The Complete Roderick (78 page)

‘What did it feel like, Indica, being held hostage for almost six weeks in the African bush?’

‘Not so bad, mostly pretty boring.’ She and Dr Tarr stood in front of a burnt-out supermarket in Himmlerville, not because they had been here during the fighting, but only because the news team had told them where to stand.

‘What did you do all the time?’

‘Sunbathed. When it rained we played Skat. Not my favourite card game, but better than the TV,’ she said.

‘We heard stories about atrocities …’

‘The only atrocity,’ Tarr said, ‘was the food. Nothing but TV dinners three times a day. We’ve all got scurvy.’

‘What about torture? Mutilizations? Executions?’

‘Nothing,’ said Tarr.

‘Well, there was that guy Beamish,’ said Indica. ‘They drowned him in the swimming pool. See, he kept shouting right from the first day about how it was all a mistake, how he
didn’t
take the sixty million dollars from the bank, how he
knew nothing about
the sixty million dollars. So naturally they started asking him where it was, they took him down to the pool and I guess they drowned him.’

‘Did you see that?’

‘Oh no, we never went near the pool, it was filthy. The pool-cleaning service never came around or something –’

‘Stop the camera, stop the camera.
Jesus Christ, folks, give me a little help here? I ask for adventures and what do I get: card games, TV dinners, complaints about the pool.’

Tarr said, ‘I thought you wanted our honest reactions.’

‘Sure I do, sure I do. But I want honest reactions to something the viewers can grab on to, I want
Prison:
the sweltering little hut where you fought off scorpions and counted the days, not
knowing whether each would bring death or rescue. I want
Blood:
how you saw all your friends slashed to death slowly or else crucified with bamboo stakes. I want
Politics
: What kind of mystery man is this General Bobo? Is he just a seedy little guerrilla dictator who wants to wipe out every white in Bimibia? Or does his rough bloodstained uniform conceal an African aristocrat, a sensitive statesman who wants to bring forth on this earth a nation conceived in peace and justice, a nation that can take its place in the progressive Third World – you just tell it in your own words, I’ll listen. Only give me something to run with.’

With the camera rolling again, he asked, ‘Tell me, Indica, what was your jungle prison really like?’

‘Most of the time they kept us in an American motel.’

‘A motel?’

‘We were bored to death, all of us. Lousy food, dirty pool, and there weren’t even paper sanitized covers over the toilets. You just had to spend the day in your room, listening to the hum of the air conditioner and the chink-chunk of the ice-maker, not to mention the same old taped music day and night. Col. Shagg said it was their way of lowering our morale, wearing us down. Then it got worse.’

‘Worse?’

‘The TV station was blown up or something, and after that we had nothing but a few old movie cassettes:
Pillow Talk
and
Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?’

‘Was there any brainwashing or intimidation? What did they talk to you about?’

Indica said, ‘Oh, we chatted a little about the socio-economic substructure of mercantile colonialism as a correlate of post-imperial capitalistic disenfranchisement of the proletariat in a classically exploitative system based upon quasi-feudal stratification, gross entrepreneurial aggrandisement, and the cash-flow pyramid – but that was just between hands of Skat. I think they thought we were too decadent to become committed to the class struggle as exemplified by –’

‘Thanks, thanks. Dr Tarr, Jack, can I ask you about the tortures? Isn’t it true the BLA drowned one man while interrogating him?’

‘Could be, I wasn’t around that day. I went out with some of
the others into the bush, we were hoping to get a glimpse of this rare type of big cat, something they call the
tobori.
Ferocious, real killers, but at the same time very shy. They kill their victims with a blow to the back of the head, with one mighty paw. Then they eat the choicest parts, the liver, and they bury the rest.’

‘Are you glad to be going home, folks?’

The reporter finally had some film shot of himself talking while Jack and Indica nodded, and of them talking while he nodded. Then:

‘This is Bug Feyerabend, GBC News, Bimibia.’

‘Hey, we didn’t get to tell you the weirdest thing,’ said Indica. ‘One day they delivered a whole great big computer to the motel. Nobody had ordered it, and there was nobody there who could get it running or anything, so they just left it in the crates, standing out on the tennis court.’

‘No kidding. Well, if you’ll excuse me, I got a hell of a lot of editing to do.’

Kratt blew cigar smoke at the phone. ‘Goddamnit, General, I am listening. I’ve been listening for six weeks to this little problem of yours, only I never hear any solutions. I just want to say two things, okay? First, the guy is dead, Beamish is dead – so much for recovering your sixty million. Second, the media boys are on this story now, you got maybe twenty-four hours before they start calling you up there: “General Fleischman, is it true your bank is missing sixty million bucks? And what do the bank examiners think, of that, General Fleischman?” … Well sure I’m worried, what with you a director of both the bank and KUR, this could be bad news for everybody. I mean it’s not a problem we need right now, still hurting from that damned yak-head idea of yours to send your old pal Shagg down there to Bimibia with his coin-in-the-slot army and all that expensive weapon surplus. And your old pal Shagg decides to quit and throw in with General Bobo, how does that make us look? Twelve million in weapon surplus gone with him, how does – no, I know it’s only the tax write-off value, but I just, yes, that’s it, we’ll have to support Bobo, give him some cash and weapons – if we can find him … Yeah, and we need to look into that pissass church that’s trying to sue us, it’ll be on the six o’clock news, some little outfit called Church of
Plastic Jesus, heard we were taking out a patent on an artificial man, they want to sue, claim God holds the original patent, oh sure, laugh, but it’s not only bad press making us look ridiculous, it’s – well you never know with these damned California lawyers, I don’t like it … No, some shirttail outfit called Moonbrand and Honcho, can’t be any good or we’d have them on the payroll already …’

Kratt lifted his snout to note the striking of his apostle clock, though not the time. His thick finger punched another button. ‘That you Hare? Test finished, is it? …’ The cheap cigar was ground out with great force in an ashtray shaped like a gingerbread boy. ‘Just what I figured. Jesus Christ, I knew that Franklin was just pulling his pecker on company time, I’ll get back to you … Hello, Franklin? This is Kratt, Hare tells me this great super-robot of yours don’t work. Supposed to be this perfect replica that could pass for human, eh? I get three patent attorneys busy tying up patent space for it, I get a lawsuit from some wacky cult, I get valuable research time wasted, and I get every goddamned thing but a working robot. Hare says all it does is run around in circles, squeaking “That’s the way to do it! That’s the way to do it!” … Yes I know it’s like Mr Punch, only I didn’t order a goddamned puppet. Listen, bub, you got fifteen minutes to clean out your desk; I’m having security men escort you out of the building.’

He stabbed at another button. ‘Connie, tell security to help Franklin clean out his desk and leave? And then get me this California law firm, Moonbrand and Honcho.’

He went to the window and looked down on the city that had given so much, but had so much more to give. Today it looked worn and greasy, like an old dime. He thought of the childhood trick of rubbing a penny with mercury and passing it as a dime. He was staring once more at the apostle clock when the phone rang. ‘Moonbrand? I just wanted to say first of all I admire your style there, doubt if your client, your Church of Plastic Jesus, your Reverend Draeger, doubt if he would have thought of this by himself. Sounds more like your idea, lawyer’s idea, right? Anyway, look, we’re withdrawing our patent application so you lose, nice try. But how would you like to take on a job for us? Still in the artificial intelligence line … You fly over here and we’ll
discuss it, fix it up with my secretary, okay? Think you’ll find KUR a good client to work for … Who is holding? Fleischman again?’

General Fleischman sat back, resting his head against the fireproof walnut panelling as he stared at the Grant Wood landscape whose bulbous trees and swollen hills seemed somehow pornographic. He brought out a small silver comb and applied it to his magnificent white frothy sideburns.

‘Fleischman, what do you want now?’
said the phone on his desk. He automatically leaned forward to speak to it.

‘Mr Kratt, I just want to tell you that I had this troubleshooter in here that thinks maybe Beamish didn’t take the money after all. She thinks the computer could have an internal fault, and we haven’t lost a penny.’

‘Who is this troubleshooter?’

‘Shirl something, name’s around here somewhere. She’s bringing in her assistant, soon as I watch the news I’m getting right down there to see them.’

The news was coming on now: a burnt-out supermarket in someplace called Himmlerville, with Indica Dinks and some man answering questions.

‘What did it feel like, Indica, being held hostage for almost six weeks in the African bush?’

‘… bad.’

‘What about torture?’

‘Well there was this guy Beamish. They drowned him … he kept shouting … they took him … they drowned him. It was filthy …’

‘Dr Tarr, Jack, can I ask you about the tortures? Executions?’

‘Ferocious, real killers …’

‘Aren’t they cannibals?’ the reporter’s voice asked, while Tarr nodded.

‘They kill their victims with a blow to the back of the head … Then they eat … parts, the liver …’

‘Are you glad to be going home, folks?’

They were. The reporter wound up:

‘An innocent tourist tortured, others cannibalized, where will it all end? Is General Bobo’s reign of terror over? Will the people of
Bimibia now start picking up the pieces and rebuilding?’ There was a quick shot of a motel with bullet-riddled walls, the camera moving on to show a lawn littered with large packing cases marked
KUR Overseas.
‘Or is this only the beginning of a long night of tragedy? No one knows for sure but General Bobo – and no one knows just where he is. This is Bug Feyerabend, GBC News, Bimibia.’

Shirl and her assistant were watching the news in the bank computer room:

A woman in New Jersey had burned her child’s hands off in a microwave oven, at the command of St Anthony, and to cure thumb-sucking. In Florida a rally of angry red-haired people were demanding an end to stereotyped ‘redheads’ in the media (‘We’re sick and tired of being laughed at, being treated like a bunch of kids, brats at that. They talk about us as if we’re born troublemakers. If we don’t get equal treatment, we’ll make some real trouble! This is Red Power and we’re fighting mad!’). Luddites smashed up an auction of rare clocks in New York. A new brand of pizza-flavoured yoghurt fudge was found to contain a poison similar to oxalic acid. Another nuclear power station accident had been covered up; the authorities claimed it was an accidental cover-up.

Shirl said to Roderick, ‘Back to work. Now I’ve already been all the way through this old machine, but I want you to find your way through, too. Because I just don’t believe what I found.’

‘But why me? There must be plenty of competent people who could do a good job here. I hardly know how to begin.’

‘People.’ She pushed back her fine auburn hair. ‘I don’t trust people. It’s people that got this poor old machine in this mess. No, I want a machine to look it over. I want the honest opinion of an honest machine.’

‘I guess that means you know me inside and out,’ he said, and went to work. The first thing to do was to find out when and where the missing money was last seen. After finding the date, he narrowed down the loss by time and by department, until:

Dept 45	Dept 45
0435 hrs	0435 hrs
31.000494958 sec	31.000494959 sec
Assets:	Assets:
475 843 722.44	415 843 722.44

Sixty million dollars had flickered out of existence in one nanosecond. Just numbers, Hector had said, one number just as good as another … Roderick shook himself out of a reverie and called on the machine’s internal auditor, asking it to explain the loss.

‘Checking balance now. Balance 60 000 000 short.’
A minute passed. Then there appeared in the centre of the screen only the word:
‘Sorry.’

‘Can you elaborate on that?’

‘Sorry, the loss is recorded and I can find no explanation in my records. The loss took place in Dept 45 at the designated time; the money is debited there and not credited anywhere else. This could happen in one of several ways:

‘
1
.
A computer malfunction causing the interchange of a 7 and a 1.

‘2. A communications malfunction causing data loss during a crédit transfer.

‘3.
A fault in the credit transfer program.

‘4. A fault in me, the auditor.

‘5.
Deliberate manipulation of machine or program by an outside agency: a thief

‘6. Some cause buried at a deeper program level, out of my reach. To me this seems the most probable explanation.’

Roderick was only vaguely aware of someone coming in to look over his shoulder with Shirl, of Shirl introducing General Fleischman to her assistant, ‘Rick Wald’. He was too busy trying to decide whether a complex machine with a fundamental flaw could itself detect that flaw; whether, having detected it, the machine would be inclined to expose or conceal that flaw; and whether he was himself competent to decide such questions; and whether he was himself competent to decide such questions; and whether …