John Sladek: The Complete Roderick

‘I mean it should rate a paragraph on about page 733 of the financial news teletext; nobody cares who runs big corporations nowadays, or who owns them, or why. I mean it’s slightly less interesting than say the intrigues of Ruritanian internal politics; I really hate this financial desk job.’

‘Don’t underrate it, kid,’ said an older reporter, waking up. ‘You start believing it’s worthless, pretty soon everybody else believes it’s worthless. Pretty soon companies start asking themselves why they should go on throwing champagne press receptions, whole system could melt down under us, leave nothing but real news to report.’

They stared out through the glass wall at real rain splashing on the perfectly square acre of concrete that separated the KUR Tower from real sidewalks and streets.

‘Okay, it’s a real meaningful job. So where’s the champagne?’

Someone adjusted his camera by focusing on the receptionist, behind her violet desk. Today she had taken the trouble to appear in violet hair, nails and lipstick, and now she smiled and turned so that the violet telephone receiver did not hide her smile. ‘Good morning, KUR Innernational… I can give you the press office… Ginny, did you see him yesterday? No him, when the ambulance men rolled him away right by my desk, he had on this oxygen mask and I mean he looked so helpless, even his eyebrows, and when you think how we all used to be so scared of him, he never even would say good morning or have a nice, if he even noticed you it was only to make some sarcastic remark about how he ought to replace you with a Roberta Receptionist machine, and now there he was. There he was, so helpless, helpless as a, a dog. Just a sec, Good morning, KUR Innernational…’

‘Besides,’ said the older reporter, ‘a conglomerate like this is interesting for its own sake. It’s like an incredibly complicated puppet — you never know where all the strings lead until you pull them and see what jumps. And something like this — Kratt keeling over like that during the negotiations — it’s like the puppeteer dropping all the strings. Now we’ll see how good Moxon is at picking them up and sorting them out.’

‘Yeah, but he’s bringing in a lot of strings of his own,’ said the younger. ‘I heard there’s gonna be a complete changeover of personnel, with—’

‘Well, there he is, let’s ask him.’

There was a stampede past the reception desk to where Everett Moxon, flanked by press aides, waited to greet them.

‘Mr Moxon, is it true you seized the moment to pull the takeover, because Kratt, who always opposed you, was safely out of the way?’

‘Everett, look this way?’

‘Mr Moxon, would you say KUR is shaky, with some of its subsidiaries—?’

‘What kind of changes do you envision for—?’

Moxon grinned Presidentially. ‘Boys and girls, one at a time, please. I thought we might go up to the penthouse and do this over a few glasses of champagne, okay? But I’ll just say now that Mr Kratt and I may have had a few minor disagreements, but we always saw eye to eye on all major decisions about the future of KUR. And when he recovers, he knows he can go on as chairman of the board as long as he likes. As you all know, the takeover has been in the cards for a long time. We like KUR, and KUR can use our capital. But let me say, let me just say that there is not going to be any asset-stripping, the Moxon Corporation is not an asset-stripping operation. Naturally we’ll have to look over the whole basket of apples and get rid of any bad ones, but only to protect the rest. Anyone here like champagne?’

‘What I’d like even more, Mr Moxon, is to know what are your plans for the KUR banking subsidiary, with General Fleisch—’

Still clamouring questions, they packed into elevators and disappeared. The receptionist said, ‘Ginny, have you seen him? Not him, him, Mr Moxon. Not bad looking only his head is kinda small, just a sec. Good morning, KUR Inner –, oh hello Dr Hare, are you coming in today because a Dr D’Earth called a few times. Oh and there’s a Mr Roderick Wood waiting to see somebody, who should I, to whom should he — never mind, he’s gone…’

Upstairs Everett Moxon walked around holding a glass of champagne and smiling for five minutes before ducking out to his office.

His secretaries, Ann and Andy, were trying to clean the place. Ann held an ashtray containing a chewed cigar stub; Andy was dusting.

‘Sorry, sir. KUR janitors are on strike,’ said Andy.

Ann sighed. ‘Something about automated cleaning machines in some subsidiary called Slumbertite.’

‘Wonderful timing.’ He looked around. ‘Is that interior decorator here? Send him in.’

Ann hesitated. ‘There are a lot of people waiting, sir. Jud Mill and people from Katrat, from Datajoy, from T-Track Records and Mistah Kurtz Eating Houses. And there’s even a delegation from Kratt Brothers Midway Shows.’

‘That’s right,’ Andy snickered. ‘They look like the cast of Guys and Dolls, I’ve never seen so many sharp sideburns and black shirts with white ties.’

‘Okay. Okay. Send Jud in first, and tell the decorator he can make measurements or look around and get inspiration but he has to keep out of the way. Datajoy? What do we own called Datajoy?’

Ann and Andy exchanged looks. Andy said, ‘Well, it’s sort of a combined clinic and pleasure ranch—’

‘Never mind how it’s marketed, what is it?’

Ann said, ‘They implant electrodes in the customers’ heads, to stimulate their pleasure centres. It’s a leasing arrangement; as long as they keep up the payments they stay turned on. If they miss a payment—’

‘The electrode gets ripped out,’ Andy said. ‘One of Kratt’s more disgusting ideas.’

‘Disgusting, yes.’ Moxon’s phone rang. He sat on the desk and reached for it. ‘Still, if we combined it with Moxon Retirement Systems… Hello, Moxon… What is it, Francine, I’ve got people to see… Jough Braun, what does he, yes all right, all right we’ll talk about it.’

Jud Mill was a distinguished-looking man of no particular age or sex. He began spreading folders on the desk and peering at them through half-moon reading glasses. ‘I may as well admit we had a few problems, Mr Moxon, with this direct editing scheme. When Mr Kratt brought me in as a media management consultant, I told him I foresaw problems with authors. Sure enough, everything worked well enough with the bookstore chains, the market survey people, the editorial — but the authors had problems. Authors always screw up a package.’

‘What happened? Direct editing?’

‘It works like this: the author writes directly on to a computer. This is linked up to leading bookstore chains, to their sales computers, and to prose analysis programs. The idea was to give the author instant feedback; as soon as he pecks out a few words, the computer grinds it through and tells him how good it is.’

‘How good?’

‘For his sales. By comparing sentences with sentences in his earlier books, and up-to-the-minute sales records, it can help him shape his prose as he writes.’

‘But it went wrong?’

‘In a sense. We had this leading Katrat Books author parked at his tax-haven home down in Nassau, hammering out his book on our DE system, when evidently he developed some kind of block. So to keep up his quota, he started, well, plagiarizing his own previous books. Naturally the computer rated this as highly saleable stuff, and I am afraid it went into production. See, the computer also sets type and — well in fact, The Hills Afar is a word-for-word copy of Red Situation, thirty million copies went out.’

‘Jesus. Could be sued by thirty million customers.’