The Silver Eggheads

TWENTY-TWO

"Racket House has something up its sleeve and they're vulnerable to kidnapping."

Sharp ears at nearby tables-and directional mikes at further ones-that had up to this point been catching only fragments of Heloise's monologue, heard that one sentence dearly.

Seekers who had come that night to the Word on the hunt for hints and leads in a promising but perplexing commercial crisis decided they had found the clue they wanted.

Trains of action were set in motion. With various figurative groans, dankings and squeals, wheels started to turn.

The chief actors among those reacting constituted a vivid cross-section of the money-obsessed division of Space-Age man.

Winston P. Mears, four-star operative of the Federal Bureau of Justice, memorized the following memorandum to himself: Rocket's sleeves bulge. Eggs? Cucumbers? Lettuce? Contact Miss Blushes. The fantastic aspects of the Wordmills Case did not trouble Mears at all. He was inured to a society in which almost any action of individuals could be construed as a crime, but in which any crime committed by organizations or groups could be justified six ways. Even the wanton destruction of the wordmills seemed nothing out of the ordinary in a world used to maintaining its economy by destroying objects of value. Mears, plump and rubicund, was wearing the cover personality of Good Charley Hogan, a big plankton-and-algae man from Baja, California.

Gil Hart, industrial trouble-blaster, rejoiced that he would now be able to tell Messrs. Zachery and Zobel of Proton Press that their suspicions of their colleagues and closest competitors were fully justified. The private hand blew out his flaming shot and downed the fiery tot of bourbon. A smile creased his blue-shaded cheeks. Kidnapping? He might try a spot of that himself to shake loose Rocket's secret. After all, industrial kidnapping had become a commonplace in a society where two centuries of government savant-snatching and general man-grabbing had set the standards. Be fun if he could arrange to snatch a gal from Rocket. Someone lively and talkative, like this Ibsen bomb, but preferably less robust. Hellions were fine, so long as they didn't pack too hard a punch.

Filippo Fenicchia, interplanetary gangster known as the Garrote, smiled ironically and closed the eyes that provided all the life there was in his long pale face. He was one of the old habituйs of the Word, who came to watch the funny writers, and it amused him that business opportunities-duties, to his way of looking at it-should pursue him even here. The Garrote was a tranquil man, serene in his knowledge that fear is humankind's most basic and enduring emotion and that playing on fear is therefore always the surest means of livelihood, whether in the days of Milo and Clodius, Cesar Borgia, or Al Capone. The earlier mention of eggs stuck in his mind. He decided he must consult the Memory.

Clancy Goldfarb, professional book-hijacker so adroit that his outfit was unofficially recognized as the fourth most powerful book distributor, decided that what most likely bulked Rocket's sleeve was books milled in excess of quota. Lighting a foot-long pencil-thin Venusian cheroot, he began to plan one of his perfect robberies.

Cain Brinks was a robot adventure-author, whose Madam Iridium was the chief fictional rival to Zane Gort's Dr. Tungsten. Currently Madam Iridium and the Acid Beast was outselling Dr. Tungsten Reams a Nut by five to four. On overhearing Heloise's strident whisper, Cain Brinks had almost dropped the tray of Martian martinis he was carrying. To penetrate the Word undetected, Cain Brinks had this afternoon tarnished himself to the point of fine pitting so as to be able to impersonate a robot waiter. Now this piece of masochism had paid off. He knew in a flash what Rocket House had up its sleeve-a Zane Gort determined to become the czar of human fiction-and he began to lay plans to cut in.

While these reactions were occurring, a strange cortege was wending its way into the Word, moving between the green tables toward the center of the room. It consisted of six slim haughty young men arm in arm with six scrawny haughty elderly ladies, followed by a jewel-studded robot wheeling a dolly. The young men were conspicuously longhaired and wore black turtle-neck sweaters and tight black slacks-the effect was almost but not quite one of leotards. The scrawny old ladies wore sheath evening dresses of gold or silver lame and were bedecked with diamonds in dazzling ropes, bracelets, pendants, and tiaras.

"My God, Babe," Homer Hemingway summarized succinctly, "look at the rich bitches and the black pansies, will you?"

The cortege stopped just short of their table. The leading female, whose diamonds were so many and scintillating they hurt the eye, looked around her superciliously.

Homer, his sleepy mind wandering like a child's, said complainingly to Heloise, "I wonder what's taking that kid so long with my milk. If she's been putting in any pep pills-"

"Aphrodisiacs, more likely, if she thinks you're worth it," Heloise told him in a quick aside while staring fascinatedly at the newcomers.

The bediamonded female announced in a voice suitable for rebuking bellboys, "We are seeking the head of the writers' union."

Heloise, never at a loss, leaped up. "I am the ranking member present of the executive committee."

The female looked her up and down. "You will do," she said. She clapped her hands sharply together twice. "Parkins!" she called.

The jewel-studded robot drew forward the dolly. On it were neatly stacked twenty four-foot-high columns of thin hardcover books in beautifully toned dust covers that themselves had a jewelly glitter. On top of these was something of irregular shape draped in white silk.

"We are Penfolk," the female announced, looking straight at Heloise and speaking in the penetrating tones an empress uses in a noisy market plaza. "For over a century we have preserved the traditions of true creative writing in our select circles, in anticipation of the glorious day when the horrid machines that trample our minds should be destroyed and writing returned to its only true friends-the dedicated amateurs. Over the years we have often execrated your union for its complicity in the plot to make metal monsters our spiritual masters, but now we wish to recognize your courage in at last destroying the tyrant wordmills. I hereby present you with two tokens of our esteem. Parkins!"

That bedizzened example of conspicuous expenditure twitched aside the white silk, revealing a mirror-gleaming gold statue of a slim nude youth driving a huge sword through the midriff of a wordmill.

"Behold!" cried the female. "It is the work of Gorgius Snelligrew, executed, cast and polished in a single day. It rests upon Penfoik's entire literary output during the past century-the slender tapers, in pastel dustcovers flecked with jewel dust, whereby we have kept alight the flame of literatureship down through the drear machine age now past: seventeen hundred volumes of deathless verse!"

Suzette chose that moment to come wagging up bearing a white-filled crystal goblet from which rose a two-foothigh blue flame.

She set it in front of Homer, covered it briefly with a silver plate.

She removed the plate. The flame was gone and the hideous stench of burnt casein filled the air.

With a final flourish of: her perky rump, Suzette announced, "Here she is, jus'-so-'ot-your flaming milk, M'sieu."