Forty Leap (35 page)

I laughed.

Wendell was okay. He didn’t call the police.
He never tried to make me leave, although he did not leave us alone
except by order either. He even brought me food. Jennie told me
about him, twenty years old and living with her up until recently.
His father, her grandson, had died suddenly ten years before and
his mother had never really been in the picture. It was a sad
story, really, but one that been told since long before I was born.
Anyhow, Wendell was very protective of his
Nona
. When she
had gotten sick, he had blamed himself for leaving her alone in the
house. Whoever heard of a woman of one hundred and two years living
by herself? But apparently the average lifespan had jumped almost
twenty years. That meant that people actually getting into their
old age lived much longer than the average. Century old people were
not uncommon.

Her life, she told me, had been a full and
happy one. She had married, though she wouldn’t give me any
details. While she spoke fondly of her life with her husband, there
was sadness there, too. Of course, he was gone. All she would say
was that he had been gone many years. Aside from Wendell’s father,
her children were still alive and about in the world. That they had
not come to see her was a curiosity to me, but she dismissed it.
The world is different, now,
she said, but it seemed cruel.
I thought of my own mother, dying in her bed, wondering where her
youngest son was. Meanwhile I was trapped in time with no idea of
her illness and impending death. Was my time with Jennie God’s way
of repaying me? Did He even care enough to do something like
that?

I was three days by Jennie’s side. I spoke
with her and watched her sleep. I helped her eat and wash. I was
truly her caregiver and glad of the opportunity. Then, on the third
day, while she was taking an afternoon nap, her lifeline went flat
and the silent alarms sounded at the nurse’s station.

No one came.

She didn’t want to be brought back.

I stared at the readout for a moment, then at
the woman to make sure that the machines were not lying. They were
not. Lifting her still warm hand, I pressed it to my face and began
to sob, apologizing to her with every breath I could find. Though I
may travel through many centuries, even millennia, there will never
be another Jennie.

I sat there for quite a while and still no
one came. Perhaps they left me alone out of respect, this poor soul
crying over a very old woman. Perhaps they were just afraid of me.
The Forty Leaper.

Finally, I detected a presence. I placed
Jennie’s now cold hand down on her bed side and looked once again
at her peaceful face.

Goodbye, love.

Expecting to see Wendell, I looked up and had
a surprise. The man standing there was in a uniform of some type. I
guessed he was military by the rank insignia and the sidearm.

“Mr. Cristian?”

I wasn’t surprised that he knew my name or
even that he knew where to find me. I had been in that hospital for
three days. Hundreds of people had seen me and any one of them
could have recognized me. Maybe even Wendell, who I never saw
again, had finally turned me in.

“Who are you?”

“Sergeant Archibald Wilkes, sir. Would you
please accompany us, sir?”

I looked past him to where the door of the
room stood open. I could see shadows and the toe of a boot. More
soldiers. What would there be? Two? Four? Five?

“No.”

To his credit, he didn’t give any reaction.
“Sir, I
am
under orders.” Sergeant Wilkes had a mid-western
accent. I had gotten used to it when I had lived with my brothers
so it almost sounded natural to me. “I would appreciate your
cooperation.”

“I don’t feel like cooperating.”

This time he blinked. “With all due respect
to you and your grief, sir, I’m confident that my people and I are
capable of handling any resistance we might encounter.”

I was sure of that. I was no fighter and in
no mood to fight. The one thing, however, that they could not
counter was my ability to leap. It’s funny that I thought of it as
an
ability
in that instant. It wasn’t a disease or a curse
or a burden. It was something I could do almost at will. All I
needed was the proper dose of adrenaline and,
whoosh
, I’d be
off through time. Sure, I had no idea how far ahead I would go; it
would exceed fifty eight years certainly. But that didn’t matter
anymore. For the first time, I was leaving absolutely nothing
behind. I was completely free of the bindings of my old life. My
brothers were gone. Jennie was gone. The people I had met, even
those who had helped me, meant nothing to me. If there was a debt I
owed to Dr. Kung, then it was a debt that would forever go
unpaid.

Now I just needed to get excited.

Standing, I walked around the other side of
the bed and made as if to submit myself to the sergeant. He led me
out of the room and into the hallway where there were three other
soldiers. Aside from the fact that one was a woman, they all seemed
identical. They wore the same type of uniform as Wilkes, with a
lesser insignia. They all had close cropped haircuts and did not
speak. In this far future, I could almost believe that they had
been genetically engineered as soldiers, but that was science
fiction. Clothing styles could change and cars could change, but
people stayed the same. Society stayed virtually the same. In fact,
almost ninety years after my humble beginnings as a Forty Leaper, I
was astonished at how little had changed. Despite not knowing how
to use money or the trolley system, I found it very easy to blend
into this society the same way I had always blended into my own. If
only it weren’t for my very recognizable face.

Musings were unproductive. I needed to get
angry. But Jennie’s death had left me without emotion. I truly
didn’t care that this Gomer Pyle freak was arresting me. I wasn’t
worried at all about what might happen to me. Apparently, Jennie’s
death had freed me from more than obligations to other people. That
I even considered escape was simply a reflex of the rational mind.
I knew that if I didn’t I would regret it. I was no longer a
scientific curiosity. I was a criminal. Who knew how they would
treat me? And yet I couldn’t put an emotion to that rationale. No
matter how much I thought about it, it was still overshadowed by
the loss I had suffered.

So I focused on that loss. What loss was it
really? How long had Jennie and I had together in her one hundred
and two years of life. She had been just a child when we met. And
then we had been in love for just a brief time. And now I had been
with her in her last moments. So little time, yet so much shared.
Cheated is what we were. I reviewed my earlier thoughts. Leaping
had brought me into contact with her, shown me something that I
would never have sought in my old life. And yet it had also taken
this gift from me as quickly as it was given. Was leaping a curse
or a blessing? Did it mean more that I had been given the gift in
the first place? Or that it had been just a taste of something that
was now gone forever?

I became frustrated with the concepts.

Wilkes motioned me toward the elevators and
his soldiers fell into step around me. Even in my grief, there
could be no peace. And that grief extended beyond a simple death.
The loss was of more than just a person, which is bad enough. It
was a loss of opportunity. The opportunity to share my life with
another person. The opportunity to experience something special. I
became enraged by the injustice of it all. I wanted to lash out at
anyone and everyone around me.

I felt tiny spasms in my muscles.

As we got to the elevator and one of the men
pushed the down button I knew that I had reached the end. I bolted
from them, taking them completely by surprise. The woman reached
out for me, but she was way behind and I disappeared into the
stairs. Behind me, I could hear them shedding their confusions,
Wilkes giving them orders. The chase was on and with it came the
rush of excitement. I knew I had to keep moving. If I leaped a
hundred years, they would still be after me. My only chance was to
move as fast as I could so that I would be far away from the spot
from where I leaped. I plunged down the stairs, hearing them behind
me. Through my mind coursed thoughts of Jennie and frustration at
having been in this predicament. They were accompanied by
frustration at having to run again and fear of what might become of
me. It was as if every emotion now finally had released. I laughed
with tears in my eyes.

I came into the lobby with my body on fire
and I knew that the leap was imminent. There, by the door, were
several more uniformed people. They saw me and shouted, pointing. I
braked and spun, back the way I had come, past the elevators and
down in the other direction. There was a short dark hallway…

…and then I crashed through the time barrier
and bowled over a simple janitor with his bucket of water. Who knew
what year it was? With all of the high paying, high profile jobs
that came and went over the years, humanity would always need
someone to mop the floors. Had I had time to reflect on this, it
might have made me happy.

“
Stay down!”
someone shouted. It
sounded more like a warning than an order so I was inclined to
obey. But the janitor had other plans. He struggled against me, the
two of us sloshing in a puddle of water. I rolled free of him,
trying to get my bearings. All I could see was a spectacular white
and green tiled floor and the feet of numerous people both sitting
and walking.

Then there was more shouting. “
FLP!
Everyone stand clear!”

Whatever was happening, it certainly had
everything to do with me. It would have had to, right? There was
the inevitable sound of gunfire. It was just one shot at first,
followed by a strangled cry. I had time to wonder about the nature
of gunfire. How many years since my birth? One hundred and twenty
plus this latest leap. So two hundred was a safe bet. And yet guns
sounded just the same. It’s funny but before Forty Leaping, I’d
never actually heard the sound of gunfire. When you grow up in New
York (or at least, if you grew up in New York in the seventies and
eighties) everyone seems to think that drugs and guns are a natural
part of everyday life. But I took the train at all times of the day
and night and I’d walked the streets both crowded and empty. There
had never been any trouble for me. I know it happened. People were
robbed. People were killed. It was terrible. But it was not a part
of the average person’s life. Leaping had introduced me into the
world of guns and violence. Leaping had set me on a path of
terrible adventure.

What was my point?

Oh yes. In all that time, they hadn’t yet
invented a quieter way of killing people. I guess gunpowder was
just perfection.

Someone grabbed my arm and dragged me to my
feet. I looked up to see an older man with an unruly mop of salt
and pepper hair flopping all over his head. I don’t imagine it was
particularly advantageous in a gunfight. He also wore a long coat
with a belt that hung unused around his waist.

“Get behind me,” he instructed in what was
unmistakably a British accent.

In his left hand was the gun, also easily
identifiable despite centuries of use. He looked out ahead of me
and scanned the crowd. I did the same.

I was still in the hospital. It was the same
hospital but it looked like the Emergency Room rather than the
lobby. People were still doing their best to get out of the way.
They scrambled for the exits while nurses, doctors, orderlies, and
one poor janitor, tried to gain control of the situation. It was
difficult for everyone to move through the maze of chairs. We were
on the far side of the room, away from the exit. A short corridor
stretched out behind us and there was a lady inside. I didn’t get a
good look at her at that time but it was clear that she was a
companion of the Englishman’s. Way out, curled up under one of the
chairs, was a young man bleeding from a gunshot wound. The
Englishman paid him no attention, but I surmised that it had been
his or the woman’s weapon that had caused the young man’s
wound.

Slowly, we began to retreat into the
corridor, the woman covering our backs, the man keeping his gaze
and his arm steady toward the front. I had half a notion to break
away from these people, tired of being swept up in the maelstrom of
hate that seemed to accompany each of my new leaps. I wanted to be
free and alone. I wanted to be anonymous. But I was suddenly awash
in a great fatigue. The physical impact of this last leap was
extraordinary. My knees buckled, but I managed to steady myself on
the wall. The man seemed to take no observance of my struggle but
asked if I could go on. I assured him I could. The woman pushed a
canteen at me and I took it.

“Drink,” she ordered so I did. A cool clear
liquid flowed down my throat. It was tasteless and refreshing.

“It’s water,” I said.

“What did you expect?” She took the canteen
back.

The Englishman stopped suddenly, tensed. All
of his focus was on the rapidly thinning crowd ahead of me. It had
been several minutes since my leap and the tension was building
with the prospect of more action. For me, this was an uncomfortable
feeling. Despite the refreshment the water had provided, I still
didn’t feel strong enough to handle either a fight or a flight.

The people had sort of slowed their exit.
Most eyes were on us now. We were very exposed. The condition of
the Englishman’s focus was uncanny. He scanned each pair of eyes
scanning him, his arm never wavering. I didn’t know what he was
looking for. I didn’t see anything but hate and fear in the eyes of
the people. Even the hospital workers looked upon us with
revulsion. One doctor had knelt to aid the fallen man but he had
time to spare us a reproving glance. It was then that I realized I
was in the company of other Forty Leapers. These people weren’t
just sympathizers. They suffered from the same condition as I and
they had been here waiting for me. But someone else had been
waiting for me as well. Unlike my previous two leaps, I could not
see any enclosure or apparatus meant to trap me. Whoever was hiding
in the crowd was an assassin.