The Broken Universe

by Melko, Paul

  “Help is on the way,” John called. “As well as the police, asshole.”

  The man screamed incoherent, garbled words in what John had come to recognize as the Alarian language. John considered climbing down and helping him, but he had no desire to scale the rocks in the dark. Let the rescue squad figure out how to get him out of there. He returned back to the transfer building.

  “Did you call an ambulance?” John asked Grace.

  “No, just the police,” she said. “What did you do to him?”

  “Nothing,” John said with a smile. “He fell in the quarry.”

  “What an idiot.”

  “This one is named Baduela Muthgalic,” Henry said, reading his driver’s license.

  “Really?” Grace said. “How do they get driver’s licenses? Do they even have birth certificates?”

  “This one may have been born here,” Henry said. “He’s young enough. Or maybe he was banished as a baby.”

  “Do they teach you Alarian instead of English?” John asked.

  A string of Alarian words erupted from his mouth.

  “I should get an Alarian-to-English dictionary,” Henry said.

  “How many of you assholes are left on this planet?” John said.

  “Fuck you, multiple swine,” he spat.

  “Listen, before the police get here and haul your defective asses off,” John said. “Tell Gesalex that I’ll transfer every single last one of you assholes wherever you want to go. Any universe out there. A free one-way ticket. Just to get you guys outta here. The offer still stands.”

  “Die a slow death, dup pig,” he said.

  John stepped on his arm and pressed down, until the man gasped.

  “Tell Gesalex that he and anyone who wants to can leave this universe for free,” John said slowly. “Do you understand me?”

  The man didn’t answer, so John leaned harder until he screamed.

  “Ah! Fine! I’ll tell him!”

  “Here come the police,” Grace said. Lights were flashing through the windows. John let his foot off the thug. It wouldn’t do to be seen torturing their trussed thief.

  After two hours, the rescue squad managed to raise the second thug from the quarry floor. He had multiple broken bones. The first was hauled away in the sheriff’s car, to be charged with breaking and entering. Grace had mentioned the restraining order, and if they could prove that either man was an employee of Grauptham House, they’d add the charge of violating a judge’s order.

  “They know about our warehouse,” Henry said.

  “We shouldn’t have built a device here,” John said.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Grace said. “They didn’t get it open.”

  “I think we need a security guard on-site, all the time,” Henry said.

  “I think we need to deal with the Alarians once and for all,” John said.

  “You said it.”

  * * *

  He dropped Henry Top and Grace Top at Henry and Grace’s house in the suburbs of Toledo. Then he drove to the new apartment he and Casey were sharing. They’d moved after the assault by the other Alarian thugs. How long before the Alarians knew their new address?

  They knew where the pinball factory was, they’d known where the Rayburns lived, and they now apparently knew the Wizards had something going on in the quarry warehouse. John felt no safety at all in Universe 7650. Maybe it was time to leave for some other location. He could move Casey and him to 7651. There was no Casey Top or John Top.

  With ten actively settled universes, 7650 held little real value. Except that it was the clearinghouse for most of their money transactions. Any arbitrage was converted into gold, silver, or platinum and transferred to 7650 for conversion into cash.

  “So what happened?” Casey asked. John had called her after the police arrived, but couldn’t explain because the sheriff had wanted his statement.

  “More Alarian thugs,” he said.

  “Again? We need to put a stop to this.”

  “My thoughts exactly,” John said. “They won’t leave us alone. They know where we work. It’s just a matter of time before they hurt us in their attempts to get the gate technology.”

  “We don’t even know who they are,” Casey said.

  “We can guess if we see a corporate roster,” John said with a laugh.

  “Yeah, they’re all Crudadud, or Yuffamix, or Slartibartfast,” Casey said, joining in his laughter. “All we need is a phone book.”

  “Did you want to comb through the Pittsburgh white pages?”

  “No, not really.”

  Casey, dressed in one of his T-shirts and devoid of any makeup, looked absolutely heavenly to him as she stood in the doorway to the kitchen. He finished pouring his glass of milk, almost spilling it as he looked at her.

  “Oops,” she said. “You almost spilled it all.”

  “I know, I was just thinking, and I was distracted.”

  “Oh, yeah, what were you thinking?” Casey reached up and wrapped her arms around his neck.

  He didn’t tell her what he had been really thinking, that he should marry Casey, just like Prime had married his own Casey. Instead he said, “That there are a million universes without any Alarians at all.”

  “Yeah. It would be nice to take a permanent vacation from them,” she said.

  “But I don’t think Grace wants to cede this universe just yet,” he said.

  “She’s hired private investigators to find out the Grauptham House and EmVis employees and owners,” Casey said. “She’s pulled off this restraining order, and we managed to buy ourselves back from them. It’s a good fight. But deadly.”

  “Yeah, but we’re constrained by the law, and they aren’t. They don’t give a crap for law,” John said. “Prime would know what to do.”

  “Prime? Why do you always invoke his name when something hard needs to be done?”

  John shrugged. “I don’t, but he knows what to do. He knows how to take action.”

  “Aren’t you both the same person?”

  “No,” John said. “I wouldn’t do the things he does. We’re different.”

  “But you’d condone the dirty work you ask him to do?” Casey asked.

  John shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  “Prime is amoral,” Casey said. “You are not. He’s a dangerous man.”

  “But you just said we’re the same person,” John said. “That makes me dangerous.”

  “Well, you can’t have it both ways,” Casey said. “You can’t be him and not be him. You can’t be amorally dangerous and morally responsible at the same time. Or can you?”

  Prime was John. John was Prime. He had always told himself that in the same situation, he would have done the same things that Prime had, desperate to get back to his home universe. John, however, had been subject to a different set of stressors, a different environment. But when John had needed him to save Grace and Henry, Prime had come willingly. He had redeemed himself in John’s eyes. Perhaps he was a rogue, but he had saved his friends’ lives.

  Casey wrapped her arms around John’s neck. “Something should be done, yes? Just not tonight, I think.”

  “I agree,” John said. He bent to kiss her, but she evaded his kiss, slipped from his embrace, and turned toward the door. She paused at the doorway, gave him a single look, and disappeared down the hallway.

  He left his milk on the counter and hurried to follow her.

  CHAPTER 17

  “What is that?” John asked.

  Grace was crouched over a small television screen in the office above the pinball warehouse. She was typing on a keyboard as she peered at the screen.

  “It’s a computer,” she said, not even looking up.

  “What? No way that’s a computer,” he said. The computers he had used in the programming class he’d taken at the university were mainframes that took up whole rooms. In FORTRAN class, they’d toured the computer facilities; the rooms were all white and super cold. To control the computers, J
ohn had used punch cards, not a little typewriter.

  “It is,” Grace said.

  “It’s … too small!”

  “You remember 6013?”

  John paused. “No.” They’d scoped out a lot of universes to settle. John would transfer in via a fixed gate in 7651 carrying the portable device and explore the quarry area. Once they had a stable, safe location, they could use the fixed gate to move in a reconnaissance team.

  “There was no John, no Grace, no Henry, no Casey,” Grace said.

  “There were a lot of those,” John said. A lot of the universes outside the 7000 range seemed radically different from their own, so much so that often the universe was one where none of them existed. The universes near 7000 all seemed similar in their histories, though there were always anomalies sprinkled throughout, such as the Pleistocene world.

  “The recon team pulled a Sears catalog,” Grace said.

  “A Sears what?”

  “Like a Macy’s here.”

  “Oh.”

  “In there,” she said, pointing to a long cardboard box labeled 6013. He opened it and pulled out a thick catalog. One of the pages was marked, and on the page was an ad for a personal computer, identical to the one Grace had in front of her. He read the wondrous ad, his mind jumping in amazement.

  “It does … this?” he asked. “Word processing? What’s a spreadsheet? Accounting?”

  “Yes,” Grace said. “I may be able to fire our accountant. This program handles a company’s books.”

  “No!”

  “Yes.”

  “I want one.”

  “I knew you would,” she said. “Yours is in the corner.”

  “Mine,” he said.

  He pulled open the box, removed the manuals, and began to read.

  * * *

  Two hours later, he looked up, realizing he was alone in the room and had to pee badly. He ran down the steps to the shop floor and found Grace in conversation with the shop boss, Viv. Grace gave him a smile as he hopped from foot to foot, as if she had known what would happen when she gave him a personal computer. Finally, when the conversation ended, John said, “Do you know what we can do with those?”

  “I think so,” Grace said. “Henry says we can eliminate the paper transfer, do everything by floppy disk.”

  “Sure, we can use it to track stuff,” John said. “But we can write a program to look for universe differences for us. It can be our arbitrage system, instead of us looking for things ourselves!”

  “Oh,” Grace said. “We could load a universe’s data into the system—”

  “The database.”

  “—and it would figure out what we could exploit.”

  “Exactly.”

  John’s mind wouldn’t settle down. He had gone his whole life without ever knowing of a personal computer, and now in two hours he couldn’t envision a universe without it. They could do … anything.

  “Grace Top thinks we could sell these,” Grace said. “Buy them in 6013 and double the price here. There’s no competition at all. We’d dominate the market.”

  John nodded, but turned suddenly as the door to the factory opened and a tall woman walked in.

  Her features were striking: her hair was platinum blond and she was as tall as John was. She was not particularly beautiful, but the set of her face was so unique that a person passing her on the street couldn’t help but look twice.

  She looked at him with blue eyes when she saw that John was staring at her. She walked directly toward him.

  “Mr. Wilson, sir?” she said.

  “Yes, that’s me,” John said, always shocked when someone used his taken name in 7650 of Wilson instead of his given name of Rayburn.

  “My name is … Clotilde,” she said. John pulled back at the name, realized that she was Alarian. He would have known instantly if she were male and walked through the warehouse door. It would have been obvious. But he couldn’t recall ever seeing a female Alarian. “Clotilde Visgrath.”

  Beside him, Grace gave an animal snarl and launched herself at the woman. Grace’s elbow caught her in the solar plexus, and the woman woofed, falling on her rump.

  Grace brought her knee up and slammed it into the woman’s nose. There was a sickening crack. She rolled over on all fours and did not move or make a sound.

  John caught Grace’s shoulder and pulled her back. The woman was rocking back and forth as blood dribbled onto the concrete floor.

  By then, Viv was there, looking on, as were a dozen of the line workers. John gave her a look, and she nodded.

  “All right, you monkeys!” Viv cried. “Stop lollygagging and get back to work.” The workers turned away sullenly, but not a one disobeyed.

  John pulled Grace backward until she stopped fighting him and sat her forcibly in an office chair.

  “Don’t get up, Grace,” he said into her face. “Don’t move.”

  She met his eyes for a moment and nodded.

  “I mean it,” he said.

  “All right,” she whispered. “Get her out of my factory.”

  “We’ll see what she has to say first,” John said.

  Grace said nothing, but she sat heavily back into the chair.

  John grabbed a handful of napkins from a nearby desk and knelt beside the woman named Clotilde Visgrath. He handed the napkins to her, but she did nothing but remain on all fours, rocking.

  “Ms. Visgrath,” John said. “Clotilde, please take these napkins.”

  For a long moment she did not move. Finally she turned and looked at the napkins. She took them and dabbed them against her face.

  “I am sorry to offend, master,” she whispered. “I am sorry to offend.”

  John was unsure of the reaction. It was not how a bossy American female would respond to an attack. Not what he would have expected from an Alarian male. Then he remembered Stella, Visgrath’s docile and seemingly brainless secretary. Had Stella been an Alarian too? Was there some difference in class based on gender in that society?

  “It’s all right,” John said. He put some of the napkins on the puddle of blood beneath Clotilde. “Grace … had a problem with someone named Visgrath.”

  Clotilde looked quickly at Grace then down again. “My … my father.”

  “Oh,” John said, and he felt less horrified by what Grace had done to her. She was an Alarian. Progeny of the most evil person he had ever known. John took her arm to help her up, but she remained on her hands and knees, rocking back and forth.

  “I’m sorry, sir. Please forgive me, sir,” she repeated.

  John felt sickened by her submissive behavior. She had been beaten down, taught to submit to anyone showing force. And she was the leader’s daughter.

  “Stand up,” John said.

  Clotilde glanced at his feet, and then shook her head.

  “It’s all right,” John said. “I want you to stand … now.”

  She nodded nearly imperceptibly, and stood slowly. John dabbed the napkins to her nose and lip. She frowned, uncomfortable with this attention. Her face was already swelling. By tomorrow, she’d have two black eyes.

  “Why are you here?” John asked. “You know we’re not particularly fond of you Alarians.”

  “I know, sir. I know,” she said. “I came—” She paused then seemed to gather her strength. “I came because you said you’d send anyone of the People—us—who came to you anywhere he or she wanted.”

  “I did,” John said. “I did say that.” He looked at her closely. “You want to leave this universe? And go back to the Alarian home universe?”

  “No!” she cried. “No, sir. I don’t want to go there. I just want to leave this one.”

  John looked at Grace. She sat on the chair, arms folded, staring straight at Clotilde. “She wants to defect,” he said.

  “Don’t trust her,” Grace said coldly.

  “I’m sorry for what my father did,” she cried. “I had nothing to do with it. Please, mistress!”

  “It’s a trap,” Gr
ace said. “Some scheme.”

  “No, I’m sincere, mistress! I am.”

  Grace stood and advanced on Clotilde. The woman cowered as Grace approached. She would have fallen to her knees if John hadn’t had a hold of her shoulder.

  Grace peered closely at her. “I killed your father,” she whispered.

  Clotilde looked at her in shock with large blue eyes. “Yes, I know,” she said. “Thank you.”

  * * *

  Grace did not exactly warm to Clotilde, but nor did she attack the woman again. John fetched ice from the freezer and then made an ice pack for her face. Grace led them to the upstairs office and stood while Clotilde sat on the low leather couch. She answered their questions tentatively.

  “I don’t know where the Alarians have gone,” she said. “No female knows where the home world is. And certainly no half-breed. I just know that Lord Charboric and most of the other Twelve—I mean Eleven—are gone.”

  “Gesalex is one of the Twelve?”

  “The youngest. He was a boy when they were banished here.”

  “And he’s all that’s left here from the originals?” John continued.

  “Yes, Lord Charboric left him to move the transfer gate to the laboratory, only something went wrong.”

  “Stop calling him ‘Lord,’” Grace said.

  “Yes, mistress,” Clotilde said meekly.

  “How many went through before they moved the gate?” Grace asked.

  “Hundreds,” Clotilde said. “Charboric and his favorite women. The other Eleven, except for Gesalex, and their favorites. Some of the oldest half-breed males.”

  “Did any come back?” Grace asked.

  “None.”

  Grace and John shared a glance. Why hadn’t they come back? They had fled this universe to … somewhere. Surely they had a gate there.

  “And how many are left, of the People, I mean,” John said. “How many are in the know?”

  “Less than a hundred,” Clotilde said.

  “From the outside, Grauptham House looks like it’s in chaos,” Grace said. She stood apart from Clotilde, her arms crossed.

  “It is, mistress,” she said.

  “Stop calling me ‘mistress,’” Grace said. “Only Henry is allowed to do that.”