"You see, the first writers to undergo the PSD had it performed in absolute secrecy. They pretended to die and went through the rigmarole of having their brainless bodies buried or cremated to fool the world-just as Zukie himself fooled the world for years into thinking he was a garden-variety brain surgeon with electronics as a hobby. It was a pretty grisly operation in eleven stages from what little's known about it, the foreskull and face being lifted off first, the optical, auditory and speech grafts being made next, then came the shift from heart to isotope-pump, and finally all the other nerve connections with the body were blocked off and severed, one by one.
"Hey, Nurse Bishop, we ready yet?"
"Only for the last ten minutes," she said.
Gaspard and Zane Gort looked around. A large dully-gleaming silver egg rested in its black collar on Cullingham's end of the mighty desk, its TV eyes, ears, and speakers arranged neatly before it but none of them plugged in yet. For a moment Gaspard saw it as a man whose nerves had been snipped a century ago, whose body was ashes scattered to the winds or mold that had sifted through a hundred vegetable generations, and he shuddered.
Flaxman rubbed his hands. "Wait a minute," he said as Nurse Bishop reached for the cable of an eye, "I want to be able to introduce him properly. What's his name?"
"I don't know."
"You don't know?" Flaxman looked thunderstruck.
"No. You said bring any brain. So I did."
Cullingham interposed smoothly. "I am sure that Mr. Flaxman intended no disrespect whatever to your charges, Nurse Bishop. He said any brain simply because each, as far as we know, is an equally gifted artist. So please tell us how we should address this one."
"Oh," Nurse Bishop said. "Seven. Number Seven."
"But I want the name," Flaxman said. "Not some number you use in the Nursery-which strikes me as pretty cold-blooded, incidentally. I certainly hope the Nursery staff hasn't got into the habit of treating the brains as machines-it might spoil their creativity, make them think of themselves as computers."
Nurse Bishop thought for a bit. "I sometimes call him Rusty," she said, "because there's a faint streak of something brown under his collar, he's the only one that's got it. I was going to bring Half Pint, because he's easiest to carry, but Half Pint was lukewarm about coming and when you sent Mr. Newt I decided on Rusty."
"I mean the real name." Flaxman was fighting hard to keep his voice down. "You can't introduce a great literary genius to his future publishers as Rusty."
"Oh." She hesitated, then said decisively, "I'm afraid I can't tell you that. And there isn't any way for you to find out either, not even if you searched the Nursery from top to bottom and went through any records you may have elsewhere."
"What?"
"About a year ago," Nurse Bishop explained, "the brains decided for reasons of their own that they wanted to become permanently anonymous. So they had me go through the Nursery files and destroy all records on which their names appeared-and deep-file off the names engraved on the outside of each metal shell. You may have documents with the names here or in some safety deposit vault, I suppose, but they wouldn't tell you which name to attach to which cerebral capsule."
"And do you mean to stand there and tell me that you went through with this. . this act of wanton concealment!. . without consulting me?"
"A year ago you weren't one bit interested in Wisdom of the Ages," Nurse Bishop replied with spirit. "Exactly one year ago, Mr. Flaxman, I called you up and started to tell you all about this in detail, and you said not to bother you with skeletons out of the past, that the brains could do anything they damn pleased. You said-and I quote you verbatim, Mr. Flaxman-'If those tin-plated egos, those canned nightmares, want to join the French Foreign Legion as fighting computers or tie jets to their tails and go zooming through outer space, it's okay by me.'"
SEVENTEEN
Flaxman's eyes grew a trifle glazed-perhaps at the thought of being mocked by thirty masked writers in an age when writers were nothing but vivider-than-life stereo-pix on back covers, perhaps at the riddle of his own nature that would allow him to view thirty canned brains as horrid monsters one minute and commercially precious creative geniuses the next.
Cullingham took over again.
"I'm sure this anonymity problem is a matter we can negotiate later," said the quieter, smoother half of the Rocket House partnership. "Perhaps the brains themselves will reverse their policy when they learn that new literary fame is in the offing. Even if they should prefer to maintain strict anonymity, that can be handled easily enough by issuing their works as 'by Brain One and G. K. Cullingham, by Brain Seven and G. K. Cullingham,' and so on."
"Wow!" Gaspard said loudly, a certain awe in his voice, while Zane Gort observed sotto voce, "Just a shade repetitious, it strikes me."
The tall fair editorial director merely smiled his martyr's smile, but Flaxman, reddening with loyalty, roared, "Look here, my dear friend Cully has programmed Rocket's wordmills for the past ten years and it's about time he started to get literary recognition of some sort. Writers have been stealing the credit from wordmill-programmers for a century-and before that they stole it from editors! It ought to be obvious even to a wooden-topped glamor-author and a robot with a Johansson block for a brain that the eggheads are going to need lots of programming, editing, coaching-call it what you want to-and Cully's the only man who can do it, and I don't want to hear a whisper of criticism!"
"Excuse me," Nurse Bishop said, speaking into the echoing silence, "but it's time for Rusty's look-listen, so I'm going to plug him in whether you gentlemen are ready or not."
"We're ready," Cullingham said softly, while Flaxman, rubbing his face, added just a touch dubiously, "Yeah, I guess we are."
Nurse Bishop motioned them all to Flaxman's end of the room, then pointed a TV eye in that direction. There was the tiniest thunk as she plugged it into the silver egg's upper right socket and Gaspard realized that he was shivering. It seemed to him that something had come into the TV eye. A faint red glare. Nurse Bishop plugged a microphone into the other top socket, which made Gaspard stop breathing, as he found out when he took an involuntary noisy breath some seconds later.
"Go on!" Flaxman said with a little gasp of his own. "Plug in. . er. . Mr. Rusty's speaker. I feel crawly this way." He caught himself and made a little wave at the eye. "No offense, old chap."
"It might be Miss or Mrs. Rusty," the girl reminded him. "There were several women among the thirty, weren't there? No, I think it will be best if you make your full proposal and then I plug in his speaker. It will go more smoothly that way, believe me."
"He knew you were bringing him here?"
"Oh yes, I told him."
Flaxman squared his shoulders at the eye, swallowed, and then looked around helplessly at Cullingham.
"Hel-lo, Rusty," the partner instantly began, a little too evenly at first, as if he were trying to talk like a machine or for a machine to understand. "I am G. K. Cullingham, partner in Rocket House with Quintus Horatius Flaxman beside me, current custodial director of Wisdom of the Ages." He went on with persuasive clarity to outline the current emergency in the publishing world and the proposal that the brains turn once again to fiction writing. He skirted the question of anonymity, touched lightly on the matter of programming ("customary editorial cooperation") and described attractive alternate plans for administering royalties, ending with a few nicely-phrased remarks about literary tradition and the great shared enterprise of authorship down the ages.