Time Bomb And Zahndry Others

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 Re

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 ru

"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 ru

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.