The Broken Universe

by Melko, Paul

  “No, you didn’t,” Casey said. “I think it’s what our Grace needed. And certainly our Henry got through some heavy stuff with the help of the other Graces.”

  “Yeah, I can see how that would help.” The minibus disappeared with a rumble from the parking lot.

  The door to the roof opened and two more pairs of John and Casey appeared and found an open spot on the roof to look at the stars.

  John fumbled in his pocket for the engagement ring there. He knelt and flipped it open.

  “Um, speaking of relationships,” he said, “would you do me the honor of marrying me?”

  “Of course, John,” Casey said with a smile. “Of course.” She squeezed him, and they kissed passionately. As he buried his face in her hair he saw five other Johns on their knees in front of their Caseys.

  CHAPTER 20

  John Prime watched the apartment for six hours. No one entered, no one left, and, when the sun set, no lights came on. It was his second reconnaissance. He’d seen no one enter and exit the apartment the first time either.

  An inquiry at the building office indicated that apartment 23B at Odin Village was not available and that his information, sir, must not be correct. Yes, the tenant had been there for years and there was no indication that he would move soon. Perhaps apartment 2C would interest him?

  The grass was mowed by the landlords. However, the mailbox was stuffed full. Prime wondered if the postal carrier had just stopped delivering and was holding the mail at the main office.

  John Prime exited his car, walked across the dark grass, and let himself into Corrundrum’s apartment, empty now since mid-May, four months, almost five. He had tucked Corrundrum’s keys into his pocket then, lifted from the dead man’s pockets.

  Prime had watched the newspapers with interest for weeks, researched the severed foot found in the woods behind an office park in Columbus. But there had been no linkage to Corrundrum, no corpse found. How could it have been? It was in another universe.

  The room smelled of dust and closed-in rooms. The air-conditioner was on, and the temperature was a tepid seventy-five. There was the faint smell of spoiled food.

  He turned on the light in the living room. Nothing had changed from his visit at the start of the summer. Corrundrum couldn’t have changed anything, since he had been with John and Prime from the moment he left the apartment until his death. He apparently had no housekeeper, no pet-sitter, and, hopefully, no pets.

  John paged through the magazines on the coffee table. Nothing of interest. The bookshelf’s contents were mundane. No advanced physics books. There was a book on Ohio’s Serpent Mound, an Adena Culture snake-shaped mound of earth, and that rang a bell for John Prime, but he couldn’t recall from what.

  The kitchen area was tidy and devoid of anything of interest. He checked the top of the refrigerator, the cabinets, searching each shelf. He found a pile of bills, but no personal correspondence. He took the electric bill from its envelope. Prime wondered why the power was still on if the bill hadn’t been paid in four months. Perhaps Corrundrum had paid ahead.

  The bread on the counter was moldy. The smell of spoiled food came from the cabinets and fridge. Prime moved to the bedroom.

  The bed was unmade. The nightstand held a clock with tile numbers that flipped over. It was still moving, its motor turning rotors, but the time was wrong, as if it had slowly gone out of sync over the months.

  Prime opened the first drawer of the nightstand. A magazine, scissors, paper, and pens. Under the paper was another gun. Apparently he had had at least two. The second drawer was empty.

  Prime froze.

  The doorbell had chimed.

  He turned slowly, and then walked quietly to the doorway of the bedroom. A shadow moved across the front door. The doorbell chimed again. A second later, the person started pounding on the door.

  “Corriander! Corriander! You in there?”

  Prime couldn’t pretend he wasn’t. The light was on, and clearly that was something a neighbor had noticed after months of darkness. He shrugged.

  “Corriander! It’s Jerry from next door.”

  Prime unbolted the door and pulled it open. A wizened man stood there, over-tan and over-bald.

  “Oh, hey,” he said. “Thought you were Corriander.” The man peered around Prime’s head. “He in there?”

  “Naw, Kent asked me to check in on his apartment,” Prime said. He stressed Corrundrum’s false first name, making it seem as if he and Kent Corriander were on a first-name basis.

  “Oh, he did? He ain’t been around in a while.”

  “No, Kent is in Europe for a year,” Prime said. “On a job.”

  “Yeah? Europe? Wow.”

  “Yeah, Kent asked me to check in on things,” Prime said.

  The man continued to peer around Prime’s head, trying to see inside. “I didn’t know he had any European, uh, interests.”

  “I guess Kent forgot to mention them to you,” Prime said.

  “Yeah, I guess so,” the man said. “You an old friend of his?”

  Prime decided to push back a bit on the nosey man. “Sure, who are you, old man?”

  The man jerked as if slapped. “Oh, me? I’m Jerry Herbert, from twenty-two. I’m the neighbor!”

  “You don’t say,” Prime said. “Anything happen over here in the last few months?”

  “No! Nothing’s been happening. Nothing happens around here,” Herbert said. “Though Miss Clark in fifteen had her laundry stolen from her deck last month.” Herbert spat. “Perverts. It was her underthings they took.”

  “I’ll let Kent know about the perverts,” Prime said. “And your concern.” He reached to shut the door.

  “I’m not surprised that Kent went off to Europe,” Herbert said. “He seemed always ready to go. Had a ready bag and everything. Like we had in the service back then. Always ready to go at a moment’s notice. I remember—”

  “Thanks, Mr. Herbert,” Prime said. “I’ll let Kent know we talked.” This time he shut the door completely before Herbert could get another word in.

  If a busybody like Herbert didn’t suspect a thing, then Prime was safe to assume no one had. He returned to the bedroom, rummaging through the closet. He thought he’d found something when he found a box on the upper shelf of the closet, but it turned out to be only a bundle of old bills and a hundred dollars in cash. The bottom drawer of the dresser yielded another gun and a box of bullets. Prime let them be. He didn’t want to be in possession of the gun of a missing person, even though the gun could have been unregistered. No, he was tired of police scrutiny.

  The bedroom revealed nothing of Corrundrum’s true nature. But there had to be something. Corrundrum would have kept notes, information, details of his life among the natives of universe 7533.

  Prime spied an air vent. He found a chair and unscrewed the fasteners of the vent with his pocketknife. Nothing but dust awaited him. The other vents and ducts contained nothing. He tapped all the walls, looking for hollow areas. He lifted all the pictures on the walls. There appeared to be no extra space unaccounted for in the unit. Nothing.

  Prime simmered. He couldn’t come back. He had one chance at this. After he’d visited the apartment once, he didn’t dare be seen there again. Especially with Jerry Herbert’s watchful eyes on the neighborhood.

  He scanned the apartment again. He didn’t want to start tearing open cushions or ripping out walls. He’d prefer his visit remain undetectable. Though Herbert knew he was here.

  Herbert … What had he said of Corrundrum? Always ready to go. With a ready bag. Where?

  Prime looked at the hooks on the wall in the kitchen. House keys were in Prime’s pocket, but there was a key ring for a car. Corrundrum had a car. Prime had known that.

  Prime exited the front door and stared at the long row of garages. Which was his? Prime turned, saw Herbert looking at him from behind his shades. He motioned at the old man.

  A moment later, Herbert appeared on his doorstep.

&n
bsp; “Yeah?”

  “Kent wanted me to check his car, turn the battery,” Prime said. “But he didn’t tell me which garage was his.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Mr. Herbert said, nodding, glad to be needed. “Right next to mine. Number forty-five, right there.” He pointed at one of the garages.

  “Thanks.”

  A streetlight cast blue light on the lock, but there were only three keys on the ring he’d lifted from Corrundrum. The lock turned with the first key and he pulled up the garage door. Inside was the car Corrundrum had driven when he’d found him in Toledo. Prime unlocked the car door and popped the trunk.

  Inside was a duffel bag.

  Prime unzipped it, but the contents remained in shadow in the faint light of the streetlamp. It looked like clothes, another gun, money in a wad.

  “Is it starting?” Mr. Herbert called from his doorway across the parking lot.

  “Uh,” Prime said. Shit. He couldn’t walk out of the garage with the duffel if he hadn’t walked in with it. “Yeah, maybe dead battery.”

  “It’s been four months. He should have asked me to start it.”

  Prime pulled the duffel from the trunk and threw it into the backseat. The dome light came on weakly. Where was his flashlight? He’d left it in the apartment, damn it.

  He pocketed the cash. Tossing the clothing to the floor of the car, he dug into the bag. The gun landed with a thud.

  “I got cables,” Mr. Herbert yelled. “I can give you a jump.”

  Prime’s hand found a book—a dog-eared notebook.

  He pulled it out, opened it, and flipped through the pages. Line after line of symbols and characters that weren’t the Latin alphabet. The numbers were, however, Arabic. Sequences of four and five digits. Universe labels?

  He tucked the notebook in the small of his back.

  There was nothing else in the duffel.

  He zipped it up, shut the car door, and reached up to close the garage.

  “Yeah, you let a battery sit for that long, you’re asking for trouble.” Herbert stood right there, his robe flapping over his knobby knees. He had a ring of keys in his hands.

  “Uh, yeah.”

  “Did it turn over?”

  “Uh, no.”

  “Let me get my car and we’ll try to jump it,” Herbert said. “We’ll have to push it out of the garage to get it close enough. Just have the two-meter cables.”

  “No, I’ll just call AS,” Prime said.

  “AS?”

  “Auto Service,” Prime said.

  “What’s that? Like Three As?”

  “Yeah, yeah, it’s like that,” Prime said quickly. Too many subtle differences were there to trip him up. He turned the lock on the door. “I’ll have ’em come by in the morning. No need for you to bother, Mr. Herbert.”

  “No bother, but okay,” he said. “Have the professionals come on out, I guess.”

  “Thanks, bye now.”

  Prime walked back to Corrundrum’s apartment. He didn’t want Herbert to see which car was his.

  He took one more look around the apartment for any sign of his invasion. There was his flashlight. Some burglar he was. Prime peered out the window. Herbert’s door was still open. Prime took the notebook out and opened it to the first page.

  The strange characters filled the page. Numbers were at the top of the page. 7533. The universe code. Corrundrum knew where he was. The date was also clear. The first entry of this journal was dated fifteen years earlier. Fifteen years Corrundrum had been trapped here.

  Prime suddenly remembered more of Corrundrum’s story. He had tried to escape this universe. By traveling to the Serpent Mound. The book on his shelf made sense. He said there was a beacon there, whatever that meant, but there’d been an ambush of some sort. “A band of paths had the beacon area under surveillance,” he’d said. Paths?

  But what Corrundrum had said that interested him the most was the idea of Prime artifacts. Corrundrum had had a hunch that Prime had a couple in his possession, that the device itself, broken though it was, was one as well. Corrundrum’s reaction to seeing the device, his description of the transfer devices he had used and Oscar’s and Thomas’s reaction. The device was something different, something special. So were the artifacts they’d collected from Billy Walder.

  Prime opened the curtain a centimeter and checked for Herbert one more time. The man’s apartment door was shut. Prime turned off all the lights in Corrundrum’s apartment then locked the door behind him. He saw no one as he sauntered across the parking lot.

  He wasn’t sure what he had in the notebook, but he had something. There was treasure—of all sorts—in the multiverse and now he had a clue of where to look.

  CHAPTER 21

  John stood on the campus of the University of Toledo in Universe 7539, recognizing a place he had never visited and faces that did not know him. 7539 had no John Rayburn or Casey Nicholson. Nor was there a Grace or Henry. But there was a woman here, at least one, and a little girl, who weren’t born here. The question at hand was, how would he find them?

  “What do you remember now?” Casey asked. “Does being here help the memories?”

  They stood on the footpath near the river. This is where he had transferred them. The woman had been shot by food looters, and the girl had broken her leg when she’d fallen down the slope to the frozen river. All for two cans of noodle soup.

  “I think it was here,” he said. “I’m just not sure.”

  He shut his eyes. He’d transferred the mother and daughter from 7538 to get here, huddled in the snow with the two. From winter to fall. From death to happy-go-lucky campus. Covered in blood, he’d asked someone to call the police, but the person had pointed him toward the emergency box.

  He opened his eyes. There was the box. He’d called, waited for the ambulance, then run off to the field house to shower and rinse the blood from his clothes.

  So he’d been about ten meters to the east of where Casey and he now stood. He walked toward the spot, weaving through the throng of students.

  “Here,” he said to Casey. “We were right here.”

  Casey looked down as if there would be a clue after two years. “Here?”

  “Yeah.” He’d left Kylie and her mother there. Kylie! That was the little girl’s name. He couldn’t recall the last name, however. Smith? No, not that common. “I remember the little girl’s name.”

  “That’s good. Do we search the papers with that? You know the date, right?”

  “The date was October twenty-ninth,” John said. Five days after Prime had tricked him out of his life.

  “That should narrow it down,” Casey said. “If we know the name and the date, we can find more. There had to have been stories written.”

  “Yeah, there had to have been,” John agreed. A wounded body, a child with a broken leg. On an otherwise bucolic college campus. Yeah, there had to be news stories written.

  “Come on,” Casey said, grabbing John’s arm. The journalism college had a building on the main quad. It published the University of Toledo newspaper—The Dagger. The main room had three microfiche readers and an archive of past issues.

  “It’s called The Knife in this universe,” Casey said. “Huh.”

  Casey sat down at one of the readers, while John thumbed through the cabinet of fiche. He found the year and then the day when he had passed through this universe two years prior. He hadn’t been here long. Just long enough to call the police and wash his clothes out.

  The fiche was heavy in his fingers and felt as if it might rip. The top story was on the student council race.

  “Nothing,” he said.

  “Should we try the next day?” Casey asked.

  “Oh, right,” John said with a laugh. “What was I thinking?”

  He pulled the fiche for the next publication date, two days later.

  “Here it is,” he said. The top story was about the shooting and attack on campus. It had been a shooting on campus, just not this exact one. John scanne
d the article, with Casey over his shoulder.

  “Her name is Melissa Saraft,” Casey said.

  “Yeah, Saraft, that’s the name. Melissa and Kylie Saraft.” John wrote the name down so he wouldn’t forget it.

  “They’re looking for an unidentified witness who was seen fleeing the incident,” Casey said.

  “That would be me,” John said. “They didn’t find me.”

  “Let’s assume after two years they’ve given up the search.”

  “Taken to General Methodist,” Casey said.

  The next edition of the paper was the Monday following. John had already reached 7650 by then and was staying with the Rayburns, working as a farmhand. There was no new information in the follow-up story, nor the scathing editorials on campus safety.

  “Nothing,” John said. “I doubt The University of Toledo Knife is the place to look for more information.”

  Casey looked at the student sitting behind the desk in the reference room. “Maybe he knows what happened to the woman and her daughter.”

  “He looks like a freshman,” John said.

  “Let’s ask anyway.”

  Casey walked over to the desk and asked the student, “Do you remember that shooting from two years ago? The one where the woman was shot and the little girl had a broken leg?”

  The student rubbed his chin. “In October, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “I remember the story,” he said. “She was shot, but it wasn’t a serious wound. But there was something else.” He tapped his chin. “I’m trying to remember. Hmmm. Ah, yes. She had psychological conditions. No family, no support system. There was a follow-up story, by Joe Cursky at The Barker, but that’s all I can remember.”

  “Thanks,” Casey said. They left and sat on the steps overlooking the quad.

  “It freaks me out when I see someone I know and they have no inkling who I am,” Casey said, as they watched the college students lounge or walk on the grass of the quad. Casey pointed. “She was in my dorm freshman year. He’s in my psychology class. Tried to ask me out.”