The Complete Roderick (73 page)

Roderick fitted his eyeball and lid. Then he phoned Shirl. ‘Mad? No, I … oh a couple of friends helped me. I’m fine … Well I thought maybe we could go to the movies … I’ll see.’ He turned on the TV and found the right teletext pages. ‘There’s a new flick at the Roxy,
The Box of Doc Caligari
… I don’t know but the ad says it cost two billion to make, it must be good … by the box office, then? Eight-thirty.’

‘Point nine two two, they said.’ Tortured curls of smoke from different pipes fought their way up to join the slice of smog near the ceiling, slipped off into the air system, and were dispersed elsewhere, outside. ‘Point nine two two my eye. What’s the point of having probability estimates that have no relation to probability? The fact is, they’ve tried for this Entity, once again, and once again they have failed.’

‘Well yes. the Roderick Entity is still operational, it looks like. This Agency team did have a lot of bad luck, one man mugged during a mission, then they lost contact with the Entity altogether, only just now picked up the trail again –’

‘Bad luck? Bad predictions, that’s what. Makes you wonder how they fake up these probability levels – point nine two two and they fail? They still fail?’

A thin shoulder shrugged. ‘How probable is probability?’

‘Oh don’t quote Pascal at me, not just now. I’ve been reviewing our entire history of attempts to finalize this Roderick Entity, and I have to say it’s not a very impressive record. To call these Agency men bungling nincompoops would be too generous. Or do you think someone’s running interference for the Entity?’

Dry hands shuffled dry paper. ‘No one we know. This man O’Smith turned up, a man who used to work for the Agency. We watched him, but all he’s doing is trying to grab the Entity for Kratt. That’s Kratt of KUR Industries.’

‘I don’t like that – can we make Kratt lose interest in this Entity? Can we make him fire O’Smith?’

‘Yes, KUR has got a Defense Department contract for novelty foods and porno cassettes – we could threaten, so to speak, premature withdrawal.’

‘Good. Get O’Smith fired today. I don’t want any complications when the Agency finalizes this Entity – if ever.’

‘What intrigues me is, someone manages to build an Entity smart enough to evade us for years like this, and all we can think of doing is go on trying to destroy it. Doesn’t say much for our creativity and flexibility of response, does it?’

‘You’ve been talking to Leo again, have you?’

‘All right yes. But for a brain floating around in a fishtank, Leo seems to make a lot of sense, sometimes. He thinks we’re just trying to cut off the Hydra’s heads; for every Entity we destroy two will grow back. Because there is some fundamental human need to build perfect copies of ourselves, to be God over somebody else … I think Leo’s got something there.’

‘Inevitability is an old argument, I’m not impressed by it. Anyway you forget that Leo does not think
we
are doing anything, he thinks that
if someone
set out to destroy Entities, they would fail. The entire world for Leo is a theoretical construct now, since he cannot sense it directly. You might say he is the Red King, and we are his dream, heh heh.’

The pipe smoke twisted and rose.

‘Wouldn’t it be funny if we were, heh heh.’

‘Heh heh. But it may interest you to know that whenever we have a vote on Entity destruction, whenever the entire board meets to vote on it, Leo gets a vote too.’

‘Does he?’

‘It may interest you to know further that he always votes
in favour
of destroying Entities.’

‘Does he, by God? In spite of what he says? I wonder why.’

‘An unconscious apprehension of the truth? Freud could probably explain it – unless Freud too is part of the Red King’s dream, heh heh.’

‘Heh.’

ORINOCO INSTITUTE INTERNAL MEMO

Class One Personnel

Only Memo Number 487d

This supersedes Memos 487a/b/c which are

cancelled effective this date.

Ongoing operations will be reclassified as follows:

Operation Manray..............................................................................

Operation Alabam..............................................................................

Operation Drood ............................................................... cancelled.

Operation Nepomuk ......................................................... no change.

Operation Ladysmith ........................................................ no change.

Operation Ixionize ............................................................ no change.

Operation Waco (3) .......................................................... no change.

Operation Whang ............................................................. no change.

Operation Roderick .................................................... now Priority I.

Operation Doll Souse .................................................. now Priority I.

Operation Duckplantain ............................................. now Priority II.

Roderick arrived at eight, wearing his suit (not worn since the Auks) with a new hat. He bought a newspaper, sat clown on a car fender, and watched the box office. Now and then a cluster of animated people would pass into the Roxy theatre, all of them obviously happy because they were with each other. To sit next to someone watching shadows on the screen, that was happiness. Even if the someone only wanted to take you apart. Eight-five.

A little man with grey five-o’clock shadow and orange teeth
came up to him and showed him a handful of pills. ‘How ya fixed, how ya feel? How ya fixed, how ya feel?’ he mumbled. ‘I got Isodorm, Ultracalm, Berserkopal, I got Tibipax and Nominal, I got Welldoze and Zerone, what I ain’t got I can get.’

‘Nothing, thanks.’

‘What does that mean, nothing? I can’t take nothing for an answer. I got Trancalept and Risibal, Serendex and Sedital, you name it.’

‘Beat it.’

This the man took for an answer. Eight-ten. Roderick opened his paper: a South American regime overthrown, yet another woman’s body found with the left leg cut off (‘Lucky Legs Killer Strikes again’), sales tax going up, somewhere in a small town a computer had rigged an election, Europe was in grave danger, and the time was eight-twelve.

A tired-looking man with red-rimmed eyes drifted over to ask if he had any Ultracalm or Somrepose, Zerone or Berserkopal.

‘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.’