The Complete Roderick

the weak and ignorant. We trust you will keep all this in mind and consider less contrversial alternatives such as ‘Tornadoes’ or ‘Tigers’. Or why not a name inspired by some popular saint, e.g., Patrick: The ‘Sham Rocks’…

Father Warren came in kneading his hands. ‘Well now, have you read that book I lent you?’

‘Yes Father, I mean I read all the words and looked them up and all, only I still couldn’t understand it.’

‘Ah. Might be a little hard for such a young—’

‘I mean on the very first page there’s these three laws of robots and they don’t make any sense.’

‘Ah! The famous Three Laws of Robotics? They make perfect sense. Believe me, this is airtight logic.’ He quoted from memory, counting fingers. ‘First, “A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.” Seems plain enough. Second, “A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.” No nonsense there. And third, “A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.” Now which of these gives you trouble?’

‘Well all of them. Look Father I’m a robot and I don’t—’

‘Still insisting on that, are we? Roderick, do me a favour. Take this pin.’ The priest plucked a pin from a desk drawer and held it out. ‘Go on take it. Now, stick me with it.’

‘What?’

‘Stick the pin in my hand there, go on. You’re supposed to be a robot, so I’m ordering you, go on.’

‘Yeah but — well okay.’ Roderick made a weak swipe with the pin, raising a tiny scratch on the back of the hand.

‘Ouch!’ Father Warren smiled. ‘You have just proved that you can’t possibly be a robot. You violated the First Law.’

Roderick watched a drop of blood form on the scratch. ‘I guess so. Only—’

‘No guessing about it. Logic says you can either be a robot or stick me with a pin, but not both.’

‘Yeah that’s logic all right, but only if you go along with these here three laws. But I mean they’re only in stories and this is real life. I mean like in the Oz stories they just got one law in Oz, “Behave yourself”. Only in real life people don’t, do they?’

‘No, Roderick, but listen—’

‘And like this here other story about the man going up on the mountain and getting these here pills with laws on them, heck even by the time he gets down the mountain everybody’s breaking the laws all over the place, worshipping a golden leg and—’

‘No, listen—’

‘I mean like nobody ever pays attention to the laws except like cops and Sheriff Benson and maybe lawyers like Perry Ma — What was that?’ He referred to a series of rapid explosions that seemed to come from the floor.

‘Nothing, just Father O’Bride getting in some target practice, he’s got a little gallery rigged up in the base, but wait, listen, the point is, in real life there are no robots, not real thinking, humanoid creatures. They’re all in stories. And in these stories, they have to obey the Three Laws. Right?’

‘Maybe, but even in stories they have to have big arguments about laws, look at Perry Mason, holy cow they argue all the time about whether somebody did or didn’t break this here law, holy cow Mr Swann makes all his money just telling people how to get around the law.’

‘Roderick, let me explain: there are two kinds of law. You’re talking about legal statutes, yes of course people can break those. Just as they can break moral laws like the Ten Commandments. But there’s also another kind of law, natural law. That includes things like the law of gravity, or the law that says 2 + 2 = 4, or the law that says if Tom is taller than Dick and Dick is taller than Harry, then Tom must be taller than Harry. And you see, nobody on earth can break laws like those. And so robots are programmed in such a way that the Three Laws are their natural laws. They can’t be broken.’

‘Yeah but how? How can they program a robot to obey some dumb law he can’t even understand? Like first thing he needs to know who’s a human being and who ain’t. Like I heard this old guy by the post office saying the president was a son of a bitch and somebody ought to shoot him. I’m just saying what he said, Father. But with these dumb laws a robot could hear that and get a gun and go shoot the president because he’s only a dog so it’s okay.’

‘Now you’re just being silly. Everybody knows the president is human.’

‘Yeah, but the Robotic Law don’t say how a robot’s supposed to find out who’s human and who’s robots, like what’s he supposed to do, go see Mr Swann every time he wants to stick a pin in a doll or—’

‘Excuse me for a minute…’ The priest hurried out, lifting his skirts as he thumped down the basement stairs into the dark gallery.

Father O’Bride was a shadowy alien, with a pair of bright orange ear-protectors standing out from the sides of his head like insect eyes. And wasn’t that a picture of the Pope he was shooting at?

‘What? Whatsa matter?’ O’Bride took off the ear-protectors and automatically kissed their strap before putting them down. ‘You still crapping around tryina convert that Wood brat?’

‘He… gets on my nerves sometimes.’

‘Little smart-ass, needs fifty laps, that’s what he needs.’

‘…tried everything, I’ve tried talking to him about Space-ship Earth even, how if he were an alien landing here—’

‘Excuse me while I throw up. I can’t stand all that space crap, can’t stand that kid either. You know what?’

‘—how the alien would wonder Who are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going?’

‘Yeah but you know what?’

‘But listen, I told him we came from the mind of God, and he — he just said, “Pa thinks we’re all apes who got tired of picking fleas and grunting” not even seven years old and he—’

‘Yeah but you know what I think?’

‘Where are we going, to the destiny God prepared for us, he came right out with how his mother says when people die they turn into ether and rise up through seven astral planes—’

‘You know what I think? I think the kid is a darn robot.’

Bzzt bzz-bzzz bzzzt bzz? said the telephone on the desk. Phones that were still cradled shouldn’t be saying anything. Roderick crept closer and listened.

‘…sure this thing’s on? I can’t hear a fucking…’

‘Look, I know my stuff, not like that hick O’Smith… hire a fucking amateur and then wonder what went wrong, man they never learn…’

‘…ill don’t see why we don’t just trash him now, hot trail gets cold while you wait for them motherfucking tankthinkers to make up their fu… ders is orders I guess… Hey I still can’t…’

‘…some kinda bionic boy or what? Hey Pete? What…?’

‘Bionic my ass, all a cover for something… unny thing you know the first real bionic man wasn’t even scratched in that plane crash, you know? Like he was just… in the hospital… started picking up infections… everything going wrong, one part after another… next thing you know… Hey I can’t hear a damn thing on this…’

‘…short of agents anyway, too much of this crap going on… tired of freezing my ass off in panel trucks… extra help on that whatsit, Kratt… in that thermos?’

Roderick looked out of the window. There was a panel truck parked across the road. The sign said O’Bannion Flowers but there wasn’t any O’Bannion Flowers in town. Okay, so G-men or something watching him, and they wanted to trash him or something, put him in the hospital where he could pick up infections like the six million –

‘…with priests you gotta go careful, see? Priests get headlines… Anyway they want we should surveil to pick up all the contacts… maybe I got the wires crossed or… was that a shot?’

Down the street, the wretched pick-up of Mr Ogilvy back-fired again. As usual, it was wobbling and going too fast, cutting a sine-wave pattern along the route from the public school to Mr O.’s favourite bar. People liked to