Master of Space and Time (22 page)

“Okay.”

Nancy lay down on the ground, I sat on her butt, and we took off.

W
ITHOUT
a windfoil, Nancy couldn't fly as fast as Sondra had. We got up to a few hundred meters and followed the turnpike north to New Brunswick. When we were about halfway there, I spotted a big black dot approaching. A hawk? A guided missile?

No, it was Sondra, fresh out of the Carteret Correctional Center. She cruised up to us and we hovered there together for a minute.

“Isn't flying fun, Nancy?” said Sondra. Her face was flushed with excitement. “They let me out into the exercise yard and I took off. I'm going to see Alwin.”

“We just saw him,” I said. “He helped me get some more gluons.”

“And I asked him what to wish for,” added Nancy. “I get to make the wish.”

“Why don't you just wish for lots of wishes?” Sondra suggested. “Wish for all the wishes we want.”

“That's too vague,” I protested. “I don't think wishes about wishing are allowed.”

“It's just a machine,” said Sondra. “Not a leprechaun or something. Nancy ought to ask for a hundred wishes.”

The two women were hovering side by side. With the bright sun, I felt like a bather on a float. There were fields below us and, off to the right, the Jersey Turnpike, with cars crawling like ants.

“Don't worry, Sondra,” said Nancy. “I'm going to ask for something really big. I think my wish is the real reason the blunzer made itself.”

“What's your wish?” I asked again. But Nancy still refused to tell me.

“How's Harry?” Sondra asked me.

“I saw him this morning. He's in the Rahway prison. He wants to get out.”

“I just wish those seventeen people hadn't died,” said Sondra. “I feel bad about them. If I could wish one thing, I'd wish for them to be alive again. Nancy, do you think—”

“She's only going to have about two seconds,” I interrupted. “And the main thing is to get my body back. She'll try to fix up our legal troubles too, but—”

“Leave it to me,” said Nancy. “I know just what to do.”

Some schoolchildren in the fields below had noticed us. Their tiny shouts floated up on the gentle autumn breezes.

“You know,” said Sondra, “I keep having trouble believing I can fly. I really have to concentrate
to keep from falling down. Like in a flying dream. Don't you feel that too, Nancy?”

“Hey,” I interrupted anxiously. “That's no way to be thinking right now.”

“. . . and just drop like a stone,” Nancy mused. “If suddenly you forget how. Yeah, I can really feel that, Sondra. How about you, Joe?”

“Hey, look, girls, this is—” A farmer drove his pickup into the field beneath us and got out with a rifle. There came a faint popping of gunfire.

We said a hurried goodbye to Sondra and flew the rest of the way to New Brunswick. Nancy came in low and touched down in a parking lot near Harry's place. At first I thought no one had noticed us, but then an old bum came stumbling over.

“Take me for a ride, angels.” He had the weather-beaten skin of a sailor. “Take me out to sea.” He seemed deranged, albeit strong enough to cause serious trouble.

“Go away,” I said curtly. “Leave us alone.” We started out of the parking lot with the bum tagging along after us.

“Give me something,” he begged. “I need money to buy a pet fish.”

“Here.” I drew a ten-dollar bill out of my handbag and gave it to him. “Now beat it.”

“Thank you, fish angel.”

The windows of Harry's store were boarded up. There was a shiny black car parked in front. When Nancy and I tried the shop's door, it flew open, revealing a fit-looking man in a black suit. He held a pistol in one hand. “Who are you?” he demanded.

“Susan Gerber and Nancy Fletcher,” I said. “We
want to make sure you don't steal anything from our men.”

“I'm Joseph Fletcher's wife,” amplified Nancy. “And this is Harry Gerber's sister. We'd like to get a few personal effects and make an inventory.”

The man gave a sharp whistle and pulled us in. The door slammed shut behind us. Inside was another man in black. He'd been guarding the back door. Both of them were armed. They said they were from the government.

“Why won't your brother talk?” the first man asked me. “His device has an enormous potential to enhance our national security.”

“Harry never tells me what he's doing,” I simpered. “Not that
I
could understand it anyway.”

“And what about you?” the second man asked Nancy. “Where is your husband hiding?”

“I bet it's somewhere hot and wet,” said Nancy. “My husband loves that kind of place. Some overgrown delta at the mouth of a river. Who knows? You're the cops, not me.”

“I could use a tropical vacation myself,” said the second man in black. “I'd like to be in the Bahamas.” He turned to his partner. “How about you, Jack?”

“If I had my druthers,” said the first man in black, “I'd be camping out in the Rockies right now.”

They'd fallen for our story and had loosened up a little. I kept giving them nice smiles.

“Can we look around now?” I asked. “We'd like to start upstairs and then check over the workshop.”

“We'll have to search your purses for weapons.”

“Fine.” I opened my purse. There was my compact
in there, the Susan Gerber IDs, some more money, and the magnetic bottle of gluons.

“What's this?” asked the first man in black, picking up the bottle.

“That's—that's my deodorant.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

They let us go upstairs alone; it was the workshop they were really interested in guarding.

“How are we going to get rid of them?” Nancy whispered.

“Maybe we should get knives from the kitchen?”

“No killing, Joe. You'll just get us in even more trouble. And those men have guns.”

“So what do we do? Seduce them?”

“Why don't we start a fire up here? They'll run up to put it out and then we can lock ourselves in the workshop. Does it take long to start the blunzer?”

“Not that long. If we can get ourselves locked in the workshop, we'll have time before they break in.” We wandered into the bedroom.

“Let's light Harry's bed,” suggested Nancy. “It's nice and greasy.”

“You don't like Harry, do you, Nancy?”

“Why should I? He doesn't like me.” She found a half-empty bottle of over proof vodka and poured it out on Harry's pillow. “This ought to help. Can you find a match?”

I found some matches in the kitchen, and another bottle of vodka. I brought a bunch of newspapers as well. Nancy had a whole plan of action figured out now. It sounded good to me.

We got the bed sluggishly burning. It gave off a lot of smoke. Nancy flew up to the ceiling by the
bedroom door. She was holding a thick broom handle.

When the smoke started to trickle down the stairs to the shop, I ripped open my blouse and began screaming. “There's another Gary-brain up here! Oh, help me!” I stood at the head of the stairs looking desperate.

“I'll save you!” shouted one of the men in black. He came surging up the stairs, and I pretended to stagger backwards into the smoke-filled bedroom. Nancy was waiting right overhead, broomstick at the ready. When the man in black came in, I embraced him and held him steady so Nancy could whack him on the top of the head. It took three whacks to knock him out.

I got the gun out of his hand, shoved it under my skirt's waistband, and ran downstairs. I ran right into the other man in black. “One of those brains is loose up there,” I cried. “I think it got Mrs. Fletcher!”

The man pushed past me. I hurried into the shop and locked the door to the stairs. Then I went to open the front door. Nancy was waiting out there. She'd flown down from Harry's bedroom window.

We ran into the workshop and got that door locked, too. Antie was in the workshop, turned off and lying on her side. I switched her power on and we got to work on the blunzing machinery. You could hear the footsteps of the men in black running around upstairs. They were busy putting out the fire.

“Go lie on that table in the blunzing chamber,” I
told Nancy. “Put on the breathing mask and get ready for the shot.”

“I'm scared, Joe.”

“Do you want me to go instead of you?”

“No. I'll do it.” For the first time today Nancy kissed me. “I'll make a better world, Joe.”

“The microwave cavity is ready,” called Antie.

“Get the gluons from my purse!” I shouted. “Good luck, Nancy.”

Now Nancy was in the blunzing chamber. I switched on the sheathing field. Antie poured the gluons into the microwave. There was noise out in the shop. I fired a random gunshot through the door. Antie fed the gluons into the vortex coil.

Noise and confusion took over. For the third and final time, someone got blunzed—but not just Nancy.

Everyone
got blunzed this time, everyone on Earth. For that was Nancy's wish: that the Planck length be ten thousand kilometers big for the 2.4 seconds that her gluons lasted. Everyone got to make a wish at once.

T
HE
guards were gone and it was raining outside—raining fish. The big rain-fish would hit the pavement, flop a little, and then melt into water.

“You really did it,” I said to Nancy. I had my arm around her, and she was leaning against my long, lean frame. I was back to normal.

“Where's Harry?” asked the old woman behind us. Antie had turned herself into a flesh-and-blood copy of Harry's dead mother. The blunzing had even affected her. Nancy's little echowomen had flown out of the chamber and helped each of us make our wish. Antie's had been
to be just like Harry's mother
, I wondered what kinds of wishes everyone else had made. The rain-fish were probably the idea of the crazy old sailor we'd seen. Everyone had gotten what they wanted most. “Where's Harry?” repeated Antie.

I waited for Nancy to answer, but she seemed too drained. Her feat had taken a lot out of her.

“I don't know where Harry is,” I told Antie. “He probably got himself out of prison. Maybe he'll turn up here soon.”

“You ought to hide,” fretted the old woman. “Now that the police can recognize you again.”

“That's all fixed,” I reassured her. “After I changed my body I got us all pardons from the governor. And I bet Sondra brought those seventeen dead people back to life.”

“That's right,” murmured Nancy. “And the men in black took their vacations. One to the Bahamas and one to the Rockies.”

A man-sized beetle marched past, the rain of fish beating on his iridescent green back. What a weirdo
he
must have been. Leaning out the door, I could see that it was sunny down by the railroad station. A fish struck me on the head and splatted onto the sidewalk.

“Let's find an umbrella and take a walk.” I suggested.

“I'm waiting here for Harry,” said Antie stubbornly. “And I have to clean up the mess in his bedroom.”

“Fine. Nancy and I'll go out alone.”

We got an umbrella and went outside. There was a startling roar as a race car shot past, its tires throwing up sheets of fish-water. It looked like an Indy 500 racer—which is what it probably was. A block away from the store I spotted the old sailor, staring up into the sky and catching fish in his mouth. Another block and we were in sunlight. I folded up the umbrella and looked around.

The train station had been transformed into a graceful lacework of metal and glass, a veritable crystal palace of transportation. A fine steam locomotive was just pulling in.

“Isn't she a beauty?” yelled the engineer, leaning out and waving. “I've always wanted to run one of these!” We smiled and waved back.

The Terminal Bar across the street had become a huge old saloon of the same period as the locomotive. You could hear a honky-tonk piano inside. The mustached bartender stood in the door, grinning and holding an inexhaustible schooner of beer. He gave us a happy salute. It was almost like being in Disneyland—except everything was real.

“Did everyone make good wishes?” I asked Nancy.

“Yes,” she smiled. “I made sure they did.”

“But how?”

“I sent out my echowomen. I sent one to watch each person on Earth. If I could see a mean wish in someone's mind, I reached in and made them change it. And if two people's wishes conflicted, I made one of them change too.”

Farther down the street was a sidewalk café—formerly a scuzzy German coffee shop. I recognized the owner sitting at one of the tables and eating a roast chicken.