Time Bomb and Zahndry Others Part 28

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 toend 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*"

"d.a.m.n it all, will you shut that c.r.a.p up?"

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

"Every time," he snarled. "Every single d.a.m.n 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 walkaway 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 ma.s.se 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 forrescue. 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 antic.i.p.ated 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 gra.s.s 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 b.u.t.t, 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 pa.s.sage throwing up dust and clouds of tiny stones as he fell down and down toward the bottom and certain deathAnd 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.