From: BEWalton17@aol.com Message-ID: Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1998 16:14:29 EST Subject: QL: The Enemy (Chapter 5) CHAPTER FIVE The first thing Al had felt about his son was mortal terror. It was not the fact that Nate was dependent on him that frightened him. That made him uneasy, but the uneasiness was familiar. He had, after all, been depended on before. It wasn't that he felt unconnected to the child. To the contrary, he had felt the connection between them immediately and intensely. Blood or no blood, he'd loved his son with no reservations from the word go. What had frightened Al about Nate was that the baby was incommunicado. He had watched Ruthie talking to Nate while she fed him, saying things which seemed to come from an unending wellspring inside of her. He had no such wellspring; when he looked at Nate, his mind went blank. It seemed like everyone around him knew what to do. Ruthie had been talking to the baby since before he was born, and had still not run out of things to say. His immediate C.O., a captain by the name of Greer who had been the closest thing he and Ruthie had to a friend of the family, had often picked the boy up and talked to him, and so had his wife. Even Al's ex-wife Martje had been able to communicate with Nate on her all-too-frequent visits. But Al had just stared at him, afraid to pick him up, unable to think of anything to say to him. He had taken to tiptoeing into the nursery late at night, sitting beside the crib, and watching the baby sleep, wondering what he was dreaming (if babies dreamed; Al wasn't sure), if he needed anything, and -- mostly -- if he had any idea that Al was his father, or if he'd taken Al's silence as a rejection. Al had been afraid it was the latter, and had often resolved to simply start talking, but every time he'd tried, he'd run into a brick wall. So he'd simply stayed, and watched the blankets move up and down with Nate's steady breathing, as he was doing now, twenty-one years later. He'd be a legal adult this year. Al shuddered. The linguistic skills which had so impressed Sam were really only the result of one last ditch attempt to communicate. Ruthie had been out -- she'd opened a show in a local gallery -- and Al had been left alone with the baby. Nate had started crying, and Al, with a great deal of trepidation, had picked him up. The crying didn't stop, and Al knew he had to say something, anything, and what had come out was, "_Buon giorno, bambino_." That had released something inside of him, some memory perhaps, and for the first time he was able to speak to his son. As long as he did it in Italian, he was fine. He wasn't sure why. The idea that it was because it had been the language his father had used with him had not occurred to him at the time, and when it did now, he thought it likely, but supremely irrelevant. Nate had begun talking during the next six months. His first word had been "Papa," and Al didn't think Ruthie had ever completely forgiven either one of them for it. She'd retaliated by speaking Yiddish so often that, between them, Nate hadn't learned English until he was three and they called a truce long enough to get divorced. "_Buon giorno_," he whispered, although it was night here in Nate's time. The charm didn't work. Nate couldn't hear him. He rolled over and his blanket slipped off his shoulders. Al reached down to replace it, but his hand, of course, went right through the hologram that was all that really existed of his son in this time. He put his hand slowly down to his side. Earlier, he'd thought he might go crazy. He'd been through a lot of things in his life, and he'd managed to survive all of them sane. He'd done that by locking thoughts of the bad things away -- Vietnam, his father's and sister's deaths, Beth, Nate... These memories were not subconscious; he was perfectly aware of their existence, and he didn't block them when they wanted to come out. He'd thought of Nate on more than one occasion, especially since Sam had started Leaping. What he *did* block was any connection between himself and them. He didn't discuss them with other people, and he locked them away from the rest of his life with iron bars. The problem was, the dungeons where he kept them were concentric, and when the inner chambers opened up, they brought everything out with them. He hadn't buried Vietnam too deeply, mainly because other people often brought the subject up. Now and then the locals would want him to marshall a Veteran's Day parade, or one for Memorial Day. He did these things without thinking much about them, but they kept him from being completely silent about that experience. Most of the people Al considered his friends (and fewer people actually fit in that category than thought they did) knew about Beth. He spoke of her reluctantly, but, maybe because the memory of her desertion was so closely tied to the memory of his years in 'Nam, he was unable to shut her out. His father and his sister were ghosts he'd shared only with Beth, Sam Beckett, Verbeena Beeks, and Ruthie Minkin Weiss, he reminded himself, it's Weiss. Underneath all of them was Nate. Al had been able to think about Ruthie without thinking about Nate; he had known her for thirty years, and Nate only occupied six of them, seven if he counted her pregnancy. But Sid Weiss was an isolated fragment of time, someone he knew only in the context of Nate's life, because most of his information about the man had come via Nate; Ruthie hadn't been comfortable talking to Al about him. When Al had recognized him in the Waiting Room, the innermost circle of his mind had suddenly exploded outward, and everything had come out with it. He'd started drinking to drown the voices in his head; they were not hallucinations -- nothing in Al's life, not even Nate, had been able to alter his essential sanity -- but they were memories too vivid to be ignored. The voices belonged to many people. Nate, of course, but also Beth, and Ruthie, and his father, and his sister... He remembered thinking pointlessly halfway through a bottle of good gin that he had enough ghosts in his life to fill a Stephen King novel. It was the last coherent thought he could place before the oblivion finally settled in. His first clear memory after coming out of the nightmare was of Donna Eleyse, leaning over him and asking, "Are you with us, Al?" He hadn't answered right away, because he wasn't sure. He looked around the Project lobby; several Project workers were gathered around, concerned. Al felt ashamed, and he knew he was back. He had reached for Tina, and she had come to him crying tears of relief. He'd nodded. "I think so," he'd said. He noticed Verbeena Beeks standing on his other side. "Why are you here? I sent you to Canada." "Tina called me in Calgary. I caught the next plane home." "You didn't have to do that." She'd smiled. "You've seen one Rocky Mountain, you've seen them all." Al hadn't offered any further resistance to her presence. She and Donna had both objected strenuously to his Observing this Leap, despite Gushie's report of Sam's insistence in the matter. Al had finally pulled rank (a thing he did infrequently and reluctantly), entered the Imaging Chamber, and had Gushie center him on Nate. He wasn't going crazy. Sometime between his vague thought of ghosts and the time Donna Eleyse had leaned over him, his mind had been able to rearrange itself. He thought that it might have started when Sammy Jo Fuller, a physicist at the Project, had told Tina that Ziggy thought Sam had been sent to help Nate. Al, even through the alcohol haze, had overheard, and his normal, ordered mind (it would surprise many of the people who thought they were close to him to realize just how ordered it was) had rallied around the objective. The dust had settled, the haze cleared, and Nate's place had been moved to the forefront of Al's mind; the other things had been relegated to temporary storage rooms, where Al might or might not deal with them later. The process had left him sane, but tired. He couldn't remember ever feeling so tired. Beeks had thought he wouldn't be able to handle Ziggy's analysis of the situation, but the idea that he was responsible for Nate's death was hardly new. It was, in its own gruesome way, comforting to have confirmation of it. It also made Observing somewhat easier, because he had no moral compunctions about using whatever means were necessary to get the job done. If all else failed, he could simply tell Sam to kill him. *** Lying in bed next to Ruthie Weiss was, Sam noticed, less unpleasant than he was comfortable with. When he had climbed carefully into the empty side of Sid and Ruthie's bed, exhausted, Ruthie had rolled over in her sleep and nuzzled herself against his side, and he had been suddenly and completely awake. There was something magnetic about Ruthie -- Sam had noticed it when he had Leaped into her car, in the way he felt compelled to look at her again and again -- and that power seemed to increase in intensity with her touch. He had felt it earlier, when he had been trying to calm her into sleep, but she had been upset then, and it had distracted him. Now, though, she was sleeping peacefully, and Sam had nothing to notice except the way his nerve endings were telegraphing excited messages to each other every time she moved beside him. He thought it would be quite easy to become addicted to her. But, ex or no ex, this woman was Al's wife, and Sam knew without needing to ask that acting on these feelings would be a betrayal beyond reckoning. So he nudged her gently back to her side of the bed, and drew the covers over her. He heard the Imaging Chamber Door open somewhere in the house. He thought it might have been in Nate's room, and if it was, it was Al. Sam climbed out of bed carefully, trying not to wake Ruthie. When he was sure she was still asleep, he tiptoed out of the room. The hallway was suburban dark -- not as dark and still as the country nights Sam had grown up with, but not like the noisy, neon- lit nights of a city, either. It was a pleasant darkness, not threatening or mysterious, not a place for thoughts of death. And yet that was what Sam felt in the air around him, the death of a six-year old boy, far from his home. The death of a father's heart. The death of all the fragile bonds that held this family together. He opened Nate's door. Al was standing beside the bed, watching Nate sleep. He looked up slowly, and Sam's heart stopped. Al looked old. Sam lived day to day with a fear that one of these days, Al would stop coming. The fears were tied up with the cigars, the fast cars, the loose sex, even his own meddling in the other man's life... but he had never considered the possibility that Al might simply fade away into old age, or maybe even... fade out... before Sam was able to Leap home. Al was only sixty, but he had lived many lifetimes in those years, and, looking at him now, every one of those lifetimes was etched deeply into his face. The skin around his eyes was sunken and bruised-looking; the eyes themselves, usually animated and young, had become burned out coals. Seeing him like this, Sam thought, was like looking into his grave. They said nothing to each other. Sam went on down the hall, and descended to the living room. He sat in a large easy chair, turned on the light above it, and waited. Al appeared a few minutes later, in the shadows across the room. At first, neither of them spoke; Sam had no idea what to say to begin. Al finally broke the silence: "Gushie told you." "Why didn't you?" Al looked down. "I told you once that I never appreciated my family until Ruthie was gone. I almost told you the rest then, but I couldn't do it." Sam remembered Al having said that. He'd Leaped into a young rabbi, David Basch, to help a couple sort through the loss of their son. Had Al acted strange during that Leap? Maybe kept some distance? Sam couldn't remember. Maybe, once or twice, there had been a look, and hadn't Al been angry at him, lectured him about the importance of his family? He thought so. But he had thought... what? Nothing. He hadn't even asked what was going through Al's head, and Al hadn't volunteered any information. "Why not?" When Al looked up, there was accusation in his eyes. "Because I didn't want to get the look you're giving me now. The 'Poor Al' look. I hate that." "I'm sorry." Al's brief anger disappeared, leaving the burned out look behind. "No, I am. There's more to it than that. Burying Nate was the worst thing I've ever been through. And talking about him... " He closed his eyes and ran one hand across his face. "It hurts, Sam. It hurts like hell." "I know." "No, you don't know. I hope you never know." "Al, I know this is hard on you, but I need to know what happened." Al nodded. "It was February. Admiral Leopold -- do you remember him, Sam?" Sam shook his head. "He was the head of Star Bright. He called me, and he wanted to talk about bringing me in. I had to go." "And where was Nate?" "He... " Al looked away. "He was alone in the apartment when the fire started. It was in the kitchen. They said he was making himself dinner." He opened his eyes and looked at Sam miserably. "Leopold promised we'd be done before school let out. But we got working on some details, and we got bogged down... and then it was six o'clock, and the phone rang... " Al stopped and looked away. "I lost track of time. I was working, and I just didn't think... Nate died because of that." "And you've never forgiven yourself." "I don't have any right to forgive myself, Sam. Nate trusted me to take care of him. He's dead; I'm responsible. If you don't believe me, ask Ziggy." Al offered him the handlink with an ironic turn of his lip, then went back to his story. He seemed determined to tell it now. "They charged me with negligent homicide. The Navy wanted me on Star Bright, so they... I don't know what they did. I don't want to know." He laughed bitterly. "And you know, the damned thing didn't work. Star Bright was a flop. They got me off the hook about Nate's death for a project that didn't even work." He was crying now, but Sam didn't say anything. "Ruthie was in court the last day, with Sid. I tried to talk to her, but she... She never spoke to me again. Not ever." There was an edge of sadness in Al's voice, a lost look on his face, and Sam knew, in a moment of insight, "You love Ruthie, don't you?" Al shrugged and sighed, shaking his head. Sam knew the expression. It meant that the question was impossible to answer directly. "Ruthie and I were kids together," he said after awhile. "She was about Trudy's age. It was like having a sister again. I'm not going to tell you that that was all there was to it, it wasn't, but that was always the most important part. Ruthie was a good friend, no matter what else she was. I miss that." "That's why we're here," Sam said without thinking. He was not surprised when the anger returned to Al's face. "No, that's not why we're here. We're here because there's a five-year-old boy asleep upstairs who's never going to grow up. We're here to keep Nate alive. And when it comes to that, Sam, I'm the enemy." He punched a button on the handset and disappeared without offering an explanation. Sam stared into the suburban darkness, and thought, for the first time, This isn't fair. *** Somewhere in the land between sleep and wakefulness, Ruthie hears Albert's voice. She is dreaming badly, as she does all too often. She is home, in the ramshackle tenement where she lives with her mother. The hallway is dark and the window at the end is broken. A doll is lying on the stairs, beside a beer bottle. It is made of old socks, the only thing Mama could find to make it from in Poland. Ruthie picks it up, and holds it tight; she hasn't seen it in a very long time, and never in this house. The doll was taken away from her by the men at the dock, and Mama said it was because it might make people sick. Ruthie doesn't really care about the doll, although she is glad to have it back. It is Mama she is searching for. Her adult self, who has been here many times, knows where she will find her, where she *did* find her on that long ago day -- in the kitchen, her head stuffed into the gaping oven like a macabre entre -- but her child self keeps searching. Then Albert's voice, low and rumbling, appears, and the child- self turns toward it and away from the horror lying ahead. She follows the rickety staircase down toward the door and was suddenly aware of herself as an adult in a large room in a lovely house in the suburbs. In *Northbrook*. There had been a time when even Skokie was an impossible dream, but that time was long past. She was not quite awake, but she was out of deep sleep. Her alpha waves, had anyone been tracking them, would have been very similar to those of a small child or an animal. She could still hear Albert's voice. She couldn't make out what he was saying. He was someplace downstairs, and the walls were thick and sturdy here. But he sounded so sad. She fought toward waking to go to him. Her eyes opened, and the voice disappeared. It had been part of the dream after all. She rolled over, and discovered that she was alone in her bed. Sid's side had been turned down, but he wasn't there. Then she heard him talking, too muffled by the walls to pick anything up, but definitely coming from downstairs. She frowned. Sid had never been given to flights of fancy, or to talking to himself. She wondered if he was on the phone, but she couldn't think who he would be talking to at an hour like this. Well, it could be one of his friends overseas, in Israel, or maybe France. A lot of his friends had, for some reason, gone to France. Ruthie couldn't imagine settling in Europe without being forced there. She remembered the continent only in strange, disconnected images retained from her infancy (her mother had brought her to the States before her second birthday), but they were all steel gray and cold. (Could have something to do with the fact that there was a war on at the time, her more mature voice chided her. Places do change, you know.) But the older, voiceless memory was more powerful. She had been in contact with genuine evil, and it had left its mark on her life. She would never return to the land it had grown on. If Sid ever wanted to visit his friends on the continent, he would do so without her. And definitely without Nate. If Ruthie could help it, her son would never set foot over there. Why the hell am I thinking about Europe? She shook her head and slid out of bed. She was still dressed from the previous day; Sid had tucked her in and not awakened her long enough to change. After she had divorced Al, she hadn't planned to marry again. But when she'd run into Sid at the community center -- he was working there that summer, teaching toddlers, including Nate, to swim -- he had been so kind and sweet that she hadn't been able to say no. He enjoyed telling jokes and singing children's songs, and he had a disarmingly inane sense of humor. He found it endlessly amusing to play ping pong with matzo balls and balance spoons on the end of his nose during dinner. Most endearing of all, he loved her, he adored Nate, and he even put up with Al (most of the time). She'd known him before, in college, and he had been her friend, and when he asked her to be his wife, it had all seemed... well, so *sane*. Ruthie would have given anything to be able to fall in love with him. There were two kinds of men in the world: The ones you could trust with your heart and the ones you could trust with your life (she supposed there were a few you could trust with neither, and even fewer you could trust with both, but they were rare enough not to count). In typical fashion, Ruthie had chosen backwards, giving her heart to Al and her life to Sid. Weren't you going to get changed? She pulled her jeans and top off and draped them over the chair by the dressing table. She supposed that those little gilt chairs had a special name, but she didn't particularly care what it was. She grabbed a nightgown out of the top drawer of her dresser and pulled it over her head with practiced ease, then crawled back into bed. She dreamed again, and this time there was no voice to pull her from it, and she woke up alone, shivering in her silk nightgown, reaching for someone who was never there. *** Al sat in the Imaging Chamber for several minutes after he had broken communication. They would be outside the door, he knew, waiting for him to come out. Tina, with her large, frightened eyes, Beeks with her sharp needles and sharper tongue, Gushie with his bored concern, Sammy Jo with her compulsive busy work. It was Donna he needed to see, he thought, Donna who he needed to talk to. Because if anyone could help him figure out what Sam was trying to do, it would be Donna. But he wasn't going to ask; Donna had enough to worry about without absorbing Al's feelings about her husband. He was furious. Sam's question -- You love Ruthie, don't you? -- had been perceptive enough. Al himself had come across it a hundred times, usually at quite unexpected moments. Half the reason he had wanted custody of Nate was to induce Ruthie to come back to him. He'd told himself then that she was just pleasant company, family, hell, practically the sister he had insisted to Sam that she was. Had he believed it, even then? "Admiral?" Ziggy's voice floated into the Chamber. "Yeah, Ziggy. I'm here. Look, can you do me a favor?" "I live to serve." Al smiled. "Can you run a scenario where Ruthie and I end up re-married?" "Admiral... " Ziggy's tone was reproachful. "I don't think that's it, but I need to know. I think Sam's going to push it." Ziggy sighed. "The chances of Ruthie leaving her husband and returning to you in 1984 are approximately thirteen percent." "And if it were to happen?" "Insufficient data." "Guess." "Admiral, I cannot make the computations necessary to answer your question. But I can tell you this: If you and Ruthie were to re-marry, there would be significant changes in your own life, and possibly in your participation in this Project." "And Nate living won't make changes like that?" Ziggy hesitated. "Nate's survival does not guarantee that he will be involved in your life. I project a seventy percent probability that if this Leap succeeds, you and your stepson will drift apart naturally." Al didn't answer. "Admiral, you know how Leaping works. You will be unable to change your own life. Nate hasn't been a part of your life on this time line, and he will not be on any new one that Dr. Beckett creates. Unless you are willing to risk failure, I suggest you tell Dr. Beckett to concentrate on the task at hand." Al was not willing to risk failure. He waited a moment longer, then left the Chamber.