John Sladek: The Complete Roderick

‘Robots, sheeit! You mean he told ’em NASA was making robots? Sheeit!’

‘Gotta admire the old bugger. Sure knew how to keep everything in the air, all right.’

Masterson came in cursing and laughing quietly. ‘Too bad he didn’t keep himself in the fucking air, though, ain’t it? Know what he done? Soon as he heard we were on to him, he went and suicided on us. Crashed his fucking plane and left us to clear up his shit. Shit!’ He kicked the empty file cabinet, walked up and down the room, and then stood, fists on hips, staring at the pictures on Stonecraft’s wall.

‘I don’t know, you give your fucking life to try to build something, and all the time you got some fuckhead like this tearin’ it all down. Look, there’s a picture of Luke Draeger, remember him?’ None of them did. ‘I seen him walk on the Moon, boys, I helped put him there. Or was it Mars? Anyways, NASA still means something to some of us. It means — it means — billowing exhaust clouds catching the first light of dawn, a silver needle rising, reaching for the fucking stars! The puny crittur we call Man setting out to conquer the sky, to rendezvous with his Eternal Destiny! Call me a dreamer, boys, but I see Man leaping out from this little planet of ours, to the Moon, to the planets, to our neighbouring stars and finally beyond, to the infinite reaches of dark promise beyond — into the cocksucking Unknown!’ He turned to face them. ‘So that’s why we’re gonna bury this, boys. To protect NASA. To protect the destiny of the human race, our inheritance in the Universe. Bury it, boys. Deep.’

‘Yeah, but we got the dirt on this old—’

‘Forget it. Make out a confidential report for all heads of departments, but keep it in the family. Bury and forget, for NASA’s sake.’ Bob handed him the robot notes and he started reading them, as he talked. ‘I mean otherwise how’s it gonna look for us? Being ripped off by some dumb asshole who blows the whole wad on old planes, how’s that gonna look? Congress heard about this they’d shut us down so fast — robots, huh? Maybe I better wire the Orinoco Institute about this, have ’em drop in on this University of Minnehaha. Them Orinoco eggheads collect robots just like this dirty mother-fucker collected flying trash. I recollect they got a standing memo about reporting attempts to make robots.’

‘Yes sir, but how can we keep it in the family if we go telling the Orinoco Inst—?’

‘You let me handle that, junior. All they care about is in this here batch of notes — no need to tell ’em any financial details.’ His hand shook as he turned a page. ‘Don’t know how we’re gonna clean up this mess, get rid of them old planes and make it all look good, but that’s just what we’re gonna do. So get to work, boys. Any questions?’

‘Yes sir. Okay if we have Stonecraft sell the old planes to a NASA subsidiary at scrap value and then auction—’

‘Sell ’em, burn ’em, do what you like. Keep ’em flying, I don’t care.’

‘Sir?’

‘His last words on the radio, they tell me. “Keep ’em flying.” Just before he piled his old Belaire Something-or-other into a mountain in Colorado. If he was alive, I’d kill the sonofabitch myself.’ Masterson sat down at the telex keyboard. The boys exchanged winks.

‘Sir, I thought Belaire was an old car, hahahaha.’

‘Just shut up and move your ass! I gotta send two wires, and I don’t want to make no mistakes.’

Kevin made an invoice into a paper airplane and sailed it over to Bob. ‘Funny thing, though, it was a computer error that put us wise to old Stonecraft in the first place.’

The conference room was full of pipe smoke.

‘We’ll have to send someone, of course.’

‘Of course. To check it out. Though—’

‘Exactly. Minnetonka has a point oh three, not much likelihood of—’

‘Exactly.’

The telex message passed from one liver-spotted hand to another. ‘Still, remember St Petersburg? Point oh oh seven only, yet look what turned up. We’d best be prepared—’

‘For a revised scenario? Of course. We’ll do all the usual extrapolations, based on personnel information—’

‘Which is never up-to-date, remember.’

‘Exactly. In the last analysis—’

‘No matter how good our figures are, we have to—’

‘Send someone. Precisely.’

Someone sighed, sending pipe smoke scudding across the page.

‘Someone from the agency?’

‘Naturally. Who else could we use? And they do get the goods.’

Another sigh. ‘But the way they get them — do they have to—?’

‘You know they do. We’ve worked that out in all three scenarios, in all eight modes. To six significant figures.’

‘But our assumptions—’

‘Are all we have. In the last analysis.’

‘Undeniably. So we send someone.’

‘Of course.’

The ivory-coloured door swung open, admitting Rogers, Fong and a breeze that disturbed the wrinkled paper on the desk.

‘…can see you’re disappointed, okay but let me explain, let me just — five minutes, you can spare that?’

‘Nearly three a.m., Lee, why don’t we call it a day?’

‘No listen I’ll lend you a book, it’ll help you understand. It’s here somewhere, just sit down a minute, while I… Learning Systems it’s called, learning systems, you have to know something about them otherwise how can you explain things to your committee?’

Rogers sat sideways in the armchair again, preparing to tap his foot on air. The slow smile opening on his Mr Peanut face might have been a sneer. ‘Not my committee, Lee. Hell, I’m only one of twenty-four members. Dr Boag has the chair. And I ought to warn you, there’s plenty of hostility there. Not many committee members are as open-minded as I am about this, ahm, this artificial intelligence. Frankly, one or two think it’s faintly blasphemous — and quite a few more think it’s a waste of time.’ The smile widened. ‘Can’t say I’m in a position to enlighten them, either.’

‘Sure, that’s why I… here somewhere…’ Fong finished running his thumb along the books on his shelves and started searching through an untidy pile on his desk. ‘Because I know they’re hostile, but the committee’s our only chance. And you, sometimes I think you’re our only chance with the committee. At least you’re the only one interested enough to come here and look at… at what we’re trying to do.’ He stopped to look at Rogers’s tapping foot. ‘You are interested, a little?’

‘Gooood niiight bayyy — sorry, can’t get the damn tune out of my head. Interested, Lee? Of course I’m interested — even if I don’t see the concrete results, I feel, I sense a quality here, how to describe it, an air of imminent discovery. I’ve got faith in your little project, I think it has tremendous possibilities. I was just saying so today — yesterday, I mean — to one of your colleagues, Ben Franklin.’

‘You know Ben?’

‘We play the occasional game of handball, and I try to pick his brain — you see, I am interested — and in fact it was Ben who suggested I might drop over and talk to you some time. You or whoever was here.’

‘And tour the lab?’ Fong let the other armchair take his weight. ‘Look, I know it was a disappointment to you, I guess you were expecting more of a, a show.’

The smile again, and Rogers looked away. ‘Well, can’t say I was very impressed. I mean, all I could see was this skinny kid in a dirty t-shirt, sitting there in this glass box pushing buttons, like—’

‘I tried to explain, Dan’s just doing some delicate on-line programming, he—’

‘Yeah, well, too bad he couldn’t stop and talk for a minute. I mean just sitting there like a disc jockey or some, like that pope whatsit in the Francis Bacon painting, can’t say that impressed me, no. As for the rest, a lot of computers and screens and things, I could see those anywhere, and what are they supposed to mean to a layman? I expected — I don’t know—’