The old man suddenly started dancing and whistling accompaniment. The entire trailer rocked with his tap routine.
‘What the hell here, shut up you!’ The assistant grabbed his arm, and might have hustled him out of the door if Kratt hadn’t spoken up. ‘Okay, okay, simmer down everybody, let’s see here.’ He took the claw and twisted it around, examining it. ‘Not bad work here, you know? Course he looks like shit, but we might fix — does he duke or what?’
‘Sure I do,’ said Roderick. ‘Gimmee your mitt, uh, sir.’
Mr Kratt held out a bunch of thick fingers. He was thick all over, Roderick noticed, and wide: a wide head growing straight from the shoulders without pausing at any sort of neck. A wide face hanging from a thick black V of eyebrow. A wide nose, upturned to display its mole. The eyes were black and tiny and slightly crossed, as though ready to concentrate on that mole.
Roderick was afraid of Mr Kratt. ‘Well maybe I—’
‘Come on, don’t stall.’
‘You, uh, will get married soon and have three children, first a boy, then a girl, then another girl.’
‘Ha! Go on.’
‘You’re uh having trouble with your, your back, back pains?’
‘What the hell is this thing shaking for? Think you got some problem with the motor circuits there. Yeah, go on.’
‘You want to make lots of money and, uh, you will. Some thing you hope for will come true soon and make you lots of money.’
Kratt took his hand away to find a cheap cigar and unwrap it. ‘Not bad, not bad.’ He waited for the assistant to give him a light. ‘Yeah, but not so good, either. Kind of easy, all it does is go through a little table, right? Tells the first client he’s got back trouble, the next one he’s got foot trouble, the next one he’s got headaches—’
‘And so on,’ said Roderick. ‘That’s it, all right. And for the children see I always say three children, they can have them eight different ways…’
‘Talkative little gadget, ain’t it?’ Kratt grinned and reached out to pat Roderick’s dome. The robot flinched. ‘Well I might find some use for him, let’s say a hundred bucks.’
‘We was thinkin’ more like a grand,’ said the old woman.
‘A grand,’ said the old man.
‘A hundred. Cash. Look, I might have to do a lot of work on it, gotta change some a that direct programming, gotta maybe fix the motor circuits, gotta do something about its appearance ’
‘Five hundred?’ said the old man.
‘One-fifty, I’m generous too, this thing is probably hot.’
Roderick made a whimpering sound when the gipsies left with the $200 Mr Kratt had meant to pay all along. Mr Kratt patted his head again, spilling ash over his face. ‘Good little gadget, bub, realistic talker. Stick on a fifty- cent coin box, penny a second, all it’s gotta do is talk to people about their troubles.’
Roderick said, ‘You mean 1 don’t have to tell fortunes? Cause I don’t like fortunes, dukes and stuff.’
‘Ha! Hear that, it doesn’t like hey, robot, what you got against duking?’
‘Well I mean making up all this stuff and then it comes true, how come they need me to make it up, how come nobody wants to tell their own fortunes, Pa says they could just put all their choices in a hat and draw one out it’s just as good. But I mean once I say it there it is, that’s the future.’
‘You think — let me get this straight — you think you can just go to a set of tables and just pick out a future for somebody and then it happens?’
‘Sure, because like Ma uses the
‘Well this Pa is right, it’s only like a game, see, to make money. Now — well, about time.’
The door opened and a one-armed stranger stumbled in. ‘Howdy. Sorry I took so long, only you know pickin’ locks with one hand ain’t exactly easy. Got jest what y’all wanted.’ He looked at Roderick. ‘What’s that?’
‘Nothing, another piece of crap for the carnival, stick it in the corner, bub let Mr Smith use the desk for his presenta—’
‘O’Smith.’
‘Yeah, now let’s see here, what’s this, memos?’
‘Yep, outa executive waste-baskets, all highly confidentials, reckon half the board at Dipchip don’t know what’s goin’ down yet, looks like maybe kind of a private showdown between the research director Hare and the vice-president in charge of product development Hatlo—’
‘So I see. And the substance of it is over-expenditure, right? On this yak-head process, whoever heard of trying to coat microcircuit chips with peanut butter, let’s see that budget there, yeah, look at those costs. Memo my ass, I’d of fired the son of a bitch, brought a suit for fraud and malfeasance, haul his ass right through the courts if I had to, what’s—’
‘Well, you see they acquired this little old firm Bugleboy Foods assets all tied up in warehouses full of peanut butter substit — yep, there’s the picture, minority interest held by TTF Endeavours, a division of TTF Enterprises, took the shares in lieu of damages — some old litigation when they were a supermarket chain Tommy Tucker Foods, now of course they’re a holding company who — sorry, awful sorry, let me—’
An avalanche of papers went to the floor. As O’Smith bent to get them his eyes met those of the little machine. It seemed to be trying to plug into a wall socket a length of dropcord running to some recess in its body. ‘Hello,’ it said.
‘Howdy doody, little feller. Need some help?’
‘Yes.’ Its voice was fainter, its eyes were going opaque.
‘Okay if I…?’ O’Smith asked Kratt, who nodded.
‘There you be.’ He straightened up and dumped papers on the desk. ‘Now where was we? Oh yeah, the divestiture…’
They had fixed him up with a fibreglass turban and a coinbox, bolted him to a slab of concrete, and installed him in a little tent just off the Midway. He was conscious only while customers kept feeding money into his coin- box, when he would begin nodding over the crystal, palm or Tarot cards and go into his routine.
The routine consisted of a softening-up line (‘Basically you’re too generous. People use you. You need to be more selfish.’) and a series of questions masquerading as answers:
‘Right now you’re worried about somebody close to you… maybe yourself, a health problem… that’s right, and money is involved… money for an operation maybe…’
‘Right now you’re worried about somebody close to you… someone you live with… or work with… live with, yes, and there’s some decision, big decision you have to make… get the impression it’s money, something to do with… if not money then some kind of exchange, a relationship of give and take… you give more than you get… well things are going to straighten out soon, only there’ll be some hassle… a lot of trouble in fact… just have to fight this thing through to the other side…’
‘Right now you’re worried about somebody close to you… not so much now as in the future, a life partner, I see a strong influence coming in there soon… not too soon but soon, romance leading on to something permanent… and children, first a boy, then…’
All week long, the customers exchanged their quarters and half-dollars for token words: love, marriage, divorce, family, money, career, lifelong ambition, relationship, social life, quarrel, not-working-out, obstacle, travel, children, promotion, home-life… At the end of the week, he had taken $21,938 and two lead slugs. Mr Kratt came to see him, trailing the assistant.
‘Damn good, little robot, you just keep it up, oh bub tell the maintenance boys to change his rate, five bucks
