Quantum Leap - Random Measures

by Ashley McConnell

  If he really concentrated, he might be able to remember her—one face out of a couple of thousand faces that made up the workers on the Project.

  A personnel specialist, Ziggy said. With a specialty in counseling. In this history Al had met Janna Fulkes in 1993, and married her last year. She wasn’t his usual type, but they’d been happy together, Ziggy said.

  Al had beaten a strategic retreat to his office, unable to cope. He buried himself in paperwork and tried not to wonder about “not your usual type.”

  Happy. That was good to know, as he stood now in front of a door to quarters he’d never seen before, prepared to enter a life he didn’t know. He closed his eyes and smothered a wry chuckle. Sam Beckett wasn’t the only one who leaped into his own life.

  Raising his hand to knock on the door, he paused. He lived here. He ought to just walk in ....

  The quarters were larger than the ones he thought of as his own. He stood in the entryway, looking around.

  Unlike the Spartan place he thought of as his own, these rooms looked as if people lived here. Before him was a cozy living room with a blue camelback sofa, a wood-and-glass coffee table, a couple of easy chairs, with an HDTV and sound system along one wall. On the coffee table were a couple of magazines and a reproduction Chinese jade horse—at least he hoped it was reproduction. If it wasn’t, he was a lot poorer than he’d been this morning.

  The far wall was covered with the various plaques, commendations, and commemorations of years of Navy service, and family pictures.

  Wedding pictures. Of himself. With a smiling woman.

  If he closed his eyes, and concentrated—and it was taking less and less concentration as the minutes ticked by— he could remember that wedding picture being taken. He swallowed dryly.

  He could remember a whole series of things, things that never happened. Meeting Janna. Making a token pass—he hadn’t been that interested in her, really, but it was expected of him. And she’d laughed at him.

  He shook himself. None of this had ever happened. None of it. He denied it. He wasn’t married. He’d never met anyone named Janna. He’d stepped into the Imaging Chamber a happily randy single man with five marriages behind him, and stepped out again married, and somehow he could almost remember both pasts, as if they were both real. The memories shifted in and out of focus. At one moment, he knew he was involved with Tina, was determinedly single after five marriages. At the next, he knew just as certainly that he had met and romanced and married Janna, that Tina had never been a factor in his life. The memories blurred in places, stood sharp in others. It was as if Sam’s Swiss-cheese effect had reached out and affected him, too. But that wasn’t possible.

  Then who was the woman coming out of the back room, dressed in blue jeans and an ivory lace blouse, smiling at him?

  “Al, honey. How’s it going—” She paused, looked at him with concern. “Is something wrong? Is Sam all right?”

  She was only an inch or so taller than he was, and at least twenty years younger. She was slender and graceful and moved lightly, like a dancer. Her brown hair was medium length. Her eyes were blue.

  She looked too damned much like Beth. He gasped for air, for balance.

  Instantly she was at his side, holding the back of her hand against his forehead, loosening his tie. “Al? What’s wrong? Is it your heart?”

  His heart? He bit back an imprecation, “remembering” just in time that references to his poor, weak heart were a running joke between the two of them, a way of acknowledging the age difference and defusing it as an issue. It was always the first thing she asked if he looked sick. Besides, the back of her hand felt wonderfully cool on his forehead, and her lips were wonderfully soft in a greeting kiss.

  And she was his wife, after all. So he responded.

  He seemed to have retained some habits from his other past lifetime. Of course, it never hurt when his partner was as enthusiastic as this. He was beginning to get thoroughly involved when she whispered in his ear, “Tina’s coming by in a few minutes ....”

  Tina?

  “Tina, uh, Martinez-O’Farrell?”

  Janna drew back and looked him in the eyes. “Of course Tina Martinez-O’Farrell, who else? She had some extension

  plans she wanted to run past you. Al, what’s wrong? Something’s bothering you, I can tell.”

  “Well, you were doing a pretty good job of bothering me a minute ago,” he said hoarsely. Tina? Here? He used to have nightmares about two or more girlfriends cornering him at the same time.

  Well, okay, sometimes they weren’t nightmares. But this time wasn’t likely to be one of those. He didn’t have girlfriends now, he was almost certain.

  “Not that, silly.” She slapped him lightly on his bare chest, revealed through the disarray of an unbuttoned shirt. “Come on, what is it? You don’t usually give me the tiger treatment after a long day at the office.”

  “I must be slipping.”

  “Albert.” Unlike certain of his previous wives—Al wondered suddenly how many previous wives he’d had in this particular timeline—her use of his name indicated great patience and a certain amount of humor, along with the more standard “time to quit the fancy footwork, Calavicci.”

  He closed his eyes and shook his head. “It’s nothing, really.” The mood was completely ruined; he started rebuttoning, as much to give himself something to do as anything else. How was he supposed to explain to her that he almost/not quite/sort of remembered who she was? She wasn’t even one of the crowd of willing stand-ins Sam had charged him with only hours earlier. Except for those almost-memories, she was as much a stranger to him as Rita Marie Hoffman was to Sam, and whether he liked it or not he understood Sam’s position all too well.

  If he were Sam Beckett, pernicious honesty would demand that he try explaining, just as Sam would’ve to Rita Marie if the “rules” of quantum leaping had allowed him to. He wasn’t Sam Beckett, and he had learned the first rule of the military about the time this woman was born. Never volunteer. Never, never, never volunteer.

  It occurred to him, of a sudden, that he could probably resolve this mess simply by taking the handlink and going back into the Imaging Chamber and encouraging Sam to do something. Anything. Lord only knew what small things would change the future. A dead butterfly in the Cretaceous could lead to a new world government; doubtless Sam Beckett’s choice of breakfast beverage could get Al Calavicci out of an unexpected marriage ....

  Janna smiled at him.

  Well. He didn’t have to change things right away, did he? It could always wait until morning. Couldn’t it?

  SATURDAY

  June 7, 1975

  Poor intricated soul! Riddling, perplexed, labyrinthical soul!

  —John Donne, Sermon XLVIII

  CHAPTER SIX

  People who believed in reincarnation, Sam had noticed, always thought their past lives were special, that they’d been kings or queens or famous in some way. It really wasn’t fair. All his lives seemed to come down to pushing a broom.

  He shoved a chair back out of the way to scrape crumbled corn chips from under the table. The bar area was spotless, speaking well for whoever had covered for Wickie the night before, but the tables were a mess. He thought you were supposed to reverse the chairs and put them up on the table when you closed a bar for the night; evidently that piece of folk wisdom wasn’t universal.

  He straightened up and counted. Thirty tables, plus the booths against the back wall, and the benches by the fireplace. It was a nice fireplace—fieldstone, with a wide mantel. Wouldn’t hold more than a couple oxen. Or maybe three or four of those elk whose heads decorated the wall, or a half dozen of the buck. But the stone was clean, shades of pale yellow and gray and pink. He doubted it had ever been used for anything at all. The stone hearth was spotless, and the broom and shovel and brass fire iron looked as if they’d been purchased only yesterday. It was a shame, really. He liked a nice fire in a fireplace.

  Then there was the Bar. Or B�
�ar. The polar bear that

  gave the bar its name towered eight feet tall on its hind legs, mouth agape, front legs pawing at the air with claws like curved black knives, was actually more yellow than strictly white, but it had certainly been alive once upon a time. Unlike the fireplace, it was far from pristine; a little motheaten, in fact, when one inspected it closely.

  On the other side of the fireplace stood a baby grand piano, probably the one he’d heard pounded on the night before, and he couldn’t resist running a few scales; it was even in tune. He hoped he’d get the chance to really play before he Leaped out. He missed music.

  No one else was up at this hour. He’d awakened at sunrise, gotten up and dressed, and looked around for something to eat. Wickie leaned to cereal with skim milk and cinnamon-raisin bagels with cream cheese and orange juice, which was fine with Sam.

  After breakfast he had retrieved the keys and checked out the truck. The damage didn’t seem too bad in the harsh light of day; he thought he could probably replace the burned-out headlamp himself if Wickie had the right tools. From there he’d wandered over to the bar. One of the keys fit the back door, so he’d gone in. The place was enough of a mess that he’d grabbed a broom to keep himself busy until he had a better idea of what he was supposed to do next.

  Lacking further direction, he found a broom and bucket and a mop and some cleaner, and started on the floor, scraping up the detritus of dead cigarette butts, smashed pretzels, and wide sticky patches of beer spills.

  Once the floor was reasonably clean, he emptied out the bucket in the sink in the utility closet and paused. Tables, he thought; he didn’t know how Wickie felt about it, but he decided he’d draw the line at cleaning bathrooms if at all possible. He started on the tables.

  It was kind of nice, actually. Nobody around, no hassles, no life-threatening crises. Not even Al. Well, he kind of missed Al, but he never seemed to have much time all by himself to think about things.

  When he thought about things, his thoughts invariably ended up, eventually, at the same place. Home.

  It had been so long since he’d been home he’d almost forgotten what it was like. He couldn’t remember it very well: scraps and bits and pieces of pictures, scenes; sharp, clear images of people without names.

  He knew what his mother looked like, because the vagaries of his Swiss-cheese memory hadn’t shot a hole into that particular image—not yet, not this time, anyway. He had no idea any more what his sister Katie looked like as an adult, though he could remember her as a child. He thought his brother Tom was alive, but he didn’t want to ask, in case he was wrong, in case something else had happened after the Leap in which he had changed things so Tom didn’t die in Vietnam.

  He could remember, as if reading them off the page, most of the equations supporting the theory of quantum leaping. He still didn’t know what had gone wrong. According to Al, nobody back at the Project quite knew, either. He couldn’t remember what the Project was like, though he knew Gooshie had bad breath and Tina had red hair.

  He probably knew that from Al, though.

  There had to be lots of other people there, but he couldn’t remember them.

  He sighed and finished polishing the last table. There were always windows to do. The Polar Bar featured stained-glass panels with large panes of red and gold and blue and green, underneath clerestory windows of clear glass. Sunlight made colored jewels of light across the floors and tables and the bar. The door was paneled in oak and heavy, mottled amber glass. It gave the place a vaguely men’s-club feeling, dark and burrowsome with occasional glimmers of beauty.

  Someone rattled at the front door. He put the rag aside. He could see only a vague shadow through the glass, so he cracked the door open an inch or so. “Yes?”

  It was the angry kid from the night before, and he shoved

  the door open, pushing Sam aside. He had medium brown hair and dark brown eyes that glittered with anger. His pupils were too small, Sam noted with a clinical part of his mind—some chemical influence there. The boy’s fingers, curled around the door frame, were white and yellow with pressure.

  “I want to know what the hell you thought you were doing last night!” the kid demanded, his voice cracking.

  “There’s a law about serving liquor to minors,” Sam said mildly, moving just in time to block his visitor from actually entering. He didn’t think the kid was stupid enough to start anything, but just in case, it was always a good idea to keep him on the other side of the portal. At least the frame would limit the scope of his swing.

  “It was a private party, dammit!” The boy pushed himself forward, his muscles visibly bunching under the blue T-shirt. There wasn’t any excess fat on him; he was athletic and strong and he moved as if he knew it. He still hadn’t quite grown into his height, but he wasn’t far from it.

  Sam shrugged, keeping a wary eye on him. “You got your money back.”

  “Where’s Rimae? I want to see Rimae.” He pronounced it Ree-may.

  Rimae. That was what Al had said Rita Marie Hoffman was called. This kid was on first-name terms with the owner of the bar? “She’s not here yet. I’m sure she’ll be happy to listen to you later on.”

  “Don’t you mess with me, Chief,” the kid snarled.

  He was just a kid, tall and all bones and angles. No match for Sam Beckett, who retained the mental disciplines for a number of martial arts he couldn’t remember the names of; no match even for Wickie Gray Wolf Starczynski, who was the same height, not enough older to make a difference, but twenty-five pounds heavier. There was no reason, as far as Sam could see, that the kid should be so sure of himself. The boy was clearly aching for a fight.

  Sam wasn’t interested in giving it to him. He shrugged and stepped back, closing the door in the kid’s face before the boy could take advantage of the opening. He could keep pounding at it all day, as far as Sam was concerned; all he’d get for it would be bruised knuckles.

  He turned back to find himself with an audience: the redoubtable Rimae and two more kids, a girl in her late teens holding the hand of a boy about the same age, or perhaps a little younger. Rimae was standing arms akimbo, with the air of a woman about to deliver serious trouble.

  The girl stood at the end of the bar, looking worriedly from Rimae to Sam and back again. She wore pink bellbottoms that looked a size too small and a loose blouse two sizes too big. She wasn’t holding the boy’s hand for reassurance but rather to reassure; she whispered something in his ear and edged in front of him protectively.

  The boy, by contrast, looked nowhere in particular. Sam’s eyes narrowed as he looked at him. There was something— he couldn’t quite remember, something nibbling at the back of his mind. It wasn’t the way he was dressed; he wore standard-issue jeans and a clean plaid flannel shirt. No, there was something about his appearance. He was thin, not the same kind of coltish adolescent thinness as the argumentative one but as if he’d been starved sometime in an important period of development. His head looked too small for his body.

  Probably Davey and Bethica, the adopted son and the niece. If Rita Marie Hoffman was raising two kids, one retarded, as a single woman in the middle 1970s, it said a lot for her courage and determination. He might ask Al just how common that used to be.

  Or maybe not. Some genius had made up a rule that he wasn’t supposed to know too much about things in the past, for fear that he might change them. He supposed it made sense from one point of view—Heisenberg’s—but evidently it had never occurred to the genius in question that the situation might have changed, that the whole point of the exercise was to make a change in the past. And it

  had also never dawned on him that the process of Leaping might make the most inconvenient and erratic holes in the Leaper’s memory, so much so that he couldn’t always remember from Leap to Leap very much about his own history.

  But no, there was a rule, and the overseers of the Project refused to allow Al to provide too much background. He wished he didn’t have the unset
tling feeling that the genius rulemaker in question was himself. Al had said something to that effect, once or twice.

  If he could get to a university with a halfway decent medical library, he could always do a search and try to find out. He’d check and see if Davey’s physical characteristics were consistent with something besides simple retardation, too. He was certain they were; they nagged at him the way something blindingly obvious would. It didn’t seem likely he’d have the chance to go look it up, though.

  In fact, there was some question about whether he was going to get out of this room, judging from the expression on Rimae’s face. There was no sign that the attempted seduction of the night before had ever happened.

  “Just what was that all about?” she demanded. “And what are you doing over here at this hour, doing Davey’s work for him? I’ve told you a hundred times I don’t want you covering up for him. How’s he going to learn to do work for himself if you keep covering up for him?”

  Sam glanced again at the boy. The kid didn’t look the least bit interested in the work or in anything else. It sounded like Wickie covered up for Davey quite a bit. That told him something about Wickie, anyway. He was glad to know the person he’d Leaped into had wider interests than he’d seemed to the night before.

  Davey showed a mild flicker of attention at the sound of his name. Bethica soothed him automatically, with the skill of long practice.

  “I thought, well, we could get a head start on things,” he mumbled. “You know, get everything ready.”

  “And what’s Kevin doing here? I didn’t think he’d even be conscious at this hour, much less beating my door down.”

  Uh-oh. Time to face the music. Sam filed away yet another new name and drew a deep breath. “He’s mad because I took the keg back last night,” he said. “I gave him his money back.”