John Sladek - The Complete Roderick

‘My dear, the computer can do anything.’ He lifted his plastic coffee-cup to eye level. ‘This thing leaks.’

‘But how—?’

‘The computers are turning human, while the humans can’t even murder somebody and cut off their leg without using an electric carving knife. Funny thing is, the police will probably have to use their computer to catch him.’

Dora sank back in her chair. ‘Au fond, I think the Campus Ripper is a pretty sick animal.’

‘Sure, but what’s his game? Sick how? I mean, what’s he planning to do with all those left legs? Start an assembly line — or maybe a chorus line?’

Her shoulders moved uneasily inside the orange coat. ‘Is that supposed to be funny or something? If you knew this waitress—’

He licked the side of the cup. ‘Jaynice? I did know her.’

‘No kidding! What, uh, what was she like?’

‘Just another human, right off the same old assembly line.’ He pencilled ASSEMBLY LINE on the formica table, then started to rub it out. ‘Wait a minute now, wait a minute…’

‘If you’re going to make sick jokes, guess I’ll split.’ She made no move.

‘Wait a minute, assembly line, chorus line, just let me talk this out…’

‘Let’s change the subject,’ she said, looking away.

‘Listen I haven’t written a fucking poem in three years, will you just shut up and let me at least try this?’

After a moment she said, ‘You don’t like women very much, do you?’

‘Love ’em, but just listen… listen, it’s, the Rockettes!’

‘The whatettes?’

‘Before your time, precision high-kicking chorus line. I got to see ’em once, wonderful female robots, never forget ’em. A technological triumph of the flesh. In the flesh. See, they used to build up each movement all along the line, the way Ford built cars.’

‘Did you see The Nutcracker?’

‘Did I—? No, no, I never liked ballet. It’s too, the figures are like little separate clockwork toys, spinning by themselves, you can see it’s an for the Nineteenth Century. But this, but the Rockettes at Radio City, Christ! Even the name gives you the idea, it’s power, see? Power. Imagine a radio city anyhow, and female rockets, it’s a… a… a 1930s science fiction power dream.’

‘Like Metropolis?’

‘Exactly. A radio metropolis, female robot, it’s all there, even the big power wheels. And that’s the Rockettes, too, all that muscle moving in unison like pistons on one big crankshaft, no wonder people thought Henry Ford was God — he could make people work like that, this one does it and the next one does it and kick and turn, kick, turn, kick-and-turn—’

‘Modern Times?’ she said. ‘Though they say Chaplin was overrated—’

‘…the basic machine, the basic human machine, there you are, it’s nothing but a knee-jerk reflex, no need to be alive even, sheep in the slaughter-house, they lay them all out on a long table and start cutting their throats and they kick! They kick, this one kicks and the next one kicks, and pretty soon they’re all kicking up, kicking up, I don’t feel so good.’

He jumped up and walked quickly out of the cafeteria, leaving her alone, a small spot of orange among hundreds of spots of colour clustering around white tables that marched out to distant walls whose colour no one ever seemed to notice. She sat listening to the conversations rising through cigarette smoke above the clatter of styrene on melamine, melamine on nybro, nybro on formica:

‘Basically I’m a Manichean, only…’

‘…basic Libran personality…’

‘A basically Jungian interpretation of economics…’

A drama student in black contemplated his Danish roll while his companion said, ‘…with Tom and Sam Beckett, get it? Get it? An Evening with…’ At the next table someone opened a paperback of Kierkegaard and bit into an apple; at the next, two future engineers stopped arguing about butterfly catastrophes to peer into their sandwiches.

The boy in the yellow sweatshirt looked up at the door, then down at his melamine plate of goulash, saying:

‘Maybe we’re all tokens of a type, if you can dig that.’

‘I can dig it, sure, but what type?’

‘The tokens never find out… Hey, isn’t that Sandy?’

The view was obscured by a fat figure with a full beard, who thumped down his tray with the declaration: ‘Ruritania! Don’t tell me about Ruritania, man…’

Beyond him a face bright with acne emitted a groan: ‘My father? My father wanted me to be a goddamn cetologist, how do you like that?’

The drama student hoisted his Danish roll as though it really were a prop skull (and as though anyone were watching him) unaware that behind him the girl in the ski sweater was stealing his scene:

‘Go ahead and sign it,’ she said to someone grovelling before her plaster-coated leg. ‘Oney just your name, nothing dirty. I awready had some smartass put “Ben Franklin”, I hadda scratch it out.’

A shrill voice at her elbow cried: ‘Jungian economics? Hahahaha, what the hell did Jung ever know about money?’

‘Well he was Swiss…’

The Manichee glanced over, ready to dispute it, while at his own table the full beard reported on Ruritania:

‘Yeah, they’re burning books, actually burning books. Anything to do with communism. They burned Stendhal’s The Red and the Black.’

The Manichee looked at him. ‘Yeah? But isn’t that anarchism?’

From somewhere, at intervals, a deep voice would say, ‘True, true as I’m sitting here. God’s truth.’ From somewhere else a whining voice would wonder was there any point in fighting entropy?

A nybro tray clattered on the vinyl chloride floor.

‘A goddamn cetologist. For my fifth birthday he gave me a comic book of Moby Dick, how do you like that?’

‘Skinner.’ said someone at another table, ‘did some very interesting things with pigeons…’

The yellow sweatshirt swivelled its shoulders towards the door. ‘Okay, maybe it’s not Sandy, but it sure looks like Sandy.’

‘Go ahead, sign it, oney nothing dirty. I had everybody sign it, even Professor…’

‘No but listen, they actually burned this book called Cubism, see, they thought it was about Castro…’

‘…hell’s the point, anyway? I mean it’s all entropy or do I mean enthalpy…’ A styrene spoon dug into green jello.

‘Sandy! Over here, Sandy!’

‘…yeah, and a wind-up Jonah. Yeah, and he took me to Pinocchio just to see Monstro, how do you like…’

The person who wasn’t Sandy went to sign the skier’s leg cast, while the drama student took a sudden Falstaffian interest in his Danish roll, while the Manichee said:

‘Basically I guess you could call me an anarchist. Only…’

‘…basic Libran, with maybe a touch of Cancer…’

‘God’s truth. Well, maybe it’s not true exactly, but…’

‘I never said it was Sandy, I only said it looked like…’

The voices went on, scudding sound and smoke across the empty table where two empty styrofoam cups stood like vigil lights beside the coffee-soaked newspaper, until Ben Franklin, balancing a tray in his other hand, swept the whole mess to the floor.

‘Jesus, they never clean the tables here or anything, sit down, will you? Standing there like a damn wooden Indian — Dan, sit down and eat something.’ With a paper napkin he expunged the pencilled word ASS.

‘I’m not really…’ Dan Sonnenschein sat down, resting his hands on a spiral-bound notebook. The long fingers showed bitten nails.

‘Sure you are. Hot roast beef sandwich, salad with thousand island, banana cream pie. There.’ He showed no interest in the food Franklin was setting before him. ‘Look, it’s not a problem in anything. Just eat it. Christ, Fong tells me you’ve been living on stale peanut butter sandwiches over there, acting like a goddamned penitent or something.’