Fritz Leiber - The Silver Eggheads

"Don't remind me!" Culllngham pleaded, paling.

"I won't. Well, as I was going to say, Madam Pneumo's off-trail femmequins may be just the thing for you-every man to his own tastes! — but me, I'm afraid they wouldn't relax me one bit, in fact, I'm afraid they'd turn my jitters into shudders, just like those Godawful silver eggheads would in my nursery nightmares as they went swooping around in the dark over my bed, dipping down under it and then slowly rising up at the foot, circling in for the kill."

For a second time the door to the office swung inward stealthily. Flaxman did only a sketch of his previous reaction, but somehow gave the impression of being quite as deeply affected.

A burly blue-chinned man in khaki overalls looked them over, then explained crisply, "Electric Light and Power. Routine damage inspection. See your electrolock isn't working. I'll make a note of that." He hauled a book out of a hip pocket.

"The robot repairing the escalator is going to attend to it," Cullingham volunteered, studying the man thoughtfully.

"I didn't see any robot when I came up," the other told him. "You ask me, they're all effing tin crooks or crocked tin stumblebums. I just fired one last night. He was drinking high-voltage juice on the job. Or shooting himself with it, if you look at it that way-a main-liner. Must have got away with hundreds of amperes. Be burnt out in two weeks if he finds a way to keep it up."

Flaxman opened his eyes. "Look, would you do me a great favor?" he said earnestly to the man in the doorway. "I know you're a city inspector, but it's nothing illegal and I'll make it worth your while. Just patch up the electrolock on that door. Now."

"Glad to oblige you," the man grinned. "Soon as I fetch my kit," he added, rapidly backing off and drawing the door shut.

"Strange," Cullingham said. "The man's the image of a Gil Hart who was a private hand and industrial troubleblaster when I met him five years ago. Either this was his twin brother or else Gil's come down in the world. Oh well, no loss, he was a pretty bad egg."

Flaxman automatically flinched at the word. He stared at the now closed and temporarily quiescent door for a long moment, then shrugged.

"You were saying, Cully, about the eggheads?" he asked. "I wasn't," Cullingham said gently, "but here's the plan I worked out last night. We'll invite two or three of the eggs-not Rusty this trip-over to the office. Gaspard can help bring them, but he mustn't be here during the interview, or any of the nurses either, it's a distracting influence. Gaspard can escort the nurse back, or something like that, while we have a good two-three hour chat and I present some stuff and maybe do some things to the eggs that I think will convince them, tease them into writing, you might say. I realize now that this'll be hard on you, Flaxy, but if it gets too bad at any point you can just walk out and take a rest while I carry on."

"I suppose you better go ahead with it," Flaxman said resignedly. "We got to get stories out of those horrors, somehow, or we're sunk. And it couldn't be much worse for me to have them here, sitting in their black collars staring at me, than just to sit here myself remembering the Godawful way they used to-"

This time the door opened so softly and slowly that there was no sense of sudden motion to catch the eye and it was almost wide open before either of them noticed it. And this time Flaxman merely closed his eyes, though with a final flash of white, as if the pupils had rolled upward.

Standing in the doorway was a tall thin man with a complexion not much more vital than his ash-gray suit. His cavernous eyes, long narrow face, high-hunching shoulders, and hollow chest all made him look rather like a pale cobra fresh-risen from a wicker basket.

Cullingham said, "What is your business, sir?"

Without opening his eyes, Flaxman added in a very tired voice, "If you are selling electricity, we are not buying any."

The gray man smiled faintly. If anything, it made him look more like a cobra. However, all he said (though in a voice that softly hissed) was, "No. I am just browsing. I assumed that since the place was open and empty it must be one of the completely gutted buildings up for sale."

"Didn't you see the electricians working outside?" Cullingham inquired.

The gray man said, "There are no electricians working outside. Well, gentlemen, I shall retire now. Within two days my bid will be sent to you."

"There's nothing here for sale," Flaxman informed him. The gray man smiled. "Nevertheless, my bid will be sent to you," he said. "I am a very persistent man and I am afraid you must put up with my little stubbornnesses."

"Well, who are you, anyway?" Flaxman demanded.

The gray man smiled for a third time as he softly drew the door shut after him, saying, "My friends sometimes call me, perhaps for my steely persistence, the Garrote."

"Strange," Cullingham said when the door was shut. "That man reminds me of someone too. But who? A face like a Sicilian Christ. . Puzzling."

"What's a garrote?" Flaxman asked.

"A tight steel collar," Cullingham replied coolly, "with a screw in it for breaking the neck. An invention of the gay old Spaniards. However, the Garrote would also mean simply the Noose."

As he said that last word, his eyebrows lifted. The two partners looked at each other.

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."