The Silver Eggheads

by Fritz Leiber

  "Moreover there surely is something a bit decadent, I must admit, about unlimited creative sex engineering; it might readily become a mania, absorbing all robot thought, perhaps especially because sex is a luxury with us, in the sense that although essential for electronic health it is not essential for reproduction, at least not yet.

  "A final practical reason keeping us conventional in our sex is the fear that, if we developed a richly varied sexual life, fanciful and elegant, human beings with their biologically limited resources in this direction might become deeply jealous and resentful of us, and we certainly don't want that to happen!

  "At all events, our robots and robixes are closely similar to your men and women. Our robixes are generally lighter in build, quicker in reactions, more sensitive, more adaptable, and on the whole a bit steadier, though with occasional hysterical tendencies. While our robots, again in the sense of robost robots, are built for heavier physical work and the more profound types of mental activity requiring extralarge electronic brains; they're apt to be a little on the single-minded compulsive side with some schizoid tendencies.

  "Attachments between individual robots and robixes are generally of the monogamous sort, involving marriage or at least steady dating. Fortunately most jobs on which robots are employed require an equal number of brunch and ixy types. We seem to get the same satisfaction you humans do out of knowing there's one individual we can wholly depend on and monopolize with our griefs and joys, though we also seem to share your wistful desire for a wider circle of companionship, empathy, and shared delight.

  "So there you have robot sexuality in a nutshell-well, some sort of shell at any rate," Zane concluded. "I hope, Nurse Bishop, that it gives you perspective for judging my own personal problem, which is, to repeat: how far should I go with a robix I find supremely beautiful and attractive, yet at the same time somewhat stupid and very puritanical?"

  Nurse Bishop frowned. "Well, Zane, my first thought is: can't Miss Blushes' circuits be changed, so she's less puritanical at any rate? I should think you robots would be doing that sort of thing all the time."

  "You jest," Zane said sharply. "Or by Saint Eando, do you not?" He took a quick step toward Nurse Bishop and raised his open pinchers to grip her throat.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Nurse Bishop paled and Gaspard started to grab at Zane's pinchers, but they stayed a foot away from the nurse's neck.

  "I mean, you had damn well better be jesting," the robot continued, enunciating the words with chilling precision. "Changing a robot's personal circuits to alter its behavior is two degrees worse in my bookspools than psychosurgery on a human, if only because it's much easier. A robot's personality is so easily tampered with that he instinctively guards it with the utmost ferocity." He dropped his pinchers. "Pardon me if I have alarmed you," he said in an easier voice, "but I had to demonstrate to you how very strongly I feel on this matter. Now pray give me your advice."

  "Well. . uh. . I don't know, Zane," Nurse Bishop began uncertainly with a quick sidelong glance at Gaspard that seemed to him to convey more of exasperation than panic. "Offhand. . uh. . you and Miss Blushes are hardly well-matched, though it's an old human notion that the strong brilliant husband and the beautiful dumb wife get on famously together, but I'm not sure how accurate that is. The psychometrist Sharon Rosenblum says there should be a gap of 30 or more I.Q. points between husband and wife, or else no gap at all. Gaspard, do your experiences throw any light on this? How dumb is Heloise Ibsen?"

  Ignoring the question as well as he could, which wasn't too well-it gave him a rather silly haughty look-Gaspard said, "I don't want to seem a cad, Zane, but would your relationship with Miss Blushes have to involve marriage?"

  "I'm no immaculate," Zane replied, "but yes, it would. Talking to you two alone I can admit that many robots are quite promiscuous, especially when they get the chance-and by Saint Henry, who's to blame them? — but I'm not built that way. I find the experience incomplete, unsatisfying, unless there is a prolonged relationship at the levels of thought, feeling, action-in short, a life together.

  "Aside from that, there is a very practical consideration in my case: I have to think about the reactions of my reading public. The hero of a Zane Gort book is always a one-robix robot. Silver Vilya turns up here and there, maddeningly attractive, but Dr. Tungsten always ditches her in the end for Blanda, his golden mate."

  "Zane," Nurse Bishop said, "has it occurred to you that Miss Blushes may be pretending to be dumber than she is? Human robixes have been known to do that to flatter a man they're interested in."

  "Do you think it's possible?" Zane asked excitedly. "By Saint Hank, I believe it is! Many thanks, Nurse! You've given me something to think about."

  "You're welcome. And I wouldn't worry too much about the puritanism angle, at least it's an old bit of human foildore that most puritanical women turn out to be very highly sexed indeed, even demandingly so. Oh Lord, it's time for me to turn the brats and shift them around." She began to rearrange the stands according to no obvious plan, occasionally setting a silver egg on one of the larger tables during the process. Whenever she got an egg relocated it had an opposite tilt to the one it had before.

  "What's the point?" Gaspard asked.

  "Changes the pressure on their brain tissue and gives them a little variety," she said over her shoulder. "Anyway it's one of Zukie's rules."

  "Did Zukertort-?"

  "Oh yes, Mr. Daniel Zukertort set up a complete regimen governing the care of the brains and their social relations with each other, the dormitory bible you might say. And since we've never had a fatality-as we shouldn't if we're careful, nerve tissue being practically immortal according to Zukie-you can understand that we follow it to the letter."

  Zane Gort was watching her very attentively. After a bit the robot said, quite hesitantly, "Excuse me, Nurse, but. . would you let me hold one?"

  She whirled around blankly. Then her face broke into a big smile. "Why of course," she said, handing him the silver egg she was carrying.

  He held it close to his blued-steel chest, not moving at all, but purring very faintly. The effect was odd, to say the least, and Gaspard found himself remembering Zane's cryptic reference to robot reproduction. For a robot to give birth to a robot, except in the sense of manufacturing one outside his body, seemed the height of impossibility or at least of engineering absurdity, and yet-

  "If a human and a robot could mate," Zane said softly, "their offspring might well resemble this, at least in the initial stage, don't you think?" And he began to rock the egg very gently while humming the lullaby from Schubert's The Maid of the Mill.

  "That's enough of that," Nurse Bishop said firmly, looking a shade apprehensive. "They're not really babies, you know, but very old people." Zane nodded and under her supervision carefully placed the egg in its black collar on its newly-located stand. Then the robot's gaze wandered to the other eggs.

  "Oldsters or infants, they're still like a bridge between human and robot," he said thoughtfully. "If only-"

  There was a confused shouting and squealing and a datter of footsteps. Miss Blushes darted into the Nursery. Frantically evading Zane Gort's open arms, she cast herself hysterically at Nurse Bishop, who winced but endured the aluminum squeezing.

  Behind Miss Blushes lurched Pop Zangwell, waving his caduceus and yelling thickly, "Avaunt, by Anubis! No newsrobots in here!"

  "Zangwell!" Nurse Bishop cried ringingly. The bearded ancient turned toward her like a hooked fish. "Get out of here," she continued icily, "before the atmosphere is totally ethyllzed and your breath soaks into the eggs. This is no news-robot. You're just having DTs. Zane, you forgot to shut the inner door."

  "Sorry."

  Pop Zangwell blinked, tried to focus by squeezing his eyelids to a slit. "But Miss Bish," he whined, "just yesterday you told me to watch out for news-robots. ." His voice trailed off as his gaze sagged from Nurse Bishop's face to Miss Blushes' body and went up and down her as if he were only
now really seeing her. "Pink robots this time!" he quavered despairingly. He drew a large flask from his hip pocket, made as if to throw it away, but instead applied it to his lips as he lurched back toward the reception cubicle.

  Nurse Bishop disengaged herself from Miss Blushes.

  "Pull yourself together," she said sharply. "What's happened at Rocket House?"

  "Nothing that I know of," the pink robix huffily. "That drunken old man just frightened me.

  "But you told Zane you'd babysit Half Pint and the others."

  "Oh, I suppose I did," Miss Blushes continued in the same fretful tones, "but then Mr. Cullingham told me I was disturbing the conference and to go out in the corridor. Mr. Flaxman told me to stand guard outside the door with the broken electrolock so no one could burst in on them. I left the door ajar so I could watch." She hesitated, then continued, "You know, Nurse-oh, nothing at all's happened, don't think that-but I just don't believe those three brains are very happy at Rocket House."

  "What do you mean?" Nurse Bishop asked sharply.

  "Well, they didn't sound very happy," the robix said.

  "How do you mean, sound?" Nurse Bishop demanded. "If they've been bitching and making self-pitying speeches that's nothing to get excited about. I know them-they'll do a lot of complaining before they give in and admit they want to be authors again."

  "Well, I don't know anything about that," the robix said, "but whenever one of them would start to complain, Mr. Flaxman would unplug his speaker-at least that's what I saw."

  "Sometimes you have to do that," Nurse Bishop said, uneasily. "But if those two have been- They swore they'd abide by Zukie's Rules, I left them a copy. What else did you see happen, Miss Blushes?"

  "Not much. Mr. Cullingham came and closed the door when he saw I was looking. Just before that I heard one egg say, 'I can't stand it, I can't stand it. For God's sake stop. You're driving us crazy. This is torture."

  "And then-?" Nurse Bishop's voice was sharp and hard. "Then Mr. Flaxman unplugged his speaker and Mr. Cullingham shut the door and I came over here and that drunken old man frightened me."

  "But what were Flaxman and Cullingham doing to the eggs?"

  "I couldn't see. Mr. Flaxman had a drill on his desk."

  Nurse Bishop snatched off her white cap and unzipped her white smock and unconcernedly let it fall away from the short white slip she was wearing underneath. "Zane," she said, "I'm putting in a hurry-up call for Miss Jackson. I don't want you to leave the Nursery until she gets here. Guard the eggs. Miss Blushes, fetch my skirt and sweater from the lavatory-that door. Then stay with Zane. Come on, Gaspard, we're going to look into this right now." She felt her hip and for a moment Gaspard saw outlined through her slip her handgun in its holster.

  Even without that, and despite her spectacular frontal development, she looked remarkably sinister.

  TWENTY-NINE

  Readership Row was not exactly filled with activity, but it was liberally spotted with it, all of an uneasy sort. Right at the start of their short sprint Gaspard sighted a slowly cruising roadster packed with apprentice writers. Fortunately it was being trailed by a government prowlwagon. Behind that came a skeleton car with three rough-looking robots hooked to the ribs of its stark metal spine. A scrap truck hurtled past. Just as they reached Rocket House a large helicopter drifted scant yards above the roof with "Penfolk" in large letters on its prow; from its balcony peered youths with black swiaters and windblown hair and beside them ancient women in gold and silver frocks; from the keel was suspended a huge sign: ROBOTS BEWARE! WORDMILLS AND WRITERS ARE FINISHED! GIVE AUTHORSHIP BACK TO tHE AMATEURS!

  Gaspard and Nurse Bishop were passed into Rocket House by a rat-faced office-bog the wordmill mechanic didn't recognize and an eight-foot-tall door-robot with peeling gold trim-possibly, Gaspard hazarded, part of Flaxman's new defenses-the pair seemed fitting partners for Joe the Guard. The first floor was still heavy with the funereal odor of burnt insulation and the escalator hadn't been repaired. Neither had the electrolock; they pushed straight in, causing Flaxman to fall out of his chair-at any rate their first glimpse of the small publisher was of his head disappearing behind his desk.

  The three brains rested in their collars on Cullingham's end of the desk with only their microphones plugged in. The microphones were clustered near the tall fair man himself, who was holding some manuscript pages while others were scattered on the floor around his chair. Gaspard and Nurse Bishop had hardly had time to take this in when Flaxman reared up from behind his desk, waving the drill Miss Blushes had seen and with his mouth open to shout something. He evidently thought better of this last, for he instead closed his lips and lifted a finger to them and pointed with the drill at Cullingham.

  At this point Gaspard began to hear what the latter was reading.

  "On and on the Golden Swarm surged, perching on planets, bivouacking on galaxies," Cullingham intoned in a surprisingly dramatic voice. "Here and there, on scattered systems, resistance flared. But space spears flashed and klirred mercilessly and that resistance died.

  "Ittala, High Khan of the Golden Swarm, called for his super-telescope. It was borne into the blood-stained pavilion by cringing scientists. He snatched it up with a savage laugh, dismissed the baldpates with a contemptuous gesture, and directed it at a planet in a far-distant galaxy that had as yet escaped the yellow marauders.

  "Slaver poured from the High Khan's beak and ran down his tentacles. He dug an elbow into fat Ik Huk, Master of the Harem. 'That one,' he hissed, 'the one in the middle of the bevy on the grass knoll, the one wearing the radium tiara, bring her to me!'"

  Nurse Bishop said out of the side of her mouth, "Miss Blushes was misled, there's no torture going on here."

  "What!" Gaspard replied the same way. "Aren't you listening?"

  "Oh that," she said scornfully. "As I often tell the brats, sticks and stones can break my bones-"

  "But words can drive me crazy," Gaspard finished. "I don't know where they dug up that stuff, but I know that if a person used to good writing-wordmill quality-were forced to listen to it for long, he'd go stark raving nuts."

  She glanced sideways at him. "You really are a serious reader, Gaspard, a writer's reader. You ought to have a go at those old books the brains pick for me-I bet you'd get to like them."

  "Just drive me bats a different way," Gaspard assured her.

  "How do you know?" she demanded. "I read a lot myself but good or bad I never get as worked up about it as you do."

  "That makes you an editor's reader," Gaspard said.

  "Stop whispering, you two," Flaxman called. "You can stay here but don't disturb the conference. Gaspard, you're a mechanic, take this drill and attach this bolt to the door. That lousy electrolock isn't working yet. I'm more than a little sick of being burst in on."

  Cullingham had stopped reading. "So there you have. Chapter One and the opening of Chapter Two of The Scourge of Space," he said quietly, directing his voice at the three microphones. "What are your reactions? Could you improve on it? If so, how? Please state the main headings under which you would organize revision."

  He plugged a speaker into the smallest of the three eggs. "You contemptible chattering ape," the speaker intoned in its quiet unimpassioned way, "you inflicter of horror on the helpless, you bullying chimpanzee, you exploded lemur, you overgrown spider monkey, you shambling-"

  "Thank you, Half Pint," Cullingham said, pulling out Half Pint's plug. "Now let's have the opinions o Nick and Double Nick."

  But as he reached the plug toward another of the silver eggs, Nurse Bishop's hand came between. Without a word she rapidly disconnected the microphones from the eggs, leaving all their sockets empty.

  She said, "I think I approve on the whole of what you two gentlemen are doing, but you're not going about it quite the right way."

  "Hey, quit that!" Flaxman objected. "Being the Czarina of the Nursery doesn't make you the boss here."

  But Cullingham lifted his hand. "She may have som
ething, Flaxy," he said. "I haven't been making the progress I'd hoped."

  Nurse Bishop said, "It's a good idea to force the brats to listen to all sorts of stuff and ask them to criticize it, so as to get them interested in writing again. But their reactions ought to be constantly monitored-and guided." She smiled fiendishly and gave the two partners a conspiratorial wink.

  Cullingham leaned forward. "Keep sending on that wavelength," he said.

  Gaspard shrugged his shoulders and started the drill chewing into the door.

  Nurse Bishop continued: "I'll attach whisper-speakers to all three of them and listen to what they're saying while you keep on reading. In the pauses you make, I'll whisper 'em back a word or two. That way they won't feel so isolated and just lose themselves in cursing you, like they're doing now. I'll absorb their exasperations and at the same time work in a little propaganda for Rocket House."

  "Great!" Flaxman said. Cullingham nodded.

  Gaspard went back for the screws. "Excuse me, Mr. Flaxman," he said in an undertone, "but where in the world did you get that crud Mr. Cullingham's reading?"

  "The slush pile," Flaxman confided freely. "Would you believe it? A hundred years of nothing-but-wordmill fiction, a hundred years of nothing-but-rejections, and the amateurs are still submitting stories."

  Gaspard nodded. "Some amateurs called Penfolk were circling over this place in a helicopter when we came in."

  "Probably planning to bomb us with trunkfuls of old manuscripts," Flaxman told him.

  Cullingham intoned, "In the last fortress on the last planet held by earthmen, Grant Ironstone smiled at his terrifled clerkish assistant Potherwell. 'Every victory of the High Khan,' Grant said floughtfully, 'brings the yellow octopoids that closer to defeat. I'll tell you why. Potherwell, do you know what's the fiercest, smartest, most dangerous, deadliest hunting-beast in the entire universe-when finally aroused?' 'A kill-crazy rogue octopoid?' Potherwell quavered. Grant smiled. 'No, Potherwell,' he said, placing a finger on the narrow chest of the trembling clerk. 'You are. The answer is: man!'"