Fritz Leiber: The Silver Eggheads

"Remember Half Pint's kidnapping," Zane Gort countered. "New experiences are exactly what will bring the greatest stories out of the eggs."

"Okay, okay-just as long as you consult me first." The publisher dove back again into his phone call.

"It's the honest truth, every word Zane's said," Half Pint put in. "I've come up from the Underworld after one hundred years, I've flown out of my own tin tomb, and I know."

At that a blast of boos, jeers, hisses and catcalls erupted from the TV screen, where the other twenty-nine eggs were watching delightedly.

Nurse Bishop squeezed Gaspard's hand. "The Nursery'll be a real madhouse," she said happily and loudly for all to hear. "We'll be looking back to the quiet days when the brats just screamed and sang. There'll be all sorts of visiting collaborators-we'll have to knock out walls. There'll be workbenches, ping-pong tables, life classes-"

Gaspard said, "I bet I get the job of adapting antigravity and manipulation to twenty-eight eggs, after Zane has shown me how on Number Two."

"It's not nearly as difficult as you imagine, Gaspard," Zane assured him, "and after the first few the brains themselves will be able to help you. I have in mind for them a wonderful electric workshop and a series of voice-operated tools approaching robot pinchers in versatility, strength and delicacy. The very thought of all the marvelous activity ahead of us makes me feel newly built-in fact I find myself getting a new, wildly zestful perspective on my entire future life." The robot paused and his single eye slowly swung around, stopped. "Miss Blushes," he said to the pink robix, "I have a question to ask you, a far-reaching proposal to make. Will you-"

"Listen here, all of you!" Flaxman commanded, springing up from the phone. "While you've been patting each other on the back and billy-cooing, I've been getting filled in on what other publishers are planning to do-and are already doing! The news is breaking all at once, and let me tell you that Rocket House had better pull some miracles right away or fold! Harper scientists have discovered how to convert advanced anadigital computers into wordmills! Houghton Mififin has done the same with a checkers-and-logistics machine! Doubleday has screened ten thousand potential scribes and weeded out seven who have real promise! Random House has made a system-wide search and discovered three talented foundling robots who have lived their entire lives among humans, without metal companionship, and in consequence think, feel and _write_ exactly like humans! Proton Press has a human sex novel on the stands by a two-year-old French robix originally built illegally for the vice trade. Dutton has two out authored by editorial directors. Van Nostrand is bannering a series of fictionalized case histories supplied by robot psychoanalysts. Gibbet House claims advances on a process for translating the classics into spicy wordwooze. Oxford Press has discovered on Venus a colony of artists who have lived for two generations in complete isolation from tunemill music, computed abstract pictures, and wordmill fiction- and fifty percent of the colony are _writers_! Unless we get off our tails and work like sixty-each egg for two-we'll be out in the street! And I mean you hulking big human and robot eggs as well as them! Gort, where's the next Dr. Tungsten book? I know there's been all this rescuing and antigravity engineering, but you were supposed to have the manuscript in two weeks ago!"

"One moment," the blued-steel robot said imperturbably. He spoke to his pink co-being. "Miss Blushes, will you enter into the companionship-and-solace agreement with me, the exclusive and eternal one?"

"Oh yes," she cried, throwing herself against his plastron with a hollow _bong_. "I'm yours, Zane, forever and wholly. Not one circuit shall be withheld. My windows, doors, and sockets shall always be open to you, beloved, by burning day and through the long watches of the night!"

Half Pint backed off Zane's shoulder, treading air near Flaxman, who did not even wince, but only said wonderingly, "You know, it's amazing what relief a man feels when his childhood nightmares come true."

Heloise Ibsen waved a highball. "Cully, baby," she called piercingly, "I think it's time you told everybody that your torments have been regularized."

"Right! Fellow Rocketeers, Heloise and I plunged into legal matriomony eleven hours ago. She now is mistress of half my voting stock and all my libido."

Gaspard turned to Nurse Bishop. "I haven't any voting stock and I'm not a tin genius," he said, "and I'm too big to fly. But I think you're ixy-the ixiest girl I've ever known."

"And I think you're real brunch," she told him, coming into his arms. "Almost as brunch as Zane Gort."