Forty Leap (46 page)

Leaving the banquet hall, I walked out into
the main corridor. To my surprise, this seemed a bit more kept up.
The paint on the walls was not fresh, but it was not peeling. The
glass doors in the front of the building were clean and I could see
the courtyard through them. The yard itself was overgrown, but the
paths were clear. Out in the center was an area that looked freshly
excavated. There was a sapling and what looked like a tombstone
next to it. Beyond, I could see the lights of Manhattan. It was a
city again. I was curious about what had happened in the
intervening time. I was curious about just how much intervening
time there was. Unless they had changed the building too much, I
would be able to find my way around. Though there was this urge to
go out into the city and explore, I went first up the stairs to the
second level and made my way down to my office.

The room was unused, hadn’t been used in a
very long time. On the door was a nameplate that read
Mathew
Cristian
. A plaque was mounted beside it.
The father of
Forty Leaping whose affliction took him from us prematurely.
I
went inside. It was a shrine to me. All this time and the room had
remained vacant. All of my things were there. The only thing that
seemed out of place from how I had left it earlier that day (how
many decades before?) was a tiny folded note on the desk. I picked
it up and read it.

Mathew, I miss you. Carolyn

I was touched. I supposed that she was long
dead, unless she too had leaped. Maybe there was a way to find out.
Certainly there was no information in here. I stepped back into the
hallway. Other offices line the corridor. The next one I went to
was Carolyn’s. This room had been redone. Apparently she had not
garnered the same respect I had. I couldn’t imagine why. Her
contribution to the Foundation had been much greater than my own.
Without her, I don’t suppose the thing would have even gotten off
the ground. Despite that, though, this office too was long
abandoned. I didn’t recognize the name on the door.

As it turned out, none of the offices seemed
to be in current use. Though the building was clean and most of it
maintained to a certain degree, I wondered what its purpose was. It
was deserted from top to bottom.

Or was it?

I wondered about the headquarters, still
probably located an elevator trip down. For an instant I considered
breaking my vow to myself and visiting it. But I didn’t. I
couldn’t. Instead, I marched up to the third floor, to the main
conference room where we had mounted the Map. The conference room
had been converted into a large office. The Map was still mounted
on the wall and I could see that many additions had been made. I
felt for the light switch and turned it on. There was power. Moving
over to the Map, I began to study it.

I had last leaped on May 20
^th
,
2342 at 10:10 pm. It was marked very clearly. Of course, my return
had yet to be recorded. I considered doing it myself but didn’t. I
had this strange aversion to the Map. In the end, I suppose I
recognized its importance, but despite its artistic quality, there
was something so sterile about a document that coldly tracked the
lives of so many people. I spent a long time studying it. There
were a lot of leapers in whose lives I was interested. Of course,
those most recent in my memory were the ones I looked up first.

Carolyn was marked with a red X. My immediate
reaction was sadness. What could have happened? Then I noticed that
she had never leaped after arriving in the twenty fourth century.
As I had originally surmised, she had probably lived a long and
happy life. Somewhere, there would be records that would give me
that answer. Natalie, on the other hand, did leap. Her leap was
barely two hours behind mine. It was recorded to the minute so she
must have stuck around after our argument. I wondered if our
argument had been the cause of her leap as well as the cause of
mine. She had arrived on September 22
^nd
, 2494, a hundred
and fifty years later. There was a red X after that.

So 2494 was in the past. Of course it was. I
had already leaped a hundred and fifty years. Where was I now? Well
I was beyond the year 2588. Rogers Clinton had leaped in on
September 30
^th
, 2588 and was marked with a red X. His
leap had been four hundred years, the same as Phinneas Scot’s leap
into 2342. Where was Phinneas Scot now? Well beyond 2588 I was
sure. His entry was not updated.

A curious thing that I noticed was that many
of the names were marked with a green circle. In fact, most of the
names on the Map were marked with either the red X or this green
circle. I had no idea of its significance. Neither mark appeared
near my name. Samantha Radish had a green circle. So did Rupert
Oderick.

When I was done looking it over, I sat at the
desk of whoever occupied this office and became pensive. So much
had happened to me over the course my last couple of years, over
the course of history. So many of the people whose lives had
touched me were not even on the Map. They were not Forty Leapers.
The Kungs. My brothers. Livvie.

Jennie.

I felt fatigued and yet I did not feel
sleepy. I had nowhere to go anyway. So I pulled out my journal and
began to write.
The sky was still dark when I was awakened by a noise in the
corridor. I must have fallen asleep while writing in the journal. I
quickly closed it up and tucked it back into my jacket. I was
unafraid, but my heart still pounded from being awakened so
suddenly. Again, there was no chance of a leap because I had just
leaped.

A man appeared in the doorway. He looked much
older than I was, perhaps in his seventies or eighties. I wondered
how old a man had to be to look that way in this century. Despite
the lines on his face and the unruly white hair on his head, he
seemed fit enough. He did not hobble, nor were his mannerisms slow
or lacking in confidence. When at first he saw me, he scowled. I
guess he didn’t expect visitors in the middle of the night. Maybe I
was sitting in his chair. But that scowl turned to a huge grin and
I recognized that grin and matched it.

It was my good friend Rupert Oderick.

I practically leaped out of my seat intending
to give his hand a good hard shake. But he grabbed me up in a huge
bear hug and squeezed me until I gasped.

“You leaped in?” he asked. “That’s
ridiculous. Of course you did. How long have you been here?”

“I’m not sure,” I said. “A couple of hours at
most. I dozed off.”

He drew his arm around the room. “I saw the
light on and thought we’d had another break in. Idiot kids are
always trying to get in here and see the Map.”

After that he began to talk at breakneck
speed. His English accent had diminished over the years. I guess
living in a world where the language and accents had undoubtedly
changed so much had had its effect on him. And he had obviously
been here a long time. But I was too tired to ask for details. As
the initial excitement of seeing him wore off, the fatigue
returned. I told him I had to have a sleep and he took me across to
building six. Of all of the buildings that made up the Foundation,
number six was the only one still in use. Rupert lived there by
himself since the arrival of a Forty Leaper had become a very rare
event. I already knew my way around but he showed me to one of the
suites as if it were my first time there. The bed was already made
up. Rupert told me to sleep as long as I liked and he would see me
later. Then we could catch up.

When I awoke, I had the unsettling feeling
that something was out of place. The room looked different in the
morning light, and a wave of panic washed over me. But I again
realized that a leap was impossible at that time. I got up and
washed up quickly in a small adjoining bathroom, rummaged through
some old clothing until I found something that fit, and then made
for the dining room. I knew when I was getting close because I
could smell…lunch.

I had slept a long time.

Rupert was sitting at the table, writing on
an electronic tablet. When he realized I was there, he looked up,
beaming.

“Great to see you, mate.”

“It’s good to see you, too.”

There was a place already set for me and
there was food on the table. Next to the setting was small phial.
Through its frosted exterior, I could just make out six small
pills.

“Adrenal inhibitors?” I asked.

He laughed and shook his head. “Never very
good, were they? You took them straight through, didn’t you?”

I nodded.

“Well those little magic beans are it, my
friend,” he said indicating the phial.

“It?” I asked. “It what?”

“The cure!” he shouted. “I never get tired of
showing it off. They pushed for it once you leaped out. There was a
woman…Lynn something.”

“Carolyn Lynn.”

“That’s it!” he cried. “She left a note for
you, by the way.”

“I got it.”

“Sweet girl I guess,” he said. “We missed
each other by a few decades though.”

I thought that was a shame.

“Anyway, she fought for you when the others
insisted you hadn’t been taking your meds. She convinced the blokes
that those adrenal inhibitors weren’t worth their candy coating.
They got right to work on a cure after that. And here it is.”

I picked up the phial

“It’s a ‘teaching drug’,” he said. “It
teaches your body how to redirect your adrenaline flow so that it
doesn’t produce the enzyme. Without that enzyme, you never
leap.”

“Amazing,” I whispered.

He nodded. “One a day for six days. If you
don’t finish the cycle, your body reverts back to Leaping. If you
take too much, your body will destroy it. May as well get started.
There’s juice in your glass.”

Looking down at the pills, I suddenly became
darkly panicked. Leaping had become a vehicle to new times and new
worlds. Though I had wished fervently for that which now rested in
the palm of my hand, I suddenly felt as if I would be stranding
myself on a deserted island. Rupert must have noticed my
hesitation.

“Why
wouldn’t
you want to be cured?”
he asked, but I guessed that he understood just the same.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m just,
frightened, all of a sudden.”

“You’ve been living with it for so long,
you’re afraid you won’t know how to live without it,” he said.
“You’ll get used to living in one time a hell of a lot easier than
you did living in multiple times.”

Maybe he was right, but still I hesitated.
Once I took that first pill, the decision was made. What would
Phinneas Scot do?

“I’m just not ready, Rupert,” I told him,
even more guilt creeping into my belly. How long had he been here?
How many leapers had come and gone through the doors of the
Foundation, always seeing Rupert Oderick, never staying on. He was
as alone here as he had been leaping from era to era. And now I was
abandoning him as well.

Yet he didn’t seem angry. “No worries,” he
said with a grin. “I felt the same way at first. You’ll take the
pills.”

I smiled back at him, but was much less
convinced.

Rupert let the matter drop and told me to
help myself to food. Presently, we began to chat, haltingly at
first, but soon more comfortably. In no time, I felt very at ease
in his company, the matter of the cure laid to rest for the moment.
He took the time to explain how Forty Leaping was all but a thing
of the past. The Foundation, which had helped countless Forty
Leapers, including himself, was considered the greatest achievement
in Forty Leap history. Once the cure had been invented, though, its
days became numbered. The funding grew more and more sparse as it
appeared that Forty Leapers were becoming extinct. The last few
years, Rupert had been struggling himself to keep the Foundation
going. Hardly any leapers came through anymore. Rupert never knew
if the next one was going to be last one forever.

“Why bother, then?” I finally asked him.

“It’s complex,” he said. “I popped in here
about, God it’s almost fifty years! At the time, the place was
busy. I stayed on to help and thought maybe I’d write a book about
the whole thing. As time slipped by, I worked more and wrote less.
The people that worked here, some of them other leapers some not,
eventually drifted off. But I stayed. I felt at home here and there
were always new people literally popping in.

“But that changed. After all, there’s a
finite amount of us out there. I guess they’ll be sprinkling in
long after I’m dead, but this place will be long gone. Truth to
tell, I’ve stuck with it mostly because I was waiting for you.”

This was a nice blow that made me want to
reach out and take all six pills at once. As if just his presence
wasn’t enough to inspire guilt, the added notion that all of his
hopes had been pinned on my arrival practically crushed my resolve.
But Rupert was decades older than I was.
Decades
. No matter
how long people lived in this century, those decades would still
show up. One day it would be just me and no Rupert. Then I would be
sitting there and waiting for…what?

Phinneas Scot?

No sense being shackled to the world by a
stopwatch.

After lunch, we went back to the main
building and to the large room that Rupert had taken as his office.
I saw the new date next to my name. November 17
^th
, 2588.
Apparently, Rupert had updated it either that morning or the night
before. It was far later than most of the other dates on the map
but not Rogers Clinton’s. I had missed him by less than two months.
And he was dead.

Rupert’s eyes welled up with tears. “He came
through in the morning. There are sensors down in the museum that
trip an alarm any time someone goes down there; no one ever goes
down there anymore. So I knew it was a leaper. I knew it wasn’t
you, Mathew. It couldn’t be you because you leaped from the great
room. It was a veteran of the war. It had to be. No one’s leaped
from the old headquarters since 2188. There really wasn’t anyone
else it could have been besides Rogers.