Master of Space and Time by Rudy Rucker Read Free Book Online Page B

F.”
    Harry slid back into a posture of noble ease. I covered up the little window and energized the copper sheathing.
    â€œAntie, get the gluons.”
    Antie pincered up the heavy little magnetic bottle with one hand, grasping the lid with her other hand.
    I opened the microwave cavity, which was a little black box like a miniature woodstove. A broad spectrum of radiation streamed out.
    â€œPour, Antie.”
    Antie came close and began pouring the gluons into the cavity. The gluons made up a sort of fluid, precious and sparkling as Christ’s blood. The microwave energy field soaked the fluid right up.
    As the gluons merged into the microwave field, the room filled with ethereal singing: faint, shifting notes almost too high to detect. A droplet of gluons slid down the lip of the magnetic bottle and burned the tip off one of Antie’s fingers. I slammed the door of the little microwave cavity and breathed a sigh of relief. The first stage was completed.
    â€œWhat was that stuff you poured in?” Sondra wanted to know. “It looked all irridescent, like fire and water mixed.”
    â€œThose were red gluons,” I explained. “Usually they’re hidden inside the protons and neutrons. I think they come in blue and yellow, too.”
    â€œBuried jewels,” marveled Sondra. “Did they cost much?”
    â€œYou know it. We’re saving half of them for the next time.”
    â€œShall I energize the vortex coil, Dr. F.?”
    â€œCheck, Antie.”
    Antie threw the knife switch on the heavy power cable leading to the vortex coil, which was a hulking cone-shaped unit right next to the blunzing chamber. Ozone filled the air, and sparks crackled up and down the vortex coil’s ridgy slopes. I saw the streetlights outside begin to dim.
    â€œInitiate stage two.”
    I stepped back from the machinery as Antie devalved the subether wave guide, a heavilychromed duct leading from the microwave cavity to the vortex coil’s rounded summit.
    â€œBrace yourself, Sondra. This is—”
    My words were drowned out by the chatter wild scream crash of tortured energy. The vortex coil was tearing into the gluons like a chain-saw hitting railroad spikes in water logs. The whole room went spastic shudder cow-eye thub scree thubby; my mind seized up. Flames, then a heavy sheet of sparks arcing from the coil to Antie’s body. The faithful robot fused into dead smoking junk.
    â€œOh, poor Antie,” wailed Sondra, starting forward.
    â€œStay back!” The screaming energy chatter slid up the scale to an insane mantric hum. The windows shattered. The fillings in my teeth were buzzing.
    â€œTurn that knob!” I screamed to Sondra, pointing to the nozzle where the vacuum pump hooked into the blunzing chamber. “This is it!”
    All I had to do now was to devalve the meter-long wave guide that led out of the vortex coil and in through the refrigerator wall to the needle at the hotshot table’s head. But the wave guide was glowing hot. I cast about wildly, then spotted a broom. The handle would do the job. Just then there was a heavy thud: chamber at vacuum. Right on, Sondra. I forced myself forward and stabbed that final valve . . .
    White light.
    An angel was hovering over me, Beva LeClaire with big soft white wings. I was lying on a rustly mattress and the angel was floating over me.
    â€œAre you all right, Joe?”
    The voice: Sondra Tupperware! I sat up and looked around. This was Harry’s workshop, same as before, and Antie was all well again, well and busy straightening up the mess we’d made. But Sondra—Sondra was hovering three feet off the floor, her wings gently aflutter. She wore a low-cut white evening dress; her face was a lovely cameo framed by ringlets of purest gold.
    â€œI don’t believe this,” the angel was saying. “All my life I’ve hated women like this, and now I’m one.”
    â€œAt least you can