The Silver Eggheads

NINETEEN

Even in the smallest things, life lulls us only to snap at us with tiger teeth-or swat us with a slap-stick. The reception cubicle at Wisdom of the Ages had seemed the most mustily tranquil spot in the world, a room that time had forgot, but when late that evening Gaspard returned to it a second time to pick up Nurse Bishop, a mad old figure came lurching through the inner door, brandishing at Gaspard a long ebon staff with two remarkably realistic serpents curled closely around it, and crying out, "Avaunt, dog of a newshound! By Hathor, Set, and black-clawed Bast, begone!"

The figure was the image of Joe the Guard, even to the two twisty hairs in the margin of each ear, except that it reared instead of bending its back, had a pointy white beard that hung to the crotch and eyes open so wide that the red-branched whites showed all around the irises.

Also, its gasping shouts perfumed the air ahead of it with the corpse-reek of alcohol that has been through the morgue of the human body.

The facial resemblance to Joe the Guard was so great that Gaspard, keeping a wary eye on the waving serpent-twined staff, prepared to snatch and yank the wagging beard to test its genuineness.

But just then Nurse Bishop came pushing past the ancient. "Down, Zangwell!" she commanded hastily, her nostrils wrinkling. "Mr. Noot's no reporter, Pop, all that newspaper work's done nowadays by robots. You watch out for those. And don't break that caduceus-you've told me often enough that it's a museum piece. And go easy on the nectar-remember the times I've found you holding pink elephants at bay and keeping pink pharoahs out of the Nursery. Come on, Mr. K'nut, let's get going. Tonight I'm fed with Wisdom to here." The back of her hand touched her little pink chin.

Gaspard obediently followed her out, musing how nice it would be to have a girl, especially such a delicately luscious one, whose wisdom was truly all in her body, whose head was airy empty.

"I don't think Zangwell ever really had to chase reporters," she said with a quick little grin, "but he keeps remembering that his grandfather did. Joe the Guard? Oh, he and Pop are twin brothers. The Zangwells have been family retainers of the Flaxmans for generations. You didn't know?"

"I never even knew Joe's last name," Gaspard said. "For that matter, I didn't know there were family retainers in the world any more. How does anyone retain a job long enough to rate that classification?"

The girl looked at him coolly. "It still happens where there's money and a purpose, like the Braintrust, that outlasts one generation. A purpose to which you can dedicate yourself."

"Do you come from a long line of dedicated family retainers?" Gaspard wanted to know, but, "Don't let's talk about me," the girl replied. "I'm fed with me too."

"I only asked because you're extraordinarily pretty to be a nurse."

"What comes next in this approach?" the girl asked crossly. "That I ought to cash in on my face and figure by becoming a writer?"

"No," Gaspard said judiciously. "A stereo starlet maybe but a writer never. For that even the sweetest girl has to look as if she were wearing dirty underwear."

The night outside was pitchy dark except for the pink glow in the sky from the rest of New Angeles and a few spots like Wisdom of the Ages that had an auxiliary electric supply. Perhaps the government felt that if there were no light on Readership Row the public would forget the destruction of the wordmills and the assessing of responsibility for it.

"Kaput," Gaspard said. "Will the brains really turn down Flaxman's offer, do you think?"

"Look," the girl answered stridently, "their first answer to anything is always no. Then they dither and swoop around and-" She broke off. "I told you I didn't want to talk about Wisdom, Mr. Gnu."

"Call me Gaspard," he said. "What's your first name, by the way?" When she didn't reply he said with a sigh, "Okay, I'll call you Nurse and think of you as the Iron Bishop."

An autocab with dim blue and red cruising lights and a yellow dome-glow came crawling along like a giant tropical beetle. Gaspard whistled and it scuttled tiredly to the curb. Top and side of the dull silver carapace swung back, they climbed in and the door closed over them. Gaspard gave the address of an eatery and the autocab moved off, blindly following a magnetized line in the rubberoid.

"Not the Word?" the girl asked. "I thought all writers ate at the Word."

Gaspard nodded. "But I'm classed as a scab now. The Word is practically union headquarters."

"Is being classed as a scab any different from being one?" the girl inquired fretfully. "Oh excuse me, I really haven't any feelings about it one way or the other. My own job isn't union."

"Just the same our jobs are a lot alike," Gaspard told her. "I am-well, was-a wordmill mechanic. I was in charge of a giant that produced far smoother and more exciting prose than any man can write, yet I had to treat it like any other nonrobot machine-this autocab, say. Whereas you've got a roomful of canned geniuses and you have to handle them like babies. We do have something in common, Nurse."

"Stop trying to soften me up for a pass," the girl snapped. "I never knew that writers were wordmill mechanics at all."

"They aren't," Gaspard admitted, "but at least I was more of a mechanic than any other writer I knew. I always watched the real mechanics when they serviced my mill and once when they had the back plate off I tried to trace some circuits. The main thing was that I was enthusiastic about wordmifls. I loved those machines and the stuff they turned out. Being with them was like being able to watch a culture plate grow the medicine that will make you well."

"I'm afraid I can't share your enthusiasm," the girl said. "You see, I don't read wordwooze, I only read the old books the brains pick for me."

"How can you stand them?" Gaspard asked.

"Oh, I manage," she told him. "I have to if I'm going to keep within ten light years of half understanding those brats."

"Yes, but is it fun?"

"What's fun?" She stamped a foot. "My God, but this cab crawls!"

"It's only got its batteries to go on," Gaspard reminded her. "See the lights ahead? We'll be back to power in a block. It would be nice if they could apply anti-gravity to cabs, though-then we could fly where we're going."

"Why can't they?" she asked, as if it were Gaspard's fault.

"It's a matter of size," he told her. "Zane Gort explained it to me a few days ago. Anti-gravity fields are all little short-range fields, like the packing force around an atomic nucleus. They can float stub-missiles but not spaceships, suitcases but not autocabs. If we were small as mice or even cats-"

"Cats taking cabs doesn't excite me. Is Zane Gort an engineer?"

"Not unless writing adventure stories for other robots counts-they're full of physics, I believe. But like most of the newer robots he has a lot of hobbies that are almost second professions. Why, he has spools feeding new information into him twenty-four hours a day."

"You like robots, don't you?"

"Don't you?" Gaspard demanded, a sudden hardness in his voice.

The girl shrugged. "They're no worse than some people. They just leave me cold, like lizards."

"That's a rotten comparison. And completely inaccurate."

"It is not. Robots are cold-blooded like lizards, aren't they? At least they're cold."

"Would you expect them to steam-heat themselves just to please you? What has hot-bloodedness ever done for humanity except to make people bitch and declare wars?"

"It's accomplished a few acts of courage and romance. You know, you're a lot like a robot yourself, Gaspard. Cool and mechanical. I bet you'd like a girl who blew electricity at you, or whatever it is robots do, as soon as you pressed her Love Button."

"But robots aren't like that! They're anything but mechanical. Zane Gort-"

The autocab stopped at a brightly lit doorway. A slim golden tentacle came weaving out of the doorway, rippling jollily like a snake that has been taught to shimmy. It helped lift the carapace, then flicked Gaspard very lightly on the shoulder.

A pair of cupid's-bow lips budded on the end of the supple, tapering rope of gold. Then they bloomed, opening like a flower.

"Let me guide you and your lady to Engstrand's Interstellar Eatery," lisped the tentacle. "The Cuisine of Space."