‘It goes on,’ she said, ‘to mention drugs sold openly in the eighth-grade washroom, thefts and vandalism, and a security man with a drink problem. Any comments?’
Ogilvy was the first to speak. ‘Not fair,’ he said. ‘Buncha lies and distortions. Like sure I take a drink now and then, but they make it sound like I spend all day lying in an alley somewheres with a bottle of Tokay in a paper bag.’
‘What really bothers me,’ said Miss Borden, ‘is the way certain people are using this tragic suicide as an excuse to whine about their own pet peeves.’ She looked at Mrs Dorano. ‘Certain people are going to be sorry they ever opened their big—’
‘The truth will out,’ said Mrs Dorano. ‘You can’t suppress—’
Mr Goun jumped to his feet. ‘Suppress, who the hell are you to talk about—?’
At the same time Mr George said, ‘How did I know they were going to print it that way? I didn’t think you’d take my criticism in a personalized way, rather than in a societally—’
‘Filth and corruption driving that young woman to—’
Captain Fest said, ‘Self-discipline, a hard line, lest we forget, moulding Americans, shaping the future—’
‘—nothing but plain murder, no better than abor—’
‘—catalyzing factors—’
‘—easy way out, no backbone, no self-discip—’
‘—building a bridge—’
‘Quiet.’ Miss Borden looked at George. ‘You all disappoint me, you especially, George. Whining to the papers behind my back instead of getting down to work — My God, you’re the school psychologist. We pay you to fix these kids.’
‘Fix? Fix? You talk as if they were a bunch of machines! What do you suggest, I get out the old tool-kit and maybe tighten up a few loose screws here and there?’
Mrs Dorano clapped her hands over her ears. ‘I won’t listen to that filth — I won’t!’
Captain Fest muttered, ‘Like to fix that little Robert whatsis-name myself. Hear he refuses to pledge allegiance to his country’s flag. You give him to me for a week, I’ll knock the robot crap out of him.’
George turned on him. ‘Knock the crap out of him, all you can think of, right? If you had the slightest understanding Look, what you ought to be doing is using his problem, making it work for us, for him. I mean, if he thinks he’s a robot maybe he should be on a teaching machine or—’
‘Good idea,’ said Miss Borden. ‘That’s it, then. Captain, you take charge of this boy and set up a teaching machine program.’ She checked something off on a form. ‘What 1 like to see, people forgetting their little individual differences and all pulling together. So much for one child’s problem. Now how about some of these bigger issues? Dope-pushing, theft, vandalism — any suggestions?’
One of the younger teachers murmured something and Miss Borden took it up. ‘Did you say bridge-building, Ms Russo? That’s the first sensible suggestion I’ve heard so far. Isn’t that our job, after all, building bridges? Reaching out—’
Ms Russo blushed. ‘No, what I shaid was—’
‘—reaching out to isolated, disadvantaged children who—’
‘I shaid I hope thish doesn’t take long becaushe I’ve got a dental appointment.’
‘Dental appointment. I see.’
‘Yah, to have a bridge rebuilt. Shee, what happened was that little bash — that Chaunshy Bangfield hit me in the mouth with a trophy. I was making him voluntarily return it.’
Someone muttered, ‘He reached out to her all right, the little disadvantaged—’
‘Any more suggestions?’
Goun spoke of actualizing the problem within a contextual framework of structured situations ranging from verbal correctives to dis-enrolment. In such an intra-systemic…
The digital clock wiped away another minute, and another.
Pa waved a plate of brass shaped like half a violin. ‘Son, what I’m trying to do here is make me a timepiece, but one that keeps real time. Human time. Like when you’re concentrating hard on one thing and it seems like only a minute goes by, why should you have clocks showing you an hour?’ He laid the brass plate on his bench and started hammering. ‘Other. Times. You wait. For some. Thing to. Happen. Like the. Sunrise. When you. Can’tsleep. You think. One. Hour. Goes by. But ord. Inary clocks. Say one. Minute!’ The coughing fit would not pass; Pa had to sit down. ‘What use is a clock doesn’t tell real time? So. Figure I’ll just hook this one up to a brain-wave gadget, need some other stuff too, fine adjustments for fidgeting, pass me that melon scoop will you?’
Roderick wondered what would happen if somebody spent all his real time watching his own real time clock? Could he make it run fast or slow, stop it? Run it back? Or what if two people watched each other’s clock? What if two clocks were hooked together? What if the clocks started running the people? And what if…? He could go on with questions like these for ever, and no time lost. Time didn’t have to move here, because he was at the place where he fitted into the world (as the melon scoop fitted into the brass half-violin turning it into the lever that threw the switch that started up the little water-wheel…). Here was Pa, measuring up and marking out all the precise spots on the brass where he was going to bash it with a hammer. Here was the workshop, with dusty autumn light slanting in through the high little window to illuminate a corner piled with forgotten inventions: the pocket calculator (that could add only 0 + 0, 0 + 1 or 1 + 0); the Goethescope with its ebony prism; ‘talking shoes’; the universal voting machine with its tangle of coloured wires leading from hundreds of switches to one dead-end; ‘Maze-opoly’; audible ink; a large abacus (designed for steam power); the ingenious solar-powered cucumber press (virtual perpetual motion, Pa explained); the Odorphone… Here was the friendly workshop itself, one friendly wall bearing the hand-lettered slogans of Miss Violetta Stubbs; another bearing tools (the dover, bit-mace, graduar etc.) below the golden key below the framed photo of Rex Reason below the shelf with the radio. Now the radio hurried through some assassination attempt on some Shah, anxious to get back to its sunshine balloon, but he could hear Ma singing one of her improvised songs, the one she claimed was from the Bow-wow Symphony — whatever that was:
There were other stanzas just as senseless, stuff about poison candy being good for you when you wake up with an electrode up your nose, stuff like that — anyway, how could a woman be Jake!
XIII
To find out about the past, Roderick had to ask Ma. Pa would only say, ‘History is a bunk on which I am trying to awaken.’
Ma sketched as she talked:
Once upon a time the town of Newer had been nothing but a flat spot on the flat prairie: no factory, no grain elevator, no town, not so much as a billboard advertising cream substitute. But to those who founded the town, flatness was ideaclass="underline" it reminded them daily that God had placed the human race upon a planet shaped like a dinner plate.
They came in 1874, Josephus Butts and his followers. They called the place New Ur, themselves the Urites. They builded here a temple with plain glass windows all around, to shew forth the straightness of God’s ruled line.
There were other rules, gradually revealed by Josephus (who now called himself Jorad): Urites were forbidden to laugh, marry, call hogs, look with pleasure at the sky or upon one another. Nine-tenths of all they owned or produced belonged to Jorad. No one could speak unless Jorad gave permission. No one but Jorad could sing. No one might think unless Jorad allowed him to put on the famous knitted ‘thinking cap’, a device designed to keep thought down to one person at a time. Finally, the Urites were asked to speak, think, sing and pray in a language called Hibble-bibble, the grammatical rules of which were clear only to Jorad.