Penelope Hill
August, 1972
"Thanks to you, little brother."
My brother's voice echoed in my soul as the Leap took me away. I'd saved him. Saved him. It was a bittersweet comprehension: Maggie was dead, and I'd failed to save my best friend from three years of hell. No matter that he had made that choice; it should have been my decision, and I'd never once thought to question what I might be there to do.
But the Leap took me away, so I knew I'd completed the task I'd been set; my brother lived - would live, to come home, and be there for my family. My mother would never carry that bleak look that had haunted our lives, and my father would have a strong right arm to support him in those days when I could not be there.
I was swallowed by the light and tumbled into time, just as I always was ...
... and was buffeted by unexpected eddies that tore at me and twisted me, wrenched me from the loop of my life and threw me into existence without any warning.
I fell.
Balletic and ballistic; I hit undergrowth and then ground, tumbling over and over with disorientated speed, brought to a halt by my own impact against solid obstruction. I lay on my back and watched as the sky spun around me, waiting for that sense of 'other' to click into focus, for the events of another's life to overlay my arrival.
It didn't happen.
Nothing happened.
The world stopped spinning, and the echo of birdsong filtered into my perceptions.
Where - and when - the hell am I?
I sat up. Slowly. I felt like a breakfast waffle - well battered and pressed completely flat.
I found myself in a thicket, half-buried in the undergrowth. Tree roots dug into me and unseen creatures scuttled away as I disturbed their environment. Even sitting up made me dizzy, and I clung to an overhead branch while I tried to orientate myself.
Wilderness stretched on every side; summer wilderness, heavy with sun-fatigued trees. The shadows made it late afternoon, and the only sounds were the whispers of wildlife going about its daily business.
A hunter, I thought, dragging myself to my feet. Or a naturalist, maybe. Forest ranger?
I looked down at myself, expecting to see the drape of wilderness gear - sturdy jeans, stout boots ...
My feet were bare.
And all I was wearing was the clingtight fit of a Fermi suit.
Oh, boy ...
I crawled out of the thicket in the end. On my hands and knees, so as to avoid the worst of the experience. The surrounding forest was thick, but navigable; I stood up once I'd reached relatively open ground and took stock of my situation.
Location first.
Scattered trees, uneven ground, well-established undergrowth; I was clearly a long way from civilisation.
The sky above me was clear, and the open ground was dry. The trees were ones I'd expect to see in any of half a dozen national parks on the slopes of the Rockies. I could be practically anywhere within a radius of a thousand miles, and I had no idea of the when. That was bad enough. But my state of dress - or undress, if you'd prefer - told me that something had gone very wrong somewhere along the line. I was beginning to suspect that I hadn't Leaped into anyone at all and, while the prospect of being me had definite appeal, the possible reasons for it were scaring me half to death.
What the hell had gone wrong ...?
"Sam?"
The voice made me spin, relief hammering into me with palpable force.
"Al," I breathed. "Thank god ..." My words trailed off as I registered what awaited me. My faithful hologram, that much was certain. His voice had been unmistakable. But as for the rest of it ...
He looked like hell. His face was unshaven, and his eyes were dark pits of exhaustion cut into pallid flesh. He was still clad in the dress whites I'd last seen him wearing, but their immaculate lines were crumpled and looked as if he might have been sleeping in them. His jacket hung open, and he'd discarded his gold braided cap; for a brief instant I was staring at the cliché image of a shipwrecked castaway, incongruous among the shadows cast by the maple trees. They should be palms, I thought, then sense reasserted itself. "Al? What's going on? Has something happened at the Project?"
It was the obvious conclusion. I was certainly displaced, and he'd turned up looking as if he'd survived Armageddon. He was definitely a hologram though; it wasn't the flicker of the handlink that gave him away, but the fact that he proceeded to walk straight through a fallen tree trunk in order to join me.
"There is no Project," he announced. Deadpan. Matter of fact. Resigned. A cold shiver ran down my spine.
"What?" I stared at him and he sighed, letting his shoulders slump as he partially turned away.
"You heard me. No Project. Nothing. And no, I've no idea why. All I know is that you Leaped out, Ziggy gave a godalmighty squeal, and - " He paused to take in a slow breath. "When I went to open the Imaging Chamber door - there was no door."
"No door?" My disbelief was defensive. How could ...? There had to be a Project. He was right there - not being there, so to speak. A spark of memory flitted through my magnafluxed brain - something about needing to isolate time in the Imaging Chamber so as to be able to project it elsewhen ... The memory, and the reason it was important, escaped me.
"No door." He repeated the words with bleak certainty, still not looking directly at me. I went on staring, trying to imagine what it might mean, and instead envisaging his reaction to the discovery. Confusion, frustration, anger, and then what? Panic, perhaps? I tried not to think about it, tried not to imagine how I might feel, finding myself sealed into an empty bubble of rock a good mile underground ...
"So - how long - ?"
"Three days," he interrupted, the words tight. "Just - three days. I've no connection with Ziggy's higher functionality, but - all the imaging control systems seem to be operational. I used those old test sweeps of yours to check out the surface, take a look around, you know?" He grimaced, trying to meet my eyes and finding himself unable to do so. "It's beautiful out there, Sam. All that unspoilt desert that goes on for miles ..." He drew in a slow breath, clearly fighting for inner control. "It's just not there. No Project, no base, no nothing, except the few abandoned buildings we found when we first picked the site. As if there never has been anything. Just me, and Ziggy's central systems stuck in this bubble of null-space - and Ziggy can't talk to me without the external interfaces ..."
I stepped back and leaned against the nearest tree trunk, feeling as if I'd taken a physical blow. No Project. I felt dizzy; the world spun.
No Project ...
Comprehension - not of my circumstances, but of his - jerked me upright.
"How's your air?" I demanded. Al shrugged.
"Pretty rank, I should think." He growled his answer as if it didn't particularly matter. "But breathable." He paused to rub at his face and neck with a distracted hand, and I wondered how much of that was fatigue and how much was despair. "I'm sort of hoping it'll run out on me soon."
I must have looked taken aback. Perhaps I hadn't heard him right ...
"Uh - you're what?"
He turned his back on me completely, unconsciously adopting a military stance as he did so - as if its discipline helped provide the strength that sustained him. Perhaps it did. Name, rank and serial number. It had served him well, once upon a time. "I don't think I want to die of thirst, Sam." He didn't like making the admission. He made it sound like a weakness, a failing in his determination. "I'm - real glad to see you, you know? I've been sort of wondering if maybe - you'd vanished, too."
Three days. Three days alone in a featureless room, without food, or water, or any sound other than your own voice to keep you company ...
"My god, Al," I breathed with quiet horror. "How - ?" I tailed off. I wanted to reach out, to somehow haul him out of the trap that held him, drag him into this world of wilderness that encompassed me. My fists clenched with tight helplessness as I fought that stupid impulse. I couldn't reach him. Couldn't even touch him, and trying to do so would have been the very worst thing I could do right then. He's nothing but a hologram. An excitation of carbon quarks attuned to my sensory perceptions ...
He took another of those careful breaths and turned to me with a grim smile. "I don't mind confined spaces, Sam," he announced with forced breeziness. "I'm used to 'em. Cockpits. Spacesuits. Shuttles. Tiger cages ..." There was a dangerous note in his voice, and it cracked on the last two words. "It's not so bad in here. Plenty of room, really. Acres of it. It's - quiet, too. Lots of time to think. And I - I can always grab a change of scenery if I want one ..."
"Sure," I acknowledged, aiming for just the right note of reassurance. I think I hit it - not too heavy on the sympathy, not too light on the understanding. Inside I was twisted into a tight knot of helpless anxiety. I wasn't sure that I could have coped in his situation - not with having to just wait, without surety of anything but an inevitable and unpleasant end. But then, I never spent five years as a POW, either.
It should only have been two ...
I was there to make it only two.
I was always free, he'd said. Where it mattered.
You should have told me, Al ...
"So," I considered slowly. "What in hell has happened?"
Al shrugged, his expression sliding back to that bleak resignation. "You tell me, Sam," he said. "Far as I can figure it, something you did musta changed history a little more than Ziggy expected it to."
Changed history ...
I did that all the time, right? Put right what once went wrong, shifted people's lives to make them better. That was the reason for each Leap, wasn't it? Despite my well-intentioned rules about affecting the past, the only way I can continue my journey is to make something change.
Something? No. The right thing.
Sometimes I screw up, shift events past the point they need to be changed, and I have to work damn hard to restore the damage I've done before I can escape into time again. There's always a purpose to each Leap. It can be hard to find sometimes, but I always manage somehow.
Don't I?
What would happen if I got it wrong? Would I really be stuck in someone else's life, or would I still Leap away, my true purpose unfulfilled? And if I did, just who would be left to face the consequences of my mistakes?
The possible answer to that was looking at me right now.
For once I remembered my last Leap with startling clarity; normally the imprint of others' lives fades from my mind once I leave them, but right now the echoes of my time as Magic resonated with accusing insistence. I hadn't been sent to 'Nam to save my brother at all. I'd been there to make that mission succeed, to save those POWs and bring them home ... Could I have done it? Could I have made the choice between my brother's life and my friend's freedom? He'd made that choice for me, sacrificing himself for my obsession, saving me from having to choose at all ...
And time had shifted, skewed, to accommodate a dead man's return from hell.
"Tom," I considered slowly. "Something to do with Tom. He came back, and - and I never founded the Project in the first place?"
That was a scary thought. Al was watching me with haunted eyes. He'd had three days to think these things over - three days with nothing to do but think them over ...
"Wait a minute." I protested my own conclusion, puzzling over conflicting evidence. "If that's the reason, then why - if there's no Project, then how come you're - how come I'm ...?"
I put out my arms to indicate the world we occupied - that I occupied - and he echoed the gesture, throwing his hands wide with exasperated despair.
"Ah, hell, I dunno, Sam." The spark of frustration in his voice was oddly reassuring. It counterpointed that resigned acceptance of circumstances, told me he had not yet surrendered to the situation. "I've been trying to figure this for days. Maybe - maybe being nowhen, so to speak, the change sorta missed me. Maybe it didn't. For all I know there's another me somewhere - a me that didn't listen to your crazy schemes." His expression narrowed down into suspicious lines. "I'm probably booked into a Vegas hotel room right now. A little champagne, a couple of chorus girls ..."
I had to grin, despite the situation. Al's concept of Nirvana undoubtedly involves a large, expensive hotel, free room service, a bunch of Miss World contestants and the entire cast of Charlie's Angels. Except for Tom Bosley, that is ...
"Who knows?" he concluded with a shrug, dismissing his fantasy with self-irritation. "Echo or not, I'm here - and so are you. So maybe ..."
Maybe I'm here to put things back on track. The conclusion was obvious. I'd made a mistake. In ignorance, perhaps, but still a mistake. And perhaps the fact that the reason for that mistake had been his selfless sacrifice had ensured me a second chance.
A chance to face the consequences of my actions - which had wrought unspeakable damage, however well-intentioned they had been. Without the Project, time unravelled; all the changes I had made while Leaping might never have happened - perhaps never did, except for this one, inescapable change which would invalidate all the others. Contradictions and paradoxes. How can this be me, if I wasn't there?
If I got things wrong this time, there wouldn't be another opportunity ...
Not for him, at least.
The man who stood beside me now - in image, rather than in actuality - was dying. A slow, inevitable death, whether it be lack of oxygen or dehydration that took him first. If I could somehow recreate the future that held the Project then it might be this whole situation would never have happened, but I couldn't be sure of that. Couldn't be sure that, trapped as he was in the null-space of the Imaging Chamber, any change I wrought could do more for him other than replace his missing door to freedom; and a lot of good that would do if he were beyond help by then. I had a time limit. A very tight time limit. He'd gone three days without water, used up three days' worth of air. When the inevitable deterioration set in it would hit him hard and fast. And he was right.
Dying of thirst is not a nice way to go ...
"Al," I promised softly. "If I can fix this, I will. Okay? Just stick with me, will you, because without Ziggy's input on this I'm gonna need you more than ever."
There was relief in his eyes as he nodded his agreement to that, and it hurt to see it there. I didn't know if I could save him, if I could live up to the trust he clearly had in me.
First things first. I had to find out where, when, and who I was. If I was anybody, that is. With no Waiting Room to receive whomever it was that I replaced, it was quite possible that I hadn't displaced anyone at all. Which would explain my state of undress, if nothing else.
"Let's take a look around," I suggested. "I need to know where and when I am."
"Right," he acknowledged, obviously cheered by the prospect of action. He set his shoulders with determination and jabbed a finger at me with authority. "You stay here for a couple of minutes and I'll run a 360 degree sweep. See if I can spot a landmark or two. You can't just walk into the woods without some idea of where you might be going."
"Okay," I agreed, casting round for a suitable perch and finding one in the toppled tree trunk. "Don't be long."
"I won't," he shot back, hit a key on the handlink and vanished. I sighed, moving over to rest my weight on my chosen seat, and tried to consider my situation dispassionately.
It wasn't easy.
I'd been euphoric at my brother's survival, the emotion brought crashing down by Maggie's death and the subsequent realisation of what I had really been sent there to do. It had all been too personal, from that first sight of Tom right up to the glossy image in that prize-winning photograph. I'd wanted my brother to live. I had wanted it so badly that I was prepared to break all my own rules, ignore all the warnings and the devil take the consequences ...
A savage slash of memory cut through my thoughts - not the details, just stark moments. My best friend, desperately trying to persuade me to pursue a course that I'd known I'd not been there to take; the image of his first wife's face and the look in his eyes as he had come to understand that some things were just not meant to be ...
Why had I been so sure that I could save Tom?
Had losing Beth that second time convinced my friend that there would never be a Leap meant for him - so that, when it came, he had chosen to give up his chance so that I could make the difference I wanted?
Or had he simply done it out of friendship, without hesitation, living with those memories and knowing he would survive them?
I don't deserve that kind of loyalty, Al.
Not when the results of such selflessness proved tantamount to committing suicide ...
I felt like a heel. A real heel. Not just for being so focused that he'd been able to make that choice without me realising there had been one to make, but for all the rest of it - for all the times I'd been so sure and hadn't listened to what he was telling me. Sure, sometimes he came up with the weirdest of theories, and maybe half of that was designed to stop me from going Leap crazy, but he deserved to be listened to, didn't he? I couldn't do all this without him.
Maybe I'm going to have to ...
I shook the thought away with irritation, and turned my attention to immediate problems. For one thing - if the Project had vanished, then why hadn't Al? Why was he trapped in nowhen, rather than flipping into whatever alternative existence I had managed to create? Unless - I didn't like the way my mind was working here - unless he didn't exist in this timeline either ...
Think it through, Sam.
As well as your Swiss-cheesed brain allows you to, anyway.
Leave the Project in place, take Al out of the equation. Somehow - anyhow, perhaps by my changing his past so that our association never came to be. When the change occurred, nowhen and real time would be connected, so the shift in history would affect him. Probably replace him with some alternative Observer whom I wouldn't recognise and who would undoubtedly give me the fright of my life.
But take the Project away ...
Nowhen might then become nowhere as well, a bubble of existence isolated from both space and time. The moment of change might break the tenuous connection before its implications could take full effect. Which might imply that the man trapped within that pocket universe was only an echo of himself, and that there might be another Al Calavicci somewhere, created by the alternative patterns of history. Which should have been a comforting thought and wasn't at all.
Because the echo was the reality for me, the man I called my friend. The man for whose current predicament I was responsible.
What had happened?
What did I change?
"Sam?" Al returned before I got totally lost in pointless speculation. "There's a road, about half a mile away in that direction." He pointed through the trees to my right. "Once there you've a choice between heading up into the hills, or down toward the lake."
"Lake?" I stood up and stared in the direction he indicated. Sure enough, the landscape sloped downwards and there, a faint glitter of light in the distance, was the barest hint of water. If I was looking for civilisation, that was probably the best direction. Only ... The Rime of the Ancient Mariner popped unbidden into my mind.
Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink ...
I threw a wary look toward my companion and he frowned at me, undoubtedly reading the way my mind had turned.
"Sam," he growled. "Don't make this any harder than it is. I can cope, okay?"
Maybe.
But it sure as hell wasn't fair.
They turned off the freeway and onto the backroads just after lunch, the rugged sweep of the landscape swallowing them up as they did so. Tom Beckett made a remark about the good time they were making, and his passenger responded with a distracted grunt. Sam had his nose in a book as usual, his face narrowed down into concentrative lines which marred its youthful innocence. His brother frowned and pulled over to the side of the road.
"That's it," he announced, reaching over to yank the tome from the younger man's hands. "You're on vacation, little brother. No more studying."
"Hey," Sam protested, grabbing at the book as it was tossed onto the rear seat. Tom fended his hands away and chuckled at his expression.
"No arguments, Sam. I promised mom I'd look after you, and this is where I start. You are not going to spoil my leave by burying yourself in a book for half of it. For the next two weeks you are nothing more than my nineteen year old kid brother, and you're going to behave that way, whether you like it or not."
Sam pouted with momentary rebellion. "Aw, Tom," he whined. "I just want to brush up on my anatomy. I've been accepted for the premed course in September and I want to be sure - "
"Premed?" Tom questioned in surprise. "I thought you were taking music and mathematics?"
"I am." His brother coloured a little. "But I've already been awarded the music degree, and I sorta wanted to do something a little more practical while I was working on my doctorate ..."
Tom laughed. "Will you listen to yourself?" he suggested. "You're nineteen, Sam. You've got your whole life ahead of you. You don't have to go at everything in a rush. Now, just forget you're the kid genius and practise being human for a couple of weeks, okay? We're going fishing, and we're gonna hike in the woods, and do whatever we please for a while. If you really want to brush up on your anatomy, then I guess I'm gonna have to find you a date or two."
"Aw, Tom," Sam grimaced. "You know I can't talk to girls ..."
"Exactly," the elder Beckett noted with triumph, releasing the handbrake and turning the car back onto the road. "What good is all this brilliance if you can't make good use of it, huh? Lighten up, little brother," he advised, flicking the younger man's arm with his hand. "Enjoy yourself. Today is the first day of the rest of your life ..."
Sam thought about it, letting a reluctant grin slide onto his features.
"Okay," he agreed with petulant submission. Tom laughed again, glancing in the rearview mirror.
"You're too much like hard work, you know?" he grinned, and broke into makeshift song. "You work sixteen tons and whaddya get ...?"
"Another day older and deeper in debt ..." His brother joined in with much more melodious ability. Within moments they were both serenading the open road at the tops of their voices. Sam Beckett relaxed into the music, savouring his elder brother's company. Tom was right. Maybe he was getting too immersed in the academic these days. It was just that everything was so fascinating. The more he learned, the more he wanted to learn, and there just didn't seem to be enough hours in the day to encompass all the questions that he wanted answering.
Never enough time, he thought with a sigh. And that included time for recreation; this vacation had not been his idea, but his brother's. Tom had arrived home on leave from the Navy, brightly announced he was going fishing and equally brightly added that Sam was going with him whether he liked it or not. As it happened he did like the idea, but he was going to feel awfully guilty about taking two whole weeks out of his study schedule ...
"We should reach Pike's Retreat by sundown," Tom informed him. "We can pick up some supplies there before we head out to the cabin. Morrison assured me it would be well stocked, but I know Morrison. The guy has no idea of a sensible diet; he'd live on chilli beans and Twinkies, given half a chance."
Sam spent a couple of moments analysing the nutritional content of such a diet and came to the conclusion that it probably wouldn't be a good idea. "Mom packed some stuff in that box before we left," he observed, and his brother laughed.
"Yeah, I know. Apple pie, homemade preserves, half a cooked ham ... Jeez, but I miss all that home cookin' while I'm away. You don't know how lucky you are sometimes, you know?"
Sam knew. He was learning to fend for himself at college, and there were days he had a very strange diet indeed. Almost as strange as chilli beans and Twinkies, now he came to think about it.
"When we start pulling trout outta that lake," Tom went on blithely, "you and I are gonna have a feast. You just wait and see." He threw his brother an affectionate glance. "Glad you came, kid?"
Sam thought about it. "Yeah," he admitted, returning the warmth of the smile in one of his own. "This is going to be fun, right? Just you and me, and nobody telling us what to do."
Tom grinned. "You bet, little brother. You're gonna remember this vacation for the rest of your life ..."
It took me over half an hour to reach the road, another two to reach the lake. Al walked some of the distance with me, until I told him to quit using up vital energy and oxygen and go wait for me somewhere. He didn't like abandoning me to the wild, but he did appreciate my logic and replaced his careful pacing with a series of key-driven flips. I began to use him as a signpost - a means of measuring my progress, since the road, once I reached it, seemed interminable. I couldn't just stride out, or jog; my feet were bare, and the going was rough. I walked, with concentrated paces, and my mind wandered into wary brooding.
Maybe I don't exist anymore. Maybe this is hell, and I'll walk this damn road forever ...
Fortunately I was disabused of that notion by the signpost. 'Welcome to Joshua County,' it said, and underneath, in smaller letters, 'Pike's Retreat, 10 miles.'
Ten miles ...! I was tempted to just give up there and then - might well have done but for the pensive image of my friend waiting for me further along the road. I might be able to stop and rest, but the clock on his life was ticking down with unavoidable inevitability. I set my shoulders, and went back to putting one foot after another. Al watched me approach with sympathetic attention, leaning his weight against an unseen wall while he did so. In other circumstances the bizarre sight might have been funny - but there was nothing funny about his current situation and I was in no mood for laughing.
"Maybe you should take a break," he suggested, once I was within conversational distance. I shook my head and kept walking. He levered himself up from his non-existent wall and fell into step beside me as I passed, deliberately expending his precious energy. I tolerated half a dozen steps before frustration jerked me to a halt.
"Damn it, Al," I snapped, turning toward him with misdirected anger. "I thought I told you ..." I let the anger and the words tail away. He was looking at me with weary patience and my irritation evaporated immediately. He was right. I was tired, and I was not going to do either of us any good by forcing my own exhaustion. I could read the threat in his eyes as clearly as if he'd spoken the words: either I took a break, or he'd walk beside me until I stopped for his sake. That's emotional blackmail, I considered to myself, and sighed. You know me too well, Al. "Okay," I acquiesced, frowning at him to let him know I'd seen through his less than subtle manipulation. "I guess five minutes wouldn't hurt."
He cracked a smile and waved me to the side of the road where the rise of a low barrier provided the perfect perch for a tired man. The road and I had been following the line of the lake for a while; its route twisted and turned with an almost malevolent delight, rising and falling with the bones of the land so that it ran along beside the water like a low-slung rollercoaster. There was a narrow beach some fifteen feet below the road edge at that point, a steep slope of grit and scree leading down to it. I rested my weight against the barrier, deliberately turning my back to the water as I did so; Al tapped a couple of buttons on the handlink and came to sit beside me, staring up at the rise of the rock wall from which the curve of the road had been cut.
"It's getting dark, Sam," he observed distractedly. I turned my head to study him in the gathering dusk. His condition was deteriorating - noticeably so, even in those few short hours - and there was a hint of effort in his voice that hadn't been there before. His eyes betrayed him the most; they held a tension not even the twist of his determined smile could hide.
"I know," I said, in answer to his remark. There was a part of me that was silently praying that I hadn't been brought to this place just so that I could watch him die.
"You don't remember, do you?" His words held a plaintive note that turned my heart over.
"Remember what?"
"What might have happened. Whether this place has any significance."
I shook my head. If I had ever been to this place before the memory of it had been wiped entirely from my mind. "I'm sorry," I sighed. "I don't. I wish I could, but - "
The sound of traffic interrupted me. The rumble of an approaching vehicle, the acoustics of the place throwing it back and forward so that I couldn't tell which direction it came from. I started to stand up, expectations of a possible ride painting relief onto my face - and then everything happened all at once, almost before I could decipher what was going on.
The car came up from the same direction as I had, its headlights on, doing maybe thirty or forty miles per hour as it rounded the curve of the road. The truck appeared from the other direction, moving a lot faster, and hogging the centre of the road. Neither driver had much time to react; the car swerved one way, the truck went the other and I scrambled over the low rail as several tons of steel and engineering careened in my direction. I think Al yelled a warning but I was already on the move, throwing myself flat against the scree as wind and undirected motion tore over me. There was the sound of an impact from above, another below, and I found myself lying on cold grit watching as the tumbled truck slowly settled itself into the disturbance of the water.
"Check the car," I called behind me, scrambling down the slope with a sense of urgency. Ice-cold water snatched at my legs as I waded across to the wreck. The cab was nearly completely immersed, the tailgate wide open and yawning at the sky. I fumbled at the driver's door and managed to wrench it open, reaching inside to drag the only occupant free from the swirl of water and out into the air.
He appeared to be unconscious. I manhandled him through the muddy morass and heaved him up onto the shoreline, cursing a little as I did so. The man was heavy and the water was bitterly cold. I had just settled him onto the stones and begun a check for damages when a frantic hologram snapped into existence right in front of me.
"Sam," he gasped. "You gotta do something. Tom got out, but you - "
"Oh my god ..." I didn't need to hear the rest of it. I was scrambling up the gravel bank and over the damaged barrier as if my life depended on it.
Which it did.
My life -
And his -
And all the other lives that my Leaping has affected since this whole crazy business began ...
"... sixty six bottles of beer on the wall, sixty six bottles of beer ..."
The song was nonsense, but it was fun; Sam chorused it along with his brother while the landscape peeled past them and the day faded into dusk. He felt a growing sense of anticipation that, back on the freeway, he hadn't expected to. The wilderness around them was filled with promise - the chance of exploration and discovery, a hint of freedom and the possibility of challenge. He'd spent so long in books he'd been beginning to forget the real wonders of the world; but they lay all around him, just waiting to be uncovered ...
I wouldn't be here if Tom hadn't insisted, he realised, grinning at his brother so as to try to convey his thanks. The road curved round to parallel the lake, and Sam craned round in his seat to get a better view of it past his brother's shoulder. Tom chuckled at his obvious enthusiasm.
"You'll get a good look once we reach the cabin," he promised. "Sit still, willya? It won't be much longer."
The road turned -
- and the world collapsed into unspecified chaos.
Lights flared into his eyes, dazzling, startlingly bright. His brother cursed in alarm; everything slewed sideways.
The rock wall came up beside him with frightening speed, savaging the side of the vehicle, a roaring and a screaming of metal from which he tried desperately to escape.
Oh, god, this can't be happening ...
The car slammed to a halt.
He was thrown forward, into the curve of the windshield, his arms raised to cover his face, pain impacting into his forearms, through his shoulders, all breath driven from his lungs. It seemed to go on forever, as if he could count every nanosecond of event, could measure the impact and its aftermath with leisurely perspective ...
... and then he was lying half across the crumpled hood of the car, the world spinning away from him, twisting and heaving in a symphony of disorientated pain. Someone called his name, a voice he did not recognise yet which somehow seemed utterly familiar, as if he had heard it once, in a dream.
"Sam? Oh my god, Sam ..."
He turned his head with an effort, seeing his brother stagger out of the tumbled wreck - seeing, too, the startled figure in white that flicked out of existence even as he registered its presence.
Must be my guardian angel, he thought with confusion. The world seemed a great distance away. He couldn't move, could barely register the fact that he existed. Somewhere close he could smell gasoline, strong and distinctive. I don't want to die, he protested inwardly. There's so much I need to do.
But right then it seemed he had no choices left at all ...
The car had come to rest against the unforgiving rock wall that marked the far side of the road. The driver, fair-haired and heart-stoppingly familiar, had staggered free to collapse to his hands and knees on the metalled surface. His passenger lay sprawled through the shattered windshield, a tumble of lanky frame and awkward limbs. Glass lay everywhere and the scent of spilled gas was overwhelming.
"You gotta get him out," Al insisted, his image reappearing in the wreck and looking at me with desperation. "This whole baby's gonna go up any minute."
I loped past my brother and grabbed for the impossibility of myself. No time for care or delicacy. My hands slid under the sprawled figure's armpits and I pulled, lifting and twisting as I did so. The limp form came without resistance, spilling into my arms, unfolding from the wreck so that the weight staggered me backwards. We tumbled away together, my arms cradling him as we fell, protecting him from further damage ...
... and the world exploded in a cacophony of light and heat, throwing both of us away into the night, rolling us over and over with its impact as the car was consumed in a ball of violent fire.
Oh, god, this can't be happening ...
But it was.
And if I hadn't been there, then Samuel Beckett's golden future would have come to an end right there and then.
No Project. No Leap. Just a burned out wreck and a wasted potential.
And all because my brother had lived to come home ...
I lay in the road, my body protecting my precious charge while debris pattered down from the sky. My mind was working in overtime.
One - or the other. Was that the price my family had to pay? Tom lived, so I had to die? But because of that, the whole future was affected. I never took all those doctorates, never won my Nobel prize, never founded Quantum Leap ... How many other lives do I really affect when I change event? One? Two? Ten? Ten thousand?
I didn't know. But the possible repercussions of my actions were overwhelming; everything I changed, changed everything. Maybe only in a subtle way. Perhaps some other genius had arisen to take the leading edge of technology in directions I had never thought of. Perhaps time, like the current of a river, reacted to reestablish its primary flow whenever it was diverted from its course. But the result of that diversion, that shift in direction always had consequences - consequences I had never truly considered until now.
It's just as well I'm not in control of my Leaping, I thought with an inner shudder. I don't think I could face the thought of changing things deliberately. And if I ever got things wrong, then I could do all sorts of damage without realising it ...
Which I had, hadn't I? I held the result of my own selfishness in my arms. If I'd known that saving my brother's life would lead to this, would I still have done it?
"Sam? Oh, god, mister, is he okay?"
My brother's voice answered my question. My brother. Alive. Surviving only to have my death on his conscience ...
But he was still my brother. And I'd saved him. I looked up, drinking in the shape of his features outlined against the lurid light. A little older than I remembered - of course he was - and his face tight with anxiety. He would never have forgiven himself for my death, just as I had never gotten over his ...
Sometimes the price can be bearable, because what it buys can be so precious.
Behind my brother's anxious crouch, another was watching us, the haggard image of a dying man. He'd paid the price of Tom's life, not me, and was still paying it, caught up in the repercussions of my actions, prepared to accept the status quo of his history so that I could change my own.
If I'd had to choose between my brother and him, which of them would I have saved?
My brother from death, or my friend from hell?
I stared at them both - at the smoke-stained figure from my past and the dishevelled image of my future. My mind teetered on the edge of a precipice, weighing up the possibilities and my own likely reactions to them. Save Tom, and watch Al die? Save Al, and never forgive him for being the price of my brother's life?
The road to hell is paved with good intentions ...
The figure in my arms stirred and coughed, and comprehension engulfed my fevered considerations.
I had been spared that choice, because Al had been strong enough - enough of a friend - to make it for me. To spare me the consequences.
And because of that, I had been given a second chance.
To make myself a world that had both of them in it.
Maybe there is a god, after all ...
Sam stirred into an awareness of pain, a perception of discomfort cradled in comforting arms. He was lain down gently onto a hard surface and expert fingers studied his condition with careful touches. The sky was dark, but lit with flickers of flame. The air was cool and each breath felt like a quiet miracle drawn into his bruised lungs.
"Take it easy, little brother," Tom's voice advised, while the stranger carefully lifted his head to place a soft support beneath it. His head hurt. Hurt with a distant pounding and a strange sense of existence washing in and out of him. Through it he could hear the murmur of voices; his brother's and that of his rescuer, discussing matters in low tones.
"He's in a bad way, Lieutenant. Cuts and contusions mostly, but he took a nasty blow to the head, and I think his left forearm is broken. He's going to need professional treatment, and soon. The consequences of shock could still be fatal."
The stranger's voice was peculiar. It sounded so much like his father's, and yet wasn't at all ...
I'm dying? he questioned, too distanced from events to find that a surprise or even something to be afraid of. I thought I was dead. Guess that's an improvement ...
"Do I know you, mister?" Tom sounded dazed. Disorientated maybe.
Must be the driver of the truck, Sam concluded, opening his eyes to try and focus on the conversation. He couldn't see much; he'd been placed in a proper recovery position and his main field of view was the ground. He recognised Tom's boots - regulation issue - and then blinked, because there were two men standing with him, and one of them had bare feet ...
"Not - exactly. Look, someone's going to have to go for help. Do you feel up to it?"
"Guess I do." Tom took a deep breath. "Stay with him. I'll - I'll be back as soon as I can."
"I'm depending on it."
"Yeah," the third man remarked quietly. "Guess we all are, right, Sam?"
I know that voice ... Is he talking to me?
Tom paused to crouch beside him, to lay a hand reassuringly to his shoulder.
"I - I gotta go, little brother. You hang on in there, you hear? I'll be quick, I promise."
Wasn't your fault, Tom. He wanted to say it out loud, but his brother was gone before he could formulate the words. He shivered, feeling cold along with the distance of pain.
"How bad is it, Sam?" The familiar tones tugged at lost memories.
What lost memories? I've got this perfect recall, right?
Oh, god, I hurt ...
"Bad. Look - I need to find some way to keep him warm. I've got to check on the truck driver too. Stay here, will you? Let me know if I'm needed."
"Sure. Sam - be careful, huh?"
I don't understand. Sam's mind refused to make sense of what he heard. I thought he was the truck driver. Guess his name is Sam, too. But why do I know his friend ...?
He shifted carefully, turning so that he could see what was going on a little better. The movement was an effort, and pain stirred with more enthusiasm than he did.
"Hey, kid, take it easy."
He looked up as the speaker came to squat beside him; a compact figure with dark hair and a square-cut face. A figure dressed in startling white. Some kind of uniform, although that didn't gel with the man's stubble beard at all. An old man, he guessed, although it was hard to tell. As old as his father maybe. And he knew him ...
The smile gave it away. A wry, self-depreciating smile that belonged to images that had no place in his history and yet were there.
"I guess you can't hear me, can you, Sam? God, but this whole damn business is crazy ..."
Maybe he is my guardian angel.
"Why shouldn't I hear you? I've not gone deaf, Admiral."
"Sam?" The reaction was pure startlement. "You can ...? You know who I am?"
"Nope." Sam smiled lazily. The world still seemed a long distance away somehow. "At least. Not really. Just - I remembered, that's all. I think."
"You think?" The man frowned at him, his eyes narrowed into wary lines, his expression somehow emphasising the haggard lines of his face. "Jeez-Louise, kid, don't get smart with me. This is all confusing enough as it is. Do you know who I am?"
He thought about it, dredging up recollections that were fuzzed and indistinct, a startling contrast to the rest of the ordered and crystal-clear memories of his life. "There was a - place," he identified slowly. A white walled, undefined place. He'd been - what? Fifteen? Sixteen? And the man, dressed like a city slicker or one of those travelling salesmen dad was always joking with mom about. A warm smile, sympathy for his confusion, a brusque and yet somehow comforting manner. 'I'm a friend,' he'd said. 'Just call me Al ...' Only the lady had addressed him as Admiral - and there had been moments when the surface veneer had slipped and revealed a hint of steel-eyed certainty behind his cheery façade. He hadn't been quite what he seemed ...
Sam shivered, drawn from his thoughts by uncentred pain. The anxiety on his observer's face twisted into tight concern.
"Don't worry about it, Sam. Just - take it easy, okay? I'm not important, anyhow. You are."
"I'm cold, Admiral." He didn't mind admitting the weakness, not to this man, somehow. He'd kept his word back then, hadn't he? Taken good care of him and sent him home ...
"I know. Don't let it get to ya. You got help coming, I promise. And it's Al, okay? Just ignore the uniform. I'm not exactly on duty right now."
It was meant as a joke, a reassurance, although Sam had no idea why the remark could be construed as funny. The words were delivered with an ironic note behind them, and the man certainly didn't look as if he were dressed according to regulations ... The white fabric gleamed in the growing dusk, as if it were lit by some other, unseen, lightsource. He was holding some kind of a device in one hand, flickering lights of green and red chasing over its surface. And - and there was something odd about his presence, an intangibility Sam couldn't quite figure out. He was hunkered real close, and yet - and yet ...
"Am I gonna die?" Sam demanded, sudden anxiety seizing his soul, reaching past the sense of distance that had enfolded him.
"No way," was the instant reply, firm and determined. Not if I can help it, was implied in unspoken undertones. "What the hell gave you that idea?"
"You." The man's look became totally disconcerted.
"What? Why?"
"I remember - " Sam refocused on the memories that didn't belong, on the possible reasons for being able to recall something that hadn't happened and yet had ... "That place? You said it was some kind of hospital, but it wasn't. I know it wasn't. It was - someplace else. I was just a kid, but I remember. Just now, seeing you - I remembered. You were there. And you're not - here - are you?" His hand reached out with an effort, analytic mind demanding proof of the theorem he was constructing. The eye demanded it make contact with a white clad leg, but his fingers closed on nothing at all. "Are you some kind of an angel?"
The disconcertion collapsed into spontaneous amusement. "Hardly," the non-existent figure laughed. "And I'm not working for the opposition either, so you can get that thought outta your head as well. I'm just a man, like any other, except - well, you're right. I'm not 'here' exactly. I'm - " He paused to think about it, settled on an explanation that didn't answer any questions. Just asked all sorts of others inside Sam's head. "I'm kinda elsewhen right now. I'm a friend, just like I said before, and - uh - if you hang on in there kid, you're gonna find out all about me - the hard way. Just take me as read for now, willya? Busy keeping an eye on you. As usual."
"It's what he does best," a second voice interjected softly. "Apart from drive me crazy." The same voice that had talked to Tom. Sam lifted his pounding head that little bit further - and found himself staring at almost familiar features, at an image that might belong in a mirror. That did belong in a mirror. The face was older - maybe fifteen, twenty years older - but the recognition was immediate.
He was looking straight at himself.
"Oh, boy," he gasped.
Sam Beckett, welcome to the Twilight Zone ...
I'd checked on the truck driver, then on the truck; he was fast asleep, draped in drunken stupor rather than threatened by any more serious form of unconsciousness. His vehicle proved much more helpful. I waded back into the ice-cold water and scrambled onto the angled tailgate; among the few tumbled contents that had remained out of the water's reach I managed to find a bundle of dry and reasonably clean dustsheets and a heavy duty flashlight that actually worked.
I tucked one of the sheets around the sleeping drunk, who stirred but was unlikely to wake for hours; the rest I carried back up the slope and over the barrier - which was when I registered the voices, and came to a disconcerted halt.
He can see - and hear - him ...
There were only two possible reasons why my younger self would be able to perceive my personal hologram, and the most obvious one was the simple fact that he was me. The transmissions from the Imaging Chamber were specifically attuned to my neural receptors; they would undoubtedly impact on both of us with equal efficiency. The other reason - the more worrying one - I dismissed without more than a moment's consideration. Apart from those few people sympathetically resonant enough to detect Al's presence there had been others able to see him; the very young, the very simple-minded - and the very few who had been close enough to death ...
I shook a sudden shiver from my soul and walked the rest of the distance, listening to the exchange of words and adding my own smile to my friend's reactive chuckle. Al Calavicci an angel? There are more unlikely candidates, of course, but I seriously doubt that my friend would qualify on a number of counts. And hadn't someone once told me they had a dress code in heaven?
On the other hand ...
Who said angels also had to be saints? He wasn't quite my guardian, but he was my guide - and I'd never had cause to question his loyalty over the course of my journeying. His concentration, maybe - and his morals on a number of occasions - but never his commitment.
"Keeping an eye on you," I heard him conclude. "As usual." It was offered as a gentle joke. I knew it to conceal an honest truth.
"It's what he does best," I interjected softly, crouching down beside the two of them . "That - and drive me crazy."
My patient lifted his head - it took too obvious an effort - and focused on my face. His eyes met mine - eyes I had once seen staring at me out of mirrors and haven't seen in far too long a time. My own eyes, taut with pain and cluttered with confusion.
"Oh, boy," he gasped, the moment of recognition completely mutual. I froze, suddenly struck by the impossibility of the situation. This was me - a gawky, awkward youth, filled with promise and genius - and for once in my life I was literally beside myself ...
Practical considerations cut through the impact of startled awe. My younger image winced with pain and let his head fall back to the bundle of Tom's jacket I had put there to support him. I reacted to that, reaching to check his pulse and frowning at what it revealed to me.
This isn't good ...
"I'm - dreaming, aren't I?" my patient concluded, closing his eyes and shivering under my hand. My frown deepened and I reached for the sheets to cover him up, aware that shock was beginning to take its toll on his system.
"Yeah," I assured him, trying to sound calm and unconcerned. "Just a crazy dream, Sam. About something that hasn't happened yet." I glanced at Al as I said it, finding him watching the two of us, his face drawn into shadowed anxiety. The handlink was still ominously silent; the look in his eyes was a haunted one.
If it ever does ...
He caught my glance, relaxed into a determined smile.
"Keep dreaming, kid," he advised gruffly, addressing the both of us. "You got this real talent for turning your dreams into reality."
Sure - real live nightmares.
I couldn't shake the feeling that maybe I was meant to perish here, my life the price of my brother's survival. But if the young man under my hand were to die, then so would the haggard figure of my friend - and what would become of me? Paradox and second chances ... Did the universe care? I suspected not. What was the life of any man compared to the vaster patterns of time and space? I had found a way to travel within my own lifetime, and found myself forced to correct the almost imperceptible mistakes of fate, the tiny flaws that lay among the intricate interactions of a myriad other lives; but compared to the scope and scale of history, that was so small a moment, so infinitesimal a split second that, in the end, it could have no significance at all.
Either I'm nothing but a misplaced particle, a rogue electron in a sea of Brownian motion, or I'm a catalyst of god, dancing, like all the other angels, on the head of a pin ...
And the situation I found myself in was a direct consequence of my own actions, whether I liked it or not.
"You have to rest," I said with authority, and surreptitiously jerked my head in Al's direction to indicate I wanted to talk to him privately. He frowned - his ability to think with clarity was undoubtedly deteriorating along with his physical condition - and then registered my intentions. He glanced around, and used his thumb to indicate a spot over by the damaged barrier. I nodded - and he vanished, a stab to the handlink whisking him away. That deepened my anxiety even further. All he'd had to do was get up and walk half a dozen steps, which either meant he was feeling extremely lazy, or implied that his situation was a lot worse than he was prepared to let on. I dropped a reassuring hand to my patient's shoulder and adopted a professional smile.
"I'll be back in a moment," I informed him. He opened his eyes and gave me a considered look.
"Sure," he breathed softly, and I winced. He thought I was a dream. Thought we were both a dream. And he was no fool.
I wonder if he's scared? Nineteen years old - and knowing that he could be dying.
I couldn't even remember being nineteen. Somehow that was the scariest thing of all.
"It's not good, right?" Al's conclusion was delivered with sympathy rather than resentment. Maybe he'd come to terms with his own situation - or maybe his faith in me was strong enough to offer no options other than my eventual success. Either conclusion demonstrated a depth of character that belied the smart talking wiseguy image he usually presented to the world.
"It's not good." I echoed his words with a sigh. Dusk was turning into genuine night, and the moon had risen, low on the horizon. Its light spilled across the tranquil surface of the lake, painting it with silver. "I don't think there's any internal bleeding, but I can't be sure. And shock is starting to set in. That could kill him. Me." I had to face the truth here. It was my life on the line as much as his.
"Can't you do anything, Sam?"
I shrugged, feeling the inevitable weight of despair settle on my shoulders. Patience is not one of my virtues, and it was patience that was needed most. "Keep him warm, keep him awake, monitor his pulse - I've got no equipment, nothing to counteract the situation. He needs help, Al. I'm not sure that I'm going to be enough."
"You're here," he pointed out. "That has to make a difference."
"It already has. If I hadn't got him out ..." I didn't need to finish my sentence. The scorched shell of Tom's car was a stark reminder of might-have-beens. I found it wasn't despair after all. It was sheer frustration. "Wasn't that enough?" I asked the general air, not expecting an answer. I heard Al sigh beside me, a quiet sound of patient irritation.
"Sam," he said softly. "Don't."
"Don't what?" I snapped, turning on him because he happened to be there. His face was lined with shadows, stark in the moonlight.
"Don't beat yourself up over this," he advised gently. "It won't help, kid. It never does."
He was right. Of course he was right. And he wasn't blaming me. So why should I blame myself?
Because it was all my fault ...
"I wish I had Ziggy's odds on this," I muttered without thinking. He winced. "Sorry," I added, almost at once. He threw me a look, and then laughed, softly.
"Forget it, Sam," he said. "It can't be more than a few more hours, right? Tom should be halfway to civilisation by now, and he'll come roaring back with more paramedics than you'll know what to do with. Look - why don't you go get some water from the lake so you can clean him up a little, and I'll keep the kid company until you get back. Shoot him a line or two. I got a zillion stories I could choose from." He adopted a lopsided grin. "And he hasn't heard any of 'em yet ..."
I did as he suggested, came back to find him finishing some outrageous tale concerning a lion-tamer he'd met somewhere in the midwest. Sabrina, he said her name was. My younger self was listening with both disbelief and fascination.
"That's anatomically impossible," he interrupted as I hunkered down to join them both. Al winked at me.
"She was double-jointed, kid. Boy, was that something to see. Not to mention ..." He broke off, as if just remembering that his audience was only nineteen. "Well, that's another story. I'll tell you when you're older, okay?"
It might have been funny, that sudden recollection, his brief embarrassment, only I was paying more attention to the slur in his voice, the effort he was so clearly making.
Symptoms of dehydration, my mind insisted on informing me. Dizziness and nausea. You don't feel too good, do you, Al ...?
"I'll hold you to that," my patient announced, his own voice equally effort-filled.
"I wouldn't bother," I remarked, hunkering down beside them both. "He's bound to tell you anyway. Not," I added with an affectionate scowl in my friend's direction, "that I ever believe him. Well," I amended, since this brought a very wounded look to Al's face, "not all the time, anyway."
Al snorted softly. "Don't you listen to him, kid," he advised. "He don't remember."
The younger me looked puzzled at this; I merely sighed.
More side-effects and consequences ...
I'd retrieved a plastic carton from the truck, washed it out and brought it back filled with cold water. I had no guarantees as to the quality of the water in the lake, of course, but then I wasn't expecting him to drink it. Fluid would counteract the onset of shock, but not when administered by mouth. He needed an IV. I didn't have one.
"Are you feeling thirsty?" I asked, wincing inwardly as Al went a little white and turned away. He was, without a doubt.
"A - little," Sam admitted. I nodded, reaching down to feel the pulse at his throat. It was too fast to be comforting and his skin had a clammy feel to it. I tore a strip off the topmost dustsheet and moistened it, using it to begin mopping some of the crusted blood from his face. Minor cuts mostly, few deep enough to permanently scar, and the tears along his shoulder and back were probably the worst.
"Sam," I said softly, "do me a favour, will you? When you build your time machine, don't use it until you're sure of what you're doing, huh?"
He stared at me. Time machine? he mouthed. I nodded, and his eyes went wide - then narrowed with calculating assessment. I'd thought him sufficiently disorientated not to pay much attention to what I said, but this wasn't me - adrift in time and magnafoozled to the nth degree. This was Sam Beckett, child genius and scientific phenomenon. Who'd been dreaming of time travel ever since Captain Galaxy showed him it might be possible ...
Oh, boy. Me and my big mouth.
Unless - unless maybe I was here to say that to myself. To make all of it happen. Because this Sam Beckett's history had one less reason in it for wanting to go back in the first place.
Tom didn't die in 'Nam ...
Unravel one thread and watch the world fall apart.
The art of changing time has to be as delicate as that of the ice sculptor - or the diamond cutter. One wrong blow, one misplaced change and the whole thing could shatter beyond repair, right?
Just - when it happens to time, there might be no-one around to pick up the pieces afterwards.
Is time a diamond, or is it ice?
The diamond cannot be recovered. But the ice can be melted down and the whole thing reshaped a second time. And a third. And a fourth.
Until it's right ...
Was that what I was doing? Like an artist working in sand? Continually going back to smooth things out and start again?
I'd been given a chance to correct this, hadn't I? I reminded myself firmly of that fact as I tucked the sheet back over his shoulders.
"It's going to be okay, Sam," I promised softly, settling myself by his side. "You'll see."
He grimaced a pale smile and put out his hand as if offering - or seeking - reassurance. I caught it, wrapped it firmly with my own.
A lifeline, Sam. One without beginning or end. From me to you and back again, the future depending on the past, the past on the future. Nothing comes without consequences, but right here, right now, it's just you and me.
And the dying echo of a man you will one day call your friend ...
Time dragged past. A long hour or more, while the moon slowly lifted higher in the sky and threw silver shadows over everything. I talked to my patient to be certain of his conscious state, asking him about college, and his family, and his dreams for the future. All the things I wanted to recall and couldn't. His words - effort-filled and weary with pain - stirred deep feelings within me; for him his father was a tower of gruff strength, his home a certainty that he took for granted. I advised him to treasure what he had while he had it, and Al frowned at me as if uncertain of my motives.
I could have told myself what I knew - warned him about Kate and the monster she would marry, about our father's trouble with the farm and his decline - but where the words might once have come freely, eager to create change, burning to right the wrongs I perceived, they now stuck in my throat, held there by an awareness of the dark eyes that watched us both.
Truth, dare or consequence ...
It's an old game, played in the schoolyard, and some players never learn that whatever you choose in the end it all comes down to consequences. My lesson in that had been a hard one.
I'd chosen the dare - risked everything to save my brother, ignored the truth in order to pursue that aim. The truth had snuck up behind me and smacked me hard. That hadn't been what I was there to do ...
And the consequences?
I was knee-deep in them, drowning in them, drinking in the bitter taste of my own mistakes.
My friend was dying.
I was dying.
And at that moment nothing in the world could have persuaded me to instigate further change, no matter what might have loomed in the future.
We sank into a seemingly endless endurance, the three of us.
My patient shivered and drifted away from me, brought back by jesting words, by a touch at his hand, by sheer willpower. Anchored by his own self, secured by his future ...
And Al?
He was fading right before my eyes, both figuratively and literally. His image slowly became a ghostly one, as if, with each passing moment, the power that had enabled him to reach my side was draining away. He'd begun the vigil with jocular effort, with dogged determination; that, too, faded as time passed, until he had nothing left but distracted concentration. One breath at a time, each slow and studied, hanging on to life the way he had learned to do so long ago ...
Only a Leap away. Three years of hell he had had a chance to prevent. The price of my brother's life.
The price of mine ...
I was losing both of them.
And in the end the only thing left for me to do was pray.
Dear god.
No words. No reasoning. Just sheer need driving the depth of my heart.
Give me the strength ...
Time ceased.
I was nowhere, nowhen. The warmth of my past was in my palm, the image of my future was a hazy ghost just out of reach. I could sense every sound in the night, the lap of water against the shoreline, the whisper of bats passing in the dark. My eyes were rimmed with silver, the moonlight tainting every edge it touched, sharp and focused.
I felt as if I could reach up and touch the sky.
All I have to do is stretch out my hand and I can walk among the stars ...
The sound of sirens cut through my reverie. Harsh, urgent sounds, cutting through the night and pitching me back into firm reality. They echoed and re-echoed along the lakeside as if the hounds of hell pursued them.
The hounds of hell ...
They'd been on Tom's heels, right? My brother had reached civilisation, had summoned the help I so desperately needed.
Tom was coming.
My hand clenched on the fingers curled within it.
"Can you hear them, Sam? They're coming. You're going to make it. Can you hear them? Al? Can you - "
I looked up, at where my friend had been sitting. His image flickered once - and then vanished completely.
Noooo!
Instinct half-launched me in his nonexistent direction. Rationality pulled me back, to lean desperately over my patient, to find his pulse almost gone, his breathing so soft and shallow it could barely be detected.
And then they both stopped altogether.
Pain shivered through me, the pain of dissolution. I fought it, seized it, used it. My hands were on my own chest, demanding life, my breath forcing air into my own lungs.
You've got to live, damn it, Sam!
You've got to ...
Everything was spinning around me, light and darkness, time and space, past and future.
Breathe in, breathe out. Count the pressure - one, two, three.
Another breath.
Another.
I want to live, do you hear me?!
I want to live!
Not for myself. For the sake of the future.
For all those people I had helped, for the world I was making each and every time I Leaped. For all the consequences of my existence.
For the sake of my friend, who had so much faith in me ...
Do you hear me, god?
I won't let go!
"Sam?" Tom's voice, pitched low and anxious. Sam reluctantly climbed out of the soft haze in which he drifted and focused blearily on his brother's face, close beside him.
"Tom?" he croaked, a little doubtfully. He'd been having these dreams - weird dreams - where his brother had been dead and his life changed forever ...
"Right here, little brother." The older Beckett's hand curled firmly around his own. "How do you feel?"
Crazy question. He was - where? Lying on his back in some sort of bed, the air filled with the scents of hospital, the soft sound of monitoring equipment providing a background to his fuddled senses. Tom occupied a chair at his bedside, his brother's face pale and coarse with untouched stubble. Hospital, he registered with clinical detachment. Uh-huh. Guess I made it then ...
"Al?" he gasped with sudden urgency, struggling to get up, to react to the fear that had caught at him. Tom reached over and held him down.
"Hey, take it easy kid. Who's Al? The guy that helped you? I wanted to thank him, but the paramedics said he just vanished once they'd taken over ..."
No, Sam's mind insisted, while the memory he fought for slipped further from his reach. Someone else had been in trouble. Someone he was supposed to help. The thought disintegrated completely; all he was left with was a vague sense of concern.
"I - I don't remember," he admitted reluctantly. He always remembered, didn't he? But not this time, not beyond vague recollections of comforting hands and snatches of a dream. I have a friend I don't know yet. The comprehension popped into his head complete and unarguable. A good friend. Who isn't an angel but ought to be.
Only there were no details, no specifics, just a curious sense of comfort that settled in his heart.
And he's gonna drive me crazy ...
"Are you feeling okay, Sam?" His brother's concern was equally comforting.
"Yeah," he breathed, settling back into the softness of the pillows, ignoring the ache of bruised flesh and the protest of his body. "I feel great."
Tom's anxiety collapsed into a grimace of affectionate disbelief. "You're something else, and no mistake," he laughed. "You came that close, you know? I was real scared I was gonna have to go home without you."
Sam smiled, mostly to himself. "You're not going to get rid of me that easily. I've got things to do."
"Yeah," his brother agreed, squeezing his hand as he did so. "But not right away, huh? Mom's on her way, and right now you have to concentrate on recovery. Sam," he added, his face settling back into anxious lines. "I'm sorry, okay? This was all my fault ..."
"No it wasn't." Sam denied the assumption of guilt with decided feeling. "You didn't know this would happen. We all make mistakes, Tom. And I'm okay, really I am."
"Thanks to that guy, whoever he was." Tom sighed. "I wish I'd had a chance to thank him. He saved your life, you know? Funny - he kinda reminded me of someone. And I didn't even catch his name. He just - vanished."
Into thin air ... Snatches of tantalising memory floated through Sam's head, none of which he could focus on.
"Sam," he announced with sudden certainty. "His name was Sam, too."
"That right?" Tom shook his head in quiet incomprehension. "How 'bout that? He certainly knew what he was doing. The paramedics said he'd done everything just right ..."
A thought crystallised with disconcerting clarity.
"Maybe it was me," Sam suggested. "Come back in time to make sure I survived to build my time machine ..."
Tom stared at him - then burst out laughing. "You're crazy, you know that?" he asked rhetorically. "You and your wild ideas ... Saving yourself! I like that, Sam, I really do ... Now, get some sleep, huh? You've got your whole life to cook up all those crazy schemes of yours. Though, god knows where you're going to end up ..."
The cessation of movement, a sensation of peace enfolding me.
Choral music impinges on my senses; soft, harmonious voices, praising god in counterpointed words.
I stand in a white world, and there are angels smiling down on me, their wings spread in glittering glory, their arms lifted in exultation.
I'm in the afterlife.
I'm dead?
No. Please - noooo.
I tried so hard ...
"Hey, Humph, move your ass willya? I know it's pretty, but the boss don't pay you to stand around and admire your own work. Move over and let the public see!"
I turn, jarred from that distanced sense of peace into total disorientation. I'm not in the afterlife at all. I'm in Macy's. In the middle of a huge shop window display.
Behind me what looks like the entire population of Manhattan Island is staring in through the plate glass; small children plastered there with wide eyes and eagerness, older ones with cynical disdain. Their parents and their grandparents cluster behind them, warm smiles, harassed looks, anxious frowns.
I'm in New York.
It's Christmas.
And I'm alive ....
Dear god, let me be alive!
The man who'd spoken earlier harumphs in irritation, grabs at my arm and drags me away.
"For heaven's sake, Humph," he complains, "you may be the best window artist we've had for years, but sometimes I think your mind is miles away. Earth to Humph," he mocks good-naturedly, "Are you reading me? Over."
It's a Leap.
Has to be.
I look up, past my jocular company, to find a colourful and familiar figure admiring the angels.
Well - admiring isn't quite the right word. More like ogling.
But that's Al all over, right?
He saunters across to join me with this little grin written on his features. I know that look. There's something about this situation he finds incredibly funny.
I'm just incredibly glad to see him.
And my Swiss-cheesed brain wonders why ...
"Cooee?" my assistant persists. "Humphrey? Are you in there?"
Al's grin becomes wider still.
My name is Humphrey?
Oh, boy ...
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