Forty Leap (47 page)

“He was still shooting when he came through.
Even without the alarms, I would have heard the gunshots. I went
down there, calling out, telling him he was safe. It had to be
Rogers, but I wouldn’t let myself believe it until I saw him.
Mathew, you should have been there. He held two guns, both of them
empty and he didn’t have the strength to reload them. There was
blood on his face and blood on his chest. He was sweating and
filthy. There was a smell on him that instantly brought me back to
that battle and that place. When he saw me, he dropped the guns. He
knew me, I suppose, but never called me by name.

“He died right there, just fell into my arms,
took a few breaths and died. His wounds were so bad, Mathew, so
bad.”

We were silent for a while after that.

“I buried him in the courtyard,” he said.
Then, as if it had been building up inside of him for all of these
years, he began to tell me about other people we had known. Most of
them had been passing acquaintances for me, but Rupert had served
with them. Every once in a while he would say, “you remember him?”
and I would nod as if I had been as intimate with these people as
Rupert. He spoke of Natalie with venom. It came out, what she had
done, after our argument. It could never have been easy for her
after that, leaping into the heart of the Forty Leap Foundation and
regarded as the greatest individual enemy Forty Leapers had ever
known. She had been tried and jailed in 2494, fifty years before
Rupert’s own arrival. She had spent two years in prison before
dying of cancer. I looked at the bottle of pills, still in my hand.
They could cure Forty Leaping, but cancer was still as deadly as
ever.

Hours passed. For Rupert, I think our
conversation was cathartic. Sharing all of this information with
someone who would care helped ease him out of a great funk. He kept
saying how great it was to have me with him. Now he could finally
be happy. At some point, I covertly stashed the pills in my pocket.
I kept wanting to take them, but something stopped me. Finally, the
afternoon stretched into evening and we went for dinner. He
promised to show me the city the next day.

Manhattan had truly rebounded from its forced
condemnation after the Forty Leap war. Many of the great buildings
had been reconstructed. Times Square was brighter than ever.
Broadway was magical. We saw several shows. Someone had used
holograms to recreate shows with original casts. The novelty was
interesting, but I much preferred the live actors. The language
barrier here was worse than it had been in 2189. My English was
growing ever more obsolete with each leap. Rupert was, of course,
fluent in the current dialect, but never used it with me. I wanted
him to do so, but he refused. He told me it was a break not having
to spit out that trash day after day. With me, he could speak
proper English.

We even got out of the city on a few
occasions. After all of the years and all of the technological
advancements, I was surprised at how little man had spoiled the
Earth. In fact, the countryside was brighter than ever. The sky was
more blue. All in all, people seemed to be doing a good job at
keeping Mother Earth healthy. Maybe all of the filth and trouble of
my era had done its share of teaching.

Rupert and I did our job of bonding. The
friendship that had started in 2189 and been cut short grew. I let
him look at passages from my journal. He was very curious about
Arab occupied New York. He was very curious about Jennie. He also
shared with me what he called his life’s work. It was a compilation
of Forty Leaper histories, from the most obscure individual right
on up to Rogers Clinton. He asked me for a copy of my journal, but
I declined. Too many parts were very private and I was reluctant to
show them to anyone, even someone as close to me as Rupert.

In spite of all of the good times we were
having, there were the pills. They hung over our heads like an
albatross. I could not take them. Every time I thought I might, I
developed this terrible panic. If I started them and did not
finish, they would later be useless. I had to be sure. I was never
sure. Rupert knew, of course. Every once in a while, he would ask.
“Did you take your morning meds, Mathew?” Every time, I would look
away. He was so good about it for so long. “No worries, mate. No
worries.” But even Rupert had his breaking point.

One evening, nine weeks after my arrival, he
sat me down in the library and his smile was gone, replaced by a
grimace, by frustration.

“Do you know what happens, Mathew?” he asked.
He had been drinking. Rupert liked a glass of wine with dinner and
sometimes a brandy before bed. He was an old world kind of person.
But this time he had gone over the limit and I doubted as if it
were wine or brandy that muddied his mind. I could tell that his
frustrations with me had come to a boiling point.

“Rupert,” I tried.

“
Don’t cut me off!”

I froze, waiting.

“When they gave me the cure, I gulped it down
without thinking. And I regretted it right away. You see, Mathew,
the Leapers come in and they get reintegrated into society and ole
Rupert is left behind, waiting.”

“Rupert,” I said again.

“I’ve been waiting for you, Mathew. All these
years, I’ve been waiting for my friend to pop back into my life and
stay here and now you want to go.”

Suddenly, he started to weep. It was the
saddest thing I’ve ever seen and it tore right through my heart.
More than anything, I wanted him to stop.

But he continued. “It’s lonely, Mathew. So
lonely. These people live a different life and speak a different
language. I’m a relic from a time they don’t even write about
anymore.”

I reached for him.

“
Don’t touch me!
” He lashed out at me,
much stronger than any ninety year old man I had ever known. His
swing caught my hand and stung my knuckle where it hit. I recoiled
and he stood, glaring down at me. I was suddenly tense, afraid. I
stood as well and as I did so, he wheeled on me. Though I tried to
dodge, he grazed my cheek, right at the bone and I staggered back.
I was stunned and he pressed the advantage, coming in with both
fists flying. He hit me twice before I could scramble away,
tripping over my own feet and going to the floor. Even if I was a
fighter, I don’t think I would have had the presence of mind to hit
him back. All I could feel was that cold guilt. I had let him down.
I deserved this.

“All these years!” he shouted as he kept
coming and I kept trying to get away. “
Wasted!
”

“Please,” I whimpered. “Rupert, please.”

“Shut up, traitor!”

“Rupert.
Rupert!
”

He stood over me, fire in his eyes, his fist
clenched, ready for another blow. “What happens next, Mathew? What
happens?”

“I don’t understand,” I said, massaging my
aching body.

“The next time you jump, you’ll be in a
different world. One day, there won’t be any more Earth to jump
into. It will be this dead rock because the sun will have burned
out. What then?”

His words stung more than his blows. They
were similar words to the ones I had used against Rogers. It was
the same argument. Had I crossed over? Was I now fighting for the
right to be a Forty Leaper?

“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know.”

He lowered his fist, waved me away. “Go then.
You’ll see.”

He turned from me and hesitated for just a
split second. Then he left the room. I lay there for a long time,
my heart pounding, waiting for him to come back. But he didn’t and
eventually I got up and went to bed.

The next morning, when I awakened, I felt
disoriented, as if it was only a dream. I got out of bed and
washed, my body tingling. There was a bruise on my cheek where that
first punch had landed, but no other marks. I was stiff and sore,
but I would be fine. I didn’t know whether Rupert would want to see
me again, but I felt that I had to face him.

Leaving my room, I made my way to the dining
area. I could smell breakfast. When I entered, Rupert was already
eating, and reading from a small screen. He looked up at me and I
could tell that his anger had faded with his drunkenness.

“You’re still here,” he said. “I thought,
what with the fight...”

“Not yet,” I said. “Soon, though. I can feel
it.”

He nodded and I thought I saw his eyes glaze
over. “I’m glad.”

“Why?”

“I need to apologize to you, Mathew. I’m
sorry for what I did. It’s just been so hard.”

I sat down next to him. “Is it true, Rupert,
that you were waiting for me all these years?”

He shook his head. “When I first started, it
was great. There weren’t a lot of Forty Leapers, but there were
enough. I was always busy and always working hard at reintegrating
people into this society. I found them lives and they disappeared.
From most of them, I never got so much as a Christmas card.” I saw
the anger flash in his eyes and I recoiled slightly. But then he
saddened again. “And all the time I was reintegrating others, I
never bothered to reintegrate myself. I just got older and older
and older and now I’m alone. When I realized that I was locked in
here, I found something else to hope for.” He looked up at me.
“When you showed up, Mathew, I was delighted. I thought I would
finally have a friend to share the rest of my life with.”

I didn’t know what to say. “I’m sorry,
Rupert. I just…couldn’t.”

He shook his head. “Don’t be sorry. I’m just
jealous, is all. I’m ninety four years old. I may live another
twenty or thirty years, but you’ll go on for another eighty or more
yourself. Before long, you’d just be me.”

“It’s not like that.”

“It is,” he said, looking at me seriously.
“Never stop leaping, Mathew. It’s like a sea captain being
landlocked. You’re not built to survive in one time anymore.
Believe me, you’d be better off dead.”

“Maybe,” I said. “Maybe you should just let
go of it, Rupert. If you’ve got twenty or thirty years, that’s a
long time to be miserable.”

We talked some more, exchanged goodbyes and
then he went out. He said he didn’t want to be there when it
happened. He would rather say goodbye and have it be final. While
he was out, I wandered through the building, looking at the things
that I had built and the things that had been built after me. It
was all so much different, so much the same. Before I left, though,
I came to a decision. I scanned my entire journal onto a memory
chip and left it for him with my affections. Shortly afterward, I
leaped.

I popped into an alley, which meant that the
Foundation had been taken down and two buildings had been put up in
its place. Sure enough, they surrounded me on both sides, shooting
upward into the Manhattan sky. The alley was well lit and well
traveled and passersby stopped in surprise at my appearance. I made
no moves, just stared at them staring at me. Eventually, their
surprise gone, the moved on, content with their own inner
explanations of what had just happened. A young man said something
to me, but I didn’t understand him. There were English words in his
sentence, but the context was wrong. I couldn’t even tell whether
it was a question or a statement. In what I deemed a universal
gesture, I shrugged my shoulders. He, too, moved on.

I stood for a brief time, watching the very
human looking people in really not so strange clothing moving about
and then decided to move about as well. Why not? I was pretty
freshly showered and dressed in clean clothing. I didn’t
particularly stand out. It occurred to me that, for the very first
time, I had reemerged from a leap in complete anonymity. Not only
didn’t these people seem to know who or what I was, they just
didn’t seem to care. And yet there was nothing otherworldly about
them that concerned me, either. They walked like people with a
purpose and talked to each other or to the air. They looked in shop
windows, greeted passersby, and ate at outdoor cafes. It could have
been New York in my lifetime or the lifetime after that. But it was
several lifetimes and I had no money and didn’t even speak the
language.

As I walked the streets, I saw a number of
things that I didn’t recognize. There were signs that made sense
and signs that didn’t. The technology was too far removed for me to
even puzzle it out. But, as luck would have it, I stumbled upon, of
all things, a book store. In my time, people had been chanting that
print was dead. And yet, here was the proof that it would never
die. Print would outlive us all.

I walked in to find an immaculate store with
shelves and shelves of books. A young lady floated about standing
on what looked like an oversized serving platter. I couldn’t see
any jets or vents and yet the thing hung in mid air, supporting her
weight and, if my guess is correct, adjusting itself to her
movements so that she would have no trouble retaining her balance.
Amazing.

“Solutions!” she said to me with a smile.

“I’m sorry?” I asked instinctively, and her
expression changed instantly. I wondered if I had offended her. She
turned away quickly, preferring to ignore me.

Before I could think of something else to do,
there was a tap on my shoulder. I turned and saw a pretty young
girl, about nineteen or twenty years old, with bright eyes and a
straight face. “English?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said. “Do you speak it?”

She made a funny gesture with her hand.
“Some. I make study of it.”

“I didn’t mean to offend her.”

“Offend?”

“Insult?” I offered. “Anger?”

She shook her head vigorously. “Not angry,”
she said, motioning to the lady on the serving platter.
“Confused.”

“Oh.” I was confused as well.

“She never heard English.”

“Oh,” I repeated with a bit more clarity. I
wondered what parts of the world still spoke it if one woman never
heard and another was studying it.