Al snorted softly.
The best witness, and sometimes the only defense that made any difference, was Ziggy. They bargained for time to keep searching for a solution by renting out Ziggy’s problem-solving capabilities, with Al acting as the front man and chief salesperson for the Project’s computational capabilities. But Ziggy was more than just an incredibly advanced computer; it was self-aware, and it made its own bargains. It agreed to work on the calculations for traffic control in the Greater Los Angeles Metropolitan area, the balancing of the declining water table for the San Fernando Valley, seven or eight major sports books for Las Vegas casinos, stress-reduction studies, the Human Genome Project, and flood-control calculations nationwide for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, if and only if it was allowed to continue the search for the secret of Sam Beckett’s return undisturbed. Al might tell Sam he was playing fantasy basketball; actually, Ziggy had been calculating the effect of certain minor tectonic shifts on the New Madrid fault.
It was discreet blackmail, was what it was, and Al Calavicci was never sure whether the Project was the blackmailer or the blackmailee. At least he had the comfort of knowing that the government didn’t realize the consequences, the ramifications of a random factor in the past. They were satisfied, at least for the time being, with the tidbits Ziggy offered, and for the most part left the Project alone, never realizing the desperate focus of its work.
But it never seemed to do any good. They never seemed to make any progress. Since the day in 1995 when Sam Beckett stepped into the Accelerator, determined to prove his theory was right, they seemed to be caught in an endless loop: Sam Leaped, made some minor change in history, and Leaped, and made some minor change in history, and Leaped, and made some minor change .. . but never came home. None of the solutions offered, none of the measures attempted, ever seemed to have an effect.
They were no closer to bringing him home than they were that first day, when the body of Sam Beckett had collapsed in the Imaging Chamber and Ziggy told them
what had happened. Meanwhile, the past was getting more and more confusing.
Al sighed and propped his feet up on the comer of his desk, surreptitiously unwrapping a long cigar and wadding the plastic into a ball between his fingers. It was against federal regulations to smoke anywhere within a public building; since federal funds built the Project, his office qualified as “public,” even though it was necessary to add several sigmas to a Q clearance to get in. Nothing said he couldn’t stick an unlighted stogie in his mouth, though.
It was a neat, well-organized room, with space on the wall for a shadow box holding assorted medals and honors and an American flag, a presentation from his retirement more than a dozen years before. The desk was metal, standardissue gunmetal gray, though he could have requisitioned a wooden desk with a glossy sheen; he wanted something he could work on and put his feet on and kick from time to time, so he stuck to metal, and if visitors thought it was less than he was entitled to, that was their problem, not his. He knew who he was.
A wide strip of graph paper ran the length of one wall, with a series of dates plotted against each other, zigging and zagging insanely in lines of blue and red. Only Al and Ziggy knew what the dates stood for; there was no discernible pattern. If there had been, Ziggy would have told him; the graph paper was there as a concession to human frailty, a visual representation of the incidence and duration of Sam’s Leaps. The gaps between Leaps were a mystery still. They had no idea where Sam was during the interLeap, or why weeks could go by at the Project when, to Sam, no time at all had passed from one crisis to the next.
Stress reduction. Like the stress of stepping out of the Imaging Chamber, into—Al took a deep breath. He didn’t even want to think about it. Al wondered if the studies Ziggy was working on addressed a stress situation like this. He doubted it.
These days he had to make himself go down to the Waiting Room to greet each new stranger. He’d seen so many. Sam had been every color, every sex, every level of intelligence—
Well, no, come to think of it, no, he hadn’t. Because what Leaped was still, always, essentially Sam Beckett. So while he might occupy, for instance, the body of a retarded man, somehow Sam Beckett’s mind managed to use the sometimes inadequate organic equipment and yet remain Sam Beckett. Al’s eyes narrowed.
“Ziggy, could that be why his memory Swiss-cheeses?” he said to the empty air.
“Could what be, Admiral?” The voice responding out of the still-empty air was a woman’s, light and beautiful and faintly peevish. “I can’t read your mind, you know.”
Al hiked an eyebrow. He wasn’t sure he believed that last remark. “Could Sam’s memory be affected by his occupying other brains?”
“Yes,” the reply came, without hesitation.
Al waited. He could hear nothing but the subdued roar of the air-conditioning system and, off in the distance from the cubicles outside his office, a ringing telephone. “Well?” he prompted at last.
“Well, what?” The voice was definitely petulant by now. “It’s certainly a viable hypothesis, Admiral, but there’s no way to test it, and certainly no way to run a controlled experiment. I don’t understand the human soul, or mind, or whatever it is. Not any more than I understand God or Fate or Chance or Time or Whatever. I’m only a computer, after all.”
If Ziggy were a flesh-and-blood woman, Al would be budgeting perfume at this point; the computer sounded like his third ex-wife, those times she claimed he wasn’t paying her enough attention.
But Ziggy wasn’t flesh and blood, exactly. She was neural tissue and electronic circuits and one hell of an ego. Al
wondered whether that ego was supposed to be a result of his contribution to the neural chips. He didn’t think so. Sam had done that part of the programming, with Gooshie’s help. And it sure wasn’t Gooshie’s ego; the poor guy didn’t have any to spare.
Which left Sam. Sam Beckett, egomaniac.
Naaah. Al chomped on the cigar. “Well, I thought if anybody could figure it out, it was you.”
“It won’t solve the problem of bringing him home.”
Al sighed. “Nothing’s gonna bring him home,” he muttered.
“That’s not true!” Ziggy said sharply. “We will bring him home! It may take time—”
“It’s already taken ten years. If the most advanced computer on earth can’t figure out what went wrong in ten years of calculations, nobody can. We’re all going to be dead first.”
“Admiral!”
Al thought he could hear shock and, yes, fear in the computer’s voice. Perversely, he continued. “Well, look at the odds. Figure your own probabilities—that seems to be your favorite thing to do. How many times has he almost died? Do you really think you’re going to get it figured out before he manages to get himself killed? Every single Leap it’s the same thing.”
The silence was eons long, for a computer.
“I can only conjecture,” Ziggy said at last, much subdued, “that whatever it is that controls Dr. Beckett’s Leaps wouldn’t permit him to die.”
“You want to take a chance?” Al challenged. He shouldn’t enjoy torturing the poor computer so much, he knew, but he could say these things only to Ziggy, and he had to say them, sometimes, to somebody. “If you’re so sure Somebody Up There is taking care of him—if it would save him somehow—how about we let him go through a whole Leap sometime and let him wing it? See if miracles really do happen?”
“I won’t abandon him,” Ziggy said quietly. Al bit his lip, ashamed of himself.
“I wouldn’t ei----” he started, when the computer interrupted.
“It’s also true,” Ziggy said thoughtfully, “that if we accept the possibility that some outside intelligence is directing the Leaps for a purpose, then we must also accept that this intelligence has chosen Dr. Beckett as its instrument because it is unable to intervene directly. And if that’s the case, that intelligence would be unable to protect Dr. Beckett in a life-threatening situation. And the
question of whether that intelligence would permit him to die is moot, since it cannot prevent his death, any more than it can intervene directly to effect the changes it wishes to make.
“I’m aware that I can have no contact with Dr. Beckett without you, Admiral, but I repeat: I will not abandon him.”
Al tossed the file onto the stack on the table. “Oh hell, Ziggy, neither will I. I’m just frustrated.”
There was a long companionable silence, and then the computer speakers released a long sound that was Ziggy’s version of a sigh.
“Go get some sleep, Admiral,” the computer said. “It’s late.”
Al looked around the office, at the stacks of papers, the never-ending piles of reports and notices. “I never really appreciated a good yeoman before,” he muttered. Getting up, he shoved the nearest pile of paper lopsided. He liked things neat and tidy; you didn’t go to sea and have things lying around loose. If a storm came up, things could get broken or lost.
But there were times when things were so screwed up anyway that it didn’t much matter. Like now. This time they were a real mess.
“Admiral,” Ziggy said again, with unwonted patience. “Mrs. Calavicci is waiting.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Wickie woke up again fully dressed, lying on an examining table set up in a corner of the white room. The woman in the red dashiki sat primly a few feet away, her hands resting lightly on her knees. She looked tired, as if she was at the end of a long day that wouldn’t stop.
“Welcome, Mr. Starczynski.”
He expected a hangover, or at least some kind of headache, after being drugged. But his mind was clear, and he actually felt pretty good, considering. He sat up smoothly and looked down at himself. Shirt and pants; a different style from the one he was used to, but the colors, brown and green, were agreeable. He wore soft slippers instead of shoes. That told him he wasn’t expected to go anywhere. But the place didn’t stink like jail, and it didn’t look like jail, either.
He took a long appraising look around.
Over at the other end of the room, past the single door, was the bed, the machinery, the stairs, the observation deck— all the things he’d seen before he’d been gassed to sleep. Opposite him was the woman. There was no one else in the room.
He looked at her and waited, patient and suspicious. She bore his gaze with equanimity. If he tried anything, he guessed, they’d just gas him again. And even if he could
get out of here, where would he go?
“My name is Dr. Verbeena Beeks,” she said. “You’re probably wondering what’s happened to you.”
He snorted softly to himself, kept his face impassive.
She waited to see if he’d ask any questions. When he kept quiet, she went on.
“The first thing is, we’re really sorry you’re here. You have no idea how sorry.” She drew in a breath. She couldn’t possibly sit up any straighter. She looked like a picture in one of Bethica’s books, a picture of a queen of some place in Africa. “You’ve accidentally become involved in an experiment that’s gone wrong. It’s our sincere hope that very shortly you’ll return to your proper place. It would help us if you’d tell us everything you can about yourself and the people you know.”
Wickie thought about this. Experiment? That sounded like the government. She was holding something back, of course. There was more to the story. He looked down at his hands, clutching the edge of the examining table, and he didn’t recognize them at all.
He wondered how much she wasn’t telling him, and decided to see if he could find out. “What kind of experiment?”
“It’s an experiment in quantum physics,” she said.
Uncertainty. She wasn’t all that sure about this part herself. But physics, that was government, for sure.
“The result is that you’ve .. . switched places . .. with one of our people. He has to take certain actions. Once he does, you’ll switch back, and you probably won’t remember anything about this.” She wasn’t sure about that, either, he could tell.
Switched places. He lifted his right hand, rotated it, examined it. It was too pale, and there wasn’t any scar across the heel of his hand.
Not his hand.
Switched places.
Demons stole people’s souls, his mother had told him. They came in the night, creatures with twisted faces, and they took people away and they were never seen again. He never really believed that stuff. This black woman, she didn’t look like a demon. This place didn’t look like any version of Hell he’d ever heard about.
Still. Not his hand. Witchcraft.
He clenched “his” fist, watching fascinated as the hand that was not his hand moved and tightened. It felt like his hand felt—strong, the muscles moving and shifting; the nails biting into the palm brought the same edged pain. But his hands weren’t so big, so white. He suppressed a shudder of panic. He wouldn’t let this woman see him be afraid.
She’d said something about switching back, if—He had to have more information. He had to. Not really expecting an answer, he asked, “What actions?”
Abruptly, she looked exasperated and much more human. “I don’t know. Nobody knows. We’re trying to figure that out. That’s why we need information from you.”
“Well, if you don’t know what actions, how do you know I’ll—switch back with this guy?” He was pushing it hard, he knew. He had no reason to think a government person would tell him anything. Government people liked to say things and act superior and they didn’t like questions. But this woman was answering him so far.
She slumped, just the tiniest bit. Definitely not a demon, then; he couldn’t remember any stories where demons looked sad. “Because that’s the way it’s always worked before.”
The past was no guarantee of the future. On the other hand, he didn’t have anything better to go on, and it looked like this doctor woman didn’t either. “This happens a lot, then?”
Dr. Beeks nodded, biting her lip. Demons didn’t do that, either.
“And it always switches back okay?”
She opened her mouth to say something, then stopped. He watched with interest, waiting for the signs that she was going to lie to him.
The signs didn’t come. “Once a man switched back in
time to die,” she said. “We can’t control that. But mostly everything goes back okay. Better than it was before.”
He looked back down at his pale hand. Switching back was better?
Better than being stuck behind a bar, watching the white kids reach for what he’d never had?
The black woman had said so.
And it was better to be yourself, always. His mother had told him that, back when he was young and foolish and wondered who he really was, when his cousins on each side of the family made fun of him for being part of the other.
He raised the unfamiliar hand. “Who is this man?”
She hesitated. Now the lies would come. But instead, she said, “I’m sorry. I can’t tell you that, because if we succeed in switching you back, we can’t let you remember any of this.”
He grinned then, a tight unpleasant grin. “Afraid I might go looking for him and punch him out, huh?”
She laughed. “Well, you might. Even though it isn’t his fault either. He’s caught, just like you are.”
Caught. Trapped in his, Wickie Gray Wolf’s, body. He felt a flare of anger. How dare this white man take his body from him?
At least she was being honest with him. So far.
“What do you want to know?” he asked cautiously.
They weren’t his quarters, for one thing. And the woman waiting for him, the woman Ziggy called “Mrs. Calavicci”— he never thought he’d get married again without Sam to stand up for him. If Sam stood up for him the marriage would last, he’d always believed. A walking good-luck charm, that was Sam Beckett.
And the terrifying part was, he didn’t even know who she was.
He’d cut the connection with Sam and the first thing Ziggy said, b
efore Al even had a chance to ask, was, “Admiral, you’re married in this present.” He’d stood there in the Imaging Chamber, surrounded by blank walls, gasping like a gaffed fish, his mouth opening and closing, completely unable to react.
Sam’s Leaping changed things; he’d gotten used to that. Once, on a trip to Washington, he’d been testifying before a congressional committee and watched the chairman change to a chairwoman before his very eyes. Nobody else had noticed; he’d slipped without missing a beat into a different future created by Sam’s actions in the past.
But the past Sam was in now had thrown up a new future, like flotsam onto the beach, that Al Calavicci was supposed to live in. Be a part of.
He wondered briefly what would happen if Sam changed something so that he, Al, wasn’t part of the Project. Would he know? Would he even realize anything had happened?
Probably not. He wouldn’t even remember anything had ever been different.
He was stalling. He could tell he was stalling.
He’d never heard of this woman, this “Janna” before, never seen her, and he was supposed to walk in and be a loving husband. It scared him more than he wanted to admit.
She had to be connected with the Project somehow, he knew that much; this was not a place where people brought their families, raised kids, and built computers to sell commercially. A scientist, an engineer, an administrator, a janitor?
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