Time Bomb And Zahndry Others

Banshee

The bar was a small, roadside spot nestled almost invisibly among the mountains of south-central Wyoming. It had probably once been a tourist trap of sorts. I guessed, before newer roads had drained traffic away and left it struggling to survive on the flyspeck towns loosely grouped around it. How it was managing to do so I couldn't guess; even at four o'clock on a Tuesday afternoon a decent bar ought to have had more than three cars huddled together in its parking lot. In my mind's eye I envisioned an interior to the place as dreary as its exterior, aching with a sense of failure, and the thought of facing that nearly made me pass it up. But I hadn't eaten since breakfast and my stomach had been rumbling for the past two hours... and besides, perhaps my patronage would help a little. Pulling my old rust bucket into the lot, I climbed out into the hot sun and went inside.

I'd been right about the bar being largely deserted; but on the plus side, the decor was not nearly as depressing as I'd feared it would be. Old and somewhat faded, it had nevertheless been well cared for. Which, coincidentally, was how I viewed the waitress who reached my side as I settled down at my chosen table. "Afternoon," she said with a smile as she set down a water glass in front of me. "Our special today is home-barbequed chicken with..."

"Sounds good," I agreed, when she'd finished her description, "but I think I'll just have a medium-rare burger and a glass of beer."

"You got it," she said, smiling again as she marked it down on her pad and moved back toward the kitchen. The chicken actually had sounded better, but the burger was cheaper, and taking that instead would enable me to shift a little more of my limited resources into her tip. Silly, perhaps, but I'd always felt that a little sacrificial scrimping was well worthwhile when it would help brighten someone's day.

Taking a long swallow of water, I moved the glass across the table and pulled out my map. I'd need to find a motel eventually, but I wanted to get at least a little closer to where I'd be hiking before I quit for the day. If I picked up Eleven and got at least to Woods Landing... "Hey! You!"

I looked up to see the barman waving the phone in my direction, an odd expression on his face. "Phone's for you," he announced.

My tongue froze against my teeth. "It... what?" I managed.

His expression grew a little odder. "Your name Sinn?"

My stomach tightened against its emptiness. No one knew where I was... which meant no one could possibly have called me. But someone had. "Yes... yes it is," I told him. "Adam Sinn."

"Yeah, well, guy wants to talk to you. C'mon—I don't want my phone tied up all afternoon."

I got my legs under me and walked over... and halfway there the only conceivable possibility clicked into place. After nearly a year... For a second I considered turning around, getting back into my car, and heading for parts unknown. I would have a perfect right to do so; neither Griff nor Banshee had the slightest legal hold over me any more.

I reached the bar and accepted the phone from the barman. Licking my lips, I took a deep breath and held the instrument to my ear. "Hello?"

"Adam? God—I was afraid we weren't going to find you."

My jaw clenched painfully, and I knew with absolute certainty that my year away from Banshee had abruptly come to an end. Griffith Mansfield was the archetypical iron-calm man, with a manner and matching voice that were as even and steady as set concrete even at the worst of times. In my two years with Banshee I'd never once heard that voice as shot through with tension as it was now, and it sent an ice-cold spike digging into my stomach. "What's the matter?" I forced myself to ask.

"Full-fledged hell has just broken loose, that's what's the matter," he growled, "and we're right square in the middle of it. Where are you?"

"What do you mean, where am I? You called me, remember?"

"Yeah, yeah, let me check the readout." The line went blank for a moment, and the spike digging into my stomach took an extra turn as I realized Griff really didn't know where I was. Checking the readout meant he'd been on something like the FBI's Search-Spot system... and last I knew the FBI was not in the habit of lending their magic phone equipment out to hole-in-the-wall agencies like Banshee. Which meant he hadn't been exaggerating: all hell really had broken out. "Adam? Okay, I got you. Look, there's a small private airstrip about four miles south of you, at the west end of Lake Hattie. Go there and wait; they'll be sending a T-61 from Warren AFB for you."

I licked my lips again without noticeable effect as my intention of pointing out to him that I was no longer under his jurisdiction died a quiet death. First the FBI's phone search machine, now an Air Force general's commuter jet casually laid on to carry a civilian cross country. Whatever was happening, it was becoming less and less likely that anyone was going to let my personal preferences get in the way. "Griff... can you at least give me a hint of what's happening? Has something happened to the rest of the Jumpers?"

"No, no, everyone's fine. As to the rest of it, you'll get everything we know on the plane—if you don't find out sooner. I understand they're going to release it to the media in a few minutes."

"Griff—"

"Look, Adam, trust me; I wouldn't be asking you to come back if it wasn't vitally important. I'll see you soon." There was a click and he was gone.

"Damn," I said softly to the dead line. Laying the phone back on the counter, I looked up to find both the barman and the waitress staring at me with what seemed to be a combination of awe and suspicion... and in the waitress's eyes, at least, I could see the dawning realization that she was about to lose possibly her only customer of the afternoon.

That, at least, I could do something about. Digging out my wallet, I found a twenty and handed it to her. "Keep the change," I told her. At least now I could give without having to take quite so much thought for the morrow: whatever Banshee's other financial difficulties, Griff had always insisted on good salaries for his Jumpers... and it looked very much like I was about to become a Jumper again.

I reached the airstrip in ten minutes, and was sitting in my car listening to the radio when the news broke.

Somewhere over western Colorado, Air Force One had just crashed. With the President of the United States aboard.

—

The T-61's pilot didn't have much more for me than I'd already heard on the radio, mainly because there wasn't much more that anyone knew at this stage. Air Force One had been on its way to Washington from President Jeffers's Sierra retreat when the pilot suddenly announced he'd lost the right inboard engine.

Seconds later the radio went silent altogether, and the jets that were scrambled for an overflight reported wreckage strewn across a large swath of smoking cliffside forest. There had been no confirmation of casualties or survivors as yet, but from the sound of things there wasn't much call for optimism. Little to do now but clean up the wreckage, both physical and psychological... and to find out, for the record, what had gone wrong.

The latter would be Banshee's job.

—

We arrived about an hour and a half after leaving Wyoming. A police car was waiting at the end of the runway for me, a lukewarm box of take-out chicken in the back seat reminding me that I'd never gotten the early dinner I'd planned. Indirect evidence of two things: that Griff was getting his balance back, and that sometime this evening I was indeed going to have to Jump. Two of Banshee's Jumpers did best on empty stomachs, but I wasn't one of them. The thought of what was coming tightened the knot in my stomach; but the hunger down there far outclassed the nervousness, and by the time we pulled up at the familiar nondescript building fifteen minutes later I'd worked my way through all three pieces of chicken and was polishing off the last of the biscuit.

Griff was waiting for me at the front door. "Adam," he nodded, gripping my hand briefly as he pushed the door open. "Thanks for coming. I really appreciate it."

"No trouble," I told him, not entirely truthfully. We stepped out of the entryway airlock... and I found myself face to face with a dress-uniformed Marine.

"He's one of our people," Griff told the Marine before I could get my tongue unstuck. The guard nodded incuriously; but even as we passed him I could feel his eyes giving me an unobtrusive but thorough once-over. I'd seen that kind of apparent unconcern once or twice before, always from truly professional guards who used it as a way to throw people off-guard.

Professional guards at Banshee. "The place has changed," I murmured.

"The Marines are just on loan," he shook his head. "Courtesy of a Washington VIP named Shaeffer. He's in the lounge updating things for Hale and Kristin."

"What about Morgan? Or has he quit?"

"No, he's still with us. He's downstairs getting prepped."

I blinked. "You've got a Jump going already?"

"We will as soon as the model of Air Force One is ready. Shaeffer insisted on particularly fine detailing, and the modelers just finished it a few minutes ago."

"Actually, I was surprised more by the speed than the delay," I told him.

Griff snorted. "Yes, well, for a change, the budget overseers aren't going to be a problem. It's amazing," he added with a trace of bitterness, "the kind of money people are willing to throw around when someone important gets killed."

I nodded silently.

We reached the lounge and went in. The Washington VIP was there, all right, easily distinguishable by his expensive business suit and taut look. He was standing over the lounge table talking across a map to Hale Fortner and Kristin Cosgrove and—

I stopped just through the doorway, so abruptly that Griff stepped on my heel. "Rennie?" I hissed.

Griff squeezed past me into the room. "We needed everyone we could get, Adam—"

"How on Earth did you get him to come back?" I whispered. The painful scene that had taken place when Rennie Baylor was fired from Banshee flooded back from my memory.

"Look, this is no time to dredge up past disagreements," Griff hissed back. "Not for me, not for any of us—and if I can stand him for three days, so can you. Okay?"

I took a deep breath and got my feet moving again. True, it was Griff, not me, with whom Rennie had had most of his friction... but that didn't mean the rest of us hadn't suffered with him from the sidelines. Still, for three days—and under such circumstances—I would do my best to make do.

"—came down about here, among a real mess of hidden ravines and tricky cliff faces," the VIP was saying as we came up to the table. He looked up, eyes flicking past Griff to lock briefly onto me. "Mr. Sinn," he nodded in greeting. "Shaeffer—special aide to President Jef—" He broke off, his mouth compressing in brief pain before he could recover himself. "Have you been briefed?"

"Just the basics," I told him, his tight expression inducing another flicker of pain within me. Shaeffer, clearly, had been very close to the President. "Air Force One lost its right wing—somehow—and went down out in Colorado."

He nodded. "That's about all we've got at the moment. The search-and-rescue team hasn't been working for very long; so far they haven't got anything."

"No survivors, in other words," Kristin interjected quietly.

Shaeffer's lip tightened. "Yeah." He took a deep breath. "Well. Banshee's job will be to find out what happened to the plane. As I've already explained to Dr. Mansfield, you've got essentially a blank check—go ahead and do as many Jumps as it takes to get the job done right. Understood? Dr. Mansfield, how much longer will it be before you can get someone back there?"

Right on cue, the lounge's lights flickered. "Immediately, Mr. Shaeffer," Griff answered. "I'm afraid it's not much of a show, but if you'd like we could head downstairs and you could see Banshee in action."

"I'm not here to play tourist," Shaeffer bit out. "I'll be in the communications center if you need me; let me know as soon as the Jump is over."

Griff reddened slightly. "Yes, of course." He turned and quickly left the lounge, heading left toward the elevator. Shaeffer nodded to each of us in turn and followed, branching to the right toward the room where our modest radio, wire, and computer-net equipment were kept.

And I was left alone with the other Jumpers.

For a moment we all just looked at each other. Then Kristin stirred. "You haven't kept in touch very well, Adam."

I shrugged fractionally. "I've been pretty busy," I told her. It was more or less true.

"So have we," Hale said, more than a little tartly. "Work load's increased considerably since you cut out on us."

My eyes flicked to Rennie. "Don't look at me," he said blandly. "I was fired; you're the one who deserted."

"That's putting it a little strongly, isn't it?" I asked... but the indignation I'd intended to put into the words died somewhere en route. I hadn't been able to tell them the reasons then, and down deep I knew I couldn't tell them now, either.

"Yeah, Rennie, desertion's much too harsh a word," Hale chimed in. "It's not strictly desertion when the captain advises you to get off a sinking ship."

"What's that supposed to mean?" I asked him.

"I think you know," he ground out. "You've always been Griffs favorite Jumper—that's common knowledge. I think he warned you that we were about to be snowed under by a huge work load and suggested you take off and leave the rest of us more expendable Jumpers to struggle under the pile."

"That's not true," I said, trying hard to keep my voice steady.

Hale snorted. "Of course not. It was just pure coincidence. Sure."

Clenching my jaw, I leaned over the table for a look at the map Shaeffer had left behind. It was an impressive job, larger scale even than the standard 7.5-minute topographic ones I used for backpacking. The crash site was marked by a large red oval near one end, and my recently filled stomach did a couple of turns at the thought of having to go back and watch it happen. "Did Shaeffer say anything about surveying the crash sight, or just watching for the primary cause?" I asked.

"That's the way," Rennie said with mock approval. "When you can't win, change the subject."

I focused on Kristin. "Did he say anything about surveying the crash site?" I repeated.

"Not to us," she said. "But, then, we're just the Jumpers. We don't count for anything in that sort of decision-making."

"If you're wondering specifically about body trackings," Hale put in, "I'm sure you'll get a shot at one. They've become almost standard for us these days."

I shivered. Watching people die in mid-air explosions was bad enough... but to follow the bodies down as they fell to earth, seeing up close the burned and battered shells that had once been human beings...

"Unless, of course," Rennie suggested, "you want to talk to Griff about exempting you from anything particularly unpleasant."

I gritted my teeth. "I'll do my share of whatever comes up. See you later." Turning my back on them, I headed out of the lounge.

For a long moment I stood leaning against the hallway wall, slowly bringing my trembling knees under control again. I hadn't really expected to be welcomed back with open arms, but the sheer intensity of the others' hostility had hit me like ice water in the face. Clearly, Griff had kept his promise not to tell them why I'd left Banshee; whether or not I could survive three days under that kind of pressure wasn't nearly as clear.

But I would, of course. For whatever reason, Banshee needed me here... and I'd always been there when people needed me.

Taking a deep breath, I turned left and headed for the elevator.

—

The Banshee building's basement always reminded me of a cartoon I'd seen a long time ago in which one of the characters had bragged that "the house itself isn't much, but you should see the rec room." A one-time basement and subbasement had had their walls and the dividing floor knocked out to create a single vast space, with nothing to break it up but strategically placed pillars put in to support the rest of the building above it. The result was a room the size of a small warehouse... a room the Banshee equipment still filled to over-flowing.

A small sign on the cabinet nearest the elevator proclaimed all this stuff to be the property of the U.S. Government Time Observation Group, Banshee's official name. Official or not, though, I'd never heard anyone refer to us by that name, even in official correspondence. Probably, I'd always suspected, because no one up there really took us seriously. With a staff numbering in the low twenties and an operating budget under four million a year, we were hardly a drop in the bucket as far as Washington was concerned. Not to mention the fact that the whole thing was generally considered either ghoulish or a waste of money by most of the handful of officials who knew anything about it.

I don't know who coined the name Banshee for the group. I know only too well why it had stuck.

There was absolutely nothing theatrical about a typical Banshee Jump, a fact that had disappointed more than one official visitor over the years. There were no revolving lights warning of high-voltage, no large and blinking status boards, no armies of steely-eyed techs huddled over displays under dark-room-red lighting. The lights were normal, our three operators had a tendency to slouch in their seats; and even the Jumper, Morgan Portland, might simply have been asleep on his contour couch amid the handful of sensor leads sprouting from his arm- and headbands. It would have taken a close look at the EEG display—and some knowledge of how to interpret the readings—to realize that Morgan was essentially registering as dead.

All of us Jumpers had long since come to the conclusion that no one really knew how the Banshee apparatus worked. Oh, all the parts were understood, to one degree or another—that much was certain. The mathematicians could show you all the equations and formulas and tell you how they implied time reversal; the various scientists could show you how the equations related to the real universe, both in physical equipment and in brain and mind structure; and the engineers could show you how all this boiled down to several million dollars' worth of apparatus. There were even those who claimed to understand how a person's consciousness could be decoupled from his body for up to an hour at a time without any major ill effects. But when you put all of it together, no one really knew how or why the whole thing worked the way it did. No one knew why there was a seventy-two-hour limit on how far back in time a Jumper's consciousness could go, no one knew why only certain very specific types of people could Jump in the first place... and no one knew how it was our disembodied consciousnesses could sometimes be seen by those about to die.

It had first happened to me on my seventh Jump, and it would forever color all my thoughts about Banshee. A little girl, maybe seven years old, had spotted me as I floated by an airport locker in hopes of seeing the person who had planted a bomb there. At least I assume she saw me; the expression on her face could hardly have been explained by anything else in the immediate vicinity. Her mother had pulled her away a moment later and plopped them both down in a waiting lounge, but she'd continued to glance nervously back in my direction. Two minutes later the bomb had blown out the bank of lockers and most of the roof overhead.

The girl and her mother had been among the casualties.

I shuddered with the memory and forced her face from my mind... and cursed once more the unfeeling idiot who'd taken his inspiration from that and similar incidents to hang the name Banshee on us.

A motion off to the side by one of the RF generator cabinets caught my eye; Griff, doing a walkthrough of the equipment. He saw me as I started toward him and changed course to meet me. "So... how did it go up there with the others?" he murmured.

"Not exactly your TV-style homecoming," I retorted softly. There was no reason for anyone to whisper while a Jump was in progress, but people invariably did so anyway. "I wish you'd told me Rennie was going to be here. And maybe prepared me a little for the sour apples from everyone else."

He sighed. "I'm sorry, Adam; really I am. If it'd been up to me, you wouldn't be here at all—that despite the fact you're still the best Jumper we ever had. But Schaeffer insisted we bring both you and Rennie back."

"Did you point out to him that three Jumpers are perfectly adequate to handle the half-dozen or so Jumps it'll take to figure out what happened?"

"I tried, but he wouldn't budge." Griff scratched his ear thoughtfully. "What makes it even stranger is that he seemed to know an awful lot about us—must've actually been keeping up with the reports we've filed into the bureaucratic black hole back in Washington."

"Very flattering. Doesn't explain why he's out here being underfoot instead of directing things from the White House, though."

"No, it doesn't," Griff agreed. "Maybe he thinks he can help. Or else needs to at least feel like he's helping."

"If he wants to help, he'd do better to be in Washington helping brief Vice President McCallum on his new office."

Griff shrugged fractionally. "From what I've read, Shaeffer and Jeffers go back a long way together, since Jeffers's first stint as mayor in Phoenix. There are other people available to brief McCallum; I get the feeling Shaeffer's more out for vengeance."

I shivered. "In other words, we'd better get him the cause of the crash in double-quick time, or else?"

"We can hope he's more sensible than that. But there's a strong tendency in people to look for scapegoats when things go wrong."

I thought back to the other Jumpers upstairs. "Yeah. Well... we'll just have to see to it that we do our job fast and get out from in front of the gunsights."

My last word was punctuated by the snap of circuit breakers shunting the end-point power surge to ground. Across the room, Morgan's body threw itself suddenly against the couch's restraints. A moment later his eyes opened a crack and he burped loudly.

We were at his side by the time the operators had the straps off. "What'd you get?" Griff asked, helping him up into a sitting position.

"It was the right inboard engine, aw right," Morgan nodded tiredly, massaging the sides of his neck. "Smoke trail out o' it just 'fore it caught fire and blew to shreds."

"Did you get inside the wing and see where the fire started?" Griff asked.

"Sorry—didn't have time. I was too busy backtrackin' the line o' smoke." His eyes met mine and I braced myself for a repeat of the confrontation upstairs. But he merely nodded in greeting and shifted his attention back to Griff. "I've seen a lot o' engine-fire plumes, Griff—this'un didn't look right at all."

Griff swore under his breath. "Shaeffer thought it might be something like this. Okay; come on upstairs and we'll take a look at the blueprints."

Morgan nodded and swung his feet over the side of the couch. "Dr. Mansfield," one of the operators called, "you want us to get ready to cycle again right away?"

"Yes," Griff answered, taking Morgan's arm. "Hale will be down immediately for prepping. We'll be Jumping again as soon as you and he are ready."

"Why the break-neck rush?" I asked Griff as he helped Morgan navigate away from the couch. "It's—what, after six already?"

"Shaeffer's in a hurry," Griff said tightly. "For now, that's all the reason any of us need. Give me a hand, here, will you?"

—

Morgan's report was strong evidence; but it took two more hours and a Jump by Hale before Shaeffer was willing to come to the official conclusion all of us had guessed at.

President Jeffers's plane had been sabotaged.

"Something in the engine or fuel line," Shaeffer growled, tapping his clenched fist on the blueprints of the VC-25A's right wing. "Something that could start a fire despite the flame retardants in the fuel."

"Implies a pretty drastic breach of security," Rennie murmured.

Shaeffer threw him a hard look but kept his temper in check. "I would think so, yes. Finding out just how the bomb was introduced should show where and how big that hole is. Dr. Mansfield, I want another Jump tonight. How soon before the equipment can be ready?"

"Half an hour at the least," Griff told him, glancing at his watch. "But I'd like to point out that it's already coming up on eight o'clock and the Jumpers will need both a good night's sleep and some wind-down time before that."

"They'll get all the rest they need," Shaeffer said shortly. "Allow me to point out that you've still got three Jumpers you haven't even used yet."

I looked over at Kristen, saw her mouth twist sourly. Being treated like merchandise or pack animals had always been especially annoying to her. She caught me watching her, looked quickly away.

"Well... I suppose we could go ahead," Griff said slowly, looking around the table at the rest of us. "Late-night Jumps can be rougher than usual, though—biological rhythms and all, you understand—"

"We're up against a time crunch here, Doctor," Shaeffer snapped. "How many times am I going to have to repeat that?"

"Yes, but we've got three da—"

"I'm not talking about the damn three-day limit—" Shaeffer broke off abruptly, and for a second a strange look flicked across his face. "We're dealing with the media here, Doctor," he continued in a more controlled tone. "The American people want some answers, and I intend to get those answers for them. So. Who's next?"

Griff grimaced and turned to Kristin; moving my head, I managed to catch his eye. "I can take it, Griff," I said. "Evening Jumps never bothered me much." It wasn't quite true, but it was close enough.

Griffs lip twitched, but he nodded. "Yes... all right, fine. If that's all, then, Mr. Shaeffer...?"

Shaeffer nodded, and the group began to break up. I got out fast and headed toward the elevator; but even so, Morgan managed to catch up with me before I reached it. "Left my jacket downstairs after my Jump," he commented. "Mind if I tag along down with you?"

"No, of course not," I said as he fell into step beside me. "How bad is it?"

"The crash?" He shrugged, a nervous twitch of shoulders beneath his shirt. "Not too bad, leastwise not as long as you're up in the air. Not goin' be much fun at ground level."

"They never are."

"No."

We'd reached the elevator before he spoke again. "So... how you been doin'? We ain't heard much from you since you left."

"Judging by my reception earlier, it's just as well," I told him, hearing an unaccustomed trace of bitterness in my voice.

He nodded heavily. "I talked to Kristin after my Jump. You know, she was kinda hurt the way you just upped and left."

"I didn't just 'up and leave'—"

"You know what I mean. Woulda helped, you know, if you'd told us why you were quittin'."

I looked at him sharply. Had he figured it out? "I had my reasons," I said.

"I reckon you did. But Kristin and Hale don't take a lot on faith. S'pose it's a little late to worry 'bout now. So what do you think of this mess?"

"What's there to think about it?" I replied grimly. The elevator arrived and we got in. "Like you say, it's a mess."

"What 'bout Shaeffer?"

"What about him?"

"Strikes me as a mite... over-wrought, I s'pose."

I snorted. "He has just lost both his employer and a long time friend. How would you expect him to act?"

"I'd expect him to be mad as a hornet," Morgan nodded. "Nothin' wrong with that. But there's somethin' under the anger that bothers me. I get a feelin' he's hidin' somethin' big up his sleeve. Somethin' he wants to do, but at the same time is scared of doin'."

I bit at my lip. Morgan had grown up in a backwoods area of Arkansas, and people tended to assume he wasn't particularly bright. But what he lacked in book learning he more than made up in people-sense... and if he thought there was something odd about Shaeffer, it was time for me to start paying better attention to the man. "Maybe he's involved in the discussions of revenge against whoever's responsible," I suggested slowly. "McCallum's never struck me as the sort to call in military strikes—maybe it's Shaeffer's job to convince him otherwise."

"Maybe." Morgan shook his head. "Well, whatever it is, I 'spect we'll hear 'bout it soon enough."

The elevator door opened and we stepped out. "See you later," Morgan said as he scooped up his jacket from a chair near the contour couch. "Good luck."

"Thanks." Squaring my shoulders, I headed over to be prepped.

—

Twenty minutes later, wired and tubed and mildly sedated, I was lying on the contour couch and we were ready for my Jump. "Okay," one of the operators called. "Here we go. Countdown: six... three, two, one, mark."

And abruptly I found myself in brilliant sunlight, floating beside Air Force One as it soared over the mountains on its unknowing way to death.

To see the past like this had been a horrible shock to me the first time, and though its impact had diminished since then I didn't think it would ever fade away completely. There was an immediacy to the experience; a sense of objective, 360-degree reality, despite the obvious limitations, that was nothing at all like viewing the event on a TV screen. For me, at least—and probably for most of the others, too—that sense came with a suffocating feeling of helplessness and stomach-churning frustration. I was here—really here—at the actual real-life scene of a real-life disaster about to happen... and there was nothing I could do to prevent it.

Griff had once brought in a psychiatrist who'd tried to tell us that everyone felt similarly when they saw disasters that happened to have been caught on film. If that revelation was supposed to make us feel better, it hadn't worked.

But all this was standard reflex, the thoughts and emotions that had come in one form or another with every Jump I'd made, and even as the frustration rose in my throat, the old professional reflexes came up to cut it back. Gritting my teeth—a sensation I could feel despite having no real body at the moment—I moved forward over the wing and dipped beneath its surface.

It was dark inside the wing, but there was enough light coming in from somewhere for me to make out the details of the fuel tanks and piping and all. It was eerily quiet, of course—vision on Jumps is as crystal clear as if we'd brought our physical retinas back in time with us, but there's no sound or other sensory input whatsoever. Like being wrapped in soundproof plastic, Kristin had once described it. For me it was just one more macabre touch amid the general unpleasantness.

I floated around inside the wing for several minutes, keeping a close watch for anything that might precede the explosion about to take place. From the settings the operators had made I knew I'd have fifteen minutes before the engine caught fire, but time sense distortion was a normal part of Jumping and I didn't want to be caught unawares. I'd been tethered to the right inboard engine pylon, the tether length adjusted to let me get nearly out to the outboard engine in one direction or to the fuselage in the other. The tether was even more of a witchgadget than most of the Banshee equipment as a whole, consisting mainly of a charged electrical lead attached to a specific spot on a scale model of whatever your target vehicle or building was. With a tether in place a Jumper would stick with that piece of metal or wood or plasterboard through hell and high water; without it, there was no way to hold your position even in a stationary building.

The experts could just barely explain the mechanism. The rest of us didn't bother trying.

I was just starting to drift toward the engine itself when the Ping-Pong ball caught my eye.

I'd poked around planes like this one a lot during my time with Banshee and in some ways knew more about them than their designers did; and I was pretty sure there weren't supposed to be Ping-Pong balls floating around inside the fuel lines. Maneuvering around in front of it, I leaned in for a closer look... and it was then that I saw that the ball wasn't alone. A dozen more were coming down the line toward the right inboard engine, and a quick check showed that two or three more were already clustered up against the engine intake itself.

There had been a lot of times I'd wished I could touch something on a Jump, and this was one of them. But there was still a lot I could learn with vision alone. The balls were coated with something waxy looking—a gasoline-soluble paraffin, most likely. They were smaller than regulation Ping-Pong balls, too, small enough to have been dropped into the plane's fuel intake or perhaps even hosed in through the nozzle along with the fuel.

I settled down near the engine, watching the balls clustered there, and waited for the clock to tick down... and suddenly the balls began spouting clouds of bubbles. I had just enough time to notice that flickers of flame were starting to dance at the balls' surfaces when the whole thing blew up in front of me.

For a second I lost control, and an instant later had snapped back behind the wing to the full length of my tether. The trail of smoke Morgan and Hale had mentioned was coming out of the engine. In a handful of seconds the engine would explode and everyone aboard would die... and if I ended the Jump right now, I wouldn't have to watch it happen.

I stayed anyway. White House cartes blanches or not, someone was shelling out a quarter of a million dollars for this trip. They might as well get their money's worth.

Morgan had been right; it wasn't nearly as bad as some I'd seen. The right inboard engine caught fire and blew up on schedule, sending pieces of itself through the air toward me. I ducked in unnecessary reflex and watched as the rest of the wing caught fire, blazing more fiercely than it had any right to. The plane tilted violently, but for the moment the wing and the pylon I was tethered to were still attached and I stayed with it. Then the wing just seemed to disintegrate... and as I fell behind the plane with the tumbling debris I watched it arc almost lazily down toward the tree-covered slope ahead.

And coming to Earth far behind the crash site, there was no longer any reason for me to stay. I let go of the past, wishing as always that I could just as easily release the trauma of what I'd just seen; and a disoriented moment later, I was back on the couch.

The operators unstrapped me and began removing the tubes and wires.... and as my eyes and brain refocused I became aware of Kristin's face hovering over me. "Kristin," I croaked, trying to get moisture back into my mouth. My eyes were just the opposite: they were streaming freely. I turned my head to the side, feeling an obscure embarrassment at her seeing me like this.

If Kristin noticed, she gave no sign of it. "Griff sent me to get you," she said. "He wants all of us in his office right away."

I blinked away the tears; and even as I struggled to sit up I noticed the tightness about her eyes. Still mad at me, I decided... until I realized her eyes were focused off in space somewhere. "Is anything wrong?"

She licked her lips briefly. "I don't know, but something sure as blazes is happening. Griff and Shaeffer have been closeted up there since you left for your Jump... and Griff wasn't sounding too good when he told me to come get you."

I swallowed, hard, and concentrated on getting my blood up to speed again. With Kristin supporting me, we were upstairs in Griff's office five minutes later.

She was right: the whole gang was there... and one look at Griffs and Shaeffer's stony faces set my stomach churning. Something had indeed happened... I looked at Griff, but it was Shaeffer who spoke. "Your report, Mr. Sinn?" His voice matched his expression.

I gave it to him without elaboration, describing as best I could the Ping-Pong balls in the fuel line and the way they'd behaved. Shaeffer listened like a man who already had the answers and was merely looking for some confirmation, and when I'd finished he nodded. "The searchers on the scene already came to pretty much the same conclusion," he said grimly. "Catalyst bombs, sounds like—gadgets that get the fuel and the degraded fragments of flame retardant to react together."

"Never heard of them," Rennie said.

"They're not exactly on-shelf technology. We've developed a type or two, and there are maybe two or three other countries doing similar work. That could be a blunder on the saboteur's part—exotic equipment makes any trail easier to trace. All right, Mr. Sinn, thank you." He took a deep breath, looked around at each of us in turn... and his expression seemed to get a little stonier. "And here now is where we get to the sticky part. I imagine you've been wondering why I came to Banshee in person instead of directing your investigation from Washington. It's because I want you to do something I don't believe you've ever tried before. Something—I'll say this up front—that could turn out to be dangerous." He paused, and the tip of his tongue swiped at his upper lip. "I've read everything President Jeffers ever received on Banshee, and he and I both noted with a great deal of interest that you've been... seen... on more than one occasion by the people you've been observing."

Kristin shifted in her seat... and a horrible suspicion began to drift like a storm cloud across my mind.

"Now, tell me," Shaeffer continued, sweeping his gaze across us Jumpers, "did any of you, during your Jumps the past few hours, ever get a look inside Air Force One itself?"

Hale, Morgan, and I exchanged glances, shook our heads. "That why Griff set the tethers so short?" Morgan asked. "So we couldn't get inside?"

A flicker of surprise crossed the rock that was Shaeffer's expression. "I hadn't expected you to notice," he said. "Yes, that's precisely why I had Dr. Mansfield set them that way. You see... as of yet, the searchers at the crash site have located only a few of the bodies from the wreckage. It occurred to me early on that due to an unusual set of circumstances back at the President's retreat no outsiders actually saw him get onto that plane. And now you've told me that none of you have seen him there, either.

"Which means... perhaps he never was aboard to begin with."

A brittle silence settled, vise-like, around the table. "Are you suggestin'," Morgan said at last, "that you want us to go back there and change the past?"

His sentence ended on a whispered hiss. I looked back at Shaeffer, and to me it was abundantly clear that he knew exactly what it was he was suggesting... and that he was just as scared about it as the rest of us were.

But it was equally clear he was also determined not to let those fears stand in his way. "There's nothing of changing the past about it," he said firmly. "We don't know—none of us do—exactly what happened on that flight. If we don't know what the past is, how can we be changing it?"

" 'If a tree falls alone in the forest, is there any sound?' " Hale put in icily. "Do you have any idea what will happen if we meddle like this?"

"No—and neither do you," Shaeffer replied. "Face it, people, no one knows what changing even a known fact of history would mean. A known fact, notice, which is not what we're talking about doing here."

"Oh, aren't we?" Hale retorted. "All right, fine—let's assume for the moment that somehow we keep President Jeffers out of Air Force One. It's been over six hours now since the crash. Are you going to try and tell us that he and his whole Secret Service detachment have been sitting around listening to the news and no one's bothered to pick up a phone to let the world know he's still alive? Come on, now, let's be serious. We keep Jeffers out of the plane and we've changed history—pure and simple."

"Maybe not," Shaeffer said stubbornly. "It's possible he could be lying low while the crash is being checked out. Especially if sabotage is a possibility, he might want to give the perpetrators a false sense of security. You might recall that for days after the Libyan raid back in 1986 Quaddafi disappeared—"

Hale snorted. "Jeffers wouldn't duck and hide, and you know it. That shoot-from-the-hip style of his was practically his trademark."

"Maybe lying low wasn't his idea," Shaeffer snapped. "Maybe someone persuaded him to do so."

I felt my hands start to tremble. "Shaeffer... are you saying you've been in touch with him?"

Kristin caught her breath and murmured something inaudible. But Shaeffer shook his head. "No, of course not. Do you think I want to risk frogging up your chances by contacting someone out there?"

"But if you call and find that he's there—" Rennie began.

"And if he isn't, then that's it," Shaeffer snapped back. "Right?" He glared around at all of us.

Morgan cleared his throat. "Mr. Shaeffer, we all of us understand how you feel 'bout... what's happened to President Jeffers. But denyin' the facts isn't gonna—"

"What 'facts,' Mr. Portland?" Shaeffer cut him off. "We have no facts at this point—just speculations and possibilities."

I looked at Griff, who had yet to say a word. "Griff...?"

"Yes, Griff, say something, will you?" Hale cut in. "Explain things to this idiot. Or has the wow-value of the big-city bureaucrat short-circuited your ability to think straight?"

Griff cocked an eyebrow, but that was the extent of his reaction to Hale's harshness. "If you're asking whether or not I'm going along with Mr. Shaeffer's idea, the answer is a qualified and cautious yes. We're talking about the chance to save a man's life here."

"Oh, for God's sake," Hale snarled, his eyes flicking around the table once before returning to Griff. "Will you for one minute look past the lure of a real budget and think about what we're being asked to do here? We're being asked to change the past—Shaeffer's weaseling phrases be damned, that's what's really at stake here. Don't you care what that might mean?"

For a moment Griff gazed steadily back at him. "Certainly, Hale, you have a point," he said at last. "Certainly this could prove dangerous. But have any of you stopped to consider the other side of the coin? If there's a single factor that consistently shows up on your psych evaluations, it's the frustrations Banshee creates in you—the stress of seeing disasters you can't do anything to prevent. Denials: anyone?"

I glanced around the table even as I realized that, for me, all further arguments were moot. The chance to save a life that would otherwise be lost—a life whose loss was filling an entire nation with grief and pain—was all the motivation I needed.

Besides which, Griff happened to be right. All of us hated the helplessness we felt during Jumps; hated it with a passion. If we really could do something about the disasters we had to witness...

"So," Griff continued after a moment. "Then consider what we've got here: a chance to see whether or not the past can be safely changed. Doesn't that seem like something worth taking a little risk to find out?"

"And if it leads to disaster?" Hale demanded. "What then? It doesn't matter a damn how pure or noble our motives were if we screw things up royally. I say we just forget the whole idea and—"

"Mr. Fortness, you're relieved of duty," Shaeffer said quietly.

The words came so suddenly and with such conviction behind them that it took a moment for me to register the fact that the man giving the order had no authority to do so. An instant later everyone else seemed to catch on to that fact, too, and the awkward silence suddenly went rigid. "Someone die and leave you boss?" Hale growled scornfully.

"That's enough, Hale," Griff said quietly. "Go back to your room."

From the looks on the other's faces it appeared they were as flabbergasted as Hale was. "Griff—you don't mean—" Kristin began.

Griff looked at her, and she fell silent. The awkward silence resumed as Hale got up from the table, face set in stone, and left the room. I half expected him to slam the door on his way out, but he apparently was still too stunned by it all to be thinking in terms of theatrics. Griff let the silence hang in the air another couple of seconds before looking back at Kristin. "I believe, Kristin," he said, "that the next Jump is yours. I know it's getting late, but I'd appreciate it if you'd try anyway. If you feel up to it, that is."

A muscle twitched in Kristin's cheek as she threw a glance at Shaeffer's tight face and stood up. "I'll try, Griff. Sure. Shall I go downstairs and start getting prepped?"

"Please. I'll be there shortly to set the tether and slot coordinates and see you off."

She nodded and left the room. Shaeffer watched her go, then turned back to lock Morgan, Rennie, and me into a searchlight gaze. "I realize that in a tight-knit organization like Banshee strangers like me are not especially welcome," he said, his soft voice underlaid with steel. "But at the moment I don't give a nickel damn about your feelings. We have less than sixty-six hours to get President Jeffers off that plane and into temporary hiding; and the longer it takes us, the greater the danger of exactly the sort of thing happening that you've all voiced concerns about." He paused, as if waiting to see if any of us would follow Hale's lead. But we said nothing, and after a moment Shaeffer turned to Griff. "All right, Dr. Mansfield. Let's get started."

—

"Now remember," Shaeffer said, leaning close to Kristin as if she were asleep or deaf or both. "You go right up in front of the President's face and hover there where he can see you—don't get out of his sight. If he doesn't seem to see you, or else ignores you, come back and we'll try again. Under no circumstances are you to stay long enough to see him climb up the steps to the plane. Understand?"

I half expected Kristin to remind him that this was the third replay of these same instructions and that she'd caught them all the first time around. But she merely nodded and closed her eyes. Griff gave the high sign, and with the usual flickering of lights she was gone.

Taking a deep breath, I moved away from Griff and Shaeffer, lingering by the two-foot model of Air Force One and the tiny model limo that now sat on the table beside it. The tether lead's alligator clip was attached to the limo; Shaeffer was pushing this contact as far back as he reasonably could, all the way back to the President's drive to the landing field. Passing the models, I kept going, heading for the rows of equipment cabinets at the building's west end. My father had always gone for a walk in the woods when he needed to think through a particularly knotty problem, and during my two years at Banshee I'd discovered that the maze of gray cabinets back here was an adequate substitute. I hoped the magic still worked. Upstairs, half an hour ago, I'd made my decision... but with Shaeffer's pep talk beginning to fade, things no longer looked nearly so clear cut. The greatest good for the greatest number, and attention paid whenever possible to the individual; those were the rules I'd been taught as a child, the standards against which I'd always measured my actions. But to make such judgments required information and wisdom... and I could find nothing in past experience that seemed to apply to this case.

How was I supposed to weigh the pain and suffering that could be caused by changing the past?

"Hello, Adam."

I jerked out of my reverie and spun around. Rennie stood there, leaning against one of the computer cabinets, arms crossed negligently across his chest. Blocking my way out.

I made a conscious effort to unclench my teeth. "Rennie," I said with a curt nod. "You taken to wandering the Banshee room, too?"

"Hardly," he sniffed. "I just noticed you head back here and thought I'd see what Banshee's own little White Knight was up to."

I felt my teeth clamp together again. I'd hoped a year might have changed Rennie at least a little, but it was becoming clear that it hadn't. "Just looking for a little peace and quiet," I told him shortly. "If you'll excuse me—"

"Must be a great thrill for you," he continued, as if I hadn't spoken. "A chance to save a real person from real death—why, I'll bet you're so happy about it you haven't even bothered to consider that you might skewer a few billion innocent people on your lance in the process."

"If you're talking about Hale's rantings, yes, I'm aware of the risks involved. You can also drop that 'White Knight' business any time."

He radiated innocence. "You're the one who tagged yourself with that title—or had you forgotten? The White Knight: defender of the lame, guardian of the helpless, picker-up of those fallen flat on their faces—"

"Do you have something to say?" I interrupted. "If not, you're invited to step aside."

"As a matter of fact, I do." Abruptly, all the mockery vanished from his face, and his expression became serious. Though with Rennie, I reminded myself, expressions didn't necessarily mean anything. "I wanted to see if you were as taken in by this whole pack of manure as you'd looked upstairs."

"If you're referring to Shaeffer's plan," I said stiffly, "I think it's worth trying, yes. At least as long as he continues to go about it in a rational manner."

Rennie snorted. "You mean that frog spit about not letting Kristin see if Jeffers actually gets on the plane because if she does that'll make that a 'known' fact? Word games; that's all it is. We know Jeffers got on that plane, Adam—whether we actually saw it or not, we know he got on it. Anybody who tells you otherwise is either kidding himself or lying through his teeth."

"Keep that sort of thing up and you'll be joining Hale in exile upstairs," I warned him.

"Maybe I ought to," he shot back. "That'd be the surest way to cancel this whole thing. Especially if I can get Kristin and Morgan to join me—I'd like to see you handle all the Jumps alone, especially with the breakneck schedule Shaeffer's trying to run."

Abruptly, I was very sick of this conversation. "I can do it all if I have to," I bit out. "Though I expect you'll find Kristin and Morgan have better ethics than you give them credit for."

"Maybe," he shrugged. "Or maybe you'll find that they can see beyond the life of a single man. The way White Knights like you don't seem capable of doing."

Clamping my teeth together, I walked toward him, ready to flatten him if he gave me even the slightest cause to do so. But he was smarter than that, even flattening himself slightly up against one of the cabinets to give me room to pass. I brushed by him without a word... but I couldn't help but notice the small smile playing across his lips as I passed.

A moment later I was back in the more open areas of the Banshee room... and I'd made up my mind. Whatever legitimate points Rennie may have had, I knew from long and painful experience that everything he did always had an ulterior motive buried somewhere within it. And in this case that motive wasn't hard to find.

He was out to destroy Griff.

The seeds of the conflict had been there from almost the very beginning, when Rennie's perfectionism had run straight into Griffs severe lack of administrative skill. It had become a simmering feud by the time he and I had left Banshee.

I had gone voluntarily; Rennie hadn't. Which had almost certainly soured his feelings toward Griff even more.

Standing across the room by the couch, Griff half-turned from his tete-a-tete with Shaeffer and beckoned to me. "Adam," he said as I joined them, "Mr. Shaeffer and I are going to head upstairs and see if anything new has come in from the crash site. Would you mind waiting here with Kristin, just in case she finishes her Jump before we get back?"

"No problem," I assured him.... and as he and Shaeffer headed for the elevator I realized that I had no choice anymore as to where I stood on this experiment. Rennie was willing to scuttle the chance to save President Jeffers's life in order to give Griff a black eye; and if I had to join Shaeffer in order to stand by Griff, then that was it. End of argument.

I looked down at Kristin's closed eyes, her dead-looking face. The trauma of coming back from a Jump had always been hard on her, and Griff clearly was still maintaining his old practice of making sure either he or another Jumper was on hand to comfort her during those first few seconds of disorientation.

Griff would never win any awards for administration or appropriations appearances... but he took good care of the people in Banshee. For me, that was what really mattered.

Pulling up a chair, I sat down next to Kristin and waited for the Jump to end.

—

As it turned out, Griff's precaution proved unnecessary. He and Shaeffer were back in the basement, looking over a computer printout, when the circuit breakers snapped and Kristin gasped for air.

They were beside me instantly. "Well?" Shaeffer demanded.

Griff shushed him and held Kristin's hand until her eyes slowly came back to focus. "Griff?" she whispered in a husky voice.

"Right here," he assured her. "That was a long Jump; how do you feel?"

"Okay." She took a deep breath. "Okay."

"What happened?" Shaeffer asked, hope and apprehension struggling for prominence in his voice.

But Kristin shook her head. "He didn't see me," she said. "I'm almost sure he didn't. He was talking to one of his people all the way to the airfield, and it was sunny and—" she broke off, squeezing her eyes shut as a shudder went up through her. "He didn't see me."

I looked at Shaeffer; but if he was discouraged it didn't show. "All right, we'll just try it again," he said grimly. "Dr. Mansfield, do you have any idea whether or not the Banshee images accumulate? In other words, will the President see only one of them no matter how many Jumpers have visited that particular time frame?"

"I have no idea," Griff admitted. "We don't even know what these images are that people see. The Jumpers don't see them, certainly—they never see each other, no matter how many of them are present in a particular slot."

"It's entirely possible that only those about to die can see them," Rennie's voice came from behind me. I jumped; I hadn't heard him come up. "That was the way a real banshee operated, wasn't it?"

"Depends on which legends you listen to," I told him shortly. Kristin's eyes flicked briefly to mine, then turned away.

"Try to recall we're talking reality here, not legends," Shaeffer said tartly. His eyes studied Rennie for a second. "I believe it's your turn now, Mr. Baylor."

I looked at Griff, expecting him to remind Shaeffer that it was after ten o'clock and that he'd pushed the usual late-night limits by a couple of hours already. But he remained silent, his attention also on Rennie.

Rennie, however, wasn't nearly so reticent. "I was under the impression, Mr. Shaeffer, that the goal here was to rescue the President, not turn Banshee's Jumpers inside out. It's getting late, and if you keep this up you're going to kill us."

"Mr. Baylor, if you don't understand what the hell we're doing here, please ask Dr. Mansfield to explain it to you," Shaeffer bit out icily. "The longer it takes us to make contact with President Jeffers, the greater the risk of changing known history. Remember? Whenever one of you finally gets seen by the President, I'm banking on him recognizing the image as that of a Banshee Jumper and coming to the proper conclusion."

"That he's going to die?"

Shaeffer's brow darkened. "Of course not—that he needs to stay incommunicado until the risk of changing the past is over. Except that from his point of view it'll be the future, of course."

"Would he really think things out that clearly?" Kristin asked.

"If he doesn't, there could be trouble," Shaeffer admitted. "But I think he will. He's been following Banshee's progress closely ever since you were first set up—he's fascinated by the whole concept."

"So how do you expect him to know when he can come out?" I asked Shaeffer. "You think he can postpone letting the world know he's still alive for a full three days?"

"That's precisely the reason I'm pushing to make contact as soon as possible," Shaeffer snapped. "Once we know he's off the plane, I can call California and let whoever's answering the phone know that he can come out. Understand?" He didn't wait for an answer, but turned back to Rennie. "Mr. Baylor? It's your turn."

I held my breath... but apparently Rennie wasn't yet ready for the big confrontation. "All right," he said heavily. "I don't suppose I can fight you, Griff, and Adam on this one, can I?" Turning his back on us, he stepped over toward the prep area.

"This isn't supposed to be a fight—" Griff began.

Shaeffer cut him off with a hand motion. "Ms. Cosgrove," he said to Kristin, "whenever you feel ready, I'd like you to come upstairs for a short debriefing."

"I'm ready now," she said, struggling to sit up. Griff put an arm around her shoulders and helped her get her feet on the floor.

We were halfway to the elevator when Rennie's voice stopped us. "I trust you realize, Mr. Shaeffer, that if President Jeffers does see me we'll change known history right then and there."

Shaeffer turned back, annoyance on his face. "You're assuming he won't think fast enough to avoid making any phone calls—"

"Actually, I was referring to the fact that Kristin has already seen this same slot of history and knows he didn't react to her presence. Her presence or, presumably, anyone else's.

We all stood there a long moment, grouped around Kristin, as the silence thickened like paste in the air. "God," Griff said at last, very softly. "He's right. We can't send him back to the same slot."

Shaeffer's eyes were defocused. "We don't know how the President would react, though. Do we? He could have seen but not have given any indication... damn." He took a deep breath, looked at Kristin. "Damn it all. Ms Cosgrove, where was he when you ended the Jump?"

"He was just getting out of the car and starting toward the landing strip. It was so sunny I figured that if he hadn't seen me inside the car he wouldn't see me out—"

"Yes, yes," Shaeffer cut her off. "Damn, Dr. Mansfield, can you hit that same end point with the next Jump?"

"No problem," Griff assured him. "The instruments record both ends of the Jump and we can get it to the exact second. But if he was already at the strip—"

"Then we don't have much time left," Shaeffer said harshly. "I know, damn it. But we don't have any choice."

Griff nodded. "I'll set the coordinates myself. Adam...?"

I took his place at Kristin's side, and he headed over to the control board. Shaeffer watched him go, then turned back toward the elevator with a hissing breath. "Come on, you two. Let's get upstairs."

—

Kristin's debriefing was short, calm, and—at least as near as I could tell—totally worthless. Jeffers had gotten into his limo with some aides and Secret Service men, gone straight to the semi-private landing strip where Air Force One was waiting, and headed off toward the plane on foot. If there were a banshee or ghost where Kristin was hovering, neither he nor any of the others ever saw it.

Afterwards, Kristin let me escort her back to her room, but she was clearly not in a talkative mood and we reached the door with barely a dozen words having passed between us. She went inside, and I trudged two doors down to where my old room had been set up for me.

It looked about the same as I remembered it, with the minor exception of a new television replacing the ancient model that had been there before. I resisted the lure of the remote control while I got undressed... but even before I crawled into bed I knew I was too wired up to sleep right away. Flicking the set on, I began to scan the channels.

Unsurprisingly, there wasn't much on except late-night summaries of President Jeffers's death.

It was thoroughly depressing. The cold hard facts themselves were bad enough, even though the media didn't yet know what we did about the cause of the crash. But for me, the interspersed segments of national and world response were even worse. Mine had been one of the landslides of votes that had reelected Jeffers a year ago, but it wasn't until now that I really understood on a gut level how truly popular with the people he'd been. The cameras showed at least half a dozen candlelit memorial marches from cities all across the country and even one or two from overseas. People talked about the shock and the fear and the pain... and I lay there and soaked it in, hurting right along with them.

Hurting with people, after all, was part of what being a White Knight meant.

White Knight. A college friend had first coined that nickname for me, and for a long time I'd felt proud of it. It was a statement of my ability to care for people; to serve them and to take whatever bits of their suffering that I could onto myself. It was a fine, noble calling—and I was good at it. It was almost second nature now for me to take the smallest piece of meat at dinners and cookouts, or to give up my days off helping people move or do home repairs. My ability to sacrifice for others enabled me to give away my money, even if I had to do without something myself.

It had enabled me to quit Banshee almost a year ago. And to not tell anyone why.

I watched the news for another half hour, until I couldn't take it any more. Lying in the dark, listening to the unfamiliar sounds of big-city traffic around me, I finally fell asleep.

—

The news that it was sabotage broke sometime during the night, and by morning the news programs were hauling in experts to give their speculations as to who was responsible and why. Combined with the eulogies still pouring in from leaders around the world, it made it that much harder, an hour later, to watch a man already dead walking casually across the tarmac toward his plane.

And to labor in vain to warn him. The others had been right: the sunlight was far too bright for the President to have any hope at all of seeing anything as insubstantial as a ghost.

Mine, Shaeffer had told me before the Jump, was to be the last effort in this particular slot, and so I kept at it all the way up the stairway. But it was no use. I did every kind of aerial maneuver I could think of to try and get his attention, but not once did he so much as take a second look in my direction. Eventually, he passed the limit of my tether, fastened to Air Force One's door, and vanished into the communications section at the front of the plane.

Third strike, and Banshee was out.

I came back to find Griff and Shaeffer leaning over me. "Well?" Griff demanded.

"Uh-uh," I shook my head. The motion sent a brief spasm of pain splitting through my skull. "He never saw me."

Griff seemed to slump. "Damn," he breathed, "Mr. Shaeffer... I'm sorry—"

"It's not over yet," Shaeffer cut him off, icy calm. "All right; if we can't stop him getting on the plane, the next step is to try and get him off it before the balloon goes up." He stepped back from the couch and gestured, and as I struggled up onto my elbows I saw Morgan standing nearby. "Mr. Portland, you're next. You'll be Jumping as soon as the equipment is ready."

Morgan nodded silently. His eyes met mine for an instant, and then he turned away from us.

I should have realized right then that something was wrong. But with the Jump and my recovery from it taking all my attention, Morgan's odd reaction missed me completely. "If you're going to try and get him off," I told Shaeffer, working myself to a vertical position, "you'll need to have the tether a lot further forward. When I left he was heading into the forward section of the plane."

Shaeffer nodded abstractly. "He'll be back in his private section before take-off, though. That's where we'll have to try and get to him."

"Ah," Griff said, offering me a hand as I swung my legs off the couch and more or less steadied myself on my feet. "You're talking about getting him out during the flight, then?"

"Right. There are parachutes stored near both exit doors. If we can contact him, all he'll have to do is grab one, open the door, and jump."

"Is that all?" an unexpected voice cut in.

We all turned around. "Hale, you were told to stay upstairs," Griff growled.

"So that Shaeffer can dismantle the stability of the universe in peace and quiet?" Hale snorted. "Fat chance."

I looked at Griff. He shrugged fractionally in return, a worried frown starting to settle onto his face. Hale had always been something of a borderline neurotic anyway, but this seemed to me to be a pretty drastic slippage. "Hale—" I began.

"You just shut up," he snapped back. "You cut out on us once—coming back now just because Griff wants a yes-man on his side doesn't win you any points."

I opened my mouth, closing it again in confusion... and only then did I spot Rennie lounging against the wall near the elevator.

And finally understood.

That confrontation among the equipment cabinets hadn't been an effort to convince me to join him in opposing Griff. Instead, he'd been trying to drive me solidly onto Griffs side... so that he could use the others' animosity toward me as a lever to get them on his side.

"Hale, if you have any specifics to bring up," Griff said soothingly, "we're willing to discuss them—"

"I have one," Rennie spoke up, strolling over. "Mr. Shaeffer, you're talking as if all the President has to do is open the door and jump out and that's that. Right?"

"He was in the Air Force for six years," Shaeffer said stiffly. "He knows how to handle a parachute."

"I'm sure he does. Has it occurred to you that if the pilot radios that they've got an open door the known past will be changed?"

I looked at Shaeffer, the muscles of my shoulders tightening. "Would they broadcast something like that?" I asked. "Or would it just show up on the flight recorder?"

"Depends on whether the pilot was on the radio at the time it happened, I suppose," he said. "If he wasn't..."

"And when someone notices the President is missing?" Hale shot back.

Shaeffer took a deep breath. "All hell breaks loose," he admitted grudgingly.

For a moment we all looked at each other. "Well?" Griff said at last. "What now, Mr. Shaeffer?"

Morgan cleared his throat. "If President Jeffers recognizes us as being from Banshee, as you've suggested he might, wouldn't he realize he has to give the pilot instructions not to mention his departure?"

"Oh, come on," Rennie scoffed. "I, for one, have no intention of just hoping he'll think of all these things on the spur of the moment—hell, Shaeffer, you've been working on this scheme for twelve hours or more and you still missed this angle."

"Rennie—"

"No, Dr. Mansfield, he's right," Shaeffer cut Griff off. "If we're going to do this safely, we've got to make sure the President winds up with only the options we want him to have."

I glanced at Rennie, saw a touch of surprise flicker across his face. Shaeffer's acceptance of his argument seemed to have pulled some of the wind out of his sails. "It gets worse," he said, a bit less belligerently. "If he jumps out of the plane anywhere near civilization, we get exactly the same problem."

"Yes, I'd caught that corollary, thank you," Shaeffer returned tartly. "Let me think."

For a moment the only sound in the room was the steady drone of a hundred cabinet fans. "All right," Shaeffer said at last. "He was in the air for approximately ninety minutes before the crash. We'll start fifteen minutes before the end."

"And what if he spots Morgan immediately?" Rennie growled.

"What if he does?" Shaeffer countered. "What's he likely to do?"

A slight frown creased Rennie's forehead as, for the second time in so many minutes, Shaeffer seemed to have taken him by surprise. "I thought the whole point of this exercise was to get him to pull the ripcord on the flight."

"Sure... but put yourself in his shoes for a second. What would you do if you were President and saw a Banshee appear in front of you?"

Rennie's frown darkened. "This isn't any time for guessing games, Shaeffer," he bit out. "If you've got some brilliant idea—"

"We wouldn't be lookin' in on him if the plane was just gonna crash," Morgan said slowly.

"What was that?" Shaeffer asked, an oddly tense look in his eye.

Morgan was frowning off into space. "Well, our business here's s'posed to be findin' out how these things happen... and if he was gonna crash, we oughta be concentratin' on the wings or engines or somethin'. If one o' us just sits there and watches him, maybe he'll think it's somethin' else gonna happen."

Griff inhaled sharply. "Like maybe... assassination?"

Shaeffer nodded, almost eagerly. "Right—exactly right. I'm expecting him to assume he's going to be the target of a simple attack, and that you're there to find out which of his aides is the one involved."

"So he'll sit there and make sure the door is locked," Griff nodded. "Makes sense."

"Or else he'll assume that there's a bomb in his private section," Hale put in.

Shaeffer's expression soured a little. "In which case he'll call for a quick search of the plane," he said shortly. "Either way, the thought of jumping shouldn't even cross his mind... until you start leading him out toward the exit."

I looked at Morgan, back to Shaeffer. "And what if the President doesn't notice him?" I asked.

"He will, Shaeffer said grimly. "This is our last chance, and we're damn well going to make sure he sees something this time. So. Dr. Mansfield, you'll be sending Mr. Portland into the slot T minus fifteen minutes to T minus six minutes—no later, understand? Ms. Cosgrove will be next, and after that Mr. Baylor here—all of them Jumping into the same fifteen-to-six minute time slot."

I looked at Griff, saw his eyebrows go up. "Didn't we decide," I said carefully, "that sending more than one person into the same slot—?"

"As each comes back," Shaeffer went on as if I hadn't spoken, "you will immediately administer a sedative, before there can be any indications one way or the other as to what the Jumper has seen or done. Understand?"

For a long moment Griff just stood there, looking as flabbergasted as I felt. Beside me, Morgan stirred. "Mr. Shaeffer," he said hesitantly, "I'd be the first to admit I'm not all that smart. But are you tryin' to say that if we don't know what the other Jumpers saw, then a lot of the problems go away?"

Shaeffer's mouth compressed into a tight line. "I'm hoping the paradoxes will, yes," he said. "It ought to work—it's a version of the Schr?dinger's cat setup—" He broke off, took a deep breath. "Anyway, we have to risk it; and we have to risk it now, Mr. Portland."

I looked at Morgan, expecting him to nod and take his position on the couch. "No," he said quietly.

—

I stared at him. We all did, for what seemed to be a very long time. "What did you say?" Shaeffer asked at last, very softly.

"I said no," Morgan told him, equally softly. "Sorry, Mr. Shaeffer, but even the way you got it I don't think it's safe enough. And if you're wrong..." He shook his head. "It all goes bad real quick."

"And you came to this conclusion all by yourself?" Shaeffer growled pointedly.

Morgan's forehead creased. "Just 'cause I never had much schooling doesn't mean I ain't got any common sense," he said without rancor.

"And common sense is important in abstract physics, is it?" Shaeffer bit out. He shifted his glare to Hale and Rennie. "All right. Which of you two put him up to this? Or would you rather the Marines upstairs ask the questions?"

"You don't need to do that," Morgan sighed. "It was Rennie who told me that you couldn't fiddle things so's it wouldn't be dangerous."

"Common sense may not be the best thing to go by here, Morgan," Griff put in quietly. "What about your sense of honor, your loyalty to the rest of us? What do they tell you?"

Morgan gave him a long look. "It's 'cause of that that I'm just quittin' straight out," he said. "Otherwise I'd prob'bly do what Hale thought I should: Jump, but stay as far as I could away from President Jeffers."

"Son of a bitch," Shaeffer ground out, turning his glare on Hale as his hand dipped briefly into his side coat pocket. "You're under arrest—both of you."

"On what charge?" Rennie asked calmly. "You had no legal authority to drag me back here to Banshee in the first place—there's been no declaration of martial law, and I wasn't served any kind of papers, Federal or otherwise. You have no power over me, Shaeffer—you or Griff. Arrest me and I'll sue your eyes out."

Behind him, the elevator opened to reveal two Marines. "These men are under house arrest," Shaeffer told them, pointing to Hale and Rennie. "Take them to their rooms and make sure they stay there." He looked at Morgan. "Last chance, Portland. Are you going to join them?"

Without a word, Morgan stepped over beside Rennie and Hale. Shaeffer nodded to the Marines and the entire group disappeared back into the elevator.

And as the doors closed on them, all of the starch suddenly seemed to go out of Shaeffer's backbone. His hands went up to rub his face and he actually staggered, and I found myself wondering just how much sleep he'd gotten the night before. Probably not much. "Dr. Mansfield, you'd better call Ms. Cosgrove down here."

I looked at Griff. "There's no way we can do this with just two Jumpers," I said.

He took a deep breath and nodded. "Adam's right, Mr. Shaeffer. Especially if you still plan to go with sedation after each Jump."

"I'd say it's obvious that idea's not going to work as is," Shaeffer bit out. "Just get Ms. Cosgrove down here—let me worry about procedure."

Griff pursed his lips and for a moment I thought he was going to argue. Then, without a word, he stepped over to the control board phone.

Kristin arrived about fifteen minutes later, looking even worse than Shaeffer did. Her eyes were red and half-lidded, her hair had the disheveled look of someone who'd spent the night doing more tossing and turning than actual sleeping, and her feet seemed to drag as she walked toward us from the elevator. I stepped forward to take her arm; she sent me a halfhearted glare and pulled back from my grasp. "What's going on, Griff?" she asked.

"Mutiny," he told her grimly. "You and Adam seem to be the only Jumpers on our side at the moment."

"We—what?"

"Ms. Cosgrove," Shaeffer interrupted her, stepping over from the control station. "I understand you're still recovering from last night's Jump, but I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to do another one this morning."

Kristin closed her eyes, and I saw a muscle in her cheek twitch. "All right," she sighed. "What am I supposed to do?"

"Same thing you tried to do yesterday; get President Jeffers to see you," Shaeffer told her. "We're going to put you in his private office on Air Force One fifteen minutes before the engine catches fire. When he sees you, you will stay in the room, hovering in front of him, until the clock in the room shows three minutes before the crash. That was—what, three-twenty-five, Pacific Time?"

"Right," Griff nodded. "The engine fire probably started a minute or two before that, though.

"Point," Shaeffer agreed, forehead furrowed in thought. "Yeah. All right, then make it three-twenty. At three-twenty exactly, Ms. Cosgrove, you are to move to a spot in front of the door and then end the Jump. Understood?"

Kristin hesitated. "What if he doesn't see me...?"

"He has to," Shaeffer said, very quietly. "He has to."

For a moment none of us said anything. Then Shaeffer took a deep breath. "No point in delaying it. This is it; let's go."

—

The lights flickered, Kristin's body sagged on the couch, and I turned to Shaeffer to wait for the other shoe to drop.

It did so immediately. "Mr. Sinn, I want you to wait in your quarters," he said. "When Ms. Cosgrove returns, she'll be put under immediate sedation, but I don't want there to be any chance at all she'll say something you'll hear."

Griff turned back from the control board, his eyes wide. "I thought you said—"

"I said the plan would need modification," Shaeffer cut him off. "This is that modification: adapting it to only two players. Problems?"

"Yes," I said with a sigh. "It isn't going to work."

"It's a perfectly reasonable—"

"No, it's not!" I snarled. For once, I was tired of tiptoeing around other people's feelings. "Think about it a second, Shaeffer. Whatever Kristin experiences on that plane, a long nap isn't going to make her forget it You're the one who mentioned Schr?dinger's cat awhile back—do you really know how that experiment was supposed to work, or were you just spouting words?"

Shaeffer held his temper with obvious effort. "A gun is set up so that if a particular radioactive atom in a test sample decays in a given time, the gun goes off and kills the cat. If it doesn't decay, the cat lives."

So he did know. "Right," I nodded. "Do you also remember why there's no way to know what actually happened?"

Shaeffer pursed his lips. "If you open the box, the cat automatically dies."

"Right," I said softly. "Were you ultimately planning to kill Kristin?"

He closed his eyes and exhaled between his teeth; a hissing sound of defeat. "Then this really is it. Isn't it."

My stomach churned with sympathetic pain. "Hang onto the bright side," I urged him. "He might see her; and if he does, I'll be able to talk to Kristin about it before I do my own Jump. Which means I'll know what the situation is before I go into it."

He gave me an odd look, as if being comforted by what he clearly regarded as an underling was outside his usual experience. Then, turning, he wandered off toward the elevators, hands clasped tightly behind him. Griff and I exchanged glances and silently settled down to wait.

We waited nearly ten minutes; and when it came, the snap of circuit breakers made me jump. We were crowded over Kristin's couch within seconds, all three of us. She gasped, eyes fluttering—

"What happened?" Shaeffer snapped. "Answer me! What happened?"

"Uh... uh... Griff," she managed, hand reaching up to grip at Griffs sleeve. Her eyes were wet as she blinked tears into them; wet, and strangely wild. "Griff—oh, God. It worked—it really worked. He saw me!"

—

President Jeffers's Air Force One office was small but sumptuous, something that rather jarred against his public image as one of the common people. The room's decor registered only peripherally, though, as I concentrated my full attention on the man standing behind the oaken desk in shirtsleeves and loosened tie... the man who was likewise concentrating his full attention on me.

Or, more precisely, on my Banshee image. Or, even more precisely, on Kristin's Banshee image. According to the clock I could just see on the side wall—and the settings Griff had used—I would be overlapping her Jump for another thirty seconds. Enough time for me to orient myself and to get into position in front of the office door where she would be when she ended her Jump. Ready to take over from her.

Assuming, of course, it wasn't just Kristin's image Jeffers could see. In that case, I'd have to abort the Jump and we'd be forced to wait until Kristin could try it again.

I watched the second hand on the clock... and when the half minute was up, I began to drift back toward the door. Holding my nonexistent breath.

Jeffers's eyes adjusted their focus to follow me.

I continued to ease back; and with my full concentration on him, it was a shock when the universe suddenly went dark around me. For a second I lost control and snapped to the length of my tether toward the front of the plane before my brain caught up with me and I realized that I had simply gone into the honey-combed metal of the office door. Fortunately, Jeffers moved slower than I did, and I was back in the corridor outside his office when he hesitantly opened the door. His eyes flicked momentarily around, found me again. His lips moved—soundlessly, of course, as far as I was concerned. But Griff had long ago made all of us learn how to lip-read: Am I supposed to follow you?

I nodded and pointed toward the rear of the plane, watching Jeffer's face closely. There was no reaction that I could detect. Whatever it was he was seeing, it didn't seem to match the nonexistent body my subconscious persisted in giving me during Jumps. Which meant hand motions, expressions—body language of all sorts—were out.

Which left me exactly one method of communication. I hoped it would be enough.

Carefully—mindful of both the deadline breathing down Jeffers's neck and the danger of him losing track of me if I moved too fast—I began backing down the corridor toward the rear of the plane. For a moment Jeffers held his ground, a whole raft of conflicting emotions playing across his face. Then, almost reluctantly, he followed. I had another flicker of darkness as someone came up from behind and walked through me, nodding greetings to Jeffers as they passed. For a bad second I thought Jeffers was going to point me out to the other man; but it was clear that he still wasn't entirely sure he wasn't hallucinating, and after a few casual words he left the other and continued on toward me. I got my breathing started again and resumed my own movement, and a minute later we were standing across from the rear door.

And I ran full tilt into my inability to speak or even pantomime. The parachutes were racked across from the door, inconspicuous but clearly visible... but moving over and hovering by them didn't seem to give Jeffers the hint. I tried moving away, then back again—tried backing directly into and through one of the neat packs and then back out—tried moving practically to Jeffer's nose, back to the chutes, and then to the door.

Nothing.

I gritted my teeth. With the usual fouling of my time sense I had no idea how many seconds we had left before the balloon went up, but I knew there weren't a lot of them. There had to be some other way to get the message across to Jeffers—there had to be—but for the life of me I couldn't come up with one. Back and forth I went, parachute to door back to parachute, repeating the motions for lack of anything better to do, all the whole racking my brain trying to think of something else—anything else—that I could do. Back and forth...

On what must have been the tenth repetition, he finally got it.

You want me to jump from the plane? his lips said. I started to nod, caught myself, and instead tried moving my whole body up and down.

For a wonder, he interpreted the gesture properly. Is someone going to shoot us down? he asked.

Close enough. I nodded again and moved back to the parachutes. Any second now—

Jeffers didn't move. What about the others? he asked, his hand sweeping around in a gesture that encompassed the entire plane I can't just leave them to die.

I blinked, feeling my stomach tightening within me. Jeffers's ability to think and care about average American people had been one of my major reasons for voting for him in the first place; to have that asset suddenly turn into a liability was something I would never have expected. I thought furiously, trying to figure out some way to answer him—

From outside came a dull thud... and an instant later the floor beneath Jeffers tilted violently, throwing him through me and into the parachute rack.

I spun around, heart thudding in my ears, half expecting to see him sprawled on the floor, dazed or unconscious from the impact. It was almost a shock to find him on his feet, fully alert—

And pulling on one of the parachutes.

I didn't stop to try and figure it out. Pulling laterally to the direction of my tether, I ducked outside for a moment, trying to estimate how much time Jeffers had before we were too close to the ground. Thirty seconds, perhaps, depending on whether the winds would be blowing him toward or away from the mountain sloping away directly beneath us. I went back inside, and to my mild surprise found Jeffers already in harness and fighting his way uphill along the sloping floor toward the door. I held my breath... and as the plane almost leveled for a second, he lunged and managed to catch the lever before the floor angled beneath him again.

I glanced back toward the parachute rack again to fix in my mind exactly which chute he'd taken; and as I did so, something skittering along the wall caught my eye. It was a flat package, covered in bright orange: one of the emergency packs that were supposed to be clipped to the front webbing of each of the chutes. I looked back at Jeffers, but before I could get in position to see his chest the plane almost-leveled again—

And in a single convulsive motion he shoved the door hard against the gale of the air outside and squeezed his way out.

I dropped straight down through the floor and luggage compartment, falling as far below the crippled plane as my tether allowed. Below and behind me, Jeffers tumbled end over end, shirt billowing in the breeze. If he'd hit something on the way out—if he was unconscious—

The drogue chute snaked its way out of the pack, followed immediately by the main chute. It filled out, stabilized... and for the first time the reality of what I'd just done hit me.

We'd used the Banshee machinery to save a man's life.

All the private agony I'd had to endure throughout my time at Banshee—all the pent-up frustration of watching disasters I couldn't stop—all of it seemed to flow out of me in that one glorious moment. All the millions of dollars—all the backhanded bureaucratic comments we'd had to put up with—it was suddenly worth it. Let them scoff now! We'd saved a life—a President's life, no less. And on top of it, we'd even done so without any of Rennie's and Hale's fears about changing the past coming true. The minute I was back, Shaeffer could direct the searchers at the crash site to move their operations back a couple of miles to where I could see Jeffers coming down....

And as my attention shifted from Jeffers's parachute to the rocky, tree-covered slope below, the flood of wonder and pride washing over me evaporated. Beyond his landing area, perhaps a mile further down the slope, a small village was clearly visible.

A village he'd be able to walk to in an hour.

—

I don't remember much about the minutes immediately following the Jump. There was, I know, a lot of shaking of my arms and some fairly insistent use of my name, but for some reason I was unable to really come out of it, and after a short time the voices and hands faded into blackness and disturbing dreams.

Eventually, though, the dreams faded. When I was finally able to drag myself back to full awareness, I found I was back upstairs in my room, lying on my bed with an intravenous tube running into my arm. I lifted the arm slightly, frowning at the tube.

"Just relax and don't try to move," a voice said from my other side.

I turned my head, and with a complete lack of surprise found Griff sitting beside the bed. "What—?" I managed to croak before my voice gave out.

"You came out of the Jump in something approximating a hysterical state," he said. "Babbled something about Jeffers bailing out and changing the past and then collapsed. Shaeffer's had them pumping stuff into your arm ever since."

I glanced again at the needle and shivered. "How... what time is it?"

He checked his wrist. "Almost four-thirty."

Which meant I'd been out of commission for something close to three hours. "What's been happening with the search?"

Griff shrugged fractionally, the lines around his eyes and mouth tightening a bit. "Nothing, as far as I know. Shaeffer's been running back and forth between here and the communications room, not wanting to launch anything major until he could talk to you and find out just what you were talking about back there."

A shiver went down my back. "He got out of the plane," I whispered. "The parachute opened okay, and he was on his way down.... but there was a town an hour's walk downslope of him. There's no way he could have missed it."

Griff swore under his breath as he scooped up the phone and punched at the buttons. "Get me Shaeffer... Mr. Shaeffer? This is Griff. Adam's awake, and we've got a hell of a problem.... Okay, and if you've got more of those maps maybe you'd better bring them... Right."

He hung up and looked back at me. "You think you'll be able to locate the exact spot where he went down?"

I shivered again. "With that town sitting practically beneath him? Of course I can."

He pursed his lips and fell silent.

Shaeffer arrived a couple of minutes later, a stack of his fine-detail maps in his arms. "Glad to see you awake," he said shortly, his mind clearly on other things as he all but pushed Griff out of his chair and sat down, laying the maps across my chest. "Show me."

I propped myself up on my elbows and began sorting through them. Someone had sketched out the plane's trajectory across the maps in red, and it took me only a minute to find the one I needed. "Here," I said, tracing a circle around the spot with my finger. "He came down about here."

Shaeffer's eyes were shining as he glanced at the number in the map's corner and then at the spot I'd indicated. "All right," he breathed. "All right. Important point, now: did you notice whether or not he had an orange emergency pack attached to his parachute?"

"No, he didn't. In fact, I think I saw it on the floor just before he jumped out. It must have come off while he was getting into the chute."

Shaeffer grunted. "Good. I guess. Eliminates the problem right away of why there wasn't a transponder for the search team to tag onto. Unfortunately, it also means he didn't have any food or water with him, either. Any chance he could have had trouble with the landing itself? Would another Jump be a good idea?"

I sighed. "I don't know. Shaeffer... what about that town down there?"

"What about it?"

"Well, it's there—right in the most obvious path for him to have taken. But it's been twenty-five hours now since he landed, and..." I shrugged helplessly.

"Maybe he's been smarter than all of you gave him credit for," Shaeffer said. "Maybe he realized that you were from the future and knew to wait until we came looking for him. Or maybe he didn't notice the town at all on his way down, in which case staying near his landing site was the only rational thing to do." Abruptly, he got to his feet. "Whichever, there's one easy way to find out."

"You going to send out the searchers right now?" Griff asked.

Shaeffer arched his eyebrows. "As Mr. Sinn just pointed out, he's spent approximately twenty-five hours in the Colorado Rockies. It would be rather a waste of effort to have gotten him out of the plane and then let him die of exposure, now, wouldn't it?"

I took a deep breath. "I want to make another Jump first."

They both looked at me. "Why?" Shaeffer asked.

"I just... want to see what happened after he landed."

"In an hour or two we'll be able to ask him what happened," Shaeffer said scathingly. "Besides, you need more rest before you can Jump again."

"And besides, if I don't know what happened, I won't be taking any further risk of changing the past?"

Shaeffer's lip twitched. "Something like that," he said. "Look, I don't have time for this. The past is secure, Mr. Sinn—the fact that we're still here and all our memories are still intact proves that. Right? The important thing now is to go out there and bring him home. There'll be plenty of time later for speculation and back-patting." With a nod to Griff, he pulled open the door and left.

I looked at Griff. "Griff...?"

He shrugged. "I don't know, Adam," he admitted. "Everything certainly feels okay. Though if our memories are also malleable I suppose feelings aren't necessarily a good indication." He locked eyes with me. "I don't think it's necessary... but if you want to do another Jump, I'll okay it."

I hesitated; but Shaeffer was right. Whatever had happened, the very fact that Jeffers was still lost out there implied that what we'd done hadn't significantly altered the known past. "No, that's all right," I sighed. "I guess I can wait until Jeffers tells us himself what happened."

"Okay," Griff said softly. "In that case, you'd better concentrate on getting some rest."

"I think I can manage that," I agreed, closing my eyes.

The lights went out, the door opened and closed, and I was alone. So that's it, I thought. Looks like all the worry was for nothing...

The opening of the door snapped me out of the doze I'd been drifting into, and I opened my eyes to see Morgan framed in the doorway. "Adam?" he whispered. "You awake?"

"Yeah," I told him. "Come in, but leave the overhead light off if you don't mind."

"Okay." He closed the door behind him and groped his way to the bedside, where he flicked on the small lamp there. "So," he said, eyeing me closely. "You did it, huh?"

"Shaeffer seems to think so. He tell everyone already?"

"Not really, but when Hale and Rennie and me were let outta our rooms, it was a pretty good clue. So tell me what happened."

I gave him all of it, and when I'd finished he sat silently for a long moment. "Well?" I prompted. "What do you think?"

"I don't like that town bein' there so close. Worries me pretty bad, if you want to know the truth."

"It worries me, too," I admitted. "But since Jeffers never showed up there everything must be safe—"

"It must, huh? S'pose the only reason nothin's happened yet is 'cause we can still change it?"

"I... don't follow you."

He took a deep breath. "We still got somethin' like forty six hours to go back and try to get the President to do somethin' we want 'fore that slot's closed, right? Well, maybe we're s'posed to do somethin' else to him... and maybe if we don't, it'll suddenly happen that he did get to that town after all, and that he was picked up twenty hours ago—"

He broke off, and as I looked into his eyes I shivered. A temporarily shattered but still-fluid past sitting there on hold was a possibility that hadn't even occurred to me. From the expression on Morgan's face it was clear he didn't care for the idea at all; I knew it sure had me scared. "What do you think we should do about it?" I asked.

He snorted. "It's not we, Adam: it's you. Shaeffer let us out of our rooms, all right, but he ain't gonna let us downstairs anytime soon, leastwise nowhere near the couch."

"So what do you think I should do about it?" I growled.

His eyes held mine. "Go back there," he said bluntly. "Go back there and... stop him."

"Stop him how? Put out my foot and trip him?"

He didn't even notice the sarcasm. "You're the guy that got him outta the plane—I figure he'd follow you anywhere you took him. So... lead him off to a ravine somewhere and get him to fall in."

I stared up at him, not believing what I was hearing. "Are you crazy?" I said at last.

"It's the only way," he insisted. "You pick the ravine right and you can make him walk miles out of his way 'fore he can get out."

"And if I pick the ravine wrong and the fall kills him?" I snapped. "That would fix things up good, wouldn't it?"

His eyes dropped away from my gaze. "He was dead once already, Adam," he said quietly. "All you'd be doin' is puttin' the universe back like it was s'posed to be."

"No," I bit out. "That's not all I'd be doing. I'd be committing murder."

"Then get him lost or somethin'. Lead him away from the town, so far off he couldn't find his way back."

"Morgan, that town's barely a mile away—and I'll only have an hour back there before I have to end the Jump. How can I get him that lost that fast?"

"Then droppin' him into a ravine's your only shot. Our only shot." He took a deep breath. "I know it's risky. But you're just gonna have to take that risk."

"Oh, right. I have to take the risk. But of course you'll be with me in spirit, right?"

"Hey, friend, I'm in this a whole lot tighter than that," he grated. "Me and everyone else in the world. We'll all have to suffer whatever happens if the past gets changed. Maybe you oughtta try thinkin' about that for a change."

Slowly, I shook my head. "I'm sorry, Morgan. I can't deliberately risk someone's life over an unknown and possibly even nonexistent set of consequences. I just can't."

A look of contempt spread over his face. "That's it, huh? You're gonna spout fancy words and all that and then just go ahead and take the easy way out. Like you usually do."

"I've never in my entire life taken the easy way—"

"Damn it all, will you shut that crap up?"

I shrank back against my pillow, stunned at the totally unexpected outburst. "Morgan—"

"Every time," he snarled. "Every single damn time I've seen you have a choice, you always took the easy way. Maybe you didn't think so, but you did."

"Yeah?" I snarled back. "Well, maybe you just haven't ever seen the whole picture."

"And maybe it's you who hasn't. You talk up a good fight with that White Knight stuff of yours, but you know what?—you ain't a White Knight at all. All you are is what we used to call a professional martyr. You make a little sacrifice that costs you something and figure that's proof you've done somebody some good."

Somehow I found my voice again. "That's unfair. You have no idea what I do and how I do it."

"No? You want me to tell you why you quit Banshee? And why it hurt all of us more'n it helped?"

I swallowed the retort that came to me. "I'm listening," I managed to say instead.

He took a deep breath. "Griff told you Banshee's money was gonna be cut, and you did some figuring and found out that even with Rennie being bounced out there wasn't gonna be enough left for four Jumpers. So instead o' workin' out a deal—lettin' us all go part-time, maybe—you just up and quit."

I felt my face go red. All my efforts to keep them from finding out why I'd done it... "Do the others know?"

His lip twisted. "No, 'course not. How you think Kristin would feel if I told you you'd quit your job for her? 'Specially since it good as trapped her here?"

"She'd probably—what?" I interrupted myself as the last words registered. "What do you mean, trapped her? She's earning more now than she ever has in her life."

He sighed. "That's just what I meant, Adam. Don't you see?—this Banshee job's pretty much a dead-end one. There just ain't anywhere to go with it. But the money's too good for her to just walk away and start somethin' new from scratch. Same for Hale and me, for different reasons."

"Oh, really?" I scoffed. "So tell me, where would you suggest someone with Hale's abrasive personality might go?"

"Again, that's what I meant," he said wearily. "Here at Banshee Griff hasn't got much choice but to put up with him, so there's no reason for him to try and change himself." He hesitated. "For me... heck, we all know I'm just a hick from the backwoods. Right? I don't have much schooling, and until I do I can't really find any better job than I've got right here. Now, if I was only workin' part of the year here, I could maybe go off to college somewhere, maybe get a degree. But stuck here, on call all the time..." He shook his head.

For a long moment I gazed at him in silence, thoughts spinning like miniature tornadoes in my brain as a horrible ache spread throughout my being. Had I really been the cause of all that? It was inconceivable—what I'd done had been to help them, not hurt them. And yet, Morgan's arguments were impossible to refute.

And impossible to ignore.

"It pretty well boils down," Morgan said at last, "to what my Ma used to call tough love. Like taking off a bandaid—short hurt for long help. If you can't do that... maybe you oughtta stay clear of that White Knight business of yours."

I took a deep breath. All the shadows of the past—all the sacrifices I'd made for others—rose up en masse to haunt me. How many of them, I wondered, had been useless? How many had been worse than useless? And perhaps most painful of all was the fact that it was too late to do anything about any of them.

Almost any of them. "Pick up the phone," I told Morgan, sitting up in bed. Gritting my teeth, I pried up a corner of the tape holding the intravenous needle in place against my arm and ripped it free. Like a band-aid, he'd said.... "Griffs probably in the communications room. Find him and tell him I want to do that Jump after all. And tell him I'll want another look at those maps of Shaeffer's."

—

From ten thousand feet up, the sun that fatal afternoon had been shining from high in a cloudless sky, seemingly bathing the world in light and heat. From ground level, however, things were considerably different. The sun, still high in absolute terms, was nevertheless almost at "sundown" as it approached a long ridge towering up in the west. The view off to the south was even more sobering, as the thin haze of white frost visible on the peaks there was mute testimony to the fact that the sun's heat was more illusion than reality. In half an hour or less, when the sun disappeared behind the mountains, the temperature on the slope would begin its slow but steady slide.

Jeffers clearly knew it, too. I'd timed the Jump to arrive after he was down, and by the time I got there he was standing in the middle of the cracker-box-sized clearing where he'd landed, industriously gathering up the parachute silk. Hovering behind him, I watched as he wadded it up and draped it around himself in a sort of combination vest and sari, securing it tightly around him with belt and tie.

I felt terrible.

Never before had I done even two Jumps in a single day, let alone three: and now I knew why Griff was usually so strict on the one per day rule. Nausea, dizziness, and a steadily increasing fatigue dragged hard at me, distracting me from the task at hand. Please, I begged silently, let him just sit down and wait for rescue. Conserve his energy...

With a final tug on his tie, Jeffers took a minute to look around him. His eyes lingered on the plume of smoke in the distance, and I saw his fists clench in impotent anger. Then, taking a deep breath, he squared his shoulders and started off downslope.

Toward the town below.

I groaned inwardly. So he had seen the village during his descent... and my last chance to avoid making the hard choice was gone. Tough love, I reminded myself; and moving out in front of Jeffers, I hovered before his eyes and waited for him to spot me.

He did so within a handful of steps. Are you the same one? his lips said. I tried the up-down motion again and he nodded understanding. You're not still tethered to the plane, are you?

In answer I moved over behind him to the parachute pack still strapped to his back. Good. Can you lead me to the town I saw when we were coming down?

I swallowed hard, and moved out ahead of him. Morgan had been right; there was no trace of the hesitation he'd shown back aboard the plane as he set out to follow me.

He trusted me.

Clamping my teeth against both the guilt and a sudden surge of nausea, I kept going. Tough love, I repeated to myself. Tough love.

It worked for over half an hour. We tramped through groves of spindly pines and over hard angular rock, always heading toward the south, and for awhile I dared to hope I could simply get him lost and leave it at that. If I could get him turned around sufficiently he might hesitate to strike out on his own after I left him. Even if he knew—and he might not—that my time limit meant that wherever I led him he would never be more than an hour's walk from the town.

But even while I hoped, I knew down deep not to rely on wishful thinking. So I kept us going the proper direction... and five minutes short of my goal, the bubble burst.

Without warning, too. One minute I was leading Jeffers across a particularly rough section of ground, a patch littered by dozens of branches apparently blown off the nearby trees by a recent windstorm; the next, he abruptly stopped and frowned up at the sky. We're heading southwest, he told me. Wasn't that town more due west?

I suppose I should have anticipated that he'd eventually notice the direction we were heading and come up with some kind of plan to allay any suspicions. But between the physical discomfort I was going through and the even more gnawing emotional turmoil I hadn't thought to do so. I had a rationale, certainly—that I was leading him to the town via the safest path available—but with all communication one-way there was no way for me to relay such a complex lie to him. Even if my conscience would have let me do so.

He was still watching me. Carefully, I did my "nod" and then continued on a couple of yards in the direction I'd been leading him. He watched for a few seconds and then, almost reluctantly began to follow. I breathed a sigh of relief. Five minutes more of his trust was all I needed.... five minutes, and I would be able to betray that trust.

Tough love. Tough love.

Three minutes later, we reached the ravine.

It was both wider and deeper than I'd envisioned it from Shaeffer's maps, probably fifty feet from rim to rim at this spot and a hundred feet or more from rim to bottom. It was also considerably starker than I'd expected. There were stunted trees lining both rims and along the very bottom, but the sides themselves were nothing but rock and gravel and an occasional clump of grass or small cacti.

And with the sun now behind the western mountains, the growing gloom was beginning to mask what lay below.

Jeffers spotted the ravine as we approached, of course, and for a moment he stood at the edge, peering as far over as the gently rolling slope permitted. What now? he asked.

In answer, I drifted over the edge and moved a few feet down the side, scanning the area immediately beneath me as I did so. I had indeed led us to the precise place I'd hoped to: barely thirty feet down, the increasingly steep side abruptly became sheer, dropping almost straight down to the trees below. Together with the loose gravel of the sides... I returned my attention to Jeffers, praying that he wouldn't look any farther, but just trust me and step out over the edge.

But whatever trust he still had in me wasn't nearly that blind. Isn't there some other route? he asked, not moving. This doesn't look very safe to me.

Again, there was nothing I could do to communicate with him except to repeat my motion into the ravine. Rubbing at his jaw, he looked both ways along the edge, as if trying to decide whether he should instead try to go around it. But the slopes in both directions were at least as intimidating as what he could see of the ravine—I'd made sure that would be the case when I chose this place. For another minute his eyes searched the area around us, looking perhaps for a place where he could tether one of the lines from his parachute as a safety rope. But it was clear that none of the half dead trees in the vicinity would stand up to any force, and after a minute he clenched his teeth and nodded. Holding gingerly onto the nearest trees for support, he stepped onto the slope and started down.

He got five steps before he lost it.

He screamed, or perhaps swore, as the ground slid abruptly out from under his feet and he started down. Dropping down on his butt, he rolled over and flattened his torso against the rocky slope, hands scrabbling for purchase. But there was nothing there to grasp onto; and as the slope steepened, his hands ceased their attempts as he seemed to realize that he was doomed. Faster and faster he went, his passage throwing up dust and clouds of tiny stones as he fell down and down toward the bottom and certain death—

And an instant later hit and collapsed onto the wide granite ledge thrusting its way out of the side of the ravine.

For an awful minute I thought all my careful planning had been in vain, that the fall had in fact killed or lethally injured him. Then, to my vast relief, he rolled over and levered himself stiffly into a sitting position. He looked at the ledge, glancing up, then eased forward to peer over the edge at the sheer drop below. And then his eyes found me...

I forced myself to look back at him, to accept the expression of betrayal on his face. Morgan had been right on this one, too: tough love meant short pain.... and there was still enough of the martyr in me to want to claim some of that pain for myself.

Though no doubt both Jeffers and Shaeffer would be able to find plenty of pain for me at the end of the Jump. But that was all right. I'd saved Jeffers's life, and I'd saved the past, and that was all that counted. Smiling to myself, I left.

—

I found Morgan, Kristin, and Griff sitting around the lounge TV when I finally felt well enough to leave my room. On the screen, coincidentally, was President Jeffers, giving his first public speech since his rescue. The two days of rest seemed to have done him a lot of good, too.

"Hey—Adam," Griff half turned as I came into the lounge. "How're you feeling?"

"Groggy, but pretty good otherwise," I told him, pulling up a chair next to his and nodding in turn at Kristin and Morgan. "I'm a little surprised I didn't wake up in Leavenworth."

He snorted gently. "What, you think Jeffers is going to hold a grudge?"

"The thought had crossed my mind."

"He had a lot of time out there to figure out why you did what you did. Shaeffer's a little madder, I'll admit, but I think he understands, too." He'd exhaled loudly. "So. Rumor has it Banshee's going to be getting a fairly dramatic budget increase. Would you ever consider coming back?"

I shrugged. "I don't know. It depends on a lot of things."

"Such as?"

Such as whether my coming back would help the other Jumpers. Really help them, not just hurt me. "Oh, you know. Things."

Griff grunted. "Well, anyway, I hope you do. Especially now that there's a whole new area waiting for us to work in."

"You mean changin' the past?" Morgan put in quietly.

Something about the way he said that... "You okay, Morgan?" I asked, craning my neck to look at him.

His expression, too, was... strange. "Listen," he said, nodding toward the TV.

I shifted my attention to the set. "...will seek out those responsible for this cowardly attack on me—and through me on the American people. I am further directing the Pentagon to draw up contingency plans for punitive military action should we find evidence of foreign governmental involvement..."

I licked my lips. "He sounds serious."

"He's angry, and he's bitter," Kristin said. "He lost a lot of friends on that plane."

Morgan took a deep breath, exhaled it slowly. "Tell me," he said slowly, "any of you ever heard o' Hezekiah?"

Griff glanced a frown toward me. "One of the kings of ancient Israel, wasn't he?"

"Of Judah, yes," Morgan nodded. "A good one, too... except that when God told him it was time for him to die, he fought and kicked against the decision. And God backed down—gave him another fifteen years to live."

A cold shiver worked its way up my back. "And...?"

"And durin' that time he had himself a son who wound up bein' one of the worst kings Judah ever had. And helped to destroy the whole country."

I looked back at the TV.... at the image of the man whose death I'd helped to reverse. "I hope, quietly, "that kind of history doesn't repeat itself.

Morgan nodded. "Me, too."