He bawled her name thrice. People in the crowd started laughing and hooting back at him. Then suddenly all was drowned in the roar of forty thousand voices, the clapping of eighty thousand hands, as the concert began.
Allbright picked up a handbill, his last connection with her:
The concert was beginning, and a peculiar farewell it was; Gary had already left the group to become a special disciple of Dodo (with the rank of saxifrage), so the Auks now consisted of Barry alone, with of course tons of equipment. The equipment, now arranged on a platform in the middle of the stadium, occupied about the same volume as a small four-room house. Indeed, it almost functioned as a small house, for once the remaining Auk had acknowledged his applause and entered among these infra-veeblifiers and tone-hurst hyperdecks, this one-man band was not visible at all.
Later there would be rumours that Barry wasn’t doing anything in there. That he wasn’t doing anything. That he wasn’t in there.
XXII
Roderick found it easy to watch television, hard to do anything else. So he stared at the screen day and night, just as in the earliest years of his life. Was this a kind of senility? he wondered while changing channels. Was he approaching the end, his life furling in about him again, and was he becoming a tidier package, more easily disposed of?
But enough of gloomy thoughts like that: everything on the screen told him not to worry, not to worry. Taco-burger-flavoured diet aids gave way to gleaming pre-owned cars; micronic toilet cleanser to pizza-burger- flavoured falafel sticks; the KUR family of companies offered educational toys like the Zizi-doll, Polly Preggers and Barfin’ Billy; America was wearing cleaner shirts than ever before; the Army offered young people almost unlimited opportunities for travel and education; people were winning new cars and boats and aeroplanes and houses, swimming-pools full of dollar bills, wheelbarrows full of gold, a dozen red roses every week for life; Dorinda managed to look on the bright side of her Destiny; old movies recaptured Hollywood’s golden past; cop dramas showed how law and order still not only prevailed but sufficed; zany comedies proclaimed a new age in which pedestrian lives would become warmly meaningful, meaningfully funny, zanily warm.
He was watching a comedy about violence in New York, filmed entirely in Los Angeles. A yellow cab with blood on the door drew up, before an apartment house. Audience laughter bubbled up, anticipating the worst.
Roderick’s door crashed open, and four large uniformed men hurled themselves into the room, pointing guns at him or at windows. It seemed so much a part of TV that he waited for audience laughter.
‘Sheriff’s office, you the robot?’
‘I, robot. Yes.’
‘You the robot known as Robert Woods also known as Robin Hood also known as Rickwood also—’
‘Yes, anything, fine.’
‘You’re under arrest. You have the right to—’
‘Al,’ said one of the other men. ‘Just shut up, will you? This robot is
‘Sure.’
Roderick waited patiently while the four men got him into a straitjacket, leg-irons and an iron collar with four lead chains attached. It was still a part of TV; he was still interested in what might be happening next — a car chase? A discovery about someone’s parentage?
As the sheriffs men were about to lead him away, there appeared in the doorway a man with the head of a fox. Behind him was a man with the head of a cat. Four guns turned towards them automatically.
‘FBI,’ said the fox, showing a gold badge. ‘I’m Inspector Wcz and this is Special Agent Bunne. I’ll have to ask you to turn over that robot.’
‘Turn him over? But we—’
‘Shut up, Al. Inspector, we have a county court order here—’
‘I know,’ said the fox. ‘But our federal court order takes precedence. This is a matter of national security, boys.’
It took some time for the sheriff’s men to release their prisoner from his complicated restraints, and about the same time for Wcz and Bunne to struggle out of their costume heads.
‘I sure wish you’d told us earlier, Inspector. Just what is this robot, a spy or something?’
Wcz said, ‘I’d rather not definitize that at this stage, not in the way you contexted it there. Let’s just say that a certain government agency has loaned overriding consideration to the problem, okay? Against a backdrop of far-reaching technical contingencies, okay? So let’s hustle it up, fellas, and get those leg-irons off him, we got a plane to catch.’
‘Okay sure fine yup all right ye—’
‘Shut up, Al.’
Roderick said, ‘Why were you wearing animal heads?’
Inspector Wcz turned, turned away again.
One of the deputies spoke. ‘Yeah, why were you wearing animal heads?’
‘We were on another case,’ said Bunne. Wcz looked at him and he fell silent.
Nothing more was said to Roderick or about him, as the FBI men drove him to the airport and bundled him aboard the plane which had been held for them. Nothing was said about Roderick or to him all through the flight. Agent Bunne watched the movie (in which a stripper adopts a crippled puppy and is therefore pursued by the Mafia, crashing a lot of new cars). Inspector Wcz studied a book called
Two more FBI men met the plane, packed themselves with Roderick into a limousine, and the five of them set off across the desert.
‘Is it all right if I know where we’re going?’ Roderick asked. Three of the FBI men exchanged looks and shifted around uncomfortably; the car was full of the creak of shoulder holsters. Inspector Wcz affected not to hear.
‘Might as well tell him, eh Inspector?’ Bunne said.
Wcz laughed, or at least, laughing sounds came from his stiff face. ‘Sure, you tell him. Tell him what they do to
‘Isn’t that a think tank?’ asked Roderick.
‘You tell him.’ Wcz laughed again. ‘Tell him about the Orinoco policy —
‘Lawyers?’ Roderick asked. ‘Corporation lawyers?’
‘Tell him he won’t feel like being funny once they get hold of him. Tell him how they start dismantling and
