‘Yes Ludd!’
‘Take this hammer!’ Someone brandished it.
‘Ludd, Ludd!’
Hammers were being brandished all over the auditorium now.
‘I smashed a parking meter!’
‘I smashed a kid’s musical top!’
‘I smashed my wife’s solid state dehydrator with stick-resistant trays and forced air flow!’
‘Praise Ludd!’
‘Smash the machines! Screw the machines!’
Men were jumping on their seats and waving hammers now, ready to smash anything remotely like a machine, while others egged them on with a steady clapping and chanting, ‘Smash… smash… smash…’
Hank held up his hands in an attempt to make them stop, but this only seemed to raise the tempo; they took it as a victory sign. Worse, the conference centre’s ‘multimedia’ people, who had prepared a special audiovisual package for the occasion, thought Hank was now signalling for it.
The giant screen behind Hank suddenly came alive with images of train wrecks, exploding cars, Chaplin demolishing an alarm clock, aircraft shot down, burning factories, the sinking of a paddle steamer, a chainsaw murder, the Who smashing electric guitars…
At that point someone broke into the projection booth and smashed the equipment, and the room went quiet. They were waiting for Hank to tell them what to do — go home and wait? Act now?
Hank opened his mouth, but just then a multimedia voice came over the p.a. system, drowning him out:
‘Thanks guys and gals for making this a memorable day. We have souvenir hammers for sale in the foyer. And in a few minutes, Hank Dinks will be going over to the main complex to Prospero Books — he’ll autograph copies of both his books. I hope we’ll see you all there!’
That seemed to be the signal for the riot to begin.
‘Luke, this is ridiculous,’ Roderick tried to say, as they were pushed along the glass bridge with the others, but the noise of chanting, screaming and smashing made speech impossible. Roderick rolled up his sleeves, shook his fist and called for demolition. He was now separated from Luke, but could still see him; the ex-astronaut had rolled up his saffron sleeves and seemed to be having a hell of a good time.
The first mechanical victim was a gum machine, and soon gumballs were raining down from the upper levels of the ziggural — followed soon by pinballs and then fragments of a mechanical donkey ride. With a terrible thoroughness, the Luddites moved through every establishment, destroying hairdryers, malted milk machines, dental drills, programmed expresso machines, a wind-up mouse, toasters by the dozen and digital watches by the hundred. They met no opposition. The few security cops on duty approached them, fiddled with guns and radios, then decided to run instead. They had been hired to deal with elderly shoplifters and kids who tried skating on the escalators, not with a mob of thousands of maniacs.
They reached Prospero Books, where the furious mob not only did not find Hank installed, it found a sign, MACHINES LIB. The mob at once entered through both window and door. Roderick found himself wedged in a corner where, through the blizzard of torn pages, he could see on a TV monitor, Indica, still calmly signing books.
She continued to sign, ignoring the mob who pressed in around her little table. One of the men crashed his hammer down on the table in front of her.
‘Honestly!’ she said, and rummaged in her purse for a moment. Finally she brought out a revolver and fired it at the ceiling.
Instantly, everyone was quiet. Throughout the entire bookstore no one moved among the wreckage, except one enterprising Luddite who went on cleaning out the cash register. Everyone waited for a killing.
‘This kind of behaviour is very destructive,’ Indica said. ‘You’re a bunch of silly little boys. I suppose my ex-husband put you up to this. Well, you can tell Hank Dinks for me, it won’t work. It doesn’t matter how many hairdryers he smashes, I am not coming back to him. Now you can just clear out, all of you. Move!’
No one spoke. Here and there a hammer dropped to the floor (where everyone was now looking). One man, who’d been tearing up a copy of Indica’s book, now fell to his knees, kissing the book and weeping. A few others felt suddenly the nakedness of their arms and rolled down their sleeves. A general shuffling and edging towards the door began, and soon the place was almost clear.
Roderick came out of his corner. Indica, I—’
‘You! God damn it, will you stop following me?’ She brought up the pistol smoothly, clasped it in both hands and aimed carefully at a point between those terrifying eyes.
‘Are you going to shoot me?’ he asked, and stopped.
…running through a dead wood, some trees charred by lightning, that was how the dream went. In a clearing she saw a figure, a man in red armour, head to toe. He didn’t move, and gradually she realized that he was rusted fast, covered with red rust. Opening her fly, she pulled out an enormous oil can and went to work, annointing him all over. The rust dripped and ran, now it was blood. Suddenly his iron arms gripped her, squeezing her so tight she could hardly breathe. ‘Don’t scream,’ he said. ‘The woods are like tinder, one scream could set off a conflagration. Through the visor she could see the glowing eyes. She screamed…
She started to put the gun away. ‘Who are you? Who are you?’
‘I’m your—’
‘Indica! Indica!’ It was Mr Shredder, calling from the spiral stairs. ‘Come up here, quick. Something’s happened.’
She went up at once to the little green office. A man lay on the green carpet, with a priest squatting next to him.
‘It’s Hank,’ said Shredder. ‘I was just showing him our nerve centre when the mob showed up.’
‘Hank? I don’t understand.’ Was that blood or oil on the priest’s fingers?
‘Same lunatic in that mob must of let off a gun,’ said Mr Shrudder. ‘Hank’s dead.’
Father Warren looked up. ‘He gave his life for us, for all of us. Now his fight must go on! We must go on smashing, smashing, smashing the machines!’
Mr Shredder looked alarmed and stood in front of his computer terminal. ‘I think we’ve had enough talk about smashing things today.’
The priest stood up. ‘Oh, I don’t mean literally smash machines with hammers. Those poor men today got the message a little wrong. No, we must smash the machines inside us, smash the idea of the machine.’ He held out a hand to Indica. ‘Won’t you join us? I know that in your heart you feel Hank was right — this is your fight too. Join the New Luddites.’
‘You don’t have to be so paternalistic, Father. You go smash the machine inside you if you want, I happen to think it’s a screwloose idea.’ She turned to make her exit.
‘With you or without you,’ he said, ‘we’ll win.’
‘Over my dead body.’
Mr Kratt turned off the TV news and picked up his cheap cigar. It had gone out. ‘Well, bub, your little plan to reunite the Dinkses doesn’t seem to have worked out too well. Unless you figured on a riot and the guy getting killed.’
Jud Mill leaned forward suddenly, the long striped wings of his shirt collar crackling with the movement. He thrust out a lighter. ‘In the media management business, you gotta expect surprises. You notice I managed to get a clear shot of the cover of Indica’s book in that news item? And the title is mentioned twice.’
‘Kind of tough though for Fishfold and Tove, losing their big name.’
‘Well, sir, I been thinking about just that problem, and I think this priest, this Father Warren, is going to take over the Luddite leadership. You put him under contract now and you can get him cheap, get all the books you can out of this little movement before they get boring. Too bad the cops didn’t arrest Indica though, you can always get a lotta mileage out of the big name family murder angle.