‘What — are you crying?’
She sniffed. ‘Let’s get to work.’
‘Yeah, but wait a minute, are you really crying over this computer? Shirl?’
But she did not answer him until later, when they had finished the murder. ‘It wasn’t the computer that bothered me, Rod, it was you.’
‘Me? Why?’
‘Because I used to like you a lot, and now I won’t be seeing you any more. You made a wrong decision tonight.’
‘To kill the computer? What do you mean a wrong decision, you agreed—’
‘Of course I agreed. I’m human. You made a very human decision there, Rod. Welcome to the human species.’ She picked up the phone and punched the General’s private number. ‘But it’s like I told you before. I’m only interested in machines… Hello, General? I’ve got some bad news for you; your bank computer system has had a serious breakdown. I doubt if you’ll be able to recover that missing money…’
As though confirming this, the printer clicked and buzzed out a last message:
‘Music is the music of all music and I am a jealous’
‘Ask him, his old man’s a doctor at University Hospital, he can get anything: Thanidorm, Toxidol, Yegrin, Evenquil…’
‘Yeah, well, but I can already get anything, I’m screwing this nurse over at Mercy Hospital, they got a better drug cabinet anytime. I can get Dormevade, Actromine, Lobanal and Doloban, even Barbidol…’
‘You got any Zombutal though, hey?’
‘Naw, you better ask Allbright. I seen him over there, over there somewhere.’ The gesture took in at least forty thousand people, all who crowded into the towering stands of Minnetonka Stadium tonight. Great sheets of dazzling lights created an artificial day, the fake grass below glowed like velvet-substitute, and in the aisles everything was for sale, from beer and hot dogs, peanuts and programmes, to purple pills and peculiar religions. All in honour of the Auks’ Farewell Concert.
Allbright was working his way down one steep aisle, a few bright-coloured pills in his cupped hand to be held under each customer’s nose briefly, to be dropped at the touch of a cop. A woman was struggling up the aisle with a pile of handbills. She shoved one into Allbright’s cupped hand, and a reflex made him drop his pills.
‘Damn you, damn you!’ He turned to glare at her, and found himself looking at the face that turned up in his dreams still. ‘Dora! Dora? But I thought you were dead, I—’
She blushed. ‘I’ll bet you did, you—’ An explosion of handbills hit him in the face; when he could see again, she was gone.
He bawled her name thrice. People in the crowd started laughing and hooting back at him. Then suddenly all was drowned in the roar of forty thousand voices, the clapping of eighty thousand hands, as the concert began.
Allbright picked up a handbill, his last connection with her:
The concert was beginning, and a peculiar farewell it was; Gary had already left the group to become a special disciple of Dodo (with the rank of saxifrage), so the Auks now consisted of Barry alone, with of course tons of equipment. The equipment, now arranged on a platform in the middle of the stadium, occupied about the same volume as a small four-room house. Indeed, it almost functioned as a small house, for once the remaining Auk had acknowledged his applause and entered among these infra-veeblifiers and tone-hurst hyperdecks, this one-man band was not visible at all.
Later there would be rumours that Barry wasn’t doing anything in there. That he wasn’t doing anything. That he wasn’t in there.
XXII
Roderick found it easy to watch television, hard to do anything else. So he stared at the screen day and night, just as in the earliest years of his life. Was this a kind of senility? he wondered while changing channels. Was he approaching the end, his life furling in about him again, and was he becoming a tidier package, more easily disposed of?
But enough of gloomy thoughts like that: everything on the screen told him not to worry, not to worry. Taco-burger-flavoured diet aids gave way to gleaming pre-owned cars; micronic toilet cleanser to pizza-burger-flavoured falafel sticks; the KUR family of companies offered educational toys like the Zizi-doll, Polly Preggers and Barfin’ Billy; America was wearing cleaner shirts than ever before; the Army offered young people almost unlimited opportunities for travel and education; people were winning new cars and boats and aeroplanes and houses, swimming-pools full of dollar bills, wheelbarrows full of gold, a dozen red roses every week for life; Dorinda managed to look on the bright side of her Destiny; old movies recaptured Hollywood’s golden past; cop dramas showed how law and order still not only prevailed but sufficed; zany comedies proclaimed a new age in which pedestrian lives would become warmly meaningful, meaningfully funny, zanily warm.
He was watching a comedy about violence in New York, filmed entirely in Los Angeles. A yellow cab with blood on the door drew up, before an apartment house. Audience laughter bubbled up, anticipating the worst.
Roderick’s door crashed open, and four large uniformed men hurled themselves into the room, pointing guns at him or at windows. It seemed so much a part of TV that he waited for audience laughter.
‘Sheriff’s office, you the robot?’
‘I, robot. Yes.’
‘You the robot known as Robert Woods also known as Robin Hood also known as Rickwood also—’
‘Yes, anything, fine.’
‘You’re under arrest. You have the right to—’
‘Al,’ said one of the other men. ‘Just shut up, will you? This robot is not under arrest, and it ain’t got no rights. What we got here is a distraint order seizing property in the name of the lawful owner, KUR Industries.’ He approached Roderick carefully and slapped a gummed seal on his forehead. ‘You coming along quietly, robot?’
‘Sure.’
Roderick waited patiently while the four men got him into a straitjacket, leg-irons and an iron collar with four lead chains attached. It was still a part of TV; he was still interested in what might be happening next — a car chase? A discovery about someone’s parentage?
As the sheriffs men were about to lead him away, there appeared in the doorway a man with the head of a fox. Behind him was a man with the head of a cat. Four guns turned towards them automatically.
‘FBI,’ said the fox, showing a gold badge. ‘I’m Inspector Wcz and this is Special Agent Bunne. I’ll have to ask you to turn over that robot.’
‘Turn him over? But we—’
‘Shut up, Al. Inspector, we have a county court order here—’
‘I know,’ said the fox. ‘But our federal court order takes precedence. This is a matter of national security, boys.’
It took some time for the sheriff’s men to release their prisoner from his complicated restraints, and about the same time for Wcz and Bunne to struggle out of their costume heads.
‘I sure wish you’d told us earlier, Inspector. Just what is this robot, a spy or something?’