The Silver Eggheads

by Fritz Leiber

  As an ultimate concession to Gaspard's importunings about the need for greater security, Flaxman loaned him an antique revolver-style bullet-gun from his great grandfather's collection and even provided him with a stock of the proper ammunition, handmade to ancient specifications by robot gunsmiths. He had earlier tried to borrow Nurse Bishop's more modern handgun but had been curtly refused.

  Gaspard would have found his drudgery easier to bear if this lovely girl had been willing to date him again and at least listen to him recite his grievances in return for being allowed to air her own. But she turned down all dinner and even lunch and coffee-break invitations with bitter remarks about ex-writers who had time to waste. She and Miss Jackson had taken to sleeping in like Gaspard, but at the Nursery. The other four nurses were not that devoted; one even took advantage of the increased work-demands to quit. Nurse Bishop filled her nights as well as her days with efficient yet nevertheless frenzied checking to make sure that each egg was safe and not missing one step of Zukie's Schedule, no matter whether it was at the Nursery, at Rocket House, or in transit between.

  As far as Gaspard could tell, he had become to Nurse Bishop nothing more than the most miserable of male slavies. She barked at him, she blew her top at him, whatever loads he had she piled on extras. To make it worse, she had taken to behaving toward Flaxman with saintly sweetness and patience, toward Cullingham in a way that was indecently cute, while for Zane Gort, when he put in one of his rare appearances, she was wittily cajoling. Only Gaspard seemed to bring out all the bad-tempered evil in her.

  However, twice, at moments when he was so utterly fatigued with egg-lugging that he literally could not lift his arms, she had given him a quick un-withholding hug and planted on his lips a shrewdly expert kiss. Thereafter one twinkling grin and the incident was as if it had never occurred.

  The second time that happened, Gaspard worked his lips together-he was too tired to wipe them-and said simply, "You little bitch!"

  "I didn't think you were very hot on love," Nurse Bishop observed wisely.

  "That's not love, that's torture," Gaspard told her.

  "Are they so different? You ought to read Justine by the Marquis de Sade, Gaspard. A girl wants to give someone she loves the most intense sensations possible, and what's as intense as pain? That's what a good girl brings, the gift of pain. Making love, Mr. Writer, is a process of applying exquisite tortures and then, two hours after the pangs become absolutely unendurable and death inevitable, pouring on the antidote. Of course, all you've got's a zombie then, but a happy zombie."

  "But when do you get to the antidote stage?" Gaspard asked.

  "In your case never!" she snapped. "Fit a new roll in Nick's voicewriter. He's been signaling for the last three minutes. Who knows, maybe he's in the midst of a seduction scene that will put Rocket House at the top of the best-seller list."

  THIRTY-TWO

  Although the partners Flaxman and Cullingham never did a lick of physical work, even for morale-building purposes, or stirred from their offices, now snugly electrolocked once more at the head of a fully-repaired and busy escalator, they too began to suffer from the Silver Eggheads Writing Derby, in their nerves rather than their muscles.

  Flaxman set himself to mastering his boyhood dread of the eggheads, talking at them at a great rate, nodding at them vigorously and almost unceasingly while they talked, and offering them cigars in moments of forgetfulness. On the advice of his psychiatrist he even had the primitive bolt removed that Gaspard had attached with so much effort, on the grounds that it was chiefly a symbolic guard against childish fears rather than a real one against present dangers.

  Flaxman largely failed in his efforts, however, especially as the eggheads caught onto his fear and found delight in touching it off by telling him about their operation (the big one Zukie had performed), by describing to him how he would feel if he were divorced from his body nerve by nerve and his brain welded up in a can, or simply by improvising and telling him horrid little ghost stories, on the grounds that these were parts of their novels.

  More and more often Flaxman's limousine was unavailable for egg-transport, being used to take its owner for long healing drives in the Santa Monica Hills.

  Cullinghain was at first highly complimented that so many of the eggheads were voluntarily seeking editorial direction, but as soon as he realized they only wanted to draw him out and subtly mock him-amuse themselves by pushing his brain buttons, as it were, and then jeer at the fewness of them-he became even more visibly distraught than Flaxman. However, on the morning for which Gaspard had predicted his nervous breakdown, he appeared with a strange female secretary (apparently the rule against hiring new employees did not apply in her case) whom he introduced as Miss Willow and who, although she did nothing except sit silently near Cullingham and occasionally wiggle a pencil across the pages of a little black notebook, seemed to have a wonderfully soothing effect on the editorial director's nerves.

  Miss Willow was a lean, tall, insolent beauty who got a gasp out of Gaspard the first time he saw her. Except that her bosom and hips were somewhat more developed, she had the figure of a high-fashion model. She dressed it in a severely-tailored black suit and topped it off with a sleek puff of platinum hair that exactly matched her stockings. Her pale face had that sharp-boned blend of intellectuality and haughtiness that also characterizes the sibyls and nymphs of high fashion.

  Gaspard developed a yen for her at once. Cunningly, it had occurred to him that Miss Willow's platinum iciness, warmed just a bit, might be the very thing to wean him from his ridiculous attachment to the saucily termagent Nurse Bishop. However, on the two occasions when he found Miss Willow alone and tried to start a conversation with her, she simply ignored him utterly-she might have been completely alone in the room for all the difference his presence made.

  Thinking it over, Gaspard decided in the end that she was most likely a psychotherapist, presumably paid a shudderingly high salary; it was difficult to think of anything else that would explain Cullingham being snatched back from the edge of nervous collapse. This theory also fitted with the black notebook and the fact that Flaxman, on top of all his other fears, seemed afraid of Miss Willow- the neurotic is apt to be scared of all psychiatrists except his own; at any rate Flaxman had moved to a somewhat smaller office adjoining the big one.

  If Gaspard hadn't had so much physical work to do, he would have been seeking a human psychiatrist or robot therapist himself-his once placid, rut-fitting personality was developing so many odd sharp angles and great gaping holes. He wondered what a weird libido he must have that, after having for months received daily physical delight, full measure pressed down and running over, from the exuberant Heloise Ibsen, he should now be submissively obessed by a girl who did little but bully and berate him. He was bothered too by the thought of what an insane imagination he must possess, that it should have been exalted and comforted by wordwooze for years of evening and long bathroom sittings, and the only recoverable memories of all that proxy adventuring be a mindless dim pink glow. Finally, at a somewhat different level, he was increasingly agitated by a sense of responsibility for the Eggheads Project and the growing conviction that it was not nearly well enough safeguarded from a cunning rapacious world that did not fight according to rules-something that Zane Gort had pointed out to him only to run off and leave Gaspard bearing the main burden of the defense of Rocket House and the Nursery.

  And the defenses he had improvised so far-his borrowed bullet gun that bruised his left ribs, Joe with his skunk pistol, Pop with his caduceus (even if it were also, as Pop claimed, a sword cane) were a farce. To make things worse, Cullingham and Flaxman, though fanatics on secrecy, were completely unrealistic about protecting the Project in any other way-Gaspard had once found Flaxman moodily tossing aside unread or at least unpondered a most chiffing note from a character who signed himself "The Garrote;" the note demanded a $2,000 weekly retainer and fifty percent of the net profits of the Project on pain of dead
ly damage being done the eggheads themselves.

  And there were endless signs of other menaces. Yet neither of the partners would hear of calling in the municipal police or any other standard protective agency because, they claimed, it would be a breach of the nonexistent veil of secrecy surrounding the Project! (And also for the totally Quixotic reason that, as Flaxman phrased it, "It's only little jerk businessmen, Gaspard, who squeal to the government for help. The Flaxmans have always been fighting millionaires!")

  Zane Gort, whom Gaspard had always thought of as a pocket battleship just by himself, was obviously the ideal person to head up Rocket's defenses, but he was shirking the job completely. The blued-steel robot, who was seldom available for more than ten minutes a day, was wrapped up in a welter of mysterious activity that seemed to have nothing whatever to do with the writing contest: conferences with his physicist-colleagues and engineer-friends, trips away from New Angeles, long sessions in his home machine-shop. Three times Zane had "borrowed" Half Pint from Nurse Bishop and taken the small egghead off with him for three or four hours in defiance of Zukie's rules, but where they went or what they did neither robot nor canned brain would reveal.

  Zane even neglected Miss Blushes, although the hysterical pink censoring robot had developed a maternal interest in the eggheads not unlike his own though more aberrated-seeming: she was knitting pastel-shaded draw- string coveralls for them, with holes for their three plugs, "to keep them warm on chilly days and brighten them up a bit and make them seem less naked," as she put it. Otherwise Miss Blushes appeared to be rational enough and Gaspard took to setting her routine assignments, like doorwatching, that wouldn't interfere with her knitting.

  One evening Gaspard decided to have things out with Zane. The writer had been catching a nap on Pop Zangwell's cot in the men's room and Zane had come in unexpectedly to change batteries and lubricate. Zane listened abstractedly while applying a needle-nosed can to his sixty-seven oiling points.

  "Just an hour ago," Gaspard was saying, "I found a short, square-headed, brown-tarnished, fine-pitted robot sneaking around downstairs. I put him out the front door but he's probably come in the back again by now."

  Zane turned to him. "That would be my old rival Cain Brinks," he said. "The brown tarnish and fine pitting are merely a clumsy attempt at disguise. He's undoubtedly plotting some villainy. And just outside now I X-rayed a parked scrap truck and whom should I see but Clancy Goldfarb. He must be up to something too-most likely book-burglary. Those storerooms are a lure."

  "But dammit, Zane," Gaspard expostulated, "if you know these things why don't you do something?"

  "Gaspard, it's always a capital mistake to go on the defensive," the robot said judiciously. "It loses you the initiative and your thinking is reduced to the level of your opponents. I have other fish to fry. If I wasted my abilities on the defense of Rocket House, I'd be crippling us all."

  "Dammit, Zane, that's just playing paradox. You should-"

  The robot placed a pincher on Gaspard's chest. "I have one piece of advice for you, Old Gland. Don't fall in love with Miss Willow."

  "Small chance of that, she's the original cold fish. But why?"

  "Just don't. Whir-hey!"

  The robot had tossed his old batteries in the trash basket and was out of the men's room before Gaspard could get out a third "dammit." Feeling completely irritated, he got up and started on the watchman rounds he had decreed for himself.

  The door to Flaxman's new office was open. It was dark inside but a little light was coming through the door connecting this office with the old one, which was now used almost exclusively by Cullingham. Gaspard moved silently in his sockassins to a point where he could peer through into the old office without much chance of being seen.

  In the soft silver light of a low stand-lamp beside her, Miss Willow was seated serenely at the head of a couch. Irked by Zane's cryptic warning, Gaspard was of a mind to go boldly in and bluntly proposition her, to see if that at least wouldn't shock her into taking notice of him. But just then he saw that Cullingham was stretched out supine on the couch with his shoes off and his head pillowed on Miss Willow's lap. It seemed a singularly comfy arrangment for analysis.

  Running her fingers gently through his hair, Miss Willow smiled down fondly at the pale publisher and said in a sweet, sweet voice that was anything but a high-fashion model's or a psychiatrist's and that shocked Gaspard profoundly, "How's Mama's little Dicky-bird tonight?"

  "Tired, oh so tired," Cullingham moaned childishly. "Tired and oh so thirsty. But it's nice to be here, nice to look at pretty Mama."

  "Mama's even prettier than that," Miss Willow replied antiphonally. "Been a good Dicky-bird today? Not nervous?"

  "Yes, Mama. Not nervous one bit."

  "All right." Miss Willow slowly zipped down her black coat, slowly untied the ribbons of her gray silk blouse until there jutted out, pillowed on lingerie, the two most perfect breasts Gaspard had ever seen.

  "Pretty, oh pretty," Cullingham moaned.

  "Naughty Dicky-bird," Miss Willow reproved roguishly. "Mama's little great big wicked man-what flavors would he like tonight?"

  "Chocolate," said Cullingham, lifting his lips with a sway first toward the right, then toward the left, "and peppermint."

  That was the night that Gaspard in utter desperation read the first of the old pre-wordmill, egghead-recommended books that Nurse Bishop had insisted on lending him: Huckleberry Finn.

  THIRTY-THREE

  When the big black hearse, streamlined like a teardrop in reverse, careened past him smelling overpoweringly of roses, with Heloise Ibsen, silver hunting necklace glinting around her neck, glaring triumphantly out of the small rear window, Gaspard suspected that something was wrong.

  He had been out purchasing thirty fresh rolls of paper for the eggheads' silent voicewriters. Clamping them tightly to his side he now sprinted for Rocket House, two blocks away.

  Joe the Guard was standing in front, waving his skunk pistol in an erratic fashion that caused most passersby to cross to the opposite side of the street.

  "Got away with Mr. Cullingham, they did," he told Gaspard excitedly. "Smashed in, grabbed him, rushed him away. I got in three good shots, point blank, with my trusty old skunk pistol just as they took off, but it turned out to be loaded with wax perfume pastilles-my little grandniece must have been playing with it again, drat her."

  Gaspard hurried inside and rode the escalator up. The normally electrolocked door was ajar. Gaspard surveyed the room without going in. There were some signs of a struggle, an overset chair and a scatter of papers, but Miss Willow was seated at her usual place beside Cullingham's desk, as cool and serene as an autumn morning.

  Gaspard's first thought was so childishly wicked it surprised him just a bit: that now, with Cullingham out of the way and none of the others (except Zane Gort, presumably) aware that Miss Willow was some sort of amatory automaton, he would be able to have his will of her at his leisure. He resolutely locked away the unworthy notion.

  Joe the Guard whispered to him hoarsely, "She's taking it mighty calm."

  "Grief-stricken, no doubt," Gaspard told him, touching his finger to his lips and softly drawing the door shut. "Frozen tears. Shock can do that to high-strung women."

  "Just cold-blooded, I'd say," Joe opined, "but then it takes all sorts to make a world. You gonna call the po-lice?"

  Gaspard didn't answer that one. Instead he looked into Flaxman's new office. There were three eggheads there. Gaspard recognized Rusty, Scratch, and Dull-Dull by their markings-along with Miss Phillips, one of the less enthusiastic nurses. Rusty had an eye plugged in and was reading a book set in a device that automatically turned a page every five seconds. The other two were listening to Miss Phillips read in a droning voice a lurid-covered paperback. She broke off, but continued as soon as she saw it was only Gaspard. There was no sign of Flaxman.

  "He's gone driving by himself in the hills again," Joe whispered at Gaspard's neck. "One of the eggs
must have given him a big scare. I put these in here to wait for Mr. Cullingham to conference them. But now I don't know."

  "Just leave them there for the present," Gaspard said. "Where's Miss Blushes? She was on the front door when I went out. She ought to have warned Cullingham about the writers. Did they get her too?"

  Joe scratched his shaggy head. His eyes widened. "Now that's a funny thing, I forgot all about it up to now, but just after you went out to buy the rolls, Gaspard, five swishes in black sweaters and tight black pants come in and gathered around Miss Blushes' reception desk and started screaming at her-I don't mean really yelling, I mean talking gay-and she was screaming back at them happy-sounding as anything-they were all six screaming about knitting-and I was thinking, 'That's all right, you're half a dozen of the same thing.' Then the swishes all went out together in a black clump and that pink robix wasn't at her desk any more. If I'd had a little time to cogitate about it, I'd have realized she was gone and that the black swishes must have spirited her off, but just then the writers come charging in and put it all out of my mind. Do you get me, Gaspard? Just after you went out to buy the rolls-"

  "I get you," Gaspard said earnestly and pushed the down button of the escalator. He was several yards below Joe before the other thought to follow.

  On the reception desk, secured by a paperweight of lunar obsidian, was a note in voicewritten pink script on black paper.

  Zane Gort! (it read) Your monstrous scheme for having robot brains replace wordmills is known. Your robot fiction factory at Wisdom of the Ages, with its hideous disembodied ovoid robot heads, is under surveillance. If you value the good looks and sanity of the robix Phyllis Blushes, give up the scheme, dismantle the factory.