From: bewalton17@aol.com (BEWalton17) Newsgroups: alt.tv.quantum-leap.creative Subject: QL: The Enemy (Chapter 11) Date: 2 Dec 1998 04:59:15 GMT Message-ID: <19981201235915.27332.00000939@ng-fc2.aol.com> PART THREE: AL >From the same source, I have not taken My sorrow -- I could not awaken My heart to joy at the same tone -- And all I lov'd -- I lov'd alone -- Then -- in my childhood -- in the dawn Of a most stormy life -- was drawn >From ev'ry depth of good and ill The mystery which binds me still -- Edgar Allan Poe, "Alone" CHAPTER ELEVEN Oh, Ruthie, he thought when Ziggy centered him on her. What are you doing down here? Al hadn't been back to the Lower West Side since he'd left it at the ripe old age of eighteen. He'd never wanted to go back at all. But here he was, in the maze of ethnic neighborhoods between Maxwell and Taylor, the part of Chicago where all the poor immigrants had washed up, and hung their hats until they could afford to move on, if they ever could. It wasn't the roughest neighborhood in town, but it wasn't easy. It was a far cry from Northbrook -- or from a fine arts classroom at Northwestern. Ruthie was sitting on the steps of a small church (Al realized with a start that it had been her synagogue many, many years ago) her elbows planted on her knees, a faraway look in her eyes. Further down the street, the St. Joe's bell tower broke the sky. Al felt a powerful mix of emotions -- revulsion, hatred, even a fossilized fear -- but they were overwhelmed by a simple, terrible thought: I've come home. His feet wanted to carry him through the streets, to see what had changed and what hadn't. His eyes strained to see every dismal detail. He wondered if, if he ever had a chance to see the tiger cage in which he'd been held in Vietnam, he would feel this same kind of urge to search it for all the old, familiar marks, and he realized, with a wave a nausea, that he probably would. Home is wherever they never let you go. Ruthie bit her lip and looked over toward St. Joe's. Al took a few steps toward her. "Ruthie?" he said. She didn't look up. "God, I wish you could hear me. I wish that more than anything." She just continued to look down the darkening street. Somewhere, a mother was calling for T'Shana to come inside right this instant. Somewhere else, a police siren cut the air. Ruthie paid no attention to either sound. The door of the church opened, and a balding Black man in a three piece suit came outside. "Ma'am?" Ruthie turned slowly, the faraway look melting gradually away from her face. "Yes?" "Ma'am, you're welcome to come inside, out of the rain." She shook her head. "I don't think so. But thank you for offering." The man hesitated in the door, then spoke quickly. "Look, ma'am, this is no neighborhood for a lady to be sitting around alone in. It's dangerous." A strange, wistful smile spread across her face. "It's more dangerous than you think." "Ma'am?" "Oh, don't mind me. I've just been communing with the ghosts." She offered a more normal smile, self-deprecating and impossible not to answer. The man nodded. "I don't mean to make you feel unwelcome. But you ought to get out of here, or a few haunts will be the least of your worries." "I suppose you're right," she said, standing. "I should be getting home anyway." "Was there anything I could help you with?" Ruthie shook her head. "I don't think so. But thanks. I was... looking for someone. A girl I used to know." "Did you find her?" "Yeah. But I think maybe it's time for her to leave, too." The man looked at her oddly, but didn't say anything. Either he understood what she was really doing, or thought she was a lunatic. She went to her car and drove away. Al looked after the car, considered re-centering on her, and instead called, "Gushie! Center me on Sam." He found himself in the kitchen with Sam and a mirror image of himself -- a mirror image who still had the world in his hands. They were doing dishes. Sam looked at him and shrugged; there was no way to talk now. Al nodded, and punched in the code to open the Door. Everyone looked up when he left the Imaging Chamber; Donna, Verbeena, Gushie, Sammy Jo, Tina. The expression on all of their faces was the same, and he hated it. Hated *them* for a moment. "How do you feel, honey?" Tina asked. "The same as I felt fifteen minutes ago. Why? Did something change out here?" She shook her head, looking hurt. He sighed. "I'm sorry, Tina. God, I'm batting a thousand today." "It's okay." "The hell it is." "No, really." She offered a smile that was about as genuine as the rhinestones on the heel of her shoe. "Why don't we, like, go out to dinner or something, hon?" "I'm not leaving 'til this is over, Tina. I'm sorry." "We could just go up to the upper building, and order out." "There's work to do here." "You need a break," Verbeena said. "No, I don't." "Yes," Donna said. "You do. You really need to get out of here." "Ziggy?" Al said. "Do you have anything to say about this?" The computer sighed dramatically. "I suppose your fragile little mind might benefit from a diversion, before I give you a rundown on the status of current scenarios." "What current scenarios?" "The ones we've been running," Donna said. "Now, will you please go eat dinner, do something?" He narrowed his eyes. "Why?" "Because it's dinner time," Tina said. Al looked at them all, carefully, noticing for the first time the way they were standing, blocking the way to Ziggy's identification scanners -- not that it made much difference; it was token gesture, and it was clear enough what it was a token of. He wiped his hand across his face. "Would you guys mind if I talked to Ziggy alone?" "I don't think that's wise, Al," Donna advised, stepping out of the line. "Ziggy isn't known for... tact." "Hmmph," the computer said, then was silent. "I'm counting on that." No one else budged. "Do I have to make this another goddam order?" Sammy Jo took the lead. "You know, Verbeena, I've been meaning to run a theory of mine by you, before I run it by Ziggy. Maybe we could go someplace... ?" She started out; Beeks glanced back carefully, then followed. Donna touched his shoulder on her way out. "If you need to talk later, Al, no matter how late... " He nodded, impatient for her to leave. Gushie stood for a moment, waiting for Tina, but she made no move. He left. Tina looked at Al, her arms crossed over her chest, then looked up at the ceiling. "Ziggy?" "Yes?" "Say anything wrong, and I'll make you regret it. I can, too." "I am quite aware of that, Dr. Martinez-O'Farrell." Al put a hand on her shoulder. "It's okay, Tina." "I don't want you to get hurt." He kissed her forehead, and tried to smile. "I know." With one last worried look, Tina left. Al turned toward the colored panel that was Ziggy's main control board. The computer could, of course, hear him from anywhere, but, being human, he always looked for a face. "Somebody hit the jackpot, didn't they?" he asked. "Explain." "Somebody ran a scenario that worked. But no one wants to let me in on it." "Dr. Fuller ran a scenario which showed a 97% probability of preventing your son from ever coming into your custody." Al waited, but Ziggy didn't elaborate. "Well?" he said. "What was it?" "It's quite simple, really." Ziggy paused, and Al was beginning to think he would have to prod her again when she continued. "Dr. Beckett must convince you -- you as you were in 1984 -- to abandon your son." *** Sam watched from the darkened hallway while Al tucked his son in for the night. In the two hours since Ruthie's departure, he'd become more and more convinced that it wasn't too late for the Leap to succeed. He suspected that the Observer had come to tell him something of this sort when he'd shown up in the kitchen, but he didn't really need to be told. If success had hinged on Ruthie's custody decision, he would have Leaped when she'd announced it, one way or another. He hadn't. So now he again found himself waiting, watching for some clue to the Leap. There was an easy answer, of course. There was always an easy answer, and it was always the same, and it was always wrong. He could just tell Al and Ruthie the truth: I'm Sam Beckett, I'm from the future, and your son is going to die if he goes to live with his father. They would doubt it, but he could convince them. Just like he could've convinced Beth. But, just like with Beth, it would be the wrong thing to do. There was too much at stake. In every Leap, there was a surface problem. It was like one of the video games that Sam had programmed into Ziggy (at Al's insistence): save the princess, find the treasure, kill the bad guys. On this level, it was alright to play by the rules, or bend them, or outright break them, as long as you got to the objective. Sometimes, this was enough. Sometimes, a plain language warning was the best thing to do. But not often. Because the real problem was almost always beneath the surface, like a fault line running through the bedrock. If it was hit from the wrong angle, the quake could tear lives apart. *Al's* life, this time. And possibly Sam Beckett's. Sam was sure that the fault line ran somewhere through Al and Ruthie's relationship, but it was well hidden, a subtle warp on the surface that betrayed nothing of its origins. One thing, however, was certain: Whatever Al and Ruthie's problems were, they were real, and they needed to be solved, not salved. Breaking the rules of the Leap, breaking the flow of their normal world, would distract them, might even solve the immediate problem, but it would mask the sickness underneath, and that sickness would fester until... something happened. Something a hundred times worse than what already had. Sam didn't know what that something might be, but he knew it was there nonetheless. And, of course, in this Leap, there was a third level, and that level was the Project itself. Sam Beckett was the mind, the soul, and the heart of Project Quantum Leap, but Al, with his outraged sense of justice, had always been its conscience. Sam had had a brief vision of the Project without Al's input: it had been clinical, cold, dispassionate. Sam's memory of that encounter with an alternate life was fragmented and distant, but he remembered a distinct feeling that his only mission had been scientific: make a change, observe the results, whatever they might be; it was the kind of science he had practiced in college, theoretical and inhuman. He had no basis for this belief -- the particular mission he'd had seemed to have been benign -- but it felt true. It was more than possible, if he took a wrong step here, to alter the course of the Project; if that happened Nate would have no chance at all to live, and all the good Sam had been able to do for other people would be erased. So he watched, waited. "Tell me a story," Nate begged. "It's getting late." Al held up his watch. "About what time would you say it is?" Nate studied the watch fixedly. "Um... Not bedtime yet?" he offered hopefully. "Try again." Nate touched the watch face and traced the placement of the hands. He counted the numbers. "Eight-fifteen?" "That's right. And what time is bedtime?" "Eight o'clock. But Mama's not home yet." Al looked out into the hall. "Hey, Sid -- is Ruthie usually home to tuck him in on Mondays?" Sam, who had no idea, just shrugged as if to say You're on your own. "Just one story, Pop. About olden days, when you were a little boy." "Olden days, huh?" Sam wondered idly which of Al's unending stream of stories would follow. Al thought about it for a moment, then smiled and said. "You don't want to hear about that trash. How about if I read you one of your books?" "*I* can read my books," Nate said, with a hint of pride. "I keep forgetting." "Will you tell me about space?" "I can't think of anything to tell you that you don't already know." "Tell me again. And about flying." Al put an arm around Nate and settled back against the headboard. "Let's see... Where should I start?" "Um... Earth. Tell about Earth." Al nodded. "From way up above, in space, Earth looks clean. And quiet. You can't see everyone running around every whichway." "Can you see houses and stuff, all little?" "No. Come on, Nate, you know that. I've told you this before." "Sorry, Pop." Al smiled and kissed the top of Nate's head. "You can see some of the big things. The Great Lakes, the big rivers, the big forests... " "And the Great Wall of China? I heard that on TV." "Well, I didn't look for it, but I guess you can see it. That's what I hear, anyway." "What *is* the Great Wall of China?" "Well, it's... it's a big wall. In China." "_E bella, Papa?_" Nate asked. Sam had enough knowledge of romance languages to understand that the question had been, Is it beautiful, Papa? "Space?" "Mm-hmm." Al nodded and said, very softly, "_Si, e molta bella._" "*I* want to go to space," Nate said. "Maybe you will." Sam left the hall and went downstairs. The sun had set, and the last of the dusk was being driven from the sky by the heavy rain. He didn't turn on the lights. He had always secretly loved dark houses, the way the shadows merged and melted into one another, leaving familiar rooms pleasantly mysterious, almost alive. Dispelling the dark with electricity was always a disappointment, although it was one that, as a reasonable adult, he was usually forced to accept. He wandered to the back of the house, to Ruthie's studio. The light from the moon was somewhat brighter in here, because of the large windows set across the entire back wall. The side walls were lined with canvasses, some blank, some painted. He had not looked at them when he first explored this room. Ruthie, he noticed, was a very talented woman. Many of the paintings were portraits, probably commissioned. These, he assumed, were her bread-and-butter workaday wages, yet they were not commercial sell-outs. He'd seen many portrait artists whose style hovered only slightly above those paint-by-the- number kits that old retired women spent their days working on. Ruthie's work had a kind of inner light, as if she had painted a soul as well as a face. He walked down a row of them. A family, with two children and two parents who looked at each other with frank affection in their eyes. A young woman in a wedding gown. A bar mitzvah boy, wrapped in a prayer shawl. An old couple holding hands. "I love that picture of the Galanters," she said behind him. "I'll be kind of sad when they come pick it up." Sam pointed to the old couple. "This one?" "I haven't painted any others of them." "Well, I... " Sam decided it wasn't a situation that particularly needed salvaging. "It's a great portrait." Ruthie smiled wearily. "Where's Al?" "Upstairs, telling Nate about space." She shook her head. "Nate's been space crazy ever since Al told him about Apollo. They're so much alike... " Her voice wandered off. "Does that bother you?" She looked up slowly, seeming to come out of a daze. "Hmm? Oh, no. It doesn't bother me. It *scares* me sometimes, but it doesn't bother me." "Are you sure?" "Mm-hmm." "*Something's* bothering you." For a minute, he thought she wasn't going to answer. He wasn't even sure she'd heard him. She just stared out the back window at the night, almost hypnotized by the moving shadows of the rain on the glass. Finally, she said, "I didn't go to class tonight, Sid." Sam knew that many things were weighing on her: guilt over the afternoon's transgression, insecurity about her relationship with her son, the nearly unbearable truth that she still loved her ex- husband. I didn't go to class seemed a rather unlikely candidate to explain the look on her face. And yet it was clearly the truth. "Where did you go?" he asked. "I went home." She blinked twice, and her strange mood dissipated immediately. "Well, I'd better go upstairs and kiss Nathan goodnight before his father bores him to sleep." She turned and left. A moment later, Sam heard her going up the stairs. *** She came in with the moon. At first Al wasn't sure whether it was the door opening or the clouds moving aside that flooded Nate's room with soft light; he decided later that they had come together. Ruthie was standing at the door, looking a little the worse for wear after her class, but somehow more natural. Her hair was damp from the rain outside, and most of her makeup had washed away. "He's already asleep?" she whispered. "Mama?" Nate muttered. "I thought he was," Al said. "That's why I turned out the lights." Ruthie sat on the bed beside them. "Kind of late, isn't it, honey?" Nate rubbed his eyes with his knuckle. "I was waiting for you." She kissed his forehead. "I'm glad you did. I miss you when you're in school all day, then I'm gone at night." "How was your class?" Al asked. "Educational," she said. "Sid tells me you guys were talking space again. Don't you ever get tired of that story?" "No," Nate said. "I want to go up there." "I know you do, honey." "Pop says it's really beautiful there." "I always figured it would be." "You think about space, too?" "Yeah, sometimes. You know, your father and I used to talk about space a lot when we were kids together." "Really?" "Really. We'd look up at the stars, and wonder what it would be like to look down from them." She looked across at Al. "Do you remember that, Albert?" "Sure I do. You were the first person I told about wanting to fly. Of course, I think you were the only one who'd have wanted to hear about it." "I wanted to go with you." "I wish you'd been able to, Ru. You'd love to fly." "I should've been born a couple of decades later." "You were born more than late enough," Al said. "I seem to remember you making your birth date a little earlier than it should have been." Ruthie laughed. "Pop taught me the planets," Nate said. "Do you want to hear?" "Sure." "It's Mercury, then Venus, then us. After us is Mars. Then, um... " "Jupiter," Al reminded him. "The biggest planet." Nate smiled at him. "Yeah. Then is it the one with the rings?" "Mm-hmm. Do you remember the name?" "Pluto?" "No. Saturn." "Oh. I forgot. I'm sorry." Ruthie smiled. "You don't have to know that, Nate. I don't think you're going need that until about seventh grade." "But I knew it before." Ruthie hooked one finger under his chin and made him look at her. "It's okay to forget things like that sometimes, honey. Everyone does." "I don't like forgetting." "So do your best to remember," she said. "But don't beat yourself up if you slip once in awhile." "Really?" She crossed her heart with her little finger. "Really." "I didn't mean you had to learn all that tonight," Al said. Nate looked at him, surprised. "I asked you to teach it to me." He turned back to Ruthie. "Mama, can you tell me a story now?" "It's really late, honey." "Please." She brushed his hair back with her fingers, and nestled him snugly into her arm. Al couldn't count the number of times he had seen her down this; he had often come back to the orphanage from one misadventure or another to find her in the younger boys' ward, cuddling one of the little ones who was sick, or having nightmares, or just new and lonely for the family that had left him behind. Al remembered being jealous of them the first few times he'd seen this, not because they were taking Ruthie's time away from him -- there was always a warm body to fill his arms when he wanted one -- but because no one had ever done that for him when he'd been small enough for it to matter. Later, he'd taken to coming down to watch her there when she didn't know, and finally to going down there by himself at night, when the lights were out and the doors were locked to anyone who didn't live on the inside of them. It was Black Magic Walters who had taught him that there were people in the world who cared, but it was Ruthie Minkin who'd taught him that it was okay to be one of them. "What story do you want to hear?" she whispered. "Tell one about a dragon," Nate said. "And a knight with a horse." "Do you want to hear about Bilbo and Smaug?" "Bilbo's not a knight; he's a burglar." "Oh, yeah. I guess there's no horse in there, either." "Gandalf has Shadowfax." "That's true. Do you want to hear something about Gandalf?" Nate nodded enthusiastically. The stories Ruthie made up weren't always (or even usually) in the books she was purportedly drawing them from. She tended to make them up on the spot, to fit whatever mood Nate was in, or whatever lesson she wanted to teach. It was one of the special things they did together, and Al wanted to leave them alone for it; he'd be taking Nate down to the desert soon, and it seemed right to let them have what time was left together. He stood up. "I'm going to get ready for bed myself." He bent over and kissed Nate's head, then, on impulse, Ruthie's. She smiled at him, and touched his face with the back of one finger. "Goodnight, Albert," she said. He took her hand and kissed it. "Good night, fair Lady of Lorien." "'All shall love me and despair,'" she quoted, and laughed softly. Al leaned forward, suddenly wanting -- needing -- to kiss her, but she pushed back into Nate's pillows. "Go to bed, Albert," she said. "I'll see you in the morning." It was only eighty-forty-five, but Al took the hint. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Barbara