Master of Space and Time (15 page)

“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 waistband 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

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.

“I'd—I'd like to understand the universe,” said Baumgard huskily. “I'd like to know why things exist and what matter really is. I'd like to understand how things can be the way they are.” For a moment there was a childlike hunger on his face. “Take the gluons. I'll give you ten minutes and then I'll call the police.”

“Thanks. That's more than fair. I'll do what I can for your wish. You might have your answer by tonight.”

“Sure I will, Colonel Fletcher.” All at once Baumgard's voice had turned high and sarcastic. He regretted having bared his soul. “I'll look for the answer right next to the two-headed calf and the half-man half-woman. Say hello to your geek friend for me.”

Sondra and I hurried out of Baumgard's glass and metal building, picked up the windfoil, and
took off. We didn't talk much till we stopped at a McDonald's in Geneseo, Indiana, for lunch.

“I liked his questions,” said Sondra, biting into a Big Mac. “Those are good, heavy mystical questions. Why do things exist? How can things be the way they are?” Men all over the restaurant were staring at Sondra, but I'd gotten used enough to her appearance to be able to focus on what she was saying. She tore open a catsup and squeezed it onto her fries. “I didn't realize that a groover like Baumgard could think about questions like that.”

“Yeah, the guy's not all bad. I just hope I'll be able to make the right wishes for everyone. Old Bitter sure wasn't much help when I asked him.”

“Do you remember what he said?”

“First he turned the question back at me. I'd asked what I should wish for if I was master of space and time. And Bitter replied, ‘What does God have in mind when He makes the world?' Then he said that this world was just fine.”

“This
world? With Gary-brains and fritter trees?”

“I mean the old world, the way it was before Harry made his wishes. Though this
is
the same world, really. It's just later in time.”

“What about the looking-glass world?”

“All the worlds are part of our superworld. But, like Baumgard asks, why do these things exist? Why is there something instead of nothing?”

“It
is
nothing,” protested Sondra. “That's enlightenment, noticing that nothing exists. And then not noticing.”

“God.” I sucked hungrily at the bottom of my Coke. “What the hell are we talking about anymore?”

Sondra laughed and sipped her coffee. “How long will you be blunzed, Joe?”

“He just gave me three and a half grams. When Harry took a hundred grams, it lasted two hours. So my trip should last a thirtieth of that. Four minutes.”

“That's not much time.”

“I'll make a list to make sure I do all the right wishes. I have to send my voice back to my car ten days ago, and eliminate the Garys, change your body, and Nancy wants a bunch of stuff too. And there's Baumgard's answer, and I want some more money.”

“Money? That's all you care about?”

“Well, God, at least you can count it. And you don't have to decide how to use it right away. I'm going to ask for ten million dollars.”

“It's counterfeit money, though, isn't it, Joe?”

“You call this counterfeit?” I pulled out a crumpled twenty and handed it across the table. “It's flawless.”

“But money has to come from somewhere, Joe. It's supposed to stand for something that someone did. Caught a fish, made a shoe, told a story.”

“Well, I'll say I stole blue gluons and shot them into my head. And that I made wishes for a lot of people. I call that doing something.” In my excitement my voice had risen again. Everyone in the place was staring at Sondra and me. Our conversation and appearance were kind of unusual for Geneseo, Indiana.

There were two college kids at the table next to us, a bearded fat boy and a pimply girl with glasses. The girl was staring at me so hard that she didn't
notice when my eyes met hers. It was as though she were watching television.

“Can we have some wishes too?” asked the boy. He smiled to show that
he
was kidding if
we
were.

“No way,” I snapped. “I got my hands full already.”

“Don't be like that,” Sondra reprimanded. “Charity cleanses the heart.” She shot the beard a Monroe tooth dazzler of a smile. Her lips, her dimples, her spit.
Oh, Sondra
, I thought,
I'd
give anything to look like you
.

“I think,” said the beard in his wet, nerdy voice, “I think I'd like some marijuana ice cream.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” said his date, tittering and rocking back and forth in her seat. “With cocaine whipped cream.”

“And an LSD cherry,” whispered the boy.

“Beautiful,” I said, getting to my feet. “Mellow.” Other people were pressing toward us. I had half a mind to unlimber the shotgun and commit Midwest mass murder. I didn't like for strangers to make fun of me and rip me off at the same time. “You coming, Sondra?”

“When I'm ready.” She took out a little pad of paper and licked her pencil. “Can you two give me your addresses? Joe will send you each a special cone. Won't you, Joe?”

There was a state trooper sitting at a table not too far away. He was looking at us like he'd heard the drug words. If it kept up much longer, I figured to shoot him first.

“Sure, Sondra. Anything you say. Give her your addresses, kids.”

“You first,” said the boy to the girl.

“No, you.”

“You tell.”

“You.”

Somehow we finally got out of Indiana.

T
HE
clouds over Jersey had cleared off, and I could get a good look at the countryside. Unlike those in Pennsylvania, most of the Jersey trees and bushes were still green. At first I thought they must all be pines, but then a chilling thought hit me. The porkchop bushes and fritter trees had taken over!

“Could you fly a little lower, Sondra? I want to see something.”

“Okay.”

Sure enough, the trees were heavy with orange fruit, and the bushes were greasy with meat. These mutant plants seemed to actually be undermining the other vegetation; as I watched, a stately elm tottered and crashed to the forest floor. The fritter trees had eaten its roots.

“What are those big plants?” Sondra asked. “Are those the food trees you were talking about?

“Yeah. Let's land and take a look.”

The porkchop-bush thickets were so dense that we couldn't reach the ground. Instead we perched in the fork of a two-hundred-foot fritter tree. From below you could hear the porkchop bushes growing—they made a steady rustling. In the distance, a mighty oak went crashing down.

“Like kudzu,” said Sondra. “The vine that ate Dixie.”

“Kudzu?”

“It's a Japanese vine they brought into the South to stop erosion. It stopped the erosion, but pretty soon it covered all the other plants up. Not really
all
of them, but—”

“Well, these things
are
killing all the other plants. They're tearing down the other trees and eating them!”

“It's really out of control,” said Sondra. “You feel how this tree is growing?”

Indeed, our tree was lifting us upward like a slow-motion Jack's beanstalk. Peering down through the leaves, I saw a deer that had been strangled by a porkchop bush's runners.

“These things are going to take over the whole planet!”

“Looks like you've got another wish to make, Joe.”

“Oh, brother. Nancy's going to be sore about hunger. Nothing is working out the way it was supposed to. You see now why I just ask for money? It's the only safe wish.”

I remounted Sondra and we flew back up into the sky. Here and there were a few remaining patches of real trees, but the green stain of the
mutant food plants was spreading steadily. A few isolated farmhouses had been taken over as well. I wondered if the farmers had been able to escape.

New Brunswick looked the same. Troops all around it, and the streets full of Herberites. We whisked in through Harry's bedroom window and hurried down the hall.

Harry was passed out at the kitchen table, his face in a plateful of candied yams. Antie was busy keeping Harry's followers from coming up to visit the throne room.

“Our leader is meditating,” she called down the stairs to them. “He is receiving truth.”

“Looks like he received a whole fifth's worth.”

“Oh, Dr. F., I'm so glad you're back. Those vulgarians keep asking for Harry.”