( 9 )
Al was trying very hard not to lose his temper, but Ziggy wasn't making it any easier for him. On the verge of shouting, he growled, "Dammit, Ziggy, I am sick and tired of this eighteenth century nonsense! Unless you want Sam to be stuck at Collinwood for the rest of his life, you'd better start giving me some answers I can use."
"Admiral." For once, the computer spoke without its usual petulance. "I am fully aware of the gravity of the situation."
Al started to curse under his breath, changed his mind, and cursed out loud. " Then why the hell haven't you come up with anything useful?"
"May I suggest that you already have the answer you are looking for?" The computer was back to its usual spoiled self. "All you have to do is make the Visitor forget."
Al turned and stared at the console. Slowly, a weary grin began to spread across his face. Clutching the handlink, he headed for the Imaging Chamber.
There was the usual surge of disorientation as Ziggy locked onto Sam in the past and deposited Al's consciousness, via brainwave transmission hologram, in the same location.
The first thing Al noticed was that he was outside--and in the dark. Trees thrashed barren limbs at the sky, and lightning flickered fitfully in the distance. Al shuddered; it looked like the backdrop from every Hammer horror ever produced. He unconsciously tightened his grip on the handlink, his lifeline to the Project, and looked around for...
"Sam!"
Not appearing to hear the Observer's panicked yelp, or even to see him, Sam walked on--straight for a rocky outcropping and the precipitous drop to the ocean below.
"Sam?" Al tried again. "Can you hear me, Sam?"
Yelling his friend's name, Al dove past him, trying without success to block Sam's path with his own, unfortunately insubstantial, body. Sam walked through him without so much as a blink of acknowledgment. "C'mon, this isn't funny, Sam!"
Giving up on trying to get through to Sam, the Observer called urgently, "Ziggy, what's wrong with Sam?"
The handlink squealed and the multicolored lights flashed faster, but the Observer wasn't looking. Instead, he ran after Sam, again interposing himself between Sam and the cliff. For all the good it'd do, Al thought, frantic in
his helplessness. If he didn't snap out of it soon, Sam was going to go for a very cold, very brief swim.
Al could hear the waves breaking on the rocks below. It was only too easy to imagine Sam's borrowed body doing the same. "Ziggy!"
He started to thump the 'link, then realized it was flashing wildly, trying to tell him something. Dancing backward, keeping himself between Sam and the fatal drop, Al tried to read with one eye while keeping the other firmly on Sam.
The edge was getting closer all the time.
Analyzing Sam's brain waves, Ziggy had determined that its creator was experiencing some sort of altered state.
"Tell me something I don't know," Al muttered darkly. Sometimes, Ziggy's grasp of the obvious was beyond infuriating. He thumped the 'link. "Tell me what to do about it, you billion dollar heap of scrap metal!"
The handlink let out an indignant squeal.
Out of the corner of one eye, Al saw Sam flinch. Just for a second, something had gotten through to him.
Immediately, Al hit the 'link again--hard. This time, the 'link let out a piercing shriek that probably deafened any low-flying bats in the area. Al winced, but smacked the instrument, once more. The noise it produced this time
was loud enough to wake the dead.
It certainly woke Sam, who stumbled to a halt, inches from doom, and stood swaying drunkenly. He blinked at Al without comprehension. Al passed a long, anxious moment until the dazed look faded from Sam's eyes and he focused on the Observer.
Sam winced.
Al looked down. He was "standing" on thin air, hovering about a foot and a half from solid ground. Muttering to himself, he strode to shore.
Sam didn't really notice. It had suddenly dawned on him that he was teetering on the crumbling edge of a very long drop, and it was taking every ounce of concentration he possessed to maintain his precarious balance. He looked down at crashing gray breakers, jagged rocks protruding like hungry teeth from the surf, and gulped. His stomach lurched, and he squeezed his eyes shut. He shuddered convulsively, only partially from the biting cold.
God, he hated heights.
Al's gravely voice, yelling advice, was little more than a distant distraction as Sam swallowed hard and slid his left foot back, careful not to lose his balance. Then, gingerly shifting his weight, the other foot. One halting step at a time, he backed away from the edge. The rock was worn smooth from centuries of weathering. Sam's bare feet were slick with nervous sweat. So what happened next was inevitable.
His right foot slipped from under him, sending him reeling. Sam's eyes popped open as he flailed his arms frantically, trying to at least fall back or to one side--anywhere but out into the yawning emptiness before him.
"Sam!" The panic in Al's voice matched that racing in icy currents through Sam's veins. Eternity stared him in the face.
Then--impossibly--strong arms enveloped him, drawing him back from the brink. Al's yell blended with the smoothly accented voice of Sam's rescuer, as they called his name in unison.
"Sam--"
"Victoria!"
"--are you all right?" Al finished, appearing beside him. He peered curiously at Sam's rescuer.
Trembling with reaction, Sam righted himself, pushing gently but firmly away from Barnabas, who released him reluctantly. The wind sliced through Sam's thin attire like a knife of ice. "I'm okay," he said, simultaneously reassuring his friend and answering the unspoken question in Barnabas' eyes. Neither man looked particularly convinced. Sam didn't blame them; his teeth were chattering so hard it was difficult to speak. He started to say more--and was interrupted by the piercing shriek which rattled the air around them.
Too loud to be the wind or the waves, it rose quickly in pitch until it rivaled Ziggy's earlier performance. But, judging form the look Al was directing at him, Sam doubted the noise was coming from the computer. Beside him, Barnabas hissed, "Angelique."
Eyes darting, Sam searched the darkness for the source of the strange sound. He found nothing. Al shrugged, gesturing helplessly with the handlink. He didn't know, either.
"What the heck's going on here?" Sam murmured under his breath. The icy wind had picked up again, tossing Victoria's long hair into his face. Impatiently, he brushed it back, and turned back to Barnabas.
The man's expression sent a fresh chill stabbing into the base of Sam's spine. He blinked. Surely it was only a trick of the light that made Barnabas' eyes appear to glow scarlet with hatred. The other man turned away for a moment; when their gazes met again, Barnabas' had lost that feral fire. His eyes still burned, but now they were reassuringly human.
Sam shook himself. Well, of course, Barnabas' eyes were human--what else would they be?
Seeing Sam's involuntary shiver, Barnabas said, "You must be freezing." A glance took in the long nightgown and bare feet. "You aren't exactly dressed for a stroll on the cliffs. I'll escort you back to the house."
As he spoke, Barnabas shrugged out of his heavy wool coat and draped it about Sam's shoulders. "What were you doing out here at this time of night, anyway?"
Apart from freezing his, er, assets off, Sam wasn't sure. At least the strange, banshee-like wail had temporarily taken his mind off the cold. Pulling the coat tightly around his body, he said, "What on Earth was that, anyway? I've never heard anything like it."
Barnabas' hesitation was barely noticeable. "Nothing, I'm sure. The wind perhaps."
Floating alongside, Al snorted. "'Wind', my a-- "
Sam shot him a quelling glance, and the Observer substituted, "--Aunt Fanny," without missing a beat. "Who's he kidding? If that was nothing, I'm a cloistered monk."
Despite the circumstances, Sam had to chuckle at the unlikely idea of Al as any sort of monk, cloistered or otherwise. He smothered the faintly hysterical sound behind his hand, and tried unsuccessfully to imitate the hologram, walking without his feet touching the ground; the cold penetrated to the bone, and his bare feet ached all the way up to the ankles.
"Victoria, are you all right?"
Sobering quickly, Sam said, "It's nothing. The cold--Next time I decide to go for a sleepwalk, I'll have to remember to wear my shoes."
Before Sam could protest, Barnabas had swept him up as easily as he might a child. Al snickered at the incongruous sight, but Sam was past caring. He was still cold, but his feet no longer felt as if they might fall off at any moment, and Barnabas broad chest provided some measure of shelter from the wind. He huddled deeper in the thick folds of the coat, and tried not to think too much about what had almost just happened.
All Sam really wanted was to get back to the relative safety of his--Vicki's-- room. Just how safe that actually was was debatable; since his arrival, Vicki's bedroom had seen about as much traffic as Grand Central Station, some of it of a decidedly otherworldly variety. He distinctly remembered watching Barnabas vanish into thin air. Unless...Had it been a dream? At this point, Sam wasn't ready to rule anything out. What, for example, had he been doing almost going for a late night stroll over the edge of a cliff?
His last lucid memory was of the deep breathing exercises he'd used to finally calm himself to sleep. Next thing he knew, Al was shouting at him and he'd been on the verge of taking a dive. Literally. He clutched the heavy folds of the coat more tightly about himself and fought back the shivers. Not all of them were from the cold, even though there was a distinctly Arctic feel in the air.
Al was being unusually quiet, studying the flickering patterns on the handlink, his heavy brows knitted as he considered the information. Sam wanted to talk to him, but first he had to get rid of his solicitous escort. Glancing up from his study, Al said, "Good, we're here."
With a start, Sam realized his friend was right. They were at Collinwood's front door. He'd been so absorbed in his own muddled thoughts, he'd paid little attention to his surroundings. Barnabas set him gently on his feet and
Sam said, awkwardly, "Barnabas...Thank you. You saved my life."
Barnabas accepted Sam's gratitude with a slight bow. He retrieved his coat, though he didn't seem to have suffered without it. His breath barely frosted the air. "I am honored to have been of service. Sleep well, Victoria."
An indignant Al squawked, "Hey, I helped too!"
A shrill burst from the 'link split the air, and he hastily amended, "Yeah, yeah, Ziggy. You helped too. Sam knows that."
Sam shook his head. He knew that Barnabas had said something during all that, but he'd have been hard pressed to say what. Fortunately, Barnabas didn't seem to expect an answer; he bade Sam good night, then faded back into the darkness.
Relieved, Sam gathered Al with a look, and retreated to his bedroom.
"Do you have any idea what the heck just happened to me?" he demanded, shutting and locking the door firmly behind him.
Only halfway through the door, Al paused in mid stride. His brows arched in surprise. "You almost took a stroll off a cliff. Don't you remember?"
"Yeah, but why?" Sam collapsed onto the bed and glared at the ceiling. It came to him again: the image of the surf pummeling the rocks, so far away and yet too close. His stomach did a nauseating back-flip.
He hated heights.
He opened his eyes to see Al watching him with a knowing smirk. Former navy pilot, former astronaut, Al Calavicci was more at home far above the surface of the Earth than on it. Unlike Sam, who was a firm believer in keeping both feet solidly on the ground.
He glared at his friend. "Does Ziggy have any ideas about my, uh, after hours excursion?"
Al consulted the handlink. "Ziggy doesn't know what to make of it." The cigar shifted from one corner of his mouth to the other. He talked around it with the facility of long practice. "You were never a sleepwalker, not even as a child, according to your records."
"I can't remember anything..." Before his first Leap, there had never been anything Sam couldn't remember. Now, he had a photographic memory with holes in the negative. It was intensely frustrating.
"Hypnosis?" Al suggested, dubiously.
"I don't think so," Sam said.
Simultaneously, the 'link responded: Unlikely.
The lights on the 'link flashed, giving it the appearance of a self-lit box of half-melted Jujubes. Al bent an eye to the data stream. The computer began running a steady flow of facts and opinions past him, often so quickly it was
difficult to tell one from the other. Al glanced up to find Sam watching him expectantly.
"Well, the good news is that Ziggy doesn't think you're a likely candidate for disassociative disorders, despite all this Leaping about."
"How nice of him."
The handlink beeped. "Ziggy says, and I quote, 'However, Dr. Beckett may be suffering from prolonged stress, resulting in reduced mental capacity, diminished vigilance, and fatigue.' End quote."
"Great," Sam said, rolling his eyes. "I'm being psychoanalyzed by a computer."
"Welcome to my world." Al directed his next question to the computer. "So what does that leave us with?"
Ziggy's response was as prompt as it was startling.
"What?" Sam demanded, staring at Al staring at the link. "What did he say?"
"He, uh, says you..." Al fell silent and studied the 'link some more as if daring it to repeat whatever unimaginable thing it had just said. It did, and he gave it a thump. "Ziggy, in his near-infinite wisdom and quantum insanity,
thinks you were under some sort of...spell."
"Spell."
"Hey, don't look at me, I didn't say it," Al said, defensively. He gave the 'link a rough shake. "That parallel, hybrid hunk of--"
Sam waved off the rest of the insult; now wasn't the time to berate Ziggy. Arching an eyebrow, he asked, "Doesn't he have any alternatives to offer?"
"No, not really." Al looked thoughtful, then added, "Unless you'd consider demonic possession as an alternative."
"I don't think so," Sam said. "I think I'd have noticed if my head started spinning around backward."
"Not you," Al said acerbically. "Ziggy."
Sam scrubbed his face with his palms. "Whatever it was, it's gone now."
"Let's hope so," Al said. "I don't want you taking any more unscheduled, midnight walking tours."
Neither did Sam. "I'd love to Leap out of here right now." He hugged himself. "But if Vicki returns, what's to prevent the same thing from happening to her?"
"Maybe it already did," Al said, looking thoughtful. "In the original history. What if that's what really happened, not suicide."
Sam collapsed wearily onto the bed. He suddenly felt oddly distanced from his surroundings, as if whatever force bound him to this body had been somehow weakened. With some difficulty, he focused on Al. "If that's so, why haven't I Leaped?"
Something in Sam's voice made the Observer take a closer look at him. "Sam?"
Al's voice was uncharacteristically soft as he finally realized the depth of Sam's distress. "It's okay now, Sam. You're safe."
Sam just looked at him, and shivered.
"I know you're pretty shook up," Al said. "Hell, it scared about ten years off my life. But it's all over and you're okay."
"And if it happens again?" Sam drew his knees up and hugged them to his chest.
Al's jaw tightened. "Well, it's not gonna happen again, because I'm going to stay right here until morning and make damn sure it doesn't."
That finally elicited a smile. "An admiral pulling sentry duty?"
Al shrugged nonchalantly. "I wouldn't for just anybody, you know." He marched to the foot of the bed, and ordered sternly, "Now, get some sleep. You look like something the cat wouldn't drag in on a bet."
"Gee, thanks."
"I mean it, Sam. You're on your last legs." Al's stern expression softened. "Don't worry. Ziggy and I will be right here if you need us."
Sam started to protest--he was a big boy now, and didn't need a babysitter--but the image of that treacherous drop loomed large again, and he shuddered.
"Okay," he said, and crawled meekly under the covers. With the blankets up around his ears, he looked at Al. The Observer had the air of one entrenched for the duration. "Thanks, Al."
Embarrassed, the Observer waved off the gratitude. "Go to sleep, Sam."
The physicist was already succumbing to post-traumatic fatigue as the adrenaline left his system. Cocooned beneath the covers, his face half buried in the pillow, he mumbled, "G'night."
Standing guard at the foot of the bed, ready to hold off the legions of darkness if necessary, the Observer sighed. "Good night, Sam."
** ** ** **
Al was trying very hard not to lose his temper, but Ziggy wasn't making it any easier for him. On the verge of shouting, he growled, "Dammit, Ziggy, I am sick and tired of this eighteenth century nonsense! Unless you want Sam to be stuck at Collinwood for the rest of his life, you'd better start giving me some answers I can use."
"Admiral." For once, the computer spoke without its usual petulance. "I am fully aware of the gravity of the situation."
Al started to curse under his breath, changed his mind, and cursed out loud. " Then why the hell haven't you come up with anything useful?"
"May I suggest that you already have the answer you are looking for?" The computer was back to its usual spoiled self. "All you have to do is make the Visitor forget."
Al turned and stared at the console. Slowly, a weary grin began to spread across his face. Clutching the handlink, he headed for the Imaging Chamber.
There was the usual surge of disorientation as Ziggy locked onto Sam in the past and deposited Al's consciousness, via brainwave transmission hologram, in the same location.
The first thing Al noticed was that he was outside--and in the dark. Trees thrashed barren limbs at the sky, and lightning flickered fitfully in the distance. Al shuddered; it looked like the backdrop from every Hammer horror ever produced. He unconsciously tightened his grip on the handlink, his lifeline to the Project, and looked around for...
"Sam!"
Not appearing to hear the Observer's panicked yelp, or even to see him, Sam walked on--straight for a rocky outcropping and the precipitous drop to the ocean below.
"Sam?" Al tried again. "Can you hear me, Sam?"
Yelling his friend's name, Al dove past him, trying without success to block Sam's path with his own, unfortunately insubstantial, body. Sam walked through him without so much as a blink of acknowledgment. "C'mon, this isn't funny, Sam!"
Giving up on trying to get through to Sam, the Observer called urgently, "Ziggy, what's wrong with Sam?"
The handlink squealed and the multicolored lights flashed faster, but the Observer wasn't looking. Instead, he ran after Sam, again interposing himself between Sam and the cliff. For all the good it'd do, Al thought, frantic in
his helplessness. If he didn't snap out of it soon, Sam was going to go for a very cold, very brief swim.
Al could hear the waves breaking on the rocks below. It was only too easy to imagine Sam's borrowed body doing the same. "Ziggy!"
He started to thump the 'link, then realized it was flashing wildly, trying to tell him something. Dancing backward, keeping himself between Sam and the fatal drop, Al tried to read with one eye while keeping the other firmly on Sam.
The edge was getting closer all the time.
Analyzing Sam's brain waves, Ziggy had determined that its creator was experiencing some sort of altered state.
"Tell me something I don't know," Al muttered darkly. Sometimes, Ziggy's grasp of the obvious was beyond infuriating. He thumped the 'link. "Tell me what to do about it, you billion dollar heap of scrap metal!"
The handlink let out an indignant squeal.
Out of the corner of one eye, Al saw Sam flinch. Just for a second, something had gotten through to him.
Immediately, Al hit the 'link again--hard. This time, the 'link let out a piercing shriek that probably deafened any low-flying bats in the area. Al winced, but smacked the instrument, once more. The noise it produced this time
was loud enough to wake the dead.
It certainly woke Sam, who stumbled to a halt, inches from doom, and stood swaying drunkenly. He blinked at Al without comprehension. Al passed a long, anxious moment until the dazed look faded from Sam's eyes and he focused on the Observer.
Sam winced.
Al looked down. He was "standing" on thin air, hovering about a foot and a half from solid ground. Muttering to himself, he strode to shore.
Sam didn't really notice. It had suddenly dawned on him that he was teetering on the crumbling edge of a very long drop, and it was taking every ounce of concentration he possessed to maintain his precarious balance. He looked down at crashing gray breakers, jagged rocks protruding like hungry teeth from the surf, and gulped. His stomach lurched, and he squeezed his eyes shut. He shuddered convulsively, only partially from the biting cold.
God, he hated heights.
Al's gravely voice, yelling advice, was little more than a distant distraction as Sam swallowed hard and slid his left foot back, careful not to lose his balance. Then, gingerly shifting his weight, the other foot. One halting step at a time, he backed away from the edge. The rock was worn smooth from centuries of weathering. Sam's bare feet were slick with nervous sweat. So what happened next was inevitable.
His right foot slipped from under him, sending him reeling. Sam's eyes popped open as he flailed his arms frantically, trying to at least fall back or to one side--anywhere but out into the yawning emptiness before him.
"Sam!" The panic in Al's voice matched that racing in icy currents through Sam's veins. Eternity stared him in the face.
Then--impossibly--strong arms enveloped him, drawing him back from the brink. Al's yell blended with the smoothly accented voice of Sam's rescuer, as they called his name in unison.
"Sam--"
"Victoria!"
"--are you all right?" Al finished, appearing beside him. He peered curiously at Sam's rescuer.
Trembling with reaction, Sam righted himself, pushing gently but firmly away from Barnabas, who released him reluctantly. The wind sliced through Sam's thin attire like a knife of ice. "I'm okay," he said, simultaneously reassuring his friend and answering the unspoken question in Barnabas' eyes. Neither man looked particularly convinced. Sam didn't blame them; his teeth were chattering so hard it was difficult to speak. He started to say more--and was interrupted by the piercing shriek which rattled the air around them.
Too loud to be the wind or the waves, it rose quickly in pitch until it rivaled Ziggy's earlier performance. But, judging form the look Al was directing at him, Sam doubted the noise was coming from the computer. Beside him, Barnabas hissed, "Angelique."
Eyes darting, Sam searched the darkness for the source of the strange sound. He found nothing. Al shrugged, gesturing helplessly with the handlink. He didn't know, either.
"What the heck's going on here?" Sam murmured under his breath. The icy wind had picked up again, tossing Victoria's long hair into his face. Impatiently, he brushed it back, and turned back to Barnabas.
The man's expression sent a fresh chill stabbing into the base of Sam's spine. He blinked. Surely it was only a trick of the light that made Barnabas' eyes appear to glow scarlet with hatred. The other man turned away for a moment; when their gazes met again, Barnabas' had lost that feral fire. His eyes still burned, but now they were reassuringly human.
Sam shook himself. Well, of course, Barnabas' eyes were human--what else would they be?
Seeing Sam's involuntary shiver, Barnabas said, "You must be freezing." A glance took in the long nightgown and bare feet. "You aren't exactly dressed for a stroll on the cliffs. I'll escort you back to the house."
As he spoke, Barnabas shrugged out of his heavy wool coat and draped it about Sam's shoulders. "What were you doing out here at this time of night, anyway?"
Apart from freezing his, er, assets off, Sam wasn't sure. At least the strange, banshee-like wail had temporarily taken his mind off the cold. Pulling the coat tightly around his body, he said, "What on Earth was that, anyway? I've never heard anything like it."
Barnabas' hesitation was barely noticeable. "Nothing, I'm sure. The wind perhaps."
Floating alongside, Al snorted. "'Wind', my a-- "
Sam shot him a quelling glance, and the Observer substituted, "--Aunt Fanny," without missing a beat. "Who's he kidding? If that was nothing, I'm a cloistered monk."
Despite the circumstances, Sam had to chuckle at the unlikely idea of Al as any sort of monk, cloistered or otherwise. He smothered the faintly hysterical sound behind his hand, and tried unsuccessfully to imitate the hologram, walking without his feet touching the ground; the cold penetrated to the bone, and his bare feet ached all the way up to the ankles.
"Victoria, are you all right?"
Sobering quickly, Sam said, "It's nothing. The cold--Next time I decide to go for a sleepwalk, I'll have to remember to wear my shoes."
Before Sam could protest, Barnabas had swept him up as easily as he might a child. Al snickered at the incongruous sight, but Sam was past caring. He was still cold, but his feet no longer felt as if they might fall off at any moment, and Barnabas broad chest provided some measure of shelter from the wind. He huddled deeper in the thick folds of the coat, and tried not to think too much about what had almost just happened.
All Sam really wanted was to get back to the relative safety of his--Vicki's-- room. Just how safe that actually was was debatable; since his arrival, Vicki's bedroom had seen about as much traffic as Grand Central Station, some of it of a decidedly otherworldly variety. He distinctly remembered watching Barnabas vanish into thin air. Unless...Had it been a dream? At this point, Sam wasn't ready to rule anything out. What, for example, had he been doing almost going for a late night stroll over the edge of a cliff?
His last lucid memory was of the deep breathing exercises he'd used to finally calm himself to sleep. Next thing he knew, Al was shouting at him and he'd been on the verge of taking a dive. Literally. He clutched the heavy folds of the coat more tightly about himself and fought back the shivers. Not all of them were from the cold, even though there was a distinctly Arctic feel in the air.
Al was being unusually quiet, studying the flickering patterns on the handlink, his heavy brows knitted as he considered the information. Sam wanted to talk to him, but first he had to get rid of his solicitous escort. Glancing up from his study, Al said, "Good, we're here."
With a start, Sam realized his friend was right. They were at Collinwood's front door. He'd been so absorbed in his own muddled thoughts, he'd paid little attention to his surroundings. Barnabas set him gently on his feet and
Sam said, awkwardly, "Barnabas...Thank you. You saved my life."
Barnabas accepted Sam's gratitude with a slight bow. He retrieved his coat, though he didn't seem to have suffered without it. His breath barely frosted the air. "I am honored to have been of service. Sleep well, Victoria."
An indignant Al squawked, "Hey, I helped too!"
A shrill burst from the 'link split the air, and he hastily amended, "Yeah, yeah, Ziggy. You helped too. Sam knows that."
Sam shook his head. He knew that Barnabas had said something during all that, but he'd have been hard pressed to say what. Fortunately, Barnabas didn't seem to expect an answer; he bade Sam good night, then faded back into the darkness.
Relieved, Sam gathered Al with a look, and retreated to his bedroom.
"Do you have any idea what the heck just happened to me?" he demanded, shutting and locking the door firmly behind him.
Only halfway through the door, Al paused in mid stride. His brows arched in surprise. "You almost took a stroll off a cliff. Don't you remember?"
"Yeah, but why?" Sam collapsed onto the bed and glared at the ceiling. It came to him again: the image of the surf pummeling the rocks, so far away and yet too close. His stomach did a nauseating back-flip.
He hated heights.
He opened his eyes to see Al watching him with a knowing smirk. Former navy pilot, former astronaut, Al Calavicci was more at home far above the surface of the Earth than on it. Unlike Sam, who was a firm believer in keeping both feet solidly on the ground.
He glared at his friend. "Does Ziggy have any ideas about my, uh, after hours excursion?"
Al consulted the handlink. "Ziggy doesn't know what to make of it." The cigar shifted from one corner of his mouth to the other. He talked around it with the facility of long practice. "You were never a sleepwalker, not even as a child, according to your records."
"I can't remember anything..." Before his first Leap, there had never been anything Sam couldn't remember. Now, he had a photographic memory with holes in the negative. It was intensely frustrating.
"Hypnosis?" Al suggested, dubiously.
"I don't think so," Sam said.
Simultaneously, the 'link responded: Unlikely.
The lights on the 'link flashed, giving it the appearance of a self-lit box of half-melted Jujubes. Al bent an eye to the data stream. The computer began running a steady flow of facts and opinions past him, often so quickly it was
difficult to tell one from the other. Al glanced up to find Sam watching him expectantly.
"Well, the good news is that Ziggy doesn't think you're a likely candidate for disassociative disorders, despite all this Leaping about."
"How nice of him."
The handlink beeped. "Ziggy says, and I quote, 'However, Dr. Beckett may be suffering from prolonged stress, resulting in reduced mental capacity, diminished vigilance, and fatigue.' End quote."
"Great," Sam said, rolling his eyes. "I'm being psychoanalyzed by a computer."
"Welcome to my world." Al directed his next question to the computer. "So what does that leave us with?"
Ziggy's response was as prompt as it was startling.
"What?" Sam demanded, staring at Al staring at the link. "What did he say?"
"He, uh, says you..." Al fell silent and studied the 'link some more as if daring it to repeat whatever unimaginable thing it had just said. It did, and he gave it a thump. "Ziggy, in his near-infinite wisdom and quantum insanity,
thinks you were under some sort of...spell."
"Spell."
"Hey, don't look at me, I didn't say it," Al said, defensively. He gave the 'link a rough shake. "That parallel, hybrid hunk of--"
Sam waved off the rest of the insult; now wasn't the time to berate Ziggy. Arching an eyebrow, he asked, "Doesn't he have any alternatives to offer?"
"No, not really." Al looked thoughtful, then added, "Unless you'd consider demonic possession as an alternative."
"I don't think so," Sam said. "I think I'd have noticed if my head started spinning around backward."
"Not you," Al said acerbically. "Ziggy."
Sam scrubbed his face with his palms. "Whatever it was, it's gone now."
"Let's hope so," Al said. "I don't want you taking any more unscheduled, midnight walking tours."
Neither did Sam. "I'd love to Leap out of here right now." He hugged himself. "But if Vicki returns, what's to prevent the same thing from happening to her?"
"Maybe it already did," Al said, looking thoughtful. "In the original history. What if that's what really happened, not suicide."
Sam collapsed wearily onto the bed. He suddenly felt oddly distanced from his surroundings, as if whatever force bound him to this body had been somehow weakened. With some difficulty, he focused on Al. "If that's so, why haven't I Leaped?"
Something in Sam's voice made the Observer take a closer look at him. "Sam?"
Al's voice was uncharacteristically soft as he finally realized the depth of Sam's distress. "It's okay now, Sam. You're safe."
Sam just looked at him, and shivered.
"I know you're pretty shook up," Al said. "Hell, it scared about ten years off my life. But it's all over and you're okay."
"And if it happens again?" Sam drew his knees up and hugged them to his chest.
Al's jaw tightened. "Well, it's not gonna happen again, because I'm going to stay right here until morning and make damn sure it doesn't."
That finally elicited a smile. "An admiral pulling sentry duty?"
Al shrugged nonchalantly. "I wouldn't for just anybody, you know." He marched to the foot of the bed, and ordered sternly, "Now, get some sleep. You look like something the cat wouldn't drag in on a bet."
"Gee, thanks."
"I mean it, Sam. You're on your last legs." Al's stern expression softened. "Don't worry. Ziggy and I will be right here if you need us."
Sam started to protest--he was a big boy now, and didn't need a babysitter--but the image of that treacherous drop loomed large again, and he shuddered.
"Okay," he said, and crawled meekly under the covers. With the blankets up around his ears, he looked at Al. The Observer had the air of one entrenched for the duration. "Thanks, Al."
Embarrassed, the Observer waved off the gratitude. "Go to sleep, Sam."
The physicist was already succumbing to post-traumatic fatigue as the adrenaline left his system. Cocooned beneath the covers, his face half buried in the pillow, he mumbled, "G'night."
Standing guard at the foot of the bed, ready to hold off the legions of darkness if necessary, the Observer sighed. "Good night, Sam."
** ** ** **