"—came down about here, among a real mess of hidden ravines and tricky cliff faces," the VIP was saying as we came up to the table. He looked up, eyes flicking past Griff to lock briefly onto me. "Mr. Sinn," he nodded in greeting. "Shaeffer—special aide to President Jef—" He broke off, his mouth compressing in brief pain before he could recover himself. "Have you been briefed?"
"Just the basics," I told him, his tight expression inducing another flicker of pain within me. Shaeffer, clearly, had been very close to the President. "Air Force One lost its right wing—somehow—and went down out in Colorado."
He nodded. "That's about all we've got at the moment. The search-and-rescue team hasn't been working for very long; so far they haven't got anything."
"No survivors, in other words," Kristin interjected quietly.
Shaeffer's lip tightened. "Yeah." He took a deep breath. "Well. Banshee's job will be to find out what happened to the plane. As I've already explained to Dr. Mansfield, you've got essentially a blank check—go ahead and do as many Jumps as it takes to get the job done right. Understood? Dr. Mansfield, how much longer will it be before you can get someone back there?"
Right on cue, the lounge's lights flickered. "Immediately, Mr. Shaeffer," Griff answered. "I'm afraid it's not much of a show, but if you'd like we could head downstairs and you could see Banshee in action."
"I'm not here to play tourist," Shaeffer bit out. "I'll be in the communications center if you need me; let me know as soon as the Jump is over."
Griff reddened slightly. "Yes, of course." He turned and quickly left the lounge, heading left toward the elevator. Shaeffer nodded to each of us in turn and followed, branching to the right toward the room where our modest radio, wire, and computer-net equipment were kept.
And I was left alone with the other Jumpers.
For a moment we all just looked at each other. Then Kristin stirred. "You haven't kept in touch very well, Adam."
I shrugged fractionally. "I've been pretty busy," I told her. It was more or less true.
"So have we," Hale said, more than a little tartly. "Work load's increased considerably since you cut out on us."
My eyes flicked to Rennie. "Don't look at me," he said blandly. "I was fired; you're the one who deserted."
"That's putting it a little strongly, isn't it?" I asked... but the indignation I'd intended to put into the words died somewhere en route. I hadn't been able to tell them the reasons then, and down deep I knew I couldn't tell them now, either.
"Yeah, Rennie, desertion's much too harsh a word," Hale chimed in. "It's not strictly desertion when the captain advises you to get off a sinking ship."
"What's that supposed to mean?" I asked him.
"I think you know," he ground out. "You've always been Griffs favorite Jumper—that's common knowledge. I think he warned you that we were about to be snowed under by a huge work load and suggested you take off and leave the rest of us more expendable Jumpers to struggle under the pile."
"That's not true," I said, trying hard to keep my voice steady.
Hale snorted. "Of course not. It was just pure coincidence. Sure."
Clenching my jaw, I leaned over the table for a look at the map Shaeffer had left behind. It was an impressive job, larger scale even than the standard 7.5-minute topographic ones I used for backpacking. The crash site was marked by a large red oval near one end, and my recently filled stomach did a couple of turns at the thought of having to go back and watch it happen. "Did Shaeffer say anything about surveying the crash sight, or just watching for the primary cause?" I asked.
"That's the way," Rennie said with mock approval. "When you can't win, change the subject."
I focused on Kristin. "Did he say anything about surveying the crash site?" I repeated.
"Not to us," she said. "But, then, we're just the Jumpers. We don't count for anything in that sort of decision-making."
"If you're wondering specifically about body trackings," Hale put in, "I'm sure you'll get a shot at one. They've become almost standard for us these days."
I shivered. Watching people die in mid-air explosions was bad enough... but to follow the bodies down as they fell to earth, seeing up close the burned and battered shells that had once been human beings...
"Unless, of course," Rennie suggested, "you want to talk to Griff about exempting you from anything particularly unpleasant."
I gritted my teeth. "I'll do my share of whatever comes up. See you later." Turning my back on them, I headed out of the lounge.
For a long moment I stood leaning against the hallway wall, slowly bringing my trembling knees under control again. I hadn't really expected to be welcomed back with open arms, but the sheer intensity of the others' hostility had hit me like ice water in the face. Clearly, Griff had kept his promise not to tell them why I'd left Banshee; whether or not I could survive three days under that kind of pressure wasn't nearly as clear.
But I would, of course. For whatever reason, Banshee needed me here... and I'd always been there when people needed me.
Taking a deep breath, I turned left and headed for the elevator.
—
The Banshee building's basement always reminded me of a cartoon I'd seen a long time ago in which one of the characters had bragged that "the house itself isn't much, but you should see the rec room." A one-time basement and subbasement had had their walls and the dividing floor knocked out to create a single vast space, with nothing to break it up but strategically placed pillars put in to support the rest of the building above it. The result was a room the size of a small warehouse... a room the Banshee equipment still filled to over-flowing.
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.