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."