Paul Melko - The Walls of the Universe

What else did Corrundrum know? Could Prime use it? What if there were observers? What if there were other devices? Could he get his hands on one?

Corrundrum had come to see him in disguise. He’d been careful, because he feared detection. Perhaps he feared Prime. He didn’t know if Prime was an exile or an innocent or a traveler. Corrundrum had felt safe when Prime was in jail or when he called Prime at the office. But Corrundrum was playing it safe. What did he fear?

How would Prime lure him out? How would he get the information he needed?

If he had a device again, he wouldn’t have to worry about Ted Carson.

What would Corrundrum find irresistible? A device, of course. If someone was trapped in a universe, he or she’d do whatever it took to escape. Hadn’t Prime done the same?

Now how to get hold of Corrundrum?

Casey was silent on the ride back to Toledo. Prime didn’t feel like talking either. He needed a shower; he needed some new clothes. In the backseat of the SUV, Abby slept.

Finally, halfway home, Casey spoke.

“You didn’t tell them anything, right?” she said.

For a second, Prime thought she was talking about Corrundrum.

“How do-” Then he realized she meant the police. “No, nothing.”

“They haven’t figured something out, have they? They don’t have some new evidence? Something we missed?”

“No,” Prime said. “They expected me to admit it. They were fishing.”

Casey exhaled. “They searched the house.”

“I know.”

“They took your… papers.”

“I know.”

“There wasn’t anything in there…”

“Casey, they’ve got nothing. They took a gamble, that they could scare me, and when they couldn’t they threw me in jail. They don’t have a case.”

“That’s what the lawyer said,” Casey said.

“Then why did you ask?”

“I needed to hear it from you.” They turned off at their exit. “The office called.”

“What did you tell them?”

“Family emergency,” she said. “But it’s been in the papers.”

Prime shrugged. “It’s only been two days. It’ll be all right. Money makes everything all right.”

“Does it?”

“Absolutely,” Prime said. “It bought us this house, didn’t it? And this car.”

Christmas lights hung from their eaves.

“What do you think?” Casey said. “I wanted something special for when you got… home.”

“It looks nice,” Prime said. “You didn’t…”

“Dad came over and helped.”

“What did you… tell him?”

“The truth. That it’s all a horrible misunderstanding. He gave us half the bail money.”

“It is a horrible misunderstanding,” Prime said. He pulled into the driveway, looking up and down the street. There were a couple of dark cars, but Prime couldn’t tell if they were occupied. Could Corrundrum be watching? Prime caught a flash of movement in one of the cars. They pulled around the back of the house into the garage.

“Has Carson’s father been around? Or… anyone else?”

Casey shrugged. “Not that I’ve seen. I haven’t been here, really.”

“Yeah.”

She grabbed Abby and climbed the three stairs into the back foyer. Prime sat in the car for a moment.

“Coming?”

“In a moment,” he said. “I want to walk around front. Look at the lights. Can you unlock the front door?”

“Sure.”

Prime walked out the garage door and waited until Casey had shut the inner door. Then he slipped through the hedge into his neighbor’s yard. He sprinted across the back lawn, dodging the piles of snow. Between the neighbor’s house and the next, Prime saw the car. From his vantage, he saw someone within, someone who could watch their house from where the car sat.

Prime hid behind a tree trunk. Then he dashed across the driveway, coming to rest behind a shrub not far from the car. A man sat within, his eyes on their house. Was it Corrundrum? He couldn’t tell for sure. The man had been wearing a disguise at the jail visiting room. It could be the police.

Prime stood and walked over to the car. He leaned in and stared at the gaping, surprised face. It was Corrundrum.

Prime rapped on the window and waited until Corrundrum rolled it down.

“So?” Corrundrum asked.

“You have information I need,” Prime said. “What do I have that you want?”

EmVis allocated office space for them at the headquarters in Columbus. They had desks, phones, and doors in a corporate office building on a wooded plot on the north side of the city. The main office was a three-story glass building that seemed half-empty, except for the guards who manned the front desk and cruised the halls regularly. John saw more of the guards than he did of any of the EmVis personnel. Behind the main office was a fenced area within which was a second and third building. The only way through the barbed-wire enclosure was via a double-gated tunnel.

“What do they do in there?” Henry asked, looking out John’s office window.

“Clearly we’re not the only business EmVis funds,” Grace said. “Maybe weapons research.”

“Development of a better mousetrap?” John suggested.

“Reusable toilet paper!” Henry cried.

“You don’t reuse yours?” John asked.

“Ew!” Grace replied.

They’d spent the last couple days at the office, working on project plans, and sales projections, and business plans. Not a minute had been spent on anything related to the pinball machines. It chafed Henry the most.

“School starts next Monday,” Henry said. “We won’t have to come down here as much. We can spend our time at the new office.”

They’d moved out of the dilapidated factory as soon as they could, into a new building in Winterfield, one with an office and reception in one corner and the rest of the ten thousand square meters shop floor and production facilities. John had moved the lease of the old factory into his own name.

John’s intercom chimed.

“Mr. Wilson?” It was Stella, his no-nonsense secretary. John had tried to kid with the beehive-haired woman on the first day, but she’d stared at him blankly. She seemed always poised to respond to anyone’s next need, as if that was what she was programmed to do.

“Yes?”

“Mr. Charboric is ready for you.”

“Charboric,” Henry said softly. Henry did not like the second of the four board members from EmVis. Visgrath was palatable, in his sincerely intense way. Charboric, similar in Nordic features to Visgrath, was brooding, angry, and mean-at least in appearance. He’d had contrary suggestions already on design and implementation that Henry took personally. The two other EmVis board members were Mr. Alabathus and Mr. Zorizic, neither of whom they had met yet.

“What does he want?” Henry asked. “More ideas for flipper design? The perfect coin box?”

“Henry,” Grace said. “Be nice.”

“Patent stuff,” John said.

“Great.”

John grabbed a notepad from his desk. “Be back in a bit; then we can head back to Toledo.”

“Sure.”

Stella was standing outside the door to his office. He wondered if she listened in on them so that she could time her appearance perfectly. Perhaps she had just been standing there waiting. Her subservience disturbed him.

“This way, sir.”

“I think I can find it.”

“No, I insist, sir.” She took his arm and led him down the hall to an elevator bank. She kept a strong grasp on his bicep while they waited for the elevator. An EmVis employee passed them, and neither acknowledged the other, though John gave the man an unreturned nod and half smile. The conference room was down one floor. Charboric was already there, sitting at the head of a table. A video camera was pointed at the chair to his left.