“Do you believe in love at first sight, Verbeena?”
The high-pitched, Marilyn Monroe breathiness was missing from her voice now. She sounded thoughtful, and sad.
Oh, you poor child, Verbeena thought in a rush of sympathy. You’re plain crazy about the man, aren’t you?
“I think two people can be attracted to each other the first time they see each other,” she said. “They say it’s pheromones. That sort of takes the magic out of it, though.”
Tina smiled again, wry. “But that’s not really love.”
“Honey, I don’t know for sure what love is, and nobody else can tell you either. Sometimes that attraction just disappears, poof like magic, and nobody knows why. One minute two people are crazy for each other, and the next they’re not.”
“Sometimes people stay in love for years.”
“Sometimes,” Verbeena agreed. “Sometimes only one stays in love and the other one doesn’t. That’s the really tragic story.”
Tina nodded, straightening up. Before Verbeena’s eyes she regained her sparkle. “Well, lightning strikes for everybody sometime.”
“That’s what they say.” The Project psychologist smiled too, sadly. The last bite of chicken was as rubbery as the first. It didn’t matter any more.
“I think that’s got to be the moment,” Verbeena said later, to Ziggy and Al. They were in the small conference room next to the administrative offices, a room usually used for meetings of a dozen or fewer. The walls were white, the acoustic tiles in the ceiling were white, the floor was white, the automatic recorder on the wall was white. Verbeena’s lab coat was white.
In all that whiteness, the red and black of Al’s clothing, the darkness of Verbeena’s skin and the deeper darkness of Al’s hair and eyes were shocking splashes of color.
“I agree,” Ziggy said from the hidden speakers. “But I still haven’t been able to determine exactly why it happened that way.” The computer sounded irritable.
“I don’t get it,” Al said. He slipped the clear plastic wrapping—something new, a recycled product Verbeena . couldn’t remember the name of—off a cigar, crumpling it in one hand as he rolled the cigar back and forth between the fingers of the other. He tossed the wrapper into a nearby wastebasket and trimmed the ends of the cigar with the deft movements of long habit, then gave the edges a thorough examination.
He didn’t want to look her in the eyes, Verbeena noted clinically. They were, after all, talking about something very, very personal to a man not accustomed to revealing secrets.
“How do we know this isn’t the way it’s supposed to be in the first place?” he asked at last, chomping fiercely on the unlit cigar.
“It isn’t,” Ziggy said flatly. “As you recall, Admiral.”
“I’m not sure I do recall that.”
Denial, Verbeena thought.
“Dr. Beckett is correct. His actions in the past have affected not only the immediate future of the people around him, but ours—yours—as well. I have initiated a detailed search of the lives of every person with whom Dr. Beckett has been involved on this Leap.”
“And what have you discovered, Ziggy?”
“Unfortunately, as yet, nothing.”
It was no wonder the computer sounded irritable. Ziggy was linked to both Sam and Al; at times it was almost like talking to one or the other of them. When Ziggy was irritated, it sounded exactly like a female version of Al. Verbeena shuddered at the thought.
“If there isn’t anything to tell him, there’s no reason to renew contact,” Al said, still examining the cigar.
Verbeena folded her hands in her lap and simply looked at him.
“Perhaps,” she said finally, keeping her voice as neutral as possible, “you could try going from the other direction, Ziggy.”
“Please clarify your suggestion, Dr. Beeks.”
“Instead of looking at it from the perspective of the people surrounding Sam, how about looking at it from Janna’s point of view? Wouldn’t it be easier to trace back the records of one person’s life than trying to trace forward the possibilities for several people?”
There was a pause. Verbeena thought she could feel the subliminal humming of the air circulation, of the electricity powering Ziggy pouring through the wires in the walls. She could hear the whisper of the cigar rolling back and forth between Al’s fingertips. She suppressed the urge to snatch the cylinder out of his hands, to crumble it onto the floor and stomp on it. She could not stand the smell of those cigars. Government regulations said there would be no smoking anywhere inside Project buildings; they’d decided long since to turn a blind eye to smoking inside private personnel quarters, and Verbeena was morally certain Al lit up as soon as he walked into the Imaging Chamber. There was a reason for that ashtray at the top of the ramp, after all. Elsewhere in the Project—in rooms like this one—Al chewed on unlit stogies.
Of course, he hated it when she called them “stogies.”
“It’s a sound suggestion.” Ziggy sounded annoyed, probably because the idea hadn’t come from it to begin with.
“I guess so,” Al said. There was a thread of resignation in his voice. He drew in a deep breath, almost a shudder, and looked up at last. “Nothing lasts forever, after all.”
He meant his marriage, Verbeena realized. He was saying goodbye to it, cutting himself off from it.
“Al, we don’t know how things will work out on this end.” She was trying to be reassuring.
He wasn’t accepting it. He didn’t want reassurance or empty comfort. He was looking at an ending with open eyes and cold knowledge, and he didn’t need help with it.
“You first met Janna at your birthday party, back in ’93, didn’t you?” Verbeena asked. If he wanted to deal with reality, well, that was one of the things she was good at.
There were a lot of new people there. Tina was one of them, wasn’t she?”
The heavy dark eyebrows knit in confusion. “Yes, I—I remember that.” His eyes squeezed shut, as if his vision had blurred momentarily and he were seeing double. “I met Tina
