by Melanie Rawn
Total bafflement during the first hours of a Leap was not unusual, especially when Al was being no help at all. Sam stood there exhibiting all the intelligent comprehension of a potted plant. It was a painfully familiar sensation.
The lady, obviously disappointed by Sam's lack of response, glanced away. After a moment she tossed
Lord Rannulf the white scarf draping her shoulders. He placed it briefly to his lips—the crowd went wild—and tied it around his upper left arm. One last bow, and he started for the center of the tourney field. It was all very nicely done, exactly according to the Chivalric Rule Book, and made Sam feel like an uncouth lout.
He might have minded less if he'd felt like an uncouth lout who knew what the hell was going on.
Glumly, he followed Lord Rannulf. The sight of massive shoulders, swathed in chain mail and about four feet wide, did nothing for his self-confidence. Surreptitiously he tested the edge of his sword. Not only did he not slice off a finger, the blade didn't even put a scratch in the leather gauntlet.
"Keep your guard up," said a familiar voice beside
him as he walked. "And remember, this sword's the
real thing and a lot heavier than that stage prop you
waved around when you did Man of La Mancha—"
Sam really, truly, seriously hated it when Al made
references that made no sense. "When I did what?"
"Never mind. Put your helmet on, Sir Percy."
Sam crammed seven pounds of metal over his
ears. The chafe against his brow told him why Sir
Percival was going bald. As he turned his head, a
slotted visor flipped down with a clank to cover his
face, startling him.
"I can't see a thing in this helmet. How am I supposed to fight? And this sword wouldn't cut butter."
"Did you think you were in the real fifteenth century?"
He was abruptly glad of the visor; it hid the hot flush in his cheeks.
Al chortled. "You did! You thought this was for real!"
"Did not," Sam muttered.
"Did so!"
"Did not!"
"Ha! Ziggy's gonna love this!"
"Well, let's see Ziggy stand here in a steel oven while Lord Rannulf over there makes her into shish kebab!"
"Oh, chill out. You heard the herald. Jousts are to demonstrate skill, not to draw blood. All the weapons are blunted."
Lord Rannulf was stretching his muscles. One more flex, and he'd burst his chain mail.
"Imagine my relief," said Sam.
"The sword's authentic enough," Al went on. "It's just not sharp. The point is, do you know how to use it?"
The royal herald forced a massive note from his brass hunting horn, proving that lung capacity was a prerequisite of the job. Lord Rannulf responded to the signal and came at Sam like a Sherman tank with a sword where the cannon should have been. Sam didn't have a prayer; all he managed was a lot of flailing around as he tried to keep his skin and Lord Rannulf's sword as unacquainted as possible.
"Guess not," Al remarked.
"Come on, show me your stuff!" his lordship taunted.
"There's a balance to a fine sword, Sam—get the feel of it, use the momentum—"
"You look like you practice by slicing sausage!"
"Come on, Sam, get him!"
Every so often Sam held an idle debate with himself about which was the single most irritating thing about Quantum Leaping. Those first minutes or hours of uncertainty? Coaxing even semi-accurate projections out of a temperamental computer? Coaxing answers out of a hot-tempered Italian-American admiral? Trying to remember that he must answer to a name not his own? Easy stuff, compared to what he now decided once and for all was the most infuriating aspect of this insanity he was caught up in: sorting out two conversations at once.
One of these two loudmouths was going to have to shut up or Sam was going to blow a gasket.
He took a swing at Lord Rannulf. Al moaned in despair. "It's not a tennis racket, Sam!"
"Or maybe taking slices with a golf club?" suggested his lordship, with a swipe that neatly mimicked Sam's graceless move. Unlike Sam, however, he very nearly connected. "Fore!"
"Lean into it, Sam! Block him!"
Hot, sweating, and increasingly frustrated, Sam blocked the next swing at the last second, then surged in as he'd seen fencers do. But they used sabers or foils or thin little rapiers or whatever they called them; this thing, however balanced and blunted, weighed at least ten pounds. What took an Olympic fencer a flick of one supple wrist required both Sam's arms up to the shoulders and most of the muscles of his back. He was in good shape, but sword muscles were specialized and he was pulling all the wrong ones. He was sweating like a plow horse, his
hair was plastered to his forehead under the heavy steel helm, his left bicep ached where Lord Rannulf had gotten in a good thwack, and the mail grated against his neck where shirt and quilted padding had shifted down.
Sam Beckett was not a happy camper.
"Aw, Sam, show a little finesse!"
Lord Rannulf was showing off now, swinging his sword one-handed, waving Sam closer with his free hand. Laughter echoed tinnily from inside his helmet. More casual, contemptuous slices of silver; more advice from Al the Kibitzing Hologram; more sweat running down his forehead to sting his eyes; more outraged protests from his back muscles.
"Throw your weight forward, Sam, get under his guard—no, not like that! It's a sword, not a toilet plunger!"
That's it, Sam thought. That is absolutely IT!
"If you don't shut up—" he yelled, threatening a swing at Al.
Being a hologram, Al was profoundly unimpressed. But Lord Rannulf took the opportunity to deal Sam a resounding slap across the chest with the flat of his sword that made every link of mail shiver.
"Home run!" his lordship crowed.
Sam landed on his backside in soft, sweet-smelling summer grass. Unhappily, just below that grass was hard, dry summer ground. He hurt all the way to his hair.
Lord Rannulf stood over him to his left; to his right stood Al. Both were shaking their heads— and definitely not in amazement at Sam's prowess.
Rannulf eased out of his helmet and grinned.
"Nice move. You'll have to teach me that one. Bet it thrilled Cynthia right down to her toes." He swept Sam a mocking bow and headed for the royal dais to receive his accolade.
Exhausted, and considerably less than thrilled himself, Sam pushed back his visor and glared up at Al.
"Pathetic," the admiral announced in disgust. "Just pathetic. Didn't you ever play Rescue the Maiden when you were a kid? Capture the Castle? Pirate Ships? No, probably not. Too busy memorizing logarithms."
Sam, still on his butt, pointed the sword directly at the knot of Al's raspberry silk tie. "Just tell me why that goon in shining armor is trying to kill me. Would you do me that one little favor? Please?"
With a snort and a smirk, Al punched buttons on the handlink. "Come on, Sir Percy. Let's go back to your tent. You don't look so good."
CHAPTER
TWO
Not that Sam had any notion where the tent was. He merely limped along through the campground behind Al, who seemed to know perfectly well where he was going. After all, Al had Ziggy.
What Sam had was a sore back, an even sorer backside, a nape chafed raw, two aching arms, and a powerful need for a long, hot bath. The tent Al waved him into promised nothing more therapeutic than an aspirin.
Still, the modernity of the big khaki-colored White Stag was a relief. Not that he'd really believed he was really in the fifteenth century. . . . And if he had, he'd never admit it.
Sir Percival's tent was a miracle of luxury compared to some of the others set up in the wooded campground. Vintage WWI pup tents and cramped little domes abounded, and there were even a few tarp canopies slung casually from poles with snarls of blankets inside for bedding. Sam appreciated Sir Percy even more when he got inside
. The man had
a nice eye to his own comfort, even while living out his medieval dreams.
The folding camp bed was made up with sheets and pillows instead of a sleeping bag. A Coleman lantern hung from the central tent pole. A sponge floated in a bucket of clean water that Sam was tempted to dump over his head. But that would probably rust the chain mail with him in it. Visions of the Tin Man came to mind, but the lyric in his head belonged to the Scarecrow: "If I only had a brain..."
A wooden coat tree stood sentinel in the corner near a folding chair with clean clothes piled neatly on the seat. Another chair was shoved beneath a collapsible table, on which rested shaving kit, first-aid box (Sam lunged for the aspirin bottle), and a boom box with a case of cassettes. He slipped the pills down his throat and swallowed them dry, then slid a tape of Celtic harp music into the cassette player just in case somebody happened along outside while he was talking with Al. Then he squatted down to get at the ice chest.
The chain mail chimed charmingly, percussion provided by the crack of Sam's left knee and right shoulder bones. He rubbed the small of his back and straightened up again. First order of business was this miserable metal prison. He began what proved to be a protracted struggle with it while Al punched the handlink into submission and relayed Ziggy's latest news flash.
"It's Saturday, July 11, 1987, and you're at a weekend tournament held by the Medieval Chivalry League. Six times a year they get together in costume to relive the glory and romance of the past."
He struck a noble pose, as if for a heroic sculpture. He looked more like a lawn jockey. "In days of old, when men were bold, and knighthood was in flower—"
Sam grunted, wrenching more muscles as he battled the mail shirt. The thing came down to his knees, split front and back to the crotch—presumably for ease of horseback riding, though he'd neither seen nor smelled horses around here. Small favors. "Doesn't this thing have a zipper?"
Al was shocked at the very idea. "Costumes and armor are strictly authentic at League functions!"
"Authentic. Wonderful. Is there an authentic way out of this?"
The Sir Lancelot wanna-be considered. "Maybe if you work it both sleeves at a time, like a sweater."
He couldn't have been less helpful even if he hadn't been a hologram. The suggested maneuver put Sam in immediate peril of strangulation.
"Well, try hiking it up over your butt, and then you can sit down, and—"
"Just tell me the who and what and why, okay?" Sam interrupted from somewhere inside twenty pounds of woven steel.
"My, my. Testy, aren't we? Your League name is Sir Percival of York—New York, that is. Manhattan's about ninety minutes thataway." He waved the cigar vaguely. "The fair maiden is Lady Cyndaria of the Chimes—also known as Cynthia Mulloy, fiction editor at a New York publishing house."
"Lady Who of What?"
"Pay attention, Sam. You'll have to call these people by their League titles. They're very strict about not using 'mundane' names. You're Sir Percival of
York, she's Lady Cyndaria of the Chimes. Got it?"
"Yeah, yeah. I got it." He'd also gotten most of the mail up around his shoulders. Hefting with both hands, he pushed it over his head and jumped to one side. It clinked and rattled to the floor, and lay like like an unstuffed metallic scarecrow.
"Be careful!" Al admonished. "You'll twist the links all out of shape. Somebody put a lot of work into making that, y'know."
"Slaving all day over a hot forge?" Sam rubbed his neck gingerly. "Come on, Al."
"You think you can pick up one of these things wholesale at Helmets 'R' Us? I told you, Sam, everyone here wears authentic period costumes. Not only do they not allow zippers, they can't even use sewing machines. Now, put that on the rack over there, with the helmet."
Sam dutifully did as told. "You sound like my mother. Tick up your clothes, Sam!' "
Al grinned. "I kinda doubt she ever had to tell you to hang up your chain mail. You know how they used to clean it, back in the olden days? They'd sew it into a leather sack filled with sand to scrape the rust off, and give it to the squires to toss around— like football practice."
Sam chuckled at the idea of throwing a Hail Mary pass that weighed twenty pounds. He lost his smile when he saw the lacings of his padded tunic. There were at least two dozen of them, located down his right side and knotted so tightly he was tempted to break them. But he forbore; he didn't want to wreck Sir Percy's property, considering he was probably here to salvage the wreck of Sir Percy's life.
Probably. Maybe. It occurred to him then that Al was taking a long time to get to the point.
"So why am I here? To keep Cynthia—excuse me, Lady Cyndaria—from buying a lousy manuscript?"
"No, smart guy. In fact, this coming Monday morning she draws up the contract for the best-seller that makes her career. Ziggy thinks she must've read the manuscript this weekend."
Sam nodded and draped the quilted tunic over the chain mail. Shirt next: fine white linen, limp with sweat, sporting about a hundred more little laces down the front. Zippers he was willing to concede— but hadn't they known about buttons in 1450?
"If it's not Cynthia, then what?"
Al said exactly nothing.
Fingers pausing on a knot, Sam regarded his friend. Long practice in reading that expressive face—especially when it was, as now, carefully expressionless—alerted him. Al wasn't telling. Not yet. And trying to force it out of him was, as Sam well knew, practically impossible. He'd tell it in his own way, in his own time. But the look in his dark eyes made the fine hairs on Sam's nape itch.
"Lord Rannulf," Al resumed, "the guy who just basted you with a sword, his real name is Roger Franks. He won his League title with his skill in jousting. So did our good Sir Percy, by the way— and I gotta tell ya, Sam, you didn't do his reputation much good today." He clucked his tongue against his teeth. "In the first place, you don't hold a sword like it's a chicken and you're trying to wring its neck. In the second place—"
"Lecture me later," Sam interrupted. "Just tell me—"
"Why you're here. Okay. Well, first of all, there's Cynthia. She makes stained-glass wind chimes, by the way. Thus the name. You earn rank by skill in crafts or jousting or music, and at every League meeting there's the chance to earn points toward a knighthood or earldom or whatever."
Al was stalling. Sam, worrying his lower lip with his teeth as he worried another knot loose with his fingers, was very close to accusing him of willfully withholding information. But Al usually had very good reasons for drawing out the inevitable. So Sam merely asked, "You never said what Roger does in 'mundane' life. Bouncer in a medieval biker bar?"
"Cute. No, he's a researcher in parties—parties?" A slap to the handlink produced a squeal of electronic outrage. "Oh. Particle. Researcher in particle physics." He regarded Sam through a haze of mercifully illusory cigar smoke. If it was one thing Sam recalled about life B.Q.L. (Before Quantum Leaping), it was that Al smoked seriously stinky cigars.
"Don't you want to know who you are, Sam?"
Amazing. After ten minutes of evasion, Al was implying that Sam was the reluctant one? Someday, Sam vowed, someday when he was back home, Al was going to pay big-time for every single one of these annoyances.
Someday. This day, this moment, Sam saw a punch line coming. He was positive he wasn't going to find it funny at all.
"Philip Larkin," said Al.
The remaining laces ripped with the violence of
Sam's reaction. He yanked his way out of the shirt and threw it onto the camp cot. "Larkin? The 'Larkin Capacitor' Larkin?"
"That's you. Him. You remember?"
How he'd come to hate that question. Did he remember family, friends, events, songs, equations, String Theory—some or all of what he knew might or might not be available to him during any given Leap. One day he spoke fluent Spanish, but the next he didn't know how to say buenos dias; one day he was a gifted physician, but the next he couldn't
clip a hangnail without risking gangrene. He'd developed a philosophical streak about it that eased the frustration most of the time. What he truly needed to know, he was usually allowed to remember.
And Philip Larkin's name was lit up in his mind like a billboard on Sunset Strip.
"I remember what it cost to buy the rights to use the thing! But we had to have it. The man was an engineering wizard and the Capacitor solved all kinds of problems—" What kinds, he wasn't sure. Something to do with energy flow, maybe. But he did know that without the Larkin Capacitor, Project Quantum Leap would have taken several more years to complete.
Belatedly, he heard the past tense in reference to Larkin, and remembered something else. "I never met him. He died before I even found out about his invention."
Al nodded. "October, 1989."
"That's right."
"If you know so much," Al complained, "how come
you need me and Ziggy? Tell me about the Larkin Capacitor, genius."
The words came automatically to his lips—for about ten seconds. "A self-contained independent component attached to the Accelerator framework that regulates and modifies the necessarily intermittent and irregular flow of energy from . . . from . . ."
He knew Philip Larkin's name, and what he had devised, and how much of their hard-won funding it had taken to purchase the patented contraption from his estate—but not how it fit into the Quantum Leap Accelerator.
What Sam would have termed a frown of concentration, Al evidently saw as a grimace of singular ferocity. He raised both hands defensively.
"Hey, don't look at me! You and Larkin were the only ones who ever understood the gadget." An electronic whine made him wince, and there was a brief pause for the customary physical abuse of the handlink. "Yes, Ziggy. I hear you, Ziggy. Right away, Ziggy." He sighed. "She nags worse than my fourth wife—except I can't divorce her. She wants me to tell you that the Larkin Capacitor might be one of the glitches. It might be one reason we can't control your Leaps."
Sam began to pace, then caught himself at it and sat on the cot. "And for all I remember about how the Capacitor works—"