Free The Complete Roderick by John Sladek Page A

practical than the Chinese, or even the Pythagoreans, with their steam-driven wooden pigeon, hardly counts even if they did mean it to carry souls up to – but no, we have to makedo with the rest, and of course the golem stories, and how clay men fashioned by the Archangel –’
    Chee!
Rogers sneezed. ‘Yes, very iderestigg, but –’
    There were Teraphim of course but no one knows their function. But the real question is, what do we want this robot
for?
Is it to be a bronze Talos, grinning as he clasps people in his red-hot metal embrace? Or an ivory Galatea with limbs so cunningly jointed –’
    ‘Look, couldn’t we – ?’
    ‘As you see, I’ve been turning the problem over, consulting the old stories …’
    ‘And?’
    ‘And I’ve decided to vote against this robot.’
    Chee! Chee!
‘Thank God. We have to take sides. Those of us who don’t want to be ciphers have to stand up and be counted. Why didn’t you say so in the first place?’
    For the first time, her eyes blinked. ‘But I had to explain! You see, I believe in baring the soul.’
    ‘Bearing the – ?’
    ‘I even talk to my food and drink, as you must have noticed.’
    ‘Dot at all,’ he lied, and hid his nose in a handkerchief.
    She sighed. ‘I can’t help feeling that respect for life – even the life of your cold virus there – is paramount. Of course we must take life, we eat food, we destroy germs. But can we not at least apologize for our murders?’ So saying, she took up the olive from her martini and spoke to it quietly: ‘Little olive, I mean you no harm, but my body needs nourishment. For one day soon, my body will go to replenish the earth, to feed new olive trees …’
    Rogers looked away, embarrassed, and caught the eye of a fat, suntanned stranger at the bar, who had turned from the television to watch Dr Hannah. ‘Uh, I’ve got to go home, nurse this cold, so …’
    She put down the olive and checked her watch. ‘If you don’t mind, I’ll stick around. Have to kill an hour before I meet my son for dinner. Never see him, since he moved into that fra – But you have your own problems, bless you.’
    Beanie’s Bar was beginning to fill up with the early evening crowd. Rogers had to squeeze his way through an animateddiscussion of Ruritania (one speaker suffered from halitosis), avoid the non-university drunk and jostle through other conversations:
    ‘… the liberry, but like when I ast for
Sense and Sensibility
they brung me this
novel.
This, yeah, by some other J. Austin, only with a e, figure that …’
    ‘… Jungian econ …’
    ‘… this machine heresy, was it?’
    ‘… Barbara Altar for one …’
    The juke box piped him out with a mournful, if not quite coherent song:
When I feel you’re in my dream
    Images of fortune play me do-o-own
    Destiny don’t seem so far, and I can touch a star
    Tragedy’s a bargain, yes, and
    Love’s a clown.
    Near the door someone said, ‘Right in front of the Student Union? No kidding, who was he anyway?’
    ‘Just some freshman with a GPA problem, happens every year …’
    The spot vacated by Rogers was still warm when a plump stranger in Western clothes slid into it. He grinned at Dr Hannah out of his deep tan.
    ‘Olives,’ he said. ‘Thought they went out with the ol’ Walther.’
    ‘Really?’ She focused on him with difficulty.
    ‘O’Smith.’ He extended a thick left hand on which she noticed a turquoise ring, almost Navaho. But fake, like the grin.
    ‘Prometheus invented the ring,’ she said, and belched. ‘Did you know – sorry – that? Out of his chains.’
    ‘No foolin’?’ A theatrical sneer. ‘Look, can we talk here?’
    ‘Why not?’ Jane Hannah needed at least two more martinis before she could face her son, and if this absurd stranger wanted to fill the interval with chatter, olives going out of style, well why not?
    ‘Usually I work alone,’ he said. ‘I run a one-man show.’
    ‘Indeed?’ Show-business, a rodeo perhaps. It seemed