by Fritz Leiber
II
Three weeks later Fay, dropping in again, handed to Daisy the largerof the two rather small packages he was carrying.
"It's a so-called beauty mask," he told her, "complete with wig,eyelashes, and wettable velvet lips. It even breathes--pinholedelastiskin with a static adherence-charge. But Micro Systems hadnothing to do with it, thank God. Beauty Trix put it on the market tendays ago and it's already started a teen-age craze. Some boys arewearing them too, and the police are yipping at Trix for encouragingtransvestism with psychic repercussions."
"Didn't I hear somewhere that Trix is a secret subsidiary of Micro?"Gusterson demanded, rearing up from his ancient electric typewriter."No, you're not stopping me writing, Fay--it's the gut of evening. IfI do any more I won't have any juice to start with tomorrow. I gotanother of my insanity thrillers moving. A real id-teaser. In this onenot only all the characters are crazy but the robot psychiatrist too."
"The vending machines are jumping with insanity novels," Faycommented. "Odd they're so popular."
Gusterson chortled. "The only way you outer-directed moles will acceptindividuality any more even in a fictional character, without yoursuperegos getting seasick, is for them to be crazy. Hey, Daisy! Lemmesee that beauty mask!"
But his wife, backing out of the room, hugged the package to her bosomand solemnly shook her head.
"A hell of a thing," Gusterson complained, "not even to be able to seewhat my stolen ideas look like."
"I got a present for you too," Fay said. "Something you might think ofas a royalty on all the inventions someone thought of a little aheadof you. Fifty dollars by your own evaluation." He held out the smallerpackage. "Your tickler."
"My _what_?" Gusterson demanded suspiciously.
"Your tickler. The mech reminder you wanted. It turns out that thefile a secretary keeps to remind her boss to do certain things atcertain times is called a tickler file. So we named this a tickler.Here."
Gusterson still didn't touch the package. "You mean you actually putyour invention team to work on that nonsense?"
"Well, what do you think? Don't be scared of it. Here, I'll show you."
As he unwrapped the package, Fay said, "It hasn't been decided yetwhether we'll manufacture it commercially. If we do, I'll put througha voucher for you--for 'development consultation' or something likethat. Sorry no royalty's possible. Davidson's squad had started towork up the identical idea three years ago, but it got shelved. Ifound it on a snoop through the closets. There! Looks rich, doesn'tit?"
* * * * *
On the scarred black tabletop was a dully gleaming silvery objectabout the size and shape of a cupped hand with fingers merging. A tinypellet on a short near-invisible wire led off from it. On the back wasa punctured area suggesting the face of a microphone; there was also awindow with a date and time in hours and minutes showing through andnext to that four little buttons in a row. The concave underside ofthe silvery "hand" was smooth except for a central area where whatlooked like two little rollers came through.
"It goes on your shoulder under your shirt," Fay explained, "and youtuck the pellet in your ear. We might work up bone conduction on acommercial model. Inside is an ultra-slow fine-wire recorder holding aspool that runs for a week. The clock lets you go to any place on the7-day wire and record a message. The buttons give you variable speedin going there, so you don't waste too much time making a setting.There's a knack in fingering them efficiently, but it's easilyacquired."
Fay picked up the tickler. "For instance, suppose there's a TV showyou want to catch tomorrow night at twenty-two hundred." He touchedthe buttons. There was the faintest whirring. The clock face blurredbriefly three times before showing the setting he'd mentioned. ThenFay spoke into the punctured area: "Turn on TV Channel Two, you bigdummy!" He grinned over at Gusterson. "When you've got all yourinstructions to yourself loaded in, you synchronize with the presentmoment and let her roll. Fit it on your shoulder and forget it. Oh,yes, and it literally does tickle you every time it delivers aninstruction. That's what the little rollers are for. Believe me, youcan't ignore it. Come on, Gussy, take off your shirt and try it out.We'll feed in some instructions for the next ten minutes so you getthe feel of how it works."
"I don't want to," Gusterson said. "Not right now. I want to sniffaround it first. My God, it's small! Besides everything else it does,does it think?"
"Don't pretend to be an idiot, Gussy! You know very well that evenwith ultra-sub-micro nothing quite this small can possibly have enoughelements to do any thinking."
Gusterson shrugged. "I don't know about that. I think bugs think."
* * * * *
Fay groaned faintly. "Bugs operate by instinct, Gussy," he said. "Apatterned routine. They do not scan situations and consequences andthen make decisions."
"I don't expect bugs to make decisions," Gusterson said. "For thatmatter I don't like people who go around alla time making decisions."
"Well, you can take it from me, Gussy, that this tickler is just aminiaturized wire recorder and clock ... and a tickler. It doesn't doanything else."
"Not yet, maybe," Gusterson said darkly. "Not this model. Fay, I'mserious about bugs thinking. Or if they don't exactly think, theyfeel. They've got an interior drama. An inner glow. They're conscious.For that matter, Fay, I think all your really complex electroniccomputers are conscious too."
"Quit kidding, Gussy."
"Who's kidding?"
"You are. Computers simply aren't alive."
"What's alive? A word. I think computers are conscious, at least whilethey're operating. They've got that inner glow of awareness. They sortof ... well ... meditate."
"Gussy, computers haven't got any circuits for meditating. They're notprogrammed for mystical lucubrations. They've just got circuits forsolving the problems they're on."
"Okay, you admit they've got problem-solving circuits--like a man has.I say if they've got the equipment for being conscious, they'reconscious. What has wings, flies."
"Including stuffed owls and gilt eagles and dodoes--and wood-burningairplanes?"
"Maybe, under some circumstances. There _was_ a wood-burning airplane.Fay," Gusterson continued, wagging his wrists for emphasis, "I reallythink computers are conscious. They just don't have any way of tellingus that they are. Or maybe they don't have any _reason_ to tell us,like the little Scotch boy who didn't say a word until he was fifteenand was supposed to be deaf and dumb."
"Why didn't he say a word?"
"Because he'd never had anything to say. Or take those Hindu fakirs,Fay, who sit still and don't say a word for thirty years or untiltheir fingernails grow to the next village. If Hindu fakirs can dothat, computers can!"
Looking as if he were masticating a lemon, Fay asked quietly, "Gussy,did you say you're working on an insanity novel?"
* * * * *
Gusterson frowned fiercely. "Now you're kidding," he accused Fay. "Thedirty kind of kidding, too."
"I'm sorry," Fay said with light contrition. "Well, now you've sniffedat it, how about trying on Tickler?" He picked up the gleaming bluntedcrescent and jogged it temptingly under Gusterson's chin.
"Why should I?" Gusterson asked, stepping back. "Fay, I'm up to myears writing a book. The last thing I want is something interruptingme to make me listen to a lot of junk and do a lot of useless things."
"But, dammit, Gussy! It was all your idea in the first place!" Fayblatted. Then, catching himself, he added, "I mean, you were one ofthe first people to think of this particular sort of instrument."
"Maybe so, but I've done some more thinking since then." Gusterson'svoice grew a trifle solemn. "Inner-directed worthwhile thinkin'. Fay,when a man forgets to do something, it's because he really doesn'twant to do it or because he's all roiled up down in his unconscious.He ought to take it as a danger signal and investigate the roiling,not hire himself a human or mech reminder."
"Bushwa," Fay re
torted. "In that case you shouldn't write memorandumsor even take notes."
"Maybe I shouldn't," Gusterson agreed lamely. "I'd have to think thatover too."
"Ha!" Fay jeered. "No, I'll tell you what your trouble is, Gussy.You're simply scared of this contraption. You've loaded your skullwith horror-story nonsense about machines sprouting minds and takingover the world--until you're even scared of a simple miniaturized andclocked recorder." He thrust it out.
"Maybe I am," Gusterson admitted, controlling a flinch. "Honestly,Fay, that thing's got a gleam in its eye as if it had ideas of itsown. Nasty ideas."
"Gussy, you nut, it hasn't _got_ an eye."
"Not now, no, but it's got the gleam--the eye may come. It's theCheshire cat in reverse. If you'd step over here and look at yourselfholding it, you could see what I mean. But I don't think computers_sprout_ minds, Fay. I just think they've _got_ minds, because they'vegot the mind elements."
"Ho, ho!" Fay mocked. "Everything that has a material side has amental side," he chanted. "Everything that's a body is also a spirit.Gussy, that dubious old metaphysical dualism went out centuries ago."
"Maybe so," Gusterson said, "but we still haven't anything but thatdubious dualism to explain the human mind, have we? It's a jelly ofnerve cells and it's a vision of the cosmos. If that isn't dualism,what is?"
"I give up. Gussy, are you going to try out this tickler?"
"No!"
"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 Ivant a man."
* * * * *
Standing in the door was something slim in a short silver sheath. Ithad golden bangs and the haughtiest snub-nosed face in the world. Itslunk toward them.
"My God, Vina Vidarsson!" Gusterson yelled.
"Daisy, that's terrific," Fay applauded, going up to her.
She bumped him aside with a swing of her hips, continuing to advance."Not you, Ratty," she said throatily. "I vant a real man."
"Fay, I suggested Vina Vidarsson's face for the beauty mask,"Gusterson said, walking around his wife and shaking a finger. "Don'ttell me Trix just happened to think of that too."
"What else could they think of?" Fay laughed. "This season sex meansVV and nobody else." An odd little grin flicked his lips, a tictraveled up his face and his body twitched slightly. "Say, folks, I'mgoing to have to be leaving. It's exactly fifteen minutes to SecondCurfew. Last time I had to run and I got heartburn. When _are_ youpeople going to move downstairs? I'll leave Tickler, Gussy. Playaround with it and get used to it. 'By now."
"Hey, Fay," Gusterson called curiously, "have you developed absolutetime sense?"
Fay grinned a big grin from the doorway--almost too big a grin for sosmall a man. "I didn't need to," he said softly, patting his rightshoulder. "My tickler told me."
He closed the door behind him.
As side-by-side they watched him strut sedately across the murkychilly-looking park, Gusterson mused, "So the little devil had one ofthose nonsense-gadgets on all the time and I never noticed. Can youbeat that?" Something drew across the violet-tinged stars a shortbright line that quickly faded. "What's that?" Gusterson askedgloomily. "Next to last stage of missile-here?"
"Won't you settle for an old-fashioned shooting star?" Daisy askedsoftly. The (wettable) velvet lips of the mask made even her naturalvoice sound different. She reached a hand back of her neck to pull thething off.
"Hey, don't do that," Gusterson protested in a hurt voice. "Not for awhile anyway."
"Hokay!" she said harshly, turning on him. "Zen down on your knees,dog!"