Duty Deferred
Rated SAFE
Part One
A duty dodged is like a debt unpaid; it is only deferred, and we must come back and settle the account at last.
—Joseph F. Newton
Jim slipped the rough-cloth cloak over the basic outfit he'd bought before leaving Patria. If anyone looked under his cloak they'd know in a second that he wasn't an outlander, but Jim was large enough to fight off any casual attacker, and gangs didn't usually come this close to the spaceport cities.
He'd picked a government office on the edge of guarded territory to switch between Jim Ellison, Sentinel Guard in search of a guide that didn't annoy him, and Jim, an outlander existing in the hinterlands of the homeworld. Shoving his uniform, money and communicator into a small bag, he came out of the bathroom.
"This is a monumentally bad idea," Simon said to him the minute he emerged. Jim handed over his bag.
"You'd rather I pick one of the garden-grown guides from the safe little enclave?" Jim answered his boss. He was lucky to have a sentinel captain who cared enough to follow him to Earth, but they just couldn't see eye to eye on this one issue.
"Hey, garden-grown does not mean we can't take care of ourselves," Rafe objected as he crossed his arms over his chest. Despite having been paired with Simon for nearly a decade, he still had the slight twang of Earth-speech.
"Some of the best guides come from good old Earth, and you saw the training they go through," Simon backed up his guide, which didn't surprise Jim at all. In fact, Simon's hand slipped to Rafe's back, offering a tactile reassurance that come what may, Simon would always back Rafe. Rafe let his own hand reach up and rest on Simon's shoulder.
"I don't feel any of them, Simon," Jim said as he turned away from the familiar scene. As his senses started veering out of control, the sight of Simon and Rafe happily bonded became more and more painful for him. And he hated that he felt that jealousy for a man who was not only his captain but also his best friend.
"Jim—" Simon started, but Rafe tightened his hand on Simon's arm.
"Let him search." Rafe faced Jim. "However, the rumors of sentinels tracking down the perfect guide—they're rumors, fantasies."
Jim glared at his captain's guide.
"On Divitia or Terra, without guide programs, maybe the old ways work. If you had caught a scent of guide there, I would say you had a chance to track one. But here? So many sentinels visit. If guides were anywhere around Patria, a sentinel would have reported it. The city guard would have tracked them. They would be in the enclave training because no one lives out there if they have a choice." Rafe waved a hand in the direction of the window.
Jim tightened his jaw and looked out toward the edge of the patrolled area. A wide fence with sensors tracked everyone in this area. The government building was in a safe zone where the outlanders could bring children and shove their dirty faces at a government doctor for immunizations or beg for the child to be tested as a sentinel or a guide or a pilot. Very few had any skills, but Rafe's own mother had lived out there.
When Jim had first insisted on wandering the outland, Rafe had talked about his few memories. He'd described the hunger and the fear and way he and his mother had slept in molding, half-fallen houses huddled together to avoid the almost constant rain. When the tester had agreed that seven-year-old Rafe had the guide gland, his mother had shoved her son at the doctor and walked away. Rafe had worms, a fungal infection in his lungs, and two broken toes when the doctor had sent him to the enclave.
"Jim, you're running out of time. Just promise me that you'll come back quickly if you don't find anyone," Simon asked.
Jim considered his options. If he couldn't find a guide, his senses would either slowly degenerate until he was left a mundane with no job training or he would zone out and die. Jim wasn't sure which option horrified him more. His father would certainly take him in if his senses failed him, but Jim had no doubt about how well that would work.
"If I don't find anyone, I'll try harder at the enclave," Jim agreed finally. A few guides had been acceptable—their unique scents hadn't offended him—so maybe he just needed to lower his standards.
"Two days. After that, I'm tracking you down," Simon warned.
"Yes, sir," Jim smiled wryly and then headed for the door. The doctor assigned to the government clinic glanced up at him and then went back to scrolling through his holonet files.
"This is such a bad idea," Simon muttered as Jim pushed the door open and stepped out into the muggy air of homeworld.
"I hope not," Jim whispered back, too soft for even sentinel ears to hear him.
---
Jim detoured around a fallen wall, the bricks scattered through the tall grasses north of the half-crumbled base. A few boards leaned against the wall, either to hold it up or, more likely, to create a small shelter. Jim ignored the shelter, already able to hear the lack of any heartbeat.
Instead he followed the same faint trail that'd he'd found not long after leaving the clinic. A wavering line where the weeds grew shorter and a few broken tree branches showed signs that someone had walked the path. Jim knew the clinic was on one end, but logic suggested that some sort of settlement must lie on the other.
"You new?" a suspicious voice asked from the darkness under a huge tree growing up through the middle of what might once have been a house. Now, only two walls half-stood. A mundane wouldn't have been able to see the speaker, but Jim risked a zone and focused his sight. A young woman with cropped hair and a rough-spun wrap tied around her body stood with a knife in her hand.
Jim ignored her and kept walking. God, she was a kid.
"Hey. You got any food?" she called out. Jim did have rations tucked into the inner pockets of his cloak, along with an electrical disrupter, a prod stick and a couple of explosive charges, but he didn't feel the need to share any of it.
"Sorry, no food," he answered, his eyes scanning the dark as though trying to find the source of the voice. In reality, he just wanted to make sure a gang didn't jump him. The fact was that a few rations wouldn’t change the girl's life, so Jim quashed the flare of guilt.
"Too bad. You just came from the clinic?"
Jim kept walking. He had his story ready, but he wasn't going to give it out to anyone less than an authority, if such a thing existed out here. The girl darted ahead, staying in the shadows, and Jim suddenly wondered why she'd risked revealing herself at all.
"The clinic sometimes does things they shouldn't do, you know. Especially with guys. It's so easy to slip something into a guy so he can't have kids. If you came from the clinic, you should check to make sure they haven't screwed with your penis," she suggested. That made Jim pause.
"What?"
"Your penis. You should check to see if there's this little cut on the underside. They make it so guys can't have kids, you know."
Jim snorted his disbelief at her naiveté. Plenty of people might want outlanders to die out, but no one believed they actually would.
After much of the population had emigrated to other planets, the remaining dregs of society had warred until they had shredded most of the technology and culture. Now that civilization had reasserted itself in the spaceports and in a few islands of guard-controlled territory, the descendents of those warring factions kept right on warring over a tired old planet without the resources to support the population or a population bright enough to recover from the battles and plagues.
But as much as the spacers might like to wipe out the outlanders, they were a tough breed, too tough to kill off without planet-wide destruction that was expensive and unethical. Castrating a few men wouldn't serve anyone's purpose.
Ignoring the girl, Jim followed the path over a series of hills, one of which sprouted a rusted fender like a bent daisy, the little unrusted metal sparkling in the sun. The girl fell silent but she paced Jim from the shadows, maybe waiting until dark to try and rob him. God, she was so young.
A scent teased him, and Jim stopped to take a deep breath. He could smell the half-jungle that had grown through the ruined city, the rotting leaves, the slime mold that crept from one leaf to another, the stagnant water rippling with insect life. Below that he could smell the last lingering traces of rotting wood and the tang of rusted metal. Below that he could smell, so faintly that he half believed that the air lied, the musk of guide.
Opening his senses Jim could now catalogue the scent. The musk was spicy but only a few molecules still floated in the air. With more resolve than ever, Jim started down the path with wide ground devouring steps that left his watcher running through the trees.
Guide smell. Jim smiled ferally. He was never letting Simon and Rafe live this one down. A tall skeleton of a building shaded the path, glass gone and walls gone so that what remained were four metal grids leaning on each other to keep from falling down. One day it would fall, but right now, Jim ran with his senses wide open and he couldn't hear any groans that would suggested that day was today. He detoured through the middle of the structure.
This time his shadow didn't follow so Jim dismissed her from his thoughts as he held his rough cloak tight and ran over the slick moss that crept over the rough debris. Guide smell.
Jim had nearly reached the sunlight on the far side when he heard the scream. His instincts warred in him, one set demanding that he find the guide while another pulled him toward the call for help. The woman screamed again, the sound cut short in the middle, and Jim detoured south and dashed over another series of evenly spaced hills toward the sound.
Pulling his most primitive weapon from a pocket, Jim rounded the corner of a half-fallen wall and found three men crouching in the weeds. A woman sobbed, her arms held to the damp ground by two while a third knelt at her side. A child sobbed, pressing himself to the cold brick of the wall. Jim stopped.
"Let her go," he said softly, tightening his grip on his knife. None of the men seemed to be armed, but from their smug expressions, they didn't feel particularly threatened.
"Walk away, buddy. You don't want in on this fight."
"Maybe I do," Jim said as he stepped closer. One man stood, gesturing with a palm for the other two to hold the woman.
"You're new around here, but trust me, you do not want to start a fight." The young man turned his body so that Jim could see the symbol that had been carved into his arm. A rough half-circle of white scar tissue rose up from the arm.
"Not impressed," Jim shrugged as he shifted his feet, ready for a fight. Now the other two men stood up. The woman crab-walked backwards, scrambling through the weeds until she reached the wall. For a second she remained frozen, her eyes staring at Jim in shock, then she snatched up her crying child and ran.
"Fuck. Well, since you took away our fun, I guess you get to replace her," the first young man said with a nasty smile.
"It's going to take more than three of you," Jim answered smugly as he studied the enemy. Thug number one favored his left side slightly, soreness or some sort of minor injury. One hit on his left knee would take him out. Thug number two moved awkwardly. He was new at this. Jim dismissed him as a minor nuisance and focused on thug number three. This one pulled out a long hunk of metal with a sharpened barb on the end. He moved well, but he swung his weapon wildly. He would do as much damage to his friends as to Jim.
All three moved at once. Jim struck the first guy's knee before darting backwards behind guy number two. Before two could react to the prey moving toward him instead of running away, Jim shoved him toward guy three.
Awkward guy stumbled into his friend and then crashed to the ground leaving Jim one on one with the only real threat. The leader was still rolling around on the ground holding his leg to his chest and cursing.
"Are you sure you want to do that?" Jim asked calmly. The thug stopped and looked at his two fallen friends. The awkward one struggled back to his feet, blood dripping from an injured hand, but the leader wouldn't get up any time soon.
"You're marked," the thug threatened. "We'll remember you!"
"Any time you think you can take me," Jim smiled his answer. Now he just had to find his guide and get back to the city before this idiot could get the rest of his gang together. Even now the guide scent blew on the wind stronger than ever.
"You're dead," thug three promised and numbers two and three backed away. Thug one just lay on the ground moaning now.
"Nice friends," Jim commented to the fallen man as he sniffed the air and found the direction he wanted once more. Slipping the knife back into a pocket, Jim set a strong pace. He wanted his guide before darkness fell.
---
Jim knew he had reached some sort of settlement. The weeds grew shorter, and here they were held back from small hills sprouting with the green tops of vegetables. Most of the buildings were gone… no rubble or twisted metal jabbing up toward the sky, just small hills and low walls. But ahead Jim could see stone buildings still standing fairly untouched despite their age and crumbled corners.
All this Jim could see without being a sentinel. However, his senses also whispered to him about the smell of meat smoking and vegetables boiling over unseen fires. He could hear heartbeats in the distance, and taste the sour smell of unwashed bodies on the air. And now guide smell permeated everything. The vegetable patch he passed, the cow lazily chewing cud in the field, the wide stone basin filled with scummy water—they all smelled of guide.
Jim slowed his trot to a walk as he approached the first stone building. It was three stories, and Jim could see the rough edges of wood planks replacing the roof, but the building itself remained solid. Considering the ruins Jim had seen everywhere else, he was surprised.
"You're a stranger," an older woman said as she stepped out of the shadow of the open doorway. Her hair was pure white, and lines guarded her eyes. Jim hadn't expected to meet an outlander who had lived to such an age. He stopped and nodded toward her.
"I'm passing through," he answered respectfully. He doubted that she had any real power, but she could be speaking for the one who did, and Jim just needed these people to step aside and let him find his guide.
"He's a sentinel," a voice whispered from behind, and Jim turned around to see his young watcher from earlier standing behind him. Too far behind him. Jim flinched as he realized that he had, in fact, just outted himself. Shit, outsmarted by a twelve-year-old outlander. "He is; he's a sentinel," the girl repeated, this time loudly enough for the woman to hear.
Cringing with chagrin, Jim turned back towards the older woman. He'd grown used to his senses being dulled by his lack of a guide, and now, with a fresh and tantalizing guide scent in his nose, his sense were opening up the way they never had before. In the enclave, he'd been surrounded by guides, and even then his senses had not opened so fully.
"Sentinel, why are you here?" the woman asked.
"I'm just doing a little looking around," Jim said, holding his hands out in the traditional gesture of harmlessness or surrender. The woman's heart rate spiked.
"You search for a guide."
"Yes," Jim admitted. He wasn't the first sentinel to walk the outlands, so he shouldn't be surprised that these people had their own stories. Jim just hoped that he wouldn't get mobbed by outlanders desperate for someone to take them out of this life. More faces appeared at windows, and a young man on the edge of adolescence stepped into the space next to the old woman.
"He stopped the Marks," said a voice from an upper window. Jim glanced up and saw the woman he had rescued earlier. A red handprint sprawled across one cheek.
"Did he?" The old woman stepped forward, and suddenly Jim could hear something… one heartbeat pounding above the cacophony.
"Guide," Jim whispered as he took a step forward. The heartbeat raced erratically and grew more faint with each second.
"Sentinel, you have endangered the tribe," the old woman said as she stepped into his path. Jim shook his head as the words sunk in.
"What?"
"The Marks. Our truce is very limited. They will come here seeking you, and you'll be gone, back to your city."
"Then tell them that," Jim said dismissively as he stepped closer to her and the sound of the fading heartbeat.
"They won't believe us," the boy said, his voice breaking as he stepped closer to woman, blocking the doorway.
That's when Jim knew. They hid his guide. They knew. Jim lunged forward and grabbed the boy's tunic, yanking him forward and out of his way before he darted into the dark.
Inside, the guide smell made Jim stagger to a halt. Casting a quick look around, Jim noticed the clean room, the looms with cloth half-woven, and roots hanging in the dark corners. Ignoring the glorious smell of guide, Jim focused on his hearing.
Feet shuffled above him, dozens of whispering voices gathering near the stairs. A baby cried in the distance, but all that faded as Jim found the sound he wanted. He took off toward a distant door.
Once he threw aside the thin plank blocking the door, Jim gasped. Pain. Blinking away tears, Jim could see the broken shards of glass sparkling in the dim light. The heavy spice dust still floated in the air, and Jim choked even as he forced himself to go through the room to the far side where a thin sheet of bent metal blocked the exit. This time, Jim moved it more carefully, but outside he found only sunshine and more buildings.
Faces watched him from under stone arches. Scanning the group, Jim quickly decided his guide wasn't there. His guide was running from him. Since the heartbeat had faded into the distance, Jim carefully opened his scent. Immediately, his eyes watered as the spice that clung to his clothes assaulted him. However, he caught the sour trail of fear that marked his guide's retreat.
Jim charged toward the gap between two stone buildings. Silent eyes considered him. A group of children playing in the fading light from the sunset stopped to watch as Jim dashed past them.
The buildings had obviously been part of a complex at some point with grey stone and arched doorways and pillars throughout, but Jim only noticed that in passing as he chased that elusive scent, his hearing reaching out for the sound of the guide's heart.
Jim had reached the far edge of the building complex when the scream of strained metal ripped through his hearing, dropping him to his knees. Gasping for air and struggling against an urge to vomit, Jim pushed himself up with his hands. Metal screamed again, but this time he had closed down his hearing some so that the sound just sent rough shivers down his spine without knocking him to the ground.
Growling, Jim turned east, where a thin man stood next to a tall strip of metal. He still had a stick of some sort in his hand. Jim could see the metal tremble, and the man raised the stick to strike it again.
"Don't," Jim snarled. The man dropped the stick and ran for one of the gaping doorways.
Fuck. Well, now Jim had lost the scent and the sound, but he wasn't giving up that easily. He'd found a hundred guides whose scents had soured his nose. He'd found a dozen who didn't repulse him, but this guide… this was the first whose scent had sharpened his senses and called to him. He'd find his guide.
Jim closed his hearing to mundane-normal since the heartbeat would be long gone, and he opened his scent. Immediately, he fell to the ground again. Shit. Tiny particles stung and stabbed his nose until tears ran from his eyes and he struggled to breathe.