The Broken Universe (8 page)

“Yes, sir, Mr. Gesalex,” Jack said. “I was just introducing myself to my fellow board members.”

“That isn’t necessary,” Gesalex said. “Let’s proceed.”

“Of course.” Banks shrugged and smiled weakly. “After you, Ms. Shisler.”

“Thank you.”

They took places on opposite sides of the conference table, Casey, Grace, Henry, and John on one side, Gesalex, Banks, and the two others on the other. Four against four, though Casey had no basis and no vote at the meeting.

Gesalex noted that first.

“Why is she here?” he asked, pointing at Casey.

“She is our best salesperson and is here to present the pro forma income statement through last week,” Grace said.

“That won’t be necessary,” Gesalex said. “We are here only to vote on the dissolution of the company and the recovery of our funding.”

“That seems premature,” Grace said. “We’re a moneymaking venture, and we will recoup your initial investment.”

“We wish to liquidate immediately,” Gesalex said.

“Why?”

Gesalex said something in another language. “It is our prerogative!”

John glanced at Banks, who looked clearly uncomfortable. John wondered if the Alarians had no one else to man the board with, if all their people had transferred out of 7650 by the time John had recovered the device. Had Gesalex made a mistake in bringing in Banks as a neutral third party?

“Wanting your money back after less than twelve months,” John said, “seems to be fraudulent.” He was speaking for Banks’s benefit.

“Nonsense,” Gesalex said. “We need the capital back for other investments.”

“Grauptham House must be under some terrible pressure if they need our capital,” John said.

“That is irrelevant!”

“It seems you would be better off letting us generate income,” Grace added. “If, that is, your motives were pure.”

“What are you insinuating?”

“I think you know,” Grace said.

“Motion to liquidate the company immediately,” Gesalex said. The room was quiet for several seconds, until Gesalex nudged the lackey to his right with his elbow.

“Second,” he rumbled in a thick accent.

“All in favor?”

Gesalex and his two cronies said, “Aye.”

“Opposed?”

“Nay!”

“Motion carries,” Gesalex said, standing up.

“Point of order,” cried Grace and John at the same time. John grinned at her. They had both seen the same thing. Banks hadn’t voted.

“I call a vote by voice,” Grace said.

“Ridiculous!” Gesalex shouted.

“If you don’t, our next stop will be a judge,” Grace said. “To get an injunction against you.”

Gesalex glared at them. “All in favor, raise your hands.” He glared at Banks when the man didn’t raise his arm. He sat there with his arms across his chest.

“Vote!” Gesalex shouted.

“You asked me to be on this board, and I will do so in as best a capacity as I can,” Banks said.

“I will replace you!”

“Not today you won’t.”

“Why?”

“I want to hear what these people have to say before I rush to any vote,” Banks said.

“The motion doesn’t carry,” Grace said.

“I table the motion,” Gesalex said. “Until later.” He glared at Banks.

“We’ll present our pro forma financial statements,” Grace said with a smile. “Casey?”

Casey stood and handed out a thick packet of financial statements, prepared the night before with as much of the data as they could include from recent sales figures.

As Casey walked through the charts and figures, John was attuned to her words. Not only was she the woman he loved, she had a way about her that drew in anyone listening. Or maybe it was just him. Gesalex wasn’t listening, fidgeting with the pad of paper in front of him. But Banks was listening, and perhaps that was all that mattered. Gesalex had expected a yes-man. He’d gotten a free-thinking, honorable servant. This would have been an entirely different meeting if Banks hadn’t been there.

“This is our projected revenue,” Casey was saying. “Our conservative estimate shows us recovering the invested capital by the end of year two.”

“How conservative is that estimate?” Banks asked.

Casey turned to Henry, who cleared his throat. He was clearly uncomfortable with the idea of speaking. “Um, exponential growth through year one, followed by linear growth in years two and three, doubling each year. We’ll saturate the market in the fourth year, and see competition of the base models.”

“You have a bit of a dip here these last few months,” Banks said, pointing at the sales history and projections.

“We had some personal issues to deal with,” Grace said calmly. She stared pointedly at Gesalex. “Those have been cleared up now.”

“Certainly the recent sales look good,” Banks said. “But what assurances do we have that these personal issues won’t rise again? A CEO and her staff need to be stable, especially in a start-up.”

“Please note that we’ve added a succession plan for all the major positions in the firm,” Grace said. “This was something we hadn’t done before, since we thought nothing like that would ever happen to us.”

“Excellent,” Banks said. “It’s always good to have your backup around, isn’t it?”

“It is, sir,” Grace said with a smile.

Casey ran through the income statement, balance sheets, and cash-flow statement. As far as John could tell, she did it perfectly, with only a handful of business classes behind her. No wonder people were willing to buy anything from her.

When she concluded her presentation, Banks asked several more questions.

“Fine presentation,” he said finally. “Seems like a good investment, Mr. Gesalex.”

“I have little care for that,” Gesalex said. “EmVis wishes to recover its investment, immediately.”

“Well, Mr. Gesalex, you can certainly liquidate the company,” Banks said. “But in this case, you’ll recover, as far as I can tell, some intellectual property—patents and such—about thirty thousand dollars in cash, a few leased buildings, and assorted accounts receivable of maybe a hundred thousand dollars. More trouble than it’s worth. In a year or two, you might get your millions back, with interest.”

Gesalex slammed his fist on the table.

“No! We won’t allow these vermin to continue on!” he cried. “They have something of ours. We demand it back!”

John leaned back and laughed.

“Vermin? Not singletons?”

Gesalex cursed in his own language.

“Really, Mr. Gesalex,” Banks said. “That’s enough. They seem earnest enough kids. What’s your problem with them?”

“There’s a motion on the table to dissolve the company!” Gesalex said. “How do you vote?”

Banks’s face turned red with anger.

“Will you excuse us for a few minutes?” Banks said finally. “Seems we need a private conference.”

“Of course,” Grace said. The four left Gesalex and the other three in the conference room alone, shutting the door after them. They wandered down the thickly carpeted hallway to the window and looked out over the parking lot. Even with the door closed, they could hear the shouting, though they couldn’t make out the words.

“Well, we know what their game is now,” Henry said.

“Revenge,” John said. “Gesalex must know he can’t get the device by simply taking over our company. He’s trying to pressure us into giving it up by taking away the company.”

“Did Charboric leave the most intelligent lackeys behind?” Grace asked. “Probably not.” Charboric had been Visgrath’s second-in-command.

The door opened and Banks walked out. He glanced over at the four.

“Well, I bought you about a week,” he said. “He’s removed me from the board, but it’ll take a while for him to find a replacement.”

“Thanks, Jack,” Grace said. “Sorry you had to waste your time.”

“Not a waste at all,” he said cheerfully. “I learned quite a bit about you all and your business.”

“You don’t happen to have fifteen million dollars, do you?” Grace asked. “You did say you were an investor.”

“I wouldn’t have taken this job if I had that kind of money,” he said, laughing. “Not sure why he hates you all, but he won’t stop until he’s destroyed your company.”

Grace shrugged. “EmVis and Grauptham House are under a lot of pressure.”

“I guess so,” Banks said. “Good luck!”

He disappeared down the hallway.

“A week won’t do us much good,” Casey said.

“More time to talk to investors,” Grace said. “More time to—”

The door to the conference room opened and Gesalex and his two cronies exited. Gesalex stopped and stared at them.

“Gesalex,” John said. “How about a deal?”

“John, what are you doing?” Casey asked.

“Getting them out of our hair.”

“What deal?” Gesalex said.

“We’ll transfer you to any universe you want,” John said. “As many of you as you want, as long as you never come back.”

“You dare make an unsuitable offer?” Gesalex shouted.

“Bite me, Gesalex,” John said. “We have a transfer device, and you don’t.”

“We have—” Gesalex started, and then stopped. “If you give us the transfer device and show us how to build more, we will let you live.”

John cocked his head. “Uh, no.”

“Multiples,” Gesalex spat. “We want the device.”

“You mean the one you used after you killed my parents?”

“We take what we want.”

“Why didn’t you make copies of it?” John asked. “Why didn’t you make another one? Too stupid?”

Gesalex took a step forward. John laughed.

“A lawsuit would solve this in our favor just as well,” John said.

Gesalex growled, and then turned away.

“The offer stands,” John called. “Transport anywhere. It must suck to be the last ones left.”

Gesalex and his friends didn’t answer.

“It was worth a shot,” John said.

“They’re idiots,” Grace said.

“I expect Charboric doesn’t want to see them unless they have a functioning device,” Casey said. “Come back victorious or don’t come back at all.”

“They must have transfer devices in their universe or wherever they went,” Henry said. “Right?”

“If they did, they wouldn’t need ours,” John said. “But they aren’t talking. At least not to us.”

Grace nodded. “Well, we have maybe a week. Let’s make it count.”

CHAPTER
7

Twice that week, John took Grace to 7651, dropping her off and letting her return via the 7651 transfer gate. Grace-7651 and Henry-7651 came once to the factory to watch how the pinball machines were built.

Henry-7651 said, after the car ride from the quarry site to the factory, “You should locate the factory at the quarry. It’ll make the transportation issue easy.”

“Yeah,” said Henry-7650. “No need for transport if we’re all located atop one another.”

“Atop?” John asked.

“Sure. All the universes occupy the same space, just shifted,” Henry-7651 explained. “7650 and 7651 are on top of each other, like all the universes.”

“Oh, I see.”

John and Henry had ripped apart a new pinball machine and were putting it back together in the factory. It was past eight, and all the workers were gone, to prevent them from seeing the duplicate Henry and Grace.

Grace asked, “Have you two found any discrepancies that we can exploit?”

Henry-7651 and Grace-7651 had been perusing the copies of the encyclopedia for just that purpose.

“Well, we know the differences in the two universes in detail,” Henry-7651 said. “The major events are the same. The presidents. The wars. Modern scientists and philosophers are different, but the technology remains equivalent.”

“The prices of commodities,” Grace-7651 said, “appear on par with those here.” She had been reviewing copies of
The Wall Street Journal
. “The biggest differences are those created by Grauptham House.”

“Scuba gear,” John said. “Beethoven’s Ninth.”

“Exactly! 7650 and 7651 may have been identical until the Alarians appeared and tipped them away,” Grace-7651 said.

“So we can exploit everything they did here,” John said.

“And pinball.”

Grace nodded. “Unfortunately it’ll take time. We can’t just turn on a new company in 7651. Scuba was introduced in 1978 in 7650. But in 7651, alternative products that do the same thing have been created.”

“The universes are just too similar,” Henry-7650 said.

“If we had a bigger set of universes to compare, we could exploit more things,” his counterpart said. “The differences would increase as a permutation.”

“We need more gates!” Henry-7650 shouted, getting on the bandwagon with his doppelganger.

“Yes!”

“All that is moot,” John said, “if we don’t have base capital to start with.”

Grace-7651 nodded. “A chicken or an egg problem.”

“We’re farthest advanced here,” Grace-7650 said. “This is where I want to stay.”

“Until Gesalex and his ilk are gone,” John said, “we’ll always be on guard.”

“Too bad they didn’t take your offer,” she replied.

“Do we have any nibbles on the investors?” Grace-7651 asked.

“Things seem tight all over,” Grace-7650 said. “We’re in a recession, and investor capital is scarce. No one wants to take a chance on a company that Grauptham House is trying to unload.”

“It looks bad for us,” John said.

They had spent hours brainstorming ideas. There were possibilities, but it seemed that every one required seed money and time. The cancer treatment in 7651, the three-wheeled motorized bikes that were the new fad in 7650, all would make money if they already had money. Time would create money if they added hard work. They didn’t have time, either.

“We could sell smilodon and dire wolves to zoos!” Henry-7651 said.

“Do you really want to catch those things?” John asked.

“Maybe just giant sloths, then.”

“Too conspicuous,” John said. “Megafauna can’t just appear one day in a timeline where they’re extinct.”

“What are we hiding from?” Henry-7651 asked. “Are these Alarians the worst there is?”

“Someone put them here,” John said. “That’s who I’m worried about. Corrundrum was scared of the Vig. Whoever that was.”

“Who’s Corrundrum?” Grace-7651 asked.

John took a moment to explain how John Prime had found another stranded traveler who had given them some vague clues about the multiverse. Corrundrum had seen the Rubik’s Cube that Prime had tried to create and knew Prime for a multidimensional traveler too. He tried to blackmail Prime, but had realized Prime knew very little about the multiverse.