The Complete Roderick

‘Last darned time I do business with that crook, with all his discount stuff from Iraq or is it Iran — I’ve had it. You know, ever since those Jesuits sank all that money in fake oil stock in Texas, everybody thinks we’re all suckers. Priests aren’t supposed to know the first thing about dollars and cents, I guess. Has he got a surprise coming, wait’ll I stop his darned cheque — Well now what is it, kid? Making trouble for Sister Olaf already are you?’

‘No sir I mean no Father, see it’s just this Baltimore catty kisum, like where they ask who made you. Sister thinks I oughta say God made me, all I said was maybe He made the people but he didn’t make the robots.’

‘Robots, eh?’ Father O’Bride had very pale eyes that didn’t blink much. ‘What’s this, something outa these crappy science fiction movies you been seeing? Boy, if you didn’t have this disability you’d be in the gym right now doing fifty laps, we’d find out who made you if we had to take you apart.

‘But, you’re lucky. I’m giving you one more chance.’ He searched among the t-shirts and tattered copies of sports magazines until he found a catechism. ‘I’m giving you one more chance before I turn you over to — well, somebody else.’ He opened the book. ‘Now tell me: Who made you?’

‘Dan Sonnenschein and some other guys, in this lab—’

‘For Pete’s sake, who made this Dan whatsit?’

‘I don’t know — God?’

‘God. And if God made him and he made you, then he was just the instrument of God’s will, right? My mother and father brought me into this world too, but I still know God made me.’

‘Yeah but—’

‘No buts. Look, if a guy hits it out of the park nobody jumps up to cheer the bat, do they? Same thing, the bat is just an instrument of the batter’s will. Get it? I mean who made the home run, the batter or the bat?’

‘Well God I guess if he made the—’

‘Okay, fine. You get the point. Now—’

‘Only if God made Dan and Dan made me, who made this God?’

‘RIGHTY-HO!’ The book hit the desk and tumbled off, taking a few Hellbats to the floor. ‘BUDDY BOY YOU HAVE JUST EARNED YOURSELF A TICKET TO SEE THE MAN HIMSELF!’

‘The…’ Excitement made Roderick hurt all over. He couldn’t work up the words to ask who this man might be.

A big hand clamped down on his shoulder. He was half-dragged, half-carried down the hall, downstairs, past Sister Mary Martha (still polishing the same spot on the floor) outside and across the street where in the vanilla slush he could see the marks of a tractor tyre, a lost mitten, the marks of another tractor tyre. Everything was so clear, full of, of clearness. To God’s house? No, past it to the rectory, a black brick building with snow in the yard, and black weeds sticking up out of the snow. Roderick thought he recognized a withered sunflower (Ma had told him the story of Vincent, who put his ear to the sunflower to hear the roaring of the sun inside, and instantly his ear was burnt away) and into the black hall where he was made to sit on a black chair and WAIT JUST WAIT BUDDY BOY while Father O’Bride went off through a polished black door.

The thing about Vincent was, he wanted to paint the sun inside the golden sunflower and it drove him crazy, and now everybody was crazy about cheap reproductions of his paintings which they thought looked good in their kitchens.

Roderick looked at the cheap reproduction over his head. It showed a woman at a piano, with a gold ring hanging in the air over her head. She was looking up too, maybe at the ring or maybe just at some other cheap reproduction.

Ma would never look at a cheap reproduction, not even when Pa tried to show her La Divina Proportione with pictures by Leonardo Da Vinci when he said about the seed spirals in the sunflower and how they were Fibonacci numbers, getting closer and closer to the divine proportion but only an infinite sunflower could be God, and she said That’s all you know, God wears an infinite sunflower in his buttonhole every day, a fresh one every day from his own garden, God is an infinite reason. Yes but the divine proportion is an irrational number said Pa, see it’s the sum of one plus one over one plus one over one plus… Ma didn’t care, all ones are one, mathematics is just a cheap trick where everything’s a copy of something else, like those Fibonacci numbers 1+1=2, 1+2=3, 2+3=5, 3+5=8, and so on with 13, 21, 34, 55, where did it all get you, no wonder poor Vincent went stark staring irrational trying to paint the blazing sum I mean sun you’ve got me doing it now and all those cheap reproductions they copy everything sometimes I think you and I are just cheap copies of something somebody read somewhere, ‘prints’ they like to call them, ‘prints’ when that awful woman in the Ladies’ Guild kept saying she really liked her prints, I thought she meant her dog, but no, there she was with sunflowers copied from sunflowers Vincent copied from sunflowers copied from the sun…

Roderick heard voices from behind the polished black door.

‘…more your league…’

‘…I see. Then where does he get this…?’

‘Beats me, don’t think he’s really nuts, but you never… well yeah, guess his mother did try to tell me something about this robot idea he’s got only I had this long-distance call just about then, bad connection I could hardly hear the guy, thought he was trying to sell us a P.A. system for the gym, it was only a lousy pieta.’

‘And you mentioned… ological difficulties… Okay, bring him in.’

Father O’Bride came out, grabbed him and trundled him through the black door to meet Father Warren.

Father Warren didn’t look much like The Man Himself. He did at least look like a priest, all in black. He could be a lot older than Father O’Bride or a lot younger, but he was definitely a lot thinner and darker, with a narrow pair of eyes, a narrow blue chin and long narrow hands. The hands kept kneading each other on the desk, as though trying to restore circulation.

‘Sit down, Roderick. Relax.’ His voice was deep and liquid, like the voice telling you to use Thong deodorant (‘Thonng’). One of the hands reached towards a silver cigarette-box, then withdrew to a silver dish of taffy. ‘Candy?’

Roderick shook his head.

‘Advent, I understand. Well now. Yes.’ He sat back and stared at Roderick until the robot looked away. The room was comfortable enough, and not at all religious: one little statue of Our Lady stood at the other end on its own little stand; it might have been a potted vine or a parrot-cage for all the difference it made here with the fireplace, easy-chairs, table lamps and magazine racks, the bookcases, the deep carpet.

‘Father O’Bride tells me you’ve been having a little trouble with your catechism.’

‘Yes sir, yes Father.’

‘And that you claim to be a robot?’

‘Yes, Father.’

‘Father O’Bride thinks you read too much science fiction.’

‘I don’t even know what it is, Father.’

‘No? Hmm.’ The hands played a game of church-and-steeple. ‘Look, you can be honest with me. I don’t disapprove of science fiction, not at all. In fact I read it myself. In fact I have a few books here, any time you feel like borrowing one, just help yourself.’ He swivelled in his chair and reached down a paperback. ‘I, Robot, by Isaac Asimov. Tried that yet? Here, take it along.’

‘Thanks, Father.’ He started to get up.

‘When you go, that is. I think first we ought to, to “rap” a little, get to know each other. After all, I don’t get too many chances in a country parish like this, to talk to real robots.’ The smirk never reached his dark eyes.

‘Talk?’

‘Tell me a little about this, this “guy” you say invented you.’

‘Gee I don’t know much, just that his name is Dan Sonnen-schein. But he and some other guys I guess they just went in this lab and maybe mixed up some chemicals and stuff and — here I am.’

‘And no mother involved?’

‘No, Father. I mean no mother, Father. No father either, Father.’ He paused. ‘I mean there’s Ma and Pa, but they’re both adopted, they’re not real.’