by Paul Melko
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.
He knew his parents were disappointed in what had happened, and John 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 Farmboy. He was a completely different thing.
They’d understand once the money started rolling in. They’d not be disappointed in their son any more.
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 realized he should have killed Johnny Farmboy, hid the body, and kept the device. Now the Cube had to work right. With his 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 he didn’t dare. 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.
*
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. 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 and he would kick the shit out of John Prime.
He smiled as he shut the barn door.
SNAIL STONES
Who’s that wagger?” Edeo asked. He was so distracted by the cloaked figure he missed the ball Haron had bounced off the wall of the abandoned building, and it rolled across the sewer grate, bumbling like a pachinko ball before disappearing into the foulness below.
“That’s great, Edeo! That was our only ball.”
But Edeo’s attention was on the gray-coated man who couldn’t have looked more conspicuous, head darting left and right, arms clutching a bundle of sack cloth.
Haron scooted on his belly by the grate, finger brushing slimy water, trying to find the ball.
“Who cares who he is?” Haron said. “Unless he has some more balls.”
Edeo, oblivious to Haron’s effort to extract the ball, edged between the two warehouses to get a better look at the figure. He climbed a pile of rubble.
“It’s Fruge, the jeweler,” he said. “My new dad bought my mom a ring from him. Then he hocked it for ringseed ale.”
“It’s Fruge, so what?” Haron said, certain that Edeo should be the one fishing for the ball. His fingers touched something furry. He pulled his hand out with a squeal.
Fruge, some hundred meters away, turned, searching the broken buildings for the sound. Edeo dropped down among the rubble pieces. “Shush, now. He’ll see us, you breather.”
“So? He ain’t the muni?”
Haron, angry that he had screamed like a little kid, stuck his hand back in, now searching for the rodent and the ball. Either would be fun to play with.
Fruge stared at the derelict buildings. He was clearly doing something nefarious, Edeo thought. He fumbled in his pocket with one hand while the other clutched the cloth to his chest.
“Holy Captain. He’s got a gun.”
Haron turned his head, hand still in the grate. “A gun?”
“He’s coming this way.”
Something brushed Haron’s hand and he squeezed. “Hey, I got the ball!” He tried to pull his hand out, but his fist was too thick to fit between the bars of the grate. Something chittered in the darkness.
Haron watched Fruge advance on them. He was still a long way off, and he had no doubt that they could outrun the pudgy man in the ruins near the spaceport. He and Edeo were small and knew a lot of good hiding places they shouldn’t have, given that their moms had forbidden them to come to the old abandoned firstfall zone.
Edeo was mesmerized by Fruge’s gun. He’d never seen one; they were illegal. Why was Fruge carrying one? It was obvious after a moment; Fruge was a jeweler. He had to carry a gun for protection.
Haron, having banged his fist against the bars a dozen times, was convinced he couldn’t bring the ball through the grate while holding it. He peered down into the sewer. Stupid ball. Edeo had picked the biggest one on the ball tree, of course.
“Who’s there?” Fruge cried. “I have a gun.” He waved it. “Don’t come near me.”
“What’s he squawking on about?” Haron asked.
“He’s afraid,” Edeo replied. “We’d better go. He might mistake us for robbers.”
“Not
without my ball.”
“We’ll get another one.”
“Not until tonight!” The ball tree was in Mr. Hebway’s garden. Any balls that fell, he burned in his incinerator instead of giving them to the kids. No way he’d let them have one, even if they asked. They’d have to climb the fence and tree in the dark.
“Come on,” Edeo said. He scrambled down the rubble pile.
“No way!”
Haron reached in with his other hand, cupping the ball. He let go and then pushed it through the grate. “I got it.”
Edeo peered around the rubble. Fruge was running at them.
“Come on!”
The sound of thunder erupted above, and radiant heat basked them in warmth. The cargo ship sprayed orange flame as it drove into the sky. The boys paused, watching the rocket climb. They’d come to watch it anyway, but then been distracted.
“Wow,” Edeo said, forgetting Fruge for the moment. It was off to Highpoint, where the bigger spline ships docked. Edeo couldn’t imagine that the spline ships were hundreds of times bigger than the simple rockets that launched from the spaceport.
When the rocket had finally become just a blur of red, they remembered Fruge. But when they turned, he was gone, perhaps scared by the sound of the rocket.
“What’s that?” Edeo asked. Where Fruge had been standing, something twinkled in the sunlight.
Haron and Edeo ran for it, Haron edging Edeo out by a hair. He scooped the glittering thing up, then dropped it as if it were a snake.
Edeo skidded to a stop, his hand frozen. The shape and size made it obvious, but he’d never seen one so big. The boys looked at each other. Then Edeo reached down to pick it up.
“Snail stone.”
*
Haron was at Edeo’s door five minutes after dinner.
“You got it?” he whispered.
Edeo’s mom was busy on the vid with her friends, all six faces on the screen showing a similar head covered with a checked cloth. His step-father was collapsed on the couch sipping a ringseed. That left just his older brother Gremon to arch a brow and say, “Got what?”
“Nothing,” Edeo and Haron said in unison.
“I bet,” Gremon said, standing up from the table to block Edeo’s way out of the kitchen. Edeo had the snail stone in his back pocket, and he knew Gremon well enough to know he’d search him until he found the artifact in question.
He sighed, as if in resignation, then tipped Gremon’s plate of food out of his hand. While Gremon juggled the plate, Edeo slid under the table. Edeo and Haron were almost to the stairwell firedoor when gravity finally won the battle and Gremon’s plate clattered to the floor, breaking in pieces.
They shared a quick grin, though Edeo knew he’d pay later. It was worth it.
“You got it?” Haron asked again.
“Yeah,” Edeo said.
Instead of heading out into the courtyard, they kept going down, sliding between boxes in the space under the last flight of stairs. Haron switched on his flashlight as Edeo pulled out the snail stone.
It felt like a rock in Edeo’s hand, cold and heavy, but it didn’t look like a rock. It shimmered with orange light, cutting the flashlight’s beam into prisms. Edeo turned his hand, and the prisms danced on the wall.
“You sleep with it under your bed and your willy gets longer,” Haron said.
“Does not!” Edeo replied, though truth be told, he wasn’t sure. People said the snail stones did all sorts of things, that they powered rockets, caused cold fusion, cured colds. Why else did the government decide they owned them all?
“How much you think it’s worth?”
“We can’t ask Fruge, that’s for sure,” Edeo said.
“Lotta jewelers,” Haron said.
Footsteps on the stair, and Haron snapped off the flashlight. The steps stopped, as if the soft click had been enough to alert the stepper.
With extra-fraternal senses, Edeo knew it was Gremon. He held his breath, willed Haron to do the same. Haron sensed his friend’s fear and remained silent, waiting.
Finally, the steps continued and the courtyard door swung open and closed.
They waited. It wasn’t above Gremon to fool them from their hiding places with a fake door opening. Then a chatting couple came in, and that was enough for the two. They slipped up the steps and, with an eye for Gremon, headed for the Guild district.
Most of the shops were closed, the gemologists and dealers off to their homes. Fruge’s shop was closed tight. None of the shops displayed any snail stones in their barred windows.
“Tomorrow?” Edeo asked. He was thinking he’d slip the stone under his mattress for safe keeping.
“Nah,” Haron said. “Here.”
The place was a pawn shop. A few rings lined the front display windows. A neon sign flickered, revealed that the shop was open twenty-two hours.
They pushed through the revolving door into the cluttered shop. Junk lined the walls; space suits hung next to stringless violins. Two rows of trikes sat covered in dust, one of them a Keebler Three-X.
“We’ll be able to buy two of those with this,” Haron whispered.
“You think?”
“I ain’t buying anymore trikes!”
A head had popped up through a glass partition at the back of the store.
“We don’t got no trikes,” Haron said.
“Well, you don’t look like you can buy one, either of you. What you want?”
Edeo nudged Haron forward in front of him. They stepped to within two meters of the pawnbroker. He was old enough to be second generation. Wispy white hair medusaed around his head.
“Snail stones,” Haron said. “How much one of those go for?”
The man’s eyes narrowed. “You trying to trick old Kort? You working with the munis, seeing if I’m on the up and up?” His voice rose as if he were addressing someone beyond the room, listening in. “I don’t traffic in restricted items, no sir.”
Haron was annoyed. “Yeah, but how much would it be worth if you did?”
The pawnbroker peered down at Haron. His eyes had a devious look to them, as if he’d just made a decision to do a bad thing for his own good. “What you find in your granddame’s attic? Something that should have been turned in years ago? Something forgotten?”
Edeo backed away, hand deep in his pocket, cupping the snail stone.
“We didn’t find nothing!” Haron said, standing fast.
The booth the pawnbroker sat in flew up to the ceiling with a whoosh, leaving the old man standing in front of Haron. He reached out with a fist and took hold of Haron’s shirt, dragging him forward with one hand while the other dug into Haron’s pants pocket.
“What you got there, pinter? What’d you find?”
Edeo ran, abandoning Haron for the gem’s safety. But when he slammed into the revolving door, it held fast.
“Maybe you’ve got the stone,” the man cried.
“We don’t have nothing,” Edeo screamed. “It was all Gremon’s idea. He sent us in to ask!”
The old man’s strength seemed to flag, and Haron’s feet touched the ground. He pulled away and huddled with Edeo in the pie-shaped slot of the revolving door.
“A trick? You playing a trick on old Kort?”
The old man spat at them, then kicked a lever with his feet. The reluctant door whipped them around and spat them onto the street. They ran, then, ducking between two women window shopping in the dusk.
Edeo ran only as far as the first turn, then he sagged against a solar shield booth, rusted and left over from before the atmosphere was thick enough. The thing was covered in graffiti, but the seats were relatively clean, so they sat there under the lead shielding and took deep breaths.
“They’re on the munis restricted lists,” Haron finally said.
“Yeah.”
“We staying out?” Haron asked after awhile.
“Ain’t going home,” Edeo replied. Gremon was sure to beat the crap out of him when he got there, unless he
planned it right.
They sat there until the sun was long gone.
“Look there,” Haron said. “Fruge.”
Indeed the jeweler had stepped out of his dark shop and was glancing left and right as he locked his door.
“Looking mighty suspish, ain’t he?” Edeo said.
“Mighty.”
Without a word, they left the confines of the solar shield, ambling with precise nonchalance in the same direction as Fruge, but on the other side of the street.
“He’s going back to the spaceport,” Edeo said, when he took a sudden turn.
“Sell his jewels off planet. Only place he can, I bet, if they’re on the restricted lists,” Haron said.
Edeo glanced at his friend. Sometimes he made a lot of sense.
Fruge kept throwing glances over his shoulder, and finally Edeo pulled Haron aside into a dark side street, certain Fruge’d see the duo soon.
“We know where he’s going,” Edeo said. “Come on.” They ran through the side streets for the spaceport, trying to reach the corner where they had seen Fruge earlier in the day.
Panting, they found a crumbled doorway that gave them a view of two streets.
“There he is,” Haron said.
In the dark, he was little more than a bumbling shadow, but clearly it was him, edging down the street, looking over his shoulder.
“Probably has his gun,” Edeo said.
Fruge stopped before he reached the intersection, slipping into a doorway. They heard the jiggle of keys, then the scrape of a door opening.
“I thought all these warehouses were abandoned,” Edeo said. When the new spaceport terminal went in on the far side of the landing fields, there’d been no need to keep up these old buildings. Old Firstfall had crumbled into decay.
“Not,” said Haron.
Light flickered from within the building, barely visible through blinded windows in the basement. Edeo and Haron shared a quick grin in the darkness and slipped from their hiding place.
Fruge had gone to some trouble to cover the windows, using tape to wedge a curtain across all of the glass. But at some point, the tape had dried up, and a corner of the curtain had drooped to reveal the inside of the building.