Read Online The Complete Roderick by John Sladek - Free Book Online

O’Smith felt low. Well they can kill you but they can’t eat you! He dumped his gear at the hotel and hit the slushy street. Within minutes he found an amusement arcade and settled down to feed quarters into Randy the Robot. When zapped, Randy would look surprised, crumple and emit sparks.
    Mister O’Smith had no more idea why he was doing this than did the figures of Randy or Brazos, or even that figure of Herakles (coin-operated and armed with a Scythian bow) that had beendrawing against a serpent (when hit, it hissed with surprise) three centuries before Christ. Whether this was a set of Skinnerian contingencies reinforcing the appropriate behaviour (zapping) or a Freudian acting-out of infantile aggression towards the castrating father, Mister O’Smith couldn’t say. Beauty was death, and death beauty, that was all Mister O’Smith knew (on a need-to-know basis).
    ‘Of course I have my own ideas.’ Tarr went on filling his pipe. ‘You both know about my plans for investigating psychic flight orientation in migratory birds.’
    Aikin and Dollsly nodded automatically: they knew, they knew. ‘But it wouldn’t be democratic to put that before the committee without first consulting you, okay?’
    Nods.
    ‘So what about your ideas? Bud?’
    Bud Aikin controlled his stutter remarkably well today, as he outlined his plan for crime prevention by use of the pendulum. He was becoming quite an authority on this psychic instrument, Tarr noticed. Too bad he still had such a hell of a time with that key word.
    Aikin unfolded a map. ‘See, here I’ve been and located the three places where this “Ripper”, this murderer left his victims. The vibrations are very strong, even on a map. Using the p-p-p – swinging thing – I was able to locate them precisely.’
    ‘Fascinating!’ Tarr lit his pipe. ‘Of course sceptics will imagine you read about the locations in the paper …’
    ‘No, but wait. I can do it blindfold, with the map turned any way at all. As soon as the p-p-p – the pen-pen – the Galilean implement – gets over a psychic “hot spot”, it starts swinging violently. And, and that’s not all. I’ve found a
fourth
location. The place where the next body will be found. See, right here near the Student Union. So I mean when they find the body there, that pretty well clinches it, right? Maybe then crime prevention can take a leap forward, using the p – the isochronic vibrating part of a clock –’
    Tarr exhaled a thick ball of smoke. ‘Lacks scope, if you don’t mind my frankness, Bud. And you don’t really need much of a grant for – but let’s hear what Byron has to say eh?’
    Byron Dollsly grinned and slapped his heavy hand on the table. ‘Scope! Hah! Think you’ll
find plenty
of scope in my idea, George. See how this grabs you. As you know, I’ve been working on lines suggested by Teilhard de Chardin, Buckminster Fuller and others, namely a kind of engineering approach to consciousness.
Well!’
    He beamed at Tarr and Aikin in turn, while they sat awaiting further enlightenment.
‘Well,
I’ve only had a
major breakthrough,
that’s all. As I see it, we have to begin with first principles.
Biology!’
    After a moment, Tarr took his pipe from his mouth. ‘Is that it? Biology?’
    ‘Is that it, he asks. Hah! Okay, let me spell it out for you. The divine Teilhard saw life as a
radial
force, and consciousness as a
tangential
force. Life, see, is like a gear-wheel growing larger, while consciousness is the gear actually turning – meshing!’
    He grabbed a handful of his thick grey hair and more or less hauled himself to his feet by it. Then he marched to the blackboard. ‘So what’s the next step? Anybody?’
    The other two looked at one another. ‘Mm, suppose you just tell us, Byron. Little short on time here …’
    ‘The
screw.
The SCREW!’
    ‘The, uh … the …’
    ‘Simple. The
creative
intellect is a worm-screw with a
right-hand
thread. Get it? Get it? See, it can never