Not wondering what to do about a baby.
Kevin could tell her what to do.
He’d better.
His parents were rich. He was captain of the ski team, he was the smartest guy in school. He got all A’s in calculus. He was going to go to USC in the fall. He was going to be an engineer and he was going to have a million dollars by the time he was thirty—he always told her so. If anybody else said that, she’d laugh at them, but not Kevin. Kevin Hodge really would do all those things, and be all those things. He’d have his own plane, and some really fast car. He’d live in a really great house, like the condos Bethica cleaned for the tourists during the season, like the big fancy houses they went home to in Chicago and New York and Beverly Hills. Not like this dump. He was so smart. . ..
And he was a jerk.
She had to tell him because he had a right to know, but the practical side of her nature knew that Kevin wasn’t going to help at all, except maybe to give her some money for a quiet abortion, and she already knew she didn’t want that Even though he’d rejected her, driven her to do things she'd never considered doing before.
All in all, Verbeena thought, it was a most unsatisfying interview.
She’d love to be able to say to the man sitting across the desk from her, “Okay, bud. Either get straight with me or I’m going to yank your clearance, I’m going to make you talk to me—”
Al was leaning back in the chair, arms crossed across his chest, his stare cool and unwavering, and Verbeena recalled suddenly that he had faced worse interrogations than hers. Threats, especially threats she couldn’t, wouldn’t follow through on, would only increase his resistance.
So she tried the opposite tack. She surrendered.
Tossing her pencil onto the desk, she held up her hands. “Al, I don’t understand. I don’t understand the Project, I don’t understand what went wrong. I don’t understand why Dr. Beckett seems to be possessed at regular intervals by other people—”
“He is other people,” the man across the desk interrupted.
Verbeena felt a small flash of triumph, quelled it before it could show.
Instead she heaved a large sigh.
“That’s what you and Ziggy tell me, and a lot of the evidence supports you—electroencephalograms, physical responses, kinesic patterns, IQ tests. If it weren’t for the little matter of DNA, retinal patterns and fingerprints, I wouldn’t have any trouble at all believing you.”
“Sam’s mind Leaped. His body is occupied by the mind of the person he Leaps into.” Despite himself, Al could not prevent a small gesture of one hand. Mal’occhio, Verbeena noted. The sign against the Evil Eye.
So it bothered him more than he liked to admit. She studied him curiously. “When you go into the Waiting Room, Al, who do you see?”
The abortive gesture again. “I see ... I see Sam Beckett. I see . . . people.” His arms sprang apart from each other as if they were like poles of a magnet, and windmilled. “I don’t know how to tell you what I see. I look at Sam Beckett’s body and as soon as I look in his eyes I know, that’s not Sam. I don’t know who it is, but I know it’s not Sam.”
“We don’t know how the brain organizes information so that we can look at pictures and know whom they represent,” Verbeena said quietly. “We don’t know how we can see a person as a child and recognize him as an adult. We don’t know how we can tell the difference between two people, superficially similar, without conscious thought or decision—”
“I don’t know either,” Al said. “I don’t care. I told you from day one, that isn’t Sam in there. He’s”—Al waved vaguely at the wall, the ceiling—“out there somewhere.”
“And when you go into the Imaging Chamber and Ziggy centers you on Sam, what do you see?”
Al’s eyes narrowed, and suddenly he was very calm and controlled again. He could tell where this was going, Verbeena realized.
Good. Let him.
“I see people. I see”—he paused, capitulated—“Sam.” He rallied. “Why are we going over old ground, Verbeena? Are you working for the Senate now?”
She ignored the questions, pursuing her line of argument. “And you’re the only one who can see Sam Beckett, aren’t you?”
“Sometimes other people can,” he protested feebly. “Kids can. Animals. Even you once.”
“That’s not really true, Admiral, and you know it. It takes more power than even Ziggy is capable of to allow me to see Sam, and even then—
She paused and bit her lip, exhaling a long breath through her nostrils. She’d stepped between the disks of the Imaging Chamber, she’d seen—someone—once. Someone in torment. Someone Al had assured her was her friend, the Director of the Project, Samuel Beckett.
That person had looked more like an inmate of an insane asylum to her. A very poor, very primitive insane asylum.
And it was obvious that the man looking at her couldn’t hear a word she was saying.
“Okay,” Al said at last. “Okay. I know why I’m here.” He fumbled at the inside pocket of his rust red suit jacket for a cigar, unwrapped and trimmed it with neat, economical, practiced movements, and bit down hard on it without lighting it.
“You want me to go back and make contact with him again.” He looked her in the eye, defiantly.
“More than that, I want to understand why you’re reluctant to do so.” There was Ziggy’s version, of course. She didn’t want to think about Ziggy’s version.
The Observer had broken eye contact as soon as the words were out of her mouth. He took the cigar out of his mouth and examined the chewed end as if there were something particularly
