by Turner, Ivan
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 2nd, 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.”
Chapter VIII
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 t
ook 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.”
I considered his words. The progression of my leaps had altered since it had all begun. But they hadn’t all come at times of stress or during adrenaline rushes. It didn’t make sense. I said as much.
“I can field that one,” said one of the men I didn’t know. His name was Raphael. I put him somewhere in his early fifties but it was hard to tell. Around that table we were all Forty Leapers which made us both aged and ageless. He’d been trained as a biologist and worked in a lab before his leaps had started. He was still in the early stages of the disease. His last leap had been three days.
“The leaping itself is caused by an enzyme that your body secretes. We still don’t know all of the properties of the enzyme or what about it makes us leap. Adrenaline does cause the body to manufacture it, but in the early stages of the condition, so little of it is created during each rush that it takes a lot of adrenaline to build up enough of the enzyme for a leap. As our condition progresses, the manufacture of the enzyme becomes more refined. We make it quicker and we make it stronger. Our leaps come closer on the heels of stressful incidents and they are always longer leaps.”
Rogers nodded. “Dr. Moneto, here, worked in the complex where I was being held. He was one of the assistants to Dr. Anton Kung.” There was a familiar name. “He and Dr. Kung and others were smuggling us out of the complex by faking our leaps. They got me out three weeks after I’d been sent there. We set up this whole thing about me getting excited and primed for a leap. When was that, Raphael?”
“It was in March, some time.”
“Yeah.” Rogers smiled. “March of 2176.”
“What year is it again?” I asked, forgetting what Rupert had told me. It’s funny that I hadn’t thought about it up until that point. Prior to then, it had always been the most important piece of information I could get. But now it didn’t really matter to me personally. Everyone I knew was gone regardless. I did remember that I’d jumped almost a hundred years.
“It’s 2189 now. November.”
I did some quick arithmetic. “So you haven’t leaped for thirteen years?”
He shrugged. “You know me, Little Mat. I was always too bored to jump.”
I shook my head.
“It’s not so hard, you know. Anton gave me pills, downers. They help, but they kill your focus. I spent a year or so practicing different meditation techniques. Anton would come with news of other Leapers and we’d work on tracking them through time. That’s how we started The Map. It began with a couple of sheets of paper. Then it expanded. We began going through the journals of his father and grandfather and great-grandfather, all down the line. Your name came up a lot.
“There were other Leapers, too. Anton had a pretty good network running, something that kept us out of trouble. He said that it had been in place for a hundred and fifty years, since Lewis Kung. You met him, right? Well, it had saved my life but I was still stewing about what had happened in the Rockies. When they moved on us out there, I knew that we were never going to have peace. I don’t guess it would have all lasted this long if it wasn’t for the nature of the leaps in the first place.
“One day, Anton came home with a grisly story about a leaper who’d popped right into one of their cages. It happened and they had their protocols. What they did with me was what they should have done with her. But there were some pretty nasty folks on duty that day and I won’t repeat the story Anton told me. But I burned with anger. I could have leaped right then and there if I hadn’t been on the heels of a pretty good session. The next day, I began to go out and speak with some of the other Leapers that I knew, other men and women under Anton’s protection. I told them the story and they were scared. I told them that this would always happen to us unless we did something about it. So we did something about it.
“Anton was against it. His philosophy was the same as the Kung philosophy since your buddy Lewis. If we got the Leapers out of harm’s way and then jumped them from unknown points, the government would never be able to trace them. That would make us safe, he said. But I didn’t believe it. I’ve been doubly oppressed in my life and I know what’s needed. My new friends and I went out there and smashed up one of their cages and killed their guards. It was ugly and it was violent. Julius Lancaster leaped in the middle of the fight. His last leap before that was 5 years so we’re hoping he’ll pop back in soon. I’ve had a team on his location for a while but they haven’t seen him, though.
“After that, we began organizing more raids. We put it to these bastards that we weren’t their guinea pigs. We gave them exactly what they asked for, a reason to fear us. Anton was against it and we argued a lot. Eventually, he told me that I was interfering with his work and that I should leave. So I left. And they all followed me. Not just a few of them. All of them. With the help of some of the contemporaries, we were able to find a place to set up a headquarters. It wasn’t this place. This is our…sixteenth place I think. We move a lot. I used the information Anton and I compiled to figure out who would appear where and when and I set other Forty Leapers up to manning the spots. All of this took place over the course of two years. We learned that there’s a mathematical pattern to the leaps, but we can’t figure out what it is. There are a finite number of individual leaps. Some people skip a leap of one length and progress to the next one, but we’ve worked out about forty of them.”
“Fifty,” a young woman to my left corrected. This was Myalee Sincere.
“Fifty,” Rogers repeated with a smile. “Ever since, every Leaper we’ve pulled and some that we haven’t have joined the movement. We’re strong, Little Mat, but with you we’ll be stronger than ever.”
There was a chorus of nods and murmurs of assent from around the table. Everyone except Natalie was in agreement with Rogers Clinton’s assessment. Apparently, I was expected to say something because they were all staring at me now.
“Why me?” I asked.
Rogers’ booming laugh filled the room. The others joined in after a moment. All but Natalie. “You’re it, Little Mat. You’re the Fortieth Leaper. The Forty Leaper. You freed the first Forty Leapers from the Rocky Mountains and led them all to safety. “
I was shaking my head. “I didn’t do that. I didn’t do any of that.”
“I told you,” Natalie said.
Rogers passed her a sour look.
“Mr. Cristian,” said a small girl sitting next to Raphael. Her name was Jeannette Umbungus. “Of course it was you. It’s in all of the histories.”
“The histories?” I asked. She sounded like a member of a primitive tribe talking about sacred parchment. “It’s wrong, though.”
“There’s video, Mat.” There was
an edge to Rogers Clinton’s voice and I didn’t like it. Some men are born great. Some men have greatness thrust upon them. “It’s you freeing the prisoners.”
I nodded. “I did that. But it was Neville who told me what to do. It was Neville who led the revolt. You remember Neville MacTavish?”
“Neville is dead,” Rogers said.
I had seen that on The Map. I was saddened once again. But it didn’t change any of the facts.
“I told you,” Natalie repeated. “He doesn’t care about us. He’s a coward. He won’t fight.”
“Fight?!” I shouted at her. “What are you fighting for?”
“We’re fighting for our lives,” she shouted back.
“What lives?” I was arguing with Natalie now and I felt myself becoming more and more angry. At least I didn’t have to worry about leaping. With only hours between me and my last jump, my body wouldn’t be nearly strong enough. “What do you get when this is all over?”
“Freedom,” Rogers said calmly.
I laughed the laugh of the mad. I saw Rogers Clinton again for the first time. “Freedom,” I repeated. “The freedom to be what you are, right Rogers? The freedom to be a Forty Leaper. The freedom to leap from year to year, century to century, millennium to millennium. The freedom to skip huge portions of the Earth’s history until you’ve reached the end of humanity or the end of the world. One day, Rogers, you’ll leap out of an Earth that can support your life and into one that’s too hot or too cold or has no air. What will happen to you then?”
I saw Natalie go white as a ghost then. Typical. When I had met her she was a teenage girl. Forty Leaping had robbed her of the opportunity to properly grow up. She had been swept up in Rogers Clinton’s righteous fight for freedom without ever even thinking about the fact that Earth’s distant future was not so distant for her. Or for any of us.