The Walls of the Universe

by Paul Melko

  The lawyer had wanted to drop John like a hot potato, but he’d convinced him that there was still cash to be made from it. Some cash at least. He’d have to pay a licensing fee probably. Kiss some ass. But there was money to be made. The lawyer would stick it out with John, though the retainer was just about gone.

  Casey waved as he rounded the corner on the third floor in front of the judge’s office. Casey sat on a bench, her belly seeming to rest on her knees. Her face was puffy and pink, as if someone had pumped her with saline.

  “Hi, Johnny,” she said. “Did you get the paper?”

  He hated being called Johnny and he’d told her that, but she still did it. Everybody used to call Johnny Farm Boy Johnny, so John was stuck with it. Some things just couldn’t be changed.

  He put on a smile and waved the certificate. “Yeah,” he said. “Everything’s ready.” He kissed Casey on the cheek. “Darling, you look radiant.” He’d be glad once the baby was out of her body; then she could start dressing the way he liked again. He hoped her cheerleading uniform still fit.

  The ceremony was quick, though Casey had to dab her eyes. John wasn’t surprised that none of Casey’s friends were there. Getting pregnant had put a lot of stress on her relationships. Field hockey had been right out.

  The judge signed the certificate and it was done. John was glad Casey’s and his parents hadn’t come. They’d wanted to, but John had axed that request. They had settled for a reception after the baby was born.

  John knew his parents were disappointed in what had happened, and he hadn’t wanted to face them during the ceremony. They’d wanted him to go to college, to better himself. But those were the dreams they had for Johnny Farm Boy. John was a completely different thing.

  They’d understand once the money started rolling in. They’d not be disappointed in their son anymore.

  John slowly lowered Casey into the bucket seat of the Trans Am, a splurge with the last of his cash. He had to have decent wheels. The Trans Am pulled away and he headed for Route 16. “Glad that’s over with,” he said.

  “Really?” Casey asked.

  “Well, I’m glad it’s over with and we’re married now,” he said quickly.

  “Yeah, I know what you mean.”

  John nodded. He had to be careful what he said with Casey, what he shared. About the time she’d started showing and they’d had to tell their parents, John had wished he had the device, wished he could jump to the next universe and start over. John felt then he should have killed Johnny Farm Boy, hidden the body, and kept the device. Now the Cube had to work right. With John’s money almost gone, he might not have another chance, no matter how good an idea the AbCruncher was. He’d wanted to come clean and tell Casey all about his past, but how could he? How could she believe him?

  He was stuck here and he had to make it work. There were no other choices now. This was the life he’d chosen. He patted Casey’s leg and smiled at her. He’d make some money, enough to set her and the kid up, and then he’d have his freedom to do what he wanted with his money. It would take a little longer now; there were some bumps in the road, but he’d succeed. He was Johnny Prime.

  CHAPTER 14

  Spring had arrived, but without the sun on his shoulders, John was chilly. He’d started working on the car in the morning and the sun had been on him, and now, after lunch, it was downright cold. He considered getting the tractor out and hauling the beat-up Trans Am into the sun. He finally decided it was too much trouble. It was late and there was no way he’d get the carburetor back together before dinner.

  He’d bought the car for fifty dollars, but the car had yet to start. He’d need it soon. He started a second-shift job at the GE plant in May. And then in the fall he was taking classes at the University of Toledo.

  He’d applied to the University of Toledo ’s continuing-education program. He couldn’t enroll as a traditional freshman, which was all right with him, because of the fact that he’d taken the GED instead of graduating from high school. He wouldn’t get into the stuff he wanted to learn until his senior year: quantum field theory, cosmology, general relativity. That was all right. He was okay where he was for the time being. If he didn’t think about home, he could keep going.

  With the plant job, washing-machine assembly line work from four until midnight, he’d have enough for tuition for the year. Plus Bill and Janet were still paying him three an hour for chores he was helping out with. He noted ironically to himself that in his own universe he wouldn’t have been paid a dime. In September he’d get another job for pocket money and rent near the university.

  He set the carburetor on the front seat and rolled the car back into the barn. This was a good universe, John had decided, but he wasn’t staying. No, he was happy with Bill and Janet taking him in. They were kind and generous, just like his own parents in nearly every respect, but he couldn’t stay here. Not for the long term.

  The universe was a mansion with a million rooms. People didn’t know they were in just one room. They didn’t know there was a way through the walls to other rooms.

  But John did. He knew there were walls. And he knew something else too. He knew walls came down. There were holes between worlds.

  John had listed his major as physics, and he’d laughed when the manila envelope from the department had arrived, welcoming him and listing his faculty advisor as Dr. Frank Wilson. Professor Wilson’s world was going to shatter one day, and John was going to do it for him.

  John knew something that no other physicist in this world knew. A human could pass through the walls of the universe. Just knowing that it was possible, just knowing, without a bit of doubt-he needed only to pull up his pant leg and look at the scars from the cat-dog bite-that there were a million universes out there, was all it would take for John to figure the science of it out.

  That was his goal. He had the device and he had his knowledge. He’d reverse engineer it, take it apart, ask the questions of the masters in the field, he would himself become one of those masters, to find out how it was done.

  And then, once the secrets of the universe lay open to him, he would go back; he would kick the shit out of John Prime and take his own life back.

  He smiled as he shut the barn door.

  Part Two

  CHAPTER 15

  John Prime awoke from a nightmare of suffocation. Casey’s elbow nudged him in the ribs.

  “Your turn,” she muttered.

  At first Prime thought she was talking in her sleep, and he rolled over, pulling the covers with him. The secondhand bed squeaked as he moved. Then he heard Abby scream.

  “Fuck,” he said.

  The alarm clock blazed 2:17. He had to get up in three hours for work at the plant. Why couldn’t Casey feed the baby? He was the one bringing in the money. All she had to do was stay home with Abby all day.

  Abby’s screams turned to tiny shrieks. The Williamses upstairs would be complaining to the landlord if Prime didn’t do something.

  He sat on the edge of the bed, rubbed his eyes, then stood. He pulled on some shorts. He should have just started wearing pajamas; it wasn’t like Casey and he had done it anytime recently.

  He stumbled into the kitchenette and opened the refrigerator, glaring at the light. He found the fullest bottle of formula and nuked it for thirty seconds. By the time he made it to Abby’s room, she was bright red and so angry her shrieks were nearly silent.

  Prime lifted her to his shoulder, his own anger gone, his own resignation lifted away. She struggled against his neck for a moment and then went still, sobbing silently. The maternity nurses had been shocked when he’d asked to be present for the birth. That was a small difference between his universe and this one. But he had insisted, and Casey had been glad for him next to her. He had viewed the blotchy purple Abby with a mixture of feelings. Pride, yet fear. Joy, yet frustration. She was another millstone, just like his marriage, just like his job.

  He sat in the wooden rocking chair his mother had given them. I
t squeaked reassuringly. Abby rooted for the plastic nipple, and fell silent save the slurping.

  Would he have used the device if he still had it? Always it had been a getaway, a fail-safe. He had tried to stay before, vowing never to use the device again. He’d tried to make a life for himself. Every time he transferred out, he was terrified, guilty, depressed.

  Now there was no choice. But would he have, if he could?

  He pulled the nipple out of Abby’s mouth, and the bottle sucked in air.

  It was safe here. He had made it safe, for once. How many times had he almost died because of that damn device? It had even made him a murderer. His mind returned to Thomas and Oscar. It had been around 7450 or so, early on in Prime’s flight. He had switched out after the police had busted in his door, having time only to grab his emergency bag.

  In the dawn light, he had been surprised to see a well-worn path and in the distance a palisade. It looked like a Pleistocene universe, one of the unpopulated ones, where all of North America was mastodons and saber-toothed tigers. But there was a human-made structure.

  He checked the sky: no contrails. He checked the horizon for power lines and cell towers. Nothing. The little transistor radio he had in the emergency pack emitted nothing but static.

  “Weird,” he muttered.

  He started down the path.

  As the palisade came into view, Prime caught the smell of burning wood and roasting meat. A guard, dressed in cured skins and armed with a twelve-foot-long pike, leaned against the gate. He didn’t show surprise at Prime’s arrival down the well-worn path, nor at Prime’s clothes.

  “Another one? And young,” the guard said, shaking his head. “Welcome to Fort America, home of the truly free. Got anything on you?”

  The man reached into Prime’s jacket, and Prime jumped back.

  The guard seemed about to press the point, then shrugged.

  “Why would you, then? They never leave us with anything useful.” He pulled out a clipboard and said, “Thomas has a spot in his crew for a tenderfoot. See that bunkhouse? Ask for him there.”

  Prime wondered at the way the guard had expected people to show up at the gate. Was that common? He spoke unaccented English, which seemed anachronistic in this wilderness world.

  The gate was open, and inside were two longhouses and several smaller huts, built of logs and skins. A battlement ran around the inside of the outer wall. At the parapet at two-meter intervals leaned pikes with stone heads. What were these people fortified against?

  The courtyard was empty except for a couple of women tending a cooking fire, slowly turning a spit. The quartered beast was nothing Prime recognized, too large for the hindquarters of a cow. The women eyed him dully.

  Prime knocked on the rough wooden door of the first long-house.

  “Come in!” someone yelled.

  Prime entered and found himself in a long room of bunk beds, rough-hewn from logs. The room smelled of sap and fresh wood. Two young men leaned against one bunk, talking.

  “Who are you?”

  “John. The guard at the gate sent me here.”

  “Jesus! Another one, and a kid,” the first said. “You don’t know metallurgy, do you, kid?”

  “Uh, no.”

  “Oh, well. I’m Thomas; this is Oscar. I’m captain and he’s lieutenant of this bunk.” Thomas was tall and blond, like the quarterback of a football team. Oscar was shorter, with a shaved head.

  Oscar said, “What have you got on you? Hand it over.”

  Prime backed away.

  “Leave him alone,” Thomas said. “They never drop anybody off with anything of value.” To Prime he said, “Come on. We were just about ready to walk out to the mine. My crew is working a coal seam today, and they’re probably loafing.”

  Thomas led him out the back of the bunkhouse and then through a smaller gate in the fort wall. This one was there for convenience, it seemed, as there was no guard. It was wide open, though it could have been closed with a wooden latch. They grabbed pikes as they passed through the gate. Prime grabbed one too.

  “What universe are you from?” Thomas asked.

  “Seven-four-three-three,” Prime said.

  “Yeah? I don’t think we’ve got anyone from there. What did they nab you for? Hacking? Propagandizing?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Oscar looked at him sharply. “A dark grab. What makes you so special?”

  “Nothing,” Prime said.

  “Yeah,” said Oscar. “Nothing special.”

  They walked over a small hill and came to a river that cut through a shallow valley. Workers, standing knee-deep, were panning the water. Others were hacking at a seam of coal they had opened on the hillside, already half-exposed by the river. There were a dozen guards watching up- and downstream. A couple were positioned on the hills.

  Thomas went to speak with a few of the workers, leaving Oscar with Prime.

  “Gold for conductors. Coal for our steam engine,” Oscar said. “We’re thinking about a trip to the old Fort Pitt area to mine some iron.”

  Thomas came back to them holding a small nugget of gold. “A few meters of wire, at least,” he said.

  He led them up the far hill of the valley. Prime struggled to understand what they were doing: reconstructing a technological world in a primitive earth. Were they colonists? Were they running from something? Hiding here? They must have their own devices, maybe ones that worked right.

  Oscar said, “We think we can build a transporter in about a hundred years. You’ll still be a young man, and if you have any children after the sterilization wears off, your children might get back home.”

  Prime stopped. These people were from high-tech worlds. The primitive living wasn’t a choice. These people were stranded, just like him.

  “You people don’t have a device? A transporter of your own?” he asked.

  Thomas barked a laugh. “Of course they wouldn’t let us have a device.”

  “But I have one,” Prime said, then cut himself off. It was too late. Thomas and Oscar turned on him.

  “You fucking liar,” Oscar said.

  “Yeah,” Prime said. “Yeah. I was just kidding.” His hand went inside his shirt, toggling the button for the next universe. He was on natural land, no man-made depressions. Prime would be all right if he transferred out here.

  “What you got there?” Thomas said. Oscar grabbed him by the arm.

  “Nothing!” Prime cried. He couldn’t reach the lever, his arm caught in Thomas’ viselike grip. Prime tried with his other hand, but Oscar batted it away.

  Thomas nodded at Oscar, who pulled up Prime’s coat and shirt.

  They stared at the device strapped to Prime’s chest, their faces stunned.

  Oscar said, “Jesus, he has a portable.”

  “Where did you get that?”

  “You stupid kid! What the fuck are you doing with a portable?” Oscar yelled, reaching under Prime’s shirt for the device.

  Prime kicked, connected with something, and rolled away.

  Thomas’ grip found Prime’s shoulder and pulled him back like he was a sock puppet.

  He pressed a knee against Prime’s throat. He pulled a knife.

  “Do you believe this?” he asked Oscar.

  “Fuck it, no.”

  The knife cut at the straps holding the device. Prime flinched. He figured the next slice would open his belly.

  Thomas stood with the device, leaving Prime to gasp and hold his throat.

  Thomas and Oscar held the device between them, marveling, ignoring Prime as they had before.

  “Frigate is going to shit when he sees this.”

  “We’re going back home.”

  “Home? We’re going anywhere we damn well please.”

  Prime pushed himself off the ground.

  They stood holding the device as if it were a baby. Didn’t they know how much trouble it had caused him? Didn’t they know it was broken?

  But Prime had earned that broken
device; he had traded his own life for it, and damn it, these assholes weren’t going to take it away.

  Prime lunged at the device, snagging it from Thomas’ grip. In a moment he was past them.

  “Hey!”

  A hand caught his leg, and he went down, Oscar and Thomas atop him.

  “You’re dead now,” Oscar said. Thomas’ knife loomed above him.

  Prime’s finger found the lever. He pressed it.

  The world shifted in an explosion of blood. He squeezed his eyes shut. Hot liquid covered his chest and legs. Something hard-the broken knifepoint-scratched his cheek.

  Prime stood, scrambling away, his gorge rising.

  He wiped his eyes clear, and looked at what had come through with him. Thomas’ hand, the front of Oscar’s chest, and a foot littered the ground, bits of the men who had been in the radius of the field when Prime had pulled the button. Looking at the flesh, he realized that Oscar was dead and Thomas was maimed. On that primitive world, with a severed hand, he would probably die.

  Prime spewed his lunch onto the ground.

  After his stomach was empty, he stood and cleaned himself as well as possible. He’d found others who knew of travel between worlds, and they’d tried to kill him. Fuck them, he thought.

  He had thought at first to bury the pieces of body but decided to leave them for the animals. What sympathy did the men deserve from him? Prime’d picked the next universe and left them there to rot.

  He looked down, realizing Abby was asleep. He lifted her gently into her crib, where she rustled for a moment, then lay still. Sometimes it was best just to keep still, to stop running, and take the best bolt-hole you could find. The universes were too dangerous.

  Prime could barely keep his eyes open the next morning. He flubbed his assembly twice, dropping bolts into the washer tub and having to stop the line to fetch them. He ignored the glares of his coworkers. Fuck ’em, he thought. Fuck ’ em all. He ’d be out of there as soon as things started shaping up.