Jumper. Steven Gould

appeared in the Stanville Library, back in front of the shelf that went from “Ruedinger, Cathy” to “Wells, Martha.” I smiled. I hadn’t had any particular destination in mind when I’d jumped, only escape. Every time I’d jumped from immediate, physical danger, I’d come here, to the safest haven I knew.

      I mentally listed all the places I’d teleported to and considered them.

      They were all places I’d frequented before jumping to them, either recently, in the case of Washington Square and the New York hotel, or repeatedly over a long period of time. They were places I could picture in my mind. I wondered if that was all it took.

      I went to the card catalog and looked up New York. There was a listing under guidebooks, Dewey decimal 917.-471. This led me to the 1986 Foster’s Guide to New York City. On page 323 there was a picture of the lake in Central Park, in color, with a bench and trash can in the foreground, the Loeb Boathouse to one side.

      When Mom and I were touring New York, she wouldn’t let us go farther into Central Park than the Metropolitan Museum on the park’s east side. She’d heard too many stories of muggers and rapes, so we didn’t get to see the boathouse. I’d never been there.

      I stared at the picture until I could close my eyes and see it.

      I jumped and opened my eyes.

      I hadn’t moved. I was still standing in the library.

      Hmph.

      I flipped the pages and tried the same thing with other places I hadn’t been—Bloomingdale’s, the Bronx Zoo, the interior of the base of the Statue of Liberty. None of them worked.

      Then I hit a picture of the observation deck of the Empire State Building.

      “Look, Mom, that’s the Chrysler Building and you can see the World Trade Center and …

      “Shhhh, Davy. Modulate your voice, please.”

      That was Mom’s expression, “Modulate your voice.” Much kinder than saying “Shut up” or “Pipe down” or my dad’s “Shut your hole. “We’d gone there the second day of that trip and stayed up there an hour. Before I hit the picture I hadn’t realized what an impression it made on me. I thought I only had hazy memories of it at best. But now I could remember it clearly.

      I jumped and my ears popped, like they do when you take off and land in an airliner. I was standing there, the cold wind off the East River blowing my hair and ruffling the pages of the guidebook I still held in my hands. It was deserted. I looked down into the book and saw that the hours were listed as 9:30 to midnight.

      So, I could jump to places I’d been, which was a relief in a way. If Dad could teleport, he wouldn’t be able to jump into my hotel room in Brooklyn. He’d never been there.

      The view was confusing, all the buildings lit, their actual outlines nebulous and blurring together. I saw a distant green floodlit figure and things fell into place. Liberty Island was south of the Empire State and I looked down Fifth Avenue toward Greenwich Village and downtown. The twin towers of the World Trade Center should have clued me in.

      I could remember Mom feeding quarters into the mounted telescope so I could see the Statue of Liberty. We didn’t go out to the island because Mom was queasy on boats.

      I felt a wave of sorrow. Where had Mom gone?

      I jumped, then, back to the library and replaced the guidebook on the shelf.

      So, was it just any place I’d been?

      My granddad, my mother’s father, retired to a small house in Florida. My mom and I visited only once, when I was eleven. We were going to go again the next summer, but Mom left in the spring. I had a vague memory of a brightly painted house with white tile on the roof, and a canal in the back with boats. I tried to picture the living room but all I could picture was Granddad in this indefinite, generic sort of room. I tried to jump anyway, and it didn’t work.

      Hmph.

      Memory was important, apparently. I had to have a clear picture of the place, gained from actually being there.

      I thought of another experiment to make.

      I jumped.

      On Forty-fifth Street there is store after store specializing in electronics. Stereo equipment, video equipment, computers, electronic instruments. Everybody was closed when I appeared at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Forty-fifth, including the vendor of Italian ice that I’d patronized the day before.

      I could see into the stores, though, their interiors lit for security or display purposes. There were steel bars lowered over most of the windows, secured with massive padlocks, but you could peer between them.

      I stopped before one store with wider bars and better lighting than most. I studied the floor, the walls, the way the shelves were arranged, the merchandise closest to the window.

      I had a very real sense of location. I was here on the sidewalk just six feet from the inside of the store. I could picture it clearly in my mind. I looked up the street both ways, closed my eyes, and jumped.

      Two things happened. First, I appeared inside the store, inches from hundreds of bright, shiny electronic toys. Second, within an instant of my appearance, a siren, very loud and strident, went off both inside and outside the store, followed by the blinding flash of an electronic strobe which lit the interior like a bolt of lightning.

      Jesus! I flinched. Then, almost without thought, I jumped back to the Stanville Library.

      My knees felt weak. I sat, quickly, on the floor and shook for over a minute.

      What was the matter with me? It was just an alarm, some sort of motion detector. I didn’t have this reaction when the two thugs in Washington Square accosted me.

      I calmed down. That hadn’t been so unexpected, so abrupt. I took several deep breaths. I could probably have stayed there, transferred several VCRs back to my hotel room, before the police showed up.

      What would I do with them? I wouldn’t know who to sell them to, not without getting ripped off or busted. The very thought of dealing with the kind of people who bought stolen goods made my skin crawl And what about the store owner? Wouldn’t he be hurt? Or would insurance cover it? I started feeling guilty just picturing it.

      Another thought set my heart to beating harder and faster. Maybe that flask was for photos? Maybe they have closed-circuit TV cameras set up?

      I stood up and started pacing across the library, breathing faster, almost gasping.

      “Stop it!” I finally said to myself, my voice loud in the quiet building. How the hell are they going to catch you, even if they had your fingerprints, which they don’t? If they did catch you, what jail would hold you? Hell, no merchandise was stolen, no locks forced, no windows broken. Who’s going to believe there was someone in the store, much less press charges?

      Suddenly, like a weight descending on my shoulders, I was exhausted, weaving on my feet. My head began to ache again, and I wanted to sleep.

      I jumped to the hotel room and kicked off my shoes. The room was chilly, the radiator barely warm. I looked at the thin sheets on the bed. Inadequate. I thought about the man in Washington Square Park. Is he warm enough?

      I jumped into the dark interior of my room in my father’s house, scooped up the quilt from the bed, and jumped back to the hotel room.

      Then I slept.

      It was midday when noise from the street, a horn I think, woke me. I pulled the quilt higher and looked at the cheap hotel room.

      It was Wednesday, so I thought my dad should be at the office. I stood up, stretched, and jumped to the bathroom in the house. I listened carefully, then peered around the corner. Nobody. I jumped to the kitchen and looked out at the driveway. His car wasn’t there. I used the bathroom, then, and had breakfast.