by John Sladek
He looked down the long office to a filing cabinet on top of which rested a biretta. With a flick of the rod, he sent a hook flying down to snag the hat’s pompon. ‘Have a heart, Charlie, we don’t have a big fat State budget behind us … okay but does two-thirty-one include the name or … okay and get it right this time? H-E-L-L-C-A-T-S, one word? Not like those baseball uniforms you picked up from, Korea was it? I mean it didn’t exactly do the old team spirit a heck of a lot of good being Holy Trinity Hub Caps all season, know what I mean? Point oh seven one, how’dya like that for a percentage, bottom of the league, even Saint Peter shut us out, we spanked Saint Theresa but then Saint Bart massacred us, Cosmos & Damien took a double-header, we got singed by St Joan and slaughtered by Holy Inno’s, Pete decked us again and then a no-hitter surprise from St Sebastian – well, it’s the old story. Let me get back to you Charlie …’
He hung up and went to retrieve the fly from his biretta. ‘Sorry about that folks, kinda busy here … well. So this is little Roderick! How ya doin’, fella?’ He shook hands with the robot.
‘Don’t be shy, kid, we’re all on the same team here. God’s team.’
‘Oh.’
‘Look, I know you probably feel awful about getting benched over at the public school, but we don’t hold that against you. Over here, nobody’s second-string, see? We’re all in there, giving it all we got. You play ball with God, and you can bet your a – your bottom dollar he’ll play ball with you.’
‘That figures,’ said Roderick. Ma seemed preoccupied with the view out of the window.
‘Ha ha, what I mean is, here at Holy Trin we’re like a team. Myself and the sisters are like coaches, you kids are the players. And all this –’ His gesture took in wall pennants, a tennis-racket in its stretcher, a bag of golf-clubs, skis. ‘All this is just a training camp, see? For the big game. The big game is when you leave here, my kid. The big game is life. You want to play to win, right?’
Roderick nodded.
‘Great! Now you run along while your mother and I talk over a few details. Go out and look over the playground, we got the works: regulation baseball and softball diamonds, gridiron, tennis, lacrosse, … Now Mrs Wood, let me put you in the picture here, we don’t usually take kids in mid-season, term I mean, glad to make an exception if you can manage the full year’s tuition. I understand the boy’s not Catholic. No, well then if you want him kept out of religion classes there’s an exemption fee too. Then the fees for basic gym-gear, uniforms, locker, use of the field and gym-equipment, oh yeah and books. Now I’m talking in the neighbourhood of …’
Sister Olaf was a large woman with a face like a peeled potato. She put Roderick in the advanced reading and arithmetic classes, but rookie religion. Everything seemed easy until they came to the catechism.
‘Who made you?’ she asked James, the first boy in the row.
‘God made me.’
‘Why did God make you?’
‘To know, love and serve Him in this world and to be happy with Him in the next.’
‘Who made you?’ she asked Roberta, the next girl. Roberta answered in identical words, as did Anthony and Ursula.
‘Now Roderick: who made you?’
‘Me?’
‘Come on, you must know the answer by now. It’s right there in the book.’
‘Sure but I –’
‘What?’
‘Well I’m not sure.’
‘Well! Who made James and Roberta and Anthony and Ursula?’
‘God, I guess.’
‘Who made you?’
Behind him, Catherine whispered, ‘God, stupid.’
Roderick turned round. ‘Well maybe God made you, but I’m pretty sure Dan Sonnenschein made me. Him and some other men in a laboratory. See they –’
‘That’s enough!’ The face became a creased sweet potato. ‘You may get away with disrupting classes over in the public school, but not here. I want you to sit in that corner over there until you remember who made you?’ And though he sat in the corner for an hour (while Sister Olaf explained how Caesar Augustus was taxing the whole world …) he could not work out any other answer.
She sent him to see Father O’Bride.
‘Sit down, kid, just got this package to open – oh no. Will you look at that?’ He spread one of the white t-shirts over his desk. The red letters across the chest read, Holy Trinity Hellbats.
‘Last darned time I do business with that crook, with all his discount stuff from Iraq or is it Iran – I’ve had it. You know, ever since those Jesuits sank all that money in fake oil stock in Texas, everybody thinks we’re all suckers. Priests aren’t supposed to know the first thing about dollars and cents, I guess. Has he got a surprise coming, wait’ll I stop his darned cheque – Well now what is it, kid? Making trouble for Sister Olaf already are you?’
‘No sir I mean no Father, see it’s just this Baltimore catty kisum, like where they ask who made you. Sister thinks I oughta say God made me, all I said was maybe He made the people but he didn’t make the robots.’
‘Robots, eh?’ Father O’Bride had very pale eyes that didn’t blink much. ‘What’s this, something outa these crappy science fiction movies you been seeing? Boy, if you didn’t have this disability you’d be in the gym right now doing fifty laps, we’d find out who made you if we had to take you apart.
‘But, you’re lucky. I’m giving you one more chance.’ He searched among the t-shirts and tattered copies of sports magazines until he found a catechism. ‘I’m giving you one more chance before I turn you over to – well, somebody else.’ He opened the book. ‘Now tell me: Who made you?’
‘Dan Sonnenschein and some other guys, in this lab –’
‘For Pete’s sake, who made this Dan whatsit?’
‘I don’t know – God?’
‘God. And if God made him and he made you, then he was just the instrument of God’s will, right? My mother and father brought me into this world too, but I still know God made me.’
‘Yeah but –’
‘No buts. Look, if a guy hits it out of the park nobody jumps up to cheer the bat, do they? Same thing, the bat is just an instrument of the batter’s will. Get it? I mean who made the home run, the batter or the bat?’
‘Well God I guess if he made the –’
‘Okay, fine. You get the point. Now –’
‘Only if God made Dan and Dan made me, who made this God?’
‘RIGHTY-HO!’ The book hit the desk and tumbled off, taking a few Hellbats to the floor. ‘BUDDY BOY YOU HAVE JUST EARNED YOURSELF A TICKET TO SEE THE MAN HIMSELF!’
‘The …’ Excitement made Roderick hurt all over. He couldn’t work up the words to ask who this man might be.
A big hand clamped down on his shoulder. He was half-dragged, half-carried down the hall, downstairs, past Sister Mary Martha (still polishing the same spot on the floor) outside and across the street where in the vanilla slush he could see the marks of a tractor tyre, a lost mitten, the marks of another tractor tyre. Everything was so clear, full of, of clearness. To God’s house? No, past it to the rectory, a black brick building with snow in the yard, and black weeds sticking up out of the snow. Roderick thought he recognized a withered sunflower (Ma had told him the story of Vincent, who put his ear to the sunflower to hear the roaring of the sun inside, and instantly his ear was burnt away) and into the black hall where he was made to sit on a black chair and WAIT JUST WAIT BUDDY BOY while Father O’Bride went off through a polished black door.
The thing about Vincent was, he wanted to paint the sun inside the golden sunflower and it drove him crazy, and now everybody was crazy about cheap reproductions of his paintings which they thought looked good in their kitchens.
Roderick looked at the cheap reproduction over his head. It showed a woman at a piano, with a gold ring hanging in the air over her head. She was looking up too, maybe at the ring or maybe just at some other cheap reproduction.
Ma would never look at a cheap reproduction, not even
when Pa tried to show her La Divina Proportione with pictures by Leonardo Da Vinci when he said about the seed spirals in the sunflower and how they were Fibonacci numbers, getting closer and closer to the divine proportion but only an infinite sunflower could be God, and she said That’s all you know, God wears an infinite sunflower in his buttonhole every day, a fresh one every day from his own garden, God is an infinite reason. Yes but the divine proportion is an irrational number said Pa, see it’s the sum of one plus one over one plus one over one plus … Ma didn’t care, all ones are one, mathematics is just a cheap trick where everything’s a copy of something else, like those Fibonacci numbers 1+1=2, 1+2=3, 2+3=5, 3+5=8, and so on with 13, 21, 34, 55, where did it all get you, no wonder poor Vincent went stark staring irrational trying to paint the blazing sum I mean sun you’ve got me doing it now and all those cheap reproductions they copy everything sometimes I think you and I are just cheap copies of something somebody read somewhere, ‘prints’ they like to call them, ‘prints’ when that awful woman in the Ladies’ Guild kept saying she really liked her prints, I thought she meant her dog, but no, there she was with sunflowers copied from sunflowers Vincent copied from sunflowers copied from the sun …
Roderick heard voices from behind the polished black door.
‘… more your league …’
‘… I see. Then where does he get this …?’
‘Beats me, don’t think he’s really nuts, but you never … well yeah, guess his mother did try to tell me something about this robot idea he’s got only I had this long-distance call just about then, bad connection I could hardly hear the guy, thought he was trying to sell us a P.A. system for the gym, it was only a lousy pietà.’
‘And you mentioned … ological difficulties … Okay, bring him in.’
Father O’Bride came out, grabbed him and trundled him through the black door to meet Father Warren.
Father Warren didn’t look much like The Man Himself. He did at least look like a priest, all in black. He could be a lot older than Father O’Bride or a lot younger, but he was definitely a lot thinner and darker, with a narrow pair of eyes, a narrow blue chin and long narrow hands. The hands kept kneading each other on the desk, as though trying to restore circulation.
‘Sit down, Roderick. Relax.’ His voice was deep and liquid, like the voice telling you to use Thong deodorant (‘Thonng’). One of the hands reached towards a silver cigarette-box, then withdrew to a silver dish of taffy. ‘Candy?’
Roderick shook his head.
‘Advent, I understand. Well now. Yes.’ He sat back and stared at Roderick until the robot looked away. The room was comfortable enough, and not at all religious: one little statue of Our Lady stood at the other end on its own little stand; it might have been a potted vine or a parrot-cage for all the difference it made here with the fireplace, easy-chairs, table lamps and magazine racks, the bookcases, the deep carpet.
‘Father O’Bride tells me you’ve been having a little trouble with your catechism.’
‘Yes sir, yes Father.’
‘And that you claim to be a robot?’
‘Yes, Father.’
‘Father O’Bride thinks you read too much science fiction.’
‘I don’t even know what it is, Father.’
‘No? Hmm.’ The hands played a game of church-and-steeple. ‘Look, you can be honest with me. I don’t disapprove of science fiction, not at all. In fact I read it myself. In fact I have a few books here, any time you feel like borrowing one, just help yourself.’ He swivelled in his chair and reached down a paperback. ‘I, Robot, by Isaac Asimov. Tried that yet? Here, take it along.’
‘Thanks, Father.’ He started to get up.
‘When you go, that is. I think first we ought to, to “rap” a little, get to know each other. After all, I don’t get too many chances in a country parish like this, to talk to real robots.’ The smirk never reached his dark eyes.
‘Talk?’
‘Tell me a little about this, this “guy” you say invented you.’
‘Gee I don’t know much, just that his name is Dan Sonnen-schein. But he and some other guys I guess they just went in this lab and maybe mixed up some chemicals and stuff and – here I am.’
‘And no mother involved?’
‘No, Father. I mean no mother, Father. No father either, Father.’ He paused. ‘I mean there’s Ma and Pa, but they’re both adopted, they’re not real.’
‘Not real. I see.’ The long fingers began squeezing one another. ‘Not real. Hmm, not, not real.’
‘Not real parents I mean.’
‘I understand you don’t think God is “real” either?’
When Roderick slipped off his shoe, his foot just reached the top of the deep carpet pile. He started running it back and forth to feel the slight pain that wasn’t really painful. ‘I don’t know. All I said was, if Dan made me and God made Dan, who made God? Father O’Bride got awful mad then.’
‘Yes well … Tell me, Roderick, have you ever looked up at the stars, and wondered?’
‘Wondered?’
‘How it all got there: millions on millions of little points of light, each one a great big sun, perhaps a sun with planets like our own Terra, perhaps with intelligent beings like us – but millions on millions of these suns, so far apart that the light from them takes centuries to reach us – haven’t you ever wondered how that all came about? Who made it?’
‘Sure, Father. I figure maybe it was just always there. Or else maybe it just popped up one day and there it was. Or maybe it –’
‘Yes yess, I can see you’ve thought about it. Now –’
‘– makes itself. Or heck, does it need to be made anyhow? Couldn’t it just –’
‘Fine, yes, that’s enough. But tell me, don’t you ever wonder if there isn’t something – or Someone – behind it all? Even if the universe “makes itself”, who arranged it that way? Eh? Eh?’
‘I don’t know, Father. What’s the point of wondering if you can’t find out the answer?’
‘Ah!’ The fingers came together, forming a little cage. ‘Just that!’
‘Huh?’
‘What’s the point of wondering? The “point” is, here you are, wondering what the point is.’
‘…?’
‘That is to say, God is the Ultimate Mystery, the Paradox of Paradoxes – by the way, do you know what a paradox is?’
‘Sure Father, don’t you?’ Roderick sat up. ‘It’s like a sign that says “Don’t Read Signs”. Or like, like priests, if they want to have kids they have to stop being Fathers.’
‘Yes fine, but what I meant was, God is – is unknowable. Great minds have been racking their brains for centuries trying to answer questions about Him, and – and getting nowhere fast, you might say. He is All Good, yet allows evil to exist in His world, the world He made. He is All Powerful, yet He allows people to disobey Him. He knows the future, yet we are still free to choose how we will live our lives. He is All Loving, yet allows His beloved Son to die on the Cross. He –’
‘Father I don’t get any of this. Especially the stuff about the Cross, the sacrafice Sister Olaf called it. But I mean in chess a sacrafice is just a sucker play – Father O’Bride says it’s the same in baseball – so how come this All Smart God fell for it?’
‘Fell for …?’
‘I mean here he had everybody just where he wanted them, he was going to send everybody to Hell, right? So I mean if he takes the Son instead his game position has gotta be worse after, right? I mean the only reason you make a sacrafice is to force the other guy to give you a better deal, sucker him into it, yeah? Like Father O’Bride does all the time with his t-shirt deals –’
‘Stop, stop, stop! Wait, wait a minute, wait …’ Father Warren seemed to be having trouble with his hands, the fingers knotting and tangling almost as though the hemispheres of his brain were at war. ‘I can see we’ll need a lot more work. A lot more work, if you … if you think that God … “game position”!’
When the hands were finally under control, the priest said, ‘Let’s, let’s leave it at that for today, okay?’
When the little robot had slid from its chair and waddled out of the room, Father Warren shuddered. ‘Game position!’ What kind of world was it to make a child think like that? It was a cry for help from a fettered soul, for sure. Fettered in a broken body too the pathos of it reminded him of a passage in That Hideous Strength, a man experimentally about to trample a crucifix, arrested by the simple helplessness of the wooden figure:
Not because its hands were nailed and helpless, but because they were only made of wood and therefore even more helpless, because the thing, for all its realism, was inanimate and could not in any way hit back …
XVI
The Devil tricks us with puppets, to which he has glued angels’ wings.
E. T. A. Hoffmann, The Jesuit Church at Glogau
The blizzard outside kept repeating all the long vowels to itself. Roderick was in his room reading I, Robot, wondering when the I character was going to put in an appearance. There must be one, because otherwise the author would have called it He, Robot, or They, Robots. He couldn’t imagine how it would feel, being hooked up to these three terrible laws of robotics, that –
The garage door creaked in a way that could not be the wind. Roderick crept downstairs and found Pa shivering and coughing in his workroom.
‘Pa, what are you –?’
‘Shh, don’t wake Ma. Do me a favour, son. Put my coat by the kitchen stove and dry it off, will you? If Ma finds it wet in the morning she’ll throw a tizzy.’
‘Well sure but – hey Pa how come you’re all dripping wet and your coat is still dry inside?’
