Three weeks later Fay, dropping in again, handed to Daisy the larger
of the two rather small packages he was carrying.
"It's a so-called beauty mask," he told her, "complete with wig,
eyelashes, and wettable velvet lips. It even breathes--pinholed
elastiskin with a static adherence-charge. But Micro Systems had
nothing to do with it, thank God. Beauty Trix put it on the market ten
days ago and it's already started a teen-age craze. Some boys are
wearing them too, and the police are yipping at Trix for encouraging
transvestism with psychic repercussions."
"Didn't I hear somewhere that Trix is a secret subsidiary of Micro?"
Gusterson demanded, rearing up from his ancient electric typewriter.
"No, you're not stopping me writing, Fay--it's the gut of evening. If
I do any more I won't have any juice to start with tomorrow. I got
another of my insanity thrillers moving. A real id-teaser. In this one
not only all the characters are crazy but the robot psychiatrist too."
"The vending machines are jumping with insanity novels," Fay
commented. "Odd they're so popular."
Gusterson chortled. "The only way you outer-directed moles will accept
individuality any more even in a fictional character, without your
superegos getting seasick, is for them to be crazy. Hey, Daisy! Lemme
see that beauty mask!"
But his wife, backing out of the room, hugged the package to her bosom
and solemnly shook her head.
"A hell of a thing," Gusterson complained, "not even to be able to see
what my stolen ideas look like."
"I got a present for you too," Fay said. "Something you might think of
as a royalty on all the inventions someone thought of a little ahead
of you. Fifty dollars by your own evaluation." He held out the smaller
package. "Your tickler."
"My _what_?" Gusterson demanded suspiciously.
"Your tickler. The mech reminder you wanted. It turns out that the
file a secretary keeps to remind her boss to do certain things at
certain times is called a tickler file. So we named this a tickler.
Here."
Gusterson still didn't touch the package. "You mean you actually put
your invention team to work on that nonsense?"
"Well, what do you think? Don't be scared of it. Here, I'll show you."
As he unwrapped the package, Fay said, "It hasn't been decided yet
whether we'll manufacture it commercially. If we do, I'll put through
a voucher for you--for 'development consultation' or something like
that. Sorry no royalty's possible. Davidson's squad had started to
work up the identical idea three years ago, but it got shelved. I
found it on a snoop through the closets. There! Looks rich, doesn't
it?"
* * * * *
On the scarred black tabletop was a dully gleaming silvery object
about the size and shape of a cupped hand with fingers merging. A tiny
pellet on a short near-invisible wire led off from it. On the back was
a punctured area suggesting the face of a microphone; there was also a
window with a date and time in hours and minutes showing through and
next to that four little buttons in a row. The concave underside of
the silvery "hand" was smooth except for a central area where what
looked like two little rollers came through.
"It goes on your shoulder under your shirt," Fay explained, "and you
tuck the pellet in your ear. We might work up bone conduction on a
commercial model. Inside is an ultra-slow fine-wire recorder holding a
spool that runs for a week. The clock lets you go to any place on the
7-day wire and record a message. The buttons give you variable speed
in going there, so you don't waste too much time making a setting.
There's a knack in fingering them efficiently, but it's easily
acquired."
Fay picked up the tickler. "For instance, suppose there's a TV show
you want to catch tomorrow night at twenty-two hundred." He touched
the buttons. There was the faintest whirring. The clock face blurred
briefly three times before showing the setting he'd mentioned. Then
Fay spoke into the punctured area: "Turn on TV Channel Two, you big
dummy!" He grinned over at Gusterson. "When you've got all your
instructions to yourself loaded in, you synchronize with the present
moment and let her roll. Fit it on your shoulder and forget it. Oh,
yes, and it literally does tickle you every time it delivers an
instruction. That's what the little rollers are for. Believe me, you
can't ignore it. Come on, Gussy, take off your shirt and try it out.
We'll feed in some instructions for the next ten minutes so you get
the feel of how it works."
"I don't want to," Gusterson said. "Not right now. I want to sniff
around it first. My God, it's small! Besides everything else it does,
does it think?"
"Don't pretend to be an idiot, Gussy! You know very well that even
with ultra-sub-micro nothing quite this small can possibly have enough
elements to do any thinking."