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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.
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.
Fay and his projects began once more to seem dreamlike, though Gusterson did run across a cryptic advertisement for ticklers in The Manchester Guardian, which he got daily by facsimile. Their three children reported similar ads, of no interest to young fry, on the TV and one afternoon they came home with the startling news that the monitors at their subsurface school had been issued ticklers.
Davidson and the pimply woman didn't interfere. They merely waited and watched and then led Gusterson on. On the escaladder he told someone, "It's cruel to tie ticklers to slow-witted snaily humans when ticklers can think and live ... ten thousand times as fast," he finished, plucking the figure from the murk of his unconscious.
They were listening to their ticklers! He shuddered. "I got six pages of caution on ticklers," he repeated into the hot, moist quiet of the pancake phone. "I typed 'em so I wouldn't forget 'em in the heat of polemicking. I want you to read every word.
"My God, they're all hunchbacked!" he yelled. "Shh! Of course they are," Fay whispered reprovingly. "They're all wearing their ticklers. But you don't need to be insulting about it." "I'm gettin' out o' here." Gusterson turned to flee as if from five thousand Richard the Thirds. "Oh no you're not," Fay amended, drawing him back with one hand.
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.
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.
"I may be back for supper and I may not." Davidson pushed out from the wall against which he'd been resting himself and his two-stone tickler and moved to block the hall. But Gusterson simply walked up to him. He shook his hand warmly and looked his tickler full in the eye and said in a ringing voice, "Ticklers should have bodies of their own!"
He said plaintively, "Haven't we heard enough about ticklers for a while?" "I guess so," Gusterson agreed, "but I get to wondering about the little guys. They were so serious and intense about everything. I never did solve their problem, you know. I just shifted it onto other shoulders than ours. No joke intended," he hurried to add. Fay forbore to comment.