by Melanie Rawn
"My name is Sammy Jo," she replied after a quick compassionate glance for Donna. "This is Dr. Alisi. You're perfectly safe, Josh. Just relax. Can I get you anything? Coffee?"
"Uh—yeah. Please. Sugar, no cream."
As Sammy Jo performed Verbeena's recommended opening of using small social rituals to distract and soothe, Donna moved away and unobtrusively keyed up her wristlink.
Josh sagged slowly back against the wall. One hand came up to comb the hair from his eyes— Sam's gesture.
And then he cried out. "My hand!"
"It's okay, I promise," Sammy Jo said. "Everything's all right."
He was staring at Sam's right hand as if it belonged to a stranger, which—in a manner of speaking—it did. Donna and Sammy Jo watched as with the left hand he touched the right, holding back slightly from the thumb.
When he tried to touch it, the index finger went right through the illusory aura.
Josh began to scream.
Donna spoke urgently into the wristlink. "Ziggy, send Dr. Beeks to the Waiting Room at once. We have another visitor."
A little while later, Josh had been given a sedative and Verbeena had ascertained enough of his history
to help Ziggy help Al help Sam. Joshua ben Avram (born Joshua Abramson on April 11, 1949, current age eighteen) had lost his right thumb and the use of his fingers in an accident on the Israeli kibbutz to which his family had emigrated in August of 1965.
Ziggy was not particularly forthcoming, but simple arithmetic meant there was a very good chance that Sam was smack in the middle of the 1967 Six Day War.
Rarely did Sam's Leaps take him out of the United States. There'd been Vietnam, of course, an archaeological dig in Egypt, and one or two others. But Something or Someone evidenced enough kindness to put Sam into situations where he was familiar with the language and culture.
Kindness, or practicality.
Donna walked down the short hall to the control room. She hoped Al was back to tell her what was going on. She hoped young Josh ben Avram wasn't fluent in Hebrew or Yiddish; neither was among Sam's linguistic accomplishments. She hoped Sam could adjust to not using his right hand. She hoped to God he wasn't literally in the middle of the war.
But where else would a young Israeli be at such a time? Josh was of military age. Even if he couldn't fire a rifle or drive a tank, he could be assigned other duties just as essential and just as dangerous. Donna could think of half a dozen right off the top of her head.
Worrying the possibilities over in her mind, she almost missed seeing the tall, lanky, balding man appear around a hall corner up ahead.
"Philip!" Donna exclaimed, surprised. Not only
had no one told her he'd be coming to New Mexico, but not an hour ago she had been talking to his younger self. This time she understood a little of Al's occasional memory gibbers.
"How are you, Donna?" Philip Larkin smiled a greeting, lengthening his strides. They met in a brief hug. "Looking as gorgeous as ever."
"Liar. What are you doing here? Did you bring Cynthia and the kids?"
"They're at Rog and Nadine's place in Pasadena." They started down the corridor to the control room. "Cynthia's got a manuscript she thinks Nadine might want to buy—she's got her own production company now. Rog pulled Disneyland duty." He grinned wickedly. "My three, his twins, and just li'l ol' him to ride herd."
"You're a cruel and vicious man, Philip Larkin, and I don't know why I like you so much." She knew very well, of course. In some ways, he was a lot like Sam, and the pair of them got on like a house on fire.
"Where's Sam?" Philip asked.
"I'm just going to find out." She tucked her hand in the crook of his elbow. For a moment she debated about telling him what Sam's last Leap had been. Actually, she didn't have to tell him. In some way he already knew. The first time he'd come to New Mexico, there'd been a look of sudden recognition in his eyes, followed instantly by bewilderment. Though she hadn't understood it then, she did now.
It wasn't often that she got to see firsthand the effect of the changes Sam wrought. Anytime she got
to feeling sorry for herself again, she thought, she'd remember the two Philip Larkins.
"Oh, almost forgot," he said. "I'm a day late, but happy birthday."
Donna smiled, and thanked him, and touched the yellow rose pinned in her hair.
"After I checked in with Ziggy, I had a talk with Tina about the hardware," Philip went on. "I think we can do some fine-tuning based on some stuff I've been working on back in New York."
"And the Capacitor?"
"We'll take apart the backup this afternoon and run some tests." He stopped outside the control room door, glanced either way to make sure they were alone, and clasped her shoulders lightly in his palms. "Donna . . . I'll do everything I can figure to do, but I honestly don't know if the problem is in the Capacitor."
He said almost the same thing every time he visited.
She made the customary reply. "If there's anything to be found, Philip, I'm positive you'll find it."
But they both knew by now that the uncontrolled Leaps had little if anything to do with the Morningstar Capacitor.
EPILOGUE
He was himself again.
Suspended in Time; remembering; knowing; watching twinned histories play out all around him like alternate takes of movie film, the wrong ones slithering to the cutting-room floor.
So. You've put it right, Dr. Beckett?
Yes.
And in helping them, helped yourself as well?
Yes.
Paid for the good you did yourself by doing a goodness for them?
Yes.
When will you learn?
He frowned slightly, seeking the voice that emanated from nowhere and everywhere.
What would you say if you were told that you have been theorizing from a faulty assumption?
Faulty—?
You take upon yourself the responsibility for other people's lives—even Alia's.
Yes.
Everyone's life but your own.
Shock stilled even the memories.
This is the error.
He didn't understand.
Alia chose her fate. She continues to choose, though she would believe this truth no more than you do.
But—but she was just as trapped as he was.
Precisely. She shares your misapprehension. But the admiral understands.
He traced down the memory, and heard Al say something about a bargain.
The bargain we make is with ourselves. We choose our own destinies, Dr. Beckett. We choose the work we set our minds and hearts to accomplish.
But that couldn't be true. He had no control over his Leaps, no choice, nor even any knowledge of who needed help—so how could he possibly know where and when he was needed?
Knowledge is distinct from information.
Yes, of course. It was the mind/heart dichotomy: what he knew versus what he knew.
It can be described in those terms. When you know with the totality of your being that what you do is yours to choose—
Then he could go home?
If you allow it of yourself.
He still didn't understand.
The "White Knight" image appeals to you.
Well. . . yes, he had to admit to that. Al called it his Boy Scout Complex.
Put another way, it is easier for you to be needed than to need. To hope that you are right, rather than to fear that you are wrong. This is your great
strength. It is also your great flaw.
But he couldn't change the way he was made. He couldn't stop wanting to help—any more than he could stop wanting to go home.
One day you will. When you believe that choosing to go home is not selfish but selfless. When you know that you are needed at least as much as you need. When you believe that your worth as yourself is at least as great as your worth as other people.
When something went wrong in his own life that he had to put rig
ht? When the life he saved might be his own?
As good an interpretation as any. . . from a certain point of view. But not this time, Dr. Beckett.
The memories seeped away, and the light dazzled him, and he Leaped.
ALL-NEW, ORIGINAL NOVELS BASED ON THE POPULAR TV SERIES
QUANTUM LEAP
_ODYSSEY 1-57297-092-8/$5.99
1983: Sam Leaps into troubled but gifted Sean O'Connor. 1999: Al Calavicci has the real Sean O'Connor in "detention" in the Waiting Room—and he's determined to escape. _TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT 1-57297-157-6/$4.99
Sam Leaps into a 1990s men's encounter group, only to encounter Al on a mission that could alter the fate of the Quantum Leap project for all time.
_THE WALL 0-441 -00015-0/$4.99
Sam Leaps into a child whose destiny is linked to the rise— and fall—of the Berlin Wall.
_PRELUDE 1-57297-134-7/$4.99
The untold story of how Dr. Sam Beckett met Admiral Al Calavicci; and with the help of a machine called Ziggy, the Quantum Leap project was born.
_KNIGHTS OF THE MORNINGSTAR 1-57297-171-1/$4.99 When the blue light fades, Sam finds himself in full armor, facing a man with a broadsword—and another Leaper. _SEARCH AND RESCUE 0-441-00122-X/$4.99
Sam Leaps into a doctor searching for a downed plane in British Columbia. But Al has also Leapt—into a passenger on the plane. _PULITZER 1-57297-022-7/$5.99
When Sam Leaps into a psychiatrist in 1975, he must evaluate a P0W just back from Vietnam—a Lieutenant John Doe with the face of Al Calavicci.
Based on the Universal Television series created by Donald P. Bellisario
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