by Fritz Leiber
III
It was a fortnight and Gusterson was loping down the home stretch onhis 40,000-word insanity novel before Fay dropped in again, this timepromptly at high noon.
Normally Fay cringed his shoulders a trifle and was inclined toslither, but now he strode aggressively, his legs scissoring in afast, low goosestep. He whipped off the sunglasses that all moles woretopside by day and began to pound Gusterson on the back while callingboisterously, "How are you, Gussy Old Boy, Old Boy?"
Daisy came in from the kitchen to see why Gusterson was choking. Shewas instantly grabbed and violently bussed to the accompaniment of,"Hiya, Gorgeous! Yum-yum! How about ad-libbing that some weekend?"
She stared at Fay dazedly, rasping the back of her hand across hermouth, while Gusterson yelled, "Quit that! What's got into you, Fay?Have they transferred you out of R & D to Company Morale? Do they lineup all the secretaries at roll call and make you give them aneight-hour energizing kiss?"
"Ha, wouldn't you like to know?" Fay retorted. He grinned, twitchedjumpingly, held still a moment, then hustled over to the far wall."Look out there," he rapped, pointing through the violet glass at agap between the two nearest old skyscraper apartments. "In thirtyseconds you'll see them test the new needle bomb at the other end ofLake Erie. It's educational." He began to count off seconds,vigorously semaphoring his arm. "... Two ... three ... Gussy, I've putthrough a voucher for two yards for you. Budgeting squawked, but Ipressured 'em."
Daisy squealed, "Yards!--are those dollar thousands?" while Gustersonwas asking, "Then you're marketing the tickler?"
"Yes. Yes," Fay replied to them in turn. "... Nine ... ten ..." Againhe grinned and twitched. "Time for noon Com-staff," he announcedstaccato. "Pardon the hush box." He whipped a pancake phone from underhis coat, clapped it over his face and spoke fiercely but inaudiblyinto it, continuing to semaphore. Suddenly he thrust the phone away."Twenty-nine ... thirty ... Thar she blows!"
An incandescent streak shot up the sky from a little above the farhorizon and a doubly dazzling point of light appeared just above thetop of it, with the effect of God dotting an "i".
"Ha, that'll skewer espionage satellites like swatting flies!" Fayproclaimed as the portent faded. "Bracing! Gussy, where's yourtickler? I've got a new spool for it that'll razzle-dazzle you."
"I'll bet," Gusterson said drily. "Daisy?"
"You gave it to the kids and they got to fooling with it and brokeit."
"No matter," Fay told them with a large sidewise sweep of his hand."Better you wait for the new model. It's a six-way improvement."
"So I gather," Gusterson said, eyeing him speculatively. "Does itautomatically inject you with cocaine? A fix every hour on thesecond?"
"Ha-ha, joke. Gussy, it achieves the same effect without using anydope at all. Listen: a tickler reminds you of your duties andopportunities--your chances for happiness and success! What's theobvious next step?"
* * * * *
"Throw it out the window. By the way, how do you do that when you'reunderground?"
"We have hi-speed garbage boosts. The obvious next step is you givethe tickler a heart. It not only tells you, it warmly persuades you.It doesn't just say, 'Turn on the TV Channel Two, Joyce program,' it_brills_ at you, 'Kid, Old Kid, race for the TV and flip that TwoSwitch! There's a great show coming through the pipes this second plusten--you'll enjoy the hell out of yourself! Grab a ticket toecstasy!'"
"My God," Gusterson gasped, "are those the kind of jolts it's givingyou now?"
"Don't you get it, Gussy? You never load your tickler except whenyou're feeling buoyantly enthusiastic. You don't just tell yourselfwhat to do hour by hour next week, you sell yourself on it. That wayyou not only make doubly sure you'll obey instructions but youconstantly reinoculate yourself with your own enthusiasm."
"I can't stand myself when I'm that enthusiastic," Gusterson said. "Ifeel ashamed for hours afterwards."
"You're warped--all this lonely sky-life. What's more, Gussy, thinkhow still more persuasive some of those instructions would be if theycame to a man in his best girl's most bedroomy voice, or his doctor'sor psycher's if it's that sort of thing--or Vina Vidarsson's! By theway, Daze, don't wear that beauty mask outside. It's a grandmisdemeanor ever since ten thousand teen-agers rioted throughTunnel-Mart wearing them. And VV's sueing Trix."
"No chance of that," Daisy said. "Gusterson got excited and bit offthe nose." She pinched her own delicately.
"I'd no more obey my enthusiastic self," Gusterson was brooding, "thanI'd obey a Napoleon drunk on his own brandy or a hopped-up St.Francis. Reinoculated with my own enthusiasm? I'd die just like fromsnake-bite!"
"Warped, I said," Fay dogmatized, stamping around. "Gussy, having theinstructions persuasive instead of neutral turned out to be only theopening wedge. The next step wasn't so obvious, but I saw it. Usingsubliminal verbal stimuli in his tickler, a man can be given constantsupportive euphoric therapy 24 hours a day! And it makes use of allthat empty wire. We've revived the ideas of a pioneer dynamic psychernamed Dr. Coue. For instance, right now my tickler is saying to me--intones too soft to reach my conscious mind, but do they stab into theunconscious!--'Day by day in every way I'm getting sharper andsharper.' It alternates that with 'gutsier and gutsier' and ... well,forget that. Coue mostly used 'better and better' but that seems toogeneral. And every hundredth time it says them out loud and thetickler gives me a brush--just a faint cootch--to make sure I'mkeeping in touch."
"That third word-pair," Daisy wondered, feeling her mouthreminiscently. "Could I guess?"
* * * * *
Gusterson's eyes had been growing wider and wider. "Fay," he said, "Icould no more use my mind for anything if I knew all that was going onin my inner ear than if I were being brushed down with brooms by threewitches. Look here," he said with loud authority, "you got to stop allthis--it's crazy. Fay, if Micro'll junk the tickler, I'll think you upsomething else to invent--something real good."
"Your inventing days are over," Fay brilled gleefully. "I mean, you'llnever equal your masterpiece."
"How about," Gusterson bellowed, "an anti-individual guided missile?The physicists have got small-scale antigravity good enough to floatand fly something the size of a hand grenade. I can smell that eventhough it's a back-of-the-safe military secret. Well, how about keyingsuch a missile to a man's finger-prints--or brainwaves, maybe, or hisunique smell!--so it can spot and follow him around then target in onhim, without harming anyone else? Long-distance assassination--and thestinkingest gets it! Or you could simply load it with some disgustinggoo and key it to teen-agers as a group--that'd take care of them.Fay, doesn't it give you a rich warm kick to think of my midgetmissiles buzzing around in your tunnels, seeking out evil-doers, likea swarm of angry wasps or angelic bumblebees?"
"You're not luring me down any side trails," Fay said laughingly. Hegrinned and twitched, then hurried toward the opposite wall, motioningthem to follow. Outside, about a hundred yards beyond the purpleglass, rose another ancient glass-walled apartment skyscraper. Beyond,Lake Erie rippled glintingly.
"Another bomb-test?" Gusterson asked.
Fay pointed at the building. "Tomorrow," he announced, "a modernfactory, devoted solely to the manufacture of ticklers, will beerected on that site."
"You mean one of those windowless phallic eyesores?" Gustersondemanded. "Fay, you people aren't even consistent. You've got all yourhomes underground. Why not your factories?"
"Sh! Not enough room. And night missiles are scarier."
"I know that building's been empty for a year," Daisy said uneasily,"but how--?"
"Sh! Watch! _Now!_"
The looming building seemed to blur or fuzz for a moment. Then it wasas if the lake's bright ripples had invaded the old glass a hundredyards away. Wavelets chased themselves up and down the gleaming walls,became higher, higher ... and then suddenly the glass cracked all overto tiny fragments and fell away, to be followed quickly by fragmen
tedconcrete and plastic and plastic piping, until all that was left wasthe nude steel framework, vibrating so rapidly as to be almostinvisible against the gleaming lake.
* * * * *
Daisy covered her ears, but there was no explosion, only along-drawn-out low crash as the fragments hit twenty floors below anddust whooshed out sideways.
"Spectacular!" Fay summed up. "Knew you'd enjoy it. That little trickwas first conceived by the great Tesla during his last fruity years.Research discovered it in his biog--we just made the dream come true.A tiny resonance device you could carry in your belt-bag attunesitself to the natural harmonic of a structure and then increasesamplitude by tiny pushes exactly in time. Just like soldiers marchingin step can break down a bridge, only this is as if it were being doneby one marching ant." He pointed at the naked framework appearing outof its own blur and said, "We'll be able to hang the factory on that.If not, we'll whip a mega-current through it and vaporize it. Noquestion the micro-resonator is the neatest sweetest wrecking devicegoing. You can expect a lot more of this sort of efficiency now thatmankind has the tickler to enable him to use his full potential.What's the matter, folks?"
Daisy was staring around the violet-walled room with dumb mistrust.Her hands were trembling.
"You don't have to worry," Fay assured her with an understandinglaugh. "This building's safe for a month more at least." Suddenly hegrimaced and leaped a foot in the air. He raised a clawed hand toscratch his shoulder but managed to check the movement. "Got to beatit, folks," he announced tersely. "My tickler gave me the grandcootch."
"Don't go yet," Gusterson called, rousing himself with a shudder whichhe immediately explained: "I just had the illusion that if I shookmyself all my flesh and guts would fall off my shimmying skeleton,Brr! Fay, before you and Micro go off half cocked, I want you to knowthere's one insuperable objection to the tickler as a mass-marketitem. The average man or woman won't go to the considerable time andtrouble it must take to load a tickler. He simply hasn't got thecompulsive orderliness and willingness to plan that it requires."
"We thought of that weeks ago," Fay rapped, his hand on the door."Every tickler spool that goes to market is patterned like wallpaperwith one of five designs of suitable subliminal supportive euphoricmaterial. 'Ittier and ittier,' 'viriler and viriler'--you know. Thebuyer is robot-interviewed for an hour, his personalized daily routinelaid out and thereafter templated on his weekly spool. He's stronglyurged next to take his tickler to his doctor and psycher for furtherinstruction-imposition. We've been working with the medical professionfrom the start. They love the tickler because it'll remind people totake their medicine on the dot ... and rest and eat and go to sleepjust when and how doc says. This is a big operation, Gussy--a biiiiiiigoperation! 'By!"
Daisy hurried to the wall to watch him cross the park. Deep down shewas a wee bit worried that he might linger to attach a micro-resonatorto _this_ building and she wanted to time him. But Gusterson settleddown to his typewriter and began to bat away.
"I want to have another novel started," he explained to her, "beforethe ant marches across this building in about four and a half weeks... or a million sharp little gutsy guys come swarming out of theground and heave it into Lake Erie."
