The Complete Roderick

by John Sladek

  ‘What – are you crying?’

  She sniffed. ‘Let’s get to work.’

  ‘Yeah, but wait a minute, are you really crying over this computer? Shirl?’

  But she did not answer him until later, when they had finished the murder. ‘It wasn’t the computer that bothered me, Rod, it was you.’

  ‘Me? Why?’

  ‘Because I used to like you a lot, and now I won’t be seeing you any more. You made a wrong decision tonight.’

  ‘To kill the computer? What do you mean a wrong decision, you agreed –’

  ‘Of course I agreed. I’m human. You made a very human decision there, Rod. Welcome to the human species.’ She picked up the phone and punched the General’s private number. ‘But it’s like I told you before. I’m only interested in machines … Hello, General? I’ve got some bad news for you; your bank computer system has had a serious breakdown. I doubt if you’ll be able to recover that missing money …’

  As though confirming this, the printer clicked and buzzed out a last message:

  ‘Music is the music of all music and I am a jealous’

  ‘Ask him, his old man’s a doctor at University Hospital, he can get anything: Thanidorm, Toxidol, Yegrin, Evenquil …’

  ‘Yeah, well, but I can already get anything, I’m screwing this nurse over at Mercy Hospital, they got a better drug cabinet anytime. I can get Dormevade, Actromine, Lobanal and Doloban, even Barbidol …’

  ‘You got any Zombutal though, hey?’

  ‘Naw, you better ask Allbright. I seen him over there, over there somewhere.’ The gesture took in at least forty thousand people, all who crowded into the towering stands of Minnetonka Stadium tonight. Great sheets of dazzling lights created an artificial day, the fake grass below glowed like velvet-substitute, and in the aisles everything was for sale, from beer and hot dogs, peanuts and programmes, to purple pills and peculiar religions. All in honour of the Auks’ Farewell Concert.

  Allbright was working his way down one steep aisle, a few bright-coloured pills in his cupped hand to be held under each customer’s nose briefly, to be dropped at the touch of a cop. A woman was struggling up the aisle with a pile of handbills. She shoved one into Allbright’s cupped hand, and a reflex made him drop his pills.

  ‘Damn you, damn you!’ He turned to glare at her, and found himself looking at the face that turned up in his dreams still. ‘Dora! Dora? But I thought you were dead, I –’

  She blushed. ‘I’ll bet you did, you –’ An explosion of handbills hit him in the face; when he could see again, she was gone.

  He bawled her name thrice. People in the crowd started laughing and hooting back at him. Then suddenly all was drowned in the roar of forty thousand voices, the clapping of eighty thousand hands, as the concert began.

  Allbright picked up a handbill, his last connection with her:

  THE CHURCH OF PLASTIC JESUS

  Welcomes You, Maybe

  Is your life out of control?

  Are others pushing you around like a checker?

  Are you a machine?

  Rev. Luke Draeger invites you to

  TAKE CONTROL OF YOUR OWN LIFE

  1749 Loyola Drive

  The concert was beginning, and a peculiar farewell it was; Gary had already left the group to become a special disciple of Dodo (with the rank of saxifrage), so the Auks now consisted of Barry alone, with of course tons of equipment. The equipment, now arranged on a platform in the middle of the stadium, occupied about the same volume as a small four-room house. Indeed, it almost functioned as a small house, for once the remaining Auk had acknowledged his applause and entered among these infra-veeblifiers and tone-hurst hyperdecks, this one-man band was not visible at all.

  Later there would be rumours that Barry wasn’t doing anything in there. That he wasn’t doing anything. That he wasn’t in there.

  XXII

  Roderick found it easy to watch television, hard to do anything else. So he stared at the screen day and night, just as in the earliest years of his life. Was this a kind of senility? he wondered while changing channels. Was he approaching the end, his life furling in about him again, and was he becoming a tidier package, more easily disposed of?

  But enough of gloomy thoughts like that: everything on the screen told him not to worry, not to worry. Taco-burger-flavoured diet aids gave way to gleaming pre-owned cars; micronic toilet cleanser to pizza-burger-flavoured falafel sticks; the KUR family of companies offered educational toys like the Zizi-doll, Polly Preggers and Barfin’ Billy; America was wearing cleaner shirts than ever before; the Army offered young people almost unlimited opportunities for travel and education; people were winning new cars and boats and aeroplanes and houses, swimming-pools full of dollar bills, wheelbarrows full of gold, a dozen red roses every week for life; Dorinda managed to look on the bright side of her Destiny; old movies recaptured Hollywood’s golden past; cop dramas showed how law and order still not only prevailed but sufficed; zany comedies proclaimed a new age in which pedestrian lives would become warmly meaningful, meaningfully funny, zanily warm.

  He was watching a comedy about violence in New York, filmed entirely in Los Angeles. A yellow cab with blood on the door drew up, before an apartment house. Audience laughter bubbled up, anticipating the worst.

  Roderick’s door crashed open, and four large uniformed men hurled themselves into the room, pointing guns at him or at windows. It seemed so much a part of TV that he waited for audience laughter.

  ‘Sheriff’s office, you the robot?’

  ‘I, robot. Yes.’

  ‘You the robot known as Robert Woods also known as Robin Hood also known as Rickwood also –’

  ‘Yes, anything, fine.’

  ‘You’re under arrest. You have the right to –’

  ‘Al,’ said one of the other men. ‘Just shut up, will you? This robot is not under arrest, and it ain’t got no rights. What we got here is a distraint order seizing property in the name of the lawful owner, KUR Industries.’ He approached Roderick carefully and slapped a gummed seal on his forehead. ‘You coming along quietly, robot?’

  ‘Sure.’

  Roderick waited patiently while the four men got him into a straitjacket, leg-irons and an iron collar with four lead chains attached. It was still a part of TV; he was still interested in what might be happening next – a car chase? A discovery about someone’s parentage?

  As the sheriffs men were about to lead him away, there appeared in the doorway a man with the head of a fox. Behind him was a man with the head of a cat. Four guns turned towards them automatically.

  ‘FBI,’ said the fox, showing a gold badge. ‘I’m Inspector Wcz and this is Special Agent Bunne. I’ll have to ask you to turn over that robot.’

  ‘Turn him over? But we –’

  ‘Shut up, Al. Inspector, we have a county court order here –’

  ‘I know,’ said the fox. ‘But our federal court order takes precedence. This is a matter of national security, boys.’

  It took some time for the sheriff’s men to release their prisoner from his complicated restraints, and about the same time for Wcz and Bunne to struggle out of their costume heads.

  ‘I sure wish you’d told us earlier, Inspector. Just what is this robot, a spy or something?’

  Wcz said, ‘I’d rather not definitize that at this stage, not in the way you contexted it there. Let’s just say that a certain government agency has loaned overriding consideration to the problem, okay? Against a backdrop of far-reaching technical contingencies, okay? So let’s hustle it up, fellas, and get those leg-irons off him, we got a plane to catch.’

  ‘Okay sure fine yup all right ye –’

  ‘Shut up, Al.’

  Roderick said, ‘Why were you wearing animal heads?’

  Inspector Wcz turned, turned away again.

  One of the deputies spoke. ‘Yeah, why were you wearing animal heads?’

  ‘We were on another case,’ said Bunne. Wcz looked at him and he f
ell silent.

  Nothing more was said to Roderick or about him, as the FBI men drove him to the airport and bundled him aboard the plane which had been held for them. Nothing was said about Roderick or to him all through the flight. Agent Bunne watched the movie (in which a stripper adopts a crippled puppy and is therefore pursued by the Mafia, crashing a lot of new cars). Inspector Wcz studied a book called The McBabbitt Way to Facial Success.

  Two more FBI men met the plane, packed themselves with Roderick into a limousine, and the five of them set off across the desert.

  ‘Is it all right if I know where we’re going?’ Roderick asked. Three of the FBI men exchanged looks and shifted around uncomfortably; the car was full of the creak of shoulder holsters. Inspector Wcz affected not to hear.

  ‘Might as well tell him, eh Inspector?’ Bunne said.

  Wcz laughed, or at least, laughing sounds came from his stiff face. ‘Sure, you tell him. Tell him what they do to robots at the Orinoco Institute.’

  ‘Isn’t that a think tank?’ asked Roderick.

  ‘You tell him.’ Wcz laughed again. ‘Tell him about the Orinoco policy – wiping out all robots and all robot builders. Because, tell him, There is only room for one intelligent life-form on this planet. Tell him.’

  ‘Lawyers?’ Roderick asked. ‘Corporation lawyers?’

  ‘Tell him he won’t feel like being funny once they get hold of him. Tell him how they start dismantling and interrogating at the same time. They know how to get everything out of a machine. They keep him alive, hanging by a thread until they can squeeze out the last bit of data. Then ssquonnge!’ Wcz laughed. ‘That’s the sound of expensive metal being crushed – ssquonnge!’

  The Orinoco Institute was a few acres of lush green grass in the middle of the desert, fenced off and guarded, and dotted with windowless buildings. Roderick was taken into one of these. After various pieces of paper were exchanged with various guards, he was marched into an office. The man behind the desk was cleaning his pipe; the air was hazy with smoke.

  ‘Hello there, Roderick.’

  ‘Do I know you?’

  ‘Ha ha no, no. But I sure know you. Been keeping tabs on you for years. Take a chair.’ He scratched his brush-cut hair and looked at the FBI men. ‘Uh, fellas, I need to have a private talk with Roderick here, okay? Could you go solve the Lindbergh case or something?’

  When they had meekly shuffled out, the pipe-smoker stoked up his pipe and lit it. Then he sat on the edge of his desk, and he arranged his left hand to grip the leather patch on the right elbow of his tweed jacket, while the right hand held up his smouldering pipe. He didn’t actually smoke the pipe much, mostly tapped his glasses frame with its stem. ‘First thing, I guess, is to tell you a little about the Orinoco Institute. Have you ever heard of us?’

  ‘I heard you were some kind of government think-tank, that’s all.’

  The pipe tapped. ‘Ah yes, that wonderful newspaper phrase, almost makes you think of a bunch of oversized brains in an aquarium, all pulsing with ideas, eh? Ha ha, well that’s not – altogether true. By and large, we’re all ordinary human beings, except that we’re intelligent, we have some expertise, and we work on The Future. We’re what the newspapers would call futurologists, people who try to extend the graph line from the known into the unknown. And sometimes we try to shape that line.’

  ‘You try to influence trends?’

  ‘Exactly. In that sense, we’re not just a think tank, we’re an “act” tank too. We try to help provide the kind of future this country (and this world) wants and needs. One of my former colleagues said, “Our job is to keep the damn world on the damn graph paper,” and I think that says it pretty well. We do try to keep the trend lines smooth, the future free from sudden shocks and surprises. I think you’ll like it here, Roderick. It’s a challenging, stimulating place.’

  ‘Ssquonnge,’ said Roderick.

  ‘Eh? Anyway, our system does work. We try to spot trends early. A trend spotted early enough can be encouraged, lessened, reshaped, eliminated – at very little cost. Later of course, it’s more expensive. Later still, impossible at any price.’

  After a pause to relight his pipe, ‘Which brings us to the robot phenomenon, eh? The artificial intelligence, the android, robot, automaton, or as we prefer to call it, the Entity, constitutes a deep and disturbing trend. Some years ago we did a breakdown of all cybernetic work and worked a few projections. No doubt about it, research teams everywhere were inching their way towards one goal, the production of a viable Entity. Our guess was, someone was going to make it – but was this a good or a bad event? We did a very careful analysis, we discussed, modelled, projected and discussed again, but finally we had to give Entities the thumbs-down. This trend had to be crushed.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Plenty of reasons. Quite a few. Many.’

  ‘Such as?’

  The pipe-smoker cleared his throat. “Well, it is all classified, but I guess there’s no real harm in telling you. Not now.’

  ‘Like a gloating villain,’ Roderick murmured.

  ‘Eh? Anyway, reasons for stopping Entities: for one thing, suppose machines get as intelligent as men, and decide not to take orders any more? Suppose they get even more intelligent and simply wipe out humanity?’

  ‘Suppose they get so intelligent they see the futility of wiping out other species?’ Roderick countered.

  ‘Yes yes yes, I didn’t say there were no counter-arguments. I’m just giving you our reasons. Suppose Entities took over all the jobs, all the worthwhile jobs, by virtue of being able to do them better or cheaper than men? That would leave us with a population forced into idleness never desirable, whatever Utopians might think. Or suppose machines begin solving many of our major problems, such as curing cancer or doubling lifespans or cheap fuel or cheap ways of mining other planets – do you see where such a wealth of handed-down answers could lead us? Yes, we could end up a pathetic kind of cargo-cult. Or suppose the intelligent machines did none of the above things, but suppose that just the idea of having intelligent machines on Earth caused a profound shock to the foundations of our societies – a civilization-quake? For example, where such an idea percolates down to the uneasy, fearful or unhappy masses, it could become the focus for any revolutionary tendencies.’

  ‘Such as Machines Lib or the Luddites?’

  ‘Precisely.’ The pipe needed lighting again. ‘Machines can become gods or demons, angels or rivals, in the inflamed imaginations of the lunatic fringe. In troubled times, the Entity might become a scapegoat or a messiah – an embodiment of instability. So we voted to stop the Entities. And by and large, we’ve been pretty successful. I won’t go into details, but we did manage things like shutting off funds for certain lines of research. And we used other government agencies to — to persuade people not to go on trying to make Entities.’

  ‘But I slipped through.’

  ‘You slipped through.’ The pipe-stem tapped the glasses. ‘You certainly did slip through. A concatenation of circumstances – fraud, resulting in a cover-up that covered you up too; Mr Sonnenschein’s paranoid precautions in smuggling you away; the fact that you had various foster homes and kept dropping out of sight; an unfortunately inept team of men from the Agency – you did slip through, and here you are today.’

  ‘What happens next?’ Roderick asked, not really wanting to know. Knowing.

  ‘I think we ought to introduce you around, eh?’

  ‘Look, what’s the point? If you’re just going to trash me, why not get it over with?’

  ‘Trash you?’ The man was so startled he forgot to tap his glasses. ‘Good grief, didn’t I make that clear? Our entire policy on Entities has been reversed. We’re not stopping them any more.’

  ‘No? But then –’

  ‘We didn’t bring you here to trash you, Roderick. On the contrary: we want you to join our team.’

  ‘Is this a trick?’

  ‘Ha ha, no trick. We really are inviting you to
dive into our tank for a good think, ha ha.’

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ said Roderick seriously.

  ‘Ha ha, great. Come on in, the water’s fine.’

  ‘I wonder if it is,’ said Roderick seriously.

  ‘Ha ha.’

  XXIII

  At the hour of anguish and vague light

  He would rest his eyes on his Golem.

  Who can tell us what God felt,

  As he gazed on his rabbi in Prague?

  Jorge Luis Borges, The Golem

  Mr Kratt’s thick black V of eyebrow came down deeper; he bit through his cheap cigar. ‘Goddamnit, bub,’ he said into the telephone, ‘you sure about this federal court order? Fine damn country if the damn government can send in the FBI to deprive a man of his legitimate property … Well, damn-it, Moonbrand, you and Honcho are supposed to be the damned lawyers, you tell me, can’t we lodge an appeal … Yes well look, I didn’t hire you to just sit in your damn hacienda out there and swill orange juice, I hired you to protect KUR interests, my interests, not to … No okay, no all right, maybe you and your partner have been zapped by this Uncle Sam authority trip, but now listen bub, can the California crap and listen, I want that damn robot! You’re the one said I got a legal claim in the first place, now you just go and get the damn thing. Or at least tell me how I can get it … Yeah well, forget your damn karma for a minute, I got a corporation ready to fall apart if I don’t get some good gimmick, I got Moxon breathing down my neck, I got a bank about to fold if that asshole Fleischman doesn’t remember where he parked that sixty million dollars, frankly I don’t need your damn karma.’

  The image of his growling voice, turned into numbers, beamed up to a satellite and back down to California, finally emerged from what looked like a gold conch shell held to Wade Moonbrand’s ear. His bare feet rested on the desktop, which had been made from a teak surfboard. He kept his eyes on a meditation symbol on the wall, a nest of concentric rings; when he’d finished talking he pulled a Colt .45 from inside his floral shirt and put three shots into the middle of the symbol.