husband upstairs asleep on the toilet — his pacemaker needed a new battery — and Mr Vitanuova helped her bring him down and pack him into the car.
Edd McFee, moving in finally to talk to General Fleischman, heard him say to Francine, ‘It’s like Whistler said, “If silicon was a gas, I’d be a—”’
Someone glowered over a glass at Indica and said, ‘I knew her when she was plain old Indica Franklin, just another faculty wife who wanted to be a taco on local TV.’
Someone glowered over a glass at Mrs McBabbitt and said, ‘Well, silicon’s the basis of her life all right —’
Someone glowered over a glass at Father Warren and said, ‘There he goes, looking for another bandwagon. If Indica gave him a kind word he’d drop this Luddite crap in five minutes… a
Someone glowered at everyone and no one, while mumbling the words of a tired limerick: ‘…both concave and convex…’
A stranger arrived and, without removing his coat, hat or even the muffler that covered him up to his pale eyes, went straight into Moxon’s library. The room was dim, lit only by a desk lamp. Everett Moxon got up from the desk.
‘Ben? About time. Things are breaking up.’
‘Feel… like I’m breaking up myself…’ Franklin sat down and took off his fur hat. ‘I’m sick, Ev.’
‘There’s this flu thing going around, you’ll probably be okay in the morning. Now what have you brought me?’
Franklin threw a heavy envelope on the desk. ‘All there, the Taipin bids, the secret leasing arrangements for Kratcom International, the whole, whole… holus bolus. Jesus Christ, Ev, why didn’t you tell me
Moxon was studying papers from the envelope. ‘This is good stuff, Ben.’ He looked up. ‘To tell you the truth, I clean forgot you used to be married to Indica. Seems like it must have happened in another ice age. Volume One and we’re in Volume Two. Anyway why can’t you two be pals now?’
‘Pals?’ Ben’s weak laugh set off a coughing fit. ‘Just the sound of her voice sets my teeth on edge, and what she says! Last time I saw her she talked about something being
‘Sure. But maybe you just hate Indica because she’s hit the big time. Without you.’
Ben had taken off his coat; now he put it on again. ‘Yes, they all take it seriously, this Machines Liberation idea of hers. Without me? Well sure, she’s a self-made woman. I’m surrounded by self-made men and women, look at Kratt. God-damned world crawling with self-made people, self-made man myself, trouble is self-made people get made in their own image. Christ, it’s cold in here.’
‘Sweat’s pouring off you, how can you be cold? Ben, why don’t you go upstairs and lie down, I’ll call a doctor, okay?’
‘No but listen, Ev, you know what Kratt’s like.’
‘He treats his employees like toilet paper, I know that.’
Ben started to shiver. ‘It’s not that, not just that. I just can’t forget that time a few years ago when he poisoned all those kids just to break into the funfood market fast — funfood! Kids were dying of mercury poisoning! And you know what he did about it?’
‘Forget it, Ben, that was a long time ago.’
‘He bribed doctors to forge death certificates.’
Moxon slid the papers back in the envelope. ‘Sure, sure. But it’s Christmas now—’
‘Christmas! I think about Kratt, every Christmas, he fits right in there, Herod and the Holy Innocents. Herod and the
‘Let me call you a doctor.’
‘Makes you wonder — did Herod really want to kill Christ, or was he happy just killing any babies?’
‘Take it easy, Ben. Just wait right here, I’ll go get help and we’ll take you up to bed. Wait.’
Moxon found Francine in the kitchen. ‘Ben’s sick as a dog, we’ll have to put him in the spare room and call the doctor. He’s out of his head with fever right now. Still goes on about Kratt and that poisoned gingerbread business.’
She understood. ‘He still blames himself.’
‘Probably right to blame himself.’ Moxon lifted his small head and stared unseeing towards the two cooks who were arguing about a missing electric knife. ‘And for Indica’s walking out on him. The fact is, Ben’s always been a fuckup.’
He went back to the library with one of the waiters to find Ben shaking and weeping and sweating; sweat dripped from his chin to the desk blotter.
‘He was here, right here in the room!’
‘Who, Ben? Kratt?’
‘Roderick was right here!’ Ben pointed a shaking finger at the darkness. ‘My robot! My son, in whom I am well pleased!’
Moxon and Toy looked at one another; each took a shuddering arm. ‘Up we go now.’
‘He came into the room and stood right there. I saw him, he was wearing a ski sweater. Black, with little white figures on it. Like little people, self-made men. He didn’t say anything but he knew who I was. He knew I was protecting him from Herod…’
On the second occasion when Roderick tried the library, Ben was gone but Allbright was there, examining books.
‘Oh it’s you. Getting to be like a reunion here, I saw your pal earlier. The guy that wears dark glasses. Felix.’
‘I… please I…’
‘You gonna puke? Try the wastebasket there.’
‘I need an outlet…’
Allbright dusted off a volume. ‘Who doesn’t? Here’s a rare little item. Life of Sir Charles M’Carthy. First edition, clothbound, slight foxing.’
‘Help.’ Roderick was on all fours behind the desk, fumbling with an electric cord that seemed to run from his navel. ‘Help… plug in.’
‘Hope this isn’t a suicide. Here.’ Allbright reached down and plugged the cord into the wall socket. He watched Roderick’s eyes go opaque, then close.
After a minute, Roderick sat upright in something like the lotus position. His navel was still plugged to 120V AC, his eyes still closed. ‘My batteries. I don’t usually let them run low like that.’
Allbright dropped Sir Charles M’Carthy into his battered briefcase and searched for more first editions. ‘Yeah, I feel like that sometimes. Only being a poet I can’t even kill myself. It would look too much like imitation of better poets.’
‘Suicide. I don’t see the point of it.’ A v-shaped smile in the shadow by the desk. ‘Why take a last step? Why not go on living — if only to see what happens next?’
Allbright’s laugh made him cough, then sneeze. ‘Life as a soap opera, eh? A never-ending series of episodes in
‘I don’t understand, Mr Allbright.’
‘The past, that’s just Scarlett O’Hara in a taffeta-hung bed and Washington throwing a dollar across the Potomac — or the Delaware — all people remember is the dollar, all else is mist and plastic dinosaurs. The past is five minutes ago, it’s what happened before the last commercial.
‘The future now, that’s just space wars, white plastic rockets against black, Terra versus Ratstar. Names don’t matter, what matters is the violence. The future has to be galactic annihilation, 1984 for a million years, a spaceboot grinding an alien face forever. Nobody believes in the future anyway, except maybe a few crank science-
