‘Eleven,’ said Roderick.
‘Eh? Eleven what?’ Hank was sweating. His hands trembled on the keyboard.
‘Fingers,’ said Roderick, pointing to them. ‘Eleven.’
‘Heh heh, no, ten. Ten fingers, Roddy. See, one, two—’
‘Bax got eleven.’
‘Backs — I don’t know, Roddy, you have to learn to talk plainer than that. Now where was I? Oh yeah, preventive…’ He pushed another button and another page of explanation appeared. ‘Ninety-four — that’s almost two years, all my spare time for two years. And just look at all this stuff that could break down between now and then: the slow cooker, the light-pipe intercom, the rotisserie, the hot food table, the cake baker, the microwave, the deep freeze, the shoe polisher, floor polisher, vacuum cleaner-washer, blenders, mixers, thermostat, lumistat, electrostatic air-conditioner, Jesus Christ the water-purifier system, the pepper-mill, the Jesus H. Christ it’s not just two years it’s the rest of my life, Roddy. The nail buffer, the can opener, the carving knife, where’d I ever get all this stuff? I mean all that’s just stuff for the house, what about this stuff for the car, the fuel computer, the skidproof brakes… what about these bikes I was going to fix up with traffic radar, what made me think I’d have time to… Jesus H., it’s hot in here, bet the damned air-conditioning’s crapped out on me too, everything else is, I need a drink, that’s what.’
‘Eleven,’ said Roderick, following him to the bar.
‘Yeah, sure, eleven.’ Hank picked up the Scotch bottle and behind it the screen lit up:
Sure you need this drink? Sure you need it now?
He put the bottle back. ‘Goddamned life run by machines, can’t even have a drink, can’t even get a cigarette, damned cigarette-box is locked until noon, another goddamned machine running my life, can’t lift a finger without—’
‘Eleven,’ said Roderick.
‘You too, huh?’ Hank went back to the desk and dropped into his chair. ‘Okay, look. Maybe I can’t beat all the goddamned mechanical systems in this place, but I sure as hell can beat you. Look, ten fingers, ten!’ He shook them in Roderick’s face. ‘Count ’em, ten.’
Roderick counted. ‘Ten.’
‘Ha!’
‘Bax got eleven.’
‘Backs? Wait a minute, Bax! You mean Baxter Logan, that creep Indica met last year, where was it, the health-ranch sure, the, sure, that singles sauna on the health-ranch she kept saying how terrific — Listen, Roddy? Listen, is Bax a man?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Was he here last night?’
‘Yeah. Bax got eleven—’
‘Forget about the goddamned eleven fingers! You sure he was here? With Indica? With Mommy?’
Roderick pointed at the ceiling.
Hank sat motionless for a moment, then turned to the computer.
‘She’s gone off with the sonofabitch, back to that goddamned health — must be a message here somewhere.’
He typed: MAIL FOR HANK?
The computer replied:
Dear Hank: I’m leaving you. don’t try to find me or talk to me except through my lawyer. I’m going to live with Bax logan who you may not remember I met last year in Nevada. It so happens that we got a meaningful relationship I mean Bax and me and not Bax and a house full of stupid gadgets like you. You and I were really like strangers ever since we knew each other. I got tired of being treated like property, just another one of your gadgets. I want to belong to just me.
Yours,
‘That just about finishes it, Roddy. Everything else breaking down and now this, it’s like the whole world slowly collapsing… every… breaking down and falling apart and wearing out and blowing away and cracking up… Even you, look at you with the dents in your head and that stupid scotch tape collar, I mean why the hell can’t you even learn to count up to ten? I mean why does every single thing have to break down all the time?’
‘Eleven?’ Roderick still wanted to tell him all about Bax, how Bax had this eleventh finger right in the middle of his body — but Hank didn’t seem to be listening any more.
Hank was rummaging through his tool-box, throwing out screwdrivers and wrenches, scraps of wire and folding rulers. Finally he up-ended the box and dumped everything out on the floor. He sat down in the middle of it all.
‘Must be here somewhere… that’s not it… that’s not it either…’
After a while he stopped talking and pawing through the stuff. Hank just sat there like a big shaggy bear at a picnic.
Roderick found a couple of sanding-discs that looked like plates, set them out with wrenches for silverware, and started piling on the food. Come and get it, plenty more where this come from, finger-lickin’, old-fashioned Southern fried country kitchen grub! For each of them there was a generous, man-sized helpin’ o’ nails, nuts and bolts, insulated wire and sizzlin’ flashlight batteries. Mm-mmm! For dessert there was a roll of friction tape that looked a lot like one of Aunt Lettibelle’s Olde Tyme Golden Dunker doughnuts, hit like to melt in yo’ mouf, chile. Roderick poured machine-oil — gravy — over everything and waited for Hank’s mouth to start a-waterin’. Red-headed kids with freckles were always sitting around having picnics like this with bears, big friendly bears like Hank. All he had to do was find the right words for a square meal like this. Come and get it, plenty more…
‘Eat up, Hank,’ said Roderick. ‘It’s yum-scrumpty-umptious!’
The big bear blinked, looked at the sanding-disc, brushed it aside. ‘That’s not it either…’
The mumbling and pawing went on until at last Hank came up with a hammer.
‘Thaf’s it,’ he said, smiling, and grabbed Roderick’s arm to hold him steady while he raised the hammer to strike.
III
Every smile was a gift, every laugh was a lift, up up we will drift, and there seemed to be no end of choruses to this one.
Pa began to wonder if this radio would ever wear out, so he could make out his report and be done with it. Funny, them giving him a radio to test on his last day at the factory. And what had Mr Danton said? Something about brightening the long hours of, of leisure activity? Whatever that meant. He knew they really wanted him to test the radio because they’d given him a key at the same time, so he could get back into the factory with his report.
For forty years Pa Wood had worked at Slumbertite, fixing first the assembly-line, then later on the machines that worked the assembly-line, and finally just the machines that fixed the machines. At the last there was no one in the place but him, and Mr Danton upstairs in the office with his part-time secretary. And now, so he heard, they were gone too, the factory rumbling on by itself. Probably have to get a machine to read his report, if this damn radio didn’t outlive him. How could he work on his inventions with all that easy listenin’ racket?
Everyone else in Newer, Nebraska, worked to music. The boys at Clem’s Body Shop hammered away to the Top Twenty; the girls at the Newer Café fried burgers to sad Western songs about drinking too much and losing custody of the children; Dr Smith the dentist had pulled all of Pa’s teeth out to the taped rhythms of his (Dr Smith’s) favourite Latin-American selections; even at the Slumbertite factory the machines worked to a kind of aggravating murmur from hidden speakers that Pa called Muse-suck. The stuff, whatever it was, had probably been turned on to entertain the workers years ago; neither Pa nor anyone else had been able to find out how to turn it off.