A Question of Charity
Chapter Three
Penelope Hill
Day 2: Saturday, October 31, 1998
He woke a second time to the harshness of electric light and the touch of a man's hand on his shoulder. He groaned and tried to bury his face in the pillow, but the hand shook him again and he surfaced blearily to find Doctor Challens leaning over him.
"Good morning, Admiral," the doctor announced with cheery determination. "Did you sleep well?"
The question seemed inappropriate, and Challens must have wondered at the broad smile that answered him. There'd been this girl ... hadn't there? He wasn't entirely sure if she'd been real or just some weird kind of dream. He certainly didn't remember her leaving, but he'd obviously woken up alone. There had been a dream - the old dream, waking him late at night, and then the girl, hang it, woman in the darkness. She'd been cold and a little alone, and he'd... "Yeah," Al assured him, studying memory of the night before with reminiscent pleasure. "I guess I did."
"M'mm." Challens seemed unconvinced. He examined his patient carefully, making no more than the occasional non-committal grunt as he checked pulse, breath and other vital signs with professional efficiency. When he'd finished he pulled his stethoscope from around his neck and considered his charge thoughtfully. "Well," he said with gruff reluctance, "your pulse is still a little high, and you look a little pale, but I can't find anything else wrong with you. You'd better hit the shower, get dressed and get back to work. Doctor Eleese was here half an hour ago. Apparently Ziggy has everything back online again."
"Great," Al acknowledged, sliding out of bed and stretching carefully. He ached in a few unexpected places, but he felt wonderful. "Say, Doc?"
"Uh-huh?" Challens turned back toward him, his expression dropping into a vague frown as if something wasn't quite right. The Admiral started to take off his pyjama jacket.
"Have you taken on a new nurse recently? Or a new orderly? I thought I might have glimpsed somebody new last night."
"Certainly not." Challens stepped a little closer. "I'm short of staff at the moment, as you well know ... By the way - does that hurt?"
'That' was a nod toward his patient's chest. Al looked down to see the raw pattern of Ziggy's discharge etched above his breastbone. "No," he denied. "Should it?"
"It might," the doctor decided after a closer look. "I'll give you some lotion for it, just in case it starts bothering you. How's the hand?"
Al dropped the jacket on the bed and stretched his damaged hand experimentally. The spatter of sparks had spotted his skin with tiny pinpricks of pain the day before, but now they just seemed to itch and sting a little. "It'll pass muster," he said gruffly. "Anything else you want to examine before I go, Doc?"
Challens smiled at his patient's obvious good humour. "Not unless you want me to get rid of that for you. The offer's still open you know. Sam's little trick with subdermal lasers works wonders."
"I'm sure it does," the Admiral growled, wrapping a protective hand over the offending matter. The tattoo had been a point of disagreement between himself and the doctor as long as the two had known each other, which was close on twenty years now. He'd had it done in Tokyo while on leave from an early posting on board the carrier Enterprise, a present from a gifted and grateful geisha he'd become acquainted with. It wasn't meant as just an ornament; the artist concerned had been a priest, and the design was supposed to impart sexual vigour among other things. He didn't know if it actually worked or not, but on the other hand he'd never had any complaints. Challens, a military doctor of long standing, did not approve of tattoos, even among the lower ranks, and he felt it was hardly the sort of thing he'd expect from an Admiral. Al, who'd known a great many Navy men from a great many Navies, thought this attitude rather funny. He'd once met a British naval commander who'd had the entire battle of Trafalgar on his back, death of Nelson and all. Beside that, his elegant oriental unicorn seemed a minor trophy; it was barely three inches long and set right at the top of his upper arm. Nobody ever saw it in public these days, since even a short sleeved teeshirt effectively covered most of it. And it had proved to be a conversation point in more intimate company.
Challens snorted, shook his head, and turned to go, leaving the Admiral to his own devices. Fortunately, every one of the Project's Medcentre care units came complete with private shower and bathroom, included in the design of the place mostly from a desire for efficiency rather than intended luxury. He kicked out of the pyjama pants, picked up the towel that sat on top of his clean clothes and went to get wet, succumbing to the temptation to sing under the impact of hot water. He carolled a medley of back beat jazz and hot rock, finishing with a ditty he'd first learned to sing in a tiny bar just outside Saigon. It had been a while since his courtesy flight with the 8th Tactical, but he'd never forgotten the refrain they'd sung to celebrate a safe return. "Wolf Pack in for the kill..." He savoured the words with relish as he towelled off the worst of the damp and then used the unit's electric razor to dispose of his morning stubble. He was still humming the tune as he returned to the main cubicle and picked up the silk boxer shorts that lay waiting for him. They were a dark purple trimmed with black, a pair which he was quite certain had not been lying in the top of the drawer; he grinned as he assembled the rest of the outfit Donna had selected from his wardrobe, recognising the effort she must have gone to to get it just right. The undershirt was perfect partner to the shorts; over that went the shirt, a darker purple patterned with a swirl of gold stars and silver comets; dark red pants, supported on intricate suspenders woven with scarlet, gold and peacock blue flames; the tie a matching flare of peacock feathers, and over all of that the jacket, gold leather with quilted wing shapes on either shoulder. It was a look that matched his mood, all flamboyance without too much overstatement, and he left Medcentre with a jaunty step, winking at one of the nurses as he passed. She smiled and coloured a little as she bent to her work, which made him feel even better still.
He waited until he was safely out of Challens' lair before dipping his hand into the jacket pocket and extracting the cigar concealed there. He unwrapped it with care and savoured the scent of it before coaxing it into flame with his lighter. Two deep lungfuls of scented smoke and he waltzed toward Imaging Control as if he hadn't a care in the world. God, but he felt good this morning, almost walking on air. Hang Tina and Vegas, he thought to himself smugly. Last night beat Caesar's Palace any day. If the night before had been real, of course. He still had a nagging feeling that it couldn't possibly have been; he had no idea of who the woman might be and no recollection of when she had left. But it had been an interesting experience, and one he wouldn't object to repeating, should the opportunity arise. If it had been a dream, he decided with a smirk, he was getting better the older he got.
"Morning, Bettenhoff. Morning, Donna. Good morning, Ziggy." He swept into the room with benevolent authority, startling almost everybody. Bettenhoff half choked on his cup of coffee; Donna left the display she was studying and moved across to Ziggy's console, which was where the Admiral came to a halt.
"Hi," she said, considering him carefully before nodding her approval. "How do you feel?"
"I'm fine," he told her, dropping his hand to the console with the nonchalance of practice. "How about you, Ziggy?"
"Good morning, Admiral." Ziggy sounded unusually subdued. "I'm afraid I am still unable to identify the origin of the anomalous fluctuations associated with this time focus."
Al raised a questioning eyebrow in Donna's direction and she sighed. "Everything checks out, but the focus has locked. Ziggy couldn't lose Sam now, short of shutting down the entire Project. We thought we'd cleared the hiccup late last night, then, round two-thirty, three this morning, there's this massive power demand and the whole thing snaps into tight lock. There's a defined power drain between us and '67, but we've no idea where it might be going."
None of that made much sense. "What about the Imaging Chamber?" he asked cautiously. He'd remembered, somewhat belatedly, that Sam's safety features included sealing the Chamber for several hundred years should the readings imply a collapse of the field. True, the override was incorporated into the handlink, but that wouldn't be a lot of help if another of those feedback discharges knocked him cold.
"The Chamber environment has been stabilised," Ziggy announced confidently. "However -" She paused, giving reason for both Doctor Eleese and the Admiral to look at her in some concern. "The ambient temperature is four degrees above normal specification."
"Four degrees doesn't sound like much," Donna remarked with some relief. "Unless - you don't want to risk it?"
Al shook his head to indicate that that suggestion was not part of his intended flight plan and frowned at the interface above him. "What's the temperature in '67?" he asked. Ziggy paused a second time.
"Four degrees above the Imaging Chamber's normal specification, Admiral. How were you aware of that?"
"Lucky guess," he growled, stepping down from the console to extract the spare handlink from its hiding place. "Anything else likely to go wrong on me in there?"
"Unknown - but unlikely, Admiral. I have rerouted several back-up systems in order to compensate for the variations I am experiencing, and have widened the dampener field to prevent further build-up of charge. Should the feedback process repeat itself, it will discharge within the peripheral equipment, not within the Chamber itself."
Donna chuckled softly. "What she means is, you don't get electrocuted, we just lose the coffee machine."
Al laughed, appreciating the joke. "Just so long as it's not the air-conditioning again," he said, recalling the occasion when Ziggy had poured so much power into an attempted retrieve that there'd been none left over for essentials, let alone luxuries. As it happened, the Imaging Chamber contained a completely controlled environment, sustained by much more sophisticated technology than simple air-conditioning or heating processes, but it too had been affected by that situation, its normal shirt-sleeve temperatures fluctuating from as high as threatened heatstroke down to near freezing. Something else Gushie was supposed to have fixed.
"I am monitoring the environment," Ziggy said, a little petulantly. Al grinned at Donna, and tucked the handlink into his pocket.
"Anything further from the research team?" he enquired as he headed toward the Imaging Chamber door.
"All available information has been downloaded for your access, Admiral." Ziggy went back to sounding smug, as usual. "Mr Johnson has requested the opportunity to interview the occupant of the Waiting Room, since he is the acknowledged expert on the subject of the house and its history."
"He's the only expert," the Admiral remarked, smirking at Bettenhoff just to disconcert the man. It did, with remarkable ease. "See what Verbeena has to say, but if she okays it, it's fine by me."
"Very well, Admiral. Doctor Beckett is currently in the library of McGowan House. Do you wish to join him there?"
"Uh-huh. Centre me in on Sam, will you, Bettenhoff? The sooner he Leaps, the sooner we can find downtime to isolate these anomalies of ours."
The library at McGowan House was a bibliophile's paradise. It occupied two storeys, the mid-point marked by a narrow balcony off which doors led to the upper level of the house. The books themselves were stacked floor to ceiling and wall to wall on three sides; the fourth held a parade of ornate windows that looked out onto the formal garden. Sunlight streamed into the room, filling it with reflected gold, most of which bounced off the large glass case that took pride of place in front of the windows. Al stepped through a wall of books and looked around with interest; the reading tables were stacked with open books and paper, half the cupboards under the windows were open, there was the inevitable homily gilded along the polished wood edge of the balcony, and Sam was perched halfway up the lower bookcase ladder, peering at the book in his hands over the rims of Carson O'Leary's spectacles.
"According to this," he was saying, "the boundaries were re-adjudicated in 1834. So we need to find where the old line ran because the claim would have been made according to the land ownership at the time, not the way it is now."
"That's just as I told you," a voice answered him, its owner emerging from the inside of the large cupboard under the glass case. She was a plump elderly woman in her mid to late sixties at first glance, her white hair neatly permed and rinsed, her dress a floral print topped with a plain jacket. "You can't use that survey thing Mary Ann had done, because it's not relevant ... Good day, and welcome to you."
Sam turned toward her, his eyebrows raised in a question, while Al glanced over his shoulder to see who'd entered the room. Nobody had. The woman was staring in his direction, although not directly at him, he was relieved to notice. The girl who'd seen him the day before had unnerved him more than he'd cared to admit. "Nan," Sam said worriedly, "who are you talking to?"
"The visitor we have," the woman answered, quite matter-of-factly. She nodded in Al's general direction, and then frowned a little. "'Tis one I've not seen here before. Such a bright presence, too. You should learn to look, young man. Perhaps it's an angel come to lift the curse and let the Lady go free."
Al sidled over to the foot of Sam's ladder and threw him a wary look. The scientist managed to shrug without making it look too obvious. The woman, who had to be Carson O'Leary's grandmother, lifted the bundle of papers she'd extracted from the cupboard and dropped them neatly onto a nearby table. "Nan-" Sam tried a slightly admonishing tone, "what are you talking about?"
Rose O'Leary laughed. "It's to be sure you're not yourself, Kit," she grinned, "or you'd remember without the need for asking. Are you sure you took no harm from that bump on the head?"
Al smirked; it was a good excuse and one Sam had used before. He had an oddly distinct impression, though, that Mrs O'Leary had not been taken in by it.
"I'm fine, Nan, really, and you're changing the subject."
"Aye." She smiled and beckoned him down to join her. Sam replaced the book on the shelf and slid down the ladder; Al stepped out of the way from habit rather than necessity. "Well, you know as well as I that there is more to this world than meets the simple eye. I have the gift for the presence, that is all - reading auras, I think they call it now, though why they should label such a thing with such a fancy name I wouldn't know. It's only seeing the nature of folk clearer than most can do. But it's the others I see - those walking about without their bodies - those are the ones that slip past most people. It's only polite to greet such folk, particularly when they come in like a bright light on a shadowed day. The Lady now - she's the one that's cursed to keep this place company - she's like moonlight in passing." She paused to smile reminiscently. "I saw her once, whole and embodied. Late at night that was, when she's strongest. Pretty as a picture she seemed, save for the marks on her neck and the flames at her skirt hem. 'Twas no way for an O'Leary to meet an end," she sighed. "But the curse was of her own making. She drifts about the house most days, but few can sense her, let alone see her here. This fellow now-" She looked straight at Al as she said it and he shifted self-consciously. "This one is bright enough to read by." She glanced from the unseen company to the man at her side and she smiled, the same knowing smile that the Admiral had seen on O'Leary's face the day before. "Perhaps it's your guardian angel, Kit. Come to watch over you for once."
Sam smiled back, a smile tinged with a little alarm. "Maybe," he agreed. "Are those the documents you mentioned?"
"Aye," she agreed for the second time. "And now you're changing the subject. I know you've a mind to challenge the old matter, but ignoring it is no way to go about it. Charity will thwart your planning, mind my words."
"Charity?" Sam and Al both chorused, one in puzzlement, the other with a sudden sense of dread. Rose O'Leary put her head to one side and studied her grandson with a doubtful frown.
"Carson O'Leary," she said. "You're studying the history of this house and yet don't know the Lady's name? Shame on you. Charity O'Leary is your own ancestor too. Hung for witchcraft in 1694, the goddess bless her. Remember now?"
"Oh yeah," Sam nodded, looking suddenly thoughtful.
"Well then." The old woman patted him affectionately on the cheek. "I'll leave you to your searching. I've work that needs doing, and the Ladies' Aid are due for lunch. I mustn't be late for them. You take care, Kit. There are forces swirling around you that you have no gift to see; honour the Lady if she comes to you and don't take her promises lightly. She's old enough to be sure of her own mind. Good day to you," she added in Al's direction as she turned to leave. He found himself acknowledging the farewell with a nod of his head and stopped himself abruptly.
"That is either one crazy lady, or a very gifted one," he observed, watching her close the library door. Sam sighed and sank into a nearby chair.
"Maybe a bit of both," he suggested, pushing unenthusistically at the bundles of documents in front of him. "She certainly saw something when you came in - but ghosts? Perhaps she can see echoes of old events."
"Yeah," Al agreed doubtfully. A cold sensation had settled over his shoulder blades. The girl last night had said her name was Charity, hadn't she? It had to be a coincidence, but it wasn't a very comfortable one. He lifted the handlink, as much in search of distraction as anything else, and studied the new data that Ziggy had promised him. "Ziggy seems to think Carson may have a point. There are three periods just prior to the Battle of Lincolnfields when Washington's movements are unaccounted for. He was almost certainly in Boston at the start of one of them, so he could have come to Middlewick."
Sam frowned. "Sounds a bit of a long shot to me," he said. He began to sort the faded papers in front of him, carefully separating them from their bundles and unfolding the yellowed paper with care. "O'Leary's notes are very disjointed, and he doesn't seem to have made much progress. Nan told me I need a different angle, and I think she's right." He paused to glance up at his companion with a wry smile. "What odds does Ziggy give me if I write a lurid tale of witchcraft and corruption instead?"
"I'm not even going to ask her that," Al shot back, then stared at him suspiciously. "Is there one?"
"Yup." Sam grinned and went back to the paperwork. "That business about the 'Lady' Nan mentioned? That Carson has documented - except that it's a century too early for Washington, so it doesn't really help. Bad business though. The girl was supposed to be hung and then the body burnt, only eyewitnesses claim she wasn't entirely dead when she went on the fire."
The Admiral shuddered. "Don't," he said with feeling. Across the room, a door opened, then closed again. Both of them looked up, Sam with a casual glance, Al with apprehensive alarm. The girl with dark red hair had entered, still draped in the same black dress she had worn the day before. She paused by the doorway, looking in their direction, and smiled.
"So," Sam went on as if nobody else was there to hear him. "I'm going to have to plough through all these papers, in hope of finding some clue or evidence - either of Washington visiting this place, or of where Alex McGowan hid the family treasure, whatever that might be. Have you seen the bible?" he added, jerking his thumb at the glass case behind him. "Lovely thing. Hand-bound and manually coloured. Late sixteenth century. Probably hasn't even been opened in decades."
The girl drifted along the line of books at the back of the room, throwing occasional glances over her shoulder as she did so. Al watched her anxiously. She really was a pleasure to look at, but he couldn't shake the feeling she was looking at him and not the material occupant of the room, who didn't seem to have noticed her at all.
"Can you ask Ziggy to cross-reference the local land registry and the tax records for me?" he requested. "And find out how long Mary Ann has before the bank forecloses?"
"Ah - " Al lifted the handlink and keyed the data in, still keeping one eye on the slender figure as she moved across the room. "I can tell you that. Two weeks, according to Ziggy. Sam - "
"M'mm?"
"Who is she?"
"Who?" Sam looked up, glanced around the room and then back at his company with a puzzled frown. "Al? Don't tell me you're seeing things too. The group are all out in the garden, working hard." He turned and strained a little to see out of the nearest window. "That's Suzanne down among the daffodils..." He trailed off as he realised that his companion was still staring at the bookshelves across the room. "There's nobody over there at all."
The girl turned slowly, her smile infinitely sad. Al began to shake a little and he hugged in the handlink so the tremor of his hands would not betray him. The hem of her dress was scorched and torn - the kind of dress worn way back in the seventeenth century. "There's a girl, in the corner. Black dress, dark red hair. She's looking at us."
Sam frowned at him, then sighed. "Al," he admonished with exasperation, "I am not going to fall for that. There are no such things as ghosts, and there's nobody in the corner. Save the jokes, will you?"
"But, Sam ..." he began, then changed his mind. The girl had taken a step forward - through the table in front of her, just as if she were as much a hologram as he was. He backed away a step, swallowing hard. Sam shook his head in patient amusement and bent back to the paperwork. He clearly could not see the figure at all.
"Do not fear me," her voice whispered around him - a familiar voice, the voice of his late-night company. For one brief and entirely rational moment, relief cut through his growing sense of dread. She was a hologram, someone who'd been snuck into the Imaging Chamber when he wasn't paying attention, part of an elaborate joke someone was playing on him. He assumed a friendly smile, took half a step forward - and she shimmered into nothing, right in front of his eyes. "I have only a small strength in the day," she murmured, suddenly close beside him. "Enough to be present for those who can see - or else touch a little, if I wish. Your presence makes me stronger, somehow."
Something did touch him - a non-existent hand that caressed the line of his cheek. The contact was electrifying, and he froze for an instant, his heart pounding into overdrive, his mouth going utterly dry. He could smell that same perfume - wood smoke and herbs, the scent of bonfires and open air ... The sense of her presence swirled around him, an eddy of force that prickled his skin and sent shivers down his spine.
He gulped in a deep breath and keyed up the Imaging Chamber door in a hurry. "I - I gotta go, Sam. Something - I need to check." Sam waved an acknowledging hand without looking up and the Admiral dived for the safety of the present, feeling the familiar tingle of the biofield discharging around him as he did so. Panic was building up inside him like a wave, making sensible thought very difficult.
"Something wrong, Admiral?" Bettenhoff enquired as the occupant of the Imaging Chamber emerged. Al shook his head wordlessly. His distance from past events had a reassuring effect, enough to make him realise that a garbled claim concerning what might be a ghost would sound both hysterical and irrational. He knew he wasn't crazy, which made things even worse if he allowed himself to think about it.
"I gotta - go," he managed, jabbing a finger in the direction of the access corridor. Bettenhoff acknowledged the implications of the statement with an "Oh," and bent back to his power monitors. Donna, who’d looked up with vague concern, smiled knowingly and waved him out with an expansive gesture.
"Don't be too long," she requested as he strode toward the exit. He grunted something in return, dropped the handlink onto a console as he passed and headed for the men's room, not sure if he were seeking safety or somewhere to throw up.
The support corridor was deserted, as was the refuge he sought. He let the door slide shut behind him, then keyed a secure privacy code into the internal lock. He was shaking all over, his heart pounding and his lungs heaving for breath. He hadn't been this terrified since a joker in the Hanoi Hilton had insisted on dragging him out of his cramped cage and teaching him to play Russian roulette; he'd survived that by the skin of his teeth, even managing somehow to conceal his raging terror from his sadistic tormentor, but this - this was something else again. He leaned back against the wall for a moment, struggling for breath, then staggered forward and hit the faucet, wanting cold water but getting a plume of steam instead. "Dammit," he cursed and fisted the control to readjust it, bruising his knuckles in the process. It wasn't just encountering the ghost - he might have coped with that - it was the comprehension that accompanied the encounter, the recognition of her voice and the memory of a night shared in darkness ... This time his stomach really did heave. He twisted away from the washbasin and vomited into the nearest pan, cursing himself, his ancestry, Sam Beckett, and anyone else he could think of in the process.
He felt a little better after that. He took several deep breaths and went back to wash his face and rinse his mouth, a hint of embarrassment beginning to replace the anxious shake of terror in his soul. It wasn't as if he'd known the girl was dead to begin with ... He shuddered and bent to splash up cold water with both hands; as he straightened again, drawing his hands down from his eyes, he focused on what lay in front of him, and his heart thudded to what felt like a complete halt. There was a message, scrawled in the condensation across the mirror.
"Mete me at moonrise," it said. Then an unseen hand added, "in ye Greate Hall."'
He backed away as fast as he could, unable to take his eyes off the impossible scrawl. Six steps slammed him up against something solid - either the wall or the locked door - and he stayed there, pinned like a butterfly and fighting for breath. Of course she could reach him here - she'd spent the damn night with him, hadn't she? What the hell had made him think he'd be safe in the present? She was the reason for Ziggy's power problems, for the focus lock, for ... for ... His mind refused to concentrate on rational matters and he let himself sink downward until he was huddled into the angle between floor and wall. The message on the mirror faded slowly, leaving only the reflection of the empty room behind it. Nothing moved, and the only sounds were the gentle hum of the air conditioning, the gurgle of water in the pipes, and the panting of his own breath, harsh and echoing.
He had nowhere left to run. The instinct that had inspired his flight from the past hammered up against that realisation and shattered away, leaving him briefly floundering. Long years of discipline and training kicked in, automatic reflexes that allowed a combat-seasoned pilot to react without the delay needed for conscious thought. His body told him he was hyperventilating and then compensated accordingly; the adrenaline that sent his heart racing was countered by a secondary surge of noradrenaline that served to sharpen the reflexes and heighten his senses. Pushed past the point of escape, his natural response was to turn and face what beleaguered him; the process focused his mind and his panic gave way to a tense awareness backed by an odd sense of foolishness. What the hell was he so scared of, anyway?
He rested his elbows on his knees and buried his head in his hands, trying to put his spinning thoughts into some kind of order. What came out was impossible, but unquestionably accurate: the girl was real, the girl was dead, and she wanted to meet with him ... He trembled all over at the thought of it, at the memory of her presence drifting round him like a ectoplasmic net, entangling him, and the feel of dead fingers that brushed his cheek. That recollection collided with another: the memory of yielding flesh and soft kisses in the dark. He could not reconcile the two at all, yet he knew, with despairing certainty, that they belonged together. He could see her face, even now, the dark intensity of her eyes looking right at him.
He took a deep breath, reassured by the continued silence, and examined his alternatives. He could just walk away, right now - just head for the surface, climb into his T-45 and get as far away as possible - except that that would be walking out on everything, on duty, on responsibility, on friendship, on commitment, even on himself. As an option it stank. He threw it out without a second thought and looked at what was left.
He could report the incident - all of the incidents, from the presence of the woman that first day, through to the moving finger writing on the mirror - but he had no proof of any of it, beyond a determined conviction as to the ghost's existence. They couldn't totally explain the problems they were having with this particular time and location, but had Ziggy registered Charity O'Leary's presence she would have commented on it, and the supernatural was not generally regarded as a scientific explanation at the best of times. He could just picture the scene - his guarded report of events, and Donna's sympathetic smile. She'd send for Challens, or Verbeena, which would be worse. He was sure he wasn't going crazy. He just wasn't sure he could convince anyone else of that. After the conversation he had overheard in Medcentre, he suspected Challens would just assume he was cracking up under the stress. Maybe he was. He sighed and looked at the rest of the consequences. Verbeena would probably recommend rest, or treatment, or something even worse - that would take him away from Sam, probably confine him somewhere on the base and leave him to deal with whatever the ghost might do if he didn't keep his appointment. No, reporting the matter was bad option number two, for a variety of reasons.
Option number three ... He could not avoid a shudder as he forced himself to face the only possibility left open to him. He would have to keep the appointment. By himself. Whatever that would mean. This ghost - according to Carson, anyway - was supposed to exist in order to ensure the effectiveness of her cursing. He had to assume that Sam's arrival was now a threat to that and that Sam, in the process of becoming an O'Leary by proxy, would now be a focus for her ancient sense of vengeance. The scientist had Leaped in to save McGowan House, and thereby Mary Ann McGowan, both of which made him a high-profile target for ghostly anger, since this - Charity - had a vested interest in seeing him fail. That made sense. But then, why had she appeared to him and not to Sam, and why had she - had she-? He clenched his fists into tight balls of determination and concentrated on breathing slowly. His memories of the previous night had been entirely pleasurable ones before he'd been aware of his companion's nature; now he saw them in a different light, and understood why her touch might have so stimulating and her scent so elusive to place. What he did not understand was why she had come to him in the first place. What had he done to warrant such particular - and unsettling - attention? Perhaps she had intended to distract him, to get under his guard and gain some measure of control; perhaps she was a mischievous spirit, intent on taking malicious pleasure in destroying him; or perhaps - just perhaps - she really was just the lonely soul seeking comfort and the warmth of life who had begged him to hold her, to remind her what it was to be alive.
He didn't know. He didn't know how to second-guess Tina's motivations, let alone those of a woman dead for three hundred years. All of this speculation was just making him feel worse. He was going to have to pull himself together, get back into the Imaging Chamber, and behave as if nothing had happened. And then at moonrise ... Moonrise, her time, he considered bleakly. He could check the time of that with Ziggy without drawing undue attention to the question. He could probably even persuade the support team to stand down that night, providing no more unexplainable hiccups occurred; they had worked through most of the previous night and Ziggy could be trusted to maintain a monitor of the focus until there was a need to actively employ it again. Ziggy was persuadable too - although sneaking in to use the Imaging Chamber without backup or explanation was a risky business in itself. He had the authorisation, but it was completely contrary to procedure and likely to get his sanity questioned if he were caught. Still, if he timed it right, nobody need ever know - unless there was a dire fate awaiting him, by which time it would be far too late anyway.
The things I do for you, Sam Beckett, he thought as he pushed himself back to his feet. His reflection stared back at him across the room, gold and purple framing his face, pale despite its Italian ancestry. He frowned at himself, willing a little colour back into the image. It would not do to walk back into Imaging Control looking as if he had just had the fright of his life - even if he probably had.
A Question of Charity. Chapter Three. Disclaimer:This story has been written for love rather than profit and is not intended to violate any copyrights held by Donald P Bellasario, Bellasarius Productions, or any other holders of Quantum Leap trademarks or copyrights.
© 1996 by AAA Press. Written and reproduced by Penelope Hill. Artwork by Joan Jobson
Chapter Four