Ben Franklin put down his flightbag and lit a cigarette. ‘Look, I know you’re trying to help. And I wish I’d had more time to go into this before. But honestly I don’t remember exactly what he looks — he looks so average.’
‘Kind of an average chin? Like this?’
‘Yes I guess so. Look I think maybe I’d better get a few more travellers’ cheques before they call my—’
‘Relax, boy. Shoot, goin’ to Taipin is just like goin’ to Chicago, only in Taipin they speak better English. Now would he have this kinda nose?’
Ben half-relaxed and allowed the cowboy to ply him with chins, noses, eyes, coiffures until a face — not the one he remembered, but close enough — could be fixed in the little machine’s memory.
‘Good enough!’ the fat cowboy winked, bringing into play several hundred crow’s feet. ‘With this face and the name Roderick Wood I oughta be able to nail this little tin shit.’
‘You talk about him as if we were hiring you to kill him,’ said Ben.
‘Always like to think of it like huntin’, Mr Frankelin. Makes it more excitin’.’
O’Smith went on with his simile, but Ben was no longer listening. He was engaged in what his namesake might have called the diligent study of one’s own life and habits.
He was now in his forties, childless and divorced, had been a member of the Project Roderick research team, and now held a responsible job in a growing corporation. He was at this moment en route to inspecting a microprocessor factory in Taipin, a new pearl soon to be strung upon the KUR necklace.
Then why didn’t he feel important? Why did he feel that all the important decisions in the world were being made in the next room, from which he was forever excluded? Roderick had been cooked up between kid genius Dan and wise old Lee Fong, and the others. Ben had been out in the cold. And it was the same at KUR, he was a rubber stamp for decisions made by Mr Kratt. Even now, sitting in the VIP lounge, he did not feel VI.
He envied O’Smith, watching the cowboy fast-drawing against some fibreglass dummy. Look at him, not a care in the world. Life was all a B Western. O’Smith had a stiff arm or something, making his draw a little awkward. But he seemed not to mind, not a care in the world.
O’Smith turned and grinned. ‘Shoot, Mr Frankelin, you oughta try somethin’ yourself. I hate to keep playin’ these machines alone. Makes me feel like a durn ijit. Soft as
‘There she is!’ someone cried, and a small army of people in anoraks ran with their cameras and notebooks to the other end of the room, where a genuine celebrity had arrived. Ben Franklin stood up to see who it was, and immediately turned away.
‘Somethin’ wrong, Mr Frankelin?’
‘That’s Indica Dinks over there.’
‘Sure it is, that’s right. The machines lib gal, nice looker — you know her?’
‘We used to be married.’ Keeping his back turned to her, he fumbled for change and plunged a quarter into the nearest machine. A sign told him to place his finger under an ‘examining lever’; when he did so, he felt a sharp stab, ‘THANK YOU. YOUR BLOOD TYPE WILL APPEAR ON THE SCREEN.’
He forgot the answer as soon as he saw it. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed Indica, a small figure in bright apple green, sweep past like a comet, pulling a tail of drab reporters.
‘She’s gone now, Mr Frankelin.’
‘Okay. Okay.’ He stood still before the machine, as though unsure what move to make next, until two men in white overalls came up to him.
‘Excuse me, buddy.’ They unplugged the machine and loaded it on a dolly.
‘What’s — what is this?’
‘County Health, buddy. We’re impounding this.’ One of the men showed him a badge. ‘Another KUR headache.’
‘KUR?’ he asked, but his plane was being called.
X
Christmas bore down upon the world, demanding its ransom. In Northern lands the sun grew weaker and threatened to go out unless everyone spent too much money soon. The countdown of shopping days had begun already, that hypnotic series of diminishing numbers that could only end in zero. The public was led into Christmastime as a patient is led into anaesthesia, counting backwards.
Likewise when William Miller had set the date for the Second Coming at March 21, 1844, a dwindling number of days were marked out, during which the faithful could dispose of the last of their money. They had gathered to meet their Maker wearing only simple gowns without pockets. Nowadays it was the purveyors of gifts, the promoters of ‘gifting’ who urged a frantic giveaway before oblivion.
Christmas seemed not so much ‘commercialized’ as the true season of money transactions. The tone had been set by the original tale of taxes and redemption and kings with costly gifts; it carried on in all that followed; the kindly saint now resident in every Toy Department; songs about beggars and kings; the heaping up of goods in Twelve Days of Christmas; Dickens’s well-loved story of Crachit in the counting-house. By now it was clear that Christmas could not be properly celebrated until money had been exchanged for frozen turkeys, novelty records, Irish liqueurs, onyx chessmen, aura goggles, hand-painted lowball glasses, digital fitness monitors, personalized toilet courtesy mats, pink pool tables, sinus masks, chastity belts, Delft-style plastic light switch plates, individualized horoscope mugs, solid brass post-top lanterns, pyjama bags in the shape of dachshunds, plastic flame-resistant trees with pre-programmed light-sound systems, mono-grammed duck calls, Shaker-style cat beds, holly-look room deodorizers, mink mistletoe.
The message was clear in the anxious faces of shoppers hurrying along the Mall. The Mall was a closed and heated portion of Downtown connected to department stores and to all other valuable pieces of real estate. Roderick sat on a park bench near an elm that might be real or artificial, listening to the anxious faces:
‘But he’s got an electric one already, hasn’t he?’
‘Sure but this is an electronic one.’
Angelic voices from somewhere sang feelingly of chestnuts roasting by an open fire. Of course vendors of hot chestnuts, with their open fires and blue smoke, had long since been banished from this pollution-fighting city. But imported
‘…don’t want to make a mistake like last year, God! Sally cried all day and wouldn’t eat her dinner just because I gave her that mistletoe she asked Santa for, how did I know she meant
‘These kids! My Sandra asked for eight TV sets so she could watch all her favourites at the same time she said, can you beat that for a four-year-old?’
A man came down the escalator talking and gesticulating to no one — or rather to Mission Control, for it was Luke Draeger. Roderick stood up and waved to him. Luke followed invisible commands, executing a few smart drill manoeuvres on his way over.
‘Rickwood, glad you could make it.’
‘But why did we have to meet here?’
‘Orders.’
‘From Mission Control?’
‘Affirmative, Rickwood.’
There passed several minutes of silence.
‘Well, Luke, was there anything special you had to see me about?’
‘Nope. Just to wish you a Merry Christmas. I’m, uh, going away, did you know that?’
‘Oh. Well, Merry Christmas, Luke.’
‘Everyone ought to go away at Christmas, even if it’s only to see your family.’
‘That’s right. Your three kids.’
Luke fidgeted with his scarf and looked at the giant Christmas tree in the centre of the Mall. ‘No, well, they’re spending it with their mother, as always. No I’m — I
