Roderick arrived at eight, wearing his suit (not worn since the Auks) with a new hat. He bought a newspaper, sat clown on a car fender, and watched the box office. Now and then a cluster of animated people would pass into the Roxy theatre, all of them obviously happy because they were with each other. To sit next to someone watching shadows on the screen, that was happiness. Even if the someone only wanted to take you apart. Eight-five.

A little man with grey five-o'clock shadow and orange teeth came up to him and showed him a handful of pills. 'How ya fixed, how ya feel? How ya fixed, how ya feel?' he mumbled. 'I got Isodorm, Ultracalm, Berserkopal, I got Tibipax and Nominal, I got Welldoze and Zerone, what I ain't got I can get.'

'Nothing, thanks.'

'What does that mean, nothing? I can't take nothing for an answer. I got Trancalept and Risibal, Serendex and Sedital, you name it.'

'Beat it.'

This the man took for an answer. Eight-ten. Roderick opened his paper: a South American regime overthrown, yet another woman's body found with the left leg cut off ('Lucky Legs Killer Strikes again'), sales tax going up, somewhere in a small town a computer had rigged an election, Europe was in grave danger, and the time was eight-twelve.

A tired-looking man with red-rimmed eyes drifted over to ask if he had any Ultracalm or Somrepose, Zerone or Berserkopal.

'See the man with orange teeth over there.'

At eight-fifteen two men in city maintenance uniforms arrived, showed some form at the box office, and began gluing wrapping paper over the glass theatre doors. Then they fastened shut all the doors, but one pair, with chains and padlocks. At eight-twenty-five, they left.

Roderick approached the box office. The ticket seller was a pretty adolescent girl with round rouge circles on her cheeks like clown makeup.

'Yah?'

'I couldn't help noticing those men chaining up the doors. Why would they do that, with people inside?'

'I dunno, someping to do with the city. I guess.'

'But I thought it was illegal to have any locked doors during a movie.'

'Yah it is. Terrible, ain't it? And lookit the mess they made with all that paper, how are we spose to get that off the glass? I dunno.'

Roderick hesitated. You couldn't fight city hall. There was probably some good reason for the padlocks. These city workers knew what they were doing. 'Have you got a hairpin? Somebody showed me last night how to pick a lock. I'm going to open these padlocks.'

'Gee I dunno.' But she handed over the hairpin. While he was picking the locks, people kept coming up to ask him for Evenquil, Nominal, Tibipax or Equapace. It was eight-forty-five.

Stood up? Roderick was beginning to feel a resurgence of pride. Just because somebody can remove your head and stick it in a wastebasket, doesn't mean they can keep you waiting like this for fifteen minutes. Sixteen minutes. The paper said there was a concert by the Auks at the Hippodrome. He made up his mind at once. First a quick check of the Roxy's rear doors in case of more padlocks and then if she still hadn't shown up, he would only wait another ten minutes or so before taking off for the Hippodrome. That would teach her to respect him as a person.

There was a long line at the Hippodrome, moving very slowly. Roderick was walking back to join the end of it when he heard: 'Rickwood! Hiya, Rickwood, glad to see you're on our side.'

Luke looked a little drunk.

'Our side?'

'The Luddites, pal. Tonight is the night, buddy. We're gonna teach these so-called musicians to have a little respect for human beings for a change.'

'The Auks? What do you mean?'

Luke winked, and opened his jacket to show Roderick a hammer. 'The Auks are finished, kid, as of now. And I do mean finished, mac. No more electronic music so-called because no more equipment, jack.'

'But, Luke, what the Christ is all this? You I thought maybe you'd be out with Ida tonight. You two seemed to be getting along fine, plenty of respect for each other what are you doing here, creeping around like some nut with a hammer ?'

'Rickwood, you know nothing of human nature. Woman must weep, and man must smash something to pieces with a hammer. Especially if a man grew up reading Hemingway. A man does what he has to what Mission Control tells him he has to.'

'Luke, you poor idiotic '

'Anyway, I'm not alone. Join us, my friend. We have many machines to smash, then we will drink the wine.'

Roderick saw that there were a dozen other men smiling and patting the hammer-shaped bulges in their jackets.

'I'll, uh, take a rain-check, Luke. See you.'

In Roderick's jacket pocket, he remembered, was a pass signed by the Auks. He took it to the stage door, where apologetic security cops frisked him, discussed him on their radios, and finally let him in.

There were now only two Auks, but a lot more equipment. They stared at Roderick until he said, 'I see you finally got rid of the old Pressler Joad co-inverter.'

'Hi!' said one of the Auks. 'I remember you, you helped us out that time, changed over to an obvolute paraverter with harmony-split interfeed.'

'Full refractal phonation,' said the other, 'with no Peabody drift at all.'

'Gary, is it?'

'No I'm Barry, he's Gary.'

Roderick nodded. 'Wasn't there someone else? Larry?'

'Larry, yeah, well Larry did a little separation. Well you know he was writing a lot? Like "R.U.R. My Baby", and "Ratstar", he wrote them. Only then when we got this new electronic writing system, he just couldn't compete and he thought he had to sad. But hey, let sad thoughts lie, just self-be, man.'

'Self-be?'

'And we'll show you all the new stuff we added. This is the famous HZGG-II, cross-monitored to a superphonesis drive through that, that's our multi-tasking hyperdeck, custom built by a guy who does his own ferro-chloride etching on his own circuits; over there is Brown Betty, our brown noise generator; then the toneburst setup with patched in signal squirt ...'

Roderick looked around at the huge cabinets, ranged around the stage like megaliths. 'Doesn't the audience have trouble seeing you, over all these big cabinets?'

'They know we're here, baby. They feel our electronic presence,' said Gary.

'Right,' said Barry. 'And this stuff gives us much more control over the essentials, the elementals. No screwing around with sounds, crap like that.'

Gary said, 'Now we are the sounds. All we gotta do is be. Dodo says everybody has to self-be. Dodo says '

'I came to warn you,' Roderick said. 'There are some Luddites out front, lining up for tickets. They've got hammers and they're kind of crazy.'

'No shit, you know this for sure?'

'I saw the hammers.'

Gary called a security cop over and told him. When the man had trotted away, Gary said, 'Hey thanks, man, you saved our life again. I mean we can't blow this concert, it's critical. See we got three hits, all over the point eighty-seven mark on the Wagner-Gains Scale but they all peaked already.'

'Peaked?'

'The record company screwed up release dates, so here we are,' Barry said. 'If we don't make it big with this here concert, we'll be off the charts in two weeks. And off the charts for us is dead.'

Gary nodded. 'The Luddites probably know that, too, got their own trend computer somewhere, just waiting their chance. Our manager's got secretaries watching the trendie around the clock I'll bet the Luddites are doing the same. After all, they killed Elvis, didn't they?'

'Elvis?' Roderick wasn't sure he understood anything.

'Elvis Fergusen, you know, he used to be Mister Robop? Then one night they cut holes in his speakers. He tried to sing without electronics and well, two months later he O.D.'d in a dirty hotel room in Taipin, you could call that murder.'

Roderick said, 'Well I guess you're about ready to play, aren't you? So I'll just '

'Hey, but thanks, man, you've been square with us. We oughta do something for you. Like we could turn you on to Dodo.'

'Dodo? What is it?'

'Everything, man.' Barry squatted down and traced a circle on the stage floor. 'Call that the universe, everything inside that circle. Then Dodo is is the circle itself!'

'You mean God or something?'

'Yeah, God and everything,' said Barry.

Larry said, 'And not-God too and nothing. See, Dodo is kind of like the secret of everything. And the secret is, there ain't no secret.'

Roderick was impressed. 'How do I find out more about Dodo?'

'I'll give you his address. Only don't go to see him if you're not sincere.'

'Him? You mean, Dodo is a person?'

Barry hesitated. 'Well yes, but more than a person too. Dodo is a way in a way of getting into your own life.'

'Right, right,' said Gary. 'The earth doesn't know it, but it's growing up to be a sun.'

Roderick felt less sincere at once, but the aphorism was sparking off others; soon Barry and Gary were grinning and shouting at each other: 'Darkness is just ignorant light.'

'Peace is war carried on by other means.'

'Every day is another.'

'Man is the piece of universe that worries about all the rest.'

'Stop looking for happiness until you find it.'

'Dodo is finding out man was never kicked out of Paradise at all.'

'Yeah, Dodo is instant everything.'

'Dodo means just do but twice.'

'Dodo says, do fish know which way the wind blows?'

'Dodo says, make today a wonderful yesterday,' said Gary finally, and wrote out an address on a page torn from an electronic test manual. 'Here you go. But listen, one thing: You have to prove your sincerity with Dodo. Take him like a bouquet of hundred-dollar bills. Anything like that.'

'A bouquet of money?'

'Dodo says money has its price.'

'Fine,' said Roderick. 'Only I don't have even one hundred-dollar bill. I've never seen one.'

'You must not be very sincere, then,' Gary said. He went to a snare drum mounted upside down at the back of the stage, reached into it and came up with a handful of hundred-dollar bills. 'Take these, it's okay. Yours to keep or give to Dodo. Your choice.'

Barry said, 'All money belongs to Dodo.'

People were running around on the big stage now, moving lights, checking the Auks's makeup, clearing spare cables. Someone led Roderick to the wings; a second later the Auks started playing and the curtain rose.

They naturally opened with the gospel-based song that first made them famous, 'Rivets': There's an android calling me Calling me, oh calling, calling me Cross the river The deep river Of Australia.

She is plastic, she is steel But she really can really can feel All my love Cross the river Of Australia.

A hammer clattered on the stage; there were dark figures struggling in the orchestra pit; another hammer spun through the air and dented a cabinet. Then it was all over: gangs of security police came from every exit and from the stage. The tiny mob of Luddites were disarmed and marched away within two minutes of their attack.

Roderick went outside to find out if Luke was still in one piece. He couldn't see the astronaut among the men with bleeding heads being herded into a paddy wagon.

A security cop was talking to a city cop. 'We could of used a little backup from you guys, you know? What if these guys had got nasty? Where's all your guys?'

'Ain't you heard? Over watching the big fire, at the Roxy.'

'The Roxy? Anybody killed?'

'Naw, they had a full house too, three hundred easy, on account of this big-budget movie. But they all got out I guess the movie was so boring half of them were ready to leave anyway. Nobody even hurt.'

Roderick slunk away like a criminal. On the way home he stopped on a bridge to throw his hat in the river.

XIX.

'Please sit down. This won't take a second.'

The man behind the desk had gleaming silver hair, gold glasses, a healthy tan, a Harris tweed jacket with soft white shirt and quiet knitted tie. He was writing something with a gold pencil on cream laid paper, resting it on a blotter decorated with a sky motif, pale blue with soft white cumulus. The blotter protected the gold-embossed leather top of his desk, which was of some handsome dark wood in some pleasantly vague antique style, with a brass handle or two. It stood in the deep pile of an Aubusson carpet.

The room was so arranged as to carry the eye slowly from one rich, pleasing and innocuous object to another the paintings by Cuyp and Miro, the geode paperweight, the brass barometer.

The man finally stopped writing. 'Now then, suppose we start with your name.'

'Roderick Wood.'