Forty Leap (37 page)

“It’s easy, mate,” Rupert encouraged from
behind me.

I started forward. The tiles were not evenly
spaced, but they weren’t far apart either. They were laid out in a
direct path that was, as Rupert had said, easy to follow. I took
them slowly, afraid of a misstep, but had no trouble with them.
Natalie stopped several dozen paces in and I stopped behind her. A
quick glance showed that we had moved around a corner somewhere and
out of the view of the front doors and windows. The darkness was
complete and I couldn’t see Rupert or Larena behind me. The only
way I knew they were there, and that Natalie had stopped, was by
the shadows that covered the particular tiles on which they were
standing. We stood waiting for a time and I said nothing and asked
no questions. Here I was again, at the mercy of those who knew the
world better than I. Was this to be my fate with every leap?

A soft humming reached my ears and a
rectangle of light opened up before us. It was an elevator and it
illuminated Natalie before me. She had grown into a striking woman.
Though her hair was cut short and not very evenly, her features
were sharp and defined. She could have been an actress or a model.
She had shed her jacket somewhere along the way and was wearing a
sleeveless tank top and a pair of pants that looked like military
fatigues. Her arms were strong and toned and her posture added to
her no-nonsense attitude. It seemed to me that one did not cross
her if one knew what was good for him. Unfortunately, I had made a
bad first impression almost one hundred years ago on an
impressionable fifteen year old girl.

Rupert nudged me into the elevator and down
we went.

I didn’t really have any expectations on what
I would find. The organizations about which Lewis and then Philip
Kung had spoken were only abstract ideas to me. I had run from both
and thought I would have run from this one as well if I’d had a
place to go. As I looked at Rupert I felt a desperate sense of just
wanting to sit with him, drink iced tea, and discuss his writings.
I had enjoyed his work in my youth. It seemed such a waste not to
take advantage of his presence almost two centuries later. But I
wondered if this Rupert Oderick was even the same man that had
written those books. I knew firsthand what leaping through time
could do to a person. Stolen from your home and your loved ones,
you begin to become detached. Fear and intimidation fall away. In
just a short time I had outlived almost everyone I’d ever known.
I’d survived trials and escaped trained hunters and assassins. It
made one feel invincible.

The elevator opened up into a darkened sub
basement. The lighting was poor, provided by a single naked bulb
that dangled from the ceiling. The walls were bricked and there
didn’t seem to be any exit except a steel door set in the far wall.
Removing a large pistol from a holster at her side, Natalie went up
and rapped on the door with its butt.

A small plate opened up and two eyes peered
out.

“It’s me, Otis,” Natalie said with little
patience.

“Password?”

“Asshole,” she said back and it was
not
the password.

“C’mon, Nat. Just for once?”

She shifted the grip of her pistol and stuck
the barrel through the peep hole. The eyes retreated. “What good’s
a password, Otis?”

Rupert whispered into my ear, “She does have
a flare for the dramatic.”

I nodded unconsciously and watched as the
door opened, spilling bright light into the room. Otis appeared, a
small man with powdery brown skin and sunken eyes. He was eighty if
he was a day yet he showed deference to Natalie.

“Let’s go,” she said to us with barely a
glance at him.

The corridors all kind of looked the same to
me. It was clear that the entire area had been restructured and
rebuilt to accommodate the Forty Leapers. Often, the halls opened
up into large rooms or larger areas containing a number of small
rooms. I glanced inside as we went and I saw people eating and
playing cards or pouring over computer monitors. Some of the
technology I viewed was beyond me, but a lot of it looked
positively twentieth century. The walls were made of brick and
stone, but many of them were painted over in bright colors, blues
and yellows mostly. The lighting was fantastic, except where the
lights were off.

Several people greeted Rupert as we walked
and he stopped a couple of times to shake hands and then had to run
to catch up. Every time he fell behind, Larena rolled her eyes with
a sort of easy defeat. She broke away from us after a bit, heading
down a different corridor. I assumed that she was headed somewhere
to have her arm fixed up. We weren’t walking long when I noticed
that we had a bit of a following. A number of people had lined up
behind us and were tracking us. Natalie was clearly aware of them
because her mood darkened with the addition of every new
person.

Finally, the passage inclined a bit and led
to a door. Natalie punched in another code and the door slid open.
We went inside, followed by our little entourage. Here at last was
the headquarters of the Forty Leapers. Like the rest of the
complex, the room was well lit. It was gigantic, the dimensions
beyond my ability to calculate. There were desks with computer
terminals lining the walls and tables and chairs set up in the
center. Like all control rooms you might see on television, it gave
the impression of managed havoc. People milled about. Some worked
on the computers, dragging their fingers across the screens and
speaking into microphones. Others carried disks and papers from one
end to the other.

In the very center of the room was a large
table with a giant canvas laid out upon it. Five people were
working on this canvas at once. They worked with odd looking pens
in a variety of colors. The whole thing reminded me of a group of
monks adding to sacred scrolls. Rupert informed that it was
The
Map
, which kept track of every Forty Leaper and every Leap. And
this was called
The Map Room
rather than being referred to
as a control room. True enough, the Map did resemble a giant family
tree. Each entry was boxed and dated, given a name, and filled in
with almost microscopic text. Arrows pointed from each of the boxes
to other boxes, except for those arrows that pointed to red Xs.
Stepping in for a closer look, I could begin to trace the journeys
of the Forty Leapers recorded there. It was a spectacular
document.

“Excuse me.” A small woman sidestepped me and
moved closer to the Map. I watched her carefully as she aimed a
tiny squarish device at it and pushed a button. Nothing seemed to
happen and it was only after she had done so several times, from
several different positions did I realize that she was taking
pictures of it. I guess that made sense. Really there was no other
way to preserve it if it should come to that. I moved in for a
closer look and found my name toward what I imagined was the top.
The first date was May 2
^nd
, 2007. This was the leap I
had made while changing into a hospital gown. An arrow led from
that box to another that described a five day leap. I remembered
that leap, remembered begging to keep my job. After that it was
five weeks and my job was gone as well as my mother, my
psychiatrist, and my best friend. With but a few gaps, the map
tracked my entire journey through the fourth dimension. It sent a
shiver down my spine. Many of those events were only months old by
my own sense of time. The final arrow showed me a jump from the
hospital where I had watched Jennie die.

I very quickly began to do what I imagined
most new people did. I searched over the document for names that
were recognizable. I found Joanne Li’s name first. The arrows ran
down an extensive list of entries and finished up with a jump that
had landed her in the year 2188. It had been just under a year
since her last jump. I saw a few other names that I recognized.
Awen Mohammed. Samantha Radish. Neville MacTavish. So many of their
trails ended right where I was. It was as if all of the Forty
Leapers were converging on this spot. Except for Neville. Neville’s
trail ended in a red X. Neville was dead.

“Do you like it, Little Mat?”

I turned to see someone I should have
probably expected. Rogers Clinton stood before me looking very much
the great man he had always perceived himself to be. There was a
wide smile across his lined face. His hair had gone totally white
and his hands were dry and scarred. But his eyes burned with that
same fierce determination I remembered. Before I could do or say
anything, he scooped me up in a giant bear hug.

“I have waited a long time for you,” he said
as he put me down on the floor. All around us, people had stopped
whatever it was they were doing. They were looking at us as if we
were two mighty titans, meeting up after an eternity of waiting. I
could feel the excitement all around me.

I pointed at Rogers. “You’re the leader?”

He nodded. I can’t imagine how old he was
now. Perhaps in his seventies or eighties. It’s so hard to guess
someone’s age when that someone is constantly leaping from time
period to time period. I tried to figure out where Rogers had come
from. I knew that he had been leaping since the nineteenth century,
which meant that his leaps took him through much greater periods of
time than mine did. I had jumped three or four times since our
meeting. Had he jumped even twice?

“Once,” he said as if reading my mind. “I
leaped out of the Rockies right after you did. And I came back into
the world in that same spot one hundred and fifty years later. What
a mess. There were soldiers everywhere. They were waiting for
us.”

As I listened to him speak, I recognized that
his accent had changed considerably. Rogers could no longer afford
to put on the slave persona or the railroad worker persona. The
seventies slang was completely out of the question. These people
must have heard his story a thousand times but they listened with
rapt attention anyway. It was hard to get the facts out of what he
was telling me. From what he was saying, there were still military
encampments in the Rockies. A couple of stragglers still hadn’t
arrived from both the time of GEI and the time of Neville’s riot.
But they didn’t call it Neville’s riot. Neville MacTavish had faded
into anonymity. It was Mathew Cristian’s riot. I had liberated all
of the leapers and led them to freedom. Natalie pulled a face and
barely stifled a sound of disgust. Of course she knew the truth. I
had told it to her myself.

I looked around at all of the faces of the
people, these poor Forty Leapers. They were like lepers, all
looking for something positive onto which they could grab. Rogers
was their leader and they loved him, but apparently I was an icon.
It was as if the Americans could have had George Washington back
during their struggle with the United Arab Nation. Not only was I
the best tracked Forty Leaper in history, I was
the
Forty
Leaper. It was my riot that had given rise to the first Forty
Leaper rebellion. And I had
been
the Fortieth Leaper.

It was all too much for me. Whatever I had
been and whatever I had become, I was no leader of a revolution. I
had no desire to be a great man and I was repulsed by the notion of
fighting a war with no meaning.

“I don’t understand,” I said.

He looked perplexed. “What’s to understand?
But how could you? It’s been almost a century for you, hasn’t
it.”

I nodded dumbly.

Rogers, the smile and the confidence ever
present, wrapped one big arm around my shoulders and led me away
from the map. “Let’s go someplace where we can be comfortable.”

The conference room was a large and
comfortable room. The lighting was as good there as it was anywhere
else in the complex. The table was large and polished, with a
couple of computer terminals built into it. The chairs were
leather, or some decent imitation. I sank into one with all of the
weight of my burden.

Around the table, the others were also taking
chairs. Rogers sat at the head with Natalie on his right. She paid
him just enough deference to let him know that she knew she was
second. But she was also arrogant enough to let everyone else know
that she was second as well. Rupert and Larena sat near each other.
I couldn’t readily determine their roles in the hierarchy, but I
supposed that their part in my rescue warranted them invitations.
Larena’s arm was bandaged and in a sling. There were four others
taking seats and I knew none of them. Rogers made brief
introductions.

“It was a different place and a different
time, but everything else was the same,” Rogers began. “They knew
where I was going to pop in and they took me. I was incensed! I
tried like hell right then and there to build up enough adrenaline
to make another leap but I couldn’t do it. My body was too
tired.

“They took me out of the Rocky Mountains and
that was the last I ever saw of that God forsaken place. Instead
they brought me to New Jersey where they had a whole complex for
Forty Leapers. But they didn’t have so many subjects. There were
rooms set up, but it seemed that most of us had learned how to make
ourselves jump so they wouldn’t stick around for very long.”

I managed to focus on Rogers Clinton’s story
because I had the feeling he was going to tell me things I wanted
to know. Not the things about his life and his experiences, but
about Forty Leaping in general. I was not the blind follower, rapt
with attention, though he was an excellent speaker. In losing his
accents, his grammar had become proper.

He continued:

“It seemed futile to leap out of a place just
to leap back in years and years later to be the same captive. So I
stuck around for a while, listened and learned. The docs there
wouldn’t tell us much. They knew that Forty Leaping was caused by a
rush of adrenaline. They’d worked out the formulae for it. Just how
much adrenaline needed depends on how rested your body is, how much
you weigh, and a whole bunch of other things. I couldn’t remember
it all. I tried to remember the important things. Like the fact
that you can’t leap right after a leap. It takes a couple of days
at least for your body to get its strength back. If you’re under
nourished or strung out you won’t be able to leap either.”