The Silver Eggheads

whenever he looked up from his contest chore.

Even Miss Willow was present-it had turned out that Cullingham's lease on her had three days more to run. However, because Flaxman found her disturbing, the femmequin had been draped at the last minute with a white sheet, though it is rather doubtful if this made her any less 'creepy' to the publisher.

Out of tacit deference to Flaxman's weakness it had been decided not to have the eggs physically present, but a two-way TV link had been set up between the Nursery and the office. Unfortunately there was a defect in the circuit which caused the huge screen to black out occasionally or dissolve in a herringbone churning. At the moment, however, it showed Miss Jackson surrounded by a battery of small TV eyes; despite their pretensions of disinterestedness and lonely intellectual grandeur, the eggs were all showing a considerable interest in the judging of their dashed-off masterpieces, not one of which had failed to make the deadline. Half Pint, indeed, had been writing continuously at absolute top speed ever since his restoration to the Nursery.

The two partners secretly enjoyed having a large audience; actually it was the only way either of them could ever get any work done. They made no comments and concealed all their reactions, favorable or otherwise, even while changing rolls, which created for everyone a nervous light-headed excitement. Conversations, conducted in undertones, skittered and veered.

'I read some more in The Mauritzius Case last night,' Gaspard remarked, shaking his head. 'Boy, Bishop, if that's a sample of the oldtimers' mystery stories, I wonder what their mainstream must have been like!'

'Hurry up and finish it,' she told him. 'The eggs have got another whodunnit picked out for you, by an old Russian master of suspense-The Brothers Karamazov. After that they're going to let you relax with a little rib-tickler about an Irish funeral called Finnegan's Wake, some light society reminiscenses entifled Remembrance of Things Past, a cloak-and-sword melodrama name of King Lear, a fairy tale called The Magic Mountain and a soap opera about the ups and downs of suffering families-War and Peace, I believe they said. They got lots of easy reading mapped out for you, they tell me, after you finish the two mysteries.'

Gaspard shrugged. 'As long as they spare me the old mainstream, I guess I'll make it. There is one mystery that keeps tickling me, though-Zane's Project El.'

'Hasn't he told you about it? You're his friend.'

'Not a word. Do you know anything? I think Half Pint's in on it.'

Nurse Bishop shook her head, then grinned. 'We've got our own secret,' she whispered. She squeezed his hand.

Gaspard lightly returned the pressure. 'Who do the eggs think is going to win the contest?'

'They won't say a word. I've never known them to be so secretive. It worries me.'

'Maybe all the scripts'll be knockouts,' Gaspard suggested with grandiose optimism. 'Thirty best-sellers smack off the bat!'

The rolls had almost all been read and tension was rising sharply-as reflected by Joe the Guard having a little struggle to keep Pop from bee-lining to the drinks-when Gaspard, visiting the refreshment table, felt himself nudged by the steel elbow of Zane Gort, who with far-seeing diplomacy was fetching a plate for Heloise Ibsen.

'Gaspard,' the robot whispered. 'There's something I must tell you about.'

'Project El?' Gaspard inquired quickly.

'No, far more important than that-at least to me personally. It's something I'd never tell another robot. Gaspard, Miss Blushes and I spent the last two nights together-intimately.'

'Was it good, Zane?'

'Thrilling beyond belief! But what I didn't realize, Gaspard, what truly startled and to a degree upset me, what I never in fact for a moment anticipated, is that Miss Blushes is such an enthusiast! '

'You mean, Zane, you're bothered because you think she's had previous-'

'Oh no, no, no. She was completely innocent-there are ways of telling-yet she almost instantly became a mad enthusiast. She wanted us to plug in on each other again and again-and for long periods!'

'Is that bad? Watch it, here comes Pop--no, Joe's caught him.'

'No, it's not bad, Gaspard, but it eats up so much time, especially when one envisages a lifetime of such companionship lying ahead. You see, the moment of robot-robix union is the one time when a robot isn't thinking- his mind goes into a sort of ecstatic electronic trance, a blackout with lightning flashes. Now I'm used to thinking twenty-four hours a day, year in and out, and the prospect of having huge chunks cut out of that thinking time is profoundly disquieting. Gaspard, I know you'll hardly credit this, but on the last connection we had, Miss Blushes and I were plugged in for four solid hours!'

'Oh-oh, Old Bolt,' Gaspard commented. 'You're up against some of the same problems I had with Ibsen.'

'But what's the answer? When'll I do my writing?'

'Is it possible, Zane, you're changing your mind about monogamy being the best solution for the author of the Dr. Tungsten stories? At any rate I think a certain amount of travel, or even flitting, is indicated. Hold it, they've finished the readings. Cullingham wins by a roll! Pay you later- I've got to get back to Bishop.'

G. K. Culllngham leaned back, blinking his eyes rapidly, squeezing the lids together. This time he did not return Heloise's smile, but only bowed his head. Then he said in a quack-quack burst, 'How-about-a-conference-Flaxy before-you-start-that-last-one? '-his voice was trying to match the drug-goaded speed of his reading. He touched a button and the TV screen went black. 'They'll-think-it's-just-the-bad-circuit- again,' he explained.

Flaxnian finished inserting his last roll in his machine and looked around at his partner. Cullingham at last got his voice under control, at least to the extent of not letting the Prestissimo Pills speed it up. In fact the words came out with painful slowness as he inquired, 'How are your entries so far?'

Flaxman's impassive look changed to one of deep sadness. With a painful hushed respectfulness, like one reporting the tragic toll of a flash-fire in a kindergarten, he said softly, 'They stink. They all stink.'

Cullingham nodded. 'So do mine. All of them.'

FORTY-TWO

Gaspard's first thought was that deep down inside him he had known all along that this was going to happen. And that all the others must have known the same thing too-deep, deep down. How could anyone really have expected aged ego-maniacs living under incubator conditions to produce anything popular? Or stories about life in the raw to come from canned and coddled hyper-basket-cases? Suddenly Flaxman and Cullingham appeared to Gaspard as figures of tragic romance, friends of the forlorn hope, the lost cause, and sunset illusions.

And indeed now Flaxman did shrug shoulders like a somewhat undersized romantic hero who bravely takes up tragedy's full burden. 'Still-got-one-more-to-wade-through-a-matter-of-form,' the publisher said briskly, bent his head, and spun his reading machine.

Gaspard stood up and gravitated with the others over to Cullingham. They were like pallbearers clustering around a funeral director.

'It's not lack of skill or inventiveness,' Cullingham was explaining almost apologetically, his speech now more under control. 'And although it might have helped, it's not even lack of editorial direction.' As he said that he gave Gaspard and Zane a faint quizzical smile.

'No simple human sympathies, I suppose?' Gaspard ventured.

'Or strong plot-line?' Zane added.

'Or reader-identification?' Miss Blushes put in.

'Or plain guts?' Heloise finished.

Cullingham nodded. 'But more than that,' he said, 'it's simply the incredible conceit of the things, their swollen ego-centeredness. These manuscripts aren't stories, they're puzzles-and most of them insoluble at that. Ulysses, Mars Violet, Alexanderplatz, Venus Deferred, The Fairy Queen, and the riddling Icelandic bards aren't in it for sheer perverse complexity. It adds up to this: the eggheads have tried to be as confusing as possible to show how brilliant they are.'