Quantum Leap - Knights of the Morningstar - Melanie Rawn (v1) [rtf]

  For QL Fans who, like me, refuse to believe

  that Sam never returned home.

  And for Scott Bakula and Dean Stockwell—

  who made the series so easy on the eyes. . . .

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Although the terms “timeline” and “Quantum Leaping” are pretty much mutually exclusive, a word is necessary for continuity’s sweet sake. This story takes place after “Deliver Us from Evil” and before “Return/Revenge.”

  PROLOGUE

  Nervetingle—musclequiver—skinprickle—lightdaz­zle—synapses fieryhot—

  No, that wasn't possible. Brainburn was not a hazard of his job.

  But sometimes it sure felt like it.

  As always, he tried to fix a memory in his mind. A single, simple thing: person, place, event, scent, touch. . . . Not that it ever did any good. People he'd helped, people he'd grown to care about, things he'd learned or done or prevented from happening—his­tory as it had been and would not now be—in that familiar split instant of nothingness he sensed it all slip away.

  He let it go.

  And, for a fragment of Time, was himself. Dis­placed from one moment in the Past, suspended inside a single blink of the Present, he was himself again: whole and intact.

  Samuel John Beckett. Born August 8, 1953, Elk Ridge, Indiana. Son of John Barrett and Thelma Katherine (nee Taylor) Beckett. Younger brother of

  Thomas Edward, older brother of Katherine Louisa. Their faces before him, their voices resonating in his heart, brought memories of the tall green corn and the barn's warm redolence on cold January morn­ings.

  He remembered.

  He remembered the morning—he couldn't have been more than two—when Mom said Tom would be leaving for the day, gone at some place called secondgrade—Now don't take on so Sam it's all right just like Dad leaves every day (for another . place called backforty) and he always comes home doesn't he? But he cried anyway, scared that Tom wouldn't come home.

  He remembered another day when it snowed so much Tom couldn't go to secondgrade and Dad couldn't go to backforty, and how Tom got mad and then big-eyed when he caught Sam with the books Grandma Nettie sent for Christmas. A game of "What's That Word" quickly became "How Long Have You Been Reading" and then "Hey Mom Guess What." For a while everybody made kind of a big deal that he was only two and a half, but then things settled down and Grandma Nettie started sending him books, too.

  He remembered a night in spring when thunder never stopped and lightning split the sky open and rain lashed the house all night long, and in the hall Dad said Damn it worst storm in a month of Sundays the road's flooded where's the doctor, and Tom came into his room and said Don't worry Sam it's just thunder Mom's gonna be fine the doctor will

  come soon. The doctor did come, and so did the baby sister.

  He remembered school: too smart for his own good, too shy for his own comfort. Skipping half a grade, then another, and suddenly too short for his own school yard safety (but there'd been only the one fight; Tom had made sure of that).

  By high school he'd grown tall, and awkward with it. Tom suggested sports, and because Tom had played basketball so did he, training too-long legs and arms into submission (if not grace) on the court. Still too smart and too shy, but the girls began to look interested instead of scornful. He trained his treacherous voice, too, in the choir, and his hands at guitar and piano—he remembered her glorious smile as he played Chopin from memory, having seen the pages only once—

  How much he could recall with that phenomenal photographic memory of his! And how it mocked him now.

  He kept remembering while he still could, habitu­ally greedy for information, knowing its play through his mind would not last.

  College: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, B.S. and M.S. and Ph.D. in Physics so fast—and the other campuses, the other degrees, the M.D. from . . . from . . .

  He couldn't remember.

  No, not yet—please!

  Stanford? Harvard? Johns Hopkins? UCLA? Where?

  The memories were clouding now. So soon. Too soon.

  School and study and exams and labs; papers and theses and doctoral dissertations—

  Project Star Bright—

  The Nobel prize—

  There was more to him, there had to be. The sum of his life couldn't be nothing but an academ­ic vita.

  He began again (Samuel John Beckett, born August 8, 1953—) but the nearer Past was upon him now, demanding his mind. The Past he'd lived twice now, once for himself and once in bits and pieces of other people's lives.

  He existed in a fragment of his own Time, his own identity. And both were changing as the changes he'd made changed him. Memories shifted as Time did its work on them, reflecting his work. The world swirled around him, a bright blue-white vortex centered on his stunned confusion—had he truly done so much? What he remembered spun and merged with what he also remembered: glimpses and impressions, enig­matically twinned, played out all around him. Sepa­rate truths and differing realities, superimposed one on the other, two images of each melding into a blur and then a resolution—

  —a slim, dark-haired woman in a blood-spattered pink suit

  —a girl of ten or twelve whose wise, beautiful eyes reminded him of Katie (but was there something of him in her face, too?)

  —a proud old lady kneeling before her husband's grave

  —another little girl, blaming herself for not being the son her grieving parents had lost

  —a lovely young woman in the nurse's whites of the U.S. Navy, cradling a bouquet of calla lilies in her arms

  —an old man with falcon's eyes, determined to die on the land of his ancestors

  His mind tried to catalog them, make sense and order. His heart cried out to know, to be certain that what had happened was right, that the changes had been for the better.

  Peace, Dr. Beckett. All is as it should be.

  The bright whirlwind steadied and his questions stilled. All except one. If everything was as it was supposed to be, then—

  Not yet. Home is waiting for you. But not yet.

  Rebellion flared. WHEN? he cried silently.

  There was no answer. There never was. Perhaps there never would be.

  His life slipped away from him then, the rainbow dance of memories engulfed in a blaze of purest light. All the faces, the names, the feelings, the deeds— even his own name—vanished.

  He let it go.

  And, as always, he hung on to one word. Mantra, focus, summation of all that was important to him— of all that he truly was.

  Home. ...

  Time and reality coalesced again. His body and brain stopped ringing.

  And he felt his right arm sag with the weight of something heavy gripped in his fingers. He blinked, and shifted his shoulders, and lifted his hand.

  The arm wore gleaming chain mail. The hand

  wore a battered leather gauntlet. The fingers held a long, shining sword.

  He heard a thunk that could have been his jaw dropping. He looked down. From its place propped between his elbow and hip, a silvery helmet sport­ing a green plume had fallen to the ground.

  The sword sank again to his side. Disappointment (not home, not by a long shot) was swept away in a flash flood of intense curiosity and equally intense confusion. When? Where? Who? Why? Strongest of all was the urgent need to do and say the right things—or at least to avoid the wrong things until those four essential questions were answered.

  When was usually the toughest, so he deferred it. (Besides, he didn't much like the implications of that chain
mail.) Where was usually the easiest; all he need do was look. So he did.

  And gulped.

  All around him was a sylvan glade awash in sum­mer sunshine and medieval splendor. Multicolored pennants, some plain and some bearing coat of arms, fluttered in a warm breeze. Jugglers in court-jester outfits and minstrels in motley, ladies fair in flowing garb, roving merchants hawking their wares, squires carrying swords and shields, knights in chain mail— the whole woodland scene positively reeked chivalric panoply circa 1450 or so. The only thing missing was a castle atop a hill.

  He flinched as a roar sounded from somewhere beyond the screening trees. Cheers and applause— at least he hadn't Leaped into the middle of a bat­tle, he thought with relief, and instantly felt like a fool. Did any of these people look worried? They

  were having a great time—all except for the guy crouched over there cranking a rotisserie, on which what looked like an entire cow revolved slowly over the fire pit.

  The sensation of idiocy increased as he heard sev­eral metallic crashes behind him. Turning, he beheld a hewn-log sawhorse against which shields, swords, and lances had been propped until his startled reac­tion to the cheers had knocked them over.

  He busied himself picking them up. They clat­tered again when someone yelled, "Sir Percival? Sir Percival of York!"

  Sam had the uncanny—and sinking—feeling that Sir Percival was none other than him.

  A herald advanced on Sam. A herald he could only be: rolled-up scrolls protruded like wayward feathers from his purple tunic, a brass hunting horn dangled from his belt, and a golden crown badge of royal service was stitched on his velvet-covered chest.

  "Sir Percival! You joust next against Lord Ran­nulf." The herald pointed.

  Nearby, a knight warmed up his fighting muscles by taking swipes at the air with his sword. Lord Rannulf was six feet four inches and 225 pounds of solid sinew in glinting chain mail. Conan the Antiquarian. He looked able to crush skulls single-handedly.

  A mighty swing of the blade turned him in Sam's direction. Their gazes met. His lordship grinned.

  All Sam could manage was a feeble, "Oh, boy."

  CHAPTER

  ONE

  You know, I was starting to think I'd done it all. Well, most of it, anyway. I could remember being a lounge singer, a Mafia hitman, a Southern lawyer, a talk-show host, a cop—several times, I think—and I've even been pregnant. Sort of.

  But never, ever, had I Leaped into a fifteenth cen­tury chain-link mosquito net.

  Now, it couldn't be the real fifteenth century. I mean, I can only Leap within my own lifetime, right?

  Boy, do I hope I can only Leap within my own lifetime. Because this sure looks like the fifteenth century.

  "Sir Percival?" the herald said. "You're ready for the joust?"

  "Uh—" With that Matterhorn of medieval muscu­lature? Sam gulped again. "I, uh—"

  Unperturbed by ineloquent monosyllables—which probably meant "Sir Percival" was usually as tongue-tied as Sam was right now—the herald nodded and darted away, calling for somebody named Lord Godwyn. Sam dragged his gaze from the hulking

  Lord Rannulf and crouched to pick up his plumed helmet.

  Three feet away there suddenly appeared a pair of dainty hand-stitched leather slippers. Sam straight­ened slowly. Above the slippers was a hint of slim ankles in yellow hose. The rest of both legs was hidden by a wide red skirt. This narrowed to an intricately tooled leather belt from which hung a velvet drawstring purse and a sheathed dagger with a bright green stone in the hilt. Above all this was a yellow laced bodice—out of which generous portions of the lady's anatomy were in imminent danger of spilling.

  Sam finally met the girl's eyes: leaf-green below curling brown hair topped by a perky white cap. She was smiling at him. One of the long-lashed eyes winked.

  "Ho, Sir Knight! A bracing cup before your joust?" She held out a lidded pewter stein of heroic pro­portions—say, half a gallon or so. Her accent, Sam noted absently, was Irish. More or less.

  Juggling sword and helm, he ended by dropping both. Again. Either he'd reverted to his adolescent clumsiness around pretty girls, or Sir Percival was not only inarticulate but so seriously klutzy that it dominated the Leap. And if the latter were the case, he'd be in even worse trouble against Lord Rannulf.

  Worse? The sword weighed a ton and he didn't have a clue how to use it. Worse did not apply.

  Aware that the girl expected an answer, he mum­bled, "Uh—no, no thanks—"

  "It's a clear head ye'll be wantin', then? For mesel', Sir Knight, I'd take a good long swig first, to dull

  the pain!" She gestured to Lord Rannulf, who was still slicing up the inoffensive breeze. "Well, here's to hopin' ye'll be alive to drink it after! He looks in fine fettle this tourney morn!"

  Didn't he just. Sam hid a wince, picturing his neck in the pathway of three feet of gleaming steel. The image thus evoked was not comforting.

  With another wink, the girl sauntered off. Sam collected sword and helmet once more from the grass. As he turned, the rack of polished shields and other items of medieval mayhem caught the sunlight—and his convexity-warped reflection.

  Sir Percival was about Sam's own height and at least twenty pounds skinnier. A thirtysomething scholarly type, he looked as if he should be wear­ing a pocket protector, not chain mail. His hairline was receding a trifle (maybe that was the effect of the shield's curvature, but Sam doubted it) into nondescript mousy waves that needed a trim, and the dominant feature of his long-jawed face was a nose only a rhino might envy. Saving Sir Percy from terminal nerdship were his remarkably fine eyes, an unusual shade of hazel sparked with green and gold, shaded by thick, blunt lashes.

  Still, he was hardly the image of the daring knight-errant.

  A loud whoosh nearby spun Sam around. Al had arrived—half in and half out of a tree trunk.

  "About time you got here," Sam hissed. Then he looked again. "What in the name of Giorgio Armani have you got on?"

  Rather than the dress whites and fruit salad of a Rear Admiral, United States Navy, Alberto Ernesto

  Giovanni-Battista Calavicci wore a suit whose col­ors were strongly reminiscent of the fruit salad crowning Carmen Miranda. Lemon satin trousers. Concord grape shirt. Tangerine jacket with lime lapels. Raspberry tie. Orange loafers.

  Sam shook his head in honest amazement. The man had no shame. And no taste, either.

  Al was paying him not the slightest heed. Gleam­ing brown eyes round as saucers, he was surveying the scene with an expression of utter bliss. Even the smoke from his cigar seemed to curl with particu­lar glee.

  Sam retreated behind the oak as a pair of jug­glers passed by, jingling with bells and dressed in green and orange checks that made Al look almost conservative.

  "Al? Where—no, when am I? Al!"

  "Mmm?"

  "Damn it, get out of that tree and talk to me!"

  "What? Oh." He obligingly stepped forward. Sam almost wished he'd stayed in the tree—the left sleeve of the tangerine jacket ended in a banana-colored cuff.

  "You're at a medieval tournament, of course. Sam, isn't this incredible? Like a book of fairy tales come to life!" He was eating this up with a spoon. Anoth­er minute and he'd start to declaim Idylls of the King.

  "A medieval—? I can't Leap centuries." He felt a twinge of panic. "Tell me I can't Leap centuries—"

  Still not listening. "Y'know, when I was a kid, my buddies and I were all the knights of the Round Table. Gawain, Galahad, Lancelot. . . . These kids

  with their computer games, they miss all the real fun. We used to lay siege to fortresses—well, really the attic at the orphanage, but with a little imagi­nation it was pretty impressive. There were running sword fights on the stairs, dragons to slay in the garage, fair maidens to be rescued from fiendish wizards—"

  Right on cue, the green-eyed wench sashayed by again, toasting Sam with the pewter mug. Al leered wistfully.

  "Al." Sam waved the sword in his part
ner's face. Had Al not been a hologram, he would have needed corrective rhinoplasty. "Talk to me. Tell me what's going on."

  The girl was followed by the herald. "Sir Percival of York, to joust against Lord Rannulf of the Franks!"

  After a fulminating glare for Al—who didn't notice, still enchanted by this evocation of child­hood fantasies—Sam stepped from behind the tree. He trudged along behind the herald to a fenced clearing the size of a soccer field. At one end was a raised dais flanked by tiered benches, overhung with a purple canvas canopy against the sun. At least a hundred men, women, and children in lavish medieval dress thronged the seats around two large chairs, on which sat a crowned cou­ple. Lord Rannulf was in the process of bow­ing to them. Managing a sickly smile, Sam fol­lowed suit.

  The herald cleared his throat importantly. "If it please Your Majesties, the joust of knightly skill between Lord Rannulf of the Franks and Sir Percival of York will now commence!"

  Knightly skill? Sam thought wildly. Does that mean he's not gonna try to skewer me?

  The queen—a charming, sweet-faced Chinese lady of about forty wearing a purple gown and a silver circlet to hold her wimple in place—leaned for­ward. "Good fortune to you both, my lord, Sir Knight."

  "I thank Your Majesty," said Lord Rannulf.

  Feeling that some equally courtly response was called for, Sam added, "Your Majesty is most gra­cious."

  The royal couple beamed. The crowd applauded. The herald backed off. And Sam prepared himself for a walloping.

  But Lord Rannulf's attention was now directed at a wimpled and dimpled damsel seated on a bench near the queen. The lady was perhaps thirty, pleas­antly rounded, and very pretty in a girl-next-manor sort of way. Blond curls escaped the wimple to wisp her forehead above blue eyes and soft cheeks that blushed a few shades darker than her helpless silk­en flutter of a petal-pink gown.

  Lord Rannulf swept her a low bow. "I beg a token, sweet lady, to carry me through to victory."

  The lady looked at Sam.

  Significantly.