"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.