not their timber or internal rhythm, the woman in a weary croon almost as monotonous.
WOMAN: Go to sleep, go to sleep baby.
EGG: Can't sleep. Haven't slept for a hundred years.
WOMAN: Go into a trance then.
EGG: Can't go into a trance.
WOMAN: You can if you try baby.
EGG: I'll try if you turn me over.
WOMAN: I turned you over yesterday.
EGG: Turn me over, I got cancer.
WOMAN: You can't get cancer baby.
EGG: I can. I'm clever. Plug my eye in and turn it around so I can look at myself.
WOMAN: You just did. Too often's no fun baby. Want to see pictures, want to read?
EGG: No.
WOMAN: Want to talk to someone? Want to talk to Number 4?
EGG: Number 4's stupid.
WOMAN: Want to talk to Number 6?
EGG: No. Let me watch you take a bath.
WOMAN: Not now baby. Got to hurry. Got to feed you brats and run.
EGG: Why?
WOMAN: Business baby.
EGG: No. I know why you got to hurry.
WOMAN: Why baby.
EGG: Got to hurry 'cause you got to die.
WOMAN: Guess I got to die baby.
EGG: I won't die, I'm immortal.
WOMAN: I'm immortal too in church.
EGG: You're not immortal at home though.
WOMAN: No baby.
EGG: I am. Esp me something, come in my mind.
WOMAN: Ain't no esp baby I'm afraid.
EGG: There is. Try. Just try.
WOMAN: Ain't no esp or you brats could do it.
EGG: We're all pickled, we're on ice, but you're out in the wide warm world. Try once more.
WOMAN: I can't try. I'm too tired.
EGG: You could do it if you tried.
WOMAN: Haven't got time baby. Got to hurry. Got to feed you brats and run.
EGG: Why?
WOMAN: Business baby.
EGG: What?
WOMAN: Got to go and see the boss. Come along, Half Pint?
EGG: That's not business, that's a bore. No.
WOMAN: Come along, Half Pint. Make smart talk-talk.
EGG: How soon? Right now?
WOMAN: Almost. Half an hour.
EGG: Half an hour's half a year. No.
WOMAN: Come along, Half Pint. Come for Mama. Boss wants a brain.
EGG: You take Rusty. He's gone crazy. They'll have fun.
WOMAN: How crazy?
EGG: Crazy as me. Take a bath. You got six months. Take off your smock and show your clothes. Take 'em off, take 'em off.
WOMAN: Lay off, Half Pint, or I'll drop you.
EGG: Go ahead do it. Maybe I'll bounce.
WOMAN: You won't bounce baby.
EGG: Sure I will ma. Just like Humpty.
The woman sighed under her white mask, shaking her head, and stood up. 'Look here, Half Pint,' she said, 'you don't want to sleep, trance, talk, or take a trip. Want to watch me feed the others?'
'All right. But plug the eye in my ear, it's funnier that way.'
'No baby, that's nuts.'
She plugged a fish-eyed TV camera into his upper right socket, at the same time unplugging his speaker with a quick tug at the cable. Tray hanging balanced at her waist she touched a nearby egg with her fingertips. Her eyes went blank above the mask as she judged the temperature of the metal and timed the beat of the tiny isotope- powered pump built into the larger fontanel. She fitted finger and thumb of her other hand to the dents in the smaller fontanel and gave it a practiced twirl. It rose slowly, spinning. She caught it just as it came unscrewed and plumped it into one of the unoccupied dishes on her tray, plucking a fresh disk from its dish, settled its threads at the first try on the threads in the hole, gave it a reverse twirl, and was on to the next egg without waiting to watch it spin down flush.
She had twirled into place the last fresh disk on her tray when a sol-sol-do chimed.
Nevertheless she said, 'Goddammit to Hell and gone!'
TWELVE
Girls are a great art-form, but one requiring exhausting study and application, reads an entry in the unwritten notebooks of Gaspard de la Nuit. The receptionist who appeared at Wisdom of the Ages in response to his sol-sol- do chime was as fresh as the cubicle was musty with shelves of old hardcover books and a dust-freighted frieze of David-stars and Isis-crosses. Gaspard, breathing hard and coughing a bit, studied her appreciatively and thanked the higher powers that skirts were back again in the non-writing world-properly short snug skirts that perfectly set off sheer-stockinged legs. A feathery sweater clung to the middle heights of the petite vision as closely as gleaming brown ringlets hugged her trim skull and the pink shells of her ears.
Zane Gort whistled the polite robot's greeting which all she-humans found most comforting.
When Gaspard's inspection did not terminate, the vision said snottily, 'Yes, yes, but we know all about me. So let's quit the panting and get down to business.'
Gaspard censored the reply, 'Marvellous by me, if you've got a couch and don't mind a robot observer,' and instead asserted defensively, 'I've been running. A scribesquad ambushed us and it was five blocks and seven levels before we shook the maniacs. I'm afraid the writers may have got wind that Rocket's up to something. We led them away from here and snuck back in a scrap-buyer's truck- lots of those headed for Readership Row, I gave the dnver tips on hot wordmills.' The remark about panting stuck in his craw, so he added, 'Incidentally, you should try running the mile some day with a robot for a pacer.'
'Give me thighs like barrels, I'm sure,' the girl replied, looking Gaspard and his bruises up and down. 'But what's your business? This isn't a first-aid station-or an oiling depot either,' she added for the benefit of Zane Gort, who bad creaked at that moment as he leaned around Gaspard to peer at the books.
'Look here, kid,' Gaspard said, a bit nettled. 'Let's quit the mumbo-jumbo and snap into it. We're behind schedule. Where's that midget computer?'
Gaspard had devoted considerable hurried thought to the phrasing of this question. When Flaxman had first spoken of 'a brain' over the phone, Gaspard had had an instant vision of a huge nakedly convoluted globe with evil saucerwide eyes that glowed in the dark, the whole being set atop a tiny misshapen torso or perhaps a small leathery pedestal with squirming octopus legs-a sort of Martian monstrosity, despite the fact that the real Martians had turned out to have their brains inside their black-armored beetle bodies. Next Gaspard had thought of a pink
