Chapter 34
In his quarters, through the haze of his siesta, Al became acutely aware of Ziggy’s voice calling his name. Groaning, he buried his head into his pillow as his body attempted to rebel against being awake.
“What is it, Ziggy?” he muttered, lifting his head momentarily to check his watch. “This better be good. I’ve only been here an hour.”
“Apologies for interrupting your human need for intermittent unconsciousness, Admiral,” Ziggy said in a mocking tone, “but I feel it my duty to relay to you that the Doctors Beckett are currently moving apart from one another at a speed of sixty-five miles per hour.”
Al raised an eyebrow in surprise. Had Sam B had a change of heart? Was he actually going to face up to his deployment?
“Well, that’s good news,” he said to the disembodied voice of the parallel hybrid computer. “Right? You didn’t need to wake me for that.” He rolled over, and closed his eyes again. “Good night, Zigs.”
“Admiral…” Ziggy persisted.
“What, dammit?”
“The Doctor Beckett you’ve designated the alphabetical character ‘A’ seems to be the one moving, and has just crossed the state line into California. I predict with an 82.6 percent probability that when Robert Deleon is deployed to Vietnam, it will actually be Richard Deleon in disguise.”
Al snapped fully awake at this. “Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me.”
“Admiral Calavicci, I would never,” Ziggy asserted. “Whose brainwaves shall I notify Gooshie to initialise the Imaging Chamber to target?”
“Go with Sam A,” Al said as he jumped out of the bed, rubbing his eyes and hurrying for the door. “But keep it ready to switch at a moment’s notice, you got that?”
“As you wish, Admiral.”
As Al stumbled out of the elevator to the Control Room floor, he straightened his creased yellow suit jacket and grabbed his handlink from the console, as Donna and Gooshie watched on.
“I think Goody-Two-Shoes Sam is on his way to war,” he told them grimly. “And he doesn’t have the right parts of Sam to pull it off. I hope I’m not too late to talk him out of it.”
Donna gave him a doe-eyed look that told him this leap had really affected her.
“Make sure my husband stays alive,” she told him quietly. “Both of them.”
Al nodded firmly. “That’s my job, Donna.” He gave her shoulder a pat before hurrying to the Imaging Chamber.
As he stepped inside, he found himself rapidly moving along a desert road, keeping pace with the white Chevy. Using the handlink, he lowered himself to Sam’s eye level, and leaned in the passenger’s side window.
“Morning, Sam. So, uh… where are we goin’?” he said in a deceptively casual tone.
Sam A shot him a quick glance, before returning his gaze to the road ahead.
“San Diego,” he said cheerfully.
Al rolled a cigar between his fingers, trying to stay cool. “How come…?”
Sam’s fingers drummed on the steering wheel. “Saving Bobby’s reputation, helping out Sam B. Hopefully saving the marriage too.” His expression turned maudlin, and he added: “I just wish I had time to save the baby. That was my mistake—expecting Sam B to manage all of that. I should have known he’d mess up.” He sighed, blinking back tears. “So I’m doing what I can to make up for that grievous error.”
“You mean you’re gonna pretend to be Bobby and go to war in his place.”
“Bingo,” Sam A said, meeting Al’s eye. “You understand, right? I have to do this.”
Al’s face turned stony as he decided to drop the casual act. “Sam, listen to me. This is nutso. You can’t go to war!”
“Sure I can,” Sam countered. “I’m not afraid.”
“I don’t care how afraid you’re not!” Al cried. “You’re a damn pussycat! You couldn’t even take down a few hippies yesterday. What makes you think you can go up against seasoned soldiers, huh?”
A moment passed as Sam played with the radio, eventually landing on ‘He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother’. Al shivered at the choice. These kinds of songs brought him right back to his worst times.
“Okay. I admit I’m more of a diplomat than a soldier,” Sam finally said, “But I’ve made up my mind, Al. Bobby doesn’t deserve to have his life ruined just because of Sam Beckett’s anxiety personified. So let me go to Vietnam, and when that ambush comes, you just tell me how to get out of it alive, and then we’ll be square.” He smiled at Al. “Trust me. I know I made mistakes before, but as long as you’re by my side, I’ll be okay. I know it. You and me are unstoppable as a team.”
That statement stirred up guilt in Al, knowing if he’d just been around the commune more, he might have caught what was going on with Danny.
“Sam, what if getting out of the ambush requires hurting people? You think you can pull it off?”
Sam’s mouth drew into a straight line. “I’ve got no other choice.”
“There’s no talking you out of this, is there?” asked Al, rubbing his forehead.
Sam flashed him a grin. “Nope.”
Al nodded, defeated. “Gooshie, switch the feed to Sam B.”
He punched a button on the handlink, and vanished from the car. A second later, he found himself standing in a tepee. Sam B had already made it back to the commune?
And as he gained his bearings, he realised what was happening at his feet, among tie-dyed bedsheets.
“Holy mackerel…” Al said under his breath, looking down at Sam B making out with a woman—the one that was sweet on Richie—while the pigtailed Alicia appeared to be simultaneously giving him a hickey. “Sam?! Well jeez, guess you had the libido after all.”
Sam caught his friend’s eye, pulling himself away from the women. “Sorry ladies, the mothership calls,” he said, leaving them to kiss one another. Al couldn’t help but watch them go at it, even after Sam had left the tepee. A moment later, Sam peeked back past the flaps with a raised eyebrow, giving Al an expectant look.
“Oh, right…” Al said, shaking his head, and passing to the other side of the canvas wall.
“For what it’s worth, they came on to me,” Sam B said, wiping at his mouth.
“I don’t doubt it,” Al said. But his Calavicci leer faded as the reality of the situation once again impressed itself on him. “Anyway, you gotta go. Sam A’s gonna take Bobby’s place in the military—you have to stop him! I tried to talk him out of it, but he’s set on going. There’s no time to waste, Sam!”
Sam B shrugged. “Let him be an idiot that gets himself shot, I say. What’s it matter to me now? As you can see, I’m quite comfortable here, even though I’ve only been here twenty minutes.” He chuckled, gesturing towards the dome. “They love me here, Al. You know they already voted to expel Danny and his minions from the commune? Just because they all thought it was some kind of an extraterrestrial miracle that I showed up when I did.”
Al groaned. Now he had to try and convince Sam B?
He queried Ziggy through the handlink, trying to find an effective method of getting through to this Sam. It came back with a statistic that he thought might have been an effective motivator, and so he went for it.
“Sam, do you know what will happen to you if Sam A dies?”
Sam shook his head. “No… what?”
“Because you’re both the same person, Ziggy says there’s a ninety-eight percent chance you’ll die too!”
Sam B’s mouth fell open. “Really? Let me see that.” He moved to the other side of Al, peering down at the handlink, which showed exactly what he had said, except that it was 98.3% rather than an even 98.
“Ah, shit.”
Sam drew open the flaps of the tepee, revealing the girls running their hands over one another sensually, slowly pulling their clothes down. Al could have watched that all day, but sadly it was not to be.
“Ladies…” Sam said, “sorry to, um, break this up, but I need a car. Right now. I gotta go chase down—um—Al, back to San Diego.”
Alicia and the other girl looked at one another, then to Sam.
“Well, we don’t have our own cars,” Alicia said.
“But I do have a spare key for the bus,” added Richie’s girlfriend brightly.
“That’ll do.”
Al had never been so happy to see a three-way come to an unsatisfying conclusion.