"Maybe, Mr. Cullingham," Gaspard said unwillingly. "And you were a good enough programmer, I'll admit, if programming is anywhere near as difficult and important as you make it out to be-which I frankly doubt. Weren't all the basic programs created at the same time the wordmills were?" Cullingham shook his head, then half shrugged. "Anyway," Gaspard continued, "I always thought Whittlesey Wordmaster Four once wrote three best-selling serious novels and a science-fiction romance without any programming at all. Maybe that's just promotion copy, you'll tell me, but I'll believe otherwise when it's proved to me." The bitter tone returned to his voice. "Just as I'll believe that my fellow monkeys can actually write books when I read 'em and get to page two. They've been talking big for months, but I'll wait 'til the juice starts to flow through their daisy rings and the words start coming."
"Excuse me, Gaspard," Flaxman interjected, "but would you mind tuning the emotional down and the factual up? I'd like to hear a little more about the fracas on the Row. What happened to Rocket's properties, for instance?"
Gaspard straightened up, scowling. "Why," he said simply, "all your wordmills were wrecked-wrecked beyond any remote possibility of repair. That's all."
"Tch-tch," said Flaxman, shaking his head. "Dreadful," echoed Cullinghain.
Gaspard looked back and forth between the two partners with deep and puzzled suspicion. Their feeble efforts to appear concerned only made them look to him more like two fat cats full of stolen cream and with a map of the secret tunnel leading to the meat locker tucked inside their fur vests.
"Do you two understand me?" he said. "I'll print it out for you. Your three wordmills were wrecked-one by bomb, two by flame-thrower." His eyes widened as the scene came back to him. "It was murder, Mr. Flaxman, ghastly murder. You know the one we called Rocky? — Rocky Phraser? He was just an old Harper Hardcover Electrobrain, rebuilt in '07 and '49, but I never missed a book he milled- well, I had to watch old Rocky blacken and warp and frizzle. My own girl's new boyfriend was on the hose, too."
"Tch-tch. His own girl's new boyfriend," Flaxman said, managing to sound solicitous and to grin at the same time. His composure and Cu]lingham's were positively supernatural.
Gaspard nodded savagely. "Your great Homer Hemingway, by the way," he shot at them, trying somehow to get a rise. "But Zane Gort scorched his rear end for him."
Flaxman shook his head. "It's a wicked world," he said. "Gaspard, you're a hero. For as long as the other writers are out we'll keep you on at fifteen percent of union wages. But I don't like this about one of our robot authors harming a human. Hey, Zane! — as a self-employed robot you'll have to bear the costs of any suits brought against Rocket House. It's in your contract."
"Homer Hemingway deserved every hot wallop Zane gave him," Gaspard protested. "The sadistic boob had been using his flamer on Miss Blushes."
Cullingham looked around at them inquiringly.
"The pink robix Gaspard and Zane carried in," Flaxman explained. "Our visiting breen, the new government censoring robix."
He shook his head, grinning widely. "So now the naked truth is we got a censor and no scripts for her to bluepencil. Can you top that for irony? It's a screwy business, all right. I thought you knew Miss Blushes, Cully."
At that moment a high sweet voice behind them broke in, strident but dreamy. "Question naked sequence. Warn on blue material. For 'can' print 'bathroom.' Delete 'screwy' and close. For 'knew' substitute 'were acquainted with.' Oh my, where am I? What's been happening to me?"
Miss Blushes was sitting up and flapping her pinchers. Zane Gort was kneeling at her side and tenderly mopping her scorched flank with a damp pad-the ugly discoloration was almost gone. Now he tucked the pad in a little door in his chest and supported her with an arm.
"You must be calm," he said. "Everything's going to be all right. You're with friends."
"Am I? How can I be sure?" She drew away from him, felt of herself and hastily closed several little doors. "Why, you've been doing things to me! I've been lying here exposed. Those humans have seen me with my sockets open!"
"It was necessary," Zane assured her. "You needed electricity and other attentions. You've had a rough time. Now you must rest."
"Other attentions indeed!" Miss Blushes shrilled. "What do you mean by making a peep show of me?"
"Believe me, miss," Flaxman volunteered, "we're gentlemen-we haven't been sneaking any looks at you-though I must say you're a most attractive robix indeed-if Zane's books had covers, I'd ask you to pose for one."
"Yes, with my sockets wide open and my oil-ports unscrewed, I suppose!" Miss Blushes said witheringly.
NINE
In the Rub-Down Room of his penthouse pad, which was finished in a rubberoid that simulated knotty pine, Heloise Ibsen was anointing the seared rump of Homer Hemingway.
"Go easy, baby, that hurts," the big writer commanded. "Don't be such a baby yourself," the moody writrix commanded back at him.
"Aaah, that feels better. Now the silk sheet, baby."
"In a minute. Christ, you've got a beautiful body, Homer. Just looking at it does things to me."
"That so, baby? Look, I figure I could drink some warm milk in about five minutes."
"Nuts to milk. Yes indeed, it does things to me. Homer, let's. ." She murmured her suggestion into his ear.
The big writer twisted away from her. "Not on your life, baby! I got to get back in training first. That stuff saps a guy."
"You think push-ups and squats will be easier on you?"
"They don't tap the life-essence. And never blow in my ear like that again-it's deafening." He pillowed his cheek on the backs of his hands. "Besides, I'm not in the mood."
Heloise sprang up and paced the rubberoid. "Christ, you're worse than Gaspard. He was always in the mood, even if he didn't know how to ride it."
"Now don't go thinking about that little pipsqueak," Homer abjured her somewhat sleepily. "You seen how I pasted him, didn't you?"
Heloise went on pacing. "Gaspard was a pipsqueak," she said analytically, "but he had brains of a slow secretive sort, or he wouldn't have been able to keep me from catching on that he was a publisher's fink. And he'd never have become a publisher's fink unless he'd seen more profit in it than staying with the union. Gaspard was lazy, but he wasn't insane."
"Look, the last babe I had always used to get me my warm milk on time," Homer put in from the massage table.
Heloise quickened her pace. "I'll bet Gaspard has inside dope from Flaxman and Cullingham about some trick Racket House has up its sleeve for beating us writers-and beating the other publishers at the same time! That's why Racket House never tried to protect its wordmills. I'll bet that little fink is sitting in Flaxman's and Cullingham's office right now, laughing at us all."
"And this babe that got me my milk didn't go clomping up and down all the time talking to herself," Homer continued.
Heloise stopped and looked at him. "Well, she certainly didn't spend much of her time in bed tapping your lifeessence I gather. Face it, Homer, I'm not going to hang myself in a closet or sit by the stove heating your bottle, even if that last midget-pelvised apprentice playmate of yours did. When you got me, Homer, you got a woman that's all woman."
"Yeah, I know, babe," Homer replied, catching fire faintly. "And you got yourself a real man."
"I wonder," Heloise said. "You let that robot friend of Gaspard larrup you as if you were a little boy."
"That's not fair, babe," Homer protested. "Them tin niggers'll kill the strongest man in the world. They'll tear Hercules apart-or any of them old movie heroes."
"I suppose so," Heloise said. She came over to the table. "But wouldn't you like to beat up Gaspard again to be even for what the robot did to you? Come on, Homer, I'll buzz the stooges and we'll go up against Racket House right now. I want to see Gaspard's face when you clomp in."