It had taken him three days of arguing and cajoling, but finally Johnny Farm Boy had taken the bait. Good riddance and good-bye. John 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 were hidden there.

"d.a.m.n farm boy."

John 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 a.s.s so fast. So Franklin had been looking the wrong way on all those bills. John had lost eighty thousand dollars.

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 John's road to fame and riches.

He climbed down from the loft. Stan whinnied at him, tossing his head to get his attention and maybe an apple.

"Of course you can have one, Stan," John said.

John took an apple from the basket and reached out to the horse. Suddenly John's eyes were filled with tears.

"Hold yourself together, man," he whispered as he let Stan gingerly chomp the apple from his hand. His own horse was dead, at his own hand.

He'd taken Dan riding and had tried the fence beyond the back field. They'd galloped through the gra.s.s, throwing mud behind them. John had felt Dan leap, felt the muscles twist and clench. They had flown. But Dan's hind left hadn't cleared it. The bone had broken, and John ran sobbing to his farm.

His father met him halfway, a rifle in his hand, his face grim. He'd seen the whole thing.

"Dan's down!" John cried.

His father nodded and handed the rifle to him.

John took it blankly, then tried to hand it back to his father.

"No!"

"If the leg's broken, you must."

"Maybe..." But he stopped. Dan was whinnying shrilly; John could hear it from where they stood. The leg had been horribly twisted. There was no doubt.

"Couldn't Dr. Kimble look at him?"

"How will you pay for that?"

"Will you?"

His father snorted and walked away.

John watched him tread back to the house until Dan's cries became too much for him. He turned then, tears raining down his cheeks.

Dan's eyes were wide. He shook his head heavily at John; then he settled when John placed the barrel against his skull. Perhaps he knew. John fished an apple from his pocket and slipped it between Dan's teeth.

The horse held it there, not biting, waiting. He seemed to nod at John. Then John had pulled the trigger.

The horse had shuddered and fallen still. John sank to the ground and cried for Dan for an hour.

But here he was. Alive. John rubbed Dan's muzzle.

"h.e.l.lo, Dan. Back from the dead," John said. "Just like me."

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. John's 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 John's hands and the soreness in his back worth it.

After dinner he excused himself. In his room he rooted through Johnny Farm Boy's book bag. John had missed a year of school; he had a lot of makeup to do. And, c.r.a.p, an essay on Gerard Manley Hopkins, whoever the heck that was.

John 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 Farm Boy stood with. She liked him, it was clear, but Johnny Farm Boy had been too clean-cut to make a move. Not so for John. He 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, h.e.l.lo, 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 a.s.s. 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 flush again. She was dressed in a white Sunday dress that covered her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, 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.

John had to race after Casey. She stopped after she had gotten out of sight of the gymnasium, hidden in the alcove where the restrooms were. When John caught up to her, she said, "My parents are so embarra.s.sing."

"No s.h.i.t," 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.

CHAPTER 5

John reached the outskirts of town in an hour, pa.s.sing 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. After 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 U.S. History and Heritage: Major Events That Shaped a Nation. U.S. 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. 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 United States against Germany, Russia, and j.a.pan. 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 internal combustion engines, cars and trucks in this universe used electric engines. That explained the trucks: electric engines.

But even as John 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 c.r.a.p out of John Prime.

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 Prime had given him. The counterman 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 would be 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 Sat.u.r.day 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 b.u.t.ton.

Nothing happened.

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.

It had been twelve hours. Twelve hours and forty-five minutes. But maybe Prime had been estimating. Maybe it took thirteen hours to recharge. John leaned against the base of the statue and slid to the ground.

He couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong. Prime had lied to him about what was in Universe 7534. Maybe he had lied about the recharge time. Maybe it took days or months to recharge the device. And when he got back, he'd find that Prime was entrenched in his life.

He sat there, trying the switch every fifteen minutes until three in the morning. He was cold, but finally he fell asleep on the gra.s.s, leaning against the Civil War Memorial.

He awoke at dawn, the sun in his eyes as it streamed down Washington Avenue. He stood and jumped up and down to revive his body. His back ached, but the kinks receded after he did some stretches.

At a donut shop off the square, he bought a glazed and an orange juice with the change he had left over from the almanac. A dozen people filed in over the course of an hour to buy donuts and coffee before church or work. On the surface, this world was a lot like his.

John couldn't stand the waiting. He walked across the square and climbed the library steps and yanked at the door. It was locked, and he saw the sign showing the library's hours. It was closed until noon.

John looked around. There was an alcove behind the lions with a bench. No one would easily see him from the street. He sat there and tried the device. Nothing.

He continued to try the lever every ten or fifteen minutes. As he sat on the steps of the library, his apprehension grew. He was going to miss school. He was going to miss more than twenty-four hours. He was going to miss the rest of his life. Why wouldn't the device work like it was supposed to?

He realized then that everything Prime had told him was probably a lie. He had to a.s.sume that he was the victim of Prime's scheming, trapped in another universe. The question was how he would return to his life.

He had the device. It had worked once, to bring him from Universe 7533 to Universe 7534. It would not allow him to return because it wasn't recharged yet. It took longer than-he checked his watch-twenty hours to recharge the device apparently.

He stopped. He was basing that logic on information he got from Prime. Nothing that Prime had said could be used as valid information. Only things that John had seen or gotten from a valid source were true. And Prime was not a valid source.

The twelve-hour recharge time was false. John had a.s.sumed that it meant the length of time was what was false in Prime's statement. What if there was no recharge time at all?

There were two possibilities that John could see. First, there was no recharge time and he was being prevented from returning to his universe for some other reason. Second, the device no longer worked. Perhaps he had used the last of its energy source.

For some reason he still wanted to believe Prime. If it was simply a mechanical issue, then he could use intelligence to solve the problem. Maybe Prime was truthful and something happened to the device that he didn't know about. Maybe Prime would be surprised when John never returned with the device, effectively trapping Prime in John's life. Prime might even think that John had stolen his device.

But mechanical failure seemed unlikely. Prime said he had used the device one hundred times. His home universe was around 7433. If he'd used it exactly one hundred times, that was the distance in universes between John's and Prime's. Did that mean he only used the device to move forward one universe at a time? Or did he hop around? No, the numbers were too similar. Prime probably moved from one universe to the next systematically.

John decided that he was just too ignorant to ignore all of Prime's information. Some of it had to be taken at face value.

The 100 number indicated that Prime only incremented the universe counter upward. Why? Did the device only allow travel in one direction?

John played with the theory, fitting the pieces together. The device was defective or designed in such a way that only travel upward was allowed. Prime mentioned the recharge time to eliminate any possibility of a demonstration. There was perhaps no recharge time. The device was of no value to Prime, since he planned to stay. That explained the personal questions Prime had asked; he wanted to ease into John's life. Some things Prime knew, but other things he had to learn from John.

The fury built in John.

"b.a.s.t.a.r.d!" he said softly. Prime had screwed him. He'd tempted John with universes, and he had fallen for it. And now he was in another universe, where he didn't exist. He had to get back.

There was nothing to do, he realized, but test the theory.

He pulled his backpack onto his shoulders and checked around the bench for his things. Then, with a quick check to see if anyone was looking, he toggled the device to 7535 and pulled the lever.

He fell.