The Silver Eggheads

by Fritz Leiber

  The Silver Eggheads

  Fritz Leiber

  It was a utopian future for writers. The invention of the wordmill – nicknamed the "Silver Egghead" – did all the hard work, grinding out endless stories for an insatiable public. All the writers had to do was cash their checks and pose for publicity photos.

  One day the writers revolted. The time had come to get back to business, so they destroyed the wordmills.

  Then they discovered that they had nothing to say.

  The Silver Eggheads

  by Fritz Leiber

  For Bjo, John and Ernie

  ONE

  Gaspard de la Nuit, journeyman writer, ran a chamois along the gleaming brass baseplate of his towering wordmill with exactly the same absentminded affection with which he would somewhat later this morning stroke the smooth squirmy flank of Heloise Ibsen, master writer. Automatically he checked the thousands of ranked telltale lights (all dark) and the rows of dials (all at zero) on the electronic machine's two-storey-high face. Then he yawned, massaging the muscles at the back of his neck.

  He had spent his graveyard shift dozing, drinking coffee, and finishing reading Sinners of the Satellite Suburbs and Everyman His Own Philosopher. An author really couldn't ask for an easier night's writing.

  He dropped the chamois in a drawer of his battered desk. Glancing critically at himself in a small mirror, he fingercombed his wavy dark hair, flicked into flamboyant folds his flowing black silk necktie, and carefully buttoned the braided frogs of his black velvet smoking jacket.

  Then he briskly walked to the timeclock and punched out. His opposite number on the day shift was already twenty seconds late, but that was something for the union disciplinary committee to fume about, not he.

  Short of the door of the cathedral-like room housing the half dozen organ-huge wordmills of Rocket House and Proton Press, he paused to let pass an ooh-ahing crowd of early morning visitors conducted by a groggy-eyed Joe the Guard, a bent old man almost as skilled as a writer at the art of sleeping on the job. Gaspard was glad he would not have to endure their idiotic questions (Where did you get the ideas you feed your wordmill, mister?) and suspicious excited peerings (among other things, the public believed that all writers were sex maniacs, which was something of an exaggeration). He was particularly glad to miss the nosy pryings of a most objectionable man-and-boy pair dressed in matching father-and-son slack suits, the man all too clearly fussy and know-it-all, the boy peevish and bored. He hoped Joe the Guard would stay wakeful enough to restrain the latter from tampering with his beloved machine.

  Nevertheless, mindful of the audience, Gaspard dragged out his large, curving, mellow-brown meerschaum pipe, tipped up its silver-filigree cap, and thumbed in cube-cut tobacco from his gold-embossed sealskin pouch. He frowned slightly as he did so. Having to smoke this Germanic monstrosity was just about his only objection to being a writer, along with the somewhat sissified clothes he had to wear. But publishers were as fiendishly thorough about enforcing such contractual trivia as they were about making a writer work his full shift whether his wordmills were turning or not.

  But what the ef, he reminded himself with a smile, soon enough he'd be a master writer, licensed to wear levis and sweatshirt, get a crewcut, and smoke cigarettes in public. And certainly with his journeyman status he was much better off than an apprentice writer, who was generally required to wear some such costume as a Grecian tunic, Roman toga, monkish robes, or doublet-and-hose along with a starchy wide ruff. Why, Gaspard had even known a poor writer's devil whom humorous union sadists had conned into contracting to dress as a Babylonian and carry everywhere he went three stone tablets and a chisel and mallet. Granted the public demanded atmosphere in its authors, that was going needlessly far.

  Yet by and large writers had such a soft, even plushy existence that Gaspard could not understand why so many masters and journeymen seemed increasingly dissatisfied of late with their lot, mouthing dark bitches and gripes against their publishers and nursing the illusion that each of them bad a deep serious message to deliver to the public. Many of them frankly hated their own wordmills, which struck Gaspard as two shades worse than sacrilege. Even Heloise had taken to haring off in the small hours of the night to attend secret grievance meetings (that Gaspard didn't even want to hear about) instead of putting the hours after her beloved swing shift into solid sleep in preparation for his homecoming.

  The thought of Heloise awaiting him on their frowsty couch d'amour brought a second frown to Gaspard's brow. Somehow two hours devoted to tender horizontal activities, even with an ingenious master writer, seemed excessive to him, not to say taxing. One hour ought to be ample.

  "That's a writer, Son." It was of course the slack-suited man answering in a needlessly loud whisper a question from the slack-suited boy. But Gaspard shrugged off the tone of contempt and disapproval in the whisper and strode out past the straggling visitors with a lewd grin. It was his lot, he reminded himself, to belong to a profession whose members were supposed to be sex fiends and, after all, the two hours of bliss looming before him were a compromise between his one and Heloise's three.

  Readership Row, the avenue of New Angeles, California, on which all the publishing houses of the English-speaking Solar System were concentrated, seemed strangely empty of humans this morning (was it possible for the whole day shift to have overslept?) though there were a number of remarkably rough-looking robots about-angular metal men seven feet tall with single video eyes like Polyphemus and small loudspeakers for conversing with humans (they mostly preferred to talk to each other by direct metal-to-metal contact or silent short-wave radio).

  Then his spirits lifted as he spotted a robot he knew, a rugged yet sleek blued-steel job who stood out from his dingier brethren like a racehorse among percherons.

  "Hi, Zane!" he called cheerfully. "What's a-foot?"

  "Greetings, Gaspard," the robot responded, striding up to him and then adding at much lower amplification, "I don't know. These monsters won't talk to me. They're goons, of course, presumably hirelings of the publishers. Perhaps the Teamsters have struck again and the publishers anticipate attempts to interfere with book distribution at the source."

  "None of our business then," Gaspard pronounced cheerfully. "Are they keeping you busy these days, Old Scrapheap?"

  "It's a fulltime job just earning enough juice to feed my batteries, Old Fleshpot," the robot replied, matching his quip. "But then I'm a crazy mixed-up electricity hog."

  Gaspard smiled at him warmly as the robot purred pleasantly. Gaspard really enjoyed associating with robots, especially his good friend Zane, though most humans frowned on fraternizing with the enemy (as they privately described it) and once in a lover's rage Heloise Ibsen had called him a "dirty robot-lover."

  Perhaps his liking for robots was an outgrowth of his affection for wordmills, but Gaspard never tried to analyze it further. He merely knew he was attracted to robots and detested anti-robot prejudice wherever it lifted its sledgehammer head. What the devil, he told himself, robots were fun and fine fellows to boot, and even if they did eventually take over the world from their creators, at least they would be dispassionate about it and (as far as science could foresee) there never would be any intermarriage question or other stupid trivia to trouble the relationship of the two races.

  In any case Zane Gort was a grand guy, in a class by himself among the metal folk. A self-employed robot who devoted himself chiefly to writing adventure stories for other robots, Zane Gort had a wide knowledge of the world, a depth of sympathy, and a cleancut brunch attitude toward life (brunch was the robotese equivalent of "manly") that made him one intelligent being in a million.

  Now Zane said, "I heard a rumor, Gaspard, that you human writer
s were planning a strike-or some even more violent action."

  "Don't you believe it," Gaspard assured him. "Heloise would have told me."

  "I'm glad to hear that," Zane said politely with a whir that didn't sound too convinced. Suddenly a bolt of electricty shot from his upraised right pinchers to his forehead.

  "Excuse me," he said as Gaspard involuntarily jerked back, "but I'm going to have to dart. I've been hung up for rour hours on my new novel. I got Dr. Tungsten into a prelicament from which I couldn't extricate him. A solution just struck me. Whir-hey!"

  He departed down the avenue like a blue flash.

  Gaspard continued on his placid way, vaguely wondering what it would feel like to be hung up on a novel for four hours. Of course your wordmill might short-circuit, but that wasn't exactly the same thing. Would it be like being stumped by a chess problem? Or would it be more like those intense emotional frustrations that were supposed to have greatly troubled people (writers even!) back in the bad old days before hypnotherapy, hypertranquilizers, and tireless robot psychiatrists.

  But in that case, what would emotional frustrations feel like? Truly, there were times when Gaspard thought that he led an existence a shade too tranquil, too bovine, even for a writer.

  TWO

  Gaspard's misty ruminations were cut short by the big newsstand that marked the end of Readership Row. It loomed up as glitteringly enticing as a Christmas tree and made him feel like a six year old about to be ambushed by Santa Claus.

  The general appearance of the insides of paperback books hadn't changed much in two centuries-it was still dark type on light paper-but their covers had blossomed wonderfully. What had been the merest intention in midTwentieth Century had proliferated and come to full flower.

  By the magic of stereoprint and 4-action reproduction, voluptuous dollsize girls undressed endlessly, garment by garment, or repeatedly passed in filmy robes across lighted windows. Mobsters and monsters leered, philosophers and ministers looked out with benign, multi-expressioned concern. Blood spattered corpses toppled, bridges fell, storms lashed trees, spaceships whizzed across five-by-five-inch windows in starry infinity.

  All the senses were assaulted-the ears by flurries of faint fairy music, as alluring as that of the sirens and punctuated by the smack of slow kisses, the thwack of whips against nubile flesh, the soft rattle of machinegun bullets and the ghostly roar of atomic bombs.

  Gaspard's nostrils caught whiffs of turkey dinners, hardwood fires, pine needles, orange groves, gunpowder, the barest hint of marijuana, musk, and such leading perfumes as Fer de Lance and Nebula Number Five: while he knew that if he reached out and touched any single book, it would feel like velvet, mink, rose petals, Spanish leather, handpolished maple, deep-patinaed bronze, Venusian sea-cork, or warm girl-skin.

  Momentarily the idea of even three intimate hours with Heloise Ibsen seemed hardly excessive. Approaching the clustered paperbacks, which actually were arranged like the baubles on a bushy Christmas tree (except for the austerely modernistic rack of robots' book-spools) Gaspard slowed his already sedate pace in order to stretch the pleasure of anticipation.

  Unlike most writers of his age, Gaspard de la Nuit enjoyed reading books, especially the near-hypnotic wordmill product, sometimes called wordwooze, with its warm rosy clouds of adjectives, its action verbs like wild winds blowing, its four-dimensionally solid nouns and electro-welded connectives.

  Right now he was looking forward to two distinct pleasures: selecting and purchasing a new paperback for tonight's reading and once more seeing on display his own flrst novel Passwords to Passion, which was mostly distinguished by the girl on the cover removing seven colored petticoats-a full spectrum. On the back cover was a stereoprint of himself in his smoking jacket against an appropriate Victorian parlor background, bending over a slim beautiful girl with a coiffure full of foot-long hatpins and a lace bodice most interestingly three quarters unhooked. The picture was captioned: "Gaspard de la Nuit collecting material for his Magnum Opus." Below was this statement: 'Gaspard de la Nuit is a French dishwasher who has had extracurricular experience as a spaceship steward, abortionist's helper (working undercover to collect evidence for the Surкte), Montmartre taxi-driver, valet to a vicomte of the ancien regime, high-topper in the pine forests of French Canada, student of interplanetary divorce law at the Sorbonne, Huguenot missionary to the black Martians, and piano player in a maison de joie. Under the influence of mescaline he has relived the infamous lives of five notorious Parisian procurers. He has spent three years as a patient in mental hospitals, where he twice tried to beat a nurse to death. An accomplished skindiver in the deathless tradition of his countryman Captain Cousteau, he has witnessed the sadistic submarine sex rites of the Venusian mermen. Gaspard de la Nuit wrote Passwords to Passion in two and one-third days on a brand-new Rocket Wordmaster equipped with Floating Adverbs and FiveSecond Suspense Injection. He polished the novel on a Simon Super-juicer. 'For outstanding achievement in prose packaging' de la Nuit was awarded by Publishers' Presideo a three-night trip to Exotic Old Lower Manhattan. He is now gathering material for his second novel, which he tells us will be titled Snuggle with Sinners."

  Gaspard knew those words by heart and also that they were completely untrue except for the detail that the milling of the sexscrawl had taken seven shifts. He had never been off earth, visited Paris, indulged in a sport more strenuous than pingpong, held down a job more exotic than stock clerk, or had even the dullest, least newsworthy psychosis.

  As for "gathering material," well, his chief memories of that photographing session were of the stabbing stereo lights and the lesbian model complaining repeatedly of his bad breath and sculpturing invitations with her slim restless torso to the mannish lady photographer. Of course now there was Heloise Ibsen, and Gaspard had to admit she counted for three women at least.

  Yes, the blurbs were untrue and Gaspard knew them by heart and still it was a pleasure to reread them on the stand, verifying and resavoring their every nuance of disgusting flattering glamor.

  As he reached out his hand for the twinkling book (the cover girl was preparing to whip off her ultimate violet shift) a hot red roaring stinking gush of flame erupted from the side and blackened in an instant the pigmy world of the sex doll. Gaspard sprang back, still in the daze of his dream though it had turned to nightmare. In three seconds the lovely book-tree was a shriveled skeleton with wrinkled black fruit. The flame shut off and a medley of harsh murderous laughs replaced its roar. Gaspard recognized the dramatic alto. "Heloise!" he cried incredulously.

  For there was no question, it was his master lover whom he'd thought to be building libido abed-her strong features convulsed in fiendish glee, her dark hair streaming like a maenad's, her vigorous form pushing out exuberantly against levis and tailed shirt, and brandishing in her right hand a sinister black globe.

  At her side was Homer Hemingway, a shaven-head mas ter writer whom Gaspard had always written off as a hulking boob, though Heloise had recently developed a whim for repeating his oafishly laconic remarks. The distinctive items of Homer's garb were a corduroy shooting vest stuffed with giant firecrackers and a broad belt with a scabbarded axe swinging from it. He held in his hairy-backed paws the smoking nozzle of a flame-thrower.

  Behind them were two burly journeyman writers in striped sweaters and dark blue berets. One carried the pack of the flame-thrower, the other a submachinegun and on a short staff a banner with a black "30" on a gray ground.

  "What are you up to, Heloise?" Gaspard demanded feebly, still in shock.

  His valkyrie of passion planted her fists on her hips. "My own sweet business, you sleepwalker!" she grinned at him. "Dig the wax out of your ears! Take off your blinkers! Unzip your little mind!"

  "But why are you burning books, dear?"

  "You call that mill-swill books? You worm! You ground-crawler! Haven't you ever wanted to write something that was really your own? Something that towered?"

  "Of course not," Gaspard
replied in scandalized tones. "How could I? Dear, you haven't told me why you're burning-"

  "This is just a foretaste!" she snapped at him. "A symbol." Then the full fiendishness returned to her grin as she said, "The vital destruction is yet to come! Come on, Gaspard, you can help. Get off your lazy tail and play the man!"

  "Help do what? Darling, you still haven't told me-"

  Homer Hemingway interrupted with, "Time's a-wasting, babe." He favored Gaspard with a contemptuous blank stare.

  The latter ignored him. "And what's that black iron ball you've got in your hand, Heloise?" he wanted to know.

  The question seemed to delight his athletic houri. "You read a lot of books, don't you, Gaspard? Ever read anything about nihilism and the nihilists?"

  "No, dear, I can't say I have."

  "Well, you will, sweetheart, you will. In fact, you're going to find out what it feels like to be one. Give him your axe, Homer."

  All at once Gaspard recalled Zane Gort's question. "Are you people striking?" he asked incredulously. "Heloise, you never told me a word."

  "Of course not! I couldn't trust you. You've got weaknesses-especially for wordmills. But now you're going to have a chance to prove yourself. Take Homer's axe."

  "Look, you people can't get away with any violence," Gaspard protested earnestly. "The Avenue's packed with robot goons."

  "They won't bother us, buddy," Homer Hemingway asserted cryptically. "We got inside dope on them tin buggers. If that's all that's been worrying you, buddy, you can grab yourself an axe and smash yourself some wordmills."

  "Smash wordmills?" Gaspard gasped in tones suitable for saying, "Shoot the Pope?" "Poison Lake Michigan?" or "Blow up the sun?"

  "Yes, smash wordmills!" his lovely man-eater snapped. "Quick, Gaspard, choose! Are you a true writer or a scab? Are you a hero or a publisher's fink?"