Quantum Leap - Random Measures

by Ashley McConnell

  Before Sam could figure out what was going on, he’d been pulled, pushed, shoved, and crowded to the other end of the parking lot, within the circle of light from the street lamp, and was standing in the middle of a circle of wild¬eyed teenagers.

  “You jerks,” Al was saying bitterly. “Ziggy, give me a reading on this—oh, terrific. Sam, Ziggy says you’re about to get beaten to a pulp.”

  “Wonderful,” Sam muttered.

  “The plan isn’t working, Sam—”

  Sam tuned him out, reaching inside himself for the calm place he needed to handle physical confrontation. He could see the faces in the circle around him, with expressions of hunger and excitement and sheer bloodlust, eyes bright, mouths slightly open, panting. Slightly behind the ring stood Bethica, the back of one hand held to her mouth, her eyes wide too, but with a different expression.

  Before him, less than six feet away, Kevin, standing well balanced, smiling at him. Kevin wasn’t going to let him walk away or talk his way out of a fight. He was looking forward to inflicting pain. He’d been looking forward to it for days, ever since Sam had embarrassed him in front of his friends; now he was going to erase that.

  And he was going to erase Wickie too, if possible. If Bethica was supposed to go to the party to talk Kevin out

  of trying to kill Wickie, maybe this would get it out of his system. If that was the case, maybe he could fight, lose, and Leap.

  Al was still studying the handlink, talking to Ziggy, and reading out information. Sam continued to ignore him and watch Kevin, who was leaning forward slightly.

  Most truly serious fights, in Sam’s experience, lasted less than a minute. When someone who knew what he was doing intentionally tried to put someone else down, it didn’t take long.

  Kevin might or might not know what he was doing, but he wasn’t trying to put Wickie down, at least not right away. He reached out and flicked Sam on the face so quickly Sam barely had time to jerk back. But then Kevin laughed and looked around for his friends’ approbation, and that told Sam a great deal all by itself.

  Sam contemplated finishing this mess quickly and getting back to Wickie’s cabin. He hoped Rimae would change her mind; he’d hate to think he would Leap out and Wickie would return to his own body only to find himself unem-ployed. On the other hand, he certainly wasn’t going to damage the kid, and if he didn’t, Kevin would lose face, and then he’d .. .

  While he was still thinking, Kevin spun around and planted a fist in his gut, propelling Sam back against the circle of spectators. They made a sound like wolves scenting blood. He barely heard it. He was too busy catching his breath.

  He must give consideration to an alternative scenario, he thought dizzily as Kevin followed up with another fist to his gut. Maybe he should just let the kid win.

  The second blow wasn’t quite as bad as the first one, mostly because he was farther away. He struggled to get his balance back.

  “Sam, are you waiting for just the right moment?” Al asked acerbically. “Because I think it was about five minutes ago. ”

  “You’re no help,” Sam muttered

  Kevin looked momentarily confused, then stepped in to slug Sam in the jaw. If he could have gotten his breath back,

  Sam would have told him that was an extremely bad idea; fragile as the human mandible is, the human hand with all its tiny bones and network of nerve tissue is considerably more so. He didn’t want Kevin to damage his hand, particularly not on Wickie’s jaw. So he spun around and kicked his opponent’s feet out from under him.

  Both combatants went sprawling. The audience laughed.

  Kevin was stunned. And furious.

  By the time he was back on his feet, Sam was too. If he didn’t breathe too deeply, he was okay. Balancing himself, he watched the boy warily. Bethica picked that moment to try to grab Kevin’s sleeve. Kevin twisted, knocking her away. Bethica plowed right back in again.

  “Kevin, stop it!”

  “Sam, she’s going to get hurt if this keeps up,” Al said worriedly. He wasn’t making a prediction based on anything Ziggy was transmitting; Sam could see for himself that Kevin wanted to hurt something, and if it wasn’t going to be Wickie, it might very well be Bethica. Some of the other kids were looking at each other nervously.

  He reached out and tapped Kevin on the shoulder. “Hey, kid. I’m over here. Or have you forgotten about me?”

  He hadn’t. He whipped around and struck Sam at the base of the throat. An inch farther up would have crushed Wickie’s larynx. As it was he gagged and fell. He decided to exaggerate the consequence of the blow.

  “Sam, are you okay? Sam? Sam, what happened to all those martial arts of yours? Did you Swiss-cheese the t’ai chi?”

  He couldn’t answer Al without spoiling his entire perfor-mance of writhing on the ground, clutching at his throat, gasping and gagging—at least he didn’t have to exaggerate that part too much—and he almost missed seeing Kevin’s foot draw back, heading for his ribs. Kevin’s toe connected

  hard enough to make him give a strangled yelp.

  Bethica screamed. Sam rolled away, covering his head with his arms, partly to convince Kevin he was beaten and partly out of a real fear that the kid would kick him in the head next.

  “Get’im, Kev!”

  “Knock his lights out!”

  “Stomp him!”

  Apparently the kids thought so too.

  The noise was enough to reach the interior of the bar. The back door opened, a rectangle of light against darkness, and the silhouette framed within it shouted, “If you kids don’t get out of here I’m going to call the cops!”

  It was enough to make some of the less enthusiastic start to fade away. The second warning was enough to break the spell for the rest. “C’mon, Kevin, he’s beaten.”

  “I’m not through with him,” Kevin said, low and ugly.

  “Give it up, he’s out of it. C’mon, she’s gonna call the Man if we don’t get out of here.”

  Sam remained tensed, all too aware of Kevin, poised to kick again. He could almost feel the boy’s desire for blood, and Sam hadn’t given him enough. But Bethica was murmuring urgently in his ear, and finally Kevin turned away, not without a final, “I’m not through with you, Indian!”

  “Sam? Sam, are you okay?”

  Al had been talking for some time, Sam realized, helpless in the knowledge that he couldn’t touch his friend, couldn’t communicate with him. Sam peeked out from under his arm to see feet receding, except of course for Al’s silver running shoes. After a moment he could hear vehicle doors slamming, engines revving; he hid his face again just in time to protect his eyes from a spray of gravel.

  Moments later the rear parking lot was empty except for Leaper and hologram. Sam rolled over on his back, ignoring the small rocks that dug into him, and stretched

  “Sam!” Al was beginning to sound as hoarse as Sam felt.

  Sam waved a placating hand at him. “I’m okay.” he croaked. “I’m fine, Al. Really.” He sighed and rolled up to his feet in one less-than-smooth movement. “Except I guess I’ve totally blown it.”

  Al stood staring at him. “You’re crazy. Has anybody ever told you you’re crazy?”

  “Besides you?” Sam felt at his throat, rubbed his ribs. Nothing broken, no thanks to Kevin. “I’m getting kind of old for this, aren’t I?” A thought struck him. “How old am I, anyway?”

  “You are crazy,” Al muttered. “That kid just beat you half to death and you want to know how old you are?”

  Sam coughed experimentally. No blood. Another good sign. “Oh, come on. He didn’t even come close.” A stab of pain reminded him that he hadn’t exactly gotten off without a scratch, either. “I’m serious. How old am I, Al? When is it now?”

  Al opened his mouth to give the answer, looked down at his link with Ziggy, and reconsidered. “Well, I could tell you the date, but I don’t know if that will tell you how much time you’ve actually experienced. Do you age in between Leaps?”

>   Glaring, Sam shook his head. “It was 1995 when I Leaped. When is it now?”

  Al shrugged. “2005.”

  “So I’m going to be. . .” Sam calculated the difference between the year 2005 and the year of his birth, 1953, and decided he didn’t really want to think about the answer after all. “No wonder I’m slowing up a little.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  "Not too much, I hope,” Al said grimly, studying the handlink. “She’s going up with them to the same place in the mountains they were last Friday.”

  Was it only last Friday? Sam thought, dazed. He took a step toward Wickie’s cabin and the Polar Bar truck, and staggered. “Oh, boy,” he muttered.

  “He hurt you worse than you thought,” Al observed.

  “No kidding.” Sam drew in a deep breath, winced, and started moving.

  “ ‘Into the Valley of Death’ . ..”

  “Just bring the shield, Sancho, okay?”

  “He must have hit you harder than I thought,” Al said. “You don’t usually mix your cues that way.”

  “It can’t be any worse than those drinks,” he shot back, and paused to catch his breath while catching hold of the driver’s side door. He had some vague idea of following Bethica and keeping her from getting hurt, but had no idea how.

  Something would turn up. Something always did. He got into the truck, started it up, and pulled out, rattling over the ruts, his breath catching at the jabs of pain. Al hovered indecisively, then summoned the Door. “I’d better go back and see if Ziggy’s got anything better than this,” he said.

  Sam glanced over at him. “I hope—”

  He paused, awkwardly. He wasn’t sure what he hoped.

  He wasn’t sure he really remembered Janna. There was a hole in his memory for that party that wouldn’t hap¬pen for another eighteen years. She mattered to his best friend, and that ought to be enough, but if he succeeded tonight, he’d be taking her away from him just as surely as if—

  “Say hello for me,” he said lamely.

  “I will if she’s there,” Al said evenly. He moved into the Door and glanced back at Sam, took a deep breath, and added, “Good luck.”

  The whirling of time stopped, the lights on the handlink faded out, and Al stood alone in the Imaging Chamber, listening to the humming of the air circulator and the power that kept the Project going.

  Clearing his throat, he said tentatively, “Ziggy?”

  “I’m here, Admiral.” As if the computer would be any-where else.

  “What’s the situation, Ziggy?” His voice was stronger now. He was used to asking for situation reports, after all. He’d done it for years, and sometimes the situation was more desperate than this.

  “There is no change insofar as your relationship with Mrs. Calavicci goes. However . .. you may wish to meet with Dr. Beeks to review the additional data I’ve devel¬oped.”

  When would it be over, he thought. When would “good-bye” finally be “goodbye”?

  “O . . . kay.” He squared his shoulders and left the Imag-ing Chamber.

  “No change. My projection is that because of her discussion with Kevin about the fight with Wickie, she’ll be sufficient¬ly distraught that she’ll lose control of her vehicle and crash, resulting in a non-fatal accident which severs her spine. She’ll also,” the computer added as an afterthought, "lose her child in the process.”

  “She’s pregnant?” Al was startled out of his grim focus.

  Verbeena winced. “Oh, that poor baby!” It wasn’t clear to any of them whether she was referring to Bethica or to her baby. She got up and poured herself a cup of coffee from her office dispenser.

  “At the moment,” Ziggy advised.

  Al opened his mouth, closed it again. He tried again. “Ziggy, did you happen to trace that kid when you were trying to figure out the connection with—”

  Ziggy was fast. “I have now, Admiral. Bethica’s child is, indeed, the connection.”

  “She is?” Verbeena said. “Then we’ve got it figured out! That’s great!”

  Al schooled himself into impassivity. “How?”

  “If the child is bom, she’ll grow up and apply to col¬lege. She has an excellent relationship with her guidance counselor, one Janna Fulkes, and asks Ms. Fulkes to accom-pany her on her orientation visit to Yale. Ms. Fulkes agrees, even though it delays her reporting to her new job in the personnel department of Project Quantum Leap until June twentieth, 1993. By which time you will already be involved with Tina Martinez-O’Farrell.”

  Verbeena glanced at him and looked discreetly away.

  Despite himself, Al sighed, a small weary tobacco-tinged breath escaping between his lips. “It’s my own fault, isn’t it?”

  “It was a choice you made.” Ziggy’s tone was neither accusing nor approving. Its very neutrality was almost more than Al could take.

  “So she’s still there, but as soon as I go tell Sam and he figures out how to fix things for the kid—”

  “There’s a ninety-eight-percent chance that this present will disappear.”

  “Why did it appear to begin with?” Al demanded. “Why did I have this, at least for a while?”

  “When Dr. Beckett Leaped in, there was no resonance at all. As soon as he arrived, the ripple effect started as a result of minor changes, which in turn gave rise to the child never being bom, or never applying to Yale, or any of a dozen other possibilities. In each case the future proceeded as you can see.”

  Al considered. He wasn’t in the same class as Sam Beckett, but he was very far from stupid. “That’s a logical impossibility, Ziggy. You’re saying that origi¬nally, there was no accident, the kid lived, Janna was late, I got together with Tina and never married Janna. But Sam arrived, so as a result Bethica gets into an argument that incidentally causes the kid to die, so Janna’s on time to get her job, I meet her, and we get married?”

  “Are you telling me that child is supposed to die?” Verbeena snapped.

  “I doubt that,” Ziggy said, dissatisfied. “As soon as he arrived, things changed.” The computer paused. “I can only assume that in the greater order of things, this child was supposed to live. And God or Fate or Chance or Time or whatever causes Dr. Beckett to Leap is just getting around to putting this particular second-order error right.”

  “But wait a minute,” Al protested, “if that was the case, I should have been married to Janna all along, and my getting involved with Tina should be the ripple effect.” He got up and crossed over to the markerboard. The stink of the marker filled Verbeena’s office as he twisted off the top and began to try to illustrate it with blue Venn diagrams.

  Verbeena looked understandably confused, so he tried again. “Look. No Sam”—a circle with a smiley face and a slash through it—“equals no fight”—a mass of squeaking Xs—“equals baby okay”—a smaller smiley face, unmarred—“equals Janna late”—a frowning face— “and I’m with Tina.” Tina was represented by a squiggly hourglass. “Everything’s copacetic.” He paused to look at the board, couldn’t figure out how to illustrate copacetic, and continued.

  “Sam Leaps in, his just being there—Sam being Sam— guarantees a fight, Bethica’s in an accident, there's no baby. The future changes. I’m married to Janna.” The board was covered with arrows, circles, slashes, Xs. He took a moment to make sure he had everything right. “Sam couldn't have Leaped in to make sure Bethica didn’t get hurt in the acci-dent; she never had an accident until he showed up. What-ever he has to put right, that isn’t it.”

  “But now he has to fix that too,” Verbeena said, thinking the board looked like a particularly messy football play diagram.

  Unwillingly, Al nodded.

  “Then we still don’t know what Sam’s supposed to put right,” Verbeena said thoughtfully. “Ziggy?”

  “I have no idea,” the computer admitted.

  “Well, you’d better figure it out pretty soon,” Verbeena pointed out. “Didn’t you say he was going up there when you left them? And wa
sn’t Kevin going to try to kill Wickie?”

  “That’s correct, Dr. Beeks.”

  Verbeena looked inquiringly at Al. “You got a reason to stick around here, honey?”

  He got to his feet. “Just one, as it happens.”

  He wanted a cigar in the worst way, but he couldn’t smoke here. And it would have made such a great distrac-tion, too.

  “She’s waiting for you,” Ziggy said.

  There had to be a feminine side to either Beckett or Calavicci, Verbeena thought, to give Ziggy that exquisite sensitivity. She watched Al go, wondering how on earth he could stand to do what he had to do.

  There was, however, one more issue she’d like to have resolved. “Ziggy,” she said quietly. “Who’s the father of Bethica’s child? Is it Kevin?”

  Ziggy paused. “There’s a ninety-nine-percent chance that the father is . . . Wickie Starczynski.”

  She was waiting for him at the bottom of the ramp, as if she knew there was something different about this time, something important. He came up to her and took her hands and kissed her lightly on the tip of the nose. “Hey, sweet-heart.”

  Her blue eyes were troubled. “Hey, sweetheart.”

  He didn’t know what to say. He had a hundred things he could say, and none of them, not one, seemed appropriate. He had a sudden image of the airport scene in Casablanca, a flash of memory of Seymour, the kid who wanted excite-ment and got more than he’d bargained for, whose view of life was shaped by Mickey Spillane and dime novels. Any second now he was going to hear himself saying something like, “the troubles of two people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this world.”

  She knew something was wrong, badly wrong, and she wanted him to share it with her, knew he wouldn’t.

  The only mercy in all of this, he thought, was that Janna, like Verbeena, wouldn’t remember once the past was changed back. They weren’t linked to Ziggy, whom God or Fate or Chance or Whatever had thrown outside of Time so Sam could Leap, making things right.

  And sometimes making things wrong that accidentally went right in the process.

  He would be left with the memories of such a short time—a shopping trip to Santa Fe, liquid honey, comfort after bad dreams, quarters that looked more like a home than an institution.