The Silver Eggheads

by Fritz Leiber

  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?"

  "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 Dr. Tungsten Turns a Crank, third in the series. The excerpt you just heard is from the fifth, Dr. Tungsten and the Diamond Drill-that's the name of the menace, Vilya's master and Dr. Tungsten's opponent in that volume. There she goes!"

  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 knew Eve, and that was the beginning of all those begattings. Some day I'm going to expurgate the Bible-it's my dream. But until then please don't quote it in deliberate attempts to embarrass me. And now, Zane Gort, you robost beast, let me go!"

  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 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 hu
man 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.