Master of Space and Time (2 page)

I whirled around, hoping to see the giant's eye, but he turned as fast as I did. All I could see of him was the cheek of his huge head. He had whirled to stare out the window of
his
car, the giant car on whose seat my own car was resting. I could see beyond his cheek and out his window—out there was the head of a yet larger giant, and so on and on, forever up and down. I was embedded in a
doubly
infinite regress. Why on earth had I asked for this? And how had Harry done it? I had to escape!

I flung open my car door, jumped out, and found myself on the seat of the giant's car. When I looked out the giant's car door, I could see the giant, standing on the seat of a yet larger car, and staring out at the yet larger giant. Looking back into my own car, I could see the little model on the seat, and the thumb-sized Fletcher standing next to it and staring back in at the ant-sized Fletcher on the model's seat. No matter how fast I turned, I could never see myself face to face.

I threw myself back into my car and turned on the radio. Static crackled from my speaker and from the endless speakers beyond and within my car. Static, and then a voice, a strangely familiar voice.

THE RED GLUONS ONLY WORK ONCE,”
said the radio.

“Hi?” I called questioningly. The giant Fletcher outside roared along, and from the tiny car on the seat came thumb-sized Fletcher's squeak: “Hi?”

“USE BLUE GLUONS THE SECOND TIME.”

“What's your name?”

“IT'S A TYPE OF EXCLUSION PRINCIPLE.”

“Please help me get out.”

“LIGHT THE FUSE.”

Silence fell. After a minute I flicked off the radio. Just then something bounced off my cheek. It was the miniature dynamite stick that Harry had thrown at me—how long ago? Time was all messed up.

I picked up the dynamite and struck a match. The larger and smaller Fletchers did the same thing. I lit the fuse and tossed the dynamite out the window. A tiny, tiny version of it flew out the window of the model car on the seat next to me. I braced myself.

The dynamites all blew at once, and I saw stars: cartoon stars and wacky spirals. When the dust settled, I was back where I'd started, at the crazed white plastic steering wheel of my Buick in the Softech parking lot. A square of sunlight lay on my lap, heavy and insistent. I turned the ignition to
ON
and fired up the big V-8.

W
HEN
I pulled into the driveway, my two-year-old daughter Serena was out in the front yard flailing at something with my fishing rod. She was holding the rod by the tip and slamming the reel down on the ground.

“Dada!” she cried. “Wiggle whack crawly bug!” Something moved in the grass, and Serena whipped my rod back for a real knockout punch. The fiberglass snapped, and the piece with the reel flew over to crash on my Buick's shiny hood.

I got out of the car and tried to just walk on past her. I was definitely ripe for my Friday-afternoon beer. But Serena was too fast for me. She put herself between me and the house.

“Bad crawly bug!” She pointed with the tip of my broken rod. “Try bite Serena!”

I gave a heavy sigh and went over to look. Serena
was hell on insects. A badly mashed stag beetle was lying in the grass. I was relieved that it wasn't a little Harry.

“Where's Mommy, Serena?”

“Mama lie down.”

“Were you a good girl today?”

“Babby bite.” She held out her hand to show me a tiny cut on her forefinger.

“The neighbor's baby bit you? What were you doing to it?”

“Playing. Babby bite. Mary Jo wash.”

Mary Jo was the name of the woman next door. Serena liked to go over and pick on her baby. “Was Mary Jo mad at you?”

“Mary Jo wash.” Serena showed me her finger again. The cut certainly did look clean.

“How nice of Mary Jo to wash your cut. I just hope her baby doesn't have rabies.” I patted Serena on the head. She was a brat, but she was mine. “Would you like a candy?”

“Yus.”

“Here.” I found a linty cough drop in my pants pocket. “Now don't bother that baby any more. And put my fishing rod away.”

“Bug gone.”

“I'm going inside to see Mommy now, Serena. Be good.” I walked into our crummy house, still brooding over Harry's message. There could be money in this, big money.

I found Nancy flaked out on our double bed with a stack of old
People
magazines and an overflowing ashtray. The TV was going full blast in the other room. I closed the door.

“God, Joey, I have such a backache today. And this morning Serena—”

“Yeah, I've had a rough day myself. Is there any beer?”

“Do you think you could rub my back a little?”

“If you move the ashtray. You know I don't like you to smoke in our bedroom.”

“Then why don't you buy a couch for the living room. I hate living like this. We might as well be in a trailer park.”

When we'd first married, we'd had a much nicer home. But I'd lost it when Fletcher & Company went bankrupt. The house we rented now was a low-ceilinged three-room tract home: two bedrooms and a kitchen-dining-living room. Looking out the bedroom window, I could see fifty-three houses exactly like ours (one Sunday afternoon I'd counted them). Our development was a reclaimed marsh with woods all around it.

“I'm going to go see Harry tomorrow. I think he's invented something new.”

“Don't give him any money, Joseph. I mean it. We need that money for our Christmas trip.”

“What trip?”

“Don't you ever listen to anything I tell you?”

“Look, I'm going to get a beer. You want one?”

“How about my back rub?”

Nancy was lying on her stomach. I sat on the backs of her legs and worked my fingers up and down her spine. She felt small and fragile, and she gave off a good smell. My woman.

“I'm sorry to complain so much, Joey. At least we have enough to eat. There's another terrible famine going on in Mexico, did you know?”

Nancy had some strange complexes about food. She was into world hunger, often serving on committees and raising funds. Yet she herself ate very immoderately. Somehow she never seemed to gain weight.

“No, I didn't know that. This afternoon, when I went out to the Buick in the lot, something really—”

Someone was trying to open the bedroom door. Serena.

“Just a minute, sweetie! Does that feel better, Nancy?”

“A little. Could you do something with Serena? She's been just awful. This morning she went next door and stuck her hand in the baby's mouth. That baby only has one tooth, but it bit Serena and she threw a fit. Mary Jo had to carry her back here.”

“What a brat.”

“Oh, but be nice to her. I was just like Serena when I was little.”

Unable to turn the knob, Serena began kicking the door. “Dada! Dada! Dada! Dada!”

“Here I come. Don't break the door.”

When I opened the door, Serena squealed and toddled off at high speed. I followed her into the kitchen and popped the top on a Bud. One thing about Nancy, she kept the fridge well-stocked. I inhaled the first beer and started a second. That regress had been bad news. In a way it had taken place outside of time. I wondered what would have happened if I'd wrung the neck of the thumb-sized Fletcher in the toy car. The giant would have done the same to me, of course, while being choked himself and uh uh uh. Hall of mirrors. Harry's
doing. Master of space and time. I'd ask him for five million.

I got out the phone book and looked under
Appliances, Service and Repair
. Harry had taken over his family's business when his parents died last winter. I'd never seen the place yet. The ad was pure Harry:

Cybernetics
. That was a word Harry and I had always laughed about. Nobody has any idea what it means, it's just some crazy term that Norbert Wiener made up. Gerber Cybernetics. I dialed the number.

“Hello?” An old woman's questioning quaver.

“This is Joseph Fletcher. Is Mr. Gerber in?”

“I'll get him.
Haaaaaaaaryr!
” There were footsteps, the sound of breaking glass, a curse, some yelling. The person at the other end knocked the phone off the counter, then picked it up.

“Hello?”

“Harry! What do you have?” I lowered my voice
so that Nancy wouldn't hear me. “I can spare two grand, but no more.”

“Who's this?” He sounded confused. In the background the old-woman-voice was still yelling.

“Who's this
. Who do you think it is, space cadet?”

“Is this Joe Fletcher?”

“I'm supposed to come tomorrow, right?”

“We're open ten to five on Saturdays.”

“I'll come in early and we can have lunch together. Like real businessmen. Do you have any circuit diagrams for the thing?”

“You want me to invent something?”

“I thought you already had it.
Master of Space and Time
, right?”

“I don't know what you're talking about, Fletch. Are you drunk?”

This was getting nowhere fast. If the little Harrys had been from the future, then maybe he really
didn't
know what I was talking about. “You're going to be master of space and time,” I explained. “I want five million dollars.”

“Hold on.” There were voices in the background. “Yes, it's ready, ma'am. Fletcher, I'm going to have to hang up. Customers. See you tomorrow!”

Serena had climbed onto my lap while I was talking. She was about as short as you can be and still walk. I planted a kiss on her fat little cheek. “You're not really a brat, are you?”

“Dada hand.” She starfished her little paw against my palm. “Serena hand!”

I looked around our shabby living area. Everything plastic, piles of laundry, and the TV always on. I wished I'd bought some good furniture when I'd had the money. Nancy and Serena deserved better than this.

S
ATURDAY
was cool and rainy. I stopped by my bank and then drove to New Brunswick. Harry's shop was in a crummy neighborhood near the train station. There was a bus station too, and next to it was a place called the Terminal Bar. Some terminal-type guys gimped past in the wet, one of them an obvious wirehead. He was so far gone that he used a mechanical walker. You could see the bulge of his stim-unit under his overcoat.

“Where's Gerber Cybernetics?” I asked. “Man.”

“Gug-ger-bub-ber? Ruh-hight thu-there. Man.”

The shop had a big plate-glass window, a dirty window crowded with junk: a plastic toad wearing a crown, an old cookie tin with cityscapes embossed on its sides, an out-of-date girlie calendar from the Rigid Tool Company, an oriental lamp, some listless houseplants, a coiled-up orange extension
cord, and a terrarium with a mean-looking little lizard in it. I squatted down to get a better look at the lizard. He was like a miniature Godzilla, with powerful rear legs and a long, toothy jaw. He looked as if he'd been in a fight recently, and seemed to be in some pain.

The letters
GERBER APPLIANCE
arced across the plate-glass window, but with the
APPLIANCE
only a pale, scraped-off shadow. In place of it, crudely brushed in, was the new designation:
CYBERNETICS.
I opened the door and entered, feeling like a twelve-year-old come to play with his best friend's train set.

The front of the shop was cramped, with a waist-high counter. A partition behind the counter divided the store from the actual work area in the rear. A robot stood behind the counter, scanning me. It was a multipurpose Q-89, with the small, bullet-shaped head and the long, snaky arms.

“What can we do you for?” The machine was programmed to sound like a friendly old woman. I'd talked to it on the phone.

“I'm Joe Fletcher. Mr. Gerber's expecting me.”

“You can call me Antie,” said the robot. “A-N-T-I-E. Harry's in back.”

“Thank you, Antie.”

She—with the voice you had to think of Antie as female—stepped aside and I went through the door behind the counter. It was a regular workshop back there, with shelves of parts, a wall of tools, and a number of partially disassembled electronic devices. The resinous tang of solder smoke perfumed the air. I felt right at home.

Harry looked up from a robot torso and gave me a big smile. “Fletcher! It's been a long time.”