The Silver Eggheads

SEVENTEEN

Flaxman's eyes grew a trifle glazed-perhaps at the thought of being mocked by thirty masked writers in an age when writers were nothing but vivider-than-life stereo-pix on back covers, perhaps at the riddle of his own nature that would allow him to view thirty canned brains as horrid monsters one minute and commercially precious creative geniuses the next.

Cullingham took over again.

"I'm sure this anonymity problem is a matter we can negotiate later," said the quieter, smoother half of the Rocket House partnership. "Perhaps the brains themselves will reverse their policy when they learn that new literary fame is in the offing. Even if they should prefer to maintain strict anonymity, that can be handled easily enough by issuing their works as 'by Brain One and G. K. Cullingham, by Brain Seven and G. K. Cullingham,' and so on."

"Wow!" Gaspard said loudly, a certain awe in his voice, while Zane Gort observed sotto voce, "Just a shade repetitious, it strikes me."

The tall fair editorial director merely smiled his martyr's smile, but Flaxman, reddening with loyalty, roared, "Look here, my dear friend Cully has programmed Rocket's wordmills for the past ten years and it's about time he started to get literary recognition of some sort. Writers have been stealing the credit from wordmill-programmers for a century-and before that they stole it from editors! It ought to be obvious even to a wooden-topped glamor-author and a robot with a Johansson block for a brain that the eggheads are going to need lots of programming, editing, coaching-call it what you want to-and Cully's the only man who can do it, and I don't want to hear a whisper of criticism!"

"Excuse me," Nurse Bishop said, speaking into the echoing silence, "but it's time for Rusty's look-listen, so I'm going to plug him in whether you gentlemen are ready or not."

"We're ready," Cullingham said softly, while Flaxman, rubbing his face, added just a touch dubiously, "Yeah, I guess we are."

Nurse Bishop motioned them all to Flaxman's end of the room, then pointed a TV eye in that direction. There was the tiniest thunk as she plugged it into the silver egg's upper right socket and Gaspard realized that he was shivering. It seemed to him that something had come into the TV eye. A faint red glare. Nurse Bishop plugged a microphone into the other top socket, which made Gaspard stop breathing, as he found out when he took an involuntary noisy breath some seconds later.

"Go on!" Flaxman said with a little gasp of his own. "Plug in. . er. . Mr. Rusty's speaker. I feel crawly this way." He caught himself and made a little wave at the eye. "No offense, old chap."

"It might be Miss or Mrs. Rusty," the girl reminded him. "There were several women among the thirty, weren't there? No, I think it will be best if you make your full proposal and then I plug in his speaker. It will go more smoothly that way, believe me."

"He knew you were bringing him here?"

"Oh yes, I told him."

Flaxman squared his shoulders at the eye, swallowed, and then looked around helplessly at Cullingham.

"Hel-lo, Rusty," the partner instantly began, a little too evenly at first, as if he were trying to talk like a machine or for a machine to understand. "I am G. K. Cullingham, partner in Rocket House with Quintus Horatius Flaxman beside me, current custodial director of Wisdom of the Ages." He went on with persuasive clarity to outline the current emergency in the publishing world and the proposal that the brains turn once again to fiction writing. He skirted the question of anonymity, touched lightly on the matter of programming ("customary editorial cooperation") and described attractive alternate plans for administering royalties, ending with a few nicely-phrased remarks about literary tradition and the great shared enterprise of authorship down the ages.

"I believe that wraps it up, Flaxie."

The small dark publisher nodded, only a trifle convulsively.

Nurse Bishop plugged a speaker into the empty socket.

For a good long time there was absolute silence, until Flaxman could bear it no longer and asked throatily, "Nurse Bishop, has something gone wrong? Has he died in there? Or doesn't the speaker work?"

"Work, work, work, work, work," the egg instantly said. "That's all I ever do. Think, think, think, think, think. Me-oh-my-oh-my."

"That's his code for a sigh," Nurse Bishop explained. "They have speakers on which they can make free noises and even sing, but I only let them use them weekends and holidays."

There was another uncomfortable period of silence, then the egg said very rapidly, "Oh, Messrs. Flaxman and Cullingham, it is an honor, a very great honor, that which you suggest, but it is much too grand for us. We have been too much out of touch with things to tell you incarnated minds how you should entertain yourselves, or presume to provide such entertainment. We thirty discarnates have our little existence together, our little preoccupations and hobbies. It is enough. Incidentally, in this I speak for my twenty-nine brothers and sisters as well as myself-we have not disagreed on matters of this sort for the past seventy-five years. So I must kindly thank you, Messers Cullingham and Flaxman, oh very very kindly, but the answer is no. No, no, no, no, no."

Because the voice was an uninflected monotone, it was quite impossible to decide whether its humility was serious or mocking or a combination of the two. However, the egg's loquacity ended Flaxman's fit of shyness, and he joined with his partner in bombarding the egg with sound logic, reassurances, pleas, considerations and the like, while even Zane Gort put in a well-phrased encouragement now and again.

Gaspard, who said nothing and was thoughtfully drifting toward Nurse Bishop, whispered to the robot in passing, "Good going, Zane. I'd have thought you'd find Rusty weird-unrobot, as you put it. After all, he's an immobile thinking machine. Like a wordmill."

The robot considered that. "No," he whispered back, "he's too small to make me feel that way. Too. . whir. . cuddly, you might say. Besides, he's conscious, wordmills never were. No, he's not unrobot or even inrobot, he's arobot. He's a human being like you. In a box of course, but that doesn't make much difference. You're in a skin box yourself."

"Yes, but mine's got eyeholes," Gaspard pointed out.

"So has Rusty's."

Flaxman glared at them and put his finger to his lips.

By this time Cullingham had pointed out more than once that the brains would not have to worry about the general nature of the entertainment they would provide, that he as editorial director would accept full responsibility, while Flaxman was enlarging in rather fulsome fashion on the wonderful wisdom the brains must have accumulated over the eons (his word) and the desirability of imparting same (in action-packed, juicy stories) to a Solar System of shortlived, body-trammeled earthlings. From time to time Rusty briefly defended his position, hedging and shifting a bit now and then, but never really giving ground.

In his slow drift toward Nurse Bishop, Gaspard inched past Joe the Guard, who, having teased up a gobbit of bubble-foam on the end of a pencil, was shredding paper on it so that it wouldn't stick to the inside of his dust pan. It occurred to Gaspard that Flaxman and Cullingham were anything but the hard-headed, march-stealing, shrewd businessmen their manner proclaimed them. Rather, in their fantastic scheme to have two-hundred-year-old canned brains write exciting romances for moderns they were mad gaudy dreamers building moon-high sand castles.

But, Gaspard asked himself, if publishers could be such dreamers, what sort of dreamers must writers once have been? It was a dizzying thought, like discovering that your great-grandfather was really Jack the Ripper.