Forty Leap (34 page)

The tests were mercifully short. Everything
he needed to do, he needed to do quickly. I lay down on the table,
noticed Natalie watching me carefully. Dr. Kung pulled over one of
the mounted instruments, a large sort of helmet, and placed it
above my head and over my face. Though it was not all enclosing, I
could see nothing but the light coming from underneath the lip of
the helmet. When it was activated, it emitted a low buzzing. The
buzzing was irritating and got into my head like a swarm of
mosquitoes. Beyond it I could hear Kung and Posner moving about,
but all of the external sounds blended into one another, leaving me
almost completely deprived of my most important senses. As this was
going one, they took blood from my arm. I felt something smooth and
cold run first across my chest and then across my belly. Though
there was nothing painful, the experience was still excruciating.
It ended in less than two hours and yet it seemed an interminable
ordeal.

When I finally sat up, I noticed that Natalie
was gone. Dr. Kung was scribbling on an electronic clipboard and
Posner was running some tubes through a machine.

“Some of us have your best interests at
heart,” Dr. Kung said to me. “Some of us understand the
consequences of your condition.”

I said nothing, quickly deciding that I
didn’t care for him and praying that he could deliver on his
promises.

He didn’t look up at me. “Akron will show you
to a room where you can get some sleep. We’ll have you up early in
the morning so that you can make your flight.”

My new name was Allen Burke. I was from New
York, which was fine because I actually
was
from New York.
Posner advised that I keep my mouth shut except when directly
questioned. It wouldn’t do for me to make friends in public. The
official stance on Forty Leapers was that they were enemies of the
state. Though the facts were clear to parties in charge, those
facts were distorted when released to the public. Leaping through
time, according to propaganda, was controllable and used as a tool
for espionage. There was a litany of items, both secure and
non-secure, that had been stolen by Forty Leapers. A leader in a
small burgeoning country had been assassinated. Any Leapers who
were identified were immediately incarcerated or executed.

According to Posner, Dr. Kung had spent his
entire life working on behalf of the Leapers. It was his contention
that the only way to eliminate the problem was to eliminate the
condition. If no one leaped through time then no one would be
persecuted for it. The early network of which his father had been a
part had fallen to pieces shortly after the destruction of the
Rocky Mountain Facility. The search for both Neville and myself had
exhausted men and resources. My leap wasn’t officially recorded
until several weeks after the incident. With no evidence, the
federal government had been forced to drop the case against my
brothers. I was glad to hear that and hoped it satisfied Martie at
least. Neville had been smuggled out of the hospital and he, too,
had leaped. But his leap went unrecorded. For months, the police
kept up the search for a man who was nowhere on Earth. When all was
said and done, Posner gave me a wealth of information and delivered
a message from Dr. Kung inviting me back after I had seen Jennie. I
thanked him for all he had done and told him to pass on that thanks
to Dr. Kung. I should be dead or worse without them and the gift
that Philip Kung was giving me was priceless.

I said goodbye to Akron Posner.

Once on the plane, my thoughts turned away
from all things but Jennie. I realize that I thought of her as she
had been in 2023, when we had been in love. I could not picture her
as an old woman, certainly not a woman of one hundred years. Dr.
Kung had said she was ill but I didn’t know what that meant for a
hundred and two year old woman. It frightened me to think of her as
gravely ill, perhaps on her deathbed. Had I leaped almost eighty
years through time just to watch her die? What would happen if I
missed her?

The flight landed before nine o’clock New
York time. Without any luggage, I was able to disembark and make my
way quickly out of the airport. Unlike Wisconsin, New York had not
made complete use of the trolley system. Individually owned cars
were illegal nationwide, but taxis were in abundance. I grabbed one
and told the driver which hospital I needed to visit. He looked at
me queerly, the hospital laying deep inside Manhattan, which was
not easy access for a cab. He told me it would cost a lot. I told
him I didn’t care.

The roads leading out of the airport were
clear and well kept. The vehicles on them resembled the vehicles of
fifty years before. They were sleek and looked like they were made
of paper. I saw no private vehicles. Everything was labeled. There
were police cars and taxi cabs and delivery trucks. Apparently
there were no trolleys on the highways either, though. I was going
to ask the driver about it, but thought better of the idea. It was
smarter at this point to live in ignorance. If I gave myself away
as a, what did she call it, Forty Leaper I would never get to see
Jennie.

Once we reached the city, I saw the driver’s
point. Deeper into the city, most of the roads had been converted
for trolleys or bicycles. Only official vehicles were allowed on
the regular streets. My driver once again told me that it would be
faster and cheaper to get out at the edge of the city and take the
trolleys. I told him that I was tired and didn’t feel like it. I
would wait out the ride and pay him for his time. This seemed to
satisfy him without giving him even the slightest hint that I just
didn’t know what to do or where to go. I watched out the window as
he took a circuitous route through the city I had once known well.
Buildings that were new ninety years before were old now. Many of
them still existed, but they had been changed, redone. The South
Street Seaport jutted out of the east side of the island like a
pinnacle of modern technology. And yet, it was billed as a
throwback to the old shipping days of the twenties and thirties. Of
course that was the twenties and thirties of the twenty-first
century so it was hardly old fashioned to me.

At length, we made it to the hospital and I
handed him the identification card given to me by Philip Kung. I
could only hope that it was legitimate and that there was enough
money on it. Otherwise I would be at a loss. The driver inserted it
into a machine and instantly a number popped up for the fare. He
passed back a keypad and I authorized the payment with the PIN
given to me. A green LED lit up and the card was ejected. He handed
it back to me and thanked me. I took it and got out of the car. I
didn’t envy him the trip out of the city.

The hospital lobby was a sprawling affair
with paintings and sculpture. There were several security personnel
posted at different positions. A large reception area was situated
off to my left and a waiting area to my right. It looked more like
the lobby of a hotel than the lobby of a hospital. The check-in
desk had nine clerks instead of the one or two hospitals had
employed in my time. We were in the heart of midtown, the building
a new building, at least new from my perspective. Large individual
letters were posted above the reception desk identifying it as the
MACrosoft Corporate Health Center
.

A timid young man looked up at me from behind
his station at reception. It was almost like looking at a version
of my own self in my youth. He looked completely out of place in
this people heavy position. He looked as if his life were boring
and unfulfilling. Without having spoken a word to him, I felt a
kinship. His name was Gerelled, which I thought to be an odd name,
or at least an odd spelling of a common name. I wondered if people
called him Gerry.

“Good afternoon, sir,” he said to me.

I responded in kind and asked him where I
could find Jennie. A queer expression crossed his features, but he
made a show of looking it up and provided me with a room number and
a visitor’s pass. When I say he made a show of it, I got the
impression that he already knew it and was pretending not to know
it for my benefit. That, in and of itself was odd, but what he said
to me was even more strange.

“Stay as long as you like, sir.”

I thanked him, making an effort to be extra
nice and extra courteous. Jennie was on the seventh floor in what
was known as the
Hospice Ward
. Some terms never go away and
never change their meaning. Jennie was dying.

I rode the elevator up and found myself
taking my time as I moved down the hallway. I thought about nothing
but where I was and what I was doing. I had nowhere to be, no
obligations whatsoever except to this one person in this one
moment. There were no thoughts in my mind about where I would go
once I left the hospital. Another person might have felt completely
lost, but I was suddenly totally at peace. It was a tremendous
comfort to have just this one thing to do. I passed by the nurse’s
station and bid them all hello. There were a lot of them. Obviously
something had changed in the medical business that allowed
hospitals to actually hire enough staff. As I approached Jennie’s
room I saw a young man standing outside just staring at nothing. He
looked enough like her for me to deduce that he was a relative.

“Hello,” I said to him.

He turned, startled, and scowled at me. “What
do you want?”

“I’ve come to see Jennie,” I said.

He studied me with the kind of intense gaze
that strips you layer by layer.

“I’m Mathew,” I told him, shedding my fake
name.

“I know who you are,” he said and did not
sound happy about it.

I grew tense, sensing a confrontation. “I’d
like to go in, now.”

He grew even more tense. “She don’t need to
see you.”

Some things never change. I took several deep
breaths and worked very hard at calming myself. It would do no good
for me to leap. I was there to see Jennie and I was determined to
do so.

“Are you her grandson?” I asked.

“Great grandson,” he corrected.

“What’s your name?”

He didn’t answer.

“Well, if you know who I am then you know
that I am a friend of your great grandmother’s from a very long
time ago. We haven’t seen each other in many years and I think it
will make her happy if you let me go in and see her.”

“Do I look like I give a (some word I didn’t
catch) what you think?”

He was not to be put off so I thought,
What would Neville do?
Neville would have probably shot him,
but that didn’t seem the right course of action for me. I was also
unarmed. However, I could meet Neville halfway. Before the young
man knew what was happening, I stepped right up to him and shoved
him with both of my hands. I abhor violence and confrontation, but
there was nothing for it. Every decision I made came to me as a
cathartic enlightenment. I thought and knew it was right so I did
it. The tension had melted away. I didn’t even react to the stream
of curses that followed me into the room.

“Here, now, what’s all the noise?” she called
from the bed. I could barely see her in the dim light, most of her
covered up by hospital blankets. Her head was on my left and her
right arm stuck out from underneath, one IV tube flowing out of the
back of her hand.

“It’s me, Jennie,” I said.

I saw her head turn on an old and rusted
neck. Her voice was weak, but still very definitely Jennie’s voice.
“Mathew?”

“It’s me,” I repeated.

Then her great grandson grabbed me from
behind and held me tight.

“
Wendell!
” she shouted and we stopped
our struggling. “You show him some
respect!
”

“He’s a criminal, Nona,” he told her, but let
go of me anyway.

“What have I told you? Those are all lies.
You keep this to yourself and go get Mathew some food.”

Straightening myself, I looked at him. “I’m
not hungry, thanks,” I said to him, although I was. I felt it was
best if he didn’t have access to anything I was going to eat.

“Well, wait outside then,” she said to him
and he obeyed.

Very much like Jennie, she did not try to
explain or justify his behavior. She reached up her left hand and I
crossed the foot of the bed to that side. Once there, with the
window at my back I finally had a good look at a one hundred and
two year old Jennie.

And I found nothing less than the woman I
loved.

As I sat, I took her withered and papery hand
in my own and kissed it affectionately. She turned her face to look
at me and showed me a shadow of that smile.

“I knew you’d come,” she said. “I knew you
wouldn’t let me die alone.”

My first instinct was to reassure her that
everything would be all right. But she was a century old and in the
Hospice Ward
. She was going to die there and probably quite
soon. We both knew it so there was no reason to deny it. What we
needed to hold onto was the fact that we were being granted her
last few hours or days together and that was a gift that
transcended value.

Again, I feel compelled to leave out the
details of our conversations. In three days, we managed to close
the gaps in our lives. I still loved her, as old as she was, as
displaced as I was, I finally felt as if we had married. It’s
difficult to explain but you have to understand the phrase, ‘
til
death do you part.
That was the crux of it. We would be
together until she died and that was all it took. I did not leave
the hospital. No one asked me to leave. The doctors and nurses that
came in to examine or discuss Jennie gave me queer looks but did
not accost me. She had no other visitors save Wendell. He came
every day and stayed for the entirety of visiting hours. He spoke
very little to me and I sensed that his aggression went deeper than
any concern about my criminal status. Jennie told me that she had
raised him, then apologized for it.