The Silver Eggheads

by Fritz Leiber

  Gaspard walked up to the double desk. During the few steps he heard, felt and smelt a ghostly encore of the sensations of the past two hours: the screeching writers, Heloise's taunts, Homer's cannoncrackers and the impact of the big boob's fist-above all, the stench of burnt and blasted books and wordmills. The resultant unfamiliar emotion, anger, seemed to Gaspard to be a fuel he had been looking for all his life. He planted the palms of both his hands solidly on the grotesque desk.

  "Well?" he said in no friendly voice.

  "Well what, Gaspard?" the short dark man asked absently. He was doodling on a sheet of silver gray paper, incising it with very black-edged ovoids, some of them decorated with curlycues and bands, like Easter eggs.

  "I mean, where were you when they wrecked your wordmills?" Gaspard slammed the desk with his fist. The short dark man jumped again, though not very much. Gaspard continued, "Look here, Mr. Flaxman. You and Mr. Cullingham here" (he nodded toward the tall fair man) "are Rocket House. To me that means more than ownership, even mastery, it means responsibility, loyalty. Why weren't you down there fighting to save your machines? Why did you leave it to me and one true robot?"

  Flaxman laughed in a light friendly way. "Why were you there, Gaspard? on our side, I mean? Nice of you and all that-thanks! — but you seem to have been acting against what your union believes are the best interests of your profession."

  "Profession!" Gaspard made the sound of spitting. "Honestly, Mr. Flaxman, I don't see why you dignify it with that name or act so blasted magnanimous to the jumped-up little rats!"

  "Tut-tut, Gaspard, where's your own loyalty? I mean of long-hair to long-hair."

  Gaspard savagely rammed his own dark wavy locks back from his forehead. "Lay off, Mr. Flaxman. Oh, I wear it that way, all right, just as I wear this Italian monkey-suit, because it's part of the job, it's in my contract, it's what a writer's got to do-just as I've changed my name to Gaspard de la Noo-ee. But I'm not fooled by any of this junk, I don't believe I'm any flaming literary genius. I'm a freak, I guess, a traitor to my union if you like. Maybe you know they call me Gaspard the Nut. Well, that's the way I like it, because at heart I'm just a nuts-and-bolts man, a would-be wordmill mechanic and nothing more."

  "Gaspard, what's happened to you?" Flaxman demanded wonderingly. "I've always thought of you as just an average happy conceited writer-no longer on brains than most but a lot more contented-and here you're orating like a fire-breathing fanatic. I'm genuinely startled."

  "I'm startled too, come to think of it," Gaspard agreed. "I guess I've begun to ask myself for the first time in my life what I really like and what I don't like. I know this much: I'm no writer!"

  "Now that really is odd," Flaxman commented animatedly. "More than once I've remarked to Mr. Cullingham that in your back-cover stereo with Miss Frisky Trisket you look more like a writer than many of the most dramatic literary lights of long standing-even Homer Hemingway himself. Of course, you haven't got Homer's shaven-headed emotional force-"

  "Or his singed-rump intellectual feebleness either!" Gaspard snarled, fingering the lump on his jaw. "That muscle-bound boob!"

  "Don't underestimate shaven-headedness, Gaspard," Cullingham put in softly yet sharply. "Buddha was shaven-headed."

  "Buddha, hell-Yul Brynner was!" Flaxman growled. "Look here, Gaspard, when you've been in this business as long as I have-"

  "The hell with how writers look! The hell with writers!" Gaspard paused after that outburst and his voice steadied. "But get this, Mr. Flaxman, I really loved wordmills. I enjoyed their product, sure. But I loved the machines themselves. Why, Mr. Flaxman, I know you owned several, but did you ever actually realize-deep down in your guts-that each wordmill was unique, an immortal Shakespeare, something that couldn't be blueprinted, and that's why there hasn't been a new one built in over sixty years? All we had to do to them was add to their memory banks the new words as they appeared in the language, and feed in a pretty standardized book program, and then press the Go Button. I wonder how many people realize that? Well, they'll find out soon enough, when they try to build a wordmill from scratch without a single living man who understands the creative side of the problem-a real writer, I mean. This morning there were five hundred wordmills on Readership Row, now there's not one in the whole Solar System-three might have been saved, but you were scared for your own hides! Five hundred Shakespeares were murdered while you sat there chatting. Five hundred deathless literary geniuses, unique and absolutely self-sufficient-"

  He broke off because Cullingham was laughing at him in little giggly peals that were mounting hysterically.

  "Are you sneering at greatness?" Gaspard demanded.

  "No!" Cullingham managed to get out. "I am merely lost in admiration of a man who can invest the smashing of a few oversize psychotically creative typewriters with all the grandeur of the Twilight of the Gods."

  EIGHT

  "Gaspard," the taller, thinner half of Rocket House went on when he got himself under control, "You are undoubtedly the wildest-eyed idealist who ever smuggled himself into a conservative union. Let's stick to facts: wordmills aren't even robots, they weren't ever alive; to talk of murder is mere poetry. Men built the wordmills, men also directed them. Yes, men-myself among them, as you know-supervized the dark electrical infinities churning inside them, just as ancient writers had to direct the activities of their own subconscious minds-usually in a most inefficient fashion."

  "Well, at least those old authors had subconscious minds," Gaspard said. "I'm not sure we do any more. Certainly we haven't any subconscious minds rich enough to pattern new wordmills on and fill their memory banks."

  "Still, it's a very interesting point," Cullingham persisted blandly, "and an important one to keep in view, whatever resources we have to fall back on to meet the approaching fiction famine. Most people believe wordmills were invented and adopted by the publishers because a single writer's mind could no longer hold the vast amount of raw material needed to produce a convincing work of fiction, the world and human society and its endless specialties having become too complex for a single person to comprehend. Nonsense! Wordmills were adopted because they were more efficient publishing-wise.

  "Toward the end of the Twentieth Century, most fiction was written by a few top editors-in the sense that they provided the themes, the plot skeletons, the styling, the key shocks; the writers merely filled in the outlines. Naturally a machine that could be owned and kept in one place was incomparably more efficient than a stable of writers galloping around, changing publishers, organizing unions and guilds, demanding higher royalties, having psychoses and sports cars and mistresses and neurotic children, exploding their temperaments all over the lot, and even trying to sneak weird notions of their own into editor-perfected stories.

  "In fact, wordmills were so much more efficient than writers that the latter could be kept on as a harmless featherbedded glamor-asset-and of course by then the writers' unions were so strong that some such compromise was inevitable.

  "All this simply underlines my main point: that the two activities involved in writing are the workaday unconscious churning and the inspired direction or programming. These two activities are completely separate and it's best when they are carried out by two distinct persons or mechanisms. Actually the name of the directive genius (today called a programmer rather than an editor, of course) ought always in justice to have appeared on each paperback or listen-tape alongside the names of the glamorauthor and the wordmill.. But now I'm riding my hobby away from my point, which is simply that a man is always the ultimate directive force."

  "Maybe, Mr. Cullingham," Gaspard said unwillingly. "And you were a good enough programmer, I'll admit, if programming is anywhere near as difficult and important as you make it out to be-which I frankly doubt. Weren't all the basic programs created at the same time the wordmills were?" Cullingham shook his head, then half shrugged. "Anyway," Gaspard continued, "I always thought Whittlesey Wordmaster Four once wrote three best-selling serio
us novels and a science-fiction romance without any programming at all. Maybe that's just promotion copy, you'll tell me, but I'll believe otherwise when it's proved to me." The bitter tone returned to his voice. "Just as I'll believe that my fellow monkeys can actually write books when I read 'em and get to page two. They've been talking big for months, but I'll wait 'til the juice starts to flow through their daisy rings and the words start coming."

  "Excuse me, Gaspard," Flaxman interjected, "but would you mind tuning the emotional down and the factual up? I'd like to hear a little more about the fracas on the Row. What happened to Rocket's properties, for instance?"

  Gaspard straightened up, scowling. "Why," he said simply, "all your wordmills were wrecked-wrecked beyond any remote possibility of repair. That's all."

  "Tch-tch," said Flaxman, shaking his head. "Dreadful," echoed Cullinghain.

  Gaspard looked back and forth between the two partners with deep and puzzled suspicion. Their feeble efforts to appear concerned only made them look to him more like two fat cats full of stolen cream and with a map of the secret tunnel leading to the meat locker tucked inside their fur vests.

  "Do you two understand me?" he said. "I'll print it out for you. Your three wordmills were wrecked-one by bomb, two by flame-thrower." His eyes widened as the scene came back to him. "It was murder, Mr. Flaxman, ghastly murder. You know the one we called Rocky? — Rocky Phraser? He was just an old Harper Hardcover Electrobrain, rebuilt in '07 and '49, but I never missed a book he milled- well, I had to watch old Rocky blacken and warp and frizzle. My own girl's new boyfriend was on the hose, too."

  "Tch-tch. His own girl's new boyfriend," Flaxman said, managing to sound solicitous and to grin at the same time. His composure and Cu]lingham's were positively supernatural.

  Gaspard nodded savagely. "Your great Homer Hemingway, by the way," he shot at them, trying somehow to get a rise. "But Zane Gort scorched his rear end for him."

  Flaxman shook his head. "It's a wicked world," he said. "Gaspard, you're a hero. For as long as the other writers are out we'll keep you on at fifteen percent of union wages. But I don't like this about one of our robot authors harming a human. Hey, Zane! — as a self-employed robot you'll have to bear the costs of any suits brought against Rocket House. It's in your contract."

  "Homer Hemingway deserved every hot wallop Zane gave him," Gaspard protested. "The sadistic boob had been using his flamer on Miss Blushes."

  Cullingham looked around at them inquiringly.

  "The pink robix Gaspard and Zane carried in," Flaxman explained. "Our visiting breen, the new government censoring robix."

  He shook his head, grinning widely. "So now the naked truth is we got a censor and no scripts for her to bluepencil. Can you top that for irony? It's a screwy business, all right. I thought you knew Miss Blushes, Cully."

  At that moment a high sweet voice behind them broke in, strident but dreamy. "Question naked sequence. Warn on blue material. For 'can' print 'bathroom.' Delete 'screwy' and close. For 'knew' substitute 'were acquainted with.' Oh my, where am I? What's been happening to me?"

  Miss Blushes was sitting up and flapping her pinchers. Zane Gort was kneeling at her side and tenderly mopping her scorched flank with a damp pad-the ugly discoloration was almost gone. Now he tucked the pad in a little door in his chest and supported her with an arm.

  "You must be calm," he said. "Everything's going to be all right. You're with friends."

  "Am I? How can I be sure?" She drew away from him, felt of herself and hastily closed several little doors. "Why, you've been doing things to me! I've been lying here exposed. Those humans have seen me with my sockets open!"

  "It was necessary," Zane assured her. "You needed electricity and other attentions. You've had a rough time. Now you must rest."

  "Other attentions indeed!" Miss Blushes shrilled. "What do you mean by making a peep show of me?"

  "Believe me, miss," Flaxman volunteered, "we're gentlemen-we haven't been sneaking any looks at you-though I must say you're a most attractive robix indeed-if Zane's books had covers, I'd ask you to pose for one."

  "Yes, with my sockets wide open and my oil-ports unscrewed, I suppose!" Miss Blushes said witheringly.

  NINE

  In the Rub-Down Room of his penthouse pad, which was finished in a rubberoid that simulated knotty pine, Heloise Ibsen was anointing the seared rump of Homer Hemingway.

  "Go easy, baby, that hurts," the big writer commanded. "Don't be such a baby yourself," the moody writrix commanded back at him.

  "Aaah, that feels better. Now the silk sheet, baby."

  "In a minute. Christ, you've got a beautiful body, Homer. Just looking at it does things to me."

  "That so, baby? Look, I figure I could drink some warm milk in about five minutes."

  "Nuts to milk. Yes indeed, it does things to me. Homer, let's. ." She murmured her suggestion into his ear.

  The big writer twisted away from her. "Not on your life, baby! I got to get back in training first. That stuff saps a guy."

  "You think push-ups and squats will be easier on you?"

  "They don't tap the life-essence. And never blow in my ear like that again-it's deafening." He pillowed his cheek on the backs of his hands. "Besides, I'm not in the mood."

  Heloise sprang up and paced the rubberoid. "Christ, you're worse than Gaspard. He was always in the mood, even if he didn't know how to ride it."

  "Now don't go thinking about that little pipsqueak," Homer abjured her somewhat sleepily. "You seen how I pasted him, didn't you?"

  Heloise went on pacing. "Gaspard was a pipsqueak," she said analytically, "but he had brains of a slow secretive sort, or he wouldn't have been able to keep me from catching on that he was a publisher's fink. And he'd never have become a publisher's fink unless he'd seen more profit in it than staying with the union. Gaspard was lazy, but he wasn't insane."

  "Look, the last babe I had always used to get me my warm milk on time," Homer put in from the massage table.

  Heloise quickened her pace. "I'll bet Gaspard has inside dope from Flaxman and Cullingham about some trick Racket House has up its sleeve for beating us writers-and beating the other publishers at the same time! That's why Racket House never tried to protect its wordmills. I'll bet that little fink is sitting in Flaxman's and Cullingham's office right now, laughing at us all."

  "And this babe that got me my milk didn't go clomping up and down all the time talking to herself," Homer continued.

  Heloise stopped and looked at him. "Well, she certainly didn't spend much of her time in bed tapping your lifeessence I gather. Face it, Homer, I'm not going to hang myself in a closet or sit by the stove heating your bottle, even if that last midget-pelvised apprentice playmate of yours did. When you got me, Homer, you got a woman that's all woman."

  "Yeah, I know, babe," Homer replied, catching fire faintly. "And you got yourself a real man."

  "I wonder," Heloise said. "You let that robot friend of Gaspard larrup you as if you were a little boy."

  "That's not fair, babe," Homer protested. "Them tin niggers'll kill the strongest man in the world. They'll tear Hercules apart-or any of them old movie heroes."

  "I suppose so," Heloise said. She came over to the table. "But wouldn't you like to beat up Gaspard again to be even for what the robot did to you? Come on, Homer, I'll buzz the stooges and we'll go up against Racket House right now. I want to see Gaspard's face when you clomp in."

  Homer considered the proposition for all of two seconds. Then, "Naw, babe," he decided, "I got to heal myself. I'll beat up on Gaspard again in three-four days, if you want I should."

  Heloise leaned over him. "I want you to do it right now," she urged. "We'll take some ropes along and truss up Flaxman and Cullinghain and terrify 'em."

  "You begin to interest me, babe. I like games where you tie guys up."

  Heloise chuckled deep in her throat. "So do I," she said. "Someday, Homer, I'm going to tie you down to this table."

  The big w
riter froze. "Now don't get vulgar, babe."

  "Well, how about Racket House? Do we or don't we?" Homer's tone was lofty. "The answer is in the negative, babe."

  Heloise shrugged. "Well, if you won't, you won't." She resumed her pacing. "I never really did trust Gaspard," she said to a spot on the wall. "He kept himself doped with wordwooze and he had this thing about mills. How can you trust a writer who reads so much and won't even pretend he wants to write a book of his own?"

  "How about you, babe?" Homer put in. "You going to write that book of yours? Then I could take me a nap."

  "Not now. I'm too excited. Remind me to have the stooges rent me a voicewriter, though. I'll write it tomorrow afternoon."

  Homer shook his head. "I just don't dig guys who think they can write books. With gals it's different-you expect all sorts of crazy stuff. But with guys I can put myself in their place and I just don't dig it. So I wonder: do they think they're built like wordmills all full of silver hair-wires and relays and mole-memory banks instead of good old muscle? May be all right for a robot, but for a man it's morbid."

  "Homer," Heloise said gently, though continuing to pace, "a human being has a very complicated nervous system and a brain with billions and billions of nerve cells."

  "That so, babe? I'll have to brush up on all that some day." His face grew grave. "Lots of things in the world. Mysterious things. Like that job offer I keep getting from the Green Bay Packers-times like this it tempts me."

  "Now Homer," Heloise said sharply, "remember you're a writer."

  Homer nodded with a happy smile. "That's right, babe. And I got the finest physique of them all. It says so on my jackets."

  Heloise began talking to her spot again as she paced. "Speaking of robots, Gaspard was a robot-lover among his other vices. Book-lover, robot-lover, wordmill-lover, publisher-lover, girl-lover when he had time for it. A gottaunderstand lover too. He doped himself with understanding things. But he — never understood action for action's sake."