Forty Leap (24 page)

“Maybe you’ll find your way later on,” I
suggested.

He made a sound of disdain through pursed
lips. “Later on, I’ll be dead. There ain’t nothin’ to fight for in
this world and I ain’t never gonna see the next. Hell, I ain’t
jumped in close to eleven years.”

At this I nearly dropped my juice. Was he
serious or was this just another of Rogers Clinton’s yarns? There
was no way to be sure just by talking to him, but the notion of it
was so enticing that I began to question him furiously. I thought
that I would give up the remainder of my life afterward to have
eleven years with Jennie. I begged him to help me, to tell me how
he had managed to control the affliction, but he dismissed me with
a wave and that sound again.

“Man, I am just too
bored
to jump,”
was the only explanation I could get from him.

Breakfast then became an extremely irritating
affair during which he consumed his eggs and toast and I
contemplated ways to broach the subject from a different angle.
Ultimately, though, Rogers finished eating, burped loudly, and bid
me good day. I sat there for a while, playing around with my food
and feeling sour when I caught some movement out of the corner of
my eye. Someone had just passed beyond the doors of the cafeteria
and in a hurry.

Curious, and eager to take my mind off of
time jumping and Rogers Clinton, I stood, leaving my dirty dishes,
and stepped out into the hall. I caught a glimpse of someone at the
end of the corridor, making a quick turn and moving hurriedly away.
If it weren’t for the graceless gait and shock of blonde hair, I
would never have known it was Wil. There was something cradled in
his arms and I could have sworn it was a rifle.

“Something amiss there, Mathew.”

I glanced over to find Neville at my
shoulder.

“They’ve been running around like that all
morning. No one’s saying a word.”

We discussed it briefly (or, rather, he
bounced ideas off of me and I dutifully listened to them) before he
suggested we check the internet. So that’s what we did. We didn’t
go to the library but instead chose to seek out Awen Mohammed.

As it turned out, Mohammed was not a writer,
but a computer programmer. Neville had discovered this during his
very brief conversation with the man. In fact, he confided in me
that his sole purpose in approaching Mohammed was to get a look at
what was on screen at the time. Though Neville knew nothing of
computers beyond the use of them, he could recognize computer code
when he saw it.

As we sat down near Mohammed, he passed me a
bland look and Neville a bitter one. There was no love lost there
despite such a brief encounter. I suppose it was possible that
Mohammed had divined Neville’s ulterior motive and held it against
him. Either way, Neville was not to be put off. After a couple of
false starts, he got right to the heart of the matter. He wanted to
get some real news about the world which meant he needed to get
past the securities put into place on our internet connection.
Mohammed considered him for a long time, his fingers poised over
his keyboard, his unblinking eyes locked on the Scottish pilot.

“You will join me in my room,” he said
finally. Then he looked over at me. “You are Mathew Cristian. It is
a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

I smiled in spite of myself, flattered by the
simple genuineness of the statement.

He shut down his laptop and we walked
together through the complex and to his room. We passed some of the
other personnel on the way and noted the tense looks in their eyes.
Wil also appeared briefly. He wasn’t carrying anything this time,
but his easy smile had gone and he refused to look me in the
eye.

“Something wrong, mate?” Neville asked
him.

“Nothing,” he answered, the life gone from
his country boy accent. “Just tired. Busy, you know.”

“I know,” Neville replied. “Keep it real,
then.”

He ushered us away, but I glanced back at
Wil, noting the slope of his posture and the lackluster look in his
eyes. I was suddenly afraid.

Mohammed’s room was spotless and we were
extremely surprised to find Samantha Radish there upon entering.
The morning was wearing on and she had obviously slept late and was
just coming out of the shower. Why she had slept in Mohammed’s room
as opposed to her own was obvious. Despite my initial shock, I
quickly adjusted and lost interest. Neville tipped her his
imaginary hat and went right to the computer.

Mohammed pulled a chip from a drawer and
inserted it into the slot. The familiar file screen popped up and
he navigated through the directories and ran a specific file.

“You will now be able to access any web site
you wish,” he said. “Please be quick. If the program runs for too
long, it may be noticed.”

This was a warning Neville took seriously and
he began to explore. Samantha retreated back into the bathroom to
dress but came out with questions. Mohammed didn’t have many
answers for her so I filled in the details as Neville typed and
clicked and clicked and typed. Finally he looked up, but his grin
was lopsided and strained.

“Listen to this,” he said. “’Government
sources have released rumors of secret installations where there
have been experiments in time travel. It has been reported that a
number of individuals have been given the power to leap forward in
time. While no definite reason for the experiments has been
released, it has been speculated that companies and, possibly,
foreign powers are working to create super spies.’

“Well, that’s it then,” he said.

“That’s what?” Samantha Radish asked.

“And do you think they are preparing to
fight?” Mohammed asked.

Neville nodded. “Without a doubt, mate. The
question is who are they going to fight?”

Rogers Clinton’s words hung in the air before
me.
That man don’t mean to do you no good,
he had said about
Igor.
They see themselves a weapon.
And yet Igor had warned
me about the government. Government agents had murdered Morty.
Government agents had murdered Dr. Mason. That is, those things had
happened if Igor was telling the truth.

Mohammed was starting to look panicked. “What
can we do?”

Neville reclined in the chair a moment and
thought things through. The thing about him was that he was a
natural leader. As the rest of us began to sweat and fear the
future, Neville seemed to grow more calm and more confident. He
rubbed his chin in a way that suggested cockiness. He wasn’t
considering a plan that might mean the difference between life and
death. He was mulling over a difficult clue from a crossword. He
was selecting a pastry from the counter.

“It doesn’t seem to me that they’re arming up
to fight the government. GEI would stand to lose everything if it
resists. That means they mean to pen us in and hand us over when
whoever it is that’s going to come for us comes for us.

“Since we haven’t got arms or experience,
we’re really just a bunch of sitting ducks.”

“What will they do with us?” Samantha Radish
moaned, slipping onto the bed.

“They’ll turn this into a prison,” I
answered, looking around me.

Neville nodded. “Why throw away a bunch of
good spies?”

“Perhaps we should try and escape,” Mohammed
suggested. I had a sudden flashback to my days as a worker for the
United Arab Nation. Sheltered in Carlos’ room in the middle of the
night, we had spoken of escape. It was Samud who had gotten us out.
Poor Samud whose actions had cost him his career and his freedom.
Perhaps his life. He had been my friend and now he was gone. There
was no Samud in this world.

Or was there?

I left them to consider it and went straight
away to a telephone. I wanted desperately to call Jennie, to hear
her voice one last time. This was the end. I knew it was. Even
should the GEI personnel prove to be our protectors, I knew they
would be woefully inadequate against soldiers. And if we survived
there would be no phone calls. There would be no internet. My
freedom was forfeit even if my life was not.

So I phoned Igor. There was a person who
manned the telephone room at all times. She seemed perplexed at my
request and virtually laughed at the idea that Igor Grundel would
even consider taking my call. But I was stern and she placed the
call anyway. Her face fell when the secretary put her through and
she had to hand me the phone. I took it from her with no
reassurance. An older, much younger version of Mathew Cristian
would have tried to make her feel better in the wake of her
insolence. But by then I was just fed up and scared.

“Igor?”

“Mat? Is that you?”

“It’s me,” I said. “What’s going on?”

“What do you mean?” It almost came off
fluidly but Igor had lost a step. Maybe it was due to age or maybe
it was just a result of his decadent lifestyle. I knew he was being
evasive.

“Are they coming or aren’t they?”

He breathed into the mouthpiece for some
time, refusing to make any other sound. I grew impatient and was
about to repeat my question when he finally answered, “They
are.”

“When?”

“They are already there, encamped in the
mountains and the surrounding towns. That’s why we haven’t gotten
you out. There’s just no place to go.”

“I saw Wil with a rifle.”

“The facility is not entirely without
defenses.”

“So you plan to fight them? Fight the
government?”

He cleared his throat. “When the time comes,
it will be best if you just follow instructions.”

“When?” I asked. “When will the time
come?”

“I don’t know, Mat. I’m sorry.”

That was it, then. I said goodbye and knew
that my fate had already been decided. Whether Igor had instructed
his personnel to fight or not, we were finished. They would not win
if they fought and we wouldn’t win either way.

Neville caught up with me outside the
telephone room and asked what was up. So I told him.

“Well that’s it then?”

I scowled, finding it easier than ever to
show my disdain for my situation. Regret piled onto me. I kept
thinking of Jennie and how I would never see her again. I could
have had that time with her instead of wasting it in a futile
attempt to cure myself. I promised myself that if I ever had the
opportunity to make this mistake again, I would die first.
Literally die.

“Is there anything we can do?” I asked him as
if I expected him to know.

He shrugged. “If there’s a fight, we might be
able to get away.”

“And then what?”

So he shrugged again. “Then we can die
marching across the mountains.”

“I think Rogers Clinton can make himself
jump.”

In his way, Neville considered this
unprecedented statement. Once again, I was amazed at how he took
the news casually, considered it with calm fluidity of thought. Of
course, jumping through time was one way out. It had saved my life
in 2014 and it could save his life here.

In the end, Neville smiled. “I guess we’d
better have a word with him then.”

Rogers Clinton was shaking his head back and
forth. “Why would you think that, Little Mat?”

“You said you haven’t jumped in eleven
years.”

Finally, Neville was surprised. “Is that
right?”

We’d found Rogers in the library, reading a
book on the American Revolution. Rogers was a voracious reader.
According to him, he had learned to read in the early 1900s while
working on the railroad. You could see it, too, when he poured
through a book that he did not take the skill for granted. Unlike
most of us, who learn to read as children and accept it as
something all people should be able to do, Rogers saw it as a
power. If not for leaping through time, it was a skill that would
have been denied him. He read and absorbed every word, both
individually and in context. He skipped none and remembered the
information as if he had conceived it himself.

“You are Neville MacTavish,” he said as if
just noticing the pilot.

“That’s right. Rogers Clinton, yes?”

He nodded. “Now we are friends.”

Neville grinned. “We are, are we?”

Rogers nodded as if Neville no longer even
had a choice in the matter.

“So be it. Then you mind telling your friends
your little secret so we can all jump the hell out of here.”

Rogers laughed a booming laugh. Joanne Li,
who was sitting across the library with an English reader, looked
up at us with disapproval.

“I don’t know how to jump,” Rogers said.

“But…”

He raised an open hand. “I said I had not
jumped.”

“You said you were too bored to jump.”

Nodding, he considered it. “Are we gonna
fight?”

At first I thought he meant him and me and I
was taken aback. Then I realized he meant on the same side. Was
there going to be a fight? Us against them. There was a gleam in
his eye.

“Yeah,” Neville said in the silence caused by
my hesitation. “There’s gonna be a fight.”

Rogers laughed again. “Then maybe I won’t be
so bored, huh? You try not to be bored, too. Maybe then you’ll get
your wish.”

And just like that, our conversation with
Rogers Clinton was over. He went back to his book.

October 8
^th
passed in frustrating
silence. All tests had been cancelled and still we weren’t told
why. But I knew. And Neville knew. And Rogers knew. The others were
kept in ignorance, sensing the anticipation that surrounded the
staff. They ate and went about their activities but there was an
underlying tension that couldn’t be ignored. Awen Mohammed came to
us to ask if we had any more information and we shook our heads. I
think he knew we were lying, but he let the matter drop. Samantha
Radish clung to him like a frightened kitten, but I think he needed
her more than she needed him.