Quantum Leap - Random Measures

by Ashley McConnell

  Tina was a delight. Had been. Would be. She was in his future, the future he’d been used to, had enjoyed before and would again. But it wouldn’t be Janna.

  But if he didn’t do this, he’d regret it. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow . . .

  “I love you very much, you know that?” he said soft¬ly.

  “Have I ever shown you the Imaging Chamber?” he asked.

  “What exactly is your relationship with Bethica Hoffman, Mr. Starczynski?” Verbeena Beeks in the throes of an attack of motherliness was not to be denied. She’d never met Bethica Hoffman; she didn’t have to. She’d swept in— literally; her caftan caught on a chair and she kicked it aside without a second thought—and marched over to the diagnostic bed upon which the Visitor was lying. Now she was standing, arms akimbo, staring down at him.

  The man in the Waiting Room shot her a wary glance, setting aside the magazine he was reading—an old issue of a popular science magazine. “Who wants to know?”

  “I do.” Verbeena Beeks was not in the mood to take any back talk from a Visitor. “This young lady is a minor child, and she’s pregnant, and I have reason to believe you’re the father.”

  “Holy sh—How do you know?” The face that was Sam Beckett’s was white with shock. It was enough to con¬vince Verbeena that Ziggy was right. Wickie Starczynski sat upright. He would have gotten to his feet, but Verbeena didn’t allow him the room. Her snapping brown glare pinned him to the bed.

  “That doesn’t matter,” she said evenly. “What does matter is just what you plan to do about it.”

  “Hey, it wasn’t my fault—”

  “Oh, really,” Verbeena said dryly. “Last I heard, it takes two.” Now that she’d gotten his attention, she stepped away, striding to the opposite side of the room.

  “She came on to me! She broke up with that fancy boy-friend of hers because she finally found out what he was really like, and she came to me to make sure he’d leave Davey alone, and—-I guess she was mad. She thought she’d show him. She was crying. And, and it just kind of . . . happened. I’m not saying it was right.” He was on his feet immediately, but he knew better than to follow her.

  “Do you even care about her?” Verbeena was making an elaborate show of glancing through a stack of other books and magazines on the table. An interesting, if eclectic, collection: Psychology Today, New Discoveries, the math books they’d been working with, Call of the Wild. Cross-word puzzles. She looked up just in time to see the look on his face.

  “Of course I care about her,” he was saying bitterly. “But what difference does that make? I’m just a half-breed bartender.”

  It was the wrong thing to say, and definitely the wrong person to say it to.

  “Pretty soon”—I hope, she added prayerfully to herself— “you’re going to be going back to yourself. I think you better start thinking about how you’re going to handle the situation you’re going to be walking into. Just what do you plan to do about it?”

  “What do you mean?”

  He only had an eighth-grade education, Verbeena re-minded herself.

  But he also had a mind. And if he had a mind, he could do anything.

  And he was going to get a determined push toward using it, right here, right now.

  “This is where you stand?” Janna said, pirouetting around on the disk. “What do you see?”

  “I see Sam. I see wherever he is—” He thought with a pang about the bachelorette party in the Polar Bar.

  Janna caught the gleam in his eye. “And just where is that?” she said with mock sternness.

  Al shrugged. “Wherever he is.” Halfway up the mountain by now, he thought. In fact he’d probably already arrived at Kevin’s little party in progress. He had to get going.

  “Could I see, too?” she asked, predictably.

  “I’m afraid not,” he said. “I can only see him because of a subatomic agitation of carbon quarks tuned to the mesons of Sam’s optic and otic neurons. ...”

  Janna burst out laughing. “Your what? Carbon quarks? Oh, come on, even I know better than that.”

  Al shrugged. “What can I say, it worked on Congress.” He found himself pulling out a cigar, unwrapping it. “Janna, love, I have to go now—”

  Caught in the midst of examining the translucent white panels that made up the Chamber’s walls, she turned back to him. “Go? Go where?”

  He shook his head. “I mean, you have to go. Out. I have to get back to Sam.”

  Puzzled, she knit her brows. “Okay, Al. I’m glad you showed me this. I’ve always wondered what it looked like.”

  “It looks exactly like this.” He gestured widely with the hand holding the cigar. The handlink was beginning to light up. “Janna, it’s time.”

  “All right.” She stepped over to the air-lock door through the Accelerator, looked back at him. “Al? Will you be back in time for dinner?”

  He bit his lip. “I don’t think so. Go ahead without me, okay?”

  “Okay.” She ran to him suddenly and gave him a quick fierce hug. “Love you.”

  He returned the embrace, kissing the top of her head. “Love you back, honey.”

  She ran back to the air-lock door, gave him a quick wave. “See you soon!”

  He raised his hand as if to say farewell, and punched the handlink control instead. “Center me on Sam, Ziggy,” he said roughly. “Now.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  There just wasn’t any way to park the truck closer. He left it at about the same place it had been on Friday night. He wondered where the kids were parking.

  He passed the pine branch, which slapped him in the face again.

  He was ready for the clearing, and he paused to scope out the situation before charging in.

  Two campfires, as before; almost two dozen people scattered around. Somehow Kevin had brought a truck around, too—he could see the road now, on the other side of the clearing. Kevin himself sat on the tailgate, swinging his legs and holding forth on something or other to a group of six or seven teens.

  By one fire a young woman played plaintive sixties folk songs on an acoustic guitar. Her audience, another girl and a boy, was more interested in each other than in the music. Not far away a cluster of boys were chugging from cans. Someone was toasting marshmallows over the other fire— he caught the smell of burning sugar and swallowed against a rush of saliva, remembering too late he’d skipped dinner. Someone else had a radio, tuned to the harder rock of the current decade.

  He couldn’t seem to find Bethica. He looked them over

  again. They were quiet still, the clashing music the loudest part of it. She wasn’t there.

  No, there she was, coming down that road. Sam started to step out from the trees, then stopped, waiting to see what would happen first.

  They were expecting her. If he strained, he could hear the greetings. It helped that the radio got staticky and someone turned it off just about the time the greetings were over.

  “So Bethie baby, gonna have one?” Kevin said, holding a paper cup under a spigot.

  She held out a hand, took the cup. Sam made himself stay still. This wasn’t what he was supposed to change. Not this.

  Besides, she looked at it and set it down on the fender of the truck. “No thanks.”

  Sam, watching, felt a rush of relief, and even some pride. She had listened after all.

  “Oh, c’mon. What’s the matter, you want something harder?” Kevin produced a bottle.

  Someone else laughed and staggered. The bottle was half-empty.

  “No thanks.”

  “So what the hell you want?” Kevin said. “You swear off or something?”

  “Maybe later,” she responded, looking around, away.

  “Later might be too late,” Kevin said, nudging one of his friends. “I have some unfinished business to take care of.” They laughed immoderately.

  “What unfinished business?”

  Sam leaned forward. He thought he knew the answer already, but
it never hurt to be sure. He was still moving stiffly. If Kevin was going to go after him again, he was going to have to stop holding back and really use the body he was occupying.

  Poor Wickie. He wondered if the guy was really used to all this exercise.

  “I’m going to take care of that Indian.” Kevin tilted his head back and drank directly from the bottle. Sam could see the amber liquid glinting in the light from the fires as the level dropped.

  “I’m gonna take care of him good,” Kevin went on, wiping the whiskey from his mouth. “You think tonight was a fight? That was just a taste. I’m gonna pound him so hard—”

  Sam’s eyes narrowed. It was unlikely that Wickie would allow this kid to “pound” him. Sam had no intention of allowing it, either, but he was less concerned about it at the moment than in keeping an eye on Bethica.

  His own rules for Quantum Leaping were designed to minimize the effect of observation on the events observed. It wasn’t necessary to intervene here in order to keep Bethica from getting in an automobile accident; the best approach he could think of at the moment was just to keep an eye on her, and when she left, talk her into going with him rather than driving herself. All he had to do was get her home safely tonight, and then he could Leap.

  “No, you won’t,” Bethica said suddenly. “You’re just a drunken bully, you know that, Kevin Hodge? You think you’re such a big deal because you can buy booze. Because you can hit people.” Her face was twisted with loathing.

  The kids gathered around Kevin fell silent, looking at each other and at their leader, waiting to see what he would do. Kevin set down his bottle and slipped down from the tailgate. Sam tensed. Getting Bethica home safely didn’t include letting Kevin hurt her.

  “What’s the matter, your big crush isn’t a big enough man to protect himself?” he jeered. “He’s just another gutless Indian. I’m sure your friend Wickie would like to take my scalp, but he can’t sneak up behind me to get it!”

  He looked around, encouraging his sycophants’ laughter. They laughed, obediently, but didn’t look very happy about it. Sam waited.

  “Yeah, you used to pretend you were part Indian when you were in the second grade,” Bethica pointed out. “Remember? You did a lot of sneaking then. Now all you can do is beat people up. And he’s never done anything to you.”

  “Like hell he didn’t,” Kevin said with sudden fury. “He tried to make a fool of me. I don’t take that from anybody, especially not some damn bartender.”

  “I don’t think it’s last Friday that’s bothering you at all, is it? It’s Wickie. Last Friday was just—”

  One of the girls in the group laughed. “Bethie has a crush on Wickie!”

  “I do not!”

  It was amazing, Sam thought, how quickly a teenager— or a group of teenagers—could regress to acting like six- year-olds. They crowded around Bethica making verbal jabs about her supposed relationship with Wickie, and she denied them all, getting more and more red in the face and finally crying. If he walked out in that clearing now, he realized, he’d probably completely ruin her reputation for good. He had to let her battle it out by herself, and as long as she wasn’t suffering any physical harm, he would.

  He started moving back, to go around the clearing and find out where she’d parked, to keep her from getting in her car and driving off. In the state of mind she was in at the moment, he could well imagine she wouldn’t be paying too much attention to her driving.

  He could still hear the laughter from the clearing as he worked his way around; it didn’t yet have the particular ugly undertone of violence. Bethica was still protesting, from the sound of it, perhaps too much.

  “Bethie’s got it bad for Wickie!”

  “How is he, Bethica?”

  “What’s Rimae gonna say? I hear she kinda likes him too.”

  “She’s gonna run away to the reservation with Wickie!”

  “She’s gonna raise papooses!”

  That one was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Bethica pushed her way out of her circle of tormentors and began running up the dirt road. She went past just as Sam fought his way out from the brush.

  “Bethica?” he called, trying to pitch his voice to reach the weeping girl without attracting the attention of the occu-pants of the clearing. He didn’t think much of anything would get their attention now, though; they were celebrating Bethica’s rout, not pursuing her.

  “Bethica!” Unfortunately, Bethica didn’t know that; what she must have seen with her blurred vision was something dark, terrifying, looming at her from the direction of the clearing. She screamed and bolted.

  Sam found himself chasing her down the dirt road, past the vehicles parked at random angles. Wickie was in good shape; Sam had had occasion to test that over the past three days; but Bethica was frightened, running like a gazelle, and Sam had to push himself to catch her.

  “Beth-i-ca—it’s me, Wickie!”

  Bethica wasn’t listening. They were past the turnoff to the paved road now, and the “road” had dwindled to no more than a rapidly narrowing path. He tried to catch at the fringes of her vest.

  She gasped and veered away, toward the tall brush and trees at the side of the road.

  And vanished.

  Sam tried to skid to a halt. As a result, he was completely off balance when he toppled through the hole in the brush Bethica had made.

  He expected to hit the ground hard, and tried to relax into the fall. This would have worked, had there been any ground to hit.

  Instead he toppled down a small cliff and landed on top of Bethica, who screamed again and beat at him.

  “Hey, wait a minute!” He managed to catch hold of her flailing fists in the dark. “Bethica, calm down! It’s Wickie! Come on, Bethica!”

  Her frantic efforts to defend herself against the monster from the dark froze. Sam managed to get himself untangled from her, then froze himself as rocks slipped and his right foot pawed for purchase on thin air. “Ohboy.”

  Bethica deflated back into tears.

  Sam cautiously brought himself back onto solid ground. “Are you okay?” he asked, wedging the two of them closer to the slope they’d fallen down. He could barely see the glimmer of moonlight reflected off the skin of her face, and it was marred by shadows.

  He twisted around to sit beside her and brushed at those shadows, relieved to find only dirt and the dampness of tears instead of blood. “Are you okay?” he asked again.

  “I’m fine. Ow.”

  “There’s an inherent contradiction in that,” Al observed.

  Sam jumped, not least because Al looked like a ghost, standing in the light of the Imaging Chamber. That light didn’t illuminate the ledge Sam and Bethica were sitting on; Al stood in a shimmer all his own. If it weren’t for the cigar stuck in the middle of his mouth, he might have been mistaken for a heavenly apparition.

  Sam knew better. He grimaced, unable to respond to the hologrammic image, and went back to Bethica. “Where does it hurt?” he asked, shifting around carefully. He was sitting on rocks and branches, and it was damned uncomfortable. “Is everything okay?” The question didn’t make much sense for Bethica, but it wasn’t intended for the girl anyway.

  Al surveyed the man and girl before him and shook his head. “Not exactly.”

  At the same time, Bethica sniffled, “My ankle—”

  Sam leaned forward cautiously. “Which one?”

  As he unwound Bethica’s leg out from under her and probed gingerly at her ankle, Al provided a summary of the situation. “—So we’re kind of back where we started, Sam,” he finished, just as Bethica yelped in affirmation.

  “That’s it?” Sam asked his patient. “Or is there more?”

  She wiped at her nose, nearly elbowing him in the eye in the process.

  Al assumed the question was for him. “Ziggy thinks you still have to keep Bethica from getting hurt, but that’s a second-order change.”

  “Is that all?” he said patiently.

&n
bsp; “Uh-huh.” Al’s voice and Bethica’s blended in an eerie chorus.

  “Can you wiggle your toes?”

  Sniff. “Yes.”

  “I think it’s just a sprain,” he diagnosed. “I could tell better if I could see anything.”

  “Well, can’t you—” Bethica began, trying to get up on her good foot.

  Sam caught her just before she toppled down into the unknown depths. “Hold on!”

  She held on. He pulled her back onto the ledge and began feeling around them, shooting Al an aggrieved look.

  “Don’t go glaring at me, Sam, I don’t know where the heck you are,” the Observer snapped. “Nobody recorded the precise location of this particular piece of real estate. There are some real bad dropoffs along that path. I think you’d better stay put until you can see better.”

  “Oh, great.” Sam settled his shoulders against the back of their oasis and pulled Bethica into his arms to make sure she didn’t try any more lunges. “Bethica, I think it’s just a sprain, okay? But neither one of us can see well enough to figure out how to get out of where we are, and even if your friends were disposed to help us”—

  Al snorted.

  —“I don’t think they could hear us if we yelled. I’m sorry, but I think we’re going to have to spend the night here.”

  “They’d probably push you over the cliff,” Al muttered acerbically.

  Bethica curled up against him, her head fitting under his chin. Under Wickie’s chin, he reminded himself. Bethica was acting very ... comfortable.

  “That’s pretty cozy, Sam,” Al remarked. “Looks like she’s had some practice.”

  Sam glared, and stilled his hand, which was resting all too familiarly on Bethica’s tangled hair. “You’ve got leaves and stuff here,” he muttered. “Hold still and let me get them out. It’s going to be okay. I promise you.”

  “Mostly,” Al murmured around his cigar. “Almost every-body gets happily ever after in this one.”

  “Does that mean you’re going to marry me, or some-thing?” she demanded. “I thought you said that was a dumb idea.”