Steven Gould - Jumper 02 - Reflex

REFLEX

Steven Gould

For Emma and Carita,

Sequels in their own right,

But also stand-alone treasures.

(And no, Emma, you can't read this yet.)

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Sage Walker for nasty things to do with one's vagus nerve, Bob Leeds for drug info,

Doc "Sully" Sullivan for Trauma talk and procedures, Rory Harper and Laura J. Mixon for first

readings and gentle corrections, and to Beth Meacham for that perfect mix of standing back and

stepping in.

ONE

"Davy was gone."

The first time was like this.

"You are the most stubborn man I've ever met."

The latest incarnation of this argument started in a little pastry shop on Sullivan Street, New

York City.

His first response was light. "You probably shouldn't have married me, then."

She glared.

"I can't help it. It's how I feel. At least I know how I feel. That's better than I used to be."

She watched him push crumbs across the tabletop, herding them into a neat little pile. The

busboy was leaning against the lime-colored wall, watching them. They were the last customers in the

place and it was almost eleven P.M. on the East Coast.

"Let's get out of here," he said.

They threaded out between the tiny tables and into the chill air of the street. It was the first week

of March. Out of sight, in a deep-sheltered doorway smelling faintly of urine, he put his arms around

her and jumped them, and the argument, a time zone to the west, to the small two-bedroom condo

they owned near her clinic, in Stillwater, Oklahoma.

Her ears popped and she swallowed reflexively, so used to it that she hardly noticed. She was

intensely frustrated. How can you love someone and want to kick them in the butt at the same

time? "But what about the way I feel? I'm thirty-one. I'd like to have kids while I'm still young enough

to keep up with them!"

The corners of his mouth turned down. "Look at how my dad—I don't exactly have the right

modeling to be a parent."

You'll never know until you try.

"And there's the Aerie. It's not exactly kid-safe."

"We can live here. We can live elsewhere if necessary. It's not as if we don't have the

resources."

"And when the kids start kindergarten? 'Did you take the bus today, little Millie?' 'No, my daddy

teleported me.' "

She glared at him but she couldn't really find an argument against this one. Was she to ask him to

stop jumping? Jump, but lie about it to their child? Let the child know, but have them lie? She knew

that one all too well. She'd been lying about Davy for ten years.

He looked at his watch. "I have a meeting with Brian in D.C. in ten minutes. He wants to sell me

on another errand."

Oh, that's convenient! Then she recalled his mentioning it the day before and felt guilty for the

thought.

"You want to wait here?" he asked.

"How long do you think you'll be?"

He shrugged. "Not too long, I should think."

She was still annoyed. "I've got clients at seven-thirty. I need my sleep. You better jump me to

bed, first." Though I'd rather you jumped me in bed.

"Okay."

He paced while she changed into her nightgown and brushed her teeth. He looked at books,

opened them, shut them. When she was ready, he jumped her to the cliff dwelling—their hidden Aerie

in the rugged desert of far west Texas. It was cool here, but not as cold as New York City.

He turned on the bedside light and she heard the faint sound of the electrical generator kicking in

from its own enclosure at the far end of the ledge. The furniture, a rough, knotty pine queen-sized

bed, contrasted sharply with the more contemporary bedstead back in the condo. The walls, ceiling,

and floor were all rough stone; the face of this cliff, and only the rough-mortared outer wall, made of

like-colored stone, was man-made. Most of the walls, natural and otherwise, were hidden by rows of

knotty pine bookshelves.

She sat on the edge of the bed and sighed. "We talked about it when we got married, you

know."

He winced. "You said we could take some time, first."

"It's been ten years!"

He looked at his watch again. "Look, I've got to go, or I'll be late. We can—"

She turned her back. "Oh, just go!"

"Millie...."

She shook her head. "Go, dammit!" Then she thought better of it and turned back to him, but

he'd taken her at her word.

Davy was gone.

Of course she couldn't sleep.

When did I become an appendage? There was a price to be paid, being married to the world's

only teleport. It was like being a Saudi wife, unable to travel anywhere unless accompanied by a male

relative.

An appendage.

She'd accepted this, she realized, quite a long time ago, trading her own independence for the

benefits, but she was beginning to feel that something was atrophying. If not my legs, then my

spiritual wings.

And even Saudi wives can have children.

She alternated between blaming him and blaming herself, with brief stints of blaming Mr. Brian

Cox of the National Security Agency. The real blame, she knew, if it was going to rest on anyone,

belonged to Davy's father, who was an abusive alcoholic when Davy was growing up, but even he'd

changed, having gone through treatment and now a decade of grumpy and uncomfortable sobriety.

Deciding who to blame wasn't going to give her a child. But she wasn't willing to raise a child

without a partner's help. Davy's help.

For the millionth time she wished she could jump, like Davy, so she could go after him, to finish

this argument, or at least defuse it. She regretted their decision to live here, hidden, instead of in

Stillwater, where she could expose him more to her friends' kids, to family settings totally unlike his

own childhood.

Instead, they commuted, Davy jumping her in and out of the condo in Stillwater, usually from the

Texas cliff house, though there were extended periods of living in Tonga, Costa Rica, and one

glorious spring in Paris. Still, they always came back to the cliff house. It was the only place Davy felt

safe.

He'd built it shortly before the NSA first discovered him, and Davy and Millie were the only

humans who'd ever been there. The surrounding terrain was incredibly rugged, a tortuous rocky

desert region known as El Solitario. Since Davy's original discovery of the place, it had become

more popular. The original ranch surrounding the area had been bought by Texas and made a state

park. Still, the house was built into a natural overhung cliff ledge two hundred feet from the canyon

bottom and a hundred feet from its top. Backpackers had made it into the bottom of the canyon, but

since the Aerie was on the side of El Solitario away from the trailhead, there were fifteen miles of

waterless mountain desert to be crossed just to get to the bottom of the canyon.

She groped for her glasses, got up, and put the kettle on the propane burner. While it heated,

she started a piñon fire in the woodstove, then browsed the shelves for a book. Davy had covered the

walls in the first five years and then added freestanding double-sided shelves later. In the last two

years, though, he'd finally started culling the shelves, donating books to community libraries, but his

acquisition rate still exceeded his outgoing and there were piles of new books throughout the dwelling.

It was three in the morning when she awoke in the reading nook, a cold pot of tea beside her

and The Wood Wife fallen from her lap, she gave up and went to bed.

Dammit, Davy! You must really be pissed.

When her alarm went off, at six-thirty, he still wasn't there.

Shit! She couldn't even cancel her clients, a husband and wife coming in for marital counseling.

There was no phone—only a last-ditch 406 MHz PLB—a satellite-detected personnel locator

beacon used by aircraft and ships for emergency search and rescue. It used the Global Positioning

System to send its location so setting it off would put some sort of helicopter on the ridge above the

Aerie fairly quickly.

She and Davy had considered a satellite cell phone for the Aerie but Davy was convinced the

NSA could use it to locate the cliff house. Instead, he carried a satellite pager, so Cox could get

messages to him all over the world, but it was receive only.

The Emergency PLB was just that, for emergencies. Was this one? Not yet, she decided.

He could get to the Aerie right up to seven-thirty and still jump her to the clinic on time, but her

professional clothes were all in the Stillwater condo. She wasn't even sure she had clothes here.

She ended up putting on one of Davy's flannel shirts and a pair of his jeans, which were tight in

the crotch and thighs, and loose in the waist. She found a pair of her own running shoes and used

Davy's socks.

For a while she stared at the picture on the bedside table, a Polaroid of both of them taken at a

restaurant in Tahiti. She remembered Davy's irritation at the flash. He hadn't hesitated to buy it from

the photographer. He didn't like images of himself floating around. He was going to destroy it but

Millie asked him to give it to her instead. Only her promise that she would keep it in the Aerie had

won him over.

There wasn't much in the propane refrigerator. She ate some Wheaties dry and drank two

glasses of water. The ceramic water tank atop the refrigerator was only a quarter full when she

checked the sight glass.

Come on, Davy! This isn't like you.

Seven-thirty came and went.

She rehearsed speeches of anger and pounded the bed with a stick. She read more. She paced.

By midafternoon the anger had turned, like the worm, and she began to feel afraid.

She was afraid for Davy. Only death or severe injury could keep him from her. No jail could

hold him, no prison bars, though, she remembered, chaining him to something solid might do

it—something he couldn't jump. They'd tried that experiment once, long ago, handcuffing him to a

railing. He'd nearly dislocated his shoulder. Old-fashioned manacles set in a wall would hold him

nicely.

She shuddered.

A while later, she began to fear for herself.

She went outside and walked to the end of the ledge, to the door set in a separate stone

generator enclosure. The emergency pack was in there, but it had been years since she'd even looked

at it.

She turned and looked out at the canyon. Looking south, she could see the rocky hills. It was

twenty-eight miles of rough trail with no water to the trailhead at Sauceda Ranch headquarters. There

was some cactus and sagebrush and surprising amounts of grama grasses, but certainly no trees this

side of the Rio Grande. Rocks cast the only shade.

Well, at least it's not August.

The backpack held the emergency PLB, several sealed bottles of water, survival rations, a light

sleeping bag, a signal mirror and flares, and a plastic bag containing five thousand dollars in hundreds

and twenties. The bag next to it held eighty meters of eleven-millimeter climbing rope, a seat harness,

and carabiners with brake bars.

She took them back into the house.

Tomorrow morning, if he hasn't returned...

He hadn't.

Dammit, Davy, you are a great deal of trouble!

She drank most of the remaining water in the ceramic cistern, then dressed in Davy's jeans and

shirt, and a pair of his underwear. When she stepped outside it was cold, the ledge still deep in

shadow, and her breath fogged around her, but she knew that would change rapidly as the sun rose

higher. She pursed her lips, then ducked back inside and took the photo from the bedside table,

putting it in her back pocket.

Outside again, she shut the door carefully, making sure the latch engaged, then dragged the rope

bag over to the anchor bolt and ring. Davy had set it into a crack in the ledge with a sledgehammer,

then anchored it further with concrete.

She put on the seat harness and closed the front with the base carabiner, then used a double

bowline to secure one end of the rope to the ring. She tugged on it. Solid as the last time she used it,

in the first years of their marriage. They used to practice the descent twice a year, as a precaution, but

she hadn't done it in over five years. There were more cracks in the rock around the concrete and she

tugged several more times to be sure the bolt was still solidly anchored.

She put the pack on the end of the rope and lowered it, hand over hand, seeing the excess rope

coil reassuringly on the loose talus slope at the bottom of the cliff. She didn't have to worry about

running out of rope.

An odd tingle went through her, almost pleasurable, and she wondered if it was fear. Am I that

jaded? She examined it more closely and realized what she was feeling was satisfaction. After all, for

the first time in a long time, she was having to do something without Davy, something difficult, even

dangerous, and he wasn't there to buffer her from the discomfort and effort.

Well, one good thing comes from this.

She threaded the rope through the 'biners and snapped the brake bars closed, then took up the

trailing end and brought it behind her, running it across the back of her thighs before coming back to

her gloved hand. She backed toward the edge, letting the rope out slowly.

She contemplated the long hike in front of her, the fact that her ID was in Oklahoma and she

couldn't fly without it, or rent a car, and she'd have to take the bus. She thought about walking a

minimal distance away from the Aerie and setting off the PLB, but gritted her teeth. Not yet.

She reached the edge and sighed, letting some more rope out and dropping over the edge. She

started down with small jumps, then swore as the rope crumbled a bit of the edge, showering her with

gravel and a nasty piece of limestone that caromed off her shin. Sand drifted into her eyes, causing her

to blink in the morning sunlight.

Oh, great!

She couldn't help picturing the condo, cluttered, friendly, sand-free, with her clothing, her wallet,

and a fridge with milk in it.

Davy Rice, you're a real pain-in-the—Above her, there was the sound of grinding rock, and

then a sharp crack. The rope went slack and she dropped backwards, watching, in horror, as the bolt

and a partial plug of concrete, still tied to the end of the rope, came flying over the edge. She dropped

like a stone, still a hundred and seventy feet above the rocks below, her arms and feet flailing. The

cold air cut past her ears and the adrenaline stabbed into her chest like a sword.

Oh, God, ohgod, ohgodohgodohgod—

She crouched in the small living room of the condo in Stillwater, a pile of rope draped across her

knees and feet. The heavy bolt and ring, with a small collar of concrete, dropped to the carpet at her

side with a thud.

That was the first time.

She stopped screaming, hadn't realized she'd started, but her voice cut off into choking sobs.

She sat back from the crouch, banging into the glass top of the coffee table and spilling a pile of

books across the carpet.

She tried to rub her back where she'd struck the table edge. It stung—she'd scraped skin.

The trouble with being a trained psychologist is that when you experience something unreal, you

consider the chance that you are experiencing a psychotic break.

Well, at least I know it's possible. Davy didn't the first time it happened to him. Her

breathing slowed and some of the tension eased out of her. She felt drained, weak, as if she'd run up

several flights of stairs.

Can everyone? If they've taken thousands of experienced jumps?

She wanted to talk to Davy about it but, of course, she couldn't.

Where are you, David Rice!

There were several messages on voice mail but they were all from the secretary she shared with

the other two therapists at the clinic. She'd missed seven client appointments yesterday. None of them

were from Davy.

She called his pager number and punched in 911, their code for come home now. He didn't.

She checked her watch. It was only six-thirty in the morning. She had wanted a good start for

her hike. But it was after eight on the east coast.

She started by calling the Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center in Johns Hopkins Hospital, in

Baltimore. Davy wasn't there. All the patients admitted in the last forty-eight hours had their own

names. None of them were John Does. None of them had appeared suddenly, inexplicably.

It took her forty-five minutes to find the number in an old phone bill. Usually, when Davy

received a page from Cox, he'd jump to D.C. and use a payphone to answer, but there'd been a time

when he was sick with the flu, dizzy and feverish, and had actually called from the condo.

It rang several times before switching to the voice mail system. "Brian Cox here. Leave a

message. I'll get back to you."

The voice took her back ten years, to her only meeting with the man, a judge-supervised

interview when the NSA first discovered Davy. Not long after that, she'd spent several days illegally

detained in an NSA safe house. She shuddered and almost forgot to speak at the tone.

"This is Millie Harrison-Rice, Davy's wife. Please call me." She left the condo's number and the

clinic's, then pushed the handset cradle switch down, cutting the connection.

Shit! What had Davy gotten into?

She tore off the clothes she was wearing and took a quick shower. She ran the water hot,

hoping it would thaw the frozen place in her chest, a knot of suppressed grief, fear, and anger. I'll let

it out soon. When I don't have to function.

She put on therapist clothes, comfortable but slightly formal, a combination she'd found gave her

the right mixture of accessibility and authority with her clients. Jeans, a nice blouse, a silk jacket, and

flats. She put her palm against the window. It was cold enough that she started to grab her overcoat,

but, at the last minute, she pulled on Davy's worn leather jacket, a bit large on her, but comforting, his

smell mixed pleasantly with the leather.

There was a bulge in the inside pocket and she checked it. It was an envelope with fifty

twenty-dollar bills. One thousand dollars. They were new twenties, oversized Andrew Jacksons, so it

wasn't his older stash, the used bills he'd stolen ten years before, from the Chemical Bank of New

York.

She shook her head. Spy money. A small portion of a payment from one of his "errands" for

Brian Cox. Non-lethal, zero-exposure transportation—an agent inserted into Beijing, a remote

electronic radio monitor left in Serbia, a dissident pulled out of Baghdad. More rarely, hostages

rescued, but he kept those to a minimum, for her sake. He'd done a few jobs a month—more recently

during the mess in pre-occupation Iraq. The original plan had been to pay back the million he'd stolen

while still a teen, but he'd kept on going, even after it had been returned with interest. He hadn't

returned it to the bank, though. He'd donated the money anonymously to dozens of shelters and drug

treatment centers across the country.

He still donated heavily, now, but there was also a closet back in the cliff house with over three

million dollars in it.

"What else am I going to do?" he'd said. "Garden?"

She put the money back in the jacket. She might need it to find him.

Her office was only a quarter-mile away, a five-minute walk, but she tried to visualize it, tried to

will herself there.

It didn't work.

Dammit. Did I imagine the whole thing? Was I at the condo the whole time?

The climbing rope with ring, bolt, and concrete was still in the corner of the living room, where

she'd piled them.

She walked to the office, kicking through drifts of fallen leaves, unable to enjoy the colors of the

changing trees. She wanted to find him, to do something. But she had no idea where he was, where to

look. Davy would come to her, when he could.

She didn't know if she was strong enough.

Waiting is the hardest role.

TWO

"That's not his blood."

Davy jumped to an alley running behind Nineteenth Street Northwest, just east of George

Washington University. It was cool and the pavement was wet from recent rain, but it wasn't quite as

cold as New York had been and, for once, the alley didn't smell of urine. Water dripped from fire

escapes and telephone wires and he hunched his neck into his jacket as he turned toward the lighted

street.

Just short of the sidewalk, where the alley widened behind a store, a refrigerator carton lay

tucked against the wall, waterproofed by a layer of split plastic garbage bags. The ragged blanket that

served as a door curtain was half-open and Davy saw two sets of eyes reflecting the mercury

streetlamp. Children's eyes.

He paused. Did they see me arrive? The dim faces moved back into the shadow and vanished.

Sighing, Davy crouched down without moving any closer to the box. "Where're your parents,

guys?"

There was no response.

He pulled a small flashlight from his inside jacket pocket and twisted it on, pointing it down. The

two children flinched in the faint light. They were cleaner than he expected and the sleeping bag they

were sharing looked fairly new. The face in front was pure Mayan, bright dark eyes and shocks of

midnight hair. The second face was paler, with straw-colored hair, but the features were identical.

Girls, he guessed.

"¿Donde está su madre?" he tried.

Reluctantly, the eldest, perhaps eight—he couldn't really tell—said, "Está trabajando. Una

portera."

A janitor. Nightshift work that didn't require good English.

"¿Y su padre?"

She just shook her head.

"¿De dónde es usted?" Where are you from?

"Chiapas."

Displaced. He thought about what their trip must've been like. They probably traveled on third

class buses up the length of Mexico, then in some horribly crowded van from someplace like Laredo

after crossing the border illegally.

The little girl, perhaps five or six, suddenly spoke, "Papa fue desaparecido."

Disappeared. The matter-of-fact way she said it made Davy want to cry.

"¿Cuándo vuelve su madre?"

"Por la mañana."

He dug his emergency cash out of an inner pocket—five hundred dollars in twenties, another

thousand in hundred dollar bills, all wrapped with a rubber band.

"Oculte esto." He mimed hiding it beneath his jacket. "Dé esto a su madre. Para la

cubierta." Give it to your mother. For housing.

The girls looked blank. He said, "Para su propia casa." For your own house. He tossed the

cash lightly into the box, onto the foot of the sleeping bag.

The kids stared at it, like it might bite them.

"¡Oculte esto!" he repeated. That amount of money could easily get them killed in their

situation.

The older girl finally took it and shoved it beneath the sleeping bag.

He turned off the flashlight and stood up. As he turned to walk away he added, "Buena

suerte." They'd need luck, even with the money.

He heard movement in the box but didn't look back.

When Davy finished threading his way through the entrance foyer and into the side room, he

found Brian Cox sitting near a front window with a newspaper open, but not lifted quite high enough

to block his view of the restaurant. Davy could tell Cox had spotted him first, probably while he was

still on the street.

Cox was wearing his hair longer these days, looking somewhat professorial, and the football

lineman physique of a decade past had turned into middle-aged heaviness draped in tweeds. Davy

dropped into the seat opposite him with a sigh.

Steven Gould - Jumper 02 - Reflex

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