Forty Leap (36 page)

“Gotcha, love,” the Englishman whispered and
fired his gun.

The crowd immediately screamed and renewed
their push through the door. The doctor who had been helping the
wounded man threw his body over his patient in an effort to protect
him. It was tough to see what my rescuer had seen but I saw a woman
fall away from the crowd. She didn’t look like an assassin to me.
Her clothing was similar to the clothing worn by the other people.
She had her hair done up above her head in what seemed like a
protracted wave. I suppose it was a current style. Her hands had
come up to her neck and I could see red trails filling in between
her fingers. I was disgusted.

“Let’s go,” said the woman, her voice barely
audible above the crowd.

“There’s one more,” the man argued.

“We’ll get away in the confusion.”

“
There’s one more,”
the man said.

She grabbed me by the arm and dragged me away
At the last moment, another man detached himself from the swarm of
people as if he wasn’t even a part of it. Bodies threw themselves
past him and he ignored them as if by some sixth sense. In an
instant he was clear of them, raising his weapon. But the
Englishman’s focus had never shifted and he fired two shots to the
man’s one. The assassin went down as his shot blew past me by an
inch. The woman was torn away from me and I stumbled against the
wall.

Finally the Englishman turned away and moved
past me to his companion. She was crouched on the floor holding her
left bicep with her right hand. He first picked up her gun, then he
helped her to her feet.

“You’re so stupid, Larena,” he said, though
not without affection.

She passed him a sour look anyway. Then we
were on our way. The corridor ran into the lobby which didn’t look
all that different from the lobby of 2095. Of course, the structure
of the building hadn’t changed. I could see where renovations had
been made, paint had been changed, etc… But the reception desk was
still in the same place and it was still the same size. There were
still a number of people working behind it, every one of them on
the phone at the moment, but looking at us. The man smiled at them
and the entire room.

“Nothing to fret about. Just a trio of Forty
Leapers up to no good.”

I saw several people go rigid and several
others look away. It seemed to me that the general disdain for
Forty Leapers had grown over the years. But, as I had observed time
and again, people were still people. Getting involved in stopping
us dangerous criminals would have sorely interrupted their
schedules. We marched unmolested through the lobby and out into the
cold and rainy dusk.

The man buttoned up his coat and seemed to
struggle with what appeared to be a new kind of button. It bent and
slipped into the loop, snapping back into a rigid position once
through. It was the bending and unbending that seemed to give him
trouble. He acted as if he didn’t understand the physics of the
whole thing. For all I know, he didn’t. The woman, too, had a coat,
which she fastened together more easily, although the fastenings
seemed more complicated. Regardless, that left only me soaked and
shivering in the downpour.

The man looked me over for a moment, then
shrugged his shoulders. “Sorry about that, mate. There’s nothing
for it, I’m afraid.”

“Who are you?” I asked as they started
leading me away from the hospital. They seemed so calm despite the
fact that they’d just battled assassins and she was wounded.

“Name’s Rupert Oderick. This here is Larena
Lansing.”

I snorted. “Rupert Oderick? Aren’t you the
guy who wrote
The Fold
?”

I was half joking, but he answered with the
grin of the most flattered. “The same.”

Now I was impressed. I had discovered his
work while I was in high school and really liked it. He wrote about
people as if they didn’t really exist, but were only shadows on the
world. They faded in and out at the whims of the casters. And he
was a Forty Leaper. Amazing. In many ways, it made sense. As I
thought about the images described in his work, the stories he told
and the characters he portrayed. Everyone was always so
lost
.

“You’ll find, my friend, that the fame of a
writer whose last book was published two hundred and thirty years
ago is nothing compared to that of Mathew Cristian.”

He could not have known how distressing I
found this. Based on his assertion, I surmised that I was in the
late twenty second century. But I asked anyway.

It was November 18
^th
, 2189. I had
leaped ninety three years. It wasn’t quite double my last leap but
it was close enough. They were piling up now. For sure I would skip
a century next time. Maybe even close to two.

Oderick began to describe the state of
affairs to me as we walked. I listened with half an ear, too
conscious of the rain and the cold and the slow progress we made
through the streets of Manhattan. The city around me was very
different from the city I had traveled by cab only four days, yet
ninety years, before. A number of the large buildings around the
hospital were gone. Houses now stood in their place. Once again,
architecture had shifted based on style or technology, but a house
was a house. The area in which we walked look much more like a
suburb than like any Manhattan I had known. There were still tall
buildings. I could see them in the distance, peeking out over the
rooftops. I noticed the Empire State Building, long since restored
after having been savaged in the attacks by the United Arab Nation.
It was lit up in the growing darkness and stood over Manhattan like
a king.

In this day and age, there were two factions
tracking Forty Leapers through time. Forty Leapers themselves made
up the first faction. They had pooled all of the information they
could on the condition, which was quite a lot by that time, and
used it to predict when their brethren would arrive from their
latest leaps. Their enemies,
our
enemies were the
Forty
Leap Police
. They weren’t really police. They were military.
They were a government sanctioned extension of the military whose
sole purpose was to rid the world of time leaping spies. The
organization, though largely driven by the United States, was made
up of branches from almost every civilized country on the planet.
Civilized, however, seemed to have taken on a different definition.
The Forty Leap Police were assassins. Forty Leapers and the FLP
were in a constant competition to intercept arriving leapers. The
Forty Leapers has amassed a huge library of information and had
begun tracking leaps directly. Unfortunately, the FLP’s body of
information was almost as extensive, but still dwindling. Part of
the mission was to get leapers out of harm’s way by stealing them
from their leap sites. If they leaped later on, only other Forty
Leapers would know when and where. In the past thirteen years since
the war began in earnest, over two hundred Leapers had been taken
off of the FLP’s radar.

So we were at war now. The founders of the
movement were the Kungs. There was a long line of them, some
doctors, some barristers, some scattered throughout other useful
occupations. They had always worked to keep Forty Leapers out of
the hands of a government that sought to exploit them. It went on
like that for a long time, the movement being something entirely
defensive. And then the Forty Leapers had taken the fight to their
aggressors. They began organizing and attacking the machinery that
was built to capture them as they arrived, weak and disoriented,
from a trip through time. Ultimately, they had become the threat as
which they had always been perceived. They still couldn’t control
their leaps. Oderick’s last leap had brought him into the recent
past from a blustery March day in 2084. I tried to grasp it all in
the fountain of English words that spewed from him. While I found
him to be a pleasant enough individual, he was not as eloquent with
the tongue as with the pen.

We marched for some time until twilight
turned to darkness and the rain let up to a steady mist. I was
chilled to the bone and shivering. Oderick took off his coat and
gave it to me. It was wet on the outside, but insulated and still
warm from his own body. I was very grateful. We passed out of the
residential area and into the city proper. This portion of
Manhattan felt more familiar. I noticed that the trolley lines had
been removed from the streets and wondered what had replaced them.
At the moment, though, I was too cold and tired to ask. I let my
thoughts stray to Jennie. All I wanted was to be able to hold onto
those few memories of her in her youth, her adulthood, and her old
age. I could hardly concentrate on my surroundings and didn’t even
realize when my escorts stopped and began to argue.

The argument drew my attention. It was both
heated and good natured at the same time. It showed a lack of
patience and an abundance of love. I listened for a while as they
debated the location of the
meet
. I could only assume that
we were to join up with other Forty Leapers on our way to who knew
where. That argument, though, was not for them to settle. From out
of the shadows, a figure approached. Even at a distance and in the
dim light of street lamps, I could see that it was a man, tall but
huddled in against the cold and the rain. He came forward with his
hands in his pockets. His stride was purposeful. There was no doubt
as to his intentions.

“Mr. Oderick,” I said, nudging him with my
elbow. He looked up at me first, then at my indication. His arm
went straight to his hip where the gun was stored.

“Don’t be an idiot, Rupert,” a deep voice
called across the distance. “If I was FLP, you’d be dead already.
What the hell’s the matter with you, arguing in the middle of the
street like this?”

The man came into full view. He was a black
man, though his skin was very light. He had a thick round head that
was completely shaved. A long scar ran from the back of one ear
almost to the center of his forehead. It gave his features an angry
look even though his demeanor, despite his words, bespoke of
kindness and patience. He was dressed in a long grey coat that
wrapped itself around him from neck to ankle. He looked at Rupert
and waited for an answer that never came. Eventually, the
Englishman looked away, embarrassed but not cowed. Larena, too,
refused to look directly at the new man. Finally his gaze settled
on me and I looked directly back at him, beyond even the ability to
be intimidated.

He smiled a broad and toothy smile. “Mathew
Cristian?”

I nodded.

“At last!” He extended one hand and I shook
it. “Gerry Bensing.”

He turned back the way we had come and we
followed him. He led us to the end of the street and into an alley.
The alley was dark and tall buildings surrounded us. There were
what appeared to be dumpsters lining the lane but they were all
closed and I could detect no smell of garbage. Still, though, it
provided excellent cover for the four people hidden there. Two were
men and two were women. The first of the women I recognized almost
immediately. It seemed a long time since I had seen her and a lot
had happened, but it was definitely Joanne Li. I had met her on the
way to the Rocky Mountain Facility at the same time I had met
Neville MacTavish. She hadn’t spoken then; I think she hadn’t
understood English. She looked almost exactly the same and regarded
me with a smile. Perhaps she remembered me as well.

If she didn’t, though, the second woman
certainly did. She spared me no friendly gesture, scowling in my
face. She was older, perhaps five or ten years. It was tough to
tell because the trials of leaping through time can age you faster
than your average day job. I had met her when she was a
teenager.

“It’s Natalie, isn’t it?”

She nodded.

Oderick smiled. “You know each other?
Natalie, you never said you knew Mathew Cristian?”

“What’s to know?” she told him. “He’s just a
man. And not a very good one at that.”

“Natalie!” scolded Bensing. “You don’t listen
to her, Mr. Cristian. You’ll never meet a more bitter bitch.”

I didn’t say anything. My acquaintance with
her could be measured in minutes. I knew where her impression had
come from, but cared little for them nonetheless. By her posture
and demeanor, I determined that she was a leader among these
people. It didn’t surprise me, but it didn’t inspire me with
confidence either. Natalie was ruled by her resentment. For her,
hate was easily manufactured. Had she not been born a Forty Leaper,
I could easily see her fighting just as bitterly for the other
side.

“Can we please get out of this rain?” Oderick
complained.

We turned and fell into step behind Natalie.
Joanne Li, Gerry Bensing, and the other two men at whom I had
barely glanced, remained in the alley. There was a great deal of
ceremony as we approached what I assumed was Forty Leap
Headquarters. Rupert and Larena departed, leaving me alone with
Natalie. She marched on ahead, never once even looking to see if I
was keeping up. Her pace was brisk, as if she was testing my
resolve. I kept up. Soon, my two original escorts returned and
reported that all was clear. Natalie seemed to trust their word and
directed us toward a building entrance on a side street. Pulling a
stack of what looked like credit cards from her pocket, she thumbed
through them until she found one that appealed to her. She slid it
through a slot and the front door unlocked silently. She pushed it
open and we stepped through into darkness.

“Follow the path,” she whispered. “If you
step off of it, you’ll sound an alarm.”

I was about to ask what she was talking about
when I noticed several softly glowing spots on the floor. They
became a bit brighter as my eyes adjusted to the darkness. I
realized that they were the same color as the streetlamps, but
didn’t likely use an electric light source. They almost appeared
phosphorescent. As Natalie began to move, I could see her shadow
blotting out the steps, one at a time.