Руди Рюкер - Master Of Space And Time

The palace guards were only some fifty meters ahead of us now. They could see there was something fishy about us. As we drew closer, they raised their weapons and aimed.

"All right," said Harry in his normal voice. He'd willed himself sober, just like that. He sat up straight and stepped on the gas. "Beam them, Fletch. You can shoot over my shoulder."

I dialed my disintegrator ray to maximum fan and blasted away. I was already a murderer from smashing that supermarket manager's spine-rider. Kill one, kill twenty. Most of the palace guards turned to dust. The survivors took to their heels. I retched up a mouthful of stomach acid. Killing wasn't something I could learn to enjoy.

Harry kept the hammer down, and we smashed through a set of ironwork gates. There were marble stairs up ahead. We took them like we had square wheels. The lovely gardens were all around us, fountains and geometric beds of flowers. Some pretty women with bare backs were lounging on the lawns.

A hot beam of red laser light speared down from one of the palace's slim watchtowers. The beam burned a hole in our Cadillac's hood, and then the engine died.

"I'll handle that," said Harry. He aimed his time-reversing ray gun at the distant laser cannon. Our engine started back up, the hole in the hood sealed over, and the laser energy returned to its source. Smoke poured out of that slim minaret — smoke and screams.

Our car stumbled up a last marble staircase and coughed to a stop. The four of us jumped out, guns at the ready. We were standing under a huge, pillared portico. Before us was the palace entrance, a Moorish arch with massive bronze doors. The doors were open and unguarded.

I felt weak and sick, but Harry's drunkenness was miraculously gone. Master of space and time.

Sondra was in high gear. "What's your anti-self going to look like, Harry? Tad and Joe say it's a giant slug. Let's be sure to steal some jewels after we kill it. I guess you know it's already eleven twenty-five? We better hurry. I can't wait for my friend Donna to see my new look. Maybe I'll go on TV. Do you think Dr. Bitter will approve?"

"That big Gary Herber's in the central courtyard," said Tad. "Let's hang real tight."

He went in first, then Harry and Sondra, then me.

Something dropped onto the nape of my neck just as I walked through the door.

Oh, no! The soft moist Herber-slug slid down between my shoulder blades and plugged itself into my nervous system. I felt a wild tingling.

"Duck into the next doorway," said a little voice in my head. The voice of the parasitic glob that had just taken over my will. I struggled to yell to the others, but instead I whipped in through the first doorway we passed.

"Fletch?" called Harry from the hall. "Where'd he go, Sondra? HEY, FLETCHER!"

I was running as fast as my legs would carry me. Through a cloakroom, out into a courtyard, through a door, and into a bedroom. There was a woman, a naked odalisque on a big mound of cushions. She had jet-black hair and lily-white skin. Almond eyes, a long straight nose, large nipples, heavy-duty thighs. I burrowed under her cushions like a rat taking cover. It felt nice down there: the silky cushions, the woman's odor and weight. I tried to wriggle into a position where I'd be able to…

"Be still," said the voice in my head.

I stopped moving and thought a message back: "Who are you?"

"I'm a scion of Gary Herber. Thank you for your body."

"I wasn't really done with it yet." For some reason I was kind of enjoying this. The parasite kept a pleasant tingle going all through my nerves, "You'll have to release me, I'm from another world."

"I know, we want to go there."

"No! You can't! It's —"

"Shhh!"

Footsteps sounded in the courtyard outside. Fat Harry, weird Tad, and sexy Sondra. They'd never find me here. I should have been screaming for help, but instead I felt like giggling. The slug had really taken me over.

"Uh, excuse me, miss, have you seen my friend?" Harry's voice.

The odalisque shifted about, but she didn't answer.

"She won't pick up on you," said Tad. "Herber's dollies don't talk to strangers."

"What would a giant brain want with slave girls?" asked Sondra.

"What Gary wants with women? He milks them, like. GABA fluid from their spines. You dig that plastic coupling down on her back?"

"Oooooo! Awful! Well, read her mind, Harry. You can do telepathy, can't you?"

"Stap my vitals!" exclaimed Tad. "Telepathy!"

"Yeah, I can do it," rumbled Harry, "but that would be too —"

"Harry, in less than half an hour, our magic door out of this place is going to disappear. And now something's happened to Joe. Use your goddamn telepathy or I'll —"

"Oh, all right."

"… cushion…" was all that me and my rider were thinking. A masquerade. We held our joint consciousness in the mind-set of a "… cushion…"

The odalisque must have some kind of block up too. After a minute Harry stopped scanning. I could feel the difference. "I don't find him anywhere, Sondra. But I think he's hiding somewhere nearby."

"Why would he hide?"

"Oh, Fletcher's weird. He's weirder than you realize, Sondra. People always say that I'm crazy, but Fletcher is much worse. He's sneaky about being crazy. The guy needs help, I mean it."

"… cushion…"

"Well, what are we going to do?"

"Let's go ahead and kill that giant brain," urged Tad. "You've got to do that for us before you leave."

"But what about Joe," protested Sondra. "We can't just forget about him."

"… cushion…"

"If he gets stuck here, it's his own damn fault. He's hiding from me, I tell you. He's got a telepathy block up, and this woman has one too. I can't read anyone's mind but yours and Tad's, Sondra."

"Oooooo! What are we thinking, Harry?"

"You don't want to know. Tad, which way is it to the central courtyard? I'll teleport the three of us there. Maybe Gary Herber can tell us where Fletcher is."

"That's cool," said Tad. "Joe's probably wearing a brain on his back right now. The courtyard is — that way, about one hundred meters."

"Okay."

The voices disappeared. I crawled out from under the cushions and sat up. The big odalisque licked her lips. She had a large tongue and a cruel mouth. I sighed and laid my head down on her shoulder. She ran one hand over my face, and with her other hand she drew a few drops of spinal fluid out of the tap at the bottom of her back. Gently she rubbed the fluid into my spine-rider. I shuddered with pleasure. This was really living.

"Where is the door to your world?" The slug's sudden question caught me by surprise.

"I can't tell you that."

"You must."

A silent struggle ensued. The spine-rider probed at my thoughts, trying to winkle out the precious secret. I sought to hide the secret in jingles, in emotions, in hebephrenic repetitions of random fact. But the parasite was too strong for me. In less than a minute I was beaten. The image of the street where we'd arrived formed in my mind. The spine-rider goaded me to my feet.

"Please call a taxi," I heard myself telling the handsome dark-haired woman. "And make sure the driver has a Herber scion."

She picked up a telephone and began dialing.

"And take this disintegrator ray," my voice added. "It may prove useful in the fight against those three intruders."

The woman took my gun and spoke softly into the phone.

"That gun isn't going to help against Harry," I thought to the bad brain on my back, "he's master of space and time, if he gets mad he'll wipe out big Gary and every single one of you scions."

"All the more reason to send one of us over to your world, now, run!"

12. Midnight Rambler

I ran back out the palace the way I'd come in. Some humpbacked guards were out on the portico, but since I too had a spine-rider, they let me pass. I ran all the way down to the street. I was exhausted and out of breath, but my scion wouldn't let me stop.