The Broken Universe (46 page)

“Did you notice which way the wind was blowing?” he asked John Gore.

“From the southwest,” John Gore replied.

“Good.”

They had a car standing by and reached the abandoned high school in minutes. The gate was in the gymnasium.

“What’s the word?” Prime asked the Henry who was attending the transfer gate. It was the largest transfer gate they’d built so far, a marvel that three Henrys had worked all night on, that would cast a transfer zone fifteen meters in diameter. Henry put down the phone as the two entered.

“They dropped the pamphlets from Site Number Four,” he said. “Right next to a boom box blaring static noise.”

“Someone will notice that,” John Gore said.

“I don’t know,” Prime said. “That nuclear bomb is probably a pretty large distraction right now.”

The Henry added, “And we have confirmation on the explosion. They’ve moved the transfer gate at Site Number Four a hundred meters north of the drop site and are watching the site every ten minutes via a remote camera.”

“What do the pamphlets say? What did Grace settle on?” Prime asked.

The Henry handed him a piece of paper with large-type font on it. It read,
Parlay at 41.5, -83.6 at noon local time. Bring John Rayburn and all his belongings. Otherwise we will detonate nuclear bombs on your facility. The Wizards.

“Let’s hope they know how to use our grid system and our time system,” Prime said.

“They attacked us in 7351,” the Henry said. “They must.”

“What’s at this location there?”

“Prairie, we think. We haven’t looked.”

“And how far is it from here?”

“About one hundred meters west.”

Prime checked his watch. Noon was two hours away, and enough time for him to gather enough firepower.

“Send me through to Universe 9000,” Prime said. “I’ll drop something through over there when I need you to transfer me back through.” He pointed to the far corner of the gym.

“Are you sure?” the Henry said. “That isn’t part of the plan.”

“We could always use more firepower,” Prime said.

*   *   *

It took him far less time to gather his firepower. He had it waiting when the rest of the team showed up.

“Where the hell did you get that?” Grace Top shouted. She looked flushed and flustered, exhausted from coordinating four transfer sites across multiple universes.

“Same place the nukes came from,” Prime said. “Universe 9000.” He patted the M1 Abrams tank on its desert-camo-painted flank. Inside were a dozen assault rifles, a handful of grenades, and a bazooka. He didn’t mention that part to Grace.

“We’re bargaining for John’s life!” she screamed. “We can’t escalate our chances away.”

“We sorta escalated it already,” Prime said with a grin.

“What sort of bloodthirsty bastard are you?”

“One who’s going to get our Johnny Farmboy back,” he said. “Is it time?”

“Five minutes,” a Henry said.

“Let’s go now,” Prime said. He jumped up to the hatch of the M1.

“We check with a camera first,” Grace said. “That’s the plan.”

Prime reached down and started the tank. It rumbled to life, drowning out Grace’s words. Grace turned toward the Henry and mimed the number five to him.

One of the Johns motioned Prime forward in his behemoth, and he rumbled it into the transfer zone.

Prime lifted his head out of the hatch and shouted, “Everyone who’s coming better find a place aboard.”

The Henry manning the gate controls glanced at Grace Home. Her face was grim, but she nodded and Graces, Henrys, Johns, and Caseys, all armed with rifles, grenades, pistols, and Kevlar jackets, climbed aboard the tank, clinging to handholds.

The Henry climbed aboard and shouted at John Prime, “I’m sending you through. Then I’ll transfer again in exactly sixty seconds. Then I do it at five-minute intervals. Get out of the zone fast, unless you need to come back right away.”

“Got it.”

The Henry got down. He counted down from five on his fingers and flipped the switch.

CHAPTER
41

Luigiantia reappeared dressed in a black cloak. She wore weapons and devices at her belt. Six soldiers escorted her into the huge bay where John had been wheeled and left to wait for an hour. The mushroom cloud had risen into the stratosphere and dissipated slowly as he and the orderly watched. Even so, the eastern skies remained dirty and dark.

After what seemed like ten minutes—though it could have been longer, they were so mesmerized by the explosion—a runner found them and shouted an order in the Vig language.

The orderly turned the wheelchair around and headed deeper into the facility. John saw black walls ahead as high as ten stories. It looked like an enclosed stadium or hangar.

They came to a checkpoint that separated the facility he had been kept in from the hangar. Four soldiers covered in battle gear and armed with weird-looking weapons took the orderly’s laminated ID. They stared at John, and their harsh words made it clear that they had no interest in letting him into the hangar. The orderly shrugged, intimidated.

Finally after some conversation on a two-way radio, they let the orderly push John into the hangar, but not without an escort of one soldier. John noticed that the technology of the enemy was eclectic. The two-way radios looked like something he could buy at an electronic supply store. Yet, the use of transdimensional technology was more advanced than anything his own universe might have. John had assumed that the level of technology he had seen of the enemy in 7351 had been to match the technology in that universe; anything too advanced would have stood out and caught attention. Other than the transfer technology—the iaciorator—there was no great differentiating technology—nothing that made him think these were superintelligent overlords.

The soldier led the orderly and John into a hallway. A pair of glass doors opened before them, and then closed with a hiss as they passed. They were in a small airlock. The pressure changed; John felt his ears pop. He smelled some sort of antiseptic smell. The doors ahead of them slid apart, and they were in the hangar itself.

Inside, the hangar was humongous. It was at least a kilometer long and three hundred meters tall. Huge machines were parked within the structure, and smaller machines, wheeled ones and fixed-wing aircraft, were parked beneath and around the larger ones. Some of them looked like blimps. One seemed to be the craft that had attacked and captured him.

“These are all transfer devices,” John said.

“What?” the orderly said.

“Iaciorator,” he said. “These are all iaciorators.”

The orderly snorted. “What else would they be?”

“Is this where you make them?”

“Make them?”

“Your factory?”

“What are you talking about? No one makes iaciorators!”

I do,
John thought to himself.

“Are these all of them? Are these all you have?”

The orderly was about to answer, but the soldier grunted. Apparently he didn’t want John to know the answer, but he had it now.

The Vigilari had found transfer technology just like he had. They controlled it, but the number of devices they had was limited. They couldn’t create it.

As he watched, a crew of twenty people ran toward one of the huge machines. They were evacuating. Their cache of transfer devices was in danger. Another nuclear device on this structure would put them out of business.

Everywhere, soldiers and crewmen were rushing toward the machines and preparing them for departure. The larger ones clearly could not be started and moved quickly. But the smaller ones could. A wheeled vehicle, sort of like a six-wheel earthmover, powered up and slowly rolled down the floor of the hangar. It entered an irising door that shut behind it. Another airlock. Why?

One of the large machines powered up with a shrill intensity and then disappeared with a boom. The hangar shook with its disappearance, from the air it had displaced suddenly rushing in.

Twice more large machines transferred out, and a half-dozen smaller machines disappeared, either using the airlock or transferring directly from the hangar to some other universe. No machines came back.

The evacuation looked haphazard and slow, as if they couldn’t believe they would ever be under attack.

Finally Luigiantia appeared with her escort. She pointed to one of the multiwheeled machines, and the orderly pushed John toward it. He was fairly certain he could now walk by himself if need be. His brain was clear of the drug. But he stayed put and even slouched a bit as if he were too weak to sit up straight.

A driver was already on board their machine. Luigiantia and the soldiers found chairs. The orderly strapped the wheelchair into its own spot in the center of the aisle. From there, he could see into the cockpit and out the front window.

John scanned the insides of the machine. It looked odd, as if it had been cobbled together. The metal of the floor and the walls had an odd bluish sheen. The chairs weren’t even bolted into it. Instead ropes and cords lashed the chairs in place.

John was certain then that they didn’t know how to build devices.

“Where did you guys find all these machines?” John asked Luigiantia.

“Shut up,” she said.

“I thought you built them. I thought you controlled the technology,” he said. “But you’re just exploiters.”

“It’s our technology.”

“Can you build new iaciorators?”

She didn’t answer him.

The machine rumbled forward toward an airlock.

“And why all the airlocks?”

“Shut up!”

A soldier drew a pistol and pointed it at John. He looked at the barrel and shrugged.

The machine filled just a third of the airlock’s area. It paused between the doors, and then the outer doors opened and the machine surged forward. Facing forward, John could see their progress better than any of the soldiers.

The vehicle turned to the northeast. The mushroom cloud had dissipated, but the sky was still a dark ruddy color that seemed similar to clouds before a tornado. There was no road, but still the vehicle could make forty kilometers per hour over the grass.

John watched as a speck on the horizon slowly grew in size.

He almost laughed when he saw it was an M1 tank.

*   *   *

Prime drove the tank forward.

“Mark the transfer zone!” Grace Home said. A Henry had a can of spray paint that he used to mark the edge of the zone. He was halfway done when Grace yelled, “Ten seconds.” The Henry backed away. Grace threw a pad of paper a meter into the zone.

“What did you say?” Prime asked.

“That we were clear for now and to keep to the five-minute schedule,” she said.

The notebook disappeared. Prime checked his watch.

“Here they come,” someone said.

In the distance, a plume of dirt rose behind a black vehicle.

*   *   *

“That’s your iaciorator?” Luigiantia cried. “It’s U.S. technology! How was it fitted inside a tank?”

John shrugged. She knew the Wizards could build their own devices, but she didn’t understand they had transfer gates. How could he use that?

She shouted orders to the driver. The vehicle slowed and stopped about thirty meters from the tank. John saw that a dozen people stood on or near the tank. They were armed with assault weapons and were dressed in army fatigues that seemed to be covering body armor. John Prime was in the hatch of the tank. Grace Home was hanging from the tank, and the two seemed to be having heated words.

John didn’t reply.

“Did it come that way or did you fit it in there?”

John shrugged.

“A tank? How foolish!”

She didn’t seem to have any concept of a transfer device that fit on a person either. They hadn’t gotten his device.

Luigiantia barked a command at the orderly then exited the machine, taking two soldiers with her. Apparently John was staying in the vehicle.

She strode in long, forceful strides toward the tank, stopping ten meters away. She was wearing a microphone for the benefit of the soldiers left behind in the vehicle because her voice boomed inside when she began to speak.

“You have violated the sovereignty of the Order of the Vigilari,” she shouted. “As such your lives and property are forfeit. Disarm yourselves and hand over your iaciorator.”

John shook his head. “That’s not gonna work,” he muttered. “You guys are used to getting your way, aren’t you?”

Grace hopped down from the tank. She was dressed in desert camo, but carried no weapons. She walked forward until she was just a meter from Luigiantia.

Grace looked her square in the face.

“We are at war,” Grace said simply. “If you fail to deliver John Rayburn to us, we will nuke that structure into a glass-lined crater.”

Before Luigiantia could answer, Grace turned on her heel and walked away.

*   *   *

John Prime couldn’t believe how cool Grace was. He would have yelled and screamed at that amazon bitch with her attitude. Grace was handling it better than he would have, not that he’d admit that aloud.

Grace motioned at a Henry, and he wheeled the SADM they had brought with them forward.

“Arm it for four minutes,” she said. “But don’t start the timer.”

“Right.”

“The Order of the Vigilari do not negotiate with vermin,” Luigiantia shouted. “Your existence is a danger to the universe! You threaten the existence of every human in every universe.”

Grace didn’t even turn.

“You’re going to ignore her?” Prime asked.

“She doesn’t see us as on her level,” Grace said. “The longer she has to cater to us, the more angry she’ll be, the more likely she is to make a mistake.”

“You all right?” Prime asked. Sweat was beading on her forehead and she looked pale. “Henry, get her some water.”

A Henry handed her a bottle of water, from which she took a long drink.

“I’m all right,” she said. “Wheel the nuke after me.”

Grace turned and walked up to Luigiantia. She stood there and waited for Henry to push the nuclear device up.

“If you fail to deliver John Rayburn to us in four minutes, we will detonate this nuclear warhead,” she said. She pointed at the timer.