The Creature from Cleveland Depths | Page 7

into the
unconscious!--'Day by day in every way I'm getting sharper and
sharper.' It alternates that with 'gutsier and gutsier' and ... well, forget
that. Coué mostly used 'better and better' but that seems too general.
And every hundredth time it says them out loud and the tickler gives
me a brush--just a faint cootch--to make sure I'm keeping in touch."
"That third word-pair," Daisy wondered, feeling her mouth
reminiscently. "Could I guess?"

* * * * *
Gusterson's eyes had been growing wider and wider. "Fay," he said, "I
could no more use my mind for anything if I knew all that was going
on in my inner ear than if I were being brushed down with brooms by
three witches. Look here," he said with loud authority, "you got to stop
all this--it's crazy. Fay, if Micro'll junk the tickler, I'll think you up
something else to invent--something real good."
"Your inventing days are over," Fay brilled gleefully. "I mean, you'll
never equal your masterpiece."
"How about," Gusterson bellowed, "an anti-individual guided missile?
The physicists have got small-scale antigravity good enough to float
and fly something the size of a hand grenade. I can smell that even
though it's a back-of-the-safe military secret. Well, how about keying
such a missile to a man's finger-prints--or brainwaves, maybe, or his
unique smell!--so it can spot and follow him around then target in on
him, without harming anyone else? Long-distance assassination--and
the stinkingest gets it! Or you could simply load it with some
disgusting goo and key it to teen-agers as a group--that'd take care of
them. Fay, doesn't it give you a rich warm kick to think of my midget
missiles buzzing around in your tunnels, seeking out evil-doers, like a
swarm of angry wasps or angelic bumblebees?"
"You're not luring me down any side trails," Fay said laughingly. He
grinned and twitched, then hurried toward the opposite wall, motioning
them to follow. 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?" 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. Then it was
as if the lake's bright ripples had invaded the old glass a hundred yards
away. Wavelets chased themselves up and down the gleaming walls,
became higher, higher ... and then suddenly the glass cracked all over
to tiny fragments and fell away, to be followed quickly by fragmented
concrete and plastic and plastic piping, until all that was left was the
nude steel framework, vibrating so rapidly as to be almost invisible
against the gleaming lake.
* * * * *
Daisy covered her ears, but there was no explosion, only a
long-drawn-out low crash as the fragments hit twenty floors below and
dust whooshed out sideways.
"Spectacular!" Fay summed up. "Knew you'd enjoy it. That little trick
was first conceived by the great Tesla during his last fruity years.
Research discovered it in his biog--we just made the dream come true.
A tiny resonance device you could carry in your belt-bag attunes itself
to the natural harmonic of a structure and then increases amplitude by
tiny pushes exactly in time. Just like soldiers marching in step can
break down a bridge, only this is as if it were being done by one
marching ant." He pointed at the naked framework appearing out of its
own blur and said, "We'll be able to hang the factory on that. If not,
we'll whip a mega-current through it and vaporize it. No question the
micro-resonator is the neatest sweetest wrecking device going. You can
expect a lot more of this sort of efficiency now that mankind has the
tickler to enable him to use his full potential. What's the matter, folks?"

Daisy was staring around the violet-walled room with dumb mistrust.
Her hands were trembling.
"You don't have to worry," Fay assured her with an understanding
laugh. "This building's safe for a month more at least." Suddenly he
grimaced and leaped a foot in the air. He raised a clawed hand to
scratch his shoulder but managed to check the movement. "Got to beat
it, folks," he announced tersely. "My tickler gave me the grand cootch."
"Don't go yet," Gusterson called, rousing himself with a shudder which
he immediately explained: "I just had the illusion that if I