The Silver Eggheads

EIGHT

"Gaspard," the taller, thinner half of Rocket House went on when he got himself under control, "You are undoubtedly the wildest-eyed idealist who ever smuggled himself into a conservative union. Let's stick to facts: wordmills aren't even robots, they weren't ever alive; to talk of murder is mere poetry. Men built the wordmills, men also directed them. Yes, men-myself among them, as you know-supervized the dark electrical infinities churning inside them, just as ancient writers had to direct the activities of their own subconscious minds-usually in a most inefficient fashion."

"Well, at least those old authors had subconscious minds," Gaspard said. "I'm not sure we do any more. Certainly we haven't any subconscious minds rich enough to pattern new wordmills on and fill their memory banks."

"Still, it's a very interesting point," Cullingham persisted blandly, "and an important one to keep in view, whatever resources we have to fall back on to meet the approaching fiction famine. Most people believe wordmills were invented and adopted by the publishers because a single writer's mind could no longer hold the vast amount of raw material needed to produce a convincing work of fiction, the world and human society and its endless specialties having become too complex for a single person to comprehend. Nonsense! Wordmills were adopted because they were more efficient publishing-wise.

"Toward the end of the Twentieth Century, most fiction was written by a few top editors-in the sense that they provided the themes, the plot skeletons, the styling, the key shocks; the writers merely filled in the outlines. Naturally a machine that could be owned and kept in one place was incomparably more efficient than a stable of writers galloping around, changing publishers, organizing unions and guilds, demanding higher royalties, having psychoses and sports cars and mistresses and neurotic children, exploding their temperaments all over the lot, and even trying to sneak weird notions of their own into editor-perfected stories.

"In fact, wordmills were so much more efficient than writers that the latter could be kept on as a harmless featherbedded glamor-asset-and of course by then the writers' unions were so strong that some such compromise was inevitable.

"All this simply underlines my main point: that the two activities involved in writing are the workaday unconscious churning and the inspired direction or programming. These two activities are completely separate and it's best when they are carried out by two distinct persons or mechanisms. Actually the name of the directive genius (today called a programmer rather than an editor, of course) ought always in justice to have appeared on each paperback or listen-tape alongside the names of the glamorauthor and the wordmill.. But now I'm riding my hobby away from my point, which is simply that a man is always the ultimate directive force."

"Maybe, Mr. Cullingham," Gaspard said unwillingly. "And you were a good enough programmer, I'll admit, if programming is anywhere near as difficult and important as you make it out to be-which I frankly doubt. Weren't all the basic programs created at the same time the wordmills were?" Cullingham shook his head, then half shrugged. "Anyway," Gaspard continued, "I always thought Whittlesey Wordmaster Four once wrote three best-selling serious novels and a science-fiction romance without any programming at all. Maybe that's just promotion copy, you'll tell me, but I'll believe otherwise when it's proved to me." The bitter tone returned to his voice. "Just as I'll believe that my fellow monkeys can actually write books when I read 'em and get to page two. They've been talking big for months, but I'll wait 'til the juice starts to flow through their daisy rings and the words start coming."

"Excuse me, Gaspard," Flaxman interjected, "but would you mind tuning the emotional down and the factual up? I'd like to hear a little more about the fracas on the Row. What happened to Rocket's properties, for instance?"

Gaspard straightened up, scowling. "Why," he said simply, "all your wordmills were wrecked-wrecked beyond any remote possibility of repair. That's all."

"Tch-tch," said Flaxman, shaking his head. "Dreadful," echoed Cullinghain.

Gaspard looked back and forth between the two partners with deep and puzzled suspicion. Their feeble efforts to appear concerned only made them look to him more like two fat cats full of stolen cream and with a map of the secret tunnel leading to the meat locker tucked inside their fur vests.

"Do you two understand me?" he said. "I'll print it out for you. Your three wordmills were wrecked-one by bomb, two by flame-thrower." His eyes widened as the scene came back to him. "It was murder, Mr. Flaxman, ghastly murder. You know the one we called Rocky? — Rocky Phraser? He was just an old Harper Hardcover Electrobrain, rebuilt in '07 and '49, but I never missed a book he milled- well, I had to watch old Rocky blacken and warp and frizzle. My own girl's new boyfriend was on the hose, too."

"Tch-tch. His own girl's new boyfriend," Flaxman said, managing to sound solicitous and to grin at the same time. His composure and Cu]lingham's were positively supernatural.

Gaspard nodded savagely. "Your great Homer Hemingway, by the way," he shot at them, trying somehow to get a rise. "But Zane Gort scorched his rear end for him."

Flaxman shook his head. "It's a wicked world," he said. "Gaspard, you're a hero. For as long as the other writers are out we'll keep you on at fifteen percent of union wages. But I don't like this about one of our robot authors harming a human. Hey, Zane! — as a self-employed robot you'll have to bear the costs of any suits brought against Rocket House. It's in your contract."

"Homer Hemingway deserved every hot wallop Zane gave him," Gaspard protested. "The sadistic boob had been using his flamer on Miss Blushes."

Cullingham looked around at them inquiringly.

"The pink robix Gaspard and Zane carried in," Flaxman explained. "Our visiting breen, the new government censoring robix."

He shook his head, grinning widely. "So now the naked truth is we got a censor and no scripts for her to bluepencil. Can you top that for irony? It's a screwy business, all right. I thought you knew Miss Blushes, Cully."

At that moment a high sweet voice behind them broke in, strident but dreamy. "Question naked sequence. Warn on blue material. For 'can' print 'bathroom.' Delete 'screwy' and close. For 'knew' substitute 'were acquainted with.' Oh my, where am I? What's been happening to me?"

Miss Blushes was sitting up and flapping her pinchers. Zane Gort was kneeling at her side and tenderly mopping her scorched flank with a damp pad-the ugly discoloration was almost gone. Now he tucked the pad in a little door in his chest and supported her with an arm.

"You must be calm," he said. "Everything's going to be all right. You're with friends."

"Am I? How can I be sure?" She drew away from him, felt of herself and hastily closed several little doors. "Why, you've been doing things to me! I've been lying here exposed. Those humans have seen me with my sockets open!"

"It was necessary," Zane assured her. "You needed electricity and other attentions. You've had a rough time. Now you must rest."

"Other attentions indeed!" Miss Blushes shrilled. "What do you mean by making a peep show of me?"

"Believe me, miss," Flaxman volunteered, "we're gentlemen-we haven't been sneaking any looks at you-though I must say you're a most attractive robix indeed-if Zane's books had covers, I'd ask you to pose for one."

"Yes, with my sockets wide open and my oil-ports unscrewed, I suppose!" Miss Blushes said witheringly.