The Walls of the Universe (4 page)

Farmboy looked away, and John knew what he was thinking. It was the time he and his father had been tossing hay bales and the pitchfork had fallen. Or it was the time he had walked out on old Mrs. Jones' frozen pond, and the ice had cracked, and he'd kept going. Or the time the quarry truck had run him off the road. It was a fluke really that either of them was alive.

Finally Farmboy said, "I think I'm ready. What's the plan?"

John Prime lifted up his shirt and began unbuckling the harness. "You leave from the pumpkin field. Select the universe one forward. Press the toggle. Spend the day exploring. Go to the library. Figure out what's different. If you want, write down any money-making ideas you come across." When he saw Farmboy's face, John added, "Fine. Then don't. Tomorrow, flip the counter back to this universe and pull the lever. You'll be back for school on Monday."

"Sounds easy enough."

"Don't lose the device! Don't get busted by the police! Don't do anything to draw attention to yourself."

"Right."

"Don't flash your money either. If anyone recognizes you, go with it and then duck out. You don't want to make it hot for our guy over there."

"Right."

"Johnny, you look a little nervous. Calm down. I'll keep you covered on this end." John slapped him on the back, then handed him the harness.

Farmboy pulled off his shirt and shivered. He passed the two bands of the harness over his shoulders, then connected the center belt behind his back. The disk was cold against his belly. The straps looked like a synthetic material.

"It fits."

"It should," John said. "I copied some of my materials for you in case you need them." John Prime pulled a binder from his own bag, opened it to show him pages of clippings and notes. "You never know. You might need something. And here's a backpack to hold it all in."

John felt a twinge pass through him. He was powerless. The device was out of his control.

"What's wrong?" Farmboy asked.

"I haven't been away from the device in a long time. It's my talisman, my escape. I feel naked without it. You gotta be careful with it."

"Hey," John said. "I'm leaving my life in your hands. How about a little two-way trust?"

John smiled grimly. "Okay. Are you ready? I've got 12:30 on my watch. Which means you can return half an hour past midnight. Okay?"

John checked his watch. "Okay."

"Toggle the universe."

John lifted the shirt and switched the number forward to 7534. "Check."

"Okay. I'll watch from the loft." John climbed the ladder, then turned. "Make sure no one sees you."

His heart was racing. This was it. It was almost his. He looked down from the barn window, waved.

Farmboy waved back, then he lifted up his shirt. Sunlight caught the brushed metal of the device.

Farmboy hesitated.

"Go!" John whispered. "Do it."

Farmboy smiled, pulled the switch, and disappeared.

John's ears popped and his feet caught in the dirt. He stumbled and fell forward, catching himself on his gloved hands. He wasn't in a pumpkin patch anymore. Noting the smell of manure, he realized he was in a cow pasture.

He worked his feet free. His shoes were embedded an inch into the earth. He wondered if there was dirt lodged in his feet now. It looked like the dirt in the current universe was an inch higher here than in the old one. Where did that extra inch of dirt go? He shook his feet and the dirt fell free.

It worked! He felt a thrill. He'd doubted to the last second, but here he was, in a new universe.

He paused. John Prime had said there was a John in this universe. He spun around. Cows grazed contentedly a few hundred yards away, but otherwise the fields were empty, the trees gone. There was no farmhouse.

McMaster Road was there and so was Gurney Road. John walked from the field, hopped the fence, and stood at the corner of the roads. Looking to the north toward town, he saw nothing but a farmhouse maybe a mile up the road. To the east, where the stacks of the GE plant should have been, he saw nothing but forest. To the south, more fields.

John Prime had said there was a John Rayburn in this universe. He'd said that the farm was here. He'd told John he'd been to this universe.

John pawed up his jacket and shirt and tried to read the number on the device. He cupped his hand to shield the sun and read 7534. He was where he expected to be, according to the device. There was nothing here.

The panic settled into his gut. Something was wrong. Something had gone wrong. He wasn't where he was supposed to be. But that's okay, he thought, calming himself. It's okay. He walked to the edge of the road and sat on the small berm there.

Maybe John Prime had it wrong; there were a lot of universes and if all of them were different that was a lot of facts to keep straight.

He stood, determined to assume the best. He'd spend the next twelve hours working according to the plan. Then he'd go back home. He set off for town, a black mood nipping at his heels.

John watched his other self disappear from the pumpkin field and felt his body relax. Now he wouldn't have to kill him. This way was so much better. A body could always be found, unless it was in some other universe. He didn't have the device, of course, but then he'd never need it again. In fact he was glad to be rid of it. John had something more important than the device; he had his life back.

It had taken him three days of arguing and cajoling, but finally Johnny Farmboy had taken the bait. Good riddance and goodbye. He had been that naive once. He'd once had that wide-eyed gullibility, ready to explore new worlds. There was nothing out there but pain. He was alive again. He had parents again. He had money — $125,000. And he had his notebook. That was the most important part. The notebook was worth a billion dollars right there.

John looked around the loft. This would be a good place for some of his money. If he remembered right, there was a small cubbyhole in the rafters on the south side of the loft. He found it and pulled out the bubble gum cards and slingshot that was hidden there.

"Damn farmboy."

He placed about a third of his money in the hiding place. Another third he'd hide in his room. The last third, he'd bury. He wouldn't deposit it like he'd done in 7489. Or had that been 7490? The cops had been on his ass so fast. So Franklin had been looking the wrong way on all those bills. He'd lost $80,000.

No, he'd be careful this time. He'd show legitimate sources for all his cash. He'd be the talk of Findlay, Ohio as his inventions started panning out. No one would suspect the young physics genius. They'd be jealous, sure, but everybody knew Johnny Rayburn was a brain. The Rubik's Cube — no, the Rayburn's Cube — would be his road to fame and riches.

John reached the outskirts of town in an hour, passing a green sign that said "Findlay, Ohio. Population 6232." His Findlay had a population in the twenty thousand range. As he stood there, he heard a high-pitched whine grow behind him. He stepped off the berm as a truck flew by him, at about forty-five miles per hour. It was in fact two trucks in tandem pulling a large trailer filled with gravel. The fronts of the trucks were flat, probably to aid in stacking several together for larger loads, like a train with more than one locomotive. The trailer was smaller than a typical dump truck in his universe. A driver sat in each truck. Expecting to be enveloped in a cloud of exhaust, John found nothing fouler than moist air.

Flywheel?
he wondered.
Steam?

Despite his predicament, John was intrigued by the engineering of the trucks. Ten more minutes of walking, past two motels and a diner, he came to the city square, the Civil War monument displayed as proudly as ever, cannon pointed toward the South. A few people were strolling the square, but no one noticed him.

Across the square was the courthouse. Beside it stood the library, identical to what he remembered, a three-story building, its entrance framed by granite lions reclining on brick pedestals. There was the place to start figuring this universe out.

The library was identical in layout to the one he knew. John walked to the card catalog — there were no computer terminals — and looked up the numbers for American history. On the shelf he found a volume by Albert Trey called
US History and Heritage: Major Events that Shaped a Nation
. He sat in a low chair and paged through it. He found the divergence in moments.

The American Revolution, War of 1812, and Civil War all had the expected results. The presidents were the same through Woodrow Wilson. World War I was a minor war, listed as the Greco-Turkish War. World War II was listed as the Great War and was England and the US against Germany, Russia, and Japan. A truce was called in 1956 after years of no resolution to the fighting. Hostilities had flared for years until the eighties when peace was declared and disarmament accomplished in France, which was split up and given to Germany and Spain.

But all of those things happened after Alexander Graham Bell developed an effective battery for the automobile. Instead of an internal combustion engine, cars and trucks in this universe used electric engines. That explained the trucks: electric engines.

But even as he read about the use of zeppelins for transport, the relatively peaceful twentieth century, his anger began to grow. This universe was nothing like his own. John Prime had lied. Finally, he stood and found the local telephone book. He paged through it, looking for Rayburns. As he expected, there were none.

He checked his watch; in eight hours he was going back home and kicking the crap out of John Prime.

His mother called him to dinner, and for a moment he froze with fear.
They'll know,
he thought.
They'll know I'm not their son.

Breathing slowly, he hid the money back under his comic book collection in the closet.

"Coming!" he called.

During dinner he kept quiet, focusing on what his parents mentioned, filing key facts away for later use. There was too much he didn't know. He couldn't volunteer anything until he had all his facts right.

Cousin Paul was still in jail. They were staying after church tomorrow for a spaghetti lunch. His mother would be canning and making vinegar that week. His father was buying a turkey from Sam Riley, who had a flock of twenty or so. The dinner finished with homemade apple pie that made the cuts on his hands and the soreness in his back worth it.

After dinner he excused himself. In his room he rooted through Johnny Farmboy's bookbag. He'd missed a year of school; he had a lot of make-up to do. And, crap, an essay on Gerard Manley Hopkins, whoever the heck that was.

By the time the library closed, John's head was full of facts and details about the new universe. There were a thousand things he'd like to research, but there was no time. He stopped at a newspaper shop and picked an almanac off the shelf. After a moment's hesitation, he offered to buy the three-dollar book with one of the twenties John Prime had given him. The counter man barely glanced at the bill and handed John sixteen dollars and change. The bills were identical to those in his own world. The coins bore other faces.

He ate a late dinner at Eckart's cafe, listening to rockabilly music. None of it was familiar music, but it was music that was playable on the country stations at home. Even at ten in the evening, there was a sizeable crowd, drinking coffee and hard liquor. There was no beer to be had.

It was a tame crowd for a Saturday night. He read the almanac and listened in to the conversations around him. Most of it was about cars, girls, and guys, just like in his universe.

By midnight, the crowd had thinned. At half-past midnight, John walked into the square and stood behind the Civil War statue. He lifted his shirt and toggled the number back to 7533.

He paused, checked his watch and saw it was a quarter till one. Close enough, he figured.

He pressed the button.

Nothing happened.

He managed to get through church without falling asleep. Luckily the communion ritual was the same. If there was one thing that didn't change from one universe to the next, it was church.

He expected the spaghetti lunch afterwards to be just as boring, but across the gymnasium, John saw Casey Nicholson sitting with her family. That was one person he knew where Johnny Farmboy stood with. She liked him, it was clear, but Johnny Farmboy had been too clean-cut to make a move. Not so for him. John excused himself and walked over to her.

"Hi, Casey," he said.

She blushed at him, perhaps because her parents were there.

Her father said, "Oh, hello, John. How's the basketball team going to do this year?"

John wanted to yell at him that he didn't give a rat's ass. But instead he smiled and said, "We'll go all the way if Casey is there to cheer for us."

Casey looked away, her face flushed again. She was dressed in a white Sunday dress that covered her breasts, waist, and hips with enough material to hide the fact that she had any of those features. But he knew what was there. He'd seduced Casey Nicholson in a dozen universes at least.

"I'm only cheering fall sports, John," she said softly. "I play field hockey in the spring."

John looked at her mother and asked, "Can I walk with Casey around the church grounds, Mrs. Nicholson?"

She smiled at him, glanced at her husband, and said, "I don't see why not."

"That's a great idea," Mr. Nicholson said.

Casey stood up quickly, and John had to race after her. She stopped after she had gotten out of sight of the gymnasium, hidden in the alcove where the rest rooms were. When John caught up to her, she said, "My parents are so embarrassing."

"No shit," John said.

Her eyes went wide at his cursing, then she smiled.

"I'm glad you're finally talking to me," she said.

John smiled and said, "Let's walk." He slipped his arm around her waist, and she didn't protest.

There was no sensation of shifting, no pressure change. The electric car in the parking lot was still there. The device hadn't worked.

He checked the number: 7533. His finger was on the right switch. He tried it again. Nothing.