The Complete Roderick (42 page)

‘Mrs Feeney says he’s like he’s got the devil in him, you know he actually stabbed one of the priests?’

‘I blame his background. My Chauncey never would …’

‘Well, somebody better teach him a lesson.’

Roderick was at the dining-table, covering page after page with cipher calculations. Ma paused to kiss the top of his head.

‘That’s a good boy. Now I’m just going out to the Guild, be back in time to give Pa his supper. But if he wants anything meanwhile will you stick around?’

‘Sure, sure.’ It wasn’t polyalphabetic with a repeating key, it wasn’t a multifid, it wasn’t Playfair or a substitution followed by a grille transposition … was it even a cipher?

It had to be. Something in the world had to make sense. Ma would say it all did make sense, only you had to be on the astral plane to perceive it. Pa would say nothing made any sense at all, only we have to make our own sense out of it.

He gave up on the cipher and wandered into Pa’s workshop. There was the radio, still faintly murmuring music for its own easy listenin’ enjoyment. There was the box of inventions. There was the photo of Rex Reason, the cards hand-lettered by Miss Violetta Stubbs:
‘OVER THE HILL
doesn’t mean
DOWN AND OUT
…’

The lettering was the same as on the piece of cloth. Sure, it was part of a hand-lettered tie: not remember wit fun, but

REMEMBER
ME

WIT
H MUSCATINE

FUN
ERAL HOMES

printed sideways so the mourners could read it. Sure, so …

After a moment, Roderick took down the green key from its nail below Rex and left the house with it.

At twilight the giant letters
SLUMBERTITE NEVER SLEEPS
suddenly
flared up like curious trees bursting into flame. The low slab of windowless factory supporting their neon splendour now seemed lower, less significant. The two tiny figures climbing out of their microscopic Rolls-Royce seemed nothing at all.

‘God, I love this place, bub. Almost makes me wish I was a religious guy … I don’t know, if I … if God …’ Mr Kratt recovered quickly. ‘Come on, let’s get inside, can’t stand around with your finger up your rectum all evening.’

He strode off across the perfect lawn, leaving Ben behind. ‘Come on, come on.’

‘Yes sir. I was just, I was just thinking …’

‘Too damn much thinking, your thinking got us into this mess, bub. Trouble with you artsy-fartsy academics, can’t see anything clearly, everything’s got too many sides to it. We had a good goddamn thing going there with Jinjur-Boy, only you had to go and spill your guts to the FDA the minute they came sniffing –’

‘It wasn’t like that at all, Mr Kratt I, all I said was –’

‘Was enough! Mercury batteries, why the hell admit a thing like that, you know what it’s gonna cost to fix this up? Hell of a lot more than you’re worth. Thing gets this far you can’t just grease a few palms you know. Gotta fix up a whole publicity campaign, pictures of a coupla senators and their kids eating the damn things, the works. And we gotta move fast before we get every hick consumer group in the country after us, look what they did to Buckingham cigarettes …’

‘I never heard of them.’

‘See what I mean? One minute they got fifty quacks on the payroll telling everybody how their natural blackstrap molasses-filter traps everything nasty, the next minute they’re wiped out. Dead!’

‘Dead,’ said Ben faintly. ‘But what do we do about these dead kids, eighteen of them now, eighteen …’

‘Look, stop moaning, will you? Our lawyers are already fixing all that up with the families, get each of ’em to sign an affidavit their kids never ate our product in return for an
ex gratia
handout, hell, most of ’em never seen so much cash, no problem there … no problem.’

‘No but it’s just that sometimes I think we, all we can do is create death Even when we try to make life it comes out death,
death is there all the time. In the program somewhere … it’s, I don’t know, almost as if we brought a gingerbread boy to life and all he wanted was to die …’

‘Goddamnit, pull yourself together, industrial accidental pollution, happens all the time! All the time, you can’t get all personal about this, Jesus you think every oil company executive pisses his pants every time he hears a pollution story? I mean sure if you want to go on playing fancy academic games writing little titbits for the
Jackoff Journal
fine, only I thought you wanted to run a goddamn company!’

‘Well I … yes, I guess … yessir I do.’

‘Fine. Then goddamnit, bub, start running it. And for Christ’s sake stop looking like a pall-bearer, give this Welby guy a big smile. Must be him waiting by the door.’

Ben Franklin managed a weak smile for Dr Welby while Kratt unlocked the plain steel door.

‘Really an honour Mr Kratt, if you don’t mind my saying so, been reading about you everywhere, newsletters,
Fortune
wasn’t it? A profile yes, and weren’t you named one of the top ten business lead –?’

‘Only the top ten
new
leaders, Doc. Good to see you’re well-informed though, because –’

‘And to think, you coming all this way just to meet with a small-town sawbones like me!’

‘Yes well I –’

‘You sure must want something pretty bad, ha ha.’

They stopped, Kratt and Welby facing each other in the chill stainless steel corridor, almost squared away like a pair of hostile dogs, each determined somehow to mount the other. Welby’s pale eyes (staring over the tops of his old-fashioned glasses) were locked in silent combat for a second with Kratt’s dark little eyes (staring under the heavy V of brows).

‘Doc,’ Kratt said softly. ‘Don’t sell yourself short. If I didn’t know you was a good businessman I wouldn’t be trying to trade horses with you. Now come on let’s see if we can find the damn board-room in this godforsaken place, think it’s at the end of the corridor …’

He led the way into an impressive conference room panelled in
something very like walnut. While Ben and the doctor took their seats at the long table, Kratt went to the liquor cabinet.

‘See Doc, you’re a man with foresight. You and I know Nebraska’s gonna bring in gambling in a year or so, and we both know the considerable financial rewards to be reaped by the right man in the right place. So can we talk?’

Dr Welby nodded at the broad back. ‘Why sure. Hey this is some layout you got here, never knew there’d be a place like this right in the old Slum –’

Kratt laughed, or perhaps coughed. ‘You know, no human being has been in this room for four years. Not even cleaners.’

‘But it’s spotless!’

‘Machine-cleaned, every damn day. Best thing about machine-cleaners is they don’t drink up the chairman’s booze – got some fifty-year-old Scotch here, Doc. What’s your pleasure?’

Dr Welby didn’t mind if he did.

The big German Shepherd snarled and threw himself against the fence, daring Roderick to try – just
try
– opening the gate and setting one foot on Slumbertite land. But when Roderick did open the gate and walk in, the dog only sniffed his hand and then trotted away to seek some other victim.

A long curved driveway led to the great factory. And just so there should be no mistake, a series of ‘landing lights’ flickered along it, pointing his way. And just to make absolutely sure there should be no mistake, a recorded voice spoke to him: ‘Keep to the driveway and don’t loiter. Please follow the lights.’

The driveway took him right up to the plain grey corrugated wall, which at first seemed to lack a door, even a keyhole. Only when he was close did a door slide open.

‘Step inside, please. Prepare for a security check. Prepare for a security check.’

He stepped inside and stood around, until a voice said: ‘Empty your pockets on the conveyor belt. Now. Everything will be returned to you when you leave the building.’ Pa’s cipher and the green key; a quarter and two nickels; a piece of string and a grubby stick of gum; half a yoyo, a broken rosary and the little folded wad of paper that was his ‘oiploma’; a rosary bead and a lead washer moved out of sight.

‘Face the light-panel. Answer the questions yes or no by pushing the yes or no button.
QUESTION
: Are you carrying or concealing any tool or weapon?’ No. ‘Are you carrying or concealing any explosive or inflammable material, such as gasoline, TNT, butane?’ No. ‘Are you carrying or concealing any electronic equipment, such as an artificial arm or leg?’ Yes. ‘Walk through the light-panel. Now.’

He pushed open the panel and entered the Emerald City.

It was bigger and greener than even the cemetery. That pure blue-grass colour lay over the floor, what he could see of the distant walls, and over every one of the ‘elephants’. They did look like elephants, turning and twisting their trunks to get at the things on the assembly-lines, twisting back to pick up screws or paint-sprayers or sandpaper or clothes. A hundred green elephants? A thousand? He couldn’t tell, not without strolling down the yellow painted road and counting – and for the moment, he preferred to stay where he was, listening.

There were no more recorded voices, only a bouncy kind of music from invisible violins. While Roderick stood transfixed, they finished ‘Sunshine Balloon’ and began ‘Oh, You Beautiful Doll’. Just in front of him, a row of beautiful dolls’ heads were being crowned with hair: a blonde, a brunette, a redhead, a blonde, a brunette … he decided to follow the dames.

After the hair-elephant came the elephant eye-lash curler, a twist of the trunk, while another trunk sorted out a pair of matching earrings and prepared to clamp them on, another with a fine brush was poised to finish the make-up (sprayed on earlier) before the heads reached the test station where trunks probed with electrodes to raise a smile, a blink, a wink. Next came a junction where a gang of assembly Dumbos worked furiously with bolts, pliers, soldering irons, fixing each head to an armless grey torso. Following the new line he watched shapely arms appear (each hand holding its nails apart to dry; left wrists receiving watches) to be fastened on, before the entire assembly was bolted firmly to a metal frame bolted in turn to one side of a coffin-sized formica box then equipped with fake drawer-handles and finally (just as the torso-women were being stitched into their clothes) a sign:
RECEPTIONIST
.

Roderick watched a final test, a torso-woman lifting an
imaginary phone and saying, ‘I’ll
tell
him you’re
here,
Mr – was that Mendozo or Mendoza? I just
know
he’ll want to see you
right away –
oh, I’m
sorry,
he’s in conference … You can go
right
in, Mr – is it Dis
nee
or Dis
nay
? Thank you sir, and
you
have a nice day
too!’
On either side other tests were in progress. He watched a glossy cocktail waitress dressed in Victorian underwear, black stockings and garters, lower her empty tray to serve non-existent customers: ‘Now who had the Black Russian? And you’re the White Lady, right? Stinger for you.’ Beyond her a torso-man in white seemed to be frying imaginary hamburgers: ‘Yeah okay that’s two with one without
and
sal, side fries
one
chicksand on white no mayo
one
poach on wholewheat no butter I got all that.’ Next a dealer found a possible straight among the invisible cards upon the green baize table to which he was permanently attached, while a masseuse writhed and groaned and told the air it was one hell of a terrific lover. Elsewhere a clown juggled; a bear wearing a grin and a mortarboard recited the multiplication tables; a bearded analyst leaned back in the chair to which he was bolted, looked at the ceiling and said, ‘Suppose we talk a little more about your father …’; a brown lifeguard murmured, ‘Interesting girl like you needs a few swimming lessons’; a black shoeshine boy practised eye-rolls; and a man with an oil-can in his hand did nothing at all during the time it took Roderick to recognize him as Pa.

‘… dedicated machines so far, but wait!’ said Mr Kratt. ‘Wait. Bub, I mean Doc, by the time we’re ready to roll on this leisure centre of yours, we figure to have a set of good all-purpose boys and girls that’ll wipe the floor with anything the competition can come up with. Like suppose you find one day you got too many girls in the sauna and not enough caddies, you just switch ’em right over – like that! – change of tapes takes maybe a minute apiece – and away they go.’

‘Sounds good, sounds good.’ Dr Welby allowed his glasses to slip even further down his nose, which had reddened perceptibly. ‘But what about special skills … mechanisms … I mean a sauna doll has to …’

‘But that’s the point, see, all our boys and girls are gonna have everything. Everything, see? Close as we can get to the real article, and that is pretty goddamn
close.
You tell him, Ben.’

Ben stopped doodling cube-headed creatures with stick arms and legs. He sat up. ‘Well, you see we’re planning to bring a former colleague of mine into the R&D division. This is a guy who I guess knows more than anybody in the
world
about official – artificial intelligence. This guy is the, the
Edison of robots.
Like the Wizard of Menlo Park himself, he mainly works alone –’

‘Wizard of who?’ Dr Welby reached once more for the decanter. ‘Look if this feller is so important, why don’t you have him already?’

‘He’s sick, he’s in the hospital. You know how some of these highly-strung geniuses are,’ Ben began. ‘Nervous –’

‘You mean he’s nuts?’

Mr Kratt grinned. ‘Don’t worry, Doc, he can deliver the goods. Just needs a little rest and he’ll be good as new. I figure six months and we’ll have him ready to roll, right Ben?’

‘Right. And –’

‘Look all this sounds fine, fine, your company goes steaming ahead only what’s in it for me?’

‘Just getting to that Doc.’ Kratt flipped open a portfolio. ‘Putting it on that basis, we propose a straight stock trade, share for share, for forty-nine per cent of your firm. We bear all the costs of installation and maintenance of course, you still keep control of your operation and get a piece of our action.
And
you get a seat on our board, with the usual salary and options.’