The Complete Roderick

by John Sladek

  ‘Come on down this escalator – Jesus, Rickwood, I wish you’d tell me what’s going on. Why did we have to go all the way up to this so-called bookstore, just so you could stare at this Indica Dinks? You didn’t even say hello.’

  ‘Well I, I didn’t want to intrude, just wanted to let her know I’m around, I’m here if she needs me. I could tell by the way she looked at me she understands.’

  Luke groaned. ‘Just what kind of Victorian truth is it that she understands? Who is this lady?’

  ‘My mother, Luke. My stepmother anyway. Sort of. She took care of me when I was small, I think. And, well, she was the first woman I ever saw naked, so naturally I –’

  ‘You what? Follow her into bookstores?’

  They took their seats. One or two people at adjoining tables stared at Luke’s saffron costume.

  ‘Naturally I love her. I read once how all boys love their mothers and kill their fathers, so –’

  Luke held up a saffron-gloved hand. ‘Now wait. Rickwood, you’ve got this a little wrong. Sure, all boys love their mothers in a way, but it just means getting “Mother” tattooed on their arms, or sending embroidered pillow covers, Souvenir of Hong Kong, or maybe asking bar pianists to play “My Mother’s Eyes” until they weep into their low-cal pilsner. It does not mean love, like love. It doesn’t mean killing anybody either, where did you get this idea?’

  ‘Well,’ Roderick said loudly, ‘I killed my father, and I’ve always been crazy about my mother’s body. And that was before I ever heard of Freud!’

  People at the next table got up and moved away. Others stared and whispered. A waitress hurried over, datapad in hand.

  ‘We’d like two coffees,’ said Luke. ‘Mine, I want a medium-roast blend of Colombian and Mocha, finely ground and filtered, with real cream (not half-and-half) and Demerara sugar. Serve it in a bone china service, preferably Spode, and with a hallmarked silver spoon. And my friend here will have instant ersatz coffee, half-dissolved in tepid water, served with artificial cream and synthetic sugar in a melamine cup, no saucer, with a styrene spoon, please.’

  ‘Two coffees,’ she said, and said it again, firmly, when she served them.

  ‘Well she got yours right, Rickwood. What do you mean, you killed your father?’

  ‘I mean I hit him with a box-end wrench, I think it was, and he fell down and never got up.’

  ‘Oh.’ Luke said nothing more until they were on their way to the rally, making their way through a series of glass tubes and corridors to the Conference Centre. The final leg of the journey took them through a glass-covered bridge high above the flat wintry earth. To their left, an infinity of parked cars. Straight ahead, the Conference Centre, a kind of flying saucer in concrete, pre-stressed and poised for takeoff. To the right, Freeway Disaster, the enormous fibre-glass sculpture by Jough Braun, incorporating moulds of an actual freeway pile-up of some twenty vehicles. It was said that, so quickly had Braun worked at the disaster scene, that he had managed to mould in one or two victims. In any case, the German museums had bid very highly for this itern, but what mere museum could provide a setting for it like this?

  ‘What did you do after you hit him with the wrench?’

  ‘I nailed myself into this packing crate and sent myself somewhere else. I mean I guess the crate was all labelled and ready anyway, because I was too young to write. So I got in and nailed it shut –’

  ‘How could you nail it shut? Rickwood, you must have had an accomplice. Your mother?’

  ‘It might have been a × I box-end wrench, or maybe it wasn’t a box-end at all, it might have been an open-end, say …’

  Mr Shredder helped her climb the seemingly endless spiral staircase to the office, a comfortable little green room. He presented her with a plastic cup of water. ‘Feel better yet?’

  ‘I’m fine, really. Just a little dizzy spell, it’s over now.’ She found she was still holding a book (Ragged Dick/Bound to Rise) and put it down.

  ‘Well while we’re in the office, I may as well show you our little nerve centre.’

  He sat down at a VDU and tapped the keys, with the air of an electric-organ owner showing off at home. Indica could almost hear Tico-tico in poor ugly Mr Shredder’s smile. The gold tooth glittered.

  ‘In the past, you know, nobody would have dreamed of running an operation like Prospero Books, but this little gadget has made the book trade into a whole new ball game. High volume, fast-throughput, unprecedented market sensitivity – well I guess what I mean is, we’re no longer at the mercy of the publishers.’

  ‘Publishers?’ She felt it was her turn to say something.

  ‘The way it used to be, the publishers ran everything. If you wanted to sell books, you sold what they gave you to sell, that’s the way it was, and tough! And not just tough, but it was a very bad, wasteful way to run an industry. I mean with all due respect, most publishers are jerks who know absolutely nothing about books. They sit around in New York offices being literati, all the time. You think they know what sells here in Minnetonka? No. What they do is, publish a book and gamble on it. They gamble, we lose.

  ‘That’s the way it was. We dealers, who know the market, had no control over the business; publishers, who know nothing, had complete control. But the computer changed all that. See with the computer we get complete control over our own stock flow, we tie ordering directly to sales, see? Say a customer buys some book, say number 0246114371, the bar code is on the cover, the cashier runs her laser wand over it, and our computer records the sale. Enough sales of that item and the computer automatically reorders.’

  Indica said, ‘Is that new? I thought that was kind of old hat.’

  ‘Yes but listen: the computer can put data together from fifty stores just as easily as five – or five hundred or five thousand. No matter how big we grow, we can always have real tight, minute-by-minute stock control. Only if we’re big, publishers start listening to us. If we don’t like a book, they print fewer copies.’

  Indica nodded, hoping the lecture was finishing.

  ‘Anyway, at the same time, publishers keep getting taken over by big conglomerates like KUR, people with electronic ideas of their own. Like they also get computerized stock control and also they fix it up so authors can set their own type – stuff like that. And it’s kind of inevitable that their computers will get together with our computers. After all, we all want the same thing.’

  Indica stopped nodding. ‘Authors and publishers and book dealers, all – together?’

  Mr Shredder grinned with his gold tooth. ‘Only a pilot scheme so far, but so far it works! We got this best-selling author to agree, he sits in his house in Nassau and types, and our computers get it via satellite, word by word. They do a complete analysis as he writes – and feed it right back to him. They give him back a sales projection every time he hits the old space bar, so he knows the second his writing falls off. He knows he’s got to go back and polish up that last sentence or change that last word – or else!’

  By the time Roderick and Luke arrived, the rally was already in full swing. The huge hall was more than half full, with more people drifting in all the time.

  The speaker was saying, ‘… mixers, processors, thermostat, lumistat … can opener, electric carving knife, Jesus Christ, there I was in the middle of the goddamned desert with an electric pipe cleaner in my hand

  ‘Why that’s Hank!’ Roderick exclaimed. Someone told him to shut his fuckin’ face.

  Luke whispered, ‘Yes, he’s the guy I met on the plane.’

  ‘Hush your mouth,’ warned another man. The audience seemed to be largely male, and many were wearing a kind of ‘uniform’ of shirtsleeves, rolled up to mid-bicep, as in political cartoons of Uncle Sam. They seemed ready to spit on their hands and go to work. When new people came in, many of them would look around for a few moments, then remove their coats and roll up their sleeves.

  ‘… just picked up a hammer and took a swing at that little robot – and I missed! And the
little robot picked up a wrench or something and cold-cocked me! But at least it was an honest fight – we were enemies and we both knew it. When I came to, I got up and walked out into the desert, a free man. A free man. For the first time in my life I didn’t have an alarm clock to wake up for, a phone to answer, a time clock to punch, or a car to keep up the payments on. No …’

  Isolated people started calling out ‘Amen’ and ‘Praise the Ludd’. Soon there was a regular, clapping chorus, and Hank seemed to be leading it, standing alone in the middle of a big stage, a tiny bearded-prophet figure. He started going through the long list of gadgets and appliances once more, now as a litany. And before he finished, men were leaping up to name machines of their own:

  ‘To hell with my drill press!’

  ‘Praise Ludd!’

  ‘Down with programmed door chimes!’

  ‘Amen.’

  ‘Smash all machines!’

  ‘Yes Ludd!’

  ‘Take this hammer!’ Someone brandished it.

  ‘Ludd, Ludd!’

  Hammers were being brandished all over the auditorium now.

  ‘I smashed a parking meter!’

  ‘I smashed a kid’s musical top!’

  ‘I smashed my wife’s solid state dehydrator with stick-resistant trays and forced air flow!’

  ‘Praise Ludd!’

  ‘Smash the machines! Screw the machines!’

  Men were jumping on their seats and waving hammers now, ready to smash anything remotely like a machine, while others egged them on with a steady clapping and chanting, ‘Smash … smash … smash …’

  Hank held up his hands in an attempt to make them stop, but this only seemed to raise the tempo; they took it as a victory sign. Worse, the conference centre’s ‘multimedia’ people, who had prepared a special audiovisual package for the occasion, thought Hank was now signalling for it.

  The giant screen behind Hank suddenly came alive with images of train wrecks, exploding cars, Chaplin demolishing an alarm clock, aircraft shot down, burning factories, the sinking of a paddle steamer, a chainsaw murder, the Who smashing electric guitars …

  At that point someone broke into the projection booth and smashed the equipment, and the room went quiet. They were waiting for Hank to tell them what to do – go home and wait? Act now?

  Hank opened his mouth, but just then a multimedia voice came over the p.a. system, drowning him out:

  ‘Thanks guys and gals for making this a memorable day. We have souvenir hammers for sale in the foyer. And in a few minutes, Hank Dinks will be going over to the main complex to Prospero Books – he’ll autograph copies of both his books. I hope we’ll see you all there!’

  That seemed to be the signal for the riot to begin.

  ‘Luke, this is ridiculous,’ Roderick tried to say, as they were pushed along the glass bridge with the others, but the noise of chanting, screaming and smashing made speech impossible. Roderick rolled up his sleeves, shook his fist and called for demolition. He was now separated from Luke, but could still see him; the ex-astronaut had rolled up his saffron sleeves and seemed to be having a hell of a good time.

  The first mechanical victim was a gum machine, and soon gumballs were raining down from the upper levels of the ziggural – followed soon by pinballs and then fragments of a mechanical donkey ride. With a terrible thoroughness, the Luddites moved through every establishment, destroying hairdryers, malted milk machines, dental drills, programmed expresso machines, a wind-up mouse, toasters by the dozen and digital watches by the hundred. They met no opposition. The few security cops on duty approached them, fiddled with guns and radios, then decided to run instead. They had been hired to deal with elderly shoplifters and kids who tried skating on the escalators, not with a mob of thousands of maniacs.

  They reached Prospero Books, where the furious mob not only did not find Hank installed, it found a sign, MACHINES LIB. The mob at once entered through both window and door. Roderick found himself wedged in a corner where, through the blizzard of torn pages, he could see on a TV monitor, Indica, still calmly signing books.

  She continued to sign, ignoring the mob who pressed in around her little table. One of the men crashed his hammer down on the table in front of her.

  ‘Honestly!’ she said, and rummaged in her purse for a moment. Finally she brought out a revolver and fired it at the ceiling.

  Instantly, everyone was quiet. Throughout the entire bookstore no one moved among the wreckage, except one enterprising Luddite who went on cleaning out the cash register. Everyone waited for a killing.

  ‘This kind of behaviour is very destructive,’ Indica said. ‘You’re a bunch of silly little boys. I suppose my ex-husband put you up to this. Well, you can tell Hank Dinks for me, it won’t work. It doesn’t matter how many hairdryers he smashes, I am not coming back to him. Now you can just clear out, all of you. Move!’

  No one spoke. Here and there a hammer dropped to the floor (where everyone was now looking). One man, who’d been tearing up a copy of Indica’s book, now fell to his knees, kissing the book and weeping. A few others felt suddenly the nakedness of their arms and rolled down their sleeves. A general shuffling and edging towards the door began, and soon the place was almost clear.

  Roderick came out of his corner. Indica, I –’

  ‘You! God damn it, will you stop following me?’ She brought up the pistol smoothly, clasped it in both hands and aimed carefully at a point between those terrifying eyes.

  ‘Are you going to shoot me?’ he asked, and stopped.

  … running through a dead wood, some trees charred by lightning, that was how the dream went. In a clearing she saw a figure, a man in red armour, head to toe. He didn’t move, and gradually she realized that he was rusted fast, covered with red rust. Opening her fly, she pulled out an enormous oil can and went to work, annointing him all over. The rust dripped and ran, now it was blood. Suddenly his iron arms gripped her, squeezing her so tight she could hardly breathe. ‘Don’t scream,’ he said. ‘The woods are like tinder, one scream could set off a conflagration. Through the visor she could see the glowing eyes. She screamed …

  She started to put the gun away. ‘Who are you? Who are you?’

  ‘I’m your –’

  ‘Indica! Indica!’ It was Mr Shredder, calling from the spiral stairs. ‘Come up here, quick. Something’s happened.’

  She went up at once to the little green office. A man lay on the green carpet, with a priest squatting next to him.

  ‘It’s Hank,’ said Shredder. ‘I was just showing him our nerve centre when the mob showed up.’

  ‘Hank? I don’t understand.’ Was that blood or oil on the priest’s fingers?

  ‘Same lunatic in that mob must of let off a gun,’ said Mr Shrudder. ‘Hank’s dead.’

  Father Warren looked up. ‘He gave his life for us, for all of us. Now his fight must go on! We must go on smashing, smashing, smashing the machines!’

  Mr Shredder looked alarmed and stood in front of his computer terminal. ‘I think we’ve had enough talk about smashing things today.’

  The priest stood up. ‘Oh, I don’t mean literally smash machines with hammers. Those poor men today got the message a little wrong. No, we must smash the machines inside us, smash the idea of the machine.’ He held out a hand to Indica. ‘Won’t you join us? I know that in your heart you feel Hank was right – this is your fight too. Join the New Luddites.’

  ‘You don’t have to be so paternalistic, Father. You go smash the machine inside you if you want, I happen to think it’s a screwloose idea.’ She turned to make her exit.

  ‘With you or without you,’ he said, ‘we’ll win.’

  ‘Over my dead body.’

  Mr Kratt turned off the TV news and picked up his cheap cigar. It had gone out. ‘Well, bub, your little plan to reunite the Dinkses doesn’t seem to have worked out too well. Unless you figured on a riot and the guy getting killed.’

  Jud Mill leaned forward suddenly, the long strip
ed wings of his shirt collar crackling with the movement. He thrust out a lighter. ‘In the media management business, you gotta expect surprises. You notice I managed to get a clear shot of the cover of Indica’s book in that news item? And the title is mentioned twice.’

  ‘Kind of tough though for Fishfold and Tove, losing their big name.’

  ‘Well, sir, I been thinking about just that problem, and I think this priest, this Father Warren, is going to take over the Luddite leadership. You put him under contract now and you can get him cheap, get all the books you can out of this little movement before they get boring. Too bad the cops didn’t arrest Indica though, you can always get a lotta mileage out of the big name family murder angle.

  ‘Now about this next book on your list, Red Situation, what is it, a spy thriller kind of thing? I guess we could always pretend the author was really in the CIA or MI5 or something, but people are getting tired of authenticity too; we need a better angle.’ Mill sat back, shirt collar crackling, and looked at the world through half-moon reading glasses. ‘I understand this author is sitting in Nassau sending all this stuff in via satellite to a typesetting computer, right? What if we just shot down the satellite and blamed Russia? I know it’s expensive, but –’

  ‘Hell, bub, you’d be starting a war.’

  ‘Sure, but probably a limited war, and maybe only an international crisis. Meanwhile we get maximum worldwide coverage of our boy and his book, “The Book the Russians Trie’d to Stop!”’

  Mr Kratt exhaled a cloud of oily smoke. ‘All sounds kind of crazy to me.’

  ‘But all part of the creative evolution of a literary property, and I do mean creative. Hell, I once got an author to sue himself for plagiarism – claimed a book he did under a pseudonym was ripped off. Of course the judge had him committed for psychiatric observation and the author ended up spending a year in a looney bin, but then we got a great book out of that, Call Me Schizo … yes, he ghosted that one for himself …’

  ‘For the last time,’ said the sergeant, ‘are you a Ludder or a Libber?’ He was counting change from Roderick’s pocket into a large envelope. ‘You gotta be one or the other.’