the back and the right side, how’s that gonna look? And nobody done the plates—’
‘Don’t worry about the plates,’ said Roderick quietly. ‘I—’
Chet said, ‘Ra’s ball, who’s supposed to be drivin’ here, anyway? I got enough on my mind, tryin’ to figure all them fancy one-way streets, half of ’em blocked off at the other end without — shit, they seen us!’
They were crossing an intersection; a few blocks to the East they could see the flashing red-and-blue lights of the police car crossing another. It went North, they went South. ‘Holy Horus they done seen the wrong side of us, too. Now they know we got the mayor’s red — well, now what?’
Roderick spoke up. ‘In a way it’s lucky they did see the red side. I mean, if we could use the one-way streets, sort of turning left all the time… hey, take a left.’
‘All I need, got enough human back-seat drivers, now the damn toys gotta start—’
‘Do like he says,’ Zip rumbled. ‘That’s one smart little cuss there.’
Chet took a left. ‘Going round in circles, real smart. But then what we got to lose?’
‘Everything,’ said old Jeb, turning his face to the window. The baby kicked at his bald spot.
‘They seen us again!’
And the police car saw them again and again, as both vehicles spiralled in through the one-way system, first seven blocks apart, then three, then two. When the police car was only one block away (and turning towards them) Roderick said: ‘Okay, now pull over on this next block — on the left. Turn out the lights and everybody duck down.’
An instant after they obeyed, tyres shrieked at the final corner and the flashing colours approached. They could hear the two policemen arguing. A spotlight went on.
‘Okay, sure it’s a new Shrapnel, only it ain’t hizzonour’s, just take a look. His is Lady Macbeth Red, and this is, it looks like Tango Green. Anyways, look at the plate, his is Elmer two six one zero five eight niner seven, while this here is Lolita six eight five zero one niner two three, we’re wasting time…’
‘Have it your way… thin air…’
The police car wow-wowed away. They were safe.
Zip said later, ‘I told you he was a smart little cuss. I bet Roderick’s got more brains in one little silly-cone chip than you got in your whole head, Chet.’
A gold tooth grinned back at Roderick, wrinkles smiled, a watery eye winked, and a tattooed hand patted his dome. The children smiled in their sleep, the woman with earrings blew him a kiss, and even the baby seemed to wave its foot in congratulations. Roderick was a gipsy hero, and now there was no question of sending him to the junk-yard.
Instead, later that night, they sold him into slavery.
VI
Midnight. The apostle clock chimed, and its twelve tiny wooden figures paraded out of one door and in at the other. Faces half-gone with worm-holes.
Mr Kratt lifted his snout and listened.
‘You must really like that old clock, huh Mr Kratt?’
‘Like it? I hate the goddamned thing. That’s what I keep it for, to remind me how much I hated my old man.’
‘I don’t get it. If you—’
‘You don’t have to get it, bub.’ He watched the wooden door shut behind the last apostle. ‘See, my old man had the damnedest collection of old clocks, cuckoos, grandfathers, you name it. Some real fancy ones, too: like this German school-house with these little enamel schoolboys that come outside, one at a time, they bend over, see, and get a beating from the old teacher. My old man spent his life fixing them up. His life and our money. And when he died he left us kids one broken-down clock apiece. All the rest went to a museum. Only good investment he ever made, and he gives it away.’
The chimes finished, and there was no sound in the office trailer but the faint noises filtering in from outside: screams. Bells. The waltz-time murmur of the merry-go-round.
Mr Kratt looked from the face of his digital watch to that of his young assistant, a pimply man with a handle-bar moustache.
‘You oughta shave that thing off, bub.’
‘Yes, Mr Kratt.’
‘No, I mean it. What do you want with all that hair on your face? Think it gives you confidence, some shit like that?’
The young man fiddled with a company report. ‘Well, I just like it. Same as you and your ring there.’
‘Ha!’ Mr Kratt held it up, a heavy gold claw mounted with a steel ball. ‘That, my friend, is history. That’s a pinball from my first machine. Took me five years to build it up to an arcade, but in two more years I had three arcades and the carny. Never looked back after that.’ He checked his watch again. ‘Where the hell is this guy? How long does it take to go through a few waste-baskets?’
‘I thought you started out in Autosaunas, sir.’
‘No, that was later. What happened was, I started out with these call girls—’
‘You was into call girls?’
‘Not me, people I knew. And when they legalized them in California, see, they wanted to expand. So I came up with this idea, wiring the girls into a computer, hell, it cut their turnaround time by forty per cent. So then I thought, hell, why pay all these girls, I mean taxi fares and food and rent, skimming, it all comes off the top. All you need is something that looks and talks and moves like a girl — anyway that’s how Autosaunas got going. I was lucky there too, managed to sell off my interest just before all that litigation came down on them, not just the nuisance suits claiming clap and syph but the heavy stuff, middle-aged guy dies of heart failure and they try to prove electrocution, another guy files injury claim for amputa — well, you know how these ambulance chasers get their clients all worked up over some little nothing. Anyway that’s when I got the idea for Datajoy, all I got so far is a registered name and a process, but when the time’s right — look, we give that guy fifteen minutes more, then I’m splitting.’
‘These people you knew that was into call girls, who, was it the Mafia?’
‘There’s no such thing as the Mafia,’ said Mr Kratt quickly. ‘Anyway that business showed me what I’m doing, made me think it deep. See, I used to think I was in the amusement machine business, but that’s just part of the picture. See, what I’m really into is pleasure. The pleasure industry. Big difference there, changes the whole concept when you think about it. I mean now I could acquire a few other interests, stuff like T-Track Records, like K.T.Art Films, see these are all just departure points to the same place, they all come under one dome,
‘Pleasure. Is that why you’re going into fun foods?’
‘That’s it, bub. Only as you know, it’s a highly-saturated market there right now, so I can only get in with a hell of a good angle.’ He glanced at his watch again. ‘Which is one reason I end up sitting here half the night waiting for that market research yak-head to bring me what I need. Is that him now?’
The assistant answered the door. It was not the market researcher, only two old gipsies trying to sell a robot.
‘Tell ’em we got a robot, we got a show full of robots. Tell ’em I make the goddamn things — no wait, wait a minute. Let’s just see what
The two old people came in carrying a small, inhuman-looking device. ‘Good evening sir, we—’
‘Put it on the desk there and turn it on,’ said Kratt. ‘What’s it supposed to do? Tell fortunes?’
The old woman kept working her multitude of wrinkles into a smile, or was it a leer? ‘If you want,’ she said. ‘Little Roderick here is a smart little cuss. He—’
‘That’s its name, Little Roderick?’
‘Roderick Wood,’ said the gadget, holding out a claw. ‘I—’
