The Complete Roderick

but these eyes… something about the eyes made her uneasy.

‘Do I know you?’

‘Don’t you?’

She dropped the smile. ‘No. No, I don’t know you.’ The eyes held her for a moment before she managed to turn away — hadn’t she seen these eyes before? Where, not in this false face with its v-shaped smile. Not in this, not in any face. The eyes she was beginning to recall had no face to them.

‘I’ll give you a hint. I used to follow you.’

‘You still here?’ She spoke without looking at him, frightened now, feeling the chill gaze on her neck. Following her. That was it, the nightmare came back to her so suddenly and clearly that she almost staggered; covered by banging her glass on the bar.

‘Like another drink here,’ she said. ‘And please tell this gentleman to—’

But he was gone. Only the revived nightmare remained. She was sitting in the kitchen talking to her mother on the phone when she looked under the pine table and saw the eyes glittering, something ready to pounce… Then she was up and running through a dead woods, some trees charred by lightning, and behind her the faint clank of tank treads, the beast that could not be killed, the eyes that would not close, endless, endless pursuit…

General Fleischman said to Norm, ‘Poetry, I got nothing against poetry, it’s poets I can’t stand. Like that creep over there in the storm-coat, never had a bath or a shave in his life. Afraid it’d spoil his poetry if he got clean once. I don’t mind telling you, when Moxon asked me to invest money from my bank in poetry, I laughed out loud. Wouldn’t you?’

‘Uh, right, sir.’

‘But this turns out to be real educational and kinda synergistic, so I think it might just develop into a nice little media package. See Moxon is going to market these Home Art Kits, each one is like a little complete art package with music, visuals, prose poetry what-have-you, all wrapped up together — here, let me show you.’

He produced a pocket recorder TV. ‘Course on this bitty screen everything gets diminutified, but here. This card is, see, Number Fifteen of the Nutshell Poets Series, John Keats. Like it says here how he liked birds and all. Animals are a plus in this line, kids like to hear how Shelley liked birds too, how Elizabeth Browning liked her dog Hushpuppy—’

‘Hushpuppy?’

‘We changed it from another name, a very downmarket name — anyway and T.S. Eliot liked cats. And we got all that info on the card, but then we can also play it.’

He shoved the card into a slot on the recorder TV. At once the tiny screen showed a cartoon Keats declaiming aloud:

Then I felt like some sky-watcher
When a new planet orbits into sight — zowie!
Or like brave Balboa when

‘What do you think of it?’ said Fleischman, turning it off. ‘Not bad, eh?’

‘It’s uh, fine. Really great, sir.’ Norm looked to the bar where a pretty girl was throwing back her head to release a theatrical laugh. He looked to the sofa where the mysteriously beautiful Mrs McBabbitt, in her customary black, still seemed to be waiting for someone. He looked to the piano where a few deliriously happy people had their heads together, trying to harmonize on a carol. Everybody in the room seemed to be having a terrific time. ‘Really terrific.’

Silently, Norm wished himself a Merry little Christmas.

The woman at the bar, Indica Dinks, was neither as girlish nor as pretty as she might seem from a distance, but she was a minor celebrity, being appreciated. That made her glow.

‘Semantics?’ She laughed again. ‘Mister Tarr, you don’t know the meaning of the word.’

The silver-haired man next to her nodded and smiled. ‘Very good. The name is Doctor Tarr, really. But my friends call me Jack.’

‘All right then, Jack, you may be an expert in your field — did you say it was market research?’

‘Market forecasting, really.’ Dr Tarr was a lot younger and handsomer than he might seem from a distance. He kept taking the unlit pipe from his mouth and pointing the stem at nothing. ‘But what I wanted to ask you was —’

‘Market whatever, you may be an expert in your field, but I too happen to know a little bit about human nature. Especially when it comes to machines.’

‘Yes, exactly. The interface—’

‘Face it,’ she continued, ‘machines are only human. They have feelings too.’

He paused, deciding not to laugh. ‘So you say in your book, Indica. But that’s just what I’m not clear about, where you say machines have feel—’

‘My book isn’t clear? The Mechanical Eunuch isn’t clear?’

‘Yes, yes, most of it and there’s quite a lot there I agree with, the magical bond between human and machine, yes. I was right with you there, where you describe a man trying to start his car on a cold morning, swearing at it, kicking it… I could almost imagine mechanical consciousness… But later when it gets down to whether a shoeshine machine feels degraded, I mean I just can’t quite… see?’

She patted his hand. ‘Of course not, okay. Don’t worry, maybe it takes a bricoleur to really dig—’

‘Yes, you’re probably right, only a man who lays bricks with his two hands knows the other side—’

‘Or a Zen person, maybe one who likes to fix motorcycles or at least lawnmowers. Because only a person like that can dig that machines aren’t just extensions of man any more. No, that’s all part of the old master-slave routine, the terrible power game we play with machines. Machines are beings in their own right. And if we don’t give them their freedom, one of these days they’ll be able to just take it.’

Dr Tarr nodded, and pointed his pipestem at nothing. ‘You’re right. I never saw it that way before. I guess my professional background does get in the way sometimes. Blinds me to certain possibilities.’

‘Your professional background?’

‘Parapsychology. I used to head a little department over at the University, before I decided to carve out a new career in market forecasting. And you know, I always took it for granted that psychic energy goes with consciousness, and with being human. Or at least with being a biological creature.’ The pipestem waggled. ‘You’ve opened up a very big can of questions, young lady. If machines can feel…’

A few moments later she was calling him ‘Jack’ often, and emphasizing everything she said by touching his hand. She was telling him about her last husband.

‘Hank was okay really, but he kept getting wound tighter and tighter into ecology. I mean I tried to tell him whales aren’t the only fish in the sea, but — oh well. Now Hank’s trying to run this really seedy Luddite movement, talk about misguided. I mean you can’t turn the clock back to zero, that’s just a waste of time. He’ll learn, I hope. I still feel a lot of natural affection for Hank, you know? Like they say people do when they get an arm or leg cut off, they go around feeling this ghost limb for a long time. Kinda like that.’

She sighed, sipped her vegetable-juice cocktail. ‘And that’s natural and healthy, the ghost limb. But on the other hand take people with artificial limbs. They can get too attached to them, you know?’

‘The dance of life goes on,’ said Dr Tarr, his stem pointing nowhere in particular.

Father Warren sat on the South sofa, pretending to study the colour of his glass of sherry. Someone sat down beside him and asked what he did — and left before he could think of an answer.

The party was beginning to run down. Indica sat at the bar, talking to the woman whose sinus trouble was the trouble with Prague. The group at the piano were trying ‘Hello Dolly’. The remains of a buffet supper were being cleared away to the kitchen where Felix Culpa was examining an electric carving knife. Mrs Doody had found her