"Just the same our jobs are a lot alike," Gaspard told her. "I am-well, was-a wordmill mechanic. I was in charge of a giant that produced far smoother and more exciting prose than any man can write, yet I had to treat it like any other nonrobot machine-this autocab, say. Whereas you've got a roomful of canned geniuses and you have to handle them like babies. We do have something in common, Nurse."
"Stop trying to soften me up for a pass," the girl snapped. "I never knew that writers were wordmill mechanics at all."
"They aren't," Gaspard admitted, "but at least I was more of a mechanic than any other writer I knew. I always watched the real mechanics when they serviced my mill and once when they had the back plate off I tried to trace some circuits. The main thing was that I was enthusiastic about wordmifls. I loved those machines and the stuff they turned out. Being with them was like being able to watch a culture plate grow the medicine that will make you well."
"I'm afraid I can't share your enthusiasm," the girl said. "You see, I don't read wordwooze, I only read the old books the brains pick for me."
"How can you stand them?" Gaspard asked.
"Oh, I manage," she told him. "I have to if I'm going to keep within ten light years of half understanding those brats."
"Yes, but is it fun?"
"What's fun?" She stamped a foot. "My God, but this cab crawls!"
"It's only got its batteries to go on," Gaspard reminded her. "See the lights ahead? We'll be back to power in a block. It would be nice if they could apply anti-gravity to cabs, though-then we could fly where we're going."
"Why can't they?" she asked, as if it were Gaspard's fault.
"It's a matter of size," he told her. "Zane Gort explained it to me a few days ago. Anti-gravity fields are all little short-range fields, like the packing force around an atomic nucleus. They can float stub-missiles but not spaceships, suitcases but not autocabs. If we were small as mice or even cats-"
"Cats taking cabs doesn't excite me. Is Zane Gort an engineer?"
"Not unless writing adventure stories for other robots counts-they're full of physics, I believe. But like most of the newer robots he has a lot of hobbies that are almost second professions. Why, he has spools feeding new information into him twenty-four hours a day."
"You like robots, don't you?"
"Don't you?" Gaspard demanded, a sudden hardness in his voice.
The girl shrugged. "They're no worse than some people. They just leave me cold, like lizards."
"That's a rotten comparison. And completely inaccurate."
"It is not. Robots are cold-blooded like lizards, aren't they? At least they're cold."
"Would you expect them to steam-heat themselves just to please you? What has hot-bloodedness ever done for humanity except to make people bitch and declare wars?"
"It's accomplished a few acts of courage and romance. You know, you're a lot like a robot yourself, Gaspard. Cool and mechanical. I bet you'd like a girl who blew electricity at you, or whatever it is robots do, as soon as you pressed her Love Button."
"But robots aren't like that! They're anything but mechanical. Zane Gort-"
The autocab stopped at a brightly lit doorway. A slim golden tentacle came weaving out of the doorway, rippling jollily like a snake that has been taught to shimmy. It helped lift the carapace, then flicked Gaspard very lightly on the shoulder.
A pair of cupid's-bow lips budded on the end of the supple, tapering rope of gold. Then they bloomed, opening like a flower.
"Let me guide you and your lady to Engstrand's Interstellar Eatery," lisped the tentacle. "The Cuisine of Space."
TWENTY
Engstrand's cuisine was not quite as empty and cold as interstellar space or even a robot's caress, and there was no lizard on the menu. Still, the food was somewhat on the sick side. The drinks were healthy enough, however. After a bit Nurse Bishop let herself be coaxed into telling how she had got interested in the eggheads because when she was a little girl she'd been taken to visit them by an aunt who was herself a Braintrust nurse. Gaspard in turn told about wanting since childhood to become a writer simply because he'd always loved wordwooze, instead of drifting into the business like most authors through stereo, TV, modeling, or public relations work. He started to describe exactly what it was that made wordwooze-especially that of certain mills-so wonderful, but his voice got a little too loud and a fidgety, spider-thin old man at the next table made it an excuse to cut in.
"You're right about that, young man," the oldster called across. "It's the wordmill that counts every time, not the writer. I read every book Scribner Scribe One ever milled, no matter what writer's name they tacked onto it afterwards. That machine had more juice than any other three working together. Sometimes I had to hunt through the fine print to make sure I was getting SS One, but it was worth it. Only SS One would leave me with that wonderful empty feeling, my mind a warm dark blank. Read the wordmill, I always said."
"I don't know about that, dear," commented the plump, white-haired, pucker-mouthed woman beside him. "It's always seemed to me that Heloise Ibsen's work has a certain quality, no matter what machine she uses."
"Moon cheese!" the old man said derisively. "They just use the same program for all her sex-epics, but the quality of the wordmill comes through every time and the Ibsen name or any other doesn't affect that one bit. Writers!" His face darkened as its wrinkles deepened. "They all ought to be lined up and shot after what they did this mormngl Blowing up amusement parks and poisoning ice-cream factories isn't in it for sheer evil. The government's saying it's not so bad and by tomorrow they'll be saying it's suzieswell, but I can always tell when they're covering up a major catastrophe. The news screen starts flickering in a hypno-rhythm for one thing. Did you hear what those writers did to SS One? Nitric acid! They ought to be lined up and have done to them what they did to those mills. The ones that did it to Old SS One ought to have plastic funnels rammed down their throat and-"
"Dear!" the old lady cautioned him. "People are trying to enjoy their dinners."
Gaspard, his mouth full of yeast steak, simultaneously smiled and shrugged apologetically at the old man and pointed his fork at his bulging cheek.
"That's all right, Mam," Nurse Bishop called to her. "His idea might be a good one for getting down this interplanetary kelp chowder." She looked at Gaspard. "How did you get into the writers' union, anyway? Through Heloise Ibsen?" she asked even more loudly, coming around the table to pound him on the back when he choked. The old man glared.
In spite of, or more likely because of this incident, Gaspard made his pass at Nurse Bishop almost as soon as they were again in an autocab.
"No," she said harshly, lifting his hands away from her and throwing them down in his lap. "You said it was for supper and talk. Supper and talk it is. I know something about what's been happening to you today. After the manic kick you're getting tired and hurt-feeling and lost, and you want sex the way a baby wants its bottle. Well, I'm not changing any more diapers or fontanels for now, thank you. I spend all day with a lot of nasty old babies in tin cans trying to pin my mind down and stick their ideas into it, I don't intend to spend the night submitting to anything like that on the physical level. You don't need a woman anyway, you need a nurse. Oh, shut up!"
The final command seemed to be directed at both of them.
Gaspard sat in huffy silence until the autocab had nosed its blind magnetic way within four blocks of her address. Then, "I got to be an apprentice writer," he said, "through my uncle, who was a master wave-guide plumber." Then he began to feed coins into the autocab's slots.