Forty Leap

by Turner, Ivan

  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.

  “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 18th, 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.

  “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.