Al had maneuvered himself past Sam and was trying to look past the front panels of the shirt. It was a blue plaid flannel, too big for her, but it probably fit Wickie perfectly. It was draped across her breasts in such a way that Al couldn’t quite see, and he raised one hand, caught sight of Sam’s frankly murderous glare, and thought better of it.
“Wickie, honey, what’s wrong?” The woman obviously thought the glare was meant for her. Sam made a hasty decision based on inadequate data and hoped he wasn’t too far out of line. The woman had all too obviously made herself at home. He could only hope that she had another home somewhere else, too. “Aren’t you glad to see me?”
“N-nothing’s wrong,” Sam stammered. “I just didn’t expect to see you here.”
“You weren’t supposed to expect me. I wanted it to be a surprise. It’s been way too long, sweetheart. Weeks, in fact. I figured it was time to do something about that.”
He was reminded of the wall of heat from the burner of the hot air balloon; he could feel himself gasping for air. She licked her lips, slowly, pink tongue against dark red lipstick, ran her hand down his chest, twined her arms around his neck, pulled him closer. It would have been a parody of lust, if she weren’t so obviously teasing him.
In all senses of the word.
And rather successfully, too.
Even if she did taste of old tobacco.
Oops.
“Oh ho,” Al chortled. “Looks like you’ve got a fan, Sam. And a very . . . attractive one, too.”
“I’m sorry, it’s just—I’ve got a real bad headache,” he said lamely, wishing he could get his hands on Al’s virtual throat. “The truck—it almost went off the road—”
“What?” the woman snapped. The image of the playful seductress snapped abruptly out of existence as she stalked across the room and through Al to yank down the blinds and peer at the truck parked outside. “You know I can’t afford more bills right now—Was there any damage?”
“No,” Sam said, still reeling from the transition and wondering if she was going to ask about damage to Wickie, too. The most important thing appeared to be the truck, though. He didn’t remember following the woman, but somehow he was standing next to her again.
“A headache?” Al interjected. “I haven’t heard that since my second—no, my th—Come to think of it, all my wives used that line on me, one time or another. . . .”
“Who is she?” Sam mouthed behind the woman’s back. Based on her reaction to the news about the truck, he had a pretty good idea, but it would be nice to get some confirmation.
“Huh? What did you say?” Al asked, belatedly realizing Sam was trying to communicate with him. Sam jabbed a finger in the woman’s direction, almost catching her in the breast as she spun around; he snatched his hand back again and laughed self-consciously.
“Don’t play tickle with me, dammit,” she snapped. “What happened with the truck?”
“Er, nothing. It’s okay, really. Really. Not a scratch on it.” He winced, remembering the tree branches scraping the roof. “Well, not to speak of.”
“Aw, now you got her mad,” Al mourned.
She was past him, pulling the shirt off as she walked through the doorway into the next room. Sam, remaining where he was, caught a tantalizing glimpse of her back. Al followed her as if on a leash.
“Al!” Sam said between his teeth. The hologram paused in the doorway without looking around. “Al, will you please get back here?”
“The view is better from here,” Al responded, not moving.
Sam took a very deep breath and let it out, slowly. He couldn’t kill Al, though the urge was overwhelming; Al was his best friend. His buddy. His Observer, his only contact with his own life.
More to the point, Al was out of reach. “Al, will you get back here and tell me what I’m supposed to be doing here?”
“It’s too late. She’s getting dressed.” Al sounded depressed.
“I don’t think I’m here to make love to a total stranger,” Sam said through his teeth.
“Since when am I a total stranger?” the woman snapped, reentering the room by walking through the hologram. She was fully dressed now, wearing sandals, flowery bell-bottom pants, and a short, rib-hugging top to match. “And you better believe, if there’s any damage to that truck, it’s coming out of your paycheck.” She marched past Sam and out the door.
Paycheck? It had to be Rita Marie Hoffman. Sam watched her examine the sides and fenders, and hoped she wouldn’t raise the tarp. He didn’t think she’d be happy about finding a full quarter-keg back there.
Fortunately she didn’t find enough damage to send her back into the cabin, looking for blood. She glanced back once at the bewildered man standing in the light of the doorway and made a disgusted gesture and marched off. Sam breathed a sigh of relief and made a mental note to see if he could get that headlight replaced before she found out about it.
“Another one of life’s great lost opportunities,” Al mourned.
“Do you suppose you could rein in your libido just long enough to find me some information about this Leap?” Sam asked, dripping sarcasm. “For starters, who was that woman?” It never hurt to verify his data.
“Another one of life’s great lost opportunities,” Al repeated. “Sam, how do you do it? Leap after Leap? All these women, throwing themselves at you, and you just. .. you just. .. .” He was practically in tears.
“Al, is Tina on vacation or something?” Sam asked.
“How did you know?” Al asked, his eyes glittering suspiciously.
“You’re just being a little more Al than usual, that’s all. Look, she’s gone now. Would you mind coming back to earth long enough to find out what I’m supposed to be doing here? Or is that too much to ask?”
“What? Oh, yeah.” The focus of his distraction having left his direct line of vision, Al managed to pull himself together long enough to look at the handlink. He had to wipe the sweat off before he could read the pattern of blinking lights.
“Uh-hmmm.” He cast a furtive glance at Sam. Sam folded his arms and waited, none too patiently. “Well. It seems there’s a ninety-eight-percent chance that your visitor was Rimae—er, Rita Marie Hoffman, the lady who owns the bar. I guess they call her Rimae. There’s a ninety-nine-percent chance that she’s having a—uh—relationship with Wickie.”
“I’d say so,” Sam agreed dryly. “Unfortunately, I’m not Wickie.”
“But you could be,” Al began. Sam raised his eyebrows. “Oh, all right. Ziggy says he hasn’t quite figured out what you’re supposed to change.”
“What about those kids up the mountain?” Sam suggested. “Does Ziggy know anything about them?”
“Hey, there’s an idea.” Al tapped in a series of codes. “Ouch. Not good.”
“What is it?”
Al pursed his lips. “Well, during the ski season most of those kids spend their free time working at the slopes. But in the summertime, there isn’t much going on in Snow Owl, so—”
“So they get together out on the mountain and they drink.”
“And they drink,” Al said. He paused. Al knew quite a bit about drinking for entertainment, and what the consequences could be. Sam thought the Observer could probably see a lot of himself in the restless teenagers.
“So what else should I know?”
Al drew in a deep breath and let it out again. “Wickie’s the bartender at the Polar Bar—”
“You told me that already. Unfortunately, I don’t know anything about bartending.”
“I could probably help you out on that. Anyway, he’s the bartender. He’s been here for the last couple of years. He does odd jobs for the boss lady.” He raised one eyebrow meaningfully. Sam groaned and started taking off his shirt, flexing the shoulder he’d carried the keg on and rubbing at the sore spot.
If he ever got home again, Sam promised himself, Al Calavicci was going to pay for a lot of things. The process of Leaping knocked random holes in an otherwise photo
graphic memory; he depended on Al for information about large chunks of his own past, varying from Leap to Leap. But if there was any justice in the universe at all, his Swiss-cheesed memory would let him remember all the times Al, who liked to pretend that he had the morals of the average goat, had gleefully tormented him about his encounters with women who thought they were dealing with husbands and lovers, not a time-lost quantum physicist caught in an experiment gone, as Al had once put it, “a little ca-ca.”
“Could we get back to business, please?” he said through gritted teeth.
He could have sworn that bushy eyebrow couldn’t possibly get any higher. That would teach him to swear, no doubt. “If you don’t mind . ..” he emphasized, rotating his right arm.
“Well, depends on the business, I guess, but since the lady has left. . .” Al sighed. “Ziggy says”—the Observer cocked an eyebrow at the handlink—“there’s a forty-three-percent chance Wickie’s gonna get fired in the next few days.” He cast an appraising eye over Sam, now stripped to his briefs and going through some stretching exercises in an effort to loosen up tight muscles. “For non-performance of duty, the data says.”
He was going to hang Al Calavicci from the highest yardarm, Sam promised himself. If the Navy wouldn’t loan him a yardarm, he’d build one himself. He continued the stretches, not giving the hologram the satisfaction of a response. It was a good thing Wickie was in good shape; the kinks came out pretty easily. On the other hand, it was taking some effort to work up a sweat.
It was taking a lot of effort to ignore the smell of lilacs still lingering in the air, and the memory of the woman standing there, with the shirt hanging open. He pushed himself harder.
“But you—or Wickie, anyway—continue to stay in Snow Owl. So you must still be performing some duties,” Al went on, all cherubic innocence. Sam gritted his teeth and reached up to put his palms flat against the ceiling.
“Let me guess,” he said. “Ziggy doesn’t really have the slightest idea what I’m supposed to be doing here. Forty-three percent is practically nothing.”
“Nope, Ziggy has no idea. But I do.”
“Enough already, Al. Knock it off. I know what you think, and I’m really not interested. Give me the background, okay?”
Al conceded, and adopting a much more businesslike tone, continued, “Rita—Rimae—Hoffman’s been divorced seventeen years. She’s got an adopted son, Davey, nineteen, who works in the bar. He’s mildly retarded. And a niece, Bethica, just turned eighteen—Ziggy says Bethica’s the one who was involved in the wreck that may or may not happen on Monday, by the way. Bethica is Rimae’s brother’s daughter. Her parents died when she was three— she’s lived with Rimae ever since.
“Rimae’s had it rough, but she owns the bar free and clear, and she’s pretty well respected in Snow Owl.”
“And Wickie?” Now he was down on the wide-planked floor, doing abdominal crunches.
“I already told you almost all of it. He’s got an eighthgrade education, has worked a few dozen places. Got thrown into jail a few years ago for drunk and disorderly, but they didn’t press charges. Clean record otherwise. Ziggy can’t find much on him. He doesn’t go anywhere or do anything with his life, as far as we can see. Never gets married. Dies of exposure in one of the big snowstorms of 1994.”
“Well,” Sam muttered, beginning to pant, “we’ve had less to go on.”
“Aren’t there splinters down there?” Al said, distracted from the handlink by the sight of Wickie—Sam—curling and uncurling his body in precise rhythm. Sam Beckett had kept himself fit with a variety of martial arts exercises. Wickie might not do sabbatt or mu tai or karate, but he was in good shape nonetheless.
“Haven’t found any yet,” Sam grunted. Sweat was beginning to trickle down the midline of his chest.
“I always used a cold shower, myself,” Al said to nobody in particular. “Different strokes, I guess.”
“Am I going to have to put up with this for this whole Leap?” Sam demanded, staring up from the floor. His fingers were still laced behind his head, his arms flat on the floor. His chest rose and fell as he panted from the exertion.
“Put up with what?”
“I thought you had a backup girlfriend for when Tina was on vacation.”
“Me?” Al was the picture of injured innocence. “I wouldn’t cheat on Tina. Not since that time she caught me with Nancy—or maybe Terri—no, it was Carlotta, and—”
“Who’s Carlotta? I thought it was Desiree. Monica? Maria? Annie?—Never mind, I don’t want to know.” The number and variety of Al’s backup girlfriends was legendary.
“You’ll never know how much you’re missing.” Al grinned reminiscently.
“I hope not.”
“Not if you’re going to insist on being so damn pure all the time.”
“Yeah, but think of all the things I don’t have to worry about. STDs, AIDS, unplanned pregnancies ...”
“You don’t have to worry about those things anyway if you look at it as an exercise in logistics. I’ve never had a single problem.” He paused. “Or a married one either.”
“AZ.” Now Sam’s arms were over his eyes. “Al, please, go away, go make up with Tina, go find Carlotta, Terri, Nancy, all of them! I don’t care. But don’t come back until you’re rational again.”
“Well, if you’re going to be that way about it. I could probably find somebody if I really wanted to.” Al punched in the code, stepped backward, and the Door slid down.
And Al was gone. The room was blessedly silent, except for the sound of Sam’s own ragged breathing. He had a stitch in his side, and he waited for it to fade out before he sat up and continued the movement to end standing again.
He needed a shower. The logical place for the shower was on the other side of the door Rita had been on, and he stuck his head around the frame carefully, feeling a little foolish but wanting to make sure the room really was empty, first. It was a good thing the room was empty. What would the occupant have thought, hearing only Sam’s half of the recent conversation? It was enough to boggle the mind. Usually he was more careful than that.
Wickie wasn’t the neatest housekeeper in the world, but he wasn’t a complete slob either, Sam was relieved to find. The bed was more or less made, and the sheets looked as ii they’d been changed recently. A pair of jeans draped over the back of a chair, and the top right-hand drawer of the dresser stood a couple of inches open. More jeans hung in the closet; the bottom dresser drawer held a supply of T-shirts.
If he ever got home again, he had a great career in front of himself as a burglar, he thought. After too many years of practice, he could go through someone’s possessions in twenty minutes flat and tell whether he or she was married, had kids, where the occupant went to school, and what their favorite flavor of Jell-0 was. Wickie wasn’t married, didn’t have kids, and didn’t eat Jell-O. As for going to school, Sam found an elementary algebra book on the counter in the kitchen, with pencil marks in the margins. Two other books, both westerns, and six magazines constituted the remainder of the reading material in the cabin. Four of the magazines, hidden under the sofa, featured hyperdeveloped
mammary glands. Sam was glad his Observer wasn’t around to critique them. At least Wickie had the excuse of being only twenty-two.
The bathroom showed signs that Rimae had made herself at home; he was fairly sure the still-wet, delicately scented lilac soap, the slender pink razor, and the loofah sponge weren’t Wickie’s. Besides, there was a second razor available, and another bar of soap, which he made grateful use of.
Twenty minutes later he was feeling much better, much more self-possessed. But the clock on the dresser said it was two-thirty in the morning, and there was nothing left to do but go to bed.
CHAPTER FOUR
Time at the Project didn’t always match Sam’s. It might be noon wherever Sam was and midnight at the Project. In this case, Al had returned to the Imaging Chamber and decided he had time to go to his office and wo
rk for a few hours. Now he was wishing he’d found some other way to put things off. The administration offices were empty. The only sounds were from the environmental controls and that annoying hum from the light bulb down the hall that was almost burned out.
Another maintenance request to sign off on.
Al Calavicci had read one too many maintenance reports, recalculated one too many salary increase budgets, offered one too many testimonies before committees which would never see the light of the Congressional Record. He was fed up with administration. He was fed up with Total Quality Management. He was fed up with the Project. He was staring at the latest set of federal requirements for management of stress reduction in the workplace and thinking seriously about quitting.
Too often, these days, he had to remind himself that they were trying to bring Sam Beckett back. If it weren’t for the fact that he was the only one who could contact Sam, he would have resigned long since, sick of watching hundreds of people batter themselves senseless against a puzzle that
simply would not be cracked. If it weren’t for the fact that Sam was still out there—
And it was getting harder and harder to measure the cost of continuing the Project against the difficulty of convincing the Project’s sponsors that while the shell of Sam Beckett, Ph.D., Ph.D., Ph.D., Ph.D., Ph.D., Ph.D., M.D., was still in the Waiting Room, what occupied that shell was not Sam Beckett, that God or Time, Fate or whatever had thrown him back in the past to put things right that had gone wrong.
It had been a lot easier to convince them when the bill was only nine or ten billion. Now they were beginning to question whether Sam had ever really disappeared at all. “Look at his fingerprints,” they argued. “Those are Dr. Beckett’s. The retinal imprints are the same. The DNA is the same. How can you say Sam Beckett is missing?”
The only physical evidence was in the brain scans. Once the difference was pointed out to them, even congressional aides could see the difference between Sam Beckett’s ultraencephalograph patterns and those of X2 test pilot Captain Tom Stratton; of private detective Nick Allen; of Jimmy La Matta, who had Down’s syndrome; of Cheree Walters, teenage singer; of secretary Samantha Stormer; of any of the dozens of people he’d Leaped into in the past several years. But now the people controlling funding were muttering about forgeries, about substitutions, about outright fraud. There were suggestions that Sam had completely lost touch with reality, that the whole Project was involved in a conspiracy to protect their Director and prevent him from (a) obtaining the psychiatric help he so desperately needed or (b) being exposed as a hopeless paranoid schizophrenic. Not that they believed any of it, but it would make an excellent excuse to shut things down, to make a cut in the deficit. Ever since Congress had pulled the plug on the Superconducting Supercollider, they’d had it in for basic science.
Quantum Leap - Random Measures Page 3