nothing. Just dumb dummies like Rod here. So let’s get him alive again.’
When they had connected batteries and made a few adjustments, the robot sat up straight.
‘Rickwood, can you hear me?’
‘Yes… master…’ The single eye stared straight ahead. ‘Yes, master…’
‘Rickwood, for Christ’s sake! Doesn’t sound like him at all, sounds like some damn toy. Rickwood!’
‘Rod, snap out of it!’
‘Yes mistress…’ The figure got slowly to its one foot and balanced. ‘I obey…’ Rigid, it fell across the studio couch. ‘Oh, and thanks, gang.’
Then the three of them were up) and hugging, slapping backs, dancing or hopping around the room, shouting and laughing until Ida went pale and had to sit down for a moment.
‘Whew. New ticker. Not broke in proper yet, boys. Excuse me. Moment.’
‘New ticker?’ Roderick asked.
‘That’s what I came by to tell you. Artificial heart, got it put in a coupla months ago, they finally let me go home last week. Here, look.’ She opened her jacket to show a thick money-belt. ‘Batteries and a microcomputer in here, see?’ She opened her blouse to show where a wire ran into her sternum. ‘Neat, huh?’
Luke said, ‘Christ, Ida, you really got a magnificent pair, kid.’
Her colour improved slightly. ‘You’re not built so bad yourself. But what do you think of the hardware?’
‘Ingenious.’
‘Rod?’
Roderick said, ‘Looks great, Ida. But why didn’t you tell me you were going into the hospital? Maybe I could have visited.’
‘Well no, see, this was out of town.’
‘Where out of town?’
‘Geneva.’ She passed Roderick his foot and a screwdriver. ‘There’s this wonderful surgeon there, Dr Cnef, I guess some people call him a quack just because he’s a little unorthodox, but all his patients seem happy.’
‘Unorthodox? I don’t like the sound of this,’ said Roderick. ‘How unorthodox?’
‘Well, while other surgeons use hearts made out of silicone rubber he uses gold, and—’
‘But has he tested these gold hearts?’
‘Just put your foot on and drop the subject, okay? I feel fine, fine. If I waited for these other guys to finish their fiddly tests I wouldn’t need a rubber heart because I’d be dead. I thought you’d be pleased I got a new heart, that’s why I came to see you.’
‘I am pleased,’ said Roderick. ‘Forget my little quibbles, I’m not myself today.’
Ida watched him for a moment. ‘You look great, Rod. You remind me of a statue I saw once, the way you got your leg crossed over and digging that screwdriver in your foot — only it was a knife and the boy was taking out a splinter — I liked that statue. Oh, here’s your other eye, I found it behind the leg of the couch.’
‘You never did tell us how you got dismantled like this,’ Luke said. ‘And nothing stolen.’
‘It was a woman named Shirl, very interested in machines. She was just going to adjust my legs so I could run better. One adjustment led to another, I guess, so finally she just got carried away. After my arms and legs were off, I couldn’t really stop her.’
Ida said, ‘I know Johns just like that. They talk you into getting tied up and then they turn
‘So then she just walked out on you,’ Luke said. ‘Like all women!’
‘Well no, what happened was she was just going to put me back together when she got paged to the phone. Some kind of emergency research work at the U, I guess NASA stuff or — anyway an emergency.’
Luke nodded. ‘Don’t tell me about NASA emergencies, I’ve been up that road all the way. Bomb trouble.’
‘What bombs?’ asked the other two.
‘Okay, it’s top secret but I’m tired of not talking about it. What do you think NASA is all about, anyway? The exploration of space? The last frontier? Flags on the Moon and Mars? Orbiting labs? Messages of hope from Nixon to the Universe? No, bombs. NASA is all about bombs. We had bombs to blow up cities, bombs to spray neutrons over large areas, bombs to sift radioactive dust into the world’s atmosphere, bombs to be focused as death rays to kill other satellites, bombs to spread satellite targets and decoy killer satellite death rays — and of course bombs to blow us up if we make any mistakes.
‘Why does anybody think Russia and America would spend trillions on space programs? You gotta be naive to think bombs aren’t in the picture at all. And that’s why astronauts, like cosmonauts, had to be military personnel. They could take orders, and they didn’t mind bombing the shit out of anybody.
‘Everything we said was in code, you know. Like if we said, “Gosh, earth sure looks beautiful guys,” that meant
Luke blinked. ‘I never told anybody all that before. Better forget I said it, there’s such a thing as a need to know and you two don’t need to know anything about the bombs. Bombs? Did I say bombs? I meant, uh, orbiting labs and communications satellites. I wouldn’t want to be in trouble with Mission Control about erp!’ He leapt to his feet as though pulled up by a wire. ‘Affirmative’. Sorry fellas, it won’t happen again. I’m what? I’m not looking good? Negative. Affirmative, I’ll go.’ He tried waving goodbye to Roderick and Ida, but his hand was quickly jerked back to his side, as he pivoted smartly and marched out the door. They heard him down the hall: ‘…won’t happen again, fellas, won’t happen again—’
Ida jumped up. ‘Yes, well, I guess I better mosey along too. See you, Rod.’
‘Oh I thought maybe we could see a movie’
But she was gone already.
Roderick fitted his eyeball and lid. Then he phoned Shirl. ‘Mad? No, I… oh a couple of friends helped me. I’m fine… Well I thought maybe we could go to the movies… I’ll see.’ He turned on the TV and found the right teletext pages. ‘There’s a new flick at the Roxy,
‘Point nine two two, they said.’ Tortured curls of smoke from different pipes fought their way up to join the slice of smog near the ceiling, slipped off into the air system, and were dispersed elsewhere, outside. ‘Point nine two two my eye. What’s the point of having probability estimates that have no relation to probability? The fact is, they’ve tried for this Entity, once again, and once again they have failed.’
‘Well yes. the Roderick Entity is still operational, it looks like. This Agency team did have a lot of bad luck, one man mugged during a mission, then they lost contact with the Entity altogether, only just now picked up the trail again—’
‘Bad luck? Bad predictions, that’s what. Makes you wonder how they fake up these probability levels — point nine two two and they fail? They still fail?’
A thin shoulder shrugged. ‘How probable is probability?’
‘Oh don’t quote Pascal at me, not just now. I’ve been reviewing our entire history of attempts to finalize this Roderick Entity, and I have to say it’s not a very impressive record. To call these Agency men bungling nincompoops would be too generous. Or do you think someone’s running interference for the Entity?’
Dry hands shuffled dry paper. ‘No one we know. This man O’Smith turned up, a man who used to work for the Agency. We watched him, but all he’s doing is trying to grab the Entity for Kratt. That’s Kratt of KUR Industries.’
‘I don’t like that — can we make Kratt lose interest in this Entity? Can we make him fire O’Smith?’
‘Yes, KUR has got a Defense Department contract for novelty foods and porno cassettes — we could threaten, so to speak, premature withdrawal.’
‘Good. Get O’Smith fired today. I don’t want any complications when the Agency finalizes this Entity — if ever.’
‘What intrigues me is, someone manages to build an Entity smart enough to evade us for years like this, and all we can think of doing is go on trying to destroy it. Doesn’t say much for our creativity and flexibility of response, does it?’
