The Broken Universe

by Melko, Paul

  “Stop.” Grace Home’s eyes were open. She nodded at Henry. “John’s right. We need to isolate the danger. Isolate the infection. Just like the Vig.”

  “But—”

  “It’s the way it’s gonna be,” Grace said.

  Henry looked ready to argue, but then he nodded too.

  The gymnasium was filled with weapons and supplies, things the team thought might be needed in the rescue of John. Now they could use everything to survive in the Pleistocene world while they figured out what to do about Grace.

  “Take everything,” John said. “Food, gear, weapons. And we need the portable gates too.”

  “In case we want to get back,” another John said.

  “In case we ever can get back,” replied a Grace.

  In ten minutes, they had gathered up their equipment, and Henry Home was setting the timer of the gate.

  “Can we leave this here?” Henry asked.

  “It may not matter at all in a bit,” John said. “Is this everyone?”

  Henry Home nodded. “I think so.”

  “You held no one in reserve when you came to rescue me?” John asked.

  “I guess that seems kinda silly now,” Henry replied.

  “No, I appreciate it,” John said. “Let’s get out of here as quickly as possible.”

  * * *

  The air smelled of char.

  They were only a few kilometers south of the crater that was New Toledo. Six days ago, Casey had died. Six days.

  “Are we safe this close?” Henry Pinball asked.

  Henry Low checked the wind with his finger. “We’re not downwind of the site. We’re not upwind either. Unless the wind starts coming from the north, we should be fine.”

  They set up tents in two locations. In one location, they placed Grace Home. Two other Graces—Grace Champ and Grace Pinball—volunteered to stay and care for her with damp washcloths and antipyretics from the first-aid kits. The rest of the team set up in the remaining tents one hundred meters away to the west.

  “We’re just waiting to die,” Henry Top said.

  “What are we going to do?” John Low asked. He looked at John expectantly.

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

  “We need to kill Prime,” Casey Pinball said. “That’s what we need to do.”

  John felt a twinge of horror at the power of her attack, though she wasn’t his Casey or Prime’s Casey.

  “He’s long gone,” Henry Top said.

  “Can we risk a hospital in any universe?” John Low asked. “Maybe some universe has a cure.”

  “How do we know which?” John asked. They had been stupid. The Vig didn’t exploit the universes. They protected them from infection. Each universe was its own petri dish of germs. It was lucky they hadn’t infected their colonized universes sooner.

  “Maybe the Vig know,” John Low said.

  “Would they help us?” Casey Pinball asked.

  “They want nothing more than for us to kill ourselves off,” John said. “They were scared of disease. They only traveled to known safe universes, and they used airlocks even then to keep their base clean.”

  “What about that Corrundrum guy? He was a traveler,” Henry Home said.

  “They rented Vig technology, I think. Or paid heavily to use it,” John said. “They must have. But they went to known safe universes.”

  “Prime never got sick,” Casey Pinball said. “He traveled to Universe 9000 and he never got sick. He should be dead.”

  “He should be,” John said. Why wasn’t Prime dead?

  “Why isn’t Prime dead?” John Case asked.

  Why wasn’t Prime dead?

  “How do other travelers deal with disease?” John asked. He looked at each of the Wizards clustered around him.

  “Avoidance,” Grace Low said.

  “Expendables,” Henry Quayle said.

  “Airlocks and airtight vehicles,” Grace Gore said.

  “We’re travelers,” Casey Case said, “and we ignored it.”

  “What else?” John asked.

  The Henrys shrugged as one. “What other travelers are there?”

  “The one Superprime got the device from,” John Low said.

  “Yes,” John said. “And he had no airlocks. He had no vehicle. Corrundrum spoke of a vehicle. Everyone but us and the singleton traveler have vehicles and we based our devices on his.”

  “Maybe he just avoided the plague worlds,” Grace Gore said.

  “How do you know ahead of time if a world is a plague world?” Henry Quayle said.

  “You can’t,” John said. “Any universe could be a plague world. Any petri dish could breed a killer bug.”

  “And a universe that was safe the last time you visited could be infected the next time,” John Low said.

  “The singleton died from a malfunction or sabotage of his device,” John said. “Not from disease. He had no enclosed vehicle. But his device was different than the Vigs’. He had different technology.”

  “Better technology.”

  “Yes, better. He didn’t fear disease like the Vig did,” John said.

  “You’re guessing,” Grace Gore said.

  “What else do we have at the moment?” John said. “But if what we’ve just deduced is correct…”

  “Then he had some other method to defend against disease,” Henry Quayle concluded. “We need to find Prime.”

  “Where’s Casey Prime?” John asked, searching the faces of the remaining Caseys.

  “She’s not here,” Grace Gore said.

  “Did she even come through from Home Office?”

  “She must have slipped out.”

  John looked at the Wizards. “I need to find John Prime, and she’s our best bet.”

  * * *

  Before John left, he had Grace Gore take his temperature three times over thirty minutes.

  “I’ll do this for all of us,” she said.

  No one seemed sick except for Grace Home, nor did her two caretakers appear to be catching any virus. However, Henry Quayle became pale just before John left. He excused himself and stumbled the hundred meters to the other tent.

  “I hope we’ve given ourselves enough time to be sure I don’t have it,” John said.

  “You’re taking a chance,” Grace Gore said. “Is it worth it?”

  “Casey Home was exposed,” John said. “She’s already risked it.”

  “So that makes it okay to do it again?” Grace Gore said.

  “It’s Grace over there,” John said loudly. “I figured you’d be more concerned about saving her.”

  “I am,” she said. “We all are. But not at the risk of billions of people. If you feel unwell, come back immediately.”

  “Though it’ll probably be too late,” Grace Case said.

  John nodded.

  He used the portable gate to transfer to Home Office. He found himself in a field outside the abandoned school. He hitched his backpack over his shoulder and trotted around the school toward the parking lot to one of the cars they had left there.

  The desolate school building startled him. The place was silent and empty, just as a plague-ridden world might appear. But then he was on the highway heading north and he was surrounded by people in their cars. He refused to think of the viruses streaming from his lungs, the bacteria shedding from his skin.

  No, they would not die.

  He drove to the quarry site and transferred to Universe 7533—Prime’s universe, or rather his own first universe. He found a company car in the quarry lot and the keys for it on the wall inside the building. John headed north toward Toledo.

  He turned off toward Prime’s house, parked in front of it, and waited. The house was quiet, all the blinds pulled shut. Had Casey managed to get to 7533 yet? Had Casey had keys for one of the cars at the school or had she had to take a taxi or call for a ride to the quarry? Perhaps he had beaten her home. Perhaps she hadn’t gone home at all. Was Prime within, watching him, ready to jump to
a new universe if John pressed him?

  John was about to try the front door when his father’s old beat-up truck pulled into the driveway. Casey Prime got out and walked to the passenger’s side where she pulled Abby from her car seat. It was then that she saw John.

  She stood staring at him for a moment, then shrugged, and motioned him to follow her into the house.

  It had been a little less than a year since he had been in Prime’s house, but he saw in an instant that the décor had changed. The paintings on the walls weren’t prints. The furniture was well made. A huge TV dominated one wall of the living room.

  Casey was in the kitchen, where John saw all new appliances. He stuck his head in Prime’s study, not expecting to see him. A pedestal held a sculpture of a female bent and doubled over under some sort of pressure from above.

  Plunder from a dead world.

  “You snuck out,” John said.

  “I wasn’t leaving her,” Casey said. She nodded at Abby.

  Abby was three now, she smiled up at John. “Hi, Daddy.”

  “Hi, Abby,” John said. He didn’t correct her. John reached out and touched her forehead.

  Casey glared at him and lifted her out of his reach. “We don’t have a fever.”

  “You sure? No weakness, nausea?”

  “No, none. We’re fine,” Casey said. “How about you? Did you bring the plague here?”

  “No, I’m fine,” John said, but he wondered. Did he seem flushed? Was his breath too fast?

  “Go play,” Casey said, shooing Abby toward the playroom in the back. To John, she said, “I know why you’re here. You think I know where my John is.”

  “Yes, we need him.”

  “Why? For revenge?”

  “No, he spent the most time in the plague universe, but he’s uninfected. I think I know why.”

  “He’s not here,” Casey said. “You know I just got back, so how could I know?”

  “You know Prime better than anyone. You must have some idea where he went.”

  “You’re him. You must have some clue,” Casey countered.

  “Did you know he had the device?”

  “No,” she said. She paused. “How do you do it?”

  “What?”

  “She died a week ago.”

  John felt a lump of sorrow in his throat. Yet he was looking at Casey right in front of him. A million Caseys existed though his was dead at New Toledo. And more would die in the Pleistocene world.

  “I dunno,” he muttered.

  Casey slipped close to him. She smelled like his Casey. Not the perfume, but the tang of her skin. It was overwhelming. She reached around him and drew him closer.

  He found himself sobbing.

  “Shush, shush,” Casey said. “It’s okay.”

  She rocked him back and forth gently while he cried. Finally he quieted, and she looked up at him with eyes that were damp as well.

  She rose on her tiptoes and kissed him.

  Without thought, he responded, kissing Prime’s Casey deeply. It was not a polite kiss. Their tongues touched.

  She had been his Casey before she had been Prime’s.

  She felt right in his arms.

  “Casey,” he said.

  “John,” she whispered. “There’s a place for you right here.”

  He blinked, stepped back, and looked at her closely. It wasn’t right.

  John pushed her away.

  “You’re married to him.”

  “I’m married to John Rayburn,” she said. “Aren’t you John Rayburn?”

  “I can’t stay here. I can’t slide into his place.”

  “He slid into your place,” Casey said. “Abby would never know. You could be her father. She’d never know her real one left her.”

  “Did he? Did he leave you?”

  “I know he did,” Casey said in disgust. “I know he left, now that he has the device again. He won’t have to stay.”

  “I need to find him, Casey. I have to find him now. Before he runs.”

  “And then you’ll come back here,” Casey said.

  “Casey, stop it.”

  “If you want to know where John Prime is, say you’ll come back to me.”

  “Casey, I can’t do that.”

  She bit her lip. “John is nothing without a Casey. You’ll come back to me. You’re the one I loved.”

  “No.”

  She stepped closer, reaching for his face. John took her wrist and held her at arm’s length. “I won’t do this, Casey. I will not. Tell me now where Prime is. You have to.”

  Casey glared at him. She yanked her wrist free.

  “Forget it. Leave.”

  “Grace is going to die,” John said. “Unless you tell me where he is. And every other one of us in the Pleistocene universe. We’re going to die.”

  Tears were running down Casey’s face. “It’s not fair, John, that I got him instead of you. It’s not fair that I got the bad one. I should have had you.”

  John nodded. “I know.”

  She sighed. “He owns a tract of land near Findlay. He doesn’t know I know, but the bank called because the insurance changed. He’s got a workshop there, and a gate. I checked.”

  “What’s the address?” John asked.

  “I have it here.”

  John took it from her and turned without another word.

  “John…”

  He paused at the door.

  “I mean it,” she said. “I’m done with him. I thought he was the same as you, but he isn’t.”

  “Okay.”

  John nodded and left.

  * * *

  John knelt in the brush and watched Prime’s corrugated metal lab.

  Nothing moved. There was no sound. He crept closer.

  A car was in the dirt drive. He felt the exhaust pipe with his palm. Cold. He couldn’t have beaten Prime here. Or had Prime gone somewhere else first?

  John ran to the door and looked through the small pane of reinforced glass. Overhead halogens lit the long room inside. He saw workbenches, tools, equipment, and an early-model transfer gate. John Prime wasn’t inside, unless he was very near the doorway and out of view.

  John waited, and then tried the door. It opened and he slipped inside the Quonset. No Prime.

  He checked the gate. The matrix was set to Universe 9000. The plague world. That didn’t mean he was there; Prime had the device now. He could have gone anywhere. Though no farther ahead than 9000. He had to have a return gate in 9000. Probably on this exact site in that universe. John didn’t dare go to Universe 9000. He’d surely become infected if he did.

  John rifled through the lab tables. He paged through a notebook with notes on Prime’s exploration of Universe 9000. He paused at a list of artwork. On the next page was a list of banks in Toledo. Next to the table was a heavy safe on the floor. It was locked. Probably full of money.

  A stack of photos lay on the next table. John stared at the robotic figure at the center of each. What had Prime found? Aliens?

  There was a pop of air.

  John spun.

  Prime was standing in the center of the lab, looking in the opposite direction. He was dressed in fatigues and carried a rocket launcher over his shoulder.

  John ran and jumped at Prime. He had no choice; if Prime used the device, he was gone forever.

  John tackled Prime and grabbed him around the neck. They sprawled across the floor. The rocket launcher skittered into the corner.

  Prime turned in his grip and grunted when he saw it was John.

  He reached into his shirt to activate the device.

  John leaped at him and clung to his chest.

  The world shifted.

  They were in an abandoned farmhouse.

  Prime stumbled. The device had sheared a circle from the decrepit floor and the two were standing knee-deep in the floorboards. If the house had had a basement, they would have fallen through.

  Prime struggled up and onto the floor. John grabbed for his leg a
nd missed.

  Prime scuttled away from him, grinning. He reached into his shirt to trigger the device.

  “You won’t get it back, John,” he said. “And you’re stuck in 7534 now.”

  He threw the switch. Nothing happened.

  He hadn’t toggled the universe number forward. It was still set to 7534.

  John lunged at him.

  The world shifted, and they were on a grassy plain.

  7535, the Pleistocene world.

  John slammed his elbow into Prime’s face, momentarily stunning him.

  He reached into Prime’s shirt and started ripping at the belts holding the device in place. John couldn’t get a grip and he couldn’t find the buckles.

  Prime regained his focus and pushed John away. John came back at him, but Prime planted a foot in John’s chest and kicked him.

  Prime toggled the device. John leaped, afraid he’d be cut in half if he was outside the radius of the device. He had to stay with him.

  The universe stuttered, and they were in a farmhouse, not a ruin.

  Someone screamed. A woman turned from the stove to stare at the two men who had materialized in her kitchen.

  John slammed his shoulder into Prime’s face. He ripped Prime’s shirt open and started unbuckling the device’s straps. He had one buckle undone when the frying pan smacked him atop the head.

  His vision wavered, and he slumped forward.

  “Wait!” he said, but the words seemed slurred.

  Another blow careened off his back.

  He reached up and toggled the device one universe forward. He pressed the button and he and Prime flipped to the next universe.

  Twilight on a sloped hill.

  John’s head throbbed. His vision was doubled. He wanted to vomit, but struggled to crawl up Prime’s body to his throat. He couldn’t let Prime go anywhere without him.

  He settled a forearm across Prime’s windpipe and held him down while he attacked the buckles.

  Prime struggled and John couldn’t keep ahold of his neck. Prime was as strong as he, as massive as he, had the same reactions and the same skills.

  Prime forced a knee up between them and pushed John off him. John found himself sliding down the hill, away from Prime, away from the device. He struggled to grab something to slow his descent. His fingers found the stem of a bush; it bent under his forceful grip, but held. He drew himself up, getting his feet beneath him.

  Prime toggled the device. John was too far away to be in the radius of the machine. If he missed the area, he’d be sliced into two pieces, one going on with Prime to the next universe and one staying here on this hill in some unknown universe.