The Broken Universe (13 page)

“I won’t tell anyone,” Prime said. “I promise.”

“You don’t have to promise,” Amos said. “We can take care of that.”

The threat cut through Prime. He didn’t see any easy way out of this. He had to buy time until Farmboy found him.

“Everyone knows about the gold where I’m from,” Prime said. “And people know where I am, so don’t think you can get away with anything!”

“People go missing all the time in the woods,” Amos said. “We’ll clean up your search site, hide all your camping gear. It’s like you’ve never been here.”

“People know I’m here. They’ll find me.”

Amos glared. “We’ll just leave you here for a few hours. You think about telling us what we want, and we’ll make it painless for you. Otherwise…”

“Yeah, I get it. ‘Otherwise’ is bad.”

“Oh, and look how close you got to the gold!” Amos said. He walked over to a pile of boxes covered in a white cloth. He whisked it away. On the top of the pile was a steamer trunk open and filled with gold coins.

“You morons,” Prime said. “What good does keeping all that gold in a box do you?”

Amos glared again. “You’ll be sorry. You’ll see!” They left the barn.

“What the hell,” Prime said, and tried to reposition himself on the dirt floor. He figured he’d be there for a long time.

*   *   *

John stood up and looked around again. Prime would not have wandered off in the middle of the day with the dig in progress. No way. Something happened. Maybe he’d hurt himself and had gone in search of medical assistance. Though there was no hospital on the island. John had no idea where to look. He could check in with the police, he guessed. The island did have one police car.

“John,” he whispered. “Where’d you go?”

For just a moment, he wondered if Prime had absconded with the gold. No, there was no way to get back to his Casey if he did. Nor did John believe Prime would steal the money even if he could go back. But John wondered for a second if Prime could build his own device. He had been armpits deep in building the machine in 7651. Maybe he’d copied the plans or memorized them. It was no harder than building a kit airplane or submarine.

John bent over and ran his detector over the bottom of the hole again. It continued to beep. Still more down there.

He dug the shovel into the earth and turned over another pile of dirt. With the side of the spade, he broke the pieces into smaller chunks. This time he didn’t need the detector to see the coins. A small handful of dull metal circles clung to the clod.

“Geez!” John hefted the pile of coins in his palm. They were heavy like gold. He poured a little water over them. They glittered as the dirt came off them. Each was bigger than a dime, smooth edged, and printed with the same words in an arc around the edge of the coin:
C. BECHTLER, ASSAYER.
And on the opposite side:
NORTH CAROLINA GOLD.
He was holding a fortune in gold in the palm of his hand. The gold alone was worth thousands of dollars, but he had a feeling the coins as antiquities would be worth even more. Civil War gold.

“John!” he shouted. He climbed out of the hole. “John!”

He scrambled onto the small hill next to it. John stopped. The small hill was an old pile of dirt. Someone a long time before had dug there. He paused and looked closely at the pile. It was moss-covered, with leaves atop and small ferns. But it was clearly not a part of the original terrain. Someone had piled that dirt there, years before. Looking for gold.

He turned at the sound of someone moving through the brush.

“John?”

The sound stopped, but there was no response.

John froze. Prime would have responded.

He carefully walked to his left, trying not to disturb plants or make noise with his feet. He slipped the coins into his pocket.

Backing carefully down the gentle slope, he found a small bush and knelt behind it.

Two shapes emerged into the clearing with the hole.

“I swear I heard something, Russell.”

“Ain’t no one here now, Amos.”

One stared into the hole. The other stood with his arms on his hips and looked around.

“This shovel wasn’t here before,” Amos said. “I’m telling you, he has a friend.”

“Then where’d he go? Ain’t here now.”

John presumed something had happened to Prime, and these two knew what. Maybe he could bluff them. He looked just like Prime.

He stood up. “What do you two want now?”

The two jumped, staring at him. They stared into the green cover as John emerged.

“Who…”

“What…”

“I asked what you wanted now? Why are you bothering me again?”

“How’d he get away?” Amos asked.

Russell didn’t answer but pulled a gun from his belt.

John turned and ran. Bluffing hadn’t worked so well.

A shot went off. Something thudded into a tree nearby.

John reached into his shirt to activate the device. Then he misplaced his foot and slid on a patch of moss.

“I think we got him!” someone yelled.

“How the hell did he get away in the first place?”

“I dunno. You cuffed him!”

“Don’t blame me!”

Pain stabbed John’s ankle where it had slid out from under him, and it was so intense he had no thoughts except to sit there in the dirt and breathe.

“There he is!”

John turned to see the two running down the slope toward him. He reached in and toggled the device, transferring to Universe 7651.

*   *   *

John Prime looked up as Amos and Russell slammed open the barn door. They’d been gone no longer than thirty minutes.

“He’s still here!” Amos cried. Amos’s arms flailed and waved as he walked toward Prime then back again.

Russell just stood by the door and glared at Prime.

“Where else would I be?” Prime asked. “You cuffed me to a goddamn pole in your goddamn barn.”

“Check the cuffs,” Russell said.

Amos edged around Prime, as if he was scared that he might lunge at him. The man tugged at Prime’s cuffed hands.

“He’s still cuffed!”

“Sounds like you saw a ghost,” Prime said.

“It wasn’t no ghost,” Russell said. “You just got a brother or something.”

Prime knew what had happened. These two buffoons had stumbled onto Johnny Farmboy.

“How do you explain him disappearing into thin air?” Prime said.

“How’d you know?” Amos cried. Prime smiled. He hadn’t, but had guessed that John transferred out to evade the two, and he hadn’t waited to do it in hiding when confronted with a gun.

“Ghost, I said.”

“It was a ghost!” Amos cried.

“No such thing!” Russell said.

“Think how bad it’ll be if you kill me,” Prime said. Amos looked at him with mostly white eyes.

“Shut up, I said!” Russell yelled.

Prime stared right at Amos. “Don’t tell me you don’t hear those Confederate soldiers at night, moaning after their gold.”

Russell smashed his fist across Prime’s jaw. He hadn’t seen it coming. Russell swung the other way, and though Prime saw this one coming, he couldn’t move much. He rocked his face back with the blow, but it still hurt.

“Shut … up.…” Russell said through gritted teeth.

The two left him in pain and darkness, but as Prime leaned his aching head against the rough wood pole, he decided it was worth it.

*   *   *

John found himself on the same sloped hill in the same humid heat. He stood, grabbing a tree trunk for support, and stumbled toward the ranger’s office. Maybe Grace or Henry in this universe could meet him halfway to the transfer gate. He’d hate to go by bus all the way to Findlay.

He jogged, favoring the bum ankle, through the wilderness preserve to the campground. The ranger station was deserted, so he stuck his head into the open door and pulled the phone off the wall mount. He pulled out his cheat sheet of numbers, organized by universe, and dialed the shack by the quarry. Grace and Henry in 7651 had had the building wired for phone service.

The phone, however, beeped at him, and John realized the ranger’s phone disallowed long-distance calls. He jogged from the camp, down the main street toward the cluster of restaurants and bars near the main ferry drop.

There was a phone booth on the main drag. He pulled the door shut and rooted through his pockets. Then he pushed the door open again. It was too damn hot to be shut in a confined space. His hand had a fist of coins, but he had no idea whether they were 7651, 7650, or 7458 coins. Half of them were gold coins that he knew would never work.

“Damn!”

He tried a quarter and a dime at random and the phone clicked. He dialed the number at the shack.

“Hello?” It was Grace.

“Grace, this is John,” he said. “John-7650,” he added after a pause.

“Yes, I know which John,” she said. “What’s up?”

“I need a lift. I’m on Kelleys Island. I had to transfer out of 7458,” John explained. “Some crazy rednecks have Prime and they ended up pointing a gun at me.”

“I hate that.”

“No kidding. I need to transfer back to 7458 right away.”

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll send Henry with the car. He’ll be there in ninety minutes.”

“That should allow me to get the next ferry. I’ll meet him at the dock in Marblehead.”

“You got it,” Grace said. “I’ll have the gateway warmed up.”

*   *   *

John had to wait only forty minutes for Henry to show.

“I broke some laws getting here,” he said. “Let’s get you back to Findlay.”

“Let’s go,” John said. “But let’s not get pulled over on the way.”

“What happened?”

John started to explain.

“Wait, you found gold? Let me see!”

John handed Henry one of the coins. “This isn’t Union gold. It’s Confederate gold.”

“Gold is gold,” John said.

“Sure, it’s still gold, but this is worth more as a coin than melted down to gold.”

“You think?”

“Can I keep this?” Henry said. “I’ll try to find out what it’s worth on the open market here.”

“Sure, I have a handful.”

John continued the story.

“You think they have Prime?” Henry asked.

“They must.”

“And you must have scared the crap out of them transferring out like that,” Henry said.

“I hope they don’t do something rash,” John said. “That’s why I have to get back there quickly.”

“Right.”

They pulled into the quarry drive just before six.

Grace-7651 had a backpack ready for him.

“Smoke bombs, mace, knife, food,” she said. “Did your money work?”

“It seemed to,” John said.

“Do you need more?”

“No, I’m okay.”

“Do you want a gun? We have one.”

John paused. “No, I guess not. No guns.”

“How are you going to get to the island?” Henry asked.

“Bus, I guess.”

“But you’ll miss the last ferry,” Grace said.

“It’s at ten o’clock,” Henry said. “Or it is in this universe.”

“Can we afford to lose twelve hours?” Grace asked.

John shook his head. “I don’t want to.”

“Can you get a car in 7458?” Henry asked.

“I don’t have a license or an address in 7458,” John said.

“How about we transfer through the car?” Grace said.

“No way it’ll fit in the transfer zone,” Henry said. John remembered the Jeep from the EmVis compound. When they’d escaped 7650 to 7651, they had been squatting behind a disabled Jeep. Only part of the Jeep had come through to 7651.

“If not a car, how about a motorcycle?”

“I can’t ride a motorcycle,” John said.

“Maybe you should learn,” Grace said. “You could take it everywhere. You’d be the cross-dimensional hog rider.”

“Uh.”

“We need some sort of transportation,” Henry said.

“Well…” Grace said.

John looked at her, knowing instantly what she meant.

“He’s there, but…”

“Prime needs us. He needs you, or rather all of you.”

“Let’s hope he’s home,” John said.

“Let’s hope.”

Grace powered up the machine and John transferred through to 7458.

CHAPTER
10

Twice John had passed by the house that sat across the road from the quarry. Twice he had averted his eyes, as if knowledge alone of his doppelganger in 7458 would contaminate him.

Now he walked toward the house with purpose. He paused after crossing the road, in the same copse of trees he’d knelt in months before when he was going to do to the one-armed John what Prime had done to him. But waiting there in the evening sun for some sign or portent seemed wrong. He had no time for skulking.

Instead, he just walked toward the house.

The Trans-Am was in the gravel driveway. No way would Dad or Mom have that for a vehicle. John-7458 existed here, and he was at home.

John patted his keys in his front pocket. Maybe his keys to the Trans-Am would work. Maybe he could just take the car. No, an ally would mean as much as a car.

He stood at the shut front door, at the screen door that he remembered from a past life.

John knocked.

He heard someone stomping down the front hall. He heard his mother in this universe call Bill’s name and say something indistinct. A shadow moved across the rectangle of the door.

“John! What are you doing knocking? The door’s unlocked.”

“Mrs. Rayburn,” he began.

“Always fooling around! I thought you were in your room.”

“Your son
is
in his room, Mrs. Rayburn.” He remained on the front stoop, though she had left the door open.

She turned then and stared at him. Her eyes ran up and down his length, noting the clothes she had never bought or washed. She raised her hand to her mouth.

“John!” she cried, but not to him. She directed her shout to the back room where John-7458 probably was messing with electronics or reading a physics book.

“What, Mom?”

“Come here, please.” Her voice was shaky.

“Coming.”

John-7458 appeared from the back of the house. He glanced at the screen door, stopped, and did a double take.

John nodded, then stepped back so that he was off the stoop and out of sight.

John-7458 appeared at the door.

“Who … who the hell are you?” he asked.