by Turner, Ivan
But not Rogers. He was already an old man. He was tough as nails, but old just the same. And his purpose was clear in his mind. “I haven’t leaped in thirteen years, Mat. There are ways to control it.”
“Control it? I don’t want to control it. I want to cure it. That’s what Phillip Kung wanted to do? It’s been two hundred years, Rogers. Where’s the cure?”
The room fell silent while Rogers composed himself. I could see that he was doing something to keep back his anger. I know I had never given him any indication that I was a fighter or a revolutionary. For the space of a Forty Leaper’s friendship we had spent a considerable amount of time together. He should have been able to read me well enough back then to know what I was about. But by that same token I’m sure he never expected defiance. When I flip back through the pages of my journal, I know that I have changed. I am not a fighter. I have used a weapon on another and I did not like the taste of it. You may very well call me a coward, but I will run from a fight every time.
“There’s no cure,” Rogers admitted. “There was never any cure.”
“And there never will be. Why don’t you say that, Rogers?”
Did these people have any idea, I wondered? When you’re chased through time it’s easy to get caught up in a movement that allows you to go on the offensive. My last four leaps had seen me intercepted or almost intercepted by people who knew where I was going to arrive. My last three leaps had set me on the run almost instantly. We arrived disoriented and under fire. It was a wonder so many of us had survived. We were oppressed. And it’s easy to fire up the oppressed into revolt. All that’s needed is the right leadership. But how long does it take for the revolutionaries to realize that they’re fighting for nothing. Achieving their goals won’t improve their lives.
Rogers met my gaze. Whatever could be said about Rogers’ actions and motives, he at least believed them righteous.
But it was Rupert Oderick who spoke. “What would you have us do then, Mathew?”
I looked at him and liked him. It suddenly transcended the enjoyment I’d gotten from reading his books. I saw a man who was generally good natured. Despite a tendency to be a bit goofy, he was smart and keen of wit. He was also open minded. As it occurred to me that I might very well have made a room full of enemies by both dashing their image of me and defying Rogers, Rupert was still willing to listen. But he was putting me on the spot, albeit unintentionally. I should have realized it would happen. You can’t shoot down someone else’s vision without having a better one of your own.
I shook my head.
“I’ve known men like you,” Rogers said. “Men who are embarrassed by what they are, men who would be the oppressors rather than the oppressed.”
“Never forget that what we are is diseased, Rogers. This is not about the color of our skin or the god we pray to. We may not be spies and we may not be carriers of a terrible virus. There’s no reason for them to hate us the way that they do, but that doesn’t mean I want to be this way. Do you?”
He steepled his fingers in front of him like a monk and replied, “I am the way I am, Little Mat.”
I waited but there was no more to his response. For the others, it seemed satisfactory. I think I wanted it to be so for me as well, but as I went over it in my head, stuck in a loop, I could not make sense of it. If I had cancer, I wouldn’t be very complacent about it. I would seek treatment. I said so. I said, “Rogers, if they aren’t looking for a cure, why aren’t we? You’ve obviously got the resources and the people. Why can’t we find a solution for ourselves?”
This enraged him. “You want to just give them the war? If we change who we are, if we conform, then they win.”
“Win? Haven’t you been listening to me? There’s no winning. There’s…” I stopped, understanding hitting me. “You already know that, though. Don’t you?”
Rogers kept his gaze steadily on me, but I could swear that I saw just a momentary flicker of doubt pass from eye to eye. I became unaware of the others in the room, their reactions to our conversation no longer important. It was Rogers who was suddenly laid bare before me and it was the truth therein which had been driving my argument.
“Rogers, this cannot be about you. You send people off to die just so that you can be regarded as a great man? My God, Rogers, you manufactured a war for your own ego?”
“Now see here, mate,” Rupert cut in. “You’re well out of line.”
But I didn’t hear him. I spoke still to Rogers. “You were going to lead the slaves to freedom but leaping through time stole that from you. So now you’re using leaping to capture that glory that was denied to you. Tell me I’m wrong, Rogers.”
But Rogers said nothing. He was a good general and he let his officers defend him. Raphael Moneto came first to his aid. “You’re wrong. They’ve been trying to kill us for decades.”
“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 se
cond 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.