Forty Leap (39 page)

“Wait,” Natalie corrected. I looked at her
and was struck by a sudden change in her aggression. She looked
confused. She looked as if she was trying to sort through
something. “There wasn’t any killing before we started attacking
the machines. Back then they were just trying to capture us.”

“Yes, but to what end?” Moneto countered.

The second woman spoke up. She was a heavy
woman with kindly features. I placed her between forty five and
fifty years old but, again, age becomes subjective for a Forty
Leaper. She had the look of a mother. In fact, behind her eyes
there was a sadness that told me she had lost children to our
illness. In looking at her, in hearing her speak, I recognized the
nature of an illness where the victim not only has to suffer the
disease, but the grief as well. Her name was Miriam.

“Natalie, Mr. Cristian was involved in a huge
battle. There were a lot of lives lost and it took place long
before Rogers even met Dr. Kung.”

“But that was an escape,” Natalie argued.
“They were breaking out, not attacking.”

“Does it matter?” Rupert asked.

“Doesn’t it?” Natalie countered.

“So now you’re suddenly his best friend?”
Larena asked. “Before, you were ready to condemn him as a
coward.”

Natalie looked at me, but I saw no softening
of her attitude. I could only assume she was taking my side because
of how she felt about the situation rather than how she felt about
me. That she was showing any defiance surprised me. I would have
thought that a man like Rogers, who had led her into action, would
have her undying loyalty.

“He’s no hero,” she said and that was all she
said.

As for me, I had nothing left to say. It was
amazing that I had said as much as I did. I remembered Rogers
Clinton. He was mad and intimidating. He was enigmatic and
confrontational. I was none of those things and I certainly was not
apt to engage him in those pastimes. His usually bright eyes had
turned to dangerous embers waiting for a spark. Abruptly, he stood,
regarded the men and women in the room, and left without a
word.

“Where’s he going?” Rupert asked when it was
pointless to do so.

“He’s got to calm down,” Raphael said. “He’s
afraid he’ll leap.”

“Is it true?” Jeannette asked. “Mr. Cristian,
do you believe the things you said?”

All of a sudden I felt guilty for saying
them. But I did feel that they were true. I think that a leader has
to be part madman. A leader needs to be driven, at least in part,
by his own ego. But Rogers was way over the line. I wouldn’t have
gone as far as to accuse him of taking advantage of people.
Perhaps, deep down, there was some altruistic motive. Perhaps he
could justify his actions to himself. But in the end I knew that he
was fighting for nothing. I knew that what angered him more than
anything was not the accusations I had made regarding his own
behavior, but the prospect that there would be no satisfactory
conclusion to his war. History determines which people are heroes
and which are villains. When the war of the Forty Leapers came to
its ultimate conclusion, how would the historians regard Rogers
Clinton? Would he be considered a great man?

The group sat there, looking at their hands
and the table and the walls. They would not look at each other.
They would not look at me, except for Natalie. She stared at me
without shame. I looked back at her but, much to my chagrin, found
it impossible to keep eye contact.
She
intimidated me.

“Well,” Rupert declared, standing. “I guess
we’d best show you your quarters, then.”

Larena suppressed a chuckle.

“Maybe I’d better just leave,” I said, not
knowing where I might go.

“I think not,” Rupert answered. “You may not
want to be part of the movement, but I doubt as if Rogers will have
you wandering the streets. Have you any idea what’ll happen if
you’re caught? Regardless of what you may have said, Mathew, there
is
a war going on. And both sides regard you as a principle
figure. If they catch you, they will break you. And it will likely
be televised.”

If he was trying to scare me, he succeeded. I
was hardly in the right frame of mind for paving the road to
salvation.

“Besides which,” Rupert continued. “The last
thing we need is for you to lead them here.”

There were barracks, giant rooms which were
shared by ten or more people. The bunks looked comfortable and the
bathrooms were clean but I was given something that was regarded as
a suite. It was a room that was maybe ten by ten square with a bed
rather than a bunk and a small desk. There was a foot locker for my
belongings. I had no belongings.

Rupert showed me in and pointed me down the
hall to the bathroom, which I promptly went to use despite some bad
memories. When I returned, he was still there, sitting in the desk
chair. I was surprised but not displeased so I took a seat on the
bed and we began to chat.

It didn’t take long for me to realize that my
initial impression of Rupert had been quite correct. He was an
intelligent man, outwardly goofy (I can think of no other word to
describe him) at times with a serious layer underneath. Our
conversation started where the briefing left off. He gave me some
more minor details, telling me stories of harrowing rescues and sad
failed attempts. Some of the things he told me were horrible. I
said very little during his stories. He told me of a man named
Jerry, one of his friends, who had leaped just the week before.
He’d been out on assignment, waiting for me. When his shift ended,
Natalie had informed him callously that Jerry had leaped. That was
that. Jerry’s leaps were already well advanced so it was unlikely
that he and Rupert would ever meet up again.

“It’s kind of like a death, mate,” he said.
“You have to grieve.”

I understood. My family was gone and Jennie
was gone, all having lived out the natural courses of their lives.
But I thought of Neville. If he had survived to be there at that
moment, how would he have reacted to Rogers Clinton’s war. Neville
had proven very capable of fighting and killing, but I wonder if he
would have been so quick to take up this battle under these
circumstances.

As we spoke, we began to drift away from the
glaring commonality in our lives and into those more subtle. He was
older than I, maybe even ten years. But he had been born in a
different era. He had been born in 1928 and first leaped in 1954,
twenty years before I was even born. Writing books had never been
something he’d even thought of as a child. He never went to
college, worked hard in England, and fought the Germans at the age
of fourteen. That had been shortly after the Americans had joined
the war. It was leaping that had driven him to write and, now that
I consider it, I can remember references in some of his books that
directly correlate to a man lost in time. That got us onto the
subject of his books, a subject which we both found very
interesting.

We conversed for several hours, well into the
night. We might have spoken until dawn had we not been interrupted
by Rogers himself. The clock read midnight when he let himself in
and politely dismissed Rupert so that we could talk. Rupert looked
from one of us to the other and I think I saw something that
resembled fear on his face. Finally, he said, “All right, Rogers,”
and left the room. Rogers waited passively, his expression
betraying nothing of his emotions. He waited for Rupert to close
the door behind him and then waited several minutes more. I sat
there and waited with him, too stunned and tired to really allow
the waiting game to put me ill at ease.

“I thought we were friends, Little Mat.”

I remembered Rogers introducing himself to me
and me to him and declaring our friendship. I never questioned it
then and truly did not question it now. As I looked across at him,
sitting just where Rupert had sat, I bore him no ill will. Whatever
I said, I meant as criticism, but it was not meant to be personal.
Of course, that was laughable. As Rupert had put it, I’d dealt him
a serious blow.

“I’m sorry, Rogers,” I said. “I didn’t mean
for it to go that way.”

“That thing you accused me of…it’s
horrible.”

“Rogers…”

He raised a hand to silence me. “There is
only one possible conclusion to this war, Mathew. You’re right
about that. Eventually, those of us not completely hidden will be
found and killed.”

I was shocked. I could never have expected
this kind of an admission.

He continued. “Every man and woman that dies
fighting against the people who would do this to us, dies an easy
death. Each leap for someone such as us is as dangerous as you say.
One day humanity will be gone and this world unable to support
life. Men and women from these centuries will leap into that world
and die, perhaps in agony. We fight now because there is nothing
else we can do. We fight now because it gives us a false hope.”

I sat, looking at him, thinking about the
things that he was saying. I had said them myself. “But why can’t
we look for a cure?”

He shook his head. “In one hundred and fifty
years of Kungs spearheading Forty Leap research, no one has been
able to isolate the cause of the enzyme manufacture. There have
been experiments. They’ve tried inhibiting the adrenal glands, even
removing them. But the consequences are disastrous. All manner of
medications have been used to attack the enzyme after its creation
but none have had any lasting effect. Many are detrimental.”

I looked away. What did it matter? Jennie was
gone.

“I tell you these things because you see who
I really am. You have known me when I was nothing, not even a
slave. You knew me during my search. I have always believed my
destiny to be greatness. And I am great. But I am not leading
people to freedom or salvation. I am protecting them from a
terrible truth. If they knew this truth then they, and we, would do
the work of our enemies for them.”

He stood then and left, not waiting for me to
respond. It was better that way. I had no response, not at the
moment. After he was gone, I lay on my bed in the clothing I had
worn at Jennie’s bedside and pondered his words without
resolution.

Then I slept.

There was breakfast the next morning. I saw
Jeannette Umbungus and Myalee Sincere at a table far off but did
not approach them. There were whispers as I entered the hall, but I
think the awe had gone away. Nothing remained but a bit of
curiosity. No one approached me until Rupert walked in. He spotted
me right away and came to sit with me as I ate. We picked up our
conversation easily. He didn’t ask about Rogers.

For the next few days, I stayed inside the
bunker. Rogers offered me an assignment and I refused. Despite his
oration about issuing hope to the hopeless, I was loath to
participate in the violence that accompanied a rescue. I did not,
however, challenge him on any points again. I even joined him in
consultation a few times. This seemed to please him, which was fine
with me. He showed me no hostility, either in public or in
private.

Rupert, between assignments at the moment,
became my constant companion. I believe Rogers noticed how close we
were becoming and chose not to send him out. Larena was out the
very next day. I asked Rupert about his relationship with her.
Their easy back and forth resembled that of a married couple and I
noted several coy glances between the two. But Rupert assured me
that there was no romance there. They had worked together for some
months and developed the rapport of two good partners. He did not
elaborate and I did not press.

The world at the very end of the twenty
second century seemed interesting, although I wasn’t permitted to
experience it. Unless on assignment, it was far too dangerous for
me to go out, especially unescorted. So I gathered my information
from television and the internet, both of which had changed but
were still prevalent in society. I guess there are some inventions
which, though not quite as good as they’ll get, will never go away.
There were no such things as brain implants as many of the popular
science fiction tales had predicted. You couldn’t think your way
through a video game or read someone’s mind by looking into his
eye. There was no time travel. Those sterile technological futures
told by countless authors had remained fictional. Those futures
which descended into the seedy gutter of human foulness had also
been rendered less than prophetic. Actually the world seemed much
the same as always. There were new television shows and old ones. I
could tune in to watch anything I wanted. I watched shows I had
never seen or heard of, not understanding much of the humor. Then
there were old favorites. It was something to watch prehistoric
episodes of
Barney Miller
and laugh while almost everyone
around me looked on with confusion.

I also met a fair number of people whose
names and faces became a blur almost instantly. No matter who you
are, you can’t meet two hundred people and know all of their names
in a couple of days. Many people were shy around me. I was regarded
in a way to which I was unaccustomed. For all of my life I had been
someone who blended into the scenery. I remembered my job and my
boss. She had liked me because I had never once caused her a day of
consideration, good or bad. That was who I had been. Now I was a
celebrity.

Rupert and I became close friends, or close
mates as he liked to say. My friendship with him was different than
the friendship I’d had with Morty. Morty had been much older than I
and our friendship had been borne of the instincts of two lonely
men to seek out company. With Rupert, we discovered commonalities
that drew us together. We talked ceaselessly, often into the night.
We both enjoyed chess. Rupert was no master, but he was much better
than I was. I won a game on the third night but I think he let me
win. It didn’t matter to me. I am not a competitive person. I
enjoyed playing and being consistently astounded at the way he read
my strategies and countered them.