Now came the singing sound of the gluons merging into the microwave field, and then the crash blast of the gluons being fed into the vortex coil. There were yelling voices in the workshop — the Herberites. Harry's shotgun roared; the voices drew back.

The vortex coil grew louder, so loud that the struggle was drowned out. The hotshot table shook with the chatter scream. I braced myself for the instant when the long needle would plunge down through my skull.

There was a heavy thump. Agony in my ears, chamber at vacuum, the swift crunch of needle through bone. I tried not to scream.

The Planck juice was in my brain now, I could feel the white heat of it. My whole body felt prickly and soft. I was a hologram made of pure light.

The needle slid back out. I sat up. Copies of me twisted off like soap bubbles from a bubble wand. It was still dark in the blunzing chamber. I could see perfectly. I felt no need to breathe. A crowd of tiny Fletchers flew around me. My little echoes, correction terms to the blunzing process. This felt good. This felt good.

I wished myself out of the chamber, and there I was, out in the workshop. A terrible fight was in full progress. Five of the Herberites had broken in. Harry had killed the big looking-glass one with his shotgun, but just now one of the others had slashed Harry's throat open with a machete! Covered with blood, Harry was lying dead on the floor!

Seeing me, Sondra began screaming for help while the Herberites with the machete charged at me and…

I WISH EVERYTHING BUT ME WOULD STOP MOVING. The trick for stopping the world is basically to turn your time axis at right angles to everyone else's. It's nothing for the master of space and time. The room around me grew still. The struggling people were like so many waxworks.

I WANT A DIGITAL DISPLAY OF THE TIME I HAVE LEFT. Purple numbers appeared in my field of vision: 3:50. Only ten seconds gone so far. Good. Now what? First bring Harry back to life — he'd done the same for Antie.

I glanced over at Harry — but that's not quite correct. I could see in every direction at once, all the time. When I say, "I glanced over at Harry," what I really mean is that I focused part of my attention on him. A few hundred of the little Fletchers flew over to transmit my wish. I healed up his wound, and as an afterthought, got rid of his headache. Now it was time for the real work. Too bad I'd had to hurry into this half-cocked.

3:42.

I WISH I HAD MY LIST OF WISHES.

20. God Goes Trans-Sex

The list, in my own handwriting, seemed to be complete. I tucked it in my shirt pocket and got to work.

As I've mentioned, I was able to see in every direction at once. More than this, I was also able to see through any obstacles. In ordinary vision, what one does is to combine various two-dimensional retinal impressions to build up a three-dimensional mental image. But now that I was master of space and time, the whole world around me was somehow contained in my head. I could see everything that everyone was doing.

But this was not all. By a slight effort, I was able to see not only the present world but also the worlds of the past. Normally such an influx of information would be staggering, but to me it was as pleasant as the sea is to a fish. It was no trouble at all to fix my attention on my Buick in the Softech parking lot, ten days ago. I could see the little images of Harry on the dashboard, and I watched as he warped my past self into a doubly infinite regress. When my past self turned on the radio, it took only a touch of my volition to make the circuits speak my piece. I didn't need to send my body back like Harry had. It sufficed to send my will.

"THE RED GLUONS ONLY WORK ONCE," I informed my past self. "USE BLUE GLUONS THE SECOND TIME."

A bit more chitchat and my first task was done. Sondra's body was next on the list. By keeping part of my attention on the past I was able to use her original body as a model. I turned her hair back to a kinky brown, flattened out the proud mounds of her breasts, thickened here and thinned there. End of second task.

3:10.

Now the Gary-brains. Here the little Fletchers came in handy. Just as Harry had done, I sent my little echoes out into the world around me to seek out and disintegrate each Herber-brain they found. As an additional precaution, I teleported the five Herberites back out into the street. I didn't want them to attack on sheer momentum when I reentered their timestream. My little helpers came flying back — all the aliens had been destroyed.

2:50.

The Plaza penthouse was the hardest wish yet. First I had to find Nancy and read her mind for the plans. Rapidly I scanned all over Manhattan till I found her. She was — I was surprised to learn — in a jail cell downtown. They'd busted her at the studio. I sent the thumb-sized Fletcher to reassure her and look into her mind. Once I could see what she wanted, I had to will the penthouse into existence — furnishings and all. And on top of that I had to create the paper that went with: titles, deeds, variances, and tax records. Not only did I have to create them but I needed to place them in the proper bureaucratic file cabinets. When I finally had the thing done, I plucked Nancy out of jail and moved her into our new home. For the finishing touch, I plopped ten thousand thousand-dollar bills down in front of her. Whew!

1:45.

Over a minute I'd wasted on that! What else did I still have to wish for? My mind seized up in panic. I got out my little list. Five down, five to go. Next was Power of flight for Nancy.

I didn't quite understand how Harry had gone about giving Sondra the power of flight. I recalled him saying that he'd done it by turning her atoms into "null matter in EPR synchronicity with her state of mind," which may or may not have meant something. Instead of trying to think it through, I just looked back in time and copied the mind-state that Harry had when he did it. Holding the strange, Gerberesque thought pattern steady, I applied it to Nancy's body. Good.

Now for those food plants.

My tiny echomen came in handy again. I sent the endless flock of them out to scour the planet for porkchop bushes and fritter trees. This took some doing, as Nancy had mailed the seeds far and wide. That was what she'd been arrested for, apparently: a slew of customs violations. I found and destroyed all the documents relating to her case while my echomen repaired all the damage the plants had done. What next?

Indiana. Get serious. Those stupid kids could just… I stopped myself. It behooves a god to be merciful. I located them and shoved the desired drug confection into each of their stupid faces.

Baumgard. That was the really tough one. I was a lot more powerful than I'd ever been, but I wasn't really much smarter. What had he asked to know? Why do things exist?

1:25.

I tried looking into the future in hopes of finding a book with the knowledge Baumgard sought. But the future was not accessible to me. As far as I could tell, it didn't really exist. Trying to see into the future was like looking at a page of movie ads. Lots of pictures, but no way to be sure which one you're going to visit. Why do things exist?

Instead of looking forward, I tried peering back through the eons. There were the dinosaurs — I sought till I found some small mammals, our ancestors. Before that, the great empty seas — I brought some molecules together into a double helix. Further back. Great disks of dust slowly clumping into planets and stars. I nudged them to make the lumps show better. But I needed to look much further, back to the very start!