She whirled around blankly. Then her face broke into a big smile. "Why of course," she said, handing him the silver egg she was carrying.
He held it close to his blued-steel chest, not moving at all, but purring very faintly. The effect was odd, to say the least, and Gaspard found himself remembering Zane's cryptic reference to robot reproduction. For a robot to give birth to a robot, except in the sense of manufacturing one outside his body, seemed the height of impossibility or at least of engineering absurdity, and yet-
"If a human and a robot could mate," Zane said softly, "their offspring might well resemble this, at least in the initial stage, don't you think?" And he began to rock the egg very gently while humming the lullaby from Schubert's The Maid of the Mill.
"That's enough of that," Nurse Bishop said firmly, looking a shade apprehensive. "They're not really babies, you know, but very old people." Zane nodded and under her supervision carefully placed the egg in its black collar on its newly-located stand. Then the robot's gaze wandered to the other eggs.
"Oldsters or infants, they're still like a bridge between human and robot," he said thoughtfully. "If only-"
There was a confused shouting and squealing and a datter of footsteps. Miss Blushes darted into the Nursery. Frantically evading Zane Gort's open arms, she cast herself hysterically at Nurse Bishop, who winced but endured the aluminum squeezing.
Behind Miss Blushes lurched Pop Zangwell, waving his caduceus and yelling thickly, "Avaunt, by Anubis! No newsrobots in here!"
"Zangwell!" Nurse Bishop cried ringingly. The bearded ancient turned toward her like a hooked fish. "Get out of here," she continued icily, "before the atmosphere is totally ethyllzed and your breath soaks into the eggs. This is no news-robot. You're just having DTs. Zane, you forgot to shut the inner door."
"Sorry."
Pop Zangwell blinked, tried to focus by squeezing his eyelids to a slit. "But Miss Bish," he whined, "just yesterday you told me to watch out for news-robots. ." His voice trailed off as his gaze sagged from Nurse Bishop's face to Miss Blushes' body and went up and down her as if he were only now really seeing her. "Pink robots this time!" he quavered despairingly. He drew a large flask from his hip pocket, made as if to throw it away, but instead applied it to his lips as he lurched back toward the reception cubicle.
Nurse Bishop disengaged herself from Miss Blushes.
"Pull yourself together," she said sharply. "What's happened at Rocket House?"
"Nothing that I know of," the pink robix huffily. "That drunken old man just frightened me.
"But you told Zane you'd babysit Half Pint and the others."
"Oh, I suppose I did," Miss Blushes continued in the same fretful tones, "but then Mr. Cullingham told me I was disturbing the conference and to go out in the corridor. Mr. Flaxman told me to stand guard outside the door with the broken electrolock so no one could burst in on them. I left the door ajar so I could watch." She hesitated, then continued, "You know, Nurse-oh, nothing at all's happened, don't think that-but I just don't believe those three brains are very happy at Rocket House."
"What do you mean?" Nurse Bishop asked sharply.
"Well, they didn't sound very happy," the robix said.
"How do you mean, sound?" Nurse Bishop demanded. "If they've been bitching and making self-pitying speeches that's nothing to get excited about. I know them-they'll do a lot of complaining before they give in and admit they want to be authors again."
"Well, I don't know anything about that," the robix said, "but whenever one of them would start to complain, Mr. Flaxman would unplug his speaker-at least that's what I saw."
"Sometimes you have to do that," Nurse Bishop said, uneasily. "But if those two have been- They swore they'd abide by Zukie's Rules, I left them a copy. What else did you see happen, Miss Blushes?"
"Not much. Mr. Cullingham came and closed the door when he saw I was looking. Just before that I heard one egg say, 'I can't stand it, I can't stand it. For God's sake stop. You're driving us crazy. This is torture."
"And then-?" Nurse Bishop's voice was sharp and hard. "Then Mr. Flaxman unplugged his speaker and Mr. Cullingham shut the door and I came over here and that drunken old man frightened me."
"But what were Flaxman and Cullingham doing to the eggs?"
"I couldn't see. Mr. Flaxman had a drill on his desk."
Nurse Bishop snatched off her white cap and unzipped her white smock and unconcernedly let it fall away from the short white slip she was wearing underneath. "Zane," she said, "I'm putting in a hurry-up call for Miss Jackson. I don't want you to leave the Nursery until she gets here. Guard the eggs. Miss Blushes, fetch my skirt and sweater from the lavatory-that door. Then stay with Zane. Come on, Gaspard, we're going to look into this right now." She felt her hip and for a moment Gaspard saw outlined through her slip her handgun in its holster.
Even without that, and despite her spectacular frontal development, she looked remarkably sinister.
TWENTY-NINE
Readership Row was not exactly filled with activity, but it was liberally spotted with it, all of an uneasy sort. Right at the start of their short sprint Gaspard sighted a slowly cruising roadster packed with apprentice writers. Fortunately it was being trailed by a government prowlwagon. Behind that came a skeleton car with three rough-looking robots hooked to the ribs of its stark metal spine. A scrap truck hurtled past. Just as they reached Rocket House a large helicopter drifted scant yards above the roof with "Penfolk" in large letters on its prow; from its balcony peered youths with black swiaters and windblown hair and beside them ancient women in gold and silver frocks; from the keel was suspended a huge sign: ROBOTS BEWARE! WORDMILLS AND WRITERS ARE FINISHED! GIVE AUTHORSHIP BACK TO tHE AMATEURS!
Gaspard and Nurse Bishop were passed into Rocket House by a rat-faced office-bog the wordmill mechanic didn't recognize and an eight-foot-tall door-robot with peeling gold trim-possibly, Gaspard hazarded, part of Flaxman's new defenses-the pair seemed fitting partners for Joe the Guard. The first floor was still heavy with the funereal odor of burnt insulation and the escalator hadn't been repaired. Neither had the electrolock; they pushed straight in, causing Flaxman to fall out of his chair-at any rate their first glimpse of the small publisher was of his head disappearing behind his desk.
The three brains rested in their collars on Cullingham's end of the desk with only their microphones plugged in. The microphones were clustered near the tall fair man himself, who was holding some manuscript pages while others were scattered on the floor around his chair. Gaspard and Nurse Bishop had hardly had time to take this in when Flaxman reared up from behind his desk, waving the drill Miss Blushes had seen and with his mouth open to shout something. He evidently thought better of this last, for he instead closed his lips and lifted a finger to them and pointed with the drill at Cullingham.
At this point Gaspard began to hear what the latter was reading.
"On and on the Golden Swarm surged, perching on planets, bivouacking on galaxies," Cullingham intoned in a surprisingly dramatic voice. "Here and there, on scattered systems, resistance flared. But space spears flashed and klirred mercilessly and that resistance died.
"Ittala, High Khan of the Golden Swarm, called for his super-telescope. It was borne into the blood-stained pavilion by cringing scientists. He snatched it up with a savage laugh, dismissed the baldpates with a contemptuous gesture, and directed it at a planet in a far-distant galaxy that had as yet escaped the yellow marauders.
"Slaver poured from the High Khan's beak and ran down his tentacles. He dug an elbow into fat Ik Huk, Master of the Harem. 'That one,' he hissed, 'the one in the middle of the bevy on the grass knoll, the one wearing the radium tiara, bring her to me!'"