Fritz Leiber: The Silver Eggheads

" Cully! " The cry came like a bugle call.

They all looked around at Flaxman. The small publisher's eyes were glued to the jerking sheet. His face was radiant.

"Cully, this is terrific!" he said without looking up or slowing the machine. "It's a system-wide knockout! It does everything a Scribner Scribe story can do and more. You've only got to read a couple of pages-"

But Cullingham was already peering avidly over his shoulder and the others were jockeying around for glimpses.

"It's about a girl who's born on Ganymede without a sense of touch," Flaxman explained, still soaking it up. "She becomes a nightclub low-gravity acrobat and the story travels around the system, there's a famous surgeon in it, but the sympathy with which the author presents that girl, the way he gets you right inside her. . It's called You've Felt My Hurtings- "

"That's Half Pint's story!" Nurse Bishop revealed excitedly. "He kept telling me the plot. I put it last because I was afraid it wasn't much good, not as clever as the others."

"Boy, would you make a lousy editor!" Flaxman chortled happily. "Cully, why the hell's the TV off? We got to tell the whole Nursery the good news!"

After a half minute of maddening herringbone, during which the Nursery was informed of Half Pint's victory and reacted with odd squawks and garbled interjections, the screen flashed clear. The upper half of Half Pint-it had to be Half Pint-and his eye, ear and speaker were screen center, banked to either side and above by the twentynine eyes of the others and Miss Jackson's frazzled-looking face.

"Congratulations, boy!" Flaxman cried, clasping his hands above his head and shaking them vigorously. "How'd you do it? What's your secret? I'm asking because-I hope they won't mind my saying so-I think all your pals can profit from it."

"I just stayed glued to the voicewriter and let the mighty brain rip," Half Pint asserted drunkenly. "I started the universe whirling like a merry-go-round and grabbed at things as they went by. I saw my shell as a gigantic codpiece and raped the world. I unraveled the cosmos and rewove it again. I hopped on God's chair while he was off feeding the archangels and put on his creating cap. I-"

Half Pint paused. "No, I didn't," he said more slowly. "At least that wasn't all I did. Tell you what, I had experience-new experience. I got myself kidnapped-the whole chase in the last third of my story is just my kidnapping, rewritten a bit. And then Zane Gort took me off on a couple of trips, that helped too, in fact it helped a lot more than-

"But I won't say anything more about those things, because I want to tell you the real secret of my story-the deep down inside secret. I didn't write my story at all. Nurse Bishop did."

"Half Pint, you idiot!" she squealed.

"Yes you did write my story, Momma," Half Pint continued overridingly, his blank form seeming to swell the screen. "It all came to life when I was telling you the plot. I was thinking of you every minute, trying to make you understand. Trying to court you, really, because you're the girl in the story too, Momma-or maybe I am, maybe I'm the girl who cant feel-no, now I'm getting confused. . Anyway, there's a barrier, an anesthesia, and we get around it. ."

"Half Pint," Flaxman said hoarsely, a tear trickling down his cheek, "I haven't told anybody about this, but there's a prize for winning this contest-a silver voicewriter that belonged to Hobart Flaxman himself. I wish you were over here right now so you could receive it and I could shake your- Well, anyway, I wish you were here, I really do."

"That's all right, Mr. Flaxman. We don't need any prizes, do we, Momma? And there'll be lots of chances-"

"No, by God," Flaxmnn roared, standing up, "you're coming over here right now! Gaspard, go-"

"Gaspard doesn't need to!" Miss Blushes squealed loudly. "Zane left a minute ago to fetch Half Pint. He told me to tell you."

"Who the hell does that tin hack think- Wonderful!" Flaxman cried. "Half Pint, boy, we're going to-"

The sentence was not finished, because at that moment the screen dissolved briefly into herringbone and then went dark. Voice cut off too.

Nobody minded. Everyone was too interested in congratulating each other and snagging victory drinks. Joe had another sharp struggle with his brother, who seemed to find the sight of so much rapid-fire imbibing more than sanity could bear. Fighting his way to his feet the old alcoholic pointed a beard-entangled shaking hand at a bottle of scotch Culhingham was lifting and cried out "There it goes!" in a bloodchillingly eerie voice and then followed with shaking hand and bloodshot eye what seemed to be the spirit double of the scotch bottle as it floated past him high in the air and out through the dosed door. "There it goes!" he wailed again despairingly. Joe with difficulty forced him back into his seat.

By that time the excitement had simmered down to the point where chunks of conversation could be heard.

Cullingham was explaining to Gaspard, "So you see it really is a matter of editorial cooperation. A kind of symbiosis. Each brain needs a sensitive human being that it can tell its story to, that it can feel through, a partner who isn't imprisoned. It depends on getting the right person for each brain. There's a job I'll enjoy working at! It'll be a little like conducting a marriage bureau."

"Cully, baby, you get the cutest ideas," Heloise Ibsen said with a ladylike chortle, grabbing his hand.

"Yes, doesn't he?" Nurse Bishop agreed, grabbing Gaspard's.

Gaspard said expansively, "Yes, and once we have wordmills again, with their bigger-than-human stock of memories and sensations, just think of what a three-way possibility we'll have. One egghead, one two-legged writer, and one wordmill-what a writing team that'll be!"

"I'm not sure new wordmills will ever be built, or at least used to the same extent," Cullingham said thoughtfully. "I've programmed them most of my adult life and so I've never said anything against them, but to tell the truth I've always been oppressed by the fact that they are dead machines that can never work by anything but formula. For instance, they never could make the corny but blessed mistake of writing about themselves, as the Half Pint-Bishop team has done." He smiled at Gaspard. "You're surprised I should be saying this sort of thing, aren't you? — but do you realize that although hundreds of millions of people have lived or at least gone to sleep by the power of wordwooze, it's never been established how much of its effect is due to actual story and how much to pure hypnotism and the perfect but sterile manipulation of a few fundamental symbols of security, pleasure and fear-an endlessly repeated formula for feeding the ego, stilling anxiety, and blanking out the mind? Who knows but that tonight may mark the rebirth of true fiction in the world? — fiction that grapples, takes chances, adventures, and explores!"

"Baby, how much have you been drinking?" Heloise asked him anxiously.

"Yeah, watch that scotch, Cully, it goes down easy when you're light-headed," Flaxman advised, coming up at that moment and giving his partner an odd look. "Listen, folks, the instant Half Pint comes through that door, I want everybody to stop what they're doing and give him a big hand. Don't let him feel like a spectre at the feast. Zane'll be trotting him in any minute now."

"Gallop, you mean, Mr. Flaxman-they ought to have been here five minutes ago, the way that robot tears," Joe the Guard opined, come up to sneak a couple of quick shots while his brother's attention was momentarily snared by the antique silver voicewriter that had just been trundled in from the adjoining office.

"Oh, I do hope there's been no more kidnapping," Miss Blushes squealed excitedly. "If anything happened to Zane now, I couldn't bear it!"