The Complete Roderick

‘Let’s get dressed. A million bucks’ worth of junk running around the house destroying my plants, how do you think that makes me feel?’

‘Yeah, but—’

‘I don’t want to talk about it any more. Just get dressed.’

Bax obeyed, and followed her downstairs. From the living-room came sounds (Yipe! Eeeeow! Boing! and scales played on a xylophone) of Roderick’s favourite TV cartoon, Suffering Cats. The little robot stood close to the screen, mesmerized by the sight of cats blackening their faces with TNT, walking off cliffs, and being flattened under weights marked I TON. Bax, too, was fascinated. He sat down to watch, only half-aware that Indica was leading Roderick out into the hall.

‘Where’s that cat?’ said a deep voice from the TV. ‘Where’s that dad-blamed cat?’ Its owner, visible from the waist down, wore hobnail boots and carried a meat- cleaver. Bax was grinning already.

‘Hey honey? Come and watch this. Old Oscar’s on the warpath and—’

An odd sound came from the hall, like grinding gears. In a minute, Indica and Roderick came back. She was crying and trembling, while the robot seemed unperturbed. Yipe! Boing! He crept up close to the screen, until his large dome caused a partial eclipse.

‘Outa the way, big-head.’ Bax noticed a shiny dent in the dome, as it moved away. But just then he needed his full attention for animated carnage: a knocked-out cat listened to birds and grew a red lump on its head, and looked at the world through a pair of plus-sign eyes.

A commercial came on. Kids were urged to get a plastic robot that stalked in circles, saying, ‘Hello, I’m Robbie! Can I be your friend? Hello, I’m Robbie! Can I be your friend?’

Roderick was unable to watch this, for his head kept revolving in the strangest way, like a lid coming off a jar of Huck Finn grape-style jelly, a taste treat for kids — and grown ups too!

‘I didn’t do anything,’ Indica protested. ‘All I did was take him and show him the avocado he killed, all I did was rub his nose in it, a little.’

Hank watched the head revolve. ‘A little? Then how did he get that big dent? Jesus, I can’t keep anything around here, you—’

‘Sure, blame the wife, it’s what I’m for, right? Blame me. Okay, maybe I got carried away. Big deal, maybe I slapped him a couple of times, okay, I slapped your little toy.’

‘Just look at him! What am I supposed to tell Allbright? He trusts us with a billion-dollar machine, am I supposed to tell him you knocked hell out of it?’

‘A million dollars, listen they had this toy robot on TV, nine ninety-five plus tax, at least it can say hello; your little mechanical shit-head here can’t even do that. All he knows is how to smash people’s house-plants, how to go around murdering living things. Okay, I’m sorry. Okay? I’m sorry, maybe I hit him too hard. I don’t know, maybe I banged his head on the floor a couple of times, shit Hank, I was pretty close to a breakdown if you want to know.’

He combed his full beard with both hands. ‘Probably cost a fortune to fix him. A fortune. What the hell can I say to the guy who built him if he comes around to see — it’s all — it’s all getting on top of me.’

‘Look, maybe I can just stick his head down with scotch tape or something, no one’ll know the difference really. I mean, this dude never comes to see him or anything, who’s to know? Even if he did, I mean we just say he fell down the stairs… Look, I’ll fix him right now.’

She carried Roderick out to the kitchen. Hank sat staring at his hands for a moment, then went to the bar. As he picked up the bottle of Scotch, a tiny screen behind it lit up with a message:

First of the day 19:48: CONGRATULATIONS HANK, YOU ARE MAKING REAL PROGRESS.

‘Shut up,’ he said. After downing the measured drink, he returned to the sofa and sat fiddling with his electric pipe-cleaner. Handy little gadget — but wasn’t it starting to make a funny noise?

‘Here we are, good as new.’ Indica plunked the little robot down in front of the TV and turned it on. ‘Good boy, you just sit here and watch the pretty pictures.’ The screen showed a lifelike armpit.

‘Good as new,’ she said to Hank. ‘Not that he was ever a hell of a lot of good. Never says a word, never opens his mouth. I mean, even when I plug him in for his recharge at night, he never says good night or anything. Some robot! If you ask me — what’s the matter now?’

Hank cocked his head over the electric pipe-cleaner. ‘Making a funny noise, hear it?’

‘You and your goddamned gadgets, how about listening to me once in a while? Hank, what the hell’s wrong with you, all you think about are your gadgets. I mean, we got a house full of broken-down machinery now, who needs it? We came out here to get away from crap and machines and — look at you, sitting here in the middle of the goddamned desert, listening to a goddamned electric pipe-cleaner!’

He looked at her, then back to the instrument. ‘Now wait a minute. We came out here to establish our own, ahm, environmental situation, right? So machines are an integral part of it. Oh sure, I used to want to turn the clock back, just like everyone else. I wanted to trash our whole technology, return to the soil — only I grew out of it. Whether we like it or not, technology is here to stay. Machines are here to stay.’

On cue, the pipe-cleaner made a loud buzzing noise and emitted a wisp of smoke. Hank dropped it to the floor where, after flopping for a moment like a dying fish, it lay still.

‘Ha! Maybe they don’t want to stay.’

Hank’s pudgy fingers dug into his beard. ‘Oh sure, laugh. But it doesn’t change a thing. Sure, machines go wrong once in a while. They have to be fixed—’

‘Tell me something I don’t know. You never fix anything around here, you never let me call a repairman, all you do is let it pile up! The crapyard of the universe we got here, the crap—’

Just let me finish, will you? Just have the courtesy to let me finish what I’m saying, okay? Okay. Machines are here to stay, we have to make the most of ’em. We owe it to ourselves not to just throw them away the minute they conk out on us. If we do that, we’re turning all our energy and raw materials into junk and garbage and pollution. Right?’

‘What is this, are you gonna quote your whole goddamned article for Country Ambience or something? I’ve read it.’

‘Just let me finish. Now, we don’t call repairmen because the true person, true to his own environment, fixes everything himself. It’s the only way to learn to live in your environment. You fix things yourself, or if you can’t fix something you make some new use out of it. Like maybe you cannibalize it to fix something else.’

‘Cannibalize my ass! I don’t believe what I’m hearing from you. God, you’ve been writing this crap so long you believe it yourself, any minute now you’re gonna tell me about bricoleurs and Zen motor cycles! Listen, buster, this isn’t your environment, it’s mine. You’re always off at some goddamned conference, I’m the one has to try living in this shit-hole day after day. Day and night, you know? I’m stuck here, with the deep-freeze that wrecks a quarter-ton of food, with the stopped-up drains — all of it. My environment, and it stinks.’ She looked at Roderick. ‘Yeah, including that little tin marvel, you mind telling me how he’s supposed to fit into our swell environmental situation? I mean, just what are we supposed to get out of having him around, a walking junkyard?’

‘Well, ahm, as a matter of fact I’m doing an article on him for Eco-Style, “I Adopted a Robot”, to tie in with their big issue on home cybernetics. And it looks like I’ll be guesting on a chat show next week, could lead to a book-movie deal, even heard from a producer putting out feelers for a sitcom series, My Little Robot, I mean it’s all talk at this stage, but who knows…?’

On the screen, a man with a yellow moustache held up a box of detergent. Roderick began to wave his arms.

‘Okay, keep him. Just keep him out of my way, Hank. I mean it.’

‘Baba abbaba!’ said Roderick. ‘Ablabba bab!’

That night, after Roderick had been plugged to his re-charger in the spare room, and while he stood