Anything For Love - Part Two
Penelope Hill
I slept late. Very late by the clock, which indicated some time after eleven by the time I crawled back to the world and blinked blearily from under the bedcovers. I didn’t have a hangover, and I didn’t ache anywhere; in fact I felt utterly languid and totally uninclined to face the faint chill of the waiting world. I stretched out in search of cat-like comfort - then remembered, and sat bolt upright in startled reaction. I was alone, much to my relief, although the bed was actually big enough to hold a small convention on. I was also completely naked.
For once on my seemingly endless journey, my much vaunted perfect recall was in complete working order. Too complete. I groaned and threw the bedclothes over my head, crystal clear memories of the night before nudging for my attention. Had I ...? Oh, god, I had, hadn’t I? And I’d been warned - by an expert, whose concern for my vulnerability had not been misplaced anxiety but genuine comprehension of just how subtly persuasive a certain Al Calavicci could be ... I groaned a second time, torn between moral outrage and deep embarrassment. Quite apart from anything else, how the hell was I going to be able to look my Al straight in the eye ever again?
The scent of grilling bacon drifted under the edges of my refuge, and my stomach growled in sudden protest. There were other bodily functions demanding attention too, and I crawled out of the bed in search of the en-suite bathroom, wrapping myself in a sheet as I did so in order to assure myself of a little dignity. I hesitated beside the shower, looking at my reflection in the mirror with wary expectation. I did not see a monster looking back at me. Instead I saw a tousled Sam Beckett, draped in tragic white, with a faint five o’clock shadow and a mortified expression on his features.
I looked so ridiculous that I simply had to laugh. At myself. At my sudden assumption of the role of fallen angel, as if the night before had been a moment of grand tragedy, of Mephistophilean corruption and epic depravity. For god’s sake, Beckett, I thought with self-chastisement. All you did was make love. And enjoyed the experience, you two-faced prig of a choirboy. Now I sounded like Al - both of them - either of them. It didn’t matter. The time I had shared with Alonzo was strictly between him and me, and had nothing to do with the way I felt - still felt - about Albert Calavicci, who didn’t have to know, and was probably better off not doing so. So long as I could keep a straight face next time I saw him. Which had better not be stark naked in the Commodore’s bathroom - or Samwise’s for that matter. I ducked my head back into the bedroom and checked out the wardrobe. Samwise’s, thank heavens.
I opted for the shower, despite the temptation of the lure of a late breakfast. I decided to make it brunch and drove away the last of my lethargy under the impact of hot water. Then I shaved, and went to get dressed, serenading the world in general with an impromptu rendition of old Beatles’ numbers. I was part way through When I’m 64 when Al poked his head around the doorframe and grinned at me.
"Morning, Sam," he announced, eyeing my half-clad frame with amused appreciation. That was Alonzo, definitely. Albert saves that kind of assessment for redheads - and blondes, and brunettes, and anyone else with the right curves in the right places.
"Good morning," I greeted him, a little warily, then reminded myself of what I’d decided and made it a welcoming grin. "You two-timing Tomcat."
He winced, a deliberate and exaggerated turn away with an appropriate intake of breath. "Low blow, Sam," he protested, although not seriously. "You know what they say. If you can’t be with the one you love ..."
"... love the one you’re with?" I managed to add just the right amount of amusement to my outrage while I shrugged into the sports shirt I’d chosen to wear. It was such a typical Calavicci remark, even in totally untypical circumstances. "Aaal ..."
He looked abashed. Positively embarrassed, in fact. I took pity on him and strode across to punch him lightly on the shoulder. The mere ability to do just that briefly took my breath away.
"Idiot," I accused good-naturedly. He looked up at me and smiled an oddly shy smile.
"Am I forgiven?" he asked, his eyes expressing hope and expectation. I doubt that anyone could resist that look. I’ve never been able to.
"What do you think?" I growled, moving past him to make for the door. Impulse turned me back; I draped my arm around his shoulders and leaned forward, staring him straight in the eye. "Alonzo Calavicci," I said with definitive firmness, "don’t you ever, ever do that to me again, you hear?"
He nodded, a wounded apology written into his expressive features. I let him squirm a moment longer and then I let out the grin I’d been holding back. "At least," I added with deliberate tease, "not until I’ve had breakfast."
"Sam!" He spluttered a little and then went for my ribs with directed intent. I’d forgotten I was ticklish and I squawked in surprise at the attack. He knew just where to get best effect too - I had to fight him off, though with good-humoured effort, and he half-chased me down the stairs with a mischievous glint in his eyes. By the time we reached the kitchen we were both laughing, and the chance for any awkwardness between us was long gone.
He cooked me fresh bacon, and two eggs, and a huge pile of toast, all washed down with steaming hot coffee. The snow had piled up to the edges of the downstairs windows and appeared to be still falling, but the lodge itself was warm and cosy and he’d banked up the log fire to add to the effect. He claimed he’d eaten earlier, but that didn’t stop him stealing a slice of toast, and he was munching on it when the unmistakable sound of the Imaging Chamber door turned both our heads. Al - my Al - stepped through, glancing around as he did so, and I felt my jaw drop open.
He was in uniform. Not the smart and polished set of dress whites that I’d seen him wear with understandable pride, but standard, everyday Navy uniform, albeit with the medal ribbons neatly in place and a mess of gold braid on his cap. It was summer gear too, short sleeved and pale khaki from head to toe. It was totally unexpected, and for a moment the man sitting next to me, clad in white slacks and a shirt cut from an impressionist painting - by Monet, I think - was less of a stranger than he was.
"Al?" I questioned in surprise. He walked across to join me with an irritated grimace. Alonzo was staring at him, and I remembered that the matter of his resignation from the Navy was a painful memory for him. Seeing his counterpart so obviously making a point of his rank and position must have been a bit like having his nose rubbed in it.
"Sam," the Admiral announced, without preliminaries or too much politeness, "I need to talk to you. Now. Alone," he added, with an anxious glance in the Commodore’s direction. The man concerned frowned, then nodded abruptly, got up and walked away. As he reached the archway he looked back.
"I think there might be a bathroom free," he remarked, somewhat sarcastically. "Isn’t that where you two usually go to talk?"
The man in uniform winced. "Not today," he growled, waiting until his mirror image shrugged and walked completely away before he turned back to me. His expression was serious, and showed evidence of anxious tension. The holographic projection was still uncomfortably fuzzy and flickered at the edges.
"What’s with the uniform?" I asked, trying to sound unconcerned. "This some kind of official visit?"
"The Committee’s here," he said bleakly. "They’re trying to spirit Samwise back to Washington, and the only way I’ve managed to delay them so far is by staging a full-scale security exercise at the base - without explaining that it’s an exercise."
"What?" The news was staggering. No wonder he looked so uptight. "How did that happen?"
He sighed, glancing down at the handlink as he did so. "Someone leaked the news that you were back. And when I get my hands on them ..." He left the specifics, but I didn’t need to fill in the blanks. "Sam - this whole situation is crazy. Ziggy’s not entirely happy about cooperating with you-know-who, and I’m inventing crisis after crisis just to keep him within spitting distance of the Waiting Room. Right now," he went on, beginning to pace a little, "I’m supposed to be in the War room of all places. I’ve got terrorist alerts and infiltration alarms going off all over the place, and I don’t know how long I can keep this up."
He paused to jab with undirected anger at the multi-coloured device in his hand. "Ziggy thinks you’re here to do something but she doesn’t know what. Sam says - Samwise that is - that it’s a year earlier here than it is back home, so the theory fits the pattern. If you can figure out what you might have to do, we think you’ll Leap without any help. And if you do that - "
"Samwise Beckett comes home to stay," I finished for him, glancing at the doorway as I did so. So much for ‘this time it’s for me’ theory. Oh well. I guess I’d come up with that one to help allay the frisson of fear that had arisen in my friend’s eyes ... But it had sure been a nice thought while it lasted. And there might still be a grain of truth in the concept. If Ziggy could be persuaded to accept a little help from my alter ego. So. Whatever I might be here to do it certainly wasn’t - well, we’d done that last night, and I certainly hadn’t Leaped anywhere. Not in time, anyway. "How’s he - coping, Al?"
The anxiety was briefly replaced by the quirk of a grin. "Like a frog in a fishpond," he drawled ironically. "He’s you, Sam. Barely a hint of Swiss cheese, mind like a steel trap ... He was the one who came up with the red alert scam. He’s playing the Committee like a concert grand. Trying to convince them that his situation isn’t stabilised - which it isn’t of course." He hesitated and then threw me an odd look. "I kinda get the feeling he likes making me act like an Admiral."
"I bet he does," I muttered to myself. Just the sheer pleasure of watching him in action, competently in command, still sure of his place in the service he loved; one of the things that ate so bitterly at Alonzo’s soul taken away and made whole and right instead. But then, I reminded myself, the Commodore did have certain compensations that the Admiral would never appreciate ... If I could get Samwise back to him. Otherwise he and I would be stranded in the wrong universe, I in a world where I might function but never feel totally comfortable, and he - he in one where the man he loved would be unreachable, unable to respond to him in the way he wanted, the way he had come to expect ...
"Sam?" Al questioned warily. "Are you okay? I mean - are you and he - that is - ahhh ..." He didn’t know how to phrase his concern, and I didn’t know how to answer it. I looked up at his haunted expression, reading there the real anxiety he felt for me, the love that lay between us expressed in his unformulated distress. The same love that had driven me the night before - to respond to another man’s need because he and this man were simply echoes of each other. I would do anything for you, I had said, not realising how true it would turn out to be. And telling him the truth of that would tear him apart.
"I’m fine," I insisted, suddenly finding I could look him in the eye and be honest and still protect him from the very thing that now bound us closer than ever. "Really. Alonzo’s a great guy, you know? Hell of a lot like - a certain friend of mine."
"Saaam," he warned, not willing to be fobbed off, and I grinned.
"What’s the matter?" I teased. "Samwise made another pass at you?" He tried to conceal the wince, and I echoed it inwardly, wondering what had happened and deciding now was not the time or place for either of us to go too deeply into that. "I promised you I’d do nothing I would regret, and I haven’t, so stop worrying about it, okay?"
His relief was almost tangible. "Okay," he agreed. "Just - " He never completed what he might have been about to say. A hammering sound came from the front door of the lodge and we both looked around in surprise.
"I’ll get it," Alonzo announced from the main room, and a moment later my company’s twin sprinted past the archway heading for the entrance hall and the insistent knock. We listened as he unlatched the locks and then started to turn back to our conversation.
There was a sudden and startling crash as the front door was thrown violently open; I sprang to my feet in startlement, hearing sounds of conflict and then a gasp of pain. Al threw me a look and was gone with a single tap at a key. I headed for the passageway, stepping out and rounding the corner in haste. The sight that met my eyes was enough to make my blood boil.
Snow had spilled in through the open door, a drift of white nearly three feet deep. With it had come two men, burly, thickset figures, bundled in heavy clothing and both armed with ugly weaponry. I’d arrived at the end of an unequal struggle; one of them had Alonzo in a brutal grip, twisting him toward the floor, and he was holding him down while his companion used the heavy butt of his rifle to beat the last of any resistance out of him. I saw red and started to pound forward; my progress was jerked to a halt by the sudden appearance of a fourth figure right in front of me.
"Sam, no!" I think they both said it, Alonzo’s cry cut short by another blow, Albert echoing his tight horror. I stepped back at the look on the hologram’s face - just a third armed man moved into the doorway and let loose with one barrel of his shotgun. The blast slammed past me, straight through the image of my friend who had offered such timely warning. I staggered back, feeling the impact of shot tear across my left arm. Another step forward and I would have been ripped in two.
"Hold it right there, bud," the latest arrival snarled, stepping past his comrades to level the gun straight at me. I lifted my hands slowly, my anger settling into burning fury as the man with the rifle slammed the butt deliberately into his victim’s face. Alonzo went limp with a groan and Al - the intangible one - bunched his fists to take an ineffective swing at the nearest villain.
"Bastards," he growled. "Sam, you gotta do something."
I threw him a helpless look. I’d already done something. Had it been Samwise charging to the rescue he’d be a bloody heap of debris by now; it had been the Admiral’s appearance that had brought me to a halt, not Alonzo’s warning.
Yet another individual waded in through the drift of snow. A smaller man than the other three, though no mean character in his own right. He looked down at the sprawled figure at his feet, then up at me, then angrily at the man with the shotgun.
"You idiot," he spat, striking at him with the back of a gloved hand. "Let everyone know we’re here, why don’t you? I toldya - no shooting ’less you have to, right?"
"Right, Nate," the gunman grimaced, reaching to push back the hood of his coat. It revealed a tightly cropped head on a broad shaped face, his features looking a little as if someone had ironed them flat at an early age. "But he was gonna ..."
"Gonna what?" the man named Nate drawled. "Take on all three of ya? And what’s this, Rivers?" he went on to ask, jerking his thumb toward Alonzo’s unconscious form. "Overreactive week at the bank? I said knock and go in, not go in and knock." He tapped his finger against his temples, staring at the man he’d addressed with irritation. "Use this a little, huh? You start playing heavy before we know the score and we might never know it. Back up," he went on, turning toward me with authority, then glanced behind him. "Someone shut that damn door, willya? You’re letting the warm out."
I backed into the main area, shadowed by an agitated hologram and trying not to show my anger as the bully who had held Alonzo down now dragged his comatose body into the room and pushed him down the steps. I could not help the instinctive move I made toward his fall, but was jerked to a halt by the lifting of a gun in my direction.
"Friend of yours?" the leader of the group questioned with a sneer. "Just the two of you in this nice little nest, up in the mountains? Cosy." He turned to the third man, the one with the nice line in rifle tactics. "Search the place. See if there’s anyone else here."
The dark-haired man nodded and took the main stairs two at a time. The second rifleman disappeared to check the rest of the first floor. I grimaced inwardly. Quite apart from the fact that we were alone - not a reason for suspicion in itself - I suspected that only one bed showed evidence of occupancy. Mine. Not that that was reason for suspicion either, but that, and other evidence, might lead a shrewd observer to put two and two together - or allow them to jump to conclusions. I hoped mine didn’t think to go and check on the upstairs searcher’s progress; he already knew the possibilities in the situation. If these intruders figured out that Samwise and Alonzo were lovers, so well and good. It was the truth, and I’d deal with whatever it brought. But I didn’t want Albert to realise that I might have got a little more involved in that side of my counterpart’s life than he currently thought ...
Fortunately he continued to pace around the two men left behind, finally coming to a halt beside the tumbled figure of himself. He half-crouched to take a better look, then stood up again, his expression tight.
"Sam," he said, moving across to join me. "I can’t stay. Ziggy’s pouring half of New Mexico into this interface, and the world’s about to come to an end back there." He glanced again at his unconscious copy and grimaced angrily. "And I’m gonna have to tell you- know-who what they just did to his pet Tomcat. Look after him - me, won’tya, Sam?" He really did not want to go, but his image had started to distort and break up quite badly. "I’ll be back as soon as I can."
Bye, Al, I mouthed, suddenly fearful that I might not see him again. Things were looking that bad. He hunched his shoulders and turned away, keying up the Chamber door. I closed my eyes briefly as the light flared. I didn’t want to watch him vanish. When I opened them again, he was gone.
Pain was beginning to demand my attention. There was blood trickling down my arm from where the side blast of the scattered shot had caught me. I glanced down at it, registering that, while uncomfortable, it was hardly going to be life-threatening. "Please," I asked, addressing the obvious leader of the intruders. "Let me help my friend."
Nate had been staring around himself with pleased interest. He started a little at the sound of my voice. "What? Oh - yeah. Keep an eye on him, Frog."
The figure with the shotgun was Frog, obviously, a name which decidedly suited him, although right then I could think of less polite ones. He glared at me and stepped back, keeping the weapon levelled as I quickly crossed the floor and hunkered down beside the tumbled figure at the foot of the steps. Alonzo was out cold, a faint purple stain beginning to mark the side of his face where the savage blow had landed. I carefully turned him over, checking the pulse in his throat as I did so, and heaved a small sigh of relief when I found it to be strong. I knew better than to move him any more without checking for further damage, and did so as carefully and completely as I could in the circumstances. I’d seen the rifle butt land at least three blows, mostly to side and shoulder; nothing there seemed to be broken, but I suspected all of it was going to hurt.
"Nobody upstairs, Nate." The man he’d called Rivers came down the main stairs with a clatter.
"Nor out back." That was the last member of his group, reappearing from the direction of the gym. "This place is a damn palace. They’ve got a hot tub and everything."
"Okaaay." Nate had been wandering around the room, picking up bits and pieces and eyeing them admiringly. "Someone’s being nice to us, boys. Warm fire, comfortable surroundings ... I can live with this. At least until the damn snow clears and we can get outta here." He turned and stared at me with careful speculation. "Guess what," he drawled. "You got house guests. He okay?"
"I don’t know," I answered tightly. The man frowned.
"Well, if he ain’t, he ain’t," he decided impatiently. "We need a place to hole out for a while. You got elected, like it or not. You cooperate, and no-one’s gonna get hurt, okay?"
My eyes flicked to the unconscious man beneath my hand. It seemed a little late to start making those kind of promises. Rivers closed the distance between himself and the speaker, leaning over to whisper something with a twist of a grin. Nate’s expression shifted subtly and he gave me an odd look.
"So that’s the way it is, is it?" he murmured. "Well, well, well."
Alonzo chose that moment to reacknowledge the world with a groan. I twisted round instinctively, stilling any attempt he might have made to rise, and I heard Nate chuckle softly.
"Yeah," he breathed. That’s it exactly, ain’t it? Real cosy, mister. Real cosy." There was a hard edge to his final words, and I winced under their impact. "Frog - find somewhere to put his sugar daddy on ice, willya? I’m hungry and I wanna eat."
Frog’s hand caught my shoulder and pushed me away so that I sprawled to the floor. Al was stirring into a return to consciousness; he barely had time to register where he might be before he was hauled unceremoniously to his feet. I saw him wince with pain, a reaction quickly subsumed by anger as he focused on our company. "What the hell ..." he exclaimed, wrenching free of Frog’s heavy-handed grip. Too quickly; he staggered, and the bully caught hold of him again, this time to painfully twist his injured arm behind his back. I drew in a hiss of protest at this ungentle treatment, and Nate chuckled a second time.
"Play ball, or play dead," Frog suggested to his struggling captive. I got to my knees, risking a quick nod in his direction and the Commodore subsided reluctantly.
"You okay, Sam?" he asked, his voice tight. I nodded again, then froze as Nate’s hand appeared close beside my face, slowly cocking back the trigger on a wicked-looking handgun.
"Now," the man said conversationally. "Pretty boy here is gonna look after us, real nice, right? Or I put a neat little hole in his favourite piece of meat." The muzzle of the gun moved down, pointing over my shoulder, straight at Al.
"Ohh, boy," I breathed, swallowing hard. The man meant it. He also wanted to do it. Alonzo stared back at him, anger closing his face down into carved stone. His eyes seethed as Nate went on to run his free hand teasingly over the curve of my shoulder.
"You wouldn’t like that, would you?" His fingers suddenly sunk into the muscles of my arm with vicious pressure. "If there’s one thing I hate more than a cop," he hissed, "it’s stinkin’ faggots like you."
I flinched at the stirrings of pain across my injured arm, then twisted down with a gasp of agony as it bit home. Al’s expression boiled over. He swung around to strike the amused Frog a hard blow with the heel of his free hand, and the thug relaxed his grip with startled surprise and a huff of distress. Nate let go of his grip and pushed me sideways, turning to level his weapon as an incensed Calavicci took two steps toward him.
"Go on," he hissed, "make me do it. Take one more step ..."
Al almost did, fury overriding sense as adrenaline kicked him into overdrive. He began to move, even as I cried a desperate "No," that he did not hear - and then stopped abruptly as someone popped into existence right in front of him. Not another Calavicci. Not my Al - but me.
"Leave it, Tomcat," Samwise yelled with a desperation equal to mine. "He’s not worth it, you hear? Don’t get yourself killed over me, you nozzle. Live for me. I don’t want to lose you. Do you hear me?"
Alonzo froze, looking up at the anxious face that was my face; a comprehension of what he had been about to do dawned in his eyes, and Samwise let out a sigh of relief as he recognised that he’d managed to get through to him. "Sam?" he questioned warily, then turned to include me in the question, his eyes darting between the two of us. It occurred to me then that this was the first time he had really confronted the truth of my presence; despite his ability to see and hear his own counterpart, the implications of this Leap would have been hard for him to encompass. I was a little taken aback myself; I was staring at my own image, and I was just as disconcerted by it as Al had been ...
"Back off," I suggested anxiously, only too aware of the immediacy of our situation. "The man means it."
"Damn right he does," the other me agreed, shooing at his lover with phantom hands. Al stepped back a reactive pace - straight into Frog’s angry grasp. The heavy wrapped one tight arm around the smaller man’s throat, and, with the other, reinstated his restraining twist; then he squeezed. The Commodore arched back into the assault with a strangled gasp while Samwise took two further steps forward and grabbed uselessly at the muscular arms that held him. Nate lowered the gun.
"That’s better," he allowed, once again in control of the situation. "That’s enough, Frog. Let him breathe, at least."
Samwise and I both relaxed, although not much, as the sullen bully did as he was told. Al gasped for much-needed air and glared round angrily at his tormentor. Frog merely grinned and twisted his other hand a little; it elicited a caught-back grimace of pain.
"Let go of him, you bastard," Samwise swore, his words tight and his eyes incensed. I wanted to say much the same myself, but realised that discretion was probably a better option.
"Look," I offered, lifting myself carefully to my feet. "Take it easy and - I’ll do whatever you say. That way nobody gets hurt, right?"
Nate glanced in my direction, then jerked his head at Frog. "I toldya to make him comfortable. Izzy - go with him, willya? It don’t have to be too comfortable," he added, and the man called Izzy grinned. It was not a pleasant sight. Frog slid his arm down from his captive’s throat to encircle his waist instead; then he just lifted and carried the man away with ease. Al knew better than to struggle, but he did look back - at me, who watched him go with anxious pain, and at Samwise, whose expression matched my inner distress.
My carbon copy glanced once in my direction then followed Frog, Izzy, and their hostage up the curve of the stairs. I was left staring after them while Nate holstered his gun and came to poke at my shoulder.
"I said I was hungry," he reminded me. "Feed me."
I made hamburgers and I found them beer and then Nate made me cool my heels in the kitchen while he had a personal prowl around his new kingdom. Izzy, and then Rivers kept me company, munching on chips and drinking steadily. I was counting on that. Nate was obviously the brains of this little bunch and his muscle men didn’t seem to have a lot of smarts between them. They’d found shelter from the storm and it was well stocked with tempting luxuries. They were almost certain to get drunk, and drunks drop their guard.
I washed the dishes after the cooking spree, in need of distraction as much as occupation. I gathered together the remains of my brunch and then the debris of my sudden servitude, piling the whole lot by the sink so I could give it my full attention. I was trying not to let imagination run away with me; I had no idea of what they might have done with Al, and I didn’t want to think about it.
The window above the sink looked out onto the rise of the mountain. Snow was nestling at the height of the window ledge, but I could see very little beyond that, the storm having returned in full force. As I dropped the next batch of plates into the water I looked up, catching my reflection with an odd sense of disconcertion. My reflection, not that of a stranger. I paused to stare at the unfamiliar and yet wholly familiar sight - and my image walked through the window, through the pile of dirty dishes and round, so that we stood side by side, staring at each other with uncertain assessment.
"Hi," Samwise offered after a moment. He was dressed in simple shirt and jeans, Ziggy’s wristlink - my wristlink - encircling his right wrist. I tried to remember why Al never used one but stayed with the handlink instead, and couldn’t. There’d be a reason, but it had slipped my Swiss-cheesed brain completely.
"Hi, yourself," I offered back, glancing across at my watchdog before I did so. It was Izzy at this point, and he was immersed in the music from his personal stereo. As long as I kept my voice low he was unlikely to overhear me. "Is Al okay?"
His expression told me more than I probably wanted to know. There was anger in it, and frustration, and tight anxiety. It was uncanny, to watch myself and yet see thoughts and emotions that were not my own - although right there and then they were probably a pretty close match. As the Admiral had said the previous day, it was like looking into a mirror - but a mirror that considered its own counsel and right now was mad as hell about the whole situation.
"If I were there, Samuel ..." he began tightly.
"You’re not," I interrupted. "I am, though. And you didn’t answer my question."
Not completely, anyway ...
"The Admiral is fine," he said cagily, deliberately misinterpreting my request. "Stalking the War Room and scaring the Committee half to death. I think he’s enjoying himself - or would be if he wasn’t worried sick about you."
"That wasn’t what I meant," I growled, although the news was comforting. I dipped my hands back to the dishes so as to appear to be doing something. That’s a trick you learn after a few Leaps into strangers’ lives. I’d never imagined I might have to use it in my own ...
Samwise Beckett sighed and ran his hand back through his hair.
"I know," he agreed. He settled his face - my face - into studied lines, seeking refuge in scientific detachment. "The situation is not good," he announced. "You have four, desperate, armed men determined to hold out here until the worst of the storm clears. Ziggy thinks that may take a couple of days yet - and that doesn’t include any factors she cannot integrate into her scenarios." He paused to consider me for a moment, then added softly, "She’s currently projecting a probability of over eighty-six percent that at least one of you is going to die."
I clenched my fists under the water. "Oh, god," I breathed. I knew what he was thinking. If there had to be a choice - and there might have to be, because that’s the way a Leap works sometimes - then it would be a choice that was no choice at all. For him, or for me. And it was one I had no intention of making at all if I could help it. "Ziggy’s been wrong before," I pointed out. "And this time she’s only predicting. She doesn’t have the data for what happened the first time round ..."
"No," he concurred. "That’s what I told her. Nobody is going to die, are they Sam." It was a statement, not a question. I looked over at him and saw a reflection of my own determination in his eyes.
"No," I answered, equally certain. "At least - nobody we care about."
That elicited the beginnings of a strained smile. "Okay," he acknowledged, clearly relieved that we were of one mind, "so what do you want to do first?"
"I want you to answer my original question." He’d been avoiding the issue and I wanted to know why.
Samwise took a deep and careful breath. "Their idea of comfortable," he said slowly, "is not mine." His image chose that moment to flicker disconcertingly and he glanced down at the wristlink with a look of impatience. "I know, Ziggy," he said. "I know. Just don’t rush me, that’s all."
"Problems?" I queried. He started to shake his head, then changed his mind.
"If I’d known what the Project had to cope with while I was away ..." he began to say, then stopped himself with a flare of his hands. "Forget it, Sam," he advised with a tight smile. "That’s my end to worry over, not yours. Mine - and the Admiral’s."
I accepted that, accepted his judgement in order to keep focused on the problems I had to solve. He and Al - my Al - would handle the Project and the Committee. Somehow. Anyhow. All I had to do in the next forty-eight hours was keep myself and his Al alive.
"You know," he was saying, pacing back and forward to work off nervous energy, "I never really understood why the Navy was so important to Alonzo - until I got to see the Admiral in action. He’s pretty amazing, isn’t he?"
I couldn’t recall ever seeing Al act like an Admiral, although I undoubtedly had at one time. It isn’t a facet of his personality that is much needed on a Leap. But I could imagine it. A controlled passion, directed and contained; a low growl of orders that men would rush to obey - not out of fear, but from obedient discipline - and the occasional unleashing of a sharply snapped command ... Oh yes, I could imagine it. It, and Samwise’s reaction to it, a reaffirmation that the man he loved really had been that gold-plated hero that the resumé proclaimed. Al himself probably hated the whole shebang. He was a pilot, a scientist, and an engineer, not a brass hat with delusions of grandeur. Which would make him a damn fine officer, since he almost certainly didn’t want to be one.
"I certainly think so," I muttered, responding to Samwise’s admiring remark. I lifted out another clean plate and replaced it with a dirty one. "You disconcert him."
Samwise grinned. "I know. But they’re so damn close ..." The grin became an embarrassed smile. "I guess you noticed."
My turn for the grin. "Yah. I noticed. Too close for comfort occasionally. Sam - " I had to ask. "What happened? Why did he resign?"
He threw me a look that weighed up my right to hear such intimate detail. "You really want to know?"
"I really want to know."
"Well," he decided, "you won’t like it. But I’ll tell you anyway. There were a couple of pilots in training who took up an unauthorised flight for a dare. He was flying a test run for a fly-by-wire system he was helping to evaluate. Two planes - one piece of air. They lost control. He kept his head - but had to watch them paint themselves across the desert floor. They were both killed instantly."
"Jeezus," I reacted, letting the plate slip back into the dirty water. I knew how personally Al took things like that - reading failure into anything but sure victories. He would have berated the skill that had saved his own life as less than perfect because the price had been so high ...
"It wasn’t his fault." Samwise was as quick to defend his friend as I would have been. "There was an enquiry - and they cleared him of all responsibility. The trainees had been flying in the wrong place at the wrong time. But he never forgave himself. He handed in his resignation and tried to walk away from all of it - as far as they’d let him, anyway. He left behind every dream he’d ever had."
Except one. One that had found him and given him a cause to fight for again. I looked at the man beside me and wondered if he was aware of that. None of the tale made any sense to me. I certainly couldn’t remember Al mentioning any such incident, but then there are a lot of things I can’t remember.
"I thought to ask the Admiral if he recalled the day," Samwise went on with a hint of self-bitterness. "You know what he said?"
"What?"
"That of course he remembered the date. That was the day he married his fifth wife. He’d been nowhere near that test flight."
Bingo. One point of difference in a slew of differences that made no difference, isolated to one particular moment. Albert Calavicci, eternal optimist, trying to work his life out yet again, and Alonzo Calavicci, increasingly haunted by his memories of a man he could not forget. Which seemed to imply ... My echo’s expression was as open as a book. He’d already reached that conclusion, and he didn’t like it at all.
"So in the end," he admitted painfully, "I guess I’m the one responsible. I screwed up his life, Sam, and I never even knew. How could I have been so stupid?"
"You couldn’t possibly have predicted what would happen," I protested, moved to his defence. He was blaming himself for things totally beyond his control - for things that, in this version of our lives, might have happened anyway ...
"That’s not the point," he shot back, still angry with himself. "I never even thought of consequences, back in those days. I was a hot-headed young idiot who didn’t give a damn about anyone else. The world was my oyster and I liked oyster. I was Mr Golden Boy - and everything I wanted, I took. Including the oh-so sure of himself hero who walked into my life that day." His lips curled in wry recollection; he had obviously regained my perfect recall ... "God, but he was beautiful. Like something from a Renaissance painting, all dark-eyed and Italian. And so unlike the rest of them. He was pure Tomcat, and he knew it. The world didn’t owe him a living. He took what came and he fought for everything he thought worth fighting for. Just like those sleek alley cats you see sometimes - a survivor with just enough scars to prove it, and the secrets of the world behind his eyes. Sexy as hell. The women loved him."
"I bet," I muttered, amused by the analogy. It fitted only too well. Had I met Al while I was still at college? MIT, or CalTech perhaps, him pursuing further study and me - me, the boy wonder, earning all those degrees and doctorates, leaving the rest of the world behind me. He’d have probably scared me to death in those days. I couldn’t remember. He must have cut an exotic figure in the halls of academia; seasoned combat pilot, Vietnam veteran, marked for adventure on the one true frontier left to mankind ... The Navy had paid well to train him, and he’d repaid them over and over again. A long way from the practically orphaned runaway who’d once earned a living in pool halls. I gave you your first break, kid, he’d told me once. Had it been then, in those tentative early days, seeing something in me that deserved a chance to flourish beyond the walls of pure learning? Had he taken a moment to push me in the right direction, at the right people, with that precise knack of right timing that only ever screws up on him where women are concerned? And had it been that way in this existence, his simple intent to encourage misread and then misused by a young man whose motives in cultivating his acquaintance had been driven by baser instincts? I looked up from the dishwater to find my own face watching me with haunted eyes. No. I was doing this version of myself a severe injustice. He was doing himself that same injustice. He’d been too young back then to understand how the connection made that day went far deeper than either man had intended, and Alonzo - Alonzo had not understood at all, until it was almost too late.
"You shouldn’t blame yourself for anything," I said firmly.
Except, perhaps, for falling in love ...
"Why not?" he demanded, intent on inflicting the damage whatever I said. "You don’t understand. I seduced him, Sam. And then I walked away. Thanks, and goodbye forever. One goddamn night. One night I taught the college stud what it was really like to screw - and I end up screwing the rest of his life altogether."
"Oh, no," I denied, sure of this one thing at least. "If anything screwed up Al Calavicci’s life, Sam Beckett, it was being in ’Nam, and having his first wife walk out on him. Not you - or me, for that matter." I twisted an ironic grin onto my face. "We’re probably the best damned thing that’s ever happened to him. I doubt my Al would ever admit that - but I know yours would. You came back into his life when he needed you - and you’ve been there for each other ever since.
"As for wishing might-have-beens - try asking the Admiral what his fifth wife did to him."
"Something bad?" Samwise eyed me anxiously, and I shrugged.
"I don’t remember, exactly. But it helped push him into the bottom of a bottle just as effectively as all that inappropriate guilt you were talking about. Plus ça change ..."
"... plus c’est la même chose," he capped, just as the Commodore had done the night before. "Point taken, Sam." His image flickered, worse than before. "I can’t stay much longer. But I need to know. Did you and he - last night - ’
"Yeah," I interrupted softly. "And if you so much as breath a hint to the Admiral that I might have ..."
"I wouldn’t dream of it." He grinned, despite the anxious cast of his features. "He’d have a fit. But I figured - I know my Tomcat, Sam. You and I have the same shadow, and the chance to seduce me back would have been irresistible. I know how hard this is for me ..."
I shot him a startled look, one that ended up echoing his grin. No way would he try anything in my existence - beyond a little teasing, perhaps - for the very same reasons that perhaps I had been willing to submit in his; because to do so would hurt the very thing he wanted to protect. The love of one man - two men, walking in the same shadow, as he’d so aptly phrased it.
"Go to him, Sam," he begged quietly. "He needs you. I need you. I need you to save him - because something tells me that last time round I wasn’t able to."
Continued in Part Three ...
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Disclaimer:This story has been written for love rather than profit and is not intended to violate any copyrights held by Donald P Bellasario, Bellasarius Productions, or any other holders of Quantum Leap trademarks or copyrights.
© 1994 by AAA Press. Written and reproduced by Penelope Hill. Artwork by Joan Jobson