Chapter 41
“So lemme get this straight,” Tom said, scratching at his five o’clock shadow. “You were bouncing in time like some kind of pinball, and you had no idea if you were ever gonna get home, or even see your own face in the mirror?”
Sam swallowed the bite he had been chewing of his turkey sandwich. “There was more to it than that,” he said. “I wasn’t leaping randomly. Every time, I had a… what do they call it in the military? A mission, right?”
“But no mission briefing…?”
Sam shrugged. “At first, my AI computer Ziggy could make predictions about my goal, and Al relayed them to me. Of course, a few years back they lost me and I had to work it all out on my own. But it wasn’t as difficult as you might think. I got pretty good at intuiting what I had to do.”
He stuffed the rest of his sandwich into his mouth hungrily, watching the cogs in Tom’s mind slowly turn.
On the other side of the table, Donna nibbled at her own sandwich, meeting Sam’s eye. “I guess it’s a lot to take in,” she said quietly.
Sam wondered if that was her way of telling him to change the subject and give Tom some time to come to terms with the information already dumped on him.
Fair.
But, he was still glad he’d finally told one of his family. They all deserved the truth. And at least now, with Tom knowing, if he did go back to leaping, his brother would be able to relate to them what happened to him.
The question of how to explain Sammy Jo and Addison, though, still eluded him. But they were family. He’d have to bring it up. Right? He didn’t want to be like that dirtbag bigamist he’d once leaped into, hiding two separate families from one another. Besides it being reprehensible, he knew from experience just how exhausting that could get.
“So where’s Calavicci now?” Tom asked, stabbing at some lettuce with a fork.
“He’s at home with his wife,” Sam said, smiling with the knowledge that Beth was yet another one of his successes. “It’s not far from here. He had dinner here with us last night.”
“You said he relayed you info from the future? How?”
Sam dabbed at his mouth with a napkin. “Subatomic agitation of carbon quarks tuned to the mesons of my optic and otic neurons.”
With a blank expression, Tom’s eyebrow raised ever-so-slightly. “Okay, brainiac, now do English.”
“He showed up as a hologram projected to my space-time coordinates in a way that only I could see or hear. For the most part.”
“Huh,” Tom said thoughtfully. “So he was the only guy from your own time you could talk to the whole time?”
Sam nodded. “Partner, mentor, friend. He was all I had.”
“And so when they couldn’t find you… you had nobody?”
Sam looked to Donna. “Not entirely.”
“About a year ago, Sam opened a secure line of communication with me from one of his leaps close to the present day,” she said. “Of course, he didn’t really get to use it except for when it was first constructed.”
Sam reached across the table, taking her hand. “It was worth it all the same. I had a lot to get off my chest.”
The two shared a moment, before being interrupted by the doorbell.
Again?
Wondering who it was this time, he headed out to the entrance and opened the door. Janis’s face peered back at him.
“Heya Sam, hope we’re not interrupting—have you got a first aid kit?” Ben blurted out in one breath, holding up a hand with a bloody tissue stuck to it. “You’re a doctor, right?”
A startled Sam took a hold of his hand, looking with concern at the raw wound underneath. Had the protest turned violent? “Uh, I’ll have to ask D—”
“Also, we need your input on the leap, Gramps,” Addison added cheerfully, stepping up to the doorway from the side. “We hit a dead end, and then Ben got a psycho-cinnamon and it was a total mess.”
Sam squinted. “Psycho-cinnamon?”
“What leap…?” came Donna’s sharp voice from behind Sam. “What’s going on, Sam…?”
“Uh, did she just call you ‘Gramps?’” another baffled voice chimed in.
“Oh boy,” Sam said with a wince, turning to see both Donna and Tom looking at him with matching puzzled expressions. “I think the cat’s out of the bag, Ben.”
* * *
Once again, Tom Beckett was dazed after another round of explanations, staring into the middle distance with a furrowed brow.
Donna was frowning at Sam as he double-checked the bandage he’d applied to Ben’s hand. Sam finally met her eye, offering her a sheepish smile.
“Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t want to lie to you, but—”
“It was my fault,” Ben said. “I asked him to keep quiet. And Ziggy said to.”
Donna sighed and let her chin rest in her hands. “It’s alright. I understand. But we all could have been helping, you know. For once, everyone around you is on your side. You should make the most of it.”
“She’s right, you know,” Sam said. “Ziggy probably gave that order so she’d have fewer variables to deal with, but I think maybe it’s best everyone knows.”
He turned to his brother. “Tom… you, uh, doin’ okay there? I know this is a lot…”
Tom licked his lips. “You’re sure I’m not being punk’d?”
“That’s totally what I thought when they told me all this!” Addison piped up. “But they showed me the facility and everything this morning. Oh, and I’ve seen the hologram.” She leaned in, grinning. “It’s me from the future. Crazy, right?”
Tom scrubbed a hand over his face, and looked at her. “And what’s your story, anyway? Why do you call Sam…”
“Gramps?” Addison finished, looking to Sam with a smirk. “I guess that makes you—what, my Great Uncle?”
Tom’s eyes snapped to Sam. “Sam, what the hell?”
“Uh, well, yes, she’s… she’s my granddaughter. And I’d rather not talk about how that, um, happened.”
“Oh, I’m sure you’ve had the birds and bees talk, Uncle Tom,” Addison added, clearly enjoying this.
“How… how old is your mother…?” Tom asked her slowly, eyes widening.
“Thirty-six.”
As Tom’s eyes bored into him, Sam sank into his chair, wishing the ground would open and swallow him.
Donna loudly cleared her throat. “So, Ben. What’s this problem with the leap you’re having?”
Ben, apparently just as happy to change the topic, perked up. “Uh yeah. Doesn’t look as though the principal is gonna budge on keeping Janis and Kat out of prom. Too scared of bad publicity. CAP is threatening to call up the national media. There’s nothing I, as a teenager, can really do to change his mind. Especially when Janis keeps getting all… you know, hormonal on me. I nearly lost it earlier.”
As Sam puzzled out Ben’s predicament, he packed up the first aid kit and returned it to its place in the kitchen drawer.
If a teen couldn’t make a difference, then what about her father?
“Maybe we should ask Al to go down there and talk to the guy,” he said as he returned to the table. “He probably has the best chance to change the guy’s mind. When he puts on his Navy whites, he has a way of demanding respect, you know?”
Ben nodded thoughtfully. “Worth a shot.”
“We’d better tell him the truth,” Sam added. “About you.”
Ben winced. “Okay… that’s gonna be an awkward conversation for the both of us, huh?”
“Back when I first leaped,” Sam said thoughtfully, “when Al walked into the Imaging Chamber, he didn’t see me; he saw the person I saw in the mirror. Then, in the Waiting Room, he saw what looked like me, except it was somebody else. It became routine for him. So I’m sure he’ll be able to cope with his daughter not being Janis for a few days.”
“Yeah, well, maybe you’d better call him all the same.”
Sam chuckled, heading for the phone on the kitchen wall. “Alright.”
Al was on the speed dial, so he pressed it and waited, leaning against the kitchen counter.
As the other end of the phone rang, he eyed Tom, who looked quite pale, and hoped he hadn’t unloaded too much too fast on him. He’d already been breathless just to see Sam after all these years, and now he just looked like he was experiencing something tantamount to a computer crash in his head. It certainly wasn’t what he’d expected the explanation of Sam’s disappearance to be. Maybe he should have just indulged his brother’s theory about a moon base, he thought.
But that would have been a lie.
“’Lo?” came Al’s voice on the line.
“Hey buddy,” Sam said brightly. “Listen, what would you think if I asked you to help me with a leap? You know, for old time’s sake?”
“A leap? What are ya talkin’ about, Sam?”
“Well, uh, the thing is…” Sam swallowed. “You remember I was telling you about Ben?”
“Ben’s here? That’s great! Who’d he leap into?”
“Uh, Janis.”
“…Oh boy.”