by Melko, Paul
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.
“Where is he now?”
“Dead,” John said. “Prime killed him.” Right before he had almost killed John. Prime had saved his life, feigning sleep until Corrundrum had made his move.
“And Prime is another version of you?” Grace-7651 asked.
“Yes, he gave me the first device,” John explained.
“Where did he get it?” Grace-7651 asked.
“From another me?”
“But where did he get it?” Grace-7651 asked again.
John shrugged. “Neither Prime or I know.”
“You could find out,” Grace-7651 said. “That might answer some questions.”
John shook his head. “I’d just as much prefer to leave Prime be.”
“John has some conflicting emotions regarding his doppelganger,” Grace-7650 said.
“Hey!” John said, but he took the words with good humor. It was true. John was scared of how similar he and Prime were. Prime was devious, dangerous, and deadly. And that meant that John could be all those things too. Maybe he was all those things and he was fooling himself that he was good person.
“But—” Grace said.
“What?”
“Prime knows a lot,” she said. “He’s been to more universes than you. Maybe he has some clue on how to exploit them.”
“I’d hoped we could go our separate ways after 7651,” John said. “We’re not the same person.”
“Yeah? But he’s still you,” Grace said.
“We’ve diverged,” John said. He tried to laugh, but his throat was dry. They’d spent six weeks with Prime in 7651, and he’d never gotten over his sense of revulsion over the person who had stolen his life, his universe, his Casey.
“Sure, you’re not him,” Grace-7650 said. “Just like I’m not her.” She nodded at Grace-7651. “But he knows stuff that we can use. For no other reason than they suck and don’t deserve to win, we don’t want Gesalex to gain our company. And if he does, he won’t stop there. He wants a gate, and we’re the only shop in this universe. Nor do we want to give up Pinball Wizards and start over somewhere else. It’ll be harder somewhere else.”
John sighed.
“Don’t we have any other possibilities?” he asked. “What about a loan?”
“There’s always an off chance for a loan of fifteen million dollars,” Grace-7650 said, “but I doubt it.”
He and Prime had diverged, as soon as Prime had used the device the first time. He had had a whole year to change, to morph into the deviant he was. A whole year to justify stealing John’s life. And when John had been faced with the same choice, he had not done it. He had come to live with his fate. But it was only by the slightest chance. They were the same, to a point. The same to the point of moral failure. John had chosen correctly. Prime had not. They were one person, save for that one decision.
John nodded. “I’ll ask Prime,” he said. “When I take these two back to 7651, I’ll use the gate to get to 7533. We’ll see what he says. But he may have no magic answers.”
* * *
Casey-7533 opened the door and recognized him immediately. She had seen through him the first time he came looking for Prime too.
“John,” she said. “Back so soon?”
“Yes,” he said. It had only been two weeks since they had returned Prime to 7533 with his huge trunk of whatever he’d stolen from 7651.
Casey leaned forward and hugged him. Her smell—Casey’s perfume—jolted him. He tentatively hugged her back.
“Thanks for bringing him back,” she said. “I was worried, and then he was back and everything seems fine … here.”
“I need him again,” John said.
“So soon?”
“There have been … ramifications,” John said.
“Of course. There always are with what you two do.”
She stepped aside. Upstairs the toddler cried. “He’s in the den,” she said. “I have to get her.” She paused as she climbed the stairs. “When are you and your Casey going to have children?”
“Uh, we’re not even married.”
“Ah, then you should marry her. I’m sure she wants you to ask.”
“Sure,” John said, uncomfortable to be talking to a version of Casey about his own Casey. But she would know for sure what Casey wanted. “Really?”
“Of course,” she said. “Casey doesn’t waste her time on something for the meantime. I know.”
“Yeah.”
John entered the den. Prime sat at the desk, reading a book. The shelves were lined with physics books and manuals. A volume of an encyclopedia lay on the desk in front of him. A cup of coffee sat next to it. The room smelled of books. Well-thumbed books. John would have liked a den like this and wondered why he didn’t have one.
“John,” Prime said.
“John.”
Prime tapped the encyclopedia. “I read this all the time, and two newspapers, just to make sure I understand this universe. I still get caught up. Something stupid, something everyone here knows inherently.”
“I know,” John said. “It’s like you moved to a foreign country at the age of ten. You can pass for native, except when you don’t. Yeah, I know how it is.”
“Of course, you do,” Prime said. “I heard you talking with Casey. I wasn’t eavesdropping, but I listened to your voices rising and falling. It’s like a dream, like I’m watching myself in some surreal environment, especially when you talk to her.”
“Yeah, I feel it.”
“You’re back soon,” Prime said. “Frankly I wouldn’t have been surprised if I never saw you again. What happened?”
“The Alarians found my gate in 7650,” John said.
“Damn!”
“But we got it back,” John said. “Most of them left 7650. The rest are trying to force us out of business, take us over, and steal back the gate.” He paused. “They killed Bill and Janet.”
“Bastards.”
“Yeah.” They were silent for a moment, considering.
“So?” Prime asked.
“We need money, a lot, fast.”
“Ah, that’s why you’re here. Filthy money.”
“Yeah, you’re who we thought of first,” John said. Prime laughed. “I know you kept notes, and thought you might have ideas if you had access to other universes.”
Prime nodded. “You can’t just walk away? Go to 7652 maybe?”
“No, we won’t go.”
“Yeah, that’s never easy,” Prime said. “How much?”
“Fifteen million.”
Prime whistled.
“Any ideas?” John asked.
“Steal it.”
“What?”
“Sure, find two universes where a bank exists in one and doesn’t in another. Walk into the bank, grab a pile of money, and transfer to the blank universe. Repeat as necessary.”
“I think theft is out of the question,” John said. He didn’t mention that he had had that same thought when he first had been lost in the multiverse. But he hadn’t been able to bring himself to do it. How long would it have taken before he’d reached that point if he hadn’t been taken in by Bill and Janet in 7650?
“That makes it harder,” Prime said. “Then it has to be something available cheaply in one universe and expensive
in another.”
“Like?”
“Furry Buddies in 7501. I saw the same boxes of Buddies in 7502 for a dollar apiece. Went for twenty in 7501.”
“We don’t have the infrastructure to sell anything in 7501,” John said. “Not quickly, anyway. And we’d still be left with the process of converting the money from 7501 to 7650.”
“Gold,” Prime said. “Easy medium of transfer.”
“And we don’t have gates in either of those universes, which means me running material back and forth. I’m limited by what I can carry.”
“You’re putting a lot of constraints on me,” Prime said. He ticked off on his fingers. “Need fifteen million. Need it next week. Can’t sell something. Can’t arbitrage. Can’t steal.”
“Do you have any ideas?” John asked, exasperated.
“That leaves finding,” Prime said.
“What do you mean?”
“Treasure hunting,” Prime said. “Surely you wouldn’t object to just finding wealth?”
“Unless it’s in Fort Knox,” John said.
“Blackbeard’s treasure,” John said. “His ship is found only in some universes. Queen Anne’s Revenge was sunk off the coast of North Carolina. Silver and gold in such quantities that we couldn’t count it.”
“Do you know how to scuba dive?” John asked.
“Uh, well.”
“Sounds like a gamble anyway.”
Prime said, “It’s a matter of probabilities. We keep searching until we find it.” He opened up a binder and flipped to a tab. “John Jacob Astor’s cache of diamonds. Found in a toilet in the crews’ section of the Titanic by chance.”
“Do you have a remote-controlled submersible?”
“Okay, fine. How about Herihor’s tomb in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt? Undiscovered in most universes, Herihor’s tomb was filled with treasures from dozens of other pharaohs.”
“And how do we operate in Egypt without being noticed?”
“You’re adding a lot more constraints!” Prime flipped pages. “How about the Ark of the Covenant, hidden behind a wall in a building in Jerusalem.”
“And we would sell that how?”
“Maybe the Vatican would buy it,” Prime said. “Fine.” He flipped through more pages. “Ah, here it is. Civil War gold.”
“That sounds promising. Where?”
“Right here in Ohio,” Prime said. “Johnson’s Island in Lake Erie was used as a prisoner of war camp for Confederate officers. Fort Johnson was also used as a treasury for funds. When the USS Michigan was captured by Confederate spies, the Johnson’s Island prisoners escaped on the ship and took a huge cache of gold with them. Only a squall crashed the ship onto the shores of nearby Kelleys Island. With a handful of survivors, Confederate Colonel Nelson Franks buried the gold on a farm on Kelleys Island. Unfortunately for him, he died of pneumonia, as did most of his men, and the gold was lost. Except where it wasn’t.”