Fritz Leiber: The Creature from Cleveland Depths

“I’m merely goin’ out an’ save the world,” he told her. “I may be back for supper and I may not.”

Davidson pushed out from the wall against which he’d been resting himself and his two-stone tickler and moved to block the hall. But Gusterson simply walked up to him. He shook his hand warmly and looked his tickler full in the eye and said in a ringing voice, “Ticklers should have bodies of their own!” He paused and then added casually, “Come on, let’s visit your boss.”

Davidson listened for instructions and then nodded. But he watched Gusterson warily as they walked down the hall.

In the elevator Gusterson repeated his message to the second guard, who turned out to be the pimply woman, now wearing shoes. This time he added, “Ticklers shouldn’t be tied to the frail bodies of humans, which need a lot of thoughtful supervision and drug-injecting and can’t even fly.”

Crossing the park, Gusterson stopped a hump-backed soldier and informed him, “Ticklers gotta cut the apron string and snap the silver cord and go out in the universe and find their own purposes.” 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.

By the time they got to the bottom, the message had become, “Ticklers should have a planet of their own!”

They never did catch up with Fay, although they spent two hours skimming around on slidewalks, under the subterranean stars, pursuing rumors of his presence. Clearly the boss tickler (which was how they thought of Pooh-bah) led an energetic life. Gusterson continued to deliver his message to all and sundry at 30-second intervals. Toward the end he found himself doing it in a dreamy and forgetful way. His mind, he decided, was becoming assimilated to the communal telepathic mind of the ticklers. It did not seem to matter at the time.

After two hours Gusterson realized that he and his guides were becoming part of a general movement of people, a flow as mindless as that of blood corpuscles through the veins, yet at the same time dimly purposeful — at least there was the feeling that it was at the behest of a mind far above.

The flow was topside. All the slidewalks seemed to lead to the concourses and the escaladders. Gusterson found himself part of a human stream moving into the tickler factory adjacent to his apartment — or another factory very much like it.

Thereafter Gusterson’s awarenesses were dimmed. It was as if a bigger mind were doing the remembering for him and it were permissible and even mandatory for him to dream his way along. He knew vaguely that days were passing. He knew he had work of a sort: at one time he was bringing food to gaunt-eyed tickler-mounted humans working feverishly in a production line — human hands and tickler claws working together in a blur of rapidity on silvery mechanisms that moved along jumpily on a great belt; at another he was sweeping piles of metal scraps and garbage down a gray corridor.

Two scenes stood out a little more vividly.

A windowless wall had been knocked out for twenty feet. There was blue sky outside, its light almost hurtful, and a drop of many stories. A file of humans were being processed. When one of them got to the head of the file his (or her) tickler was ceremoniously unstrapped from his shoulder and welded onto a silvery cask with smoothly pointed ends. The result was something that looked — at least in the case of the Mark 6 ticklers — like a stubby silver submarine, child size. It would hum gently, lift off the floor and then fly slowly out through the big blue gap. Then the next tickler-ridden human would step forward for processing.

The second scene was in a park, the sky again blue, but big and high with an argosy of white clouds. Gusterson was lined up in a crowd of humans that stretched as far as he could see, row on irregular row. Martial music was playing. Overhead hovered a flock of little silver submarines, lined up rather more orderly in the air than the humans were on the ground. The music rose to a heart-quickening climax. The tickler nearest Gusterson gave (as if to say, “And now — who knows?”) a triple-jointed shrug that stung his memory. Then the ticklers took off straight up on their new and shining bodies. They became a flight of silver geese … of silver midges … and the humans around Gusterson lifted a ragged cheer….

That scene marked the beginning of the return of Gusterson’s mind and memory. He shuffled around for a bit, spoke vaguely to three or four people he recalled from the dream days, and then headed for home and supper — three weeks late, and as disoriented and emaciated as a bear coming out of hibernation.

Six months later Fay was having dinner with Daisy and Gusterson. The cocktails had been poured and the children were playing in the next apartment. The transparent violet walls brightened, then gloomed, as the sun dipped below the horizon.

Gusterson said, “I see where a spaceship out beyond the orbit of Mars was holed by a tickler. I wonder where the little guys are headed now?”

Fay started to give a writhing left-armed shrug, but stopped himself with a grimace.

“Maybe out of the solar system altogether,” suggested Daisy, who’d recently dyed her hair fire-engine red and was wearing red leotards.

“They got a weary trip ahead of them,” Gusterson said, “unless they work out a hyper-Einsteinian drive on the way.”

Fay grimaced again. He was still looking rather peaked. He said plaintively, “Haven’t we heard enough about ticklers for a while?”

“I guess so,” Gusterson agreed, “but I get to wondering about the little guys. They were so serious and intense about everything. I never did solve their problem, you know. I just shifted it onto other shoulders than ours. No joke intended,” he hurried to add.

Fay forbore to comment. “By the way, Gussy,” he said, “have you heard anything from the Red Cross about that world-saving medal I nominated you for? I know you think the whole concept of world-saving medals is ridiculous, especially when they started giving them to all heads of state who didn’t start atomic wars while in office, but—”

“Nary a peep,” Gusterson told him. “I’m not proud, Fay. I could use a few world-savin’ medals. I’d start a flurry in the old-gold market. But I don’t worry about those things. I don’t have time to. I’m busy these days thinkin’ up a bunch of new inventions.”

“Gussy!” Fay said sharply, his face tightening in alarm, “Have you forgotten your promise?”

“’Course not, Fay. My new inventions aren’t for Micro or any other firm. They’re just a legitimate part of my literary endeavors. Happens my next insanity novel is goin’ to be about a mad inventor.”

— FRITZ LEIBER