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28. Earthly Delights
The 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 hell 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 su
"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, gri
"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 cafe — formerly a scuzzy German coffee shop. I recognized the owner sitting at one of the tables and eating a roast chicken.
"There's a buffet inside," he called to us. "Help yourself. I'll make out the bill later."
"Are you hungry?" I asked Nancy.
She nodded and sat down at one of the su
We ate in silence for a minute. It was the best food I'd ever tasted. One of the things on my plate was a crisp white veal sausage. I held it up for Nancy to see, remembering the fable.
She laughed and patted my hand. "You see, Joe? It's not so bad to ask for simple things."
"Do you know what each person wished?"
"No, not anymore. While I was blunzed I knew, sort of. I sent my echowomen everywhere, like Alwin said I should. I made the Planck length big enough to cover the whole Earth, and I helped everyone make his or her wish."
"Do people know it was you? You'll be treated like a queen!"
"No, no. You know how small most of the echoes are. People couldn't see me. And I wouldn't want them to know it was me, because then they'd ask me to do it again."
"Yeah. And we can't do it again. There's only three colors of gluon, and each color only works once." An attractive young couple floated down out of the sky to sit at a table nearby. Glancing up, I could see a number of people flying around overhead. The power of flight seemed to be a fairly common wish.
"I wonder what Harry wished for," I mused. "Do you know?"
"I meant to check, but he was already gone by the time I got to him. He was like you — he knew right away he'd been blunzed, and he acted on it."
"He wasn't in Rahway anymore?"
"He left our space, so far as I could tell. Look at those two!"
Another couple had joined the crowd at the cafe — a beautiful red-haired woman and a man who was only three inches high. The man was perched in the redhead's decolletage like a prince on a balcony. It looked like a good place to be.
More and more people were out in the street now, everyone chattering and looking around to see what the others had done. There were many more beautiful men and women than was normal for New Brunswick; beauty was obviously a wish even more popular than flight. Lots of people wore jewels as well, and I noticed several men drawing out big wads of cash.
"All my money's going to be worthless," I suddenly realized. "Everybody and his brother must have asked for a million dollars."
"Yes," said Nancy. "But we've still got our penthouse."
"But what are we going to live on? I can't go back to working at Softech."
"Go back in business with Harry," suggested Nancy. "If you can find him."
"Yeah, that's a thought." I was distracted again by a passerby, this one a man ru
"A lot of beauties, a lot of millionaires, a lot of great athletes," said Nancy. "Can I have some more wine, please?"
A giant breast rolled past, followed by a man with four arms. Shiny cars — antique and futuristic alike — buzzed this way and that. In a doorway across the street lay a man slumped in some interminable ecstasy. In the distance I heard music playing.
"How about Alwin Bitter? What did he wish for?"
Nancy's eyes danced above her tilted wineglass. "Alwin — Alwin is an altruist," she said, setting down her glass. "He wished for this all to happen."
"But the blunzer made itself. It was a cause-and-effect loop with Harry and me in it."
"Even so, you and Harry and the loop had to come from somewhere. Alwin wished you into existence."
"I don't believe that, Nancy, do you?"
"I don't know. What's important is that now everyone will be happy for quite a while, and maybe later — even if the changes all wear off — people will still remember how to be happy. I thought it was worth a try."
A machine that seemed to be a flying saucer zipped down the street and hovered by our cafe. A hatch opened and family of little green "Martians" hopped out. They talked with New Jersey accents.
"This sure is fun, Nancy. Did you happen to notice what Serena wished for?"
"A pet rabbit and a box of candy."
"Sweet. Maybe we better fly down to Princeton and pick her up. You can still fly, can't you?"
"Sure. You'll feel better to me with all that girl fat gone." Nancy reached under the table and squeezed my thigh. I drank a little more wine and smiled at her. Everyone in sight looked happy. It was like some magic Christmas party.