7

Back in his study, Jeff Tracy stared at the computer message, and shook his grey head. England. The red-haired little pain in the neck had called England. What was next? Spain? Drumming his fingers on the varnished desk top, Jeff briefly considered calling the boy over, then squashed the impulse. He needed to think things through, first. Combining Alan's volatility with John's mile-wide stubborn streak, Gordon was often as difficult to control as the west wind. More worrisome still, the boy had a host of outside entanglements, andseemed intractably set against severing them. Jeff sighed. He had no one to blame, but himself, he supposed.

A line... 'No good deed goes unpunished'... came to him, then. Didn't recall who'd said it, or why. Just fit his mood.

Pushing back his leather chair, Jeff got to his feet and went over to the bar. There, in a locked safe, he kept a numbered bottle of two-hundred year old Irish whisky. Coleraine single malt. His father had opened it, once, to toast the birth of a son. He'd done it five times. A family heirloom, it was, and not to be wasted. Still, on a night like this, with the sound of Virgil's playing filling the house with ghosts and shadows, it mightn't hurt to break with tradition. Just this once...

Fetching a crystal tumbler, Jeff breached the bottle and poured out three fingers of dark golden whiskey. He didn't bolt it. Liquor as old and fine as this was not to be gulped, but savored. At once smooth and fiery, with a dense, mellow flavor refined by great age, the liquor warmed him from top to toe, fumes rising into his head from each slowly swallowed mouthful.

'Damn, that's good,' he thought wistfully, 'Need to get married, again, and have a few more sons.'

Turning, Jeff went to the balcony, listened to the music, and stared at the night, very, very slowly finishing his drink. His thoughts went this way and that, settling time and again on Gordon, and the special problem the boy had presented, twice now.

His business rivals called Jeff Tracy a bastard and a sonuvabitch, and sometimes they were right...

He'd been at his desk, eight months after the accident, driving himself harder than he'd ever worked in his life. The idea, the organization that would have saved Lucinda, had it existed then, was coming together. A passion, a burning excitement he hadn't felt in months, had finally thawed the ice in his numbed soul, giving Jeff Tracy a reason not to shoot himself. So much to do, and all of it, somehow, in secret.

Sorting through the accounting paperwork on his cluttered desk, Jeff came across a recent medical bill, from the hospital in Geneva. Physical therapy... Food... pharmaceuticals... it added up to quite a bit, marked in one corner "paid in full".

Jeff stared at the bill, dated 22 Oct 2050. He hadn't forgotten about the baby, exactly, nor the others, either, just buried himself so deeply in work that everything but land deals, aircraft design and International Rescue had faded out of his consciousness. But now...

His heart jerked a bit, seemed to shake off a coat of grey ash. The baby was still alive? Recovering, even? He'd said nothing of all this to his parents, or to the boys. Why stab them again with false hope, when the doctors had pronounced Gordon to be mortally wounded? The child had been lost, he told his grieving family, swept away by the avalanche, his tiny body never recovered. It seemed like the right thing to do at the time, the merciful thing...

But now, Jeff's face stretched just a bit, in a small, rusty smile. They would be surprised, all of them, and overwhelmed with joy, when he came back with the baby. Toddler now, he supposed. Making up his mind all at once, Jeff hit the desk comm to his secretary, never wondering why Kathleen had failed to call him from the hospital.

"Jean," he called out, excitement brimming in his warm, deep voice.

"Yes, Mr. Tracy?" The young woman responded, poised and prim as always.

"Have my jet prepared for a trans-Atlantic flight, ASAP. Cancel all of my appointments for the rest of the week. Robert can handle anything really vital that comes up. Tell my staff to set up the usual travel kit for me, and..."

"Yes, Sir?"

"Get a baby bag prepared."

There was a long, pregnant pause at the other end. Jean was single, and childless, so possibly Jeff's assumption that she knew what young children needed was a little off.

"A... baby bag, Sir? As in, to carry a baby, or...?"

"Supplies, Jean! Supplies: bottles, diapers, fuzzy animals, tranquilizers, whatever it is they need. Get one together."

"Fuzzy animals and tranquilizers... I see." If he hadn't known better, Jeff would have thought she was laughing at him. "Yes, Mr. Tracy, I'll get on it right away."

The afternoon raced by, as he shut down what he was doing, leaving himself an urgent note to contact that young post-doc student at Princeton, the twitchy little engineer everyone said was crazy. He had some interesting ideas, and Jeff wanted to hear them, but now all that mattered was his live, healed baby son, and a wonderful family surprise.

The flight went smoothly. Jeff was a skilled pilot, taught to fly by the best, and a former astronaut, at that. Odd, he thought, giving the instrument panel a loving pat, how something so thrilling, so vital, could come to seem an ordinary, work-a-day task; grey and indifferent as the rest of his life had become. Well, that was all changed, now. He was starting over.

Touching down at GVA with hardly a bump, Jeff taxied the jet over to the company hangar, a modest affair with but a single, bored mechanic. He raced through the shut-down procedures in record time, handing the plane over to the mechanic with instructions to top her off and check out the engine (He hoped, anyway... Something about the man's bemused expression suggested that Jeff's French wasn't all it should be).

Scooping up his black, monogrammed carry-on, and the dinosaur print bag Jean had put together, Jeff Tracy all but sprinted out the hangar doors. He hadn't a company car in Geneva, so he had to go to the rental counter, which nearly shattered his pleasant mood. The last time he'd been here... eight months previously... Lucinda and the boys had been along, all excited about their impending ski trip. He recalled his own preoccupation, his irritated retreat into the Wall Street Journal, and how Lucinda had worked so hard to make him smile.

'Didn't really want the kids along,' He thought to himself, guiltily. And then, 'I'm sorry, Lucy... I was wrong. But I'm fetching our son back, and I'm going to make it all up, if it's not too late. I promise you.'

He rented the car, a tiny, yellow Peugeot, and drove like mad for the hospital, weaving at breakneck speed through winding roads that seemed to have been designed with horse carts in mind. It was a beautiful fall day, sunny and cool, with the snow-capped mountains jagged and tall in the middle distance. He avoided looking at them, recalling the avalanche, and what had happened afterward.

Luck was with him; he found a space in the hospital's parking garage, not far from the entrance. Then, stopping just long enough to pick up a blue teddy bear from the hospital gift shop, Jeff Tracy went to get his young son.

A few questions at the information center (repeated many times, with frequent reference to his electronic phrase book) guided him up to the pediatric convalescent ward. The white-blonde nurse there was very friendly, and spoke much better English.

"Oui!" She responded, smiling cheerfully. "The baby... he is yes, 'ere. Very ... eh... sweet, Monsieur. Sweet boy. And Madame Tracy, she is so very much loving to him. You must be 'appy ... eh... une famille tres heureux, Monsieur. Very 'appy."

Puzzled, actually... though not worried. After all, Kathleen was his cousin Joe Tracy's widow. A fire fighter in Drogheda, he'd been killed in the line of duty little more than a year before. Trapped by a fallen roof, and burned beyond assistance, he'd died at the scene of the fire before his wife could reach his side. Kathy had every right to call herself "Mrs. Tracy".

Giving the nurse a quick nod, he followed her directions to the right room; 344. The door was open.

He heard the sounds well before he saw anything. Cheerful, childlike squeals and giggles, together with the wobbling patter of a young toddler re-learning to walk. A gentle voice, soft and encouraging, floated from the room. Kathleen.

Jeff paused in the threshold, as yet unseen, and looked within. The baby had grown, he noted proudly, and healed, as well. The scars where multiple compound fractures had rent his skin had faded with time to thin, whitish lines. Smiling, Jeff looked on.

Kathleen knelt upon the tiled floor in a patch of sunlight, arms out, calling to the tiny boy, who made his unsteady way toward her, nearly falling half a dozen times, laughing the entire way. He reached her at last, throwing himself forward into her welcoming arms.

"Mommy!" He chortled, as Kathleen scooped him up and nuzzled him, eyes closed.

"No, Love..." she whispered, her long red hair swinging down around them like a curtain. "...Mummy. Say 'mummy'."

Face screwed up in concentration, the child tried again.

"Mmm-uuu-mmy!" Was rewarded with a soft blizzard of kisses.

"There's my brave little man, just like daddy! And good, and clever, and funny, and..."

Jeff must have moved, or made some slight, bewildered sound, for Kathy turned her head suddenly, and saw him. Her face changed instantly, going dead white. Green eyes huge with terror, she clutched the child close and got to her feet, began backing slowly away.

Shaking her head, she mouthed, too stricken to speak aloud,

'No... please, no...God, oh God, please...!'

Jeff stood there in shock, still holding the bear, watching as Kathleen began to cry, her thin shoulders trembling in silent agony. The baby didn't understand, of course. All he wanted to do was play.

"Mummy! Mummy, walk!" He tugged petulantly at her sleeve, then looked over at Jeff. Nothing. Not a hint of recognition, or interest. His father might as well have been a piece of furniture, or a hospital orderly, for all the boy knew. With some detached portion of his mind, Jeff noted that the boy's eyes were changing color. They'd be green soon, or hazel. Eight months was a very long time in the life of a baby. And in the mind and heart of a lonely, devastated young woman, an eternity.

There were two Jeff Tracys, then; the one that strode in and tore back his son, letting an innocent young girl die of a twice-shattered heart, and the one that set down the 'baby bag', walked out the door and called his lawyer. Horribly torn, he saw himself doing both. But of course, both weren't possible, any more than happiness seemed to be.

Jeff Tracy turned and left the room, heavy hearted... and empty handed. The inanely smiling teddy bear ended up outside, in a waste bin. Unable to do what he should have, take back the child Kathleen had fallen so desperately in love with, Jeff returned to the States, got his lawyer, and filled out some custody papers. He never saw or spoke to Kathy again, keeping tabs on his growing son through a local barrister, and sending a generous, bi-weekly draft which she refused to spend. All of the money, he found out later, ended up in Gordon's college fund. She made do on one small income and, later, Gordon's meager athletic stipend, loving the boy, and raising him as her own, to the end of her too-short days.

Jeff Tracy's business rivals called him a bastard, and a sonuvabitch, but sometimes... that time... they were wrong.

The glass was empty. Sighing, Jeff debated filling it again, then set it aside. Like the past, alcohol was best taken in small doses.