Руди Рюкер - Master Of Space And Time

"Gotcha," murmured Harry. He rummaged in the hall closet and found a small knapsack to wear under his sweater. There were a lot of pretty dresses in the closet; apparently the spine-riders had let Sondra do some clothes shopping. I reached into the closet and touched the prettiest dress of all: a red-and-white-candy-striped number.

"I'll be right back," said Harry. He clattered downstairs and called a bright hello to the guards.

Sondra stepped out of the bedroom, looking great in tight jeans and a frilly white top. I reminded myself to stop staring at her.

By the time we'd finished breakfast, Harry was done with the windfoil. It was a little box with a parabolic antenna on top. The box was supposed to generate a kind of special ray that would force the wind to streamline around us instead of beating our faces. Harry showed me how to turn it on and adjust its dials.

"Where exactly in Iowa is the SIPL?" I thought to ask.

"Just north of Ames. Follow I-80 west to Des Moines and turn right — you can't miss it."

"And what happens when Baumgard refuses to sell me the gluons?"

"You kill him." Harry handed me a sawed-off shotgun and a handful of shells. "You blow his stinking head off."

"But, Harry —"

"That's illegal," chimed in Sondra. "We'll go to jail!"

"Listen," said Harry, grinning and holding up his hand for silence. "This morning Fletch the thief kills Baumgard — big trouble. But this afternoon Fletch the master of space and time resurrects Baumgard — non habeas corpus! No body, no crime."

I couldn't stop myself from chuckling. What a plan!

"Well, I guess so," said Sondra. She turned and walked into the bedroom. She bellied down across the bed, her face toward the open window. "Come on, Joe. Sit on my butt."

I sat on her butt. It was big and hard, but not too hard. Once again I caught myself wishing that I could have such a beautiful body myself. I pocketed the shells and put the shotgun and the windfoil in my lap.

I was on Sondra like a rider on a horse. To fit through the window I had to crouch down like a jockey in the stretch, but then we were out over the street. It was raining. The Herberites cheered when they saw us; they must not have noticed that our backs were flat.

We followed the Raritan River out of New Brunswick. There were troops on most of the bridges; some idiot even took a shot at us. We gained altitude and headed west.

The wind was starting to tug at my face now, and the rain was hurting my eyes. Gripping Sondra's waist with my knees, I sat up and adjusted the windfoil. I diddled the knobs until an invisible energy net reached out in front of us to wedge a break in the wind and rain.

"Isn't this great, Sondra?"

"Yeah, I really love to fly. It's been a lifelong dream of mine. Could you stop squeezing me so hard? If you do fall off, I can always catch you."

"Oh. Sorry." I let up on the knee pressure, and Sondra angled upwards. Now that the wind had stopped, there really wasn't much danger of slipping off. "When I change your body back to looking the old way, you still want to be able to fly, right?"

"That's right. That's what I wanted in the first place."

We were up above the clouds now, and the air was clear and cool. The hot morning sun beat on my back. Now and then through a rent in the clouds I could see Pennsylvania. The trees had all turned red and yellow. From the air, the wrinkled hills looked like rucked-up carpet. Then came flat Ohio, scuzz Great Lakes, and checkerboard Indiana.

"I-o-way!" I shouted as we crossed the Mississippi. "I've never been here before."

"I have," said Sondra wearily. "And I hadn't planned to come back."

18. Why Things Exist

The Super Intersecting Proton Loop looked like some primitive earthwork: a giant figure eight in the midst of empty cornfields. There was a glass and metal building where the rings intersected. We touched down in a field nearby.

"When were you in Iowa before?" I asked Sondra.

"In the fifth grade. My father took some horticulture courses at Iowa State so he could grow better marijuana. But then they expelled him for not paying any bills. We lived in the married student housing in Ames. Quonset huts. It was a long time ago." She stumbled on a cornstalk and caught my arm. "Don't you think you ought to hide that shotgun?"

"Right." After checking that the safety was on, I slid the barrel of the gun down under my waist-band and pulled my shirt over the stock. I set the electronic windfoil down at the edge of the cornfield.

Though it was only about nine in the morning, Iowa time, Baumgard was in his office. For a moment he didn't recognize me.

"I'm Joe Fletcher, Professor Baumgard. Harry Gerber's friend?"

"Oh, Lord. Fletcher and Gerber again. I hear that you two are responsible for those mind-parasites invading New Jersey. I don't suppose you can tell me how you did it?"

The guy was a real square. He had long, greasy gray hair and a beard. A microcomputer in the pouch of his sweatshirt. And — ugh — Beatles music playing softly on his radio.

"I can try." I started to tell him about the blunzing chamber and the way the vortex coil could churn the gluons into Planck juice and…

"That's enough, Mr. Fletcher. That's quite enough gibberish for today."

"Our machine worked, didn't it?" My voice was rising. Baumgard really knew how to get under my skin.

"How should I know if your machine works or not. I don't even know what it's supposed to do."

"It grants wishes. Look at her. Harry gave her the power of flight." I pointed to Sondra, who'd been standing quietly to one side. "This is Sondra Tupperware, by the way. She's a minister in the Church of Scientific Mysticism. Could you float in the air, Sondra?"

Sondra hovered halfway between floor and ceiling. Baumgard looked away in disgust. "Have you come here simply to show me your parlor tricks, Mr. Fletcher? Have you brought a deck of cards as well?"

"No," I said, trying to control my voice. "I've come to ask for your help in stopping the alien invasion."

"Oh, my. How exciting. Why doesn't Gerber reinvent his inertia-winder and fly the bad monsters away?" Baumgard was referring to a sort of rocket drive that Harry had come up with a few years back. Somehow we'd forgotten how to build it — the conclusion of the affair was a little hazy in my mind — and we'd ended up losing a lot of money.

"I need some blue gluons, Professor Baumgard. Give them to me and I'll make your dreams come true."

Baumgard leaned back in his chair and laughed. "Make my dreams come true. You should work in a carnival, Fletcher. You should be the barker for a freak show." Abruptly the savant stopped laughing. "And I'm asking you to leave. Must I call Security?"

It was time to get out the shotgun. I turned away, maneuvered the gun from under my clothes, then spun back to level the short barrels at Baumgard's face. "Harry says that if I kill you now, we can probably bring you back to life with the blunzer. You want to try it?"

"You'll never get away with this, Fletcher."

"Where have I heard that line before?"

"You'd better give Joe the blue gluons," Sondra piped up. "I think he wants an excuse to kill you."

That wasn't true at all, but Baumgard seemed to believe it. The guy really had a low opinion of me.

Just thinking about it made me wish I had an excuse to kill him.

But now he'd unlocked one of his cupboards and he was getting out a little magnetic bottle. "There are three and a third grams of blue gluons in here."

Still keeping the gun aimed at him, I unscrewed the bottle's lid and glanced in. Ink, sky, sea, my heart. It was the genuine article. "What do you want for it?" I asked, tightening the lid back on. "You can have anything you want, Professor Baumgard."

He tried to tighten his face into an ironic smile, but he couldn't quite pull it off. Whether he liked it or not, he knew there was a chance I could deliver.