Руди Рюкер - Master Of Space And Time

Fortunately my admirer didn't get in the same train car as I. I plumped myself down next to a cute brown-haired woman with big glasses. Her clothes were kind of tattered.

"Isn't it wonderful to be able to leave New Brunswick?" she said to me. "I feel like the last week has been a long bad dream."

"Do you live here?" I asked, ready for some pleasant girl talk.

"No, I was just visiting my boyfriend at Rutgers. He's a graduate student in engineering. My roommates must think I've been killed!"

"Yes," I said. "It's been awful. Did the aliens make you do anything that —"

"I don't want to think about it," the brunette exclaimed. "And all those rednecks showing up. I'm going to see my gynecologist as soon as possible. I bet they got after you too, what with your figure and blond hair."

"Yes," I lied. "Gary Herber made me go out in the streets at night. With the brains sliding around and everyone grabbing each other —"

"Men are so awful," said the woman next to me, her face momentarily close to tears. "Those brains were like men, the way they glue onto us and try to use us. Even my Tommy's like that, a little bit."

"Men are people too," I protested. "They just want to be happy like women do."

"Don't kid yourself, sister." My companion's voice took on a hard edge. "Men and women don't want the same things at all. When's the last time any man did something really romantic for you — without wanting to get paid back the same night?"

"You have to think about the genes," I said. I'd heard a theory about this. "Basically all a person wants is to perpetuate his or her genes. The best strategy for men is to have lots of children with lots of different women. The best strategy for women is have children and make sure the father stays around to help take care of them."

"Ha!" snapped the woman next to me. "Some man must have told you that. All a person wants is to perpetuate their genes. Boy, is that stupid."

"Well, yes," I said after a time. "I guess it is."

I got a taxi at Penn Station. "The Plaza Hotel," I told the driver.

"Sure thing, little lady."

I sat back and watched the buildings sweep past. People, people, people. And all of them thinking, all of them just as conscious as me. When I'd been a kid I'd always thought of grown-ups as a race apart — big meat robots, really. Then once, when I was in my twenties, my father had said something funny to me. We were playing golf behind a foursome of businessmen in colored trousers and billed caps.

"Look at them, Joe," my father had said. "They really look like they know what they're doing. I'd always thought I'd be like them someday. I'd always thought I'd get to be a grown-up. But I'm not. I still don't feel any different. I'm sixty and I still don't know what I'm doing."

As the years passed, I'd come to understand what my father meant. Even though I was almost forty, I still didn't feel like a grown-up. I didn't really feel much different from how I had in high school.

And now in the taxi I was thinking that the same thing is true for men and women. As a man I'd always assumed that women are somehow not like real people. Of course I never put it that baldly, but the feeling had been there all along.

Yet now here I was, with the tits and ass and lipstick — still just a person. The woman on the train — I'd never quite talked to a woman that way before, without the sex game somewhere in the background. As she'd unselfconsciously told me about her boyfriend and her job and her roommates, I realized something that I'd only seen in flashes before.

Everyone is just a person trying to be happy. Everyone is really alive.

What a liberation to know this! What a burden!

22. Strictly from Detroit

"Do you expect me to have sex with you?"

"Well, sure. I'd rather do it with you than with anyone else."

"The way I feel now, Joe, I'd rather do it with anyone else but you. How could you pull this on me?" She paced back and forth across the enormous living room. Outside the big French windows lay the wonderful clutter of Manhattan. "We could have been so happy." There were tears in her eyes.

"Come here, Nancy. Come sit on the couch with me."

"No. And you killed the fritter trees, too."

"They were taking over. You know that. That's what you got arrested for: distributing dangerous, nonapproved seeds."

"I suppose the police will be coming for me again?"

"I don't think so. I repaired the damages, and I erased all the documents relating to your case. With no documents and no more fritter trees or porkchop bushes, I don't see how —"

Someone was pounding on the door. It was the police, two of them.

"Hello, ladies," said the older of the two. He was a white-haired man with a weathered face. "Is this the residence of Joseph Fletcher?"

"Yes," said Nancy. "But —"

"He's not here," I interrupted, getting up from the couch and swiveling over to the cops.

"Do you mind if we take a look around?" asked the old cop, giving me an appreciative once-over. "You see, we have a warrant for his arrest."

"Come on in, boys," I cooed. Nancy look disgusted. I winked at her and sat back down on the couch. I was too tired to stay standing.

The police left after a while, and Nancy finally came over to sit next to me. The sun was going down. I wished we could go to bed, but I knew better than to suggest it. We held hands and the silence deepened.

"I could have you declared dead," Nancy said after a while. "And then remarry."

"You can not," I snapped, letting go of her hand. "Joseph Fletcher may be missing, but without a corpse he's not legally dead."

"Serena needs a father."

"Where is Serena, anyway?"

"I left her with Sybil Bitter."

"Alwin Bitter's wife?"

"That's right. I went back down to Princeton before coming to New York. My TV interview was really exciting, Joe, you should have seen it." As the room darkened, Nancy was finding it easier to talk to me. "They arrested me right on the Brad Kurtow show. I was in jail all day, and then suddenly I saw this thumb-sized little man who looked like you."

"That was me, all right. An echo of me."

"And then I was here in this wonderful penthouse. I still haven't looked at all of it yet. And I can fly, Joe. I've only tried it a little but —"

"Would you take me flying with you now? It's dark and no one will see us. We could fly over to the World Trade Center and back."

"But you can't fly, can you, Joe?"

"I can ride on your back. I did it with Sondra."

"Well… take that silly dress off first." In the bedroom there was a dresser that looked like mine. The top drawer was filled with money — Nancy had stored all our money in here for me. The other drawers were filled with Joseph Fletcher clothes. I selected a pair of corduroys and a flannel shirt. Stepping into the bathroom, I noticed a pair of scissors. I took them and cropped my long hair short. Then I used a washcloth to get the makeup off my face. Nancy was in the living room, hovering above the floor. She smiled when she saw me, appreciative of the gesture I'd made.

"That's much better, Joe. You look almost like your old self. I was just thinking — with all our money, maybe you could get surgery to… you know…"

She flew down and hugged me. "Oh, Joe, why did you do it?"

I gave a quick shrug. "A subconscious desire. I've always wanted to be a beautiful woman."

"Me too," laughed Nancy.

"But you are."

"Not the kind that drops men in their tracks. I thought those policemen were going to pass out when they saw you."

"Hey, let's go flying. If you really want me to be dead, you can just drop me on Times Square."

"You'd make quite a splash."

We opened a big French window and flew out into the night. Nancy's wiry body felt nice between my soft thighs. The cool air beat against us as the staggering city perspectives swept past. We looped around the Empire State Building, zoomed along a cable of the Brooklyn Bridge, and finally alighted on the flat top of one of the twin towers of the World Trade Center.