John Sladek - The Complete Roderick

‘But why?’

‘Plenty of reasons. Quite a few. Many.’

‘Such as?’

The pipe-smoker cleared his throat. “Well, it is all classified, but I guess there’s no real harm in telling you. Not now.’

‘Like a gloating villain,’ Roderick murmured.

‘Eh? Anyway, reasons for stopping Entities: for one thing, suppose machines get as intelligent as men, and decide not to take orders any more? Suppose they get even more intelligent and simply wipe out humanity?’

‘Suppose they get so intelligent they see the futility of wiping out other species?’ Roderick countered.

‘Yes yes yes, I didn’t say there were no counter-arguments. I’m just giving you our reasons. Suppose Entities took over all the jobs, all the worthwhile jobs, by virtue of being able to do them better or cheaper than men? That would leave us with a population forced into idleness never desirable, whatever Utopians might think. Or suppose machines begin solving many of our major problems, such as curing cancer or doubling lifespans or cheap fuel or cheap ways of mining other planets — do you see where such a wealth of handed-down answers could lead us? Yes, we could end up a pathetic kind of cargo-cult. Or suppose the intelligent machines did none of the above things, but suppose that just the idea of having intelligent machines on Earth caused a profound shock to the foundations of our societies — a civilization-quake? For example, where such an idea percolates down to the uneasy, fearful or unhappy masses, it could become the focus for any revolutionary tendencies.’

‘Such as Machines Lib or the Luddites?’

‘Precisely.’ The pipe needed lighting again. ‘Machines can become gods or demons, angels or rivals, in the inflamed imaginations of the lunatic fringe. In troubled times, the Entity might become a scapegoat or a messiah — an embodiment of instability. So we voted to stop the Entities. And by and large, we’ve been pretty successful. I won’t go into details, but we did manage things like shutting off funds for certain lines of research. And we used other government agencies to — to persuade people not to go on trying to make Entities.’

‘But I slipped through.’

‘You slipped through.’ The pipe-stem tapped the glasses. ‘You certainly did slip through. A concatenation of circumstances — fraud, resulting in a cover-up that covered you up too; Mr Sonnenschein’s paranoid precautions in smuggling you away; the fact that you had various foster homes and kept dropping out of sight; an unfortunately inept team of men from the Agency — you did slip through, and here you are today.’

‘What happens next?’ Roderick asked, not really wanting to know. Knowing.

‘I think we ought to introduce you around, eh?’

‘Look, what’s the point? If you’re just going to trash me, why not get it over with?’

‘Trash you?’ The man was so startled he forgot to tap his glasses. ‘Good grief, didn’t I make that clear? Our entire policy on Entities has been reversed. We’re not stopping them any more.’

‘No? But then—’

‘We didn’t bring you here to trash you, Roderick. On the contrary: we want you to join our team.’

‘Is this a trick?’

‘Ha ha, no trick. We really are inviting you to dive into our tank for a good think, ha ha.’

‘I’ll think about it,’ said Roderick seriously.

‘Ha ha, great. Come on in, the water’s fine.’

‘I wonder if it is,’ said Roderick seriously.

‘Ha ha.’

Mr Kratt’s thick black V of eyebrow came down deeper; he bit through his cheap cigar. ‘Goddamnit, bub,’ he said into the telephone, ‘you sure about this federal court order? Fine damn country if the damn government can send in the FBI to deprive a man of his legitimate property… Well, damn-it, Moonbrand, you and Honcho are supposed to be the damned lawyers, you tell me, can’t we lodge an appeal… Yes well look, I didn’t hire you to just sit in your damn hacienda out there and swill orange juice, I hired you to protect KUR interests, my interests, not to… No okay, no all right, maybe you and your partner have been zapped by this Uncle Sam authority trip, but now listen bub, can the California crap and listen, I want that damn robot! You’re the one said I got a legal claim in the first place, now you just go and get the damn thing. Or at least tell me how I can get it… Yeah well, forget your damn karma for a minute, I got a corporation ready to fall apart if I don’t get some good gimmick, I got Moxon breathing down my neck, I got a bank about to fold if that asshole Fleischman doesn’t remember where he parked that sixty million dollars, frankly I don’t need your damn karma.’

The image of his growling voice, turned into numbers, beamed up to a satellite and back down to California, finally emerged from what looked like a gold conch shell held to Wade Moonbrand’s ear. His bare feet rested on the desktop, which had been made from a teak surfboard. He kept his eyes on a meditation symbol on the wall, a nest of concentric rings; when he’d finished talking he pulled a Colt .45 from inside his floral shirt and put three shots into the middle of the symbol.

‘Cass, old buddy, we kind of aced ourselfs, you know? I mean talk about the oneness of everything, we aced our own selfs!’

Cass Honcho, wearing buckskin and sitting at a desk made of a split log, nodded to show he was awake.

‘Talk about conflict of innerest,’ Moonbrand went on. ‘I finally got the story outa the Orinoco gang, and guess who’s behind the FBI move? Leo! Leo Bunsky, our client! Man, if we hadn’t slapped that injunction on them to get the poor bastard’s head straight — I mean wires uncrossed — like he would still be floating on some astral plane with like Madame Blavatsky and James Dean, instead of down here making waves. We aced our own selfs!

‘Like you remember when we took on Leo as a client? And we got that injunction against Orinoco saying they was violating his civil rights? And we wanted our electronics people and neurologists to look him over, remember that?’

Honcho nodded.

‘And man their argument was just that Leo had all his rights because they let him vote with the rest of the committee, only we argued that you couldn’t be sure his vote was real unless we got our experts in there to check his wiring, remember?’

Honcho nodded.

‘And then when our boys did go in there sure enough they found a couple of wires crossed or something, so like his vote was garbled, remember? And after that they voted on something and Leo changed his vote and I guess the bottom line is, they decided to send in the FBI and just grab Roderick; so there we are, aced. I mean we just get one client fixed up so he can think straight, first thing he does is rip off another client. Mr Kratt’s mad as hell and we lose out everywhere. Talk about a conflict of innerest, we just conflicted all over ourselfs there, you know what I wish?’

Honcho nodded.

‘I wish there was some piranha fish in Leo Bunsky’s tank.’

Roderick stared at the brain in the tank, trying to see it as a living person and not as a relic. Leo Bunsky had created him; now he tried to reconstruct Leo Bunsky, as his guide explained and explained:

‘…see one of the key factors in our policy on Entities was always Leo’s vote: no matter how hard he might argue for building Entities, when it came to a vote he always voted for their extermination. You’re probably wondering whether we didn’t think there was something wrong, but, hell, a lot of people here play games like that, arguing intellectually but voting with their true feelings. We thought Leo really was opposed to Entities. His vote influenced other votes, so the Entity extermination policy always had a comfortable plurality. And, well, it was only after Leo’s lawyers made us check the wiring that we realized, Leo’s vote was being misrecorded. He thought he was voting “Nay”, we thought he was voting “Aye”. For poor Leo, Yes meant No.