Forty Leap (23 page)

As before, Wil was my constant chaperone on
this journey. This time he did not even attempt conversation. We
flew in silence, his nose in a book, my gaze out the window. We
were met at the airport in Denver by a van. Two other people were
accompanying us on our trip. One was a man and one was a woman. The
man had taken the front seat of the van and turned around with a
wide grin as we entered. He wasn’t a particularly large man but he
was brimming with confidence and I could tell that he kept himself
well in shape. He introduced himself as Neville MacTavish from
Scotland. The woman was much more reserved, probably because she
didn’t speak any English. She was a Chinese woman and I could tell
by her haggard appearance that she had come a long way and traveled
for several hours. She was introduced to us as Joanne Li and I
wondered about her having an English name without the command of
the language.

Neville talked for much of the trip, telling
us about his adventures as a pilot and a time jumper. Of course,
he’d had to ground himself since learning of his problem. I
listened to some of what he said. I wasn’t terribly interested but
it took my mind off of my depression at having to leave Jennie. He
had crashed a plane and that was when he knew he was in trouble.
Justifying away the little incidents before had been easy, but when
he’d walked away from a plane crash it was because he simply hadn’t
been there. When the plane had crashed everything had changed.

“Just bloody glad it was only me on that
plane!” he joked.

For someone whose entire existence was,
essentially, in question, I thought he was in exceptionally good
spirits.

The van took us way out of civilization. We
drove into the mountains, stopping occasionally to use the bathroom
at a rest stop and once to eat. After several hours, we pulled into
a tourist center that arranged helicopter rides for people over and
through the mountains. We were booked on a flight that was due to
leave twenty minutes later. Of course, Igor had arranged all of
this. Wil wandered off and spoke with the people in charge of the
station while Neville, Joanne, and I wandered about staring at
pictures of the Rockies and reading about the nature and history of
the mountain range.

I remember nothing that I read.

Shortly, we were loading ourselves and our
luggage onto a helicopter. Neville, being cute, took the pilot by
the shoulder and asked if he could “have a go”. The pilot gave him
a sour look, clearly not appreciating the humor of it. I’m not sure
whether he knew the danger and didn’t care for the joke or just
didn’t get the joke.

I have to say that the view of the Rockies
from the helicopter was almost worth the trip. It was breathtaking.
The flight from the tourist center to the facility was just over
thirty minutes and I spent every second staring out the window at
the terrain below. I have never been so captivated by anything in
my life before. It’s just proof once again that nature can outshine
man whenever it wants to. But as magnificent as it was, when we
landed in the small enclave into which the facility was nestled, I
felt suddenly small and trapped.

The facility itself was built using an
architecture that I had never seen before. While I wasn’t surprised
by that, I was surprised that I actually made that observation.
Either my awareness of such things was becoming more acute or the
changes in the world, from my perspective, were becoming more and
more drastic; so drastic that they could hardly escape my notice.
It was a sprawling structure, only two levels but with spires and
antennae whose purposes remained a mystery to me. Our pilot flew a
slow circle over the entire estate so that we might have a good
look and I was impressed. There were eleven entrances, all placed
at points were the mountainous terrain was thinnest and supply
roads led away. I wasn’t sure how far a ground vehicle could get on
those roads, but probably horses or donkeys could be used. I
didn’t, though, see any animal pens. I saw a running track and
basketball courts. I saw a sauna. There was even a hiking trail
that ran around the entire facility, although it stayed fairly
close to the building. Finally, we touched down on a helipad and
were ushered off of the helicopter.

We were met by an average looking man who
introduced himself as Marty Fingergold, the director of the
installation. He insisted we call him Marty, but none of us ever
spoke or thought of him as anything but the director. Neville
MacTavish was instantly suspicious of him, a fact which he conveyed
to me with a wink and a look. But I though the director seemed nice
enough. He was jovial and genuinely happy to have us with him. The
winds on the helipad were almost unbearable so he brought us inside
quickly, the big heavy doors closing behind us.

Much of the inside was devoted to living and
leisure space for all of the occupants, both those on staff and
those under care. We three were given a careful tour and PDAs with
a map programmed into them. I was able to get a decent sense of the
layout. There was a logic to it and I found it difficult to lose my
way. The research areas were built into one wing. We were brought
inside where we were able to view some of what was going on there.
In addition to the standard blood and medical tests, there were
people on treadmills and people in strange tanks. Some had
electrodes pasted to their heads and chests. Some simply sat and
waited.

Our rooms were spacious, each with its own
personal computer. Internet access was available, although
monitored, and we were informed that all emails would be scanned
before being sent off due to the secrecy of the installation. Any
phone calls would go through a special satellite link and would be
monitored for content. The phone given to me by Igor was left in my
possession but there was no signal. We were allowed to make calls
at any time of the day or night. The kitchens were open from 6:00
am through 9:00 pm. At other times, we could help ourselves from a
community store. There were recreation rooms with card and billiard
tables, video games, computer terminals. There was a gym and a
swimming pool. There was a library. The entire place was designed
to make us feel comfortable. But that didn’t make it feel like
home. In fact, I wondered if you could take twenty two people (for
there were twenty two of us at the installation) who were displaced
in time and make them feel at home.

My fellow patients were an interesting lot.
If I had thought Neville MacTavish’s stories were interesting, I
was amazed at some of the things I learned by sitting and
listening. And sitting and listening is most of what I did. Though
I was not as dispirited as I had been in Arab occupied New York,
the feel of the place was similar. Despite the comforts and
freedoms offered, I was still lonely for Jennie and my family,
still acutely aware of time slipping away from me at an ever
increasing rate, still unhappy. What confounded me the most was the
good spirits of the people around me. Of the twenty two of us, four
had leaped through time so often that they had long since cleared
their own lifetimes.

One of them was a man named Moziya Markwee.
Dr. Moziya Markwee. African in descent, Markwee had spent most of
his life across the ocean, battling with his time jumping and the
far reaching effect it had on his life. I don’t know how Igor had
found him, but in a snatch of conversation, I overheard that they
had come for him in his homeland. He had never been to the United
States and, as payment for his volunteering for the program, Igor
had provided him with a grand trip across the country.

Two others were Awen Mohammed and Samantha
Radish. I didn’t learn much about them in my first days. Mohammed
was quiet, like me. I noticed him keeping to himself in the dining
room much of the time. He had a laptop and was always furiously
pounding keys. I suppose he was writing a book about his
adventures. Once I saw him talking with Neville MacTavish, but
Neville’s clear attempt at friendship was decidedly rebuffed. The
Scot walked away with a sour look on his face, but gave me a nod
and a half smile when he saw me looking. I found myself grinning
back.

Samantha came to speak to me once. Time
jumping, she felt, had been her saving grace. A gift from God. She
was a devout Christian who had found her unfortunate way into a bad
marriage. After twenty years, she said that her kids were worse
than her husband. When she’d finally got to the point where she
just couldn’t take it anymore, the solution had been presented to
her. After some hard early leaps, she understood the truth and used
it to escape her terrible family. Working with GEI in an effort to
understand the science of this God-given gift was just her way of
paying back her good fortune.

The others all had different stories. Some
were depressed, as I was, by the loss associated with leaping
through time, but many had come to accept it. In fact I found that
most of us were, at this point, captivated by the adventure. I
often heard people talking about what it would be like in the far
future and how it was so tremendously exciting to have the
opportunity to be a part of it.

By far, though, the most interesting person
in the place was a man by the name of Rogers Clinton. Rogers
reminded me a bit of Jonah Jones in that he would talk to anyone,
but he didn’t have the gentle nature of Jonah Jones. On the
contrary, when he spoke it was with a fiery determination. He never
touched the games and never made any phone calls. Why would he? He
was the farthest removed from anything he had ever known. According
to Rogers, he had been born in1804, the son of a slave and destined
to be a slave himself. He’d begun his career as a time leaper at
the age of 38 and almost lost his life to it several times. One
story of his brought me back to one of my early leaps, when I had
gone off to get tea for my sister-in-law and come back several
minutes later with no indication of lost time. But for Rogers, this
similar instance had earned him a beating at the hands of his
master whereas I had simply gotten a sour look from Martie. Though
I had no desire to engage in conversation with Rogers Clinton, I
would always find a way to sit near him so that I could hear him
speak. His lunacy was as captivating as his stories and I
endeavored to absorb some of that from him as immunization against
it for myself. How would I feel 220 years after my birth?

But I learned that I could not hide from
Rogers Clinton. He was an alert and powerful individual and in
trying to hide from him I had placed myself directly into his
sights.

“Your name is Mathew Cristian,” he introduced
me to me. “And my name is Rogers Clinton.”

I nodded.

“Now we are friends.”

And so we were.

While I felt that he mostly spoke at me
rather than to me, I developed a genuine liking for him and I think
he experienced a similar feeling. He spoke to me of his life as a
slave and how he had once leaped from a field in plain sight of all
of the other workers. He had then been branded a witch. His next
leap had been from a burning stake. His stories were fantastic and
I don’t know how many of them were true, but I found myself
enjoying his company and spent a lot of time with him.

In return, I told him about my travels, which
seemed quite tame in comparison. He was most interested in Jennie
and shocked to learn that she was a black woman. Though many of the
masters of his day had had relations with the slave girls, he had
never known two people of different skin colors to love each other.
Even his travels in the modern world, while bringing knowledge of
such events, had never shown him two so different people in love.
His wonder encouraged me to speak more about it. I even let him
speak to Jennie on the phone once so that he could confirm that she
was, in fact, who I said she was. I was amazed at how he could find
my relationship with Jennie far more interesting than all of his
harrowing adventures.

And in the meantime, there was the testing. I
was poked and prodded, hung upside down, and spun around every
which way. Some of the tests were obvious while others made no
sense to me. The doctors and researchers were kind and gentle and I
was able to beg off testing a couple of times in the first two
weeks. Igor himself came for a visit to the installation on October
4
^th
. He seemed genuinely pleased to see me and I found
that my disdain for him had lessened. Rogers, on the other hand,
had grown to hate him on my behalf and refused to even acknowledge
his presence. He only stayed two days. Other endeavors required his
attention, but he wanted to make sure that Wil was taking care of
me properly and that I was satisfied with the accommodations.

Rogers stayed away from me until the seventh.
That morning, he came to sit with me at breakfast.

“That man don’t mean to do you no good,” he
said to me over a plate full of eggs and toast.

“I know,” I told him. “But I need to do my
part to help find a cure.”

“A cure? Man, they ain’t trying to find no
cure.”

He had this gleam in his eye and at that
moment I was a little afraid of him.

“Little Mat, they see themselves a weapon
here. All they needs is to go backwards.”

“How will that help them?”

“Think it through, man. They can sneak into
any place, grab what they want and then get it back ‘fore anyone
knows it’s gone. Governments would kill for that.”

Indeed, according to what Igor had told me,
our government already had.

“There ain’t gonna be no cure,” Rogers
repeated. “This thing just grabs hold and robs you of everything
you’re supposed to be.”

I didn’t understand what he meant and I told
him so.

In his own vernacular, which was a mixture of
the slang used by slaves, the slang used by railroad workers, and
the slang of the seventies, Rogers began to explain to me how he
had been born for greatness. When preaching as he was doing then,
he sometimes lapsed into incomprehensibility, but I was able to
glean that he thought it had been his destiny to free his people
from slavery. His early jumps had made it impossible for him to
organize while the later ones had taken him past the abolition of
slavery and the civil rights movement. All that he was destined for
had gone up in smoke with the advent of equality. It was the first
time Rogers had ever evidenced any dissatisfaction with his life.
Another man might have been ecstatic at having been spared the long
life of a slave, but not Rogers. He was so sure that his place was
at the head of that fight. He was a hero denied his heroism.