The Broken Universe

by Melko, Paul

  “If they had that sort of force in the first place—”

  “The universe is a big place. Maybe we’re in such a backwater we don’t even see the wars being waged,” Casey said. “We just don’t know.”

  “I hope not,” John said. “We just don’t know. Which is why I have to look.”

  She kissed him, her arms wrapped around his neck. “Just be careful.”

  * * *

  By eight that evening, the morgue was empty of all its employees save the cleaning staff. John trailed a pair of Slavic cleaners through a first-floor entrance and followed signs to the morgue. The inner room smelled of disinfectant and other less clean smells.

  No one was at the front desk, but some sort of rock-and-roll music played from the speaker of a transistor radio.

  “Hello?” he called.

  No answer came back.

  He pushed through a door that said COLD CHAMBER.

  The room was twenty meters long and ten meters wide. The temperature was near freezing. Wheeled tables lined one wall and meter-square doors lined the opposite wall.

  A bearded, long-haired man in scrubs was leaning over a table with a corpse on it.

  “Yeah?”

  “You Bob Lauric?”

  “Yeah, and what do you want?”

  “I want to take a look at a body you have here.”

  “Shit. Another one?”

  “What?”

  “It’s been a regular turnstile in here this week,” he said. “Let me guess. You want to see the death-by-police victim.”

  “Uh, yeah.”

  “Which paper you from?”

  “No paper.”

  “You’re not a reporter?”

  “No.”

  The man came around the table and peered at John. “Then what do you care?”

  “I’m an investigator. I’m investigating.” John reached into his pocket and handed Lauric fifty dollars.

  “Nah, the price is up this week. Supply and demand. I need a hundred.”

  John shrugged. He’d brought more than fifty in case. He fished another bill from his pocket and handed it to Lauric.

  “Fine,” Lauric said. He pointed at a door. “Number twelve.”

  There was a handle. John grabbed it and pulled. A pale cadaver lay within. Four bullet holes adorned the body’s chest. He had no tattoos, no identifying marks, no jewelry, no clothing. No transfer device.

  “Has he been identified?” John asked.

  “Hell if I know. No next of kin have been by to see him though.”

  “Did he have anything on him? A wallet, tools?”

  “Keep pulling.”

  John pulled the corpse out another half meter. There was a plastic box at the body’s feet. Inside was a watch, a wallet, a flashlight. Beneath that were a folded shirt, folded pants, and a jacket.

  “Police took the guns and ammo.”

  “Normal guns?”

  “As normal as guns can be.”

  John looked at the watch. No logo. The wallet had no ID, no credit cards, just seventy dollars in cash. There were no tags at the nape of the shirt, nor at the waist of the pants.

  “Weird,” John said.

  “Yep. Nothing on that guy,” Lauric said. “You want to see the other one?”

  “What other one?”

  “Number thirteen,” Lauric said.

  John glanced at the drawer below twelve. He pushed twelve in and pulled thirteen out.

  It looked like a slab of beef.

  John realized in a moment it was the soldier John Prime had sliced in half with the gate.

  “Jesus.”

  “Yeah, we don’t have the other half of him,” Lauric said. “Very odd.”

  John knew where the other half was.

  “How many died in the blast? Where did those bodies go?”

  “FBI took the bits and pieces we could find,” Lauric said.

  “How many died?”

  “Three? Five? Seven? Dunno.” Lauric looked quickly at the clock. “All right, you gotta go.”

  “Why?”

  “Because … because my manager is coming by to meet with me,” Lauric said. “I can’t have you here then. You saw, now go.”

  John didn’t have a reason to argue. There was no clue to be had on the corpses. They were clean of any sort of identifying mark. There was no abnormal technology. No clue. There was nothing to find here.

  “Thanks, Bob,” he said.

  He left the morgue and headed back the way he came. Exiting the door, he found himself face-to-face with three men dressed in black leather jackets. They pushed past him and into the city building. John thought nothing of it, until he saw the black van idling near the curb.

  He walked quickly, head lowered as if to avoid the cold, toward his car. He couldn’t see if someone sat at the wheel of the van, but he didn’t make himself obvious by staring. His rental was in the lot across from the city building, not quite with a clear view of the van. John pulled out and found another slot a little farther down and with clear sight of the front door and the van.

  Ten minutes passed, and no one entered or exited the building or the van. Finally, one of the three who had squeezed past him appeared and waved.

  The van dropped into gear and drove slowly down the street until it reached an alley. John pulled out of his spot and followed. He peered down the alley but did not turn into it.

  The van had backed up against a loading dock. John looked in the rearview mirror; no one was behind him. He stayed there for a few seconds. Bob Lauric appeared, pushing a gurney. The three men grabbed the bagged body and settled it into the back of the van. A minute later, Lauric appeared with a second body bag.

  John pulled a little way forward and waited. When the second bag had been placed in the van, the three men entered the side door and the van turned back toward the main street.

  John ducked down as the van pulled past, then followed at a leisurely pace. It accelerated onto the interstate and headed north for several kilometers before it pulled off onto a state highway.

  It was just John’s car and the van, so John let himself fade back a little. The van couldn’t go far without his seeing its taillights.

  About ten kilometers along the highway, the van turned into a long driveway. John noted the address as he passed and continued on.

  He pulled off at the next drive and watched the van’s lights disappear into a patch of trees. Even through the trees, he could see its headlights wash tree trunks and patches of white snow on the ground. It stopped not too far into the trees.

  John left his car where it was, at the end of the driveway of a dark house, hoping it would be fine there.

  He ran across the frozen, tundralike field. Severed cornstalks grabbed at his feet.

  John reached the driveway and paused. He could smell the exhaust smoke of the van, and just ahead, he heard the rumble of the van’s engine.

  The driveway dropped off to either side into a drainage ditch filled with drifted snow. He had no choice but to take the driveway. Ducking low, he followed the gravel path.

  He’d only gone a few meters when he heard arguing voices. Definitely not English, he decided, not Alarian, nor anything he recognized.

  As he came nearer, lights flared. He thought the van had turned around toward him, but no. Overhead security lights now illuminated the open area in front of a large barn. Farther up the drive was an old farmhouse. But it was the barn that the van was parked in front of. Four men from the van were talking with a fifth that had emerged from the barn.

  Inside the barn was a vehicle the likes of which John had never seen. It looked like a harvester at first, but no combine bristled with weapons like this one did. John could only assume those were weapons. It was dull black, two stories tall, and sitting atop six huge, studded wheels. It was wider than three normal cars. A ramp led up to a gaping doorway, but he could see little of the interior.

  The vehicle was a war machine of some sort, he was certain. But what point
was there to bring such a thing to this universe? Its very appearance would have excited comment and immediate response. Why bring the thing through at all?

  John scooted off the driveway and into the ditch. Trying not to disturb the snow, he took shelter under a pine tree. The trunk was sappy, but the ground immediately below the branches was free of snow. It felt like a bunker from which he could observe the enemy.

  Whatever conversation the five were having ended and two of them started dragging the body bags from the black van. They dumped them on the ground. There was no ceremony involved, no ritual. They hadn’t retrieved the bodies to honor them.

  The fifth man wore a mask over his face. John had assumed it was for the cold, but the mask looked like a gas mask. It was black and the shield was reflective. He stood back from the other four as if he were in charge.

  He gestured for the two carrying the bodies to stop; he asked a question. One pointed to one of the bags, which the masked man ordered them to open. Based on the size, John guessed it was the corpse that had been cut in half.

  The masked man squatted and looked at the body, but did not touch it. He asked a question, muffled by the mask. The same man shrugged a nonanswer.

  The masked man barked a harsh question. He brought his hand down in a cutting motion. John guessed he was asking about the other half of the corpse or why it was cut in half. John knew the morbid answer.

  The masked man made another gesture and the other man zipped the bag closed again. The two continued dragging the bags into the huge machine.

  John heard a humming. A wind blew a gust of snow across the drive. The masked man looked up, and from the sky a machine landed in the drive. It was just a few meters long and a couple wide. A single pilot sat in the front of it. As it landed, John heard very little sound at all. Clearly, this silent aircraft was what had chased him from Henry’s and Grace’s house in this universe.

  John watched as the pilot dismounted, and then began folding the flying machine, bending wings and struts into the fuselage until it was no bigger than a meter by a meter. Then he and another of the men from the van rolled it onto the large vehicle.

  The masked man gave an order and everyone ran toward the machine, up the ramp, and into the machine. The leader was the last to leave and scanned the frozen drive before disappearing into the vehicle’s maw.

  John heard a humming, a deep throb that reached him through the ground. He wanted to flee, but he held his ground under the pine tree.

  With a whoosh, the vehicle disappeared. Air seemed to suck him in, and then just as quickly it pushed him back. He gasped, realizing he’d been holding his breath.

  He’d just seen a transfer device, the first time ever he’d seen one besides the one on his chest and the ones he had built from scratch. It was embedded in that monstrous machine, and it transferred it en masse. The power of it shook the earth and collapsed the air around it when it moved.

  John crawled forward, out from under the tree, and stood slowly in the knee-high snow. The Wizards were truly up against someone who had the same technology they had. He had seen it, someone else had transdimensional traveling ability, and they were after the Pinball Wizards.

  He’d known it, but now he’d seen it.

  John stepped forward onto the driveway. He glanced at the farmhouse. It was dark and apparently empty. The snow to the side door was undisturbed. The enemy had wanted the farm for its large garage only. They’d needed someplace to store their war machine, someplace out of sight.

  John pulled open the van’s side door. No black-clad enemy lurked within, just the antiseptic smell of the morgue clinging to the unfinished cargo area. Otherwise the van was empty. He reached under the front seats, checked the glove. Nothing.

  John peered into the garage. Indented in the dirt three centimeters deep was the tread imprint of the tires of the behemoth. Even in the cold, frozen ground, the thing had left impressions. John scanned his flashlight around the dark corners. Nothing.

  He turned, glancing one last time before starting for his rental car. He’d seen them, he’d found them, and now the enormity of their enemy had been driven home. There was more, he realized. He’d seen their transfer devices. He’d seen them and how they acted. They could use all that information.

  He had taken no more than three steps when he was knocked flat.

  The whoosh pushed John down, and as he fell, he turned to see the machine hulking over him, just meters away.

  “Shit!” he cried, struggling to get up in his bulky winter coat.

  Lights flared. He ran, aiming for the tree he had crawled under.

  Shouts sounded behind him.

  He dove under the tree, flattening himself against the ground. Something whizzed through the air near his head. A stream of bullets turned the trunk of the tree into Swiss cheese. Splinters rained down in front of his eyes. Only there was no explosion of gunpowder, no rat-a-tat-tat of machine-gun fire. The gun was using some other method of launching projectiles. Some silent way.

  The tree keeled over, exposing him to the sky and light. Something heavy hit his shoulder. A webbing of some kind, sticky and thick. He tried to shake it off, but the stuff was glued to him.

  He reached into his jacket to trigger the device, to get him out of there, but his right hand wouldn’t move. The sticky webbing had pinned his right arm against his torso.

  “Shit!”

  The projectiles had stopped. Lights focused on him. He lifted his head up, trying to see what was happening.

  John’s left hand was plastered against the ground too.

  The ramp of the machine had lowered. Two men ran out, armed with rifles, and crouched there, staring at his location.

  He rotated his torso, trying to get his left arm out of his sleeve from the inside. The webbing seemed to tug tighter. He groaned. Sweat beaded on his forehead and froze there.

  Suddenly his arm came loose. He exhaled.

  His left hand was trapped between his coat and his shirt. He grabbed at his buttons, trying to get to the device. He could feel it under his shirt, but he couldn’t work the controls through the flannel.

  A shadow passed across his head. He looked up at the two soldiers. Their expressions were cold, as they aimed their rifles casually at him.

  “I’m— I’m— from next door,” John said. “I didn’t see anything.”

  “Nice try,” one said, in a slightly accented voice. “We know who you are, John Rayburn.”

  John worked at the button on his shirt.

  “Who?”

  He ripped at the shirt and a button popped.

  John snaked his hand into his shirt and pressed the button on the device. Nothing happened.

  “Freeze, Rayburn,” the soldier said. “The goop is only going to get tighter.”

  John’s mind raced. Why hadn’t the device worked? Then he realized he’d forgotten to set it to another universe. It was still set to the current universe. He toggled the universe counter, hoping 7352 was a nice universe, and pressed the transfer button again.

  He was back under the tree, still plastered in the sticky webbing.

  John exhaled. Safe. That had been closer than he wanted it to be.

  He tried to sit up. He couldn’t. His predicament wasn’t over. He was still encased in webbing.

  Peering over his shoulder, he tried to see around his hood at his body. Blobs of white stuck to his shoulders, torso, and legs. But there was less of the gunk. He’d transferred past most of it.

  John realized he’d have to crawl out of his clothes, just as he’d pulled his arm out of the sleeve to trigger the device. He’d have to squeeze out of the neck of the coat without getting any of that stuff on his body.

  But not in this cold universe.

  Using his left hand, he unzipped his coat and looked down at the display on the device. He dialed it to the Pleistocene and pressed the transfer button.

  He was on the plain in the Pleistocene world. Dark, cold, but not as cold. The sky was cloudles
s and the half-moon gleamed silver, casting the waving grass as swords. Bearable, he decided, and pulled himself out of his coat carefully. To the north he saw a jutting of rock; he’d seen the same formation in 7351.

  He stood shivering in his flannel shirt looking down at the gunked winter coat.

  “At least the run to New Toledo will keep me warm,” he said to himself.

  Getting a clear bearing on the North Star, John began his run, at least ten kilometers in the dark, hopeful that he wouldn’t come across any smilodons or a nest of the cat-dogs.

  CHAPTER 34

  He had to turn south twice to ford a river, finding shallow rapids of icy-cold water, and so approached New Toledo from the west. By chance he looked in the sky, away from the rising sun, and caught a flash of silver.

  “Shit!” he screamed. It was the flying machine.

  The enemy had followed him. He was a fool. He was a damned fool. He’d left his jacket on the plain, covered in goo, and probably covered in some sort of tracking device. They were facing an enemy with technology far in advance of their own. Of course they’d have means to track things across universes. Maybe even communication across universes, and he’d led them right to New Toledo.

  He ran, even though he was exhausted and nearly empty.

  Casey was there, to teach her class. Melissa and Kylie were there. Clotilde and the rest of the Alarians. What had he done?

  He had to warn them.

  His face was senseless from the cold. His lungs burned. He forced his legs to move, to punch the hard ground. He didn’t care if he ran across a nest of cat-dogs, or a saber-tooth. He had to get there.

  Twenty minutes later the flying machine crossed the sky in the direction it had come from.

  They had time; the enemy was leaving. They could evacuate.

  He should never have gone looking for clues. He’d found trouble, and he’d brought the trouble to them.

  He turned at the whine in the sky.

  It was bigger than the first flying machine. It thumped the sky and sounded like it looked. It bristled with gun turrets. Another war machine. Another deadly thing.

  John ran harder, unsure where the strength came from. A gully appeared in front of him and he crested it with a behemoth jump. He had to warn them, stop the enemy, save everyone.…