A Question of Charity
Chapter Seven
Penelope Hill
Outside the impressive portico that fronted McGowan House, Sam Beckett, in the guise of Charity's distant descendant, was gathering a crowd of confused onlookers. The front porch was a pillared extension to the frontage, its carved fitments entwined with hundred-year-old ivy. Sam had arrived at a gallop, taken one look at the greenery and rushed across to the nearest volunteer gardener to appropriate her pruning shears. Al arrived to find him balanced on the top of an ornamental urn, snipping away at the overgrowth with determination. The puzzled girl he'd roped in to help him was staring bemusedly at his efforts, and a number of others had drifted over to join him. Mary Ann was one of them, looking at him as if he'd gone ever so slightly mad.
"Kit," she protested. "What do you think you're doing? I thought we'd agreed to leave the ivy - it adds character."
"I need to read the words," he called down, seizing a thick rope of strands and giving them a hard tug. "It's the answer. I mean the map. I mean - whoaaa ..." He slipped, dragging a massive weight of vegetation with him. Mary Ann darted forward to steady his descent, her frown becoming an angry reaction.
"Kit O'Leary," she began, but Sam wasn't even listening to her. Instead he was staring up at the carved surface now revealed by his efforts. A parade of chiselled words stood out in clear relief.
"Enter ye with a loyal heart and lift up thine eyes to heaven," he read, and turned to Mary Ann with a broad grin. "That's it. That's the start of the trail." His head lifted slightly to share the sense of triumph with the unseen figure who stood among the crowd. Al smiled back, with a pained twist to his expression; he had to hope that Sam was too caught up in what he was doing to notice it.
"What trail?" the owner of the house was demanding, while other members of the group exchanged puzzled glances.
"Alex McGowan's trail," the enthused scientist explained. He caught Mary Ann's shoulders and guided her to look up at the newly exposed words. "That's the first clue. Solve it and we get the next one, and then the next one and then ..."
Revelation dawned in the young woman's eyes. "A treasure trail? Kit, that's wonderful! What does it mean?"
Sam looked confused for a moment. "The trail - or the clue?"
"The clue, you ninny. I know what the trail means."
"It's on the ceiling," someone suggested.
"It's under the portico," another voice piped up. Sam silenced them by raising his hands.
"I think we do exactly what it says," he offered, and stepped over the fallen ivy to enter the house. A gaggle of spectators followed him, Al trailing in their rear. Normally this would have been an interesting place to be, since most of the crowd was female and unaware of his presence; right at that moment he couldn't have cared less if they were both stark naked and tangible.
Inside the entrance lay the open spaces of the reception hall, the twin arms of the magnificent staircase sweeping down to merge at a central point before spilling on to meet the tiled floor. Above that central landing rose a complex setting of stained glass, an interior window that overlooked the Great Hall beyond. Sam had paused in the centre of the room and was tilting his head to follow the curlicues and letters that lay within the pattern of glass and lead. "Guard thy sacred trust with - honour," he recited carefully. "And determination. Place thy hand above thy heart and know what is written there."
"Oh, great," someone said disgustedly. "Second clue and it's meaningless."
"No," Sam denied, frowning up at the display. "It's got to refer to a room in the house, somewhere. Where's the heart of a house?"
"Kitchen?" Mary Ann suggested.
"Sitting room?" was one offering.
"Bedroom," was another, making the surrounding women laugh. "It can be," the guilty party protested, sounding wounded.
Sam shook his head. "It has to be more obvious than that." He looked around, catching sight of his Observer, who was standing a little way apart from the excited throng. Al was staring up at the window seeing not the pattern of words but the picture they surrounded. A winged angel stood there, one hand extended, her hair a tumble of dark locks around a face suffused with purity. She stood on a scatter of books and her other hand encircled the hilt of a sword whose point pierced the serpent that coiled among the volumes. The halo above her head glowed with a golden light, lit from behind as the rear windows of the Great Hall let in the morning sun. It would have been silver in the moonlight, he thought distractedly. Moonlight, and soft words, and a moment out of time ... He shivered, and pushed the memories away with determination. This wasn't helping anything or anybody, least of all Sam, who was frowning at the window again.
"We could try the kitchen," one of the women was saying. "It's as good a place as any."
"No ..." Sam was struggling with a thought that wouldn't solidify. "I don't think that's it. And once we start on a false trail we could end up anywhere but where we need to be. Something about the heart of a house ..."
The Admiral lifted the handlink and punched in a quick and dirty parameter search, a process akin to asking Ziggy to act as dictionary, thesaurus and encyclopaedia all at once. The tiny screen cleared and then filled with a scroll of data, most of it pure garbage. Heart of England, Hearts and Flowers, Hearts of Oak ... "Come on, Ziggy," he hissed, clacking the side of the device with the heel of his hand to speed up the jerky display. "Hearts and Houses, damn you." The multi-coloured gizmo gave a faint peep and then an electronic squeal, spitting up a totally spurious entry concerning witch bottles - undoubtedly a relic of Ziggy's earlier research. "Often buried under hearthstones at the centre of the house," the entry read. "Believed to keep witches and other evil spirits at bay." "Thank you, Ziggy," Al growled through gritted teeth. "I really need to know that." He thumped the handlink a second time, earning himself a distraught look from Sam. "Sorry, Sam," he called over. "Ziggy doesn't seem to know either." Revelation struck about three seconds after the words left his mouth, and he glanced down at the device in his hand with astonishment. "Hearthstones," he muttered. "Centre of the house ... Sam! It's the Great Hall. The hearth in the Great Hall. Hearth, Sam. Not heart, hearth."
Sam Beckett, staring up at the painted angel, closed his eyes and silently thanked whatever god was watching over him. Then he turned to his confused company with a beatific smile. "Being a historian," he announced, with a certain smugness, "I should have realised sooner. The ancient heart of any house was its hearthstone, of course."
"The Great Hall," Mary Ann realised with delight. "Kit, you're a genius!"
"I know," Sam noted, glancing over her head to wink at his holographic companion. Al winced. "I had a little help," the scientist went on to admit, earning himself a puzzled look from several of the group. He waved at the angel. "Divine inspiration, you might say."
"Gee," the Admiral remarked, touched by the acknowledgement, "thanks, Sam."
"Onward," Sam cried with theatrical emphasis, striding toward the door under the left-hand turn of the stairs. The group followed him in an excited rush. Al hesitated a moment, suddenly conscious that he was not alone in the Imaging Chamber any more. He glanced round, but could see nothing out of the ordinary; all the same, he knew she was there.
Inside the Great Hall, the troupe of treasure hunters had gathered around the massive fireplace and were chanting out the words written in stone above it. "Great men will gather and speak of wisdom, yet the ignorant will not see, nor the foolish hear their words. What is plain before them will seem but fancy. Go to the place of learning and see truth."
"All this time," Mary Ann observed. "All this time I have lived with those words and not given them a second thought."
"Perhaps that was the problem," Sam offered with sympathy. "You were too close to it."
"Well, yeah," one of the other women interjected. "But what does it mean?"
"That's easy," another said. "The place of learning is the library, right, Kit?"
"Right," the leader of the hunt acknowledged thoughtfully. "And the library leads - what does it say? "Deny man steel and gunpowder ..." Mary Ann, does this house have an armoury, or a gun room?"
Some of the group had slid sideways to peek into the library and check the text written there, but Mary Ann clearly trusted O'Leary to know what he was talking about. "There's the trophy room," she said, a little doubtfully.
Al thoughtfully punched up the map Ziggy had provided him at the start of this Leap; the trophy room was clearly marked on the opposite side of the Great Hall to the library. "That way, Sam," he announced, jerking a thumb over his shoulder. Sam nodded, responding to both of them at once.
"Let's see," he suggested, and the crowd shifted en masse, cutting right through the holographic image with a thunder of excited steps. That was a disconcerting experience and Al gave himself a little shake as he emerged unharmed from the stampede. This all seemed too easy somehow; the trail seemed crystal clear and the clues, once recognised as such, were hardly cryptic. He had the uncomfortable feeling that it wasn't going to be as easy as it seemed.
He was right. There were three sets of words placed around the trophy room, each completely different, and each hinting at a completely different direction. The group were arguing over which one to pick, while Sam paced between the three of them and muttered under his breath. Al popped into existence in the middle of the room and leaped back about a foot as he did so, mainly because his chosen spot put him eye to eye with a snarling mountain lion. The lion was stuffed, but it was still a surprise. Someone laughed. Not one of the group, who wouldn't have seen him in the first place, nor Sam, who only threw him a distracted frown. The Observer glanced around the room with wary expectation, finally catching sight of a familiar misted form watching him from one side of the room. He walked across to join her, only to have her vanish like smoke before he got there. "Charity," he pleaded softly, "please ..."
She came back, a slow materialisation like the Cheshire cat in reverse. Her hair was full of flame and the look in her eyes was intense. "The closer they come," she whispered, "the more I burn. Turn them away, beloved. Turn them away ..."
Fear caught at him, a prickle of cold sweat icing his spine and setting his heart racing. He backed away in disconcerted alarm. Her image vanished, only to reappear at his left. This time there was no fire, but the mark on her neck was a livid twist of scarlet. One hand groped at the mark, the other reached for him, like a curled claw. "I have no breath," she hissed in a cracked parody of her velvet tones. "Give me thine ..."
Fear became utter terror. He backed away even further, his heart pounding like a military drum. He stepped straight through Sam, who was sufficiently startled by it to turn and follow his progress, despite the milling company. Al didn't really notice. He was too busy just trying to breathe. It's just subliminals, he tried telling himself severely. The interactive effect of her temporal echo. He didn't believe it though. She'd scared him - deliberately, with a directed attack. He took one more backward step, and collided with something unexpectedly solid.
"What the ...?" He spun round, to find himself face to face with a dark angel. Her expression was wary and apologetic; the sense of horror she had woven barely seconds earlier was gone, to be replaced by infinite sadness and regret. She did not speak, but the echo of her earlier words came back to haunt him. "I have the power to warn thee if thou goest astray ..." He closed his eyes for a second and took several deep breaths to steady his equilibrium.
"Al ...?" Sam hovered uneasily behind him, trying not to attract too much attention from the crowd while wanting to express his concern.
"It's okay," the Admiral reassured him, glancing at the man's anxious expression and summoning a wan smile. "Just ... Charity - startled me, that's all."
"Oh." Sam didn't sound convinced. He looked up, at the painted board above his friend's head. "This the one?"
Al followed the line of his gaze, finding one of the three sets of words paraded above him. "If ye fight for peace and freedom, seek them not upon the battlefield," he read. "True answers come only in sacred places."
"I - guess so, Sam." He was still shaking, he realised distantly. Charity had gone, vanished as if she'd never been there, but she had managed to guide him with great effectiveness despite being true to her curse. He felt a little ashamed. He should have trusted her - did trust her. But he had allowed himself to forget the truth of her nature and this reminder of it had not been a comfortable one.
"Why this one?" the scientist pondered with puzzlement, then laughed. "Of course! It's the one nearest the library. "With both the war may yet be won ..." Words and weapons. Very clever, Alex," he noted. "Very clever indeed."
"Have you figured it out, Kit?" Mary Ann circled the snarling lion to join him.
"Uh-huh." Sam indicated the painted words. "Which way to the chapel?"
The words were not in the chapel, but on it - carved on the ornate door to be exact, a curlicue of letters practically lost among the ornamentation of mock medieval figuring. "We put our trust in the words of the Lord," they said. "Our faith will protect us."
"Now what in heaven's name is that supposed to mean?" Mary Ann sighed, once Sam had deciphered the faded lettering. He shrugged, as did several of the others.
"I guess we take a look around," he suggested. "Search for hidden panels, hollow walls, that sort of thing. Whatever Alex McGowan hid, he hid it in here, somewhere." He split the company up into smaller groups and marshalled them into a systematic search. It didn't take that long; the chapel was a small room, furnished in simple style with polished wooden benches and a plain altar that didn't match the ornate entranceway at all. It had a stone-flagged floor. None of the stones were loose or could be lifted. Its walls were decorated with pious panels, commemorating various members of the McGowan family. None of them concealed a hidden chamber. After a long and fruitless search, the group collapsed onto the benches and admitted defeat. Sam was left standing by the altar stone with a look of frustrated puzzlement on his face, an expression his Observer reflected almost exactly.
"Never mind," Mary Ann sympathised, encircling Sam's waist with a comforting arm. "It was a good try, Kit. Maybe you got the wrong clue down in the trophy room."
"Yeah," one of the women breathed, "and maybe this was a wild goose chase. There's nothing in here."
"There should be," Al growled, pacing backward and forward through a line of benching. "There damn well should be."
"Lettie's right," Sam sighed, addressing both his physical and holographic company. "If there was anything hidden in here, it's long since gone."
"Oh well." Mary Ann pushed him gently toward the door. "I guess I'll just have to sell the bible after all."
Sam froze at the words. His eyes met those of his Observer, equally startled by the same revelation.
"The bible!" he exclaimed. "The words of the Lord ..."
"Meet you down there, Sam." Al keyed in the shift without waiting for an answer, the world reforming around him in the blink of an eye. Charity was there, waiting by the locked case, one hand passing through the glass to rest lightly on the pages of the book within. She looked up as he arrived, and smiled, dissolving briefly to reappear at his side.
"An old riddle," she murmured, "overlong in its solving." He nodded uncertainly, unsure of where he stood with her, the terror she had inspired in him still echoing a little in his soul. She tilted her head slightly to one side and considered him with care. "Thy friend comes to break my chains," she said softly. "I have thee to thank for that. Small thanks I have offered thee, save distress - and fear, in this day's wreaking."
"Hey," he said, finding he could manage a small grin after all. "I wouldn't say that. In fact, I'd say I wouldn't have missed these past three days for all the world."
She matched the grin, moving closer as she did so. Her hand lifted to brush his cheek with gentle affection. "Thy charm is dangerous, my stalwart champion," she warned with amusement. "It works a stronger spell than any I might cast - save one, which I did not intend. I would free thee of that, but I do not know how."
"I wouldn't want you to," he decided, caught in the eyes that were now so close to his own. This would be the last moment, he realised. The only moment. He dropped the handlink into his pocket and reached for her instead. She was warm and solid to his touch, a yielding presence that pressed close in answer to his need. Their kiss was an implosion of fire that he wanted to last forever, would hold in his heart for the rest of his life; a passion that had nothing to do with lust or desire, just a meeting of souls that seared each other to the core. Then the library door burst open, flooding the room with excitement and a tumble of oblivious figures - and she was gone, an emptiness in his arms that left him feeling utterly cold.
"I've got the key," Mary Ann was saying as she led the stampede across the room. Sam was a step behind her. He acknowledged his Observer's presence with barely a glance, his attention focused on the glass case and the treasure it contained. Al stepped aside with a sigh, avoiding the crowd by moving through a table and its burden of books. He felt oddly numb, the excitement of the hunt stripped away; he pulled the handlink free again and keyed up Ziggy's estimates with unenthusiastic effort.
The key unlocked the case, and Sam lifted the precious volume out of its supporting cradle, closing the book with gentle care. He turned it this way and that, examining the binding while the group watched with bated breath. Finally a small smile wrote itself onto the scientist's face. He reached for the letter opener that lay on his work table and gently slid it into the minute crack he had found in the edge of the bible's massive spine. The ancient leather parted, and a weight of documents fluttered free from the prison that had held them for centuries.
"Is that it?" someone demanded. Sam put the heavy volume down and picked up the paper instead, opening the pages with exaggerated care.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident ..." he read, carefully following the faded handwriting, then stopped, looking up with slight astonishment. "It's a draft of the Declaration of Independence," he said. "Why would - oh, boy."
"What?" Mary Ann demanded, trying to look over his shoulder.
"Look." Sam was carefully turning the pages over one by one. On the final sheet were a scrawl of signatures and seals, prominent among which was that of Washington himself - a seal that did not rest on the original document at all. "We the undersigned do agree to the principles herein, and for the love of freedom and the rights of the people, do swear to continue the fight that has begun," the scientist read. His hands trembled slightly as he smoothed the paper out in order to identify some of the other signatures. "This man was a British General," he noted disconcertedly. "And this one was a Colonial Governor ... My god, do you know what this means?"
"What?" they chorused around him.
He reverently slid the last sheet back behind the other papers. "This," he announced, "would have been sheer dynamite in Washington's hands. It's a pledge to support him from half a dozen of the most influential British authorities in the country. It's going to throw a whole new light on the history of the war. No wonder he told Alex McGowan to keep it hidden. I just hope it can be authenticated."
"It is, Sam." Al had watched the figures tumble into place as his friend was speaking. "Carson O'Leary gets his doctorate out of the resultant research. Mary Ann gets the grant from the Society, and the bank backs off. The group founds a centre for alternative medicine and technology ... Hey - " He perked up a little as he absorbed the information Ziggy was sending him. "This is real good stuff. Apparently the work they do is so successful that they set up a national foundation to support similar work right across the world. They're into ecological research, energy-saving technology, anti-pollution and renewable resource development - the whole kit and caboodle. Sam," he grinned with sudden delight. "You did it, kid. You just helped give the whole world a decent present for a change."
"That's great," Sam responded. The group were whooping around him with excitement and delight. "What about Charity?"
"Ahh ..." He didn't know how to answer that one. Mary Ann clearly thought the question was directed at her. She smiled.
"I think it's about time we put the curse behind us, don't you, Kit?"
Sam turned at her touch, responding to the offered embrace with a shy smile. "If you say so," he breathed.
"Oh, yes," she answered, and kissed him with determined passion. Al watched the numbers tick down to zero.
"'Bye, Sam," he muttered, his brief moment of cheer replaced by a sense of appalled inevitability. It had all come round so fast. And if Sam Leaped now, he wasn't ever going to know for sure ...
Sam Leaped: a flare of blue-white brilliance that engulfed the world. The Admiral waited for the dazzle to fade, expecting to see nothing but clean white walls and the empty Imaging Chamber left behind as Ziggy lost the focus.
"Mary Ann," Carson O'Leary was saying with slight bemusement. "I think I love you."
Al blinked in astonishment. He was still standing in the library of McGowan House, the group joyfully congratulating the couple in their midst. Sam was gone - completely gone, his presence replaced by the youthful O'Leary, who was glancing around himself with wary confusion. The young man's arms were tight around Mary Ann, who seemed unaware of his disconcertion. It was nowhere near the disconcertion that their unseen Observer felt; he never saw the aftermath of a Leap. Sam went, the lock was lost, and the world returned to the present until the next time. It had always worked that way. Until now.
"They seem content enough," a quiet voice said from behind him. He spun around in startled reaction. Charity stood there, watching the happy couple with an odd look on her face. "Thus is the balance maintained," she said softly. "And all that should be is made to be. The wheel turns and time passes. And we stand parted by time alone." Her gaze shifted, to meet his eyes, and she smiled, a sad, sympathetic smile. "I cursed once," she offered gently, "and by it was cursed. It is a blessing I would offer now. May this house prosper, and its people with it. May everyone who shared this day achieve their heart's desire. Three times I wish this. Three times three. And three times three is true. Goodbye, beloved. Remember that I love thee."
"Charity!" He reached for her, too little, too late. Like Sam before her, she was engulfed in light - a silver light that filled her image and took her away. His hands found only emptiness, and then the world dissolved altogether, the echoes of the past shredding around him, the voices of another time fading into endless silence.
He stood alone in the centre of the Imaging Chamber. Completely alone, every remnant of her presence vanished as if she had never been. 1967 was just a memory; he was cold, and he was tired, and he found he wanted to weep. He didn't. Of course he didn't. He sighed, and keyed up the Chamber door instead. It slid open with its normal hiss and he stepped through, the buffer zone flaring briefly around him and then winking out, the need for it gone until the next time Sam 'arrived' somewhen.
Outside, in Imaging Control, there was a crowd waiting. Donna's smile was relieved. Bettenhoff looked decidedly haggard. Challens was berating Gushie, who was beginning to look vaguely alarmed, and Tina - Tina threw herself at him with anxious delight.
"Al, honey," she cooed with syrupy concern. "I've been so worried about you. When Doctor Eleese told me what's been happening, I felt so guilty. Why didn't you call me? I'd have come back straight away ..."
He disentangled her gently, feeling too numb inside to formulate any real response to her presence. He should have got mad with her. He could have settled for mild indignation and an enjoyable apology. He liked Tina, when she wasn't being so damned manipulative. But right then, all he wanted to do was crawl away into a hole somewhere and lick wounds she wouldn't even understand. He felt utterly drained and he didn't have the energy to cope with her; didn't want to have to cope with her. "Tinkerbell," he sighed, giving her the briefest buss of his lips before pushing her away. "Leave it for later, willya? Ziggy needs you more than I do. Donna?" He turned to Sam's wife with a weary smile. "He's gone, he's safe, and he did what he had to do. A nice easy Leap for him. Permission to vanish for a while?"
She nodded sympathetically. "Permission granted, Admiral. Take a break. You deserve one. I'll debrief you later, okay?"
"Okay." He dropped the handlink on the nearest console and walked away, leaving Tina staring after him with a totally bemused expression on her painted face.
"Honey?" she queried in a slightly querulous tone. "You want I should come round tonight?"
He paused in the doorway. The question seemed oddly irrelevant. What he wanted he would never have - not now. Not ever. Memory rose with bittersweet recollection; an angel in his arms, her sense of self complete and whole against him ... He turned and found the anxious woman a bare smile. Company - any company - would be better than facing the coming night alone. "Sure," he allowed. "Whatever. Ziggy," he added, belatedly remembering she would still be listening, "hold all my calls."
"Certainly, Admiral." The answer was crisp and prompt. It was also heavily laced with irony. He grimaced, shook his head, and made his escape, seeking sunlight and the open air. There was an icy bite to the wind that whispered down the mountain, carrying a hint of snow and a promise of winter. He shivered and pulled his jacket close as he made his way back to his bungalow.
"Sam," he muttered to himself as he walked, "I don't know whether to curse you, or to thank you." He paused to quirk a wry smile at the thought, turning back to look up at the mountain and the ever-present flare of light that marked Sam Beckett's crowning achievement. "Thank you, I guess," he decided. Self-pity never solved anything, and, despite everything, the past three days had been kind of wonderful ... "Cursing seems to be a dangerous business somehow. Stay safe, kid. I'll see you real soon ..."
Consequences: Tuesday, November 3, 1999
A year passed. An eventful year that saw Sam’s unexpected return to the Project and the subsequent resumption of his travels. Each Leap remained an unknown quantity, bringing a variety of problems and complications to the team that monitored their absent Director’s progress. Admiral Al Calavicci worked constantly, balancing the day to day demands that command of the base brought him against the even more demanding events of Sam Beckett’s unpredictable journey. He argued with funding committees, backed up Dr Eleese’s submissions and requests, authorised work schedules, sweet-talked Ziggy, charmed, interrogated and bullied the temporary inhabitants of the Waiting Room and coped with Sam - hardly the lifestyle he would have chosen for himself at his age, but the task he had accepted and was prepared to carry until such time as his friend came home for good. It had never been easy, but after the strange events of that Halloween it became a little harder still. It took quite a while to be able to step back into the Imaging Chamber without a stir of uneasy anticipation - a reaction he had only just begun to lose when the trauma of that barbaric asylum and the subsequent experience of his own Leap revived everybody’s uncertainty as to the safety of the whole process.
Then there’d been the disconcertion of having to converse with himself, and Sam’s efforts on his behalf that had nearly screwed up his life for good ... Losing Lisa a second time had hurt, perhaps even more so than the first time round, even if Sam’s eventual solution had ensured that she had lived to say goodbye at least. The memories of that seemed irretrievably tangled with those of another, more poignant farewell. He had finally faced and accepted the reality of Beth’s decisions, only to have the chains they had laid over him replaced by impossible memories and hopeless desires.
Tina continued to tempt him, pamper him, and frustrate him in equal measure, her demands upon his time and attention slowly becoming more and more of an imposition and less and less of a pleasure. She wasn’t the woman he really wanted; he knew that and never held it against her, but she never seemed to comprehend the pressures he faced or the sympathies he needed.
Donna might have understood, but he knew better than to load her with his problems; Verbeena listened to those things he was prepared to admit, which helped a little, but sometimes he’d just have to break loose for a while, seeking solace with strangers or the simple giddy freedom of the open road or the uncritical desert sky. Never in a bottle though. He’d promised Sam, and it was a promise he kept with determination; drink was for social occasions, celebrations, or moments of mark - never for misery, never for the sake of it, and never alone ...
He sometimes suspected that the two things that kept him sane over that long year - over all the long years since Sam’s precipitate departure to the past - was his ability to fly, and his friend’s unshakeable faith in his presence. He had to endure the pressures, cope with the hassles, and face the darker moments for Sam’s sake. The trouble was it was wearing him down, layer by layer, making it harder each time to recapture his bounce and enthusiam. Time in the Imaging Chamber could exhaust him, and only the fact that - after his unexpected return - the intervals between Sam’s Leaps seemed to stretch a little longer made it possible for him to catch his breath and face the next one with renewed determination.
The next century approached with ominous certainty; in the depths of the Project, Kennedy was assassinated once again; Ziggy gained proof of the existance of UFOs; Verbeena denied the reality of vampires; and Sam Leaped ... again, and again, a seemingly endless tumble of events and misshaped lives, rewritten by the dictates of some unseen power. And at midnight on Halloween, Al Calavicci found himself staring up at the stars and wondering at the way that same power chose to direct his fate. He found no answers, and went home cold and alone, to be greeted by the Afterburner and an empty bed. Tina had gone to a conference in San Diego - on her own - and he refused to think about what she might be up to there. He slept badly that night, dreaming of ghosts and of pursuing something that seemed to lie forever beyond his reach ...
Three days later, he was on duty behind the flight deck of a desk that he normally tried to avoid like the plague. He was in uniform for once, having just completed his regular staff meeting, and was busy signing what seemed to be a huge pile of requisitions, authorisations, approvals, and other regulation paperwork. Lieutenant Means had been apologetic as she'd offered them up, but she tried to keep the number of times she forged his signature to a minimum, and he was supposed to check all of it before he signed it. He'd sighed a martyred sigh, pulled out his pen and got down to the job, frowning occasionally as something unexpected surfaced from among the routine. He authorised six weekend passes, two requests for compassionate leave, and one approval for a marriage. He paused to draft a personal note of congratulations to the officer concerned before plunging back into a sea of equipment transfers and duty rostering. The pile didn't seem to be getting any smaller, so the buzz over his intercom was an unwelcome interruption.
"Yes, Lieutenant?" he responded, a little tetchily.
"Doctor Eleese to see you, sir," Mean's crisp voice announced. Al frowned. Donna rarely needed to call on him officially, and usually waltzed in without formalities.
"Well then, show her in, Kay," he growled, bending back to the paperwork. The door opened. Two figures came in, and approached the desk. He made a point of signing the last requisition before he looked up. Donna stood there, draped in the usual white coat over shirt and slacks, a quiet smile on her face. And next to her ...
"Al," Donna was saying brightly, "I thought you'd like to meet the latest member of our team before I took her down into the depths. The Doc's going to be over the moon. He's been complaining about being short-handed for months. This is Doctor O'Leary, our new medical officer. Part of her time here is being sponsored by the McGowan Foundation, but the rest of it is all ours. Her research area is just fascinating. "
He wasn't really listening. He'd risen to his feet on automatic pilot alone, too startled to offer more than a polite and wary smile. The woman wore a smart suit in pale colours. Her dark red hair was piled into an efficient tightness away from her face, which was highlighted by the barest touch of makeup. Beneath her jacket her blouse was cut low, revealing a silver chain and the glitter of a five-pointed star lying just above her breasts, but for once in his life he barely registered the hint of bare flesh. He didn't need to. His eyes were riveted on the familiar face, on the glitter of emeralds that were her eyes. She smiled, a polite smile at a stranger, then her expression froze in wary startlement. Their eyes met, and the look she gave him was the look that measured so much more than surface detail alone.
"Charity?" he mouthed, no more than a whisper. Memory had come flooding back with involuntary fire. She stared a little longer, then shivered and glanced away. When she looked back, it was with a non-committal politeness, as if that brief moment of recognition had never been.
"How do you do, Admiral," she said, offering her hand as she did so. Her voice was the same, deep and rich, and filled with subtle promise. "Doctor Eleese has been telling me all about you. I'm looking forward to contributing to the work here."
He took the hand. It would have been impolite not to, although his heart was pounding loudly in his ears and he felt as if he were quivering from head to foot. Her touch was just as electric as he remembered, a warmth inside his palm. On impulse he lifted the hand to his lips in gallant greeting, and she blushed a little behind the mask she wore. It was a mask, he was sure of that. This woman, smart, efficient, crisp and deliberately made as plain as she could be, was not, on the surface, the wild and untamed spirit that had seared him to the soul, but she was there; was there hidden behind the echo of those green eyes. Laughing at him. A child born in '68, he considered distantly, letting her hand slide from his with reluctance, would be a woman indeed by now. A witch reborn in body and spirit. Returned to the wheel of life. Returned to me?
He couldn't allow himself that kind of hope and dashed it away with inner anger. Her presence here was mere coincidence, another twist in the changing fortunes that Sam's many Leaps had wrought over the years. "I'm very pleased to meet you, Doctor O'Leary," he smiled. "Welcome to the Project. I've heard a lot of good things about the McGowan Foundation. " Made a point of doing so over the past year. Oh, Sam - what have you done ...? "I'm sure you'll fit in here just fine."
"I'm sure she will," Donna agreed, smirking at him as she did so. She hadn't missed the effect her guest had had on him, although she probably assumed it had something to do with his usual reaction to good-looking women. "In fact," she went on, "I have the feeling that Charity here is going to be one of the best things that's happened to us for a long while ..."
Al Calavicci grinned an unsteady grin at that, watching as the two women left his office before he allowed his shaking body to seek the sanctuary of his chair. Oh boy, he thought to himself, reaching reflexively for a cigar. Oh boy, oh boy, oooh boy ...
A Question of Charity. Chapter Seven. 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
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