"Back in the days when I had a body," Double Nick went on before either of the partners could compose an answer, "there was a glut of such books. Three out of four book covers thunderingly implied that the act of love would be served up in satisfying detail inside, well spiced with violence and perversions, but heavily glazed with an infantile he-man morality. I recall telling myself at the time that ninety percent of all so-called perversions are simply the natural desire to view an adored object and a gratifying act from all possible angles, exactly as you'd want to look at a beautiful statue from all sides, even manufacturing a fourth spatial dimension from which to view it, if that were possible. Today, I must confess, the whole business simply bores me. Possibly my physical condition, or rather the lack of such, has something to do with it. But it especially depresses me to think that after one hundred years the human race is still groping for proxy thrills and a naughtiness that is simply natural curiosity disavowed and projected.
"Moreover," Double Nick continued, "granting that you wish us to produce love stories, may I draw your attention to the kind of stimulation you're furnishing us, or rather its lacks? We've been locked in a back room for well over a century, and what do you show us? Two publishers! Pardon me, sirs, but I do think you could have demonstrated a little more imagination."
Cullingham said coolly, "I suppose certain visits might be arranged, especially to spots with voyeur facilities. How about Madam N's to start with, Flaxy?" Nurse Bishop said cryptically, "You old coots have had your kicks," but Flaxman cut in with, "You know that's out, Cully! The brains can't be taken from the Nursery except to this office. That's Zukie's First Rule that every Flaxman has sworn to enforce. Zukie's last warning was that traveling the brains would kill them."
"Futhermore," the egg ground on, disregarding the comments, "judging from the kinds of piffle you've been inificting on us (even if they are rejections) the writing game has been going to pot. Now if you'd only read us some of those wordmill stories you claim are so smooth-during our retirement, as you know, we've read almost nothing but non-fiction and of course the classics. Another of dear Daniel's endless rules."
"I'd honestly rather not do that," Culllngham replied. "I think your output will be a lot fresher without wordmill influence. And you'll feel happier about it."
"Do you think that wordwooze-a mechanical excrement-could conceivably give us an inferiority complex?" Double Nick asked.
Gaspard felt a rush of anger. He wished Culllngham would read them a well-milled story and make Double Nick eat his words. He tried to remember some hyperbrilliant bit of wordwooze to quote right now, something from one of the top milled books he'd read recently, even his own Passwords to Passion. But somehow when he turned his mind in that direction, there was only a baffling rosy haze. All he could remember of his own book, even, were the blurbs on the back cover. He told himself this must be because every sentence of the contents was so superbly brilliant that no one or two could stand out. But this explanation did not entirely satisfy him.
"Well, if you refuse to be frank with us and put all your cards on the table," Double Nick said, "if you refuse to give us the complete picture-" The egg left its remark unfinished.
"Why don't you first be frank with us?" Cullingham said quietly. "For instance, we don't even know your name. Forget your anonymity-you'll have to some day. Who are you?"
The egg was silent for a space. Then it said, "I am the the heart of the Twentieth Century. I'm the living corpse of a mind from the Age of Confusion, a ghost still blown by the winds of uncertainty that lashed the Earth when man first unlocked the atom and faced his destiny among the stars. I'm freedom and hate, love and fear, high ideals and low delights, a spirit exulting daily and doubting endlessly, tormented by its own limitations, a tangle of urges, an eddy of electrons. That's what I am. My name you'll never know."
Cullingham bowed his head for a moment, then signed to Nurse Bishop. She turned down the speaker. The editorial director dropped on the floor the remaining pages of The Scourge of Space and picked up a typed manuscript bound in purple plastic with the Rocket House emblem-a slim rocket entwined by serpents-stamped big on it in gold.
"We'll try something else for a change," he said. "Not wordnilll, but very different from what you've been hearing."
"Miss Jackson get to the Nursery?" Gaspard asked Zane. They spoke in undertones outside the open door.
"Oh yes," the robot replied. "She's a looker like Miss Bishop, only blonde. Gaspard, where's Miss Blushes?"
"I haven't seen her. Did she kite off again?"
"Yes, she got restless. She said all those human beings in silver cans staring at her made her nervous. But she said she'd meet me here."
Gaspard frowned. "Did you ask the new door-robot downstairs or the kid with him if they'd seen her come in?"
Zane said, "There wasn't any door-robot downstairs when I came in just now, or any kid either. More im posters, I suppose. But I did spot a federal investigator named Winston P. Mears just outside. I got to know Mears while he was investigating me on charges-nothing was ever proved-of designing atomic-powered giant robots (an inevitable technologic development that still seems to terrify most humans). But the point now is that Mears, a federal agent, is near, and much as I adore Miss Blushes, I must remember that she is a government employee and therefore, whether she wants to be or not, a government undercover agent. Consider that, Gaspard."
Gaspard tried to, but there were distractions.
Most especially, there was what Cullingham was now intoning: "Clinch, clinch, clinch went the host working pinchers, firming the cable to the streamlined silflsh burden. Squinch, squinch, squinch went to the winch as Dr. Tungsten turned it. A feelingful flood rilled the grills of his brunch frame. 'Happy landings,' he gusted softly, 'happy landings, my golden darling.' Seven seconds and thirty-five revolutions later, a shock of delicious violence trilled his plastron. He almost let go the winch crank. He turned crinkily. Vilya, gleaming silver in the glooming, was brisking the maddeningly ixy claws, never made for human service, that had but now tittled him. 'Nix,' Dr. Tungsten sternly quinched. 'Nix, nix, ixy robix.'"
Nurse Bishop held up a hand. "Nick wants to say that although that is still pretty terrible, it's a lot more interesting than anything else you've been reading. Different."
"That," Zane Gort whispered modestly to Gaspard, "was me. Oh yes. I wrote that. My readers love cranking scenes almost as much as humans love spanking scenes, especially when the gold and silver robixes are both in them. None of my other bookspools ever sold as well as Dr. Tungsten Turns a Crank, third in the series. The excerpt you just heard is from the fifth, Dr. Tungsten and the Diamond Drill-that's the name of the menace, Vilya's master and Dr. Tungsten's opponent in that volume. There she goes!"
Gaspard whirled his head quick enough to see something pink dart from the ladies' room and disappear almost at once down the cross corridor.
"Get to the front entrance," Zane ordered rapidly. "Stop Miss Blushes if she tries to get out. She may be hypnotized. If you have to knock her down, hit her on the head. I'll take the back-that's where she was heading. Whir-hey!"
He skated off along the corridor, banked around the first turn, and was gone.
Gaspard shrugged his shoulders and trotted down the escalator. The rat-faced office boy and the eight-foot doorrobot were gone, just as Zane had said. Gaspard stationed himself where they had been, lit a cigarette, and set himself to reconstructing in his mind the brilliant passages of highly literary wordwooze that had eluded him upstairs. He almost remembered thousands, literally, from his lifetime of reading. Surely with a little calm effort he could recapture the exact words of a dozen or so.