Quantum Leap - Random Measures

by Ashley McConnell

  “I thought I heard you talking to somebody, but there’s nobody here,” Bethica said.

  “There’s me,” Sam and Al chorused.

  “So were you talking to yourself?”

  “Not exactly.” Observer and Leaper exchanged glances and half-smiles over the girl’s head.

  She twisted around to look over her shoulder to see what Sam was looking at. To her eyes, there was no one there; from Sam’s perspective, she was looking Al straight in the eye. Al was disconcerted.

  Sam was amused.

  But there was business to get to, and this was a good opportunity. “Hi,” he said cheerfully. “What’ll it be? Although I don’t think I can serve you anything except—” he glanced around—“maybe ginger ale.”

  “Ginger ale would be great,” she answered, turning back around again. “Where are the pretzels?”

  Sam, caught in the act of removing the cap from a green glass bottle, raised an eyebrow.

  “Well.” Filling a glass with ice, he poured the amber liquid over it, added a straw and pushed the glass over to her.

  Bethica sucked noisily on her straw.

  Sam poured a ginger ale for himself and rested his elbows on the bar across from her. “Have you thought about what I said about the party tonight?”

  Bethica nodded nervously.

  “You don’t have to go, you know.” Out of the corner of his eye he could see Al watching the handlink, shaking his head. That meant his arguments weren’t going to have the red effect. He wasn’t sure which effect Al was looking for—prevention of Bethica’s accident or Wickie’s death. Either one was something he’d rather not see happen.

  He decided to try another tack. “Bethica, have you ever driven a car while you were drunk?”

  The girl gave him an exasperated look. “Is this going to be another lecture? ’Cause I really don’t want one.”

  "No, it’s not a lecture. I just asked you a question.”

  She shrugged and concentrated on her drink, looking uncomfortable. “Yeah. But so have you!”

  Wickie drove drank. Terrific.

  "I never said I was smart.”

  "Genius, yes. Smart, no,” the Observer sniped.

  Sam couldn’t tell if Al was joking or not. “I never said it either,” he protested to them both. Neither one seemed to believe him.

  "Well, gee, you don’t have to sound so mad,” Bethica observed.

  "Yeah, Sam. Don’t get so thin-skinned. It’s not your fault you’re a genius.” Al could never resist a free shot, knowing Sam was limited in his responses. Bethica didn’t know Al was there; if Sam started answering Al, she’d think Sam had lost his mind. Sam was beginning to feel he had, anyway.

  Sam closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and exhaled through his nostrils, trying to bring things back into focus. "All I’m saying is that you could get hurt that way, and I’d hate to see that happen.” He sneaked a glare at Al. You could get hurt one of these days too if you keep it up, his unspoken message said. Al only smirked.

  Bethica, for her part, glanced up quickly. “Really?”

  “Really.” Encouraged by her sudden lightening of attitude, Sam smiled. “You know, you probably shouldn’t drink at all. Even if you weren’t—” He paused.

  Bethica’s face went very still. “You still think I’m a little girl.”

  “Not so little,” Al remarked.

  “No, I don’t think you’re a little girl.”

  “And stupid,” she muttered, poking at the ice in her glass with the straw. “At least, that’s what you thought—”

  “Well, yes, if you want to put it that way,” Sam said, interrupting. “When a person gets drunk they sometimes don’t know what they’re doing. They get involved in things they never meant to—”

  “Stop it! Just stop it!”

  He was startled to see tears glistening in her blue eyes. “I’m sorry.”

  “I’ll bet!”

  Sam drew breath to answer and let it go again. He’d done it again. It didn’t take much imagination to figure out what had been going on when Bethica got pregnant. Now she was looking at him as if he'd slapped her.

  Al was watching him steadily now, waiting to hear what he was going to say next with as much interest as the teenage girl in front of him.

  He was saved by the chirping of the handlink.

  Al studied the readout and said nothing. Sam raised an eyebrow. Al ignored him.

  “Look, if I asked you straight out, would you promise not to go to that party tonight?”

  She looked up then, eyes blazing, and snatched her hand away. “You know, you’re just as bad as Kevin is. You treat me like I’m some kind of little kid, unless it’s convenient. Well, you can’t tell me what to do!”

  “Bethica—”

  She slipped off the stool and walked out, slamming the door behind her.

  Sam looked helplessly at Al.

  He sighed and resumed polishing the bar. “Well, Plan A didn’t work. Got any suggestions for Plan B?”

  Now it was Al’s turn to shake his head. “You could try taking Kevin out before the party.”

  The polishing rag paused. “Seems to me you’ve made that sort of suggestion before. It didn’t work then, either.”

  "So sue me.”

  Are you going to tell me what’s going on, or are you going to hang around forever making me crazy?”

  First you complain because I’m not around. Now you ant to get rid of me?”

  The rag slapped onto the bar, splattering water the length of the bar. “Dammit, Al, what is going on? Is it something at the Project? What’s wrong?”

  Al studied him. his face impassive, no emotions showing. It was the face of a man who had faced down enemies and survived, of a man who had received orders he didn’t like and carried them out anyway because that was his job, of a man who hid his own feelings and carried on.

  It was not a face he had shown Sam Beckett very often.

  "Things at the Project,” he said, enunciating each word carefully, “are just fine. Everything is going as expected.”

  Baffled, Sam stared back. “Then why are you acting this way? Al, we’re friends. What’s going on? Is it Tina?”

  Al flinched.

  “It is Tina, isn’t it?”

  “No,” the Observer said, his gravelly voice hoarser now.

  "It isn’t Tina. It’s Janna. My—wife.”

  Wife. Wife?

  “You’re not married,” Sam said, barely hearing his own words. “You used to be. Did you get married again, after— after I left?”

  “I guess I did.” Al looked weary again. “I wasn’t married the last time I walked into the Imaging Chamber, but when I left it, I was.”

  Something in Sam Beckett’s forebrain kicked into high gear, ducking around holes in his memory, examining the ramifications of the Observer’s statement. It took a few minutes, staring past Al’s head, to reach a conclusion.

  “Why didn’t we think of that before?” he whispered.

  “What do you mean? You did think of it,” Al snapped, remembering years of minor changes, years of asking Ziggy every time he prepared to leave the Imaging Chamber. “I

  don’t know what it is you do, but sometimes Tina and Gooshie are married and sometimes they aren’t, sometimes you’re”—Al abruptly changed gears—“sometimes Verbeena has a doctorate in psychology and sometimes in psychiatry, sometimes—this is the part that really drives me nuts—we’re overrun seven million bucks and sometimes we’re on budget. And up until now I’ve been five times divorced and still single, but this time I’m married.

  “And unless there’s somebody else running around mucking up the past, Sam, it’s all your fault. We’ve got to get you home, just to make things settle down!”

  “But if . . . if things change every time you leave the Imaging Chamber, when you go back you’ll probably be single again, right? So everything should be okay again?”

  The impassive face was gone, replaced by another Sam had se
en only once before—when he’d told the Observer he wouldn’t change the past to save Al’s first marriage, the one to Beth. It was a look of such anguish he closed his eyes against it, and heard Al’s next words that much more clearly.

  “When I go back,” Al agreed, speaking very softly, “I’ll probably be single again. Janna will be somebody I never met, or somebody I only know from work. And I don’t want that, Sam. I don’t want this to change. I love her.”

  “But to stay married to her . . .,” Sam whispered, already knowing the answer, unable to finish the sentence.

  Al finished it for him, mercilessly. “To stay married to her, I can’t risk going back.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Kevin Hodge slid out from under his truck and wiped grease off his hands. Bethica was standing over him, tapping her foot impatiently.

  "So?” he said. “What?”

  "Are you still having that party tonight?”

  "Yeah, sure. Why not?”

  "Are you going to have beer and booze?”

  Kevin got to his feet and looked down at her. “Of course we’re going to have beer and booze. It isn’t a party otherwise.”

  “Good,” she said, and turned and stomped off.

  "Unless Wickie takes it away from you again,” one of his friends mocked. “Wickie’s good at taking stuff away from you.”

  Bethica stopped and turned around.

  Kevin glared at the boys. “Not any more.”

  His friends laughed at him. “You shoulda seen your face,” one unwary kid sitting on the tailgate of the truck said.

  In two strides Kevin crossed to the back of the truck, reached up and took the boy by the neck, hauled him out of the truck bed and threw him on the ground. “You got something to say?”

  The boy remained where he was, stunned.

  Bethica backed away several steps and watched him warily. Kevin wheeled around to glare at her, too. “What are you looking at?”

  “Nothing,” she assured him. “Nothing, Kevin.”

  He was staring at her with a kind of madness blazing in his eyes. “He’s not going to make a fool of me twice,” he said in a voice so low only she could hear. “Nobody makes a fool of me, not like that. You hear me, Beth? I’ll kill him if he tries. And you know I mean it.”

  Then, raising his voice, he said, “I’m getting a whole keg this time, and I’m picking it up myself. So don’t anybody worry. There’s going to be lots of booze up on the mountain this time, lots of food. It’s going to be the best party all year.”

  The other boys looked at each other meaningfully. They’d all heard that before. When Kevin spun around to look at them again, they chorused assent. Bethica had heard it too, and she too knew better than to challenge him. There was more going on here than just a quarter-keg of beer or a wrestling match in a parking lot.

  She also knew when it was a good idea to get away from Kevin, and she hurried away while he was still basking in the approval of his peers. She was still angry, at herself, at Kevin, at Wickie. So Wickie thought he could lecture to her like she was some little kid? Well, she wasn’t a little kid, and Wickie ought to know it. The party would go on as planned. Now all she had to do was find something great to wear. And hope Wickie didn’t do anything more to tick Kevin off.

  “I can’t do that stuff,” Wickie muttered.

  “Why not?” Verbeena asked reasonably. “It’s not so hard.”

  Wickie snorted to himself. “You’re a doctor. You’re smart.”

  Verbeena wondered what he’d say if he realized whose body he was in—a man who’d been on the cover of Time,

  Man of the Year. One of the smartest men of all time.

  Wickie might not exactly be in Sam Beckett’s league, but he was no dummy, either. Someone somewhere along the line had tried to give him a start. Despite his insecurity, he was making a decent try at the problems in the text he’d asked for, and he asked good questions, and he was more interested in the phenomenon of Leaping than frightened by it. In order to explain what little she understood of the physics, she’d had to start over with basic math. What he really wanted to do was talk to Ziggy, but there had to be units. She didn’t know how much memory he’d retain of his visit to the future.

  But he was an eager student, and Verbeena loved to teach. She gathered her dashiki around her and sat cross-legged on the floor of the Waiting Room and indulged them both, joyfully.

  "Al, I’m sorry,” Sam whispered. “I don’t know what to say.”

  Al shrugged, sliding his feelings behind a shield. “I don’t know what to say either. We went up to Santa Fe, had lunch, did some shopping. Not much to fall in love on, is it?”

  Sam bit his lip. “I guess it’s enough.” He didn’t comment on the things Al had left out. “You don’t know for sure that things will be different when you go back,” he offered.

  "Shall I have Ziggy figure the odds?” Bitterness filled the Observer’s voice for a moment, then disappeared, to be replaced by resignation. “It doesn’t make much difference, does it? It doesn’t do me a lot of good being married to her if I have to spend all my time with you to keep it that way. I lost her the minute I stepped back into the Imaging Chamber.”

  “She’s not gone, Al. She didn’t cease to exist because of something I’ve done. She’s alive somewhere now, doing something that probably leads her to the Project. Do you remember her from—from before the last time?”

  Al shrugged. “I think I do. She was just somebody around, not a direct report. How was I supposed to know? I was with Tina!”

  “What about Tina now?”

  “Tina’s happily married to Gooshie, has been for six months.”

  “But Gooshie has bad breath,” Sam protested.

  “I know,” Al said, expelling a cloud of cigar smoke.

  The two of them looked at each other, mystified.

  “You know, it’s not just your life—that suddenly you’re married when you weren’t before. Janna’s life changed too. But since she’s not here—she must be connected somehow to somebody I’ve met here,” Sam said thoughtfully, as they changed the subject by mutual agreement. “It’s a ripple effect. I’m the stone in the pond, and your life and Janna’s are somewhere out of my sight, but you’ve been hit by the ripple changes from this Leap. You could ask Ziggy about that.”

  Al raised an eyebrow and tapped the handlink. “Ziggy,” he said, speaking now to the computer controlling the Imaging Chamber in which his physical body remained, “how’s Janna connected to the people Sam’s met in Snow Owl?”

  The handlink blinked, pink, yellow, blue cubes glowing in sequence, slowly, then more rapidly. Al tapped in a code pattern. The light sequence repeated.

  “Ziggy can’t find a connection,” Al announced. “Who knows, Sam. Even if we did find out, it wouldn’t make any difference. Things would still change. They’ll keep changing until we find a way to get you home for good.”

  Home for good.

  Sam closed his eyes against a sudden unbearable rush of homesickness. He could only remember glimpses of the Project, of his family, of his own past. He could barely remember any more what his own face looked like. He’d been Leaping so long.. . .

  “I’d go home if I knew how, Al,” he said quietly.

  "I know, Sam.” Al reached out in a futile effort to touch Sam's shoulder, a touch that couldn’t connect, could offer no comfort.

  Sam drew a long shuddering breath. “Okay,” he said, straightening up again. “Things will keep on changing. They'll always affect you and the Project, to a greater or lesser extent. We don’t know how to keep that from happening; in fact, as long as the purpose of my Leaping is to change things, we can’t prevent it from happening. That’s a strict parameter. So we have to live with it until . . . we can stop making changes. Right?”

  Right.” Al tapped at his cigar. The ash fell and disappeared.

  That means you have to go back and find out the most efficient change I can make that will let me Leap. And you h
ave to go back, too, to work with Ziggy and, and . . .”

  And Gooshie and Tina and Verbeena,” Al supplied quickly, so the failure of memory wouldn’t be quite so obvious.

  "Gooshie and Tina and Verbeena,” Sam said, as if reading them back into his memory. He knew the names. He wasn’t quite sure what role each of them had at the Project. In any case it seemed that the roles involved were in flux. “And look for some way to find out what went wrong.”

  And bring me home again.

  He didn’t say it. He didn’t have to.

  "So I go back.” Al’s voice was expressionless.

  Sam looked at him carefully, aware of the weight and measure of his words, of what he was asking, aware that he had to ask it anyway. “Al, this sounds selfish, I know, but once I’m home, you might still be married to her. Or if you aren’t, you could marry her then.”

  “It won’t be the same,” Al grumbled softly. It did sound as if this plan were wholly to Sam’s benefit, but on the other hand . . . there was no other hand. He couldn’t spend the rest of his life in the Imaging Chamber, watching Sam; even if he did, he still wouldn’t be with Janna.

  “Ziggy does say you need to find a way to keep Bethica from going to that party, but since that’s when she talks Kevin out of killing Wickie, there’s a sort of conflict of interest going on.”

  “Does Ziggy have any suggestions?”

  “Not yet,” Al said, studying the handlink.

  “Then maybe you ought to go help Ziggy find out what the connection is between Janna and this Leap,” Sam said softly.

  Al met his eyes, his fingers poised over the handlink to send the code that would open the Door and end his relationship. He said nothing. His fingers touched the link. The Door opened, Al nodded once, sharply, and stepped through. The Door closed behind him.

  “Good luck,” Sam whispered.

  No one else came into the bar that afternoon. Sam finished cleaning up, mopped down the floor, dusted everything in sight. He’d expected Kevin, or someone fronting for Kevin, to come in and buy another keg, but no one came. He was spending more time alone on this Leap than he could remember in a long time.

  He half wished Davey would come in so he could try again to teach him to play “Chopsticks,” even though he knew it would be a futile effort. He wondered if the boy compared himself to other people and felt bad about his own limitations, his irrational rages. They weren’t remotely his fault, but no one would ever be able to explain that to him. Eighteen or nineteen years ago, fetal alcohol syndrome wasn’t that well known anyway. He wondered when Rimae had found out that her adopted son was irreversibly retarded, and found himself flinching with sympathy at her reaction. Grief. Anger. And an overwhelming urge to protect her son, forever.