The Complete Roderick

‘You mean he’s nuts?’

Mr Kratt grinned. ‘Don’t worry, Doc, he can deliver the goods. Just needs a little rest and he’ll be good as new. I figure six months and we’ll have him ready to roll, right Ben?’

‘Right. And—’

‘Look all this sounds fine, fine, your company goes steaming ahead only what’s in it for me?’

‘Just getting to that Doc.’ Kratt flipped open a portfolio. ‘Putting it on that basis, we propose a straight stock trade, share for share, for forty-nine per cent of your firm. We bear all the costs of installation and maintenance of course, you still keep control of your operation and get a piece of our action. And you get a seat on our board, with the usual salary and options.’

Dr Welby shook his head hard. ‘What’s the catch?’

‘No catch. No catch at all. Only thing is Doc you’re in a hell of a good position to help us out with another little product running into some snags, our Jinjur Boy talking edible, seems you were the examining physician in twelve outa these eighteen problem cases—’

‘He means the eighteen who died, eighteen kids who died,’ Ben said, from behind the knuckle he was gnawing.

‘Oh. Oh! Well you can’t expect me to do anything unprof—’

‘Hear me out, let’s not get excited.’ Kratt’s thick fingers gripped the table, and the doctor’s eye was drawn to that pinball ring. ‘Anybody can lose a few files, get a lapse of memory now and then… that’s all we need.’

‘What about the death certificates? Dr De’Ath did all the autopsies, he’s the one found mercury in all —’

‘Forget him. Time this town gets through with him, he won’t be able to find mercury in his own thermometer. They got him in jail right now, attempted murder.’

‘What, him? That’s just ridiculous, some mistake — who would he ever—?’

‘Some priest name of O’Bride. Housekeeper swears this De’Ath knocked him out and cut his throat.’

‘Oh, that. Listen he told me all about it, Father O’Bride had a fall, respiratory trouble so Sam I mean Dr De’Ath performed an emergency tracheotomy—’

‘Look, I believe you.’ Kratt laughed. ‘Only the old housekeeper, how do you think it looked to her? Here’s the priest lying knocked out with a cut throat, here’s some darky standing over him with a bloody knife — yes and she says she heard them quarrelling earlier, yelling about blood, blood!’

Welby gulped his drink. ‘I know all about that too. Father O’Bride was trying to buy whole blood for some reason, only he wanted to get some kind of cheap imported blood without a health certificate. God knows what diseases it might be carrying, malaria, flukes, hepa—’

‘Sure, sure. Thing is, this O’Bride was jobbing our products all over the State, begins to look like De’Ath was trying to put the bite on us. right? Little extortion? And then O’Bride wouldn’t play ball… Like I say, time this is over, who’d believe anything De’Ath says?’

Indica looked out over a sea of new hats, fresh hair-styles, and hostile glasses. How could they hate her so much even before she’d said a word? Was it her youth? Her Western clothes? You’d think they’d never seen dreds before, or Fyre-flye false eyebrows, or a bolero cut to expose one breast — she should have dowdied down for them, too late now.

‘Machines,’ she began, ‘are only human…’

Gradually the hard faces began to soften and settle into sleep.

The flowers on Violetta’s hat brushed the ear of Mrs Dorano. ‘Delia, I haven’t got my glasses, but is that woman really showing a bosom?’

‘I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of looking. No sense of decency.’

‘No sense of shame.’

‘No more sense of shame than — than Ma Wood there.’ Mrs Dorano craned around to glare at her. ‘A cabbage! Ma’s wearing a cabbage on her hat!’

‘Oh I wish I had my glasses!’

‘You can see everything she’s got! Right up to the armpit, I can see a little birthmark there, looks like a dumb-bell—’

But Violetta Stubbs had leaned over the other way to hear what Ma Wood was whispering:

‘…seems a little fond of Goldwynisms if you ask me, “Clocks and watches are just a waste of time,” “Cars get you nowhere” is that the way she thinks or just an affectation?’

‘How do you mean?’ Mrs Smith whispered back.

‘There she goes again, “Electric blankets can really get on top of you.” I think it must be unconscious, all this about how utility companies just want to use us, how owning a big heap of machines can be heavy… I mean if she wants to say we’re all too dependent on machines, why not just say it? Instead of all this “Do your own dishes, give ’em a break”, and how a free machine is an investment in America’s future…’

‘Shh!’ said Mrs Dorano, and went on to Violetta, ‘Imagine having a birthmark like that and showing it off along with everything she’s got!’

‘Birthmark?’

‘Right under her arm there, like a little dumb-bell — what’s the matter?’

Violetta Stubbs stood up and tried to push along the row of crossed legs, handbags, discarded shoes, shopping and knitting. ‘I’m not well, I… gotta go…’

Too late. Indica Dinks stopped speaking to stare at her.

‘Mother!’

‘Son, I knew you’d figure out that cipher in about two minutes flat. So I guess by now you know everything.’ Pa set the oil-can down on a reception desk.

‘Pa, I didn’t work out the cipher at all. I just — saw Ma doing all that witchcraft stuff down by the lake and I knew somehow she was bringing you back to life.’

‘Life, ha.’

‘So I knew you must be hiding out somewhere like this. Because I mean the undead—’

‘Undead? Witchcraft? But son, all you had to do was turn the darn cipher upside down!’

Roderick tried to call up a mental picture of the message, turned upside down, while he watched the receptionist. She picked up the oil-can, placed it to her ear like any smiling suicide, and said, ‘He’ll see you in just a sec, Mr — is it Getty or Goethe?’

‘Pa, maybe you’d better explain.’

‘Maybe I’d better!’ Pa sat down for a shoeshine and, while the eye-rolling contraption buffeted away at his bare feet, he began the story.

XXIII

To make men serfs and villeins it is indispensably necessary to make them brutes… A servant who has been taught to write and read ceases to be any longer a passive machine.

William Godwin, Political Justice

‘Started as a joke,’ said Pa. ‘Well you see right after the war everything seemed like a joke. Listen, during the war they had these cookies with chocolate on them, only they couldn’t get any chocolate so they started putting brown wax on them. That seemed like a joke, you know? Here were millions of people killing each other, and they still managed to find somebody to sit painting brown wax on cookies. And Hitler was a joke. Trying to get half the world to stick its head in the oven and turn on the gas… okay maybe it’s not funny but you gotta admit it’s kind of strange.