Free Master of Space and Time by Rudy Rucker

God-pig Gary Herber and assassinate him. The people here will thank us forever. I’ve never seen a religion that wasn’t basically evil.”
    â€œGary Herber?”
    â€œGary Herber’s the one that preacher was talking about on the car radio. He’s some kind of big prophet here. I figure everything bad here is Herber’s doing.”
    Gary Herber . I turned the name over in my mind. Of course. It was all beginning to make sense. “I guess you realize who Gary Herber really is , don’t you, Harry?”
    â€œHarry Gerber!” squealed Sondra. “Gary Herber!”
    Harry looked a little unsettled. He hadn’t realized. “Uh . . .”
    â€œIt’s your mirror self,” said Sondra. “Your other nature. You’ve objectified the repressed side of your personality so as to do battle with it. How Jungian!”
    Harry looked more and more uneasy. “Damn. I hope this Herber guy doesn’t look too much like me.”
    It made me feel better to see Harry look so worried. “You know the old line, Harry. Inside every fat man there’s a thin man fighting to get out .Gary Herber’s probably real thin. And clean.” My mouth framed a hard grin.
    â€œOur Harry’s not dirty,” squealed Sondra, slipping back into her blond bombshell routine. “Are you, honey?” She gave a shrill giggle and pinched Harry’s cheek.
    â€œYou can turn off your ray now, Sondra.”
    Sondra lowered her pretty pink pistol, and the gaunt man started talking. “I need my hat.” His thin-lipped mouth formed a faint, gentlemanly smile. “The sun’s mighty bright up here.”
    I held the hat out of reach. “Just wait a minute. What’s all the circuitry in the sweatband for? And why were you throwing rocks at us?”
    â€œI’ve got to have my hat, mister.” His voice was papery and far away. Still I hesitated, and his faint smile twitched into an agonized rictus. His whole body began to shake, though his flat, burnt eyes stayed calm. “I’m not making it too good.”
    â€œHe’s a wirehead,” said Harry. “His hat’s a stim-unit. Let him have it back.”
    I handed the gaunt man his fedora. With precise, twitching gestures, he got it snugged down on his bony skull. His eyelids dropped and the shaking stopped.
    â€œSeeing with my mouth,” he murmured. “Should take off more often. Running out of lobes.” He got his eyes back open and fixed me with a hard stare. “You’re coming on real tiresome.”
    â€œCan you help us?” asked Harry. “We’re from another world and we think we want to kill Gary Herber.”
    The stranger chuckled slowly. “Kicks, man, kicks. But Herber’s awful big. Used to be he was just ayahoo and a brain full of truth. But ever since they electrocuted him . . .” The man in the hat chuckled again, and went off on a tangent. “I had a booth selling pieces of the electric chair. ‘Relics of the Scionization,’ you dig, all splinters smeared with rancid ghee.” He paused to give me a look of unwholesome flirtation. “I threw the rocks because you look so rave.”
    I cleared my throat. What kind of guide had Harry dreamed up for us? “I’m Joe Fletcher. And that’s Sondra and Harry.”
    â€œJoe.” He touched my face with his cool fingers. “It’s a rare pleasure to meet an intelligent man. I’m Tad Beat.”
    â€œHow about a drink?” asked Harry. “Do you have any whiskey?”
    â€œI have enough to get you boys country drunk. Let’s make my pad.”
    We followed Tad downstairs. His apartment took up one very large room on the building’s top floor. His floor and walls were covered with Oriental carpets. A narrow bed, some boxes of food, and a desk with papers and a typewriter completed the furnishings.
    â€œStap my vitals,” muttered Tad,