The Silver Eggheads

THIRTEEN

"Gaspard," said Zane Gort severely, "I can forgive your ignorance of Daniel Zukertort, but not of Sherlock Holmes, the greatest fictional detective, bar none, of the whole prewordmill era."

"That accounts for my not knowing," Gaspard said happily. "I can't stand pre-wordmill books. They roil up my mind." His face fell. "You know, Zane, I'm going to have a hard time filling in my leisure or just getting to sleep without new wordniill fiction. Nothing else really gets to me. I've been reading the entire output of the mills for years."

"Can't you reread the old ones?"

"That doesn't work. Besides, the paper darkens and disintegrates a month after the book is purchased and unsealed-you must know that."

"Well then, perhaps you are going to have to widen your tastes," the robot told him, looking up from his black volume. "They're not exactly catholic, you know. For instance, we're friends, yet I'll wager you've never read anything I've written, even one of my Dr. Tungsten tales."

"But how could I?" Gaspard protested. "They're only on spools that plug into a robot's book-niche. You can't even play them on a regular wire recorder."

"Rocket House has manuscript copies available to anyone interested enough to ask for them," Zane informed him coolly. "You'd have to learn a bit more robotese, of course, but some people would find that rewarding."

"Yeah," was all that Gaspard could think to say. Then, to change the subject, "I wonder what's keeping that bloody old nurse? Maybe I'd better call Flaxman." He indicated a phone by the bookshelves.

Zane ignored both question and suggestion and went on, "Doesn't it strike you as strange, Gaspard, that stories for robots are written by live individual beings like myself, while humans read stories written by machinery? An historian might see in that the difference between a youthful and a decadent race."

"Zane, you call yourself-" Gaspard began angrily and then stopped in mid-sentence. He'd been about to say, "You call yourself a live being when you're made of tin?" And that would have been not only unkind and inaccurate (robots had as little actual tin in them as most tin cans) but basically untrue. Zane was clearly far more alive than nine out of ten flesh-and-blood humans.

The robot waited a few seconds and then continued, "To an outsider like myself it's crystal clear that there is a large element of addiction in the human love of wordwooze. As soon as you open a wordmilled book, you people go into a trance, as if you'd taken a large dose of some narcotic drug. Have you ever asked yourself why wordmills can't write any genuine non-fiction? Anything truly factual? I discount autobiography, serenity books, self-help, and popular philosophy. Have you ever wondered why robots can't enjoy wordwooze-can't make anything out of it at all? The stuff seems gibberish even to me, you know."

"Maybe it's too subtle for them! — too subtle for you too!" Gaspard snapped, stung to the quick by this criticism of his favorite form of escape and even more by Zane's deprecation of the machines he had adored. "Stop eating on me, Zane!"

"There, there, don't blow an artery, Old Tissue," Zane said soothingly. "'To eat on one'-an odd expression. Cannibalism is about the only unpleasantness our two races cannot visit on each other." He returned to his black book.

The phone buzzed. Gaspard grabbed at it automatically, hesitated, then picked it up.

"Flaxman speaking!" a voice barked. "Where's my brain? What's happened to those two boobs I sent?"

As Gaspard searched his mind for a suitably dignified rejoinder there erupted from the phone a series of bangs, crashes, howls and gasps. When the racket ceased, there was a moment's silence, then a bright voice said in the jingling rhythms of a receptionist, "Racket House. Miss Jilligan here, speaking for Mr. Flaxman. Who is it please?"

But Gaspard knew the voice, from an infinite-seeming series of intimate encounters. It was that of Heloise Ibsen.

"Gun Seven of Wordmill Avengers here, speaking for the Noose," he replied, extemporizing rapidly. To disguise his own voice he whispered hissingly, seeking a tone of dark menace. "Barricade your office! The notorious nihilist Heloise Thsen has just been observed approaching it with armed writers. We are dispatching a Vengeance Squad to deal with her."

"Cancel that Vengeance Squad please, Gun Seven," the receptionist voice replied without hesitation. "The Ibsen woman has been arrested and handed over to government- Hey, aren't you Gaspard? I didn't tell anyone else about nihilism."

Gaspard indulged in a blood-curdling laugh. "Gaspard de la Nuit is dead! So perish all writers!" he hissed into the phone and hung up.

"Zane," he said to the robot, who was reading rapidly, "We've got to get back to Rocket House on the double. Heloise-"

At that moment the sweater girl came edging back into the room, a huge package in each arm.

"Shut up," she ordered, "and help me with these."

"No time now," Gaspard rapped out. "Zane, get your blue beak out of that book and listen-"

"Shut up!" the girl roared. "If you make me drop these I'll cut your throats with a hacksaw!"

"Okay, okay," Gaspard capitulated, wincing. "But what are these? Christmas-or Easter maybe?"

These were two large colorful packages. One was rectangular with wide red-and-green stripes and silver ribbon, the other was egg-shaped and wrapped in gold paper with large purple dots and tied by a wide purple ribbon with a big bow in it.

"No, Labor Day-for you," the girl told Gaspard. "You take this one." She indicated the ovoid. "Be very careful with it. It's heavy but very fragile."

Gaspard nodded and looked at her with some respect as he received the full weight. The girl must be huskier than she looked to have carried it in one arm. He said, "I take it this is 'the brain' Flaxman asked for?"

The girl nodded. "Careful, don't joggle it!"

"Look, if it's such an all-fired delicate mechanism," Gaspard said, "we'd better not take it to Rocket House now. Some writers have started another fracas there. I just got a call."

The girl frowned for a moment, then shook her head. "No, we'll go right now and we'll take it with us. I'll bet they can use a brain at Rocket House. I've gone to a lot of trouble getting things set up for this trip and I don't want to back-track. Besides, I promised it that it could go."

Gaspard gulped and rocked a bit. "Look," he said, "you don't mean to tell me that this thing I'm carrying is alive?"

"Don't tip it! And stop asking stupid questions. Tell your browsing metal friend to take this other package. It's equipment for the brain."

"Look at this, Gaspard," Zane said excitedly at that moment, springing up and thrusting the black book in Gaspard's face. "Jewish robots! S'truth! Golems are Jewish robots-made of clay and powered by magic, but robots none the less. By Saint Karel, I never realized that our history goes back-" He noted the situation that had developed while he'd been absorbed in his book, froze for two seconds while he replayed to himself the last minute's conversation, then took the red-and-green package from the girl, saying, "Please excuse me, miss. At your service."

"Now what's that for?" Gaspard asked. That was a small handgun of greened steel which the girl had been carrying under the second package. "Oh, I get it-you're our bodyguard."

"Nuh-uh," the girl said nastily, hefting the wicked-looking weapon. "I just walk right behind you, mister, and when you drop that Easter egg-maybe because someone is trying to cut your throat-I shoot you in the back of the neck, right in the middle of the medulla oblongata. Don't let it make you nervous, you won't feel a thing."

"Oh, all right, all right," Gaspard said hufffly, starting out. "But where's Nurse Bishop?"

"That," the girl said, "is for you to figure out, step by logical step, as you watch for banana skins."