"Okay," he said, aloud, and sat back, touched the rerun tab.

The rhetorizor, as Colleen reentered the library with her tall gin drink, began to construct for him in the auddimension. "It is a wise old squirrel," it said tinnily (it possessed only a two-inch speaker), "and yet this little fellow's wisdom is not its own; nature has endowed it--"

"Aw god," Joe Adams said savagely, and slapped off the sleek, steel and plastic machine with all its many microcomponents; it became silent. He then noticed Colleen. "Sorry. But I'm tired. Why can't they, Brose or General Holt or Marshal Harenzany, _somebody_ in a position of responsibility, put Sunday night somewhere between Friday noon and--"

"Dear," Colleen said, and sighed. "I heard you type out only two semantic units. Give it more to ogpon."

"I'll give it plenty to ogpon." He touched the _no_-tab, typed a whole sentence, as Colleen stood behind him, sipping and watching. "Okay?"

"I just can never tell about you," Colleen said. "If you passionately love your job or hate it." She read the sentence aloud. " 'The well-informed dead rat romped under the tongue-tied pink log.'"

"Listen," he said grimly. "I want to see what this stupid assist that cost me fifteen thousand Wes-Dem dollars is going to do with that. I'm serious; I'm waiting." He jabbed the rerun tab of the machine.

"When's the speech due?" she asked.

"Tomorrow."

"Get up early."

"Oh no." He thought, I hate it even more when it's early.

The rhetorizor, in its cricket's voice, intoned folksily. "We think of rats, of course, as our enemy. But consider their vast value to us in cancer research alone. The lowly rat has done yeoman's service for huma--"

Again, at his savage instigation, it died into silence.