The characters in this story belong to Paramount and whoever
does Quantum Leap, not to me.  Blah blah blah lawyers coming
to get me, aha aha blah blah.  In case you were wondering, this
is a crossover between Star Trek Voyager, Q, and Quantum
Leap, and was written entirely as an excuse for me to get Al
and Q to meet.


Homeward Q by Mercutio (mercutio@europa.com)

Sam was trying to cure cancer and save a baby from a burning
building, while simultaneously keeping the lovely young ingenue
from trying to kiss him.

But it was no use.  Even as he emerged from the smoldering
building, baby clasped in his manly arms, the cure for cancer
neatly written down on a piece of paper folded into his back
pocket, she ran up, threw her arms around him and kissed him.

As her lips touched his, Sam leaped.

He opened his eyes to find himself standing inside a futuristic
ship's helm, something so advanced, it must be a movie set. 
Everyone was staring at him.  

"Q!  Get off my ship!"

Having an advanced mind, and a quick grasp of details, Sam
immediately realized he was floating three feet in the air.  As
soon as he realized that, he crashed to the ground, head hitting
the floor, much to the amusement of everyone around him.

"Oh, boy," Sam said, as he slipped into unconsciousness.

****

[Stirring martial music begins.  Voiceover provided by Ziggy.]

These are the voyages of Samuel Beckett, who stepped into the
Quantum Leap accelerator and was instantly transported to the
Delta Quadrant.

[Computer graphic of little manta ray ship gliding through
space, effortlessly banking around a figure of a man being
accelerated.]

Our continuing mission, to seek out new life, to boldly find the
leap home.

****

Al stepped out of the door, cigar in his mouth, banging the
handlink, which seemed be having its own problems about
operating this far into the future.

Sam, sitting on a table in Sickbay, was entirely happy to see
him.  "Al!  What's going on?"

The holo-doctor looked over at him, an expression of annoyance
on his face.  "You're omnipotent, and incapable of having
amnesia.  Therefore, you must be doing it only to waste my
time, which I do not appreciate.  If you would shut me off,
which would be a kindness far beyond your abilities, since then
at least I wouldn't have to listen to your drivel."

Al looked over at the doctor.  "Who stuck a burr up his butt?"

Sam ignored Al, looking at the doctor.  "How do I turn you
off?  I don't understand."

The doctor rolled his eyes.  "Omniscient, hah!  You say,
'Computer, end program.'"

Experimentally, Sam tried it.  "Computer, end program."  The
doctor vanished, and Al looked over at Sam with an expression
on his face of 'Don't try that on me, buster'.

"What am I doing here, Al?  And who am I?  This can't be
something from my own lifetime."

Al looked at the handlink.  "You wouldn't believe the guy
we've got in the Waiting Room, Sam.  He's loonier than the
looniest nutcase we've ever had.  Although he *is* a snappy
dresser."

"Al..." Sam said, warning Al with his tone that he was at the
end of his patience.

"If you want to believe the nutcase, you're a god."

Sam rubbed his temples, tiredly.  "Oh, boy."

Captain Kathryn Janeway came striding through the door,
stopping dead as she took in the sight of Q sitting on a table in
Sickbay, talking to himself.  What was going on?  

Janeway ignored the apparent discongruity, and took a seat
opposite him, leaning forward earnestly, hands clasped together. 
"Q, I don't know what you want with us here, but I ask of you,
whatever it is, please send us home."

Sam stared back at her, struggling not to glance at Al.  "Why
would you want me to send you home?"

Her eyes got, if anything, more of a puppy dog look in them. 
"I know you have the power to send us home.  Q, we'll play
your games, whatever they are, but please, we do want to go
home."

"Don't we all?" Sam said softly.

"Then you will?" Janeway said, a expression of hope dawning
in her face.

"Sam..." Al said warningly.  "She's good-looking, I admit, but
now isn't the time to fall for women in uniform.  You don't
have the power to do what she wants."

"I know," Sam said to Al, before addressing the captain.  "I
can't do that."

Her face fell.  "Then I ask that you state your business with this
ship.  We are far from home, and while we have nothing but
time, our plight is too serious for games."

"Business?"

Janeway stood up.  "I'm not going to play games with you, Q. 
I can't get rid of you, and I can't do anything to you, but I can
refuse to take part.  You have the run of the ship, because I
can't stop you, but that doesn't mean anyone will cooperate with
your sordid amusements."

She turned and left the room, leaving Sam and Al behind her.

Al pursed his lips and whistled.  "She is *mad* at you, Sam.  I
wouldn't want to have that lady angry with me. "

Sam turned on Al.  "Just tell me what I'm here to do."

Al looked at his handlink.  "Ziggy doesn't have any data on this
time period.  All we have to go on is what the captain told you,
what this Q is telling us, and ship's gossip."

"You've been roaming the halls, listening in on conversations?"

Al smirked.  "You can learn a lot that way."  He looked back at
the link.  "Ziggy says there's a 65% chance you're here to send
these people home, a 10% chance you're here to save the
universe from a threat or threats unknown, and a 2% chance
that you're here to fall into bed with a Commander Chakotay
and that feisty balding engineer, B'Elanna Torres."

Sam stared levelly back at Al.  "You can't be serious."

Al shrugged.  "That's all we have to go on.  This isn't the
twentieth century, you know."

"Oh, boy."

****

Q opened his eyes.  One minute he had been about to play a
grand joke on the stranded crew of the NCC Gilligan's Island,
and the next, he was *waking up* here, in some barbaric
experimental laboratory.

The concept of waking up was what had Q spooked.  He didn't
sleep, so there was no need for him to wake up.  The only other
time he had was when he'd been, ever so briefly, mortal. 
Waking up implied all sorts of nasty things about his current
situation.

He looked down at himself.  He was wearing something ugly, in
an unflattering white.  How colorless.  With a small twist of his
powers, he turned it to the wine red color he preferred.  Or
tried to.  Nothing happened.  He was, once again, powerless.

He looked up, raising his head to the ceiling.  "Q!!"

A woman trotted through the door, and looked at him.  "He's
awake," she said to someone unseen.  "Notify the admiral."

*Admiral?*, Q thought to himself.  Was Picard an admiral
now?  He was sadly out-of-date on the little events of mortal
lives which they found so engrossing.

After a few minutes, a short, dapper man, dressed in nothing a
Starfleet admiral would ever consider wearing, came through the
door.  

"Who are you?" they asked simultaneously.  

Al gestured to Q.  "I asked you first."

"I'm Q.  Now that your tiny little brain has no doubt been
enlightened by this information, what am I doing here?"

Normally, they didn't give out a lot, or any, information to the
various people who inhabited Sam's body.  But this was an
unusual case, and Al needed the person sitting on that table to
be as cooperative as possible.  "Watch it with the tiny little
brain comments.  I'm Admiral Al Calavicci.  And you've been
Leaped into by one of our scientists."

Q narrowed his eyes.  "I've been possessed?  Telepathically
invaded?"

Al shook his head.  "He's got your body, and you've got his."

Q looked down again at the body he wore.  He went over to the
one-way glass and looked into it, studying his reflection.  "Not
one I would have chosen, but I suppose it'll do.  The clothes
have *got* to go though."

Al tilted his head.  "You don't like those?"

Q looked over at Al, surveying his lemon tie and lime jacket
with forest green velvet lapels.  "You're obviously a man of
taste and distinction.  Would you wear this?"

Al grinned at him.  "Not in this life."

"Exactly."

For a moment, Al studied Q.  He needed information from this
joker desperately.  But he sensed that Q would not be an easy
person to get information from.  Usually, the people arriving in
the Waiting Room were disoriented, frightened, and sometimes
even peeing their pants.  This one was cool as a Georgia
sunrise.  Unusual methods were clearly called for.

"C'mon, let me show you something."

Minutes later, in his quarters, Al knew he'd found the right
motivator.  Q was rummaging through the contents of Al's
wardrobe with great delight.  "This is priceless!"

"Glad you think so."

"And this..." Q pulled out Al's Navy uniform, carefully
wrapped in plastic, but still hanging there.  "I don't think the
color does anything for you."

"My feelings exactly."

Q pulled out a handful of ties, and started going through them. 
"You said your scientist is in my body."

"That's right."

Q held up the tie to his chin and looked critically at it in the
mirror.  "He probably won't be able to use my powers.  I
wouldn't even be surprised if the captain has him in the brig by
now."

"He's in Sickbay."

"Really?" Q asked, showing no signs of interest, other than the
tone in his voice.  "Whyever for?"

"He lost consciousness when he hit his head on the deck."

Q looked at Al then.  "Clumsy of him.  He could have gotten
down on his own, after all."  He set down the tie, discarding it
as not nearly garish enough.  "And feeling pain.  So human. 
I'll probably have to rebuild the body from scratch when I get it
back."

"What do you mean, so human?" Al asked, unable to restrain
his curiosity.

"My dear man, I'm *Q*," Q said superciliously.  At the
complete look of noncomprehension on Al's face, he stopped. 
"What time period am I *in*?"

"The late twentieth century.  Sam usually travels within his own
lifetime, but he isn't now."

"He is in his own lifetime.  He's there and he's alive, isn't he? 
Or were you under the delusion that physical form was in some
way related to the reality of existence?"  Q retorted, trying to
absorb the time referent.  The white outfit with the uniform cut
had seemed unfamiliar, but Q hadn't realized that it was meant
to be a *real* uniform.  Very shortsighted of him.  

These people were disrupting the fabric of time.  Which was
something very close to one of the powers of the Q.  Where in
the multiverse was he?  For a moment, Q dimly recalled
something, some experiment, some project one of the Q had
been working on, but then the memory was gone.  He only had
a limited mortal brain to hold his memories now, after all, and
it wasn't even the one he'd started with.

Q concealed his dismay with flippancy.  "I'm a god by your
reckoning.  And your scientist is playing with things he doesn't
understand."

"Well, he doesn't have a choice, not if he's going to fix
whatever it is he leaped in there to fix.  And you'd better hope
he can, because otherwise, you won't be getting home."

Q flicked a hand at Al disdainfully.  "If he were able to use the
powers he now has, and I assume he still does, since I do not,
then he could simply put us back."  Q picked up an orange tie
with blue paisley accents.  "Either way, there's nothing I can do
about it now."

****

Al stepped out of the glowing doorway, then caused it to shut
down behind him.  

Sam was sitting in a chair in the dining hall, a orangeish alien
bending over him.  "You *like* the food?"

"It's delicious," Sam said.  "Although I don't recognize the
spices."

"Kes!  Here's someone who actually *likes* my cooking!" 
Neelix bent over Sam again, not about to let a satisfied customer
get away, even if he *was* a potentially deadly superbeing.  "I
have other things you can try."

Al looked at Sam, amused.  "He's not the one you're supposed
to go to bed with, Sam."

"I know that," Sam said petulantly.

Neelix scuttled back.  "All right, all right.  But remember,
whatever you want, Neelix can provide."

Al stood next to Sam, looking down at the remains of dinner on
Sam's plate.  "You don't have to eat that, you know."

"I didn't exactly have a choice about it, Al," Sam whispered
urgently.

"No, I mean, according to Q, you shouldn't be having any
bodily needs at all.  He thinks it's some sort of psychosomatic
reaction.  You think you should have biological functions, so
your body's reacting by producing them for you."

"So I'm only hungry because I *think* I'm hungry?  Al, things
don't work that way."

"Q is very convincing," Al said.  It was an understatement. 
Seeing the way Q had reacted to hunger, food, and the natural
processes following thereafter had more than persuaded Al that
Q had little or no experience with them.  "Sam, you need to
believe this.  If you don't have these powers, we're stuck with
Q for the rest of your natural life.  And Gooshie is going to
make that even shorter than it was originally intended to be."

"So lock up Gooshie," Sam said, slightly annoyed.  "Al, you
can't expect me to believe I'm a god."

"Sam, you have to believe it."  Al's face took on a serious
expression.  "You can use these powers to come home, Sam.  I
believe this Q, and he says you could use them to stop leaping. 
You could finally come home."

Sam looked at Al, trying not to feel the despair those words
engendered.  Al was very persuasive.  The cynical way Al
viewed most everything made his statements here more
believable than if they'd come from anyone else.  But it didn't
help.  Sam had spent too much time hoping that he might go
home, that he might leap back into his own body.  A chance to
go home meant even more disappointment when it failed.  

"All right, Al.  I'll try."

****

Sam stood on the bridge, watching the frenzy roil around him.

"We're being drawn into the anomaly!"

"Damn!  Engineering!  Torres, is there anything you can do?"

"I'm trying, Captain, but it's no use.  The anomaly's more
powerful than we are.  Our shields are holding for the moment,
but I estimate that we'll be torn apart by the gravitational
stresses in less than 36 hours."

All eyes went to Sam, where he stood in the doorway of the
turbolift, trying not to blink stupidly.

"Q!  This is your doing!"

"Excuse me?" Sam asked.  "How could I have caused *that*?" 
He pointed at the swirling pink and purple blob on the screen.

"As easily as you breathe," Paris said snidely.  "But I forgot. 
You don't need to breathe, do you?"

"I don't have anything to do with the anomaly."

Janeway looked at Sam with a bit of pleading in her manner. 
"If you didn't cause it, then surely you must have known of it. 
You let us be drawn in here for your own purposes."  Horror
dawned on her face.  "You did this because I refused to play
your games!"

Sam held up his hands, trying to defend himself.  "Captain, you
misunderstand..."

"He's going to stand right there and laugh as he watches us be
destroyed," Paris said bitterly.  "Q to the end."

"That's enough, Mr. Paris," Janeway snapped.  She turned on
Q.  "You have us at your mercy.  What are you going to do
about it?"

Sam knew he had to get out of there before he exposed himself
as being a fraud.  "I'll let you know."

He stepped back into the Turbolift and let it take him away.

****

"He's failing, isn't he?" Q asked lazily, now gorgeously attired
in a deep red smoking jacket with a matching red and black
plaid tie.

"Can't you give him any help?  How do these powers of yours
work, anyhow?"

Q shrugged elegantly.  "How do you tell your hand to wave? 
How do you tell your eyes to blink?"

"We're running out of time, Q.  We've got to get these people
home before the anomaly destroys their ship."

"You can't avoid the anomaly," Q said.  "Even if he manages to
get them home, what happens will happen."

Al stared at him in frustration.  "Can't you make any sense?"

"Oh, you'd like for me to spell this out for you in neat little
sound bites, wouldn't you?  Well, the universe doesn't work
that way, my friend."

"You have to make it work that way then.  I understand you
used to be good at that."

Q nodded slightly, acknowledging the hit.  "Do you have a way
of contacting this scientist of yours?"

"Sure.  I just step into the Imaging Chamber, and bingo, I'm
there, wherever Sam is.  I'm just a hologram, but I can see
him, hear him and speak to him."

"I suppose I could come with you and try to talk your lost lamb
down," Q drawled with the air of one who's being very much
put upon.

Al's brows furrowed.  "That's not possible.  I'm tuned to him. 
I'm the only one who it'll work for."

Q shrugged.  "And I *am* him.  You people are so backwards,
you probably still think the earth revolves around the sun."

Al stared at Q, then spoke to thin air.  "Ziggy, will it work?"

"Seventy three percent probability that it will, Admiral. 
However, there is also a thirteen percent probability that it will
fail and either one or both of them will be lost."

Al stared at Q, considering.

"There is also a one percent chance that *you* will be affected
by the failure of this attempt, Admiral."

"Thank you, Ziggy," Al said in a put-upon tone of voice.

****

Sam greeted Al's reappearance with great relief.  "Al!  You've
got to help me!"

Out of the doorway stepped a second figure.

Sam boggled as he saw his own self, but a strangely altered self. 
Not only did this Sam Beckett hold himself different -- like a
posturing peacock -- but he was also dressed very differently as
well.  Much like... *Al*.

Sam looked at Al.  "You've created an evil twin of yourself,
haven't you?"

"I like to think of myself as the evil one," Al said smirking. 
"Don't you like the effect?"

Sam shook his head.  "I should have known you'd do something
like this.  I suppose everyone's seen me in that getup."

"*And* we have pictures," Al said smugly.

Sam groaned.  "Now I *know* I don't want to go home.  I'll
never live that suit down."

Q plucked at his lapels.  "Whoever you are, you have no taste. 
This is a lovely color."

Sam cast a long-suffering glance at Al.  "Can you help me, Al? 
We've only got six hours left before the ship collapses.  And
everyone thinks I'm the only one who can save them.  I've been
hiding out here in the cargo bay for the last half a day.  You
don't know what it's like."

Al, who had been a POW, shook his head.  "That's what we're
here for."  He looked at Q.  "You're on."

Q turned to Sam.  He cared about this far more than he was
willing to admit openly.  He *wanted* his powers back, and
didn't like being stuck in this form, with all the attendant
indignities.  However, he wasn't going to *say* that.  Not after
the way he'd made a fool out of himself the last time,
blubbering over the simplest of things.  He really did want his
powers back.  So much so that he'd have attempted to teach a
Klingon mathematics to get out of this.

"Have you been able to make any use of my powers?"

Sam shook his head.  "As far as I can tell, I don't have any
powers."

"Have you *tried*?"

"Of course, I tried."

Al looked at Q, a little worried now.  "Maybe he didn't get
them."

"This isn't a fruitcake we're passing around," Q snapped.  "He
has to have them.  They're not inherent in a bodily shape; they
should have passed with me, if this were possible at all.  But
somehow I was bumped out of my body by your puny mortal
contrivings, and I *know* I don't have my powers."

"That's not logical," Sam said.

Q turned on him.  "Look, you were suspended in the air when
you arrived here, right?"

Sam nodded.  "I'm not likely to forget."

"Well, did you fall immediately, or as soon as your limited
human brain realized you couldn't possibly be hanging there in
the air and reasserted human concepts on yourself?"

Sam stared at Q.  "Al, he's right."

"He is?"

"I didn't fall right away.  There *was* a second when I was just
hanging there."

Q shrugged.  "My point."

"So you could do it then?" Al asked hopefully.

"I've been *trying*, Al.  It just doesn't work."

"You have to *believe* in it, Sam."

Sam's posture was that of a totally frustrated man.  "I *can't*. 
Everything in me tells me that the universe just doesn't work
that way.  You can't make a wish and have things happen.  I'm
a scientist.  I *know* better than that."

Q started laughing.  "It's all magic and tricks of the light to
you, is it?  As if everything that can be known about the
universe could be encapsulated in your neat little facts and
numbers."

Al was searching desperately for any means of rescue.  "What if
we hypnotized you?"

Sam was ignoring him, focussing entirely on Q.  "Are you
saying it isn't magic?  That it's something else?  Neither factual
or fictional?"

"Believe what you will," Q said blithely.  "Your beliefs have no
effect on the nature of reality.  Not as long as you continue to
resist the powers within you."

"Use the force, Luke," Al quipped.

Sam glared at him.  "That isn't funny, Al."

The admiral shrugged.  "Funny is where you find it.  C'mon,
Sam.  *Try* to believe in it at least.  You don't have any other
choice.  Ziggy says this ship isn't going to hold together another
six hours, no matter what that sexy engineer with the receding
hairline said."

Sam looked back at them, willing to try anything.  He'd done
stranger things, admittedly.  "What should I try for?"

"Click your heels three times, and repeat after me, 'There's no
place like home'."

Sam manfully ignored that.  He closed his eyes.  When he
opened them, there was no visible change in their surroundings. 
His expression deflated.  "It didn't work, did it?"

"Let me check."  Al hit his handlink a few times, then stepped
back through the doorway, taking Q with him.

A few seconds later, he reappeared.  "You did it, Sam!  We're
in orbit around Earth!"

"You realize I'm going to get credit for doing a good deed," Q
said grumpily to Sam.  "If I ever get myself back at all."

"Yeah, well we all make mistakes," Al said sarcastically from
behind him.

"Then why haven't I Leaped?" Sam asked.

"Sam!" Al said, suddenly remembering.  "You can use the
powers you've got to put yourself back!  Do it now, before
it's... too late..." he added, as the characteristic corona
appeared around Sam, and he Leaped.

Q stood in the empty cargo bay, and watched them go.  He was
himself again.  With a thought, he reversed the damage the
scientist had done to the body.  Give them power, and they
inevitably chose to be mortal.  Q couldn't understand that at all.

He could, of course, stop the Leaps, but now that his mind was
no longer divided and his consciousness confused, he knew that
they were part of an experiment by another member of the
Continuum.  And Dr. Beckett and Admiral Calavicci seemed
well equipped to handle it.  For mortals.

Now about this business of having done a good deed...

Q snapped his fingers gleefully and went on about his business
of creating merry hell in the universe.

****

The disorientation faded, and Sam knew he'd Leaped.  But to
where?

He looked up at the huge freight train lumbering towards him. 
He was tied down in its path, helplessly staked out, with no way
to escape.

"Oh, boy."



-the end-