The Complete Roderick

by John Sladek

  Instead, later that night, they sold him into slavery.

  VI

  Midnight. The apostle clock chimed, and its twelve tiny wooden figures paraded out of one door and in at the other. Faces half-gone with worm-holes.

  Mr Kratt lifted his snout and listened.

  ‘You must really like that old clock, huh Mr Kratt?’

  ‘Like it? I hate the goddamned thing. That’s what I keep it for, to remind me how much I hated my old man.’

  ‘I don’t get it. If you –’

  ‘You don’t have to get it, bub.’ He watched the wooden door shut behind the last apostle. ‘See, my old man had the damnedest collection of old clocks, cuckoos, grandfathers, you name it. Some real fancy ones, too: like this German school-house with these little enamel schoolboys that come outside, one at a time, they bend over, see, and get a beating from the old teacher. My old man spent his life fixing them up. His life and our money. And when he died he left us kids one broken-down clock apiece. All the rest went to a museum. Only good investment he ever made, and he gives it away.’

  The chimes finished, and there was no sound in the office trailer but the faint noises filtering in from outside: screams. Bells. The waltz-time murmur of the merry-go-round.

  Mr Kratt looked from the face of his digital watch to that of his young assistant, a pimply man with a handle-bar moustache.

  ‘You oughta shave that thing off, bub.’

  ‘Yes, Mr Kratt.’

  ‘No, I mean it. What do you want with all that hair on your face? Think it gives you confidence, some shit like that?’

  The young man fiddled with a company report. ‘Well, I just like it. Same as you and your ring there.’

  ‘Ha!’ Mr Kratt held it up, a heavy gold claw mounted with a steel ball. ‘That, my friend, is history. That’s a pinball from my first machine. Took me five years to build it up to an arcade, but in two more years I had three arcades and the carny. Never looked back after that.’ He checked his watch again. ‘Where the hell is this guy? How long does it take to go through a few waste-baskets?’

  ‘I thought you started out in Autosaunas, sir.’

  ‘No, that was later. What happened was, I started out with these call girls –’

  ‘You was into call girls?’

  ‘Not me, people I knew. And when they legalized them in California, see, they wanted to expand. So I came up with this idea, wiring the girls into a computer, hell, it cut their turnaround time by forty per cent. So then I thought, hell, why pay all these girls, I mean taxi fares and food and rent, skimming, it all comes off the top. All you need is something that looks and talks and moves like a girl – anyway that’s how Autosaunas got going. I was lucky there too, managed to sell off my interest just before all that litigation came down on them, not just the nuisance suits claiming clap and syph but the heavy stuff, middle-aged guy dies of heart failure and they try to prove electrocution, another guy files injury claim for amputa – well, you know how these ambulance chasers get their clients all worked up over some little nothing. Anyway that’s when I got the idea for Datajoy, all I got so far is a registered name and a process, but when the time’s right – look, we give that guy fifteen minutes more, then I’m splitting.’

  ‘These people you knew that was into call girls, who, was it the Mafia?’

  ‘There’s no such thing as the Mafia,’ said Mr Kratt quickly. ‘Anyway that business showed me what I’m doing, made me think it deep. See, I used to think I was in the amusement machine business, but that’s just part of the picture. See, what I’m really into is pleasure. The pleasure industry. Big difference there, changes the whole concept when you think about it. I mean now I could acquire a few other interests, stuff like T-Track Records, like K.T.Art Films, see these are all just departure points to the same place, they all come under one dome, pleasure. Nowadays whenever I plan anything, anything at all, I ask myself: “How is this gonna help give the most pleasure to the most people, at the highest return?” You’d be surprised how much crap that cuts out, having a simple business philosophy.’

  ‘Pleasure. Is that why you’re going into fun foods?’

  ‘That’s it, bub. Only as you know, it’s a highly-saturated market there right now, so I can only get in with a hell of a good angle.’ He glanced at his watch again. ‘Which is one reason I end up sitting here half the night waiting for that market research yak-head to bring me what I need. Is that him now?’

  The assistant answered the door. It was not the market researcher, only two old gipsies trying to sell a robot.

  ‘Tell ’em we got a robot, we got a show full of robots. Tell ’em I make the goddamn things – no wait, wait a minute. Let’s just see what they call a robot. We got time.’

  The two old people came in carrying a small, inhuman-looking device. ‘Good evening sir, we –’

  ‘Put it on the desk there and turn it on,’ said Kratt. ‘What’s it supposed to do? Tell fortunes?’

  The old woman kept working her multitude of wrinkles into a smile, or was it a leer? ‘If you want,’ she said. ‘Little Roderick here is a smart little cuss. He –’

  ‘That’s its name, Little Roderick?’

  ‘Roderick Wood,’ said the gadget, holding out a claw. ‘I –’

  The old man suddenly started dancing and whistling accompaniment. The entire trailer rocked with his tap routine.

  ‘What the hell here, shut up you!’ The assistant grabbed his arm, and might have hustled him out of the door if Kratt hadn’t spoken up. ‘Okay, okay, simmer down everybody, let’s see here.’ He took the claw and twisted it around, examining it. ‘Not bad work here, you know? Course he looks like shit, but we might fix – does he duke or what?’

  ‘Sure I do,’ said Roderick. ‘Gimmee your mitt, uh, sir.’

  Mr Kratt held out a bunch of thick fingers. He was thick all over, Roderick noticed, and wide: a wide head growing straight from the shoulders without pausing at any sort of neck. A wide face hanging from a thick black V of eyebrow. A wide nose, upturned to display its mole. The eyes were black and tiny and slightly crossed, as though ready to concentrate on that mole.

  Roderick was afraid of Mr Kratt. ‘Well maybe I –’

  ‘Come on, don’t stall.’

  ‘You, uh, will get married soon and have three children, first a boy, then a girl, then another girl.’

  ‘Ha! Go on.’

  ‘You’re uh having trouble with your, your back, back pains?’

  ‘What the hell is this thing shaking for? Think you got some problem with the motor circuits there. Yeah, go on.’

  ‘You want to make lots of money and, uh, you will. Some thing you hope for will come true soon and make you lots of money.’

  Kratt took his hand away to find a cheap cigar and unwrap it. ‘Not bad, not bad.’ He waited for the assistant to give him a light. ‘Yeah, but not so good, either. Kind of easy, all it does is go through a little table, right? Tells the first client he’s got back trouble, the next one he’s got foot trouble, the next one he’s got headaches –’

  ‘And so on,’ said Roderick. ‘That’s it, all right. And for the children see I always say three children, they can have them eight different ways …’

  ‘Talkative little gadget, ain’t it?’ Kratt grinned and reached out to pat Roderick’s dome. The robot flinched. ‘Well I might find some use for him, let’s say a hundred bucks.’

  ‘We was thinkin’ more like a grand,’ said the old woman.

  ‘A grand,’ said the old man.

  ‘A hundred. Cash. Look, I might have to do a lot of work on it, gotta change some a that direct programming, gotta maybe fix the motor circuits, gotta do something about its appearance ’

  ‘Five hundred?’ said the old man.

  ‘One-fifty, I’m generous too, this thing is probably hot.’

  Roderick made a whimpering sound when the gipsies left with the $200 Mr Kratt had meant to pay all along. Mr Kratt patted his head again, spilling ash over his face
. ‘Good little gadget, bub, realistic talker. Stick on a fifty-cent coin box, penny a second, all it’s gotta do is talk to people about their troubles.’

  Roderick said, ‘You mean 1 don’t have to tell fortunes? Cause I don’t like fortunes, dukes and stuff.’

  ‘Ha! Hear that, it doesn’t like hey, robot, what you got against duking?’

  ‘Well I mean making up all this stuff and then it comes true, how come they need me to make it up, how come nobody wants to tell their own fortunes, Pa says they could just put all their choices in a hat and draw one out it’s just as good. But I mean once I say it there it is, that’s the future.’

  ‘You think – let me get this straight – you think you can just go to a set of tables and just pick out a future for somebody and then it happens?’

  ‘Sure, because like Ma uses the I Ching all the time and she says it never fails, that’s just 64 choices, 64 ways the future can go.’ He hesitated. ‘Only Pa says it’s a lot of crap.’

  ‘Well this Pa is right, it’s only like a game, see, to make money. Now – well, about time.’

  The door opened and a one-armed stranger stumbled in. ‘Howdy. Sorry I took so long, only you know pickin’ locks with one hand ain’t exactly easy. Got jest what y’all wanted.’ He looked at Roderick. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Nothing, another piece of crap for the carnival, stick it in the corner, bub let Mr Smith use the desk for his presenta –’

  ‘O’Smith.’

  ‘Yeah, now let’s see here, what’s this, memos?’

  ‘Yep, outa executive waste-baskets, all highly confidentials, reckon half the board at Dipchip don’t know what’s goin’ down yet, looks like maybe kind of a private showdown between the research director Hare and the vice-president in charge of product development Hatlo –’

  ‘So I see. And the substance of it is over-expenditure, right? On this yak-head process, whoever heard of trying to coat microcircuit chips with peanut butter, let’s see that budget there, yeah, look at those costs. Memo my ass, I’d of fired the son of a bitch, brought a suit for fraud and malfeasance, haul his ass right through the courts if I had to, what’s –’

  ‘Well, you see they acquired this little old firm Bugleboy Foods assets all tied up in warehouses full of peanut butter substit – yep, there’s the picture, minority interest held by TTF Endeavours, a division of TTF Enterprises, took the shares in lieu of damages – some old litigation when they were a supermarket chain Tommy Tucker Foods, now of course they’re a holding company who – sorry, awful sorry, let me –’

  An avalanche of papers went to the floor. As O’Smith bent to get them his eyes met those of the little machine. It seemed to be trying to plug into a wall socket a length of dropcord running to some recess in its body. ‘Hello,’ it said.

  ‘Howdy doody, little feller. Need some help?’

  ‘Yes.’ Its voice was fainter, its eyes were going opaque.

  ‘Okay if I …?’ O’Smith asked Kratt, who nodded.

  ‘There you be.’ He straightened up and dumped papers on the desk. ‘Now where was we? Oh yeah, the divestiture …’

  RODINI ROBOT

  Palmist – Knows the Past – Tarot Reader

  Seer – Tells the Future – Scryer

  Mystic – Clairvoyant

  S3.oo (PER MINUTE) DONATION

  They had fixed him up with a fibreglass turban and a coinbox, bolted him to a slab of concrete, and installed him in a little tent just off the Midway. He was conscious only while customers kept feeding money into his coin-box, when he would begin nodding over the crystal, palm or Tarot cards and go into his routine.

  The routine consisted of a softening-up line (‘Basically you’re too generous. People use you. You need to be more selfish.’) and a series of questions masquerading as answers:

  ‘Right now you’re worried about somebody close to you … maybe yourself, a health problem … that’s right, and money is involved … money for an operation maybe …’

  ‘Right now you’re worried about somebody close to you … someone you live with … or work with … live with, yes, and there’s some decision, big decision you have to make … get the impression it’s money, something to do with … if not money then some kind of exchange, a relationship of give and take … you give more than you get … well things are going to straighten out soon, only there’ll be some hassle … a lot of trouble in fact … just have to fight this thing through to the other side …’

  ‘Right now you’re worried about somebody close to you … not so much now as in the future, a life partner, I see a strong influence coming in there soon … not too soon but soon, romance leading on to something permanent … and children, first a boy, then …’

  All week long, the customers exchanged their quarters and half-dollars for token words: love, marriage, divorce, family, money, career, lifelong ambition, relationship, social life, quarrel, not-working-out, obstacle, travel, children, promotion, home-life … At the end of the week, he had taken $21,938 and two lead slugs. Mr Kratt came to see him, trailing the assistant.

  ‘Damn good, little robot, you just keep it up, oh bub tell the maintenance boys to change his rate, five bucks a min – yeah and move him on to the Midway, real attraction there, best investment I ever – reminds me, any word yet on that lease-back arrangement with Bugleboy, the warehouses? No? Gotta complete that before we move on this computer edibles package, did I tell you we managed to bust the contract of this guy Hare, got him coming over to head up research in Katrat Fun Foods, he –’

  ‘Yes sir, but isn’t he the guy who –?’

  ‘Sure, well of course he’s only nominal head, don’t want research costs mounting up on us do we? No, real head is this new guy Franklin, real ideas man we managed to grab off some hayseed univers – but see with Hare we get his patented process for etching microcircuits right on peanut brittle, be right in there in the fun food vanguard, bub, few technical wrinkles to iron out first but I mean there we are with fifteen warehouses full of peanuts, get this moving sky’s the lim – what was that?’

  The little figure in the fibreglass turban had made a kind of moaning sound. Now he said, ‘I wanta go home.’

  Mr Kratt squatted down and inclined his big neckless head. ‘Aren’t you happy here, little robot? Look, you’re a big success, main attraction almost, everybody after you –’

  ‘Yeah, but I get nightmares.’

  ‘Ha! No, really?’ Kratt winked at his assistant. ‘Not something you ate, is it?’

  ‘I keep seeing their faces, the busted people.’

  ‘The, the what?’

  ‘The customers, the ones you call the marks. They’re all busted, Mr Kratt, sometimes even their faces are all busted up – I just wanta go home, that’s all.’

  ‘Well you can’t. So just get that idea out of your little memory chip, comprende? This is your new home, so you better get used to it.’ He stood up. ‘Come on, bub, can’t waste any more time yakking with a goddamn robot doesn’t even know how to be grateful, whole point in changing this show over to machines was we could get rid of all the whining and bullshit, pay’s not good enough, food’s not good enough, homesick, lovesick,’ he whirled on Roderick and stuck out a thick finger. ‘You know what your trouble is? You know?’

  ‘Basically I guess I’m too sympathetic, people use me. I need to be more hard-hearted …’

  ‘Come on, bub, wasting our time. Wanta nail down this Bugleboy deal, see, what we got now is a new concept in fun foods, two things kids really like are eating junk and playing with talk-back toys, put the two together and you get the edible talk-back, start maybe with a Gingerbread Boy, kid gets tired of yakking with it and – chomp! See? Get our boy Franklin right to work on that one just as soon …’

  Outside the tent stood a long line of silent people: young men with old faces, old women in burst shoes, old men in greasy hats, young women with pierced ears. At the front was a man holding a newspaper upside-down, apparently reading. He watche
d the two men leave, then slipped inside to feed Rodini the Lucky Robot with quarters. Now he was safe, now he could lower his paper to expose a face without a jaw.

  ‘Basically you’re …’

  Not all of them gave him nightmares, but what he couldn’t understand was why there should be any miserable marks at all among his four hundred daily visitors. Television had never prepared him for their stories of loneliness, horror, guilt, confusion, sickness, dread. Almost none of his visitors came close to televised truth: here were no pop stars, kindly country doctors, top fashion designers, executives with drink problems, zany flight attendants, sneering crooks, tough but fair cops, devoted night-nurses, cynical reporters, hell-for-leather Marines, dedicated scientists, big-hearted B-girls, ageing actors, cute orphans, smart lawyers – none of the ordinary decent network folks he’d come to know and almost like.

  Instead there was the man with no jaw, wondering if maybe he couldn’t get him a girl if only he had a real fast car with full accessories. The drunken wife-beater who wanted to quit (drinking and beating) but even more wanted to go way out West where it wouldn’t matter so much. The personable young man who kept sniffing his armpits and re-applying deodorant, and whose ambition was to steal a hydrogen bomb and drop it on some black people. The failed suicide who dreamed of a big win at Las Vegas …

  And the line shuffled past. The worst of it was the mechanical laughing clown, going night and day right in their faces, just the way it did in all the movies where somebody got killed by the merry-go-round or on top of the Ferris wheel or in the dark behind a tent that clown was always there with the chipped white paint on its face, rocking back and laughing in their faces …

  And Roderick dreamed of them.

  They were numbers, then they were letters, then words, then broken bits of voices. If he could only sort them out, all of them, into some kind of pattern … but it was always just beyond (beyond (beyond …