The Complete Roderick (83 page)

Roderick sat down with a group of reporters: tired-looking men and women in waterproof coats, some with aerials sticking up from the backs of their necks, some fiddling with cameras or pocket memo machines, some sleeping.

‘You covering this too?’ someone said, and when Roderick did not reply, went on: ‘I drew the short straw, I wanted to cover that management consultant mass murder story, sounds like some juicy stuff there, cops say the guy’s been doing it for years, cutting women’s legs off.’

‘Juicy stuff? Is that what you call it?’

‘Well sure, easy to get a handle on a story like that, you got sex, big business, police incompetence, a sadistic fiend, that’s all prime stuff, you automatically get first or second slot in the six o’clock. Whereas this Moxon takeover is not exactly a surprise, is it?’

‘Takeover?’ said Roderick, surprised.

‘I mean it should rate a paragraph on about page 733 of the financial news teletext; nobody cares who runs big corporations nowadays, or who owns them, or why. I mean it’s slightly less interesting than say the intrigues of Ruritanian internal politics; I really hate this financial desk job.’

‘Don’t underrate it, kid,’ said an older reporter, waking up. ‘You start believing it’s worthless, pretty soon everybody else
believes it’s worthless. Pretty soon companies start asking themselves why they should go on throwing champagne press receptions, whole system could melt down under us, leave nothing but real news to report.’

They stared out through the glass wall at real rain splashing on the perfectly square acre of concrete that separated the KUR Tower from real sidewalks and streets.

‘Okay, it’s a real meaningful job. So where’s the champagne?’

Someone adjusted his camera by focusing on the receptionist, behind her violet desk. Today she had taken the trouble to appear in violet hair, nails and lipstick, and now she smiled and turned so that the violet telephone receiver did not hide her smile. ‘Good morning, KUR Innernational … I can give you the press office … Ginny, did you
see
him yesterday? No
him,
when the ambulance men rolled him away right by my desk, he had on this oxygen mask and I mean he looked so helpless, even his eyebrows, and when you think how we all used to be so scared of him, he never even would say good morning or have a nice, if he even noticed you it was only to make some sarcastic remark about how he ought to replace you with a Roberta Receptionist machine, and now there he was. There he was, so helpless, helpless as a, a dog. Just a sec, Good morning, KUR Innernational …’

‘Besides,’ said the older reporter, ‘a conglomerate like this is interesting for its own sake. It’s like an incredibly complicated puppet – you never know where all the strings lead until you pull them and see what jumps. And something like this – Kratt keeling over like that during the negotiations – it’s like the puppeteer dropping all the strings. Now we’ll see how good Moxon is at picking them up and sorting them out.’

‘Yeah, but he’s bringing in a lot of strings of his own,’ said the younger. ‘I heard there’s gonna be a complete changeover of personnel, with –’

‘Well, there he is, let’s ask him.’

There was a stampede past the reception desk to where Everett Moxon, flanked by press aides, waited to greet them.

‘Mr Moxon, is it true you seized the moment to pull the takeover, because Kratt, who always opposed you, was safely out of the way?’

‘Everett, look this way?’

‘Mr Moxon, would you say KUR is shaky, with some of its subsidiaries –?’

‘What kind of changes do you envision for –?’

Moxon grinned Presidentially. ‘Boys and girls, one at a time, please. I thought we might go up to the penthouse and do this over a few glasses of champagne, okay? But I’ll just say now that Mr Kratt and I may have had a few minor disagreements, but we always saw eye to eye on all major decisions about the future of KUR. And when he recovers, he knows he can go on as chairman of the board as long as he likes. As you all know, the takeover has been in the cards for a long time. We like KUR, and KUR can use our capital. But let me say, let me just say that there is not going to be any asset-stripping, the Moxon Corporation is not an asset-stripping operation. Naturally we’ll have to look over the whole basket of apples and get rid of any bad ones, but only to protect the rest. Anyone here like champagne?’

‘What I’d like even more, Mr Moxon, is to know what are your plans for the KUR banking subsidiary, with General Fleisch –’

Still clamouring questions, they packed into elevators and disappeared. The receptionist said, ‘Ginny, have you seen him? Not him,
him,
Mr Moxon. Not bad looking only his head is kinda small, just a sec. Good morning, KUR Inner –, oh hello Dr Hare, are you coming in today because a Dr D’Earth called a few times. Oh and there’s a Mr Roderick Wood waiting to see somebody, who should I, to whom should he – never mind, he’s gone …’

Upstairs Everett Moxon walked around holding a glass of champagne and smiling for five minutes before ducking out to his office.

His secretaries, Ann and Andy, were trying to clean the place. Ann held an ashtray containing a chewed cigar stub; Andy was dusting.

‘Sorry, sir. KUR janitors are on strike,’ said Andy.

Ann sighed. ‘Something about automated cleaning machines in some subsidiary called Slumbertite.’

‘Wonderful timing.’ He looked around. ‘Is that interior decorator here? Send him in.’

Ann hesitated. ‘There are a lot of people waiting, sir. Jud Mill and people from Katrat, from Datajoy, from T-Track Records
and Mistah Kurtz Eating Houses. And there’s even a delegation from Kratt Brothers Midway Shows.’

‘That’s right,’ Andy snickered. ‘They look like the cast of
Guys and Dolls,
I’ve never seen so many sharp sideburns and black shirts with white ties.’

‘Okay. Okay. Send Jud in first, and tell the decorator he can make measurements or look around and get inspiration but he has to keep out of the way. Datajoy? What do we own called Datajoy?’

Ann and Andy exchanged looks. Andy said, ‘Well, it’s sort of a combined clinic and pleasure ranch –’

‘Never mind how it’s marketed, what
is
it?’

Ann said, ‘They implant electrodes in the customers’ heads, to stimulate their pleasure centres. It’s a leasing arrangement; as long as they keep up the payments they stay turned on. If they miss a payment –’

‘The electrode gets ripped out,’ Andy said. ‘One of Kratt’s more disgusting ideas.’

‘Disgusting, yes.’ Moxon’s phone rang. He sat on the desk and reached for it. ‘Still, if we combined it with Moxon Retirement Systems … Hello, Moxon … What is it, Francine, I’ve got people to see … Jough Braun, what does he, yes all right, all right we’ll talk about it.’

Jud Mill was a distinguished-looking man of no particular age or sex. He began spreading folders on the desk and peering at them through half-moon reading glasses. ‘I may as well admit we had a few problems, Mr Moxon, with this direct editing scheme. When Mr Kratt brought me in as a media management consultant, I told him I foresaw problems with authors. Sure enough, everything worked well enough with the bookstore chains, the market survey people, the editorial – but the authors had problems. Authors always screw up a package.’

‘What happened? Direct editing?’

‘It works like this: the author writes directly on to a computer. This is linked up to leading bookstore chains, to their sales computers, and to prose analysis programs. The idea was to give the author instant feedback; as soon as he pecks out a few words, the computer grinds it through and tells him how good it is.’

‘How good?’

‘For his sales. By comparing sentences with sentences in his earlier books, and up-to-the-minute sales records, it can help him shape his prose
as he writes.’

‘But it went wrong?’

‘In a sense. We had this leading Katrat Books author parked at his tax-haven home down in Nassau, hammering out his book on our DE system, when evidently he developed some kind of block. So to keep up his quota, he started, well, plagiarizing his own previous books. Naturally the computer rated this as highly saleable stuff, and I am afraid it went into production. See, the computer also sets type and – well in fact,
The Hills Afar
is a word-for-word copy of
Red Situation,
thirty million copies went out.’

‘Jesus. Could be sued by thirty million customers.’

‘No, well oddly enough, it’s selling very well and so far nobody seems to notice. The bookstore figures show we could even reprint.’ He opened another folder and sat back, causing the striped collar of his shirt to crackle. ‘That’s not important now. What I really wanted to do was launch a more foolproof scheme, total computer authorship.’

Moxon looked surprised. ‘But I thought –’

‘Computers weren’t ready? Not to produce works of “lasting literary significance”, no, but to write
big bucks books,
yes. Naturally we keep the authorship under wraps, create a persona using a photo of a model, a fake bio – even, if necessary, an actor to appear on TV. I’ve talked it over with Mel Zell at –’

‘Wait a minute, hold on there. I’m not at all sure about leaving out the human touch like that, the author is very –’

‘The author is one big problem for everybody,’ said Mill ‘When you’re trying to orchestrate a big, complex deal, bringing together all the elements of the package each in the right quantity at the right time, the author just gets in the way. When I architected a certain big property a few years ago with Sol Alter, we started with a one-line idea. Then we got a big-name star interested in appearing in a movie, that enabled us to bootstrap a six-figure plus movie deal, and with all that we had something to take to the publishers. We landed a seven-figure paperback deal and from there on had no problem getting all we wanted out of magazine serialization, 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 hack out the screenplay and book, the fictionalization. We paid him I think two grand and no comebacks. That book, Mr Moxon, was
Boy and Girl.’

The interior decorator, who had been quietly walking around the office, now cleared his throat.

‘What is it?’

‘This apostle clock on the wall – it’ll have to go, Mr Moxon. For one thing, it’s an obvious fake.’

‘Fine, take it away.’ Moxon turned to Jud Mill, who was now collecting his folders. ‘I’d feel better about this computer author if I could see a sample of its work.’

‘What good would that do? Oh all right, here.’

Moxon took the piece of paper and studied it for a minute. ‘This some kind of joke, Jud? It’s not even spelled right, looks like some six-year-old batted this out during recess.’

‘No, well, our market research has been pretty darn thorough, and all the indications are that this is the coming thing, as the literacy level of the public keeps dropping, the demand is for more regressive stuff, fairy tales, basic English, short sentences …’

‘But Jesus, this is, well just listen: “Once upon a time there was a boy. He had a Ma and a Pa, and they all lived in a little white house on the edge of Somewhere. The boy’s name was Danny Sunshine, because he was allways smiling warm. Danny was only a poor boy, but he was honest and good, people could see that. One day he was wandering in the Somewhere Woods with his dog Lion. Lion was scratching in some leafs and he found an old rusty sword. ‘I’ll take it home and clean it up!’ Danny thought to himself. ‘Then I can read this funny writing on the blade, under the rust. Maybe if I keep this sword till I grow up, I can be a real nite!’ So He –” The public demands this?
This?’

Jud Mill shrugged. ‘That’s it. The competition already has something like this in the pipeline … space opera about robots, so I hear …’

‘Great, okay, don’t tell me any more, go ahead with a pilot project, I’ll bring it up at the board.’

As Jud left, Ann looked in. ‘General Fleischman’s on line three.’

‘Christ … Yes hello General, thank you, thanks … No of course we still want you on the board, no great changes just yet. we have our commitments after all … yes well I will, and you give mine to Gerda too, bye … Andy? Make a note, we’ve got to convene a special meeting of the board to fire General Fleischman before the old shithead loses another sixty million … oh and what’s this memo about some nut religion suing us. what’s the state of play there? Because I don’t see any KUR counter-suit. Not only that, things seem to be snarled up there, the lawyers acting for this Church of Plastic Jesus are also acting for us, that right? Honcho and Moonbrand are on KUR’s payroll, how can they represent, yes get our legal department to look into this, Swann, get Swann. And somebody come in here for dictation and bring the figures on Katrat Fun Foods …’

Behind him the decorator, having removed the wooden clock from the wall, was examining a dark stain now revealed: blood? Ink? Oil?

Roderick spent an hour in the hospitality suite, playing poker with the reporters, watching them drink champagne and stuff their pockets with xeroxed press releases. He couldn’t think what to do next, where to go, what to be.

Someone turned on the large-screen TV, and there was a man in dark glasses, handcuffed to two policemen, but sitting at a table before a microphone and smiling for the cameras.

‘Jeez,’ said one reporter. ‘I wish I was there.’

‘Shh,’ said another, turning up the volume. A cop spoke:

‘…
eakthrough came when I realized I’d seen this guy’s M.O. before. I had a hunch the Lucky Legs Killer and the Campus Ripper were one and the same – and when I tied in the Snowman Murder, I knew it was only a matter of time. Sooner or later our killer would make one mistake too many …’

‘But Chief, didn’t your prisoner turn himself in?’

‘Well yes, matter of fact he did, but we regard that as a publicity stunt. He hopes to create a favourable impression, to get his bail lowered.
’