Duty Deferred
Rated SAFE
Part Two
"Sentinel, come away from there," a voice called. Wrong voice. Blinded by tears and nearly deaf and insensible as his senses all shut down at the attack, Jim couldn't identify the hands that pulled at him. He jerked away, but that simply sent him crashing to the ground, his hands pressed to the damp ground and leaves sticking to his skin.
"Sentinel. It's not safe for you here. Sentinel, come away." The voice called again, hands pulled at him, and this time Jim didn't fight as others pulled him away from the spot where he last smelled his guide, where he lost his guide. He stumbled after hands which led him into one of the buildings and up stairs, and some part of Jim panicked at being so out of control. But his hearing and sight and smell all screamed at him, and he couldn't do more than struggle to retain consciousness as outlanders led him where they wanted and guided him to sit.
In the darkness of Jim's injured senses, hands travelled over him and, eventually, Jim figured out they brushed dirt from him and washed his face and brought fresh smelling herbs that slowly soothed his swollen nose. His senses careened out of control. They fell to near nothing so that Jim could only float on the lack of sensory input and then spiked until even the fresh mint overwhelmed him. Eventually, the pain began withdrawing so that Jim could start trusting what his senses told him about the world. They were inside. The sun had set, and he ached. Reaching up, Jim wiped his face and realized that he had a significant nosebleed.
"Are you better?"
The older woman crouched in front of him, and Jim blinked at her through tear-blurred eyes as he considered the answer. He'd finally found a guide who called to him, and that guide had run like a rabbit. And even more annoying, these people had helped cover his guide’s tracks. Tightening his jaw against the curses that threatened to fall out of his mouth, Jim took the damp rag from her hand and mopped up the last of the blood that trickled from his abused nose.
"It's dark. You might want to sleep here before you walk back to the city," the woman suggested as Jim wiped the corners of his still-watering eyes.
And if I do, he'll stay out there," Jim answered her. She didn't answer, but Jim knew it was the truth. His guide was avoiding him, frightened of him. It made Jim's protective instincts jangle with apprehension.
"I'm leaving," Jim said as he pushed himself off the pile of furs where someone had led him.
"He won't come back tonight. Not even if you leave."
Jim looked up to see the same boy who had stood next to the old woman out front. He hovered near an open door and nervously ran his hand up and down the metal trimming the edge. He smelled of not just fear, but terror. Jim frowned and looked at the woman. She wasn't afraid.
"It's not safe out there." Jim took a step forward into the dim light of a candle, and the boy backed up.
"He has grown up here. He knows how to keep himself safe," the old woman stepped in Jim's path, and he stopped. "You do not."
"I can take care of myself just fine," Jim disagreed with her. She looked up at him, her eyes studying his face before she slowly shook her head.
"You attack the Marks without understanding your enemy. You cannot defend your own senses, so you must be desperate for a guide. You don't know the terrain or where to go if a large gang of Marks spots you. He knows this world; you don't. He would not want you wandering around after dark."
"He wouldn't want me out there?" Jim demanded incredulously. His anger boiled until he fisted his hands and used every bit of control to not charge past her and go searching the dark for this mysterious "him." Unfortunately, Jim's senses weren't even up to mundane-normal and he couldn't just stumble around the dark hoping to run into a man who had clearly prepared ahead.
"If he doesn't want me out there, then he should come and tell me to my face. This is a free confederation. If I make my case for why he should become my guide, and then he refuses, I can't force him. All he has to do is to say 'no' and he can stay right here in the lap of luxury," Jim snapped as he waved his hand toward the room. The floor was bare, a few threads clinging to corners where a carpet had long ago rotted away. The doors and windows had disappeared as well. In a rough wood trough something pale and bulbous grew in dark soil, and two candles weakly lit the entire space.
The old woman never flinched but simply watched Jim with a calm that just made him even more angry.
"He does his duty as he sees it," she quietly announced. Then she turned away. The boy came forward and offered her his arm, which she held as he escorted her from the room.
Jim sighed and looked up at the ceiling. Bare girders and a few metal straps decorated the underside of the metal beams making the floor of the room above. "Simon, I could really use some help on this one," he whispered to the universe as he blinked away the last of the spice. He didn't add that he could use Rafe, but without any guide to leak the necessary hormones into the air, Jim could feel his senses slide farther out of his control. Soon he would have to either head back to the enclave or risk losing all of his control.
Fuck and fuck. Jim bent down and grabbed his cloak, checking each pocket before he slipped it back on over his Patria-purchased brown trousers and shirt. So much for inconspicuous, Jim thought wryly, as he headed out into the dark hallway, carrying the last candle with him.
With his eyes still watering he couldn't open his sight even up to mundane-normal, so he walked slowly, never knowing what he might find. He found only a quiet hall with doors at regular intervals. A few doors had cloth or planks propped in the openings, but most were open. At the end was a large stairwell. Choosing to go down, Jim walked carefully, avoiding entirely the one step where the edge had crumbled to dust and a plank lay over it to make an uneven replacement for the damage.
The lower floor was moving with life, and now that Jim could see the people tending fires near the open windows, Jim's hearing decided to cooperate so that he could hear the crackling spitting of damp wood and the wild whispers that appeared when he walked into the large room. Unlike the floors above, someone had removed most of the walls on this level leaving rough lines of jagged concrete on the floor where there used to be walls. Six of the rooms from above had been turned into one large space, and at the far side, Jim could see a hallway that led to more individual rooms.
"Sentinel," a young woman breathed. She had crouched next to a nearby fire, but now she stood and walked toward him. Jim could smell her desire, and now his scent had the bad timing to open. Sweat, dirt, the sour stink of fear, the sharpness of disease, the decay of plants, the subtle rot from the various furs. Jim stepped backwards.
"Would you like food?" she asked as she held something out. Jim wavered. He had rations, but he wasn't about to eat them in front of these people who seemed to live on boiled plants and the flesh from animals.
He shook his head. She stopped advancing, but didn't go back to her own place. Slowly, Jim walked farther into the room, looking around as children sat on the floor and stared up at him.
"Sentinel," another woman said respectfully. Women tended the fires and watched him with eyes that ranged from suspicious to worshipful. A few young men and older boys gathered on the edges of the group. Little boys and girls played in the dust and ash scattered on the concrete floor. The man who had struck the metal to disable Jim's hearing stood near one wall looking like he would run any second.
The old woman sat in a corner crushing leaves with a smooth stone by the light of her fire, and Jim headed towards her. The young man from earlier had vanished, maybe joining the other boys in the shadowed corners. Jim sat cross-legged on the floor across the fire from her.
"I respect that he feels an obligation here," Jim started, far more cautious of his words. "I just want a chance to show him that he has more than one obligation, more than one choice."
She didn't pause in her grinding.
"I am not some knuckle dragging caveman who's going to carry him back to Patria."
She smiled at that, but Jim didn't especially like her smile. She coughed and kept grinding.
"If I make my case and he tells me that his work here is too important to leave, I'll respect that."
"He has made his choice."
"He hasn't given me a chance to explain my side," Jim countered. She paused.
"He understands your side as well."
"No." Jim slapped his hand against the cold floor and a cloud of dust rose into the air, a wind brushing it away. "No, he doesn't," he said more calmly, but that didn't change the fact that faces watched him suspiciously now. "I've been to four enclaves. The Earth enclave was my last chance, and it took me three months to get here. I get off the ship, and every guide smells… wrong. Some smell less wrong than others, but whatever it is that makes other Sentinels smell them and want them… I don't have it." Jim flinched at sharing so much truth… too much truth… but he needed to make her understand. He needed to find his guide.
She pursed her lips. "We all have obligations and choices," she agreed slowly. Jim closed his eyes as hope threatened to overwhelm him.
"Just tell me where he is. I promise, if he says no, I'll find my own way back to Patria."
She shrugged. "Who knows where Blair hides. The earth loves him; she opens new folds for him to hide in."
Blair. Jim rolled the word through his mind. Blair.
"I'll wait for him," Jim announced. That made the woman frown.
"No, you will not," she declared. "You have endangered the tribe, Sentinel. You have challenged the Marks and a delicate balance is shattered. You will leave when the sun first rises, and if Blair chooses you, he will find you."
Jim sat stone-faced as he struggled with an urge to grab the woman by the neck and squeeze an answer out of her. "I don't—"
"No!" she interrupted. "You have had your say, but as Sentinel, you will not endanger the tribe."
"I won't endanger—"
"You won't mean to, but you will if you stay. The Mother of All Sentinels gave birth to her children to protect the tribe, and that is your first duty," she said fiercely. "Not to yourself or to your guide, but to the Mother who calls on you to protect the people."
Jim found himself grinding his teeth at the primitive religion. In Elite Guard rules couldn't control him; mumbo-jumbo sure as hell wasn't going to work.
"Five minutes—"
"Tomorrow you will leave," she interrupted him, nodded as if they had reached some agreement. "If Blair seeks you, then you will know which duty he chooses. If not, you know what you must do." She stood and took the heavy bowl with her to another woman's fire. A group of women surrounded her, hiding her from Jim, and he sighed in defeat. No matter what, Jim did know what he would have to do… stake out their village and wait for his chance to find his guide.
---
Three days. Jim shifted in the small space he'd claimed under a fallen pillar. It leaned precariously against a ruined wall, and anyone else would be afraid to sit in the deep shade, but Jim could hear the wind slide along the steel and concrete without any groans or shifting. He could feel the stability through his fingertips.
He sat in the shade eating a dry ration as yet another group of women swept through the trees gathering grasses or rocks or whatever the hell it was they were gathering today. They smelled of fear. The wind had shifted so Jim could only smell a trace of the cooking fires from the village. Tonight, like the last two nights, he would creep out and circle the compound as he searched for that scent. He wouldn't leave; not until he had found his guide and made the man at least listen to Jim's proposal.
Stretching his legs in the fading light of sunset, Jim watched the women look up toward the sky. One suggested they go back, and all of the women then flocked together before they headed back up the path. Jim waited. Sometimes older children would wander after the women had already gone inside, and as his young watcher from the first day had proven, they were a wily lot. Jim didn't like getting caught by a child once, but he would not be caught again.
As the sun set, the insects started chirping, creating a white noise that soothed Jim's hearing. It let him open it farther than he had ever dared, even when he was with Simon and Rafe.
He could hear the familiar sounds of outlanders breaking wood and starting their fires. The heat was such that they only did that when they needed to cook… or when they needed the smoke to drive away insects, Jim mused as he slapped his arm. As the darkness spread, the mosquitoes started eating him. He already looked as bad as he did that time he had not closed down his sense of touch fast enough when a pirate masquerading as a transport captain had tossed an acid bomb.
Opening his hearing farther, Jim could track small animals scurrying through the tall trees and a herd of something large but soft-footed pacing south of him. He couldn't hear human footsteps in the jungle.
Crawling out of his shelter, Jim prayed that Simon showed a little patience. Or, to be more accurate, he prayed that Rafe showed patience and was able to keep Simon away. Eventually Simon would track Jim down but, right now, Jim needed the time to find his missing guide.
Slapping at the bugs that landed on him, Jim headed into the jungle, slowly circling the compound as he opened his senses. Every night he could smell the faint traces of his guide all over the compound, but tonight, that musk was stronger. Smiling ferally, Jim stalked closer to the edge of the compound.
Winds blew stronger, and now Jim could smell the sweat. Young. Male. Guide. Breathing deeply, Jim turned his head toward the source and started moving silently through the jungle.
With his senses stretched farther than ever before, Jim could hear one set of footsteps padding across the cracked concrete walks of the compound. A figure appeared, and Jim crouched.
He was young. Long, curled hair tumbled past his shoulders and his clothes, unlike the others, were of leather and not spun cloth. Walking without even a candle, he went slowly to the edge of the compound and sat on a wall made from tumbled stones piled together. Pulling his legs under him, he tilted his head up.
"Moon, if you have any advice, I'm willing to listen," he whispered, but Jim could hear each soft word. Since he couldn't indulge in touch or taste, Jim settled for dialing his sight all the way up so that the moonlight turned darkness to day. Now Jim could see the brown curls streaked with red and the blue eyes.
"Naomi always told me that you would send a sentinel, but man, I'm losing some faith here. I thought this time—." Blair spoke so softly that even Jim struggled to catch the words. With every ounce of training he'd ever learned, Jim closed in on his prey. If the kid wanted a sentinel, Jim was very happy to provide one. Maybe the old woman had lied about Blair's unwillingness to bond.
Blair sat silent, staring up at the sky until Jim got within 50 feet. Then, despite the fact that Jim moved silently through the tall weeds and big trees, Blair sat up and scanned the jungle.
"Hello?"
Jim's original plan had included grabbing the guide, hauling him back to the clinic, and then having a talk where the old woman or the group couldn't influence him. However, 50 feet was too large a gap for Jim to quickly close.
"Hello?" Blair called again, getting off the wall and standing ready to flee.
Jim stepped out with his hands raised in surrender.
"Guide," he said quietly.
"Sentinel." Blair didn't just sound surprised, he sounded stunned.
"Sentinel Jim Ellison," Jim introduced himself as he moved cautiously forward. Blair didn't run, but then he seemed more frozen in shock than anything else. "I just wanted to sit down with you and have a conversation."
"Great moon, when I pray, I don't normally get this kind of response. Moon is really more likely to ignore me than anything else," Blair answered. He also backed up so that the low wall stood between them. Jim stopped.
"You pray to the moon," Jim said, glancing up. Right. He knew that if he found an outlander they would have some strange beliefs.
"I pray to what the moon represents," Blair corrected him. "The moon is a symbol, something to focus on as I talk to the universe."
"So you pray to the universe?" Jim asked, no less disturbed by that thought. He'd flown through much of the universe, and he hadn't seen much worthy of prayer.
"My friend , you are way too literal." Blair shook his head, but he didn't look upset, so Jim slid a little closer.
"I tried to see you the other day."
"Anna was telling me. Sentinels have come before, but they don't usually hang around and talk to the little people, afterward."
"Little people?" Jim glanced toward the compound.
"That's how most sentinels treat outlanders, like we're some sort of lower lifeform—the mold growing on their shoe."
"If they thought that, they wouldn't come out here," Jim pointed out.
Blair laughed. "You are far too literal. Far. They may want a guide, but they're coming out here to rescue one, to take one out of the misery of living on earth. They don't actually think outlanders are equal or could be equal, they just want to wash the primitive right out of us, and I'm a little old to wash out the old brain."
"I wouldn't, I mean, I don't expect you to change who you are. If you want to worship the universe, I'm not asking you to stop."
"Not going to be sent away with a simple 'no,' are you?" Blair sighed. "Anna said you'd had trouble finding a guide."
"Enough that I spend three years' savings to come here," Jim admitted. "I've zoned a lot lately, and a few times, the senses have gone off-line."
"Have you zoned since you've been out here?"
Jim kept his face neutral, but inside he cheered the question. The thought of Jim zoning had bothered Blair. The first tentative sentinel-guide bonds slipped into place. "There's really not much to zone on, not since that trick with the metal noisemaker."
Blair flinched. "No way would that make you zone. You had scent and hearing going off the charts, so the one would have kept you from sliding into any zone created by the other."
"You've studied sentinels," Jim tried to keep his voice neutral, but he must have failed because Blair shot him a sharp look. Rather than try to get closer to the guide, Jim moved in an arc until he reached the wall about twenty feet south of Blair. He casually sat on a pile of square stones.
"I'm a guide; of course I've studied them."
"At the enclave?"
"Not by every traitorous star," Blair snapped, his anger stabbing at Jim as pheromones flowed. Jim could feel his own adrenaline surge and his heart pound heavily in his ears. "Great moon , I’m sorry. I studied sentinels, and I so totally know what I'm not supposed to do, but then I go and flood you with fight hormones when there's no one to fight."
"It's okay, Chief," Jim waved his hand as he struggled to tell his own body to stand down. "You haven't trained, and you didn't know."
"I did know. And if the Marks were coming over the hill ready to rape the women in the compound, I would so totally let my anger loose, but you can't do anything about a fucked up universe."
Jim sighed. Shit. This was worse than he had feared. "Chief, one of the reasons guides need training is that you can't let that gland run away with you. More to the point, you can't let that gland run away with any sentinel you might bond with. I'm sure your people have stories of sentinels, but the real deal isn't anything like the myths or legends you might have heard."
For a moment, Blair just stood looking up at the sky, probably praying to his moon again. The logical side of Jim's brain told him to run now before his last two senses locked on this guide. The rest of his brain watched the way the moonlight washed over Blair's strong features and the way he smelled of hard work and kindness.
"You have no idea where you are, do you?" he finally asked. Jim wasn't sure if Blair was talking to him or the moon. Blair sat down on the rough wall and looked over toward Jim.
"Don't you know what this was?"
"It was a city," Jim shrugged.
"It was Cascade. You're sitting at the edge of what was Rainier University, the center of the rebirth of sentinels."
"Sentinels developed as a response to space flight. Long-term space flight forces some people to develop acute sensory responses as a reaction to the lack of stimulus," Jim explained patiently.
"That's what they tell you?" Blair asked curiously. "They lie."
"And you're telling the truth?" Jim crossed his arms disbelievingly two seconds before his brain could remind him that he was supposed to be courting the man as his guide.
Blair just smiled. "Some of the records are lost. They were on paper. Some are on plastics that survive, and others my people have copied, carving the letters into metal sheets so that when the paper crumbles, the ideas won't crumble with them." Blair looked back toward the compound. "You're a sentinel, so use those senses of yours to see if I'm lying."
Jim allowed himself to violate the man's privacy as he searched for clues beyond the sound of the heart and the scent of guide gland. "You aren't."
"Exactly," Blair said triumphantly. "Rainier had a department studying the physiological effects of long-term space flight. The first sentinel was one of the returning astronauts. But after the man nearly ripped his own skin off, the program started testing for sentinels, weeding them out. They'd leave potential astronauts alone for two weeks in a small bunker. It doesn't take space to bring out the senses, it takes silence, and the world then didn't have enough silence."
Jim took a deep breath. "Astronauts?" he stalled, as he tried to figure out a way to deal with this delusion.
"The first people to explore space. The people who live here now… we've come here because this was the beginning of the end. Maybe some of us hope it can be the beginning of something better."
"Chief." Jim stopped, his words failing him. "Chief, I understand that you have your belief systems, but whether the first sentinels were in space or here, it doesn't change things today." Jim pulled one leg up and leaned on it as he watched Blair, practically feeling the moment when his words truly reached him.
Blair nodded. "Yeah, I guess not." Blair stood up and started walking back toward the compound.
"Blair," Jim called. The guide didn't turn around. This despair wasn't the reaction Jim had hoped for.
"Go home, sentinel." Blair sounded tired, and Jim could feel himself respond to that emotion as well. He reined his feelings in, hard.
"I think I've earned a right to make my case," Jim said as he stood and took a step toward Blair's retreating back. Every instinct Jim possessed told him to grab the guide and, unlike a trained guide, Blair wasn't dampening his own feelings. It made it all the more difficult for Jim to focus on the logic of his argument.
"What have you done to earn that right?" Blair asked, his voice tight with some emotion that not even Jim with all his sentinel senses could identify.
"I've worked for twenty years to protect people, I'm a commissioned officer of the Sentinel Guard, and an ethical, strong man," Jim countered. Blair turned around and looked at him.
"What have you done for the people?" Blair asked. Jim considered a dozen different answers. He knew he had one shot at this.
"I have arrested dozens of smugglers whose drugs would have corrupted and addicted millions. I've traced a ship full of immigrants who were taken by slavers by tracking the scent from a child's dropped blanket. I have fought in a half dozen battles, helping stations hold off attackers. I have inspected engines and hulls and seals and found defects so small that no instrument could have identified them, and any one of those could have led to decompressions that would have killed hundreds, maybe thousands. And this is what I've done without a guide. But now, my senses are failing me. I need help." Jim swallowed his pride on the last part, but it was the truth, and if Jim wanted a guide, he had to be willing to share more of himself than he had with others.
"So, you protect your tribe?"
Jim controlled the urge to roll his eyes at the constant tribal references. "I protect the confederacy," he agreed instead.
"Is Patria in the confederacy?"
"Yes."
"Earth?"
"Yes." Jim watched as a dozen emotions flitted across Blair's face.
"So, why not me?"
Jim waited for the rest of the question, the chirp of insects filling the air between him and his chosen guide. "Why not you?" Jim prompted.
"Why haven't you ever protected me?" Blair exploded, his fury battering at Jim who dropped into a protective crouch and struggled with an almost overwhelming need to grab Blair and kill whatever made the guide so angry. "Why didn't you protect me when I was suffering? Where were the sentinels and their precious protective instincts when Naomi…" Blair's voice broke.
Blair turned and took two running steps before Jim's control shattered. He charged after Blair catching him around the waist and driving him to the ground while he pulled out his blaster with his free hand.
His senses turned on fully, Jim studied the jungle, searching for a danger. Instead he could only see trees and the silent buildings on the edge of the compound. Eventually, Jim's fear and defensiveness faded as his senses instead focused on the feel of Blair's neck under his hand.
Jim knelt in the grass next to Blair, his hand pinning the guide to the ground, and all Blair did was blink up at him. Under his fingers Blair's skin was warm and soft. The curls brushed the back of Jim's hand, catching on the small hairs on the backs of his fingers so the breeze tugged them when it ruffled Blair's hair.
"Blair, I'm sorry," Jim offered as he slowly leaned back, letting go of Blair's neck.
"My fault," Blair refused to look at Jim as he pushed himself up to his knees.
"I want you as a guide. Once you've been trained, we'll do better," Jim promised. "There's so much work to be done. You could help me do it."
Blair shook his head, and Jim could smell salt. "There's work to do, but it's here, Sentinel. These are my people."
"I could offer you something more than this."
"You could offer me something different, but if we want something better with our lives, we have to make it for ourselves, not wait for someone to ride in and rescue us," Blair disagreed. He slowly stood.
"Blair," Jim pleaded without getting up from the ground.
"Hey, you don't want some guide so superstitious that he would actually believe that the moon sent you as an answer to a prayer. I wouldn't fit in up there." Blair gestured toward the stars.
"You don't know me well, but when you get to know me, you'll find out that I don't give a shit about what other people think," Jim argued. "I could offer you a good life, a life without the Marks and with food any time you opened a chiller.”
"I don't care what most people think," Blair said slowly, "But I care what some people think. The stars and the life you offer… it's greed. That's so not my path."
"Blair," Jim called as he felt his chance slipping away.
"Go home, Jim. Go find a nice trained guide."
Long after Blair had walked back to the compound, Jim continued to kneel on the ground, his mouth open as he tasted a few random molecules Blair had shed as he’d walked away.