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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.
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.
Then the secondary ribbon speeded up, carrying them at about 30 feet a second toward the blank concrete wall in which the alley ended. Gusterson prepared to jump, but Fay grabbed him with one hand and with the other held up toward the wall a badge and a button.
"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.
After some time she said, "Gusterson, do you remember the Doré 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?
"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.
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.
"That doesn't sound like anything so very original to me," Fay commented coolly, leaning back from the wagging finger. "I think all senior executives have something of that sort. At least, their secretary keeps some kind of file...." "I'm not looking for something with spiked falsies and nylons up to the neck," interjected Gusterson, whose ideas about secretaries were a trifle lurid.
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.
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.
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