NOTE: Dialogue from… well, you know where I got this dialogue from.
EPILOGUE
Admiral Al Calavicci opened the binder full of bank statements. It had been a very productive week. Sam had been in stasis now for nine days, which had given everyone at the Project down time to spare. Personally, Al had used the first day to catch up on his sleep. Then the next six to tackle the Colossus of paperwork that always seemed to accrue on his desk, no matter what he tried to inhibit it. Yesterday he'd spent entirely with Tina, most of it in bed and the rest of it doing things that weren't entirely inappropriate activities for bed in the bathtub, the living room, and the basement lounge. Now that the needs of Project and Self had been dealt with, it was time to sacrifice a year-old ram without fault or blemish to the god of Finances.
He farmed out his personal bookkeeping, of course: couldn't afford not to. A charming young accountant with the most exquisitely balanced… ledgers you ever saw took care of it for him. Nevertheless, it behoved a man to be aware of his financial situation, and so he tried to glance through this particular book every couple of months.
It had been more than a couple of months this time, though, he realized as he flipped through statements going back at least half a year to the last one he'd signed off on. There was a doodle in the corner, a clumsy sketch of Teresa Bruckner, the darling little munchkin who'd come down for breakfast one morning to find a man in her mother's clothes and a hologram in her kitchen. Al grinned. Seemed like it had been longer than six months since that leap. That had been a great one. Always nice when you did something really important. When you made a real difference.
The last leap had been like that, too. Re-uniting that ill-fated couple, giving true love the second chance it deserved.
He hadn't let Sam know just how close to home Phillip Dumont's plight had struck. Sam didn't need to remember about Beth. It had cut the kid up badly enough when he'd told him the first time. As Al recalled, he'd actually had tears in his eyes. Soft-hearted sentimentalist. Still, it had been awfully good to see Phillip and Katherine reunited the way they should be. The way he and Beth should have been.
It wasn't fair. Sam had had his break, been given a second try with Donna. Was it too much to ask of God or Time or Fate or Whatever that Al get a chance to make it right with Beth? Just imagine stepping out of the Imaging Chamber one day to find that the last thirty years were nothing but a bad dream…
But Sam had connections. All Al had was a lifetime of proof that God didn't care, but boy, the Devil sure did.
Sparing one more wistful thought for the only woman he had ever really loved, now lost in the distant past, he turned back to the present, which meant his bank statements.
He thumbed through them. The first charge on each one was always the same: had been for over twenty years. Eight hundred and fifty dollars deducted with all the regularity of an IRS payroll garnishment, taken off by his attorney and sent away to his first wife—well, his first wife after Beth. Somehow Beth always seemed in a league of her own, which made it hard sometimes to keep the other four straight.
Al grinned ruefully. Over the years, that Hungarian had cost him the better part of half a million dollars. Most of that had been in the initial settlement, though of course ten grand a year added up pretty quickly over a couple of decades. She'd walked away with the house, the cars, the rest of his compensation pay, and most of his credit rating, along with an alimony that would be considered ridiculously high at today's prices, for a working wife with no kids. To her credit, she'd never come back for more the way Sharon and Max had. Probably because any court would probably have ruled in his favor at a second viewing. Those had been feminist times, and the Hungarian had found herself a feminist lawyer and a feminist judge. Never underestimate the capitalist wiles of a commie! Al had always considered himself lucky that he'd got out of that courtroom still wearing his jockey shorts.
It had meant a few lean months, before the brass made up their minds that the best way to wipe away the blot the ugly divorce had cast on their little space hero's image was to show confidence in him and promote him to Captain. The resultant increase in pay had ensured that the second half of his Masters' studies at M.I.T. had been considerably more comfortable than the first.
Funny, though, how little he remembered about his second wife. It came to the surface in fits, like the memories buried in the iron casket labelled "Vietnam". A glimpse of red hair here, a Hungarian swear-word there, the feeling of sand between his toes. Just random fragments of a torn photograph long ago scattered in the wind. He couldn't even remember her name.
It was Ziggy who interrupted these musings. It took very little for her to banish the Admiral's indistinct attempts at remembrance. Sam had leaped.
MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMThe kid had been in all kinds of tough situations, but standing in front of a rookie cop's locker overflowing with colorful lingerie had to be one of the tougher ones. Resisting the very real temptation to burst out laughing, Al coached his friend.
"It's a hazing, Sam," he advised. "Like in a fraternity."
Some people didn't know the meaning of the word gratitude. "I know what it is, Al," the annoyed physicist muttered, speaking out of the corner of his mouth as if it was the Observer's fault he'd leaped into a cross-dressing detective. Turning to the crowd of good-naturedly jeering policemen, Sam reached into the locker and fished out one of the slinky little garments.
"Tina will love this!" he announced.
Al grinned, his imaginative mind having no difficulty filling out the shimmery black camisole with his lover's oh-so-caressable curves. "I'm sure she would," he chuckled lecherously.
Sam plucked up a tiny red thong. "Now, I think this'll fit Laurie," he said.
Laurie! Al had almost forgotten Laurie. She ran that little book shop in upstate New York. They used to read the Brownings and bop one another in Non-Fiction, D to M…
"Michelle!" Sam continued, displaying a naughty-looking garter belt. Al's playful mood heightened as he remembered his old fishing buddy. Michelle'd had a long, shapely pair of lures that would have made Captain Ahab forget Moby Dick!
He turned his attention back to Sam, eager for the next recollection.
"Ooh—oh—oh!" Sam exclaimed, holding aloft a negligee with peek-a-boo fronts in black lace. "And I can't wait to see Elsa in this!"
Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Total blank. Al frowned, groping in his mind for something that should be there, but wasn't.
The cops roared with laughter. Sam had got in some dig on his partner, but Al hadn't really heard it. Dammit, there was a hole… something that should be there. A glimmer of hair like fire, rhinestone earrings in the sunlight, a haughty laugh, the walls closing in on him… but nothing else. No face. No sense of where or when. As if someone had excised Elsa, whoever she was, from his mind and left a well-healed but unmistakable hole.
Detective Scaggs gave Sam a companionable smack on the back. "You're all right, partner," he said fondly, tossing the nightie into the locker and moving off.
Puzzled, perhaps hoping that maybe Sam would bail him out by admitting he'd thrown one of his own girlfriends into the mix, Al gave the kid a bemused look. "Elsa?" he said. "What Elsa? I don't remember any Elsa."
Sam wasn't listening. He had just pulled a pair of jeans out from under the foliage of women's undergarments. He clutched them as if they were a priceless treasure and cast his eyes towards the heavens. Al could see that right now the kid really knew that there was a God up there, and boy, was God ever good.
"Pants," Sam breathed. "Thank you."
Al smirked. Leave it to Sammy to stand in front of a locker full of Saturday night fun, giving thanks for a boring old pair of jeans. "Well, personally," he jibed; "I think you'd look kinda foxy in this little purple number with the white fuzz." He grinned wickedly at the displaced scientist. "Just my opinion."
Sam gave him a look of utter disgust. "Why am I here?" he asked through clenched teeth.
Al went to work with the handlink. "Well, let's find out," he said. As Ziggy dissembled, he relayed. "Your name is Jake Rawlins. Oh, this is interesting, Sam! See Jake is usually short for Jacob, but you're just… plain Jake!"
He chortled happily, but Sam wasn't laughing. Al narrowed his eyes a little. "Never mind," he said, in a voice that clearly communicated that Sam was one heck of a wet blanket. He continued. "You graduated from UCSD in '65 with a BA in Criminal."
The 'link had jammed again. He smacked it. "Justice. Then you enrolled in the San Diego police academy a month later. Well, you were second in your class there. Since joining the force you've received two commendations. The first of which was you saved the life of a wounded fellow officer. You shielded him with…"
Sam was struggling with Jake Rawlins' padding-filled bra. It was Al's turn to deal out annoyance. "Just… twist that around your body if you want to get it off," he instructed. Only Sam wouldn't know how to remove a brassiere.
The time traveller gave him a blank look. "What?" he said, still struggling with the garment.
"Your brassiere," Al said, spelling things out for the genius yet again. "Just twist the catch around to the front so that you can undo it." Sam complied clumsily. Al continued. "You shielded him with your body in a shootout during an attempted armed-car robbery."
"Well, I didn't," Sam hedged. "I mean… I mean, Jake did."
The fine lines of leaping weren't Al's strong point. As far as he was concerned, it was exactly what Sam would have done in the situation. More heart than brains, which considering the man's I.Q. was saying a lot. "Well, you're him now, sort of," Al reasoned.
Sam wasn't interested in hearing it. "What did Jake do wrong that I'm here to put right?" he asked, sliding his miniskirt up around his waist to reveal a crime that ought to be punished by life in prison, no parole.
Al pulled a face. "You mean besides putting on your panty girdle backwards?" he asked.
Sam peered down at his abdomen. "Looks okay," he said, with the innocence of a farm boy brought up on good home cooking and solid family values.
"Trust me, Sam," Al warned.
"No. I don't want to trust you," Sam argued.
"Trust me. It's backwa—"
"No—"
"It's backwards!"
"I didn't put it on anyways—"
"It's! Back! Wards!"
"Al, don't—"
"It's on backwards!"
"Okay," Sam said in a tone that clearly meant the party was over. "Just what am I doing in San Diego in…" He looked up expectantly.
"Sixty-nine," Al supplied. Ah, San Diego in the sixties! Calavicci's own little corner of heaven, for far too short a season. This was going to be a fun one! Al consulted the handlink again. "April First, nineteen sixt—Hey!" He grinned and waved his hand dramatically. "It's April Fool's Day!"
Suddenly his heart froze. His mind was in turmoil. April Fool's Day, 1969. Pain closed on his chest. Somehow it was all tied together. Those bank statements, the elusive Elsa, somehow it was all part of this pain. Part of this loss. The greatest single loss in a life full of bitter losses. April Fool's Day, 1969.
Suddenly he didn't care who Elsa was, if there had even ever actually been anyone named Elsa. This was April Fool's Day, 1969. Sam had leaped into San Diego on April Fool's Day, 1969. The worst day of Al's life. The day some legal nozzle had come out of nowhere and stolen away his heart. Stolen her away while he was Missing in Action on the other side of the world. Beth. San Diego. 1969. Oh, God. Oh, God. It couldn't be true—it had to be true! Why else would Sam be here… now… After all the years of loneliness, after a lifetime of unanswered prayers and unending miseries, Calavicci was finally going to get a second chance.
Sam was muttering resentfully, wrestling with the lacy stockings. Al tapped at the link. The numbers weren't good… he didn't give a damn about the numbers! She was here! His Beth! She was here, and Sam was here, and he was going to get a second chance! Another shot at happiness! An opportunity to mend that greatest of wrongs in his own life! Why else could Sam be here?
The pain that came with the influx of memories and the desperate hope that a lifetime of experience was telling him not to feel was almost too much to be borne. It was certainly too much to hide. Sam looked up from his grumbling, his face suddenly blanching with concern.
"What's wrong?" he asked somberly.
Al stared at the handlink. There, in glowing neon, was her name. Beth. Beth Calavicci. His love. His angel. His reason for living. His only reason for surviving Hell itself.
And she could be his again. Sam was here to make sure she waited for him. Sam was here to make sure Beth was his again.
Al's throat closed with the overwhelming flood of jumbled emotions that seized him.
"Sam…" he said hoarsely. Even after all these years, it still hurt to admit that this had happened. The pain was as fresh as if he'd been returned Stateside yesterday, instead of twenty-five years ago.
"You're here to stop a woman from…"
He glanced up at Sam, his heart beating frantically to the rhythm of a prayer of sheer desperation. Oh, Beth! Oh, Beth! Please, God, let this be our second chance!
"…making the mistake of her lifetime."
FINIS