by Timothy Zahn
"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."
