(About a longing we on Earth will never know...)

Jumper

by

Zvi Zaks

I was fixing a weeder in the cornfield and trying not to think about Ariela when the jumper alert sounded.

I hated that field. Its hot mugginess and swarms of gnats made me sick. Normally, I worked in an air-conditioned computer room, but I was the brownhorn up from Earth just two years ago. I was the chump sent to ride the elevator ten levels inward to the half-gravity level where the farm robot broadcast distress signals.

The vista around the crops should have calmed me. I stood at the bottom of a perfectly straight valley. Above, a flock of geese flew under cumulus clouds. To the south, majestic snow-covered mountains approached a wide, peaceful river whose bank, overhung with lazy willows, marked the end of the cornfield.

It was all fake. The mountains and geese were pan-holograms. The valley itself stretched too straight, and its sides rose too smoothly for an earth scene. Above me was no sky, but rather a ceiling that curved upward parallel to the valley and formed the floor of the next layer of our space station. Instead of the river, a 10-foot-thick rock radiation shield delimited both the cornfield and the space station itself. The disguise showed skill and ingenuity, but I and the 50 thousand other spacers in this station, this monstrous, spinning tin can named Epsathree, knew we did not live on Earth. And we could never think otherwise.

I shook my head. Only one place could be worse than this cornfield. That's when my phone shrieked out the jumper alert.

The cry, a harsh klaxon noise, turned my sweat cold. That sound came for one purpose only - to announce another insane spacer, another poor soul who had lost his reason and was trying to jump away from the space station back to Earth.

Yes, I wanted to leave the cornfield, but not for this. Trembling, I looked at the phone. A red five flashing on the screen told me I was the last person enlisted into the rescue team. How could my luck be worse? If the computer had found just one more brownhorn on a level above mine, I would have been drafted as backup only.

I tapped the screen to acknowledge the alarm and ran to a nearby ersatz redwood. Pressure from my palm on a smooth area of bark opened a large panel and revealed an outside elevator door. All too quickly, the elevator arrived with one passenger, a tall fair skinned woman who looked a little like my Ariela, though without her long, flowing hair. I entered. The cool air on my sweaty face brought relief from the farm's heat. I felt myself heavy as the cubicle shot inward/upward.

I turned to the woman. "I'm Dahm Origin."

"Ivana Peterson." Her voice sounded bored.

"You're answering the alert?"

"Of course."

"How far down did the notice go?"

"I got it on level nine, just below you." She emitted a grunt of disgust. "This is such a bother. Don't jumpers care how much they inconvenience others?"

How could she be so callous? "Jumpers are insane. It's an illness."

"It's a strange insanity that attacks completely normal people with no warning. Ah well, not my concern. I'm just backup. I won't have to go Out." She smiled and patted her belly.

As the elevator sped towards the axis, I let out a long breath and frowned. "Congratulations."

"I just found out yesterday. But you look glum. What's wrong?"

I gnawed my lower lip. "My wife and I couldn't conceive so the Tricouncil divorced us. She just moved out."

Ivana smirked. "I'm sorry, but what did you expect? The station can't afford fruitless trees. If you really loved each other, you'd resign from space and return Home together."

A screen in the elevator flashed a message - the jumper's suit readings were stable.

She was uncaring to the point of cruelty. Yes, if Ariela and I returned home, we could stay together, but my sense of responsibility wouldn't allow that easy out. Ariela's wouldn't have either. "Would you leave the station for your husband?"

Her face showed astonishment at the question, but after several moments, she answered. "Not for him, certainly. Sometimes I'd like to see where I grew up, visit my parents in the flesh instead of through vids, but it isn't important enough to leave the station forever."

I sighed. "Sometimes I wonder. Grounders see us as the saviors of humanity…

"Potential saviors," she corrected.

I nodded. "…potential saviors of humanity, and no one would criticize a spacer who returned to Earth, at least not openly, but still…" I couldn't vocalize the obvious conclusion.

A warning dinged. We grabbed the side rails and felt momentarily upside-down as the elevator braked and came to rest in the station's no-gravity core. The woman grinned again. "Good luck, Dahm. Whatever you do out there, don't get space sick."

"Your concern is touching," I said and scrambled out of the elevator into the beige circular chamber - Wheel Room - adjoining the South Wall airlocks. Ivana, not hurrying, followed and pushed off towards the backups' diversion room, where she and two others would wait in case more rescuers were needed. In the meantime, they would enjoy donuts and coffee, and watch movies, maybe even old cowboy movies, my favorites. Duty demanded otherwise of me.

I kicked over to the nearby rows of gray spacesuits, found one my size, and pressed my thumb on its chest pad. The suit glowed bright yellow with a large purple number five. On impulse, before suiting up, I pushed over to the storeroom and grabbed a loop of memory rope. A minute later, I and four other rescuers struggled into our suits and crowded into the freight air lock. The inner door closed, pumps sucked air from the chamber, the outer door irised open, and we kicked off, away from the space station into silent emptiness.

#

Everyone on Earth has seen and loved the moon, that small, white, but beautiful disk. Few have appreciated full Earth from Luna, a larger, more commanding, resplendence. But neither of these can compare with the majesty, the splendor, the pure magnificent power of the Earth from the orbit of Epsilon Three. No description is adequate. She lay in the heavens, filling a fifth of the cosmos, dominating the universe, the queen of the sky. Oceans and clouds glistened, a blue-white luster seeming to glow from within. Her sheer magnitude overshadowed the rest of creation.

From here, no trace was visible of the nuclear holocaust with the massive destruction it caused 70 years ago. Seen from this orbit, the Earth was more than beautiful. She was exquisite.

This view had greeted me every morning of my first three months in space. Like all newcomers, I lived in my spacesuit then, bathed in Earthlight while clamping girders to build Epsilon four. Though physically uncomfortable, enthusiasm of my new roll as one of the saviors of humanity made the time a joyous one. I and my colleagues would continue mankind's survival if the grounders chose to bomb the rest of the planet and themselves into radioactive waste. That I could never return to Earth's surface didn't bother me.

That was two years ago, when I had just arrived from the Home of us all. Now, away for over twenty-four months, vivid dreams of Earth, both scary and comforting, had started. After two years' exile, two years of trying to believe that station life was just as fulfilling, the View had changed. Out here I faced no picture, no holographic portrayal; the Earth herself, Gaia, called me, her wayward son, coaxing me back from my self-imposed banishment. I listened and stared, entranced by the sight.

I knew now why spacers jumped.

An intermittent beep sounded steadily louder in my headphones. "Dahm Origin here," I said, looking around for my fellow rescuers.

"Control here," a female voice answered. "Rescuer One has been stunned by the View. Two will try to revive him. Three, Four and Five will go after the jumper. A backup rescuer, Six, will stay by the airlock and wait for further instructions."

That made sense. We didn't know whether the backup would be needed more urgently for the jumper or for the stunned rescuer. I wondered if the backup was Ivona, the woman from the elevator.

The voice in my helmet spoke again. "Numbers Three, Four, and Five, I've activated your suit rockets. Remember, manual override is on your right forearm."

Right forearm. I had forgotten. The only details I remembered from a four hour lecture on Earth were the need to restrain the jumper so he couldn't suicide by breaking an air seal, and the strength given the jumpers by their madness. No refresher course followed that one class given over two years ago.

In the thirty years since the first jumper death, we had learned little about the phenomenon. Jumpers who survived always tried again. The risk started after three years in space and grew with each decade. A short trip to Earth provoked a jump within days, making such visits impossible. Rescuing a jumper or even discussing the topic added to the risk, leaving the subject an absolute taboo.

My suit rocket flared. Three, Four and I flew in formation towards the jumper, invisible in the radiant Earthly glory. The receding space station lay behind us, forgotten. Five minutes later, a shadow - two arms, two legs and a head - appeared in the middle of the Earthly View and grew larger as the three of us approached. He was drifting because, like most jumpers, he had disabled the suit's rockets; that way, he couldn't accelerate, but neither could the station use the rockets to bring him back by remote control.

We would probably rescue this jumper before his air ran out, as we did most of them, but he would have to return earthside. Each year, the jumping sickness deprived us of only one tenth of one percent of the population, but the psychological effect was far out of proportion to the actual numbers. More than any other factor, the jumpers reminded us of the rigidity of our exile.

Control clicked on. "Rescuers, fly to the jumper on my mark. Three, fasten his right arm, Four take the feet, and Five, the left arm." The three of us positioned ourselves so close, I could see the hook on the back of the spacesuit used to restrain the jumper's arm. "Mark," said Control. I accelerated, but reached the target before Three. When I grabbed his arm, he swung around suddenly and punched my chest with such ferocity, he knocked me away. For a moment, I couldn't breathe. Three and Four veered off.

My suit computer cut in, correcting the rotation caused by the tussle. The jumper was now spinning like a ballet dancer, the righting reflexes of his suit disabled along with the other circuits.

He waved something in his hand and shouted on the common frequency, "Stay away from me, people. I have a knife and I'll use it."

A knife? "Control, did you hear that? What should we do now?"

After a short delay she answered, "I read you, Five. Hover above the jumper. Three and four, you stay behind him."

The View confused me. "Uh, what do those directions mean here, Outside?"

"Above is away from the Earth, towards Epsathree. Behind is in back of his feet. He won't notice any of you there."

"Gotcha."

"Three and four, you distract the jumper. Five, pull back about 200 meters. Then, on my signal, go in and try to hit the jumper's knife hand with your helmet. It's durable enough to deflect the blade. But be careful."

Be careful. She didn't need to tell me that. Three and Four aligned themselves below the target and clicked on their radios, asking him what was wrong, why he was risking his life, and the like. The jumper waved the knife a few times, but didn't answer. He extended all his limbs to slow the spin and hung in space, a rigid, slowly twirling shape, a human silhouette against the unflawed blue-white Earthly radiance.

Control said, "Five, go in now."

With a deep exhalation I aimed toward the jumper - toward the Earth. Vertigo struck. Rushing, accelerating toward Terra, suddenly I wanted to go Home. "Correct course, Five," the controller said, forcing my attention away from the View and towards the jumper. I focused on the visibly growing figure, trying not to think of the View just below, seemingly so close one could reach and touch it. So close I could embrace it. How could such beauty be lethal?

The jumper, looming larger, craned his neck to see the Earth, snapping his head quickly around each time the spin of his body turned him away from the huge, shining disk. He didn't need further distraction. I was close enough to see the knife in his grip, but he was oblivious to me, oblivious to everything but the View, that mesmerizing View. I fought down panic. "Control, I can't correct my course. Can you help?"

"No problem," she said. As the figure grew, I felt the pressure of the auxiliaries' brief flare. Then, head down, butting against the jumper's arm like a space-riding goat, I collided with him and blasted a few meters away.

"Damn your hides. What are you doing? Why won't you leave me alone?" the jumper complained. Most jumpers were men, but some malfunction in the suit ratio of this one distorted the voice too much to identify the gender.

I checked my suit for leaks. There was a rip on my right forearm. It was small and the suit was able to plug it with sealant, but I was pissed. The son of a bitch got me after all. I switched to control frequency and told her about the torn suit.

"Does he still have the knife, Five?"

"Is this jumper a man or a woman? Whichever, he sure does. I'm below him now, about four meters away and can see the blade. He has a complex spin, head over heels, and is waving the knife in all directions."

A moment of uncomfortable silence filled the airwaves. "Well, you're on the scene. Do you have any suggestions?" the controller asked.

Thinking of my favorite cowboy movies, I said, "I do have an idea. It's unorthodox, but not dangerous to me or to the jumper." Silly, but not dangerous.

"All right number Five. Do as you see best. Do you want any help from Three and Four?"

This controller didn't know any more than I did. "No. Let me handle it myself." I moved 30 meters away from the jumper on the station side, and switched to the rescuee's frequency, interrupting his invective. "Jumper. Are you all right?"

"I would be all right if you fools would leave me alone. And stop calling me jumper. Where the hell are you?"

"I'm up here. You can't see me because you're rotating too fast," I said. I took the memory rope from my suit and set it to uncurl and then to wrap the far end slowly around anything it touched.

"Are you the one who hit me?"

"I was trying to dislodge the knife. Did I hurt you?"

"Shook me up a little. But, damn it, now I'm spinning so much, I can't see the Earth." The anguish in his voice was palpable.

"Sorry to spoil your view, but I'm trying to save your life," I said, trying not to sound sarcastic. I pressed the button to uncurl the rope.

He laughed, a short cynical bray. "I knew this would happen. I just knew it. You really believe that bullshit they fed us in training."

"Bullshit? What bullshit?"

"About burning up in the atmosphere."

"That's bullshit?" The rope had extended itself, but at the wrong angle, ending up far from the jumper. Cursing to myself, I pressed the rewind button.

"Of course it is. Bullshit. Propaganda. Whatever you want to call it. The Tricouncil doesn't want us to visit Earth because they're afraid we won't return. So they made up this story about incinerating on re-entry."

"But it isn't a story," I said. Taking careful aim and concentrating on my task, trying to ignore that View, I uncurled the rope once more. It settled two meters away from the twirling jumper.

"No? Have you ever seen or even heard of anyone burning up?"

"Well no, but that's because jumpers are always rescued." They weren't always rescued alive but I didn't mention that.

"Ha! Exactly! The government won't let anyone go Home on their own because it will expose the lie."

"That's crazy," I said, stammering. I pressed the control to stiffen the rope, and turned it with exquisite slowness towards the target. A buzz in the suit indicating a drop in air pressure caught my attention. Nervously, I applied more sealant to the rip made by the jumper's knife.

The jumper answered my charge of insanity. "New ideas are always thought crazy. I'll show them. I'll go down, visit my mother, talk to a few people and then take the next shuttle up. They say any spacer who visits Earth jumps as soon as they return to the station, but that's just another lie, one I'll be happy to disprove. I just wish you hadn't sent me spinning like this, you bastard. I can't see the Earth."

"Uh, I'm sorry about that, I guess, but I am trying to save your life," I repeated. What else could I say? I looked at my suit's pressure meter; it was stable. Thank God for small advantages. I focused the telescopic sights on the jumper and saw the rope touch his leg and curl around his ankle. Ah - success. The jumper didn't even notice it. I set the controls on my suit to accelerate me slowly, ever so slowly, back towards the station.

"Guy, can't you understand me? My life isn't in danger. Nothing bad will happen to me. I'm just going Home," he said, pleading for understanding. His certainty gave me the chills. Then he said, "Oh, thanks, guy. You're not so bad after all."

Squeal and static from the radio transmission distorted the jumper's voice. "I beg your pardon."

"I'm thanking you," he said tersely. "You stopped some of that damn spin. Now I can concentrate on the View. I'm trying to be polite."

Of course. By pulling him back towards the station, I had stopped the head over heels part of his rotation. He'd have to bend his neck backwards to see the Earth, but that was a small matter. "You're welcome."

The controller spoke up, "You're doing great, Five. Keep him talking so he doesn't realize what's happening." She clicked off.

Her gratuitous advice annoyed me, but now was not the time to argue. "Uh, jumper, we were talking about getting Home safely."

"Yes." His voice was now tranquil, soothed by the View. If he stayed calm we would have no problems, but we were approaching Epsathree at an agonizingly slow rate.

"You know that meteors or satellite debris burn up when they enter the atmosphere."

"Yes. So?"

"Why won't that happen to you?"

He sighed. "Are you stupid, or just pretending to be? Rocks and debris are inanimate, lifeless hunks of matter. They don't live or grow or move, or do anything people do. In particular, they don't think."

"What does that have to do with burning up in the atmosphere? The laws of physics don't care about life." The artificial satellite, our current home, was visibly larger. I stared at it, happy to turn away from that enticing Earthly View, but we still had a way to go.

"It has everything to do with it. God won't let us jumpers burn up because He knows we want to go Home."

"God?"

"Yes, God. Are you embarrassed to talk about God?"

Control broke in. "Be careful, Five. This is when a jumper is most likely to kill himself rather than be brought into the station."

The air pressure warning buzzed again. I broke into a cold sweat.

"Where are you, guy? I asked if you were embarrassed to talk about God." The jumper's voice was strident.

"No, not at all," I said quickly. By now we were almost at the central airlock. Two, Three, Four and Six were waiting for us. "This jumping, then, is a religious thing?"

"No, of course not. It isn't religion. It's, it's..." He sighed as if frustrated, unable to find the right words.

"Is it an important fact about salvation, incontrovertibly true but revealed only to you?" I asked, praying he would not see the rescuers moving in behind him. the air pressure warning buzzed still again, making me shiver and sweat at the same time. I felt dizzy.

"That's it. That's it. But it isn't revealed just to me; it's revealed to all jumpers. That's why we jump."

"Oh." Having just seen the View, I could understand how the urge to jump developed, but this jumper's irrationality puzzled and bothered me. Did my ideas sound equally crazy to others? No time to think about it because the rescuers were almost on him, and I was feeling faint from lack of oxygen. If only he didn't turn around at this moment. "Just out of curiosity, why not ask to go down on the shuttle? It's your right and would avoid all this fuss."

"Shuttles take too long. And except for you bothering me, there's no fuss," he said. At that moment, Two, Three and Four swooped down and, in a perfect maneuver, bound his arms to the back of the suit and his legs to each other. The jumper wiggled with fury and screamed curses into our ears, but couldn't injure himself or us as we pushed him through the airlock back into the station.

I took off my helmet and gasped for air. When they took off the jumper's helmet, I gasped again. It wasn't a man after all. It was a woman, a beautiful woman with long, flowing hair.

The jumper was my beloved Ariela.

She looked at me. "You wretched son-of-a-bitch," she yelled and unleashed a stream of horrible obscenities.

"Ariela, it's me, Dahm. Don't you recognize me?"

I'll never know if she did. The invective continued without pause while I stood there in shock. We had lived and loved together for a year, but in her current delirium, she couldn't acknowledge that. She could only cry out her frustration at having been thwarted from certain death.

A medic injected her with a sedative and wheeled her to the hospital sector where she would stay, drugged and bound, waiting for the next shuttle to Earth. Instead of sharing our lives, we would never see each other again. I wanted to cry.

Outside Wheel Room, the pregnant woman from the elevator approached me. Now, she didn't look at all like Ariela. "What happened? How did you get him back?" she asked.

My grief was so heavy, at first I didn't know what she was asking. I shrugged. "Her. I lassoed her."

"What?"

"I programmed a length of memory cable to form a circle and tighten on command, then threw it at the jumper until I caught her by the foot. Then I towed her to the station."

"That's brilliant," she said. "Where did you learn such a trick?"

"In pre-war videos. They do it all the time, usually to catch criminals."

She laughed. "That's an incredible idea. You'll probably get a medal."

I frowned. "But I wouldn't be able to show it to anyone. It would remind people about jumpers."

"I guess you're right." She smiled. "Still, it's a good job," she said, patting me on the shoulder. She left and I was alone.

#

Two nights later, I dreamed of being in my spacesuit with the Earth's visage above me, beckoning. I was finally going home. Then the air turned stuffy, and I gasped, unable to breathe. The oxygen meter flashed a low pressure warning. With asphyxiation immanent, I panicked,

I bolted upright in bed and couldn't stop panting, my body covered with sweat. I took one of the tranquilizers given me after the rescue, and paced the corridors of the residential level until morning. Instead of reporting to the computer room, I went to the only person who could talk to me without endangering himself. His office was a large, Earthstyle room with an oversized wood desk, plush brown chairs and a six foot black sofa. It bore no similarity to the functional, often colorful, but never roomy spacer furnishings. The psychologist himself sported long gray tresses around a large bald area, and wore, instead of the usual bodysuit, a white shirt with navy ruffles at the neck and flared maroon trousers, typical earthside style.

He was sitting behind his desk, looking at a computer screen when I came in. Finally he looked up. "Dahm, I'm glad you came. You saved me from filling out the paperwork for security to bring you." He chuckled at his own joke, though I didn't think it funny. "You went Outside two full days ago. Why didn't you visit me yesterday?"

I sat in one of the plush chairs and shrugged. "Spacers shouldn't need a head-shrinker."

He stared for a few moments as if he hadn't heard me. Then he grinned. "And broken legs should set themselves without a physician. At any rate, I'm guessing you experienced one of two different dreams. In the first, you've jumped yourself and suddenly realize that your suit has run out of air or you're burning up in re-entry. In the second dream, you make a graceful landing on the Earth's surface."

I clutched the arms of the chair. "You're right. I had the first dream, where I was suffocating."

Three seconds later, he nodded. "The first dream? Good. That means your subconscious can recognize reality. Rescuers who have the second dream get sent down by shuttle that very day."

I frowned. "Did Ariela jump because I couldn't get her pregnant?"

Once more he waited before answering. "No need for a guilt trip. Jumping comes from living on the station, not from how satisfied you feel living there."

Suddenly I understood. "You're a holo!"

Pause. "Come again?"

"You're not here on Epsathree. You're a hologram from Earth. The radio waves carrying your picture need two seconds to bounce between you and the station. Right now you're safely groundside. That's why the delay before you answer me."

After two seconds, he raised his eyebrows. "Of course. You couldn't talk to me about jumping if I lived on station. But I understand station life. I served on Epsaone for a year, precisely so I could serve you people as I am doing now."

"A year? That's no time at all. You can't understand me. You will never understand how we feel because you went back."

#

That was several years ago. For months, I thought about returning to Earth so I could remarry Ariela, but I'm a spacer. I couldn't abandon that, not even for her. I married another woman on the station, and now have two children, a boy and a girl. They have never been Home on Earth and they think walking on wide plains under the dome of the sky is an impossible fairy tale. Will their generation produce jumpers? This question obsesses me, but I don't worry about becoming a jumper myself. I sleep without nightmares and don't fret.

But every now and then, when my defenses are down, I close my eyes and see it, the View, the sight that lures people to their deaths. Every now and then it comes into my mind. When the memory breaks through, the totality of all I've lost by immigrating into Space hits me. I try to distract myself with a vid or a stroll in the park or visit with friends. But nothing works. I know what I have lost and I cry.

<end>

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Revised 9/06