Is this Anything? Dreaded Bonding AU Miscellanea
So, I hear you asking, "What's next in the Dreaded Bonding AU universe?"
I have loads of stuff in the hopper, each more fascinating than the last.
--28 pages of the story that follows Part III of "Finding Home".
--10 pages covering four minor adventures that Kas and Angel have while Angel is in med school.
--An AU of the AU, in which Guides are the dominant half of the pair, because Sentinels are considered to be unable to control their instinctive reactions, and Guides are the only people who can keep them in line. But don't get too excited--I couldn't make it about Blair and Jim; c'mon, people might actually want to read that! No, it's about Kas and Angel. Of course. I've only written a couple of pages of that one so far.
--And...what was the fourth one? Oh, yeah. The "How they met" story for another OC pair that will be introduced in the first story in this list, but I haven't actually gotten to the part where they show up yet. Because what this series needs is more OCs.
Is anyone interested in reading any of this stuff? Probably the first one, right? I'll go ahead and post what I have so far on that one; it's slow going, so maybe your thoughts will help me keep making progress.
Blair bounded up the stairs to the Cascade Sentinel-Guide Resource Center. Shortly after he, Jim, Kas, and Angel returned from Peru, the four of them had realized that they needed to find some way that they could be accessible to the press and to Sentinels and Guides with problems, not to mention the occasional bile-spewing lunatic, that would not mean dealing with constant phone calls and drop-in visitors at their homes and workplaces. They’d set up the Center on the third floor of a commercial building that Kas and Angel owned. It had been a belated (“very belated,” according to Angel) Bonding present from Kas’s family, who apparently had more money than God. There was some sort of complicated backstory about how Kas’s sister had gotten a thriving strip mall as a wedding present, and a few months later Kas had been given the title to this building, which housed an ethnic hair salon on the ground floor, a private detective and a tax accountant on the second floor, and, owing to the lack of air conditioning or elevator, usually nothing on the third floor.
Kas was apparently a little bitter about it, but the price was right, so the third floor became the Sentinel-Guide Center. The next stroke of luck had been that after moving out of her tent on the G-TAC grounds, Naomi had moved in as unpaid office manager, setting up a makeshift studio apartment in one of the office’s three rooms. Three high school student interns-two Guides and one Sentinel-rounded out the staff. (The two Guides, Raisa and Cory, had signed on first, followed a few weeks later by Liam, the Sentinel. Kas and Angel had lined them up and announced seriously that even though they now had a mixed group, there would be, Kas said, “No hanky,” and Angel had said, “There will be no panky, either,” and then they had both giggled like they were high for about ten minutes. Blair still had no idea what that was about.)
“Hi, Raisa,” he said, going into the outer office. “Are you on your own today?”
“Your mom is in the back. Liam has basketball today, and Cory’s at the copy shop.”
“Cool-did you say copy shop or coffee shop?” He hoped he hadn’t missed the snack run-he’d be stuck with whatever kick Naomi was on this week or one of the syrupy concoctions the kids liked.
“Copy shop. The new press release.”
“Oh, good.”
He went into the inner office, where Naomi was working at an old computer she’d gotten one of her friends to donate. “Hey.”
“Hi, honey. No Jim today?”
“He’s at work-I was at Rainier this afternoon. Anything interesting today?”
“Hm, there are some people you should probably call back. Oh, and Raisa was talking earlier about how she probably isn’t going to bother with college applications-you should talk to her about it.”
He nodded. “Yeah, okay.” Raisa was probably right that there wasn’t much point to her applying to college-she had just started her senior year, and things weren’t going to change fast enough for her not to be going to G-TAC after graduation-but he ought to say something, anyway.
On second thought, maybe he could punt that one to Kas. He had lots of stories about how not taking high school seriously after his Guide test came in had made things much more difficult than they had to be in nursing school.
He was working on returning the phone calls when Raisa came to the door. “Uh, Mr. Sandburg? There’s somebody here to see you.”
“Okay,” he said cautiously. They didn’t get a lot of walk-in visitors.
In the outer office he found…Michelle Masden, the Sentinel trainer from G-TAC. Behind her was her Guide Tim, looking acutely embarrassed.
Now he had to decide whether he wanted to have this conversation in front of his mother or the baby Guides. “Hi,” he said. “What can I help you with?”
“Ah. Good afternoon…Mr. Sandburg.”
He waited.
“You may have heard that I’m no longer with G-TAC.”
Right, because G-TAC kept him in the loop on all their HR decisions. “I hadn’t heard, no.”
“I had hoped there might be someone here I could speak with about…employment.”
“Here?”
To her credit, Masden seemed to have come to the realization that that would not be happening. She smiled nervously.
“We don’t really have any openings,” Blair said, as diplomatically as he could. Man, was she lucky Jim, Kas, or Angel weren’t there. “Or paid staff, for that matter. We do occasionally hear from people with job opportunities for Sentinels.” They didn’t usually do anything with them, since finding work was not one of the problems anyone had ever come to them with before, but-well, they were a Sentinel and Guide, and they were asking for a resource. He guessed he kind of had to help. “Do you want to see what we have?”
Masden must have been getting desperate, because she agreed.
“Okay, have a seat.” He cleared the kids’ backpacks off of the guest chairs and motioned for them to sit down.
Michelle sat. Tim stood behind her. Blair looked at them.
After a long moment, Michelle said, “Sit down, Tim.”
“Okay….” He pulled out the file drawer where they kept stuff they didn’t really care about. As a bit of stage business, he took out a form-it was actually a telephone message form, so he hoped Masden wasn’t looking closely-and wrote her name at the top. “Michelle Masden and Tim….”
“Masden,” Tim said, with what Blair had come to think of as the “I, unlike some people, am a proper Guide,” expression.
“Right. Previous employer…G-TAC, for both of you…what did you do before that?”
“I was in the Navy,” Michelle said.
“What did you do there?”
“I was a linguist.”
“Hm. What about you?” he asked Tim.
At Michelle’s nod, he said, “I was also in the Navy. As a Guide.”
“Either of you have any law enforcement experience?” The city school district was hoping for a retired cop Sentinel to check students’ lockers for drugs.
“No.”
“Industrial?” There was a computer manufacturer who thought a Sentinel would be just the ticket for ensuring that parts had been made to exact specifications.
“No.”
“I don’t suppose you’d be interested in inspecting meat in a slaughterhouse.”
“Not particularly,” Michelle said.
“Well-you could try the private investigator downstairs.” He hadn’t submitted a formal request, but every time he saw Jim, he said something about how helpful Jim’s abilities would be for tracking down philanderers and insurance frauds.
Michelle looked unimpressed with that idea, too, but when she glanced over at Tim, apparently giving him permission to have an opinion, he said, “That does sound better than the slaughterhouse. Or re-enlisting.”
“I suppose it’s worth considering,” Michelle said.
“He’s down on the second floor; his name is Terrell Meeks. Nice guy,” Blair said, even though he didn’t really know him. Meeks had come by and offered his help when the offices had been vandalized shortly after they opened up shop. With Jim being a Sentinel and a police detective besides, they hadn’t really needed help from a private dick, but it had been a neighborly gesture.
“Thank you,” Masden said grudgingly.
“You’re welcome.” And, because anything that helped Michelle would also help Tim, and God knew the guy needed all the help he could get, he added, “Leave your number, and we’ll let you know if anything else turns up.”
When Jim showed up and heard about their visitor, his reaction was predictable. “Giant brass balls on that woman. I hope you kicked her to the curb.”
“I don’t think this was quite what she was expecting,” Blair said with a gesture around at the shabby office. “Or who. I suggested she ask Terry for a job.”
“You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din,” Jim said, with a shake of his head.
To Blair’s surprise, though, the next week he noticed Tim and Michelle skulking around the building. Evidently Terry had been serious about hiring a Sentinel, and they had taken the job. Angel initially had to be physically restrained from giving her a piece of his mind, but time, and judicious scheduling of his shifts at the office for times when he was unlikely to encounter her, calmed him down somewhat.
But the issue must have been preying on his mind, because after a couple of weeks, he came to a Resource Center board meeting (aka dinner party at the loft) and announced that he had a new project in mind.
“Oh, God,” Kas said. “Is this that thing you were--”
“Yes. The Masden person,” he explained, for Blair and Jim’s benefit.
“What about her, exactly?”
“I think she should be the test case for our educational program demonstrating how sane people treat their Guides.”
“You know,” Blair said, “that’s not a bad idea. G-TAC puts a lot of energy into indoctrinating people into their idea of how Sentinel-Guide relationships should work. We should be countering that with some direct action. And Michelle-I know you don’t like her, Jim, but she’s going to be a lot less resistant than some. She came up with that revolting operant conditioning scheme because she objected to the beatings, so she’s at least open to other ideas.”
“Plus I’m getting really tired of watching her lead Tim around like a dog,” Angel said.
“There is that,” Jim said.
Blair nodded. “Right. Think global, act local-where better to start than in our own backyard? I’m in.”
Jim, realizing he was outnumbered, said, “I’m not having her in the loft.”
“He was thinking the cottage,” Kas said.
And so it happened that a few weeks later, they were in Jim’s truck, bumping along the dirt road to the Williams farm, where they would leave their vehicles before taking ATVs up to Kas’s family cottage. Tim and Michelle were riding with Kas and Angel, Jim having also refused to have the other Sentinel in his truck. Angel had apparently decide to act as though they were taking Michelle’s interest in working at the Resource Center straight, and had invited her to participate in a long-weekend think-tank session to discuss reforming Guide training. It was even partially true-they had a Task Force meeting next month, and the issue was one of the first things they planned to address. Michelle and Tim could provide a viewpoint from inside G-TAC.
Jim parked the truck by the corncrib, at Hank Williams’s direction, and they climbed out. The other four were already in conversation with Hank’s wife, Estelle. “-probably be enough,” Angel was saying. Seeing them, he asked, “Do you guys need any eggs?”
Part of the plan for the weekend’s secret agenda was that each Sentinel-Guide pair would be responsible for preparing dinner one day.
“Nope,” said Blair.
“Blair,” Estelle said, “we saw you on the television.”
“Oh,” Blair said. “Great.”
But Hank just said, “We’re glad you’re all right, son,” and left it at that, so it wasn’t too bad.
The next thing they had to figure out was how to get everyone and everyone’s luggage up to the cottage on two ATVs.
“Do you know how to drive one of these things?” Kas asked Michelle and Tim.
“No,” said Michelle.
That was bound to be a problem, since not even Angel was mellow enough to really like the idea of riding double with her up to the cottage-or having her hanging onto his Guide. It was a little like the logic problem about getting the chicken, fox, and goose across the river in a boat that would only hold two at one time.
After several attempts at solving the problem, Angel said, “Okay, so I’ll take Blair up, and Kas can take Tim, and then Kas and I will come back down and-no, that won’t work either.”
Finally Tim said diffidently, “I used to ride four-wheelers as a kid.”
That made it easy. He and Blair rode up on one machine, Kas and Angel on the other, and then Angel and Blair rode back down.
Michelle and Tim looked surprised; they had clearly been expecting the Sentinel-Guide pairs to stick together.
“Kas always likes to do a walk-through as soon as we arrive to see what’s broken or leaked since the last time we were here,” Angel explained.
“He’s handy around the house?” Michelle asked.
It was a caseworker-type question, and Angel shot it down by saying, “It’s his house.”
“I see,” Michelle said.
She stood back and watched as Angel, Blair, and Tim got the luggage arranged on the two ATVs. When they had finished, she had another question for Angel. “Doesn’t Sentinel Ellison mind you being alone with his Guide?”
“No.” Angel affected a puzzled expression. “Why would he?”
Michelle’s expression suggested she was trying to figure out if he was for real. Angel had that effect on people.
Angel went over the ATV controls with Tim-different brands were a little different-and they mounted up, Michelle climbing stiffly onto the back of theirs and holding on to Tim’s waist gingerly, as if she didn’t really like to touch him all that much. After the first bump, though, Blair looked back over his shoulder and saw that she had found the error of her ways and was now clinging to Tim’s waist.
When they reached the cottage and started unloading the luggage, Kas and Jim came out to help. Blair glanced at his watch. “It’s almost nine-thirty. What do you say we take half an hour to unpack, then meet in the living room at ten to hammer out the agenda?”
“Works for me,” Jim said.
“I guess,” said Angel. “But I’d better get started on the snacks.” He darted off.
“Why don’t I help you with…this,” Kas said to Michelle and Tim, looking at the large pile of luggage they had brought with them. “I’ll give you the ten-cent tour on the way.”
Jim had already taken their stuff-one bag each, plus Blair’s knapsack with his laptop in it-to the room they had used last time they visited, so Blair just dumped out his clothes into a drawer and then headed to the living room to get his notes in order.
The others trickled in about a half-hour later, Angel carrying a plate of interesting-looking things on toast points, Jim following with a cocktail shaker, a tray full of glasses, and an aggrieved expression. He must have stopped by the kitchen to put their steaks into the refrigerator and gotten dragooned into helping with the snacks.
“Christ, Angel, it’s ten AM,” Kas said when he saw the cocktail shaker.
“They’re mango-pomegranate mimosas,” he said.
“Oh, well then. Just a little one.”
Jim found a place to get rid of the tray, and Blair moved his stuff to make room next to himself on the couch. Kas and Angel sat on the other couch, and Michelle perched on a chair, with Tim standing behind her, an expression of rabbit-like disapproval on her face.
Blair decided to give Angel the benefit of the doubt and suppose that the drinks were part of his plan and not just the usual Angel weirdness. It wasn’t exactly against G-TAC policy for Guides to drink, but it definitely wasn’t encouraged, either.
“You want to sit down, Tim?” Kas asked. “I can bring the other chair around.”
After Michelle glanced up at him and nodded, Tim said, “Yes, thanks.”
They fussed around with seating, drinks, and hors d’oeuvre for a few more minutes-Angel’s snacks turned out to be crab-artichoke dip on pita chips and duck pate on white toast-then got started. “Okay, let’s start with logistics. What do we need to do other than meetings?” They could have figured all of this out earlier, of course, but modeling consensus-based decision making was part of Angel’s secret agenda.
“Today or tomorrow I have to go up on the roof and replace a couple of shingles,” Kas said. “I could use a hand, if anybody is up for it.”
“I did some construction in high school,” Blair said. “I’m in.”
“Oh, good, then I don’t have to help,” said Angel. “You should do it today; it’s going to rain tonight.”
“I’m pretty sure it’s rained a bunch of times since the leak started, but today’s fine.”
They decided to do it after lunch. Blair filled that in on the schedule. “What else do we need to do?”
“Fishing. Tomorrow morning,” Kas said.
“I think that’s more ‘want’ than ‘need,’” Blair objected.
Kas shook his head. “Angel is counting on fish for dinner tomorrow.”
Angel added, “I have a backup plan, but it’s not as good.”
“Anyway, we’ll be just about done before this one’s out of bed,” Kas added. “What do you think, 5 AM?” he asked Jim.
“Works for me.”
“What about you guys?” Kas asked Tim and Michelle. “Do you fish?”
“No,” said Michelle. “Thank you.”
“Tim?”
He glanced over at Michelle. “I haven’t fished in years.”
“So do you want to?”
“I don’t have a license.”
“It’s private property; you don’t need one,” Kas said. “And we have plenty of gear. You should come.”
Tim ducked his head and looked over at Michelle again.
She sighed. “Go, if you want.”
But she sounded less than enthusiastic about the idea, and Blair wasn’t surprised when Tim said, “I don’t know.”
“Think about it,” Kas suggested. “You can decide later.”
“Okay,” Blair said. “Meals. You guys are doing dinner tomorrow?”
“Yup,” Angel said.
“Do you care whether you do tonight or Sunday?” he asked Michelle and Tim. “We’re doing steak, which will keep just fine for a couple of days, so I don’t think it matters.”
“The corn on the cob will be best today,” Jim said. “But it can wait if you’re making something time-sensitive.”
“I don’t know what Tim has planned,” Michelle answered. “Tim?”
“Chicken,” Tim said. “It, uh, doesn’t really matter which day I cook,” he said, looking over at Michelle as if for confirmation that this was true.
“Sunday it is, then,” Blair said, writing it down. Suddenly and vividly, he flashed back to the “training session” that he and Jim had had with Michelle, back at G-TAC. One of the things they had worked on was a housework schedule, which involved Jim writing down what Blair was going to do, and how often. Compliance with this schedule was, if he remembered correctly, one of the ways he was supposed to earn privileges like eating real food and sleeping in a bed.
Angel was right; Michelle really did have to be shown how sane people treated their Guides. He cleared his throat and continued, “Are we going to have the same pair that cooks clean up?”
“That’s probably the fairest,” Kas said. “When Angel’s been cooking, you pretty much have to wash everything in the kitchen.”
“Lies, all lies,” Angel said.
“Right, there was that one time you managed to make a cup of tea without using the hard-boiled egg slicer.”
“Or the garlic press,” Angel said indignantly.
“He’s not really that bad,” Kas told the others. “As long as he’s not taking a cooking class.”
Still, they decided that each of them would clean up after they cooked. After that they set up a schedule of meetings, settling on a morning and afternoon session each day, with plenty of time left over for fishing, relaxing, or-Kas suggested hopefully-hiking.
Rolling right into the strategy session, Blair said, “Okay. When we finished up last time, we were talking about what makes the Marine Sentinels so different from the rest of the armed forces.” For the benefit of Michelle and Tim, he added, “You might know, they have a reputation for being more protective and less physically abusive than average.”
“Everyone knows the Marine Corps is soft on Guides,” Michelle said.
“Uh-huh,” Blair said, deciding to forgo the lecture on how the vast number of things that “everyone knows” that turned out not to be true was why there was such a thing as science. “I wondered if there’s any evidence of that difference, or if it’s all anecdotal. I couldn’t find much data. Apparently it’s not something the government has ever decided to collect statistics on-go figure. But the DoD did do a study from 1982 to 1985 aimed at uncovering any detrimental impact that these differences-which, for the purposes of the study they decided to just assume exist-had on military effectiveness. Anybody know what they found out?” He looked around. “Maybe you read it at work?” he asked Michelle.
“I must have missed that one,” she said after a moment.
Blair nodded. “You probably did, because they didn’t make much of an effort to publicize it, since the finding was that Sentinels in the Marines function as well, and according to some measures better, as Sentinels in any of the other branches of the armed forces. Which is still not as well as Sentinels in civilized countries, but that’s another issue.”
“So using them as a starting point is probably strategically safe,” Angel said. “Since their own evidence proves that whatever it is they’re doing works.”
“Exactly,” said Blair. “So step two is to figure out what they do differently from everyone else. That’s a little more challenging, and one thing we’re going to want to do is talk to some actual Marines about it--”
“We can do that,” Kas said. “We know some people.”
“Great.” Blair nodded. He had figured they would. “Now I did find something interesting in their Guide Care texts. They put a lot of emphasis on what they call--” he glanced at his notes-“‘maintaining the Guide in a combat-ready condition.’ As far as I can tell, none of the other services say anything about that.”
“We don’t,” Jim said. “In the Army, I mean.”
“Never heard it before in my life,” Angel agreed. “What about the Navy?”
“I don’t remember anything like that from Sentinel School,” Michelle agreed.
“Yeah. Now, it’s still patronizing as hell-especially since the chapters explicitly connect up this idea to the importance of properly maintaining equipment-especially rifles, and man, there has got to be a paper, if not a whole thesis, in the weird psychosexual relationship Marines have with rifles-but the theory I’m working on is that this policy provides just enough of a toehold that Marines retain the Blessed Protector instinct to a much greater degree than other Sentinels. From what you guys have said about Sentinel School, and what I’ve read in the textbooks, it sounds like a major part of the narrative is breaking down the Blessed Protector instinct by teaching Sentinels to see Guides as interchangeable commodities.”
“Of course it is,” said Michelle, with a patronizing smile. “That’s not a secret. Sentinels must learn to overcome the instinct to protect Guides if they’re going to function effectively in dangerous situations. A Sentinel would be useless in combat if all he cared about was getting his Guide to safety.”
“Tell that to the Marines,” Blair suggested.
Michelle looked furious, and she looked over at Jim as if wondering what he was going to do about his Guide’s impertinence. Jim’s jaw clenched in a way that Blair recognized as Jim trying hard not to let loose an unmanly giggle.
“No, seriously,” Blair said. “I know that’s the party line, but the Marines don’t seem to have that problem. Or, for that matter, the Israeli Defense Force-really progressive attitudes about Guides there, and it doesn’t seem to hurt them any. Or the British in World War II-I know they haven’t done much lately, but you have to admit they kicked some Nazi ass, and while there was some class-based and colonial stuff going on there that I wouldn’t want to emulate, they didn’t have this idea the US seems to have that if Sentinels realize it’s okay to like Guides, the entire military is going to fall apart.”
“Breathe, Chief,” Jim advised him.
Blair breathed, and Angel added, “While we’re on the subject, it’s not like Jim and Blair haven’t been in dangerous situations together, either. And you know Jim has that crazy-high Blessed Protector rating. Somehow, he manages to cope.”
“Even in the US,” Blair added, “Sentinels’ protectiveness toward Guides was considered a positive thing, rather than an obstacle to be overcome, up until less than a century ago. As recently as the beginning of the First World War, the prevailing belief was that a Sentinel would fight harder to defend a unit that included a Guide he was attached to.” Delving into his backpack, he added, “I printed out a bunch of articles.” He started passing them out.
“Is there one on the Israeli Defense Force?” Angel wanted to know.
“Here,” Blair said, passing him one.
“Oh…no pictures?”
“Pictures?” Blair was puzzled. “No, it’s an academic article.”
“Any time you want to stop splashing around in the shallow end, Angelito,” Kas said. “Any time.”
“I can’t help it if those IDF guys are hot.” Angel looked down at the article. “Oh, look, there’s a chart here about that serious thing we were talking about.”
For another half-hour or so, they kept up the discussion. Tim Masden didn’t say anything-big surprise-and Michelle contributed by voicing the kind of objections they could expect to hear from the other task force members. It was helpful, in a way, and good practice for the real thing, but Blair couldn’t help a sense of growing anxiety at saying the kind of things he was saying with a G-TAC trainer in the room.
It was probably worse for Tim, who was Bonded to the G-TAC trainer in question. Plus, Blair had, at least theoretically, the option of shutting up if it got to be too much, while Tim didn’t have much choice but to sit there and listen while the rest of them pissed off his Sentinel.
When they broke for lunch, Blair decided to introduce an innocuous topic. “How’s Carlos doing?” he asked Angel, who was getting sandwich fixings out of the refrigerator.
“Great! He’s grown a lot since the last time you guys were out. I’m thinking about getting him a friend.”
“I should have known that was going to happen,” Kas added, “as soon as he showed me the plans for the four-stall llama barn.”
“Everybody on the listserv says they do better with other llamas,” Angel explained. “Or a herd of sheep or something, but we don’t want sheep.”
“No, we do not,” said Kas.
“Ones that grow up without other llamas around can get aggressive when they’re older,” Angel went on to explain. “And Carlos was probably a little young to be separated from his mother. So what we want is an older adult llama that knows how to behave around people. The girls on the listserv put me in touch with a llama rescue group. I have to get Carlos neutered before I can get another one, though.”
“Llama rescue?” Blair asking, picturing something like search-and-rescue dogs, only with llamas.
“They take in abused and neglected llamas and find them good homes,” Angel explained. “Apparently it’s a bigger problem than you’d think. People decide to get a llama because of how cute they are, without really knowing how to take care of them, and then the llamas end up malnourished or antisocial or sick.”
“Just imagine,” said Kas with mock disapproval, “getting a llama on a whim.”
Angel tsked.
“Perhaps after buying a live chicken and a basket full of vegetables,” Kas added, deadpan. “While drunk off their ass on Peruvian moonshine.”
“Shut up!” Angel said, swatting him on the shoulder.
Blair heard a soft gasp, and turned to see Tim, backed up into the small space between the pantry cabinet and the back door, looking like he expected the sky to fall in any moment. A quick glance around demonstrated that Michelle was nowhere to be seen-probably, Blair though sourly, in the dining room waiting to be served. Blair edged over to the other Guide and said confidentially, “I know; they’re kind of a shock when you’re not used to them.”
Tim nodded, wide-eyed. “He’s just going to….”
“Yep. It might help if you think of it as being almost like a sibling Bond,” he suggested. “Angel was still a teenager when they got together.”
Tim murmured, “Sibling Bonds can be difficult to manage if the parents failed to establish appropriate boundaries,” which sounded like something his Sentinel would say, and probably had.
“Uh huh,” Blair said, letting his skepticism show.
“That can’t possibly work,” Tim protested in a whisper, glancing furtively over at Angel to see if the other Sentinel was listening. “I mean, he’s…and he’s….”
“They’ve been Bonded for twenty-five years,” Blair answered. “It works great.”
After giving him a last doubtful look, Tim scuttled off to make his Sentinel a sandwich.
#
“Is Angel actually taking care of the llama all by himself like he promised?” Blair asked Kas, once they were up on the roof that afternoon.
Before Kas could answer, Tim’s head popped up at the top of the ladder. “Hi,” he said. “Um, Sentinel Masden sent me up to help.”
Kas didn’t have to ask why-since fixing the roof had become what the Guides were doing, it was unsurprising that Michelle had sent her Guide to do it too. But he also didn’t have to ask to see that Tim was acutely uncomfortable being up there. Probably afraid of heights. “I think we’ve got it under control,” he suggested.
He wasn’t too surprised, either, that Tim climbed awkwardly onto the roof, instead of taking the out that had been offered. However scared he was of heights, he was more scared of not doing what his Sentinel told him to do.
So Kas got him settled as far back from the edge as was practical while he and Blair got back to work pulling up shingles.
“So?” Blair said.
“Oh, Carlos? Yeah, actually. Well, not really. He has a llama sitter come out to groom it and play with it about twice a week on the days we work late, but hired her all by himself. And he has our landscaping guy clean up the paddock every week. But I’ve only had to feed the llama and muck out the stall once, when he was sick.” Kas shrugged.
“Yeah, that counts,” Blair agreed. “I’m surprised.”
“He can be pretty devoted to his weird hobbies. And those internet llama women are scary-they’d probably track him down and string him up if he didn’t take good care of Carlos. Hand me that moisture sensor.”
“What?” Blair asked.
“Thing that looks like a baby Taser.”
Blair handed it to him.
The boards under the shingles were wet, naturally. One of these days he was going to have to have the whole roof replaced. “I’m a little worried about the second llama. Apparently the llama women say you’re supposed to spend an hour a day working with each of your llamas.”
“That would add up fast,” Blair agreed.
“Yeah. I’ve asked Angel if any of these people have jobs-one of them has twelve llamas-but he just dodges the question.” Kas sighed. “On the other hand, it is kind of adorable when goes down to his little barn in his little rubber boots and his little LL Bean barn coat.” He was probably the only person in the state who wore an LL Bean barn coat to an actual barn. “I’m thinking of getting him a flat cap for his birthday.”
Blair pictured it. “He’ll look like an extra from All Creatures Great and Small.”
“Exactly.”
When they stopped snickering, Tim, who had been watching them with a disapproving expression, said, “Do you respect your Sentinel at all?”
Kas gave him a hard look, but Tim didn’t blink. “Yeah. Actually. I do.”
Tim first looked disbelieving, then thoughtful. As well he should.
They went back to focusing on the roof, and after a while Blair asked if he had any theories about what the Marines did differently.
“Thought you said it was compensatory masculinity,” Kas said. That had been Blair’s theory the first time they talked about it; that Marine Corps Sentinels were nicer to their Guides because they didn’t have anything to prove.
“If that’s all it is, there isn’t much we can do about it,” Blair said. “Except fix the whole Western world’s toxic ideas about masculinity, which would be biting off more than we can chew even for me. There have got to be some observable practices we can examine.”
Kas thought Blair was moving onto shaky ground-wasn’t he just saying there had to be more to it because he wanted there to be?-but didn’t say so.
“Come on,” Tim said, surprising both him and Blair. He hadn’t said more than word or two during the meeting. “Everyone knows it’s that weird thing they do.”
“What weird thing?” Blair asked.
“Nobody knows,” Kas said. “That’s part of what’s weird about it. I don’t even know for sure that they actually do it; it might just be a rumor.”
“It exists,” Tim said. “We-that is, Sentinel Masden-had a client once who was a former Marine. His civilian Guide was trained in one of the other services-I forget which one; maybe Coast Guard-and one of their problems was that the Guide didn’t want to do it, and the Sentinel said it wouldn’t work if he forced him.”
“But what is it?” Blair wanted to know.
“He wouldn’t say,” Tim answered.
“You hear all kinds of wild stories about it,” Kas explained. Blair didn’t know many American military Guides; he probably hadn’t heard them, and it was the sort of thing he’d want to know about. “It’s some kind of ritual that Marine Sentinels do when they get a new Guide. They call it…initiation? Impressing? Something like that.”
“Imprinting,” Tim said.
“Right, imprinting. Most of the rumors I’ve heard involve nudity, and sometimes bondage. One version I heard is that your Sentinel strips you down and licks you all over, but I don’t think that one’s true.”
“That can’t be all of it,” Tim said. “It lasts for three days.”
“Yeah, there’s no way it can be all licking, then,” Blair agreed. “The Sentinel’s tongue would be worn down to a stump.” He considered. “It might be kind of fun, though.”
“Not as much as you’d think,” Kas said. “It takes forever and it gets boring after a while.” Even as orally fixated as Angel was, he’d never managed to lick more than half of Kas before he lost interest in the project. “Also there are hair issues.”
“Ick,” said Blair. Turning back to Tim, he asked, “What did they mean, it ‘wouldn’t work’ if he forced him? What’s it supposed to do?”
Tim shook his head. “They didn’t say.”
“Whatever the ritual actually is, it’s interesting that there is one,” Blair said. “Lots of non-industrialized cultures have them-a shared vision quest is a favorite-but they’re very, very rare in the first world. When I was in Spain, there was a community of Sephardic Jews trying to revive one that hadn’t been done since the Inquisition, but they were running into some problems-the biggest one being that nobody knew exactly what it was.”
“Catholics have a blessing they use for Bondings,” Kas pointed out.
Blair nodded. “That’s different, though. I mean, even Western culture accepts that a Bonding is kind of a big deal. Getting a new Guide is supposed to be like, I don’t know, changing your socks or something. Only it’s not, and the Marines apparently recognize that culturally. Trust me, if you were an anthropologist, you’d realize how exciting this is.”
Privately, Kas wasn’t sure that the United States Marine Corps constituted a culture, but he knew that saying so would only get him Blair’s lecture on “What is culture?”, and he’d already heard it twice. “There’s somebody I might get to tell me about it if I can convince him I’m not asking out of morbid curiosity.” The Marine Guides Kas knew tended to get very quiet and a little pissy when the subject came up, but that could be because it was universally known as “that weird thing.”
“That would be great!”
“I may have to promise him that you won’t write a paper about it. Or at least won’t quote him in it.”
“Oh. Well, I guess that’s better than nothing.”
They finished fixing the roof and went back inside. Angel had fixed up another round of snacks for the afternoon meeting, which Blair kicked off by babbling excitedly at Jim about the discovery of the Weird Marine Corps Thing by modern anthropology (in the person of Blair Sandburg). Finally, after an extended period of speculation about what the Thing might be-Angel contributing a version he’d seen in a porno movie-they settled down to talking about Sentinel School and Guide training.
“What I never got is why there aren’t any Sentinels teaching at Sentinel School,” Angel said. “Shouldn’t there be? At least some?” He turned to Michelle and Tim and added, “Blair’s doing an article on how Guides teach each other how to be Guides, even though there are no Guides at Guide School, either. But we don’t do that.”
“Sentinels don’t accept the authority of other Sentinels,” Michelle said.
“I’m pretty sure Chaska, for one, would take exception to that,” Angel said. Then, of course, they had to explain that Chaska was the Sentinel of the Chopec group they had encountered in Peru. “Anyway, the point is, the Sentinels there train the new Sentinels, like an apprenticeship system.”
“It doesn’t work in modern society,” Michelle insisted.
“Liam’s doing okay,” Blair pointed out. “He’s one of our student interns at the Center.”
“Yes, and he’s going to have to un-learn all the bad habits he’s been taught there once he goes to Sentinel School.”
“Uh-huh,” Blair said. “Or not, which I’m sure from your perspective would be worse. But would it? If we’re really going to change anything, the first thing has to be introducing G-TAC and the SRB to the idea that there is such a thing as evidence-based practice. Too much of what goes on is based on what ‘everybody knows’-no offense, Tim-but nobody ever asks how everybody knows it. If they looked at what they’re doing, and looked at what other countries are doing, and did some basic statistical analysis, it would be blindingly obvious that treating Guides like dogs and Sentinels like circus elephants is not only not necessary, it’s not even effective.”
“Circus elephants, Chief?” Jim asked.
“Sure,” said Blair. “If you want to make a two-ton animal do what a 15-pound person tells it to do, you have to make sure the elephant doesn’t know its own strength. Sentinels, similarly, get all their information about what it means to be a Sentinel from so-called experts who just repeat all of the same unexamined assumptions.”
Kas was not as fast a thinker as Blair was, and was still a few steps back. “If you think Sentinels can’t learn from other Sentinels,” he said slowly, “what the hell were you doing in your old job?”
Masden had figured out by now that she couldn’t expect Jim to rein in any of Blair’s outrageousness, but still looked to Angel to Do Something about him. But Angel just wrinkled up his forehead and said, “Yeah, was it some kind of long-running scam, collecting a paycheck for doing something that couldn’t possibly work?”
For a second, Kas thought that Masden was going to storm out of the room, or possibly brain Angel with his cocktail shaker. “Obviously,” she said, in a carefully controlled voice, “Sentinels can be influenced by other Sentinels. In some circumstances.”
Kas would have taken the small victory and let up there, but Blair shot back with, “Which circumstances are those?” When she didn’t answer, he said, “You don’t know. Because you haven’t asked the question, or read the work of anybody who has. You just ‘know’ that Sentinels don’t accept the authority of other Sentinels, and that way you can keep on knowing it even when your own experience tells you something different.”
Before Masden could muster a response, Angel said, “You’re right about evidence-based practice, but I don’t know who you’re going to get to do the research. Liaison officers don’t have the inclination or the expertise, and Sen-Med doctors won’t touch it.”
Blair was successfully distracted. “Why not? You’d think they, at least, wouldn’t be hostile to evidence.”
“No, but they’re paranoid about ending up in, as they call it, ‘the mystic shit.’ A technical term, I think. There’s next to nothing in the Sen-Med literature about Bonding, Sentinel-Guide compatibility, or even the physiology of what Guides actually do for Sentinels. When I did my Sen-Med rotation, there was this guy who wanted to study how Sentinels recover faster from injuries if they have a Guide present-it’s generally accepted that we do, but nobody know why, how significant the effect is, or if it matters whether there was a pre-existing Sentinel-Guide relationship or not. The last one, in particular, you’d think the military would want to know, because it makes a big difference, if you have a Sentinel who’s going to be medically unfit for duty for a long time. Are they better off with the Guide they had before, or a new one with medical training? Nobody knows, because if you ask, and it turns out to be the former, you’re neck deep in the mystic shit, and that’s a career killer.”
“That, and as long as they don’t know, they can do whichever is more convenient,” Kas pointed out. “But he’s right about the mystic shit, and it’s not just in the US, either. Even in Europe they won’t go anywhere near it.”
“Okay, so we’ll bring in outside agitators,” Blair said with a shrug. “There are plenty of social scientists studying Sentinels and Guides who aren’t afraid of the mystic shit. If the oral transmission of Guide Lore paper makes a big splash-and honestly, with as much publicity as I’ve gotten lately, I don’t see how it couldn’t-we’ll have people lining up around the block to study Sentinels and Guides in contemporary industrialized societies.” He considered. “Finding enough subjects for them all might be more of a problem, but if we could get the US military to provide access-boom!”
“Boom!” was one thing that they could all agree on. Not much later, the group broke up so that Jim and Blair could get a start on dinner. Kas made sure that the kitchen wasn’t too much of a disaster area, then joined his Sentinel out on the porch.
Angel was leaning against the railing, looking out at the trees. When Kas came up to hug him from behind, he leaned on Kas instead, with a contented sigh. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah,” Angel said. “Masden’s in a foul mood and taking it out on Tim, but I’m sure he’s used to that.”
Kas winced. “It might have been a mistake, bringing them here,” he suggested.
“Mm. If it is going to work, it’s not going to work in the first few hours.”
“Not exactly what I meant.” The cottage meant something to them, and bringing someone neither of them really liked changed it, somehow. “We could have done something at the Center, or…I don’t know. Somewhere.” Or not. One of the things they wanted to accomplish was giving Masden a good look at them-two Sentinel-Guide pairs with different styles, neither of them based on fear, dominance, or control-in their natural habitat. So it was either here or their place in Cascade, and that was not happening.
“I’m okay,” Angel assured him. And Kas supposed he was, but he also noticed that he made no move to go inside until Blair and Jim called them to dinner.
#
Blair thought it was a good thing that they were doing the first night’s dinner. Jim was getting better at dealing with Angel’s cooking, but he was sure Masden would find whatever Cuban specialty he had planned a sensory nightmare. Not that she was his problem, but…well, he already knew it was hard for him to watch Sentinels suffer, even Sentinels he loathed.
Jim had planned out their dinner with an eye to making it simple without being insipid. Steak, seasoned with a dry rub and seared over charcoal. Potatoes, Idaho russets the size of a baby’s head, baked in their jackets and topped with Irish butter. Corn on the cob, bought at o-dark-thirty from a farmer’s market vendor who swore it had been picked just before the truck left that morning. Blair’s contributions were a simple salad of sliced tomatoes and mozzarella and a peach pie. He’d also helped pick out the wine.
Blair wondered if Masden would twig that Jim was doing most of the cooking, and if she did, if she would object. Given the way Sentinel-Guide behavior was mapped onto gender stereotypes, the idea of a Sentinel cooking slabs of meat over a manly fire might not offend her sensibilities.
Possibly Blair should have insisted on choosing their menu. Quiche, maybe.
On the other hand, it wasn’t like either of them could conceivably outdo Angel in that department, so maybe it was just as well they were keeping things natural. It was the sort of thing Jim usually made when it was his turn to cook-steaks, beef stew, spaghetti. Guy food.
There wasn’t nearly enough room on the grill for Jim’s enormous slabs of meat, so he had to cook them two at a time, swapping them out in a rhythm too complex for Blair to follow. Blair wondered if he was using scent, or maybe temperature. Finally, they had everything on the table and called the others in.
Angel came in from the porch in what Blair thought of as his “Blessed Protectee” mode, pressed up against Kas’s side and clutching Kas’s arm around him like a stole. They had seen him that way a lot during their G-TAC ordeal, but Angel wasn’t radiating distress the way he had then. Shamming, maybe, or a pre-emptive strike.
When the other pair came in, Michelle sat, and Tim hovered anxiously behind her until she snapped, “For Christ’s sake, Tim, sit down.”
He flinched, and sat down next to her.
“And stop that.”
Tim was certainly better suited to being Michelle’s Guide than he was. Blair, in his place, would have said, “Stop what?” and forced her to spell out, “Stop acting like you’re afraid of me.” At which point he’d probably have pointed out it wasn’t an act, and things would only get worse from there. But Tim just ducked his head and said he was sorry.
Conversation for the first part of the meal revolved around establishing consensus that everything was good, yes, very good.
Blair might have been imagining it, but he thought there was something pointed in the way Michelle said, “This steak is very unusual…would you mind having Blair give Tim the recipe?”
Jim just said, “It’s my recipe, actually, but I’d be glad to.”
The other Sentinel smirked knowingly. Yes, she definitely figured out what game they were playing.
“The salad’s my recipe,” Blair said brightly. “But there isn’t much too it.”
“Is this the butter from Trader Joe’s?” Angel asked.
“Yes,” Jim said.
“And I can hear your arteries hardening from here,” Kas added as he reached for another slab of it.
“No you can’t,” Angel said, but he took only a small amount of extra butter. “So,” he said to Jim. “Any interesting major crimes lately?”
They had had a few cases that, suitably edited, made for reasonable dinner conversation. When they ran out of them, Blair asked Michelle, “How’s the world of private investigation treating you?”
Sentinels had been speaking directly to other people’s Guides, and vice-versa, all day, but she pointedly punted the question to Tim, who said, “Thanks to us, half a dozen people are aware of their spouses’ infidelity.”
“That reminds me,” Angel said to Kas. “I cracked the case of who’s been finishing the coffee in the doctors’ lounge and not making more. You were right; it was asshole resident.”
“How did you figure that out?” Kas asked.
“Saw him doing it.” Angel twirled his wine glass between his fingers. “I haven’t figured out what to do about it yet.”
“You know,” Blair said, “there’s a study demonstrating that people are less likely to do that if there’s a picture of eyes on the wall. People are more honest if they feel like somebody’s watching them. It doesn’t even have to be a whole face, just eyes.”
“That can’t possibly work,” Jim objected.
“No, I read that one too,” Angel said. “Only it wasn’t making coffee; it was taking coffee without putting money in the kitty. Our coffee is free, so it’s not the same thing at all.”
“Wait,” Kas said, “this study was actually about coffee-stealing?”
“Yes,” Blair said. “There’s another one about the rate of disappearance of break-room cutlery.”
“Why did you read it?” Angel asked. “Switching to psychology?”
“I’m taking a class in humor as a method of cultural transmission,” Blair explained. “We did a whole week on what passes for humor in the social sciences literature. Oh,” he added. “I’m going to get to cite you again.”
“You are?” Kas looked alarmed.
“Yeah, for the seminar paper I’m going to work up those notes I took on military jokes.”
“Oh. For a minute there I thought you were going to ask me about Guide jokes.”
Why hadn’t he thought of that? “There are some?”
“None I can tell you in mixed company,” Kas answered.
“So there are?” Blair pressed.
“You know, I sometimes worry that telling you these things so you can write about them makes me some kind of a sellout.”
“I’ll be sure to mention that in my paper on the ethics of participant ethnography.”
“Oh, good, that’s what I was hoping you’d say.”
“You’ll appreciate this,” Blair said, changing the subject slightly. “In my ethnography techniques class, there happen to be several of us studying our own subcultures-one woman is native American; another guy is a Hmong immigrant, and there’s an African-American guy doing some interesting work on hip-hop. So this upper-middle-class white woman in the seminar has decided, and is apparently planning to do her paper on, how she’s at an unfair disadvantage because nobody wants to study suburban white girls. It’s not her fault she isn’t lucky enough to come from a marginalized minority.” It had been a little nastier than that, actually, with some snippy remarks about how some people had to do real research and not just write about their own experiences.
“That’s hilarious,” Angel said.
“Yeah, I think I can use it in the humor class somehow. She’s not completely wrong-G-TAC has done more for my career than I could ever have done on my own-but it’s still a spectacularly tasteless thing to say.”
“I don’t know, Chief,” Jim said. “If they can write articles about stealing silverware from the break room, I don’t know why she can’t write about suburban white girls.”
He had a point. She wouldn’t, of course, be able to just write about her own experience-but then, neither could any of the rest of them. “You know I should tell her that. It’s not a group that has been studied to death-I mean, God, if she were Samoan or something, she’d really be screwed.”
“So you’re keeping up at school?” Kas asked. “It seems like you’re at the Center all the time.”
“It’s not that bad,” Blair said, although it was true that he won pretty much every work-life balance conversation hands-down. “It helps not having to worry about my love life. You’d be amazed how much time and energy grad students put into trying to get laid.”
“That was my secret weapon in med school, too,” Angel agreed.
“I seem to remember you going to a mind-boggling number of parties,” Kas argued.
“Yeah, but not to get laid. And it wasn’t that many; it was just that I belonged to all those clubs. Hispanic med students, Catholic med students, Army med students-their parties weren’t very good; the Catholic ones were better.”
“But not as good as the unpronounceable acronym ones,” Kas finished for him.
“Right,” Angel agreed. To the rest of them, he explained, “The Coalition of Lesbian and Gay Medical, Veterinary, and Dental Students. That one was intramural. We were the only members from our school. They had the best parties. Until it got all political.”
“I still can’t believe you got away with leaving and returning to the dorm in drag that time.”
“It was Halloween; I’m sure I wasn’t the only Army man wearing a dress that night.”
Before Blair could ask if there were pictures, Jim jumped in with, “Who’s ready for dessert?”
He and Jim cleared the table and brought out coffee and pie. As they started eating, Kas said, “What are we doing after din--” then cut himself off, glaring at Angel.
“That’s when we usually have the orgy,” Angel said cheerfully.
Kas sighed. “At the unpronounceable-acronym meetings, if there was somebody new who was, you know, nervous about being in the nest of perverts, Ang and this other guy--”
“Josh Colter,” Angel supplied.
“Right. They’d set each other up, to say that. What ever happened to Josh?”
“AIDS,” Angel reminded him.
“Who was the one who got born-again and married that dental hygienist?”
“Mark.” Angel drank his coffee quickly. “All right, so what are we going to do? I doubt talking about how all my college friends are dead is much fun for anybody. Cards?”
They settled on Trivial Pursuit, since no one could think of any six-player card games other than poker, which neither Kas nor Blair was dumb enough to play with three Sentinels.
They decided to play as teams, since six-player Trivial Pursuit would take all night. Blair was prepared to clean up-the things he didn’t know, like sports trivia and pop culture from before he was born, Jim did. But Kas and Angel proved to be pretty good, too, often conferring for a long time before settling on an answer. Michelle gave rapid, confident, and usually wrong answers, while Tim sat beside her looking uncomfortable.
Blair and Jim had four pie pieces, Kas and Angel three, and Michelle and Tim none, when she plunked her piece down on the “Sports and Leisure” pie square.
Angel read, “What equine athlete’s heart weighed 22 pounds?”
Michelle rolled her eyes. “Man o’ War.”
“Um,” said Tim.
She turned to him and snapped, “What?”
“Secretariat.”
She huffed and shook her head. “Whatever. Fine. Secretariat.”
Angel turned the card over. “Correct.” He passed them the pie piece and said helpfully, “That means you get to go again.”
After that, Michelle started consulting Tim about their answers. Blair could see that she wasn’t used to asking for his input, and didn’t like it, but she liked having the other Sentinels mop up the board with her even less. The rest of them were very careful not to comment on the change.
I have loads of stuff in the hopper, each more fascinating than the last.
--28 pages of the story that follows Part III of "Finding Home".
--10 pages covering four minor adventures that Kas and Angel have while Angel is in med school.
--An AU of the AU, in which Guides are the dominant half of the pair, because Sentinels are considered to be unable to control their instinctive reactions, and Guides are the only people who can keep them in line. But don't get too excited--I couldn't make it about Blair and Jim; c'mon, people might actually want to read that! No, it's about Kas and Angel. Of course. I've only written a couple of pages of that one so far.
--And...what was the fourth one? Oh, yeah. The "How they met" story for another OC pair that will be introduced in the first story in this list, but I haven't actually gotten to the part where they show up yet. Because what this series needs is more OCs.
Is anyone interested in reading any of this stuff? Probably the first one, right? I'll go ahead and post what I have so far on that one; it's slow going, so maybe your thoughts will help me keep making progress.
Blair bounded up the stairs to the Cascade Sentinel-Guide Resource Center. Shortly after he, Jim, Kas, and Angel returned from Peru, the four of them had realized that they needed to find some way that they could be accessible to the press and to Sentinels and Guides with problems, not to mention the occasional bile-spewing lunatic, that would not mean dealing with constant phone calls and drop-in visitors at their homes and workplaces. They’d set up the Center on the third floor of a commercial building that Kas and Angel owned. It had been a belated (“very belated,” according to Angel) Bonding present from Kas’s family, who apparently had more money than God. There was some sort of complicated backstory about how Kas’s sister had gotten a thriving strip mall as a wedding present, and a few months later Kas had been given the title to this building, which housed an ethnic hair salon on the ground floor, a private detective and a tax accountant on the second floor, and, owing to the lack of air conditioning or elevator, usually nothing on the third floor.
Kas was apparently a little bitter about it, but the price was right, so the third floor became the Sentinel-Guide Center. The next stroke of luck had been that after moving out of her tent on the G-TAC grounds, Naomi had moved in as unpaid office manager, setting up a makeshift studio apartment in one of the office’s three rooms. Three high school student interns-two Guides and one Sentinel-rounded out the staff. (The two Guides, Raisa and Cory, had signed on first, followed a few weeks later by Liam, the Sentinel. Kas and Angel had lined them up and announced seriously that even though they now had a mixed group, there would be, Kas said, “No hanky,” and Angel had said, “There will be no panky, either,” and then they had both giggled like they were high for about ten minutes. Blair still had no idea what that was about.)
“Hi, Raisa,” he said, going into the outer office. “Are you on your own today?”
“Your mom is in the back. Liam has basketball today, and Cory’s at the copy shop.”
“Cool-did you say copy shop or coffee shop?” He hoped he hadn’t missed the snack run-he’d be stuck with whatever kick Naomi was on this week or one of the syrupy concoctions the kids liked.
“Copy shop. The new press release.”
“Oh, good.”
He went into the inner office, where Naomi was working at an old computer she’d gotten one of her friends to donate. “Hey.”
“Hi, honey. No Jim today?”
“He’s at work-I was at Rainier this afternoon. Anything interesting today?”
“Hm, there are some people you should probably call back. Oh, and Raisa was talking earlier about how she probably isn’t going to bother with college applications-you should talk to her about it.”
He nodded. “Yeah, okay.” Raisa was probably right that there wasn’t much point to her applying to college-she had just started her senior year, and things weren’t going to change fast enough for her not to be going to G-TAC after graduation-but he ought to say something, anyway.
On second thought, maybe he could punt that one to Kas. He had lots of stories about how not taking high school seriously after his Guide test came in had made things much more difficult than they had to be in nursing school.
He was working on returning the phone calls when Raisa came to the door. “Uh, Mr. Sandburg? There’s somebody here to see you.”
“Okay,” he said cautiously. They didn’t get a lot of walk-in visitors.
In the outer office he found…Michelle Masden, the Sentinel trainer from G-TAC. Behind her was her Guide Tim, looking acutely embarrassed.
Now he had to decide whether he wanted to have this conversation in front of his mother or the baby Guides. “Hi,” he said. “What can I help you with?”
“Ah. Good afternoon…Mr. Sandburg.”
He waited.
“You may have heard that I’m no longer with G-TAC.”
Right, because G-TAC kept him in the loop on all their HR decisions. “I hadn’t heard, no.”
“I had hoped there might be someone here I could speak with about…employment.”
“Here?”
To her credit, Masden seemed to have come to the realization that that would not be happening. She smiled nervously.
“We don’t really have any openings,” Blair said, as diplomatically as he could. Man, was she lucky Jim, Kas, or Angel weren’t there. “Or paid staff, for that matter. We do occasionally hear from people with job opportunities for Sentinels.” They didn’t usually do anything with them, since finding work was not one of the problems anyone had ever come to them with before, but-well, they were a Sentinel and Guide, and they were asking for a resource. He guessed he kind of had to help. “Do you want to see what we have?”
Masden must have been getting desperate, because she agreed.
“Okay, have a seat.” He cleared the kids’ backpacks off of the guest chairs and motioned for them to sit down.
Michelle sat. Tim stood behind her. Blair looked at them.
After a long moment, Michelle said, “Sit down, Tim.”
“Okay….” He pulled out the file drawer where they kept stuff they didn’t really care about. As a bit of stage business, he took out a form-it was actually a telephone message form, so he hoped Masden wasn’t looking closely-and wrote her name at the top. “Michelle Masden and Tim….”
“Masden,” Tim said, with what Blair had come to think of as the “I, unlike some people, am a proper Guide,” expression.
“Right. Previous employer…G-TAC, for both of you…what did you do before that?”
“I was in the Navy,” Michelle said.
“What did you do there?”
“I was a linguist.”
“Hm. What about you?” he asked Tim.
At Michelle’s nod, he said, “I was also in the Navy. As a Guide.”
“Either of you have any law enforcement experience?” The city school district was hoping for a retired cop Sentinel to check students’ lockers for drugs.
“No.”
“Industrial?” There was a computer manufacturer who thought a Sentinel would be just the ticket for ensuring that parts had been made to exact specifications.
“No.”
“I don’t suppose you’d be interested in inspecting meat in a slaughterhouse.”
“Not particularly,” Michelle said.
“Well-you could try the private investigator downstairs.” He hadn’t submitted a formal request, but every time he saw Jim, he said something about how helpful Jim’s abilities would be for tracking down philanderers and insurance frauds.
Michelle looked unimpressed with that idea, too, but when she glanced over at Tim, apparently giving him permission to have an opinion, he said, “That does sound better than the slaughterhouse. Or re-enlisting.”
“I suppose it’s worth considering,” Michelle said.
“He’s down on the second floor; his name is Terrell Meeks. Nice guy,” Blair said, even though he didn’t really know him. Meeks had come by and offered his help when the offices had been vandalized shortly after they opened up shop. With Jim being a Sentinel and a police detective besides, they hadn’t really needed help from a private dick, but it had been a neighborly gesture.
“Thank you,” Masden said grudgingly.
“You’re welcome.” And, because anything that helped Michelle would also help Tim, and God knew the guy needed all the help he could get, he added, “Leave your number, and we’ll let you know if anything else turns up.”
When Jim showed up and heard about their visitor, his reaction was predictable. “Giant brass balls on that woman. I hope you kicked her to the curb.”
“I don’t think this was quite what she was expecting,” Blair said with a gesture around at the shabby office. “Or who. I suggested she ask Terry for a job.”
“You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din,” Jim said, with a shake of his head.
To Blair’s surprise, though, the next week he noticed Tim and Michelle skulking around the building. Evidently Terry had been serious about hiring a Sentinel, and they had taken the job. Angel initially had to be physically restrained from giving her a piece of his mind, but time, and judicious scheduling of his shifts at the office for times when he was unlikely to encounter her, calmed him down somewhat.
But the issue must have been preying on his mind, because after a couple of weeks, he came to a Resource Center board meeting (aka dinner party at the loft) and announced that he had a new project in mind.
“Oh, God,” Kas said. “Is this that thing you were--”
“Yes. The Masden person,” he explained, for Blair and Jim’s benefit.
“What about her, exactly?”
“I think she should be the test case for our educational program demonstrating how sane people treat their Guides.”
“You know,” Blair said, “that’s not a bad idea. G-TAC puts a lot of energy into indoctrinating people into their idea of how Sentinel-Guide relationships should work. We should be countering that with some direct action. And Michelle-I know you don’t like her, Jim, but she’s going to be a lot less resistant than some. She came up with that revolting operant conditioning scheme because she objected to the beatings, so she’s at least open to other ideas.”
“Plus I’m getting really tired of watching her lead Tim around like a dog,” Angel said.
“There is that,” Jim said.
Blair nodded. “Right. Think global, act local-where better to start than in our own backyard? I’m in.”
Jim, realizing he was outnumbered, said, “I’m not having her in the loft.”
“He was thinking the cottage,” Kas said.
And so it happened that a few weeks later, they were in Jim’s truck, bumping along the dirt road to the Williams farm, where they would leave their vehicles before taking ATVs up to Kas’s family cottage. Tim and Michelle were riding with Kas and Angel, Jim having also refused to have the other Sentinel in his truck. Angel had apparently decide to act as though they were taking Michelle’s interest in working at the Resource Center straight, and had invited her to participate in a long-weekend think-tank session to discuss reforming Guide training. It was even partially true-they had a Task Force meeting next month, and the issue was one of the first things they planned to address. Michelle and Tim could provide a viewpoint from inside G-TAC.
Jim parked the truck by the corncrib, at Hank Williams’s direction, and they climbed out. The other four were already in conversation with Hank’s wife, Estelle. “-probably be enough,” Angel was saying. Seeing them, he asked, “Do you guys need any eggs?”
Part of the plan for the weekend’s secret agenda was that each Sentinel-Guide pair would be responsible for preparing dinner one day.
“Nope,” said Blair.
“Blair,” Estelle said, “we saw you on the television.”
“Oh,” Blair said. “Great.”
But Hank just said, “We’re glad you’re all right, son,” and left it at that, so it wasn’t too bad.
The next thing they had to figure out was how to get everyone and everyone’s luggage up to the cottage on two ATVs.
“Do you know how to drive one of these things?” Kas asked Michelle and Tim.
“No,” said Michelle.
That was bound to be a problem, since not even Angel was mellow enough to really like the idea of riding double with her up to the cottage-or having her hanging onto his Guide. It was a little like the logic problem about getting the chicken, fox, and goose across the river in a boat that would only hold two at one time.
After several attempts at solving the problem, Angel said, “Okay, so I’ll take Blair up, and Kas can take Tim, and then Kas and I will come back down and-no, that won’t work either.”
Finally Tim said diffidently, “I used to ride four-wheelers as a kid.”
That made it easy. He and Blair rode up on one machine, Kas and Angel on the other, and then Angel and Blair rode back down.
Michelle and Tim looked surprised; they had clearly been expecting the Sentinel-Guide pairs to stick together.
“Kas always likes to do a walk-through as soon as we arrive to see what’s broken or leaked since the last time we were here,” Angel explained.
“He’s handy around the house?” Michelle asked.
It was a caseworker-type question, and Angel shot it down by saying, “It’s his house.”
“I see,” Michelle said.
She stood back and watched as Angel, Blair, and Tim got the luggage arranged on the two ATVs. When they had finished, she had another question for Angel. “Doesn’t Sentinel Ellison mind you being alone with his Guide?”
“No.” Angel affected a puzzled expression. “Why would he?”
Michelle’s expression suggested she was trying to figure out if he was for real. Angel had that effect on people.
Angel went over the ATV controls with Tim-different brands were a little different-and they mounted up, Michelle climbing stiffly onto the back of theirs and holding on to Tim’s waist gingerly, as if she didn’t really like to touch him all that much. After the first bump, though, Blair looked back over his shoulder and saw that she had found the error of her ways and was now clinging to Tim’s waist.
When they reached the cottage and started unloading the luggage, Kas and Jim came out to help. Blair glanced at his watch. “It’s almost nine-thirty. What do you say we take half an hour to unpack, then meet in the living room at ten to hammer out the agenda?”
“Works for me,” Jim said.
“I guess,” said Angel. “But I’d better get started on the snacks.” He darted off.
“Why don’t I help you with…this,” Kas said to Michelle and Tim, looking at the large pile of luggage they had brought with them. “I’ll give you the ten-cent tour on the way.”
Jim had already taken their stuff-one bag each, plus Blair’s knapsack with his laptop in it-to the room they had used last time they visited, so Blair just dumped out his clothes into a drawer and then headed to the living room to get his notes in order.
The others trickled in about a half-hour later, Angel carrying a plate of interesting-looking things on toast points, Jim following with a cocktail shaker, a tray full of glasses, and an aggrieved expression. He must have stopped by the kitchen to put their steaks into the refrigerator and gotten dragooned into helping with the snacks.
“Christ, Angel, it’s ten AM,” Kas said when he saw the cocktail shaker.
“They’re mango-pomegranate mimosas,” he said.
“Oh, well then. Just a little one.”
Jim found a place to get rid of the tray, and Blair moved his stuff to make room next to himself on the couch. Kas and Angel sat on the other couch, and Michelle perched on a chair, with Tim standing behind her, an expression of rabbit-like disapproval on her face.
Blair decided to give Angel the benefit of the doubt and suppose that the drinks were part of his plan and not just the usual Angel weirdness. It wasn’t exactly against G-TAC policy for Guides to drink, but it definitely wasn’t encouraged, either.
“You want to sit down, Tim?” Kas asked. “I can bring the other chair around.”
After Michelle glanced up at him and nodded, Tim said, “Yes, thanks.”
They fussed around with seating, drinks, and hors d’oeuvre for a few more minutes-Angel’s snacks turned out to be crab-artichoke dip on pita chips and duck pate on white toast-then got started. “Okay, let’s start with logistics. What do we need to do other than meetings?” They could have figured all of this out earlier, of course, but modeling consensus-based decision making was part of Angel’s secret agenda.
“Today or tomorrow I have to go up on the roof and replace a couple of shingles,” Kas said. “I could use a hand, if anybody is up for it.”
“I did some construction in high school,” Blair said. “I’m in.”
“Oh, good, then I don’t have to help,” said Angel. “You should do it today; it’s going to rain tonight.”
“I’m pretty sure it’s rained a bunch of times since the leak started, but today’s fine.”
They decided to do it after lunch. Blair filled that in on the schedule. “What else do we need to do?”
“Fishing. Tomorrow morning,” Kas said.
“I think that’s more ‘want’ than ‘need,’” Blair objected.
Kas shook his head. “Angel is counting on fish for dinner tomorrow.”
Angel added, “I have a backup plan, but it’s not as good.”
“Anyway, we’ll be just about done before this one’s out of bed,” Kas added. “What do you think, 5 AM?” he asked Jim.
“Works for me.”
“What about you guys?” Kas asked Tim and Michelle. “Do you fish?”
“No,” said Michelle. “Thank you.”
“Tim?”
He glanced over at Michelle. “I haven’t fished in years.”
“So do you want to?”
“I don’t have a license.”
“It’s private property; you don’t need one,” Kas said. “And we have plenty of gear. You should come.”
Tim ducked his head and looked over at Michelle again.
She sighed. “Go, if you want.”
But she sounded less than enthusiastic about the idea, and Blair wasn’t surprised when Tim said, “I don’t know.”
“Think about it,” Kas suggested. “You can decide later.”
“Okay,” Blair said. “Meals. You guys are doing dinner tomorrow?”
“Yup,” Angel said.
“Do you care whether you do tonight or Sunday?” he asked Michelle and Tim. “We’re doing steak, which will keep just fine for a couple of days, so I don’t think it matters.”
“The corn on the cob will be best today,” Jim said. “But it can wait if you’re making something time-sensitive.”
“I don’t know what Tim has planned,” Michelle answered. “Tim?”
“Chicken,” Tim said. “It, uh, doesn’t really matter which day I cook,” he said, looking over at Michelle as if for confirmation that this was true.
“Sunday it is, then,” Blair said, writing it down. Suddenly and vividly, he flashed back to the “training session” that he and Jim had had with Michelle, back at G-TAC. One of the things they had worked on was a housework schedule, which involved Jim writing down what Blair was going to do, and how often. Compliance with this schedule was, if he remembered correctly, one of the ways he was supposed to earn privileges like eating real food and sleeping in a bed.
Angel was right; Michelle really did have to be shown how sane people treated their Guides. He cleared his throat and continued, “Are we going to have the same pair that cooks clean up?”
“That’s probably the fairest,” Kas said. “When Angel’s been cooking, you pretty much have to wash everything in the kitchen.”
“Lies, all lies,” Angel said.
“Right, there was that one time you managed to make a cup of tea without using the hard-boiled egg slicer.”
“Or the garlic press,” Angel said indignantly.
“He’s not really that bad,” Kas told the others. “As long as he’s not taking a cooking class.”
Still, they decided that each of them would clean up after they cooked. After that they set up a schedule of meetings, settling on a morning and afternoon session each day, with plenty of time left over for fishing, relaxing, or-Kas suggested hopefully-hiking.
Rolling right into the strategy session, Blair said, “Okay. When we finished up last time, we were talking about what makes the Marine Sentinels so different from the rest of the armed forces.” For the benefit of Michelle and Tim, he added, “You might know, they have a reputation for being more protective and less physically abusive than average.”
“Everyone knows the Marine Corps is soft on Guides,” Michelle said.
“Uh-huh,” Blair said, deciding to forgo the lecture on how the vast number of things that “everyone knows” that turned out not to be true was why there was such a thing as science. “I wondered if there’s any evidence of that difference, or if it’s all anecdotal. I couldn’t find much data. Apparently it’s not something the government has ever decided to collect statistics on-go figure. But the DoD did do a study from 1982 to 1985 aimed at uncovering any detrimental impact that these differences-which, for the purposes of the study they decided to just assume exist-had on military effectiveness. Anybody know what they found out?” He looked around. “Maybe you read it at work?” he asked Michelle.
“I must have missed that one,” she said after a moment.
Blair nodded. “You probably did, because they didn’t make much of an effort to publicize it, since the finding was that Sentinels in the Marines function as well, and according to some measures better, as Sentinels in any of the other branches of the armed forces. Which is still not as well as Sentinels in civilized countries, but that’s another issue.”
“So using them as a starting point is probably strategically safe,” Angel said. “Since their own evidence proves that whatever it is they’re doing works.”
“Exactly,” said Blair. “So step two is to figure out what they do differently from everyone else. That’s a little more challenging, and one thing we’re going to want to do is talk to some actual Marines about it--”
“We can do that,” Kas said. “We know some people.”
“Great.” Blair nodded. He had figured they would. “Now I did find something interesting in their Guide Care texts. They put a lot of emphasis on what they call--” he glanced at his notes-“‘maintaining the Guide in a combat-ready condition.’ As far as I can tell, none of the other services say anything about that.”
“We don’t,” Jim said. “In the Army, I mean.”
“Never heard it before in my life,” Angel agreed. “What about the Navy?”
“I don’t remember anything like that from Sentinel School,” Michelle agreed.
“Yeah. Now, it’s still patronizing as hell-especially since the chapters explicitly connect up this idea to the importance of properly maintaining equipment-especially rifles, and man, there has got to be a paper, if not a whole thesis, in the weird psychosexual relationship Marines have with rifles-but the theory I’m working on is that this policy provides just enough of a toehold that Marines retain the Blessed Protector instinct to a much greater degree than other Sentinels. From what you guys have said about Sentinel School, and what I’ve read in the textbooks, it sounds like a major part of the narrative is breaking down the Blessed Protector instinct by teaching Sentinels to see Guides as interchangeable commodities.”
“Of course it is,” said Michelle, with a patronizing smile. “That’s not a secret. Sentinels must learn to overcome the instinct to protect Guides if they’re going to function effectively in dangerous situations. A Sentinel would be useless in combat if all he cared about was getting his Guide to safety.”
“Tell that to the Marines,” Blair suggested.
Michelle looked furious, and she looked over at Jim as if wondering what he was going to do about his Guide’s impertinence. Jim’s jaw clenched in a way that Blair recognized as Jim trying hard not to let loose an unmanly giggle.
“No, seriously,” Blair said. “I know that’s the party line, but the Marines don’t seem to have that problem. Or, for that matter, the Israeli Defense Force-really progressive attitudes about Guides there, and it doesn’t seem to hurt them any. Or the British in World War II-I know they haven’t done much lately, but you have to admit they kicked some Nazi ass, and while there was some class-based and colonial stuff going on there that I wouldn’t want to emulate, they didn’t have this idea the US seems to have that if Sentinels realize it’s okay to like Guides, the entire military is going to fall apart.”
“Breathe, Chief,” Jim advised him.
Blair breathed, and Angel added, “While we’re on the subject, it’s not like Jim and Blair haven’t been in dangerous situations together, either. And you know Jim has that crazy-high Blessed Protector rating. Somehow, he manages to cope.”
“Even in the US,” Blair added, “Sentinels’ protectiveness toward Guides was considered a positive thing, rather than an obstacle to be overcome, up until less than a century ago. As recently as the beginning of the First World War, the prevailing belief was that a Sentinel would fight harder to defend a unit that included a Guide he was attached to.” Delving into his backpack, he added, “I printed out a bunch of articles.” He started passing them out.
“Is there one on the Israeli Defense Force?” Angel wanted to know.
“Here,” Blair said, passing him one.
“Oh…no pictures?”
“Pictures?” Blair was puzzled. “No, it’s an academic article.”
“Any time you want to stop splashing around in the shallow end, Angelito,” Kas said. “Any time.”
“I can’t help it if those IDF guys are hot.” Angel looked down at the article. “Oh, look, there’s a chart here about that serious thing we were talking about.”
For another half-hour or so, they kept up the discussion. Tim Masden didn’t say anything-big surprise-and Michelle contributed by voicing the kind of objections they could expect to hear from the other task force members. It was helpful, in a way, and good practice for the real thing, but Blair couldn’t help a sense of growing anxiety at saying the kind of things he was saying with a G-TAC trainer in the room.
It was probably worse for Tim, who was Bonded to the G-TAC trainer in question. Plus, Blair had, at least theoretically, the option of shutting up if it got to be too much, while Tim didn’t have much choice but to sit there and listen while the rest of them pissed off his Sentinel.
When they broke for lunch, Blair decided to introduce an innocuous topic. “How’s Carlos doing?” he asked Angel, who was getting sandwich fixings out of the refrigerator.
“Great! He’s grown a lot since the last time you guys were out. I’m thinking about getting him a friend.”
“I should have known that was going to happen,” Kas added, “as soon as he showed me the plans for the four-stall llama barn.”
“Everybody on the listserv says they do better with other llamas,” Angel explained. “Or a herd of sheep or something, but we don’t want sheep.”
“No, we do not,” said Kas.
“Ones that grow up without other llamas around can get aggressive when they’re older,” Angel went on to explain. “And Carlos was probably a little young to be separated from his mother. So what we want is an older adult llama that knows how to behave around people. The girls on the listserv put me in touch with a llama rescue group. I have to get Carlos neutered before I can get another one, though.”
“Llama rescue?” Blair asking, picturing something like search-and-rescue dogs, only with llamas.
“They take in abused and neglected llamas and find them good homes,” Angel explained. “Apparently it’s a bigger problem than you’d think. People decide to get a llama because of how cute they are, without really knowing how to take care of them, and then the llamas end up malnourished or antisocial or sick.”
“Just imagine,” said Kas with mock disapproval, “getting a llama on a whim.”
Angel tsked.
“Perhaps after buying a live chicken and a basket full of vegetables,” Kas added, deadpan. “While drunk off their ass on Peruvian moonshine.”
“Shut up!” Angel said, swatting him on the shoulder.
Blair heard a soft gasp, and turned to see Tim, backed up into the small space between the pantry cabinet and the back door, looking like he expected the sky to fall in any moment. A quick glance around demonstrated that Michelle was nowhere to be seen-probably, Blair though sourly, in the dining room waiting to be served. Blair edged over to the other Guide and said confidentially, “I know; they’re kind of a shock when you’re not used to them.”
Tim nodded, wide-eyed. “He’s just going to….”
“Yep. It might help if you think of it as being almost like a sibling Bond,” he suggested. “Angel was still a teenager when they got together.”
Tim murmured, “Sibling Bonds can be difficult to manage if the parents failed to establish appropriate boundaries,” which sounded like something his Sentinel would say, and probably had.
“Uh huh,” Blair said, letting his skepticism show.
“That can’t possibly work,” Tim protested in a whisper, glancing furtively over at Angel to see if the other Sentinel was listening. “I mean, he’s…and he’s….”
“They’ve been Bonded for twenty-five years,” Blair answered. “It works great.”
After giving him a last doubtful look, Tim scuttled off to make his Sentinel a sandwich.
#
“Is Angel actually taking care of the llama all by himself like he promised?” Blair asked Kas, once they were up on the roof that afternoon.
Before Kas could answer, Tim’s head popped up at the top of the ladder. “Hi,” he said. “Um, Sentinel Masden sent me up to help.”
Kas didn’t have to ask why-since fixing the roof had become what the Guides were doing, it was unsurprising that Michelle had sent her Guide to do it too. But he also didn’t have to ask to see that Tim was acutely uncomfortable being up there. Probably afraid of heights. “I think we’ve got it under control,” he suggested.
He wasn’t too surprised, either, that Tim climbed awkwardly onto the roof, instead of taking the out that had been offered. However scared he was of heights, he was more scared of not doing what his Sentinel told him to do.
So Kas got him settled as far back from the edge as was practical while he and Blair got back to work pulling up shingles.
“So?” Blair said.
“Oh, Carlos? Yeah, actually. Well, not really. He has a llama sitter come out to groom it and play with it about twice a week on the days we work late, but hired her all by himself. And he has our landscaping guy clean up the paddock every week. But I’ve only had to feed the llama and muck out the stall once, when he was sick.” Kas shrugged.
“Yeah, that counts,” Blair agreed. “I’m surprised.”
“He can be pretty devoted to his weird hobbies. And those internet llama women are scary-they’d probably track him down and string him up if he didn’t take good care of Carlos. Hand me that moisture sensor.”
“What?” Blair asked.
“Thing that looks like a baby Taser.”
Blair handed it to him.
The boards under the shingles were wet, naturally. One of these days he was going to have to have the whole roof replaced. “I’m a little worried about the second llama. Apparently the llama women say you’re supposed to spend an hour a day working with each of your llamas.”
“That would add up fast,” Blair agreed.
“Yeah. I’ve asked Angel if any of these people have jobs-one of them has twelve llamas-but he just dodges the question.” Kas sighed. “On the other hand, it is kind of adorable when goes down to his little barn in his little rubber boots and his little LL Bean barn coat.” He was probably the only person in the state who wore an LL Bean barn coat to an actual barn. “I’m thinking of getting him a flat cap for his birthday.”
Blair pictured it. “He’ll look like an extra from All Creatures Great and Small.”
“Exactly.”
When they stopped snickering, Tim, who had been watching them with a disapproving expression, said, “Do you respect your Sentinel at all?”
Kas gave him a hard look, but Tim didn’t blink. “Yeah. Actually. I do.”
Tim first looked disbelieving, then thoughtful. As well he should.
They went back to focusing on the roof, and after a while Blair asked if he had any theories about what the Marines did differently.
“Thought you said it was compensatory masculinity,” Kas said. That had been Blair’s theory the first time they talked about it; that Marine Corps Sentinels were nicer to their Guides because they didn’t have anything to prove.
“If that’s all it is, there isn’t much we can do about it,” Blair said. “Except fix the whole Western world’s toxic ideas about masculinity, which would be biting off more than we can chew even for me. There have got to be some observable practices we can examine.”
Kas thought Blair was moving onto shaky ground-wasn’t he just saying there had to be more to it because he wanted there to be?-but didn’t say so.
“Come on,” Tim said, surprising both him and Blair. He hadn’t said more than word or two during the meeting. “Everyone knows it’s that weird thing they do.”
“What weird thing?” Blair asked.
“Nobody knows,” Kas said. “That’s part of what’s weird about it. I don’t even know for sure that they actually do it; it might just be a rumor.”
“It exists,” Tim said. “We-that is, Sentinel Masden-had a client once who was a former Marine. His civilian Guide was trained in one of the other services-I forget which one; maybe Coast Guard-and one of their problems was that the Guide didn’t want to do it, and the Sentinel said it wouldn’t work if he forced him.”
“But what is it?” Blair wanted to know.
“He wouldn’t say,” Tim answered.
“You hear all kinds of wild stories about it,” Kas explained. Blair didn’t know many American military Guides; he probably hadn’t heard them, and it was the sort of thing he’d want to know about. “It’s some kind of ritual that Marine Sentinels do when they get a new Guide. They call it…initiation? Impressing? Something like that.”
“Imprinting,” Tim said.
“Right, imprinting. Most of the rumors I’ve heard involve nudity, and sometimes bondage. One version I heard is that your Sentinel strips you down and licks you all over, but I don’t think that one’s true.”
“That can’t be all of it,” Tim said. “It lasts for three days.”
“Yeah, there’s no way it can be all licking, then,” Blair agreed. “The Sentinel’s tongue would be worn down to a stump.” He considered. “It might be kind of fun, though.”
“Not as much as you’d think,” Kas said. “It takes forever and it gets boring after a while.” Even as orally fixated as Angel was, he’d never managed to lick more than half of Kas before he lost interest in the project. “Also there are hair issues.”
“Ick,” said Blair. Turning back to Tim, he asked, “What did they mean, it ‘wouldn’t work’ if he forced him? What’s it supposed to do?”
Tim shook his head. “They didn’t say.”
“Whatever the ritual actually is, it’s interesting that there is one,” Blair said. “Lots of non-industrialized cultures have them-a shared vision quest is a favorite-but they’re very, very rare in the first world. When I was in Spain, there was a community of Sephardic Jews trying to revive one that hadn’t been done since the Inquisition, but they were running into some problems-the biggest one being that nobody knew exactly what it was.”
“Catholics have a blessing they use for Bondings,” Kas pointed out.
Blair nodded. “That’s different, though. I mean, even Western culture accepts that a Bonding is kind of a big deal. Getting a new Guide is supposed to be like, I don’t know, changing your socks or something. Only it’s not, and the Marines apparently recognize that culturally. Trust me, if you were an anthropologist, you’d realize how exciting this is.”
Privately, Kas wasn’t sure that the United States Marine Corps constituted a culture, but he knew that saying so would only get him Blair’s lecture on “What is culture?”, and he’d already heard it twice. “There’s somebody I might get to tell me about it if I can convince him I’m not asking out of morbid curiosity.” The Marine Guides Kas knew tended to get very quiet and a little pissy when the subject came up, but that could be because it was universally known as “that weird thing.”
“That would be great!”
“I may have to promise him that you won’t write a paper about it. Or at least won’t quote him in it.”
“Oh. Well, I guess that’s better than nothing.”
They finished fixing the roof and went back inside. Angel had fixed up another round of snacks for the afternoon meeting, which Blair kicked off by babbling excitedly at Jim about the discovery of the Weird Marine Corps Thing by modern anthropology (in the person of Blair Sandburg). Finally, after an extended period of speculation about what the Thing might be-Angel contributing a version he’d seen in a porno movie-they settled down to talking about Sentinel School and Guide training.
“What I never got is why there aren’t any Sentinels teaching at Sentinel School,” Angel said. “Shouldn’t there be? At least some?” He turned to Michelle and Tim and added, “Blair’s doing an article on how Guides teach each other how to be Guides, even though there are no Guides at Guide School, either. But we don’t do that.”
“Sentinels don’t accept the authority of other Sentinels,” Michelle said.
“I’m pretty sure Chaska, for one, would take exception to that,” Angel said. Then, of course, they had to explain that Chaska was the Sentinel of the Chopec group they had encountered in Peru. “Anyway, the point is, the Sentinels there train the new Sentinels, like an apprenticeship system.”
“It doesn’t work in modern society,” Michelle insisted.
“Liam’s doing okay,” Blair pointed out. “He’s one of our student interns at the Center.”
“Yes, and he’s going to have to un-learn all the bad habits he’s been taught there once he goes to Sentinel School.”
“Uh-huh,” Blair said. “Or not, which I’m sure from your perspective would be worse. But would it? If we’re really going to change anything, the first thing has to be introducing G-TAC and the SRB to the idea that there is such a thing as evidence-based practice. Too much of what goes on is based on what ‘everybody knows’-no offense, Tim-but nobody ever asks how everybody knows it. If they looked at what they’re doing, and looked at what other countries are doing, and did some basic statistical analysis, it would be blindingly obvious that treating Guides like dogs and Sentinels like circus elephants is not only not necessary, it’s not even effective.”
“Circus elephants, Chief?” Jim asked.
“Sure,” said Blair. “If you want to make a two-ton animal do what a 15-pound person tells it to do, you have to make sure the elephant doesn’t know its own strength. Sentinels, similarly, get all their information about what it means to be a Sentinel from so-called experts who just repeat all of the same unexamined assumptions.”
Kas was not as fast a thinker as Blair was, and was still a few steps back. “If you think Sentinels can’t learn from other Sentinels,” he said slowly, “what the hell were you doing in your old job?”
Masden had figured out by now that she couldn’t expect Jim to rein in any of Blair’s outrageousness, but still looked to Angel to Do Something about him. But Angel just wrinkled up his forehead and said, “Yeah, was it some kind of long-running scam, collecting a paycheck for doing something that couldn’t possibly work?”
For a second, Kas thought that Masden was going to storm out of the room, or possibly brain Angel with his cocktail shaker. “Obviously,” she said, in a carefully controlled voice, “Sentinels can be influenced by other Sentinels. In some circumstances.”
Kas would have taken the small victory and let up there, but Blair shot back with, “Which circumstances are those?” When she didn’t answer, he said, “You don’t know. Because you haven’t asked the question, or read the work of anybody who has. You just ‘know’ that Sentinels don’t accept the authority of other Sentinels, and that way you can keep on knowing it even when your own experience tells you something different.”
Before Masden could muster a response, Angel said, “You’re right about evidence-based practice, but I don’t know who you’re going to get to do the research. Liaison officers don’t have the inclination or the expertise, and Sen-Med doctors won’t touch it.”
Blair was successfully distracted. “Why not? You’d think they, at least, wouldn’t be hostile to evidence.”
“No, but they’re paranoid about ending up in, as they call it, ‘the mystic shit.’ A technical term, I think. There’s next to nothing in the Sen-Med literature about Bonding, Sentinel-Guide compatibility, or even the physiology of what Guides actually do for Sentinels. When I did my Sen-Med rotation, there was this guy who wanted to study how Sentinels recover faster from injuries if they have a Guide present-it’s generally accepted that we do, but nobody know why, how significant the effect is, or if it matters whether there was a pre-existing Sentinel-Guide relationship or not. The last one, in particular, you’d think the military would want to know, because it makes a big difference, if you have a Sentinel who’s going to be medically unfit for duty for a long time. Are they better off with the Guide they had before, or a new one with medical training? Nobody knows, because if you ask, and it turns out to be the former, you’re neck deep in the mystic shit, and that’s a career killer.”
“That, and as long as they don’t know, they can do whichever is more convenient,” Kas pointed out. “But he’s right about the mystic shit, and it’s not just in the US, either. Even in Europe they won’t go anywhere near it.”
“Okay, so we’ll bring in outside agitators,” Blair said with a shrug. “There are plenty of social scientists studying Sentinels and Guides who aren’t afraid of the mystic shit. If the oral transmission of Guide Lore paper makes a big splash-and honestly, with as much publicity as I’ve gotten lately, I don’t see how it couldn’t-we’ll have people lining up around the block to study Sentinels and Guides in contemporary industrialized societies.” He considered. “Finding enough subjects for them all might be more of a problem, but if we could get the US military to provide access-boom!”
“Boom!” was one thing that they could all agree on. Not much later, the group broke up so that Jim and Blair could get a start on dinner. Kas made sure that the kitchen wasn’t too much of a disaster area, then joined his Sentinel out on the porch.
Angel was leaning against the railing, looking out at the trees. When Kas came up to hug him from behind, he leaned on Kas instead, with a contented sigh. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah,” Angel said. “Masden’s in a foul mood and taking it out on Tim, but I’m sure he’s used to that.”
Kas winced. “It might have been a mistake, bringing them here,” he suggested.
“Mm. If it is going to work, it’s not going to work in the first few hours.”
“Not exactly what I meant.” The cottage meant something to them, and bringing someone neither of them really liked changed it, somehow. “We could have done something at the Center, or…I don’t know. Somewhere.” Or not. One of the things they wanted to accomplish was giving Masden a good look at them-two Sentinel-Guide pairs with different styles, neither of them based on fear, dominance, or control-in their natural habitat. So it was either here or their place in Cascade, and that was not happening.
“I’m okay,” Angel assured him. And Kas supposed he was, but he also noticed that he made no move to go inside until Blair and Jim called them to dinner.
#
Blair thought it was a good thing that they were doing the first night’s dinner. Jim was getting better at dealing with Angel’s cooking, but he was sure Masden would find whatever Cuban specialty he had planned a sensory nightmare. Not that she was his problem, but…well, he already knew it was hard for him to watch Sentinels suffer, even Sentinels he loathed.
Jim had planned out their dinner with an eye to making it simple without being insipid. Steak, seasoned with a dry rub and seared over charcoal. Potatoes, Idaho russets the size of a baby’s head, baked in their jackets and topped with Irish butter. Corn on the cob, bought at o-dark-thirty from a farmer’s market vendor who swore it had been picked just before the truck left that morning. Blair’s contributions were a simple salad of sliced tomatoes and mozzarella and a peach pie. He’d also helped pick out the wine.
Blair wondered if Masden would twig that Jim was doing most of the cooking, and if she did, if she would object. Given the way Sentinel-Guide behavior was mapped onto gender stereotypes, the idea of a Sentinel cooking slabs of meat over a manly fire might not offend her sensibilities.
Possibly Blair should have insisted on choosing their menu. Quiche, maybe.
On the other hand, it wasn’t like either of them could conceivably outdo Angel in that department, so maybe it was just as well they were keeping things natural. It was the sort of thing Jim usually made when it was his turn to cook-steaks, beef stew, spaghetti. Guy food.
There wasn’t nearly enough room on the grill for Jim’s enormous slabs of meat, so he had to cook them two at a time, swapping them out in a rhythm too complex for Blair to follow. Blair wondered if he was using scent, or maybe temperature. Finally, they had everything on the table and called the others in.
Angel came in from the porch in what Blair thought of as his “Blessed Protectee” mode, pressed up against Kas’s side and clutching Kas’s arm around him like a stole. They had seen him that way a lot during their G-TAC ordeal, but Angel wasn’t radiating distress the way he had then. Shamming, maybe, or a pre-emptive strike.
When the other pair came in, Michelle sat, and Tim hovered anxiously behind her until she snapped, “For Christ’s sake, Tim, sit down.”
He flinched, and sat down next to her.
“And stop that.”
Tim was certainly better suited to being Michelle’s Guide than he was. Blair, in his place, would have said, “Stop what?” and forced her to spell out, “Stop acting like you’re afraid of me.” At which point he’d probably have pointed out it wasn’t an act, and things would only get worse from there. But Tim just ducked his head and said he was sorry.
Conversation for the first part of the meal revolved around establishing consensus that everything was good, yes, very good.
Blair might have been imagining it, but he thought there was something pointed in the way Michelle said, “This steak is very unusual…would you mind having Blair give Tim the recipe?”
Jim just said, “It’s my recipe, actually, but I’d be glad to.”
The other Sentinel smirked knowingly. Yes, she definitely figured out what game they were playing.
“The salad’s my recipe,” Blair said brightly. “But there isn’t much too it.”
“Is this the butter from Trader Joe’s?” Angel asked.
“Yes,” Jim said.
“And I can hear your arteries hardening from here,” Kas added as he reached for another slab of it.
“No you can’t,” Angel said, but he took only a small amount of extra butter. “So,” he said to Jim. “Any interesting major crimes lately?”
They had had a few cases that, suitably edited, made for reasonable dinner conversation. When they ran out of them, Blair asked Michelle, “How’s the world of private investigation treating you?”
Sentinels had been speaking directly to other people’s Guides, and vice-versa, all day, but she pointedly punted the question to Tim, who said, “Thanks to us, half a dozen people are aware of their spouses’ infidelity.”
“That reminds me,” Angel said to Kas. “I cracked the case of who’s been finishing the coffee in the doctors’ lounge and not making more. You were right; it was asshole resident.”
“How did you figure that out?” Kas asked.
“Saw him doing it.” Angel twirled his wine glass between his fingers. “I haven’t figured out what to do about it yet.”
“You know,” Blair said, “there’s a study demonstrating that people are less likely to do that if there’s a picture of eyes on the wall. People are more honest if they feel like somebody’s watching them. It doesn’t even have to be a whole face, just eyes.”
“That can’t possibly work,” Jim objected.
“No, I read that one too,” Angel said. “Only it wasn’t making coffee; it was taking coffee without putting money in the kitty. Our coffee is free, so it’s not the same thing at all.”
“Wait,” Kas said, “this study was actually about coffee-stealing?”
“Yes,” Blair said. “There’s another one about the rate of disappearance of break-room cutlery.”
“Why did you read it?” Angel asked. “Switching to psychology?”
“I’m taking a class in humor as a method of cultural transmission,” Blair explained. “We did a whole week on what passes for humor in the social sciences literature. Oh,” he added. “I’m going to get to cite you again.”
“You are?” Kas looked alarmed.
“Yeah, for the seminar paper I’m going to work up those notes I took on military jokes.”
“Oh. For a minute there I thought you were going to ask me about Guide jokes.”
Why hadn’t he thought of that? “There are some?”
“None I can tell you in mixed company,” Kas answered.
“So there are?” Blair pressed.
“You know, I sometimes worry that telling you these things so you can write about them makes me some kind of a sellout.”
“I’ll be sure to mention that in my paper on the ethics of participant ethnography.”
“Oh, good, that’s what I was hoping you’d say.”
“You’ll appreciate this,” Blair said, changing the subject slightly. “In my ethnography techniques class, there happen to be several of us studying our own subcultures-one woman is native American; another guy is a Hmong immigrant, and there’s an African-American guy doing some interesting work on hip-hop. So this upper-middle-class white woman in the seminar has decided, and is apparently planning to do her paper on, how she’s at an unfair disadvantage because nobody wants to study suburban white girls. It’s not her fault she isn’t lucky enough to come from a marginalized minority.” It had been a little nastier than that, actually, with some snippy remarks about how some people had to do real research and not just write about their own experiences.
“That’s hilarious,” Angel said.
“Yeah, I think I can use it in the humor class somehow. She’s not completely wrong-G-TAC has done more for my career than I could ever have done on my own-but it’s still a spectacularly tasteless thing to say.”
“I don’t know, Chief,” Jim said. “If they can write articles about stealing silverware from the break room, I don’t know why she can’t write about suburban white girls.”
He had a point. She wouldn’t, of course, be able to just write about her own experience-but then, neither could any of the rest of them. “You know I should tell her that. It’s not a group that has been studied to death-I mean, God, if she were Samoan or something, she’d really be screwed.”
“So you’re keeping up at school?” Kas asked. “It seems like you’re at the Center all the time.”
“It’s not that bad,” Blair said, although it was true that he won pretty much every work-life balance conversation hands-down. “It helps not having to worry about my love life. You’d be amazed how much time and energy grad students put into trying to get laid.”
“That was my secret weapon in med school, too,” Angel agreed.
“I seem to remember you going to a mind-boggling number of parties,” Kas argued.
“Yeah, but not to get laid. And it wasn’t that many; it was just that I belonged to all those clubs. Hispanic med students, Catholic med students, Army med students-their parties weren’t very good; the Catholic ones were better.”
“But not as good as the unpronounceable acronym ones,” Kas finished for him.
“Right,” Angel agreed. To the rest of them, he explained, “The Coalition of Lesbian and Gay Medical, Veterinary, and Dental Students. That one was intramural. We were the only members from our school. They had the best parties. Until it got all political.”
“I still can’t believe you got away with leaving and returning to the dorm in drag that time.”
“It was Halloween; I’m sure I wasn’t the only Army man wearing a dress that night.”
Before Blair could ask if there were pictures, Jim jumped in with, “Who’s ready for dessert?”
He and Jim cleared the table and brought out coffee and pie. As they started eating, Kas said, “What are we doing after din--” then cut himself off, glaring at Angel.
“That’s when we usually have the orgy,” Angel said cheerfully.
Kas sighed. “At the unpronounceable-acronym meetings, if there was somebody new who was, you know, nervous about being in the nest of perverts, Ang and this other guy--”
“Josh Colter,” Angel supplied.
“Right. They’d set each other up, to say that. What ever happened to Josh?”
“AIDS,” Angel reminded him.
“Who was the one who got born-again and married that dental hygienist?”
“Mark.” Angel drank his coffee quickly. “All right, so what are we going to do? I doubt talking about how all my college friends are dead is much fun for anybody. Cards?”
They settled on Trivial Pursuit, since no one could think of any six-player card games other than poker, which neither Kas nor Blair was dumb enough to play with three Sentinels.
They decided to play as teams, since six-player Trivial Pursuit would take all night. Blair was prepared to clean up-the things he didn’t know, like sports trivia and pop culture from before he was born, Jim did. But Kas and Angel proved to be pretty good, too, often conferring for a long time before settling on an answer. Michelle gave rapid, confident, and usually wrong answers, while Tim sat beside her looking uncomfortable.
Blair and Jim had four pie pieces, Kas and Angel three, and Michelle and Tim none, when she plunked her piece down on the “Sports and Leisure” pie square.
Angel read, “What equine athlete’s heart weighed 22 pounds?”
Michelle rolled her eyes. “Man o’ War.”
“Um,” said Tim.
She turned to him and snapped, “What?”
“Secretariat.”
She huffed and shook her head. “Whatever. Fine. Secretariat.”
Angel turned the card over. “Correct.” He passed them the pie piece and said helpfully, “That means you get to go again.”
After that, Michelle started consulting Tim about their answers. Blair could see that she wasn’t used to asking for his input, and didn’t like it, but she liked having the other Sentinels mop up the board with her even less. The rest of them were very careful not to comment on the change.