"Steven Gould - Jumper" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gould Stephen Jay)

sympathize. I didn't see where the knife had gone, but he wasn't holding it at the moment.

Other doors opened slowly in the hall and heads cautiously peered around doorjambs. I shut my
door softly and locked it.

For the first time since I arrived in that hotel, I smiled.



Well, it was time to face it. I was different. I was not the same as my classmates from Stanville
High School, not unless some of them were keeping a pretty big secret.

I saw several possibilities.

The first was that Dad had really given it to me that last time, inducing brain damage or other
trauma to the point where I was dreaming the whole mess. Maybe even my mugging was just a detail
added by my subconscious to correlate with the "real" injuries. I could be lying in the St. Mary's
Hospital intensive care unit back in Stanville, a little screen going beep, beep, beep over my still form.
I doubted this, though. Even in my most terrifying nightmares I've had an awareness of the dream
state. The stench of the garbage from the alleyway seemed too real.

The second possibility was that I'd done most of the things I remembered and most of the bad
things that had happened to me had. My mind just warped reality in dealing with the results, giving to
me the more palatable alternative of escape by a singular paranormal ability. This seemed more likely.
Each time I'd "jumped" there was a feeling of unreality, of disorientation. This could be my shift into an
irrational psychosis, an adjustment to a nasty reality. On the other hand, it could be the result of every
sense reeling as the environment surrounding me changed completely. Hell—the very nature of the
jump could be disorienting.

It was this third possibility that I distrusted the most. The one that meant I might finally be
someone special. Not special in the sense of special education, not special in the sense of being a
problem child, but unique, with a talent that, if anybody else had it, they hid. A talent for teleportation.

There, I'd thought the word. Teleportation.

"Teleportation."

Aloud it vibrated in the room, a word of terrible import, alien to normal concepts of reality,
brought into existence only under special circumstances, in the framework of fiction, film, and video.

And if I was teleporting, then how? Why me? What was it about me that made me able to
teleport? And could anybody else? Is that what happened to Mom? Did she just teleport away from
us?

Suddenly my stomach went hollow and I began breathing rapidly. Jesus Christ! What if Dad
can teleport?

Suddenly the rooms seemed unsafe and I pictured him appearing before me, the belt in his hand,
anywhere, anytime.