping moustache. ‘Poor kid, he’s really twisted, I mean the isolationizing factor must’ve catalyzed something –’
Miss Borden took hold of Roderick’s claws and looked into his eyes. ‘How could you? How could you? The files, the files are – well I mean they’re the files!’ She threw a magnetic card on the desk. ‘How could you do a thing like that?’
Roderick looked down at it. There was his picture, with a smile added to the face and big muscles to the arms. ‘The Steel Spider Wood,’ it read. ‘Grade: 8. Med: No file. Assessmt: A nice kid. Teacher: Pesty Festy. Comment: A reel nice kid. IQ: 1,000,000.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘It was just – I didn’t know – heck – it was gonna go in print and all – I’m sorry.’
‘We’ll have to expel the boy of course,’ she said.
‘Expel him? I’d like to break every –’
‘That will do, Captain. The main thing is, we’ve got to keep this quiet. Dr Froid and the county board are already breathing down our necks, and wouldn’t the papers just love something like this? So we can’t even call the expelling expelling, we’ll have to recommend a transfer on account of his handicap, something like that. As for the files –’
‘Don’t worry,’ said Roderick. ‘They’re all fixed up now.’
‘Fixed –?’
‘Just now. Everything’s deleted. All the files.’
Miss Borden looked around her office at the stacks of forms, pink, green, pale green, buff, blue, yellow, gold, white, lavender – at lavender she began to grind her teeth.
Louie Honk-Honk was pouting. ‘It’s not so cold.’
‘Louie it is, it’s too cold. How can I be a detective and give you reports in weather like this? Let’s go to my house.’
‘Nope! Your folks would just get mad.’
‘No they wouldn’t, they –’
‘They would so! They would so!’
‘Okay then, your house?’
‘My folks would get mad. They told me never to talk to little kids. I told ’em I was only kidding about throwing some kid in Howdy Doody Lake, but they said –’
‘Yeah okay. But look, we’ll just have to call it off for the winter. When it’s warmer –’
Louie stamped his enormous foot. ‘But you – you didn’t even start telling me about that new book – what’s it called?’
Roderick held up the paperback. ‘Die Die Your Lordship. I guess it’s all about this guy named Your Lordship who gets murdered – look it’s too cold to go detectiving now.’
‘Just some of it, huh Roddy? Some of it?’
‘Okay here’s the title, now what’s this word?’
‘Dee. Eye. Eee. Die, is it?’
‘Good, you got that easy.’
‘Hey the next is die again. “Die die you –” no “your” – am I right?’
Louie managed to sound out the hard word lordship, and they went on to the first paragraph. For some time, Roderick had been meeting him by the corner mailbox for these little detective sessions, and had so far taught him to detect the alphabet, numbers up to a hundred, addition, subtraction and quite a few words. This book was going to be too hard maybe, but Roderick planned to read it, tell Louie the story, and then stop every now and then to detect a sentence with him.
When they had finished the first paragraph (‘The body lay on the carpet. It was very very dead.’) Roderick gave him a secret detective handshake and went home.
It was only later that he discovered the book to be incomplete.
‘I’ve called you all together,’ said the wizened detective, ‘to get at the bottom of this. Let’s just recall the facts. We know that Lord Bayswater was brutally bludgeoned to death in this drawing-room. We know that on the evening in question, only four people could have been here alone with him. We know that each of the four dropped one clue, and that each had access to only one of the four weapons. You, Adam, his wastrel playboy nephew were the only one with access to a polo-stick. You, Lady Brett Bayswater, his so-called wife (in love with the doctor, aren’t you?) left clear fingerprints on the poker. You, Dr Coué, were seen entering this room at 8:00, leaving it at 8:15. And you, Mr Drumm, his so-called secretary (slyly playing on the affections of his daughter, I believe) entered at 8:14 and left at 8:30 – the last visitor, hmm?’
White-faced, Drumm stammered, ‘But-but the thread was left by the first person in the room. And no one knows who left the smudge of soot.’
‘We know it came from the poker. You do admit dropping a blood-soaked handkerchief on the floor, however? Drumm?’
The young man nodded guiltily. ‘But not the hair.’
‘Well,’ said the wizened sleuth, ‘we have begun to marshal our facts. Let us continue: the weapon may have been the statuette, eh? We know that if you, Dr Coué, picked up that statuette, it was at first to take from under it a folded message. We also know that if the weapon was not the billiard cue, then either Drumm was embezzling from his employer or Dr Coué was being blackmailed – or both. What is more, we know that if there was a message under the statuette, then young Adam here was, without doubt, the thief!’
‘The murderer!’ screamed Lady Brett.
‘Not necessarily, but the thief. We also know that if Drumm embezzled, it was because he had compromised your daughter. And if the bloodstained handkerchief was not used to wipe the statuette, then you, Lady Brett, only pretended to be in your room reading all evening. And we know that Coué could only have been blackmailed because he was supplying your butler Yes! Supplying him with morphia! For his addiction!’
‘Good God!’ said Adam. ‘The murdering –!’
‘Let’s not jump to conclusions. I did not mean that your butler is an addict – not necessarily – but let us press on: We know that if you, Lady Brett, left your room during the night, then Adam could not have been the thief at all! We have established that your daughter is not compromised, it is my happy duty to report. And finally we know that if Jenkins the butler is addicted to vile morphia, then the weapon can only be the billiard-cue.’
Lady Brett spoke sharply. ‘But what does it all mean?’
‘It means, your ladyship, that I can now name the murderer, the time and the weapon. I must therefore caution one of you that anything you say may be taken down and used in evidence. I hereby arrest you,
And that was all. A lot of perfectly blank pages followed. Roderick flipped through them again and again, until finally a minute slip of paper fell out.
The publisher regrets that, due to unforeseen technical problems, the last chapter of this book has been lost. However, the publisher is willing to offer the sum of five hundred thousand dollars ($500,000) to the first person coming forward with the correct solution to Die Die Your Lordship. The clues are all there, it’s up to you. Send solutions to the address below:
What a cheat. Roderick set to work and solved the mystery that evening, wrote out his answer and explanation (which appears on page 339 below) and signed Louie’s name. Boy, wouldn’t Louie be surprised when he got all that money! Half a million, he could afford to hire a real detective – or a r
eal teacher.
Next day he was at the corner mailbox, trying to reach the envelope up to the slot, when Louie came skipping along on one leg.
‘Here, chief, lemme help ya.’ Louie popped the envelope inside and clanged the door. ‘There. That’s my good deed, Roddy. Ain’t it?’
Roderick wished he could grin.
XIV
‘Love?’ Pa was so startled that he scratched his head with the hand holding the soldering iron. Later on he said: ‘Well I don’t know, some people say it’s everything, some say it doesn’t exist, some say it’s just using a fabric conditioner to make your family’s clothes soft or pouring some breakfast food in their trough every morning. Some say it’s the secret of the universe, some say you can buy it in any massage parlour, some say it’s priceless, some say it’s a lot of trouble and to hell with it.’
‘Yeah, but what do you say?’
‘Ask your Ma.’
Ma was working on her greatest project so far, File: drawings of all drawable nouns to be filed alphabetically in one cabinet and cross-indexed by shape. She was now up to claviers, claymores and clepsydras. ‘Have you asked Pa?’
‘He said ask you. See I been reading these stories and it’s always got hearts in it, love is always a heart thing, like in the Constant Tin Soldier see, where he loves this paper girl and when she falls in the fire he throws himself in after her, and he melts down into a little heart. And then like in this Wizard story –’
‘The Wizard of Oz, you’re reading that?’
‘Yeah and it says “The Tin Woodman appeared to think deeply for a moment. Then he said: ‘Do you suppose Oz could give me a heart?’” See because he can’t love this girl he’s supposed to love. So like you can’t have a love situation I guess without a heart thing.’
Ma sketched a clam. ‘Then you’ve been poking around up in the attic?’
‘Yeah, there’s a whole bunch of these Wizard I mean these Oz books, and lots of old clothes and other junk. I found this old picture of somebody getting married, it kinda looked like you and Pa only it wasn’t. Was it?’
Her cheeks were pink. ‘No, I think … must be my cousin’s wedding …’
