AUGUST 13, 1965
'What
are you doing?' a woman's voice was screaming not three inches from Sam
Beckett's right ear.
Sam
barely heard, his vision filled by the truck looming towards him. His
consciousness dazed by this latest Leap and acting on instinct alone, he
wrenched the wheel between his hands hard to the right. With a protesting
shriek from the tires, the car fishtailed wildly before Sam got it back on the
right side of the highway.
He
punched down on the brakes as the car slid towards the shoulder. The car
lurched downward on one side for a moment, bounced hard as the undercarriage
hit something in the few moments before it came to an ungainly halt. For a
moment, the only sound was that of laboured breathing returning to normal. At
last, Sam recovered enough composure to wheeze out, 'Oh, boy.'
'John,
what happened?' The woman's voice again; Sam turned towards it. Into his field
of vision moved a young woman. He guessed her age as mid-twenties; her hair was
brown and held back by a pink Alice band at her forehead. 'Are you okay?' she
was asking.
'Yeah,
I'm – I'm fine,' Sam stalled. Another Leap, another bout of prevarication,
while he tried to work out where he was and who he was supposed to be.
'You
should have woken me earlier. Where's the sense in getting killed?' Now that
the shock was past, she was smiling. 'Finding us dead would just ruin
Frank Bach's day.'
From
the way she said it, Sam guessed that this was some kind of private joke
between John – that was his name! – and his wife. No, his fiancée; Sam
snatched a glance at her hand, saw an engagement ring, but no wedding band.
'Yeah, I guess it would, at that,' he said. Cautiously, he tried the ignition.
It stayed silent. He tried again; once, twice, three times.
The
woman clenched her fist. 'Darn!' she hissed. 'It's shot, isn't it?'
'I
guess so.'
'Well,
I am not staying here all night.' She paused, face thoughtful for a
moment. 'There was a sign back down the road for a motel not far from here.'
'That's
good. With any luck, we can get someone to come out here to tow this thing in.'
'Between
the motel and the repair bill, we're going to be low on cash again. I hope it's
cheap.' She turned to look at him. 'John, you're sure you're all right?' she
asked.
Sam
looked at his reflection in the rear-view mirror. As always, the face that
returned his gaze was that of a stranger; John looked similar in age to his
companion, generally clean-cut, but badly in need of a shave. From the look of
him, Sam guessed that these two must have been on the road all day. 'Honestly,
I'm fine,' he said, 'just a little – disoriented, I guess. A good night's sleep
should do me the world of good.'
Fate,
or God, or whoever was responsible for Sam's Leaps, had smiled on him for a
change; he and the woman – whose name, he learned was Kim Sayers – found a
passing trucker kind enough to give them a ride to what passed for
civilisation. Kim gave their names to the receptionist – a fiftyish woman with
harsh features and a build that suggested that she could have played pro
football at nose tackle – as Kim and John Lincoln, having slipped a ring onto
her wedding finger in the car park. Maybe it was just to save money on the
rooms, but Sam hoped it wasn't for the reasons he was thinking. The girl looked
cute, but he couldn't carry his impersonation as far as all that. The rules of
Project: Quantum Leap – rules that he had made, or so he'd been told –
forbade it.
The
matron had told them that they were in time for dinner. Subjectively, Sam
didn't feel it had been long since he'd eaten, but his body felt more than
ready. He'd been told that discernible time elapsed between Leaps; from the
size of his appetite, he felt that this gap could have been as long as a week.
The
young waitress looked up as they entered, smiled at them as she slipped the
book she was reading – a cheap dime-store romance, by the look of the cover –
out of sight. 'Hi,' she chirped. 'What can I get you folks?'
'Something
good and simple,' said Sam.
The
waitress thought for a moment. 'Well, ham and eggs is simple enough. And it's
pretty good, too. We keep our own pigs down the road a ways.'
'Kim?'
Sam asked.
'What?'
Kim sounded startled.
'Do
you want ham and eggs, too?'
'Oh.
Yes, that'll be fine. And some coffee to go with it would be lovely.'
As
the girl went back into the kitchen, Sam turned to his companion. 'Now it's my
turn to ask if you're okay,' he said.
Kim
raised a wan smile. 'You're going to think I'm crazy.'
'Believe
me, I know from crazy when I hear it. What's the matter?'
Kim
shook her head. 'No, like you said before, I'm probably just tired.'
The
haunted expression didn't leave her face, but Sam didn't feel enough on top of
the situation to enquire further. Right now, he felt pretty drained himself. It
was Lord only knew when, he was wandering somewhere in the desert in the
company of a total stranger, and for once, his customary back-up seemed to have
backed out.
Or
had he? A thudding sound behind him alerted Sam's attention, and he turned to
face it.
'Hi,
Sam.' The holographic image of Admiral Albert Calavicci, the government's
observer on Project: Quantum Leap, was dressed in a pink and purple Hawaiian
beach shirt and brown slacks. He caught Sam's look. 'Hey, I was getting a start
on my tan. Tina knows this great place out by Big Sur and I thought…'
'Nice
to see you, Al.'
'What?
Who's Al?' asked Kim.
'Sorry,
honey, just – thinking out loud for a moment. I'll be right back, okay? I just
remembered I should have made for the little boys' room when we arrived here.'
Al
threw his hands out from his sides. 'Damn it, Sam! You know how tired I am of
sneaking around the heads all the damned time? I must have seen more toilet
bowls in the last year than a sanitation engineer sees in his whole career.'
Business
being as slow as it was, there was no-one in the toilet; now, at least, Sam
could have a conversation with thin air without being observed. 'At least it
seems pretty peaceful so far,' he mused. 'Maybe I won't have to do anything
really hazardous on this Leap.'
'Well,
here's hoping. Before I tell you what we've got so far, you got anything
yourself yet?'
Sam
beamed. 'As a matter of fact, Mr. Smart Guy, I have. I found out my name
already. It's John Lincoln.'
'Wrong.'
'Wrong?
Al, I…'
'Look
at your driver's licence, then argue with me. It's August 13, 1965, and
we're in Arizona; near Milburn, which is a small town about fifty miles from
Phoenix.'
The
Observer squinted at the object in his hand, which looked like a pocket
calculator covered in Christmas tree lights. 'Your name is John Loengard,
not Lincoln. You graduated in political science from UCLA, and you lived in
Washington, where you used to work for a – con? Well, I guess Washington's full
of crooks.' Al slapped the side of the handlink with the heel of his hand. It
chirruped cheerfully. 'Right, that's better. You worked for a Congressman named
Charles Pratt. I say "lived" because there seems to have been some kind of
weird stuff going on. Pratt got killed about two years ago, Loengard left town
in a hell of a hurry, and it looks like he and the girl must have been
wandering the country since then, because Ziggy can't get a make on him
anywhere since late 1963.'
'You
mean I'm on the run?'
'Looks
that way.' Al leaned forward. 'Sam, I got to tell you, this guy Loengard has
got to be some kind of nut. He's back in the Waiting Room and we couldn't even
get near him, and he's screaming something about hives.'
'Complaining
about his allergies?' Sam smiled. 'Boy, that's a good one.'
'Tell
me about it; he damned near cold-cocked me. In the end, Dr. Beeks and I sort of
double-teamed him and she managed to shoot him up with some kind of sedative.
He's taking a little nap right now.'
'So
why did Loengard's fiancée give the name Lincoln?'
'Well,
this is a motel, Sam. Sometimes people come to motels and they don't give their
real names because they…'
'Please,
Al, lift your mind out of the gutter for a moment!' Sam raised his hands; he
almost reached out to shake Al by the shoulders before he remembered that the
man standing in front of him was merely a holographic image.
'I
guess it does make a kind of sense,' he conceded. 'The girl I'm with, Kim, she
seems very nervous. I haven't figured out why just yet.'
'Yeah,
I noticed. She's not bad. Reminds me of a nurse I met in an evac hospital in
'Nam. Boy, she had more curves than a major league pitcher.'
'Al,
can we get back to the point here?' Sam chided.
'Sorry,
I guess I got a little – sidetracked.'
'Forget
that now. Does Ziggy know yet why I'm here?'
'Ah,
not just yet. We're still running scenarios, but Ziggy's having a snit because
we've got so little hard data to go on. I guess all you can do for now is hang
in there and see what develops. I'll drop by when we've got something more
positive to report.'
'Maybe
I can drop something into the mix here. Kim mentioned a guy called Frank Bach.
Have Ziggy run a check on him. I get the impression that Bach is chasing us for
some reason. Maybe Loengard killed Pratt, and Bach is the cop trailing him. It
might help.'
'Kind
of like The Fugitive.'
'Who?'
'Old
TV show. Your Swiss-cheesed brain probably lost that detail somewhere along the
line.' Al frowned. 'Bach, eh? I know that – yeah, no wonder this date sounded
so familiar. I'm flying over Georgia sometime tonight and I crash a Phantom.
There was a guy called Bach in charge of my hearing. I thought I was going to
get hung out to dry, but it just blew right over. Wasn't long after that I got
picked up by NASA. Sure, Sam, I'll look into it.' Al pressed a button on the
remote. Behind him, a bright white rectangle rose up from the floor; Al stepped
back into it. 'Hang tough, pal,' he said, just before the rectangle dropped
closed again.
As
Sam returned to his seat, he noticed another customer enter the diner; a young
man, thin, bespectacled and rather awkward-looking, wearing a red blouson
jacket with some kind of college insignia, Californian at a guess. The waitress
gave him a broad smile. 'Stevie! Lord, it's been ages! What brings you
out this way?'
Stevie
returned her grin. 'Don't act so innocent, Rosemary. You've got to know why I'm
here.'
Rosemary's
hand flew to her throat. 'Dare I hope…' she said, eyelashes fluttering.
'Hey,
another time, sure. But I've come about the lights in the sky.'
'Then
you've wasted your time and your gas.' The receptionist stood at the door to
the kitchen, leaning against the lintel and fixing the young man with a
soured-milk glare. 'Someone's misinformed you, son. We didn't see no lights.'
'Mom,
we saw…'
'Nothin'
worth talkin' about. Now get your nose out of that trashy novel and get your
mind about your work.' The older woman glared at the younger before turning
away. Something in her tone told Rosemary that her mother would brook no
further argument; she tucked a paper napkin into the book to mark her place and
stashed it under the counter.
'Lights?
In the sky?' Kim looked not so much puzzled as concerned. She beckoned across
to the young man, who caught the signal and joined them at table.
'I'm
sorry if I seem rude, but what was that you were saying about lights?' Kim
asked.
'You
don't know?' asked Stevie.
'We're
from – out of town,' Sam explained.
'There's
been weird lights in the sky around here these last three nights. Nobody seems
to know what they're supposed to be. The Air Force has been putting out crap –
pardon me, ma'am – about night flights, but these things don't seem to behave
like planes.'
As
they spoke, Rosemary had glanced quickly at the door. Evidently the coast was
clear; she leaned forward to cut in on the last comment. 'It was the same last
year, Stevie. It went on for four straight nights.'
'You
were here?'
'Just
Mom and I; Dad was in Tucson on business. I remember one of them came in real
close,' Rosemary almost whispered. 'I swear, every electrical gadget in the
place came on. Lights switchin' themselves on and off, irons, TVs, vacuum
cleaners, even the rotisserie in the kitchen in back. And the noise! I thought
it was goin' to rattle my teeth clean out of my head! Then Mom went out to get
a closer look. That was the really weird part. The moment the door closed, the
whole room went black. Next I know, it's half an hour later and I find Mom
asleep on the couch in our rooms.'
'A
report went to Project: Blue Book.' Al Calavicci stepped back into sight
alongside the young woman.
'Al!'
Sam exclaimed.
'Al?'
Kim queried.
'I
mean – I'll bet that made all the papers.'
'No
way, José,' said Al. 'Blue Book's conclusion was that the whole
lights-in-the-sky bit was "abnormal activity in the Aurora Borealis". Come on!
This is Arizona, not Alaska.'
'Didn't
they – I mean, didn't you tell anyone about it?' Sam asked.
'I
wanted to, but I wasn't sure where to go…'
'Try
the National Enquirer,' Al suggested.
'…and
Mom wouldn't even discuss it. Not the lights, not the weird stuff with the
electricity, not the fact that neither of us can remember the thirty minutes
after she stepped outside. Dad left about three months later; I don't think it
was because of that, but…' Rosemary fumbled in her apron pocket, found a wadded
paper tissue and dabbed at her eyes with it. 'Hey, I shouldn't be unloading all
this stuff on you, it's not right.'
'Don't
worry, honey, it's okay,' soothed Kim.
Al
was examining the handlink again. 'Ziggy came through quicker than I thought;
you will not believe this. I was right about Bach, by the way; he is the same
guy who should be getting ready to tear me a new butthole about now. But Ziggy
absolutely cannot get anything about him. Some kind of top secret thing.'
'You
have top secret clearance,' Sam protested.
Kim
glanced at him. 'John, I worked in Jackie Kennedy's private office. That's
hardly major league access.'
'Not
this much,' Al continued. 'And Ziggy's sending back messages that say that if I
push it too hard, I may get taken for a long ride off a very short pier.'
'So
I guess that line of enquiry is dead. Is anything else new?'
'That's
why I'm here. We did some digging into local property records and the like, and
we put names to the All-American and her daughter; they're Alice and Rosemary
Walker. Alice owns the place, Rosemary helps out. It used to be a
husband-and-wife operation, but Alice's husband ran out on her about nine
months ago, started divorce proceedings.
'But
the biggie is, Ziggy gets a probability of 87.4 per cent that you're here to
stop them disappearing.'
'Disappearing?'
Sam said under his breath.
'Two
days from now, a neighbour gets concerned because neither Alice nor Rosemary is
answering the phone. When the police get out here, they find the place
abandoned. Nobody hears from either of them again.'
'When
does it happen?' Sam asked.
'We
don't know for sure,' replied Al.
'I
guess if they come back, it ought to be about ten,' answered Rosemary. 'It has
been, other times.'
Kim's
face wore the distracted expression Sam had seen earlier. When she spoke, it
was in a low, dull voice. 'When they come, we'll be here.'
Pinballing
through history these last few years had punched some big holes in Sam's
memory, but some things he could remember as clearly as others remembered
yesterday. Even if the setting and the circumstances were different, the next
few hours reminded him of days when he was a boy in Indiana, when his father or
his brother Tom would take him out hunting, usually for pheasant, sometimes for
bigger game. Much of the time was spent waiting, anticipating something
happening, making ready.
He
recognised the signs here. Stevie was constantly moving; from a battered
pick-up truck parked in the motel's lot, he had brought a cumbersome case which
he sat by the main window in the dining room, overlooking the highway. Now he
prowled the room, occasionally stopping by the window and looking out into the
night sky with a hand shading his brow. Twice Rosemary had asked him to sit
down on ground that he was making her nervous; twice he had relented, but for
no more than ten minutes at a stretch.
Kim
had looked unsettled almost since their arrival here, but as she walked back
towards the lobby she suddenly froze, as though someone had just shoved a gun
into her back. She half-turned. 'John!' she hissed.
Sam
quickly joined her. 'What is it?' he asked.
'I
knew it. Listen.'
Alice
Walker, half-screened from their view behind an ivy-covered room divider, was
speaking to someone on the telephone; but the sounds she was making were not so
much words as harsh, sibilant rasps, with occasional fragments of English – Highway
93, Milburn and, ominously, Rosemary – dropped into the
stream like pebbles.
Sam
glanced at Kim. She met his gaze, gripped his wrist with unexpected fierceness.
'John, she's Hive,' she whispered.
Sam
was perplexed. Al had said that John Loengard had been raving about hives, but
Kim plainly meant the word as an affiliation of some kind. 'She is?' he asked.
'The
voice. And this close, I can feel an echo of it in my head. One of those –
those things.'
Alice
was speaking more loudly; it wasn't necessary to understand the language to
recognise an argument in progress. As Kim tugged at Sam's arm, prompting a
retreat from sight, the proprietor's voice fell back to normal pitch, a hint of
resignation in her last words as she replaced the receiver.
Kim
stared at Sam. 'Something's going to happen here, John. Tonight.'
'I
know. Whatever these UFOs are, they're going to come tonight and take Alice and
Rosemary away.'
'Did
Alice say that?' Kim's expression screamed lack of understanding. 'John, we've
never been able to understand the Hive's language…'
Sam
gripped the woman's shoulders. 'Kim, trust me on this. Find Rosemary. Stick
with her. Don't let her out of your sight if you can.' At the edge of his
vision, Sam saw a familiar patch of pure white, and an equally familiar figure
stepping from it. 'Go,' he implored.
Kim
went.
Al
Calavicci had now added a pair of baggy Bermuda shorts to his vacation attire.
Unfortunately, he still lacked the tan that would make the ensemble more
credible. 'Did I just miss something?' he asked.
'For
once, Al, your timing is perfect. I hope.'
'Oh.
Okay, well, I got more on Alice and Rosemary.' Al jabbed furiously at the
handlink's key-pad. 'When they disappeared, Alice's husband was pulled in for
questioning by the Yavapai County sheriff's office. They never charged him, but
the details are still on the files. According to Jack, Alice went a little nuts
after these UFOs passed by last year. She said, "I have responsibilities to
those who will return" – her very words. And I don't think she was talking
about the people who stay at this joint.' Al swept his gaze around the lobby.
'I've seen roaches that'd turn this motel down.'
'Great.
This is starting to make a little more sense.'
'That's
good.'
'What
about Loengard?'
'Well,
he's a little friendlier. I think he's convinced himself that we're on the same
side.'
'Has
he said much? I could really…'
Alice
Walker came back into view, striding across the lobby carrying a black,
rectangular object, about the size of a briefcase, between her hands. Sam
almost fell backwards as he retreated from her line of sight; the action,
though, seemed meaningless, Alice staring directly ahead as she went through
the door to the parking lot and the main highway.
'Kind
of wrapped up in herself, isn't she?' Al suggested.
Sam
ducked across to the doorway. 'I can't follow her, it's wide open out there,
she'll see me. You, on the other hand…'
'Way
ahead of you.' Al prodded the handlink. 'Gushy, centre me on Alice!' The
Observer blinked out of sight.
Sam
had to remind himself not to run back into the dining room; Rosemary was
spooked enough as it was. As he entered, he saw Stevie fiddling with a tripod
on which he had mounted a cine-camera produced from his heavy case. Kim and
Rosemary were in detailed conversation; they barely registered his entrance.
'Nice
set-up,' Sam said to the young man.
'This?
It's a Super 8; a loaner from college. I'm a film major. We're supposed to do a
short on "how I spent my vacation" – you know, kind of like sixth-grade English
class? – but with our own spin on it. If I'm right about these UFOs, I should
get something to knock everyone's eyes out of their heads.'
'I
guess so.'
'Well,
I figured anyone could make the likes of "Sorority Babes on Spring Break". I
wanted something with a little more – atmosphere.'
Al,
if he had been here, would probably have made some comment about his own
experiences with sorority babes. Sam decided not to editorialise. Instead, he
glanced at his watch. 'Quarter of ten,' he said.
'Yeah.
Y'know, if these things really are from another planet, it could change – well,
everything, I guess.'
'You
think so?'
'Sure.
Think about it. Any truly advanced civilisation would have outgrown war by the
time it began to reach out to other worlds. They would come in peace. They
could teach us so much…' Stevie suddenly fell silent.
'What
is it? Have…'
The
student turned to face the women. His voice came out as a whisper: 'They're
coming.'
As
Stevie turned back to the camera, Al popped back into sight. 'Oh, boy, are we
in trouble,' he sighed.
'What
happened, Al? What is Alice doing?'
'She
was carrying something. Kind of triangle-shaped with the corners cut off, and
metallic, maybe gold. There's a weird pattern on it. More triangles and squares
with some fancy swirls around it.'
'Sounds
like some kind of home plate.'
'Sam,
the aliens are coming.' Al's voice sounded almost haunted. 'Remember I said I
crashed a plane sometime tonight? Well, I was being tracked by something with
those same markings. It was a UFO. It zipped out of sight when I was ordered to
fire on it, and I lost control of the plane. Which makes Loengard's story even
more important.'
'So
what has he said?'
'He's
not running from the cops – he's running from his old boss, Frank Bach. Do you
remember what happened at Roswell? 1947?'
'I
think so. The Air Force supposedly shot down an alien spaceship. Turned out it
was a weather balloon.' The shoe dropped; Sam's eyes widened. 'You mean it
really was…?'
'One
hundred per cent. Turns out that Loengard belonged to a set-up called Majestic
– a group so secret that even the President doesn't know about it, set up by
Harry Truman after Roswell to protect the country from alien invasion.' Al
spread his hands in dismay. 'I tell you, Sam, these guys have a licence to do anything
and answer to no-one. And those markings are just like the ones Loengard
described as being on the Roswell aliens' ships. And the one I run into
tonight.'
'That's
it. Alice went missing last year because these aliens abducted her.'
'And
now they're coming back to finish the job.'
'John,
who are you talking to?'
Sam
looked around to find Kim's gaze on him. Many times, it seemed to him, people
had witnessed him talking to the hologram that only he could see or hear, and
had assumed him to be crazy. Now, though, something in Kim Sayers' face told
him that she was afraid for herself as much as him.
'It's
all right, Kim. I know exactly what's going on.'
'Is
that a fact, now, Mr. Lincoln – or should I say Loengard?'
Alice
Walker was standing in the doorway to the dining room, carrying a very large
and very ugly-looking pistol. 'We weren't expecting this kind of bonus tonight.
You and Miss Sayers are going to make some people very happy.' She strolled
closer to Sam, the gun not moving; she smiled at her daughter. Rosemary
shuddered. 'Sorry we don't have time to pack, honey, but we're going to be
taking a little trip.'
'Damn!
My truck!'
The
voice was Stevie's; without thinking, he threw open the door to the parking lot
and bolted. Alice wheeled the gun to fire at him; Sam flung his left arm upward
as Rosemary screamed, shoving Alice's aim ceilingward so that the shot smacked
harmlessly into the paintwork. There was no time to be chivalrous; he grabbed
her right arm at the wrist. As they wrestled, he jabbed a thumb hard into the
point where the wrist meets the hand, hoping to hit some nerve plexus which
might make her drop the gun.
Now
it was Alice's turn to scream, a blood-chilling yodel which was as much Hive as
human. Kim took that as her cue to take action; as Sam struggled with the
Hive-possessed woman, she picked up a heavy tray. The Leaper saw her; he
strained to hold Alice more or less still – and it was a strain; she was
every bit as strong as she looked.
Two-handed,
Kim brought the tray down hard on the back of Alice's head. The woman made a
gurgling sound far at the back of her throat as she fell.
As
though freed from some spell of paralysis, Rosemary rushed to her mother's
side. 'Oh, my God, is she…?' she asked.
Sam
knelt to feel at Alice's wrist and neck. 'No, there's a pulse. She's just going
to be out for a while.'
'But
when she wakes up, the ganglion in her head is going to be out for blood.' Kim
frowned. 'Unless – unless we can remove it.'
'Remove
it?' Sam felt his own blood chill. What did she mean? Were they going to have
to saw the top of Alice's head off, or something?
'Do
an A.R.T.,' said Kim.
'It's
okay, Sam.' Al Calavicci was peering over Kim's shoulder. 'Loengard told me all
about it. A.R.T. stands for Alien Rejection Technique. First thing you need
is…'
'Seltzer
water.' Kim was talking to Rosemary. 'We need about a beakerful of seltzer
water. Quickly! Your mother may come around any time!'
'All
right.' Rosemary's eyes were wide, shocked; but she still got up, disappeared
into a recess to emerge some moments later with a packet of Alka-Seltzer
tablets. She dropped about half the packet into some water, brought it back
with the glass tumbler almost overflowing.
'Okay.
Hold her steady, John.' Kim prised Alice's jaws apart. 'Now, Rosemary, pour the
water into your mother's mouth, slowly.'
Rosemary
did as she was bidden. As the liquid trickled down Alice's throat, her whole
body heaved in a giant convulsion; Sam threw his weight over her to hold her
down.
'What's
happening?' Rosemary almost shrieked.
'The
seltzer is upsetting the pH balance of Alice's body,' Kim explained. 'Now we
need some acetone.'
'What's
that?' asked Rosemary.
'The
stuff you use to take off nail polish,' answered Sam, his voice strangulated
with effort.
'Well,
I've got some, but it's just in those dinky little bottles…'
'How
much do we need, John?' Kim asked.
'How
much do we need?' Sam repeated to Al.
The
hologram grimaced. 'Loengard didn't say. And you don't have time for me to go
ask; the E.T.s are going to be ripping the roof off this place any time now.'
'Have
to take a guess at – hey!'
Sam
was flung to one side as the possessed Alice, with strength drawn from who knew
where, raised herself upright. The older woman propped herself upright on one
arm, glared at the visitors. A hideous rattling sound came from the base of her
throat. Her eyes widened and bulged as she pinned her full attention on Sam.
She began to bring herself upright.
'No,
you don't!' As Alice rose unsteadily to her feet, Kim stepped between her and
Sam and brought out a left cross that would have delighted even Muhammad Ali (was
he still Cassius Clay, wondered a small scrap of Sam's mind). Alice was
moving too slowly to avoid it; she crashed to the carpet and was still at last.
'Nice
shot!' Al enthused. 'I never want this woman mad at me.'
Behind
them, Rosemary returned. She almost screamed again at the sight of her fallen
mother, but bravely turned it into a gulp instead. 'I've found some acetone
stuff,' she said. 'Now what do we do?'
'Loengard
says you inject it into the back of Alice's neck, and then restrain her,'
answered Al.
'Hypodermic,'
said Sam.
'Needles?
We haven't got… Oh. Maybe in the first aid box.' Rosemary ducked behind the
reception desk, started opening and closing drawers with loud slams.
With
the immediate crisis over, Kim had moved over to the window, something Sam
wasn't aware of until her cry of alarm sounded out. 'John! They've got Stevie!'
she shouted.
'What?'
'There's
an alien ship hovering over the parking lot! It's got a beam of light trained
on Stevie's truck and trying to lift it off the ground!'
'But
I've got to stay with Alice,' Sam muttered to himself.
'I've
got to go to help him, John,' said Kim. 'You know I have to. You know why.'
'Kim!
Wait…' Sam's plea fell on empty air; Kim had already opened the door to the lot
and was gone. Instead, Sam turned to Al. 'Go with her, Al. Watch her,' he
asked.
'Me?
What can I do? I'm a hologram, remember? I can't go slugging it out with little
green men.'
'They're
grey, not green. And it'd make me feel easier. Really.'
'Okay.
If things start getting ugly, I'll holler.' Al tapped the handlink three times,
and winked out of sight.
'I
found a syringe!' Rosemary was returning to Sam's side. 'Now what?'
'Pour
the acetone into the syringe, quickly.' Rosemary followed the instructions
eagerly, handed the syringe to him without a word.
Sam
took a deep breath. 'Okay, here goes.'
What
seemed like an age ago now, Al had told Sam that he had a medical degree – one
of the seven doctorates he had been awarded over the years. Now a fragment of
that array of knowledge returned to the forefront of his mind. There was a
blood vessel on either side of the neck that ran directly into the brain. On
the assumption that whatever was controlling Alice was inside her head,
injecting the acetone into that blood vessel was the quickest way to get the
stuff where it was needed. He found the spot, jabbed in the needle. His finger
pushed on the plunger.
Sam
counted off seconds in his mind. He had got to seven when Alice gave a
strangulated yelp. Her mouth opened; horrible retching sounds emerged from her
throat.
'She's
choking to death!' yelled Rosemary.
'I
don't think so,' replied Sam. 'Look.'
Squirming
its way free from Alice's mouth was something the like of which Sam
instinctively knew he had never seen. Half spider, half scorpion in appearance,
it crawled free of Alice's head, took five wobbly paces forward onto the
orange-brown carpet before its spindly legs collapsed beneath it. It made a
strange hissing, rattling sound.
'Oh,
my God!' Rosemary yelped. Before Sam could do anything to stop her, the girl
was stomping on the creature, the first shot tentative, the others increasing
in venom before she was finally satisfied that this obscenity was truly dead.
Bare moments after its death, it began to dissolve, the toxic acetone ripping
its body tissues apart from the inside out. Fumes rose from the carcass; within
a further twenty seconds, it was little more than a messy stain on the carpet.
'Mom…'
Rosemary's legs were none too stable, either; Sam felt her about to drop,
guided her to an easy chair.
'It's
okay, Rosemary. It's over. Alice is going to be just fine.'
But
what of Stevie? And Kim? Sam rushed to the door to the parking lot, looked out
into the night. Stevie was hanging onto the front fender of his truck like a
dog refusing to let go of a particularly juicy bone. The truck and its owner
were several feet clear of the ground by now; Kim was hanging onto the young
man's belt before he drifted away completely.
'Damn
it, let the damned thing go!' Stevie yelled. 'You've got a spaceship,
for God's sake! What do you want a truck for?'
Someone
in the spaceship must have heard him. The light snapped off like a torch being
extinguished; the pick-up crashed the ten feet or so back to terra firma
with a jolt loud enough to carry all the way back into town. Stevie relaxed his
grip and rolled backward, his effort spent.
'I
think they've decided they've lost this time,' said Kim. She pointed upward.
'See?'
Above
them, the spaceship began to rise with increasing speed; it halted in mid-air,
just for a moment, then darted away northward over the desert with a speed no
Earthbound aircraft could match.
'I
wonder what it would be like to fly one of those babies,' said Al.
'Do
you really want to know that?' asked Sam.
It
was close to midnight by now. Alice, conscious once more, was being fed hot,
sweet tea by her solicitous daughter and the two were deep in conversation,
with Kim pulled into the discussion like a long-lost relative. Stevie, not
surprisingly, had made sure his camera was okay as soon as he had got back indoors;
now he was in the lobby making a phone call.
'Well,
looks like things are getting back to normal around here.' Al was prodding the
handlink with gusto. 'You did it, Sam. With that whoozis out of Alice's head,
she goes right back to being her old self. She and Jack get back together
again, they get this place on track, and by the time they retire in 1987,
they've got a dozen thriving hotels all across the Southwest. Rosemary gets
married in three years' time – not to Stevie, I might add – and she and
her husband run the chain today. They've got a nice spread out in Sun Valley,
very upscale. And a couple of kids.'
'That's
great, Al,' said Sam. 'But I still think something's wrong. I stopped Rosemary
from being abducted, and I got that thing out of Alice's head. If I did all
that, why haven't I Leaped?'
Across
the room, Stevie was returning. 'It's okay, Rosemary. My dad's going to come
out and get me. Boy, this is just going to blow his socks off!' he said,
patting the cine-camera.
'You've
got it? On film?' Kim looked worried. 'Stevie, if people find out about it, you
could be in danger. Believe me, John and I know that very well.'
'Well,
I guess I wasn't going to make a show of it. Not yet, anyway. People wouldn't
believe it. A movie needs more than just this to be believable. But I can work
on that. Give me a while, and I'll make tonight into a movie the whole world
will come and see.'
Rosemary
swatted the young man's arm. 'My, my, Mr. Spielberg, don't you talk big?'
Al
and Sam looked at each other; the electric-blue glow that accompanied a Leap
was swathing Sam's body. They said it together: 'Spielberg?'
