by Melanie Rawn
"That's my best buddy," Al interjected. "Nobel prize in physics and a mind like a steel sieve."
"For all I know," he repeated irritably, "the blue wire might get plugged into the green socket or get wrapped around a Christmas tree. But if the
Capacitor's what went wrong, and it gets fixed—"
Something began to bubble inside him—wonderful, scary, crazy, full of hope and yelling a warning. Sam took a deep, steadying breath and fisted his hands on his knees to keep them from shaking.
"Is Larkin there? In the Waiting Room?"
"Yes, he's there—I mean here. Where else would he be?"
He could sit still no longer. Springing to his feet, he tried not to yell as he pointed out the obvious. "He invented the damned thing, didn't he? So he can fix it!"
Al frowned. "He's not in such good shape, Sam. Some people don't react well to the transfer—"
"Well, wake him up! Calm him down! Give him coffee, a brandy, sedatives—give him a good swift kick in the butt if you have to! Just get him to work on it!"
"There might be another way. Larkin patented his gizmo in 1989—after working on it for four years."
Sam knew that tone. It was the I've-just-said-something-extremely-significant tone Al used when Sam was supposed to draw his own conclusions. It took a moment, but Sam finally took the hint and started searching the tent. The cot, the sheets, the pillows; the table, the cassette case; the duffel bag of clothes in the corner; the briefcase under the table___
He stopped cold. A battered leather briefcase leaned against a table leg just to one side of the ice chest. Slowly, in a hushed voice that vibrated with the pounding of his heart, he said, "Al. . . it's like when I went back to the farm that time . . . when
I saw my family again ... I remember that Leap. It was for me. So is this. Al, this time it's for me. . . ."
Al was shaking his head solemnly. "No, Sam."
"How can you say that?" he demanded. "You don't know that!"
"I do know it. My God, nobody knows it better than I do!"
Sam turned away. "I don't want to hear about it."
"And if you don't remember, I'm not going to tell you. We've had this conversation before—whether you remember it or not! Ziggy says—"
"And don't quote me any damned odds from Ziggy! I know why I'm here, Al. I know it!"
"If I've learned nothing else since this started," Al went on with terrible intensity, "it's that no Leap is ever about our own lives. Even if we want it to be. It just doesn't work that way."
Another reminder that Al knew things Sam didn't. Al remembered all the Leaps. All the details. Sam retained only bits and pieces, like souvenirs he didn't recall buying in places he didn't remember visiting on vacations he wasn't sure he'd taken. All he really had were his instincts. And right now they were howling at him.
He saw his hands reach for the briefcase as if it were the Holy Grail. Which, for him, it might very well be.
"I know it," he repeated, stubborn and scared. "Even if 7 don't understand his notes, you can relay them to Ziggy through the handlink. She can work on them, and maybe—"
"Oh, Sam. Don't do this to yourself."
"Maybe I could get back home."
CHAPTER
THREE
Roger Franks didn't particularly like particles, in physics or otherwise. He preferred a grander scale of things. The Big Picture. The bigger and grander the better, in fact. That was why he was Lord Rannulf of all the Franks, not just those in a village in Normandy to which he really had traced his ancestors, giving him one of the few genuine pedigrees in the League.
Happily encased in chain mail and his alter ego, he clung tightly to his token of victory. It was nothing more grand than a small round disk of beaten tin, but it would join the others on what His Majesty King Steffan I (who was part Cherokee) irreverently termed a "scalp belt." This item, a leather strip to which the disks were tied with thongs, was displayed outside Roger's tent. Societies similar to the Medieval Chivalry League had other rules and tokens of advancement in the nobility, but Roger preferred the solid feel of palm-sized circles of metal. Threading each new souvenir of his prowess onto his collection was his proudest task after each
tourney. Eventually there would be enough for a dukedom, and in a couple of years he'd be eligible for election to the kingship.
At his side now walked the only woman he would accept as his queen.
Cynthia looked the perfect evocation of a medieval damsel: clothed with both modesty and elegance, blond as sunshine beneath her wimple, and winsomely lovely. He preened inwardly as they strolled, knowing they were the focus of all eyes, authentic enough to have stepped right from an illuminated manuscript or a cathedral window. Sword at his hip, helm dangling casually from his fingers, he was the very portrait of a noble knight escorting his lady fair from the tourney field. And she was his lady, at least for the rest of the evening. Her scarf, still knotted around his upper arm, proclaimed it for all to see. The breeze toyed with the silk, a wisp of incongruous femininity snagging on formidable chain mail.
"You were lucky today," Cynthia observed. "Sir Percival's not usually so easy a joust."
"Off his form, I guess." Roger shrugged, knowing she was right. Accounting for Phil's worse than amateurish fighting was not his main concern right now, though. "My lady, may I make so bold as to come by your tent later? After I clean off this dirt, of course."
"Lord Rannulf!" She batted long lashes at him, playful and sarcastic all at once. He enjoyed the former, wishing it wasn't accompanied by the latter. A real medieval lady would not be so ... forward.
"My lord, you know very well what Queen Elinor said last spring when all the knights went skinny-
dipping in the creek!" She pronounced it crick, thus betraying her Wyoming origins: small-town girl from Big Sky country with an English Lit. degree from Oberlin College, working her way to a senior editorship in the New York publishing world. The small mannerism of speech spoiled the medieval illusion; Roger determinedly put it out of his mind.
"I still say it's a total waste of League funds to rent portable showers," he grumbled. "This park has a perfectly good stream to bathe in. And it's more authentic, too. Hip baths would be acceptable, but those showers—"
"Now, I didn't say that our gracious sovereign minded for herself," Cynthia went on archly. "In fact, I think she was very upset when the local Smokey the Bear contingent happened by and spoiled her view."
A real medieval lady would definitely refrain from such suggestive comments. Roger very nearly blushed, and to cover it raked his fingers through his sweaty hair. He loved a good workout at the jousts, but the July sun made his armor an oven.
Cynthia pulled a face as his arm raised. "Your lordship, you stink. Swallow your objections and go take a shower. You may come by my tent only if you're clean—and only if you bring the famous manuscript with you."
This was what he'd been angling for, but now that she'd taken the bait he was strangely reluctant to start reeling in.
"Well. . . nobody's read it yet. I kind of wanted to get a first reaction from somebody other than an important editor."
"Editor, yes. Important—I'm working on it."
She winked at him, lashes sweeping graceful as a bird's wing down over a lapis-blue eye. . . . His literary instincts provided the description and filed it for future reference. Cynthia Mulloy was nothing if not inspirational.
"Oh, come on," she coaxed. "You've been hinting around for months! If you're serious about getting published, you really ought to have a professional give it a once-over."
Still he balked. "I'm not even sure if all the commas are in the right places."
Her sigh was a miracle of tolerance. "I promise I won't give it back to you bleeding red ink."
"Well. . ."
"Well?" she prompted.
"If you really think so."
"I really think so." When she laughed—a sound as sweetly melodious as the wind-borne singing of her chime
s, he composed in his mind—she became Lady Cyndaria again, and he was enchanted. "Come, Lord Rannulf, this coy hesitation becomes you not! Courage!"
He bowed as extravagantly as to the Queen of France. Cynthia swept him a curtsy in reply, wimple fluttering delicately on the summer breeze, and his transportation back to the Middle Ages was complete. His soul swelled with it.
"By your leave, gentle lady," Roger intoned, rolling the words with a hint of the French accent he sometimes used. "I shall obey your every word without hesitation."
"Forward, my lord! Forward!"
She shattered the illusion once more by giving him a push. But he didn't mind. As she strolled off to her tent, the mighty Lord Rannulf of the Franks had a very hard time restraining a whoop of sheer glee.
Philip Larkin's briefcase contained the current issues of ten different technical journals, phone bills, computer brochures, a photocopied article on the Battle of Crecy, an elaborate spurious genealogy for Sir Percival of York, a garishly colored coat of arms for same, and similar frustrating and useless effluvia.
"I was pretty sure you'd remember Philip Larkin's name," Al was saying. "But you don't know who Roger is, do you?"
A scribbled page of notes turned out to be a grocery list. Sam snarled and kept searching. "I bet you're going to tell me."
"Roger Franks wrote the raciest, sexiest, juiciest, spiciest, trashiest best-seller of 1989. Knights of the Morningstar—that's knight with a K. Sold a gazillion copies. The movie was so hot they had to issue fire extinguishers with the tickets."
Sam gave a snort. "Roger doesn't look as if he could write a letter. Besides, what's a researcher in particle physics—hal—doing writing a bodice ripper?"
"How should I know? And it's not just a bodice ripper. I mean, it's steamy stuff, but scholarly, too. The reviewers said everything was meticulously researched and you could get a pretty good education about the Crusades and life in medieval
France from reading Roger's book."
"The Middle Ages," Sam said wryly. "Otherwise known as 'a thousand years without a bath.' "
"They were probably a lot cleaner than you are right now. Boy, am I glad you're a hologram. You must smell like a stable."
Sam took an experimental sniff. Al was right. Did they take showers in the fifteenth century? Well, this was a state park campground, they ought to have showers someplace. And the idea of gallons of hot water beating down on his aching shoulders was sheer bliss.
"Roger also made pots of money and married his editor."
There it was—that tone again. Sam decided to ignore it, and Al, in favor of the briefcase.
"His editor was a certain blue-eyed blonde."
"Uh-huh."
"Who also belonged to the Medieval Chivalry League."
"Mmm-hmm."
"He married Cynthia, you twit!"
Sam flipped through a copy of the League newsletter. "I hope they're very happy."
"She divorced him after Philip died."
This snagged Sam's notice. "Huh?"
Center of attention once again, as was his just and proper due, Al took a luxurious pull at his cigar before continuing. "When she married Roger, Philip buried himself in his research. You know the type— all work, no fun—sound familiar?"
Pointedly: "No."
"Huh."
After a moment's rumination, Sam asked, "How did Philip die?"
"Well, after he left the League he took up a different hobby. Drinking. In October of '89, the day after he registered the patent on the Capacitor, he went out to a bar, got flummoxed, and ended up with a telephone pole for a hood ornament."
Sam bit his lip. "Cynthia blamed herself?"
"Must have. I've got a suspicion Roger blamed himself, too. He never wrote another word." After brief consultation with the handlink, he added, "He lived off his royalties and the film sale until '94, when the savings-and-loan mess wiped him out. Right now he's data processing in Kalamazoo." Al shuddered. "Jeez, I'd rather be in—"
"Philadelphia!" Sam supplied, wondering where the reference had popped up from.
For a change, Al was helpful—if sarcastic. "Thank you, W. C. Fields."
Wickedly inclined to follow up on the advantage as he sorted papers, Sam said, "Am I to understand that Kalamazoo is one of the few towns you don't have a gal in?"
Al heaved a martyred sigh. "Why is it you always forget everything except just enough to make rotten jokes with?"
Throwing him a smug grin, Sam set aside another pile of magazines and kept searching.
"Ziggy's pretty sure you're here to win Cynthia away from Roger. From what I saw at the joust, she's inclined in Philip's direction anyway. He's just too nerdy to do anything. So all you have to do is romance her until she gets the idea, and—"
"And meantime find Philip's notes for the Capacitor."
Al raised his eyebrows, then frowned deeply. He didn't say anything. He didn't have to.
"I can do both, damn it! This is a chance, Al! I can go through his stuff here, search his office and apartment if I have to—"
"What about Cynthia?"
"I'll just keep things sort of slow," he said, hedging, "and not tell her how he feels until I find what I'm looking for."
"You know it doesn't work that way."
"Stop saying that."
"What if something happens to force the pace? And it will, Sam. It always does."
Sam closed his eyes. After a moment he asked, "If I get them together and they get married, Philip will live, right?"
"Ziggy says that's a one-hundred-percenter."
"What about Roger?"
"What about Roger?"
Looking at his partner again, he asked, "Does he write more books? Philip's death and the divorce must've hit him hard."
"Oh—you mean writer's block due to guilt? Hmm. No odds, but I'd say it's likely he'd do more books if nothing happened to Philip."
Sam took a deep, steadying breath. "What about the Capacitor?"
"Well, you gotta admit a honeymoon with Cynthia would be a distraction. . . ." Al stopped. "I don't like what I think you're thinking, Sam."
"You don't have any idea what I'm thinking."
"Oh, no?"
"No."
"Then look me in the eye."
It cost him, but he did it.
"Now," Al ordered, "tell me you're not thinking that if Philip doesn't bury himself in his research and lives happily ever after with Cynthia instead, the Capacitor won't be invented for us to use in Project Quantum Leap."
"That's not what I was thinking."
"Sam, when are you gonna learn that you can't lie to me?"
This was getting much too dicey. He needed some kind of distraction, and because his dehydrated innards needed something to drink, Sam slid the ice chest from under the table. Sodas, beers (he opened one immediately and took a swig), cheese, candy bars, a salami—and a huge envelope wrapped in plastic. He stared at it for a blank moment, then set the beer can aside and hefted the package from the ice. About 800 pages of 8½ by 11 paper emerged from plastic and manila and tape.
"What's that?"
"Looks like a report." He riffled the unwieldy mass of pages, too excited to read any of the typescript. "Maybe a treatise on the theory—but there aren't any diagrams."
"Philip didn't leave any notes. That was always the problem. It drove you crazy until I scraped up funding to buy a second one. You took it apart to see how it ticked. And left it in a hundred pieces on the lab bench, Tina says to remind you."
Sam wasn't listening anymore. His gaze had finally focused on a remarkable paragraph. He read it out loud, more amazed with every word.
"When first he beheld her beauteous visage, her silken sun-kissed tresses, her rose-petal-lips, her luminescent sapphire orbs, he knew himself gladly, gloriously, and eternally enslaved by the noble and puissant Lady Mix de Courteney, for whom he would slaughter whole armies of perfidious Moors and perish if needs must, her name his dying brea
th—Alix, Alix—"
Al's jaw had long since descended toward the tent floor.
"This is terrible!" Sam exclaimed. "It's worse than terrible!"
The admiral shook himself out of a literary stupor. "It sure as hell ain't quantum physics. Did you say her 'orbs'?"
"It's a manuscript," Sam said in sheer awed disbelief. "A book manuscript. A lousy book manuscript!"
"I figured that out, thanks. What I want to know is, what's a 'puissant'?"
"How the hell should I know?" He thunked the pages down onto the table, feeling utterly betrayed.
"Knew a girl named Alix once . . . no, twice—" Al abandoned fond reminiscences when Sam glared at him. "One of these days you should check out popular culture. The noble and—whatever—Lady Alix de Courteney just happens to be the heroine of Roger's book. But what's Philip doing with the manuscript
of Knights of the Morningstar?"
Sam stared down at the first page, emblazoned with title and author.
"I think because Philip wrote it."
CHAPTER
FOUR
Once upon a time—it didn't matter which time, because Al remembered it quite clearly and that was the important thing—Thelma Beckett had arrived in New Mexico to visit her younger son. She lived in a condo in Hawaii these days near Katie and her family; the Indiana farm was far behind her. Thelma had sold the land to Beckett kin a few years after her husband's death, so it stayed in the family. But she had never been back.
"I suppose I could've kept on," she'd said to Al over a late-night brandy. "But the house was so big with just Katie and me in it, and it only got bigger once she went away."
Al nodded comprehension of the reference to Katie's ill-considered elopement at age seventeen. No Beckett had spoken the name of the regrettable Chuck since the divorce.
"Of course, I never could have kept the farm as long as I did without Ralph and Suzie and their boys coming to live with us that second summer. It just seemed right to sell it to them."
"Better them than that big corporation Sam told me about," Al agreed.
"Money had best not be everything to a person," Thelma Beckett replied. "I thought I taught Sam that, but his letters are all full of the cost of this and the price of that. He's forever complaining about tightfisted committees back in Washington."
