Short Fiction - Fritz Leiber (desktop ebook reader .TXT) 📗

“Hokay!” she said harshly, turning on him. “Zen down on your knees, dog!”

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 teenagers rioted through Tunnel-Mart wearing them. And VV’s suing 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 snakebite!”

“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. Coué. 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. Coué 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