The Complete Roderick

Indica nodded, hoping the lecture was finishing.

‘Anyway, at the same time, publishers keep getting taken over by big conglomerates like KUR, people with electronic ideas of their own. Like they also get computerized stock control and also they fix it up so authors can set their own type — stuff like that. And it’s kind of inevitable that their computers will get together with our computers. After all, we all want the same thing.’

Indica stopped nodding. ‘Authors and publishers and book dealers, all — together?’

Mr Shredder grinned with his gold tooth. ‘Only a pilot scheme so far, but so far it works! We got this best- selling author to agree, he sits in his house in Nassau and types, and our computers get it via satellite, word by word. They do a complete analysis as he writes — and feed it right back to him. They give him back a sales projection every time he hits the old space bar, so he knows the second his writing falls off. He knows he’s got to go back and polish up that last sentence or change that last word — or else!’

By the time Roderick and Luke arrived, the rally was already in full swing. The huge hall was more than half full, with more people drifting in all the time.

The speaker was saying, ‘…mixers, processors, thermostat, lumistat… can opener, electric carving knife, Jesus Christ, there I was in the middle of the goddamned desert with an electric pipe cleaner in my hand

‘Why that’s Hank!’ Roderick exclaimed. Someone told him to shut his fuckin’ face.

Luke whispered, ‘Yes, he’s the guy I met on the plane.’

‘Hush your mouth,’ warned another man. The audience seemed to be largely male, and many were wearing a kind of ‘uniform’ of shirtsleeves, rolled up to mid-bicep, as in political cartoons of Uncle Sam. They seemed ready to spit on their hands and go to work. When new people came in, many of them would look around for a few moments, then remove their coats and roll up their sleeves.

‘…just picked up a hammer and took a swing at that little robot — and I missed! And the little robot picked up a wrench or something and cold-cocked me! But at least it was an honest fight — we were enemies and we both knew it. When I came to, I got up and walked out into the desert, a free man. A free man. For the first time in my life I didn’t have an alarm clock to wake up for, a phone to answer, a time clock to punch, or a car to keep up the payments on. No…’

Isolated people started calling out ‘Amen’ and ‘Praise the Ludd’. Soon there was a regular, clapping chorus, and Hank seemed to be leading it, standing alone in the middle of a big stage, a tiny bearded-prophet figure. He started going through the long list of gadgets and appliances once more, now as a litany. And before he finished, men were leaping up to name machines of their own:

‘To hell with my drill press!’

‘Praise Ludd!’

‘Down with programmed door chimes!’

‘Amen.’

‘Smash all machines!’

‘Yes Ludd!’

‘Take this hammer!’ Someone brandished it.

‘Ludd, Ludd!’

Hammers were being brandished all over the auditorium now.

‘I smashed a parking meter!’

‘I smashed a kid’s musical top!’

‘I smashed my wife’s solid state dehydrator with stick-resistant trays and forced air flow!’

‘Praise Ludd!’

‘Smash the machines! Screw the machines!’

Men were jumping on their seats and waving hammers now, ready to smash anything remotely like a machine, while others egged them on with a steady clapping and chanting, ‘Smash… smash… smash…’

Hank held up his hands in an attempt to make them stop, but this only seemed to raise the tempo; they took it as a victory sign. Worse, the conference centre’s ‘multimedia’ people, who had prepared a special audiovisual package for the occasion, thought Hank was now signalling for it.

The giant screen behind Hank suddenly came alive with images of train wrecks, exploding cars, Chaplin demolishing an alarm clock, aircraft shot down, burning factories, the sinking of a paddle steamer, a chainsaw murder, the Who smashing electric guitars…

At that point someone broke into the projection booth and smashed the equipment, and the room went quiet. They were waiting for Hank to tell them what to do — go home and wait? Act now?

Hank opened his mouth, but just then a multimedia voice came over the p.a. system, drowning him out:

‘Thanks guys and gals for making this a memorable day. We have souvenir hammers for sale in the foyer. And in a few minutes, Hank Dinks will be going over to the main complex to Prospero Books — he’ll autograph copies of both his books. I hope we’ll see you all there!’

That seemed to be the signal for the riot to begin.

‘Luke, this is ridiculous,’ Roderick tried to say, as they were pushed along the glass bridge with the others, but the noise of chanting, screaming and smashing made speech impossible. Roderick rolled up his sleeves, shook his fist and called for demolition. He was now separated from Luke, but could still see him; the ex-astronaut had rolled up his saffron sleeves and seemed to be having a hell of a good time.

The first mechanical victim was a gum machine, and soon gumballs were raining down from the upper levels of the ziggural — followed soon by pinballs and then fragments of a mechanical donkey ride. With a terrible thoroughness, the Luddites moved through every establishment, destroying hairdryers, malted milk machines, dental drills, programmed expresso machines, a wind-up mouse, toasters by the dozen and digital watches by the hundred. They met no opposition. The few security cops on duty approached them, fiddled with guns and radios, then decided to run instead. They had been hired to deal with elderly shoplifters and kids who tried skating on the escalators, not with a mob of thousands of maniacs.

They reached Prospero Books, where the furious mob not only did not find Hank installed, it found a sign, MACHINES LIB. The mob at once entered through both window and door. Roderick found himself wedged in a corner where, through the blizzard of torn pages, he could see on a TV monitor, Indica, still calmly signing books.

She continued to sign, ignoring the mob who pressed in around her little table. One of the men crashed his hammer down on the table in front of her.

‘Honestly!’ she said, and rummaged in her purse for a moment. Finally she brought out a revolver and fired it at the ceiling.

Instantly, everyone was quiet. Throughout the entire bookstore no one moved among the wreckage, except one enterprising Luddite who went on cleaning out the cash register. Everyone waited for a killing.

‘This kind of behaviour is very destructive,’ Indica said. ‘You’re a bunch of silly little boys. I suppose my ex- husband put you up to this. Well, you can tell Hank Dinks for me, it won’t work. It doesn’t matter how many hairdryers he smashes, I am not coming back to him. Now you can just clear out, all of you. Move!’

No one spoke. Here and there a hammer dropped to the floor (where everyone was now looking). One man, who’d been tearing up a copy of Indica’s book, now fell to his knees, kissing the book and weeping. A few others felt suddenly the nakedness of their arms and rolled down their sleeves. A general shuffling and edging towards the door began, and soon the place was almost clear.

Roderick came out of his corner. Indica, I—’

‘You! God damn it, will you stop following me?’ She brought up the pistol smoothly, clasped it in both hands and aimed carefully at a point between those terrifying eyes.

‘Are you going to shoot me?’ he asked, and stopped.

…running through a dead wood, some trees charred by lightning, that was how the dream went. In a clearing she saw a figure, a man in red armour, head to toe. He didn’t move, and gradually she realized that he was rusted fast, covered with red rust. Opening her fly, she pulled out an enormous oil can and went to work, annointing him all over. The rust dripped and ran, now it was blood. Suddenly his iron arms gripped her, squeezing her so tight she could hardly breathe. ‘Don’t scream,’ he said. ‘The woods are like