‘Mr Kratt? Sir?’
The camera pulled back again, to show a security fence, and a German Shepherd snapping at a moth.
‘Listen, Mr Kratt?’
‘No, you listen, trying to tell you something damn important.’
‘But listen, there’s a mob heading—’
‘Sure, sure, now just you turn that thing off and pay attention. Bub, you know what my dream is?’
‘No sir.’
‘You know what it is?’
‘No sir.’
‘You know—?I’ll tell you what my dream is. What I’d like to see is, KUR Industries having the world franchise, see—’
‘Yes, sir, now couldn’t we—?’
‘The world franchise, exclusive, on pleasure. Datajoy! What we’d have is like a wire running right into everybody’s head, right into the old pleasure centre. Datajoy! And as long as they pay their lease, we give ’em all the juice they want, see? Datajoy, call it—’
‘Yes Mr Kratt, now—’
‘And by God if they don’t pay, we rip that wire right outa their head! Haha, whatya think a that? Hey? Whatya — leggo my arm, what the hell here?’
‘We’ve got to leave, sir. Now. There’s a mob on the way with torches — I don’t know, maybe the parents of those kids we — those kids who — I don’t know who they are!’
When they had left, the room showed little sign of human occupation. A few chairs out of line, an empty decanter, three glasses on the long table (in one, the faecaloid stub of a cheap cigar floated in fine old Scotch). The cleaning-machines waited a precise number of minutes, then went to work.
‘It’s me they want,’ said Pa. ‘But they’ll have to come in and get me.’
‘Pa, I mean Ma’am, maybe they just want to burn the factory down, you know like the old house in Franken—’
‘No, it’s me. But at least I can choose to make my last stand, among all the wonderful guys and dolls, Roberta the Receptionist, Bert the Bartender, all the only true friends I ever had. Bye, son.’
‘Wait, Pa. I wanted to ask you—’ But she was gone.
Close up, the mob looked as good as anything in Frankenstein. Roderick spotted pitchforks, axes, garden rakes and electric lawn-edgers as well as rifles, ropes, torches. Dr Smith the dentist seemed to be unarmed until he got close enough for Roderick to see him wield a tiny dental hook.
Doc Smith was not a well man. Later on, when they got around to hanging Roderick, he would try to insist they use his patent dental floss.
XXIV
It was the best of time, it was the worst of time. Choose one.
The pigeon hesitated before the two windows, trying to get it right this time. Finally it pecked the left-hand window. Almost immediately the window lit up, and a tiny feed pellet rattled down into the magic cup. From the pigeon’s point of view it was a triumph of the righteous: yea, God doth reward those who keep His commandments and His rites. Before the next trial, the pigeon worshipped, stepping three times to the left, twice to the right, and lifting its head in turn towards each of the four upper corners of its prison. The pigeon was not aware of the computer.
From the computer’s point of view, the cycle had brought a special instruction into force. It knew only that it had generated the pseudo-random digit o, and that this matched the input o (from the Skinner box). The instruction therefore was to add 1 to the number T (trials), add one to the number H (hits) and calculate P (probability). The computer was aware neither of the pigeon nor of Dr Tarr.
Dr Tarr sat in his new office watching the printer. From his point of view, the test was on the whole a qualified success. Pigeons were precognitive.
Or at least this pigeon, now and then, seemed uncannily able to peer a split-second into the future, determine which plastic window (of a randomly-selected pair) would deliver the goods, and peck that window. Now and then.
Now and then, that was the trouble. Not enough hits, not near enough to convince those Dr Tarr needed to convince. There was NASA, first of all, paying $150,000 towards his expenses; expecting results. Likewise the University, providing not only computer time, but an empty office and lab in the Computer Sciences building. And how about the parapsychology journals, the professional associations waiting for the paper that could make him, career-wise? Finally of course the professional sceptics: he saw them as hyenas, forever trailing the herd of parapsychologists, forever waiting for some weak individual to fall behind. Ready, yes ready to bury their bloodstained snouts in his entrails…
More hits, damn you! he willed at the bird, more hits! Unaware of his telepathic command from the office, the creature in the laboratory preened, digging its beak deep in iridescent neck feathers to chew at a parasite. For the moment, it was aware of nothing else, not even of the cruelly erratic God it had learned to love.
Tarr, acutely aware of his own predicament (for not since Mary of Nazareth had anyone risked so much on the behaviour of a single pigeon) turned to the printer, whose ultimate line still read:
TRIALS = 980 HITS = 502 P < 0.444Computer error? Sure, damn thing probably wasn’t working at all! Poor pigeon probably pecking away, hit after hit and nothing coming through. He examined the cable running from the computer to the printer, experimentally unplugged it and plugged it in again.
TRIALS = 981 HITS = 503 P < 0.425More like it. More like it! Funny how it (he repeated the operation) clocked up a hit every time you jiggled the… you could almost… not quite ethical maybe but… well, just to enhance the figures a little, to emphasize what we already know…
TRIALS = 1126 HITS = 648 P < 0.0000000406The score was getting too sensational, time to stop, but Tarr kept on, tickling just one more reward from the printer, just one more. Had God at that moment been a Skinnerian psychologist, peering in through the office ceiling, He’d have been pleased to recognize His guilty creature here crouched at its task. Working along its reinforcement schedule. ‘Learning’, if not growing wise.
No one was peering in. He looked over his shoulder at the door at nothing, no one, nothing but the door itself, newly painted to hide some old stain that showed through nevertheless, a shadow like a clutching hand.
The mob was making so much noise so many almost city noises Roderick could hardly hear men leaning together like glass buildings falling over follow a skeleton to Junior’s Discount Cameras God call him up every time lousy jackpot blade heavy split up when electric .38 for LAW & ORDER raping housekeepers nigger priest bites dog pills bustup treats me like shit .38 bike overtime MASSAGE THERAPY dolls of Devil’s Island escape from jail and bust into factory Lewd-ite revenge calling for a rope unless we all go back to the Idle Hour boys have a beer and talk it God fight city hall needles bitch freak t-shirt no shit the Klan? What Klan?
‘Klan, shit, we’ll be our own Klan!’
‘What?’ Another man seemed shocked. ‘Take the Klan into our own hands?’
‘I’m serious now Jake, I’ll be the Kladd, you be the Kludd, let old Carl there be the Grand Goblin.’
‘Goblin? That sounds dumb as hell, you know?’ ‘Sure does. Forget all that Klan shit, let’s just teach this motherfucker a lesson!’
‘Why can’t I be the Imperial Wizard, though?’