'I haven't seen her. Did she kite off again?'
'Yes, she got restless. She said all those human beings in silver cans staring at her made her nervous. But she said she'd meet me here.'
Gaspard frowned. 'Did you ask the new door-robot downstairs or the kid with him if they'd seen her come in?'
Zane said, 'There wasn't any door-robot downstairs when I came in just now, or any kid either. More im posters, I suppose. But I did spot a federal investigator named Winston P. Mears just outside. I got to know Mears while he was investigating me on charges-nothing was ever proved-of designing atomic-powered giant robots (an inevitable technologic development that still seems to terrify most humans). But the point now is that Mears, a federal agent, is near, and much as I adore Miss Blushes, I must remember that she is a government employee and therefore, whether she wants to be or not, a government undercover agent. Consider that, Gaspard.'
Gaspard tried to, but there were distractions.
Most especially, there was what Cullingham was now intoning: 'Clinch, clinch, clinch went the host working pinchers, firming the cable to the streamlined silflsh burden. Squinch, squinch, squinch went to the winch as Dr. Tungsten turned it. A feelingful flood rilled the grills of his brunch frame. 'Happy landings,' he gusted softly, 'happy landings, my golden darling.' Seven seconds and thirty-five revolutions later, a shock of delicious violence trilled his plastron. He almost let go the winch crank. He turned crinkily. Vilya, gleaming silver in the glooming, was brisking the maddeningly ixy claws, never made for human service, that had but now tittled him. 'Nix,' Dr. Tungsten sternly quinched. 'Nix, nix, ixy robix.''
Nurse Bishop held up a hand. 'Nick wants to say that although that is still pretty terrible, it's a lot more interesting than anything else you've been reading. Different.'
'That,' Zane Gort whispered modestly to Gaspard, 'was me. Oh yes. I wrote that. My readers love cranking scenes almost as much as humans love spanking scenes, especially when the gold and silver robixes are both in them. None of my other bookspools ever sold as well as
Gaspard whirled his head quick enough to see something pink dart from the ladies' room and disappear almost at once down the cross corridor.
'Get to the front entrance,' Zane ordered rapidly. 'Stop Miss Blushes if she tries to get out. She may be hypnotized. If you have to knock her down, hit her on the head. I'll take the back-that's where she was heading. Whir-hey!'
He skated off along the corridor, banked around the first turn, and was gone.
Gaspard shrugged his shoulders and trotted down the escalator. The rat-faced office boy and the eight-foot doorrobot were gone, just as Zane had said. Gaspard stationed himself where they had been, lit a cigarette, and set himself to reconstructing in his mind the brilliant passages of highly literary wordwooze that had eluded him upstairs. He almost remembered thousands, literally, from his lifetime of reading. Surely with a little calm effort he could recapture the exact words of a dozen or so.
A weary and literarily fruitless half hour later, Zane Gort whistled to him from the foot of the stalled escalator. Zane bad Miss Blushes firmly by the wrist. The pink robix seemed very much of her dignity, while Zane was clearly the prey of mixed emotions.
'I found Mears in the short corridor by Storeroom Three,' the blued-steel robot said when Gaspard came up. 'He claimed to be an electricity dowser hired by the Electric Light and Power to hunt down a lost feeder line. I told him straight out I thought I'd met him before and he had the nerve to tell me he wouldn't know, all robots looked alike to him. I took pleasure in sending him packing. Then after a long search I discovered Miss Blushes hiding-'
'Not hiding,' she protested. 'Just thinking. Let me go, you brunch engine.'
'It's for your own good, Miss B. Well then,' I discovered her thinking, in a ventilation duct. She says she had a fit of amnesia, that she doesn't remember anything from the time she left the Nursery to the time I found her. I didn't actually see her with the government man.'
'But you think she may have been reporting to him?' Gaspard prompted. 'You think he knew her?'
'Please, Mr. Nuit!' Miss Blushes objected. 'Not 'knew,' but 'were acquainted with.''
'Why do you keep objecting to 'knew?' Gaspard demanded. 'You did it yesterday.'
'Don't you ever read your Bible?' the pink censoring robix replied scathingly. 'Adam
She flirted her wrist from his grasp and started up the escalator, head held high. Zane followed her dispiritedly.
'I think you're getting too suspicious, Zane,' Gaspard said with forced cheerfulness, bringing up the rear. 'What reason would government men have to be interested in Rocket House?'
'The same reason that every consciousness in the system has, flesh, metal, or Venusian vegetable,' the robot replied darkly. 'Rocket House has something potentially valuable, or at least mysterious, that no one else has. That's all you ever need. To Space-Age man, every mystery is a greed-magnet.' He shook his head. 'I suppose I ought to take better precautions,' he muttered.
As they approached the door to the partner's office Nurse Bishop threw it open, letting a surge of chatter escape into the hail.
'Hi, Gaspard,' she called gayly. 'Hello, Zane. How do, Miss Blushes. You two boys are just in time to help me trek the brats back to the Nursery.'
'What's happened?' Gaspard asked. 'Sounds like everybody's happy.'
'Sure are! The brats have agreed to give Rocket's proposal a whirl. We buzzed the Nursery and the rest of the brains confirmed it. They'll each write a trial short booklength novel, strict anonymity, editorial direction only if desired, ten days' writing time allowed.
'Your first assignment, Gaspard, Mr. Flaxman says, will be to rent twenty-three voicewriters. Rocket can scare up seven.'
THIRTY-ONE
During the first days of the Silver Eggheads Writing Derby, Gaspard de la Nuit found himself rapidly becoming everybody's porter, helper, and errand boy-and nobody's friend. Even dependable, square-shooting Zane Gort acquired the habit of being mysteriously absent more often than not when there was any lugging on the agenda, while it developed that Joe the Guard Zangwell had a heart condition that prevented him from carrying anything heavier than his skunk pistol or a lightly laden dustpan.
When Pop Zangwell quit drinking because he could no longer keep the stuff down, Gaspard had some hopes of getting a third-rate assistant, but it turned out that without liquor the old custodian merely became a jittery wreck twice as disturbing and useless as he had been while on the booze.
Flaxman and Cullingham turned down Gaspard's suggestion that a little extra help be hired, robot or human, on the grounds that it might slit the cloak of secrecy surrounding the Eggheads Project, a garment that seemed to Gaspard more holes than cloth to start with. They also hinted that Gaspard was exaggerating the amount of work the Derby involved.
But from his point of view there was certainly a weary plenty of lugging and kindred jobs to be done. Just getting hold of twenty-three voicewriters proved a Herculean task, involving trips all over New Angeles, since existing local stocks had all been rented or bought by hopeful union authors at the time of the wordmiil smash. Gaspard managed to re-rent a few from the disillusioned and bought the rest at prices that made Flaxman squeal.
Then a special connection had to be made on each voicewriter so that it could be plugged directly into an egg's mouth socket, bypassing the audible-sound stage. It was a simple enough job, taking little more than half an
