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"Pooh-Bah will do a better job than I could," Fay assured him. "Get the gist without losing the chaff." "But dammit, it's all about him," Gusterson said a little more strongly. "He won't be objective about it." "A better job," Fay reiterated, "and more fully objective. Pooh-Bah's set for full precis. Stop worrying about it.
"But dammit, Gussy, we made it just for you! practically." "Sorry, but I'm not coming near the thing." "Zen come near me," a husky voice intoned behind them. "Tonight I vant a man." Standing in the door was something slim in a short silver sheath. It had golden bangs and the haughtiest snub-nosed face in the world. It slunk toward them. "My God, Vina Vidarsson!" Gusterson yelled.
He wet his lips, his eyes moved from side to side. "I'm not quite sure," he said in an odd strained voice and darted out. Gusterson stared for some seconds at the pattern of emptiness Fay had left. Then he shivered. Then he shrugged. "I must be slipping," he muttered. "I never even suggested something for him to invent."
Play around with it and get used to it. 'By now." "Hey, Fay," Gusterson called curiously, "have you developed absolute time sense?" Fay grinned a big grin from the doorway almost too big a grin for so small a man. "I didn't need to," he said softly, patting his right shoulder. "My tickler told me." He closed the door behind him.
Then the little man came out of the shadows and Gusterson saw the large bulge on his right shoulder. "Yes, we had to up it a bit sizewise," Fay explained in clipped tones. "Additional super-features. While brilliantly successful on the whole, the subliminal euphorics were a shade too effective. Several hundred users went hoppity manic.
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.
Everything that's needful for a man's welfare gets on the spools. Efficiency cubed! Incidentally, Russia's got the tickler now. Our dip-satellites have photographed it. It's like ours except the Commies wear it on the left shoulder ... but they're two weeks behind us developmentwise and they'll never close the gap!" Gusterson reared up out of the pancake phone to take a deep breath.
"You're not wearing the new-model tickler I sent you," he said accusingly. "I never got it," Gusterson assured him. "Postmen deliver topside mail and parcels by throwing them on the high-speed garbage boosts and hoping a tornado will blow them to the right addresses." Then he added helpfully, "Maybe the Russians stole it while it was riding the whirlwinds."
There were things I saw " Once again his voice went shrill. He clapped his hand to his mouth and rocked back and forth on the couch. Gusterson gently but firmly laid a hand on his good shoulder. "Steady," he said. "Here, swallow this." Fay shoved aside the short brown drink. "We've got to stop them," he cried.
Lemme see that beauty mask!" But his wife, backing out of the room, hugged the package to her bosom and solemnly shook her head. "A hell of a thing," Gusterson complained, "not even to be able to see what my stolen ideas look like." "I got a present for you too," Fay said. "Something you might think of as a royalty on all the inventions someone thought of a little ahead of you.
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