The Silver Eggheads

'Homer Hemingway deserved every hot wallop Zane gave him,' Gaspard protested. 'The sadistic boob had been using his flamer on Miss Blushes.'

Cullingham looked around at them inquiringly.

'The pink robix Gaspard and Zane carried in,' Flaxman explained. 'Our visiting breen, the new government censoring robix.'

He shook his head, grinning widely. 'So now the naked truth is we got a censor and no scripts for her to bluepencil. Can you top that for irony? It's a screwy business, all right. I thought you knew Miss Blushes, Cully.'

At that moment a high sweet voice behind them broke in, strident but dreamy. 'Question naked sequence. Warn on blue material. For 'can' print 'bathroom.' Delete 'screwy' and close. For 'knew' substitute 'were acquainted with.' Oh my, where am I? What's been happening to me?'

Miss Blushes was sitting up and flapping her pinchers. Zane Gort was kneeling at her side and tenderly mopping her scorched flank with a damp pad-the ugly discoloration was almost gone. Now he tucked the pad in a little door in his chest and supported her with an arm.

'You must be calm,' he said. 'Everything's going to be all right. You're with friends.'

'Am I? How can I be sure?' She drew away from him, felt of herself and hastily closed several little doors. 'Why, you've been doing things to me! I've been lying here exposed. Those humans have seen me with my sockets open!'

'It was necessary,' Zane assured her. 'You needed electricity and other attentions. You've had a rough time. Now you must rest.'

'Other attentions indeed!' Miss Blushes shrilled. 'What do you mean by making a peep show of me?'

'Believe me, miss,' Flaxman volunteered, 'we're gentlemen-we haven't been sneaking any looks at you- though I must say you're a most attractive robix indeed-if Zane's books had covers, I'd ask you to pose for one.'

'Yes, with my sockets wide open and my oil-ports unscrewed, I suppose!' Miss Blushes said witheringly.

NINE

In the Rub-Down Room of his penthouse pad, which was finished in a rubberoid that simulated knotty pine, Heloise Ibsen was anointing the seared rump of Homer Hemingway.

'Go easy, baby, that hurts,' the big writer commanded. 'Don't be such a baby yourself,' the moody writrix commanded back at him.

'Aaah, that feels better. Now the silk sheet, baby.'

'In a minute. Christ, you've got a beautiful body, Homer. Just looking at it does things to me.'

'That so, baby? Look, I figure I could drink some warm milk in about five minutes.'

'Nuts to milk. Yes indeed, it does things to me. Homer, let's. .' She murmured her suggestion into his ear.

The big writer twisted away from her. 'Not on your life, baby! I got to get back in training first. That stuff saps a guy.'

'You think push-ups and squats will be easier on you?'

'They don't tap the life-essence. And never blow in my ear like that again-it's deafening.' He pillowed his cheek on the backs of his hands. 'Besides, I'm not in the mood.'

Heloise sprang up and paced the rubberoid. 'Christ, you're worse than Gaspard. He was always in the mood, even if he didn't know how to ride it.'

'Now don't go thinking about that little pipsqueak,' Homer abjured her somewhat sleepily. 'You seen how I pasted him, didn't you?'

Heloise went on pacing. 'Gaspard was a pipsqueak,' she said analytically, 'but he had brains of a slow secretive sort, or he wouldn't have been able to keep me from catching on that he was a publisher's fink. And he'd never have become a publisher's fink unless he'd seen more profit in it than staying with the union. Gaspard was lazy, but he wasn't insane.'

'Look, the last babe I had always used to get me my warm milk on time,' Homer put in from the massage table.

Heloise quickened her pace. 'I'll bet Gaspard has inside dope from Flaxman and Cullingham about some trick Racket House has up its sleeve for beating us writers-and beating the other publishers at the same time! That's why Racket House never tried to protect its wordmills. I'll bet that little fink is sitting in Flaxman's and Cullingham's office right now, laughing at us all.'

'And this babe that got me my milk didn't go clomping up and down all the time talking to herself,' Homer continued.

Heloise stopped and looked at him. 'Well, she certainly didn't spend much of her time in bed tapping your lifeessence I gather. Face it, Homer, I'm not going to hang myself in a closet or sit by the stove heating your bottle, even if that last midget-pelvised apprentice playmate of yours did. When you got me, Homer, you got a woman that's all woman.'

'Yeah, I know, babe,' Homer replied, catching fire faintly. 'And you got yourself a real man.'

'I wonder,' Heloise said. 'You let that robot friend of Gaspard larrup you as if you were a little boy.'

'That's not fair, babe,' Homer protested. 'Them tin niggers'll kill the strongest man in the world. They'll tear Hercules apart-or any of them old movie heroes.'

'I suppose so,' Heloise said. She came over to the table. 'But wouldn't you like to beat up Gaspard again to be even for what the robot did to you? Come on, Homer, I'll buzz the stooges and we'll go up against Racket House right now. I want to see Gaspard's face when you clomp in.'

Homer considered the proposition for all of two seconds. Then, 'Naw, babe,' he decided, 'I got to heal myself. I'll beat up on Gaspard again in three-four days, if you want I should.'

Heloise leaned over him. 'I want you to do it right now,' she urged. 'We'll take some ropes along and truss up Flaxman and Cullinghain and terrify 'em.'

'You begin to interest me, babe. I like games where you tie guys up.'

Heloise chuckled deep in her throat. 'So do I,' she said. 'Someday, Homer, I'm going to tie you down to this table.'

The big writer froze. 'Now don't get vulgar, babe.'

'Well, how about Racket House? Do we or don't we?' Homer's tone was lofty. 'The answer is in the negative, babe.'

Heloise shrugged. 'Well, if you won't, you won't.' She resumed her pacing. 'I never really did trust Gaspard,' she said to a spot on the wall. 'He kept himself doped with wordwooze and he had this thing about mills. How can you trust a writer who reads so much and won't even pretend he wants to write a book of his own?'

'How about you, babe?' Homer put in. 'You going to write that book of yours? Then I could take me a nap.'

'Not now. I'm too excited. Remind me to have the stooges rent me a voicewriter, though. I'll write it tomorrow afternoon.'

Homer shook his head. 'I just don't dig guys who think they can write books. With gals it's different-you expect all sorts of crazy stuff. But with guys I can put myself in their place and I just don't dig it. So I wonder: do they think they're built like wordmills all full of silver hair-wires and relays and mole-memory banks instead of good old muscle? May be all right for a robot, but for a man it's morbid.'

'Homer,' Heloise said gently, though continuing to pace, 'a human being has a very complicated nervous system and a brain with billions and billions of nerve cells.'

'That so, babe? I'll have to brush up on all that some day.' His face grew grave. 'Lots of things in the world. Mysterious things. Like that job offer I keep getting from the Green Bay Packers-times like this it tempts me.'

'Now Homer,' Heloise said sharply, 'remember you're a writer.'

Homer nodded with a happy smile. 'That's right, babe. And I got the finest physique of them all. It says so on my jackets.'