Roderick saw that there were a dozen other men smiling and patting the hammer-shaped bulges in their jackets.
‘I’ll, uh, take a rain-check, Luke. See you.’
In Roderick’s jacket pocket, he remembered, was a pass signed by the Auks. He took it to the stage door, where apologetic security cops frisked him, discussed him on their radios, and finally let him in.
There were now only two Auks, but a lot more equipment. They stared at Roderick until he said, ‘I see you finally got rid of the old Pressler Joad co-inverter.’
‘Hi!’ said one of the Auks. ‘I remember you, you helped us out that time, changed over to an obvolute paraverter with harmony-split interfeed.’
‘Full refractal phonation,’ said the other, ‘with no Peabody drift at all.’
‘Gary, is it?’
‘No I’m Barry, he’s Gary.’
Roderick nodded. ‘Wasn’t there someone else? Larry?’
‘Larry, yeah, well Larry did a little separation. Well you know he was writing a lot? Like “R.U.R. My Baby”, and “Ratstar”, he wrote them. Only then when we got this new electronic writing system, he just couldn’t compete and he thought he had to — sad. But hey, let sad thoughts lie, just self-be, man.’
‘Self-be?’
‘And we’ll show you all the new stuff we added. This is the famous HZGG-II, cross-monitored to a superphonesis drive through that, that’s our multi-tasking hyperdeck, custom built by a guy who does his own ferro-chloride etching on his own circuits; over there is Brown Betty, our brown noise generator; then the toneburst setup with patched in signal squirt…’
Roderick looked around at the huge cabinets, ranged around the stage like megaliths. ‘Doesn’t the audience have trouble seeing you, over all these big cabinets?’
‘They know we’re here, baby. They feel our electronic presence,’ said Gary.
‘Right,’ said Barry. ‘And this stuff gives us much more control over the essentials, the elementals. No screwing around with
Gary said, ‘Now we are the sounds. All we gotta do is
‘I came to warn you,’ Roderick said. ‘There are some Luddites out front, lining up for tickets. They’ve got hammers and they’re kind of crazy.’
‘No shit, you know this for sure?’
‘I saw the hammers.’
Gary called a security cop over and told him. When the man had trotted away, Gary said, ‘Hey thanks, man, you saved our life again. I mean we can’t blow this concert, it’s critical. See we got three hits, all over the point eighty-seven mark on the Wagner-Gains Scale but they all peaked already.’
‘Peaked?’
‘The record company screwed up release dates, so here we are,’ Barry said. ‘If we don’t make it big with this here concert, we’ll be off the charts in two weeks. And off the charts for us is dead.’
Gary nodded. ‘The Luddites probably know that, too, got their own trend computer somewhere, just waiting their chance. Our manager’s got secretaries watching the trendie around the clock — I’ll bet the Luddites are doing the same. After all, they killed Elvis, didn’t they?’
‘Elvis?’ Roderick wasn’t sure he understood anything.
‘Elvis Fergusen, you know, he used to be Mister Robop? Then one night they cut holes in his speakers. He tried to sing without electronics and — well, two months later he O.D.’d in a dirty hotel room in Taipin, you could call that murder.’
Roderick said, ‘Well I guess you’re about ready to play, aren’t you? So I’ll just—’
‘Hey, but thanks, man, you’ve been square with us. We oughta do something for you. Like we could turn you on to Dodo.’
‘Dodo? What is it?’
‘Everything, man.’ Barry squatted down and traced a circle on the stage floor. ‘Call that the universe, everything inside that circle. Then Dodo is — is the circle itself!’
‘You mean God or something?’
‘Yeah, God — and everything,’ said Barry.
Larry said, ‘And not-God too — and nothing. See, Dodo is kind of like the secret of everything. And the secret is, there ain’t no secret.’
Roderick was impressed. ‘How do I find out more about — Dodo?’
‘I’ll give you his address. Only don’t go to see him if you’re not sincere.’
‘Him? You mean, Dodo is a person?’
Barry hesitated. ‘Well yes, but more than a person too. Dodo is a way in — a way of getting into your own life.’
‘Right, right,’ said Gary. ‘The earth doesn’t know it, but it’s growing up to be a sun.’
Roderick felt less sincere at once, but the aphorism was sparking off others; soon Barry and Gary were grinning and shouting at each other:
‘Darkness is just ignorant light.’
‘Peace is war carried on by other means.’
‘Every day is another.’
‘Man is the piece of universe that worries about all the rest.’
‘Stop looking for happiness until you find it.’
‘Dodo is finding out man was never kicked out of Paradise at all.’
‘Yeah, Dodo is instant everything.’
‘Dodo means just
‘Dodo says, do fish know which way the wind blows?’
‘Dodo says, make today a wonderful yesterday,’ said Gary finally, and wrote out an address on a page torn from an electronic test manual. ‘Here you go. But listen, one thing: You have to prove your sincerity with Dodo. Take him like a bouquet of hundred-dollar bills. Anything like that.’
‘A bouquet of money?’
‘Dodo says money has its price.’
‘Fine,’ said Roderick. ‘Only I don’t have even
‘You must not be very sincere, then,’ Gary said. He went to a snare drum mounted upside down at the back of the stage, reached into it and came up with a handful of hundred-dollar bills. ‘Take these, it’s okay. Yours to keep or give to Dodo. Your choice.’
Barry said, ‘All money belongs to Dodo.’
People were running around on the big stage now, moving lights, checking the Auks’s makeup, clearing spare cables. Someone led Roderick to the wings; a second later the Auks started playing and the curtain rose.
They naturally opened with the gospel-based song that first made them famous, ‘Rivets’:
