by John Sladek
‘Alone, I hate being alone. I hated writing both my books, you know? What I really like is promotion. The TV appearances, radio phone-ins, I guess I must be part of the whole awful system. But shit, Jack, I’ve missed so many boats.’
‘Me too, me too. I was a pretty good parapsychologist, you know? I had it all working for me, then I just – it all blew up on me. And here I am in market forecasting, a kind of limbo – no real life in it.’
‘I never had any kids,’ she said. ‘Never wanted any, either. But I was just remembering, this robot kid-thing Hank and I had for a little while. It was Allbright who dumped it on us, some friend of his built it, I guess. We called it Roderick. Cute little thing, like a toy tank only with these big eyes – we were both just crazy about it.’ She sighed. ‘Maybe I should have had real kids. Or maybe I should have gone on with my dancing. I was only in an ad, but the potential was all there, you know?’
‘No life in it,’ he said. ‘Market forecasting, sometimes it’s like I don’t know, trying to make a dead pigeon fly.’
‘The potential was there, just like the 480 ova inside you, all those chances … sure I’ve got a little fame, a little money, I’m helping the cause of machine justice, only I still feel cheated.’
He bit the pipestem and drove on. ‘Tell you what. Next week I’m flying to the Middle East to help plan this big tampon campaign. You could come along.’
‘Where?’
‘Cairo. Might be fun – if you forget your sleeping pills.’
433 East 11th had once been a smoke-blackened building of no great distinction; now it was an undistinguished low pile of smoke-blackened stone and brick. One of the caryatids that had pretended to hold up ten storeys now lay full-length, relaxed and indeed disjointed like the backbone of a dinosaur. And on her head, where a palaeontologist might have sat contemplating evolution or Ozymandias, Mr Vitanuova now sat holding a sheaf of pay-cheques.
‘You guys may wonder why I’m paying you in person. It ain’t because of Christmas, I ain’t Sandy Claus. It’s because I wanna make sure each and everybody gets his and her cheque personal. Because this is the last. You’re all laid off as of now, and the company is going into liquidation, right after Christmas.’
Roderick noticed a general murmur of protest, so he added his voice to it. ‘What’s going on?’ he asked several times.
‘I’m real sorry, boys and girls. Our lawyers say we got to wind down the company, we’re bleeding to death from a whole buncha lawsuits. All from that goddamn mixup when we almost blew up 334 down the street there insteada 433. Now all of a sudden everybody wants to get something outa that.
‘See, we evicted all the tenants on behalf of the owner, so both tenants and owner are now suing there.’ He started counting on his gloved fingers. ‘And that doorman we had arrested is suing us too. Then some of the tenants was so pissed off at the eviction they trashed their places, busted pipes, took the floor out even. So the owner sues us for that.’ On the thumb, he said, ‘As if all that ain’t enough, a burglarizer climbs in one of these apartments one night, puts down his foot for a floor and falls thirty feet and breaks his back. So he sues us.’
‘A burglar? How can he sue?’ Roderick asked.
‘Don’t ask me, but that’s the bigggest suit of all. This here burglarizer, this Chauncey Bangfield, is claiming loss of earnings, see? Says he pulls down about half a million a year and he’s got maybe twenty years ahead of him. And he’s suing us in California so we ain’t got a chance.’
‘Did you say Chauncey Bangfield?’ Roderick’s jaw clicked open.
‘You know him or something?’
‘I went to school with him. I mean there can’t be two Chauncey Bangfields, can there? Well well, good old Chaunce. He was the school – well – bully.’
‘Well now he’s pushing me around.’ Mr Vitanuova laughed, coughed, look out his cigar and examined it.
‘Look, boss, why don’t I talk to him? If I told him it would ruin you, maybe he’d drop the suit.’
‘Nobody talks to him, I already tried. They got him over there at Mercy Hospital, and these fancy California lawyers won’t let anybody see him or even find out how sick he is. But I don’t know – you could try. You could try.’
He drove Roderick to the hospital in his Rolls-Royce, and talked all the way of destruction.
‘See, I was always in the garbage business, started out with just my brother and one truck. We built up a fleet and lotsa valuable contacts; when the city moved into garbage, we moved into incinerators. Real money was there. But I still didn’t see the big picture.
‘Then one day I met this broad who gave me some million-dollar advice. She said her ex-husband was into incineration too, dropping bombs. A pilot or an astronaut or some damn thing. Then she said, You’re not just in garbage, you’re in the destruction business, just like Luke. And it’s a wide-open, growing field.
‘Destruction, see, that was it! I had contacts in junk, so why not buy into junkyards? And ship salvage? And demolition? Hell, now I’m diversified all over the place, got interests in bottle banks, graveyards, even tried a little asset-stripping – but that was too abstract, I like to see real stuff falling apart. That’s why I acquired Hackme, and I’d really hate to see it go. So here we are, get in there, kid, and fight for us.’
As soon as Roderick asked for Mr Bangfield, the receptionist became very nervous. She pushed a button and then pretended to be looking up the room number. A stack of X-rays slipped to the floor.
‘Let me help,’ said Roderick. Before he could help, however, he was grabbed from behind and his arm twisted into a hammerlock.
‘Peace,’ said someone.
‘Well peace, fine, but – ouch – what is this?’
‘Routine, man, just hold still until we see if you’re clean.’ Hands patted and prodded him. ‘Okay, beautiful.’ His assailant released him and stepped back as Roderick turned. ‘We love you, man.’
‘Who are you two to love me?’ He saw that they were two remarkably healthy-looking men in late middle age, both dressed in the style of a bygone age.
The one who did all the talking wore a shirt printed with tiny flowers in fluorescent colours, white beachcomber trousers and rope sandals. His blond hair was twined with artificial flowers; around his neck were assorted strands of beads and a gold cowbell. He wore a CND button and (just visible inside his open flowing shirt) a Colt .45 automatic.
His partner, who did all the nodding, wore his dark hair streaked, long and fastened up with a white headband. His shirt was buckskin, dripping with bead and fringe, over Levis above moccasin boots. He favoured bearclaw necklaces and silver rings and bracelets mounted with turquoise. His button urged saving the whale, and his weapon of choice seemed to be a Smith & Wesson .38 police special. Both men were as muscled and tanned as possible, and looked as though they spent their days surfing and swilling vitamin cocktails.
‘Yeah hey we oughta introduce ourselfs, I’m Wade Moonbrand and this is like my partner Cass Honcho, we’re like Mr Bangfield’s attorneys. He doesn’t want to see anyone, man. Not in this shastri (that means incarnation). Right, Cass?’
Mr Honcho nodded. Wade Moonbrand spoke again.
‘So unless you like dig sitting around and waiting for like a million light years till he comes around again, forget it, hey? Man who needs trouble? We just want peace and love everywhere without guys like you coming in here to hassle our client, trying to lay some kinda guilt trip on him. There he is, fighting for his life in there, all purple and black aura, here come all you plastic guys to dump your bad karma on him, who needs it? Man like I never like like to get into pushing and authority games, I want everybody to be free, okay? Only your freedom has to stop were our client’s begins, so now we’ll just ask you as a favour, just split?’
Mr Honcho nodded agreement.
Roderick said, ‘I see your point. But maybe Mr Bangfield would want to see me if you told him I was here. I’m an old classmate of his, we went to grade
school together in Nebraska. I heard about his accident –’
‘You thought maybe there was some action you could horn in on, try the old school buddy scam and grab what’s going down, eh? We’re not that fucking dumb, man. Anyway listen old buddy Chauncey is like on the nod just now, he don’t want his rems messed up by no fakey school bud. So –’
But Mr Honcho stopped nodding here.
‘What’s the matter? Like Cass man, you can’t mean that? Okay sure I know, it wouldn’t do no harm just to let him see old Chauncey, see him and just walk away? Okay man, be free, have it your way. Everything’s cool. But if this turns into a bad trip then you shoot Plastic Man here and I’ll handle your defence.’
Finally, in the company of a yawning doctor and the two lawyers, Roderick was marched into Intensive Care Unit 9. The place was dim, the only bright areas being the face of the patient and, on the other side of the room, the chair where a nurse stopped filing her nails and looked up. ‘No change,’ she said.
The rest of the room was crowded with dim machines on wheels, machines that clicked and clucked, buzzed and bleeped, showed on their screens moving dots, flickering numbers, or wave forms moving like an endless parade of shark fins.
The doctor yawned. ‘Didn’t expect any change. Let’s get this visit over with.’
Roderick was gripped by both wrists and both arms, and marched to the bedside. He felt as though being asked to identify a corpse at a morgue.
‘That’s Chauncey all right. Of course he’s a lot older now. Er, would it be all right if I woke him?’
The doctor laughed in mid-yawn. ‘Make medical history if you did. Didn’t anybody clue you in? This guy has irreversible brain damage, he can’t wake up. Best thing we could do for him would be to turn off something vital and call in the heartsnatchers.’
Mr Moonbrand said, ‘The doc is exaggerating. Our client –’
‘Exaggerating? Your client would be out in Vitanuova Cemetery right now, only you two won’t let the family sign the release form. Because he’s worth twenty million alive and only eight dead, wasn’t that what you said?’
‘I really don’t need this, man. You make it sound like bounty hunters or something, dead or alive. I mean anyway, who’s to say what death is? Who are you to say if somebody’s dead, anyway? Like orthodox medicine, what do you know, all you know is machines and operations and chemotherapy, like you only treat the symptoms and not the whole holistic, who are you, anyway? Anyway what’s your beef, you guys are getting like a hundred grand a week out of this guaranteed, man life is beautiful all over!’
At his expansive gesture, one of Wade Moonbrand’s necklaces parted, its beads dropping in darkness to become a string of rattling sounds only.
‘Hare Krishna! Hey man can everybody help me these are like these real expensive amber beads. Not that I’m into bread, I’d like to see the whole world free and everybody just take what they need, only I mean like you gotta be a realist in the world like it is, anybody got a flashlight? I – thanks. Beautiful. I mean I like a nice shadowy room like this man but – that’s it, everybody get down and help, real cooperation commune spirit okay maybe I am like too possessive about these beads only they got sedimental value too, I bought them because they reminded me of this great Herman Hesse novel, real fat paperback I had I was gonna read it when I got my head together – Cass, can you reach me that one there, Cass or anybody, there, no there, there you fucking idiot right behind that wire let me get it my – what’s that?’
One of the machines had suddenly begun a high-pitched whine.
‘Alarm,’ said the nurse. ‘Somebody unplugged his lungs.’ She and the doctor pummelled and prodded the figure in the bed for a few minutes, but none of the machines showed any signs of life.
‘There goes twelve million,’ said Moonbrand. ‘Four of it ours.’
Honcho shook his head.
‘Man you don’t mean it? Yeah yeah, a malpractice suit! Outa sight! I see just how we build it …’ The two legal minds departed.
Roderick hung around until the heart team rushed Chauncey away. He felt a loss here, but why? Chauncey had never been anything but the school bully (‘Why you wearing a iron suit, huh? Huh? Think you’re tough or someping?’), ugly and unpleasant all his life. Yet something had been lost here, more precious than amber.
In the lobby Roderick saw a children’s choir in red and white robes, come to sing carols to the shut-ins. They were stopped now, while security cops frisked everyone. He lingered for a half-hour, hoping to catch a song, but the search was very thorough.
Finally he emerged into the clear, cold night air. He looked across the river to the city, where tiny blue winking lights of snowploughs moved here and there along bright streets, bright below a darkness in which the massed shapes of skyscrapers seemed not only indistinct, but unimpressive. They might have been a pile of empty cardboard boxes in some unlit cellar.
Empty, that was it. Christmas Eve, and in all the tens of thousands of offices in all the hundreds of buildings in sight, not a single window was lit. No, there was one. Just one, a single emerald-cut light set high in the forehead of some great toad of a tower.
While he stood on the steps contemplating this beacon, Roderick heard someone cry for help. No one else seemed to notice: visitors, patients, doctors, cops and carollers, all came and went as normal. He alone could hear it!
A psychic experience, without doubt. Could it be the tormented soul of Chauncey? Or telepathy? Or even something extraterrestrial?
‘Where are you?’ he called.
‘Help! Here, in the bushes.’ There were evergreen bushes by the side of the broad steps; a man crawled out of them and collapsed at Roderick’s feet. His face was covered with blood.
Roderick got him to his feet, and helped him up the steps. ‘What happened?’
‘Mugged,’ said the man. ‘Don’t ask me how, but I was mugged! Me!’
Inside the receptionist haggled about insurance and donor cards, but finally accepted the patient. Roderick waited around while the man was examined, cleaned and bandaged, put to bed.
‘He’s fine,’ said a doctor. ‘He can go home tomorrow.’
‘Good. Good.’
In the lobby there was no one now but two carollers, counting something out in their hands.
‘Hey no fair, you got one more Ultracalm than me. I want the extra Somrepose then, hey?’
‘Okay fine but then I want some Zerone too, heck these are 25 milligram ones and yours are only 5 …’
He went on out on the steps again, and looked for the single lighted window. But now all was dark, and the city slept with its fathers.
XIII
‘Look, have some fruit, forget about it.’
‘Forget I got mugged? How do you forget an experience like that? I’m telling you –’
‘Sure, okay, but I’m just wondering how this is gonna look to our people? Frankly, old buddy, you blew it. You had your chance to waste this guy, and you –’
‘I got mugged, that’s all. I got mugged, I got mugged! Don’t ask me how.’
‘I won’t ask you nothing. But you can bet your ass somebody’s gonna ask, and ask hard. That a winesap apple there? Okay if I help myself, I really got a thing about winesaps …. Look, this thing reflects bad on everybody, it reflects bad on the whole Agency, our section even worse, and me worst of all.1
‘I know, I know. But what can I do? It just happened.’
‘Yeah, but when the people at Orinoco start looking for some balls to stomp on, where do they look first? I mean, who’s really responsible here?’
‘What are you implying?’
‘I’m not implying nothing. I’m just saying, that’s all. Those Concord grapes there? You mind? I’m saying, look at all the trouble everybody took to set this thing up. We traced the customer to where he works, I found out from his co-workers that the boss is driving him to Mercy Hospital to see somebody. We rush over a camera team by helicopter just to take his picture when he ge
ts out of the car, regular and infra-red just so we don’t get the wrong guy –’
‘Again.’
‘All right, our people watch all the damn exits until you can set up in your bush with your snooperscope and your infra-red detector and your laser-aimed sniper rifle
The man in bed rolled over. ‘I know what I had, or are you just mentioning it all for the benefit of everybody else in here? Tell the whole ward, tell the whole damn world!’ He rolled back again. ‘Any Muscat grapes?’
‘I ate them. No I’m just saying, we took a lot of trouble, we spent a lot of money, and then you let yourself get jumped like that, you not only blow the whole mission, you fix it so some maniac mugger is now running around town with a snooperscope and all the rest of this stuff, how’s that gonna look if he uses it?’
‘He won’t use it, he ripped it off to sell, didn’t he? I mean, that’s what he jumped me for, all that Government equipment.’
‘If you know so much about him now, how come you let him sneak up on you like that?’
‘How did I know I was a mugging target? I mean these guys are everywhere, society’s getting so God-damned violent, is that my fault?’
‘I blame TV myself. Television is definitely – and maybe fast food, kids don’t digest any more. Take your average mugger today – and parental discipline too.’
‘You saying it’s my fault? You implying I should be a child psychologist?’
‘I’m not implying nothing. Honest.’
The man in bed lay back and looked at the curtain until he heard the other agent leave, then turned again to watch (past the basket now containing a heap of banana skins and orange peels topped by the core of a Bartlett pear) other patients being served a Christmas dinner from a mobile microwave oven that passed him and passed the curtained bed.
‘I’m sorry, Mr … Nothing by mouth for you, and nothing by mouth for Mr Franklin either …’