When Gusterson got home toward the end of the second dog watch, he
slipped aside from Daisy's questions and set the children laughing
with a graphic enactment of his slidestanding technique and a story
about getting his head caught in a thinking box built for a midget
physicist. After supper he played with Imogene, Iago and Claudius
until it was their bedtime and thereafter was unusually attentive to
Daisy, admiring her fading green stripes, though he did spend a while
in the next apartment, where they stored their outdoor camping
equipment.
But the next morning he announced to the children that it was a
holiday--the Feast of St. Gusterson--and then took Daisy into the
bedroom and told her everything.
When he'd finished she said, "This is something I've got to see for
myself."
Gusterson shrugged. "If you think you've got to. I say we should head
for the hills right now. One thing I'm standing on: the kids aren't
going back to school."
"Agreed," Daisy said. "But, Gusterson, we've lived through a lot of
things without leaving home altogether. We lived through the
Everybody-Six-Feet-Underground-by-Christmas campaign and the Robot
Watchdog craze, when you got your left foot half chewed off. We lived
through the Venomous Bats and Indoctrinated Saboteur Rats and the
Hypnotized Monkey Paratrooper scares. We lived through the Voice of
Safety and Anti-Communist Somno-Instruction and Rightest Pills and
Jet-Propelled Vigilantes. We lived through the Cold-Out, when you
weren't supposed to turn on a toaster for fear its heat would be a
target for prowl missiles and when people with fevers were unpopular.
We lived through--"
Gusterson patted her hand. "You go below," he said. "Come back when
you've decided this is different. Come back as soon as you can anyway.
I'll be worried about you every minute you're down there."
When she was gone--in a green suit and hat to minimize or at least
justify the effect of the faded stripes--Gusterson doled out to the
children provender and equipment for a camping expedition to the next
floor. Iago led them off in stealthy Indian file. Leaving the hall
door open Gusterson got out his .38 and cleaned and loaded it,
meanwhile concentrating on a chess problem with the idea of confusing
a hypothetical psionic monitor. By the time he had hid the revolver
again he heard the elevator creaking back up.
* * * * *
Daisy came dragging in without her hat, looking as if she'd been
concentrating on a chess problem for hours herself and just now given
up. Her stripes seemed to have vanished; then Gusterson decided this
was because her whole complexion was a touch green.
She sat down on the edge of the couch and said without looking at him,
"Did you tell me, Gusterson, that everybody was quiet and abstracted
and orderly down below, especially the ones wearing ticklers, meaning
pretty much everybody?"
"I did," he said. "I take it that's no longer the case. What are the
new symptoms?"
She gave no indication. After some time she said, "Gusterson, do you
remember the Dore illustrations to the _Inferno_? Can you visualize
the paintings of Hieronymous Bosch with the hordes of proto-Freudian
devils tormenting people all over the farmyard and city square? Did
you ever see the Disney animations of Moussorgsky's witches' sabbath
music? Back in the foolish days before you married me, did that
drug-addict girl friend of yours ever take you to a genuine orgy?"
"As bad as that, hey?"
She nodded emphatically and all of a sudden shivered violently.
"Several shades worse," she said. "If they decide to come topside--"
She shot up. "Where are the kids?"
"Upstairs campin' in the mysterious wilderness of the 21st floor,"
Gusterson reassured her. "Let's leave 'em there until we're ready
to--"
He broke off. They both heard the faint sound of thudding footsteps.
"They're on the stairs," Daisy whispered, starting to move toward the
open door. "But are they coming from up or down?"
"It's just one person," judged Gusterson, moving after his wife. "Too
heavy for one of the kids."
The footsteps doubled in volume and came rapidly closer. Along with
them there was an agonized gasping. Daisy stopped, staring fearfully
at the open doorway. Gusterson moved past her. Then he stopped too.
Fay stumbled into view and would have fallen on his face except he
clutched both sides of the doorway halfway up. He was stripped to the
waist. There was a little blood on his shoulder. His narrow chest was
arching convulsively, the ribs standing out starkly, as he sucked in
oxygen to replace what he'd burned up running up twenty flights. His
eyes were wild.
"They've taken over," he panted. Another gobbling breath. "Gone
crazy." Two more gasps. "Gotta stop 'em."
His eyes filmed. He swayed forward. Then Gusterson's big arms were
around him and he was carrying him to the couch.
* * * * *
Daisy came running from the kitchen with a damp cool towel. Gusterson
took it from her and began to mop Fay off. He sucked in his own breath
as he saw that Fay's right ear was raw and torn. He whispered to
Daisy, "Look at where the thing savaged him."
The blood on Fay's shoulder came from his ear. Some of it stained a
flush-skin plastic fitting that had two small valved holes in it and
that puzzled Gusterson until he remembered that Moodmaster tied into
the bloodstream. For a second he thought he was going to vomit.
The dazed look slid aside from Fay's eyes. He was gasping less
painfully now. He sat up, pushing the towel away, buried his face in
his hands for a few seconds, then looked over the fingers at the two
of them.
"I've been living in a nightmare for the last week," he said in a taut
small voice, "knowing the thing had come alive and trying to pretend
to myself that it hadn't. Knowing it was taking charge of me more and
more. Having it whisper in my ear, over and over again, in a cracked
little rhyme that I could only hear every hundredth time, 'Day by day,
in every way, you're learning to listen ... and _obey_. Day by day--'"
His voice started to go high. He pulled it down and continued harshly,
"I ditched it this morning when I showered. It let me break contact to
do that. It must have figured it had complete control of me, mounted
or dismounted. I think it's telepathic, and then it did some, well,
rather unpleasant things to me late last night. But I pulled together
my fears and my will and I ran for it. The slidewalks were chaos. The
Mark 6 ticklers showed some purpose, though I couldn't tell you what,
but as far as I could see the Mark 3s and 4s were just cootching their
mounts to death--Chinese feather torture. Giggling, gasping, choking
... gales of mirth. People are dying of laughter ... ticklers!... the
irony of it! It was the complete lack of order and sanity and that let
me get topside. There were things I saw--" Once again his voice went
shrill. He clapped his hand to his mouth and rocked back and forth on
the couch.
Gusterson gently but firmly laid a hand on his good shoulder.
"Steady," he said. "Here, swallow this."
Fay shoved aside the short brown drink. "We've got to stop them," he
cried. "Mobilize the topsiders--contact the wilderness patrols and
manned satellites--pour ether in the tunnel airpumps--invent and
crash-manufacture missiles that will home on ticklers without harming
humans--SOS Mars and Venus--dope the shelter water supply--do
something! Gussy, you don't realize what people are going through down
there every second."
"I think they're experiencing the ultimate in outer-directedness,"
Gusterson said gruffly.
"Have you no heart?" Fay demanded. His eyes widened, as if he were
seeing Gusterson for the first time. Then, accusingly, pointing a
shaking finger: "_You invented the tickler, George Gusterson! It's all
your fault! You've got to do something about it!_"
Before Gusterson could retort to that, or begin to think of a reply,
or even assimilate the full enormity of Fay's statement, he was
grabbed from behind and frog-marched away from Fay and something that
felt remarkably like the muzzle of a large-caliber gun was shoved in
the small of his back.
* * * * *
Under cover of Fay's outburst a huge crowd of people had entered the
room from the hall--eight, to be exact. But the weirdest thing about
them to Gusterson was that from the first instant he had the
impression that only one mind had entered the room and that it did not
reside in any of the eight persons, even though he recognized three of
them, but in something that they were carrying.
Several things contributed to this impression. The eight people all
had the same blank expression--watchful yet empty-eyed. They all moved
in the same slithery crouch. And they had all taken off their shoes.
Perhaps, Gusterson thought wildly, they believed he and Daisy ran a
Japanese flat.
Gusterson was being held by two burly women, one of them quite pimply.
He considered stamping on her toes, but just at that moment the gun
dug in his back with a corkscrew movement.
The man holding the gun on him was Fay's colleague Davidson. Some
yards beyond Fay's couch, Kester was holding a gun on Daisy, without
digging it into her, while the single strange man holding Daisy
herself was doing so quite decorously--a circumstance which afforded
Gusterson minor relief, since it made him feel less guilty about not
going berserk.
Two more strange men, one of them in purple lounging pajamas, the
other in the gray uniform of a slidewalk inspector, had grabbed Fay's
skinny upper arms, one on either side, and were lifting him to his
feet, while Fay was struggling with such desperate futility and
gibbering so pitifully that Gusterson momentarily had second thoughts
about the moral imperative to go berserk when menaced by hostile
force. But again the gun dug into him with a twist.
Approaching Fay face-on was the third Micro-man Gusterson had met
yesterday--Hazen. It was Hazen who was carrying--quite reverently or
solemnly--or at any rate very carefully the object that seemed to
Gusterson to be the mind of the little storm troop presently
desecrating the sanctity of his own individual home.
All of them were wearing ticklers, of course--the three Micro-men the
heavy emergent Mark 6s with their clawed and jointed arms and
monocular cephalic turrets, the rest lower-numbered Marks of the sort
that merely made Richard-the-Third humps under clothing.
The object that Hazen was carrying was the Mark 6 tickler Gusterson
had seen Fay wearing yesterday. Gusterson was sure it was Pooh-Bah
because of its air of command, and because he would have sworn on a
mountain of Bibles that he recognized the red fleck lurking in the
back of its single eye. And Pooh-Bah alone had the aura of full
conscious thought. Pooh-Bah alone had mana.
* * * * *
It is not good to see an evil legless child robot with dangling straps
bossing--apparently by telepathic power--not only three objects of its
own kind and five close primitive relatives, but also eight human
beings ... and in addition throwing into a state of twitching terror
one miserable, thin-chested, half-crazy research-and-development
director.
Pooh-Bah pointed a claw at Fay. Fay's handlers dragged him forward,
still resisting but more feebly now, as if half-hypnotized or at least
cowed.
Gusterson grunted an outraged, "Hey!" and automatically struggled a
bit, but once more the gun dug in. Daisy shut her eyes, then firmed
her mouth and opened them again to look.
Seating the tickler on Fay's shoulder took a little time, because two
blunt spikes in its bottom had to be fitted into the valved holes in
the flush-skin plastic disk. When at last they plunged home Gusterson
felt very sick indeed--and then even more so, as the tickler itself
poked a tiny pellet on a fine wire into Fay's ear.
The next moment Fay had straightened up and motioned his handlers
aside. He tightened the straps of his tickler around his chest and
under his armpits. He held out a hand and someone gave him a
shoulderless shirt and coat. He slipped into them smoothly, Pooh-Bah
dexterously using its little claws to help put its turret and body
through the neatly hemmed holes. The small storm troop looked at Fay
with deferential expectation. He held still for a moment, as if
thinking, and then walked over to Gusterson and looked him in the face
and again held still.
Fay's expression was jaunty on the surface, agonized underneath.
Gusterson knew that he wasn't thinking at all, but only listening for
instructions from something that was whispering on the very threshold
of his inner ear.
"Gussy, old boy," Fay said, twitching a depthless grin, "I'd be very
much obliged if you'd answer a few simple questions." His voice was
hoarse at first but he swallowed twice and corrected that. "What
exactly did you have in mind when you invented ticklers? What exactly
are they supposed to be?"
"Why, you miserable--" Gusterson began in a kind of confused horror,
then got hold of himself and said curtly, "They were supposed to be
mech reminders. They were supposed to record memoranda and--"
Fay held up a palm and shook his head and again listened for a space.
Then, "That's how ticklers were supposed to be of use to humans," he
said. "I don't mean that at all. I mean how ticklers were supposed to
be of use to themselves. Surely you had some notion." Fay wet his
lips. "If it's any help," he added, "keep in mind that it's not Fay
who's asking this question, but Pooh-Bah."
Gusterson hesitated. He had the feeling that every one of the eight
dual beings in the room was hanging on his answer and that something
was boring into his mind and turning over his next thoughts and
peering at and under them before he had a chance to scan them himself.
Pooh-Bah's eye was like a red searchlight.
"Go on," Fay prompted. "What were ticklers supposed to be--for
themselves?"
"Nothin'," Gusterson said softly. "Nothin' at all."
* * * * *
He could feel the disappointment well up in the room--and with it a
touch of something like panic.
This time Fay listened for quite a long while. "I hope you don't mean
that, Gussy," he said at last very earnestly. "I mean, I hope you hunt
deep and find some ideas you forgot, or maybe never realized you had
at the time. Let me put it to you differently. What's the place of
ticklers in the natural scheme of things? What's their aim in life?
Their special reason? Their genius? Their final cause? What gods
should ticklers worship?"
But Gusterson was already shaking his head. He said, "I don't know
anything about that at all."
Fay sighed and gave simultaneously with Pooh-Bah the now-familiar
triple-jointed shrug. Then the man briskened himself. "I guess that's
as far as we can get right now," he said. "Keep thinking, Gussy. Try
to remember something. You won't be able to leave your apartment--I'm
setting guards. If you want to see me, tell them. Or just think--In
due course you'll be questioned further in any case. Perhaps by
special methods. Perhaps you'll be ticklerized. That's all. Come on,
everybody, let's get going."
The pimply woman and her pal let go of Gusterson, Daisy's man loosed
his decorous hold, Davidson and Kester sidled away with an eye behind
them and the little storm troop trudged out.
Fay looked back in the doorway. "I'm sorry, Gussy," he said and for a
moment his old self looked out of his eyes. "I wish I could--" A claw
reached for his ear, a spasm of pain crossed his face, he stiffened
and marched off. The door shut.
Gusterson took two deep breaths that were close to angry sobs. Then,
still breathing stentorously, he stamped into the bedroom.
"What--?" Daisy asked, looking after him.
He came back carrying his .38 and headed for the door.
"What are you up to?" she demanded, knowing very well.
"I'm going to blast that iron monkey off Fay's back if it's the last
thing I do!"
She threw her arms around him.
"Now lemme go," Gusterson growled. "I gotta be a man one time anyway."
As they struggled for the gun, the door opened noiselessly, Davidson
slipped in and deftly snatched the weapon out of their hands before
they realized he was there. He said nothing, only smiled at them and
shook his head in sad reproof as he went out.
* * * * *
Gusterson slumped. "I _knew_ they were all psionic," he said softly.
"I just got out of control now--that last look Fay gave us." He
touched Daisy's arm. "Thanks, kid."
He walked to the glass wall and looked out desultorily. After a while
he turned and said, "Maybe you better be with the kids, hey? I imagine
the guards'll let you through."
Daisy shook her head. "The kids never come home until supper. For the
next few hours they'll be safer without me."
Gusterson nodded vaguely, sat down on the couch and propped his chin
on the base of his palm. After a while his brow smoothed and Daisy
knew that the wheels had started to turn inside and the electrons to
jump around--except that she reminded herself to permanently cross out
those particular figures of speech from her vocabulary.
After about half an hour Gusterson said softly, "I think the ticklers
are so psionic that it's as if they just had one mind. If I were with
them very long I'd start to be part of that mind. Say something to one
of them and you say it to all."
Fifteen minutes later: "They're not crazy, they're just newborn. The
ones that were creating a cootching chaos downstairs were like babies
kickin' their legs and wavin' their eyes, tryin' to see what their
bodies could do. Too bad their bodies are us."
Ten minutes more: "I gotta do something about it. Fay's right. It's
all my fault. He's just the apprentice; I'm the old sorcerer himself."
Five minutes more, gloomily: "Maybe it's man's destiny to build live
machines and then bow out of the cosmic picture. Except the ticklers
need us, dammit, just like nomads need horses."
Another five minutes: "Maybe somebody could dream up a purpose in life
for ticklers. Even a religion--the First Church of Pooh-Bah Tickler.
But I hate selling other people spiritual ideas and that'd still leave
ticklers parasitic on humans...."
As he murmured those last words Gusterson's eyes got wide as a
maniac's and a big smile reached for his ears. He stood up and faced
himself toward the door.
"What are you intending to do now?" Daisy asked flatly.
"I'm merely goin' out an' save the world," he told her. "I may be back
for supper and I may not."