Class Fives: Origins (16 page)

“You might want to contact him. He was talking about Dark Matter as well. And in a way that seemed to indicate he has a similar interest in finding a way to detect it.”

Marvin stared at the card, noted the name of the university where Henry taught and felt himself suitably impressed.

“Now,” Manstein said suddenly, his face erupting in a wide grin, “Let’s order some food. I’m starving.”

Jim turned to scan the street and once again fix on the closed front door of the apartment building across the roadway from where they sat.

“What are we waiting for?” he said.

Dan glanced at his watch.

“Not quite yet,” he said.

Jim sighed and leaned back.

“I didn’t know it was going to be a stake-out.”

“It’s not. It’s… a back up.”

Jim shot him a confused glance.

“Back up for what?”

“Well,” Dan said thoughtfully, “If I’m understanding this right, he might try to make a break for it when he sees me.”

“I’ll be standing right next to the cruiser, just like you told me. He won’t get past me.”

Dan turned to him and smiled.

“I know. That’s why we’re waiting.”

Jim stared at him, considering what his partner had told him on the drive over.

“So you really believe this guy can travel in time?”

“Not… travel so much. More like hop back a little bit. Some kind of do-over thing. But from what he told me, I don’t think he can go all that far. A few minutes, tops.”

“So we’re waiting because…?” Jim encouraged.

“If he can only jump, as he calls it, back a few minutes, then he’ll expect that we won’t have even gotten here yet and might try to make a break for it. And if he tries that…”

“We’ll be sitting right here,” Jim finished. “Do you know how nuts that sounds?”

Dan nodded. “Oh yes. About as nuts as some guy squashing my handcuffs with his bare hands.”

“Right,” Jim conceded.

“Or walking into a fire. Or picking up a car and – “

“Okay, okay, I get the point.”

“And the more I think about it,” Dan continued, “The more I think he might have already done that to us.”

“How do you mean?” Jim asked.

“Remember when we came here that other time? The super said he’d just driven off not a minute before we pulled up?”

“Yeah. So?”

“What if we actually went up to see him, but he panicked and jumped back so he could get away before we got here?”

Jim stared at him a moment.

“No more coffee for you today,” he said, flatly.

“Maybe I’m crazy,” Dan admitted, “But after meeting Roger…”

“I know,” Jim responded. “It’s weird shit all right.”

Dan cast another glance at his watch, straightened up.

“Ok. It’s been thirty minutes. That’s got to be beyond his… I don’t know, range, whatever. Anyway, stay by the car and watch for him to try and get out of here.”

“Got it,” Jim replied, and they got out of the cruiser.

Dan moved to the door where he saw the Super was already bustling out from behind his desk and coming to admit him.

He let himself be led up to the second floor and to the door of the small apartment, at which he knocked.

John got up from the sofa, only half pulling his attention away from the TV program currently flooding his single room with noise and light, and paused before turning the knob to lean down and use the small peephole.

His chest went tight upon seeing the cop waiting in the hall.

“John?” Dan called. “It’s Dan Sinski. You called me last night. Do you remember? I think we should talk.”

He waited a moment before knocking on the door again.

“John, I just want to talk, that’s all. It’s nothing official, nothing bad, okay? John?”

John felt his panic begin to flood upwards, and almost without thinking he felt the familiar falling sensation, as if his body was being sucked backwards, destroying his balance and threatening to drop him flat onto his back.

An instant later he was hurrying to slip on his shoes and grab his keys from atop the microwave.

He managed to lock the door and then move briskly to the stairwell. In a few moments he was pushing through the door into the ground level garage and hustling toward his car. Something at the corner of his vision jerked his attention and he shocked to a halt halfway to his vehicle.

The police cruiser was parked directly across from the gate that separated the garage from the street.

Suddenly the door of the cruiser opened and that same cop stepped out of it.

Panic seized him and he felt almost paralyzed. How long had the cop been waiting before he had come up? John had felt himself toppling almost level, to the very far edge of his endurance before his instincts had yanked him back, ending the backward fall. It had to be close to ten minutes. But the cop had waited. The cop knew.

“John, it’s Dan Sinski,” the cop was saying as he crossed the street. In his wake, circling the vehicle, John could see a second cop, his hand resting on the butt of the gun at his hip.

“John, you called me last night, do you remember? I just wanted to talk to you. You’re not in any trouble.”

John moved quickly over next to one of the massive pillars that supported the heavy building above him, and pressed his back tightly against it. It was a relatively safe location, unless at the instant he landed some idiot was ramming it during a rotten attempt at parking.

He closed his eyes and jumped again.

A moment later he was turning to grip the pillar to keep from toppling over.

Too soon, he told himself. Every time he jumped so soon after a prior jump it always resulted in a sudden rush of vertigo and nausea, exactly like now.

But in this case he’d had no choice. And he had to extend his range because the cop knew.

After a moment his sense of balance began to steady, and he managed to look up through the gate.

The cruiser was still there. Or already there. And although they hadn’t seen him yet, hidden as he currently was in the deep shadows of the space, if their attention was directed toward him any movement would catch their eye.

And he couldn’t jump again. Not for a while. Because if he did he’d land as nothing but a retching, spasming mess, unable even to stand up.

Shit, shit, shit, he thought. The cop knows. And what was that he said about calling him the night before? Is that why he’d awakened this morning to find that card the cop had given him sitting on the end table next to the sofa? And what the Hell did I say, he wondered?

He took a further moment to gather himself, letting his roiling stomach settle, then straightened, drew in a deep breath and stepped out of the shadows toward the door to the interior of the building.

Seated in the cruiser, Jim perked up, seeing the motion.

“There’s somebody in the garage,” he said sharply, causing Dan to turn and peer across the street.

“Let’s go,” he said.

John met them at the front door of the building, flipping the latch and pushing it open to allow them entrance.

“Come on in,” he said, his voice tired.

Upstairs, he ushered them into his small apartment and moved to fetch himself a drink of water. He always felt dehydrated after a jump, as if he was somehow losing water in some way.

“How did you know?” he said quietly as he lifted the glass of tap water to his lips.

“You sort of told me,” the one named Dan, the one that had questioned him the other day responded.

John set the empty glass on the counter and glanced over at where the cop stood, between the small aisle that was the kitchen and the short hallway to the apartment door.

“I really called you?” John asked.

“Yes, you did. But you were pretty drunk.”

John nodded, considering this.

“Sounds about right,” he said quietly. “Ok, so why don’t you tell me what you want?”

Dan shot a glance toward the large room that was John’s temporary home.

“Can we at least sit down?” he asked, hopefully.

Ten minutes later they were still seated, Dan leaning forward, attempting to process everything John had told him, Jim pushed way back in the hard-backed chair as if to maximize the space between himself and where John slouched on the sofa.

It really was totally insane, Dan told himself. Completely impossible. So why was he feeling so excited for just having heard it?

“So, let me see if I get this,” he said, organizing the information he had just gathered. “You can jump backwards in time, but it’s limited. Only ten minutes at most, right?”

John nodded.

“That’s right.”

“And when you arrive in the past, you arrive in exactly the same physical place you took off from. You don’t go back to where you were originally… before you jumped… at that time.”

“I don’t change location, no.”

“So what happens,” Dan asked, still puzzled, “To that time in between? The time you jumped over. Does that stay the same except for you?”

John gave a weak shrug.

“I don’t know what happens to it. I think it just… goes away.”

“Goes away,” Dan repeated. “For whom? For everybody?”

“I guess. I don’t know.”

“So if some guy in China, say, gets hit by a car a couple seconds before you jump, and you arrive ten minutes earlier, then that guy hasn’t been hit by the car yet? In China?”

John raised his eyes to stare at Dan.

“I don’t know anybody in China. Do you? Does it matter?”

“I’m just trying to get a grip on how it works.”

John leaned suddenly forwards, his eyes flaring.

“I don’t know how it works. It just works. If I want to go back, I just tell myself to go back, and then I’m back. That’s it.”

“What’s it feel like? I mean, can you tell it’s happening?”

“Oh yeah,” John replied with bitter amusement. “I know.”

“So what’s it feel like?”

“Like falling backwards.”

“And how do you know how far you’re going?”

“By the angle. Flat on my back is about ten minutes. Any time before that is less, depending on how far it feels like I’m angled. I just have to guess, but I got a pretty good sense of it by now.”

“And you can pull right out of it, at will.”

“That’s right.”

Dan leaned back to ponder this a long moment.

“You know,” John said, “I could undo this conversation if I wanted to. Just make it like it never happened.”

Dan shot a glance at his watch.

“Not the whole thing. We’ve been sitting here for twelve minutes now. You’d be just about getting to the good part.”

John sighed and leaned back, raising an arm to drape it over his eyes.

“I’ve got a wicked headache.”

“I don’t wonder,” Dan said gently. “You were pretty drunk when you called me.”

“Why do you think I did that?”

“I think because you originally planned to just talk a couple minutes, find out what you wanted to find out, then you would jump back and the call never would have happened.”

“Instead I passed out.”

“You passed out.”

“So what was I asking you about, anyway?”

“You wanted to ask if I thought what you’d done at the liquor store was wrong.”

“And?”

“No, I don’t think it was. That would be really hard to explain to people, but if I knew there was going to be a murder, and I knew there was no way I’d ever be able to convince anyone of that fact, I’d do it, too.”

“Why?”

“To stop a murder? That just shows your values are in the right place. And you did it, despite the fact you thought you’d probably have a mess after you did it. Or undid it. Whatever. So, yes, John, I think it was a good thing that you did.”

“Me, too,” Jim added quietly. “Fuck Morales. He’s a dirtbag.”

“So,” John said, “What now?”

“Now?” Dan responded. “Now nothing. We talked, that’s all I wanted to do.”

John nodded gravely.

“And the whole assault thing?”

“Oh, that case is closed already. I think Morales was enough to put it to bed. Who did it is going to stay just a question mark. Not worth the resources to track down.”

John looked back and forth between the two cops, then raised a hand and rubbed it over his face.

“I feel like shit.”

“You want us to call someone?” Dan asked, suddenly tensing.

“No,” John replied, “It’s just doing it with a hangover is a real kick in the head, that’s all. And I did it twice in a row. That always sucks, big time.”

Dan relaxed slightly as John pulled himself together, straightening a bit.

“So we done?”

“Yes, we’re done. And thank you. I just wanted to verify something that had been gnawing at me. And you’ve done that. So thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” John said, rising and prompting both officers to mimic the move.

“And if you ever feel like talking, about anything,” Dan said, “You have my card.”

“Right,” John said, glancing down to where the rumpled rectangle of paper sat on the table.

Dan tried to come up with something suitable to say, some kind of perfect statement to cap the mind-bending moment that was ending, but just couldn’t find anything that wouldn’t sound stupid or meaningless.

“Okay, then,” he finally said and turned toward the door.

“Hey,” John said, following the officers to the door, “Let me ask you something.”

Dan stopped and turned back to him.

“Did you really sit outside there for a half hour, because you really thought I could jump backwards in time? I mean did you really believe it, or were you just… I don’t know… covering your bases?”

Dan considered this a moment before smiling.

“A bit of both, I guess. I was hoping – “

“Hoping what?” John prompted. “That it was for real? That I could really do it?”

Dan pondered and slowly nodded.

“I guess so.”

“Well, I guess that’s good, then,” John concluded. “That you got your curiosity satisfied.”

“I suppose it is,” Dan replied simply.

“And of course you know,” John added as they began moving toward the door once more, “That if you try to do anything about this, tell a bunch of people or anything, I’m not going to like it. And I’m going to do something about it. I don’t know what, but something. You get that, right?”