The Complete Roderick

strangers straggled up and removed items, but Warren and Dinks stood motionless, watching the endless parade and listening to a loop of tape play an endless medley.

‘Doesn’t um seem to be here, Hank. And we’re running a little late.’

‘Well I’m not leaving here without something.’ Hank snatched up the saffron bag. ‘Let’s go.’

‘But that’s, you can’t just—’

‘Let’s get out of this place. I hate airports, all this automated luggage and automated music and people like zombies moving along herded along no life no reality no, no weather even, might as well be in some damn shopping mall—’

‘Ha ha, well I hope you won’t mind coming out to the Vitanuova Shopping Piazza today, that’s where we’ve set up the um, at the conference centre—’

‘What? You fixed my rally, my rally, in some plastic shopping centre? Why not just hold it here in the Arrival lounge, I’m trying to reach real people, not — I just don’t believe this.’

But Hank nevertheless allowed himself to be led from the terminal into a taxi. ‘I just don’t believe this.’

‘But just look at this brochure, the conference centre seats five thousand, a first-class convention hall, facilities — your publisher thought—’

‘Let me see that. “Our trained personnel will be happy to advise you in preparing multimedia presentation, programmes on any subject, and we have plenty of prepackaged units ready to be computer-tailored to your individual multimedia needs” you thought I wanted this? This? You thought the Luddites have multimedia needs? We need computer tailoring?’

‘No, of course not, I—’

The driver was craning around. ‘Hey I know you, you’re that Luddite guy, I seen you on TV, now what’s your name?’

‘Look I’m sorry, Hank, I just thought it might be good exposure for your book, I know it’s a, um, compromise but your publisher is paying and it’s a chance to pull in new, a new audience, to sell your book too—’

‘I was gonna say the name Godfrey Dank,’ said the driver. ‘Only now I remember he was the ventriloquist, and when I hear the fadder here call you Hank—’

‘Sure sure, anything to sell the book, why not turn the rally into a sales conference, why not bring in the slogans and the gimmicks? The prizes for top salesman, why not?’

‘Hank, you’re tired, you must be over-reacting. I’ll admit we made a mistake, Fishfold and Tove thought —’

‘Yeah, Hank. Hank, now don’t tell me the last name—’

‘Why not bring in the, damn it, the strippers and the pep band, you think I came here for that?’

‘No, of course not, I—’

‘This whole piazza place is dedicated to the inhuman, to everything mass-produced and cheap, fast food and book supermarts and everything designed by computers and stamped out of the same plastic by robots, the potted palms, the furniture, the stores, the clerks inside, maybe even the robot customers, all of it slathered over with that damn homogenized music you get everywhere, “Moon River” and “Sunshine Balloon” everywhere, “Garioca” everywhere, bars and restaurants, airports, toilets, dentist chairs, delivery rooms and funeral parlours, assembly- line music for assembly-line people—’

‘I think it was on the Yoyo Show I seen you, or no, was it Ab Jason? I remember your beard was real long then—’

‘It’s that kind of stuff I started the Luddites to fight, the way we’re burying the world in useless gadgets, unreal junk heaped up around us until we don’t even recognize the real world at all, it’s just one more thing on TV!’

‘Yes I know, the angst, I trace it to a loss of faith in human values concurrent with the cybernetic—’

‘Indica and I tried to get away from our gadgets, we moved out West to this ecological house, but we brought the disease along with us, in no time we were right back in the same old manure pile of gadgets, house full of broken-down machinery who needs it? Solar panel leaking through the ceiling and something wrong with the autodoor on the garage and the lawn mower and the ultrasound dishwasher and the automatic toilet bowl cleaner — and all around us stuff getting ready to break down, the slow cooker, the light-pipe intercom, the rotisserie, the popcorn popper, the hot food table, the cake oven, microwave, deepfreeze, shoe polisher, floor polisher, vacuum cleaner-washer, blender, mixer, processor, slicer, chopper, coffee grinder, thermostat, lumistat, electrostatic air-conditioner, Jesus Christ, the water purifier, electric pepper-mill, nail-buffer, can opener, carving knife, Jesus H. Christ, there I was in the middle of the desert with an electric pipe-cleaner in my hand, and it was starting to make a funny noise…’

‘Yes, yes I know it must have been—’

‘Listen Indica and I even tried adopting a robot child, now isn’t that sick? A robot child!’

The driver said, ‘Kids these day, I know, I know—’

‘One day I just couldn’t take any more. I picked up a hammer and took a swing at little Roderick… and I missed! And, and the little machine pasted me back with a wrench, and I was free. I just got up and walked out, out into the desert, a free man.’

Father Warren folded his long hands, unfolded them, played a game of church-and-steeple. ‘That was when you decided to write Ludd Be Praised?’

‘Yes I knew then, we have to smash the machines. Smash their grip on our minds, our lives.’

‘It’ll go all right,’ said Father Warren. ‘Try not to worry, Hank. The point is, you have a message to put across, a battle-cry: Smash the machines!’

‘Father I wish I had your faith. At times like this—’ Hank waved the brochure, ‘I wonder if the machines haven’t smashed us. I — I get so discouraged—’

‘Definitely Ab Jason, the Ab Jason Show, only I just can’t recall your name, Hank, your—’

‘ Will you just shut up and drive? My name is Hank Dinks, yes I, was on the Ab Jason Show, now will you just, just—’

‘Okay okay, ya don’t hafta yell. I mean excuse me mister bigshot celebrity from TV, I don’t wanna insult ya, a lousy working stiff tryina talk to ya, excuse me. All to hell.’

The driver punched buttons to start an endless tape of ‘Moon River’, ‘Carioca’, ‘Sunshine Balloon’…

‘Well well well Ms Dinks, Indica, this is indeed a pleasure, welcome aboard, be glad to show you around our little operation here, after all we’re the people who deal the merchandise, the urn books, so if you don’t mind me saying so, we’re the people who know people. Yes, Mr and Ms Bookbuying America are old, old friends of ours, they don’t have many secrets from us. We know how to give them what they want — and make them want it, heh heh. Any questions before we start the grand tour?’

‘Quite a store you have here, Mr Shredder.’ Indica peered down the aisle of what might have been a supermarket, with customers plying shopping carts past display shelves of products with eye-appeal beneath signs and video screens whispering sales messages. Her gaze, finding nowhere to alight, came back to Mr Shredder’s gold tooth.

‘See we’ve put a dump bin of your book in the front, and you’ll be autographing in the back, so people have to pass as many shelf feet as possible to get to you. And along here see we have our Today’s Top Ten, with daily sales figures logged in right off our national computer hookup — people like to know where they are when they buy a book. And here’s another bin with that darned psychic pigeon novel, just keeps on selling! We’ll probably nominate that one for the American Book Award this year, hard to say until we do a book-by-book cost analysis, over the year.

‘Now here’s our astrology and science section, and over here a little item that should do well.’ He picked a book from a cardboard barrel.

A Completely New Novel by Ford James Smith

Based on the TV Series by Joyce Henry Madox

Inspired by Adam Thome’s Novelization of the

Original Screenplay by Conrad Brown

Developed around a Theme Inspired by