by Melko, Paul
“It’s just a shadow.”
John had seen caves before, the limestone caverns up by Toledo called the Ottawa Indian Caverns. His father and mother had taken him a year before on his thirteenth birthday. At first he’d been excited, but the tour had been through the well-lit parts. The dark and inviting passageways all had been roped off. They hadn’t seen a bat or a skeleton from a lost spelunker or a sparkling outcropping of crystals. It had been only milky, oozing stalagmites and stalactites, which were okay, but nowhere near as interesting as bats.
“Yeah. Is that a ledge there? I think we can climb down to it.”
“Climb? I don’t know about that,” John said.
“Come on.” Billy led him around the quarry to the far side and got down on his belly, wiggling backward to the edge. Machines had long ago scraped the topsoil away, leaving the scratched rock surface bare. John watched him disappear over the edge of the cliff, Billy’s short cropped head tilting once to flash John a grin.
“You coming or not, Johnny?” Billy called, but John stood rooted at the edge of the quarry. Six feet in front of him was the abyss of Quarry #3. The sign that named it also read NO TRESPASSING.
The limestone quarries had been mined for eighty years by Desmond Rock and Stone, but abandoned since before John was born. Billy’s dad and uncles had worked there, been laid off, and now spent a considerable amount of time cursing Desmond’s name. For the boys, the quarry was a wonderland. Stunted shrubs and pines adorned the slag piles that sat between the water-filled quarries.
John’s own father had told him how he and his friends had played near the quarries at night, after the quarry men headed home. They’d gone swimming in #3, jumping off the quarry edge to the water fifteen meters below. His father also told him how Roger Martin had drowned there, his body tangled in the water vines.
He knew his father had told him the story to scare him away from the abandoned quarry, but the place lured them.
It was Billy who always wanted to ditch his sister and come over here. John followed, despite his father’s stories of Roger Martin, his slime-covered corpse, pulled from the clinging plants, his body blue and bloated. The quarry was like an alien landscape, not farmland, not street, not grass, but bare rock, like a desert, like Mars maybe. How could they stay away? How could they not climb down the cliff wall to the cave below?
John got down on his belly and inched forward to the edge. Billy stood on a thin ledge, two and a half meters below the top. Dust covered his fingers.
“Gonna need the rope?” John asked. He wanted to run back to the barn and bring back a loop of rope. Then maybe his mom would see him and give him a chore, and then he’d not have to come back at all.
“Naw. It’s right below me.” Beyond Billy’s head gleamed the green-blue of the quarry water, striking contrast to the white sheer cliffs of stone. John could make out the snaking forms of water vines, like those that had clung to Roger Martin’s body.
“Careful, Billy,” John said. The only thing worse than John falling into the quarry water was Billy doing it and John having to run home to tell their fathers.
“Jesus, Johnny, you’re a scaredy-cat,” Billy said, looking up, squinting at him. “You’ve been a scaredy-cat all day.”
John blushed. They’d come to the quarry from the Walder barn where they’d been looking at the Playboy in the loft, ogling Miss June, trying to figure out the dirty jokes on the other side of her. Billy had stolen the magazine from his dad’s nightstand, daring to take just one from the stack of dozens, picking Miss June because she looked so much like Mrs. Fonza, their teacher from fourth grade, with the jet-black hair and slim figure.
Billy had wanted to get another issue, but John had said no, worried that they would get caught.
Billy said, “I can see it.”
Looking down, John was seized with vertigo. He tasted his lunch at the back of his throat—Mom’s tomato soup. He closed his eyes and gripped a crack in the rock. Billy was always doing fool stuff like this. John still felt the pain on his backside from the time they snitched a jug of Billy’s father’s wine and drank it in the hayloft. Swimming in Mrs. Jones’s pond had been Billy’s idea too, but John was the one who’d tripped over the barbed-wire fence. His calf ached where he’d gotten the three dozen stitches.
John opened his eyes and forced himself to watch Billy’s progress down the cliff face. Someone would have to help him if he fell.
“Almost there,” Billy said, his foot stretching. He lowered himself another meter. “I can see into it.”
Billy disappeared.
“Billy?” John called. There was no splash.
“Billy?”
“I’m in,” Billy called up. “There’s enough room for two. Come on down.”
John edged closer to the abyss, his fingers biting into the scraped stone.
“This cave goes way back. Like twenty meters,” Billy said. His head popped out of the cliff wall. “You coming or not?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did I mention there are cave-dweller paintings on the wall?”
“There are?”
“Yeah. Get down here.”
John sat up, his legs dangling over the edge, not looking down.
“There ain’t no cave-dweller paintings,” he said to himself. “But you’re going down there anyway, aren’t you?”
He rolled onto his belly and felt with his feet for the first ledge, a five-centimeter jut in the wall.
If he didn’t look down, if he ignored the fact that he was fifteen meters up, it was like being on the balance beam in gym class. He reached down with his foot and found the next small ledge.
John stepped lower, his face flat against the rock wall, his fingers aching from the force of his grip. As he pressed his foot down, a rock shifted and skittered down the side of the cliff. He slipped, dangling for a moment by his arms.
Blood pounded in his ears, and his shoulders screamed. How easy it would be to let go and plummet into the blue-green water below, just like Roger Martin. John hung there, his breath stopped for that second. Then he flexed, exhaled sharply, and dragged himself upward until his feet found a crevasse in the rock face.
A gentle wind tugged at his shoulders and cooled the sweat across his back.
The top of the cliff was just ten centimeters above him. He could climb back up. Up and back to the farm, and screw Billy Walder.
“Keep going,” he whispered.
He forced himself to step down once, then again. He saw the opening below him and Billy’s face grinning up.
“Don’t worry, even if you fall, you’ll just land in the water.”
The dust tickled his nose. He took another step down, and Billy grabbed his leg.
“There you go.” He pulled John into the cave mouth. “I was kidding about the cave-dweller paintings.”
“I figured so,” John said. He stood for a moment, letting his heart slow. He summoned up enough saliva to spit once, even though his mouth and nostrils were caked with dust.
“Look over here though,” Billy said, pulling him deep into the cave. The air leached the heat from John’s cheeks. The light faded away before the cavern did.
Billy pulled out his key-chain flashlight.
“This is so cool. So much better than a tree fort. We have a new command post, and there’s no way Sheila will find us here.”
“I’m not climbing down here every day,” John said.
“We’ll get a ladder.”
At the far end of the cave, dark holes gaped, leading deeper into the stone. There might have been a large complex of caves beyond this one cavern, and John felt the urge to explore each tunnel, mapping them out with graph paper, compass, and string. The limestone walls reminded John of the cave he’d visited with his parents. Its walls had the same rippled, milky texture, but this cave was nothing like that one, because there was no roped-off trail here. In this cave there might really be bats and outcroppings of jewels.
“What’s t
hat?” he said. Something reflected the light of Billy’s flashlight.
“Jewels?”
They edged closer, finding footholds on the slippery rocks. John peered closely at the thing, a disk of metal embedded in a column of limestone.
“Not jewels,” he said. Then he saw the skeleton. Or rather, the half skeleton, its right side sealed into the rock, as if the limestone had absorbed it. Across its chest was the disk of metal, strapped in place.
Billy began to back away, the light jiggling.
“It’s Roger Martin,” he whispered.
“No, it isn’t. They found his body,” John said. He almost called Billy a scaredy-cat, but remembered his own fear on the cliff wall. “Don’t worry, Billy. He’s long dead. Hold the light steady.” Falling was something to be scared of, not a skeleton, stuck in the limestone, dead years ago.
John pulled out his pocketknife and began chipping away at the wet limestone. In a few minutes the disk was loose. He removed the straps on the back and brought it closer to the light.
“What is it?” Billy asked.
It was a thin disk, with buttons and a digital readout that said 7312 on the face. Around the edge were a one-inch-long lever and a couple of dials.
“I don’t know,” John said with a smile. “But I’m going to find out.” His finger lightly touched the finished metal of the lever. “Whatever it is, it’s ours now.”
* * *
“My dad told me those same stories about Roger Martin,” John said. They sat in the Friendly’s on Pike Street, three look-alikes drawing stares and attention. John didn’t care.
“Yeah, me too,” Prime said.
Superprime had wolfed down his dinner, as if he hadn’t eaten in days. By his skinny appearance, John guessed that was true.
“So what happened then?” John asked.
“You can guess. We figured out how to dial a new universe,” John Superprime said. “That was cool. I know we pulled the lever, but the universe counter must have been lower than 7312 so the device didn’t work. And then we dialed it up higher and—poof—I was gone.”
“What did you do?”
“When?”
“When you transferred out?” John said. “What did you do?”
“I was scared shitless!” Superprime said. “The first place I ended up was this crazy world where everyone spoke French. I almost got caught, because I had no idea what had happened. One minute I was in the barn at Billy Walder’s and the next I was in this huge stone-paved area that looked like ancient Greece.”
“French?” John asked Prime.
“Saw one like that once. I think the French and Indians never lost the war with the British,” Prime said. “No General Washington. The United States is all balkanized. I didn’t stay long. It was useless to me if it was too far different.”
“Yeah,” Superprime said. “It was different. Bastards started chasing me when I tried to ask some questions. They were chasing me, shooting at me! I ran, ran for a corner. I was sure I was out of my mind.
“But then I came around the corner, right? And there were these guys in brown shirts and they waved me into this little lawn-mower-engine car. ‘American? American?’ they kept saying. They drove me out of the center of the city.
“By then my mind had settled a little. They threw a cloak over me as we went through this checkpoint. We didn’t even have to stop. I started thinking. We had been playing with the device. It was in my pocket, so I took it out.
“They started shouting, like it was a bomb or something. They jammed on the brakes and I flew into the seats in front of me. They scrambled out and I reached for the device. Toggled it back to 7312 and of course nothing happened. Then I tried some other number and pulled the lever.
“Splat! I fall a meter or two on my ass. No car in that universe. But this one was closer to ours, right? America at least. Not some crazy French place.”
“So what did you do then?” John asked.
“I tried to tell people,” he said. “I tried to walk home first, but my house wasn’t there. It looked the same, same roads and all, but no house. I was sure I was insane. Then I walked to the police station, and told them I couldn’t find my house. They took everything down, tried to find my parents. No Rayburns of any kind in the area.
“They began to think I was crazy too. But I wasn’t some bum. I had clothes and I was well fed. They put me up for the night at the precinct. But then they had some psychiatrist look at me. The house address I was repeating just wasn’t there.
“I gave him the device.”
“You what?” Prime cried.
“I didn’t know then!” he cried. “I had no idea what it was!”
“What did he do?” John asked.
“He looked at it, touched it, but didn’t press any buttons. Then he handed it back to me and asked me to tell him how it worked. I said I didn’t want to, that everything would disappear. He told me in a calm voice that, no, it wouldn’t. I argued until I was in tears. He insisted. Finally he put it in my lap, turned the dial, and put my finger on the trigger.”
“No,” John said in horror at what he knew would come next.
“I had no idea, you gotta believe me,” Superprime said. “I didn’t know.”
“He made you press the button.”
“He seemed so sure, and I wanted to believe him. He said it was all in my mind, that the device was just a toy. That if I pressed it, nothing would happen. I so wanted to believe that. So I let him push the lever.”
“Jesus,” Prime said.
“No,” John said.
He hung his head, nodding it. “So much goddamn blood.”
“How much of him—” Prime stopped his question halfway through.
“His arms, some of his chest.” Superprime turned away, and his stomach heaved. He wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “I was in a field. With cows, and two goddamn arms.
“I panicked. I tried everything on the device to get back to my universe. But it wouldn’t work.”
They paid and left the restaurant, driving back to the apartment building.
“Did you guys break it when you took it out of the cave?” Prime asked.
“You’ve seen it. There’s nothing to break.”
“How old was that skeleton?” John asked.
“It was a fossil. It could have been decades, centuries old.”
Prime glanced at John. “We need to see it,” Prime said.
“Yeah,” John replied. “What did you do then?”
“I started jumping universes, looking for some answer,” he said. “I hoped there was some advanced civilization in the next universe over that could get me back. But none of the universes had technology any more advanced than mine. Some of them were backwards. Steam engines, horses and wagons. I tried—tried talking to myself once. But what good was that? I scared the hell out of my—our parents there. The John there thought it was cool.
“I stayed there for a few months. I was hungry and tired. I should have stayed, but…” He paused.
“What?” Prime said.
“We were only kids. I was jealous, okay? I was jealous of the other me!
“So I left one day. Didn’t even tell them. Just left,” he said. “I guess I had the idea then of … you know.”
“Yeah,” Prime said.
“So I started looking for a place that looked like home,” Superprime said. “Some place where I could fit in. I found you.” He nodded at Prime.
“Yeah,” Prime said. “I know.”
“How’d you do it?” John said. “I never knew.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Prime said.
“I knocked him out with a shovel,” Superprime said. “I tried to get him to try it, but he wouldn’t. He was too suspicious. So I pretended like it didn’t matter and then whacked him on the head. I dialed the device ahead one universe and triggered it with the handle of a shovel.”
“Wow,” John said. It was almost his exact plan when he was going to do the same to one-ar
med John.
“So, you can take me back, can’t you?” Superprime said. “If you’re here, then you figured the thing out, right? You gotta take me back.”
He stood up, then, and put his arms on John’s shoulders. He smelled of vomit and beer, plus a sweet pungent odor.
“No!” John shook him off.
“Why?” he said, shrugging at Prime. “Doesn’t he want his life back? Here it is for him to have. I don’t want it.”
“You can rot in it for all I care,” Prime said.
“Screw you both!” He turned away. “I did what I had to do. You both did it too.”
John didn’t reply. He hadn’t done it, but he almost had. He wasn’t any better than either of the two.
“We’re not going to do anything for you in your current state,” John said. “You’re drunk, stoned out. What good is giving you back your old life if you’d just screw it up again?”
“Screw you,” Superprime said.
“Fine,” John said. “Let’s go.”
He and Prime turned away and started walking toward the street.
“Cathartic enough for you?” John asked Prime quietly.
“No. Not at all.”
“It doesn’t make it any better looking the person in the eye. Not at all.”
“He killed my mother,” Prime said.
“It was an accident. And you can take cold comfort in her being still alive in your home universe,” John said.
“Cold comfort,” Prime repeated.
“Hey! What are you going to do?” Superprime cried. “Why did you find me? Just to torment me?”
John turned on him. “We wanted to know where it came from. Now we do. Now we’re going to go look for ourselves.”
“You could take me back. Please! Take me back.”
“Not today, John,” he said. “Get your life back together and maybe we will.”
CHAPTER 14
John ruminated on his last comment as they walked back to the quarry. What right did he have to deny Superprime his desire to return home? Why did he judge him unworthy?
“I guess we can’t settle this universe,” Prime said. “Otherwise he gets to be on the board.”
John looked at him. He shouldn’t have been surprised that they were thinking about the same things at the same time.