self on it. That way
you not only make doubly sure you'll obey instructions but you
constantly reinoculate yourself with your own enthusiasm."

"I can't stand myself when I'm that enthusiastic," Gusterson said. "I
feel ashamed for hours afterwards."

"You're warped--all this lonely sky-life. What's more, Gussy, think
how still more persuasive some of those instructions would be if they
came to a man in his best girl's most bedroomy voice, or his doctor's
or psycher's if it's that sort of thing--or Vina Vidarsson's! By the
way, Daze, don't wear that beauty mask outside. It's a grand
misdemeanor ever since ten thousand teen-agers rioted through
Tunnel-Mart wearing them. And VV's sueing Trix."

"No chance of that," Daisy said. "Gusterson got excited and bit off
the nose." She pinched her own delicately.

"I'd no more obey my enthusiastic self," Gusterson was brooding, "than
I'd obey a Napoleon drunk on his own brandy or a hopped-up St.
Francis. Reinoculated with my own enthusiasm? I'd die just like from
snake-bite!"

"Warped, I said," Fay dogmatized, stamping around. "Gussy, having the
instructions persuasive instead of neutral turned out to be only the
opening wedge. The next step wasn't so obvious, but I saw it. Using
subliminal verbal stimuli in his tickler, a man can be given constant
supportive euphoric therapy 24 hours a day! And it makes use of all
that empty wire. We've revived the ideas of a pioneer dynamic psycher
named Dr. Coue. For instance, right now my tickler is saying to me--in
tones too soft to reach my conscious mind, but do they stab 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. Coue 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--some