Forty Leap (40 page)

Over the course of a week, I also learned how
the Movement operated. This headquarters was one of several. There
were nine, actually, just in New York alone. None of them was as
big as ours, of course. In fact, they were often referred to as
safe houses
. Across the world, others had been set up as
well. People were leaping in and out of time in all regions. I
myself had leaped from New York, Colorado, and Wisconsin. In fact,
it was a downright miracle that I had found my way back to New York
so that I could join Rogers Clinton in the Forty Leap headquarters.
Or was it? With the knowledge afforded us by the Map, it made sense
that Rogers would set up shop in Manhattan.

There were not new leapers coming in every
day. I saw only three new people in the week. Reports were sent in
via telephone and what I could only approximate to email. These
reports came from the safe houses and detailed arrivals. People
coming back into the world could be moved to other states or other
countries in some cases, but most stayed where they were, joining
the cause in helping to ease other Forty Leapers into the twenty
second century.

Rogers was busy all of the time. He worked
tirelessly, spending most of his time in the Map Room. That was his
central hub. He even took his sparse meals in there so as not to
interrupt his work. Whatever could be said about him and his
motives, he was fully dedicated to his cause. During the first
couple of days, I was awestruck by that dedication. Soon, though, I
chalked it up to a symptom of his fanaticism. He led by example and
the example preserved that leadership.

On the morning of the seventh day, Wednesday
the 27
^th
of November, the complex was a flurry of
activity. I exited my room without noticing, showered, went back,
dressed… My usual routine. It was on my way back to my suite that I
noticed the quickened pace of the people. There was a dark look
appearing on most faces. Everyone was very busy and everyone was
very upset.

The edge of dread creeping into my gut, I
grabbed my journal and made my way to the Map Room. Rogers was
there, of course, on the phone with someone. I caught sight of
Rupert as well. He was standing at the far side of the room and
inspecting rifles that had been stacked on a cart. A young woman,
tender of the cart, stood nearby and watched. Standing close to
Rogers, looking extremely agitated, was Gerry Bensing.

“Can’t
anyone
get out?” Rogers was
saying into the phone. “We’ve got people out on assignment who need
to be warned.” He paused, listening. “No,” he said. Then, “Not
likely.” He repeated, “No.” Then he said, “You’re kidding!”
Finally, “Get it done.” And then he hung up the phone.

He noticed me then, standing in the doorway,
looking, I assume, stricken.

“You’d better grab a rifle,” he said. I could
feel my expression warp and he must have seen it clearly because he
quickly told me never to mind as if he’d suddenly had a voluntary
change of heart. Ushering me over, he began to explain the
situation. I glanced over at Rupert, who spared me a glance of his
own and then went back to his work.

“The day has come, Little Mat.” In the past
week, he had gone back and forth between calling me Mathew and
calling me Little Mat, which is how he had referred to me in the
Rocky Mountain facility. Though I always preferred to be called
Mathew, I was never one to care too much about the way people
addressed me. With Rogers, though, I knew that he was exercising
his greatness when he called me
Little Mat
. Back in the
twenty first century, the moniker had been part of his lunacy. Now
it was a way of demonstrating superiority over the legend.
Remarkably, it didn’t irk me. Now I was too on edge to even worry
about it. You see, I knew what he was talking about. It was just
what we had discussed. There was only one resolution to this
war.

The military had discovered the location not
only of our installation, but many of the others across the
country, across the world. Rogers didn’t know how long they had
been compiling data, but they had chosen to launch a mass attack on
all of the installations at once. Some of the others had already
fallen. Signals had come across the gulf in a panic and been
abruptly ceased.

Bensing looked over to where Rupert was
completing his inspection of the guns and then back at Rogers with
a grimace. He virtually ignored me. Apparently my status did not
grant me any special consideration when it came to strategy.

“We can’t hope to stand up to them in a
straight fight,” Bensing began. “They’ll come through every port
and wipe out anyone who’s waiting. Even if we manage to hold them
off for a while, they’ll send in fresh gunners while ours will tire
out and get careless. All of the exits have been blocked so there’s
nowhere for us to run.”

“What about leaping?” Rupert joined the
conversation with a look that mirrored Bensing’s.

Rogers shook his head. “The short leapers
probably couldn’t manage it.” Short leapers were people whose leaps
were still restricted to weeks or less. “Even if they could, they
would just leap into a situation that was no better than the one
they left.”

Bensing looked thoughtful. “What about
assigning the short leapers to fight and let the long leapers
jump?”

I must have made a visible reaction because
all three looked at me curiously. Frankly, the idea repulsed me.
Essentially he was suggesting that we make cannon fodder of those
people who couldn’t leap on demand.”

Rogers echoed my sentiments. “We will all
fight together.”

“Rogers,” said Bensing. “I’m not heartless,
but these people will die anyway. They can do it saving the few who
can survive.”

“It won’t matter,” I muttered. “We’ll be
scattered to the four corners of time and the movement will be
dead.”

“Then we fight as a people,” Rogers
confirmed.

“What about surrender?” I asked.

It was Rupert who shook his head. “The order
is for annihilation, mate. There’s no such thing as surrender.” He
thrust one fist into the other hand. “But how did they find
us?”

Rogers shook his head. “It doesn’t matter.
They are here.”

“It does matter,” Rupert said.

“We have a large network, Rupert. Anyone
could have informed on us for any reason.”

Rupert bowed his head in frustration and
bewilderment. I felt sorry for him.

The three of them ceased their conversation
and looked at me.

“You want that gun now?” Rupert asked.

I shook my head.

Rogers seemed perturbed. He was allowing
himself to become excited. “You may not want to fight with us,
Mathew Cristian. But you will die with us.”

He turned and walked away, giving orders.
Bensing also moved away, but Rupert stayed nearby. As he did,
people grabbed up rifles from the rack and began moving about. The
Map was carefully rolled up and taken from the room. As they were
doing this, I was thinking they should destroy it. All of the
leapers who had gone since its creation had their leaps recorded.
The Map could lead our enemies straight to each and every one of
us. It would spell the complete annihilation of a people that had
been struck ill and experienced far more suffering than the illness
could dispatch on its own.

I saw men and women move through the room.
Each of them grabbed a rifle off of the cart and, when it was
empty, another cart came through. Rupert moved away from me and
inspected this new cart. His inspection was rushed and incomplete,
though, because people were grabbing the weapons and taking them
away as he counted. What did it matter, I wondered? How organized
did you have to be to make a last stand? Some people looked at me
as they passed. They wished me luck and I said nothing. Luck was
not a factor. Rogers was right. This was the end.

He reappeared, moving to a computer console
and punching keys. The large monitor in front of him switched
views. It displayed what appeared to be a schematic of the
headquarters. I looked carefully and, for several moments, couldn’t
make heads or tails of it. Finally, I was able to identify the Map
room, where we were. I traced out some of the corridors from that
position and was able to locate my room and a handful of the
barracks. There was the dining hall. Using his finger, Rogers was
marking up the schematic. He consistently moved back to a color
tablet situated on the side of the screen. In several of the center
sections, he made green marks, presumably indicating Forty Leapers
ready to fight. I traced his motions to the extremities of the
schematic and found entrances. There were nine in all, the one into
which I had passed a week before readily identifiable. He placed a
large red X over it. I don’t know what that indicated. Suddenly,
his fingers were moving too fast for me to follow. He was marking
up the schematic at blinding speed and then unmarking it just as
quickly. Gerry Bensing was next to him, also marking up the screen,
making suggestions, following Rogers’ lead. I caught sight of Awen
Mohammed, a face from long ago that had not changed at all.

Finally, the entire place shook with the
force of an explosion.

The explosion was not near us. All
indications were that the enemy had penetrated one of the
entrances. I don’t know what Rogers had done to seal them up, but I
guess it wasn’t enough. Of course it wasn’t enough. The end was
near.

Rogers looked away from the monitor and
scowled. He pulled a radio from his belt and spoke into it. I
caught a few of the words but they were meaningless to me. I caught
even fewer words from the returning signal and they were even more
meaningless. What was not meaningless was the gunfire I heard in
the background.

I was frightened.

Rogers went back to work on the schematic and
I lost interest. I was wondering how I wanted to spend the last few
moments of my life. In the back of my mind, I felt this
overpowering shame. I looked at the empty rifle cart; a third had
not been brought in. The Map Room was virtually empty. It was just
Rogers and Bensing and me. I don’t even know what happened to
Rupert. I had chosen not to fight. I wanted to believe that it had
nothing to with cowardice. I don’t think I’m a coward. Neville’s
riot had put me off of ever lifting a weapon against another human
being again. I could still feel the impact of the broom handle
against the back of the soldier’s head. It made me sick to my
stomach. How would the impact of a bullet fired from a gun in my
hand feel? I could not do it. There was always another way.

In this case, however, the other way was
death. While my peers fought futilely for their lives, I had
accepted my fate. No. That’s not right. I can’t say I accepted it.
I don’t know if a person can ever
accept
death. Perhaps it’s
because it’s unknown or perhaps it’s because it’s perceived as the
cessation of all awareness, but death is alien to the human being.
So I guess I held out hope even as I knew, rationally, that there
was none.

I left the Map Room then, and started to make
my way back to my quarters. My journal was stuffed deep into a
pocket and I fingered it absently. It was a record of my adventure
and I thought, maybe, it could serve a purpose. If it were found,
if it were
read
, then perhaps they would understand better
what we were going through.

The sounds of action intensified. Some were
close and some were far away. My body jerked every time I felt that
it was very close. Someone shouted. They were in the complex. All
entrances were breached. The Map Room was almost dead center. I
wondered how long it would take them to reach it. How long had it
taken them just to break in? How long had I been lost in my
reverie? How many people were already dead?

I heard running footsteps behind me and
turned to see a group of men and women come rushing around the
corner. They were armed and stopped up short when they saw me,
tensions high. They were Forty Leapers, though I didn’t know any of
them. They all seemed so young. Good fighting bodies for the
movement.

“Stick with us, Mr. Cristian!” one young man
shouted as they started past, but I didn’t and they didn’t turn
back to find me.

I must have stopped moving then. In fact, I’m
sure of it. It still nagged at me in the back of my mind. Why was I
heading toward my room? Was there something there that I wanted?
There wasn’t, of course, but I didn’t get a chance to reconcile
that. I just stood in the middle of the corridor, listening to the
sounds of gunfire and shouting. Some of the shouts were warnings.
Others were shouts of anger. Some were cries of pain or cries for
help. It was a dreadful concert.

More footsteps reached my ears, closing.
These were in front, not behind, but I still didn’t move. I must
have expected that I was still deep enough into the complex that
there was no way I would see the enemy yet. But again, time had
slipped away from me. I had not leaped. That’s not what I mean. I
just sort of zoned out, my mind on the sounds of battle and the
implications. When the man came around the bend, I was startled. He
was very young. I wouldn’t even swear that he was out of his teens,
his chin was so clean. There was a helmet on his head with a
protective visor extending down to his nose. The visor was tinted,
but I could still see his wide clear eyes. He wore a grey uniform
that almost but didn’t quite match the predominant color of paint
in the complex. When he saw me, he froze for a moment, then leveled
his rifle.

I raised my hands above my head but did not
surrender. Instead, I asked, “What did we ever do to you?”

Surprisingly, he did not play the part of a
mindless grunt. Yet another misrepresentation of the future by
science fiction. The man before me was not a genetically engineered
soldier with a programmed objective. He paused, as if considering
my request, then lowered his rifle.