The Walls Of The Universe Part 41

"d.a.m.n it."

Someone tapped on his pa.s.senger side window.

He looked up to see Grace. She pulled open the door and sat beside him.

"So," she said, then didn't say anything more.

"So," John said.

"Were you going to leave us?" she said.

"I could have. I thought about it," John said. "But I couldn't."

"I read a lot of science fiction," she said matter-of-factly, "so this is not as much of a shock as it should be."

"The tough part is how I used you guys," John said. "I never meant that to happen. It just s...o...b..lled."

"Sure, I understand. If I didn't know you were the biggest Boy Scout ever, I wouldn't be out here now," she said. "So, thousands of universes, you end up here. The bad guys end up here. They find you. They don't know you have a device. We're in the thick of it. Is that the skinny?"

"That about sums it up."

"And now you need some help," she said. "From your friends."

"My only friends."

"That's true enough," Grace said. "John, I'm not giving up the company. I'm not giving up Henry. I'm not letting Visgrath or Charboric take it all away. And that means..."

"Yeah?"

"We're going to help you."

John let out a breath.

"What do we do? Do you have an idea? I've been struggling for so long with this alone. ..."

"Show us the device. I want to see it."

"Sure," John said. "Does that mean I get my job back?"

"Don't push it."

"That's it?" Henry asked.

"Yeah."

Henry stared at the device, ran a finger over the metal edge. "It looks like a piece of equipment from s.p.a.ce Lords. s.p.a.ce Lords."

"It's a Virbidian Shift Modulator," Grace said, with a squeal.

"It's not," John said. "It's a powerful device that rips holes in the walls of the universe."

"It looks like a toy," Henry said.

Grace took it in her hand. "Feels like aluminum. Is it?"

"I don't know."

"You haven't run a spectrograph on it?"

"No. I did a tomogram," John said.

"What's that look like?" Henry asked.

John showed him the diagrams. "Cool. What are these things in here?"

"I haven't a clue," John said, laughing. He felt joyful to be sharing it with his friends after hiding it for so long.

"Is this a seam in the cylinder?" Grace asked. She ran her finger along the edge of the device.

"You have sharp eyes," John said. "It is." He handed her a magnifying gla.s.s.

"I felt it."

She peered at the edge. "There's marks here."

"I know."

"Someone's opened this," she said.

"Probably, to build it, of course," John said.

"Not necessarily. You say the device doesn't work," Grace said. "We can't test that?"

"You'll have to trust me," John replied.

"But a device like this would have fail-safes," she said. "It shouldn't break. Unless..."

"What?"

"Isn't it obvious?"

"Uh."

"Sabotage."

"What?"

"Sure! Suppose you're some guy in a high-tech, world-hopping society. You have a rival for your affections. What do you do? Murder? No way. Not in a high-tech, panopticon world. No, you sabotage the unalterable. You rig the unriggable. You make his trip across the universes one-way."

"You think," John said, "that this device was deliberately broken, for some reason."

Grace shrugged. "We know the devices are rare. We know people are punished by banishment to backwater worlds. We know the technology is controlled. We know the technology is advanced. There have to be fail-safes. There have to be redundant systems. No advanced society would risk all they have. Isolation would be worse than death. Someone deliberately broke this thing."

"I think you're extrapolating too far," John said.

"Why else is it broken?"

"Parts wear out."

Grace harrumphed. "You're going to trust your life to a device that wears out?"

"Cars wear out."

"Make a car with an order of magnitude more technology. Two orders of magnitude," she said. "Whoever made this is not burning fossil fuels to get around!"

"But we can't say this was sabotaged!" John said.

"Then let's do what we have to do," Grace said.

"What's that?"

"Let's open it up."

John's stomach dropped. He said, "No!" before he could think of anything else.

Grace stared at him, and he looked away.

"I thought you were staying," she said softly.

"I am, but..."

"But what?"

If they took it apart and it broke, he'd be stranded forever.

"I know what you're thinking," Grace said. "But how bad could that be, living here with us for the rest of your life?"

"What about Visgrath and company?" John said.

"Those a.s.s clowns?" Grace laughed. "We'll fix them!"

"But...," John said. He sighed. It wasn't like some other Casey would love him when this one didn't. It was clear they weren't meant to be. "Okay. Let's open it up. But carefully."

Grace smirked at him. "Just like physics lab. Careful as can be."

"And we can't let Visgrath know."

"A tangled web we weave," Henry said.

"You're the one, John," Grace said, "who has to be careful. He thinks you're something that you are not, and will act according to his a.s.sumptions."

"He thinks I'm stranded just like they are," John said.

"He's made a.s.sumptions you can't betray," Grace said, "or we're doomed."

"I don't know how long I can keep it up," John said.

"Avoid him," Henry said. "At all costs."

After buying supplies and equipment, they met the next Sat.u.r.day. That should have been a factory day, but the three put Viv the foreman in charge and met at John's old warehouse.

"So, tell us what you know," Grace said, "from the beginning."

John brought out the spectrum that he'd collected earlier in the year. He showed them the spectrum of the radiation being emitted by the device, and explained its significance.

"Cool! Antimatter," Grace said.

He showed them his drawings of the outside of the device. They each looked at the seam with the light microscope. Henry examined the device millimeter by millimeter.

John explained the tomograph and how it depicted two ovoid shapes within the device.

Henry shook his head. "That's ingenious, John. I'd never have thought to use tomography."

"I wouldn't have either if I hadn't talked with the radiation engineers in the lab."

"How do you think the thing comes apart?" Grace asked. "Do you think it pulls apart at the seam?"

John shrugged. "I a.s.sume the two halves come apart there."

"That's a tight fit," Henry said, squinting at the line.

"Yeah. Whoever built this thing were machining gurus," Grace said.

John could tell both of them were excited about opening the device. But he felt a twinge of trepidation. He spoke on what he had been thinking about for the last week: "It's possible that we may destroy the device in the course of opening it up. I can deal with that, though this is not my home universe. I will regret not ever seeing my parents again. I will regret not getting back to John Prime. But I accept the consequences of what we are about to do."

Grace smiled. "Don't worry, John. We build and take apart delicate machinery for a living."

"This is not a pinball machine!" John said.

"Sure it is," Grace said. "You're the ball and the multiverse is the play field."