Master of Space and Time by Rudy Rucker Page B

meters.”
    â€œOkay.”
    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.
    â€œwhere is the door to your world?” The slug’s sudden question caught me by surprise.
    â€œi can’t tell you that.”
    â€œyou 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.
    â€œPlease 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.
    â€œAnd 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.
    â€œthat gun isn’t going to help against Harry,” I thought to the bad brain on my back, “he’s master of spaceand time, if he gets mad he’ll wipe out big Gary and every single one of you scions.”
    â€œall the more reason to send one of us over to your world, now, run!”

12
Midnight Rambler
    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 justas 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.
    â€œsend 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