Nurse Bishop paled and Gaspard started to grab at Zane's pinchers, but they stayed a foot away from the nurse's neck.
"I mean, you had damn well better be jesting," the robot continued, enunciating the words with chilling precision. "Changing a robot's personal circuits to alter its behavior is two degrees worse in my bookspools than psychosurgery on a human, if only because it's much easier. A robot's personality is so easily tampered with that he instinctively guards it with the utmost ferocity." He dropped his pinchers. "Pardon me if I have alarmed you," he said in an easier voice, "but I had to demonstrate to you how very strongly I feel on this matter. Now pray give me your advice."
"Well. . uh. . I don't know, Zane," Nurse Bishop began uncertainly with a quick sidelong glance at Gaspard that seemed to him to convey more of exasperation than panic. "Offhand. . uh. . you and Miss Blushes are hardly well-matched, though it's an old human notion that the strong brilliant husband and the beautiful dumb wife get on famously together, but I'm not sure how accurate that is. The psychometrist Sharon Rosenblum says there should be a gap of 30 or more I.Q. points between husband and wife, or else no gap at all. Gaspard, do your experiences throw any light on this? How dumb is Heloise Ibsen?"
Ignoring the question as well as he could, which wasn't too well-it gave him a rather silly haughty look-Gaspard said, "I don't want to seem a cad, Zane, but would your relationship with Miss Blushes have to involve marriage?"
"I'm no immaculate," Zane replied, "but yes, it would. Talking to you two alone I can admit that many robots are quite promiscuous, especially when they get the chance-and by Saint Henry, who's to blame them? — but I'm not built that way. I find the experience incomplete, unsatisfying, unless there is a prolonged relationship at the levels of thought, feeling, action-in short, a life together.
"Aside from that, there is a very practical consideration in my case: I have to think about the reactions of my reading public. The hero of a Zane Gort book is always a one-robix robot. Silver Vilya turns up here and there, maddeningly attractive, but Dr. Tungsten always ditches her in the end for Blanda, his golden mate."
"Zane," Nurse Bishop said, "has it occurred to you that Miss Blushes may be pretending to be dumber than she is? Human robixes have been known to do that to flatter a man they're interested in."
"Do you think it's possible?" Zane asked excitedly. "By Saint Hank, I believe it is! Many thanks, Nurse! You've given me something to think about."
"You're welcome. And I wouldn't worry too much about the puritanism angle, at least it's an old bit of human foildore that most puritanical women turn out to be very highly sexed indeed, even demandingly so. Oh Lord, it's time for me to turn the brats and shift them around." She began to rearrange the stands according to no obvious plan, occasionally setting a silver egg on one of the larger tables during the process. Whenever she got an egg relocated it had an opposite tilt to the one it had before.
"What's the point?" Gaspard asked.
"Changes the pressure on their brain tissue and gives them a little variety," she said over her shoulder. "Anyway it's one of Zukie's rules."
"Did Zukertort-?"
"Oh yes, Mr. Daniel Zukertort set up a complete regimen governing the care of the brains and their social relations with each other, the dormitory bible you might say. And since we've never had a fatality-as we shouldn't if we're careful, nerve tissue being practically immortal according to Zukie-you can understand that we follow it to the letter."
Zane Gort was watching her very attentively. After a bit the robot said, quite hesitantly, "Excuse me, Nurse, but. . would you let me hold one?"
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.