“Hell, the tickler’s not even efficient yet about little things,” Gusterson blatted, diving back into the privacy-yashmak he was sharing with Fay. “Whyn’t that girl’s doctor have the Moodmaster component of her tickler inject her with medicine?”
“Her doctor probably wants her to have the discipline of pill-taking—or the exercise,” Fay answered glibly. “Look sharp now. Here’s where we fork. I’m taking you through Micro’s postern.”
A ribbon of slidewalk split itself from the main band and angled off into a short alley. Gusterson hardly felt the constant-speed juncture as they crossed it. 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. When they were about ten feet away the wall whipped aside, then whipped shut behind them so fast that Gusterson wondered momentarily if he still had his heels and the seat of his pants.
Fay, tucking away his badge and pancake phone, dropped the button in Gusterson’s vest pocket. “Use it when you leave,” he said casually. “That is, if you leave.”
Gusterson, who was trying to read the Do and Don’t posters papering the walls they were passing, started to probe that last sinister supposition, but just then the ribbon slowed, a swinging door opened and closed behind them and they found themselves in a luxuriously furnished thinking box measuring at least eight feet by five.
“Hey, this is something,” Gusterson said appreciatively to show he wasn’t an utter yokel. Then, drawing on research he’d done for period novels, “Why, it’s as big as a Pullman car compartment, or a first mate’s cabin in the War of 1812. You really must rate.”
Fay nodded, smiled wanly and sat down with a sigh on a compact overstuffed swivel chair. He let his arms dangle and his head sink into his puffed shoulder cape. Gusterson stared at him. It was the first time he could ever recall the little man showing fatigue.
“Tickler currently does have one serious drawback,” Fay volunteered. “It weighs 28 pounds. You feel it when you’ve been on your feet a couple of hours. No question we’re going to give the next model that antigravity feature you mentioned for pursuit grenades. We’d have had it in this model except there were so many other things to be incorporated.” He sighed again. “Why, the scanning and decision-making elements alone tripled the mass.”
“Hey,” Gusterson protested, thinking especially of the sulky-lipped girl, “do you mean to tell me all those other people were toting two stone?”
Fay shook his head heavily. “They were all wearing Mark 3 or 4. I’m wearing Mark 6,” he said, as one might say, “I’m carrying the genuine Cross, not one of the balsa ones.”