A small sign on the cabinet nearest the elevator proclaimed all this stuff to be the property of the U.S. Government Time Observation Group, Banshee's official name. Official or not, though, I'd never heard anyone refer to us by that name, even in official correspondence. Probably, I'd always suspected, because no one up there really took us seriously. With a staff numbering in the low twenties and an operating budget under four million a year, we were hardly a drop in the bucket as far as Washington was concerned. Not to mention the fact that the whole thing was generally considered either ghoulish or a waste of money by most of the handful of officials who knew anything about it.
I don't know who coined the name Banshee for the group. I know only too well why it had stuck.
There was absolutely nothing theatrical about a typical Banshee Jump, a fact that had disappointed more than one official visitor over the years. There were no revolving lights warning of high-voltage, no large and blinking status boards, no armies of steely-eyed techs huddled over displays under dark-room-red lighting. The lights were normal, our three operators had a tendency to slouch in their seats; and even the Jumper, Morgan Portland, might simply have been asleep on his contour couch amid the handful of sensor leads sprouting from his arm- and headbands. It would have taken a close look at the EEG display—and some knowledge of how to interpret the readings—to realize that Morgan was essentially registering as dead.
All of us Jumpers had long since come to the conclusion that no one really knew how the Banshee apparatus worked. Oh, all the parts were understood, to one degree or another—that much was certain. The mathematicians could show you all the equations and formulas and tell you how they implied time reversal; the various scientists could show you how the equations related to the real universe, both in physical equipment and in brain and mind structure; and the engineers could show you how all this boiled down to several million dollars' worth of apparatus. There were even those who claimed to understand how a person's consciousness could be decoupled from his body for up to an hour at a time without any major ill effects. But when you put all of it together, no one really knew how or why the whole thing worked the way it did. No one knew why there was a seventy-two-hour limit on how far back in time a Jumper's consciousness could go, no one knew why only certain very specific types of people could Jump in the first place... and no one knew how it was our disembodied consciousnesses could sometimes be seen by those about to die.
It had first happened to me on my seventh Jump, and it would forever color all my thoughts about Banshee. A little girl, maybe seven years old, had spotted me as I floated by an airport locker in hopes of seeing the person who had planted a bomb there. At least I assume she saw me; the expression on her face could hardly have been explained by anything else in the immediate vicinity. Her mother had pulled her away a moment later and plopped them both down in a waiting lounge, but she'd continued to glance nervously back in my direction. Two minutes later the bomb had blown out the bank of lockers and most of the roof overhead.
The girl and her mother had been among the casualties.
I shuddered with the memory and forced her face from my mind... and cursed once more the unfeeling idiot who'd taken his inspiration from that and similar incidents to hang the name Banshee on us.
A motion off to the side by one of the RF generator cabinets caught my eye; Griff, doing a walkthrough of the equipment. He saw me as I started toward him and changed course to meet me. "So... how did it go up there with the others?" he murmured.
"Not exactly your TV-style homecoming," I retorted softly. There was no reason for anyone to whisper while a Jump was in progress, but people invariably did so anyway. "I wish you'd told me Rennie was going to be here. And maybe prepared me a little for the sour apples from everyone else."
He sighed. "I'm sorry, Adam; really I am. If it'd been up to me, you wouldn't be here at all—that despite the fact you're still the best Jumper we ever had. But Schaeffer insisted we bring both you and Rennie back."
"Did you point out to him that three Jumpers are perfectly adequate to handle the half-dozen or so Jumps it'll take to figure out what happened?"
"I tried, but he wouldn't budge." Griff scratched his ear thoughtfully. "What makes it even stranger is that he seemed to know an awful lot about us—must've actually been keeping up with the reports we've filed into the bureaucratic black hole back in Washington."
"Very flattering. Doesn't explain why he's out here being underfoot instead of directing things from the White House, though."
"No, it doesn't," Griff agreed. "Maybe he thinks he can help. Or else needs to at least feel like he's helping."
"If he wants to help, he'd do better to be in Washington helping brief Vice President McCallum on his new office."
Griff shrugged fractionally. "From what I've read, Shaeffer and Jeffers go back a long way together, since Jeffers's first stint as mayor in Phoenix. There are other people available to brief McCallum; I get the feeling Shaeffer's more out for vengeance."
I shivered. "In other words, we'd better get him the cause of the crash in double-quick time, or else?"
"We can hope he's more sensible than that. But there's a strong tendency in people to look for scapegoats when things go wrong."
I thought back to the other Jumpers upstairs. "Yeah. Well... we'll just have to see to it that we do our job fast and get out from in front of the gunsights."
My last word was punctuated by the snap of circuit breakers shunting the end-point power surge to ground. Across the room, Morgan's body threw itself suddenly against the couch's restraints. A moment later his eyes opened a crack and he burped loudly.
We were at his side by the time the operators had the straps off. "What'd you get?" Griff asked, helping him up into a sitting position.
"It was the right inboard engine, aw right," Morgan nodded tiredly, massaging the sides of his neck. "Smoke trail out o' it just 'fore it caught fire and blew to shreds."
"Did you get inside the wing and see where the fire started?" Griff asked.
"Sorry—didn't have time. I was too busy backtrackin' the line o' smoke." His eyes met mine and I braced myself for a repeat of the confrontation upstairs. But he merely nodded in greeting and shifted his attention back to Griff. "I've seen a lot o' engine-fire plumes, Griff—this'un didn't look right at all."
Griff swore under his breath. "Shaeffer thought it might be something like this. Okay; come on upstairs and we'll take a look at the blueprints."
Morgan nodded and swung his feet over the side of the couch. "Dr. Mansfield," one of the operators called, "you want us to get ready to cycle again right away?"
"Yes," Griff answered, taking Morgan's arm. "Hale will be down immediately for prepping. We'll be Jumping again as soon as you and he are ready."
"Why the break-neck rush?" I asked Griff as he helped Morgan navigate away from the couch. "It's—what, after six already?"
"Shaeffer's in a hurry," Griff said tightly. "For now, that's all the reason any of us need. Give me a hand, here, will you?"
—
Morgan's report was strong evidence; but it took two more hours and a Jump by Hale before Shaeffer was willing to come to the official conclusion all of us had guessed at.