The Complete Roderick

Time say? Called you an exponent of the germane gear, didn’t they? A Joan of arc- welding? Congratulations.’

‘Look, I don’t need heavy irony,’ she said. ‘You always—’

‘No irony intended, the reviewers think it’s new and gimmicky, that’s all you need nowadays. After all, the book industry doesn’t ask if a book is good or if it says anything important. The industry asks only is it new? Because they might have to slot it in between selections like In Praise of Teddy Bears and The Hidden Language of Tour Handwriting and The Dieter’s Guide to Weight Loss after Sex, and God know how much other ephemeral whole forests being felled to print a book on how to sit in your seat on a commercial air flight, how to get over the death of a pet, you think people who publish that care about any book, any idea? Wait, wait—’ He fumbled in a pocket and came up with a tiny ruled notebook.

It’s a beautiful morning,’ Tarr said. ‘Why don’t you just shut up and enjoy it?’

‘He’s got a point though, Jack. I mean I know I’m probably being ripped off by my publishers, who are they? They’re just some subsidiary of a conglomerate, what do they care about machines?’

‘Or people?’ Allbright suggested, thumbing dog-eared pages. ‘I just jotted down a few titles, books the reviewers can really get their teeth into, if any: Garbo. a long-awaited biography; The Politics of Pregnancy, well maybe; Railways of Ruritania to grace any coffee table alongside The Yeti and I — the ad says “a close encounter that became a night of primal love”; here’s The Real Garbo; Marxism and Menstruation, why not; then there’s Frogs: Their Wonderful Wisdom, Follies and Foibles, Mysterious Powers, Strange Encounters, Private Lives, Symbolism and Meaning, serious rival there for the Teddy Bear book; then there’s Pornography, Psychedelics and Technology, yup; and Paedophilia: A Radical Case and finally Sons of Sam Spade. Hard to imagine[3] a newer collection of novelties than that, right?’

Tarr said, ‘Sounds a little bit like sour grapes there, Allbright. I notice the people who sneer most at success are usually unsuccessful.’

‘That’s goddamned profound, Tarr. And in my case, true!’

After they dropped Allbright, Dr Tarr got out his pipe and sucked at it madly as he drove. ‘Jesus,’ he said through clenched teeth, ‘you try to forget some things for a while, along comes some Allbright to remind you. They never leave you alone.’

‘Alone, I hate being alone. I hated writing both my books, you know? What I really like is promotion. The TV appearances, radio phone-ins, I guess I must be part of the whole awful system. But shit, Jack, I’ve missed so many boats.’

‘Me too, me too. I was a pretty good parapsychologist, you know? I had it all working for me, then I just — it all blew up on me. And here I am in market forecasting, a kind of limbo — no real life in it.’

‘I never had any kids,’ she said. ‘Never wanted any, either. But I was just remembering, this robot kid-thing Hank and I had for a little while. It was Allbright who dumped it on us, some friend of his built it, I guess. We called it Roderick. Cute little thing, like a toy tank only with these big eyes — we were both just crazy about it.’ She sighed. ‘Maybe I should have had real kids. Or maybe I should have gone on with my dancing. I was only in an ad, but the potential was all there, you know?’

‘No life in it,’ he said. ‘Market forecasting, sometimes it’s like I don’t know, trying to make a dead pigeon fly.’

‘The potential was there, just like the 480 ova inside you, all those chances… sure I’ve got a little fame, a little money, I’m helping the cause of machine justice, only I still feel cheated.’

He bit the pipestem and drove on. ‘Tell you what. Next week I’m flying to the Middle East to help plan this big tampon campaign. You could come along.’

‘Where?’

‘Cairo. Might be fun — if you forget your sleeping pills.’

433 East 11th had once been a smoke-blackened building of no great distinction; now it was an undistinguished low pile of smoke-blackened stone and brick. One of the caryatids that had pretended to hold up ten storeys now lay full-length, relaxed and indeed disjointed like the backbone of a dinosaur. And on her head, where a palaeontologist might have sat contemplating evolution or Ozymandias, Mr Vitanuova now sat holding a sheaf of pay-cheques.

‘You guys may wonder why I’m paying you in person. It ain’t because of Christmas, I ain’t Sandy Claus. It’s because I wanna make sure each and everybody gets his and her cheque personal. Because this is the last. You’re all laid off as of now, and the company is going into liquidation, right after Christmas.’

Roderick noticed a general murmur of protest, so he added his voice to it. ‘What’s going on?’ he asked several times.

‘I’m real sorry, boys and girls. Our lawyers say we got to wind down the company, we’re bleeding to death from a whole buncha lawsuits. All from that goddamn mixup when we almost blew up 334 down the street there insteada 433. Now all of a sudden everybody wants to get something outa that.

‘See, we evicted all the tenants on behalf of the owner, so both tenants and owner are now suing there.’ He started counting on his gloved fingers. ‘And that doorman we had arrested is suing us too. Then some of the tenants was so pissed off at the eviction they trashed their places, busted pipes, took the floor out even. So the owner sues us for that.’ On the thumb, he said, ‘As if all that ain’t enough, a burglarizer climbs in one of these apartments one night, puts down his foot for a floor and falls thirty feet and breaks his back. So he sues us.’

‘A burglar? How can he sue?’ Roderick asked.

‘Don’t ask me, but that’s the bigggest suit of all. This here burglarizer, this Chauncey Bangfield, is claiming loss of earnings, see? Says he pulls down about half a million a year and he’s got maybe twenty years ahead of him. And he’s suing us in California so we ain’t got a chance.’

‘Did you say Chauncey Bangfield?’ Roderick’s jaw clicked open.

‘You know him or something?’

‘I went to school with him. I mean there can’t be two Chauncey Bangfields, can there? Well well, good old Chaunce. He was the school — well — bully.’

‘Well now he’s pushing me around.’ Mr Vitanuova laughed, coughed, look out his cigar and examined it.

‘Look, boss, why don’t I talk to him? If I told him it would ruin you, maybe he’d drop the suit.’

‘Nobody talks to him, I already tried. They got him over there at Mercy Hospital, and these fancy California lawyers won’t let anybody see him or even find out how sick he is. But I don’t know — you could try. You could try.’

He drove Roderick to the hospital in his Rolls-Royce, and talked all the way of destruction.

‘See, I was always in the garbage business, started out with just my brother and one truck. We built up a fleet and lotsa valuable contacts; when the city moved into garbage, we moved into incinerators. Real money was there. But I still didn’t see the big picture.

‘Then one day I met this broad who gave me some million-dollar advice. She said her ex-husband was into incineration too, dropping bombs. A pilot or an astronaut or some damn thing. Then she said, You’re not just in garbage, you’re in the destruction business, just like Luke. And it’s a wide-open, growing field.

‘Destruction, see, that was it! I had contacts in junk, so why not buy into junkyards? And ship salvage? And demolition? Hell, now I’m diversified all over the place, got interests in bottle banks, graveyards, even tried a little asset-stripping — but that was too abstract, I like to see real stuff falling apart. That’s why I acquired Hackme, and I’d really hate to see it go. So here we are, get in there, kid, and fight for us.’

As soon as Roderick asked for Mr Bangfield, the receptionist became very nervous. She pushed a button and then pretended to be looking up the room number. A stack of X-rays slipped to the floor.

‘Let me help,’ said Roderick. Before he could help, however, he was grabbed from behind and his arm twisted into a hammerlock.