Ashley McConnell - Quantum Leap - The Wall

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ONE SMALL STEP FOR MAN ONE QUANTUM LEAP FOR
MANKIND
Theorizing that a man could time travel within his own
lifetime, Dr. Sam Beckett stepped into the Quantum
Leap Accelerator—and vanished.
Somehow he was transported not only in time, but
into someone else's life.. ..
And the Quantum Leap Project took on a whole new
dimension.
QUANTUM LEAP
Now all the excitement and originality of the acclaimed television show are captured in these inde-pendent
novels . .. all-new adventures, all-new leaps!
OUT OF TIME. OUT OF BODY. OUT OF CONTROL.
Praise for Quantum Leap: The Novel...
"ENTERTAINING ... INTERESTING CHARACTERS
AND SITUATIONS." —Science Fiction Chronicle
"THOUGHTFUL ... EFFECTIVE ... A GOOD STORY!" —Dragon
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author gratefully acknowledges the support and assistance of Kathryn Ptacek and suggestions and sup-port from
Anna Nusbaum, Phyllis Linam, Bill Davis and other habitues of GEnie, and Lynn from Northgate Technical Support. In
addition, she would like to express a debt of gratitude to her mother, who never, ever threw anything away, and to her
sister, who held the memory that started it all. This one is yours, Mom, and yours, Mary Pat.
Saturday, August 5, 1961
HEADQUARTERS 7100TH SUPPORT WING WIESBADEN AREA COMMAND
INFORMATION AND INSTRUCTIONS FOR
NONCOMBATANTS IN THE EVENT
OF AN EMERGENCY
3. alert signals: The signal for an alert will be
a five (5)-minute rising and falling blast of the sirens
in the Wiesbaden Area (not to be confused with
the one (1)-minute rising and falling blast sounded
Monday noon for test purposes or the less-than-one
(1)-minute steady blast of district sirens for calling
police and fire officers to routine duties). In addition,
an airplane will fly low over the Wiesbaden Area
firing double red flares.
4. ACTION UPON ALERT:
a. In the event of an alert all noncombatants will:
1) Return immediately to their quarters.
2) Assemble the items listed in paragraph 5
below. . . .
3) Await further instructions . . .
4) If not contacted . . . within two (2) hours
of the Alert Signal, proceed to the Eagle Club.
(cont'd.)
CHAPTER _________
ONE
"Children should quickly learn the fact that their misbehavior can cause their fathers to suffer official
humiliation."
—Innumerable guides to military life
By now he knew what it felt like to Leap out of someone's life, had learned to recognize the moment of
completeness, of rightness that precipitated the lunge Out.
But he would never, never learn how to prepare for the Leap in. He never knew if he would end up in
the body of a pregnant woman, a retarded teenager, a college professor, or his own best friend. Or even
himself. He never knew if he would find himself in the middle of giving a college lecture or in the aftermath
of making love, of catching a pop fly or flying a fighter jet.
Or, as now, absorbing a blow that sent him reeling back against a wall. He was aware of the impact of
flesh against flesh and flesh against wall, of a deafening shriek, and the smell of juniper berries.
Bar fight? he wondered, holding a hand to a lip, feeling blood, bunching his muscles to uncoil in self-
defense.
Another blow, and he found himself sprawling. Must be one hell of a big guy, he thought muzzily,
staggering up again.
The shrieking was resolving itself into words. The dark blur in front of him was becoming a figure, an
impossibly tall backlit shadow with a lifted hand. Despite himself he ducked back, fell again.
"Don't you talk back to me!" the shriek was say-ing. "Damn you, don't you talk back to me!"
He opened his mouth to say, "But I'm not," then thought better of it. It wasn't in his best interest to
argue with a giant.
The hand before him dropped suddenly, and the shriek was replaced by a sob. The giant fell down
before him on her knees, and when the hand was lifted again it was to brush clumsily at his brow. "Missy,
Missy honey, I'm sorry, Mommy's sorry, don't cry honey, Mommy didn't mean it. Don't cry."
Mommy? Missy? He glanced down at himself, as much to get away from the alcoholic fumes as to
check and see who he was this time.
"Oh, nuts," he whispered. He was wearing a dress again.
The stroking hand paused. " 'Nuts'? 'Nuts'?" The hand pulled back and descended again in a
lightning-quick slap, at too short a range to have much power behind it, but strong enough to rock him
back again. "You get to your room!" The woman heaved herself to her feet, staggering, and extended
one unsteady hand to point the way. "You get in there right now, you hear me, and you don't come out
again until I tell you!"
He was tempted to crawl, to stay beneath and out of range of that threatening hand, but something
wouldn't let him, and besides, he could move faster when he was on his feet and knew what to expect.
He scurried down the hall and ducked behind the indicated door, closing it behind himself with a sigh of
relief.
His face was beginning to hurt, and he was cer-tain that he had a bruise on the back of his head where
he'd hit the wall. He couldn't feel any other injuries.
From the other side of the door he could hear weeping.
He wondered if he should be crying, too, instead of feeling—what did he feel, anyway? Bewildered,
certainly. Shocked. A sick feeling that there must have been a reason, that he—no, not him, it couldn't
have been him, he wasn't even there—that someone must have done something to cause that sobbing,
those words, those blows. There had to have been a reason.
But reason or not, there was no possible excuse. And the emotional reaction there was easy to
iden-tify. Taking a deep breath and letting it out again, he decided it was anger.
Never, in the opinion of a good-natured quantum physicist, a very constructive emotion; one he had
always felt faintly ashamed of. But this was one of those rare occasions when even Sam Beckett felt
anger was fully justified. With a muttered curse, he let fly with a spinning kick at thin air.
And landed on his rump, tangled in a rag rug.
He'd been right the first time. Anger was not a constructive emotion.
Struggling to his feet again, rubbing the tender place on his posterior, he finally took a good look
around the room.
A twin bed, with a pink bedspread.
A picture of a Disney Alice, having tea with the Mad Hatter and the March Hare, hung on the wall
over the bed. He snorted in sympathy at the confused look on the cartoon character's face. Alice didn't
know the half of it. The headboard was white, with imitation gilt paint in imitation plasterwork. A chain of
plastic daisies hung from one of the bedposts.
A pink plush stuffed doll, with a plastic face and threadbare patches, was propped carefully against a
lace-edged pillow.
He turned slowly.
There was a window, with tiny plastic horses perched on the windowsill. A small bookcase, stuffed to
the gills with very thin books. A miniature dresser next to a full-size one.
The miniature dresser came complete with minia-ture mirror. Taking a deep breath, he steeled him-self
and stepped into square with it and looked at the person reflected in the frame.
She was a very pretty little girl. About six, he judged. She had long brown hair, neatly parted and braided,
with bangs cut severely across her fore-head, and she had lovely violet eyes. He blinked, fascinated to
watch the long lashes moving, and blinked again. It took him a moment to realize that he couldn't see her
blinking.
He couldn't watch himself blinking, because his eyes were closing too. His eyes, which were her eyes,
which were almost the color of the bruise rising on the side of her face. He raised a hand to touch,
carefully, and the little girl in the mirror winced.
So did he, and not just at the stab of pain from the cheekbone. Sam Beckett had always
considered himself the flexible sort. Adaptable. Versatile.
But he'd never been a six-year-old girl before.
"Oh, boy," he said.
Verbeena Beeks straightened up and folded her stethoscope neatly into the pocket of her lab coat. The
man in the bed stared at her, wide-eyed and silent, and Verbeena shut her eyes briefly and sighed.
A whimper of apprehension came from the bed, and the doctor opened them again and smiled brightly.
"Hello there! My name is Dr. Beeks. What's yours?"
His hands clutched at the sheet covering him, and he sneaked a look past her at the white walls,
the eerie blue light. "Is this a hospital?" he whis-pered. His voice was oddly high pitched to the doc-tor's
ears.
"It's a kind of hospital," she agreed, making care-ful note of the pitch. Sometimes it was difficult to
identify the Visitor, and every clue helped. "What's your name? You didn't tell me."
"Is my mommy here?" He looked around again, clear apprehension in his eyes.
No mirrors for this one, Verbeena decided. No reflective surfaces, even. This is a really young one.
"You didn't tell me your name, honey."
"Missy. My name is Missy. M'lissa Renee Robi-cheaux," he said, pronouncing the words carefully.
"Where's my mommy?"
"Melissa?" Verbeena choked. Not only a child, but a girl child? It took her a deep breath to recover
enough to say, "That's a very nice name. How old are you, Melissa?"
"Missy," he corrected instantly, and then flinched, his gaze darting around the white room as if looking for
someone. "I'm six." It was a whisper.
"Well, you're a very big girl for six years old," the doctor said. Oh, Lord. Sam, where are you
now? What have you gotten into this time? "This is... this is like a hospital, Missy. You need to
stay here for a little while."
"Do I have to get a shot?" His hands—long, elegant musician's hands—twisted around
each other.
"No, honey. No shots here." She smiled and patted the sheet.
The wary gaze snapped back to her, as if assess-ing, and then he asked cautiously, "Can I have my
Susie?"
Verbeena dredged her memories of her childhood. "Is Susie your dolly?"
A flash of fine indignation: "Susie's my friend. I'm too big to have a dolly."
"You certainly are, dear." Verbeena sighed again. This one was going to be very, very complicated. "I'm afraid
Susie isn't here right now, and we weren't, um, expecting you. Do you—" how to put this—"do you know
where you live?"
"Einundswanzig Texasstrasse, apartment five. Major Robicheaux's quarters."
The recitation was flat, without that quality of "affect" that the doctor was used to in her invol-untary
patients. It took her by surprise. "I beg your pardon?"
"Einund—"
"No, no, that's all right. I heard you the first time." Missy cringed, and Verbeena changed the subject
hastily. This one was afraid of anything that looked like criticism. "Do you know what town you're in,
honey?"
"Hainerberg." Once again, there was no emotion. The words had no meaning for the little girl. "Is my
mommy coming soon?"
Hainerberg? Where the hell is Hainerberg? Ver-beena wondered. She shrugged; she could always
come back to it. Meanwhile, let Ziggy, silently moni-toring, take the data and run with it. "And when is your
birthday, Missy?"
"This month!" He smiled, a smile to break her heart. "I'm going to be six whole years old this month!"
"You mean, you aren't six yet?" This is even worse than I thought.
"Almost! I almost am!" He cringed, pressed him-self back into the bed, away from her. "I didn't lie!"
"No, no," she soothed, a terrible suspicion begin-ning to dawn in her. She paused, mentally adding up
the flickering gaze, the twisting hands, the shrinking away from her shadow, even the repeated requests
for her mother, the response to perceived corrections.
At six, surely she should be more independent? "No, you didn't lie. I'm not mad at you, honey." She
reached out, carefully, and took one of his hands in hers, patting it gently. "Nobody's mad at you here, I
promise."
He relaxed minutely, and the doctor reached out to brush the lock of white hair out of his eyes. His
gaze never left her hand, as if he expected her to lash out without warning.
"Tell me about yourself, Missy," she said. "Tell me about your family. Tell me about Hainerberg."
"Al, I'm really worried about this one," she said two hours later in the main conference room. "This could
be very, very bad."
The small dapper man across the table from her rolled an unlit cigar back and forth in his mouth. "Bad?
How bad can this be? He's Leaped into a serial killer, for God's sake. He's been pregnant! How much
worse can you get than pregnant?"
"I'm sure he found it a very soul-enriching experi-ence, Admiral," Verbeena said, glaring. "Pregnancy is
a wonderful thing. Having a child you've wanted and loved and planned for . . ." She paused. Sam
Beckett had certainly never planned to be pregnant. Shifting gears, she went on, "That isn't the point I'm
trying to make here. Dr. Beckett has had quite a lot of experience by now with Leaping. I'm more
worried about our guest."
"Why? She won't remember anything. They nev-er do. It's that swiss-cheese effect. Plays hell with
Sam, but I always figured it worked in our favor with the guys he traded places with." Despite the title,
he was not in uniform; he was wearing civilian clothing. Defiantly, vividly civilian clothing.
"This is not a guy, Admiral."
Her repeated use of his title instead of his name finally penetrated, and he realized she was really
annoyed. He took out the cigar and leaned forward.
"He's been a woman before."
"This is not a woman, Admiral. This is a little girl. A very little girl. And any minute now she's going to
realize that she's in the body of an adult male. Al, this is ... this is a kind of child abuse." She chewed her
lower lip. "And the worst thing . . ."
"Child abuse? Sam? Are you nuts?" Al was on his feet and pacing, his arms flailing like windmills.
"Sam Beckett would no more—"
"I realize it isn't his choice, Al, but what's going to happen to that little girl? If she remembers any-thing
about this, it will scar her for the rest of her life." She took a deep breath and let it go. "And the thing is,
I'm afraid she may already be carrying some scars. I think Missy Robicheaux may already be an abused
child."
CHAPTER _________
TWO
"Though there is no apparent rank among wives, tradition and courtesy expect proper recognition
and respect to be accorded those whose husbands occupy positions of high responsibility."
—Protocol, Officers' Wives Club
Sam could well imagine that it was taking Al and Ziggy a while to figure out where and when he'd landed
this time. He still wasn't sure himself. The hours shut up in the bedroom stretched on. Looking out the
window, he could see two rows of identi-cal brown buildings, rectangular, three stories tall, facing each
other across a narrow street. A scatter-ing of saplings in full leaf dotted the lawn between them. It looked
like a young, grim housing project. The street was almost completely free of traffic. He spotted a handful
of cars in diagonal slots in front of the buildings; they were massive and blunt, station wagons mostly,
dating from the mid- to late Fifties. Well, that gave him some idea when he was, even if he didn't know
for sure where he was yet.
The angle of the sun felt wrong for the season the trees showed. All that told him, really, was that he
wasn't in the same latitude he grew up in; you could
take the physicist out of Indiana, but you couldn't take the farm boy out of the physicist. He watched the
shadows stretch out and listened to the sounds on the other side of the door and wondered what on
earth he was supposed to do this time. Report being slapped? To whom, and how?
A man with a leashed German shepherd came around the corner from the next building over. Sam
leaned forward, straining to see; the dog wore a heavy muzzle, and resisted the lead. The man yanked him along
impatiently, clearly wanting to get this "walk" business over with.
Finally, the dog began sniffing at a convenient bush, and the man stood still, checking his watch
impatiently. Sam could sympathize with the dog; he was beginning to feel a reminder of liquids past
himself. The dog had just lifted his leg when, from a loudspeaker some distance away, came the sound of
a trumpet.
Sam watched with amazement as the man stiff-ened in place, yanking the dog away from the bush, and
remained at strict attention as the trumpet—a scratchy recording—played "Retreat," and then the
National Anthem. The man did not relax, nor allow the dog to finish, until the trumpet was silent.
The man and dog circled the building and dis-appeared. Sam sighed, put his elbows up on the
windowsill, and rested his chin on his doubled fists. After a while a pair of children crossed his field of
view, heading toward the end of the building, fol-lowed a few minutes later by three more. He could hear
the faint sounds of children shouting, and won-dered idly what games they were playing.
His train of thought was interrupted by a brisk pounding at the bedroom door. "Missy! You get out
here and wash your hands and set the table!"
With relief, Sam headed for the door, pausing only long enough to let Mrs. Robicheaux disappear
down the hall. The location of the bathroom was a wild
guess that proved to be a lucky one; he closed the door behind himself and faced the same problem he
seemed to face every time he Leaped to the oppo-site sex: a mind wired for one set of reflexes in a body
configured for another. Fortunately, by this time, he had learned to compensate and adapt to the physical
requirements of the body he occupied, whatever they might be. Though fastening a bra behind his back
was still something of a challenge, as he recalled. Fortunately or otherwise, Missy was too young to
worry about that.
A brown wooden step, obviously handmade, was next to the sink, ready for a child to stand upon.
Washing his hands afterward, he studied the bruise reflected in the mirror. It was darker now, and
omi-nous looking. Sam shook his head, carefully—sud-den motion made his head ache—and checked
the rest of the child's body with clinical thoroughness, looking for other signs of abuse.
There were a couple of faded yellow marks along her ribs, and a more recent, greenish one on her leg.
There were beatings, then, but not every day. Sam suspected that they might be a result of the moth-er's
drinking, and the paucity of old bruises and scars might mean that she had only just progressed to
attacking her daughter. That might mean that he had Leaped to somehow short-circuit the cycle of child
abuse. He hoped so. He found himself liking the little girl whose body he occupied, even though he had
never—would never?—have the opportunity to meet her in person.
Well, he might, someday. Sam had given up pre-dicting the future about the time that the past had
gone berserk. It didn't matter, anyway. He would do what he was supposed to do, Leap, and ... do
what he was supposed to do.
"Story of my life," he murmured to the child in the mirror.
"Missy? Did you fall asleep in there?"
"No . . . Mom," he answered, scrambling to re-spond.
At the other end of the hallway from the bedrooms was the living room, dining room, and kitchen. Two
doors at the far end of the living room led to a closet and, presumably, an exit.
His pell-mell rush came to a screeching halt as he registered what rested next to the door. He looked
over uncertainly to find the woman—now that he knew he had Leaped into a child, he realized that she
wasn't really a giant—reaching into a china cabinet, getting out a set of cut-crystal glasses.
He looked again, gave the living room a quick scan. Yes, that was a tired-looking overstuffed green
couch against the far wall, and a mas-sive leather club chair, battered from years of use. He
couldn't see a television set anywhere, but a cherrywood cabinet in the corner had four large doors
and stirred a faint memory, as if the Beckett family might have had a similar cabinet, back in
Indiana. He wasn't sure, but the sight of it gave him a pang of homesick-ness.
Over the couch, a mountain landscape in an ornate frame held pride of place. On the floor, a loose
carpet that had once been red covered the floor. An elaborately carved, dark coffee table held an empty
crystal candy dish and a squared-off stack of magazines and newspapers. He made a mental note to
take a look at them as soon as he had a chance. They'd give him details about where and when he was.
And lined up next to the door, waiting, were three large suitcases, and three quart bottles of water.
Nothing in the scene went with cut-crystal glass-ware.
"Are you going to stand there all day?" the woman said sharply. "Snap to!"
"Yes, Ma'am!" he responded, startled.
From a corner of the kitchen, a boy of perhaps ten sneered at him.
Uh-oh, he thought. I'll bet a girl's big brother isn't any better than a boy's big brother. And then
he recalled, with a start of guilt, that he had been a girl's big brother once upon a time, as well as a boy's
younger sibling, and wondered if this Leap wasn't Someone's way of paying him back for some of the
tricks he'd played on his little sister Katie.
"Dammit, Missy! How many times do I have to tell you to move! Are you deaf?"
She was a woman of forty years and average height, not slender and not stocky, her blonde hair short
and badly permed, her hands red about the knuckles, her dark blue eyes lined, her face ill and tired. Just
now she was clutching the top of a dining room chair as if it could keep her from fall-ing somehow,
pressing it back against the flowered shirtdress.
He cleared his throat. "Mom, are we... are we going away somewhere?"
Missy's mother closed her eyes. "No. Not unless they call the alert. I explained all that to you. Now
set the table, unless you want a spanking."
Sam moved around her warily—nearly tripping over a voltage transformer in the process—keep-ing
out of striking range just in case, and noticed gratefully that Missy's putative brother was taking knives,
forks, and spoons out of a drawer and put-ting them on a countertop. He dived for the silver-ware, and
began to move around the table, putting it in place in front of the chairs. There was one more chair that
needed a place setting. Missy's mother left the kitchen and walked slowly down the hall, her hands at her
temples.
"You're gonna get in trouble, you're gonna get in trouble," the boy sang off-key. The kid had the same
brown hair Missy did, the same violet eyes. He was thin and wiry. dressed in a lone-sleeved shirt and
gray slacks. He got up on a step stool and opened a cupboard, getting out three plates. Sam wondered if
those long sleeves covered the boy's share of bruises, too.
Three? Only three? Sam wondered. He was begin-ning to wish Al would show up. There were
a lot of questions he'd like the answer to, questions he couldn't ask. Like, for instance, Where's Daddy?
"She's gonna tell Daddy on you, and you're gonna get it when he gets back," the boy said, as if
answer-ing him.
Sam made another trip out to the dining room, carrying plates, and back again. "When's he coming
back?" he asked, as casually as possible. How does a six-year-old girl sound? he wondered desperately,
suddenly realizing another pitfall of this particular Leap. He couldn't for the life of him remember what his
little sister Katie sounded like when she was six.
The boy started to answer, then stopped. "That's a secret," he said, stirring something in a pot on the
stove. He moved around the kitchen as if he were well used to putting a meal on the table without
the assistance of an adult. Sam wondered just how often Missy's mother hit the bottle, and how hard. He
was still wondering when the telephone in the living room rang, a shrill double note.
The boy raced out to answer it.
"Major Robicheaux's quarters, Tom speaking, may I help you?" he recited breathlessly. Sam blinked. So
Missy's brother was named Tom. Sam's own older brother was named Tom, too. Interesting coinci-dence.
And this was Major Robicheaux's quarters. And a ten-year-old answered the telephone in a way
that would put many a professional secretary to shame.
Tom laid the handset down carefully and yelled, "Mom! It's Colonel Baker's wife!"
Mrs. Robicheaux came back, still pale. She picked up the phone, paused to take a deep breath,
and
said cheerily, "Doris? How nice of you to call."
Sam thought she didn't look very pleased, though. The circles under her eyes were more pronounced, and
she kept rubbing her temples.
Tom had paused in carrying a platter of pot roast to the table, and was openly watching his moth-
er. Mrs. Robicheaux, catching sight of him, turned away. After a short conversation she hung up the phone.
"Is it the Russians, Mom?" Tom said, his voice tense and oddly adult.
"Don't be silly, Tom. It's just the Officers' Wives Club meeting."
She said nothing more, even when Sam, reaching for the pepper and misjudging the length of his arm,
knocked over his glass of milk during dinner. Tom flinched, but Mrs. Robicheaux only sighed, squeez-ing
her eyes shut as if to deny the entire scene. Sam hopped out of his chair and ran for a dishcloth to
clean up the mess, and the meal continued in silence.
Afterward, he got up automatically to clear the table, and was rewarded with a wan smile. Tom
shot him a dirty look and recited, "May I be excused please and go out and play?"
Mrs. Robicheaux lifted a hand as if to restrain him, and hesitated. "Don't go far, Tom. Remember to
check in."
"I will." The boy pushed himself back from the table and ran for the door, passing the suitcases as if he
never even noticed them.
Sam continued to clear the table, trying hard not to let the plates and silver make a noise. After a while
the woman sitting at the table got up and went back down the hall toward the bedrooms.
It was about time, Sam thought, for Al to show up. Maybe the Observer could tell him what to do next.
Not that it wasn't clear enough: boyhood on a farm that didn't have time for fancy things
like
dishwashers was excellent preparation for doing the evening dishes.
It was quiet in the apartment now. The only sounds were those of water, of a squeezed sponge, of his own—of
Missy's own—feet as he stepped up and down from the metal stool Tom had tucked away in the corner.
There was no television, no radio, no sounds of life from outside. It might have been spooky. Instead, it
was comforting. It allowed him time to think, something to occupy his hands, and leisure to summon his
patchwork of memories and formidable intelligence to the problem of who and where he was, and why
he was where he was, this time.
And, perhaps, try to retrieve some more memories of his own youth. His idolized older brother Tom, the
Vietnam vet, had . . . survived the war? Been killed? In one version of the past, Tom had died. But he
thought he had a wisp of a memory of being the best man at his older brother's wedding, and if that were
so, Tom must have lived. He remembered Leaping into a member of his brother's squad. He thought he
saved him. Had he really? Did Tom die later?
He never knew when he changed things, if they stayed changed or not. Maybe that was why he kept
on Leaping—to get the past nailed down the way it was supposed to be.
Supposed to be for what? So that Sam Beckett could get several doctorates, and design a hybrid,
neurocell computer named Ziggy? Why did he do that? So that he could Leap into past lives and
straighten things out so that he could get several doctorates, and. . . .
It was circular logic, and it offended him.
The only explanation he'd ever been halfway hap-py with was that the timeline that contained Sam
Beckett wasn't as real as the ones he Leaped into and changed. He was making himself possible.
Making some specific event possible, possibly something
besides the creation of Ziggy. Maybe he'd created Ziggy to correct something that had gone wrong in his
own past. Tom's death, maybe?
If Tom was still alive, and Sam was still Leaping, it meant there was something else. And he couldn't
remember what it might be, or even if there was anything at all.
Every time he Leaped, he was supposed to change something, put something "right." Fix a disaster,
however minor or major, in someone's life. He had it down to a science now: He Leaped, shortly there-
after Al popped in with the link to Ziggy the comput-er and told him what Ziggy thought was supposed to change,
he changed it, and he Leaped again. Except when Ziggy was wrong, of course, which happened more
often than not.
But the change had to be made. He and Al had speculated that success had nothing to do with whether
he Leaped or not, but if he wasn't supposed to change something, what was the point of Leaping at all?
Or he might try and fail, and Whoever or Whatever was controlling the Leaps might send him somewhere
Else to try again. If that was so, then there did indeed have to be a Plan, a Final Purpose to his dizzying
journey through the last forty-some years of history. And every failure meant even more Leaps until
whatever, in the greater scheme of things, finally got straightened out, and he could go back to being Sam
Beckett in Sam Beckett's body and Sam Beckett's time. He wanted to go home.
At times like this, he was grateful for mundane chores like doing the dishes. Dirty silverware, at least,
he could handle.
He finished drying the crystal water glasses and carried them out to place them carefully on the din-ing
room table. He didn't want to take the chance of breaking one; they were lovely things, collecting prisms
of light in the hand-cut sharp edges and throwing it back as rainbows on the drab walls. He
wondered if they were heirlooms, and if so, why they were used for an ordinary dinner.
And that brought him back to the original set of standard questions. Who. When. Where. Why.
He had Leaped into the body of Missy Robicheaux, who was at best six years old. Missy had a brother, Tom,
and a mother with a headache. She also had a father, a Major Robicheaux, who was mysteriously
absent. So that was "who."
Judging from the cars, the time was the late Fif-ties. He saw nothing to contradict that estimate; he
would check the newspapers and magazines on the coffee table so he could get a better idea of the
date. He did think it rather strange that there was no television. He'd grown up with it, and its absence in
this house felt like the gap when a tooth had been pulled—not painful, exactly, but an absence all out
of proportion to its size. There had to be television; he could only Leap within his own lifetime.
He wondered whose Plan it really was, who decid-ed that this time he needed to be six years old and
female in order to fix whatever it was. God's? Fate's? Ziggy's? Sheer random chance? No; if it were chance, he
wouldn't have to change anything in order to Leap again. There had to be some reason, some design to all this.
Most dreadful possibility of all, was it really his own design, and had he programmed Ziggy to do this
to himself?
What was so terribly wrong with Sam Beckett's life that he would take it upon himself to change the
universe? As far as he knew, or remembered, he wasn't an egomaniac to that scale, casually altering
other people's lives to fit what he wanted. Was he?
He shivered, rejecting the idea.
"Somebody walking over your grave?"
It was Al at last, dressed in a natty red suit with a matching scarlet fedora and a paisley tie that
shrieked against a black shirt. Sam nearly dropped
a bone china plate in surprise. Not at the cloth-ing—for Al, that was practically subdued—but at the
suddenness of his appearance, out of nowhere. Which, in a sense, was a perfectly accurate descrip-tion.
"Where have you been?" It was practically a ritual question by now.
"Working," Al said, with a self-righteous jab of his unlit cigar. "Trying to figure out why you're here. It
isn't easy, when Verbeena won't even let me talk to the person in the Waiting Room." Al surveyed him
carefully, from the tips of his Keds to the top of his braided head. "Aw, you're cute. But where'd you get
the shiner?"
Sam sneaked a look over his shoulder before ask-ing his next question. Sometimes he had a problem
remembering that other people couldn't see Al, and his conversations with the Project Observer looked
like conversations with thin air. But there was no one to see, this time, and judging from the silence down
the hall, it didn't sound like Mrs. Robicheaux was coming out anytime soon.
So he shrugged, and responded, "Never mind about that. Why won't Verbeena let you talk to her? Do you mean you
don't have any information?"
Al sighed. "Oh, I've got information. More informa-tion than I want. It's just not quite the right informa-tion that I
want, if you follow me. But Verbeena won't let me in the Waiting Room because she's afraid our visitor is going
to realize she's visiting in your body, and our headshrinker is afraid it will traumatize her little mind."
Why should Missy Robicheaux be any more trau-matized than any other visitor? Sam started to
ask. Then he looked down at the pink play-dress and reconsidered. He didn't often think about how his
own body was being treated, hosting the minds or souls or awarenesses or whatever the hell it was, back
in the Waiting Room; something to do with
CHAPTER _________
THREE
Office of Civilian Personnel
7100 HQ SUPPORT WING
Wiesbaden Military Post 22 May 1952:
"All hired help are required to have the following prior to employment: an identity card station political
clearance; registration with the Ger-man police when recruited from another locality; physical
examination and immunization by mili-tary post surgeons; social insurance card; and a wage tax
card...."
"The Berlin Wall? You aren't suggesting I'm here to stop the Wall?" Sam nearly fell off the step stool in
shock.
"No, of course not." Al jabbed at the handlink and frowned. "At least, we don't think so ... No,
it's way too late to stop the Wall. The East Germans are leaving by the thousands, every day, and the
Russians—yeah. They just forbade ministers to go to an interfaith conference in Berlin. Nope, Missy isn't
going to stop the Wall."
"So," Sam said with exaggerated patience, "what am I here to do? Something for Missy?"
Al was faintly embarrassed. "Well, actually, as a matter of fact—"
"Let me guess. You don't know." Sam snapped a dish towel next to where Al would have been
stand-ing, if Al, instead of his hologrammatic image, had actually been standing there. "I thought you said
you had all these files on her?"
Al crunched the cigar between his teeth. "Well. Sort of. We have the files on her father; he never got
promoted past major. He's still alive. Her mother, let's see—" The data stream was fragmented and hard
to read; he slapped the handlink and the jum-ble fell back into words. "Her mother dies in 1989. Her
brother has a perfectly ordinary career as an electrical engineer, gets married, has a couple of kids."
"And Missy?"
Al cocked an eye at him. It was unsettling—with one part of his mind, the part linked through Ziggy, he
could see Dr. Samuel Beckett. With another, he could see a little girl giving him a mutinous stare, lower
lip stuck out, wisps of hair escaping from long braids. Sam was going to have to learn how to braid hair
in this one. Al smothered a smile.
"Missy stays single. Gets a doctorate in psychol-ogy—now that's interesting, wonder if it's because of
her childhood? Seems to be perfectly happy." He shook his head. "I don't know if having you Leap into
her childhood's going to change that."
"So what happened to Missy in August of 1961?"
Al took a deep breath and shrugged. "Nothing, so far as we can tell." The datalink flickered. "Oh, wait.
No. She broke her arm."
Sam's—or Missy's—jaw dropped. "She broke her arm? Are you telling me I Leaped here to keep a
six-year-old from getting a broken arm? Is Ziggy sure about that? What happens, it doesn't get set right?"
The datalink cubes glowed in some sequence that made sense only to the computer. Al squinted at the
screen. "Er, no. It doesn't seem to make any dif-ference. Ziggy says there's only a sixty-two-percent
chance that you're here to keep her from getting her arm broken."
"And that's all you've got? How does it happen?"
"That's all we've got right now," Al corrected him. "And we don't know how it happened. That part
was never recorded anywhere, not even in the hospital records. Ziggy can't access what was never
written down, you know. He can't read minds." Except may-be yours and mine, he did not add. He
wasn't sure about that. The links, Ziggy's chips, were made from his nerve tissue and Sam's, after all—that was
why he was the Observer, why he could always find Sam, eventually, no matter where in time he landed.
"Well, can't you ask her?"
"Ask who what?"
Sam spun around to see Missy's mother standing in the doorway. "Ah—"
"Ask what? Who are you talking to?" The woman sounded angry.
Al decided that this would be a good time to do a fade and leave Sam to the inevitable explanations.
摘要：

ONESMALLSTEPFORMANONEQUANTUMLEAPFORMANKINDTheorizingthatamancouldtimetravelwithinhisownlifetime,Dr.SamBeckettsteppedintotheQuantumLeapAccelerator—andvanished.Somehowhewastransportednotonlyintime,butintosomeoneelse'slife....AndtheQuantumLeapProjecttookonawholenewdimension.QUANTUMLEAPNowalltheexciteme...

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