Master of Space and Time (10 page)

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!”

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.

Just as 1 got to the curb, a taxi pulled up. I jumped in the front, and we took off. The driver was a tall, muscle-faced man with round shoulders. Instead of addressing him directly, I pulled up our shirts and let our Gary-brains touch. Once the driver got the picture, he really stepped on the gas.

Looking out the window I tried to tell which of the pedestrians wore a scion on his or her back. Only about one in ten. Yet the others were so beaten down by Herber's rule that they might just
as well have had one of the parasites plugged into their nervous systems. No one smiled; there was no sense of play. This was a city of statistics, of interchangeable bodies carrying out Gary Herber's tasks. I felt like a cockroach in an anthill.

Yet all the while the tingling in my nerves continued to fill me with a sort of secret pleasure. I may have looked like a zombie, but on some level I was having fun. It was perhaps a little like being a wirehead. I watched the scenery whip past and tried not to think about what came next.

The taxi pulled up to the spot where this whole adventure had started. There was the mirror image of Harry's shop. The driver and I hurried inside. The copy of the blunzing chamber was still there: a big metal box, two meters on a side.

“send him through and then destroy it!”
said the voice in my head.

Send him through? I took a good look at the driver. He was a strong, mean-looking character with short black hair. Send him through and let the Herber-scions invade Earth?
“no”
I protested,
“please not that.”

A lash of pain swept up my spine and into my skull. I fought it as long as I could and lost again. Numbly I watched myself open the blunzing chamber's door. Over on the other side I could see upside-down Antie, still waiting for her master.

The Gary-brained driver took a running jump and leaped through the magic door. He flipped, landed smoothly on the other side, and took off at a run. Tears welled out of my eyes and streamed down my cheeks. My arms swung the door shut.

“now let's smash it,”
said the voice in my head,
“i want my brother brain to be safe from harry.”

My body hurried across the room to pick up a sledgehammer I'd noticed before. My arms put all their strength into the first blow, and the hammer smashed a hole in one of the chamber's sides.

It was the side that led into the Micro world. A pseudopod lashed out from the hole I'd made and ingested the head of my hammer. When I managed to pull it free, my sledgehammer was just an axe handle with an acid-charred end. The giant Microworld amoeba pushed another pseudopod out of the hole and felt around. My spine-rider and I backed off in some confusion.

Just then there was a
pop
and a rush of air. It was Harry and Sondra. I raised my axe handle and charged at Harry. My Herber-slug wanted me to smash Harry's skull in. But Harry and Sondra had been expecting trouble. Sondra raised her pink demotivator ray and froze me in mid-lunge.

“It's Fletcher!” exclaimed Harry. “My worst enemy? Here we've been over at the palace killing that giant brain and here's my so-called pal Fletcher trying to tear down our magic door!”

Harry walked around behind me, careful to stay out of Sondra's beam. I felt my shirt slide up.

“Wearing a brain, sure enough,” Harry rumbled. “Well, I'll just—”

A wave of murderous agony began to build inside my skull. That bad brain was going to kill me with it. I prayed a last prayer and prepared to merge into the One. But then—
phht
—the pain and the spine-rider were all gone. Harry had simply willed it out of existence.

“Turn off the ray, Sondra. He's clean.”

Slowly I arched my back. My body was my own again.

“Oh, God, Harry, it wasn't my fault. That—
thing
was part of Gary Herber. There's thousands of them all over the city.”

“It's eleven fifty-six,” Sondra called tautly.

“It's okay, Fletch, I know it's not your fault. Too bad you had to give that Arab-looking woman your disintegrator ray, though. She killed poor Tad, and almost got Sondra and me, too.”

“But you took care of the big brain?”

“Yeah. And now I'm going to get all the little ones.” Harry reached into his coat pocket and took out the thumb-sized “echo” of himself that the blunzing chamber had produced. He snapped the little fellow in the air like a handkerchief, and an endless swarm of smaller Harrys appeared as well.

“Okay, boys,” said Harry. “Search and destroy. I want every single Herber scion on the planet to disappear in the next minute.”

“Roger!” piped the tiny ones, and teleported themselves away.

“And meanwhile I'll fix this.” Harry beamed his time-reversal ray at the hole I'd made in the side of the blunzing chamber. The giant pseudopod slid back, my sledgehammer was whole again, and the rent in the chamber's side healed over.

“It's eleven fifty-nine,” said Sondra.

She pulled the magic door open. The view was as before: hyperspace below, moon robots above, microorganisms on the left, and endless hills to the right. There on the other side was our own world,
seemingly upside down, and with good old Antie still waiting.

The zillions of tiny Harrys came suddenly swarming back, chattering like schoolchildren. They'd done their job: this world was clean. Tad Beat had not died in vain. The cloud of Harrys settled down on big Harry like flies on cowflop.

Somewhere a bell was tolling twelve. Time to go. Sondra and Harry grabbed me under the arms and flew me through the door.

I crashed to the floor of Harry's real workshop and shuddered with relief. The bell outside finished tolling midnight, and then the blunzing chamber was just an empty, copper-covered box.

“I can still fly!” exclaimed Sondra. Blond and shapely, she was floating in midair.

“Sure,” said Harry. “It'll last a few years. I changed the quantum responsiveness of your atoms. As they're replaced, in the normal course of things, you'll slowly lose the power.”

“And my money?” I couldn't help asking.

“Don't worry. It's under your bed. I suppose I could have gotten myself something too, but I guess I didn't want to.”

“Don't you know what you want, Harry?”

“No. Do you? Does anyone? What's good today is bad tomorrow, and this year's disaster is next year's golden opportunity. I got what I needed—an exciting adventure. I saved that whole planet from the brain-slugs.”

Suddenly I remembered the driver. “Harry, the experiment had one lasting effect you don't know about. A man jumped through to our world just before you—”

“What?”

“Yes, a man with a spine-rider. With one of the Gary-brains on his back. I wanted to stop him, but—”

“Dr. F.'s right,” volunteered Antie. “A man came through the blunzing chamber just before your return. He ran out onto Suydam Street.”

“Joe!” Sondra wailed. “How could you?”

“I—it wasn't my fault. Do those special guns still work, Harry?”

Harry threw his ray gun on the floor. “No, I unwished them at the end. I thought they'd be too dangerous to have around. But we've got to stop that man before his slug can reproduce! They could take over our whole world!” And then, shockingly, Harry began to laugh, first in high squeals and then in sloppy guffaws.

I stepped forward and shook him. “Don't get hysterical, Harry. Sondra! Call the police!”

“I'm not hysterical,” said Harry, still chuckling a little. “I'm just excited. You're a real pal, Fletch. Who else but you would have found a way to bring Gary Herber back with us?”

“It's not a game, Harry. This isn't some wild fantasy anymore. Your superpowers are all gone! Do you have any kind of gun?”

“There's a flare ray by the cash register,” said Harry, sitting down and wiping the laugh-tears from his eyes.

I found the flare ray and ran out into the street, hoping to spot that taxi driver. The sleazy New Brunswick street was empty, save for a drunk leaning against the wall outside the Terminal Bar.

“Did you see anyone go by in the last five minutes?” I demanded. “A big strong guy with round shoulders?”

The drunk gestured vaguely at the door to the bar. I braced myself and went inside. There were a few drifters and a lady of the night, but no trace of the man I was looking for.

“What'll it be?” said the bartender, a stocky man with a gray mustache.

“I'm looking for a big guy with round shoulders,” I said. “He just came in here a minute ago.”

The bartender favored me with a look of contempt. “He's already found his
friend
for tonight. I think they went to the John. And I'm just trying to run a decent place to drink.”

“Thanks,” I said, and headed for the men's room. There was a good chance I'd find two men with spine-riders in there. I held my flare ray at the ready.

But the men's room was empty. There was nothing moving except the air that swept through the open bathroom window. I jumped up on the toilet seat and wriggled out. There was an alley back there, an alley leading out to the main drag. I ran out the alley as fast as I could, but I got to the street too late. A gray car with two round-shouldered men in it was just pulling out. I chanced a shot with the flare ray, but a flare ray's not much good on plastics. The car sped off, headed toward the turnpike.

I hurried back to Harry's. Sondra was still on the phone. I yelled the gray car's license number to her and jumped into my Buick.

“Hold on, Fletch, let me come too.” It was Harry.