Authors note: My apologies for the cliff-hanger at the end of the first part. For better or worse, "The End" appears at the end of this instalment. Many thanks as always to Susan Foster, who has a great answer for any question I come up with about her universe; and to my terrific beta readers Kaye and Techgrrl (who proves that computer skills and literary talent can inhabit the same body).
Jim had dropped onto his hands and knees on the hard floor, but willed himself to go no further. He could bear the personal humiliation. But to collapse now into the inviting darkness would mean betraying all of Blair's careful instruction. To give in now would be to lose any chance of winning him back from the cold, thin air into which he'd vanished. Think, Ellison. Even if it hurts.
He turned his head to look back at Elena. He hoped that, as a guide, she appreciated the novelty of having a sentinel at her feet. She seemed surprised, but all too ready to reach out to him again with that spider's touch. From this angle, the planes of her face were thrown into shadow by the acrid light that spilled into the hallway. If Blair were here he would already be sketching out her personality from the brushstrokes of her feelings, her gestures, her face. All Jim had was the evidence of his senses, and right now they weren't telling him much. Lucky thing I'm so good at figuring out women.
He couldn't just hand her the victory, though, so for now he'd just fake it. Carefully, with as much dignity as the position allowed, Jim pushed himself to his feet and began rather theatrically to brush the lint and grime from his hands. He even added his handkerchief, for effect. "Nice crime den. Did you know it used to be a printing plant? As in benzene? Birth defects? Or maybe the great and powerful sentinel didn't notice."
Elena, who had clearly been poised to offer sympathy, seemed nonplussed. Now that he'd started, it seemed to Jim that he could actually do this. He strolled slowly back down the hall, deliberately turning his back on her. "So did you set this whole thing up with your buddy Roger? To get Blair away from the investigation because you knew a guide would see right through your little triangle with Trager and Justin?" Of all the possibilities it seemed the least likely to Jim, since it meant that Roger would have had to deceive Blair during their brief bonding. But it had its intended effect. Elena's look of resolute compassion faded, and she clenched her fists.
"Roger is not involved. He cannot understand that extreme situations call for extreme tactics." Her voice, which had risen, became low and confidential again. Jim thought she had the shadow of an accent, along with the over precise diction of intelligent people who'd learned English as a second language. "If you want to know, it was his girlfriend who called us. She works for the GDP, and has been quite useful in our efforts."
"Poor Roger can really pick them, can't he?" Jim asked dryly. "His girlfriend is a spy, one of his buddies is a thief, and the other is a murderer." He paused for a moment, inviting her to disagree. "Elena, did Justin force you to come here with him?"
"Of course not."
"Then you, little lady, are an accessory to murder, and you're under arrest."
"You can't do that!" Elena proclaimed, throwing her arms out wide. Suddenly and incongruously, Jim thought: Missy Fisher. Why had that name come to him now? She'd been one of the prettier girls in 11th grade, but when she'd been cast in the lead in Oklahoma, she had turned into a prima donna, and the boys started spelling her first name with a P. She had dropped out and moved to LA, then moved back a year later, and according to Jim's dad was now appearing nightly at the Stagecoach Inn, as a waitress. Jim wished all the drama queens and kings he'd met in his career could have been pushed off the stage so harmlessly.
Did Elena's big gestures and consciously sonorous voice remind him of Missy, or was he losing touch with reality already? Blair was always telling him that sense-based memories were especially powerful. If he were lucky, he'd dredged up something he could use; if not... He shook his head and came back to himself to find Elena staring at him, as if she couldn't decide whether to flee or check him for a pulse. Elena opened her brown eyes wide. Just don't bat your eyelashes at me, Jim thought, or I might have to laugh. "You don't understand. Justin did not kill Daniel. I can help you find the men who did. Once Justin is cleared of suspicion, he can bring Blair back to you." She seemed to be willing him to be persuaded.
"That's great, but there's still a little matter of kidnapping. Plus you haven't told me who took Blair or why. And assuming for a moment that Justin didn't kill Trager, I think it's quite possible that you did." He saw her flinch, and he pounced. "Was that it, Elena? You couldn't stand being with a loser like Trager, a weak sentinel and a petty thief, kneeling and groveling and sleeping at the foot of his bed? Meanwhile Justin was telling you that you were his golden princess, and you believed him. Then last night they got into an argument and you couldn't take it any longer." Jim only half believed what he was yelling, but he gave his anger free play. With no sentinel to shield her, his taunts would be like hailstones against her fragile barriers. "So you killed your own sentinel and you ran off. You think getting Blair out of the way is going to help? Well, it's not, because I was on the phone to my captain not fifteen minutes ago, and I gave him Justin's name, and your name, and right now half the Cascade PD is looking for him!" None of which happened to be true, to Jim's considerable regret, but Elena wouldn't know that.
"Are you really that eager to do the GDP's work for them?" Elena asked bitterly.
"Don't give them so much credit. It was Blair who figured out that you were the missing piece in Trager's murder."
"What if I told you I was there when it happened?" Tears had come to her eyes. "I saw them murder Daniel. Three men in masks. Big men. They were yelling that Daniel had double-crossed them, had stolen things and sold them and kept the money, instead of sharing as he was supposed to."
Oh, no, Jim thought, his stomach sinking. If Claydove was right, and it was all about petty theft, then I put Blair in harm's way for nothing. "And you didn't believe them? You think the GDP cooked this whole thing up to frame Justin?"
"No. Yes." She shook her head impatiently. "I did't believe them because it didn't feel right. They were yelling, but they weren't really angry. Besides, I already knew who the thief was, and it was not Daniel."
"So who was it?"
"Come with me. I'll show you."
With reluctance but some curiosity, he followed her gently swaying form back down the hall and around the corner, where she opened two large doors. Still in darkness, he could feel the slight change in air pressure and temperature, and a wave of domestic scents chased away the industrial ghosts: coffee, candle wax and ripe bananas. Jim blinked as she flipped on the lights, and then looked around in amazement at a room right off the cover of Pacific Home. The cavernous space had been divided into discrete areas for dining and sleeping, set off by swaths of wall color and immense curtains that hung from ceiling tracks. Huge, quiet, all done in calm shades of gray and blue: as a sentinel's lair, it made his own loft seem like a locker in a bus station.
"What line of work did you say Justin was in?"
Elena seemed to appreciate his grudging admiration. "He's studying to be a paramedic. His parents are rich, and very proud of their sentinel son." She strolled across the rubber flooring, stopping at a square that Jim could see had faint worn edges, and pulled it up. She lifted out the board underneath and then with little difficulty pulled out a strongbox two feet long and a foot deep. No safe, no booby trap, Jim thought. If there's anything but someone's lunch in there, Justin is either arrogant or stupid.
Elena carried the box over to the glass-topped dining table, neither looking for nor expecting Jim's help. "I told you Daniel was not a thief." She popped open the lid. "I am the thief. Go ahead, see for yourself."
Inside there was nothing but pieces of paper, some with the faint sheen of photocopies, others glossy photographic blow-ups. Jim took a hand-width and began to flip through them. There were reports, memos, rosters, many bearing unfamiliar corporate logos, full of names Jim didn't recognize, almost all labeled with portentous adjectives: Confidential, Secret, Privileged. He was all set to ask Elena whom exactly she was spying for when a name struck him like a blow: Merganthaler.
Suddenly it was yesterday, and he was listening to Blair ramble on about sentinel genetics while stuffing wedges of pita bread into his mouth. He could hear Blair saying the name "Merganthaler" even as he could see the deckled edges of the letters. He felt Blair's absence suddenly like a weight. The letter M looked like a fence sagging between two posts, an opening through which he could pass into the blankness where absence was all....
"Jim! Come back. I need you here. Blair needs you here. Look at me. Listen to my voice. Speak to me." The voice was thick and dark, like syrup, and when he heard it he though of the taste, piercingly sweet, and then his other senses were back. He felt the unpleasant lurch, like a plane hitting an air pocket, of a waning zone. Unpleasant, but there was always Blair afterward, a warm hand somewhere on his body, his face amused or worried, depending on how long Jim had been out and how big a fool he'd made of himself.
But this time, when the world slammed back into place, there was only Elena, holding him by both shoulders and regarding him with such calm triumph that he had no choice but to shove her away from him, violently. The papers went flying and she bounced off the table, the slippery pane of glass giving her hands no purchase, ending up in an ungainly heap on the floor, her stolen treasures cascading around her.
"Don't touch me again, ever," Jim said, not moving an inch to help her up.
"Should I have left you in the zone, then? Turned out the lights and gone to bed?" Even now, she didn't seem agitated, which annoyed Jim. "Will you stop indulging your anger for just ten minutes, so I can explain what these papers contain?"
Now he could listen; whichever way he wanted to play it--angry, reluctantly cooperative-- she would be believe him. He had to be careful, though, because his calculated emotions were all too close to the real thing. To minimize his contact with Elena, he would have to be cautious with his senses, in control of his feelings.
He gave her a bright, false smile. "All right, but make it interesting. I wouldn't want to zone again and push you out the window or anything."
+ + + + +
Blair opened his eyes to find himself lying in bed in a room he'd never seen. Given how light-headed he felt, he considered it quite possible that the room was a dream, or a hallucination, except it didn't look like anything that would come from his subconscious. In fact, if he had to pick up a subconscious, he would have guessed Simon Banks's, because it looked like one of those temples of guyhood that infested the pages of Simon's outdoors magazines.
Strenuously rustic furniture sat squarely on an unfinished plank floor; epoxy-coated fish leapt dramatically if inaccurately from epoxy-coated cross-sections of burly trees. He only needed to read a few of the titles on the bookshelf to conclude that they were all hairy-chested tales of Man fighting Nature on mountain and sea.
Perhaps more than anything, it was the matchbook in the ashtray next to his bed that convinced him this was someone's reality: Roy's Family Steak House & Good Time Emporium. No way would that have come out of his subconscious--or, to give Simon credit, out of his either. He supposed that meant that he should move, maybe try to find out whether one of the three doors in the room led to something useful, like a fireman's pole that led to his bedroom in the loft. Oops, he thought, there I go being surreal again.
He tried to move, but found himself effectively and warmly pinned by a huge
wool blanket that almost reached to his chin. He lifted his arm to peel it
back, an action he immediately regretted. Evidently he had done something
immensely strenuous that made his body feel shaky and weak, as if he were made
of jelly. If Jim were here he could help him remember what it was. Well, maybe
he could just imagine that he was, the way Jim said he often imagined Blair's
voice helping him when they were apart. He closed his eyes and listened.
-OK, Chief, what's the last thing you remember?
Going into that warehouse to look for that guy. Sorry, I don't remember
his name. It's all a little foggy.
-No problem, Chief. Even in his imagination, Jim's smile was amused
and kind. Did you go in the warehouse?
No, I stayed outside like you told me.
-Well, there's a first time for everything. What happened next?
A truck pulled up, one of those big sport utilities. A couple of guys got
out and said my name. They were sentinels.
-And so you yelled out for me? And ran? And dialed 911 on the cell phone?
No, I just stood there. I mean, they didn't feel threatening. I
thought maybe they were just going to ask what I was doing there.
-I'll just bet they did, Chief. And so you had a pleasant conversation
with them.
Not exactly. The taller one, the blond one, reached out to me with something that looked like an electric shaver. But it burned, Jim, it felt like a snake biting me, and all my muscles stopped working and next thing I knew I was staring at the asphalt but I couldn't move and oh Jim it hurt...
Blair's eyes shot open, and his body gave an involuntary jerk at the memory of the shock that had it had received. Before he could ask the imaginary Jim what it meant, the door opened, and a familiar blond head appeared.
"You're awake? Great!" the man said with nervous vigor. "I'll be right back." The door closed, then opened again. "Don't try to get up, OK?"
Blair heard the stairs creak; wherever he was, it was not a house designed for sneaking, or apparently, for security, since the door appeared to have no lock. A few minutes passed while Blair heard indistinct voices, male and female, from downstairs, and then the young man reappeared carrying a tray, which he lowered onto the nightstand.
"Chicken soup, tea, crackers, applesauce," he said brightly, unnecessarily pointing to the items. "There's real food if you want it, but I didn't know if you'd be hungry. How are you feeling?"
Through his half-eroded barriers, Blair could detect genuine concern, even though this man had clearly hurt him. Unfortunately, he also knew with flesh-crawling certainty that this was an unbonded sentinel. At least that narrowed down the possibilities of who this might be. "OK, I guess. Kind of weak. What did you do to me? Where's Jim?"
"It was a stun gun. I'm really sorry, Blair, but we weren't expecting you. We weren't planning on meeting you for another few weeks, but the situation with Dan, and then you showing up at the warehouse..." He held up his hands, then dropped them in his lap, in what Blair thought was a conscious attempt to seem open and harmless. "We didn't think it would knock you out. Evidently it has an enhanced effect on empaths."
"Yeah, well, before I decide to accept your apology, Justin-you are Justin, right?" The young man nodded. "Tell me what I'm doing here, and where my partner is."
A smile lit Justin's soft features, like a child about to tell a secret. "You're going to be doing something incredible, Blair. You're the key to everything we've been working for."
"Right, great. And Jim is where?"
Justin's brow creased and he looked a little annoyed, although it seemed to Blair like a reasonable question. He dropped the smile and instead regarded Blair with pale, serious hazel eyes. "Jim can't be with you now. No, there's nothing wrong with him," he said quickly, seeing Blair start. "We left Elena to take care of him, to help him while you're gone. But for what we're doing to work, your barriers have to be completely lowered, and that wouldn't be possible with Jim around."
Blair swallowed dryly and reached for the cup of tea. "And what would that be, exactly?"
Justin's look of compassion worried Blair more than any threat. "I'll explain everything, I promise. But first there are a few things you need to understand."
Justin had a puppyish eagerness, but it reminded Blair of one of those nervy purebreds that fawned all over your for years, then one morning decided you were Godzilla, and sunk their teeth into your leg. Of course, Justin was quite possibly a murderer, so Blair's mistrust might be well placed.
"Let me tell you a story about our friend Roger Cho. You liked Roger, right? Did he tell you where he's from?" Blair shook his head. "Belle Fleur, Mississippi. Sounds beautiful, doesn't it? Well, it's a dump, according to Roger. His folks moved there so they could practice as dentists. Dentists." He laughed, allowing Blair to notice that he himself had perfect teeth. "They were from Taiwan. I guess ninety percent of Americans couldn't tell it apart from mainland China, which if you remember wasn't too popular about twenty years ago. So they went to an 'Underserved Rural Area.'" Justin raised his eyebrows to indicate quotation marks. "Now that they had a good life in beautiful Belle Fleur, population three thousand not counting the pigs, they wanted a child. But try as they might they couldn't conceive. So Mrs. Cho went down to Gulfport to visit the government clinic, which if you remember there were a lot of about twenty years ago, after that unpleasantness with the vaccine."
Blair shifted nervously. "Actually, my mom refused to get vaccinated. Look, don't you think this is invading Roger's privacy just a bit? Why don't we skip it and move on to the part where you explain to me why I'm here?"
"Wait, I'm just getting to the good part. Lo and behold, just a month after visiting the clinic, Mrs. Cho was pregnant, and she gave birth to a fine son, tall and smart and good at whacking catfish or whatever they do down there. And the best of all was that when he was fourteen years old, another government clinic opened up in Gulfport, this one for testing sentinels and guides, and of course the Chos being so grateful to the government, they took there son straight down there and guess what they found out. They left the pigs and the chickens behind and moved to Cascade, so Roger could get the best sentinel training available. Do you want to know a strange fact?" Blair was pretty sure he didn't. "He met five other kids at the academy who came from the Gulfport clinic. Doesn't that seem like a lot?"
Blair nodded, testing Justin carefully from behind his weakened shields. His cynical monologue didn't fool Blair, whose students ping-ponged easily between reverence for "primitive" cultures and contempt for their hopelessly unhip upbringings. Behind the sarcasm Blair could feel panicky excitement, and it unsettled him. He had been moving toward his own uncomfortable conclusions in the three years that he'd been studying guides, but he did not welcome the prospect of confirmation.
"So maybe the Gulfport clinic was cooking the books--sending through weak or nonexistent sentinels to make their quota. Roger didn't exactly set the world on fire with his sentinel abilities, and neither did you or Trager."
Justin gave him a tight smile. "There's nothing wrong with our abilities. That isn't why we were put on the trash heap at the academy. It's because we could all be controlled." He leaned forward, closer to Blair, elbows on his knees. "My mom is VP for business development at Xentex. They get a lot of government contracts. Roger's parents are patriotic, and they haven't got citizenship yet. Dan did it to himself--always going off on these psycho conspiracy monologues and putting his fist through walls. When we got rated below a 4 for sentinel abilities, not suitable for permanent assignment, we all either had reasons not to complain, or no one to listen."
"But you decided you were better than your test results?" Blair thought of the trendy Stanford Street address, and figured he did.
"You tell me." Justin reached out slowly and put a cool hand on Blair's forearm. Blair started to tremble, the chill creeping through his body. There was no doubt it was the touch of an alien sentinel, and a fairly powerful one at that, although Blair's weakened barriers could be magnifying the effect. He wanted to jerk his arm away, but instead flicked his gaze up to Justin and said flatly, "Take it away."
Justin complied, looking solemn. "I don't want to hurt you. I really respect what you've done, going back to school and making a life for yourself. So I want you to understand what we're doing here, what you're going to be doing here."
"Then will you tell me already? Justin, you zapped me, kidnapped me, took me away from my sentinel, and you keep making these Doctor Doom pronouncements without explaining what they mean."
"And your shields are almost gone. It's OK, Blair, you don't have to hide it."
"Jesus." Blair involuntarily shrank back against the wall, trying to eke out more space between himself and Justin.
"Alright, I won't drag this out. Besides, I think you already know what this is about, although I don't blame you for wanting to avoid it. It took me long enough, before I was willing to face it. We've been taking documents from the GDP, and from some government department that I don't think even has a name. It took a long time, but I put together some numbers." He pulled a pen from his pocket, and reached down under the nightstand to pull out a copy of Rod & Rifle, and scribbled something on the back. "I'm going to show you two numbers. One is the approximate number of active, on-line sentinels registered with the GDP. The other is the number of guides."
Blair surprised himself by thinking numbly, I just didn't know the number was so big. And the other one so small. And he was one of those numbers, a dwindling abstraction like the great whales, pitied by some and hunted by others. And he would be hunted, if the sentinels found out, because as a Dark Guide he was the Golden Fleece. Hundreds of sentinels scouring the earth for him, fighting over him, but it wouldn't matter, because what he had done with Jim couldn't be undone. After Jim, he could never bond again, and there would only be pain and despair.
He hated Justin, for calculating his darkest fears and bringing the numbers into the world on a glossy ad for Predator rifle shells. Yes, sweetie, there are monsters in your closet. Shall I tell you exactly how many, and what species? He looked at Justin and said, "I think I'm going to be sick."
Justin lunged for the trashcan, and for an awful moment it looked like he was going to touch Blair again, but he just let his hands hover, apparently with the intention of offering comfort but instead ratcheting Blair's panic up another notch. The last shreds of Blair's barriers, which he had been pulling around him like a tattered coat, tore away. He was totally exposed now, to Justin's guilty sympathy, to his own dreadful knowledge and worst of all, to the perfect void of Jim's absence.
With a conscious effort, Justin pulled his hands away and clasped them together, squeezing them nervously. In that gentle, husky tone you used around sick people, the one that convinced them you knew they were dying, he whispered, "Everything's going to be fine, Blair. We can begin now."
+ + + + +
Jim and Elena sat at the dining room table, papers fanned out before them, reminding Jim of some yuppie couple going over their investments. Jim started to lose patience after the fifth cryptic memo, but hung on long enough to have a reasonable confidence that Elena wasn't bullshitting him. "So the GDP has a surplus of sentinels, and they're trying to cover it up."
"Not the GDP," Elena said, patient as if she were used to dealing with children, or particularly dense sentinels. "Another group, which Claydove does not manage. They refer to themselves as the 'project.' Look," she said, shuffling papers deftly, "these memos go back seven years at least."
"May I ask how come, if it's so secret, they documented everything and left it where you could find it?"
"One thing I have found true of every authoritarian organization throughout the world: they are addicted to paper."
It was the closest she'd come to showing a sense of humor, and Jim decided to cut her a break. "OK, so there's this giant conspiracy, you steal the evidence, they find it missing. Trager hasn't always been a good little sentinel so he's a likely suspect. You'd still have to connect your 'project' to the murder."
"They trashed the apartment. Everywhere. They opened everything, looked anywhere papers could have been concealed."
Now Jim had to laugh. "Trashed? I was there, not six hours after you say the murder happened. There wasn't a speck of dust out of place. Hell, there wasn't even a speck of dust."
"Exactly. They put everything back, and they brought a sentinel to clean up after themselves."
"A sentinel?" But Jim remembered how clean the crime scene had been: scrubbed, to an almost microscopic level.
"Do you think I wouldn't know? Especially then?" She straightened her back, her posture regal, though she was not tall: an interesting stress reaction for a guide. "My sentinel had just died, and whatever you think about my relationship with Daniel, his death was very painful to me. Not only that, but it left me completely unprotected. They made me kneel on the kitchen floor, blindfolded, but I could hear them searching, all the comments they made back and forth. After maybe an hour the sentinel came in. My barriers were completely gone; I could probably have felt him a mile away."
"I'll bet. And you think he was there to make sure they hadn't missed anything?"
"I know he was." She paused, somewhat dramatically. "I also know who he was."
"From what, his aura or something?"
"No." She knew she was being mocked, and didn't like it. "His voice, and his, well, feel. His name is Robert McElvoy. I met him last year when Justin and I went to a Guide Liberation Army meeting. He must have been a GDP spy."
And you all must have been pretty naïve, Jim thought, to think the GDP wasn't far enough into the GLA to see the light on the other side. Even Naomi, hardly a skeptical soul, had speculated to Jim that the GLA was actually a GDP front.
"So the GDP kills Trager because they think he's seen things they shouldn't see, then brings McElvoy in to sweep up so there's no evidence. Then they waltz out, leaving the one eyewitness alive and free."
"You've been with Blair too long, Jim." She had the sense to flinch when she saw Jim's look of anger. "What I mean is, you may have forgotten what the expectations are of ordinary guides. A guide whose sentinel is injured or sick is supposed to stay by his side, is thought to be incapable of doing anything else. Without her sentinel, she is helpless."
"But you weren't."
"No. Perhaps because Justin and I had a prior...commitment to each other, the bond with Daniel was never very strong. After an hour or so I felt well enough to move, and I called Justin. It was still dark, so I walked down to the gas station on the corner, so that no one would see Justin's car and be able to place him at the scene of the crime."
"But that afternoon, Roger's girlfriend tips you off that we're looking for you anyway, and you and your friends wait here to ambush us." Jim looked down at his hands, needing to be free for a moment from Elena's limpid, hopeful gaze so he could make a decision. It reminded him of those annoying puzzles where you could ask questions of two men, and one always lied and one always told the truth, and depending whose story you believed, you either ended up at your destination or you got eaten by a tiger. Except that in real life, everybody lied and everybody told the truth; the difference was the motive for doing it. Elena's motives seemed clear enough, and while they might lead to acts of misplaced heroism, he doubted they would lead to murder.
"Suppose I believe you. How does this all work out? We get McElvoy to admit the whole thing, Justin brings Blair back, and I decide not to have you charged with in connection with the kidnapping because I'm such a nice guy?"
"It's enough for me that you believe me. But I am concerned that once the GDP knows you don't believe their cover story, that they might try to blame me, or Justin. Anything that separates us would be unacceptable."
Jim was sorely tempted to remind her that was exactly what she'd done to him and Blair. He was even more tempted just to run her downtown and let her enjoy the leaky plumbing and cream of crud soup in the lockup for a night, then see if she had a whole new perspective on what separation really meant. Of course, she hadn't cracked so far, despite her sentinel's death and being alone with his murderers, and she'd managed to bring him out of a zone when every other guide but Blair crumpled. Some bad food and the company of Cascade's drunkest and skankiest might just appeal to her martyr complex, and Jim might wait days for useful information.
"Before I lift another finger on this case, I need to know Blair is safe. What was that you said about Blair 'going to make more guides'?"
"A theory of Justin's." Her tone told Jim she didn't necessarily buy it herself. "He thinks that Blair, as a Dark Guide, can help underdeveloped guides improve their abilities."
"And that would be more constructive than whatever this 'project' is cooking up?"
"Justin thinks so."
"You don't agree?"
"After what I have seen, and read, I do not think there will be a peaceful resolution to this situation. When food is scarce, how many choose to starve so others will eat? How many choose their own deaths over those of their comrades? If ordinary humans do not, how can we expect that sentinels will?"
"Yeah, well, leaving Armageddon aside for a moment, how are you going to convince me that Blair is safe while we chase after McElvoy?"
"You can talk to him yourself," she said, pulling a cell phone from her pocket as proof. "Justin is supposed to call me, once they have safely arrived at their destination."
"Then you make sure I get that call." Jim pushed his chair back from the table. "Otherwise you're going to be explaining your end-of-the-world theories to my captain."
+ + + + +
Blair watched Dustin ducked into the closet and reemerged with a flannel bathrobe, which he held out to Blair expectantly, reminding him that under the thick wool blanket he wore only a pair of faded boxers, too far gone to pass Naomi's stringent reuse/restore/recycle test. Normally Blair wouldn't have been afraid of any ritual--no matter how fiendish--that involved plaid, but his eroded barriers made moving--not to mention breathing or thinking--painful. When Justin didn't back off, Blair rose, groaning, and let Justin not only wrap him in the bathrobe but also tie the belt. "You're doing just fine. Not too much longer now. We're going to go downstairs and meet my friends, OK? I won't touch you unless you ask me to, but if you feel like you're going to fall, you grab me, alright?" Blair nodded, the slight movement sending hot needles through his head.
Downstairs might as well have been the floor of the Copper Canyon. Blair moved slowly, trying to keep his bleary gaze fixed on a pale glow at the bottom that turned out to be an umbrella stand shaped like a trout with an open mouth.
It reminded him of a fish he'd caught last time he had gone with Jim and Simon to Wind Lake, a shining creature with rainbow skin that had flopped and gasped at Blair's feet until Jim had grabbed it and delivered the coup de grace. Now Blair wished he had thrown it back; instead it had ended up on a metal platter surrounded with lemon wedges, Simon digging in and good-naturedly cursing Blair's beginner's luck. Tears started to his eyes, thinking about the fish, and then about the comradeship they had enjoyed that evening, and finally and inevitably about Jim. Blair clutched the banister, feeling sorrow for the fish, himself, and the world.
The living room, mercifully, was dimly lit, most of the light coming from a well-fed fire. A half-dozen people crowded into the little room, four men and two women including Justin, all looking at him expectantly. He could feel hope, envy, admiration, and all the little everyday emotions rolling off them in waves as he shuffled into their midst.
"Blair, these are my friends. They're all very happy to see you." They murmured their greetings. "Can you do something for me, Blair? Before I tell you who they are, can you tell me what they are? How many are sentinels, and guides, and regular people?"
What a stupid game, Blair thought. He could have told from a mile away. It made him feel the way he used to when he was a kid and Naomi made him play his recorder for her friends. He answered dutifully, "Four sentinels. Two guides."
Justin gave a shout of triumph. "I knew it! I told you! Michael, he can sense you!" A young man and woman, a guide and sentinel, began to congratulate each other, their joy like a phosphorous flare in Blair's head.
"Blair, why don't you sit over here, by the fire." Justin cleared a path to guide him to a wing-backed chair, into which he sank heavily. "You don't know what you've just done, so I'll explain. Michael here isn't a guide, at least not that anybody's been able to detect, but his biological father was. You're able to sense his latent guide abilities, and we're very hopeful that you can help him bring those out." Blair looked at the young man; his light brown skin glowed in the firelight, so that he seemed to be made of the fire itself.
"I teach a seminar on Guide Dynamics every Thursday at 4," Blair said dully. "Beyond that I can't help you. Why would you want to be a guide, anyway?"
He smiled at the woman whose hand he held. "Because I love Laura. She's a sentinel, and I want to be her guide. I was meant to be."
Jim had told him that love was the most dangerous motivation for any crime. "What do you expect me to do about it?"
Justin intervened. "Michael didn't grow up with his biological father. Remember what I told you about Roger? The same thing happened to Michael. With no empaths around him while he grew up, his empathic abilities never developed. I think--we think--that if he can experience the full force of your emotions, it might switch on his abilities."
"What do you mean, experience?"
"I'd like you to let Michael touch you."
Blair hadn't thought he had the energy to count to ten, but somehow he managed to bolt from the armchair and shove his way past his captors, and actually had his hand on the doorknob before Justin caught up, grabbing the belt of his robe and making him scramble in place like a cartoon character.
"Blair, calm down. It's freezing outside and you don't even have shoes on. We won't force you to do anything you don't want. We hoped you'd want to help, but I guess your barriers are too far gone for that. So I'll make you a deal."
"What kind of deal?"
"I'm supposed to call Elena in a little while and check in. If you help us, I'll let you talk to Jim."
Blair knew you weren't supposed to bargain with kidnappers, but Justin was offering the one thing he wanted more than anything else in the world, short of seeing the doorknob turn and Jim himself walk in.
He turned away from the door and let Justin lead him back to the fireplace, sufficiently recovered by the thought of talking to Jim to feel a bit foolish, although he was glad to feel some discomfort coming from the conspirators.
"OK, you can touch me, whatever good you think it will do. But I warn you, if you're any kind of empath, it's going to hurt."
Michael looked solemn, but no less eager. He advanced on Blair as toward some exotic animal, and to his surprise, chose to place his hand on Blair's cheek.
For Blair the pain was instant and incapacitating, no less awful for being familiar; but the effect on Michael was even more startling. He jerked his hand away from Blair's face and sagged, hiding his face in his hands. After a fearful moment he turned to his friends, angry tears in his eyes.
"Do you know what we're doing to him? It's terrible, not just the pain, but my God, the emptiness." He started to weep and dropped to his knees at Blair's side, too inexperienced to know that he was trapping them both in a whirlpool of recirculating pain.
Laura, the sentinel, started toward him, and Blair just managed to croak out, "No. Get back. If you touch him now you may not be able to stop the bonding drive. He couldn't handle a bonding now, his pathways are too new." He looked hazily at the volatile group: sentinels and guides, all churning with their own primeval desires. Why did Justin think the GDP used regular people as guards? Blair spoke quietly to the sobbing young man in front of him. "Michael. Michael! You have to get away from all of us, until your emotions are under control. Go up to your room, shut the door, and stay there. Do you understand?" He nodded, sad as a punished child, but rose, shivering, and made his way hastily from the room.
Free from the vortex of Michael's newborn abilities, Blair felt himself getting angry. "Justin, are you nuts? If you thought this had even a chance of working, what did you think would happen to Michael? It takes children years to learn to shield themselves enough for normal life. How is Michael going to manage that as an adult?"
"He won't have to learn. He'll be my guide, and I'll shield him," Laura said hopefully.
"And if you can't be around him every minute of the day?" Blair felt absurdly like a parent lecturing a couple of kids who planned to elope. "The best thing you can do for him is get him to the GDP academy as fast as you can." Blair enjoyed the chorus of outrage; it bolstered his own anger. "Yeah, I know they're the evil empire, but at least they're prepared to deal with overloaded guides, which is more than I can say for your merry little band."
"Blair, don't you understand what you've done?" Justin asked.
"Yes. I've helped you ruin someone's life." The thought seemed immeasurably depressing, and Blair felt his anger-borne energy slip away. "Justin, the world doesn't need more sentinels and guides. I know you think you're saving the planet, or aiding true love, or something, but it's no different from what the GDP is trying to do. And now that I've kept my part of the bargain don't you think you should keep yours? I want to talk to Jim, and then I want you to let me out of here."
"It's not that simple."
"Yes, it is. Thanks to this little drama you put me through, I have no barriers left. If I'm exposed to this too much longer I could get permanent damage."
"I'll help you. Any of us will. We'll help you build your barriers back up."
"No, you won't. Any contact could be dangerous for both of us. Get me back up to that bedroom, bring me a phone and let me talk to Jim."
Justin gave him a long, considering look and finally nodded, but Blair did not sense acquiescence, more like a covert shuffling of thoughts. Justin gestured to one of the sentinels, a tall, rangy fellow with a worried face.
"Max, help Blair up to his room. Don't touch him unless he stumbles. Blair, as soon as Elena calls in, I'll come upstairs."
Blair made a couple of wobbling attempts before he got to his feet. Max tracked him nervously up the stairs, ready to catch him if he fell, a not unlikely possibility. In an effort to stay conscious more than because he really cared, he asked, "Whose place is this, anyway?"
"My uncle's. Pretty lame with all the fish and stuff, huh?" Blair wanted to remind him that it had in fact been intended for fishing, not kidnapping, but held his tongue, and was rewarded by being allowed to sink down on the bed in the dimly lit room. He brushed off Max's offers of water and aspirin and let himself sink into a drowsy twilight state pleasantly free of thought.