The Complete Roderick

therefore was to add 1 to the number T (trials), add one to the number H (hits) and calculate P (probability). The computer was aware neither of the pigeon nor of Dr Tarr.

Dr Tarr sat in his new office watching the printer. From his point of view, the test was on the whole a qualified success. Pigeons were precognitive.

Or at least this pigeon, now and then, seemed uncannily able to peer a split-second into the future, determine which plastic window (of a randomly-selected pair) would deliver the goods, and peck that window. Now and then.

Now and then, that was the trouble. Not enough hits, not near enough to convince those Dr Tarr needed to convince. There was NASA, first of all, paying $150,000 towards his expenses; expecting results. Likewise the University, providing not only computer time, but an empty office and lab in the Computer Sciences building. And how about the parapsychology journals, the professional associations waiting for the paper that could make him, career-wise? Finally of course the professional sceptics: he saw them as hyenas, forever trailing the herd of parapsychologists, forever waiting for some weak individual to fall behind. Ready, yes ready to bury their bloodstained snouts in his entrails…

More hits, damn you! he willed at the bird, more hits! Unaware of his telepathic command from the office, the creature in the laboratory preened, digging its beak deep in iridescent neck feathers to chew at a parasite. For the moment, it was aware of nothing else, not even of the cruelly erratic God it had learned to love.

Tarr, acutely aware of his own predicament (for not since Mary of Nazareth had anyone risked so much on the behaviour of a single pigeon) turned to the printer, whose ultimate line still read:

TRIALS = 980 HITS = 502 P < 0.444

Computer error? Sure, damn thing probably wasn’t working at all! Poor pigeon probably pecking away, hit after hit and nothing coming through. He examined the cable running from the computer to the printer, experimentally unplugged it and plugged it in again.

TRIALS = 981 HITS = 503 P < 0.425

More like it. More like it! Funny how it (he repeated the operation) clocked up a hit every time you jiggled the… you could almost… not quite ethical maybe but… well, just to enhance the figures a little, to emphasize what we already know…

TRIALS = 1126 HITS = 648 P < 0.0000000406

The score was getting too sensational, time to stop, but Tarr kept on, tickling just one more reward from the printer, just one more. Had God at that moment been a Skinnerian psychologist, peering in through the office ceiling, He’d have been pleased to recognize His guilty creature here crouched at its task. Working along its reinforcement schedule. ‘Learning’, if not growing wise.

No one was peering in. He looked over his shoulder at the door at nothing, no one, nothing but the door itself, newly painted to hide some old stain that showed through nevertheless, a shadow like a clutching hand.

The mob was making so much noise so many almost city noises Roderick could hardly hear men leaning together like glass buildings falling over follow a skeleton to Junior’s Discount Cameras God call him up every time lousy jackpot blade heavy split up when electric .38 for LAW & ORDER raping housekeepers nigger priest bites dog pills bustup treats me like shit .38 bike overtime MASSAGE THERAPY dolls of Devil’s Island escape from jail and bust into factory Lewd-ite revenge calling for a rope unless we all go back to the Idle Hour boys have a beer and talk it God fight city hall needles bitch freak t-shirt no shit the Klan? What Klan?

‘Klan, shit, we’ll be our own Klan!’

‘What?’ Another man seemed shocked. ‘Take the Klan into our own hands?’

‘I’m serious now Jake, I’ll be the Kladd, you be the Kludd, let old Carl there be the Grand Goblin.’

‘Goblin? That sounds dumb as hell, you know?’ ‘Sure does. Forget all that Klan shit, let’s just teach this motherfucker a lesson!’

‘Why can’t I be the Imperial Wizard, though?’

‘Will you listen to that? Will you I mean listen-to-that?’

‘We gonna hang somebody or what? How about that nigger in the jail? How about him?’

‘Busted out didn’t he?’

‘Hell he did. He—’

‘Yeah but listen, I wanta be the Wizard or I don’t be nothing.’

‘If he’s still in jail who the hell raped them women at the Meeting Hall? I heard—’

‘Bullshit man, they ain’t raped they just got excited.’

‘—perial Wizard, goddamnit is anybody listening to me?’

‘Piss on all this, I’m going to the Idle Hour.’

This seemed a good idea to others, and indeed the whole mob made its way — arguing, shoving Roderick almost as much as they shoved one another — towards Main Street.

‘No but seriously if you’re gonna form a Klan Klavern you—’

‘Will you listen to that? Will-you—?’

‘Yeah see Miss Violetta Stubbs they found out she’s got a kid!’

‘Aw Jesus doesn’t that make you sick? Nice old lady like that raped by a black—’

‘No listen—’

‘I say we hang the bastard right here in front of the Idle Hour. I say we teach him a lesson!’

‘Piss on that I’m going—’

And in a moment, they were all gone, leaving Roderick alone in the street. Immediately the sheriff’s car drew up, flashing all its lights: red, blue, green, tangerine, ochre and plum.

‘Get in, Wood. I’m taking you in — for your own protection. No, in the back.’

Roderick climbed into the cage in the back, and allowed the sheriff to drive him the thirteen yards to jail.

‘County’s too damn busy, you know?’ Sheriff Benson led him inside and snapped on the handcuffs. ‘Like we had a riot earlier at the Meeting Hall, Mrs Dorano trying to throw rocks at Miss Violetta, can you beat that? And now this. Hell I didn’t hardly get time to see Hollywood Squares, hell of an evening.’ He kicked Roderick into a cell, hauled out a blackjack and began beating him carelessly around the face.

‘Ouch! Look is this — ow, this for my own protec — ouch! My own protection? Because I, ouch, you take off these cuffs I could protect myself…’

‘What?’ The sheriff had not been looking at his victim, but through the open door at the TV in his office. Someone was trying to name nine brands of beer in thirty seconds. Sheriff Benson looked at the weapon in his hand. ‘Sorry, son. Just gets to be a habit. I guess.’ Slamming the cell door, he added, ‘Hope I can still count on your support come election day?’

Roderick was not surprised to find a black man in the next cell, even though the man was not wearing faded overalls nor playing a harmonica.

‘Hi man. My name’s Roderick Wood. What’s yours?’ Ignoring him, the man continued taking his own temperature. ‘I’m in protective custody. For my own good. What are you in for? Oh, I hope you don’t find this paint on my face offensive. No insult intended, man. See what it is is mourning. See my Pa died — he’s not really my Pa, in fact he’s not really anybody’s Pa, he’s a woman. Only I didn’t know that, when he looked at this gas bill for a million dollars and just keeled over. Only now I find out he’s not dead and he’s not a he either. Now he lives I mean she lives in the factory. So when I thought Ma, who really isn’t a woman either she’s a man who used to write science fiction that all came true, I thought she was doing witchcraft but it was only scientific stuff to revive Pa. Boy was that ever a shock! I mean last time I had a shock like that was when these gipsies kidnapped me and sold me to this carnival where I was supposed to tell fortunes. Duking, they called it. You know that was about the only time I ever went out of town anyways, oh except when Ma and me went to the city to get me a new eye, this burned-out store only when she left me there I got pretty scared because here was this same carny guy with a pinball on his finger, wouldn’t you be scared? And I didn’t find Ma again until later when I was in one of these two limousines that crashed into a art gallery—’

‘Really?’ The man held the thermometer up to the light. ‘Been seeing a lot of movies have you, sport?’

‘I used to watch them on TV a lot, when I was living with these people in Nevada I think it was only the guy