Jumper: Griffin's Story (11 page)

Three hundred thousand dollars. Give or take twenty thousand.

It was one of the big security companies. Surely they had insurance?

Mum would not be happy. Nor Dad.

Well, they're not here, then, are they?

 

The tourists drove me out of Oxford–them and their buses. The buses are the oddest thing. The companies run them and the tourists use them to get from place to place, but it's more like a city bus, running all the time, and mostly empty.

I hate diesel fumes.

I found a karate dojo in Knightsbridge run in conjunction with a fancy gym. It was expensive and I had to fake my dad's signature on a release, but they had a really nice locker room with showers. I paid for a year.

It was my birthday present to myself–I was thirteen.

I'd had it with cold sponge baths in the Hole, but the local solution called for more construction, maybe a propane water heater, and let the soapy water flow away with the clean under the flowstone wall, but I hated the idea. I pictured some desert spring where the bighorn sheep came to drink, foaming up with soap suds. It was the reason I used a bucket toilet odorized with pine–scented disinfectant back in the smaller chamber and, when I needed to, dumped it at one of the park's picnic area pit toilets late at night.

I was still careful. I certainly didn't jump anywhere near the dojo. I used the Underground a lot, jumping to lots of different stations, always trying to pick a place, before I left, that I'd never jumped to before. Also someplace the video–cameras didn't cover–where phone stalls or info signs made a blank spot.

Leaving, going back to the Hole, I just jumped from the moving subway, whatever train came. I'd either pick a mostly empty car and jump when no one was looking, or I'd move to the next car, jumping when I was between the doors in the noisy, rattling space.

But having classes to go to was good; it meant I had a schedule, a structure that I didn't have before.

It meant I had to buy a watch.

It was one of those time–zone clocks, showing the time in two different places at once. I kept it on U.S. Pacific Time, minus seven, and
London
,
Greenwich
zero. If I hit a button it would show me the time in Phuket–Greenwich plus seven.

Breakfast, cereal, I tended to eat in the Hole. Got a little twelve–volt fridge to hold the milk. Eight o'clock in the morning and it was time for the four o'clock afternoon teen class at the dojo. I wasn't the youngest one there, but I was the shortest.

But I made up for the lack of size.

"Fierce 'un, eh?" That's what the senior instructor, Sensei Patel, would say to Martin, the junior instructor who had our lot, after watching me spar. I was swathed in pads and usually picking myself up, yet again, but I was right back in there, punching and kicking.

"Not right, that one," Martin would say, a big smile on his face. He knew I could hear. He was just teasing. "Oi! Less blocking with the head, there."

After class I'd drop off my laundry (done by the pound), usually yesterday's clothes and the day's practice gi and the linens every week or so.

Lunch was whatever, usually in
London
, without jumping. Sure it was evening there, but if you want a particular type of food and you can't find it in
London
, you aren't trying very hard. Well, except Mexican, perhaps. I ate Paki, Indian, Chinese, and the occasional bit of fish and chips.

There was a library branch not too far from the dojo where I'd do my homeschooling workbooks. I was still working through the French science series and the Spanish math so the ladies who worked there kept coming up to try out their "Bonjour, mon ami" and "iComo esta?". They were a bit disappointed when they found out I wasn't so foreign, but they were always good for a pointer or two when I got stuck on a bit of math or a bit of chemistry.

Reference librarians, they explained, lived to answer questions. And I was a nice change from the kids who wanted them to tell them "where the reports are kept" or came to snog in the stairwell or score some weed back by the toilet.

Dinner might be anywhere. Morning in Phuket, something in
San Diego
. Not
London
, though–getting past midnight in
London
.

Sometimes I'd just jump my dingy down to
Bahia
Cha–cacual, a bay twenty miles west of La Crucecita, and I'd skin–dive for my supper, lobster or fish, cooked on the beach with limes and peppers.

Then home to Hole and hearth and up again, pick up my laundry and repeat as needed.

After six months, Sensei Patel said I could come to evening adult classes. They tested me for nikkyu, low brown belt, after that and I passed, barely.

Didn't really like forms, the kata. Didn't see the point, so I didn't practice them as much as I should.

"Well, then," said Sensei Patel when I expressed this opinion, "you're a right git, aren'tcha?"

He sat me down on the floor and said, "Watch."

He did the first two steps of Heian Shodan, a lower block and a stepping midlevel punch. He paused between the block and the punch. "That's how you do it. Now, come here and attack me. Front kick."

I got up and did my best kick. He blocked it to the side with the lower block and the knuckles of his fist brushed my nose and I fell backward, overbalanced. Hadn't even seen him step in but he had. For the barest second, I wondered if he'd jumped.

"How do you think I learned that? Made it mine? It wasn't from sparring. Now–watch." He did the whole kata, but this time there was a different rhythm and intensity to it. Block–punch, block–block–punch. He didn't even move that fast but everything flowed from one to the other.

"You want to spar better, you get on with your katas, eh?" He tapped me on the forehead. "Use a little imagination. You think you're out here by yourself but that's not what it's about. Enemies surround you. Start acting like it."

Ouch.

Every couple of months I'd give Sam a call, using a pay phone. I'd talk in Spanish and ask for Carlotta or Rosa or any of a bunch of different names. If he said tienes el numero in–correcto and hung up, we'd meet the next day down the road from the Texaco, on a rise where you could see for miles. If he said, "No la conozco," I'd have to postpone–he couldn't make it the next day or he felt like it wasn't safe.

But this time it was okay and Consuelo and he sat on their folding chairs and I perched on the tailgate and we ate a nice curry and spoke in Spanish.

"Alejandra is coming home," Consuelo said. "She said to tell you she misses the chupulinesP She smiled briefly but she was clearly worried.

"Is the bellman from the Villa Blanca still around?" "Oh, yes. Mateo buys drinks in the bars for my relatives. He's been letting Rodrigo use his car in the afternoon to drive around the girls."

"jEstupido! Did no one tell him?" I wanted to go slap Rodrigo around. This stung. I thought he was my friend.

Sam shrugged. "Tell him what? Anything Rodrigo knows Mateo can find out from anyone. Someone tells Rodrigo don't talk to Mateo and suddenly Rodrigo does have a secret. Leave well enough alone. It won't last. Rodrigo's mother is forbidding it–he doesn't have his license–and she told him she'll have cousin Paco arrest him if he doesn't listen."

"He never listens," I said. "What about Alejandra? I'm worried."

Consuelo sighed. "She misses her family. And she broke up with her boyfriend, the Dominican."

"I could
–
"

"What?" Sam said. "You could show up and give them a reason to bother her?"

I dropped off the tailgate and kicked a rock. It flew over the edge of the hilltop, then crashed through the mesquite and cholla. My big toe throbbed and I tried not to limp as I stepped back to the tailgate.

"Right. What about you guys? You think this is safe?" I waved my hand around at the empty hillside. The highway was seven miles south of us and the dirt road running out to the hilltop was clearly visible and empty, a thin straight line that didn't bend until it hit the bottom of the ridge.

Sam shrugged. "As safe as it gets without no contact."

Consuelo shook her finger at me. "You are not a jaguar to live alone and solitary. It is unhealthy." She reached out and plucked at a hole in my jeans. "More like a coyote. But even coyotes keep together, eh?"

"Okay. I'll go howl at the moon. Maybe go through the trash cans."

Sam tapped his plastic fork against the Styrofoam container. "This didn't come from any trash can. Where did it come from?"

"Huh? Oh, Cafe Naz in the East End." At his blank look I added, "
London
."

"Ah." He mouth worked for a moment but nothing came out. Finally he said, "Not bad. Not bad at all." He poked a finger toward my upper torso. "You look healthy. Whatcha doing for exercise?"

"Karate. A dojo in
–
well, maybe I shouldn't say where."

"Right. Not if you go there regular. And income? You got enough money?"

I looked away. "No worries. Don't have to worry about the rent. I'm saying my prayers and washing behind my ears and brushing my teeth, Papa." Teeth. I didn't want any more X–rays compared if I could help it. "I'm even doing my lessons. I'm up to Second Form, uh, tenth grade in the science and I'm starting precalculus."

"What is that, four grade levels ahead?"

I shrugged. "Whatever." I tried to be indifferent but it was nice to have someone make a fuss. Quite nice.

It made me afraid for them.

I waited thirty minutes after they left, watching the dust trail of the pickup all the way to the highway before I jumped away to the Hole.

Jumped to Embankment Station at the curvy underground part, not the aboveground platform, in a nook, behind a crowd of tourists, and someone started screaming.

Someone was shouting, "MOVE! MOVE YOUR BLOODY ASS!" The two women tourists in front of me were holding their hands above their head, cameras dangling, and one of them was screaming. Over their shoulder I saw someone running up the platform holding a big, oddly shaped gun– one I'd seen before.

He fired and something smacked into the wall on both sides of my nook and suddenly the two women tourists were thrown into me. I heard the breath leave their lungs and they stopped screaming, but they were spasming and I smelled ozone. I wasn't pinned–though the women were jammed across the opening of the nook there was still room behind me–and I jumped.

"Wait!" I yelled. I don't know why or to whom, but the sound echoed in the wash of the
Empty Quarter
. I jumped immediately to Charing Cross platform and stepped onto the northern train heading back toward the
Thames
and Embankment Station.

Nobody screamed and nobody shot at me but my eyes were wide open.

It took maybe three minutes for the train to reach the other station, but he was gone. There were transport police on the platform. They'd gotten the women out of the nook and seated on a bench. The cable was still there, taut between two areas of broken blue tile, so I guess they wiggled back into the nook and ducked under it. I didn't get off the train and as it left, we passed more transport police in the tunnel itself, flashlights waving as they searched.

I got off at
Waterloo
and took the Jubilee line back to
Green
Park
, then took the Piccadilly line over to Knights–bridge. I wasn't even late for class, though it seemed as if I should be.

The next one was closer.

Elephant and Castle Tube stop and he was more careful than the last guy. He followed me and didn't attack until we were in the twisty stair up to street level. He was firing up the stairs and I heard something mechanical click right before he shot, so I was bending forward and looking back. The cable tore overhead and tangled in the handrail above me and I was standing in desert sand before the next one arrived.

Right, then.

The first one was clearly not just coincidence. They were watching the Tube stations.

I jumped back into
London
, on the other side of the
Thames
, to South Kensington Station. It was only one stop away from Knightsbridge but I didn't get on the train. I wandered between platforms–there are three different lines at that station–keeping my eye on everyone else. It was busy but when I stayed on the Piccadilly platform through three different train arrivals, the faces had all recycled.

I took the stairs up to the eastbound platform then took the passage under

Cromwell Road

over to the Natural History Museum. I spent an hour there, wandering back and forth between the whales and the dinosaurs, checking everybody who came near. All random faces. Finally, I walked up

Brompton Avenue

to Knightsbridge, picked up my laundry and a bite of falafel, and hopped a cross–city westbound bus.

The falafel was fresh, warm, crisp, and it sat in my stomach like a dead weight. How many of them were there? How many stations could they watch? Were they going to force me out of
London
like they'd forced me out of
San Diego
and Huatulco?

What the hell do they want?

 

Somewhere past Ealing Common, when the bus was mostly empty, I jumped back to my Hole.

I got my hair bleached. Bought a reversible jacket and three hats. Bought some dark–framed glasses with clear glass. Still used the subway, but I was very, very careful. Never jumped to a station. Never left from a station. Tried to choose a new arrival point every single day, but never near my departure point for that day.

I definitely stopped jumping into the cinemas without paying.

I passed my ikkyu, upper brown belt, test. Sensei Patel said my kata didn't suck nearly so bad now. I'd actually tagged Sensei Martin in the ribs with a front kick during the sparring test.

And I made a friend.

Chapter Seven
Punches and Pimples