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Updated: September 23, 2025
Overhead hovered a flock of little silver submarines, lined up rather more orderly in the air than the humans were on the ground. The music rose to a heart-quickening climax. Then the ticklers took off straight up on their new and shining bodies. They became a flight of silver geese ... of silver midges ... and the humans around Gusterson lifted a ragged cheer....
Two scenes stood out a little more vividly. A windowless wall had been knocked out for twenty feet. There was blue sky outside, its light almost hurtful, and a drop of many stories. A file of humans were being processed. The result was something that looked at least in the case of the Mark 6 ticklers like a stubby silver submarine, child size.
And the music breaks into bright pieces, and joins together again, and again breaks, and is dissolved, and the crowd scatters, moving slowly up the hill. At the corner of the road the stalls begin. "Ticklers! Tuppence a tickler! 'Ool 'ave a tickler? Tickle 'em up, boys." Little soft brooms on wire handles. They are eagerly bought by the soldiers. "Buy a golliwog! Tuppence a golliwog!"
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.
"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.
"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."
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?"
Outside, about a hundred yards beyond the purple glass, rose another ancient glass-walled apartment skyscraper. Beyond, Lake Erie rippled glintingly. "Another bomb-test?" Gusterson asked. Fay pointed at the building. "Tomorrow," he announced, "a modern factory, devoted solely to the manufacture of ticklers, will be erected on that site." "You mean one of those windowless phallic eyesores?"
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!
Toward the end he found himself doing it in a dreamy and forgetful way. His mind, he decided, was becoming assimilated to the communal telepathic mind of the ticklers. It did not seem to matter at the time.
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