The Complete Roderick

by John Sladek

  ‘See the man with orange teeth over there.’

  At eight-fifteen two men in city maintenance uniforms arrived, showed some form at the box office, and began gluing wrapping paper over the glass theatre doors. Then they fastened shut all the doors, but one pair, with chains and padlocks. At eight-twenty-five, they left.

  Roderick approached the box office. The ticket seller was a pretty adolescent girl with round rouge circles on her cheeks like clown makeup.

  ‘Yah?’

  ‘I couldn’t help noticing those men chaining up the doors. Why would they do that, with people inside?’

  ‘I dunno, someping to do with the city. I guess.’

  ‘But I thought it was illegal to have any locked doors during a movie.’

  ‘Yah it is. Terrible, ain’t it? And lookit the mess they made with all that paper, how are we spose to get that off the glass? I dunno.’

  Roderick hesitated. You couldn’t fight city hall. There was probably some good reason for the padlocks. These city workers knew what they were doing. ‘Have you got a hairpin? Somebody showed me last night how to pick a lock. I’m going to open these padlocks.’

  ‘Gee I dunno.’ But she handed over the hairpin. While he was picking the locks, people kept coming up to ask him for Evenquil, Nominal, Tibipax or Equapace. It was eight-forty-five.

  Stood up? Roderick was beginning to feel a resurgence of pride. Just because somebody can remove your head and stick it in a wastebasket, doesn’t mean they can keep you waiting like this for fifteen minutes. Sixteen minutes. The paper said there was a concert by the Auks at the Hippodrome. He made up his mind at once. First a quick check of the Roxy’s rear doors – in case of more padlocks – and then if she still hadn’t shown up, he would only wait another ten minutes – or so – before taking off for the Hippodrome. That would teach her to respect him as a person.

  There was a long line at the Hippodrome, moving very slowly. Roderick was walking back to join the end of it when he heard:

  ‘Rickwood! Hiya, Rickwood, glad to see you’re on our side.’

  Luke looked a little drunk.

  ‘Our side?’

  ‘The Luddites, pal. Tonight is the night, buddy. We’re gonna teach these so-called musicians to have a little respect for human beings for a change.’

  ‘The Auks? What do you mean?’

  Luke winked, and opened his jacket to show Roderick a hammer. ‘The Auks are finished, kid, as of now. And I do mean finished, mac. No more electronic music – so-called – because no more equipment, jack.’

  ‘But, Luke, what the Christ is all this? You – I thought maybe you’d be out with Ida tonight. You two seemed to be getting along fine, plenty of respect for each other – what are you doing here, creeping around like some nut with a hammer –?’

  ‘Rickwood, you know nothing of human nature. Woman must weep, and man must smash something to pieces with a hammer. Especially if a man grew up reading Hemingway. A man does what he has to – what Mission Control tells him he has to.’

  ‘Luke, you poor idiotic –’

  ‘Anyway, I’m not alone. Join us, my friend. We have many machines to smash, then we will drink the wine.’

  Roderick saw that there were a dozen other men smiling and patting the hammer-shaped bulges in their jackets.

  ‘I’ll, uh, take a rain-check, Luke. See you.’

  In Roderick’s jacket pocket, he remembered, was a pass signed by the Auks. He took it to the stage door, where apologetic security cops frisked him, discussed him on their radios, and finally let him in.

  There were now only two Auks, but a lot more equipment. They stared at Roderick until he said, ‘I see you finally got rid of the old Pressler Joad co-inverter.’

  ‘Hi!’ said one of the Auks. ‘I remember you, you helped us out that time, changed over to an obvolute paraverter with harmony-split interfeed.’

  ‘Full refractal phonation,’ said the other, ‘with no Peabody drift at all.’

  ‘Gary, is it?’

  ‘No I’m Barry, he’s Gary.’

  Roderick nodded. ‘Wasn’t there someone else? Larry?’

  ‘Larry, yeah, well Larry did a little separation. Well you know he was writing a lot? Like “R.U.R. My Baby”, and “Ratstar”, he wrote them. Only then when we got this new electronic writing system, he just couldn’t compete and he thought he had to – sad. But hey, let sad thoughts lie, just self-be, man.’

  ‘Self-be?’

  ‘And we’ll show you all the new stuff we added. This is the famous HZGG-II, cross-monitored to a superphonesis drive through that, that’s our multi-tasking hyperdeck, custom built by a guy who does his own ferro-chloride etching on his own circuits; over there is Brown Betty, our brown noise generator; then the toneburst setup with patched in signal squirt …’

  Roderick looked around at the huge cabinets, ranged around the stage like megaliths. ‘Doesn’t the audience have trouble seeing you, over all these big cabinets?’

  ‘They know we’re here, baby. They feel our electronic presence,’ said Gary.

  ‘Right,’ said Barry. ‘And this stuff gives us much more control over the essentials, the elementals. No screwing around with sounds, crap like that.’

  Gary said, ‘Now we are the sounds. All we gotta do is be. Dodo says everybody has to self-be. Dodo says –’

  ‘I came to warn you,’ Roderick said. ‘There are some Luddites out front, lining up for tickets. They’ve got hammers and they’re kind of crazy.’

  ‘No shit, you know this for sure?’

  ‘I saw the hammers.’

  Gary called a security cop over and told him. When the man had trotted away, Gary said, ‘Hey thanks, man, you saved our life again. I mean we can’t blow this concert, it’s critical. See we got three hits, all over the point eighty-seven mark on the Wagner-Gains Scale but they all peaked already.’

  ‘Peaked?’

  ‘The record company screwed up release dates, so here we are,’ Barry said. ‘If we don’t make it big with this here concert, we’ll be off the charts in two weeks. And off the charts for us is dead.’

  Gary nodded. ‘The Luddites probably know that, too, got their own trend computer somewhere, just waiting their chance. Our manager’s got secretaries watching the trendie around the clock – I’ll bet the Luddites are doing the same. After all, they killed Elvis, didn’t they?’

  ‘Elvis?’ Roderick wasn’t sure he understood anything.

  ‘Elvis Fergusen, you know, he used to be Mister Robop? Then one night they cut holes in his speakers. He tried to sing without electronics and – well, two months later he O.D.’d in a dirty hotel room in Taipin, you could call that murder.’

  Roderick said, ‘Well I guess you’re about ready to play, aren’t you? So I’ll just –’

  ‘Hey, but thanks, man, you’ve been square with us. We oughta do something for you. Like we could turn you on to Dodo.’

  ‘Dodo? What is it?’

  ‘Everything, man.’ Barry squatted down and traced a circle on the stage floor. ‘Call that the universe, everything inside that circle. Then Dodo is – is the circle itself!’

  ‘You mean God or something?’

  ‘Yeah, God – and everything,’ said Barry.

  Larry said, ‘And not-God too – and nothing. See, Dodo is kind of like the secret of everything. And the secret is, there ain’t no secret.’

  Roderick was impressed. ‘How do I find out more about – Dodo?’

  ‘I’ll give you his address. Only don’t go to see him if you’re not sincere.’

  ‘Him? You mean, Dodo is a person?’

  Barry hesitated. ‘Well yes, but more than a person too. Dodo is a way in – a way of getting into your own life.’

  ‘Right, right,’ said Gary. ‘The earth doesn’t know it, but it’s growing up to be a sun.’

  Roderick felt less sincere at once, but the aphorism was sparking off others; soon Barry and Gary were grinning and shouting at each other:

  ‘
Darkness is just ignorant light.’

  ‘Peace is war carried on by other means.’

  ‘Every day is another.’

  ‘Man is the piece of universe that worries about all the rest.’

  ‘Stop looking for happiness until you find it.’

  ‘Dodo is finding out man was never kicked out of Paradise at all.’

  ‘Yeah, Dodo is instant everything.’

  ‘Dodo means just do – but twice.’

  ‘Dodo says, do fish know which way the wind blows?’

  ‘Dodo says, make today a wonderful yesterday,’ said Gary finally, and wrote out an address on a page torn from an electronic test manual. ‘Here you go. But listen, one thing: You have to prove your sincerity with Dodo. Take him like a bouquet of hundred-dollar bills. Anything like that.’

  ‘A bouquet of money?’

  ‘Dodo says money has its price.’

  ‘Fine,’ said Roderick. ‘Only I don’t have even one hundred-dollar bill. I’ve never seen one.’

  ‘You must not be very sincere, then,’ Gary said. He went to a snare drum mounted upside down at the back of the stage, reached into it and came up with a handful of hundred-dollar bills. ‘Take these, it’s okay. Yours to keep or give to Dodo. Your choice.’

  Barry said, ‘All money belongs to Dodo.’

  People were running around on the big stage now, moving lights, checking the Auks’s makeup, clearing spare cables. Someone led Roderick to the wings; a second later the Auks started playing and the curtain rose.

  They naturally opened with the gospel-based song that first made them famous, ‘Rivets’:

  There’s an android calling me

  Calling me, oh calling, calling me

  Cross the river

  The deep river

  Of Australia.

  She is plastic, she is steel

  But she really can really can feel

  All my love

  Cross the river

  Of Australia.

  A hammer clattered on the stage; there were dark figures struggling in the orchestra pit; another hammer spun through the air and dented a cabinet. Then it was all over: gangs of security police came from every exit and from the stage. The tiny mob of Luddites were disarmed and marched away within two minutes of their attack.

  Roderick went outside to find out if Luke was still in one piece. He couldn’t see the astronaut among the men with bleeding heads being herded into a paddy wagon.

  A security cop was talking to a city cop. ‘We could of used a little backup from you guys, you know? What if these guys had got nasty? Where’s all your guys?’

  ‘Ain’t you heard? Over watching the big fire, at the Roxy.’

  ‘The Roxy? Anybody killed?’

  ‘Naw, they had a full house too, three hundred easy, on account of this big-budget movie. But they all got out I guess the movie was so boring half of them were ready to leave anyway. Nobody even hurt.’

  Roderick slunk away like a criminal. On the way home he stopped on a bridge to throw his hat in the river.

  XIX

  ‘Please sit down. This won’t take a second.’

  The man behind the desk had gleaming silver hair, gold glasses, a healthy tan, a Harris tweed jacket with soft white shirt and quiet knitted tie. He was writing something with a gold pencil on cream laid paper, resting it on a blotter decorated with a sky motif, pale blue with soft white cumulus. The blotter protected the gold-embossed leather top of his desk, which was of some handsome dark wood in some pleasantly vague antique style, with a brass handle or two. It stood in the deep pile of an Aubusson carpet.

  The room was so arranged as to carry the eye slowly from one rich, pleasing and innocuous object to another – the paintings by Cuyp and Miro, the geode paperweight, the brass barometer.

  The man finally stopped writing. ‘Now then, suppose we start with your name.’

  ‘Roderick Wood.’

  ‘Fine. Mind if I call you Roderick? Okay then, Roderick, what seems to be the problem?’

  ‘Everything, doctor. Everything.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Well like last night I was supposed to go to the movies with this girl, at the Roxy. Only she stood me up. And if she hadn’t we and three hundred other people would have burned up in the big fire.’

  ‘How do you feel about being stood up, Roderick?’

  ‘Terrible, but – I don’t know. I don’t even know if I can feel. I’m not even real, I’m a robot.’

  ‘Why do you say that you’re a robot?’

  ‘Because I am.’

  ‘You believe you’re a robot?’

  ‘I am synthetic. Ersatz. Substitute. Artificial. Not genuine. Unnatural. Not born of woman. False. Fake. Counterfeit. Sham. A simulacrum. Not bona fide. A simulation. An echo, mirror image, shadow, caricature, copy. Pretend. Make-believe. A dummy, an imitation, a guy, an effigy, a likeness, a duplicate.’

  ‘So you believe you’re not genuine?’

  ‘Robots seldom are, doctor. And I am certainly a robot. Or if you prefer, an automaton, android, golem, homunculus, steam man, clockwork man, mannequin, doll, marionette, wooden-head, tin man, lay figure, scarecrow, wind-up toy, robot.’

  The doctor picked up his gold pencil, put it down again, and leaned back. ‘All right, but suppose you were not a robot?’

  ‘But I am.’

  ‘Tell me a little about your childhood.’

  ‘What is there to tell? I was a normal healthy robot child, lusted after my mother and killed my father. But through it all, I had no sense of purpose. I still don’t have one.’

  ‘And you want a sense of purpose?’ When Roderick did not answer, the psychiatrist tapped his gold pencil on the sky blotter for a moment. Then: ‘Do you dream much?’

  ‘I had a dream last night. I dreamed I was walking down the street naked, with strangers staring. A man playing a tuba came up to me and asked for some rice for his mother. Someone with no face was giving a speech, saying that suffering and death are nothing but zebras eating doughnuts. Suddenly I was frightened; I hid under the stairs until the teacher called us all to our desks and made us draw trees. Then all the furniture started to move and then I was being chased through the snow by a sewing machine. The dentist was trying to stick my feet to a giant can-opener, the fire chief’s teeth were on the floor, don’t ask me why. I was on the doorstep of a strange house, my mother came to the door saying: “This house, with all its luxurious rooms tastefully furnished with elegant appointments (either casual colourful room coordinates with a casual contemporary look, or traditional antiqued items with the accent on classic styling) designed for a graceful, decorator-look life-style is really four nuns eating popcorn on an escalator.” In the next room they were showing a movie of my entire life. I saw a penny on the floor, and when I picked it up I saw another, and when I picked it up I saw another, and when …’

  ‘Yes, go on.’

  ‘Then I woke up.’

  The psychiatrist looked at his watch. ‘Well I see our time is up. Like to go into this dream with you more in detail next week, Roderick. Okay?’

  Roderick was out in the waiting room again when he realized the psychiatrist probably thought the robot talk was all part of a delusion. Why hadn’t he proved he was a robot? Why hadn’t he, say, opened up his chest panel to show his innards? Was he afraid of shocking the doctor? Afraid of seeing the kindly, impartial face suddenly jerk into a mask of fear?

  He went back in. ‘Doctor, there’s one thing I ought to tell you –’

  ‘Please sit down. This won’t take a second.’

  The doctor was writing again with his gold pencil on cream laid paper. When he had finished, he turned to Roderick with no recognition. ‘Now then, suppose we start with your name.’

  ‘You don’t know me?’

  ‘Do you think I should know you?’

  ‘Since I just left the room not five minutes ago, yes.’

  ‘I see.’ After a slight pause, the doctor said, ‘Roderick
Wood, this is not your appointment. I must ask you to leave.’

  On impulse, Roderick got up and walked around behind the desk. The doctor sat back and looked at him. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Just looking.’ Below the hem of the doctor’s rich Harris tweed jacket there were no legs, no chair legs or human legs. There was only a steel pedestal as for a counter-stool, and a thick coaxial cable plugged into the floor. In the middle of the doctor’s back was a small plate:

  CAUTION:

  Do not remove this plate while psychiatrist

  is connected to live power.

  KUR INDUSTRIES

  ‘A robot. You’re a robot.’

  The doctor turned to face him. ‘Does that upset you?’

  ‘It disgusts me.’

  ‘Next time we must talk about that disgust you feel.’

  *

  ‘We might, for example, mean that Mary Lamb has given birth to a child, a “little Lamb”.’ The lecturer tossed chalk from hand to hand, but gave no other sign of his irritation at seeing a student come creeping in late. ‘Or, Mary ate a small portion of lamb. Or, Mary owned a small lambskin coat. What did Mary have for dinner? Mary had a little lamb. What fur did she own? Mary had a little lamb.’

  Roderick took his seat between Idris and Hector. Idris seemed to speak no English, and it was not clear why he was taking a course in Linguistics for Engineers; he spent most of his time at lectures fiddling with a gold-plated pocket calculator. Hector was no more attentive; he spent the time reading dog-eared paperbacks with titles like Affected Empire and Slaves of Momerath, or feeling his sparse beard for new growth.

  ‘Or,’ said the lecturer, ‘a tiny twig of Mary’s family tree belonged to the illustrious-Lamb family. In her genetic makeup, Mary had a little Lamb.’

  ‘The final’s gonna be a bitch,’ Hector whispered. ‘Guess I’ll just have to cut it.’

  Roderick replied, ‘Wait a minute. I want to get this down, this is important. I think.’

  ‘Not if you cut the exam. I can do it without flunking out.’

  ‘Or, Mary behaved lambishly. In her personality, Mary had a little lamb.’

  ‘It can’t be done. Cut the final?’

  ‘I got a job on the Registration computer,’ Hector said. ‘It’s real easy to get through to the Grades computer and make changes.’ Idris found the Golden Section to be 1.6, roughly. ‘I don’t believe you,’ Roderick whispered. ‘They must have it all checked some way.’