Master Of Space And Time

"Hello, Mrs. Bitter?"

"Yes."

"This is…" In sudden panic, I realized I didn't know how to finish the sentence. "How's Serena?" I blurted.

"Serena is fine. Who am I speaking to, please?"

I hung up.

I had on my Joe Fletcher clothes from last night. I looked in the hall mirror and wondered whether to put on makeup. Just because Nancy was so uptight didn't mean I couldn't get a little fun out of my new body. My hair was a real mess.

"Hey, Nancy," I called.

"Hold your horses, I'm not ready yet," she shouted through the closed bedroom door.

"I'll be downstairs in the beauty salon."

I left before she could protest. I'd spent my whole life waiting for women to finish dressing; now it was my turn to get back.

The hairdresser was chic and in his twenties. He cluck-clucked over the way I'd butchered my hair.

"Whatever possessed you, dear?"

"I — I thought someone would like me better with short hair. Can you fix it up?"

"Of course, dear. He'll love the new you."

"She. Not too much off the sides and make it spiky on top."

They did my hair and nails, and then they fixed my face. I told the makeup girl I wanted to look like I was from Detroit. She got the picture. When they were done, I looked even better than I had yesterday. Except for the clothes. I wondered if I should go back upstairs and…

"Come on, Joe," said Nancy, stomping into the beauty salon. "I've been waiting and waiting for you."

We hit the street and caught a cab. Nancy didn't want to get our Corvette out of the hotel garage. On the way uptown we stopped to buy me a tailored tweed suit in earth tones. I was starting to look kind of butch. But from Detroit, strictly from Detroit.

23. Way Uptown

"Open up, Eddie." I could see his eye staring out the peephole in his steel-covered door. "It's Joe and Nancy Fletcher."

"You're not Joe Fletcher." His voice was slow and amused. He was kind of a wirehead. "If I let you in, will you —"

"Here," said Nancy, pushing me aside. "You recognize me, don't you, Eddie?"

"Who's your girlfriend? Does she like men?"

"Open the goddamn door, Eddie!" I could hear someone coming up the stairs after us. This was a terrible place to be standing around with two million bucks in my purse.

Eddie let us in just as the footsteps reached our landing. Instead of a mugger, it was a neighbor, a young professional like Ed. I wondered where all the weirdos I'd seen outside lived. What a crowd!

Wireheads, she-males, black'n'whites, oz-drippers, and God's own number of gunjy mues.

Eddie ushered us down his long hall and into the living room. His two big dogs were barking.

"Tasp?" he offered, holding up a little machine the size of a flashlight. It was a remote stim-unit: if you beamed it at the base of your skull you'd get colors and a pleasure flush. Usually I didn't indulge, but right now I really needed a lift. Nancy had been cold-shouldering me ever since the beauty parlor. She'd waited in the cab — fuming — while I'd visited the dress shop. I guess it was all kind of freaking her out. She's just a person too, I reminded myself as I raised the tasp to my head. A person who wants to be happy.

I pressed the button and things got better real fast.

"What's your name?" Eddie was saying, smiling at me and holding out his hand for the little pleasure machine.

"It's Joe, Eddie, it really is." Nancy refused Eddie's offer of the tasp and kept talking. She was here to do business. "Yesterday he was Marilyn Monroe and today he wants to be Susan Gerber. We want for you to make him some ID."

Eddie zapped himself again and wandered over to the window. "Come here, Joe, look at this." Now that Nancy had confirmed it, he didn't seem to have any trouble accepting my changed appearance. He'd been living uptown for a long time. "Look at those dead cars," said Eddie.

I tasped myself once more and looked down at the cars Eddie was talking about. There were three of them on his block, cars with headlights, tires, chrome, and engine parts all gone. "Picked clean," I chuckled. "Check," said Eddie. "I'm always looking at them and thinking about valet parking. A salesman from Iowa, right? He leaves his car with the valet at the Sheraton, and this is how the car looks the next day. The one up at the corner was mine." He was laughing so hard now that he had to lean on the windowsill for support. "What'd you say your name was? How'd you get in here, anyway?"

"I came with her." I jerked my head at Nancy. "Oh, right. Joe Fletcher. So you went trans-sex?"

"Yeah, basically. And I need ID. Susan Gerber from Detroit."

"Check. Hold on to this and don't let me have it back till I finish." Eddie passed me the tasp. At least he didn't have a socket yet. Once you got the socket in your skull you were pretty well done for.

"Nancy and Joe," said Eddie, sitting down at his desk. "Wow. Would you throw me that tasp, Joe?"

"You just told me not to."

"Check." Eddie turned on the desk's screen and put his fingers on the keyboard. "Susan Gerber from Detroit? Got a street address?"

"You'll have to look it up."

"Okay." He punched a few buttons and got the information. "105 Madius Street. You got a picture of the lovely new you, Joe?"

"No."

"Okay we'll do that next." Eddie hit some more buttons and the screen displayed three different ID cards, front and back. The thing had a typesetting program built in. Another push of the button and a hard copy of the cards slid out onto the desk. "Now we get the pictures and paste these up. Could you just hand me that tasp?"

"I'll take the tasp," said Nancy, snatching it out of my hand.

I followed Eddie into his photo room and we got the shots. He had a videoscan still camera, so there was no waiting for the prints. I studied one of the pictures, trying to believe it was really me. I was still light-headed from the stim, and it all seemed pretty exciting.

"I could do with one more pulse," I told Nancy as we came back into the living room.

"Check," said Eddie. "Me too."

With both of us standing over her, Nancy gave in. We each took a couple more pulses before she got the tasp back from us.

"Where were we?" Eddie asked.

"IDs," nagged Nancy. "If you guys are going to keep getting blasted, you could at least offer me a drink or something, Eddie."

"A beer?"

"Fine."

While Eddie was getting the beer, Nancy took the opportunity to chew me out. "You're going to go right down the drain in a hurry, Joe, if you don't get your real body back. It's not like you to be using stim this way."

"What do you care? You don't love me."

"I do too love you, Joe. Who else would put up with you?"

"I'm not so hard to get along with. I'm just a person who wants to be happy. A person just like you."

"That's your big insight from having a woman's body?"

"It's true, isn't it?"

"As far as it goes. But the surest way to be unhappy is try to be happy all the time."

"That sounds like something your father told you. What a redneck."

"At least he has a penis."

"I'm going to see Harry, Nancy. I'm going to see Harry for the gluons today."

Eddie returned with three beers. "ID," he said, reminding himself. "We still have to do the hard part." He had full-color paper replicas of each of the three cards, front and back, made out to Susan Gerber and with my picture on each one. "First, sign these, Joe. Michigan driver's license, federal citizen card, and a cash key."

"Write Swan Gerber," Nancy reminded me, as if I didn't know.

I signed the flimsy papers, and then Eddie took them down the hall. The dogs started barking again.

"Come on, girls," called Eddie, "I'll show you my machine."