The Silver Eggheads

TWENTY-FIVE

Robert Schumann's song "I Will Not Grieve" conveys a feeling of terrible, glorious loneliness with its Germanic images of lost loves, diamond splendors, and coiled serpents chewing at hearts frozen in eternal night, but it is even more impressive when sung in strangely harmonious discords by a chorus of twenty-seven sealed brains.

At the last low "nicht" shuddered away, Gaspard de la Nuit applauded softly. His hair was crewcut now and his facial bruises had turned a rich greenish purple. He took a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and lit one.

Nurse Bishop darted about the Nursery unplugging speakers with chipmunk rapidity, though not swiftly enough to escape an encore of whistles, jeers and boos from the encapsulated minds.

When she returned, flicking into place an imperceptibly disturbed ringlet, Gaspard said, "They're just like a dormitory."

"Put out that cigarette, you can't smoke here. Yes, you're so right about the brats. Fads, crazes, the latest for Byzantine history and talking in colors with light-up spectrum speakers. Squabbles, feuds-sometimes two will refuse to be plugged in on each other and keep it up for weeks on end. Criticisms, complaints and jealousies-I talk to Half Pint more than I do to the others, he's teacher's pet, I forget Greeny's look-listen, I can't put Big's eye exactly where he wants it, endless-or maybe it's just that I was two minutes and seventeen seconds late giving Scratch his audio-visual bath, which is a flood of color and sound that's supposed to tone up their sensory areas, only we can't hear or see it, thank goodness, Half Pint says it's like a Niagara of suns.

"Moods, oh good Lord-sometimes one of them won't say a word for a month and I have to coax and coax, or pretend not to care, which is harder but works better in the long run. And just general copy-cat silliness-let one of them think of some new stupid way to behave and in two shakes all the others are imitating. It's like having a family of Mongolian geniuses. Miss Jackson, who goes in for history, calls them the Thirty Tyrants after some collaborators who once bossed Athens. They're really an endless chore. Sometimes I think I never do anything in this world but change fontanels."

"Just like diapers," Gaspard said.

"You think that's funny," Nurse Bishop told him, "but on days when there's been an extra lot of hate in the Nursery those fontanels stink. Dr. Krantz says it's my imagination, but I smell what I smell. You get sensitive working here. Intuitive too, though I'm never so sure of that, sometimes it's just worry. Right now I'm worried about those three brats over at Rocket House."

"Why? Flaxman and Cullingham seem reasonably responsible, even if they are crazy publishers. And then Zane Gort's with them. He's absolutely trustworthy."

"Says you. Most robots are chuckleheads in my books. Always kiting off to hunt golems or something just when you need them and then giving you some screwy logical explanation ten days later. Robixes are steadier. Oh, Zane's all right, I suppose. I'm just nervous."

"Are you afraid the brains will get upset or scared away from the Nursery?"

"More likely get into mischief and irritate someone into taking a crack at them. When you work close to them like I do, you want to pick them up and smash them ten times a day. We're understaffed-just three nurses besides myself and Miss Jackson and Dr. Krantz, who only comes in twice a week, and Pop Zangwell, who isn't exactly a strong staff to lean on."

"I can believe your nerves get frayed," Gaspard said dryly. "I've had a demonstration."

She grinned at him. "I really blew you up last night, didn't I? Did everything I could to blast your male confidence and ruin your sleep."

He shrugged. "That last might conceivably have happened without you, dear Nurse Bishop," he told her. "I didn't have anything new to read and without wordwooze I seem to sleep short and wake up sudden. But what you said last night about sex-" He paused, looking around at the silent silver eggs. "Say, can they hear what we're saying?" he asked in a hushed voice.

"Of course they can," she replied loudly and contentiously. "Most of them are having look-listen. You wouldn't want them unplugged and put in the dark, would you, just so you could feel private? They have to be unplugged five hours a day anyway. They're supposed to sleep then, but all of them swear to me they never can sleep, the closest they can get to it is what they call black dreaming. They've discovered that consciousness never dies wholly, they say-no matter what we body-clogged people think. So you just say anything you want to, Gaspard, and forget about them."

"Still-" Gaspard said, looking around again dubiously. "I don't give a damn what they hear me say," Nurse Bishop said, then shouted, "You hear that, you pack of dirty old men and hairy old lesbians?"

"Whee-wheet!"

"Zane Gort, who let you in?" she demanded, turning on the robot.

"The old gentleman in the reception cubicle," he replied respectfully.

"You mean you hypnotized the combination out of Zangwell as he lay there snoring and perfuming the air for seven yards. It must be wonderful to be a robot-no sense of smell. Or do you?"

"No, I don't, except for a few powerful chemicals that tickle my transitors. And yes, it is indeed wonderful to be a robot and alive today!" Zane admitted.

"Hey, you're supposed to be at Rocket House babysitting Half Pint and Nick and Double Nick," Nurse Bishop said.

"It is true I told you I would," Zane said, "but Mr. Cullingham said I was having a disturbing influence on the conference, so I asked Miss Blushes to take over for me."

"Well, that's something," Nurse Bishop said. "Miss Blushes seems a solid sensible soul, in spite of her little nervous flare-up yesterday."

"I'm so glad to hear you say that. I mean, that you like Miss Blushes," Zane said. "Nurse Bishop, could I-? Would you-"

"What can I do for you, Zane?" she asked.

He hesitated. "Miss Bishop, I would like your advice on a rather personal matter."

"Why, of course. But what possible good would my advice be to you on a personal matter? I'm no robot and I'm ashamed of how little I know about them."

"I know," Zane said, "but you impress me as having a bluff common sense, an instinct for going straight to the heart of a problem, that is very rare, believe me, in both flesh and metal men-and women too. And personal problems seem to be remarkably the same for all intelligent or quasi-intelligent beings, whether organic or inorganic. My problem is highly personal, by the by."

"Should I leave, Old Battery?" Gaspard asked.

"No, please stay, Old Gland. Nurse Bishop, as you may well have noted, I am more than a little interested in Miss Blushes."

"An attractive creature," Nurse Bishop commented without blinking. "Generations of flesh women would have sold their souls for that wasp waist and curves as smooth as hers."

"True indeed. Perhaps too attractive-at any rate I have no problem there. No, it's the intellectual side I'm bothered about, the mental companionship angle. I'm sure you've noticed that Miss Blushes is a little-no, let's not mince words-really quite stupid. Oh, I know I've laid it to the shock she received when she was attacked in the riot (nasty business that, attacking a walking robot, a true robot) but I'm afraid she's naturally rather stupid. For instance she was completely bored, she told me, by the talk on antigravity I gave at a robots' hobby club last night. And she is very puritanical, as you'd expect from the profession built into her-but puritanism does narrow mental horizons and there's no two ways about it, even though prudery does have its rather dangerous charms. So there's my problem: physical attraction, a mental gulf. Miss Bishop, you're female, I'd deeply appreciate getting your impressions. How far do you think I should go with this lovely robix?"

Nurse Bishop stared at him.

"Well, I'll be a tin Dorothy Dix," she said.