She was the Project’s senior medical staff member and had, in the current version of technobabble, “official
oversight” of the Project medical team. Everything about the physical and mental health of the Project personnel was her responsibility.
She emphatically was not an expert in quantum physics or time-travel theory. Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Theorem, as interpreted by Samuel Beckett, M.D. and multiple Ph.D., was a source of enduring frustration to her. She agreed in principle that the patient must be led to personal discovery of the self rather than simply being told, but... in this context, it meant that Al couldn’t just come right out and tell Sam all about who he really was. Sam himself had set up an elaborate network of rules based on his own programming. It kept him in a state of chronic partial amnesia.
But that wasn’t the key problem at the moment. It was second order at best.
Her key problem at the moment was Al Calavicci. Since Sam’s only real link to his own identity was Al Calavicci, the Observer, linked to Sam through Ziggy the computer, Al was not only an Observer, but the focus to remind Sam of who he really was. It placed an incredible amount of pressure on him.
Verbeena had been about to suggest a little vacation to Al when Ziggy had notified them once again that Sam had found—or been placed in—yet another host, and the physical shell in the Waiting Room contained yet another Visitor.
Normally that news led to a carefully orchestrated series of events. Verbeena would make an immediate assessment of the Visitor. Al would enter the Imaging Chamber and Ziggy would center him on Sam. Simultaneously Ziggy would begin scanning history, looking for data on the individual into whose life Sam had Leaped, running projections on whatever it was that had gone wrong in that person’s life, tracing possibilities of new histories predicated on changes Sam might effect.
All that had happened this time, too. But not even Ziggy could calculate the infinite consequences of seemingly minor changes, and Sam usually managed to screw up the most elegant of solutions. So Al needed to be there, on call; not
to reinforce Sam’s sense of identity but to keep track of what he was doing.
And Al wasn’t.
And it had been more than two whole days since Al’s last contact with Sam. He’d made his initial contact, left the Imaging Chamber, and gone back to his office. The next day he’d taken a trip to Santa Fe with his wife. Ziggy, too, bad been uncharacteristically silent on the question.
"Ziggy.” Most of the time she looked up to that point at the ceiling she’d picked out as the “presence” of the omnipresent Ziggy. This time she stared straight ahead.
"Yes, Dr. Beeks.”
"Do we have a problem here?”
"In what respect?” The computer was being careful. She hated it when Ziggy was careful. It generally meant trouble.
"In that Admiral Calavicci shows no signs of being interested in returning to his duties as Observer.”
The computer didn’t answer. Verbeena counted to one hundred, twice.
"Ziggy, don’t you think this is a problem?”
“I can’t provide guidance to Dr. Beckett without the intervention of the Admiral.” The computer’s voice was female, and at the moment petulant. If the computer had occupied a human body, it would be kicking something.
“So it is a problem.”
“Of course it’s a problem!” the computer snapped.
“Have you tried talking to the Admiral?”
“He’s busy.” Ziggy was definitely sulking. Verbeena could detect a distinct undercurrent of jealousy, and she stifled a smile.
Ziggy’s visual sensors were sharper than she thought. "You’re laughing at me.”
Better watch it, Verbeena thought, or I’m going to be back to psychoanalyzing the computer. 1 don’t think I’m up
to a virtual Electra complex today.
“No, I’m not laughing at you,” she prevaricated, groping for something else to be laughing at to divert the computer’s wrath. “It’s the Admiral. He certainly is busy these days.”
There was a long pause before Ziggy answered, an unaccustomed hesitation. “He wasn’t that busy before.”
“No, he—” Verbeena paused, a small alarm bell having gone off deep inside. “Before what, Ziggy?”
An even longer pause, as if the computer wasn’t sure it should speak. “Before the actualization of the present.”
Verbeena blinked. “The what of the present?”
“The actualization.” Now that Ziggy had made up its “mind,” the computer was impatient, as it often was with mere human intellects. “Before the current present became real, when the Admiral wasn’t married to Janna Calavicci. He was dating Tina—”
Now Verbeena was completely confused. “Tina Martinez-O’Farrell? Al dated the Chief of System Design?”
“Constantly,” Ziggy confirmed.
A horrible suspicion was beginning to dawn in Verbeena Beeks. She tried to visualize Al with the tall, brilliant, idiotic-sounding redhead. On the one hand, it was patently ridiculous. On the other hand ... it was all too possible.
“Are you saying the current reality isn’t real, Ziggy?”
“No, Dr. Beeks. It is perfectly valid.” The computer paused in a way she instinctively mistrusted.
“What aren’t you telling me, Ziggy? What do you mean, Al dated Tina? Al’s never looked at Tina.”
“In this reality,” the computer repeated patiently.
“You mean ... in some other reality ... he did? He cheated on Janna?” She’d kill him herself, she thought wildly, she’d . ..
“In other realities he was never married to Janna Fulkes.”
That silenced her for several minutes. She gazed unseeingly at the sheaf of reports sitting on her desk, on the little ragged holes in the desk protector. At last she said softly, “Did I know about this, Ziggy? About Al dating Tina? In these—” It was hard to say. Hard to believe. “In these ‘other realities’? ”
“Of course
