hour, as Zane Gort demonstrated step by step to Gaspard while adapting a voicewriter for Half Pint. Thus instructed, Gaspard adapted the other twenty nine, getting many new insights into the joys of the mechanic's life and the question of whether there really are any. He might have quit right there except that it was fun being badgered and wheedled by Bishop and the other nurses transmitting the imperious demands of the eggheads, who now all wanted to be equipped with voicewriters on the instant and were bitterly jealous of those who got machines first. Zane dropped back briefly to remark with an embittering admiration that while robots excelled at trouble- shooting and original work, it took a human working stiff to really carry through on a monotonous job.
It was during this job that Gaspard took to sleeping in at Rocket House, snatching naps in the mens' room on Joe the Guard's cot, odorous of Odor-Ban. When it was done, Gaspard briefly found a mildly pleasant pride in folding his pricked, gouged, and grim-engrained hands and sitting back in the Nursery to survey the machines he had adapted, each plugged into its egghead, while the endless rolls of paper rustled out in irregular bursts, or backtracked for x-ings out, or more often just sat still and silent while presumably the canned brains thought furiously.
He did not get to enjoy this leisure long, even if helping Miss Bishop and the other nurses with routine chores could be accounted leisure. As soon as the eggheads had machines, they began to demand daily and even more frequent storyconferences with Flaxman or Cullingham, necessitating that they and their voicewriters and other equipment be trundled over to the office, for the partners were always too busy to come to the Nursery. Gaspard early decided that the eggheads were not having any real trouble with their writing and certainly did not expect any sort of useful advice from incarnated humans, but merely enjoyed taking little trips after so many decades of being fettered to the Nursery by Zukie's rules.
It got so that at any time of the working day at least ten eggs would be over at the office, with a nurse, fresh fontanels, and so forth, having or awaiting or recuperating from conference. Gaspard fatigued his arms almost to the point of uselessness with lugging and came bitterly to detest most of the peevish, cruelly witty lead-heavy brains. Finally after applying several times to the partners, Gaspard was grudgingly given the use of Flaxman's limousine, when available, for transporting the eggs portal-to-portal, though even that left lugging a-plenty. He was also permitted after some demurs to set up a sketchy security system with one of the Zangwell brothers standing guard during the loading or unloading of the eggs, which now, also by Gaspard's suggestion, were transported cushioned with excelsior in plain boxes rather than the attention-getting gift wrappings.
As an ultimate concession to Gaspard's importunings about the need for greater security, Flaxman loaned him an antique revolver-style bullet-gun from his great grandfather's collection and even provided him with a stock of the proper ammunition, handmade to ancient specifications by robot gunsmiths. He had earlier tried to borrow Nurse Bishop's more modern handgun but had been curtly refused.
Gaspard would have found his drudgery easier to bear if this lovely girl had been willing to date him again and at least listen to him recite his grievances in return for being allowed to air her own. But she turned down all dinner and even lunch and coffee-break invitations with bitter remarks about ex-writers who had time to waste. She and Miss Jackson had taken to sleeping in like Gaspard, but at the Nursery. The other four nurses were not that devoted; one even took advantage of the increased work-demands to quit. Nurse Bishop filled her nights as well as her days with efficient yet nevertheless frenzied checking to make sure that each egg was safe and not missing one step of Zukie's Schedule, no matter whether it was at the Nursery, at Rocket House, or in transit between.
As far as Gaspard could tell, he had become to Nurse Bishop nothing more than the most miserable of male slavies. She barked at him, she blew her top at him, whatever loads he had she piled on extras. To make it worse, she had taken to behaving toward Flaxman with saintly sweetness and patience, toward Cullingham in a way that was indecently cute, while for Zane Gort, when he put in one of his rare appearances, she was wittily cajoling. Only Gaspard seemed to bring out all the bad-tempered evil in her.
However, twice, at moments when he was so utterly fatigued with egg-lugging that he literally could not lift his arms, she had given him a quick un-withholding hug and planted on his lips a shrewdly expert kiss. Thereafter one twinkling grin and the incident was as if it had never occurred.
The second time that happened, Gaspard worked his lips together-he was too tired to wipe them-and said simply, 'You little bitch!'
'I didn't think you were very hot on love,' Nurse Bishop observed wisely.
'That's not love, that's torture,' Gaspard told her.
'Are they so different? You ought to read
'But when
'In your case never!' she snapped. 'Fit a new roll in Nick's voicewriter. He's been signaling for the last three minutes. Who knows, maybe he's in the midst of a seduction scene that will put Rocket House at the top of the best-seller list.'
THIRTY-TWO
Although the partners Flaxman and Cullingham never did a lick of physical work, even for morale-building purposes, or stirred from their offices, now snugly electrolocked once more at the head of a fully-repaired and busy escalator, they too began to suffer from the Silver Eggheads Writing Derby, in their nerves rather than their muscles.
Flaxman set himself to mastering his boyhood dread of the eggheads, talking at them at a great rate, nodding at them vigorously and almost unceasingly while they talked, and offering them cigars in moments of forgetfulness. On the advice of his psychiatrist he even had the primitive bolt removed that Gaspard had attached with so much effort, on the grounds that it was chiefly a symbolic guard against childish fears rather than a real one against present dangers.
Flaxman largely failed in his efforts, however, especially as the eggheads caught onto his fear and found delight in touching it off by telling him about their operation (the big one Zukie had performed), by describing to him how
More and more often Flaxman's limousine was unavailable for egg-transport, being used to take its owner for long healing drives in the Santa Monica Hills.
Cullinghain was at first highly complimented that so many of the eggheads were voluntarily seeking editorial direction, but as soon as he realized they only wanted to draw him out and subtly mock him-amuse themselves by pushing his brain buttons, as it were, and then jeer at the fewness of them-he became even more visibly distraught than Flaxman. However, on the morning for which Gaspard had predicted his nervous breakdown, he appeared with a strange female secretary (apparently the rule against hiring new employees did not apply in her case) whom he introduced as Miss Willow and who, although she did nothing except sit silently near Cullingham and occasionally wiggle a pencil across the pages of a little black notebook, seemed to have a wonderfully soothing effect on the editorial director's nerves.
Miss Willow was a lean, tall, insolent beauty who got a gasp out of Gaspard the first time he saw her. Except that her bosom and hips were somewhat more developed, she had the figure of a high-fashion model. She dressed it in a severely-tailored black suit and topped it off with a sleek puff of platinum hair that exactly matched her stockings. Her pale face had that sharp-boned blend of intellectuality and haughtiness that also characterizes the sibyls and nymphs of high fashion.
Gaspard developed a yen for her at once. Cunningly, it had occurred to him that Miss Willow's platinum iciness, warmed just a bit, might be the very thing to wean him from his ridiculous attachment to the saucily termagent Nurse Bishop. However, on the two occasions when he found Miss Willow alone and tried to start a conversation with her, she simply ignored him utterly-she might have been completely alone in the room for all the difference his presence made.
