The Silver Eggheads

in.'

'Probably planning to bomb us with trunkfuls of old manuscripts,' Flaxman told him.

Cullingham intoned, 'In the last fortress on the last planet held by earthmen, Grant Ironstone smiled at his terrifled clerkish assistant Potherwell. 'Every victory of the High Khan,' Grant said floughtfully, 'brings the yellow octopoids that closer to defeat. I'll tell you why. Potherwell, do you know what's the fiercest, smartest, most dangerous, deadliest hunting-beast in the entire universe-when finally aroused?' 'A kill-crazy rogue octopoid?' Potherwell quavered. Grant smiled. 'No, Potherwell,' he said, placing a finger on the narrow chest of the trembling clerk. 'You are. The answer is: man!''

Nurse Bishop's curly head was now bent over the clustered whisper-speakers plugged into the eggs' lowest sockets. Occasionally she uttered what looked like a sympathetic 'Tsk-tsk.' Gaspard drilled and wielded the screwdriver. Flaxman smoked a cigar, his nervousness at the eggs' presence well under control except for occasional twitchings and single beads of sweat running down his forehead. Chapter Two of The Scourge of Space rocketed remorselessly toward its climax.

As Gaspard twisted the last screw down flush and proudly surveyed his handiwork, there came a very faint tap at the door. Gaspard softly opened it to admit Zane Gort, who stood respectfully listening.

Cullingham, who had grown a shade hoarse, declaimed: 'As Potherwell, fingernails flailing, launched himself at the canary chrome brain sac of the rogue octopoid, Grant Ironstone cried, 'There is a spy among us!' and took hold of the filmy bodice of Zyla, Queen of the Ice Stars, and ripped. 'Look!' he commanded the astounded space marshalls. 'Twin radar domes!' Chapter Three: By the light of the inmost moon of the sunless planet Kabar, four master criminals surveyed one another doubtfully.'

Zane Gort observed quietly to Gaspard, 'You know, it's funny how humans are forever ending stories or episodes with the discovery that the beautiful woman is a robot. Just at the point where it starts to get interesting. And ending it bang without one word of description as to the robot's shape, color, decor, pincher-style and so on, or even telling you whether it's a robot or a robix.'

He shook his metal head. 'Of course I'm prejudiced, but I ask you, Gaspard, how would you like a story in which it turned out that the beautiful robot was really a woman and snap it ended right there, without a word about complexion, hair shade, and bust measurement, without even a hint as to whether she was a houri or a hag?'

He turned his headlamp toward Gaspard and twinkled it. 'Come to think of it, I once did end a Dr. Tungsten chapter just that way: Platinum Paula turns out to be an empty robot-shell with a human movie starlet inside at the controls. I knew my readers would feel so frustrated they'd want to get on to something else right away. So I cut to Silver Vilya oiling herself. That always tickles them.'

THIRTY

Cullingham had a fit of coughing.

'That's enough for now,' Flaxman said. 'Better rest your voice. Let's hear from the brains.'

'Double Nick has a comment,' Nurse Bishop announced, switching his speaker to full volume.

'Gentlemen,' said one of the two larger silver eggs, 'I assume you understand that we are brains and nothing else. We have sight, hearing, the power of speech-that's all. Our glandular equipment is at a minimum, believe me, just enough to keep us from vegetating. So may I ask you humbly, very humbly, how you expect us to be interested in turning out stories involving action at the bumping level, feelings suitable for conformist morons, and a lead- heavy emphasis on that tiresome tumescence which you euphemistically call love?'

Nurse Bishop's lips curled in an incredulous, knowing smile, but she said nothing.

'Back in the days when I had a body,' Double Nick went on before either of the partners could compose an answer, 'there was a glut of such books. Three out of four book covers thunderingly implied that the act of love would be served up in satisfying detail inside, well spiced with violence and perversions, but heavily glazed with an infantile he-man morality. I recall telling myself at the time that ninety percent of all so-called perversions are simply the natural desire to view an adored object and a gratifying act from all possible angles, exactly as you'd want to look at a beautiful statue from all sides, even manufacturing a fourth spatial dimension from which to view it, if that were possible. Today, I must confess, the whole business simply bores me. Possibly my physical condition, or rather the lack of such, has something to do with it. But it especially depresses me to think that after one hundred years the human race is still groping for proxy thrills and a naughtiness that is simply natural curiosity disavowed and projected.

'Moreover,' Double Nick continued, 'granting that you wish us to produce love stories, may I draw your attention to the kind of stimulation you're furnishing us, or rather its lacks? We've been locked in a back room for well over a century, and what do you show us? Two publishers! Pardon me, sirs, but I do think you could have demonstrated a little more imagination.'

Cullingham said coolly, 'I suppose certain visits might be arranged, especially to spots with voyeur facilities. How about Madam N's to start with, Flaxy?' Nurse Bishop said cryptically, 'You old coots have had your kicks,' but Flaxman cut in with, 'You know that's out, Cully! The brains can't be taken from the Nursery except to this office. That's Zukie's First Rule that every Flaxman has sworn to enforce. Zukie's last warning was that traveling the brains would kill them.'

'Futhermore,' the egg ground on, disregarding the comments, 'judging from the kinds of piffle you've been inificting on us (even if they are rejections) the writing game has been going to pot. Now if you'd only read us some of those wordmill stories you claim are so smooth-during our retirement, as you know, we've read almost nothing but non-fiction and of course the classics. Another of dear Daniel's endless rules.'

'I'd honestly rather not do that,' Culllngham replied. 'I think your output will be a lot fresher without wordmill influence. And you'll feel happier about it.'

'Do you think that wordwooze-a mechanical excrement-could conceivably give us an inferiority complex?' Double Nick asked.

Gaspard felt a rush of anger. He wished Culllngham would read them a well-milled story and make Double Nick eat his words. He tried to remember some hyperbrilliant bit of wordwooze to quote right now, something from one of the top milled books he'd read recently, even his own Passwords to Passion. But somehow when he turned his mind in that direction, there was only a baffling rosy haze. All he could remember of his own book, even, were the blurbs on the back cover. He told himself this must be because every sentence of the contents was so superbly brilliant that no one or two could stand out. But this explanation did not entirely satisfy him.

'Well, if you refuse to be frank with us and put all your cards on the table,' Double Nick said, 'if you refuse to give us the complete picture-' The egg left its remark unfinished.

'Why don't you first be frank with us?' Cullingham said quietly. 'For instance, we don't even know your name. Forget your anonymity-you'll have to some day. Who are you?'

The egg was silent for a space. Then it said, 'I am the the heart of the Twentieth Century. I'm the living corpse of a mind from the Age of Confusion, a ghost still blown by the winds of uncertainty that lashed the Earth when man first unlocked the atom and faced his destiny among the stars. I'm freedom and hate, love and fear, high ideals and low delights, a spirit exulting daily and doubting endlessly, tormented by its own limitations, a tangle of urges, an eddy of electrons. That's what I am. My name you'll never know.'

Cullingham bowed his head for a moment, then signed to Nurse Bishop. She turned down the speaker. The editorial director dropped on the floor the remaining pages of The Scourge of Space and picked up a typed manuscript bound in purple plastic with the Rocket House emblem-a slim rocket entwined by serpents-stamped big on it in gold.

'We'll try something else for a change,' he said. 'Not wordnilll, but very different from what you've been hearing.'

'Miss Jackson get to the Nursery?' Gaspard asked Zane. They spoke in undertones outside the open door.

'Oh yes,' the robot replied. 'She's a looker like Miss Bishop, only blonde. Gaspard, where's Miss Blushes?'