The Complete Roderick

business lead—?’

‘Only the top ten new leaders, Doc. Good to see you’re well-informed though, because—’

‘And to think, you coming all this way just to meet with a small-town sawbones like me!’

‘Yes well I—’

‘You sure must want something pretty bad, ha ha.’

They stopped, Kratt and Welby facing each other in the chill stainless steel corridor, almost squared away like a pair of hostile dogs, each determined somehow to mount the other. Welby’s pale eyes (staring over the tops of his old-fashioned glasses) were locked in silent combat for a second with Kratt’s dark little eyes (staring under the heavy V of brows).

‘Doc,’ Kratt said softly. ‘Don’t sell yourself short. If I didn’t know you was a good businessman I wouldn’t be trying to trade horses with you. Now come on let’s see if we can find the damn board-room in this godforsaken place, think it’s at the end of the corridor…’

He led the way into an impressive conference room panelled in something very like walnut. While Ben and the doctor took their seats at the long table, Kratt went to the liquor cabinet.

‘See Doc, you’re a man with foresight. You and I know Nebraska’s gonna bring in gambling in a year or so, and we both know the considerable financial rewards to be reaped by the right man in the right place. So can we talk?’

Dr Welby nodded at the broad back. ‘Why sure. Hey this is some layout you got here, never knew there’d be a place like this right in the old Slum—’

Kratt laughed, or perhaps coughed. ‘You know, no human being has been in this room for four years. Not even cleaners.’

‘But it’s spotless!’

‘Machine-cleaned, every damn day. Best thing about machine-cleaners is they don’t drink up the chairman’s booze — got some fifty-year-old Scotch here, Doc. What’s your pleasure?’

Dr Welby didn’t mind if he did.

The big German Shepherd snarled and threw himself against the fence, daring Roderick to try — just try — opening the gate and setting one foot on Slumbertite land. But when Roderick did open the gate and walk in, the dog only sniffed his hand and then trotted away to seek some other victim.

A long curved driveway led to the great factory. And just so there should be no mistake, a series of ‘landing lights’ flickered along it, pointing his way. And just to make absolutely sure there should be no mistake, a recorded voice spoke to him: ‘Keep to the driveway and don’t loiter. Please follow the lights.’

The driveway took him right up to the plain grey corrugated wall, which at first seemed to lack a door, even a keyhole. Only when he was close did a door slide open.

‘Step inside, please. Prepare for a security check. Prepare for a security check.’

He stepped inside and stood around, until a voice said: ‘Empty your pockets on the conveyor belt. Now. Everything will be returned to you when you leave the building.’ Pa’s cipher and the green key; a quarter and two nickels; a piece of string and a grubby stick of gum; half a yoyo, a broken rosary and the little folded wad of paper that was his ‘oiploma’; a rosary bead and a lead washer moved out of sight.

‘Face the light-panel. Answer the questions yes or no by pushing the yes or no button. QUESTION: Are you carrying or concealing any tool or weapon?’ No. ‘Are you carrying or concealing any explosive or inflammable material, such as gasoline, TNT, butane?’ No. ‘Are you carrying or concealing any electronic equipment, such as an artificial arm or leg?’ Yes. ‘Walk through the light-panel. Now.’

He pushed open the panel and entered the Emerald City.

It was bigger and greener than even the cemetery. That pure blue-grass colour lay over the floor, what he could see of the distant walls, and over every one of the ‘elephants’. They did look like elephants, turning and twisting their trunks to get at the things on the assembly-lines, twisting back to pick up screws or paint-sprayers or sandpaper or clothes. A hundred green elephants? A thousand? He couldn’t tell, not without strolling down the yellow painted road and counting — and for the moment, he preferred to stay where he was, listening.

There were no more recorded voices, only a bouncy kind of music from invisible violins. While Roderick stood transfixed, they finished ‘Sunshine Balloon’ and began ‘Oh, You Beautiful Doll’. Just in front of him, a row of beautiful dolls’ heads were being crowned with hair: a blonde, a brunette, a redhead, a blonde, a brunette… he decided to follow the dames.

After the hair-elephant came the elephant eye-lash curler, a twist of the trunk, while another trunk sorted out a pair of matching earrings and prepared to clamp them on, another with a fine brush was poised to finish the make-up (sprayed on earlier) before the heads reached the test station where trunks probed with electrodes to raise a smile, a blink, a wink. Next came a junction where a gang of assembly Dumbos worked furiously with bolts, pliers, soldering irons, fixing each head to an armless grey torso. Following the new line he watched shapely arms appear (each hand holding its nails apart to dry; left wrists receiving watches) to be fastened on, before the entire assembly was bolted firmly to a metal frame bolted in turn to one side of a coffin-sized formica box then equipped with fake drawer-handles and finally (just as the torso-women were being stitched into their clothes) a sign: RECEPTIONIST.

Roderick watched a final test, a torso-woman lifting an imaginary phone and saying, ‘I’ll tell him you’re here, Mr — was that Mendozo or Mendoza? I just know he’ll want to see you right away — oh, I’m sorry, he’s in conference… You can go right in, Mr — is it Disnee or Disnay? Thank you sir, and you have a nice day too!’ On either side other tests were in progress. He watched a glossy cocktail waitress dressed in Victorian underwear, black stockings and garters, lower her empty tray to serve non-existent customers: ‘Now who had the Black Russian? And you’re the White Lady, right? Stinger for you.’ Beyond her a torso-man in white seemed to be frying imaginary hamburgers: ‘Yeah okay that’s two with one without and sal, side fries one chicksand on white no mayo one poach on wholewheat no butter I got all that.’ Next a dealer found a possible straight among the invisible cards upon the green baize table to which he was permanently attached, while a masseuse writhed and groaned and told the air it was one hell of a terrific lover. Elsewhere a clown juggled; a bear wearing a grin and a mortarboard recited the multiplication tables; a bearded analyst leaned back in the chair to which he was bolted, looked at the ceiling and said, ‘Suppose we talk a little more about your father…’; a brown lifeguard murmured, ‘Interesting girl like you needs a few swimming lessons’; a black shoeshine boy practised eye- rolls; and a man with an oil-can in his hand did nothing at all during the time it took Roderick to recognize him as Pa.

‘…dedicated machines so far, but wait!’ said Mr Kratt. ‘Wait. Bub, I mean Doc, by the time we’re ready to roll on this leisure centre of yours, we figure to have a set of good all-purpose boys and girls that’ll wipe the floor with anything the competition can come up with. Like suppose you find one day you got too many girls in the sauna and not enough caddies, you just switch ’em right over — like that! — change of tapes takes maybe a minute apiece — and away they go.’

‘Sounds good, sounds good.’ Dr Welby allowed his glasses to slip even further down his nose, which had reddened perceptibly. ‘But what about special skills… mechanisms… I mean a sauna doll has to…’

‘But that’s the point, see, all our boys and girls are gonna have everything. Everything, see? Close as we can get to the real article, and that is pretty goddamn close. You tell him, Ben.’

Ben stopped doodling cube-headed creatures with stick arms and legs. He sat up. ‘Well, you see we’re planning to bring a former colleague of mine into the R&D division. This is a guy who I guess knows more than anybody in the world about official — artificial intelligence. This guy is the, the Edison of robots. Like the Wizard of Menlo Park himself, he mainly works alone—’

‘Wizard of who?’ Dr Welby reached once more for the decanter. ‘Look if this feller is so important, why don’t you have him already?’

‘He’s sick, he’s in the hospital. You know how some of these highly-strung geniuses are,’ Ben began. ‘Nervous—’