Free Master of Space and Time by Rudy Rucker Page B

army of men, women, and children, each with a naked brain riding on his or her back. They are constructing a palace.
    18. Don’t you want to share? The tablet of God’s Laws, the electric chair, and a cheerful brain float together in a space of light.
    19. Come to the Palace this Thursday! Two happy children, a boy and a girl, walk up the marble steps of a splendid white building.
    I closed the comic and looked up. Tad and Sondra were arguing. Harry was really out of it, and Tad had just given him another bottle.
    â€œWhy do you give him so much to drink?” Sondra demanded.
    â€œIt’s like the sight of someone about to flip excites me,” Tad said, reaching up to fondle his hatband. “I like to crack them open and feed on the wonderful soft stuff that ooze out.”
    Sondra looked at Tad with real dislike. “You’re awful! A wirehead, a drunk, a gay—”
    Tad leered at her, forming his face into a caricature of heterosexual lust. “What are these strange feelings that come over me when I look at those tits sticking out so cute? No, no!” He held his hand as if to shield his face, then sidled over to drape his arms across my shoulders. “You and me could really exist, Joe.”
    Harry was taking this all in with drunken relish.
    â€œWe don’t have very much time,” I said, fending off Tad’s advances. He was a real old-time degenerate.
    Harry chugged from the new bottle and tossed it back to Tad. I didn’t see how they could stomach the stuff. I felt sick from the one taste of it I’d had.
    â€œJust tell us where to find Gary Herber,” said Sondra. “And we’ll be on our way.”
    â€œIt’s not going to be as easy as we thought,” I told her. “Herber is all over the place. He’s a sort of parasite that grows on people’s backs. But what was that about a palace, Tad?”
    â€œGary’s palace,” said Tad, smiling loosely. “Ten blocks east of here. The palace is for the boss slug. The king-size Herber that grows the buds. Granpaw brain. We’ll hold him still with that pink gun and work out. Do it hard TV so’s the citizens down home can share the harvest plenty.” Tad seemed almost as drunk as Harry.
    Sondra and I exchanged looks of concern. It was well past eleven.
    â€œWe really have to get moving,” I repeated.
    â€œDon’t you want to try on my hat, Joe? It has aleft-brain/right-brain feedback loop. Feel real wiggy.”
    â€œNo!” cried Sondra. “Let’s go before it’s too late!”
    We clattered down the stone stairs to the street, Harry leaning heavily on Tad and me. Sondra flew down ahead of us.
    â€œDo you want me to drive, Harry?”
    â€œNaw, naw, I’m shuperman. I’ll shober up when I hafta. You wanna gun, Tad? Look in the glove compartment.”
    Tad found himself a heavy .45 automatic. We all got in the Cad. Both of the windshields were broken—the police laser had broken the back, and Tad’s rock had broken the front. Harry gunned the engine up to a chattering scream, and peeled out into a teleportation jump.

11
cushion
    W E were speeding down a broad boulevard, a tropical allée with rows of royal palms: tremendous palm trees each with ten meters of bare trunk topped by a luxuriant green frizz-bop of swordy leaves. The pavement was smooth marble. There was quite a bit of traffic: official vehicles, merchants’ vans, tour buses, commuters. But there was no real congestion—everyone drove according to the book. The cars moved like cautious ants, and the pedestrians marched back and forth like windup toys.
    Far ahead of us, tiny in the distance, was a cordon of white-uniformed palace guards. Beyond the guards lay bright ornamental gardens leading to the palace itself, a vast, minaretted structure something like the Taj Mahal.
    I was in the back seat with Tad Beat. He twitchedhis head this way and that, keeping