He combed his full beard with both hands. ‘Probably cost a fortune to fix him. A fortune. What the hell can I say to the guy who built him if he comes around to see — it’s all — it’s all getting on top of me.’
‘Look, maybe I can just stick his head down with scotch tape or something, no one’ll know the difference really. I mean, this dude never comes to see him or anything, who’s to know? Even if he did, I mean we just say he fell down the stairs… Look, I’ll fix him right now.’
She carried Roderick out to the kitchen. Hank sat staring at his hands for a moment, then went to the bar. As he picked up the bottle of Scotch, a tiny screen behind it lit up with a message:
First of the day 19:48: CONGRATULATIONS HANK, YOU ARE MAKING REAL PROGRESS.
‘Shut up,’ he said. After downing the measured drink, he returned to the sofa and sat fiddling with his electric pipe-cleaner. Handy little gadget — but wasn’t it starting to make a funny noise?
‘Here we are, good as new.’ Indica plunked the little robot down in front of the TV and turned it on. ‘Good boy, you just sit here and watch the pretty pictures.’ The screen showed a lifelike armpit.
‘Good as new,’ she said to Hank. ‘Not that he was ever a hell of a lot of good. Never says a word, never opens his mouth. I mean, even when I plug him in for his recharge at night, he never says good night or anything. Some robot! If you ask me — what’s the matter now?’
Hank cocked his head over the electric pipe-cleaner. ‘Making a funny noise, hear it?’
‘You and your goddamned gadgets, how about listening to me once in a while? Hank, what the hell’s wrong with you, all you think about are your gadgets. I mean, we got a house full of broken-down machinery now, who needs it? We came out here to get away from crap and machines and — look at you, sitting here in the middle of the goddamned desert, listening to a goddamned electric pipe-cleaner!’
He looked at her, then back to the instrument. ‘Now wait a minute. We came out here to establish our own, ahm, environmental situation, right? So machines are an integral part of it. Oh sure, I used to want to turn the clock back, just like everyone else. I wanted to trash our whole technology, return to the soil — only I grew out of it. Whether we like it or not, technology is here to stay. Machines are here to stay.’
On cue, the pipe-cleaner made a loud buzzing noise and emitted a wisp of smoke. Hank dropped it to the floor where, after flopping for a moment like a dying fish, it lay still.
‘Ha! Maybe they don’t want to stay.’
Hank’s pudgy fingers dug into his beard. ‘Oh sure, laugh. But it doesn’t change a thing. Sure, machines go wrong once in a while. They have to be fixed—’
‘Tell me something I don’t know. You never fix anything around here, you never let me call a repairman, all you do is let it pile up! The crapyard of the universe we got here, the crap—’
Just let me finish, will you? Just have the courtesy to let me finish what I’m saying, okay? Okay. Machines are here to stay, we have to make the most of ’em. We owe it to ourselves not to just throw them away the minute they conk out on us. If we do that, we’re turning all our energy and raw materials into junk and garbage and pollution. Right?’
‘What is this, are you gonna quote your whole goddamned article for Country Ambience or something? I’ve read it.’
‘Just let me finish. Now, we don’t call repairmen because the true person, true to his own environment, fixes everything himself. It’s the only way to learn to live in your environment. You fix things yourself, or if you can’t fix something you make some new use out of it. Like maybe you cannibalize it to fix something else.’
‘Cannibalize my ass! I don’t believe what I’m hearing from you. God, you’ve been writing this crap so long you believe it yourself, any minute now you’re gonna tell me about bricoleurs and Zen motor cycles! Listen, buster, this isn’t your environment, it’s mine. You’re always off at some goddamned conference, I’m the one has to try living in this shit-hole day after day. Day and night, you know? I’m stuck here, with the deep-freeze that wrecks a quarter-ton of food, with the stopped-up drains — all of it. My environment, and it stinks.’ She looked at Roderick. ‘Yeah, including that little tin marvel, you mind telling me how he’s supposed to fit into our swell environmental situation? I mean, just what are we supposed to get out of having him around, a walking junkyard?’
‘Well, ahm, as a matter of fact I’m doing an article on him for Eco-Style, “I Adopted a Robot”, to tie in with their big issue on home cybernetics. And it looks like I’ll be guesting on a chat show next week, could lead to a book-movie deal, even heard from a producer putting out feelers for a sitcom series, My Little Robot, I mean it’s all talk at this stage, but who knows…?’
On the screen, a man with a yellow moustache held up a box of detergent. Roderick began to wave his arms.
‘Okay, keep him. Just keep him out of my way, Hank. I mean it.’
‘Baba abbaba!’ said Roderick. ‘Ablabba bab!’
That night, after Roderick had been plugged to his re-charger in the spare room, and while he stood motionless, his blue glass eyes opaque in sleep, Hank and Indica patched up their quarrel.
It was a chance to be alone, and they made the most of it. Indica set out low-cholesterol potato chips in a biodegradable plastic bowl, Hank opened a few recycled cans of home brew, and they put on their favourite old video tape of Jacques Cousteau. Holding hands, plenty of friendly eye-contact — it was almost like old times.
Indica looked at the underwater ballet of porpoises critically. After all, she’d been a dancer herself once, and a good one. The chorus of Mao and I, nine months with the Braxton Hicks Dancers doing TV work, the talent was there. Even in that TV commercial where she’d been a dancing taco, it was there, talent she could have built into a career. Only she hadn’t. Somehow after she’d married Hank — anyway, here she was, watching a bunch of fish! Oh well, Hank probably loved it.
Hank watched a man in a wet-suit cavorting with cetaceans. Ho hum. Indica probably loved this stuff, this expression of man’s unity with Nature. For him, it was just a place to rest his gaze while he swallowed flat beer. Of course he still cared about the global environment, in a way. He still wrote articles about the blue whale and the white rhino. Not his fault if they turned into promotional tie-ins for glossy magazine spreads selling dog food and deodorants. He had to live. Had to swim with the current and survive. People got tired worrying about Spaceship Earth, they wanted to concentrate on Spaceship Me.
There were no more triumphs, only peak experiences; no more tragedies, only personal problems. Indica’s problem was being a good dancer who’d stopped dancing. Hank’s problem was being a bad writer who couldn’t stop writing. Together they were building for themselves a modest little problem relationship.
Just like old times,’ said Indica.
‘A déjà vu experience,’ said Hank.
‘You can say that again.’