The other boys looked at each other meaningfully. They’d all heard that before. When Kevin spun around to look at them again, they chorused assent. Bethica had heard it too, and she too knew better than to challenge him. There was more going on here than just a quarter-keg of beer or a wrestling match in a parking lot.
She also knew when it was a good idea to get away from Kevin, and she hurried away while he was still basking in the approval of his peers. She was still angry, at herself, at Kevin, at Wickie. So Wickie thought he could lecture to her like she was some little kid? Well, she wasn’t a little kid, and Wickie ought to know it. The party would go on as planned. Now all she had to do was find something great to wear. And hope Wickie didn’t do anything more to tick Kevin off.
“I can’t do that stuff,” Wickie muttered.
“Why not?” Verbeena asked reasonably. “It’s not so hard.”
Wickie snorted to himself. “You’re a doctor. You’re smart.”
Verbeena wondered what he’d say if he realized whose body he was in—a man who’d been on the cover of Time,
Man of the Year. One of the smartest men of all time.
Wickie might not exactly be in Sam Beckett’s league, but he was no dummy, either. Someone somewhere along the line had tried to give him a start. Despite his insecurity, he was making a decent try at the problems in the text he’d asked for, and he asked good questions, and he was more interested in the phenomenon of Leaping than frightened by it. In order to explain what little she understood of the physics, she’d had to start over with basic math. What he really wanted to do was talk to Ziggy, but there had to be units. She didn’t know how much memory he’d retain of his visit to the future.
But he was an eager student, and Verbeena loved to teach. She gathered her dashiki around her and sat cross-legged on the floor of the Waiting Room and indulged them both, joyfully.
"Al, I’m sorry,” Sam whispered. “I don’t know what to say.”
Al shrugged, sliding his feelings behind a shield. “I don’t know what to say either. We went up to Santa Fe, had lunch, did some shopping. Not much to fall in love on, is it?”
Sam bit his lip. “I guess it’s enough.” He didn’t comment on the things Al had left out. “You don’t know for sure that things will be different when you go back,” he offered.
"Shall I have Ziggy figure the odds?” Bitterness filled the Observer’s voice for a moment, then disappeared, to be replaced by resignation. “It doesn’t make much difference, does it? It doesn’t do me a lot of good being married to her if I have to spend all my time with you to keep it that way. I lost her the minute I stepped back into the Imaging Chamber.”
“She’s not gone, Al. She didn’t cease to exist because of something I’ve done. She’s alive somewhere now, doing something that probably leads her to the Project. Do you remember her from—from before the last time?”
Al shrugged. “I think I do. She was just somebody around, not a direct report. How was I supposed to know? I was with Tina!”
“What about Tina now?”
“Tina’s happily married to Gooshie, has been for six months.”
“But Gooshie has bad breath,” Sam protested.
“I know,” Al said, expelling a cloud of cigar smoke.
The two of them looked at each other, mystified.
“You know, it’s not just your life—that suddenly you’re married when you weren’t before. Janna’s life changed too. But since she’s not here—she must be connected somehow to somebody I’ve met here,” Sam said thoughtfully, as they changed the subject by mutual agreement. “It’s a ripple effect. I’m the stone in the pond, and your life and Janna’s are somewhere out of my sight, but you’ve been hit by the ripple changes from this Leap. You could ask Ziggy about that.”
Al raised an eyebrow and tapped the handlink. “Ziggy,” he said, speaking now to the computer controlling the Imaging Chamber in which his physical body remained, “how’s Janna connected to the people Sam’s met in Snow Owl?”
The handlink blinked, pink, yellow, blue cubes glowing in sequence, slowly, then more rapidly. Al tapped in a code pattern. The light sequence repeated.
“Ziggy can’t find a connection,” Al announced. “Who knows, Sam. Even if we did find out, it wouldn’t make any difference. Things would still change. They’ll keep changing until we find a way to get you home for good.”
Home for good.
Sam closed his eyes against a sudden unbearable rush of homesickness. He could only remember glimpses of the Project, of his family, of his own past. He could barely remember any more what his own face looked like. He’d been Leaping so long.. . .
“I’d go home if I knew how, Al,” he said quietly.
"I know, Sam.” Al reached out in a futile effort to touch Sam's shoulder, a touch that couldn’t connect, could offer no comfort.
Sam drew a long shuddering breath. “Okay,” he said, straightening up again. “Things will keep on changing. They'll always affect you and the Project, to a greater or lesser extent. We don’t know how to keep that from happening; in fact, as long as the purpose of my Leaping is to change things, we can’t prevent it from happening. That’s a strict parameter. So we have to live with it until . . . we can stop making changes. Right?”
Right.” Al tapped at his cigar. The ash fell and disappeared.
That means you have to go back and find out the most efficient change I can make that will let me Leap. And you have to go back, too, to work with Ziggy and, and . . .”
And
