MEANS YOU, and why shouldn’t this make Roderick hesitate?
‘Maybe we shouldn’t go in,’ he said, at which Luke laughed.
‘You don’t know much about politics, Rickwood.’ The question which cries out for an answer now is, who does know anything about politics? Isn’t it just a dirty game for cynical manipulators of mass ignorance?
They walked in, by direct action demanding to be let in and given the same rights as anyone else — as those who could not read, for example.
Gert’s Cafe provided only four tables, but then there were only three Fractious Disengagementists in the Gert’s Cafe Branch, which was also so far the only branch of this new regrouping of committed elements of radical consciousness in anticipation of a totally new unfettered mass spiritual/ political movement unifying to force a final showdown with the present-day corrupt and powerful system. Anyway Bill was playing the video game machine in the corner all evening, so didn’t need a chair.
So far Gert’s Cafe had a menu but no manifesto, but tonight’s meeting would hopefully fix that. The menu had taken careful planning and much meaningful discussion, working through all objections to California grapes and Brazilian coffee and any other foodstuff outputted by any other oppressive regime. It was finally agreed to limit the menu to bread and water — homebaked stoneground wholemeal bread and pure bottled mineral spring water — the fare of all political prisoners everywhere.
These prisoners of conscience became acquainted: there was Rickwood, a taciturn guy whose symmetrical, bland face probably concealed a real thinker; Luke, a drunken loudmouth but probably revolutionary at heart; Bill, the big guy with the beard who played video games and said little, in fact nothing; Wes, the small intense guy with rimless glasses who talked a blue streak and wanted action! action! and ‘Gert’ who was really Joanne and married to Wes but who preferred not to be known as Mrs or even Ms but adopted the totally unbiased and sex-free title Msr, applicable to men persons and to women persons, in any order.
What was to be done? The entire world was now in the grip of authoritarian zombarchical police states, maintaining power through multinational conglomerates at the top and the jack-booted forces of oppression at the bottom. The world was beginning to resemble something in a satirical science-fiction novel of no great quality. It was time to do something, all right. Time for some all-out, ultimate, definitizing gesture that would make it clear for all time where everybody stood.
Wes wanted to go out right away and collect money to save up for a cobalt bomb that would wipe out all life on this planet for millions or maybe billions of years: that was action. Gert and Luke preferred to argue about the placement of punctuation in a draft manifesto condemning ‘world interdependences/coercive structures/Houston Mission Control/militarist juntas/pigshit bureaucracies’.
Roderick, having gone into the kitchen to find an outlet and recharge his batteries, came back at dawn to find the arguments still raging on, and Bill still playing a video game. Since it was breakfast time, they all sat down and (all but Roderick) had a bread and water breakfast. Bill spoke for the first time:
‘A lot of people talk a lot about blowing up the world, tearing it all down and starting over,’ he said ‘But I’m really doing something. I got me a job with the Hackme Demolition Company, and we’re really tearing stuff down.’
‘You blow stuff up for some capitalist,’ said Wes. ‘That’s no good. A rich guy in silk hat and striped pants holds out this bag with a dollar sign on it, and you say “Yes sir, yes sir. You want me to lose that building? Yes sir.”’
‘But I still blow it up,’ said Bill. ‘It’s still one building less.’ He thought for a moment, chewing his bread. ‘And they’re still hiring, if anybody here wants a job, a honest job.’
Wes already had a job, as clerk to a tax lawyer for a leading investment firm. Joanne had the cafe to run, Wes added.
Roderick and Luke agreed to help dismantle the world.
VIII
The apostle clock chimed. Mr Kratt lifted his snout automatically and listened. For a second the heavy black V of his brow-line softened.
‘Okay Smith, where were we?’
‘O’Smith, sir. The name is O’Smith. And the game today is I do believe industrill espionedge. Ain’t it?’ The insolent tone was unexpected. Nice change of pace, Kratt thought, from all the panting yes-men around here. Of course it was the desperate insolence of a loser, just look at the man. Kratt looked, and found himself trying to stare O’Smith down.
In essence, this ‘Mister’ O’Smith (who seemed to have no first name) was a fat cowboy with a deep tan. He wore the modified Western clothes favoured by bogus oilmen and revivalists on the make, but even his hand-tooled boots failed to give him a prosperous look. His fat would be the fat of poverty, of hash-house burgers dripping with mayonnaise, pancakes or powdered-sugar doughnuts in the morning and greasy pizza at night, watery tap beer and syrupy wine, and cokes glugged down too fast in desert gas stations. Kratt had seen thousands of O’Smiths passing through his amusement arcades and his carnival, hurrying on their way from trailer-camp childhoods to flophouse deaths, losers all the way.
Mr Kratt’s gaze faltered. ‘Okay, let me give you a general rundown on this operation and then turn you over to my product-development boy, Ben Franklin.’
‘Yes sir. Now do I liasonize with you or this Frankelin?’
‘Him, this is all his show. See, Franklin worked on a research project at the University, a few years ago. Building a robot.’
‘Yep.’ O’Smith was staring hard again.
‘When the project broke up, the robot disappeared. Naturally
Franklin was disappointed. After putting in all that work on the thing, to have somebody come along and steal it…’
‘So you want me to steal it back?’
That’s about it. It’s worth ten grand in cash, plus all reasonable expenses. Agreed?’ Mr Kratt stood up and was about to offer his hand when O’Smith turned aside and walked to the window.
‘By God you got a view here, sir. A view! From up here it looks like you could just reach down and pick up any old piece of that city down there, pick it up in your hand. Like it’s all yours. Guess lots of it is yours, right? KUR is such a big old conglomerate, like I guess you manufacture that there Brazos Billy gadget, right?’
‘Brazos Billy? What — oh, you mean the fast-draw amusement machine, yes one of our subsidiaries handles that one, why?’
‘Nothin’, I just always kind of liked old Brazos, boy I must of drawed against him a thousand times — at bus stations, airports, arcades.’
Kratt looked at his watch. ‘There a point to all this?’
‘I like the way when you hit old Brazos he flops down on the floor and bleeds like a stuck pig. Plastic blood I know but boy it surely looks real. I always wanted one of them machines for myself so I could practise at home.’
‘You want me to throw in a toy, is that it?’
O’Smith grinned. ‘’Predate that, Mr Kratt sir. But I was only calling attention to the difference between you and me. I wanted a robot for years and never got it. You want one for five minutes, you just call me in, say “Ten grand in cash” and you got it.’ The grin broadened. ‘You got it, Mr Kratt. Sir.’
O’Smith offered his left hand, a final insult.
Mister O’Smith still had his smile when he had finished talking to Ben Franklin, who could only give him two minutes. He kept the smile on until he was safely out of the building and into a bar, where he ordered a tap beer. Then he let it go.
‘What’s the matter, cowboy? Somebody shoot your horse?’
He looked at the woman in purple with her purple lipstick, and he continued to scowl. She raised her shotglass and nodded to him as though he’d bought her a drink. ‘You wouldn’t think it to look at me now,’ she said,
