Lost Souls in the Hunting Ground - Part two (concluded)
Penelope Hill
The next three days passed in a kind of blur. The villagers diligently removed every trace of Lascale and his bully boys from Lao Fe, burying the bodies deep within the maze of the ruined temple. They kept only the rifles, hiding those with equal diligence. I didn't ask where. To be quite honest, I no longer cared. I knew what was coming well enough - the impact of a world war, and the storm clouds that would follow it - but I had no heart to try and warn anyone.
I don't think they'd have believed me anyway.
Schuster turned out to be pleasant enough; bright, enthusiastic, reasonably tolerant, and sympathetic in his attitudes. He insisted on returning to the temple in order to record the carvings he had come so far to see, and Yun Shi escorted him up there in between supervising the repairs to the shrine. I stayed in the village. Somehow I didn't think I could face the Goddess a second time. Instead I spent long hours listening to Yun Ho spout politics at anyone who would listen. Mostly in his own tongue, which probably meant I was spared the worst of it. I let it all wash over me; how he planned to travel and join his father in the glorious people's army; how he would fight beside them to liberate his country; and how a new age would arise from the ashes of the old oppressions.
I might have argued with him, but there didn't seem any point.
There didn't seem to be any point to anything.
I hadn't Leaped. I hadn't heard from the Project, and I didn't really care.
I might as well have stayed dead. I certainly felt like a zombie.
"You have too little faith," Yun Shi told me with a certain asperity. It was the evening of the third day, and I was sitting on the steps of the shrine, watching the village pursue its daily life, just as I had done on the previous two evenings. My back to the compassionate face of the Buddha, supported by that pillar, by the painted lotus blossoms. Someone had very laboriously scrubbed them clean, so that not a trace remained on their white petals, nor any on the gleaming steps that lay below them.
I could still smell it - still taste it - hot and rich and vital to the very end.
"What is there left to have faith in?" I asked, turning to study him in the golden light. Another glorious sunset.
Whoop-di-do.
"Yourself," he answered, smiling slightly. "And in the natural balance of the world."
What did he know about it? As far as the world I inhabited knew, my friend was alive and enthusiastic.
Too enthusiastic.
"I can do without the mystic clichés," I muttered, a little bitterly. "I've been dead, remember? It's not everything it's cracked up to be."
"You can say that again," a familiar voice remarked to my right. Impossibly familiar. My head jerked round in total startlement - and my heart thudded to a stunned halt.
"Aaall?"
"Too little faith," Yun Shi said again, bowed at what to him was thin air, smiled, and began to walk away.
He believes in his ghosts. In angels who watch over us.
I didn't know what to believe.
Except I knew damn well that neither ghosts nor angels were likely to appear to me in their dressing gowns.
"Don't stare at me like that, Sam," Al growled, tucking Ziggy's handlink into one pocket while groping in the other with his free hand. "You'll attract attention."
My mouth worked several times. No sound came out. None at all.
"And I'd close your mouth if I were you. That's a damn good way to catch flies around here."
I did as I was told, watching as he walked across the gleam of the floor and came to stand beside me. The groping hand had found what it searched for: the stubby length of a cigar, which he proceeded to light with deliberated pleasure.
"Aaah," he sighed, breathing out a wreath of smoke as he did so. "I sometimes think Kipling was right, you know?"
My mind did several somersaults to place the relevance of this observation; when revelation finally dawned it was with total incredulity.
"A woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke...."
Was he serious?
"Al?" I questioned, the echo of scepticism - of doubt - clear even in that single syllable. Was it him? Could it possibly be? Could I allow myself to think so? He looked down at me and grinned.
"Then again," he allowed, "that could just be nicotine deprivation talking. They don't allow me these things in MedCentre." A pause: the grin grew a little wider. "The nurses though - they've been really nice to me just lately..."
That was Al, all right. I leaned back against the pillar, feeling as if an unseen weight had been stripped from my heart; as if the very last lock that had held me prisoner was finally opened, and my soul set free.
"Yeah?" I enquired lightly, unable to stop a grin curling onto my face. "Now I wonder why that would be..."
He chuckled, dropping down to join me on the floor, glancing out at the evening bustle of the village and the sunset that painted it over with liquid gold. "Sometimes it pays to be generous to a man who's just been brought back from the dead," he observed thoughtfully. "Right, Sam?"
I turned slowly, meeting his eyes, reading what lay within them as I had never expected to do again. Not a gibe - however much it might be phrased as one; a simple truth, one that acknowledged the reality of miracles and knew better than to question them.
"I thought you'd died. Right here," I accused softly. He shrugged.
"I know," he said, studying his cigar in preference to my face. "I did, Sam. I remember. Last breath, ocean of darkness, tunnel of light ... the whole shebang. Then - slam - I was flat on my back in the Waiting Room with the entire Navy Medical Corps dancing on my chest."
I don't think he meant that literally - but it had probably felt that way.
"You arrived in arrest." A statement, not a question. He nodded reluctantly, taking another puff at his cigar.
In between the Leaps there is a place; a quiet place, devoid of time or need or trauma. A place of suspension, where hurts are healed and the soul can rest. It had not returned the life that had been stolen from me; but it did heal. And if a man took his last breath in such a place, then the world that accepted his return might have a slender chance of calling him back from that final journey...
If they moved fast enough.
If they had the determination.
If the man concerned had reason to live a little longer.
If he'd been judged worthy to survive...
"As a way home, kid," he said, with a look that spoke volumes, "I don't recommend it."
I believed him. Besides - it would take more guts than I had to risk the slender chances that lay in such a return. However much I might want to go home, I had no wish to die first. Or perhaps that should be, no wish to die again.
Not unless I had no choice in the matter.
"Mind you," he observed thoughtfully, "I ain't complaining. I don't know how you do it, Sam. Life after life, Leap after Leap. These past few days-" He shuddered, mostly for effect, some of it straight from the heart. I smiled at him with sympathy.
"These past few days," I pointed out, "were a little more intense than it usually gets."
"You're telling me," he chuckled. "Beeks is under the impression I'm gonna need a lifetime of therapy to cope with it. Now that's all I need, right?" His grin was wicked. "Someone else to get their fangs in me..."
I swallowed a reflex snort of laughter.
Oh, Al....
He'd carry the scars of recent experiences for the rest of his life - probably more so than I would. Deep scars; I suspected that the nightmares would haunt him for a long time. But he was a survivor - the humour was part of that, one of the weapons he brought to bear with well-honed expertise. And he was alive. That miracle alone was probably worth half a lifetime of counselling.
It certainly made me feel a whole lot better.
Of course, it hadn't been easy. He'd just implied as much. "Al-" I questioned with sudden concern. "You died three days ago. Should you even be out of bed right now?"
"Nope," he answered promptly, taking another pleasured puff at the cigar. "I snuck out. I figure they'll work out where I am - eventually."
"Are you crazy?" I demanded, staring at him. "Not that I'm not glad to see you, but-"
He chuckled a second time. "You want me to call that putz Gushie back?"
Well - if you put it that way...
"Sam," he assured me, " I feel great. Apart from the bruises where they had to kick-start me this morning, that is." His hand drifted to rub absently at his chest and I stared at him even harder. This morning?
"Anyway," he was saying, "no-one believed me when I insisted you were back on line, so I had to come and tell Ziggy myself." He clamped his lips around the cigar without losing his grin, and tugged the handlink out of his pocket. "She found ya quick enough. Although now she's refusing to accept that you were ever dead."
I remembered the ashes of my soul, cold and lifeless. How my pale flesh closed over bloodless wounds. The howl of the demon, concealed in my silent heart.
And the warmth that had sustained me, the gift of a life that was not my own.
"Ziggy doesn't know what she's talking about," I decided. "And you are crazy." I paused, drinking in the sight of him, torn between exasperation at his stubborn idiocy and an overwhelming sense of thankfulness at his being there. "I'm not worth you risking your life for me, you nozzle..." I tailed off, realising just what I'd said. He was still grinning, a Cheshire cat sized grin that stretched practically from ear to ear.
"Pure selfishness," he confided with a shrug. "You know the way I look at it, Sam? I've got this vested interest in keeping you alive. All the time you're stuck out here Leaping, I still got a job...
"Which means I can cover all these alimony cheques I have to pay," he added, keeping a remarkably straight face as he did so. He sounded quite convincing, but I didn't believe a word of it.
Not one word.
Because I knew the depth of his heart and the regard with which he measured me.
"Sure," I acknowledged with a knowing smile. "So we're back to business as usual, huh?"
"Looks like it," he agreed brightly. "But don't you worry, kid. We're gonna get you home one day. I'm sure of it."
I sighed. Not with resignation but acceptance. Business as usual.
It felt good. It felt damned good.
"So," I asked, leaning my weight back against the pillar and staring up at the gold-washed sky. "What happened, Al? To Dix and Joe and Chris? And here? What happened here?"
"M'mm? Oh - ah-" He tapped at the link with a practised hand and it squealed, right on cue. "Well - the police arrested Chris for McFarlane's murder-"
I tensed. Uh-oh...
"But it never came to trial. The records aren't clear; looks like someone pulled strings and buried the whole business."
I frowned.
"Someone? Someone we freed from McFarlane's influence? Or another of his - kindred?"
Al threw me a wary look. "Hard to tell, Sam. Chris walked, Joe and Dix got married... Oh, that's nice."
He was deliberately distracting me from a line of thought that held too many questions.
I knew they were out there.
He knew they were out there.
McFarlane's kindred.
The demons that haunt the shadows and prey on mankind...
But I had my own quest to pursue. A quest I had no control over, no say in the how or the why, or the where. There are many evils in the world, and I couldn't let the horror of one blind me to the existence of all the others. I had been sent to face McFarlane, and had barely survived the encounter. Hadn't survived it, if I was willing to be honest with myself. Perhaps, one day, I would be ready to face his like again. Maybe I would have to. But not yet...
Dear god, not yet.
Besides - the question had been an unfair one. Al had barely been home long enough to draw breath, let alone consider the implications of what we had faced together.
"What?" I asked, accepting his deliberate distraction and filing the thought away for another time.
Maybe once I get home...
"They moved to LA. Joe became a stills photographer for the movies, and they had twins. And Chris - he landed himself a bit part in a daytime soap, graduated to a leading rôle, and has a thriving fan club. That's good, right?"
"Right," I agreed with a smile. It was good; good to hear that we had saved those lost souls from the darkness which had threatened them. And not just Chris and Joe and Dix either; by destroying McFarlane when we had we would have spared all the subsequent victims of his mastery.
Ripping away a dark veil from the world. Letting in a shaft of light.
And that I realised, with sudden insight, might have been worth my sacrifice. Might have been the judgement call that had sent me to that time and place in order to make the difference. Knowing that I might fail...
"And here?" I offered my query softly, knowing that this hadn't really been my Leap. In some ways it had actually been a Leap for me.
"Here? Ah - umm..." He gave another shake to the link, accompanied by his familiar frown of frustration with its performance. "Okay ... well, Schuster goes back to the States with his records and samples, although his work doesn't really receive any immediate recognition because of the development of antibiotics. But," he registered, reading further, "the research he did publish has been rediscovered recently and is showing positive benefits in a variety of areas including the treatment of burns and the development of new pinkillers ... painkillers," he corrected manfully, and I grinned.
"Sounds good."
"Gets better. Frazel returns to Australia, gets married, has three kids, and thirty years later one of them serves in 'Nam. And, get this-" he grinned. "As a doctor, Sam. Saving lives, not taking 'em."
He was right. It got better. Much better.
"What about Lao Fe?"
His face fell.
"Like Gushie said," he admitted reluctantly, "this whole area gets hit with napalm and then dusted with Agent Orange in '71. And there just aren't any records of what happened to the people. I guess - there are just some things that can't be changed, kid."
"Maybe not."
But you did something when you saved that child. I know you did...
"Al?" I questioned slowly, watching Yun Ho stride up the path toward me with a confidence worthy of some ancestral warlord. "How many MIAs never came home? How many are still unaccounted for?"
He stared at me, taking in a breath to answer with a number I knew he knew with certainty. "Ask Ziggy," I instructed before he could do so. "Ask her right now."
He closed his mouth down into a frown, but did as I'd requested. The frown became confusion. He checked again.
"Two thousand, five hundred and two," he murmured after a moment. "God damn it, Sam! That's fifteen less..."
Bingo...
I smiled quietly, with that sense of satisfaction I always get when a Leap comes to an appropriate end. I was ready to leave now, ready to face my odyssey with a renewed sense of certainty. All wars are futile, McFarlane had said to me. Lost souls pursuing lost causes...
But we are all at war; a constant conflict between hope and despair, between the darkness and the light.
Between death and glory...
I had tasted both; had been taken by the dark and redeemed by selfless sacrifice. And the miracle of my friend's survival did not diminish the price he had been prepared to pay.
A lost cause? Maybe. But it was a good one, and each victory we snatched from defeat, each wrong I put to right, helped to bring a little more light back into the world.
I would go home one day; it had been written in my fortune.
A hard journey and the reaping of heaven's rewards at its end...
But until I did so I could go on making that difference. Knowing my cause was just. Knowing it was giants I fought, and not windmills. Knowing, too, that I would not be alone.
There are angels watching over me.
Well, I grinned to myself, cheered by my hologram's tousled and intangible presence, at least one I can be sure of, anyway...
I hadn't Leaped. Not yet. Sometimes there was just one more thing I had to do...
"Keep counting, Al," I advised, climbing to my feet and stepping down to intercept the passing young man's progress. Yun Ho drew to a halt and eyed me up and down with suspicion.
"Your grandfather tells me you are leaving soon," I remarked, and he nodded curtly.
"I go to China," he said, with pride. "To join my father."
And the army of Ho Chi Minh...
"Your father will be proud of you," I said softly. "For what you have done here."
He nodded affirmation a second time, this one with pleasure.
"Will you do me a favour?" I asked, and he shrugged. "Will you remember what happened here?"
His shoulders straightened with confidence. "I will not forget," he declaimed. "How a glorious blow was struck for freedom-"
"Not that," I interrupted, while Al choked briefly on his cigar. "I want you to remember how it felt. What it was like to be helpless and completely at another man's mercy. How scared you were, and how hard it was to be strong."
"I wasn't - scared," he denied, but the catch in his voice betrayed the truth behind his brave words.
"Yes, you were," I insisted.
"Five hundred and one," Al read off the handlink in disbelief.
"You were frightened. You didn't understand what he wanted. He treated your grandfather without honour. He treated you without honour."
"Four hundred and ninety eight..."
"I just want you to remember," I repeated softly. "Because - a time is going to come when you are the man behind the gun. When there are young men at your feet, bewildered, afraid, helpless. And when that time comes, Yun Ho, remember what it felt like and treat them with honour.
"Otherwise you will be no better than Lascale. And it will all have been for nothing. Will you do that for me?"
Yun Ho hesitated, frowning at my words, trying to understand what I was asking of him.
"Four hundred and ninety six..." came the astonished count from behind me. I held the young man's eyes with determination.
"You owe me your life," I pointed out. It might have been a little mean of me to remind him of that, but this was important. Really important.
"This is true," he acknowledged. "Very well. I will remember. But I do not understand why."
"You will," I assured him softly. "I know you will..."
"Four nine four." Al's voice was dazed. "Six more names that went up on the Wall, and-" He had to take a moment to catch his breath. "Seventeen that came home. Oh god, Sam. Seventeen more came home..."
I turned from Yun Ho's doubtful countenance to glance toward my friend. His expression was pure poetry; a stunned delight he could neither totally encompass nor properly express.
A delight my smile echoed as I re-climbed the steps to join him.
"You do - a good job, kid," he managed after a moment. I shook my head.
"Not this time," I denied with warmth. "This time - someone else put heart and soul into the work."
I paused to draw in a sweet breath of air; to savour the certainty of my life, and the reassurance of his.
Then my hand went out in that same easy gesture I'd used before, the contact no longer impacting on his arm but sinking into it. Somehow it still managed to convey that sense of warmth, that sense of connection.
"Thanks, Al," I concluded softly, putting all my gratitude - all my heart - into the words.
Just as time reached out and took me away...
Lost Souls in the Hunting Ground. Part Two. 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.
© 1996 by AAA Press. Written and reproduced by Penelope Hill. Artwork by Joan Jobson
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