The Silver Eggheads

TWENTY

Engstrand's cuisine was not quite as empty and cold as interstellar space or even a robot's caress, and there was no lizard on the menu. Still, the food was somewhat on the sick side. The drinks were healthy enough, however. After a bit Nurse Bishop let herself be coaxed into telling how she had got interested in the eggheads because when she was a little girl she'd been taken to visit them by an aunt who was herself a Braintrust nurse. Gaspard in turn told about wanting since childhood to become a writer simply because he'd always loved wordwooze, instead of drifting into the business like most authors through stereo, TV, modeling, or public relations work. He started to describe exactly what it was that made wordwooze-especially that of certain mills-so wonderful, but his voice got a little too loud and a fidgety, spider-thin old man at the next table made it an excuse to cut in.

"You're right about that, young man," the oldster called across. "It's the wordmill that counts every time, not the writer. I read every book Scribner Scribe One ever milled, no matter what writer's name they tacked onto it afterwards. That machine had more juice than any other three working together. Sometimes I had to hunt through the fine print to make sure I was getting SS One, but it was worth it. Only SS One would leave me with that wonderful empty feeling, my mind a warm dark blank. Read the wordmill, I always said."

"I don't know about that, dear," commented the plump, white-haired, pucker-mouthed woman beside him. "It's always seemed to me that Heloise Ibsen's work has a certain quality, no matter what machine she uses."

"Moon cheese!" the old man said derisively. "They just use the same program for all her sex-epics, but the quality of the wordmill comes through every time and the Ibsen name or any other doesn't affect that one bit. Writers!" His face darkened as its wrinkles deepened. "They all ought to be lined up and shot after what they did this mormngl Blowing up amusement parks and poisoning ice-cream factories isn't in it for sheer evil. The government's saying it's not so bad and by tomorrow they'll be saying it's suzieswell, but I can always tell when they're covering up a major catastrophe. The news screen starts flickering in a hypno-rhythm for one thing. Did you hear what those writers did to SS One? Nitric acid! They ought to be lined up and have done to them what they did to those mills. The ones that did it to Old SS One ought to have plastic funnels rammed down their throat and-"

"Dear!" the old lady cautioned him. "People are trying to enjoy their dinners."

Gaspard, his mouth full of yeast steak, simultaneously smiled and shrugged apologetically at the old man and pointed his fork at his bulging cheek.

"That's all right, Mam," Nurse Bishop called to her. "His idea might be a good one for getting down this interplanetary kelp chowder." She looked at Gaspard. "How did you get into the writers' union, anyway? Through Heloise Ibsen?" she asked even more loudly, coming around the table to pound him on the back when he choked. The old man glared.

In spite of, or more likely because of this incident, Gaspard made his pass at Nurse Bishop almost as soon as they were again in an autocab.

"No," she said harshly, lifting his hands away from her and throwing them down in his lap. "You said it was for supper and talk. Supper and talk it is. I know something about what's been happening to you today. After the manic kick you're getting tired and hurt-feeling and lost, and you want sex the way a baby wants its bottle. Well, I'm not changing any more diapers or fontanels for now, thank you. I spend all day with a lot of nasty old babies in tin cans trying to pin my mind down and stick their ideas into it, I don't intend to spend the night submitting to anything like that on the physical level. You don't need a woman anyway, you need a nurse. Oh, shut up!"

The final command seemed to be directed at both of them.

Gaspard sat in huffy silence until the autocab had nosed its blind magnetic way within four blocks of her address. Then, "I got to be an apprentice writer," he said, "through my uncle, who was a master wave-guide plumber." Then he began to feed coins into the autocab's slots.

"I supposed it was something like that," Nurse Bishop said, standing up as the carapace lifted after the last coin had chinked in. "Thanks for the dinner and the talk. Sometimes even the stupidest talk is hard to do, especially when I'm around, and you at least tried. No, don't come to the door-it's only three yards, you can watch me through it." She stepped out and as her apartment entrance scanned her, recognized, and opened to receive her, she said, "Cheer up, Gaspard. What's a woman got, anyway, that wordwooze hasn't?"

The question hung in the dark air like micro-skywriting after she was gone. It depressed Gaspard, chiefly because it reminded him he hadn't bought a new paperback for tonight and now was in no mood to hunt up an open stand. Then he began to wonder if her remark had meant that, for him, women and wordwooze were nothing more than avenues toward blackout.

The autocab whispered, "Where to, mister, or are you getting out?"

Maybe he ought to walk home, he thought, it was only ten blocks. Might do him good. He felt a swampy feeling welling up inside him-a dark cold dirty wet loneliness and self-contempt and need to have his ego stroked, no matter how. Dammit, why had he stopped Zane Gort from giving him the address of that robot whorehouse, or whatever they called it! Madam Pneumo's? He was weary, weary, weary; he hadn't slept since his graveyard-shift catnaps; but his moody misery outranked his weariness. Even mindless, let alone robot caresses would help tonight.

"Where to, mister, or are you getting out?" Conversational tone now.

Well, he could swallow his pride and give Zane a buzz right now. At least robots didn't gloat and say "I told you so" and you never had to worry whether they were asleep.

He took his phone out of his pocket and murmured Zane's code.

"Where to, mister, or are you getting out?"

The answer came at once, in sugary tones rather like Miss Blushes'. "This is a recorded message. Zane Gort regrets he is unavailable chatterwise. He is addressing the Midnight Metal Mind-Weavers Club on the topic 'Antigravity in Fiction and Fact.' He will be free in two hours. This is a recorded-"

"WHERE TO, MISTER, OR ARE YOU GETTING OUT?"

Gaspard stepped out of the autocab and started walking just before it closed and locked its carapace, darkened its windows, and started its meter again. The thought of being charged at the present moment for "necking time" was more. than he could bear.