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"Which one?" I asked cautiously.
"Look." He had a plastics molder and — most important of all — a selection of official plastic blanks. If your card didn't have the right field patterns, you could forget it. The fields were like invisible seals of validation. One by one he laminated the graphics onto the plastic blanks.
"Did we talk money yet?" Eddie inquired.
"Whatever you say." I took the fresh IDs and admired the craftsmanship.
"Call it five thousand."
"Check." I took out my wad and peeled off the bills.
"Can I have my tasp back now, Nancy?"
"Sure," said Nancy, handing it over.
Eddie and I passed the tasp back and forth for a while. Pretty soon I was laughing harder than I'd ever laughed before. And then I was in a taxi again. Robot driver. There was a person next to me. Nancy.
"Where are we, Nancy?"
"We're going to Rahway. You are. I'll get out there and fly to Princeton. I want to get Serena."
"Check."
"Stop acting like a wirehead or I'll leave you flat."
I clammed up and looked out the window. Ugly, ugly. It seemed stupidly wasteful to take a taxi all this distance. But we had money to burn. Can money buy happiness? It still seemed worth a try. I wondered how much a tasp would cost — in case this yellow gluons thing didn't work out.
24. Spacetime Plumbers
"My cell window's right next to a metal roof, and all day there's a bumblebee out there. He's beautiful, Susie, he's just like a comic-strip bug: a big dot for a body and a lazy eight for wings. He's always patrolling his territory, you know, going around in a sort of polygonal path, but if he sees another bug — zow!" Harry threw his hands in the air, trying to show how fast the bumblebee could move.
"I'm not really your sister," I hissed, "I'm Fletcher! We've got something important to discuss." We were sitting at either side of a long table with an armed prison guard at the end. The guard looked too bored to be listening to us — but that could have been an act. Harry chose to ignore my whispers.
"So what I've been doing, Susie, is tricking the bumblebee. I wad up a piece of toilet paper and throw it out through my bars. Zoom, he's right on top of it. I did it a lot a lot a lot until he started getting mad. He figured out where all the fake bugs were coming from."
"Please, Harry." I leaned forward, trying to get his attention. "You have to help me find some yellow gluons."
"Then I filled up my mouth with water. For squirting. Because I knew the bumblebee was going to come for me the next time I threw out a piece of paper. And he did! I tell you, Susie, he looked as big — as big as a dog, coming at me like that."
"Did you get him?" I sighed. Harry may or may not have known it was me, but right now he needed to be talking to his sister.
"I sure did. Remember those great water-gun fights we used to have with the neighbors?"
"You mean the Fletcher kids? Joe and Nancy?"
Harry shot me a look of understanding. "That's right. We had three special guns, remember?"
"I sure do. I wish I had one of them now. I wish I had a lot of things. Oh, Harry, I hate looking like this. I didn't know what I was doing."
"I wish I could help you. I'm not too crazy about being in jail, either. The feds keep grilling me, but I haven't told them anything. One of the FBI guys told me I'm going to get twenty years."
"Wow. I've got money, you know. I'll get you the best lawyer."
"Gee, thanks. You want to hear about the cockroach under my bed?"
"Come off it, Harry." We were both leaning across the table, with our faces almost touching.
The guard was definitely not paying attention any more. "I want to try ru
"I've been racking my brain. Someone at Princeton might have some. Do you know any of the physics guys?"
"Alwin Bitter!"
"Beautiful. But do you think you can operate the blunzer? You don't really understand how it works, Joe."
I felt like laughing in his face. "I don't understand? I happen to be the one who told you how to build it, Harry."
His face clouded over in sudden anger. "You? Don't try to hog the credit, Fletcher. I designed and built it. It's my invention."
"Sure it is," I sneered. "Where did you get the original idea though, huh?"
"In — in a dream. But it was my dream, and —"
"It wasn't your dream, Harry. I fed it to you. When I got blunzed yesterday I went back in time and gave you the dream about how to build the blunzer." Harry was shaking his head and holding his eyes squeezed shut. "It's true, Harry. Remember the river with the duck that walked on water?"
Harry's eyes snapped open. "Oh. Oh, my. Didn't you have to trade some mass to move back like that? The way I had to move Zeke forward to go see you in the car?"
"I just sent my image. You don't really have to trade mass. You just did it that way so you could make a Godzilla."
"This is confusing." Harry glanced over at the guard. The guy was out on his feet. "Assuming Bitter gets you the gluons, what are you going to wish for this time? You'll only have a second or two."
"I'd just like things back the way they were. Of course I'll keep my money."
Harry studied my face for a minute. "You're still the same underneath, Fletch. You're the one who's really crazy. That's what I always tell people, but they never listen. Have you gotten laid yet?"
"I'm scared to."
"What about the answer to why things exist? Weren't you going to find that out for Baumgard? You rushed off so fast yesterday that I never got to ask you."
"You didn't have to keep calling me a homo."
"Well, face it, Joe, anyone who —"
"I don't want to talk about it. I'll tell you about Baumgard's question. Why things exist. What I did was to look way, way back in time to try to see how it all started."
"How far back?" Harry's eyes widened with interest.
"I went all the way back to the Big Bang."
"And?"
"I caused it."
"You caused the Big Bang?"
"It was like nothing was happening and I got impatient. I was spread out all over space and time, so I just took energy from all over and focused it back on the starting point."
Harry's eyes glazed over in thought. "The universe as a self-excited system," he said slowly. "I like it. It makes sense."
"So in a way I'm God, aren't I?"
Harry gave me a look of mingled pity and amusement. "Sure you are, Joe."
"Well, look, if I was the one who —"
"I. Who invented the blunzer? Nobody did, Fletch, it invented itself. It came out of no place and told us how to make it. I put the parts together, you got the shot… Can't you see it was just using us? The universe was using us to help excite itself. There's probably lots of these sort of drains where energy gets fed back through time. We're the guys who help hook up the pipes, is all. Spacetime Plumbers."
We'd been talking too loud. The guard was paying attention again.
"I guess I'd better be going," I said, leaning back in my chair. "It certainly was nice to see you again, brother Harry. Though it's a shame it had to be like this."
"Well, Sis, God works in mysterious ways."
They processed me back out of prison. It took half an hour. So many doors, so many walls. Nancy had flown on ahead, but our robot taxi was still waiting for me. The meter was up to seventy-two dollars.
On the turnpike I tried to think through the course of events thus far. I felt like making notes. It had all started on Friday afternoon, September 20. I felt in my pockets for pen and paper and, finding none, asked the driver for writing utensils.
"Lllookkk in the storage comparrtment," the machine intoned. I turned around and snapped up the lid on the storage compartment behind my seat. It held a first-aid kit, some cans of food, a flashlight, and a type-screen. The type-screen was like a child's slate, with a keyboard at one end. You could type onto the screen and, if necessary, produce hard copies. I set the thing on my knee and made a list.