The Complete Roderick (65 page)

Ben Franklin turned from the phone to his yellow notebook, muttering. ‘No telling what kind of cretins they get to work over there, can’t even work out how to call somebody to the phone.’

‘You said it, buddy,’ said the agent.

Ben twitched the curtain closed and scribbled alone until he slept, waking with a shout in the darkness, soaking wet and shivering as he was again waking in the morning if it was morning, to find himself muttering, ‘Hexcellent, a most hexcellent dancer, your servant ladies and gentlemen …’ And plunged back into that sea of sleep out of which he always seemed to emerge dripping and chilled on the shore of what could hardly be called consciousness.

He was aware of changes: the man with the bandaged head and the self-pitying face in the next bed vanished to be replaced by a salesman of religious novelties who had a noisy TV; he in turn gave way to an old man who kept his teeth in a glass; one morning he was gone but the teeth remained.

An expert on tropical diseases came to look at Ben.

‘Malaria,’ he said. ‘Where have you been travelling?’

‘Only to Taipin.’

‘Try again, there’s no malaria in Taipin. No mosquitoes.’

But they treated him for malaria and he began to improve; one day he sat up and tried to read his notes:

Tolstoi’s ‘Our body is a machine for living’ as a recipe for

French stone. Stones of Deucalion? J. Baptist says God can raise
stones up children to Abraham, a pun on children (banim) & stones (abanim) – why always stones or clay in legends as though mineral future reality foreseen, cybern. Kids out of sand?

If we made them would they purge us of the terrible disease of being human?

Can a mind be built from within, by one thought?

‘Everything must be like something, so what is this like?’ – Forster?

Another noisy TV went on, and Ben found himself jerked out of naps by news programmes:

‘…
where Machines Lib demonstrators broke into the Digital Love computer dating agency and deprogrammed the computer. Two were arrested, and now Digital Love says it will sue for deprivation of data. Here’s Del Gren on the spot with an up-to-the-minute report. Del?’

The screen showed a ragged line of people in parkas, carrying signs: THIS STORE DEGRADES MACHINES and NO MORE COMPUTER PIMPS. One marcher, a fairly old man with iced-up glasses, paused to shake a mittened fist at the camera. A microphone darted out towards him like a striking snake.

‘Thanks, Mel, these people have been picketing all day. Uh, what is it you’re protesting about, sir?’

‘Well it’s – what do you mean? Machines!’

‘Yes? Just what –?’

‘About the machines! About the unfair, the unfair –’

‘Thanks now if I can just get someone else in on this, you, ma’am?’

A plump woman whose face looked frostbitten came forward, waved her sign and said,
‘We’re against the exploitation of machines! Man if you look at this in the historical context of the last two hundred years it just makes you throw up! Just look how machines get a raw deal all down the line, all the dirty and degrading jobs like rolling steel and pulling trains, not even blacks or women ever had to pull trains.’

‘Yes well thank you this is Del –’

Someone shouted
‘Humanists Go Home!’
and others took up the chant.

‘– Del Gren returning you to Mel?’

‘… fortunate enough to have here in the studio the founder and guiding hand of Machines Lib, Miz Indica Dinks. Hi Indica, and welcome to Minnetonka. Can we get the ball rolling here by finding out just what Machines Lib is all about? What’s the bottom line here?’

‘Hi, Mel, I’m originally from Minnetonka and it’s great to be back. First off let me say that we’re not against people. Far from it! When machines are set free, people will be set free too. In my new book, plug, plug,
The Nuts and Bolts of Machines Lib,
I
explain just how that works out. By the way I’ll be autographing my book next Tuesday at the Vitanuova Shopping Piazza all day.’

‘Fascinating idea, Indica. But what kind of world would it be if all the machines could do what they wanted?’

‘A better world, Mel. A world where a lot of the pressure is off. Just look at now, at our light bills and repair bills and instalments, all the money we pour into just keeping our machines down. But once we ease up and set them free, all that pressure and tension just goes away! Once you stop owning a dishwasher, you can stop paying for it too. Machines Lib means people lib too – and, Mel, that’s what I think America is all about freedom!’

Her beauty pursued Ben. Damn it she looked no older than that day she’d walked out on him to take a job as a dancing taco all those years ago. He remembered her last speech: ‘Ben, I’ll never cut it hanging around a University, I need to fulfil myself. We just, we’re just too different, our worlds are poles apart.’

Now no one ever remembered his part in her life, the questions as now were always about her second husband:

‘Miz Dinks, Indica, how about your ex-husband Hank Dinks? Isn’t he founding a movement of his own? What do you think of his New Luddites?’

‘Yes, he has this little band of fanatics running around wrecking machines. I feel sorry for them, they’re just being self-destructive. To me, America is not about tearing down, it’s about building up. No, Hank and I are just too different. Our worlds are poles apart?

Ben’s phone made a faint sound and he answered it.

‘Mr Franklin? I have a call for you from Mr Kralt, will you hold?’

The perfectly-shaped nail and finger of Mrs McBabbitt pushed two buttons in succession. ‘I have Mr Franklin on the line for you.’

‘Cancel him, Connie, I’m gonna be tied up here a while with
Jud Mill.’ The stubby hand with its massive gold ring mounting a pinball pushed buttons to turn off the TV and close a wall panel over the screen, then moved to the cheap cigar smouldering in the ashtray.

‘Okay, bub, you’ve had a chance to look over our media figures, where did we go wrong? I don’t count the losses on K.T. Art Films, we budgeted those, writing off taxes on the equipment we managed to sell to Taktar Video our other production subsidiary, the one who’s dealing for cable leasing – I think we got all that under control. It’s our publishing interests that worry me, right from Katrat Books,
Folks
magazine and –’

‘Yes yes yes, well that’s what you hired me for, what media management consultancy is all about,’ said the other man. Leaning forward slightly so that the long striped wings of his shirt collar crackled, he peered down through his half-moon reading glasses at the open portfolio; he ran his finger down a column of figures.

‘Your timing could be better, with some of these properties you leave loose ends dangling. Take this
Politics of Pregnancy,
you should of tied up video cassette rights and cable royalties first thing, the author could just walk away with everything. Anyway you’re using it as a lead book and it’s not strong enough to sustain a real attack on the market, you need something better, a very strong item indeed like that psychic pigeon book.’

Kratt nodded. ‘We’ve had a lot of author trouble –’

‘That’s lesson number one: dump the author. When I package a property, I try to leave out the author, bring him in as the last element. Then I make damn sure he’s just hired to do a job, paid off and kissed off. Like with
Boy and Girl,
that was just an idea I came up with, me and Sol Alter were sitting around by the pool one day and I said: “How about a simple boy and girl story: some kinda tragedy?” and he said: “Good movie idea there: boy meets girl, girl goes blind and boy leaves her, he goes back but it’s too late, she’s already committed suicide.” (That was the uptown version, we also mapped out a downtown version where the girl gets eaten by her seeing-eye dog.) But anyway we interested Jerre Mice in starring, that enabled us to bootstrap a six-figure plus percentage movie deal, and with all that we had something to take to publishers, we landed a seven-figure paperback deal and
from there on had no problem getting all we wanted out of magazine serialization, hardcover, book club, foreign and cassette rights, direct cable specials, options for a TV series, syndicated comics, T-shirts, board games, colouring books and so on. Then we fixed the music and wrapped up those rights. And then and only then did we finally hire an author to hammer out the screenplay and book, the fictionalization. We paid him I think two grand and no comebacks.’

After a moment, Kratt cleared his throat. ‘That’s okay for generating properties, but what about existing items? You just saw this Indica Dinks promoting our book there on local TV, we been whistle-stopping her around the country for bookstore and media –’

‘I know but we need something, a handle for the public to grab her by – where’s her bio – now here it says she used to dance. Why not dress her up as a robot and have her do a tap routine I know it sounds dumb but like Barnum said, nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the public – no wait! Wait! She used to be married to Hank Dinks, now he is out whistle-stopping a book of his own, am I wrong? Yes, listen, why shouldn’t they bump into each other maybe signing copies at the same bookstore? A reconciliation, sure: they get married again, right there in the bookstore, give the minister copies of their two books signed right there – this is almost good enough for the six o’clock news.’

‘Sounds fine, only what if they hate each other’s guts?’

‘So what, they play ball with us or they lose out on the cocreative book we’ll have written in their names, all the other stuff we could cut them in on, unbelievable deals we could pull together. We could build them in
Folks
magazine, goes out to a million supermarket customers with “Together again – for Keeps!” and pictures of the home, kids, pets, leisure equipment – no, okay, maybe they won’t remarry. Let ’em meet anyway, maybe fight in public, we can go that way too.’

The media management consultant sat back and reached for the phone. ‘Let me just contact Hank’s publisher, that’s Fishfold and Tove, let me just sound them out, they could divert his tour so it just runs into hers, kinda accidental-like. We don’t tell the Dinkses.’

‘You think that’s a good idea, not telling them?’

‘Bound to strike some kinda sparks. Now you just let me pull something together, get it blended and orchestrate a meaningful deal …’

His finger went for a button.

‘Von Neumann, playing Kuratowski to Frege’s Wiener, offered a different identification’

W.V. Quine,
Word & Object

Luke was wearing saffron: Hat, overcoat, suit, shirt and tie, shoes, attache case and a visible inch of sock were all part of the saffron glow.

‘Can’t help it, Rickwood, it’s what we had to wear all the time; probably why they called us the Saffron Peril. Only let me tell you, we were the only ones in danger, when those lunatic Luddites showed up and –’

‘Okay, fine, but why did we have to meet way out here in a place like this? The Vitanuova Shopping Piazza may be a terrific place and the chief jewel in Minnetonka’s crown and all, but I mean it’s miles from civilization.’

The two friends sat on a park bench near a fountain which, according to a brochure, could form over fifty million different beautiful patterns without repeating itself. Like everything else of importance here, it was indoors, for the entire great shopping complex was, enclosed under geodesic domes, as if it were a moon base.

‘And don’t tell me Mission Control ordered us here,’ Roderick added.

‘Nope, my idea. We are going to a meeting, important meeting.’

‘Not your Saffron Peril?’

‘I’m all through with them – or they’re through with me. I only have to wear this stuff because my luggage with my other stuff was delayed at the airport. Had to leave Tibet in kind of a hurry, Rickwood. Now I’m through with meditation in the Himalayas, I mean who needs it?’

Roderick watched the fountain repeat itself. ‘But I thought
you
did.’

‘Okay okay, laugh, I deserve it. It’s just, the whole thing turned out to be more of a commercial venture than I figured. See I expected to maybe shave my head and sit down with the monks to some meditation and glass beads, only it wasn’t like that at all. I mean they got computerized prayer-wheels, that was the first shock. And all they really do is deal in different stock markets and talk about exchange rates and commodity prices, all day while the old prayer-wheels go on grinding away all by themselves. I felt kind of uneasy about it, but I suppressed it. I said to myself, “Give it a chance, Draeger, there might be some deeper meaning in all of this. The Master must know what he’s doing.” So I hung on.

‘The Master was a little old dried-up-looking man, he always looked ready to say something important. He went off on these trips to Taipin, somebody said, to plant the seed of consciousness. But then somebody else said he just went to gamble, that he was robbing the treasury. Who could believe a thing like that? Especially when our Master seemed so doggoned
wise,
I mean he never had to say anything to anybody – I don’t think I ever heard him speak – but you still knew
he knew everything.

‘Then the police showed up and took our Master away. They were extraditing him to Taipin, to stand trial for murder. They said he’d killed some Chinese guy in a quarrel over a poker game.’

Roderick stared through the changing fountain to where a sign was going up. ‘TODAY. **DICA **NKS … *N*ICA D**KS … IN*IC* DIN** …’

‘Sure we were shaken a little. Some people said it was all over, they wanted to go home. But I persuaded them to hang on – maybe it was only a test of our faith and loyalty, I said.

‘Just as I was saying that, the Luddites broke in and smashed the whole place up. The stock quotation machines, the computers, the prayer-wheels, everything. Worst of it was they took out the phone and telex, left us stranded.