‘Yes, yes I know it must have been—’
‘Listen Indica and I even tried adopting a robot child, now isn’t that sick? A robot child!’
The driver said, ‘Kids these day, I know, I know—’
‘One day I just couldn’t take any more. I picked up a hammer and took a swing at little Roderick… and I missed! And, and the little machine pasted me back with a wrench, and I was free. I just got up and walked out, out into the desert, a free man.’
Father Warren folded his long hands, unfolded them, played a game of church-and-steeple. ‘That was when you decided to write Ludd Be Praised?’
‘Yes I knew then, we have to smash the machines. Smash their grip on our minds, our lives.’
‘It’ll go all right,’ said Father Warren. ‘Try not to worry, Hank. The point is, you have a message to put across, a battle-cry: Smash the machines!’
‘Father I wish I had your faith. At times like this—’ Hank waved the brochure, ‘I wonder if the machines haven’t smashed us. I — I get so discouraged—’
‘Definitely Ab Jason, the Ab Jason Show, only I just can’t recall your name, Hank, your—’
‘ Will you just shut up and drive? My name is Hank Dinks, yes I, was on the Ab Jason Show, now will you just, just—’
‘Okay okay, ya don’t hafta yell. I mean excuse me mister bigshot celebrity from TV, I don’t wanna insult ya, a lousy working stiff tryina talk to ya, excuse me. All to hell.’
The driver punched buttons to start an endless tape of ‘Moon River’, ‘Carioca’, ‘Sunshine Balloon’…
‘Well well well Ms Dinks, Indica, this is indeed a pleasure, welcome aboard, be glad to show you around our little operation here, after all we’re the people who deal the merchandise, the urn books, so if you don’t mind me saying so, we’re the people who know people. Yes, Mr and Ms Bookbuying America are old, old friends of ours, they don’t have many secrets from us. We know how to give them what they want — and make them want it, heh heh. Any questions before we start the grand tour?’
‘Quite a store you have here, Mr Shredder.’ Indica peered down the aisle of what might have been a supermarket, with customers plying shopping carts past display shelves of products with eye-appeal beneath signs and video screens whispering sales messages. Her gaze, finding nowhere to alight, came back to Mr Shredder’s gold tooth.
‘See we’ve put a dump bin of your book in the front, and you’ll be autographing in the back, so people have to pass as many shelf feet as possible to get to you. And along here see we have our Today’s Top Ten, with daily sales figures logged in right off our national computer hookup — people like to know where they are when they buy a book. And here’s another bin with that darned psychic pigeon novel, just keeps on selling! We’ll probably nominate that one for the American Book Award this year, hard to say until we do a book-by-book cost analysis, over the year.
‘Now here’s our astrology and science section, and over here a little item that should do well.’ He picked a book from a cardboard barrel.
‘You can’t really go wrong with a cover like that, and it doesn’t even mislead the customer. Plenty of books with misleading titles around to hook the customer these days. One thing about the book trade, you can always count on good old-fashioned customer illiteracy; best title of the last fifty years was Your Erroneous Zones but you find just as much inspiration nowadays, here’s a fishing book You Can Master Bait and a how-to-study item called The Erotetic Method, oh yes and a reprint of two Horatio Alger books in one with the titles run together…’
But Indica missed the next part of Mr Shredder’s lecture, as she looked across a row of gaudy science-fiction covers straight into the eyes of her pursuer.
XV
‘Come on Rickwood, I’ll buy you a coffee, you can’t stand here daydreaming all day.’ Luke led him as far as the cashier.
‘You gonna buy that, mister?’ she asked.
‘Buy… that?’
‘The book in your hand, human use of human beings wiener, you gonna buy it or what?’
Luke took the book from his hand and led him on out of Prospero Books, into the great pleasure dome of Vitanuova Shopping Piazza. In general form, it was a kind of interior Hanging Gardens of Babylon, with a small terrace of stores at each level, with plenty of polished stonelike substances, with gleaming escalators, set at every angle, and with every nook crammed with green potted palms, blue caged birds or tanks of red fish. From the top level, looking over a parapet at the whole dizzying spectacle, Luke spotted the yellow umbrellas of a cafe far below.
‘Come on down this escalator — Jesus, Rickwood, I wish you’d tell me what’s going on. Why did we have to go all the way up to this so-called bookstore, just so you could stare at this Indica Dinks? You didn’t even say hello.’
‘Well I, I didn’t want to intrude, just wanted to let her know I’m around, I’m here if she needs me. I could tell by the way she looked at me she understands.’
Luke groaned. ‘Just what kind of Victorian truth is it that she understands? Who is this lady?’
‘My mother, Luke. My stepmother anyway. Sort of. She took care of me when I was small, I think. And, well, she was the first woman I ever saw naked, so naturally I—’
‘You what? Follow her into bookstores?’
They took their seats. One or two people at adjoining tables stared at Luke’s saffron costume.
‘Naturally I love her. I read once how all boys love their mothers and kill their fathers, so—’
Luke held up a saffron-gloved hand. ‘Now wait. Rickwood, you’ve got this a little wrong. Sure, all boys love their mothers in a way, but it just means getting “Mother” tattooed on their arms, or sending embroidered pillow covers, Souvenir of Hong Kong, or maybe asking bar pianists to play “My Mother’s Eyes” until they weep into their low-cal pilsner. It does not mean love, like love. It doesn’t mean killing anybody either, where did you get this idea?’
‘Well,’ Roderick said loudly, ‘I killed my father, and I’ve always been crazy about my mother’s body. And that was before I ever heard of Freud!’