“I thought you said it was going to be for two.” Gusterson complained.
“Budgeting always forces a last-minute compromise,” Fay shrugged. “You have to learn to accept those things.”
“I love accepting money and I’m glad any time for three feet,” Daisy called agreeably. “Six feet might make me wonder if I weren’t an insect, but getting a yard just makes me feel like a gangster’s moll.”
“Want to come out and gloat over the yard paper, Toots, and stuff it in your diamond-embroidered net stocking top?” Gusterson called back.
“No, I’m doing something to that portion of me just now. But hang onto the yard, Gusterson.”
“Aye-aye, Cap’n,” he assured her. Then, turning back to Fay, “So you’ve taken the Dr. Coue repeating out of the tickler?”
“Oh, no. Just balanced it off with depressin. The subliminals are still a prime sales-point. All the tickler features are cumulative, Gussy. You’re still underestimating the scope of the device.”
“I guess I am. What’s this ‘work-emergencies’ business? If you’re using the tickler to inject drugs into workers to keep them going, that’s really just my cocaine suggestion modernized and I’m putting in for another thou. Hundreds of years ago the South American Indians chewed coca leaves to kill fatigue sensations.”
“That so? Interesting — and it proves priority for the Indians, doesn’t it? I’ll make a try for you, Gussy, but don’t expect anything.” He cleared his throat, his eyes grew distant and, turning his head a little to the right, he enunciated sharply, “Pooh-Bah. Time: Inst oh five. One oh five seven. Oh oh. Record: Gussy coca thou budget. Cut.” He explained, “We got a voice-cued setter now on the deluxe models. You can record a memo to yourself without taking off your shirt. Incidentally, I use the ends of the hours for trifle-memos. I’ve already used up the fifty-nines and eights for tomorrow and started on the fifty-sevens.”
“I understood most of your memo,” Gusterson told him gruffly. “The last ‘Oh oh’ was for seconds, wasn’t it? Now I call that crude — why not microseconds too? But how do you remember where you’ve made a memo so you don’t rerecord over it? After all, you’re rerecording over the wallpaper all the time.”
“Tickler beeps and then hunts for the nearest information-free space.”
“I see. And what’s the Pooh-Bah for?”
Fay smiled. “Cut. My password for activating the setter, so it won’t respond to chance numerals it overhears.”
“But why Pooh-Bah?”
Fay grinned. “Cut. And you a writer. It’s a literary reference, Gussy. Pooh-Bah (cut!) was Lord High Everything Else in
“Oh, yeah,” Gusterson remembered, glowering. “As I recall it, all that went on that list was the names of people who were slated to have their heads chopped off by Ko-Ko. Better watch your step, Shorty. It may be a back-handed omen. Maybe all those workers you’re puttin’ ticklers on to pump them full of adrenaline so they’ll overwork without noticin’ it will revolt and come out some day choppin’ for your head.”
“Spare me the Marxist mythology,” Fay protested. “Gussy, you’ve got a completely wrong slant on Tickler. It’s true that most of our mass sales so far, bar government and army, have been to large companies purchasing for their employees—”
“Ah-ha!”
“—but that’s because there’s nothing like a tickler for teaching a new man his job. It tells him from instant to instant what he must do — while he’s already on the job and without disturbing other workers. Magnetizing a wire with a job pattern is the easiest thing going. And you’d be astonished what the subliminals do for employee morale. It’s this way, Gussy: most people are too improvident and unimaginative to see in advance the advantages of ticklers. They buy one because the company strongly suggests it and payment is on easy installments withheld from salary. They find a tickler makes the work day go easier. The little fellow perched on your shoulder is a friend exuding comfort and good advice. The first thing he’s set to say is ‘Take it easy, pal.’
“Within a week they’re wearing their tickler 24 hours a day — and buying a tickler for the wife, so she’ll remember to comb her hair and smile real pretty and cook favorite dishes.”
“I get it, Fay,” Gusterson cut in. “The tickler is the newest fad for increasing worker efficiency. Once, I read somewheres, it was salt tablets. They had salt-tablet dispensers everywhere, even in air-conditioned offices where there wasn’t a moist armpit twice a year and the gals sweat only champagne. A decade later people wondered what all those dusty white pills were for. Sometimes they were mistook for tranquilizers. It’ll be the same way with ticklers. Somebody’ll open a musty closet and see jumbled heaps of these gripping-hand silvery gadgets gathering dust curls and—”
“They will not!” Fay protested vehemently. “Ticklers are not a fad — they’re history-changers, they’re Free- World revolutionary! Why, before Micro Systems put a single one on the market, we’d made it a rule that every Micro employee had to wear one! If that’s not having supreme confidence in a product—”
“Every employee except the top executives, of course,” Gusterson interrupted jeeringly. “And that’s not demoting you, Fay. As the R & D chief most closely involved, you’d naturally have to show special enthusiasm.”
“But you’re wrong there, Gussy,” Fay crowed. “Man for man, our top executives have been more enthusiastic about their personal ticklers than any other class of worker in the whole outfit.”
Gusterson slumped and shook his head. “If that’s the case,” he said darkly, “maybe mankind deserves the tickler.”
“I’ll say it does!” Fay agreed loudly without thinking. Then, “Oh, can the carping, Gussy. Tickler’s a great invention. Don’t deprecate it just because you had something to do with its genesis. You’re going to have to get in the swim and wear one.”
“Maybe I’d rather drown horribly.”
“Can the gloom-talk too! Gussy, I said it before and I say it again, you’re just scared of this new thing. Why, you’ve even got the drapes pulled so you won’t have to look at the tickler factory.”
“Yes, I am scared,” Gusterson said. “Really sca … AWP!”
Fay whirled around. Daisy was standing in the bedroom doorway, wearing the short silver sheath. This time there was no mask, but her bobbed hair was glitteringly silvered, while her legs, arms, hands, neck, face — every bit of her exposed skin — was painted with beautifully even vertical green stripes.
“I did it as a surprise for Gusterson,” she explained to Fay. “He says he likes me this way. The green glop’s supposed to be smudgeproof.”
Gusterson did not comment. His face had a rapt expression. “I’ll tell you why your tickler’s so popular, Fay,” he said softly. “It’s not because it backstops the memory or because it boosts the ego with subliminals. It’s because it takes the hook out of a guy, it takes over the job of withstanding the pressure of living. See, Fay, here are all these little guys in this subterranean rat race with atomic-death squares and chromium-plated reward squares and enough money if you pass Go almost to get to Go again — and a million million rules of the game to keep in mind. Well, here’s this one little guy and every morning he wakes up there’s all these things he’s got to keep in mind to do or he’ll lose his turn three times in a row and maybe a terrible black rook in iron armor’ll loom up and bang him off the chessboard. But now, look, now he’s got his tickler and he tells his sweet silver tickler all these things and the tickler’s got to remember them. Of course he’ll have to do them eventually but meanwhile the pressure’s off him, the hook’s out of his short hairs. He’s shifted the responsibility….”
“Well, what’s so bad about that?” Fay broke in loudly. “What’s wrong with taking the pressure off little guys? Why shouldn’t Tickler be a super-ego surrogate? Micro’s Motivations chief noticed that positive feature straight off and scored it three pluses. Besides, it’s nothing but a gaudy way of saying that Tickler backstops the memory. Seriously, Gussy, what’s so bad about it?”
“I don’t know,” Gusterson said slowly, his eyes still far away. “I just know it feels bad to me.” He crinkled his big forehead. “Well for one thing,” he said, “it means that a man’s taking orders from something else. He’s got a kind of master. He’s sinking back into a slave psychology.”
“He’s only taking orders from himself,” Fay countered disgustedly. “Tickler’s just a mech reminder, a notebook, in essence no more than the back of an old envelope. It’s no master.”
“Are you absolutely sure of that?” Gusterson asked quietly.
