Jumper 1 - Jumper (42 page)

He flinched more from my voice than he had from the belt. "What kind of man are you? What sort of
creature?
What pitiful excuse for a human being?"

I took a step toward him and he started crying.

What?

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I never meant it. I... I didn't want to hurt her. I didn't want to hurt you." Tears were streaming down his face.

It made me want to puke.

What do you want from him?

"Stop it! Stop it!"

He flinched again and fell silent.

"Get up."

He got slowly to his feet, one hand to his pants. The belt with its battered buckle stayed on the grave.

"Turn around."

He did and I jumped him to the parking lot of the Red Pines Substance Abuse Treatment Center in Stanville. I let him go and he turned.

"You know where we are?"

He swallowed. "Yeah."

"Well?"

"I can't! I lost my job. I don't have the insurance anymore!" The anguish in his voice was even greater than when he'd said he was sorry. It diminished him to be without his job, the same job he'd had all my life—or to admit it to me.

"You could sell your car."

"They repossessed it!" He started to cry again.

"Stop it! If there was a way to pay, would you do it?"

He closed his mouth to a stubborn line.

"How many people are you going to screw up before you die? Fuck it. It's your life. Kill yourself if you want." I stood there, arms crossed.

"I didn't say I wouldn't do it. I'll do it. I was gonna do it right before I lost my job."

I jumped to the cliff dwelling, then returned, a bag under my arm. Dad followed me up the steps and inside.

It took a half hour to fill out the paperwork but Dad signed in all the right places. When it came time to discuss payment they said the average six weeks ran twelve thousand dollars.

I paid cash, in advance.

Cox came to the phone. He sounded tired.

"Millie Harrison and her roommate are back in their apartment."

"What?"

"They're free. Home. Safe. A federal judge in Wichita issued warrants for the arrest of myself, several of my men, and the head of the agency for kidnapping. We could have stonewalled them, but... I talked my superiors out of it."

"Uh, for how long? When are you going to grab them again?"

He was silent for a minute, then said, "I don't know. I don't know who else knows your identity and Millie's relationship to you."

"Well, you certainly didn't help in that area!"

He cleared his throat. "No, I suppose not. But we did release her. Think about that. An act of good faith, not unlike your releasing me."

I stared at the phone. "I'll think about it."

"You have our number."
He
hung up.

I phoned from a phone booth, still not sure if Cox could be trusted.

"Hello?" Millie answered immediately, her voice anxious.

"Any bogeymen around?" My voice was lighthearted. My eyes were full and my throat felt tight.

"Oh, Davy! Oh, God, are you all right? Are you hurt?"

"Are you alone?"

"Yes! The bastards better not come near me, either, or Mark will slap them with a—"

I jumped to her bedroom and she dropped the phone. Her bed was stripped and boxes, half packed, covered the floor. Then I didn't notice anything but the press of her body against mine, the smell of her hair, the taste of tears on her cheeks.

When we'd loosened our arms enough to actually look at each other, she said, "You haven't been eating."

I laughed. "Well, not really." I looked around. "What's with the boxes?"

"Sherry is moving out. She doesn't want to associate with me anymore. I hang out with 'questionable' people. I can't afford this place on my own."

"Some friend."

She shrugged. "We were never that close. And she was locked in a room for a week just because she lived with me."

"Did they hurt you?"

"No. They treated us with kid gloves, except for holding us incommunicado. They didn't even ask any questions after the first day."

I thought back. That must have been after I started jumping agents to Europe, Africa, and the Middle East.

"So, what are you going to do? Get a smaller apartment?"

She shrugged. "Well, if I didn't get any better offers... and stop grinning like that."

I kissed her.

"I'd just as soon not have to worry about goons breaking in the door. If there's anything to be said about your place, it's private."

"The rent's right, too."

She shrugged. "But you'll have to make some way for me to get out of there in an emergency. And I want a real bathroom. Stop grinning like an idiot and help me pack."

Millie looked down into the pit. Matar was seated by the smoking remains of the fire. I noticed that he'd burned the chair after the firewood ran out. He was trying to sharpen one of the chair's metal bolts on a piece of sandstone, but the hardened steel was just wearing a groove in the stone.

She whispered, "What are you going to do with him?"

"Well, I could drop him again from the World Trade Center, only this time..." I lowered my fist rapidly to waist height and opened it suddenly, flat, fingers extended. "Splat. Or I could drop him like I did the last time, pulling him away at the last moment, over and over again, until he loses his fear of it. Then I could let him hit."

Millie made a face. "If you're going to kill him, just do it. Don't play with him like a mouse."

"Do you think I should kill him?"

She looked away from me, at the horizon and sighed. "It's not my decision. He didn't kill my mother, did he?"

I nodded. "But it would affect how you feel about me, wouldn't it?"

She nodded slowly, looking back at me with solemn eyes.

"I thought about leaving him in the pit, just putting several years of food there, and checking on him every couple of months. He wouldn't kill anybody else."

"That's sick. You'd be obligating yourself to take care of him forever."

"Well, yeah. Besides, somebody would probably run across him eventually or he'd carve climbing steps out of the pit."

She nodded. "Give him to the NSA."

"American justice? He was wearing a mask when he killed an American citizen. I doubt he'd be convicted. When he killed the maid, he was in Egyptian waters aboard a Greek ship. Oh my God... I forgot about the maid. Her body's in Baltimore and they don't have any idea who she is."

"Her family..."

I nodded. I knew exactly how they must feel.

I arranged for Cox to meet me in the Baltimore Hospital morgue, watching carefully. He arrived alone, with the paperwork.

They put her, Maria Kalikos, in a body bag. The news media published her name, making much of her disappearance. Maria Kalikos—I wanted to remember it. I didn't want to forget. Cox signed for her and distracted the attendant while I jumped the body to Athens Airport, to the tarmac, and put it in an empty baggage trailer. Then I went back and jumped Cox to the same place.

The sun was low in the sky. It was late afternoon here, late morning in Baltimore.

He looked at his watch. "Ten minutes." He took out a knife and started to cut away the tag on the body bag, which said, BALTIMORE MORGUE.

"No problem," I said.

I jumped to Heathrow Airport.

Corseau was waiting by the New Caledonia ticket counter. He carried a camera and a tape recorder. We walked around a corner and I jumped him to Athens.

"Brian Cox of the National Security Agency. Jean-Paul Corseau of Reuters News Service. Mr. Cox will be the 'unidentified American intelligence agent.' "

Corseau looked like he tasted something bad but it was part of the deal—exclusive but limited coverage of the exchange. Cox was even unhappier about it, but it was one of my conditions. "Right," said Corseau.

"Be right back."

I jumped to the pit. Matar was ready. I'd handcuffed him earlier, wrists
and
ankles, and left him in a chair. As always he flinched back when I appeared.

I smiled and considered taking him on one more drop off the World Trade Center. No—Millie wouldn't like it.

"What was my mother's name?"

He licked his lips. "Mary Niles."

"Right," I said pleasantly. "And the maid from the
Argos?"

"Maria Kalikos."

I hadn't taken him for any more "drops" but I'd threatened to if he forgot those names. When you're responsible for the death of someone, you should remember their name.

He screamed when we appeared on the tarmac, but abruptly cut it off when he realized he was on solid ground, not falling. I pushed him against the baggage trailer and he sat, next to the body bag.

Cox handed me a slip of paper and some Greek coins. "Call that number and tell them what gate we're at. Keep out of sight until they're gone—it's bad enough that
we
know who you are."

I was starting to like Cox. Didn't trust him a bit, but I was definitely starting to like him.

I turned to Matar. "Remember. If you escape, I will find you. If they don't convict you, I will find you. If you ever kill again, I will find you. I assure you, you don't want that."

He refused to look at me, but his face whitened.

Millie was waiting for me in the terminal, my binoculars around her neck. I'd jumped her here before any of the others. She wanted to see the exchange.

A voice on the other end of the phone said, "Metaxos."

I said, "Gate 27."

In heavily accented English, the man, Metaxos, said, "I will send them at once." He hung up.

Five minutes later, two unmarked cars and an ambulance rounded the far end of the terminal building. Millie handed me the binoculars. Four men got out of each car. Matar's face was compared with a photo and he was put in the back of one of the cars, a man on each side of him. Corseau took pictures, while Cox stood carefully behind him.

Then the body bag was opened and Maria Kalikos's face compared to another photograph. The ambulance attendants closed the bag, put it—her!—on a stretcher, and loaded the stretcher into the ambulance.

Maria Kalikos,
I said to myself. I wanted to remember.

Cox shook hands with one of the Greeks and the three vehicles drove away.

"Do you want me to jump you home first?"

Millie took the binoculars back. "I'll wait. Take them first."

I kissed her and jumped back to the tarmac.

"Okay?" I asked Cox.

"Okay."

Corseau shook his head. "This isn't enough. I want an interview."

"Sorry. This is as far as I can go without endangering myself. Look at the bright side—I can be awful handy to know when you need to get someplace in a hurry."

"All right," he said, reluctantly. "I won't push it. But If you ever go public?"

"Sure," I said. "No question about it. All yours."

I jumped him back to Heathrow.

"Ready?" I asked Cox, on returning.

"We still need a better way to contact you." He sounded tired, making the argument because he'd been told to.

I shook my head. "I promised I'd check the
New York Times
classifieds. That's the most I can promise. If I see the message, I'll call. If I can help you out with quick transport, I'll think about it. But I'm not a spy. I'm not an agent."

"What'll you do, then? Hijackings only? Eventually they'll catch you. Someone may even set up a fake hijacking just for that purpose."

I shook my head. "I don't know. Maybe I'll go to work for the fire department. Maybe I'll start working my way down Amnesty International's Prisoner of Conscience list. Maybe I'll go on vacation."

"Are you sure you don't want us to watch Millie?"

I shook my head violently. "You know that you're more likely to attract attention to her than shield her.
I'll
watch her. You guys stay away."

I jumped him to D.C. and even shook his hand before I left.

I jumped Millie back to the pit. It was midmorning in Texas and the sun slanted down, not touching the water at the bottom of the pit.

"Why did we come here?" she asked.

I raised my arms. "It's over, but it doesn't
feel
over! My dad said he was sorry, but it doesn't change anything. Matar is in the authorities' hands, but... it all feels wrong."

She looked at me. "Did your father acknowledge the damage he did to you?"

I frowned. "Well, he said he was sorry, that he never meant to hurt us."

She closed her eyes. "That's not acknowledgment—that's 'don't be mad at me.' "

I picked up a fire-blackened stone and heaved it out into the water. It splashed just short of the cliff, spraying water on the rock wall.

"Davy, you may never get acknowledgment from him. He may never be capable of it."

I threw another stone, bigger, pried out of the sand. It only reached halfway. I started to pick up yet a larger rock, then stopped. "I tried so
hard!"

She stood there, her mouth turned down at the corners, her eyes bright.

"Is this what you meant? That I couldn't run away from myself?"

She nodded.

"It hurts. It hurts a lot."

"I know."

I went to her and held her, let her hold me, let her squeeze my body to her, let her stroke my back. I felt sad, almost infinitely sad. Finally I pushed away and said, "I'll talk to somebody—if you'll help me find a good therapist."

"Oh, yes."

I ventured a small smile. It didn't seem so impossible, just very, very difficult.

I jumped away and returned almost immediately.

"What's that?"

"It's a lei," I said. "A Hawaiian lei made of orchids." I put it around her neck. "This is part of the custom," I added, kissing her.

She smiled. "Looks out of place in a Texas sinkhole."

I picked her up. "Well, let's go where it fits in. Hold on."

"You bet," she said.

We jumped.

Teleportation is, I hope, a classic trope of science fiction, and not a cliché. Certainly without Alfred Bester's
The Stars My Destination,
Robert Heinlein's
Tunnel in the Sky,
Larry Niven's "Flash Crowd," Phyllis Eisenstein's
Born to Exile,
and even "Star Trek" 's hoary old transporter beam, I wouldn't have asked myself certain questions about teleportation—certain questions that resulted in the novel you now hold. I'll let you judge whether I've perpetrated a cliché or something new, but I freely acknowledge my debt to those who've already plowed this particular furrow.