Fritz Leiber - The Silver Eggheads

"But words can drive me crazy," Gaspard finished. "I don't know where they dug up that stuff, but I know that if a person used to good writing-wordmill quality-were forced to listen to it for long, he'd go stark raving nuts."

She glanced sideways at him. "You really are a serious reader, Gaspard, a writer's reader. You ought to have a go at those old books the brains pick for me-I bet you'd get to like them."

"Just drive me bats a different way," Gaspard assured her.

"How do you know?" she demanded. "I read a lot myself but good or bad I never get as worked up about it as you do."

"That makes you an editor's reader," Gaspard said.

"Stop whispering, you two," Flaxman called. "You can stay here but don't disturb the conference. Gaspard, you're a mechanic, take this drill and attach this bolt to the door. That lousy electrolock isn't working yet. I'm more than a little sick of being burst in on."

Cullingham had stopped reading. "So there you have. Chapter One and the opening of Chapter Two of The Scourge of Space ," he said quietly, directing his voice at the three microphones. "What are your reactions? Could you improve on it? If so, how? Please state the main headings under which you would organize revision."

He plugged a speaker into the smallest of the three eggs. "You contemptible chattering ape," the speaker intoned in its quiet unimpassioned way, "you inflicter of horror on the helpless, you bullying chimpanzee, you exploded lemur, you overgrown spider monkey, you shambling-"

"Thank you, Half Pint," Cullingham said, pulling out Half Pint's plug. "Now let's have the opinions o Nick and Double Nick."

But as he reached the plug toward another of the silver eggs, Nurse Bishop's hand came between. Without a word she rapidly disconnected the microphones from the eggs, leaving all their sockets empty.

She said, "I think I approve on the whole of what you two gentlemen are doing, but you're not going about it quite the right way."

"Hey, quit that!" Flaxman objected. "Being the Czarina of the Nursery doesn't make you the boss here."

But Cullingham lifted his hand. "She may have something, Flaxy," he said. "I haven't been making the progress I'd hoped."

Nurse Bishop said, "It's a good idea to force the brats to listen to all sorts of stuff and ask them to criticize it, so as to get them interested in writing again. But their reactions ought to be constantly monitored-and guided." She smiled fiendishly and gave the two partners a conspiratorial wink.

Cullingham leaned forward. "Keep sending on that wavelength," he said.

Gaspard shrugged his shoulders and started the drill chewing into the door.

Nurse Bishop continued: "I'll attach whisper-speakers to all three of them and listen to what they're saying while you keep on reading. In the pauses you make, I'll whisper 'em back a word or two. That way they won't feel so isolated and just lose themselves in cursing you, like they're doing now. I'll absorb their exasperations and at the same time work in a little propaganda for Rocket House."

"Great!" Flaxman said. Cullingham nodded.

Gaspard went back for the screws. "Excuse me, Mr. Flaxman," he said in an undertone, "but where in the world did you get that crud Mr. Cullingham's reading?"

"The slush pile," Flaxman confided freely. "Would you believe it? A hundred years of nothing-but-wordmill fiction, a hundred years of nothing-but-rejections, and the amateurs are still submitting stories."

Gaspard nodded. "Some amateurs called Penfolk were circling over this place in a helicopter when we came in."

"Probably planning to bomb us with trunkfuls of old manuscripts," Flaxman told him.

Cullingham intoned, "In the last fortress on the last planet held by earthmen, Grant Ironstone smiled at his terrifled clerkish assistant Potherwell. 'Every victory of the High Khan,' Grant said floughtfully, 'brings the yellow octopoids that closer to defeat. I'll tell you why. Potherwell, do you know what's the fiercest, smartest, most dangerous, deadliest hunting-beast in the entire universe-when finally aroused?' 'A kill-crazy rogue octopoid?' Potherwell quavered. Grant smiled. 'No, Potherwell,' he said, placing a finger on the narrow chest of the trembling clerk. ' You are. The answer is: man!'"

Nurse Bishop's curly head was now bent over the clustered whisper-speakers plugged into the eggs' lowest sockets. Occasionally she uttered what looked like a sympathetic " Tsk-tsk ." Gaspard drilled and wielded the screwdriver. Flaxman smoked a cigar, his nervousness at the eggs' presence well under control except for occasional twitchings and single beads of sweat running down his forehead. Chapter Two of The Scourge of Space rocketed remorselessly toward its climax.

As Gaspard twisted the last screw down flush and proudly surveyed his handiwork, there came a very faint tap at the door. Gaspard softly opened it to admit Zane Gort, who stood respectfully listening.

Cullingham, who had grown a shade hoarse, declaimed: "As Potherwell, fingernails flailing, launched himself at the canary chrome brain sac of the rogue octopoid, Grant Ironstone cried, 'There is a spy among us!' and took hold of the filmy bodice of Zyla, Queen of the Ice Stars, and ripped. 'Look!' he commanded the astounded space marshalls. 'Twin radar domes!' Chapter Three : By the light of the inmost moon of the sunless planet Kabar, four master criminals surveyed one another doubtfully."

Zane Gort observed quietly to Gaspard, "You know, it's funny how humans are forever ending stories or episodes with the discovery that the beautiful woman is a robot. Just at the point where it starts to get interesting. And ending it bang without one word of description as to the robot's shape, color, decor, pincher-style and so on, or even telling you whether it's a robot or a robix."

He shook his metal head. "Of course I'm prejudiced, but I ask you, Gaspard, how would you like a story in which it turned out that the beautiful robot was really a woman and snap it ended right there, without a word about complexion, hair shade, and bust measurement, without even a hint as to whether she was a houri or a hag?"

He turned his headlamp toward Gaspard and twinkled it. "Come to think of it, I once did end a Dr. Tungsten chapter just that way: Platinum Paula turns out to be an empty robot-shell with a human movie starlet inside at the controls. I knew my readers would feel so frustrated they'd want to get on to something else right away. So I cut to Silver Vilya oiling herself. That always tickles them."

Cullingham had a fit of coughing.

"That's enough for now," Flaxman said. "Better rest your voice. Let's hear from the brains."

"Double Nick has a comment," Nurse Bishop announced, switching his speaker to full volume.

"Gentlemen," said one of the two larger silver eggs, "I assume you understand that we are brains and nothing else. We have sight, hearing, the power of speech-that's all. Our glandular equipment is at a minimum, believe me, just enough to keep us from vegetating. So may I ask you humbly, very humbly, how you expect us to be interested in turning out stories involving action at the bumping level, feelings suitable for conformist morons, and a lead-heavy emphasis on that tiresome tumescence which you euphemistically call love?"

Nurse Bishop's lips curled in an incredulous, knowing smile, but she said nothing.

"Back in the days when I had a body," Double Nick went on before either of the partners could compose an answer, "there was a glut of such books. Three out of four book covers thunderingly implied that the act of love would be served up in satisfying detail inside, well spiced with violence and perversions, but heavily glazed with an infantile he-man morality. I recall telling myself at the time that ninety percent of all so-called perversions are simply the natural desire to view an adored object and a gratifying act from all possible angles, exactly as you'd want to look at a beautiful statue from all sides, even manufacturing a fourth spatial dimension from which to view it, if that were possible. Today, I must confess, the whole business simply bores me. Possibly my physical condition, or rather the lack of such, has something to do with it. But it especially depresses me to think that after one hundred years the human race is still groping for proxy thrills and a naughtiness that is simply natural curiosity disavowed and projected.