John Sladek - The Complete Roderick

‘If you’re ill, Dr McGuffey, perhaps—’

‘Ill? Ill-aspected, Mars the face of Mars, malefic but I ward it off, they have to get up early to catch old Fred, Napoleon slept only four hours per night, magnetic power, secret dynamos, hidden reserves of Atlantean force fields deep in the — but they do, you know. They do get up early, humming away in the night, in the…’ He looked bewildered. After a moment he sat down and began to study the documents before him. The meeting continued.

‘No luck, chief?’

‘Zilch. Either this guy really is some government yahoo, which I very much doubt, or he’s really nuts. Any word from the FBI yet on his prints?’

‘Maggie’s drawers, so far. Should I book him or what?’

‘Not just yet. Not just yet.’ Chief Dobbin drummed a pencil on his legal pad. ‘I want to try a little psychology on this cracker. Because if he’s nuts, he just might be nuts enough to be our Ripper, right?’

Collar snapped his fingers. ‘Hey, that ties in with something else. I forgot to tell you. You know that book we found last week on the scene of the crime?’

‘Yeah, this education—’

‘But that’s just it! I had our experts go over it, and it’s not education at all. This book, this Learning Systems, is all about computers!’

‘And we caught this guy at the Computer Science building! Now we’re getting somewheres.’ Dobbin sat up. ‘Get the prisoner, Collar. I think the three of us oughta pay a little visit to the morgue.’

The Mortuary Science department of University Hospital was just around the corner, and in a few minutes they were in the cool antechamber, handing the attendant a ticket.

‘Six-sixty-six?’ he said. ‘Let’s see, that must be—’

‘Never mind who it is, just bring it out.’ Dobbin watched the attendant slouch away, then turned to his suspect. ‘Still not talking, Mister Spy?’

‘Nope. Like I said before, you boys are makin’ one hell of a mistake here. People I work for ain’t goin’ to like this a-tall.’

‘Sure, sure, double-oh-seven. We got your number all right.’ When the attendant rolled in the sheet-draped trolley, the two cops twisted their handcuffs, forcing the suspect to move close to it. He would need a full dose of psychology.

‘I want you to take a good look at this girl,’ said Dobbin. ‘I think maybe you seen her before. Before you took an electric carving knife and butchered her up like this!’

He whipped back the sheet to show the placid features of Bill Hannah. ‘What the hell — Collar, what’s this?’

‘I don’t know, chief, guess the computer mixed up the ticket numbers or — and they must of cremated the girl.’

The suspect grinned out of his deep tan. ‘Now if you boys are done fartin’ around here, how about lettin’ me go? I ain’t really done nothin’ and you know it.’

‘Millions of bits of information on a little chip,’ said the Shah. ‘Answers at the speed of light. Of what will they think next? Ah, dear Helen, I cannot tell you how much I look forward to seeing your computers.’

‘Well I’m sure you’ll be — Good God what’s that?’

As the long Mercedes turned into University Avenue, a mob suddenly closed in to block the way. There seemed to be angry faces at every window, fists hammering at every bomb-proof panel.

‘MURDERER! MURDERER OF CHILDREN!’

‘I can’t think how this happened, Your Incomparability. This is — I must apologize. Must be some mistake in our security, some leak—’

He shrugged a peacock epaulet. ‘I am accustomed to this. Ruritanian students assuredly, a despicable faction known all too well in my own country. And now even here, in the land where everything is free—’

The bodyguards started feeling inside their jackets as the car slowed, halted. A student whose sign read NO FASCHISM HERE shouted something in an ancient language, and the Shah looked unhappy.

‘They accuse me of murder — I who brought them colour television on two channels! Only communistic anarchists could even dream of so terrible a lie. Drive on Uza,’ he shouted in the microphone. ‘Run them down!’

‘No, wait. I’m not sure you should—’

‘Red anarchistic nihilists! They say I murdered children — I , their spiritual father! I never murdered anyone in my life.’

‘No, of course but—’

‘All of those so-called children were executed in accordance with our laws, after a fair trial — and many were over ten years old!’

He shouted something into the gold microphone, and the car began inching forward.

When the FBI report finally came through, O’Smith left the yokel cops mumbling their apologies, and went right to work. No time for subtleties now, just have to go in fast and heavy. He stopped at a drugstore on University Avenue and picked up cotton wool and a few cans of lighter-fuel. Then, straight for the Computer Science building.

Seemed to be lots of other folks hurrying in the same direction. One or two carried signs. Away down the street a black limo was caught in a mob of some kind. Student demonstration? Good diversion there, all set for a quick in-and-out operation.

He paused, waggled his stiff right forefinger until it clicked, then removed the tip of it. Half the fingernail slotted into the remaining finger to form a forward sight. Not more than three or four in the lab, he reckoned, should be able to get the drop on two of ’em before the others could close their mouths.

Better get this Dr Lee Fong first thing, you never knew with chinks and their martial arts. Then the notes, grab essentials (they’d be most likely in top desk drawers and pockets) and use the rest to start the fire. Whole thing didn’t need to take more’n fifteen minutes.

He was closer to the car now, and could see students sprawling over the hood, banging on it, scratching the paint with their signs. Punks! If he didn’t need the ammo he’d take out a couple of ’em right here and now.

Suddenly the car broke free, flinging a body and a sign into the air, and careered towards him. O’Smith dodged left as it swerved left, dodged right as it swerved right, and collided with someone else, a student with a sign.

‘Murderer!’

O’Smith felt the blast of bad breath, saw NO FASCH and felt the impact; before he could argue the truth of the accusation, or demonstrate it, he was down and out.

The room that had been a lab was nearly empty now, its grey floor material marked with pale squares and rectangles. In one corner two men wearing the orange uniforms of Custodial Services struggled to lift the last large cabinet, revealing the last pale rectangle. In the opposite corner Dan sat at a table sorting papers into two piles. Franklin paced up and down, stepping carefully in the pale parts. Finally he hunkered down and lit a cigarette.

‘Christ,’ he exhaled. ‘Seeing all this you might think we’d lost out or something.’

‘Maybe we did, in a way.’

‘Like hell. Lee’s just the same, moping around his office like a Jehovah’s Witness the day after the world didn’t end. I mean what the hell’s wrong with you two, we’ve got the green light on this, now we can really be—’

A thump from the other corner made him look up. ‘Careful, fellas. That stuffs expensive.’

One of the men put down his end of the cabinet and turned around. ‘Listen, you think you can move this fuckin’ ton a junk any better, you just come over and try.’

‘Okay, I just, okay.’

‘Smartass perfessers.’

He waited until the two had lifted their burden on to a trolley and wheeled it out of the room. ‘Be lucky if anything works when we get moved. I don’t know where Custodial gets these guys. Saw one in the hall just now didn’t even have a uniform; old clothes and a straggly beard looked like it had mange on one side. Only reason I knew he worked here was I saw him carrying a box of your stuff. Can’t be two Bugleboy Peanut Butter cartons on the whole campus.’