Fritz Leiber: The Silver Eggheads

Gaspard de la Nuit, journeyman writer, ran a chamois along the gleaming brass baseplate of his towering wordmill with exactly the same absentminded affection with which he would somewhat later this morning stroke the smooth squirmy flank of Heloise Ibsen, master writer. Automatically he checked the thousands of ranked telltale lights (all dark) and the rows of dials (all at zero) on the electronic machine's two-storey-high face. Then he yawned, massaging the muscles at the back of his neck.

He had spent his graveyard shift dozing, drinking coffee, and finishing reading Sinners of the Satellite Suburbs and Everyman His Own Philosopher . An author really couldn't ask for an easier night's writing.

He dropped the chamois in a drawer of his battered desk. Glancing critically at himself in a small mirror, he fingercombed his wavy dark hair, flicked into flamboyant folds his flowing black silk necktie, and carefully buttoned the braided frogs of his black velvet smoking jacket.

Then he briskly walked to the timeclock and punched out. His opposite number on the day shift was already twenty seconds late, but that was something for the union disciplinary committee to fume about, not he.

Short of the door of the cathedral-like room housing the half dozen organ-huge wordmills of Rocket House and Proton Press, he paused to let pass an ooh-ahing crowd of early morning visitors conducted by a groggy-eyed Joe the Guard, a bent old man almost as skilled as a writer at the art of sleeping on the job. Gaspard was glad he would not have to endure their idiotic questions (Where did you get the ideas you feed your wordmill, mister?) and suspicious excited peerings (among other things, the public believed that all writers were sex maniacs, which was something of an exaggeration). He was particularly glad to miss the nosy pryings of a most objectionable man-and-boy pair dressed in matching father-and-son slack suits, the man all too clearly fussy and know-it-all, the boy peevish and bored. He hoped Joe the Guard would stay wakeful enough to restrain the latter from tampering with his beloved machine.

Nevertheless, mindful of the audience, Gaspard dragged out his large, curving, mellow-brown meerschaum pipe, tipped up its silver-filigree cap, and thumbed in cube-cut tobacco from his gold-embossed sealskin pouch. He frowned slightly as he did so. Having to smoke this Germanic monstrosity was just about his only objection to being a writer, along with the somewhat sissified clothes he had to wear. But publishers were as fiendishly thorough about enforcing such contractual trivia as they were about making a writer work his full shift whether his wordmills were turning or not.

But what the ef, he reminded himself with a smile, soon enough he'd be a master writer, licensed to wear levis and sweatshirt, get a crewcut, and smoke cigarettes in public. And certainly with his journeyman status he was much better off than an apprentice writer, who was generally required to wear some such costume as a Grecian tunic, Roman toga, monkish robes, or doublet-and-hose along with a starchy wide ruff. Why, Gaspard had even known a poor writer's devil whom humorous union sadists had conned into contracting to dress as a Babylonian and carry everywhere he went three stone tablets and a chisel and mallet. Granted the public demanded atmosphere in its authors, that was going needlessly far.

Yet by and large writers had such a soft, even plushy existence that Gaspard could not understand why so many masters and journeymen seemed increasingly dissatisfied of late with their lot, mouthing dark bitches and gripes against their publishers and nursing the illusion that each of them bad a deep serious message to deliver to the public. Many of them frankly hated their own wordmills, which struck Gaspard as two shades worse than sacrilege. Even Heloise had taken to haring off in the small hours of the night to attend secret grievance meetings ( that Gaspard didn't even want to hear about) instead of putting the hours after her beloved swing shift into solid sleep in preparation for his homecoming.

The thought of Heloise awaiting him on their frowsty couch d'amour brought a second frown to Gaspard's brow. Somehow two hours devoted to tender horizontal activities, even with an ingenious master writer, seemed excessive to him, not to say taxing. One hour ought to be ample.

"That's a writer, Son." It was of course the slack-suited man answering in a needlessly loud whisper a question from the slack-suited boy. But Gaspard shrugged off the tone of contempt and disapproval in the whisper and strode out past the straggling visitors with a lewd grin. It was his lot, he reminded himself, to belong to a profession whose members were supposed to be sex fiends and, after all, the two hours of bliss looming before him were a compromise between his one and Heloise's three.

Readership Row, the avenue of New Angeles, California, on which all the publishing houses of the English-speaking Solar System were concentrated, seemed strangely empty of humans this morning (was it possible for the whole day shift to have overslept?) though there were a number of remarkably rough-looking robots about-angular metal men seven feet tall with single video eyes like Polyphemus and small loudspeakers for conversing with humans (they mostly preferred to talk to each other by direct metal-to-metal contact or silent short-wave radio).

Then his spirits lifted as he spotted a robot he knew, a rugged yet sleek blued-steel job who stood out from his dingier brethren like a racehorse among percherons.

"Hi, Zane!" he called cheerfully. "What's a-foot?"

"Greetings, Gaspard," the robot responded, striding up to him and then adding at much lower amplification, "I don't know. These monsters won't talk to me. They're goons, of course, presumably hirelings of the publishers. Perhaps the Teamsters have struck again and the publishers anticipate attempts to interfere with book distribution at the source."

"None of our business then," Gaspard pronounced cheerfully. "Are they keeping you busy these days, Old Scrapheap?"

"It's a fulltime job just earning enough juice to feed my batteries, Old Fleshpot," the robot replied, matching his quip. "But then I'm a crazy mixed-up electricity hog."

Gaspard smiled at him warmly as the robot purred pleasantly. Gaspard really enjoyed associating with robots, especially his good friend Zane, though most humans frowned on fraternizing with the enemy (as they privately described it) and once in a lover's rage Heloise Ibsen had called him a "dirty robot-lover."

Perhaps his liking for robots was an outgrowth of his affection for wordmills, but Gaspard never tried to analyze it further. He merely knew he was attracted to robots and detested anti-robot prejudice wherever it lifted its sledgehammer head. What the devil, he told himself, robots were fun and fine fellows to boot, and even if they did eventually take over the world from their creators, at least they would be dispassionate about it and (as far as science could foresee) there never would be any intermarriage question or other stupid trivia to trouble the relationship of the two races.

In any case Zane Gort was a grand guy, in a class by himself among the metal folk. A self-employed robot who devoted himself chiefly to writing adventure stories for other robots, Zane Gort had a wide knowledge of the world, a depth of sympathy, and a cleancut brunch attitude toward life ( brunch was the robotese equivalent of "manly") that made him one intelligent being in a million.

Now Zane said, "I heard a rumor, Gaspard, that you human writers were planning a strike-or some even more violent action."