At the keyboard of the rhetorizer he typed, carefully, the substantive he wanted. Squirrel. Then, after a good two minutes of sluggish, deep thought, the limiting adjective smart.

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

The rhetorizer, as Colleen reentered the room with her tall drink, began to construct for him in the aud-dimension. "It is a wise old squirrel," it said tinnily (it possessed only a two-inch speaker), "and yet its 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.

"Dear," Colleen said and sighed. "I only heard you give it two semantic units; give it more to ogpon."

"I'll give it plenty to ogpon." He touched the on-tab and typed an entire sentence. 'The well-informed dead rat romped under the pink log.'

"When's the speech due?"

"Tomorrow night."