Руди Рюкер - Master Of Space And Time

"Who is it?" called Antie in her old woman's voice. "Who's there?"

"Sondra. Let me in, guys."

8. Magic Doors

"Sondra, the point is to see it work. We know it works. That's why we built it. Fletcher, you talk to her. I'm going in the chamber now." Harry hovered near the heavy, copper-swathed door like a fat man entering a steam-bath.

"Good luck, Harry." I stepped forward and shook his hand. "The effects will last till midnight, right?"

"If I've got it calibrated correctly. We'll only use a hundred grams of the gluons. First I'll take care of the time travel and then I'll open up a door to another world."

"Why?" Sondra burst out. She'd been asking questions ever since we'd let her in, and she didn't seem to like the answers she'd been getting. I wished she would go away and let us destroy the universe in peace.

"Look," I said, "could you please just get out of the way?"

"So it's no girls allowed, huh? What if I call the cops?"

"Antie's a girl," said Harry. "Sort of. We're not doing anything illegal." He stood there, thinking, his hand on the fridge's door latch. "Sondra, I'm going to be master of space and time for two hours. Is there something you'd like me to do for you during that period of time? Wouldn't you like to have blond hair and a bod that won't quit?"

"He can make you look like Beva LeClaire," I suggested. Beva was the latest Hollywood sex symbol, the Marilyn Monroe of the 1990s. "Wouldn't you like that, Sondra?"

"I'd rather be able to fly."

"Done," said Harry. "Now shut up and watch." With a last nervous smile Harry stepped into the cubical blunzing chamber. A cloud of frost crystals billowed out, and then the refrigerator door slammed shut.

I slid aside a piece of the copper sheathing and peered in through the window we'd set into the door. Harry lay down on the hotshot table, waved his fist, and fitted on a breathing mask.

"Turn on the microwave, Antie."

"Check, Dr. F."

Harry slid back into a posture of noble ease. I covered up the little window and energized the copper sheathing.

"Antie, get the gluons."

Antie pincered up the heavy little magnetic bottle with one hand, grasping the lid with her other hand.

I opened the microwave cavity, which was a little black box like a miniature woodstove. A broad spectrum of radiation streamed out.

"Pour, Antie."

Antie came close and began pouring the gluons into the cavity. The gluons made up a sort of fluid, precious and sparkling as Christ's blood. The microwave energy field soaked the fluid right up.

As the gluons merged into the microwave field, the room filled with ethereal singing: faint, shifting notes almost too high to detect. A droplet of gluons slid down the lip of the magnetic bottle and burned the tip off one of Antie's fingers. I slammed the door of the little microwave cavity and breathed a sigh of relief. The first stage was completed.

"What was that stuff you poured in?" Sondra wanted to know. "It looked all iridescent, like fire and water mixed."

"Those were red gluons," I explained. "Usually they're hidden inside the protons and neutrons. I think they come in blue and yellow, too."

"Buried jewels," marveled Sondra. "Did they cost much?"

"You know it. We're saving half of them for the next time."

"Shall I energize the vortex coil, Dr. F.?"

"Check, Antie."

Antie threw the knife switch on the heavy power cable leading to the vortex coil, which was a hulking cone-shaped unit right next to the blunzing chamber. Ozone filled the air, and sparks crackled up and down the vortex coil's ridgy slopes. I saw the streetlights outside begin to dim.

"Initiate stage two."

I stepped back from the machinery as Antie devalved the subether wave guide, a heavily chromed duct leading from the microwave cavity to the vortex coil's rounded summit.

"Brace yourself, Sondra. This is —"

My words were drowned out by the chatter wild scream crash of tortured energy. The vortex coil was tearing into the gluons like a chain-saw hitting railroad spikes in water logs. The whole room went spastic shudder cow-eye thub scree thubby; my mind seized up. Flames, then a heavy sheet of sparks arcing from the coil to Antie's body. The faithful robot fused into dead smoking junk.

"Oh, poor Antie," wailed Sondra, starting forward.

"Stay back!" The screaming energy chatter slid up the scale to an insane mantric hum. The windows shattered. The fillings in my teeth were buzzing.

"Turn that knob!" I screamed to Sondra, pointing to the nozzle where the vacuum pump hooked into the blunzing chamber. "This is it!"

All I had to do now was to devalve the meter-long wave guide that led out of the vortex coil and in through the refrigerator wall to the needle at the hotshot table's head. But the wave guide was glowing hot. I cast about wildly, then spotted a broom. The handle would do the job. Just then there was a heavy thud: chamber at vacuum. Right on, Sondra. I forced myself forward and stabbed that final valve…

White light.

An angel was hovering over me, Beva LeClaire with big soft white wings. I was lying on a rustly mattress and the angel was floating over me.

"Are you all right, Joe?"

The voice: Sondra Tupperware! I sat up and looked around. This was Harry's workshop, same as before, and Antie was all well again, well and busy straightening up the mess we'd made. But Sondra — Sondra was hovering three feet off the floor, her wings gently aflutter. She wore a low-cut white evening dress; her face was a lovely cameo framed by ringlets of purest gold.

"I don't believe this," the angel was saying. "All my life I've hated women like this, and now I'm one."

"At least you can fly." I looked around for my goodies. And there they were, right under me, packs and packs of twenties and hundreds and five hundreds, a whole mattress of them! And next to my money-bed was a small wood box containing, no doubt, a simply reproducible device for turning dirt into food, just like I'd asked Harry for. Harry?

I hurried over to the blunzing chamber and dragged the big door open. "Harry!"

There he was, standing in the middle of the blunzing chamber. The hotshot table was gone. Harry was standing there with a swarm of little Harrys in the air around him. The little Harrys were all sizes, numberless as a column of spring gnats.

"Holy science, Harry! You really did it!"

"I've already done the trip back to Friday, and the lizard's trip, and I made your money and Nancy's cure for world hunger, and I moved the hotshot table out of the way." I noticed the table standing off to one side of the room. "And I fixed Antie — "

"What about me?" interrupted Sondra. "Flying milk van. I don't like it, Harry."

"Well, I do." Excitement parted his big lips. He stepped out of the blunzing chamber and looked around. "I like it this way." The swarm of little Harrys followed him out of the chamber.

"What are those things?" demanded Sondra. "Bugs?"

"They're little copies of me. There's infinitely many of them. It has to do with the renormalization problem and the existence of multiple solutions to the Schroedinger wave equation."

"They're little people?" said Sondra, stepping closer. She reached out a finger and one of the little Harrys landed on it. "How cute!"

"I can use them as scouts," said Harry. "That's what I'm going to do now." He herded the buzzing school of little Harrys back into the blunzing chamber, closed the door, and stood outside with his head pressed against the door. A minute passed, and another.

"There," Harry said finally. "It's done. Six worlds meet. Go on and look."

He stepped aside and I swung the blunzing chamber's door back open. What I saw inside was impossible. Somehow each of the cube's six faces were now an open door. I staggered and almost lost my footing.