The Broken Universe

by Melko, Paul

  He walked up to the door, tried it. It was locked. He remembered where Grace and Henry of his universe hid their spare key, in a magnetic box under the rail at the far end of the porch. He found the key there.

  He turned back toward the door and stopped.

  There were tracks in the unmelted snow under the window. Boot prints.

  Soldiers—or armed persons of some sort—had been here in the last two days.

  Maybe it was just the police.

  But why the police?

  Because the quarry was owned in the name of Pinball Wizards, Inc., in this universe, and Henry and Grace were part owners. That’s why. They were just looking for answers.

  But would the police shovel the driveway?

  John turned and walked down the driveway.

  Over his breath, over the scrape of his shoes on the concrete, he heard the whoosh of wind above him.

  He ran.

  They’d been discovered by the local government! Somehow they’d tipped their hand and been found out. One of the team here had triggered the self-destruct and was either captured or dead. And the police—maybe the army!—had staked out the house to find their associates.

  John had walked right into it.

  He left the sidewalk behind, dodging between houses. The sound seemed to follow him. Helicopter. He risked a glance over his shoulder.

  A faint light dipped over the roof of the house to the right.

  He ran across the backyard, between trees, past an aboveground pool, over a hedge.

  He realized he had to stop and transfer out. Was he safe here? He ducked around the corner of the next house, sucking in air as he leaned against the cement. The whirl above him was muffled. He heard footsteps.

  John crouched lower between the trash can on one side of him and the hose reel on the other.

  A dark shape appeared in front of him. The soldier was dressed in all black, with no insignia. He carried a rifle, but it seemed too sleek, too rounded. He didn’t recognize the model.

  The soldier stood there, scanning the area. His eyes seemed to pass right over John but didn’t stop. The man waited ten seconds, fifteen, peering into the darkness. Then he reached to his shoulder and tapped something.

  He spoke words that weren’t English, and then he ran forward into the darkness.

  John pressed the switch on the device and transferred to 7535.

  * * *

  They convened in the common room of the New Toledo settlement. Though one of the other universes would have had more modern conveniences, 7535 was the only one where ten sets of identical people could meet and not cause a disturbance that would have to be explained.

  Grace took a roll call. All four of them from 7322, 7462, 7512, and 7650: quartets from Low, Pinball, Gore, and Home. John and Henry from 7458, Universe Gold. John, Grace, and Henry from 7510, Universe Quayle. John Prime and Casey from 7533. John from 7601, Universe Ten, though he spent a lot of his time in 7535, the Pleistocene. John, Henry, and Casey from 7625, Universe Case. And Grace and Henry from 7651, Universe Top. Twenty-nine board members, with four missing from 7351: John, Henry, Grace, and Casey Champ. John Superprime was there as well, though they had yet to vote him onto the board.

  This was the first time they had all met together in one place.

  When the last of them arrived, John stood and raised his hands for their attention.

  “I wish this were a better time for us,” he said. “I wish we were all meeting under perfect circumstances. But urgent matters have come to our attention.” He paused. “I think we can dispense with introductions,” he said with a smile. There was an abrupt bark of laughter from the group. “You all know me as John Rayburn, originally John-7533 and now John Home. You all are the board members from every settled universe of Pinball Wizards, Transdimensional, except for one universe.”

  His colleagues looked around at each other.

  “Four days ago, the self-destruct on the transfer gate in Universe Champ was triggered, obliterating the transfer mechanism. I traveled there yesterday, going to Grace’s and Henry’s house in 7351. It was empty. Worse, it was a trap. Soldiers were watching the house, waiting for someone to come.”

  There were mutters and quiet words.

  “The local government?” a Henry asked.

  “Not the local government,” John said. “I thought so at first. That we had somehow let ourselves be spotted in that universe. But I think it’s worse than that. The soldiers did not speak English, or any other language I recognized. Not even Alarian.”

  “Shit.”

  “We’ve been avoiding the truth, I think. We thought with Visgrath dead and Charboric banished, with Grauptham House under our control, we’d be safe. But the fact remains that someone put the Alarians in 7650. Someone banished them to one of our universes for transgressions. There is an entity—called the Vig—that takes it upon itself to police the multiverse.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know. But I think we’ve run afoul of them somehow.”

  “Where are John, Casey, Henry, and Grace Champ?” someone asked.

  “We don’t know.”

  “We have to find them!” This was Grace Home, he knew, fearing for anyone who might have been held captive.

  “We have to be careful,” John said. “But, yes, I want to go back to 7351 to find them.”

  “Not by yourself!” one of the Johns said.

  “No, not by myself.”

  “We need to take it to these bastards!”

  “Yeah!”

  “Hold on, hold on!” John said. “They probably have a lot more resources than we do. They are organized and mean and have professional soldiers.”

  “But we’re smarter,” a Henry said.

  “And we have ten universes to call upon,” Casey Gore said.

  “And a multibillion-dollar corporation,” Grace Top said.

  John sighed. “I have faith in every one of you. I do. But I fear we’ve run across something too great for us to handle. I couldn’t stand for any of you to be hurt. I will not—”

  “—allow it?” Grace Home finished for him. “We are not all your responsibility, dork. Stop trying to make everything perfect.”

  “Uh, yeah, I guess so.”

  “Yeah, that’s right. What’s your plan?”

  “Here’s what I think,” John said. “They need to remain as secret as we do.” The Johns returned his smile. They knew where he was going.

  CHAPTER 31

  “That’s the last of the gold,” Grace Home said. “We have a hundred thousand in cash in this universe ready. If we need more, we can convert more gold.”

  “That should be enough,” John said. They had rented the same warehouse in Universe Champ that they used in Home Office to reach the Pleistocene universe. It was the command center, and the site of the biggest gate they had ever built. Henry Home and Henry Top were managing the construction of two more secondary gates in other corners of the city. One was near Grace’s and Henry’s house at Grover Estates in Universe Champ, about three kilometers away in an old textile factory. And another was near Casey’s and John’s apartment about fifteen kilometers to the northeast of Grace’s and Henry’s house. The warehouse was about halfway between the two auxiliary sites.

  A circle to mark incoming transfer zones was in the center of a mass of supplies and equipment. John Prime had shown up with M16 rifles, body armor, and grenades.

  “Where did you get that?” John had asked.

  “Uh, trade show in my universe. No licenses needed for this stuff,” he said. “Do you believe it?”

  “Uh, I guess,” John said, but before he could ask more questions, someone shouted out.

  “The house across the street from Henry’s and Grace’s house is up for rent. I’ve got a call in to a broker. We should have access by the evening.”

  They’d put a bank of phones in that morning, a rush order with the local phone company. John wondered what the line jockeys had thought putting ten phon
es on a table in the middle of an otherwise empty warehouse. One of their surveys had run across a world in which portable phones were commonplace. Not so in any of their settled universes, though it would have been very convenient to have pocket-sized walkie-talkies to let people know what was going on.

  “Good,” Grace Home said.

  These transactions were going through the Pinball Wizards company in this universe. John hoped no one was tracking that. How much influence and power did the Vig have in a random universe? Did they keep a presence in every universe?

  John Case entered the warehouse and motioned to John. Each of the Johns had taken to wearing a unique identifier, a beard style, a haircut, that made differentiating easier. The Caseys all wore their hair differently. But the Graces and Henrys might as well have been just two persons for all he could tell them apart.

  “We have some bad news,” John Case said. He carried a stack of newspapers in his hands. “Here’s the Findlay papers from three and two days ago. There was a body in the wreckage of the quarry warehouse.”

  “Who?”

  “Undetermined. They don’t say in either of these two papers.”

  “Call the coroner. Then call the sheriff. See if there’s been an identification.”

  “Right.”

  He grabbed a Grace’s shoulder. “How much activity are we putting through the company here?”

  She nodded. “You think it might be tracked?”

  “The quarry site was owned by Pinball Wizards here. They all worked for the company. Whoever’s after us may be watching the company.”

  “That would require some sort of warrant, some sort of government interaction.”

  “Yeah, but…”

  “Right. Cash transactions where possible.”

  “Yeah.”

  “We’ll go through our cash faster that way.”

  “Then we’ll have to launder more money.”

  “Right.”

  John turned as a Henry came up to him. “We’ve got the courier set to deliver the package to John’s and Casey’s apartment in twenty minutes.”

  “And they’ll ring the doorbell for five minutes?”

  “Yeah, I told them to get a signature and that the occupants are hard of hearing. They’ll wait at least five.”

  “Who’s watching?”

  “We’ve got a private investigator watching the front of the complex. He knows about the package.”

  “He’s taking pictures?”

  “Yeah, he’s got line of sight of the door through a window. Not perfect, but he can see if anyone opens the door.”

  “Good.”

  There were a lot of pieces in play, John thought. Too many things for him alone to keep straight. Yet, he had the most dedicated, self-directing team anyone could ask for. Consensus was easy to reach with this group, and he was likely to agree with any decision one of his doppelgangers happened to make. They were an army of Johns, a fleet of Caseys, an air wing of Henrys, and a corps of Graces.

  “Have we checked the offices yet?” he asked aloud to no one.

  “The office is in a business complex in Smerna,” a Henry said. “We called the office manager there, and they told us the office was locked tight, and no one had been there in three days. She was holding some packages for them.”

  “Let’s check all the parents’ houses,” John said. “They could be hiding out there.”

  John heaved himself into a chair and watched the chaos around him. They’d find out what happened here, sooner or later.

  * * *

  A Henry set down one of the phones.

  “That was the PI at Casey’s and John’s apartment complex. No one answered the door, even after five minutes. The courier left the box.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Yeah, a guy exited a van in the parking lot, entered the building, and looked at the package before returning to the van.”

  “Did he get pictures?”

  “Yep, of the van and of the guy. He wants to know if he should get them developed or keep the surveillance up.”

  “I want the pictures. And get the license plate number now.”

  Henry read off the license number. John wrote it down and handed it to John Prime.

  “You think you can find out who this is registered to?”

  “Duh.” He took the number and grabbed one of the phones.

  “Social engineering,” John said to the Grace walking past.

  “Sounds devious to me.”

  “Hey, yeah,” John said, his mind fumbling with something. “Can someone go pick up the packages at the Pinball Wizards office in Smerna?”

  A Grace and a Henry volunteered.

  “Take some protection!” John called. “We need bodyguards or something.”

  “No sign of them at any of the parents’ but they’re all worried, and there have been enquiries from others,” someone called.

  “Enquiries?”

  “Someone’s looking for the four.”

  John nodded, taking that as a good sign. If they were in the custody of the Vig, then the Vig wouldn’t be looking for them. But what about the dead body found in the wreckage of the transfer gate?

  “That van,” John Prime said, “was rented three days ago to an Agnes Ulysses, along with three other vans.”

  “You got the license plates on those, make and models?”

  “Of course. All are black, all are the same Tucker Comet van.”

  “Pass the descriptions and license numbers around. We know what they’re driving at least.”

  “Where’d they get the helicopter, though?” Prime asked.

  “Probably brought that through a transfer gate. Cars are hard to disguise if they’re a weird make and model. Aircraft? Not as easy to say it doesn’t belong here.”

  “True.”

  Four vans of bad guys and one helicopter. They needed to apply some heat, make it hard to operate.

  “What can we do to make the police help us by flushing these guys?” John asked.

  A Grace said, “Call in crimes with the vans as the getaway car? Hit-and-run incidents?”

  “We need bodies to make that real to the police. A fake hit-and-run won’t work,” Prime said.

  “Think on it,” John said. “If we can get them tripped up, it’ll free us to work more in the open.”

  “I’m on it,” Prime said.

  * * *

  John Prime took an overcoat from the rack and hid explosives in the huge inner pocket. He looked over his shoulder as he did so, making sure no one noticed. Farmboy had asked him to trip the enemy up, and that he could do. The explosives were something he’d found at an army base in 9000.

  The wind swirled around him as he left the warehouse. A meticulous Henry marked his exit on a pad of paper.

  “How long will you be out, John?” he asked.

  “Sixty minutes.”

  “Okay.”

  The warehouse was on the edge of Toledo’s small downtown. Prime headed away from it, into a grungy, run-down area. He wanted to be a good distance from the warehouse, but he also wanted a desolate unpopulated area.

  He found it, fifteen blocks away—an empty factory off the main thoroughfares. The for-sale sign on the chain-link fence meant the place was empty. He slipped through a hole in the fence, and, looking around for anyone who might be watching, jogged across the lot to the nearest door. It was locked, but twenty meters around the corner, a garage door was partially open. He slid under and blinked at the sudden darkness.

  The building smelled of oil and rust. He listened and heard nothing but silence. Perfect.

  He took the explosive device from his pocket. It was a simple device, with a timer and huge yield. He had spent an afternoon in Universe 9000 blowing up houses, buildings, and cars.

  There was a press machine in the middle of the factory floor. That was as good a target as any.

  He set the device on the press and set the timer for five minutes: long enough for him to get away but still
be a witness for the next part of the plan.

  Prime ran for the garage door. He rolled under it, ran across the lot, and dashed through the hole in the fence. Then he slowed his pace, looking around. A car drove slowly down a cross street, but the driver didn’t look his way. He walked casually down the sidewalk.

  He was three blocks away when the blast rumbled over him. The concussion pushed his lungs and made him feel like he needed to cough. The fireball rose into the sky like a mushroom cloud. There was a second explosion, then another.

  Apparently there’d been some combustibles in the old building.

  By the time he got back to the building, there was already a crowd standing at the fence. He slipped in among them. The building crackled and burnt.

  “Did you see those Tucker Comet vans that just drove away?” he asked no one and everyone.

  “No, man, what did you see?”

  “Four vans were parked outside the building just before the explosion. Did you see that? They had stickers from Allbright Rentals,” Prime said.

  “Yeah, I think so.”

  He moved away to the other side of the crowd.

  “Where’d those black Tucker Comet vans go?” he asked aloud.

  “What vans?”

  “They were right here before the explosion. Then they just drove off.”

  “Four vans?”

  “From Allbright Rentals, I think,” Prime added.

  “I think I saw them.”

  When John Prime heard the sirens, he slipped away, a smile on his face.

  * * *

  “You’re sure?”

  John turned at the change in Grace’s voice. She was on one of the phones.

  Her face was pale. She saw John looking at her, and she returned his look with one of dejection. She nodded at something said on the other side.

  “His parents saw the body? There was … it was identifiable.” She paused, her hand shaking. “Thank you.”

  Grace refused to look up at him as he neared.

  “What is it? What happened?” John asked.

  “John … John Champ is dead,” Grace said. “His was the body found in the transfer gate wreckage.”

  “Oh, no,” John said. “Oh, no.”

  The warehouse floor seemed to waver, and he found himself sitting heavily beside the bank of phones, Grace’s hand on his shoulder.