The Silver Eggheads

Heloise began talking to her spot again as she paced. 'Speaking of robots, Gaspard was a robot-lover among his other vices. Book-lover, robot-lover, wordmill-lover, publisher-lover, girl-lover when he had time for it. A gottaunderstand lover too. He doped himself with understanding things. But he — never understood action for action's sake.'

'Babe, how come you got so much energy?' Homer complained wonderingly. 'After this morning you should be bushed. I am even without my injuries.'

'Homer, a woman has resources a man hasn't,' Heloise said wisely. 'Especially a frustrated woman.'

'Yeah, I know, babe. She's got a layer of fat that keeps her warm on long-distance swims. And her uterus is stronger, square inch for square inch, than any muscle of a man.'

'You bet it is, you coward,' Heloise said, but Homer was lost in a dream. 'I often wonder. .' he began and trailed off.

'. . if there isn't some way for a woman to put the shot or high-jump with her uterus?' Heloise finished for him.

'Now you're kidding me, babe,' Homer said gravely. 'Look, you got so much energy, why don't you go down to headquarters or over to The Word and keep in touch? The Action Committee'll have something for you to do. Or anyway tell 'em your troubles. I'd like to rest.'

'That Action Committee isn't active enough for me,' Heloise said. 'And I certainly don't intend to share my ideas about Racket House with those union grifters. However,' she continued, looking Homer straight in the eye, 'you do give me an inspiration.' She began to strip off her shirt and levis.

Homer turned away ostentatiously, bracing himself for a kiss on the back of the neck. But it never came. Presently, intrigued by a faint jingling noise, he turned around to find Heloise wearing loafers, gray slacks, and a low-cut longsleeved black sweater. She was fastening around her neck a cumbersome necklace that gleamed pale gray.

'Hey, I never seen that before,' Homer observed. 'What are them silver walnuts?'

'Those are not walnuts,' Heloise said darkly. 'Those are little silver human skulls. It's my hunting necklace.'

'That's morbid, babe,' Homer complained. 'Hunting what?'

'Babies,' Heloise responded evilly. 'Two-hundred-pound male babies, give or take seventy-five pounds. I've given up on men. Now, don't be offended, Homer,' she added quickly, 'I don't mean you.' She came over and stood beside the table. 'Homer,' she said solemnly, 'There's something I've got to tell you. I wanted to let you rest and heal yourself and get back into training, but I'm afraid it's not going to be possible. Homer, I have secret but sure information that Racket House has a trick up its sleeve for turning out books without wordmills. I know to a certainty that right this minute Flaxman and Cullingham are hiring all the top writers away from the other publishers to author those books. Only Racket House writers will have jackets at all. Do you really want to be left out?'

Homer Hemingway jumped off the table like a rocket lifting from its pad. 'Get me my Mediterranean sailing suit, the wind-weathered one with violet shadows, babe,' the big writer commanded rapidly, his brow furrowed with thought. 'And my dirty canvas sailing shoes. And my battered captain's cap. And hurry!'

'But Homer,' Heloise protested, thrown off balance by the extent of her strдtegem's success, 'what about your burnt behind?'

'In my Medical Room, babe,' the resourceful master writer informed her, 'I have a transparent, ventilated, adhesive-based, form-fitted, plastic buttock-shield designed for just such emergencies.'

TEN

'Well, Zane Gort,' Flaxman said genially, 'Gaspard tells me you were quite a hero at the wordmill smash.'

The atmosphere in the office had relaxed noticeably since Miss Blushes had departed to compose herself in the ladies' room-with a parting shot about publishers too cheap to maintain a restroom exclusively for robixes.

The small dark publisher's face sobered. 'It must have been rough on you, though, having to watch your brother machines being lynched.'

'Frankly no, Mr. Flaxman,' the robot replied without hesitation. 'The truth is that I have never liked wordmills or any other thinking machines that are all brain and no body, unable to move about. They have no consciousness, just blind creativity, stringing symbols like beads and weaving words like wool. They're monstrous, they scare me. You call them my brothers, but to me they're unrobot.'

'That's odd, when you consider that both you and wordmills are equally writers.'

'Not odd at all, Mr. Flaxman. It's true, I'm a writer. But I'm a lone-wolf self-assigned writer, like the human writers of olden times-before the Era of the Editors that Mr. Cullingham mentioned. Like all free robots I am selfprogrammed and since I have never written anything but stories about robots for robots, I have never operated under human editorial direction-not that I would not welcome it under certain circumstances.' He purred winningly at Cullingham, then swung his big dark single eye around thoughtfully. 'Such as the circumstances that now obtain, gentlemen-now that your wordmills are all destroyed and your human writers a doubtful quantity and we robot authors the only experienced fictioneers left in the Solar System. .'

'An yes, the wordmills destroyed!' Flaxman said with a big grin at Cullingbam, rubbing his hands.

'I would be quite ready to accept the direction of Mr. Culllngham where human feelings are involved,' the robot went on quickly, 'and to have his name appear alongside mine, same type size. 'By Zane Gort and G.K. Cullingham'-it sounds right. Our pictures, too, on the back cover, side by side. Humans would be sure to take robot authors to their hearts if there were human co-authors-at least to start with. And in any case we robots are a lot closer to humans than those uncanny wordmills ever were.'

'Now wait a minute all of you!' Gaspard's command was a roar that made Flaxman wince and a faint frown ificker across Cullingham's forehead. The writer looked around like a lean and shaggy bear. He was feeling angry again- angry at the mystery of Flaxman's and Cullingham's unnatural behavior-and, as before, his fury was a fuel providing the power to blast away at mysteries. 'Shut up, Zane,' he growled. 'Look here, Mr. F. and Mr. C., every time someone mentions wordmills getting destroyed, you act like you're sitting down to Christmas dinner. Honestly, if I didn't know that your own wordmills had been wrecked with the rest, I'd swear that you two crooks-'

'Tut-tut, Gaspard.'

'Don't kid me! Oh I know, anything for Old Rocket House, we're all heroes and you're a pair of saints, but its true just the same. What I was going to say was that I'd swear you two publishers had engineered the whole smashup. Maybe in spite of Rocket getting it too. . Tell me, were you in on it?'

Flaxman rocked back, grinning. 'We sympathized, Gaspard. Yes, put it that way, we sympathized with you writers and your injured egos and thwarted urges toward self-expression. No active aid, of course, but. . we sympathized.'

'With a bunch of screaming long-hairs? Bah! No, you must have had something practical in mind. Let me think.' He jerked his meerschaum pipe from the pocket of his smoking jacket and started to thumb tobacco into it, then hurled pipe and pouch to the floor. 'The hell with atmosphere anymore!' he said, reaching his hand across the desk. 'Gimme a cigarette!'

Flaxman was taken aback, but Culllngham leaned forward and smoothly complied with the request.

'Let's see,' Gaspard said, taking a deep drag, 'maybe you actually do have in mind this crazy scheme-excuse me, Zane-of having robots write books for humans. . no, that won't work, because practically every other fiction factory publishes robots' books and has one or more robots in its writing stable, all of them looking for wider fields to conquer. . '

'There are robot authors and robot authors,' Zane Gort observed in somewhat injured tones. 'Not all of them are so adaptable or resourceful, have such broad sympathies with nonrobot beings-'

'Shut up, I said. No, it has to be something that Rocket has and the other fiction factories haven't. Hidden wordmills? No, I'd have known about those, nobody can fool me there. A secret stable of writers, who can actually write with something approaching wordmill quality? I'll believe that when Homer Hemingway learns the alphabet. But what then? Extraterrestrials. .? Extrasensories. .? Automatic writers tuned to the Infinite. .? Brilliant psychopaths under some kind of direction. .?'