III

It was a fortnight and Gusterson was loping down the home stretch on

his 40,000-word insanity novel before Fay dropped in again, this time

promptly at high noon.

Normally Fay cringed his shoulders a trifle and was inclined to

slither, but now he strode aggressively, his legs scissoring in a

fast, low goosestep. He whipped off the sunglasses that all moles wore

topside by day and began to pound Gusterson on the back while calling

boisterously, "How are you, Gussy Old Boy, Old Boy?"

Daisy came in from the kitchen to see why Gusterson was choking. She

was 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 her

mouth, while Gusterson yelled, "Quit that! What's got into you, Fay?

Have they transferred you out of R & D to Company Morale? Do they line

up all the secretaries at roll call and make you give them an

eight-hour energizing kiss?"

"Ha, wouldn't you like to know?" Fay retorted. He grinned, twitched

jumpingly, held still a moment, then hustled over to the far wall.

"Look out there," he rapped, pointing through the violet glass at a

gap between the two nearest old skyscraper apartments. "In thirty

seconds you'll see them test the new needle bomb at the other end of

Lake Erie. It's educational." He began to count off seconds,

vigorously semaphoring his arm. "... Two ... three ... Gussy, I've put

through a voucher for two yards for you. Budgeting squawked, but I

pressured 'em."

Daisy squealed, "Yards!--are those dollar thousands?" while Gusterson

was asking, "Then you're marketing the tickler?"

"Yes. Yes," Fay replied to them in turn. "... Nine ... ten ..." Again

he grinned and twitched. "Time for noon Com-staff," he announced

staccato. "Pardon the hush box." He whipped a pancake phone from under

his coat, clapped it over his face and spoke fiercely but inaudibly

into 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 far

horizon and a doubly dazzling point of light appeared just above the

top of it, with the effect of God dotting an "i".

"Ha, that'll skewer espionage satellites like swatting flies!" Fay

proclaimed as the portent faded. "Bracing! Gussy, where's your

tickler? 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 broke

it."

"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 it

automatically inject you with cocaine? A fix every hour on the

second?"

"Ha-ha, joke. Gussy, it achieves the same effect without using any

dope at all. Listen: a tickler reminds you of your duties and

opportunities--your chances for happiness and success! What's the

obvious next step?"

* * * * *

"Throw it out the window. By the way, how do you do that when you're

underground?"

"We have hi-speed garbage boosts. The obvious next step is you give

the 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 Two

Switch! There's a great show coming through the pipes this second plus

ten--you'll enjoy the hell out of yourself! Grab a ticket to

ecstasy!'"

"My God," Gusterson gasped, "are those the kind of jolts it's giving

you now?"

"Don't you get it, Gussy? You never load your tickler except when

you're feeling buoyantly enthusiastic. You don't just tell yourself

what to do hour by hour next week, you sell yourself on it. That way

you not only make doubly sure you'll obey instructions but you

constantly reinoculate yourself with your own enthusiasm."

"I can't stand myself when I'm that enthusiastic," Gusterson said. "I

feel ashamed for hours afterwards."

"You're warped--all this lonely sky-life. What's more, Gussy, think

how still more persuasive some of those instructions would be if they

came to a man in his best girl's most bedroomy voice, or his doctor's

or psycher's if it's that sort of thing--or Vina Vidarsson's! By the

way, Daze, don't wear that beauty mask outside. It's a grand

misdemeanor ever since ten thousand teen-agers rioted through

Tunnel-Mart wearing them. And VV's sueing Trix."

"No chance of that," Daisy said. "Gusterson got excited and bit off

the nose." She pinched her own delicately.

"I'd no more obey my enthusiastic self," Gusterson was brooding, "than

I'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 from

snake-bite!"

"Warped, I said," Fay dogmatized, stamping around. "Gussy, having the

instructions persuasive instead of neutral turned out to be only the

opening wedge. The next step wasn't so obvious, but I saw it. Using

subliminal verbal stimuli in his tickler, a man can be given constant

supportive euphoric therapy 24 hours a day! And it makes use of all

that empty wire. We've revived the ideas of a pioneer dynamic psycher

named Dr. Coue. For instance, right now my tickler is saying to me--in

tones too soft to reach my conscious mind, but do they stab into the

unconscious!--'Day by day in every way I'm getting sharper and

sharper.' It alternates that with 'gutsier and gutsier' and ... well,

forget that. Coue mostly used 'better and better' but that seems too

general. And every hundredth time it says them out loud and the

tickler gives me a brush--just a faint cootch--to make sure I'm

keeping in touch."

"That third word-pair," Daisy wondered, feeling her mouth

reminiscently. "Could I guess?"

* * * * *

Gusterson's eyes had been growing wider and wider. "Fay," he said, "I

could no more use my mind for anything if I knew all that was going on

in my inner ear than if I were being brushed down with brooms by three

witches. Look here," he said with loud authority, "you got to stop all

this--it's crazy. Fay, if Micro'll junk the tickler, I'll think you up

something else to invent--something real good."

"Your inventing days are over," Fay brilled gleefully. "I mean, you'll

never equal your masterpiece."

"How about," Gusterson bellowed, "an anti-individual guided missile?

The physicists have got small-scale antigravity good enough to float

and fly something the size of a hand grenade. I can smell that even

though it's a back-of-the-safe military secret. Well, how about keying

such a missile to a man's finger-prints--or brainwaves, maybe, or his

unique smell!--so it can spot and follow him around then target in on

him, without harming anyone else? Long-distance assassination--and the

stinkingest gets it! Or you could simply load it with some disgusting

goo 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 midget

missiles buzzing around in your tunnels, seeking out evil-doers, like

a swarm of angry wasps or angelic bumblebees?"

"You're not luring me down any side trails," Fay said laughingly. He

grinned and twitched, then hurried toward the opposite wall, motioning

them to follow. Outside, about a hundred yards beyond the purple

glass, 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 modern

factory, devoted solely to the manufacture of ticklers, will be

erected on that site."

"You mean one of those windowless phallic eyesores?" Gusterson

demanded. "Fay, you people aren't even consistent. You've got all your

homes 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 was

as if the lake's bright ripples had invaded the old glass a hundred

yards away. Wavelets chased themselves up and down the gleaming walls,

became higher, higher ... and then suddenly the glass cracked all over

to tiny fragments and fell away, to be followed quickly by fragmented

concrete and plastic and plastic piping, until all that was left was

the nude steel framework, vibrating so rapidly as to be almost

invisible against the gleaming lake.

* * * * *

Daisy covered her ears, but there was no explosion, only a

long-drawn-out low crash as the fragments hit twenty floors below and

dust whooshed out sideways.

"Spectacular!" Fay summed up. "Knew you'd enjoy it. That little trick

was 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 attunes

itself to the natural harmonic of a structure and then increases

amplitude by tiny pushes exactly in time. Just like soldiers marching

in step can break down a bridge, only this is as if it were being done

by one marching ant." He pointed at the naked framework appearing out

of 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. No

question the micro-resonator is the neatest sweetest wrecking device

going. You can expect a lot more of this sort of efficiency now that

mankind 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 understanding

laugh. "This building's safe for a month more at least." Suddenly he

grimaced and leaped a foot in the air. He raised a clawed hand to

scratch his shoulder but managed to check the movement. "Got to beat

it, folks," he announced tersely. "My tickler gave me the grand

cootch."

"Don't go yet," Gusterson called, rousing himself with a shudder which

he immediately explained: "I just had the illusion that if I shook

myself 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 know

there's one insuperable objection to the tickler as a mass-market

item. The average man or woman won't go to the considerable time and

trouble it must take to load a tickler. He simply hasn't got the

compulsive 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 wallpaper

with one of five designs of suitable subliminal supportive euphoric

material. 'Ittier and ittier,' 'viriler and viriler'--you know. The

buyer is robot-interviewed for an hour, his personalized daily routine

laid out and thereafter templated on his weekly spool. He's strongly

urged next to take his tickler to his doctor and psycher for further

instruction-imposition. We've been working with the medical profession

from the start. They love the tickler because it'll remind people to

take their medicine on the dot ... and rest and eat and go to sleep

just when and how doc says. This is a big operation, Gussy--a biiiiiiig

operation! 'By!"

Daisy hurried to the wall to watch him cross the park. Deep down she

was a wee bit worried that he might linger to attach a micro-resonator

to _this_ building and she wanted to time him. But Gusterson settled

down to his typewriter and began to bat away.

"I want to have another novel started," he explained to her, "before

the ant marches across this building in about four and a half weeks

... or a million sharp little gutsy guys come swarming out of the

ground and heave it into Lake Erie."