The Complete Roderick

by John Sladek

  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.

  XIV

  ‘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.

  ‘There we were – about fifty of us – broke, our outfit smashed, our Master gone, no money to come home on. We didn’t have a prayer you might say. Nothing in the storeroom either, but a half pound of rice, an old motheaten silver fox coat, and a catcher’s mitt autographed by Yogi Berra. We were high up in the mountains with snow all around. What could we do?’

  Pray?’ Roderick suggested, watching I*D*C* INKS …

  ‘Right. Our prayers were answered right away too, because this camera team from some big magazine syndicate showed up. They were doing a feature on Everest-climbing tours, and they wanted some local colour. We fed them the last of our rice and gave them beds. During the night, I put the catcher’s mitt on my foot and went out walking in the snow. In the morning we pointed out the giant tracks to them and they got real excited and took lots of pictures.

  ‘Then in the afternoon there was a snowstorm. I put on the fur coat and ran around in it, the others pointed me out and the photographers chased me and took more pictures. Then they got on their radio and arranged a lucrative book and movie deal, and our end of it was just enough to pay our fares home.’

  Roderick got up from the bench and moved to one side of the fountain to read:

  TODAY:

  INDICA DINKS

  will autograph copies of her

  sensational new best-seller,

  THE NUTS AND BOLTS

  OF MACHINES LIB

  at

  Prospero Books,

  Fourth Level

  ‘On the plane home,’ Luke said when he returned, ‘I met another Luddite. In fact he was the guy who started the whole movement. I told him what happened and how Luddite heavies had moved in on us. He apologized. He said, “Some of the boys just got carried away with the message, I guess.”

  ‘Then he started telling me all about the New Luddites Movement and it didn’t sound so fanatical after all. He said the Luddites were opposed to violence, even against machines. He wanted a way of peace, linked with the great Eastern traditions of resignation and manual labour. Why didn’t I come to the rally he was having in Minnetonka? So here I am, ready to be a Luddite.’ Luke looked pleased with himself. ‘Maybe I can convert you too.’

  ‘Convert – but Luke, I can’t be a Luddite. I’m a machine. I’m everything they’re opposed to!’

  ‘Oh, you don’t have to join right away, Rickwood. I just want you to come along and meet some Luddites yourself. Great buncha guys.’

  ‘But Luke, this is crazy!’

  ‘Meet the guys, hear what they got to say, that’s all. T
hen you make up your own mind.’

  Father Warren and Hank Dinks stood by the luggage carousel, watching the same parade of unclaimed bags pass for perhaps the sixth time, the tattersall overnight pursued by the natural calf two-suiter followed at a distance by the viola case, then two items in red hide crowded close by a stiff Gladstone bag with labels and, after a short interval, the duffel bag and the large bright saffron suitcase leading the tattersall overnight. From time to time strangers straggled up and removed items, but Warren and Dinks stood motionless, watching the endless parade and listening to a loop of tape play an endless medley.

  ‘Doesn’t um seem to be here, Hank. And we’re running a little late.’

  ‘Well I’m not leaving here without something.’ Hank snatched up the saffron bag. ‘Let’s go.’

  ‘But that’s, you can’t just –’

  ‘Let’s get out of this place. I hate airports, all this automated luggage and automated music and people like zombies moving along herded along no life no reality no, no weather even, might as well be in some damn shopping mall –’

  ‘Ha ha, well I hope you won’t mind coming out to the Vitanuova Shopping Piazza today, that’s where we’ve set up the um, at the conference centre –’

  ‘What? You fixed my rally, my rally, in some plastic shopping centre? Why not just hold it here in the Arrival lounge, I’m trying to reach real people, not – I just don’t believe this.’

  But Hank nevertheless allowed himself to be led from the terminal into a taxi. ‘I just don’t believe this.’

  ‘But just look at this brochure, the conference centre seats five thousand, a first-class convention hall, facilities – your publisher thought –’

  ‘Let me see that. “Our trained personnel will be happy to advise you in preparing multimedia presentation, programmes on any subject, and we have plenty of prepackaged units ready to be computer-tailored to your individual multimedia needs” you thought I wanted this? This? You thought the Luddites have multimedia needs? We need computer tailoring?’

  ‘No, of course not, I –’

  The driver was craning around. ‘Hey I know you, you’re that Luddite guy, I seen you on TV, now what’s your name?’

  ‘Look I’m sorry, Hank, I just thought it might be good exposure for your book, I know it’s a, um, compromise but your publisher is paying and it’s a chance to pull in new, a new audience, to sell your book too –’

  ‘I was gonna say the name Godfrey Dank,’ said the driver. ‘Only now I remember he was the ventriloquist, and when I hear the fadder here call you Hank –’

  ‘Sure sure, anything to sell the book, why not turn the rally into a sales conference, why not bring in the slogans and the gimmicks? The prizes for top salesman, why not?’

  ‘Hank, you’re tired, you must be over-reacting. I’ll admit we made a mistake, Fishfold and Tove thought –’

  ‘Yeah, Hank. Hank, now don’t tell me the last name –’

  ‘Why not bring in the, damn it, the strippers and the pep band, you think I came here for that?’

  ‘No, of course not, I –’

  ‘This whole piazza place is dedicated to the inhuman, to everything mass-produced and cheap, fast food and book supermarts and everything designed by computers and stamped out of the same plastic by robots, the potted palms, the furniture, the stores, the clerks inside, maybe even the robot customers, all of it slathered over with that damn homogenized music you get everywhere, “Moon River” and “Sunshine Balloon” everywhere, “Garioca” everywhere, bars and restaurants, airports, toilets, dentist chairs, delivery rooms and funeral parlours, assembly-line music for assembly-line people –’

  ‘I think it was on the Yoyo Show I seen you, or no, was it Ab Jason? I remember your beard was real long then –’

  ‘It’s that kind of stuff I started the Luddites to fight, the way we’re burying the world in useless gadgets, unreal junk heaped up around us until we don’t even recognize the real world at all, it’s just one more thing on TV!’

  ‘Yes I know, the angst, I trace it to a loss of faith in human values concurrent with the cybernetic –’

  ‘Indica and I tried to get away from our gadgets, we moved out West to this ecological house, but we brought the disease along with us, in no time we were right back in the same old manure pile of gadgets, house full of broken-down machinery who needs it? Solar panel leaking through the ceiling and something wrong with the autodoor on the garage and the lawn mower and the ultrasound dishwasher and the automatic toilet bowl cleaner – and all around us stuff getting ready to break down, the slow cooker, the light-pipe intercom, the rotisserie, the popcorn popper, the hot food table, the cake oven, microwave, deepfreeze, shoe polisher, floor polisher, vacuum cleaner-washer, blender, mixer, processor, slicer, chopper, coffee grinder, thermostat, lumistat, electrostatic air-conditioner, Jesus Christ, the water purifier, electric pepper-mill, nail-buffer, can opener, carving knife, Jesus H. Christ, there I was in the middle of the desert with an electric pipe-cleaner in my hand, and it was starting to make a funny noise …’

  ‘Yes, yes I know it must have been –’

  ‘Listen Indica and I even tried adopting a robot child, now isn’t that sick? A robot child!’

  The driver said, ‘Kids these day, I know, I know –’

  ‘One day I just couldn’t take any more. I picked up a hammer and took a swing at little Roderick … and I missed! And, and the little machine pasted me back with a wrench, and I was free. I just got up and walked out, out into the desert, a free man.’

  Father Warren folded his long hands, unfolded them, played a game of church-and-steeple. ‘That was when you decided to write Ludd Be Praised?’

  ‘Yes I knew then, we have to smash the machines. Smash their grip on our minds, our lives.’

  ‘It’ll go all right,’ said Father Warren. ‘Try not to worry, Hank. The point is, you have a message to put across, a battle-cry: Smash the machines!’

  ‘Father I wish I had your faith. At times like this –’ Hank waved the brochure, ‘I wonder if the machines haven’t smashed us. I – I get so discouraged –’

  ‘Definitely Ab Jason, the Ab Jason Show, only I just can’t recall your name, Hank, your –’

  ‘ Will you just shut up and drive? My name is Hank Dinks, yes I, was on the Ab Jason Show, now will you just, just –’

  ‘Okay okay, ya don’t hafta yell. I mean excuse me mister bigshot celebrity from TV, I don’t wanna insult ya, a lousy working stiff tryina talk to ya, excuse me. All to hell.’

  The driver punched buttons to start an endless tape of ‘Moon River’, ‘Carioca’, ‘Sunshine Balloon’ …

  ‘Well well well Ms Dinks, Indica, this is indeed a pleasure, welcome aboard, be glad to show you around our little operation here, after all we’re the people who deal the merchandise, the urn books, so if you don’t mind me saying so, we’re the people who know people. Yes, Mr and Ms Bookbuying America are old, old friends of ours, they don’t have many secrets from us. We know how to give them what they want – and make them want it, heh heh. Any questions before we start the grand tour?’

  ‘Quite a store you have here, Mr Shredder.’ Indica peered down the aisle of what might have been a supermarket, with customers plying shopping carts past display shelves of products with eye-appeal beneath signs and video screens whispering sales messages. Her gaze, finding nowhere to alight, came back to Mr Shredder’s gold tooth.

  ‘See we’ve put a dump bin of your book in the front, and you’ll be autographing in the back, so people have to pass as many shelf feet as possible to get to you. And along here see we have our Today’s Top Ten, with daily sales figures logged in right off our national computer hookup – people like to know where they are when they buy a book. And here’s another bin with that darned psychic pigeon novel, just keeps on selling! We’ll probably nominate that one for the American Book Award this year, hard to say until we do a book-by-book cost analysis, over the year.

  ‘Now her
e’s our astrology and science section, and over here a little item that should do well.’ He picked a book from a cardboard barrel.

  A Completely New Novel by Ford James Smith

  Based on the TV Series by Joyce Henry Madox

  Inspired by Adam Thome’s Novelization of the

  Original Screenplay by Conrad Brown

  Developed around a Theme Inspired by

  The Dorothy Parker Short Story,

  LOLITA

  ‘You can’t really go wrong with a cover like that, and it doesn’t even mislead the customer. Plenty of books with misleading titles around to hook the customer these days. One thing about the book trade, you can always count on good old-fashioned customer illiteracy; best title of the last fifty years was Your Erroneous Zones but you find just as much inspiration nowadays, here’s a fishing book You Can Master Bait and a how-to-study item called The Erotetic Method, oh yes and a reprint of two Horatio Alger books in one with the titles run together …’

  But Indica missed the next part of Mr Shredder’s lecture, as she looked across a row of gaudy science-fiction covers straight into the eyes of her pursuer.

  XV

  ‘Come on Rickwood, I’ll buy you a coffee, you can’t stand here daydreaming all day.’ Luke led him as far as the cashier.

  ‘You gonna buy that, mister?’ she asked.

  ‘Buy … that?’

  ‘The book in your hand, human use of human beings wiener, you gonna buy it or what?’

  Luke took the book from his hand and led him on out of Prospero Books, into the great pleasure dome of Vitanuova Shopping Piazza. In general form, it was a kind of interior Hanging Gardens of Babylon, with a small terrace of stores at each level, with plenty of polished stonelike substances, with gleaming escalators, set at every angle, and with every nook crammed with green potted palms, blue caged birds or tanks of red fish. From the top level, looking over a parapet at the whole dizzying spectacle, Luke spotted the yellow umbrellas of a cafe far below.