The Complete Roderick

by John Sladek

  But in three days, no residents had been seen going in or out. No one went to work, received visitors, bought groceries or walked a dog. Nothing was delivered to the building except the doorman’s meals and laundry.

  The doorman took brief naps, and somehow managed to shower and shave without leaving his post for more than a few seconds at a time. He remained on duty day and night.

  On the morning of the fourth day, he admitted to the press that the building was empty. There were no residents. ‘I only protected the place out of a sense of loyalty, I guess. I still say there’s some terrible mistake.’

  The crew went to work. Several floors of the building were knocked out inside. Then holes were drilled at strategic points, to take dynamite. When the charges went off, the entire twelve floors would collapse inward, burst like a bubble and leave almost nothing.

  The TV cameras watched all this, the death of this particular building having become news. Mr Vitanuova posed with his finger on the firing button.

  Flashguns were still going off like lightning when there came the sound of sirens. Escorted by two motorcycle police, the owner of 334 East 11th arrived.

  ‘Stop! There’s been a computer error!’ he cried. ‘You were supposed to blow up 433, not 334!’

  Father Warren’s appearance caused one or two raised eyebrows at the airport. Minnetonka was after all a province, where not everyone was used to cosmopolitan priests in black leather cassocks and crucifix earrings. Couldn’t be helped; he had to impress the person he was meeting that not all Midwesterners were bucktoothed hicks.

  The VIP lounge was almost deserted, but a guard checked Father Warren’s ID all the same.

  ‘I’m here to meet Mr Dinks. Hank Dinks, the author.’

  ‘Make yourself at home, uh, Father. I guess the press is here awready.’

  There were indeed a few men and women in the drab anoraks of the press corps. Father Warren pretended to inspect an amusement machine until a few reporters drifted over.

  ‘You’re Father Warren, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The Stigmata,’ one older man explained to his colleagues. ‘I covered the story two years ago on Good Friday, how you managed to make your hands bleed.’

  ‘Hi Father, look over here. Thanks.’

  ‘You re here to meet this Luddite guy Dinks?’

  ‘That’s right.’ Father Warren chose his words with Jesuit care. ‘I don’t say that Hank Dinks and his New Luddites have all the answers, but at least they’re asking some of the right questions. Do we really need all these machines? Can we really control them – aren’t we becoming slaves to our own creations?’

  A woman said, ‘A lot of people might say you can’t turn the clock back – we don’t want to go back to living in caves, do we?’

  ‘No, no indeed. That’s certainly not our intention. We don’t want to go back to the horse-and-buggy days, not at all. What we want is, well, just to say Whoa. We want to stop and catch our breath. Before we turn our world over to thinking machines, let’s try thinking for ourselves.’ He produced a self-conscious chuckle. ‘But don’t let me get started making speeches. All I’m here for today is to welcome Hank Dinks to our city.’

  As if to signal the end of this session, one young man began firing wild questions: Was Hank Dinks a junkie? Weren’t there allegations of bribing a Congressman? A scandal involving farm animals? How about a Mafia connection? Was the KGB funding the New Luddites? What of gay priests? Convent abortions? Transvestite nuns?

  The man was given no answers and evidently expected none; it was simply his way of probing for what he called a human interest angle.

  The photographers took over. To show he did not hate machines themselves, Father Warren was asked to play one or two of the amusement machines for the cameras. Obligingly he tried a fast draw against Brazos Billy, he repelled alien invaders for a few seconds, and he even had his blood tested. The latter machine pricked his finger, beeped and flashed his blood-type on a screen. He forgot the type immediately. As the cameras clicked, he noticed a small warning plate next to the coin slot:

  KUR BLOOD-TYPE BONANZA. Warning: Don’t use this machine if you have had any of the following diseases: malaria, hepatitis (jaundice), yellow fever, syphilis, flukes …

  Father Warren had once had malaria. Before he could decide what to do about it, someone from the airline brought him a telegram:

  SORRY HAD TO CANCEL FLIGHT BIG SPONTANEOUS RALLY INDIANAPOLIS. WILL SCHEDULE NEW VISIT. HANK.

  IX

  In the conference room the pipe smoke was thicker than ever. In its layers and eddies, the Orinoco people might have seen analogies with the weather of world events: laminar flow with occasional turbulence. The Orinoco people believed in containing local storms, smoothing them out and bringing them back into the general pattern of balminess. The world could be made to work given enough computing power and the ability to spot trouble in advance.

  Today the centres of turbulence were few and obvious: the President had had a light stroke (the news would not reach the public) and so was postponing a few major decisions. Earthquakes in China were causing economic imbalances that would work their way through world trade figures – likewise the discovery of gold in the Sahara. American experiments near Jupiter were beginning to alarm the Russians, who believed they were trying to turn Jupiter into a sun. How to reassure them?

  The problem of Entities still nagged. ‘Shouldn’t we be getting some Entity news from Minnetonka? The Agency isn’t going to let us down again, are they?’

  ‘I have an interim report,’ said someone, and dry liver-spotted hands rustled dry tissues of paper. ‘The Agency sent two men, and they have reported a probable kill of the Entity, with a certainty of point nine two two.’

  ‘I hear a but coming,’ someone chortled.

  ‘But they now disconfirm. The Entity is still at large, and no longer highly visible They now ask for a priority number so they can plan their hunt. Any ideas?’

  ‘Just how badly do we need this Entity?’

  ‘Good question. Not exactly a case for calling in more agents, is it?’

  ‘To make a worse mess of it. You know I can’t help wondering why this is all so difficult. Two grown men, experienced field agents, with all the Agency backing – money, help, equipment, administration – can’t manage to track down and kill a lone automaton. I gather the thing is none too bright, has no friends or allies – what is the problem?’

  ‘I don’t know, I can check. But we can’t let this thing run free, you know. Suppose someone discovers it – their co-worker or lover or neighbour turns out to be all full of electronic junk and no meat! Could start a bad panic – we’d have a devil of a time getting the media to sit on it.’

  ‘Exactly, exactly. The projections are all bad. But we do have these two Agency men still on it, I don’t see how we can justify more. Vote on it?’

  The Hackme Demolition Company was halted, temporarily hung up on a legal snag, so Roderick had the day off. He decided to call up all his friends. Ida’s recorded voice told him that she was home, but not at all well and not taking calls today. Luke’s recorded voice told him he was out, seeing his children in a zoo. That exhausted the list.

  Roderick wandered into an amusement arcade, to test his reflexes for half an hour. Then he prowled the streets and stared at the mannikins in store windows. Finally he found himself on Junipero Serra Place, just outside Danton’s Doggie Dinette. Might be fun to borrow a dog and go in? Let the waitress bustle about, setting out a bowl of ice water for the dog and a menu for him?

  On the other hand he might run into Danton, not so funny. No, best thing was to just keep going, right on past this alley too, don’t even look down it …

  Roderick saw Allbright back in his usual corner of the alley, sitting on a box and drinking something out of a bottle in a paper bag.

  ‘I’m glad they let you out. I knew you weren’t the murderer, Allbright.’

  The bag tipped, pa
used, tipped again. ‘They said you described me perfectly.’

  ‘No I didn’t. I described that guy we saw that day, with the gold hair and tinted glasses.’

  ‘I believe you, I guess.’ The bag tipped. ‘You should have described me, so maybe they’d have picked him up.’

  ‘Well anyway you’re free. You’re innocent.’

  Allbright nodded, wiped a grimy hand across his mouth, burped. ‘Yes, the innocent they let off with a warning. They don’t care a hell of a lot for innocence – they don’t know how to handle it.’

  ‘I guess that makes sense. Cops have to be suspicious.’

  ‘See as long as I looked guilty they treated me like a king. After all, they knew I’d be hiring a fancy lawyer for a fancy fee. They knew I’d be talking to the press a lot, maybe writing up my story as a sensational book, see? I was somebody and something.

  ‘Then the real killer sawed the leg off another woman while I was still locked up. Not guilty, I’m all of a sudden just another piece of innocent human shit.’ He offered the bottle. ‘Drink?’

  ‘No thanks, I don’t drink.’

  ‘That’s okay, I think it’s empty anyway.’ Allbright blew down the bottle and produced a low, dull note. ‘Let me give you some advice, kid. Don’t be innocent. Don’t ever be innocent, be guilty. Innocence scares hell out of people, they don’t know how to approach it – they don’t know what innocence wants from them. So they try to wipe it out. To wipe you out.

  ‘So get some guilt. Be divorced. Go bankrupt. Have an old unpaid parking tag, at least. Drink too much. Put at least one parent into a retirement home against their will. Spoil a life. Need therapy. Get some guilt, or you are in trouble.’

  ‘Have you got some guilt?’

  ‘Only a goddamned stupid innocent could even ask that question. Of course I’ve got some guilt. I don’t know where to start, there’s so much … for one thing my talent, my precious gift frittered away in years of self-indulgence, pill-popping, snorting, lushing, messing up my one life and other lives … There was a girl who really took me seriously, took my work seriously. She was willing to quit the University and take a job, just to feed me and clothe me and keep me straight enough to maybe write poetry again. Only of course that wasn’t enough for me, no I had to nag her into popping pills with me … We ended up both broke and living in a dirty squat, an old packing house that always smelled of meat or shit, the timbers of the old place were all soaked through with blood. One morning I woke up and found her dead beside me, yes you could say I’ve got some guilt about Dora. Not just her dying but dying alone like that with me off in my head somewhere watching the pink and green lights in my head. So she died all alone in that shit-smelling place and I couldn’t do anything for her, just wrap her warm in an old quilt and just leave her there in that place, in that place. I’ve got some guilt. Much guilt.’

  Roderick asked another question, but just then a jet plane roared over. Then Allbright was getting up and edging away, and no wonder: here came Danton, puffing steam, with a baseball bat in his hand.

  ‘You!’ he shouted, looking murderous. ‘Wood! Did I give you permission to come out in the alley? Did I?’

  ‘No sir, but – wait a minute, I don’t –’

  Danton took a cut with the bat. Roderick jumped back.

  ‘You don’t what? You don’t work? I know that. I got a mountain of dirty bowls in there and nobody around, nobody!’ He took another cut and hit the wall. ‘I treat you like my own son, my own son! And you –’

  ‘But you fired me, Mr Danton. I don’t work for you.’

  Danton paused, puffing steam. ‘Yeah, that’s right. I did fire you.’ He looked at the baseball bat in his hand, then stood on one foot and used the bat to knock imaginary dirt from his imaginary cleats. ‘Well, back to the old grind.’ He started to walk away, then looked back, the bat over his shoulder. ‘If you ever need a job, kid …’

  ‘Okay then, was it anything like this?’ O’Smith punched some more buttons on the pocket-sized gadget. In the little window a square chin changed to a pointed chin.

  Ben Franklin put down his flightbag and lit a cigarette. ‘Look, I know you’re trying to help. And I wish I’d had more time to go into this before. But honestly I don’t remember exactly what he looks – he looks so average.’

  ‘Kind of an average chin? Like this?’

  ‘Yes I guess so. Look I think maybe I’d better get a few more travellers’ cheques before they call my –’

  ‘Relax, boy. Shoot, goin’ to Taipin is just like goin’ to Chicago, only in Taipin they speak better English. Now would he have this kinda nose?’

  Ben half-relaxed and allowed the cowboy to ply him with chins, noses, eyes, coiffures until a face – not the one he remembered, but close enough – could be fixed in the little machine’s memory.

  ‘Good enough!’ the fat cowboy winked, bringing into play several hundred crow’s feet. ‘With this face and the name Roderick Wood I oughta be able to nail this little tin shit.’

  ‘You talk about him as if we were hiring you to kill him,’ said Ben.

  ‘Always like to think of it like huntin’, Mr Frankelin. Makes it more excitin’.’

  O’Smith went on with his simile, but Ben was no longer listening. He was engaged in what his namesake might have called the diligent study of one’s own life and habits.

  He was now in his forties, childless and divorced, had been a member of the Project Roderick research team, and now held a responsible job in a growing corporation. He was at this moment en route to inspecting a microprocessor factory in Taipin, a new pearl soon to be strung upon the KUR necklace.

  Then why didn’t he feel important? Why did he feel that all the important decisions in the world were being made in the next room, from which he was forever excluded? Roderick had been cooked up between kid genius Dan and wise old Lee Fong, and the others. Ben had been out in the cold. And it was the same at KUR, he was a rubber stamp for decisions made by Mr Kratt. Even now, sitting in the VIP lounge, he did not feel VI.

  He envied O’Smith, watching the cowboy fast-drawing against some fibreglass dummy. Look at him, not a care in the world. Life was all a B Western. O’Smith had a stiff arm or something, making his draw a little awkward. But he seemed not to mind, not a care in the world.

  O’Smith turned and grinned. ‘Shoot, Mr Frankelin, you oughta try somethin’ yourself. I hate to keep playin’ these machines alone. Makes me feel like a durn ijit. Soft as

  ‘There she is!’ someone cried, and a small army of people in anoraks ran with their cameras and notebooks to the other end of the room, where a genuine celebrity had arrived. Ben Franklin stood up to see who it was, and immediately turned away.

  ‘Somethin’ wrong, Mr Frankelin?’

  ‘That’s Indica Dinks over there.’

  ‘Sure it is, that’s right. The machines lib gal, nice looker – you know her?’

  ‘We used to be married.’ Keeping his back turned to her, he fumbled for change and plunged a quarter into the nearest machine. A sign told him to place his finger under an ‘examining lever’; when he did so, he felt a sharp stab, ‘THANK YOU. YOUR BLOOD TYPE WILL APPEAR ON THE SCREEN.’

  He forgot the answer as soon as he saw it. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed Indica, a small figure in bright apple green, sweep past like a comet, pulling a tail of drab reporters.

  ‘She’s gone now, Mr Frankelin.’

  ‘Okay. Okay.’ He stood still before the machine, as though unsure what move to make next, until two men in white overalls came up to him.

  ‘Excuse me, buddy.’ They unplugged the machine and loaded it on a dolly.

  ‘What’s – what is this?’

  ‘County Health, buddy. We’re impounding this.’ One of the men showed him a badge. ‘Another KUR headache.’

  ‘KUR?’ he asked, but his plane was being called.

  X

  Christmas bore down upon the world, demanding its ransom. In Northern lands the sun grew w
eaker and threatened to go out unless everyone spent too much money soon. The countdown of shopping days had begun already, that hypnotic series of diminishing numbers that could only end in zero. The public was led into Christmastime as a patient is led into anaesthesia, counting backwards.

  Likewise when William Miller had set the date for the Second Coming at March 21, 1844, a dwindling number of days were marked out, during which the faithful could dispose of the last of their money. They had gathered to meet their Maker wearing only simple gowns without pockets. Nowadays it was the purveyors of gifts, the promoters of ‘gifting’ who urged a frantic giveaway before oblivion.

  Christmas seemed not so much ‘commercialized’ as the true season of money transactions. The tone had been set by the original tale of taxes and redemption and kings with costly gifts; it carried on in all that followed; the kindly saint now resident in every Toy Department; songs about beggars and kings; the heaping up of goods in Twelve Days of Christmas; Dickens’s well-loved story of Crachit in the counting-house. By now it was clear that Christmas could not be properly celebrated until money had been exchanged for frozen turkeys, novelty records, Irish liqueurs, onyx chessmen, aura goggles, hand-painted lowball glasses, digital fitness monitors, personalized toilet courtesy mats, pink pool tables, sinus masks, chastity belts, Delft-style plastic light switch plates, individualized horoscope mugs, solid brass post-top lanterns, pyjama bags in the shape of dachshunds, plastic flame-resistant trees with pre-programmed light-sound systems, mono-grammed duck calls, Shaker-style cat beds, holly-look room deodorizers, mink mistletoe.

  The message was clear in the anxious faces of shoppers hurrying along the Mall. The Mall was a closed and heated portion of Downtown connected to department stores and to all other valuable pieces of real estate. Roderick sat on a park bench near an elm that might be real or artificial, listening to the anxious faces:

  ‘But he’s got an electric one already, hasn’t he?’

  ‘Sure but this is an electronic one.’