by John Sladek
‘All of you,’ shouted someone in the back. The audience laughed, clapped, cheered and whistled; even DIMWIT raised its cartoon eyebrows.
Another figure in the front row jumped up. ‘I’m the one he means, I’m the robot.’
‘Robbie, sit down! That’s an order!’
‘My name isn’t Robbie, it’s Roderick Wood. I don’t see why I should take orders from anybody. I don’t know how you got me here, but I’m leaving now.’
Roderick made it to the aisle and began a dignified retreat before the brothers recovered.
‘Hey stop him! Get him!’
With war-whoops and rebel yells, they went after him. At the same moment, DIMWIT decided to entertain with a spectacular light-show and deafening music. In the confusion of flickering light and artificial thunder, it was hard for the audience to know exactly what was going on. Some thought they saw FUN boys tackling the fugitive, some saw his clothes torn off, some thought they saw a naked figure break free and run to the exit.
Some thought the figure was that of a man, some thought a woman.
‘Thanks,’ Roderick said, getting into the car. ‘Not everybody would pick up a naked stranger.’
Shirl nodded. ‘I thought at first you were the first streaker of spring. But then I saw the way you ran. I said to myself, “That’s the old Slumbertite Z-43 prosthetic hip and double-action knee, both sides.” You must be a robot.’
‘I am, but – have you met others?’
She shook her head, a quantity of auburn hair falling over the shoulder of white overalls. ‘No, I just reasoned that no live person could stand the pain of running on those. Not adjusted the way you’ve got them.’
‘Oh. You sould like an expert in prostheses.’
‘One of my sidelines,’ she said. ‘I’m interested in anything electromechanical. My main job is troubleshooting automotive computer links. In my spare time I design and build research equipment for the Computer Science department. Uh, where should I drop you?’
Roderick gave his address. ‘But what am I thinking of, I haven’t got a key!’
‘I’ll open the door for you,’ she said.
‘Would you? Terrific!’
‘I’ll do better than that. You wait in the car, I’ll get into your place and bring you out a pair of pants.’
‘You really are very kind, Shirl.’
‘I’m interested in you,’ she said simply. ‘You’re electromechanical.’
XVIII
Luke found Roderick’s door open, so he asked Mission Control to give him permission to take a look inside. The shades were drawn and the lights on.
‘You awake, Rickwood? Thought you might like to go fishing if – Oh my God!’
The hand lay on the worn carpet, palming an eye. The eye was unmistakably Roderick’s. Part of a foot lay on the studio couch, near a lower jaw, an oil can and a set of little wrenches. There were pieces of Roderick on every visible surface around the room, arranged almost as in an ‘exploded view’.
‘This is terrible, terrible. Mission Control, we got us a problem here, any ideas? No, of course not. You always have plenty of advice when I don’t need it, but the minute I need help you’re out to lunch. Everybody in Houston got laryngitis?’
He sat down, fished in a wastebasket and came up with Roderick’s head, minus one eye and the jaw. Luke held up the head to look at it. Poor Roderick!
‘Poor Rickwood. I knew him, Houston, a guy in a million.’
The door opened and an overdressed woman with bleached hair looked in. ‘You murdered him!’ she said. ‘You went and murdered him! Why?’
‘Uh no, look lady I –’
‘God, he was only a poor damn robot, never did nobody no harm, why did you have to murder him?’ Her voice kept cracking, scratching like an old needle on an old record. ‘What did he ever do to you, mister? Or did you just want to see how he ticked? Or maybe you needed some spare parts, is that it? I mean look at him, he was my friend, just look at him.’
‘Lady look, I didn’t, I found him, I found him this way. He was my friend too I guess. I was just sort of saying goodbye here, I –’
Roderick’s remaining eye, which had been closed, now flicked open, rolled to look at each of them, and blinked.
‘He’s alive! Christ, don’t drop him.’
‘Look at him wink.’ Luke held up the head as one holds up a clever baby. ‘Look at him wink!’
‘Yeah, winking was always important to Roderick. Hey I’m sorry I yelled at you there. My name’s Ida.’
‘I’m Luke. Will you look at him wink?’
‘You don’t suppose that’s code or something, Luke?’
‘Sure, that’s it! Morse code, let’s see what it says: A-S-S-E-M-B-L-Y, Assembly Instructions. One, Body Mainframe Subassembly. A. Align front frame section with rear frame section and assemble, using eight bolts marked G472, eight lockwashers and eight nuts. Tighten with torque wrench set to – holy moroni, how are we gonna keep up with all this?’
Ida squatted down. ‘We’ll do it, that’s all. You read me the instructions, I’ll do the business.’
Two hours later, when they stopped for coffee, Roderick had taken shape. He sat on the floor leaning back against an armchair, head lolled back, hands dangling at his sides, legs splayed out and one foot still not in place. Except for the flickering eye, he was still inert.
‘I never realized,’ Luke said. ‘Never saw him naked before, it make you realize: he really is a dummy. Look, you can see all his joints.’
‘He looks helpless. Like a stiff.’
‘Yeah but at the same time – free, you know? The dead are free. No worries. No Mission Control breathing down their necks, telling them what to do. The dead have got it made.’
‘The dead haven’t got shit, Luke. I nearly croaked not long ago myself, and to me, the dead are just – just nothing. Just dumb dummies like Rod here. So let’s get him alive again.’
When they had connected batteries and made a few adjustments, the robot sat up straight.
‘Rickwood, can you hear me?’
‘Yes … master …’ The single eye stared straight ahead. ‘Yes, master …’
‘Rickwood, for Christ’s sake! Doesn’t sound like him at all, sounds like some damn toy. Rickwood!’
‘Rod, snap out of it!’
‘Yes mistress …’ The figure got slowly to its one foot and balanced. ‘I obey …’ Rigid, it fell across the studio couch. ‘Oh, and thanks, gang.’
Then the three of them were up) and hugging, slapping backs, dancing or hopping around the room, shouting and laughing until Ida went pale and had to sit down for a moment.
‘Whew. New ticker. Not broke in proper yet, boys. Excuse me. Moment.’
‘New ticker?’ Roderick asked.
‘That’s what I came by to tell you. Artificial heart, got it put in a coupla months ago, they finally let me go home last week. Here, look.’ She opened her jacket to show a thick money-belt. ‘Batteries and a microcomputer in here, see?’ She opened her blouse to show where a wire ran into her sternum. ‘Neat, huh?’
Luke said, ‘Christ, Ida, you really got a magnificent pair, kid.’
Her colour improved slightly. ‘You’re not built so bad yourself. But what do you think of the hardware?’
‘Ingenious.’
‘Rod?’
Roderick said, ‘Looks great, Ida. But why didn’t you tell me you were going into the hospital? Maybe I could have visited.’
‘Well no, see, this was out of town.’
‘Where out of town?’
‘Geneva.’ She passed Roderick his foot and a screwdriver. ‘There’s this wonderful surgeon there, Dr Cnef, I guess some people call him a quack just because he’s a little unorthodox, but all his patients seem happy.’
‘Unorthodox? I don’t like the sound of this,’ said Roderick. ‘How unorthodox?’
‘Well, while other surgeons use hearts made out of silicone rubber he uses gold, and –’
‘B
ut has he tested these gold hearts?’
‘Just put your foot on and drop the subject, okay? I feel fine, fine. If I waited for these other guys to finish their fiddly tests I wouldn’t need a rubber heart because I’d be dead. I thought you’d be pleased I got a new heart, that’s why I came to see you.’
‘I am pleased,’ said Roderick. ‘Forget my little quibbles, I’m not myself today.’
Ida watched him for a moment. ‘You look great, Rod. You remind me of a statue I saw once, the way you got your leg crossed over and digging that screwdriver in your foot – only it was a knife and the boy was taking out a splinter – I liked that statue. Oh, here’s your other eye, I found it behind the leg of the couch.’
‘You never did tell us how you got dismantled like this,’ Luke said. ‘And nothing stolen.’
‘It was a woman named Shirl, very interested in machines. She was just going to adjust my legs so I could run better. One adjustment led to another, I guess, so finally she just got carried away. After my arms and legs were off, I couldn’t really stop her.’
Ida said, ‘I know Johns just like that. They talk you into getting tied up and then they turn mean.’
‘So then she just walked out on you,’ Luke said. ‘Like all women!’
‘Well no, what happened was she was just going to put me back together when she got paged to the phone. Some kind of emergency research work at the U, I guess NASA stuff or – anyway an emergency.’
Luke nodded. ‘Don’t tell me about NASA emergencies, I’ve been up that road all the way. Bomb trouble.’
‘What bombs?’ asked the other two.
‘Okay, it’s top secret but I’m tired of not talking about it. What do you think NASA is all about, anyway? The exploration of space? The last frontier? Flags on the Moon and Mars? Orbiting labs? Messages of hope from Nixon to the Universe? No, bombs. NASA is all about bombs. We had bombs to blow up cities, bombs to spray neutrons over large areas, bombs to sift radioactive dust into the world’s atmosphere, bombs to be focused as death rays to kill other satellites, bombs to spread satellite targets and decoy killer satellite death rays – and of course bombs to blow us up if we make any mistakes.
‘Why does anybody think Russia and America would spend trillions on space programs? You gotta be naive to think bombs aren’t in the picture at all. And that’s why astronauts, like cosmonauts, had to be military personnel. They could take orders, and they didn’t mind bombing the shit out of anybody.
‘Everything we said was in code, you know. Like if we said, “Gosh, earth sure looks beautiful guys,” that meant Bomb armed and locked into targeting module. Confirm targeting start. But if we said. “Be advised, you guys, that earth is one heck of a beautiful sight” that meant Bomb away. The wording was real important …’
Luke blinked. ‘I never told anybody all that before. Better forget I said it, there’s such a thing as a need to know and you two don’t need to know anything about the bombs. Bombs? Did I say bombs? I meant, uh, orbiting labs and communications satellites. I wouldn’t want to be in trouble with Mission Control about erp!’ He leapt to his feet as though pulled up by a wire. ‘Affirmative’. Sorry fellas, it won’t happen again. I’m what? I’m not looking good? Negative. Affirmative, I’ll go.’ He tried waving goodbye to Roderick and Ida, but his hand was quickly jerked back to his side, as he pivoted smartly and marched out the door. They heard him down the hall: ‘… won’t happen again, fellas, won’t happen again –’
Ida jumped up. ‘Yes, well, I guess I better mosey along too. See you, Rod.’
‘Oh I thought maybe we could see a movie’
But she was gone already.
Roderick fitted his eyeball and lid. Then he phoned Shirl. ‘Mad? No, I … oh a couple of friends helped me. I’m fine … Well I thought maybe we could go to the movies … I’ll see.’ He turned on the TV and found the right teletext pages. ‘There’s a new flick at the Roxy, The Box of Doc Caligari … I don’t know but the ad says it cost two billion to make, it must be good … by the box office, then? Eight-thirty.’
‘Point nine two two, they said.’ Tortured curls of smoke from different pipes fought their way up to join the slice of smog near the ceiling, slipped off into the air system, and were dispersed elsewhere, outside. ‘Point nine two two my eye. What’s the point of having probability estimates that have no relation to probability? The fact is, they’ve tried for this Entity, once again, and once again they have failed.’
‘Well yes. the Roderick Entity is still operational, it looks like. This Agency team did have a lot of bad luck, one man mugged during a mission, then they lost contact with the Entity altogether, only just now picked up the trail again –’
‘Bad luck? Bad predictions, that’s what. Makes you wonder how they fake up these probability levels – point nine two two and they fail? They still fail?’
A thin shoulder shrugged. ‘How probable is probability?’
‘Oh don’t quote Pascal at me, not just now. I’ve been reviewing our entire history of attempts to finalize this Roderick Entity, and I have to say it’s not a very impressive record. To call these Agency men bungling nincompoops would be too generous. Or do you think someone’s running interference for the Entity?’
Dry hands shuffled dry paper. ‘No one we know. This man O’Smith turned up, a man who used to work for the Agency. We watched him, but all he’s doing is trying to grab the Entity for Kratt. That’s Kratt of KUR Industries.’
‘I don’t like that – can we make Kratt lose interest in this Entity? Can we make him fire O’Smith?’
‘Yes, KUR has got a Defense Department contract for novelty foods and porno cassettes – we could threaten, so to speak, premature withdrawal.’
‘Good. Get O’Smith fired today. I don’t want any complications when the Agency finalizes this Entity – if ever.’
‘What intrigues me is, someone manages to build an Entity smart enough to evade us for years like this, and all we can think of doing is go on trying to destroy it. Doesn’t say much for our creativity and flexibility of response, does it?’
‘You’ve been talking to Leo again, have you?’
‘All right yes. But for a brain floating around in a fishtank, Leo seems to make a lot of sense, sometimes. He thinks we’re just trying to cut off the Hydra’s heads; for every Entity we destroy two will grow back. Because there is some fundamental human need to build perfect copies of ourselves, to be God over somebody else … I think Leo’s got something there.’
‘Inevitability is an old argument, I’m not impressed by it. Anyway you forget that Leo does not think we are doing anything, he thinks that if someone set out to destroy Entities, they would fail. The entire world for Leo is a theoretical construct now, since he cannot sense it directly. You might say he is the Red King, and we are his dream, heh heh.’
The pipe smoke twisted and rose.
‘Wouldn’t it be funny if we were, heh heh.’
‘Heh heh. But it may interest you to know that whenever we have a vote on Entity destruction, whenever the entire board meets to vote on it, Leo gets a vote too.’
‘Does he?’
‘It may interest you to know further that he always votes in favour of destroying Entities.’
‘Does he, by God? In spite of what he says? I wonder why.’
‘An unconscious apprehension of the truth? Freud could probably explain it – unless Freud too is part of the Red King’s dream, heh heh.’
‘Heh.’
ORINOCO INSTITUTE INTERNAL MEMO
Class One Personnel
Only Memo Number 487d
This supersedes Memos 487a/b/c which are
cancelled effective this date.
Ongoing operations will be reclassified as follows:
Operation Manray..............................................................................
Operation Alabam..............................................................................
Operation Droo
d ............................................................... cancelled.
Operation Nepomuk ......................................................... no change.
Operation Ladysmith ........................................................ no change.
Operation Ixionize ............................................................ no change.
Operation Waco (3) .......................................................... no change.
Operation Whang ............................................................. no change.
Operation Roderick .................................................... now Priority I.
Operation Doll Souse .................................................. now Priority I.
Operation Duckplantain ............................................. now Priority II.
Roderick arrived at eight, wearing his suit (not worn since the Auks) with a new hat. He bought a newspaper, sat clown on a car fender, and watched the box office. Now and then a cluster of animated people would pass into the Roxy theatre, all of them obviously happy because they were with each other. To sit next to someone watching shadows on the screen, that was happiness. Even if the someone only wanted to take you apart. Eight-five.
A little man with grey five-o’clock shadow and orange teeth came up to him and showed him a handful of pills. ‘How ya fixed, how ya feel? How ya fixed, how ya feel?’ he mumbled. ‘I got Isodorm, Ultracalm, Berserkopal, I got Tibipax and Nominal, I got Welldoze and Zerone, what I ain’t got I can get.’
‘Nothing, thanks.’
‘What does that mean, nothing? I can’t take nothing for an answer. I got Trancalept and Risibal, Serendex and Sedital, you name it.’
‘Beat it.’
This the man took for an answer. Eight-ten. Roderick opened his paper: a South American regime overthrown, yet another woman’s body found with the left leg cut off (‘Lucky Legs Killer Strikes again’), sales tax going up, somewhere in a small town a computer had rigged an election, Europe was in grave danger, and the time was eight-twelve.
A tired-looking man with red-rimmed eyes drifted over to ask if he had any Ultracalm or Somrepose, Zerone or Berserkopal.
