The Complete Roderick (41 page)

‘Will you join me?’ ‘Why, are you coming apart?’ But on the astral plane nothing ever came apart, nothing was lost. Death was just people getting temporarily misplaced – open the right drawer and there they are! Yes Ma half-believed that stuff, with all the paradoxes: life is death, all is one, up is down, yes means no. If you don’t know whether you’re a man dreaming you’re a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming you’re a man, swat the butterfly. For all is one and one is nothing, and you can be the person who killed the person who killed the person who …

Lightning flickered somewhere, and Roderick saw Ma standing by the lake, stooping to pick up something. She seemed to be wearing some kind of cone on her head. Of course! If up was down and day was night, good was evil and this was witchcraft!

He found it hard to believe even when she’d built the fire and begun the incantation: ‘Alcatraz! Mulligatawn! Tapeworm! …’

What a let-down. He’d seen hundreds of old witch movies on TV, every single one a let-down. Probably now she was going to strip off her clothes and dance around the fire, and then screw some giant goat out of the sky or something, then there’d be plenty of thunder and lightning, screaming and flames and that would be that.

A scratchy old record started up: The Bow-wow Symphony. Ma left the circle of firelight, and he could hear her calling down the beach: ‘Hurry up, the rain’s starting …’

Suddenly there was a distant bang, a flash of blue flame, and the unmistakable clatter of Patent Applied For. Then the rain came down and Roderick could no longer be sure what he saw or heard, an electric arc or was it lightning, a man’s scream or was it the scratchy record, Ma shouting not to forget the candy while lightning danced on six stovepipe hats while Roderick tried to run for the shelter of the trees but crashed into another running figure as blinding lightning struck again and he fell into perfect darkness.

‘… a bad dream?’ said Ma. ‘Your batteries must be low …’

‘Sure, from the long walk. But how did I get home?’

She pretended not to hear. ‘Feel like going to school today?’

‘And what was Cliff doing out there with his Patent Applied For?’

‘… all a bad dream, son.’

Roderick held up a scrap of wet cloth. ‘Yeah but when I woke up I found this in my fist, did I dream this? Look there’s writing on it.’

‘Did I dream this?’

‘Well yes, in a way. I do believe this is a genuine
apport,
son.’

‘Apport?’

‘A psychic deposit of physical evidence. It was your dream that made it appear, made it pass right through the walls of your room!’

‘Looks familiar only –’

She snatched it away. ‘I’ll just mail it right off to the Society for Psychical Research, they’ll be
very
interested.’

‘But Ma,
I’m
interested, I –’

‘Why don’t you stay in bed this morning, school can wait. Oh, and you could work on that psychic message your Pa sent you through the planchette.’

He took her advice, if only to keep an eye on her. Besides, the cipher – if it was a cipher – might hold some indirect clue to Ma’s
– madness? He smoothed it out on the bedclothes and opened his notebook to a clean page.

At noon, when he closed the notebook, there were no more clean pages, and no solution. His best so far was a single line:

hpmoy hpoq hw dwnp noh

threw then to gosh set

‘Take a look at this.’ One liver-spotted hand passed the binoculars to another.

It was just possible to make out a tiny group of people standing outside the fence with signs.

‘What do they want?’

‘Would you believe they’re Luddites?’

‘No I would not. Is that what security –?’

‘Precisely. Haven’t you seen the book? By this guy, what’s his name now, Hank Dinks, called
Ludd Be Praised,
turning into quite a cult item there.’

‘Ha ha, is it now? Think my daughter’s reading it now that you mention … but what’s the premiss?’

‘Crank stuff. Back to Nature, more or less, but with the emphasis on ol’ devil computer. Might know they’d get around to us – though I’m surprised they can’t muster more people for such an obviously populist cause. Can’t be twenty souls out there.’

‘The sun, you forget the sun. And we are a good way from Phoenix. If it weren’t for the sun, you know, I’d be tempted to stroll out and have a chat with them.’

‘Ah but security’s against it. Usual overcaution. I swear, sometimes I think they’d like to put all of us in Leo’s tank, seal us off from the rude world … oh wouldn’t they all be upset out there if they knew about Leo!’

‘Ha ha, wouldn’t they … be more like twenty thousand out there then, eh? But what, ah, what do they actually accuse us of doing? Running a clandestine computer?’

‘Better than that! Listen, they think we’re running robots! Us!’

After a few dry chuckles and coughs, the binoculars changed hands again. ‘Still, too bad they associate us with robots in any way. I don’t like it.’

‘Nobody likes it. The Agency certainly doesn’t like it. But …’

‘These little movements blow over, I suppose.’

‘Precisely. Precisely. Even if they don’t, we might …’

‘Use them? Exactly. Exactly. By the way, how’s that Nebraska business shaping up?’

‘No problem, as our Agency friends like to say. We have a clear set of pictures of the subject, front and profile, we have a voice print, we know exactly where to find him.’

‘Is he passing?’

‘More or less. At the moment he’s trying to pass as a black man.’

‘Fascinating! I wonder if we couldn’t study him for a while before –?’

‘Too risky, look what happened to our last surveillance team, that highly unlikely “accident”. Point oh oh oh oh seven at best, makes you wonder … No in fact I’ve already ordered the destruction for this evening.’

‘Oh well. Fun while it lasted. Better than this Kratt Industries business, that’s just boring. Pinball machines, talking gingerbread, automated concubines – low-grade stuff, all of it.’

‘Precisely what we have to encourage, my friend. Our job, after all, is to –’

‘I know, I know. To keep the world on the graph paper. Only sometimes don’t you feel, just a little like letting it, letting it slip?’

But the other elder was squinting through the glasses again. ‘I can just make out a sign – Oh listen to this!
STOP ROBOTS. STOP POLLUTING THOUGHT WAVES
.’

‘Fascinating!’

‘Fixed up like a minstrel today, are we? Well never mind, have your last little joke, because this is your last day. Here.’ Sister Filomena shoved a piece of paper at him.

‘What’s this, Sister, I – listen I –’

‘Walking papers,
Mister
Wood, walking papers. Your diploma. You are now officially graduated, so goodbye.’ She went back into her office and closed the door.

A.M.O.G.

Know all Men by these presents that

RODERICK WOOD

having satisfactorily completed the Eighth Grape at

HOLY THINITY SCHOOL

in the Year of Our Lord McM____

is hereby awarded this

OIPLOMA OF SCHOLASTIC ACHIEVEMENT

(signed) Sr. M. Filomena, Principal

PRINTED IN TAIWAN

Father O’Bride put his head in at the door, without removing his fishing hat. ‘Hiya Sister, didn’t I see a new pupil come along here just now?’

‘New pupil?’

‘Yeah yeah, I was in my office cutting up one of Father Warren’s old cassocks, boy you wouldn’t believe how many relics you can get out of eleven yards of material, boy I got a hundred and fifty thousand little pieces so far not even half done I mean even at a buck apiece we can’t go wrong there, bandages for five –
yeah I meant to ask you, any sign of that blood transfusion unit I ordered?’

‘What? Blood, Father, is Father Warren –?’

‘No prob, no sweat, just forgot to tell you I ordered this neat little unit, figured we could cycle a few pints right through him put it in these little plastic phials one drop each and – well don’t look at me like that, Sister, criminy! Not as if we’re taking anything away from him, he’ll still have blood of his own only we add a pint and drain off a – look, people hear about a stigmata first darn thing they want is a drop of the precious – okay never mind! Just tell me where I can contact this kid, one with the muscles. The natural.’

‘Natural? Father I don’t think –’

‘Natural, natural athlete, heck all these boogie kids are naturals. Point is this guy could make all the difference on the gridiron next season against St Larry’s – damn it I mean darn it, where is he?’

‘You must mean Roderick but he –’

‘Yeah
Robert, where’s Robert?’

She waved, almost blessing him. ‘Gone, Father. Home or –’

‘Gone? Gone?’ He vanished and she could hear him bawling in the hallway:

‘
ROBERT
! Hey Robert, wait up!’

… his feet flapping down the stairs and hitting that miraculously shiny little patch of floor at the bottom … then a cry … a thump …

Then blessed silence.

‘Somebody oughta teach that nigger a lesson, knocking Father Owhatsit down the stairs like that, leaving him all paralysed from the waist up was it? Or down? Just who does this Doc Sam think he …’

‘Oh it wasn’t him, it was that other nigger one that’s been living in sin with Ma Wood, Violetta saw them … and anyway a man that wears a skirt and don’t like girls …’

‘Jake told me the Wood boy’s gone black, didn’t he used to be paralysed himself? Bobby Wood, used to be so paralysed they had to wheel him around in a little tank or …’

‘Jake’ll say anything, told me the kid was a two-headed robot,
but listen before Doreen gets me under that drier and I can’t hear a thing, guess who asked Doc Sam to
examine
her the other day?’

‘Robots, shit we got enough damn robots out at the factory, Jap robots, German robots, reckon the machines is taking over all right, makes you wonder who won the damn war…’

‘Makes you wonder if these here Lewdites ain’t got something there, least they know the difference between a man and a god-durned wheel, but listen, my old lady says some nigger robot stuck a knife in Father O’Bride …’

‘Bob Wood? Yeah I heard that, same asshole knifed Father Warren a few months back ain’t it? Sure it is, hell they get away with murder these days … Not that I like Catlicks, only you let a bunch wild niggers run around with knives …’

‘Machines is taking over, hell they even got machines’ lib, no shit, my wife’s going to the Ladies’ Guild to hear one of ’em, makes you wonder who won … three beers here, Charlie?’

‘Trouble-maker from way back, remember when he was at the public school here, wrecked the damn computer, just went berserk and wrecked …’

‘Somebody oughta wreck him, you know? Somebody oughta teach that little shit a lesson.’

‘I blame his home background I mean what do you expect? I think I liked the other ones better dear, the uh pink frames with rhinestones? What do you expect? Ma and Pa Wood aren’t exactly, well I mean they’re communists for one thing, atheistic communists, dressing that kid of theirs up in that porno get-up for the Christmas play, no wonder he scared poor old Sister Martha to death … only what do you expect, anybody sets a big
toilet
out in their yard, health hazard the sheriff had to break it up, we saw the whole thing! And Herb says
she
oughta be locked up. Do you think the rhinestones are too …?’

‘Remember how she tried to poison Jake Mcllvaney? Cookies with ground glass and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if she was behind this gingerbread …’

‘Oh she was, didn’t you know? They had a big police raid there, the FBI took away all her ginger to test for poison too bad they didn’t take her away at the same …’

‘And she’s been playing house with a black man ever since poor Pa, probably poisoned him too! And she’s a witch, everybody knows …’

‘Well the boy always was a trouble-maker, ask anybody, didn’t his teacher Miz Beek commit sui …?’