The Broken Universe

by Melko, Paul

  John nodded his head. “Civil War gold, lost in Ohio. I like it. We just need a universe where the prisoners escaped, then died, and the gold was never found.”

  “I have that universe,” Prime said. “Universe 7458. I was going to try and find the gold, but I had to, uh, move on before I could dig it up. I never found another universe where the Confederate officers even escaped.”

  “So where is the gold?”

  “Uh, well,” Prime said. “I know the general vicinity.”

  “There’s no exact location?”

  “I know within a few hundred meters,” Prime said.

  “That’s gonna make it hard to find.”

  “Metal detectors,” Prime said. “We’ll need metal detectors.”

  “We?” John asked. “I’m just asking for ideas, not volunteers.”

  “Ten percent finder’s fee,” Prime said with a smile. “Seems fair.”

  John shook his head, but still he laughed. “Fine.”

  “What’s that? Another adventure without me?” Casey stood in the doorway, holding Abby to her shoulder.

  “This one is just digging holes,” Prime said.

  “I’ve dug holes for you before,” Casey said coldly.

  John watched something pass between the two. Prime nodded. “Really, it’s nothing dangerous. I’ll just be gone a couple days.”

  Casey met his gaze for a moment, and then nodded. “I guess. All our problems are cleared up here, what with Ted Carson suddenly showing up a week ago.”

  “A week?” John asked. “He was missing here?”

  Ted Carson was a bully, a sociopath, that had tormented John in high school.

  “Mysteriously,” Casey said.

  “The police thought I might have something to do with it,” Prime said. “Fools.”

  “Fine, a few days,” Casey said. “It’s not like you have a job at the moment.”

  To John’s raised eyebrows, Prime said, “Disappearing for six weeks puts a damper on your career. That and the murder charge. But the severance is enough to survive for a couple years. But ten percent of a lot of gold will be better.”

  “If we find it,” John said. “What are the real chances? I need this to work.”

  “I have no idea. The gold could be at the bottom of Lake Erie for all I know,” Prime said. “The event is rare, but given that the escape happened at all and the ship disappeared … I have to assume the gold is on that island.”

  John turned to Casey. “Can you spare him for a few days?”

  “Yes, of course, if you need him,” Casey said. “I know what he owes you.” She turned away then, and John thought he saw the streak of a tear on her face.

  “Maybe I should do this myself,” John said. “Just tell me where the gold is. You’ll get your percentage.”

  Prime looked after Casey, a look of real concern on his face.

  “No,” Casey said, her voice muffled with her face snuggled close to Abby’s neck. “I want him to go.” She glanced up with glassy eyes. “I suppose he has to go now.”

  “Yeah, the sooner the better,” John said.

  “And you’re doing it for your friends, and for your Casey?”

  “Yes.”

  “Instead of just running away? You’re doing whatever it takes?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Would you do just about anything for your friends?” Casey asked.

  John felt the gravity of the question, and paused. “Yeah, I would.”

  “Okay,” she said. “He can go. But same as last time, bring him back in one piece. Or you have to take his place.” John laughed, but Casey only smiled.

  “Well, we need some supplies,” Prime said. “Luckily I have some cash in this universe, so let’s make a list.”

  * * *

  John and Prime filled a shopping cart with supplies at the local Creble’s Sporting Goods: a tent, two sleeping bags, a lantern, cooking supplies, and, the most important items, two top-of-the-line metal detectors and enough batteries to last a week.

  “So your legal trouble is over?” John said as they packed the trunk of Prime’s car.

  “Surprisingly, when I returned the police had dropped all charges,” Prime said.

  “Why?”

  “Ted Carson suddenly appeared, and not even an apology from the police,” Prime said. “Do you believe it?”

  “Yes, I believe that,” John said. “They thought you had murdered him?”

  “Yeah. The guy was just missing.”

  John studied him for a long moment. “So what was in that trunk that we brought back with us from 7651?”

  Prime leveled him a hard stare. “Do you really want to know?” he said. “Because I’ll tell you if you do.”

  John looked away. Why did he prod Prime? Why did he look into that mirror every time he could? “I think I know,” he said. The police were suspicious enough of Prime to charge him in the disappearance of Ted Carson. Then suddenly all those charges were dropped when Prime returned six weeks later … carrying a huge crate that might have contained a living human body.

  But he knew Prime was capable of atrocious things, whether justified or not. He had watched him shoot Corrundrum. Prime had stolen everything from John. And now this business with Carson. What John hated was that he would have done similar things in the same situation.

  “Let’s go.”

  Casey dropped them off at the quarry site, not waiting to see if they transferred out or not. Abby was crying in the backseat.

  The late-afternoon sun did not change position as they transferred to 7651. One hundred meters to the northwest of them now sat the wooden building housing the transfer gate where nothing had existed in 7533.

  “God, I hate this place,” Prime said.

  “We spent far too much time here,” John said.

  John looked around them to make sure their sudden appearance had gone unnoticed. No one saw them.

  Grace appeared at the knock on the door.

  “John!” she cried. “And John, I presume.” She stared at Prime. “The illustrious John Prime.”

  John looked at her for a long moment, and said, “Grace. Good to meet you, I guess. Though I think I know you.”

  “A little bit,” Grace said. “You know me just a little bit.”

  “So they hired you to watch the gate here?” Prime asked.

  “That and sell pinball machines,” Grace said. “We sold ten this week!”

  Prime looked at this Grace and nodded. “You aren’t like the other Grace, that’s true.”

  John said, “You met her after she had gone through a lot.”

  “Yeah,” Prime said. “I hope she’s getting better.”

  Grace-7651 said, “She is.” To John she asked, “Where to, boss?”

  “Universe 7458,” John said. “We’re looking for some Union gold.”

  “You want to leave a message for Grace and Henry in 7650?”

  “You run as courier?” Prime asked.

  “Easier than that,” Grace said. “Anything in the transfer zone swaps places with whatever is on the other side. We just put a box in the zone and place a satchel on top of it.”

  “Oh, I see. Each gate is a two-way transfer; where you are and where you’re going change places,” Prime said. “The Alarians never figured that out?”

  John shrugged. “I don’t think so. It’s not obvious.”

  A bright red circle had been painted on the wooden floor of the warehouse. There was a divot cut into the floor and into the rock below from the first time they had tried the device and taken a bite from this universe to 7650. The device itself was a metal contraption that hung above the red circle. Wires connected it to its control circuits and the most important matrix circuits that determined the destination.

  “Yeah, tell Grace that we’re off to 7458 to look for gold,” John said. “I’ll be back to 7650 tomorrow after we get Prime set up on his scavenger hunt.”

  John dragged a transfer platform over to the middle of the
transfer field, right on top of the red circle. The shape of the transfer field created by the gate was a sphere, and standing on the edge of it seemed dangerous. The edge of the gate didn’t seem to move, but who knew if it would for some unknown reason. So they stood on a box, placing their centers of mass as close to the center of the sphere as possible.

  “Come on, John,” he said to Prime.

  Prime hopped up, and squatted down in the middle of the platform, pushing John away from the center.

  “We’ve done this dozens of times since last you were here,” John said.

  “Sure, sure,” Prime said. “Once it’s approved by OSHA, I’ll be cool.”

  Grace handed up the bag of camping and detector gear.

  “Universe 7458,” she said, dialing the matrix circuit. “You guys have some fun, okay? Hey, do you have gold for incidentals?”

  John patted his pockets. “Uh, no.”

  Grace laughed. She went to the small, open safe they had on the floor and pulled out a couple of gold coins. She handed two to John. “If you don’t spend them, bring them back. We don’t have a lot of petty gold,” she said.

  “Don’t I know it.”

  “Positions!” she shouted. Then she ran to behind the console. “Universe check.”

  “7458,” John replied.

  “Power on!” she shouted. “Charging!” John didn’t know why Grace-7651 made such a production of the transfer. She wore a white lab coat, and if she had goggles, she would have pulled them over her eyes. “Transfer imminent! Clear the transfer zone!”

  “No one else is here but us,” Prime said to John.

  “She has her script,” John replied.

  “In three … two … one … Transfer!”

  Grace-7651 disappeared and they were outside again. The two of them dropped about five centimeters. They staggered off the platform.

  “There’s got to be a better way to do that,” Prime said. He patted his body, as if to make sure his limbs were all still there.

  John surveyed the area. The same abandoned rock quarry existed here as in most of the universes they knew. He squinted into the setting sun.

  “We need transportation,” he said.

  “Let’s hike into town and catch a bus to Toledo,” Prime said.

  John gazed across the road at the Rayburn house.

  “Was he here in this universe?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” Prime said. “I didn’t check every time, and I don’t remember this one in particular.”

  “Let’s cut through the back,” John said.

  It would take a little longer, but the back end of the quarry abutted against Steller Road. Sometimes there was a development of little box houses on the road, and sometimes it was just farmland. Steller ran into town too, but curved here and there on the way, running past the reservoir and sailboat marina.

  The hike into town took an hour, and, except for a few farm trucks, they saw no one. The town looked little different than what John knew of Findlay. Clearly things were similar between the universes. They bought sodas and found the money in John’s wallet to be identical to the local currency. Cash would not be a problem, and if they needed more than the couple hundred he had, there were the gold coins Grace had given them.

  Prime stayed outside as John bought two one-way tickets to Toledo and then on to Sandusky. Twenty-two dollars each. He kept expecting the ticket agent to have some look of recognition, but she didn’t even bat an eye at him.

  The bus got them into Sandusky at just before midnight. There was no ferry to Kelleys Island until the next morning, so they found a cheap motel near the terminal.

  The next morning they hiked to Marblehead and caught the first ferry across to the island. The weather was hot and muggy. The spray from the lake over the rail was welcome even that early in the morning. Mostly summer workers were on the ferry, coming over for the day of work at restaurants and bars.

  The island was just over ten square kilometers in area, little of it inhabited. They passed touristy bars and restaurants, and then entered areas of the older established homes of the year-round residents. Huge quarries had been dug to get to the limestone, laid bare by the last glaciation. They passed through a dry quarry, filled with broken rock and patchy vegetation.

  “Lucky the quarry diggers didn’t find the cache,” John said.

  “The site is on the north side of the island,” Prime said. “I think it’s actually in the state park.”

  They stopped at the ranger station and paid for a primitive lot at the back of the site.

  The ranger stared at them.

  “Twins?”

  Prime nodded. “Yeah, identical twins.”

  “Have a good time! Careful with your campfires!”

  “Will do.”

  Prime said, “We want to see Bird Rock. Can you tell us where that is?”

  The ranger paused. “Bird Rock? Oh, yeah, the old boulder covered in petroglyphs. There’s a trail that runs behind all the lots. Follow it toward the lake. But don’t stop at the water. Follow the lakeshore and you can’t miss it.”

  “Thanks!”

  After they left the ranger station behind, Prime said, “I’m surprised more people haven’t commented on our twinness.”

  The site was empty, and none of the lots near them were taken. Raising the tent had seemed easier in the store when the salesmen had been showing them than in the wild. Eventually they got the tent up, but only after they had done it once with a bad slant to the left.

  “Ready?” Prime asked.

  They took the metal detectors and strode off toward the northern shore. Birds and small rodents scurried away in front of them. Twice they saw deer staring unconcernedly while they chewed grass, their mouths churning in circular motion.

  “The article said it was within a hundred meters of Bird Rock,” Prime said. The path opened onto the lake, a rocky shore that forced them to jump from rock to rock to cross.

  Snakes, sunning themselves in the morning light, slithered away from them. Mollusk shells crunched under their feet and the smell of dead fish was overwhelming.

  “That must be it,” John said. A boulder sat on a bar of rock that jutted out into the water. John jumped from his current rock to the bar, nearly slipping on the algae. The boulder was etched deeply with simple line drawings and geometric shapes. They were so old that thick moss had grown over the shapes. John ran his finger over the lines.

  Prime scrambled up the boulder and peered back at the land.

  “One hundred meters puts us about where that big tree is over there,” he said. “And near those shrubs over there.”

  “I doubt it was exactly one hundred,” John said. He followed Prime’s gaze, marking the extent of the area they had to explore. Then he noticed the house. “Uh-oh,” he said.

  “What?” Prime asked.

  “It could be on their property.” The state park ended at the edge of someone’s home. Occupied, John guessed, based on the hanging laundry.

  “Yeah, but it won’t matter.”

  “Why?”

  “If we find anything, we’ll dig it up in the middle of the night, and leave for 7650,” Prime said. “But it’s probably not. More likely over there in that higher area. Let’s grid this off and start looking.”

  “Should have brought some flags,” John said.

  “We’ll use rocks.”

  Starting from Bird Rock, they marked five-meter increments along the shore with rocks. One hundred meters away was a small patch of sandy beach. They turned on their detectors and swept them over the sand. Immediately the detectors flared at them.

  Digging with their shovel, John turned over the sand. The shovel struck a beer can. It sloshed onto the beach, draining of dirty water.

  “Gold!” Prime said. “Malt gold!”

  “Funny,” John said.

  Walking parallel and separated by three meters, the two walked into the woods. The brambles and tightly growing bushes made going in a straight line dif
ficult, and when they turned back toward Bird Rock, they realized they had walked off at a diagonal.

  “This is going to be hard,” Prime said.

  “Yeah,” John said. They’d taken thirty minutes to walk one dissection of the plot. It was going to take four or five days at that rate to cover the whole area one hundred meters from Bird Rock.

  “We should have brought string and stakes to mark it out,” Prime said.

  “That would make what we’re doing noticeable,” John said. “The last thing we want is a slew of treasure hunters walking around here, following us.”

  “True,” Prime said. He took his knife out and notched the nearest tree. “Is this far enough?”

  “I guess so,” John said. “Let’s work backwards.”

  They stepped over a couple meters and began working their way back toward the lakeshore.

  They broke for lunch in the early afternoon, with a handful of soda cans to show for the work. They had also found a quarter from 1965. Lunch was a couple of sandwiches they’d picked up at the store just off the ferry.

  “Well, twenty-five cents doesn’t quite cut it, does it?” John said.

  “We’ll find it,” Prime said. “There’s some good spots over that way that we haven’t gotten to yet.”

  “Right,” John said. “I’ll work with you for the rest of the day, and then I’ll catch the last ferry to the mainland. I’ve got to check in with Grace and Henry.”

  “Sure. I can handle this,” Prime said. “I am after all just a treasure hunter.”

  John looked at him. There had been some bitterness in his voice.

  Prime met his gaze. “Casey was my treasure. Your life. Everything I have, I plucked from someone else.”

  “What are you saying?”