The Broken Universe (42 page)

John reached into his shirt, toggled his device, and pressed the button.

Nothing happened.

He looked down. The device was set to 7536. He pressed the right button again.

Nothing.

“Shit!” he said. Were they blocking the capability of the device? Had the detonation scrambled its circuits? He was trapped.

John turned and jumped into the gorge.

He ripped off his shirt and unbuckled the device. He pulled his shirt back over his shoulders. He jumped across the dry creek bed.

He dropped the device behind the memorial for the execution of Jason Grayborn and continued running up the gorge.

He was certain to be killed or captured. The least he could do was ditch the device.

In the gorge, it almost seemed as if nothing had happened. The trees within still stood. If he didn’t look up into the dark sky, if he forgot that Casey was dead, if he forgot that New Toledo was destroyed.

He ran.

Above him, the shadow of the aircraft loomed.

CHAPTER
35

“I’ll go,” John Prime said.

Grace Home looked at him with evident relief in her eyes. Casey, however, shook her head slightly.

To her, he added, “I have to. We have to know.”

They’d received a satchel post from 7535 twelve hours before that said,
Under attack.
Then nothing more. When Henry Home had tried to do a return transfer of a video camera, nothing had come back.

“You can’t go through on top of the New Toledo site,” Henry Home said. He’d been very perturbed when the video camera didn’t return. Even the hovering system had failed.

“I’ll go through from the south, about ten kilometers,” Prime said.

“Alone?” his Casey asked.

“Yes,” Prime said. “We’ve lost too many.” John Home, Casey Home, John Ten, all the refugees, all the Alarians were now missing in action. Grace Home had sent through emergency messages to all transfer gates to shut everything down, go into hiding, and make no unnecessary transfers until they could understand everything that had happened. Then she’d asked John Prime to join her in 7650 at the original Pinball Wizards factory. Casey had dropped Abby off at her parents’ and come with him. The meeting included John and Casey Prime, Grace and Henry Home, as well as Grace and Henry Top. A privy council of the Wizards to deal with the crisis.

“Ten kilometers?” Grace Home asked.

“I want a good distance between me and the site,” Prime said. “I’ll need an ATV and a portable gate.”

“A portable gate?” Henry Top said. “We don’t have a portable gate, just the one that John…”

He stopped before finishing his sentence. John was missing and with him the device that had started it all. They had no idea where he was, having disappeared after heading to Champ to reconnoiter. He could have been captured, killed, or lost in Pleistocene.

“I need a portable gate, one that I can transport easily with the ATV, that can get me back quickly, and that I can destroy after using if need be,” Prime explained.

Henry Home and Henry Top turned toward each other and began whispering. After a moment they turned and nodded in unison.

“We can do that. Portable generator, quick-deployment rig,” Henry Top said.

“Give us four hours,” Henry Home said.

“I’ll need to go back to 7533,” Prime said.

“Why?” Grace Home asked.

“Uh, weapons,” Prime said. “I have a cache of weapons I’ve been buying up in 7533.”

“Okay,” Henry Top said. “What site do we use for the new transfer site to the Pleistocene world?”

*   *   *

John Prime transferred across the ATV and its wagon of equipment just before six in the morning the next day. The weather was warmer in the Pleistocene universe, but not enough for him to forego a coat. His leg, where the shrapnel had embedded itself, was pink and puckered. It ached dully when he walked, but two Percocet took care of that. Casey had been shocked that the wound had healed so quickly.

Prime wore a military-grade ballistic vest. He had three pistols strapped to his body—waist, shoulder, and ankle holsters. He had a knife and three grenades. His weapon at hand was a Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun. He also had an AT4, an anti-tank gun, just in case he came up against something big. All of the equipment was from Universe 9000, his personal trove of equipment. Yes, he thought to himself, my entire universe of equipment.

The ATV could go forty kilometers per hour on open ground. With the trailer, he expected the rate would be less, but he didn’t expect to drag the trailer all the way to New Toledo. He’d set it up halfway there, near an outcropping of rock that was in a metro park in Home Universe: a safe, clear place to transfer into 7650.

His backup plan was to have the team activate the new transfer gate in 7650 every ten minutes until he returned.

Prime marked the transfer zone with small flags.

“Okay, here goes,” he said.

He dropped goggles over his eyes, started the ATV, checked his compass, and headed toward New Toledo.

Even with the goggles, tears ran from his eyes at the wind against his face. He blinked his eyes clear and focused on avoiding any ravines.

The trip was quicker than he expected. He stopped after five kilometers, near the outcropping of rock. He unloaded the generator and the new gate. The Henrys had built something quick and dirty, but it would work fine. It was big enough to transfer two persons in a hurry. Any more travelers and there was danger of someone losing a limb in the tight fit.

Prime verified that the generator would run and power the gate, and then he left it ready to transfer him out.

He took another bearing and continued on the ATV. He stopped repeatedly to scan the sky and the horizon, ahead and behind. Prime saw nothing.

Finally he was near enough to New Toledo that he felt he should see some sign of it. He thought he had the right location. The landmarks to the west seemed right, but the hills on the banks of the river where the settlement should have been … were absent.

He slowly drove closer.

As he crested a rise near the settlement, he stopped, staring at the sight.

Where New Toledo once stood was a huge glass bowl.

The entire settlement had been nuked.

“Jesus,” Prime said. They had all been killed, murdered by a weapon of mass destruction.

No wonder the video camera Henry had sent through didn’t come back. There was no hard ground to transfer onto. Just a drop fifty meters into a glass bowl.

John Prime felt his rage boil.

This was his multiverse too. What right did any goddamn shitheads have to kill his friends? Who put them in charge? And if they were in charge, why the hell weren’t they doing a better job? The Wizards hadn’t hurt anyone. The Alarian women certainly had suffered enough. Why did they have to die?

Tears were running down his cheeks. He felt impotent, useless, a burden. And stupid. Idiotic for letting this all happen. He had given Farmboy the device. Prime had set this all in motion. Farmboy liked to take responsibility for everything, but it was just as much his fault. So many deaths laid on his shoulders.

“John!”

He turned.

A woman, with a walking stick, was coming toward him. She was one of the Alarians, and he remembered her name—Radeheva, one of the pregnant Alarians. She was gravid with her baby, at least eight months pregnant.

As she neared, John Prime saw that the stick was a broken branch that she had picked up to help her walk. A scratch ran across her forehead. Her leg was clearly stiff from another wound on her thigh.

“Radeheva,” Prime said. “You’re alive.”

“For the moment, John,” she said. She looked at him closely. “John Prime.”

“What’s happened here?”

“Atomics,” she said. “I expect we’re getting a good dose standing here. Let’s be off.”

“Shit!” Prime said. Why had he not thought of that? He was standing on the edge of an atomic blast site.

“Are there any others who survived?” Prime asked.

“Two others,” Radeheva said. “Though I doubt for long. We were hunting. We saw the ship approach. We saw the explosion. It knocked us flat. The other two are worse than me.”

“You shouldn’t be so close to the site in your condition.”

“What else were we to do?” Radeheva said. “Neither Audofleda nor Brenasontha can walk. And this is where a rescuer would come.”

“But your baby—”

“—still kicks. Let’s go.”

She led him to the west.

“We were a kilometer to the east. The ship rose high, dropped its warhead, and came low. It sighted a survivor to the north, across the river, and pursued.”

“A survivor?”

“Yes, it was John Rayburn—John Home.”

“Farmboy? He was here.”

“Not that I knew of when I left that morning. He was coming to New Toledo when the blast occurred.”

“He’s captured then, and with him the device.”

“Perhaps. When someone is pursued, they often drop or destroy the things they want to keep from enemy hands.”

“There is no way to destroy the device easily.”

They drove the ATV two kilometers to the west, where they came upon a formation of rock under a small waterfall in a stream. In the depression behind the falls were Audofleda and Brenasontha. Audofleda was unconscious, her head bruised at the temple. Brenasontha was conscious, but her leg was broken.

Together, Prime and Radeheva carried the two women and placed them in the trailer of the ATV.

“I need to see what’s happened to John,” Prime said. “Can we wait an hour?”

Radeheva nodded. “We can wait. Where is the transfer gate?”

Prime explained where it was and how to use it, in case something happened to him.

“Give me an hour to look for him.”

“We will give you two.”

*   *   *

Prime had brought an inflatable canoe, which he used to cross the river to the far side. His mind kept coming back to the reality as he rowed: three survivors of a thousand. Just three.

They were facing monsters.

He reached the shore and pulled the light canoe up the bank where he set two large stones, fore and aft, to keep it from blowing away. He was still a kilometer or two upstream of the settlement site. No, not a settlement. The crater site.

He jogged easily toward the trees where Radeheva had last seen Farmboy John. She said she’d seen no sign of the enemy since. Had they found what they wanted in Farmboy? Had they left a few survivors to spread the word?

Radeheva had said the aircraft had pursued Farmboy from the trees northward. She’d seen him here, in front of the trees, facing the settlement. He was shocked to see footprints in the ash. Farmboy’s footprints. They came forward from the trees a few meters, then they turned back into the trees.

Prime followed. Farmboy had run back, jumped down the gully, and that’s where his tracks ended.

Prime hopped down and, by chance, found charred bits of clothing. This was where Farmboy had survived the blast, here behind the dirt of the ravine wall.

He looked left and right, spotted the stone someone had put up for that bastard Grayborn. That way, Prime thought. He would have gone that way.

John Prime ran past the memorial, taking the slanting gully slowly northeast and upward. When the gully was just a meter high, he found where Farmboy had scrabbled up the side. Ashes at the top of the gorge had been disturbed, and his footprints led off to the north.

Farmboy had been running; the length of his stride made that clear. Prime went five hundred meters, following the footprints straight, until the tracks veered suddenly to the left, then the right. Farmboy had been dodging something. The ground became a chaos of dirt, leaves, grass, and ash.

Something had swept the burnt-out land in all directions, something that had landed here. There was no corpse; they’d captured him. Then they had taken him away, leaving Radeheva and the two others to their fate. They had wanted John Farmboy specifically or just one captive. Prime had no idea which.

There was nothing to be done here. Prime turned around and followed the track back.

As he passed the memorial to Jason Grayborn, he paused. It was odd that this one thing was all that survived of New Toledo. Prime decided that it should not be so. He grabbed the memorial and tilted it over, shattering the stone.

His eyes settled on the device lying there.

“There you are,” he whispered.

Farmboy had ditched the device here, knowing he was about to be captured. Why hadn’t the enemy found it? His trail was easy to backtrack. They weren’t looking for the device for some reason.

But he had it now.

John Prime had it again. He smiled.

It was back in his hands again.

CHAPTER
36

John awoke in a cell. His head was pounding. His body ached. Sliding his feet over the edge of the bed he laid on, he pulled himself to a seated position.

The room was three meters square, with a bed against one wall and a toilet across from it in one corner. A door, with a metal screen window, was to his left. There was no other window. A vent in the ceiling blew cool air. He caught the scent of ammonia.

He leaned forward, head in hands, remembering. He had run, not to escape, but to draw the enemy away from the device. It hadn’t worked! Panic had flooded him, the same panic when Prime had first given him the device and it hadn’t worked, it hadn’t let him go back home. This time, it hadn’t let him transfer forward.

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.