by Melko, Paul
Sitting in his cell, he guessed why. The enemy had some suppression tool, some way to stop the transfer from happening. The aircraft had emanated some field that suppressed the transfer process. They had trapped him and hunted him and captured him. But maybe they didn’t have the device.
They had chased him from the gorge. The aircraft had moved slowly, not via a fixed wing, but some other means that kept it aloft. John wondered if they had some sort of antigravity science. As the shadow of the thing overtook him, he’d dodged left and right. Again a chunk of sticky webbing landed on him, and he fell in a heap.
The ship settled above him, its three struts forming a triangle with him in the middle. He could barely turn his head to see it, but it bristled with antennae and weapons. It was not aerodynamic in the least.
John lay there beneath it for long minutes. He was sure he’d been there for half an hour when finally he heard voices.
A booted foot pushed him on his thigh.
He said nothing, didn’t react, didn’t move.
Someone spoke in words he couldn’t understand. It could have been the same language he’d heard at the farm in 7351. Someone else laughed. It was not a humorous sound.
A hand reached down and lifted some of the webbing off the ground and tossed it on his shoulder. John caught sight of the gloves the man wore; the webbing seemed to slither around the gloves, but it didn’t stick.
A bit of webbing landed on his cheek, sticking dangerously close to his lips and nose. He tried to shake it loose but it wouldn’t budge.
Another laugh. The man slung a wad of the webbing directly on his face.
John panicked, struggling to free himself. His mouth and nose were covered. He couldn’t breathe, and he could do nothing to clear his face. He struggled on the ground, breathless, and certain he would die.
With that thought, his mind cleared, and he stopped his motions. John forced the panic down. He’d die with dignity.
His lungs burned, but he waited in calmness.
Casey was dead. What more could he do but die here?
Green and yellow swirls stained his vision. Then splotches of light, until his consciousness faded.
He awoke here, in the cell.
Casey.
The light did not waver as he sat there. No sound rose above the hum of the fan in the ceiling. No one looked in the wired window of his cell. He had no watch. His shoes were missing and his pockets were empty. He had no way to tell the passage of time, but he must have waited several hours before the door opened suddenly.
A tall woman entered.
Without thinking, he launched himself at her. His fingers were curled in claws. His teeth were bared. He screamed sounds of inarticulate rage.
His fingers never reached her throat. A soldier stood behind her and fired a weapon at him.
Something slammed into his chest and he fell to the floor.
Air couldn’t fill his lungs. Again he could not breathe.
He heard the woman speak in their language. A soldier entered, dragged him to his cot, and handcuffed his hands behind his back. John slumped forward, trying to get air in his lungs.
A chair was brought in, and the woman sat.
The woman was tall, as tall as John, dressed in a dark blue jumpsuit, and severe in feature. Her black hair was pulled back. Her fingers were long and thin as they lay in her lap. She crossed her legs.
“The penalty for attacking an officer of the Vigilari is death,” she said in accented English.
John snorted. “As long as you die too.”
Her eyes grew slightly round as she heard these words, surprised perhaps at his wish for her death.
“Where is your iaciorator?” she asked.
The word meant nothing to John.
“You killed my wife-to-be,” John said. “You’ll get nothing from me.”
“We know you have obtained one. We detected the attempt to translate,” she said. “Yet it was not in that … town we destroyed. Where, then?”
Did she mean the transfer device? John was confused by her questions, but tried not to show it.
“Why couldn’t you just leave us alone?” John said. “We weren’t bothering you.”
The woman considered this.
“You know why,” she said. “Now, tell us where the iaciorator is located.”
“I don’t know that word,” John said. “Who are you?”
“I am Imperator Luigiantia of the Order of the Vigilari,” she said. “You are John Rayburn, a duplicate, present in thirteen percent of the fallow universes. Twenty years old, a student usually, a backwater boy. Except where you have found an iaciorator.”
“What does it matter to you what we found?”
Luigiantia exhaled through clenched teeth. “You don’t know much, do you? You’re just some farmboy.”
“A farmboy you attacked.”
“It is our job!”
“Says who?”
“If we don’t do this, there will be chaos!”
“The argument of every dictator.”
“You fool! The multiverse will be destroyed if we don’t do what we do! It is for the good of everyone that we do this.”
“You nuked us for our own good! Excellent.”
Emotions passed across Luigiantia’s face. Whatever an Imperator was, one didn’t expect this sort of response, apparently. John felt nothing but disdain for her and her organization—this Order of the Vigilari.
“Where is the iaciorator?” she asked. “It is crucial that we take control of all such devices. Where is the one you found? Once we take control of it, you can tell us how you found it.”
“Is your organization responsible for banishing the Alarians?” John asked. “If so, I owe you for my friend Grace too.”
“The who?”
“Alarians. Really messed-up Germanic people. Got ahold of some transfer devices—some iaciorators—and built an empire.”
She took a small handheld device from her pocket, and began typing on it with one hand.
“Ah, the residents of Universe 2119,” she said. “They were exterminated.”
“Not all,” John said. “Some of them were marooned and set up shop in my universe.”
“But they had no iaciorator,” Luigiantia said. “Therefore not an issue for us.”
“They were an issue for us.”
Luigiantia shrugged slightly.
“If we did not do our job, there would be chaos. Nothing would be unique. Everything would be merged. Universes that were in sync would be different. Order would be destroyed.”
It sounded like cant to John, some ritual response to questions.
“So? Singletons are more valuable than duplicates? That’s what the Alarians believed. Is that what this is all about?”
“No!”
“Power does not give you the right to decide how to exploit people,” John said. “The fact that you have transfer devices does not allow you to be kings of the multiverse.”
Luigiantia laughed. “I should have known. So many of you ‘Americans’ believe as you do, in the inherent rights of humankind. A parochial view, John Rayburn, when the whole multiverse is on the edge of oblivion. When one wrong transfer will destroy everyone human, duplicate or singleton.”
“Freedom matters,” John said.
“You are not free to murder, you are not free to rape, you are not free to infect,” she replied.
“But we’re free to live our lives otherwise.”
“In your own damned universe, you are,” Luigiantia shouted. “But when you get out, you’re my problem. And I will not allow it.”
John looked at her. “It’s too late. We’re out and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
“We’ll see.”
She motioned at the soldier in the doorway. Before John could move, a hypodermic needle had been punched into his shoulder. He gasped, shuddered, and then released his consciousness, the last thing on his mind an image of Casey smiling at him.
CHAP
TER 37
While Grace Champ drove Radeheva, Audofleda, and Brenasontha to a local hospital, John Prime explained what he had seen.
“Nuclear weapons?” Grace Top cried. “They nuked us!”
Though there was a moratorium on travel between universes, it seemed that every Grace, Henry, Casey, and John had come to 7650, to the Pinball Wizard factory.
“But you saw no body,” Grace Home said. “They didn’t kill John?”
John Prime shrugged. “There was no body there. But it was clear where he had been caught.”
“And the device too,” Grace Home said, not as a question, as a statement. “They have that too.”
“Yeah,” Prime said, though the transfer device was strapped to his chest right then. It was his once again. He touched his chest absently.
“We have to get him back,” Grace Top said.
“No sign of Casey?” Grace Home asked.
“None,” Henry Home said. “No one has seen her.”
“A thousand people,” Grace Home said. “A thousand people dead.” Her eyes were red from her crying, but her face was dry now.
“Some may be alive,” Henry Top said. “They might have kidnapped others as well as John.…” His voice trailed off. No, the New Toledoans were dead. John Ten, John Home, John Superprime, Casey Home, Clotilde, Englavira, Melissa, little Kylie, Devon, Jane, and their two children. One thousand emigrants, eighty Alarians. All dead or missing. “Shit,” he said.
“Yeah.”
“What do we do?” Casey Low asked. Her tears were on her face, and John Prime felt a pang looking at her.
“Where did they take him?” Grace Top asked.
“Where do we attack?” John Gore asked.
John Prime nodded at that. Those were his sentiments.
“How do we know?” Grace Home asked. “There’s no way for us to know. We’re so … so ignorant of everything.”
Prime said, “There are people we can ask.”
The statement hung there for a full minute.
“Charboric,” Grace Home said with clear hostility.
“They’d know,” Prime replied.
“The Alarians we know are dead,” Henry Case said. “And they didn’t know the history of their banishment any more than folklore. Charboric is gone.”
There was a pause.
“I know where the Alarians went.”
Prime looked at Grace Home. “You know?”
“John and I found the stolen transfer gate that the Alarians were trying to build. It was set for Universe 2219.”
“No!”
“Yes. That’s where they went.”
“We know where the Alarians went,” Prime mused. He grinned. “It’s time to have a talk with Charboric.”
* * *
In the end, Prime convinced Grace Home she wasn’t coming.
“One person will have more luck than two,” he said. “And I’ve had the most experience with jumping universes, now that John is gone.”
“You think I’ll go nuts and kill Charboric? Is that it?”
“No, I don’t,” Prime said, though he was unsure.
“I could help you,” she argued.
“You could hinder me,” Prime said. “I’m going alone.”
“Fine.”
They started by scanning the location near the quarry in 2219. It was where the Alarians had gone through from Home Office, near the abandoned Rayburn barn, where John had built the first transfer gate.
“See? There,” Henry Home said. “A shack.”
John Prime leaned close to the video image. “That’s pretty close to where the transfer gate was, about three hundred meters from the quarry.”
“They’re waiting for the rest of the Alarians to come through,” Grace Top said. “Long wait.”
“Looks abandoned.”
“It’s been months, and Charboric knows the transfer gate was moved to Columbus,” Prime said. “This is just in case someone comes through here. I bet there’s a guard shack near the Columbus site too.”
“We can check,” Henry Home said.
“Let’s see what’s in that shack first.”
Prime transferred through with the ATV and the portable gate. He stood there for a long time, waiting for some alarm, some sign of life in the shack. Ten minutes passed. Nothing.
Prime set the portable transfer device up first. He had the device on his chest, sure, but he wasn’t going to let anyone else know that. Then he walked over to the shack.
Snow had drifted against the door, shielded by the sun and unmelted. The shack was empty.
Prime pushed the door open and looked inside. A piece of paper was tacked to the wall. On it was a crudely drawn map and some characters in an alphabet he did not know.
He grabbed it and walked back to the transfer zone. Checking his watch, he found the hemispherical depression of earth where the gate had cut away the dirt. The quarry did not exist here, so their transfer had cut through the earth. Prime put the piece of paper under a rock on a platform in the transfer zone.
Three minutes later the platform disappeared.
In five minutes he could expect another transfer and hopefully a response. They’d decided on a five-minute increment on transfers between here and 7650 until he returned safely.
He spent the five minutes scanning the horizon. There were no jet contrails, no power lines or telephone lines, no signs of any civilization. It was another empty universe. Unpopulated, just like the Pleistocene one. Hopefully it wasn’t a plague world like 9000. A bolt-hole universe for the Alarians.
There was a pop and a new platform appeared. Atop it was a notebook. Prime grabbed the notebook. Inside was a message.
Radeheva translated. Directions in Alarian to the base. Five kilometers to the southeast. Want help?
It was signed by Grace.
His reply was, Going to look on foot. Leaving portable gate. If not back in four hours, don’t send reinforcements.
Not that Grace would listen.
Five kilometers was a no-sweat jog. He set off, submachine gun slung over his shoulder, backpack full of munitions and supplies.
The Alarian bolt-hole fortress was a warehouse of corrugated metal built in a valley with a small river. There were no guards, no towers. Beyond the warehouse were several rows of wooden houses, recently built.
It looked no more advanced than New Toledo had.
“They left 7650 for this?” Prime said to himself.
He lay on the hill and scanned the little town with his binoculars. Here and there, Alarians moved about, always men. None of them appeared heavily armed. He spotted one man with a sidearm, no one else.
Then out of the largest wooden building walked Charboric. He looked like a smug son of a bitch, that was for sure. King of this empty little pocket universe. Charboric turned and shouted orders at one of his aides, and then he sauntered down the center of his town.
He walked right past the warehouse and started up the valley wall to the north, not forty-five degrees from John and only three hundred meters away.
What luck! Could it be this easy?
He took no guards with him, as if he was certain he’d be safe here. The fool.
John Prime ran along the bowl of the valley, just over the edge and hidden from sight. He came across a well-worn path. The Alarians came this way often. Charboric appeared, just a few meters down the path. Prime pulled the taser from his belt and ran at him.
Charboric turned at the sound of Prime’s pounding feet. His mouth formed an O as Prime tasered him in the chest. The man fell over and twitched.
Prime turned at words behind him.
Two of Charboric’s aides had come after him for some reason. They were aiming guns at him.
Prime slung Charboric over his shoulder and transferred the two of them to Universe 9000.
* * *
Prime cuffed Charboric and left him next to a fire hydrant while he went in search of a vehicle. He found an SUV that started in a garage not too
far away.
Charboric was awake when he returned.
“John Rayburn, you useless dup—”
John aimed an elbow at Charboric’s chin.
“Just shut up.”
He dragged Charboric’s limp body into the passenger’s seat. He undid the cuffs and recuffed him to the handhold above the passenger’s window.
John drove toward his camp just north of Findlay.
Charboric shook himself awake after a few minutes. He didn’t speak again, just looked out the window.
Prime felt the man’s tension grow.
“Where is this?” he cried finally. “Where are we?”
Prime glanced at him.
“9000.”
“There are no people here,” he said.
“Everyone is dead here.”
“Plague world!” Charboric lunged at him. “What have you done, you idiot?”
Only the cuffs kept him from knocking into Prime.
Prime slammed on the brakes. Charboric danced like a puppet on his cuffed arms. Prime pulled the taser off his belt.
“We’re here, we’ll be fine. I’ve spent days here and I’m fine. No plague.”
Charboric frothed and lunged at him again. His face was wild and unrecognizable. Prime tasered him again.
John Prime tied him to a tree at the camp and then drove to the quarry where he transferred through to Universe 2219 and from there transferred himself with the portable gate to Home Office.
“Did you find them?” Grace Home cried when he appeared.
“I found their camp,” Prime replied.
“You were gone a long time! We almost came through to get you.”
“It’s too well armed,” Prime said. “We’ll have to think of a good plan.”
“What can we do?”
John Prime thought quickly. “I can go back at night, with night-vision goggles, kidnap one of their guys and get some answers.”
“How heavily guarded is it?”
“They have guns, lotsa guns, vehicles, Jeeps, machine guns.”
“Sheesh,” Henry Top said. “This may be a dead end.”
“Not yet, Henry, not yet,” Prime said. “We gotta try for John’s sake.”
