No Big Deal Part I

I opened the door on an empty hallway. Almost empty. Sandburg was just getting off the elevator. "Hey there!" In one hand Sandburg carried a white paper bag, which he waved.

"What the hell are you doing here?" I asked. What time was it, anyway? A long night of not sleeping because of the clamor of traffic noise, a long morning, too bright to sleep, too desperate for rest not to try. Aw, hell, I had the day off. Couldn't I get a little sleep?

"Hey, we said bright and early. We have to get started here." He brushed past me into the loft. Besides the white bag, he carried a backpack over one shoulder and a gym bag in the other hand. "Nice place. Yeah, this has a good vibe."

I closed the door, tightened the belt on the bathrobe I had snared on the way to the stairs. "I'm so pleased you approve."

Apparently oblivious to the sarcasm, Sandburg turned around and held out the bag. "Breakfast?"

Breakfast turned out to be coffee and banana nut muffins. That, a short visit to the bathroom, and a clean pair of jeans went a long way toward improving my mood. Meanwhile, the kid made himself at home on the couch and unloaded his luggage all over the coffee table. The orderly, complicated mess was a little intimidating, but yesterday things had worked out so well. The senses had seemed controllable and useful, it had seemed altogether likely that life could get back to normal very quickly, that this insanity could fade away as quickly as it had arrived.

That hope had lasted until about three o'clock this morning, when a couple on the other side of the building had gotten into a venomous and graphic fight about the state of their sex life. Now-- now it seemed pathetic and desperate that my only chance at sanity lay with this unfocused flake who was telling me to have a seat on the couch.

"OK. Now there are a number of things we need to do. First, we have to get a baseline, so we know what you're capable of, what we're dealing with here. Then we need to figure out what's causing you the most problems. I think--"

"Could we skip the lecture and just get on with it, Chief?"

Sandburg blinked. "Right. Get on with it. OK. But see, we need to talk about confidentiality."

"Confidentiality?"

"You know? I don't publish your personal information? I have a form--"

"Confidentiality. Right. You can't tell anybody. Jeeze. You didn't tell Joel anything yesterday, did you?"

"Joel? Oh, no. No." He was still holding out his form.

"Good. Nobody at the station can know this is going on. Nobody."

"OK. No problem." He was patient now, speaking slowly. It was irritating.

"So what are we doing here?" I pointed to the mess on my coffee table.

Sighing, Sandburg put down the form and gestured to a cluster of small, blue glass bottles. "This is a standard taste test."

"What? Like comparing soft drinks?" How the hell was that going to help? What was this child doing?

Another sigh. "No. Actually, this test was developed by the Food Science Program to give to volunteers before they taste test their products. To make sure their taste buds are functioning normally. I dip a cotton swab in, you taste it, you identify the flavor from this list."

"Oh?" Then, "Food Science?"

"They're a division of the chemistry department. You do not want to know."

"Right." Sandburg was already dipping the first swab into a little numbered bottle. "It's not...um...I mean--"

"It's harmless. I've given this test to eighty people."

Right. Harmless. I took the swab. Sandburg sat there looking neutral and polite. I wanted to smack him. Instead, I tasted the damp cotton. "It's salty." A surprise, although I didn't know what I had expected.

Apparently Sandburg was surprised too. "Salty?" His bland expression faltered.

"Is something wrong?"

"No. That's fine." He made a note on his clipboard, dropped the swab in a baggie, produced a new one.

"It's sweet." I watched him, but no expression flickered. "But it's not sugar." He still didn't twitch, but I could still tell he was surprised. Either I was failing his test or beating it. By a lot.

The next one was, well, nothing. I couldn't identify it. There was wet cotton and paper, but nothing else I could put a name to. It was embarrassing to admit. The next one was odd. I glanced at the list. Chocolate, mint, orange, salt and on down. Nothing listed there came close. "It's metallic. It's not here." I wondered if this meant I was failing his test or if he was messing with my head.

Sandburg just made a check on his clipboard and opened the next bottle. "Orange," I said.

He checked the number, reclosed the bottle, and set it aside scowling.

"What?" I asked.

"I'm just wondering what to do."

"Why? Did I fail the test?"

"Did you-- OK. When I said I was using the standard test, well, my friend in food science mixes me up batches that are one-half and one-fourth strength for identification. I've only had three people catch those at the lowest concentration."

"Oh. And the metallic one?"

"Heh. It's supposed to be chocolate, but naturally it has no chocolate in it. Everybody with significantly heightened taste says it tastes like tin. The one you didn't get was water, the control. The orange is not supposed to have a scent that carries. And the sweet one was fructose, not sucrose. So you can see my problem."

"What problem? I passed the test."

"Well, yes, and normally, I would just check the box and go on. But maybe you need to know exactly what your threshold is. Most people I talk to have been living with their senses all their lives, some have even been tested elsewhere. So finding their exact limits wasn't that important. I just had to prove significantly above normal. But you may need to be more exact.... Well, I can't do anything about it now. I'll talk to Jay about mixing up a lower concentration, I guess." The bottles were swept into a ziplock bag and dropped into the backpack.

"Here." He struggled to open another set of small bottles--brown, this time. Wincing at his sore hand, he passed them to me. "Break the seal and smell them. One of these is alcohol and water and one is just water."

They were marked "A" and "B". I opened them carefully. "Alcohol's in "A.""

He grinned. "That was my lowest concentration." All the brown bottles went into a bag. Flipping the page on his clipboard, he handed me a new list. "The green bottles are smell. There are only twelve odors there, but there are different concentrations of each. Just open and smell them in any order, just read me the number on the outside first." He handed me the bag of coffee beans he'd carried yesterday.

There must have been thirty of the tiny bottles on the table. The list only had twenty items on it, and some of them surely would be red herrings. I wondered if this was supposed to be hard. Yesterday--trying to remember dozens of scents I had never heard of before, that was hard. This list had things like banana, lemon, onion, paint thinner on it. Normal smells.

Of course, the first one I opened was the paint thinner. The headache I'd had yesterday shot up through my nose and lodged behind my eyes. I grabbed the bag of coffee beans, not that it was much help. "Paint thinner."

"OK, good. Next."

"Fourteen: lemon. Nine: it's like that crappy fake rose from the first perfume place. Not the one that smelled like old sneakers, the other one." The first perfume place we'd visited yesterday used only synthetics-- Nothing they had was at all like the sample we had from the bird's nest, and we'd been able to leave in about ten minutes.

"Right. Right. OK. Let's skip the rest of these for right now."

"Why?" I'd thought I was doing fine.

"If you can tell it's not the real thing at that concentration-- I should have known from yesterday. This isn't going to tell us anything we don't already know." He began gathering up green bottles. Did stopping in the middle mean he was giving up?

"Will this, um, cause a problem? I mean, with your sample?"

"Oh. No, don't worry about it. I set up the tests to identify significantly heightened senses using volunteers from my intro class as a control where I had to modify a standard test. Mostly, I was just trying to establish that the potential existed. After a certain point, the specific parameters weren't important. We've exceeded those parameters, that's all."

"So, just how much...?"

"Well, it varies depending on the specific test. I just needed convenient cut offs to use as a benchmark. I had to guess where: I didn't actually have a sentinel. While the cut offs are statistically significant, they're also sort of, um, arbitrary. It was all hypothetical, anyway, right? Well, until three days ago."

That didn't sound like an actual answer. "So at about what level does your test stop working?"

"The most accurate tests require equipment my grant didn't cover. The lowest threshold I can measure with butyl alcohol is three parts per billion. More or less."

"Which means?"

"About a thousand times better than average. About. Um. Better than a dachshund, but not as good as a German Shepherd. Probably. The odor identifications? Nobody in my control group got more than twenty-one out of thirty. Finding and identifying the rose would have been one hundred times normal. Theoretically. And what you did yesterday, sorting out multiple odors? There are tests for that, but I've never used them."

The headache pounded bright and hard behind my eyes. I swallowed dryly and tried to understand where this was going. Apparently I was even beyond the bounds of abnormal.

"Hey, no. Don't worry. It would be nice to have exact numbers, but we don't need them, not right away. We're still good here." He produced an eye chart and a tape measure and began to measure the room. If he wasn't stopping-- I let out the breath I'd been holding. Screwing up the tests didn't mean he couldn't help me. He wasn't giving up.

The eye chart went down to 20/10. We did it at the standard 20 feet and then at 40 (Sandburg had to stand on the balcony for that). I read him the copyright information both times. He was thrilled. Absolutely tickled. He hopped back to the gym bag and dug out a stack of cards. "This one's easy. All you have to do is sort them by color."

"Why?"

"Yeah, why? I'm not having trouble with colors." Aside from the fact that they were about twice as bright as before. "I can tell what they are just fine. Believe me. We don't need to test that."

"Well. Yes. But. Cross-culturally there are patterns in the way people group colors together, the boundaries between color categories. It has to do with language, although in the United States it also has to do with gender--" Mid-word he glanced up and saw the look on my face. "Fine. Not now. It's not a priority. We can do this later." The cards disappeared. "What would you like to work on? We haven't touched hearing yet, how's that?"

"That would be fine."

"The equipment for that isn't exactly portable. To give me an idea what we're talking about here, though, how 'bout you just shut your eyes and tell me everything you can hear?"

It was reasonable. It didn't seem too awful. Yesterday we had skipped all this to race up and down the county sniffing for traces for the Switchman. Surely, for that alone I owed him a couple of hours of running the maze. I closed my eyes. "Traffic noise. Do you want details?"

"Not particularly."

"The people downstairs have a radio on. Something's broken down in the bakery--I can hear cursing, and someone kicking something. The refrigerator just came on. There's a helicopter over the bay. And there's something moving...it's small?" Shit. Did I have mice? Were those mouse feet running?

"Jim? Detective Ellison? Jim, can you hear me?"

Shit. Sandburg. I opened my eyes. The light was fierce and blinding, and I shut them again. "What the hell was that?"

A sigh blew across my face as Sandburg pulled back, leaving a cool spot on my arm where he'd been gripping it. "You had a little zone out. It's no big deal. You're OK."

I jumped up, stalking away from him. "This has got to stop! I was just listening to--" I closed my eyes, trying to avoid--everything. The hyperactive nut playing 20 questions in my living room. The fact that I had just had some kind of weird blackout. The throbbing in my head.

"What were you listening to?"

"Mice, goddamn it! Again! What am I paying condo dues for if we can't hire a competent exterminator?"

"Whoa, big fella. You need to relax." This, from the most un-relaxing person I'd ever met.

"This has got to stop!" I yelled at him. And regretted it, because my voice echoed off the walls.

"It will. It just needs a little time. Here. Sit down. Let's take a few minutes. Yeah."

"I can't live like this. I sure can't do my job like this."

"You won't have to. It just needs some time, some practice."

"Last night at dinner, it was like five alarm chili. It was pan fried chicken and au gratin potatoes. That's all, and it almost burned--"

"OK. Yeah. This is a pretty big adjustment."

"It's not all the time. I mean, it's always strong, but sometimes it's OK. Except the colors are so bright and the edges are so sharp. I can't live like this."

"Yes, you can. It's just going to take a little time. OK? So let's just relax--"

"Relaxing is not going to help." I was very close to just slugging the patronizing little shit.

"Actually, yes, it is. Look, you want control, right? But if you can't assess where you are, if you can't concentrate, that is not going to happen."

"Fine. How do I do that, Darwin?"

"OK. Well, let's just start with a nice deep breath. OK. That was good. This time, breathe from down here." At which point he laid his hand on my stomach. I tried not to flinch. "When you breathe, your diaphragm should drop and your belly should come out. Breathe like you were singing. Yeah. Like that. That's good." The third breath ended in a sigh as something tight and vibrating uncoiled in my gut. "Yeah. That's good." I could tell he was genuinely pleased.

"This is really good. Keep breathing. Now let's start with something simple. We'll do a body check. All you have to do is pay attention to yourself, what you're feeling from you right now."

What I was feeling? Petrified. Pissing-myself sacred. Completely lost at sea with no land in sight and no idea where the shore might be.

"Remember to breathe.... Yeah.... Can you tell me how you're feeling?"

"Hungry." Which was a cop-out, yeah, but also true. The muffin had to have been less than an hour ago, but it wasn't cutting it any more.

"I guess so. Bet you didn't actually eat much last night, huh?" He sounded sympathetic enough that it was possible he understood, really understood. "Why don't we take a break, get something to eat? What would you like?"

"Wonderburger."

A soft laugh then. "OK. Sure. Why not?" He backed off, mumbling about bizarre cravings, asking if I felt like driving or if I wanted him to do it.

My eyes popped open and I asked, despite myself, "What if I--can't?"

"Can't what? Can't eat?" He frowned. "Jim. It's just a hamburger. If you run into trouble, we'll back off for a moment and try again. You can do this. It won't be any harder than the muffin."

Right. Sure, I thought. Trust him, he's the expert.

Oh, God. This grunge, counterculture flake is my expert.

No, no. He threw himself under a truck for me just two days ago.

Just because he's brave doesn't mean he's competent.

Aw, damn. But he found Veronica Sarris. Him, not me. He was the one who made me pay attention to the evidence, who knew where to go for custom perfumes and plant essences.

"Jim. C'mon. Let's go find some food."

Contrary to expectation, lunch wasn't a disaster. Sandburg sat quietly, picking at a salad while I downed one hamburger and started on another. I had to scrape the sauce off, but overall, the food tasted, well, not normal, but OK. Good enough. I glanced at Sandburg, risking a brief, close look at him. Just what had I gotten myself into here? "What's that smell?"

"Smell?"

Unable to pinpoint it, I waved in his general direction. "Eggish. Sulfury. But bitter." Damn. There just was no good way to describe smells.

Wincing, he shut the plastic container and shoved the salad away. "That would be the preservative they sprayed on the lettuce. Thank you. So much. Really."

I couldn't help smiling. "Sorry."

He laughed, warming a little. "Don't worry about it. I wasn't that hungry. So, how's the hamburger?"

"Great." Feeling a little guilty, I turned the fries toward him. "Want one?"

"Thanks. But that's OK. So I was thinking tomorrow we could do another field trip. Head to a park, maybe, start getting you used to the greater level of stimulation."

"Can't tomorrow. Gotta work."

"Work?" His eyes widened. "What do you mean, work? You can't go out on the street! You're not ready."

How quickly we go from helpful to annoying. "Tomorrow is Friday. It was nice of Simon to give me today, but I have work to do. I have paperwork from last week sitting on my desk, and the DA is going to want to talk to me about yesterday. I can't just say, 'sorry, I've turned into some kind of prehistoric freak, and I can't make it.'"

"Wait. OK. The office. Meetings. Yeah, that can work." He was ignoring me completely, having the conversation with himself. "The police station should be fine. It's not like people will be shooting at him, right? And then we've got the whole weekend. OK, it's not perfect, but it's something."

"So, Chief, do I have your permission to go back to work tomorrow."

Oblivious to sarcasm, he nodded thoughtfully. "Yeah. Sure. Just keep my number close. In case anything happens. I don't have class tomorrow, I

can sit by the phone."

"Gee. Thanks."

After lunch we played games. I didn't know what else to call it. It started almost as soon as I got home. I came out of the bathroom to find Sandburg standing in the middle of the floor, grinning. "OK, Jim. I've hidden something of mine in the living room. I want you to find it."

I looked around, wondering what he'd hidden, why we were doing this stupid thing, if he was crazy.

"Uh. Jim?"

"Hmmm?" I glanced at him. He tapped his nose, and I scowled, suddenly understanding what he wanted. "You want me to find it by smell? That's disgusting."

"It worked well enough for you yesterday."

Not having a comeback, I turned away from him and sniffed experimentally. I paid attention to the riot of smells I had been trying to ignore since I got home last night. I could smell the dish soap at the sink: it reeked of fake lemon. It caught in my throat and I gasped--a mistake I realized as stale coffee, the toilet bowl I had not had time to clean in two weeks, the crud at the bottom of the garbage can, and some awful, unnameable stench that might be from the dirty laundry flooded my nose and mouth, blotted out everything else in a bright, three-dimensional stink that I had never even imagined.

I clamped my teeth together, unwilling to breathe in that fouled air, unable to stop myself from gasping again and again as I panicked.

Something cold and wet covered my face. Shock made me gasp again, but the air this time was a little cleaner. Unpleasant, but no longer overwhelming. "Jim? Easy, it's OK. Easy. You really need to focus on something besides smell just now, can you do that? Can you concentrate on touch for me? Can you do that?" Something hard and complicated in my hand. A quarter. The ridges around the outside felt like deep caverns. "Can you talk to me, Jim? Are you with me?"

"Yeah. God."

"Jim, I want to take the towel away now. Do you think you're ready?"

I nodded and my face was suddenly free. I blinked, took a shallow breath. I was sitting on the floor, my anthropologist crouched beside me holding a wet towel in one hand and me in the other. He smiled and slowly moved away. "You OK?"

I nodded, surprised at how all right I was. Not perfect, but OK.

"You want to rest for a while before we try again?"

I slid away from him. "Are you crazy? I can't do that again."

"So--what? You're never going to smell anything again?"

I scrambled to my feet. "Apparently not!"

"Jim--"

"No. You do not understand. I can't do that again!" I knew how I sounded--panicked, whiny, crazy, weak. But it didn't matter suddenly, what he thought of me or even what I thought of myself. I could not do that again. No.

"Jim, it's a lot more than you're used to. It will take a while to acclimate to the increased stimulus."

"Acclimate!" I gasped.

"Jim." He stepped toward me, and without meaning to, I flinched away. "Jim, you misjudged how powerful your sense of smell was. You were trying too hard. Way too hard. You just need to relax a little, go a little slower."

"I can't--"

"You were doing fine this morning, weren't you? It didn't get away from you then, did it? You were focused. You were in control. You can do that again." He stepped forward again, and this time I didn't retreat. "You are looking for a specific smell. Me. It is going to be very easy to find."

Without meaning to, I noticed the smell of him. Clean, and not too bad, except for his sneakers. He had washed his hair this morning, but it smelled tangy rather than sweet. I blinked, leaned closer for a better sniff.

"Not too much. You hardly have to try."

I stepped backward slowly, trying to try only a little. His bags were still by the chair in the living room. I assumed that didn't count. Turning slowly, I took a cautious sniff. He was right; now that I knew what I was looking for it was fairly strong. I retrieved his necklace from the sink and held it in my hand. The twine held his scent quite well. I turned back, holding it out--

He was looking at me with open delight and pride. It wasn't a look I got a lot and it was a bit disconcerting. "You did it, man! See? I didn't even have time to time you. You can do this. You can so do this."

We spent the next several hours playing games: more hide and seek mostly, but I also sorted his colored cards, listened to unusual sounds on his tape recorder (turned down and on the other side of the room) while trying not to zone, and performed what I can only describe as relaxation drills.

Around two-thirty, I zoned twice while I was supposed to be 'breathing.' The pitter-patter of rodent toes, naturally. That little scuffling noise they made digging in their bedding, rolling over in their rodent sleep, in the floor directly under the couch. The second time he pulled me out Sandburg sighed and sat down beside me.

"You OK, Jim?"

"Sure." I put some effort into not sounding bitter. It wasn't Sandburg's fault he kept having to put my wandering ears back into my body. I should just be grateful that he could.

"Let's try another body check."

"Let's not." He sighed, and I added, "Look, I'm just a little tired."

"Yeah, I guess so. You've really worked today." Sighing again, he stretched sideways, and then settled down to look at me closely. "How are you sleeping?"

"What sleeping? I can hear sirens all over town. And let's not talk about the neighbors."

"Right. OK. I see your point. Hmmm. Got any ear plugs?"

"No." Although it was a good idea.

"OK. I'll cover that tomorrow. In the meantime, I want you try something. Just to see." He bounced from the couch to the coffee table, and then motioned for me to lie down. "See, we all sleep through a certain amount of background noise. Sounds we're used to. We ignore it. But you, you've got all this new noise going on right? And you don't know which noises are important and which you can ignore, so it all gets your attention. So just let yourself get used to it. Listen, and don't go listening hard. Just notice the things you're hearing now. The sounds that float by."

"Float?"

"You know what I mean. Just notice the sounds you're hearing one at a time, identify what they are, and then forget about them. Once you know what they are, they aren't important."

This wasn't going to work. Noticing the noise wasn't going to make me not mind it. Noticing it wasn't the problem. I couldn't stop noticing it. Anyway, it wasn't just the noise. The bed smelled... odd, and the sheets were scratchy. And now that I knew I had mice I was going to be listening for them all the time. "This isn't gonna work. You can't choose not to hear something or see something or smell something. You can't control that. It's just--" It was hopeless. Every time I opened my eyes, I was seeing the grain on the wood of the floor, the sharp outline of each unique leaf on a tree across the park, the pores on Simon's nose. Right then, Sandburg's stomach growling sounded like a passing train and I could smell my disgusting dish soap. It would not go away, and I couldn't live with it.

"Jim. You can control a lot of it. Everybody is constantly bombarded with huge amounts of sensory information all the time. It's just that, well, most of it is old news, and we automatically ignore it. Only stuff we think is important or is associated with danger or is new actually impinges on our consciousness. Before you came back on line, your brain was doing that, too. Now, though, a lot of it is more vivid than before or has to be reclassified, so you're aware of more than you're used to. Actually, you're already doing a lot better than I would have expected someone coming on line suddenly like this to do. You're not overwhelmed all the time. You're already coping with and ignoring all kinds of unnecessary information.

"We've had some bad moments today. OK. Actually trying to process some of this information and make sense out of it, that's going to take

practice. Some of it may always be hard. But it is going to get so much better, you just have to be patient."

He waited, possibly for me to agree, but I couldn't make myself say anything.

"OK. Let's try it again. Notice the sounds you're hearing now. Just let them float past you. Notice them and let them go." The loudest thing was his breathing, each breath slow and long. I remembered to take a breath from my stomach. That hum. Sandburg had left the bathroom light on. A snap: outside, a car engine started, coughed, and died. Below me one of the mice stirred and got up and... what was that? It sounded like metal rattling, almost like--a rodent wheel. Damn, it was somebody's pet. Running pretty fast, too, by the sound of it. Not an infestation after all.

"Don't focus on any one sound, Jim. Just notice what they are, and let them go." I could hear his heart beating; quiet and even, so easy not to notice unless I paid attention. On the street below two women in high heels walked along the sidewalk, laughing. On the roof a couple of pigeons cooed.

I only slept until about eight-thirty. Sandburg was long gone. He'd locked the door behind him which said reassuring things about his common sense. For dinner I had crackers and chicken soup that tasted mostly like salt and can, and then went to bed.

The next day was pretty rotten. I should have stayed home. Not that I would ever tell Sandburg that. I couldn't have anyway. I'd let everything go for the Switchman, and I had work to do on that case, too. But by eleven I had a killer headache and a knot in my stomach. I could see the flicker cycle of the fluorescent light over my desk. It made a weird strobe effect on my computer screen. Joel's aftershave smelled like turpentine. The coffee tasted like vinegar--I assumed because the machine had recently been cleaned and not rinsed properly.

I tried relaxing. I tried breathing. The harder I tried, the worse everything got.

It was after five before I could get away. My home--my calm, quiet, comfortable home--was loud and bright and drafty. I turned on the stereo and sat on the couch with my eyes shut and my face buried in a clean, damp towel. The fabric softener was cloying, but not unbearable. I was still sitting there when Sandburg arrived at six. In addition to his backpack and gym bag, he had a pizza.

I braced myself for him to start in on the senses thing right away, but he was actually civil during dinner. He asked how the case was going, and seemed interested in the answers. There was a lot I couldn't discuss, of course, but he seemed actually curious about standard procedures and legal processes and forensics and so on. Maybe he did think it was interesting; he wasn't as young as he looked, but he was only 25, and, according to the background check I had finally gotten around to running, had spent the last nine years in school. You obviously learned a lot of facts like that, but you didn't really learn anything about the world--not about real danger or real responsibility or real consequences. So yeah, maybe he found police procedures thrilling.

When we finished eating, he threw out the pizza box, took an armload of coffee mugs from my cabinet, and, setting them on the table, began to dig in his bag. "I talked to my Food Sciences guy today. I told him I didn't like the way the taste threshold test was working out and I wanted to see what we could do using even lower concentrations. He threw together a test batch." He produced four plastic bottles which he lined up behind four of the mugs. "You ready?"

I shrugged.

"OK. First, don't swallow, spit." He handed me an empty mug, then poured a couple of inches from one of the bottles into the mug next to it.

I took some, almost tentatively. When nothing immediately exploded on my tongue, I let myself give it more attention. There was nothing I could pin down, and I felt faintly embarrassed.

"Jim? Not too much, OK?"

"I'm not getting anything. What is it?"

"I'm not supposed to say before--" He paused, considering me. "That was the control. Distilled water." He handed me the second candidate. I was relieved at how easy this one was. "Salt." Next was the fructose, and after that-- "I don't want this one again. This is not edible, I don't care what they say."

He smiled tolerantly and scribbled in large letters in the margin of his note pad. "No Fake Chocolate!!" He closed the bottles and put them away, pushing the cups to one side.

"What? That's it?"

"What can I say, man? You beat my test again." And smiled. "Now, how did it go today?"

So I told him about the headache. And the flickering light. The coffee. And Henri's bad breath, which I had forgotten until that moment. I talked and talked and he wrote it all down, watching me closely and asking questions. That's pretty much all we did all evening; talked about details I had hardly even noticed at the time until he left at nine, promising to be back the next morning.

He showed up at eight thirty, not even bothering to say "good morning" before stepping up in my face and demanding, "Try to figure out where I've been by how I smell."

"Flowers? And bread."

"Farmers' Market. Very good." He thrust a whole wheat raisin loaf into my hands. "What else?"

"Some kind of animal." I leaned closer. "Not horses. Not dogs. I don't know."

He just grinned again. "Primate lab on campus. The division chair is so anxious for it to get used, he's actually giving out money for the stupidest projects. One of the junior professors talked me into signing on to one of them. Never mind, let's not go there. Have you given any thought to today? I thought we'd do some field testing, you know, give you a chance to practice under real-world conditions? Does the park sound all right? If you're feeling really ambitious, we could go back to the farmer's market."

So we spent the day at the park, alternately practicing using my senses and practicing ignoring them. The kid had a checker board and a scrabble set. In the morning I played with earplugs in and dark glasses on. In the afternoon, I played without the senses artificially dimmed. In the morning, we beat each other fairly evenly, and not by too much. My first game without the earplugs was scrabble, and I lost 185 to 43. I was completely appalled, but Sandburg just shrugged and said, "Now we know how much practice you need."

Sunday I met Sandburg at the university. He had a key to a little room with a table, two chairs, and one of those machines they test hearing with. "You've probably done something like this before," he said, handing me a huge headset and taking a seat across from me. "You just raise your hand when you hear a tone."

"Right."

But he didn't jump right in. His hands stilled over the equipment and he studied me for several seconds. "Jim, you need to understand that if you want to stop the test at any time, all you have to do is ask."

Which was just strange. Did he think he could stop me, if I decided to leave? What about this test would make me want to stop, anyway?

"Also, you can ask for a break, if you want it. We have all day here."

"Maybe you do, chief."

A tiny frown, frustration and impatience quickly shunted aside in favor of bland patience. "If the sounds are too loud, or in any way painful or uncomfortable, you need to tell me."

With the headphones half-way on, I froze. "'Painful?' This is supposed to be painful?"

"No. It's not supposed to hurt. Which is why you have to tell me if it is."

"I thought you'd done this before."

"Right. And everybody is different. I don't want to take chances. So I'm telling you to tell me if there's a problem."

I jammed the headphones on. "Let's get on with it."

Click. Tone.

The flat, empty pitch went up and down, louder and softer. It went on for a very long time. Twice I found myself blinking against the light, Sandburg holding my headphones and telling me to breathe. After the second time he gave me some water and an apple.

After the break, he said, "Let's vary it a bit. I'm going to play two tones. Just nod if they sound different."

Tone. Tone.

After a while, the sounds started to get much louder, and after I winced at one blaring whine, I asked Sandburg to cut it out. Frowning, he checked his settings, and then gave me a couple more quiet ones. I nodded: different. Again, softer. Different. Again, softer. Different.

He smelled different suddenly, sharp and acidic. I knew this smell, though I couldn't place it. He cut the power to the machine and said in a toneless whisper that sounded like a shout, "We're finished. Let's do some breathing and take a body check." I started to remove the headphones, but his hand shot across the table to hover just in front of me. "Wait."

Which is when I noticed that I could hear his heartbeat even with the huge headphones on.

That smell was Sandburg scared. Oh, God, the hearing was totally out of control! The machine hadn't gotten louder--

But even as I worked out just how panicked I should be, silence descended. Suddenly. Completely. Although Sandburg was still frantically shaking his head, I took off the headphones, and could hear the muffled rattle as they came away. Normally.

Sandburg opened his mouth, froze, afraid to speak.

"No," I said. "It's OK. I'm back."

"Jeez. What happened?"

"You tell me. It's your specialty."

He took a deep breath, began to straighten out his papers. "Well. Obviously. The more you focus, the more you practice, the more sensitive and precise you get."

"Isn't that what you've been saying here, Coach?"

"Well. Yes. Yes, but. Jim, what you just did, you can't do that out on the street. You were identifying ten decibels as 'loud.' That's library quiet. Quieter. If you open up like that somewhere without controlled conditions, it could get really overwhelming."

I had figured that out. "But we knew that, too. Didn't we?"

"Yeah. Yeah, we did." He sighed. "Sorry." He dropped my empty water bottle in his bag and closed it, standing up.

"We're finished?"

"Oh, yeah."

"So... how'd I do? What did all that mean?"

A chuckle. "Way, way above normal. You're a phenomenon."

"Can you be a little more vague there?" I followed him to the door.

"Well, I can't just give you an absolute number."

"Because I'm not allowed to know?"

"No. No, it's just... hearing is complicated. There is no single meaningful number. Sounds at the high and low ends of the range have to be louder to be audible than sounds at the middle range. Besides which, this machine--which is not what you'd find in a doctor's office--only goes up to forty thousand hertz, and only goes down to zero decibels."

"OK. And--?"

"A human child with no hearing damage can hear about twenty to twenty thousand hertz at twenty decibels or less. Adults are often only tested from two-fifty to eight thousand hertz. You blasted through the normal range at one decibel. When we stopped you were hearing thirty thousand hertz at forty decibels."

"Dog whistles?" I asked, though I was loathe to make animal comparisons. I was hoping he'd say no.

"Yeah. Also the navigation frequencies used by some bats and whales."

"Charming."

"I don't think you'll make it to the frequencies used by medical diagnostic equipment, though. Your graph was dropping pretty quickly there at the end."

"Gee. Too bad."

"What say we grab some lunch and then head back to the park?"

The rest of the day went pretty much the same as Saturday, except that it was below freezing and sleeting, so we played games in the food court of a mall. By the time we packed it up and went home, Sandburg was only beating me by about 20 points at scrabble.

On Monday I totaled the Land Rover.

I'd had court all morning and meetings after that until about two o'clock. I was starving by then and was on my way to a late lunch when I heard two punks knocking over a convenience store on High Street. Yes, heard. Someone screaming, "Put your hands up, shithead and gimme the money!" kind of stands out. Unfortunately, it took me a few minutes to figure out just where it was coming from, and by that time they'd made it to their getaway car.

Engaged in pursuit of suspects. Stopped suspects. Arrested same. Dammit, that Land Rover was only six months old. By the time I'd brought them in and done the paperwork and dealt with my mangled car it was after six and I had only enough energy to be profoundly grateful that Banks had been tied up in a meeting so I didn't have to explain any of it in person.

Joel gave me a ride home. He wouldn't come up for a beer, which was just as well. Sandburg was sitting beside my door with a bag of sandwiches in his lap. I didn't mention the car until we were done eating and he was setting up the checker board and multiple tape recorders. I shouldn't have mentioned it at all: he was useless after that. He put everything away and insisted I relax instead. He put some kind of weird space-music CD on my stereo and made me sit on a pillow on the floor "breathing" and counting until I got fed up and claimed to be tired so he'd leave. His overreaction caught me totally by surprise and was totally ridiculous. But it was well meant, at least. Even if it was ridiculous, and his remedy was a bunch of flaky nonsense. He offered to give me a lift to the rental place in the morning so I could pick up the temp. He wasn't a bad guy.

When he picked me up the next morning he started harping right away about how I needed to get him cleared to ride with me. "It's all too new. You're lucky not to have gotten yourself killed. You need someone around who understands what's going on and can help you."

"I'm managing just fine. I don't need any help."

"Specialized backup, then. Somebody who has a clue. For God's sake, you wrecked your car."

"That has nothing to do with this sentinel thing."

"Right. Sure. You crash into utility poles on a regular basis."

"This is the first major body damage I've had this year."

Instead of cringing at my tone, he squinted up at me for a moment and then chuckled. "No, you're kidding. You don't... go through several cars a... year?"

"No. I don't," I snapped.

"Um --" He looked uncertain.

"It's a dangerous job. There's a certain predictable wear and tear on equipment."

"Right. Right. It's dangerous. That kind of makes my point. I mean, you can't afford to be on the street with your senses out of control right now."

I didn't say that I was fine, although I was. Because he had a point. This whole mess was a hell of a lot more bearable with him than without him and I could not afford to be making mistakes. I hadn't actually been putting off making arrangements for him to ride with me for a while. I hadn't. There really had been no opportunity to talk to my boss; he was constantly in meetings, I was busy, and if I'd been hoping that maybe it would all just go away, that I wouldn't need Sandburg after all, well, that wasn't so awful, was it? No harm in hoping.

Except it wasn't going away. I was darned lucky not to have gotten myself or anyone else killed. Or that nobody had caught me having a blackout in the bullpen. Or that I hadn't completely lost it, overcome with some smell or sound, and freaked out in front of everyone, sick and frightened-- No, that didn't bear thinking about.

"Besides which, all this laboratory stuff and practice is fine, but it will only get us so far. I need to be with you on the job."

"I know. I know. I'm working on it, all right. We're just a little busy right now. The switchman isn't our only high profile case at the moment. One of our big ones is coming to trial."

"I understand that. But excuses will not help you control your senses."

"Will you stop? You win. You're right. On all counts. I will talk to my Captain."

"When?"

"The next time I see him." It's hard to be generous with someone who doesn't know how to quit when they're ahead.

"What are you going to say?"

"I don't know. Something."

"You're going to have to do better than that."

"No shit."

"I think we need to talk about our cover story. We're going to need details."

But by then we had made it to the strip mall with the rental agency. I didn't have to continue the discussion after all. I told the kid to meet me at my place after work and fled.

Of course at work everyone had heard about the Land Rover. There was a pile of little toy cars on my desk. Carolyn came in as I was dumping them in a drawer. On her way to Simon's office, she looked down at my desk and winced, shaking her head. Her sympathy and concern were even more irritating than open amusement.

Never mind.

There was a stack of files in my in-box. I took the first, opened it. The light above me was flickering so brightly and quickly that it made me seasick. I had to wonder, was it really flashing? Or just flashing at a frequency only I could see? Who would you ask?

Well, Sandburg.

I was standing on a chair, trying to tug the long, fluorescent bulb out of its socket without losing my balance when I heard Simon Banks come up behind me.

"What are you doing?"

"It isn't working properly. Blinks sometimes. It's driving me crazy."

"So call maintenance. How did your meeting with the DA go?"

"Fine." I looked at the dusty bulb in my hand. "Captain, I need to talk to you about something."

OK, what's going on here, Jim?

What do you mean?

You were awesome today. I've never seen anything like it. You were hearing things I couldn't hear; smelling things I couldn't smell. I mean, level with me, will you?

All right. Over the past couple of weeks, I've had these sensory things going on. Things I couldn't control. It turns out I've got what can only be described as hyperactive senses.

I didn't hear from Sandburg on Saturday. This wasn't a huge surprise. In fact, I didn't even notice until late afternoon. Everyone had stayed late on Friday night: the station was a mess, dead and wounded to take care of, emergency personnel everywhere, some thirty terrorists to book and then hand off to the feds, and then statements and paperwork and witness reports. Sandburg was one of the witnesses. I don't think he got to go until about 9:00, when one of the uniforms took him home.

I was there until midnight, and back again early the next morning. Simon was with Joan and Daryl in counseling, so Major Crimes was being organized by Rhonda (who was white and weepy and should probably have been in counseling herself). Around ten we started finding bodies in the trunks of patrol cars. God. So, no, I didn't have time to think about Blair on Saturday, would not have had time for him or his weird tests and stupid games if I had thought of him.

But I left at four, thinking I'd call him when I got home. First I'd stop and see Joel at the hospital, and then I'd call Sandburg and make sure he was all right. Seeing him stunned and disheveled last night had been almost funny. Turnabout. Fair play and all that. After all, the entire time he'd known me I'd been out of my depth and floundering, so it was nice to know that he wasn't always calm and helpful and accepting.

But after giving it some thought, well, it really was a little much for a guy who hadn't even gotten his pass yet. I couldn't have him freaking out and running away. Not now. Never mind that I needed him, I owed a him a little, well, sympathy, didn't I? He'd handled himself pretty well in there. Better even than your average rookie. But he was still a cloistered academic. An innocent civilian. A kid. Who'd been in the middle of a terrorist assault because of me. He couldn't be having an easy time with this.

So I was planning to call him. Imagine my surprise at finding him sitting on the window sill in Joel's hospital room, chatting about baseball.

He smiled, asked how I was doing. I told him I was fine. We were both talking about my senses. Then, of course, we went back to entertaining Joel. I'm not real big on baseball, but it turned out they were both fans. They talked and I watched. Joel seemed to be doing pretty good. He was present and relaxed, which was a relief. He'd been a key witness against Alton and Morrison, which would have been enough to endanger him even if Joel hadn't been a black cop and Kincaid hadn't been a psychotic white supremacist with a fixation on law enforcement.

We stayed another ten minutes, until I pointed out that Joel was getting tired.

In the hall I asked Sandburg if he was all right. "A little twitchy still," he said. "Yesterday was pretty intense. I don't want to do that again soon."

"It's, um, it's not always like that."

"Oh. Yeah. I know. Look, I never thanked you--"

"Don't worry about it." I shrugged. "My job."

"Right. Right."

He was looking at me with big eyes, and I said, "Besides you figured out how to make them land the damn thing. I appreciate not dangling a couple thousand feet up in the air."

"Ooo. Hey. Anytime. God, I hope not." We laughed and he changed the subject. "I talked to my food science guy again. He won't be able to get us a new batch till sometime next week."

"You told him no 'chocolate' right?"

He laughed and prodded me with his elbow. "I told him."

"Do I even want to know what the chocolate really is?"

He shuddered elaborately. "No, you don't. The less you know about what goes on in that building, the happier you'll be all 'round."

He was standing very close, and I could smell him. I let myself notice--yesterday I had noticed everything, and it had felt... good. The world had been so much bigger, and I had known it so intimately, had so much of it in my hand. "You used a different shampoo. Something nasty with fake flowers."

He nodded, pleased, and took a step on past me as I froze, trying to sort out a tangle of scents that didn't smell like Sandburg and didn't make any sense.

"Jim? You OK?"

I took a step closer, sniffed. The odors blossomed and became clear one at a time. Sex. He smelled like sex, and I blushed, not having meant to go looking for something so personal. But the scents were still resolving and I couldn't smell a woman.

Not a woman. Another man. My gut knotted and I had a sudden, vivid picture of what Garrett Kincaid would have done to Sandburg if he'd known. "You can't tell anyone."

He rolled his eyes. "We've been through this. I haven't told anyone. I'm not going to--"

We were standing in the middle of the hospital corridor. I seized his arm and dragged him into a stairwell. "About you!" I snapped as the fire door clanged shut behind us. Kincaid would have killed him. Kincaid would have worse than killed him. "You can't tell anyone about you!"

He looked at me as though I had lost my mind. "What about me? There's nothing to tell about--" he stopped, pulling back, suddenly afraid. "You can smell it on me."

I grabbed both his arms, halting his retreat. "You can't tell anyone." His eyes, so close, were wide and scared. I thought of the university--the faculty, bookish and multicultural and tolerant to the point of vacuousness, the students thinking they knew everything, thinking they were so worldly, so bad, so dangerous but mostly law abiding, really, mostly innocent, the cars in the parking lot with their little rainbow bumperstickers. His world, all of that. So safe. So safe.

But in my world there was Kincaid. And worse than Kincaid. "You can't tell anyone."

"Well, of course not!" Scared, but impatient too, getting angry himself. "I'm not going to embarrass you, if that's what you're worried about."

"I can't protect you." I couldn't stop smelling it on him. A man. I didn't know why--if he was experimenting or had flipped out because yesterday was so traumatic or if he was just that way and--it didn't matter. He was a good kid. Brave and smart and so patient with me. He didn't deserve what Kincaid could have done to him. Would have done to him. What could still happen, in my world which was full of thugs and sickos and--God, yes, even cops maybe. The Cascade PD wasn't New York, but it wasn't San Francisco either. "I can't protect you."

"Jim. It's OK. Jim. Jim. Listen to me." He spoke very quietly, gently, as though I was the one in trouble. "Jim. You won't have to. Nobody is going to know. You didn't know."

My eyes squeezed shut. I had worked gaybashings. Not many; it wasn't that common in Cascade, and most of it wasn't reported anyway. But I'd seen victims with the shit beat out of them, and one kid Blair's age badly messed up. They'd found him in an alley with "fag" written on his back in his own blood. But even working those cases... it had been far away. Just another crime. Distant. Impersonal. Not my problem, except to collect the evidence and cuff someone.

But I could hear Blair's heartbeat. He was right here, under my hands, and he didn't deserve--

"Jim. Nobody is going to know. I'm an anthropologist. A scruffy grad student. That covers a lot, believe me. I'm a harmless, flaky hippie. Harmless. Nobody will look past that. Nobody is going to know."

No one was going to know. I hadn't known. I took a deep breath. What I was smelling--other people couldn't smell it. No one would know.

"That's better. It's going to be fine. I'm not stupid. I won't let anybody find out. I won't embarrass you at the station. I understand--"

My eyes flew open. "You don't understand. It's dangerous--" But he didn't look like a kid, looking back at me. He didn't look innocent.

"Jim, I'm not stupid, and I'm not careless. If I'd known I was going to see you today, I would have taken another shower."

I looked down at him. His gaze was steady and only a little defensive. "You didn't think I could take it," I said.

"I didn't see any point in finding out. It really wasn't any of your business."

"I--I didn't--"

"I know you didn't mean to pry. It wasn't your fault. But now we're going to have to deal with it. I don't think this partnership is going to work if you're uncomfortable with me."

"Uncomfortable with you?"

He nodded. "Because I'm betting you've gone your whole life without any gay friends."

"But--you're not--"

"I'm bi. I think that's enough to pretty thoroughly freak you out."

"No, no, I just. Do you have any idea what Kincaid-- You could have been--" but I couldn't say it, any more than I could think it.

Sandburg snorted. "Like he needed an excuse. Kincaid gets off on power and hurting people. That's all. It wouldn't have mattered to the Sunrise Patriots who or what I was, if they wanted to have a little fun."

Yes, he was right. But--

"Jim. I need to know where your head is on this. That's what matters right now."

"I'm fine with it," I said.

He looked doubtful, but let it go, patting my arm and stepping away. "OK. OK, then. Since we're both here, let's get back to work. OK? Do you have some time?" He waited till I nodded. "I've got some ideas about testing your hearing. Oh, hey--I don't know about you, but I'm starving. Why don't we talk about it over dinner?"

"Sure," I said, more loudly than I intended. "There's a sushi place a couple of blocks from here. My treat. Unless you're afraid of a little raw fish."

He laughed and led the way down the stairs. "You're going to have to try a lot harder than that to gross out an anthropologist."

I chuckled. "Ever eaten snake?"

"Are you kidding? Snake is great!"

I looked at him, but he wasn't kidding. This was going to be harder than I thought. "Alligator?"

"No. But I'd always wanted to."

Hmmm. "Ever eaten monkey, hot shot?"

"New World and Old World. You?"

"Just, um, New World."

"When you were in Peru, right?" I had to hand it to him; he sounded very casual. No doubt he wanted details about my time in Peru and whether or not my senses were fully on line there. The little I could tell him that wasn't classified, though, was vague and disjointed.

"Yeah. But it was mostly yucca and plantains. Pretty dull stuff."

I didn't bring up Sandburg's... sexual identity again. It was none of my business, wouldn't have been, even if I didn't need him. I couldn't help thinking about it though. Even though it was none of my business.

I had always assumed that people, well, like him, had something fundamentally wrong with them. At least, that's what I'd always heard. I certainly couldn't imagine that. Even aside from the fact that I would have to be some kind of huge hypocrite to come down on someone else for being abnormal, though, I just couldn't picture him as some kind of real deviant. He was irritating. He drove me crazy. He was immature. He was naive. He wasn't nearly as careful as he should be, not about staying in the car or avoiding--just for example--serial bombers. He was willing to accept some of the weirdest, flakiest, new-age bullshit as gospel.

But he wasn't... he wasn't perverted or evil or, or, or wrong.

Over dinner he asked about how I did yesterday with the senses under combat conditions. Of course, he didn't use the phrase 'combat conditions.' It was one of the most thorough debriefings of my entire life--although naturally he didn't say 'debriefing' either. He led me through the entire afternoon, eliciting details about every step and even getting me to remember things that had already slipped my mind or that I didn't even realize I had noticed.

Locating people by scent interested him immediately. "Jim, we have to test you, see how many popular perfumes and aftershaves you can identify by name. Then we'll start on the obscure ones."

"Oh, come on."

"Jim, this will be at least as useful for you as it is for me! Personal hygiene products can be a clue, can't they? Your memory for scents is amazing. Let's put that to work for you. Hmmm. Also, I'd like to see just how many you can identify without giving your nose a break. On the average person, sense of smell starts to get overwhelmed at about three consecutive odors--that's why people carry coffee beans when they go perfume shopping. But you only use the beans every five or six consecutive odors. I'm betting you could go even longer with practice."

Jim, one week. One week, and I promise, I promise, we'll be out of your hair. Come on. One week, man.

Considering how freaked out I was initially, it was amazing how quickly I got to take Sandburg for granted, how soon I found things much more important to get upset about than who he slept with. The second day he was with me in the field, a contact we were going to meet in the warehouse district was killed. An old friend of mine. His mother was a woman I'd grown up calling 'Aunt Sue' and I had to face her at the funeral.

For the next couple of weeks I was a mess. Crazier than I was willing to admit, and even I knew I was out of control. I nearly fell apart. I broke rules right and left. I did stupid shit. When I came back to myself, there was Sandburg, watching me sympathetically, drilling me on popular commercial perfumes, asking to borrow a video camera.

In retrospect, I had to wonder if he was some kind of nut, sticking with me through all of that. Let's face it, what kind of nut wanted to video tape a monkey--excuse me, 'Barbary ape'--watching television?

I don't know what I was thinking when I agreed to adopt Sandburg and his monkey. I must have been going soft. When Simon asked about it I said, "It seemed like a good idea at the time," but that was a lie. It seemed like a horrible idea. Not that Sandburg was a bad guy, or that he wasn't fun. He was just some kind of involuntary vortex of chaos.

But I didn't even throw them out when Larry reappeared and trashed my place for the second time. We rushed to the loft, popped him back in his cage, and spent twenty minutes sweeping up broken glass and spilled apple juice before heading back to our dinner appointment with Earl and his grandmother. Which is when I got details about how Sandburg spent his day. Instead of combing the streets for his monkey--or even tagging along after me taking notes--he had stayed in the projects to form an impromptu neighborhood watch--or possibly a renters' association--and faced down the gang members who came to kidnap Miss Lacroix.

I wasn't even surprised, really. But after that I couldn't just demand he take Larry back to the primate lab. Well, I could have. But I didn't. We kept Larry for another two days, for most of which he and Blair watched WWII and Lassie movies.

The day after Larry left, Sandburg completely took over my home.

I came home to find everything different. He changed out all the light bulbs for lower-wattage, 'soft' coated ones. The dish soap became biodegradable. He threw out the laundry soap and put in something obscure and hypo-allergenic. He hung a tapestry on one wall--to absorb sound, he said. I made him take it down. He had vacuumed everything and set little containers of baking soda in every corner. He changed my bed and put on the good sheets, which was just--just--just way too personal. He had replaced my pillows.

He took over, changed everything, and the only thing that kept me from killing him was the knowledge that he had meant well. He had.

Dinner involved tofu and a lecture on cholesterol. I smiled politely and thanked him, and counted the days till he would be gone. There weren't many. I was counting them again as I got into bed and noticed that it didn't smell funny. And didn't itch.

OK, it's eerie to have someone you've known less than a month move into your place and mess with your stuff and take over. It's weirder to lie there realizing that he knows you better than you do.

I lay there in the darkness, listening to him read in the little room below me. I didn't want anyone to know me as well as it seemed Sandburg did.

He couldn't have the money to buy me pillows and light bulbs. Shit. His house had just gone up in a spectacular explosion. He had to be saving for a security deposit. Did he even own a functional pillow right now?

If he hadn't been here, would I have ever have thought to get new pillows? Or would I just have gotten used to the smell. Eventually.

The next morning he made breakfast again. There was scrambled eggs and toast and orange juice. "This is a nice gesture here, Chief," I said as I sat down. "But if you're going to stay, you're going to have to stop messing with the eggs."

My brilliant anthropologist looked up from pouring the orange juice and grunted, "Huh?"

"I'd say the ratio of whites to yolks is about three to one. Don't give me that innocent look, Sandburg. Did you think I wouldn't notice? My cholesterol is fine; I get a physical once a year. So leave the eggs alone."

"Sure." He was looking at me through narrowed eyes. "OK. Leave the eggs alone. Is there anything else?"

"Yeah. No more flushing the john in the middle of the night. The pipes set up this weird resonance that goes on for ten minutes when nobody else is using water. It's like fingernails on a blackboard."

"OK..."

"Also, your taste in music stinks. Don't play it when I can hear it."

"That's not fair. You hear everything."

True, but irrelevant, so I ignored it. "You'll have to get a better bed. Did the one from the warehouse make it?"

"Um, no. Almost nothing did." He was staring at me, his food untouched on his plate.

"What?" I said.

"Nothing. Nothing. Thanks, Jim."

"And stop leaving your shoes in the living room. In fact, you're going to have to get some odor eaters."

Sandburg gave a short, surprised laugh. "Oh, come on. You're kidding."

"My first choice would be new sneakers entirely, but that's probably too much to ask."

He fought down the smile and said too meekly, "OK. Odor eaters. You've got it."

After work he took me shopping for sheets ("The highest thread-count you can afford. Believe me, it's worth it.") and personal hygiene products ("We can go either hypo-allergenic or herbal, here. I think you're going to have to try some samples before you make up your mind.")

Damn. I really wanted to get you back to the lab, see if we could study this. You know, you could take some more of that cold stuff in a controlled environment, of course.

OK.

Great!

Under one condition. You hang underneath a speeding train while I spend the night handcuffed to Isabel, huh?

Over breakfast I got Simon telling stories about prisoner transports and protected witnesses. He'd been on the force twenty years, and he had a river of stories, many funny, a few hair-raising. I didn't often see Simon socially; our relationship was mostly professional, which he had to remember every time I turned in an expense report for another totaled car. But he was also very good to me; he was sticking with me through this weird sentinel shit. He did his best to keep my butt covered and he didn't even complain any more about Sandburg.

Excuses aside, I knew what it felt like to sign your divorce papers. So we ordered pancakes and sausage and biscuits and fried apples and sweet rolls, and I kept Simon talking about the civilians from hell. Which was good, because my head was pounding and my throat burned and I couldn't have kept the conversation going to save my life. Sandburg, usually good for distracting (if not downright disgusting, frightening, or irrelevant) conversation, just sat there quietly and picked at his apples.

"So they march straight up to the front door, no idea we've already seen them. Miller--you remember Miller? He's over in ninth precinct now. Burglary. Anyway, he picks up the witness, I pick up her dog, and we beat it out the back door. We can't get to our car--it's out front, so we take her car. Which breaks down four blocks later."

I laughed. "You're kidding."

"Could I make this up? So there we are, me, Miller, a ninety-year old mob witness who persists on calling us 'you two nice Colored boys,' and a terrier, broken down on Grand Avenue--which was, at the time, an even worse neighborhood than it is now."

"How far away was backup?"

"Backup? No radio in her car, and nobody had cell phones then."

"Oh. Yeah. Simon. I'm going to need a new phone."

"Dare I ask what happened to the last one?"

"I dropped it while I was hanging from the bottom of the train."

Simon snorted. "Who were you trying to call from the bottom of a train?"

"I was answering it. Which makes it your fault, since it was probably you on the other end."

Simon was laughing openly now. "Me? You're the hot-shot trapeze artist who thought he could get the phone while, what? Hanging upside down?"

When he put it that way, I had to laugh too.

Abruptly, Sandburg shoved back his chair. "Excuse me," he mumbled and made a bee-line for the restroom.

"What's with him?" Simon asked.

"I don't know." But I did. I could hear Sandburg. He was losing his breakfast into the john. "Maybe he's catching my cold." I glanced after him. "I'm gonna go check on him."

I was aware of Simon's puzzled frown as I followed Sandburg's path across the restaurant, but what could I say?

He was still throwing up when I entered the restroom, even though he was down to dry heaves by that point. "Sandburg? You OK?"

Which was dumb, because of course he couldn't answer me. I cranked down a large wad of coarse, brown paper towel and soaked it, handing it to him through the stall door he hadn't had a chance to close. He took it. I stepped back and waited.

Soon he stopped and wiped his face and called softly, "I'm fine, Jim. Go back to breakfast."

I didn't. I waited till he came out, pale and red-eyed and miserable. "Jim, I'm fine. I'm just getting your cold. I told you those germs had a life of their own."

I didn't answer, just caught him by the shoulders and pulled him to a stop in front of me. "You don't smell sick."

"Something I ate then--" He caught my eye and stopped. As though I would let him eat something that didn't smell right. "Look, I can handle it, OK? It just--I just lost it a little, but I'm fine. I can do this. You have nothing to worry about."

"That's good to hear. Now what shouldn't I be worried about?"

"I'm just a little stressed out. The whole cop-thing got to me. But it's nothing. I can handle it."

Puking his guts out in an IHOP restroom was nothing? But it didn't make sense. "Stressed out? From last night? Blair, last night was no big deal. You've seen worse stuff than that. I mean, yeah, we had a near miss with the train, but..." But we had had harder days than this. Getting kidnapped by Kincaid, for example. Facing down a street gang with a group of elderly civilians. Shit, less than two weeks ago he'd been kidnapped and drugged by a psychotic serial killer. That had been bad, and he'd reacted pretty much the way you'd expect--while we waited for backup and the EMTs, he'd tried to cling to me. He was weak from the drug, scared, disoriented and a little weepy. Exactly what you'd expect; that had been one hell of a ride. Compared to that, last night was a walk in the park. Even then, even after Lash, Blair hadn't smelled this devastated. He hadn't gone completely to pieces. "What is the matter with you? An hour ago you were making jokes! You were trying to pick up girls! Sandburg--"

"What's the matter with me? You almost got killed. They threw you off a train, you son of a bitch! I thought--" He broke free and fled back into the toilet, retching again.

I went and told Simon that Sandburg was sick and I was taking him home. It was either that or tell him that the kid had lost his mind, because I sure as hell wasn't going to tell him Sandburg was in love with me.

Simon was polite and understanding. I collected my nauseated and depressed partner and we went home. He tried to make conversation in the truck, acted like nothing was wrong. My head hurt and my throat hurt and I had no idea what to say anyway, so I let him talk. At home, to my relief, he pled exhaustion and retreated into his room. I drank half a bottle of orange juice and went to bed myself.

*There's a guy named Hector Carasco, who we suspect supplied the weapons for that heist. If I'm right, Carasco's the biggest illegal arms dealer in the northwest. *

So you need some major-league backup, right?

Well, actually, his daughter is a student here. We need you to check her out.

I was very, very glad when Maya Carasco left. It didn't undo my mistake, but it kept it from getting any worse. I'd introduced Blair to a beautiful, exotic, intelligent, kind, loyal, innocent young woman and turned him loose. Even as I pointed her out, I knew it would be a disaster. Of course Sandburg would tackle this with the uninhibited enthusiasm he brought to everything. Of course he would see only her best qualities, her most attractive potentials.

Not the danger.

Not her faults.

Not the way this had to end.

I knew it was a mistake even while I was doing it, and even then it was too late. If I had been thinking of anything besides the case, I might have gotten a clue before I--

But I didn't stop to think. Or rather, I just thought that he was charming and attentive and unthreatening. A nice guy who knew how to talk to girls. That he wanted to help.

It didn't relieve my conscience much to know that she had never endangered Blair deliberately. Innocent to the point of stupidity. Optimistic to the point of obliviousness. Loyal to the point of unquestioning, blissful, ignorance. But Blair had never noticed that. Oh, no. Too innocent and optimistic and loyal himself, he had ferreted out the best parts of her and lost his heart to them.

He'd almost gotten killed, but of course he didn't blame Maya for that. She was innocent. To blame her would be unfair. In all of this he was scrupulously fair. The little tramp didn't even succeed in seducing him. Despite his tendency to treat sex as some kind of sport, he wouldn't sleep with students, research subjects, professors, or, apparently, police suspects.

If Blair had behaved badly in this--been indiscrete, been deceived, broken the rules, something, then I could be angry with him. But the truth was, aside from falling for a beautiful girl who was exotic, intelligent, kind, loyal, and innocent, I couldn't fault him. He gave away his heart so easily, and for so little. He seemed to have room in it for everyone. How could I be angry at him for that?

He was embarrassed. Embarrassed about losing his objectivity, embarrassed about not seeing through her father at their single meeting, embarrassed about missing her. For days he walked around pretending to be normal, and all I could think to do was pretend not to notice.

He was still showing enthusiasm for the sentinel thing, though, so I let him devise more elaborate tests. The weather was warmer; we spent what would have been a very pleasant and sunny afternoon playing checkers in the park while one tape recorder played opera at about ten decibels, another played haunted house sound effects and every five minutes an alarm went off, signaling Sandburg to open a baggie holding an index card soaked in patchouli or ammonia or dog shit. But it seemed to make him happy.

The next evening I came home to find him buried in text books and paper, turning the phone over and over in his hand. "What's all this?" I asked.

"Finishing my final exam." He shook his head. "I'm such a slacker. Half this thing's going to be scan-o-matic." But he was still looking at the phone, frowning.

"How will they ever forgive you."

"Heh. Um. Jim."

"Yeah?"

"My div chair just called. The prof they had teaching anthro of religion for summer school just bailed. Some kind of illness. Since I put myself on the list to teach last fall, they're offering it to me."

"You said you weren't teaching summer school." I was disappointed. I had expected to have Sandburg pretty much to myself this summer, full time in the field with me.

"I wasn't expecting to."

"Do you have to take the class?"

"Well, I'm not required to, but I signed up in the first place because I needed the money, and I--"

"Are you short?"

"No, no. I'm OK. But, well, if you wanted me to move out anytime soon, well, summer school money would make that a lot easier. So I sort of need to know. You know. What you have in mind."

"If that's all it is, forget it. You can stay here."

"Are you sure, Jim? I mean, this is your place--"

"Look, if you want the job, take it. But you don't need to be scraping up money so you can hurry and move."

He softened slightly. "Thanks, man."

I frowned. "Forget it, Sandburg. It's been really, you know, convenient, having you on call twenty-four hours. You're doing me the favor by staying."

He laughed. "Yeah, right. I'm sure that completely makes up for the smell of my sneakers."

"Yeah, speaking of that. You need to try another brand of deodorizer."

He laughed tolerantly and began to stack up the books. "I can't believe the semester is almost over. It only seemed to last forever."

"I thought you had about three more weeks."

"Well, yeah, officially. But this year I won the lottery--my final is the first slot, on the first day of the finals schedule. I have forty-eight hours after that to get them scored and the grades turned in and that is it, man, I am free as bird."

"Great."

"Hey, we ought to celebrate. My last regular class is this week. What do you say we go out to celebrate, maybe pick up some girls, do a little cruising?"

Cruising? Were we in high school? But as little as I wanted to go to the kind of hang-out Sandburg would like, this was the most animation I'd seen out of him since the Carasco girl found out he was working with the cops, and I wanted to encourage it. "Sure. But I pick the place." Someplace without loud music and not particularly likely to be raided while we were there.

His eyes narrowed, as though he were trying to measure just how much of an old fuddy-duddy I might be, but at last he nodded slowly. "Hmmm. The natural habitat. That could work. You're on!"

Sandburg's last class was on Thursday, so Thursday night we met at this nice little pub on South Aster. Blair conceded that it "wasn't too shabby." We were early, it was quiet.

Sandburg pounced on the first two girls to come in. Of course. He invited them to sit with us and turned on the charm, throwing himself into the hunt with everything but a "tally ho." He was interesting, attentive, funny, as always having something in common with everyone. He was even generous; he talked me up like I was some kind of hero. Flattering, but it had me worried; if he succeeded in hooking them, we might be stuck seeing them again. Frankly, they were dull enough to make one evening with them more than I wanted.

But the worst case scenario.... The smaller one with the high-pitched laugh was looking at me like I was good enough to eat. If she asked me to take her home--

It was almost ironic. I was supposed to be thinking of nothing but getting in her pants. But my God! She was wearing seven different perfumed personal hygiene products. I could see the make-up flaking off her face, and sitting this close to her hair spray was making my eyes sting. The idea of touching her was scary--being so close to a stranger, feeling her against my skin, breathing her, allowing her access to my body. If I put my arms around her, would I get her sweat all over me? Would it burn like acid? Or spread over my skin like an oil sheen until I suffocated like the woman in that Bond movie?

Who was I kidding? It didn't matter how well I knew a woman or how much I wanted her. I couldn't bring her home. What if my senses spiked while we were together, or, God forbid, if I zoned out? Beverly and I hadn't even made it past the couch, and still there'd been a near miss. Living with these senses was hard enough without trying to explain them to a woman whose throes of passion have been interrupted by--

I jumped up, trying not to look like I was fleeing. Sandburg followed me, naturally. "Where are you going, man? What's the problem?"

"You didn't have to pounce on the first two girls who smiled at you here." He wasn't going to buy it. He was going to ask me what was wrong, he was going to ask me to 'share.' God. I wanted to go home and get quietly drunk and try not to think about the fact that I was never going to have sex again as long as I lived.

"Come on, Jim. That's the way it's done, you know. You just got to--hit it, you know." He smiled at me, open and innocent and completely unconcerned. I hated him.

"Sandburg, I'm just not really good at this kind of stuff, you know."

"Just, just relax, man. Take it easy. The important thing is just roll with it." His eyes were alight with the joy of the hunt. I really, really hated him.

Then the most beautiful woman I had ever seen glided into the bar and brushed against me. My heart pounded and a sudden erection strained against my jeans. I forgot that I hated Sandburg. I forgot that I had ever been afraid of anything, except that That Woman wouldn't talk to me. Briefly, her fathomless eyes met mine, and I managed to choke out "Excuse me." It was entirely inadequate. I wished I could sing.

"Just roll with it. Oh, man!" Sandburg was chuckling, looking after her with hungry eyes, practically drooling--but even as I considered killing him, he faded into the background. All of my senses were drawn toward the goddess seated by the bar.

I can say this for the next few days that followed: when it was over I knew I was still capable of having sex. The whole time I'd been around Laura I was so high on pheromones I forgot to be anxious about zone-outs or spikes or my newfound revulsion to strangers' bodies.

The sex was incredible. Dizzying and exhausting, potent beyond anything I'd ever imagined. Better than the sex was the feeling: excitement and security; certain and blessed; accepted and loved. Life had a meaning, my destiny was clear, she knew me, she fit me.

And all of it was a lie. The only thing worse than my own shame (Shouldn't I have known better? How could I be so gullible, so stupid?) was Sandburg's sympathy. Gloating, I could have taken that, superiority or amusement... but he just kept watching me with sad eyes and reassuring me that it hadn't been my fault.

When he suggested getting away as soon as he was done with his class I resisted at first--even though it sounded like a wonderful idea--because I didn't want either my researcher or my boss to know I wasn't one hundred per cent on top of things. But he kept pushing, and I gave in.

You know, next time we go away for a little peace and quiet, I'm going to choose the place.

OK. Where?

I don't know. Uh, I'm thinking a little contrast would be nice. Maybe Vegas.

Sin City? All right, great, but don't tell the monks that.

We finally got out of St. Sebastian's at around six o'clock. Brother Jeremy didn't ask us to stay and I wouldn't have anyway; the whole place smelled like smoke and blood and gunfire. Besides, the monks had had a pretty rough time, they needed to turn inward for a while, close ranks and sort things out. As we moved our things from the bus to the truck, I called to Sandburg, "Where's the map?"

"Lost already?"

"Nah. We've got four days left. What say you plot us the route to Vegas?"

He laughed. "Sure, Jim. I'm up for a road trip." But when we got in, he didn't dig out the map. He just watched me narrowly with that same, sad look he'd had since telling me my girlfriend was our felon.

"What?" I demanded. Then, "I'm not ready for Las Vegas, am I?"

He shook his head sadly. "Not yet. Someday, but right now you'd just be miserable."

I took a deep breath. "Home?"

"Well, let's see. Maybe. Gimme your cell phone." He dug the spare battery out of the glove box and started making calls. By time we got to the ramp for I 5 he had reservations for us at a little hotel in Ashford, about a mile from Mt. Rainier National Park. "That OK?" he asked hopefully.

"That's great. How did you manage it?"

"On a week day? Off season? It's not as hard as you'd think. I only had to try five places."

"Thanks. Say, I don't suppose they have a golf course?"

We got in a little after dark. The hotel was an old-fashioned, two story wooden building. Quaint. Homey. We had two rooms across the hall. After unloading the truck, we slipped back out for dinner. Sandburg was generous; he was still coddling me, so we went to a steak house and he didn't even comment when I got extra sour cream for my potato.

After his second glass of wine, Sandburg got, well, maudlin. He went on and on about Brother Marcus and the monastery. Mostly, he talked about this last case, but a few times he talked about earlier visits to Saint Sebastian's. "I'm the reason they have a 'no roller skates' rule, you know," he added. "They didn't even think of that before me."

"You roller skate?"

"No. Not at all." He folded over, giggling.

We went to bed early. I'd had murder investigations more relaxing than this vacation so far. But as tired as I was, I lay awake in the king-sized bed tracing minute cracks in the ceiling. Not exactly wired. Unsettled, maybe.

Something was missing. Not traffic noise--there was none of that at the monastery and I hadn't really noticed. Something though. I tried to breathe and relax, but I found myself straining to hear--

Aw. Nuts. It was Sandburg. I hadn't been out of his sight in days. For the last two nights, he'd slept almost within touching distance. His smell, his heartbeat had saturated everything. I could still barely hear him, going "hmmmm" to himself every few minutes and turning the page. The man was just across the hall. But it was too far away. It was an old building, with solid walls and wide hallways. I couldn't hear the soft hum of blood in his veins, couldn't smell him on anything but my dirty clothes in the bathroom. The room seemed empty and cold and I was wide awake.

Sandburg was my 'guide' in this, Brackett had said. He'd acted as though I couldn't function without Blair. God, yes, in the field, yes, it was so much easier with Blair than without him. When things were bad, nothing, nothing got me sane and calmed and focused as well as he could just by touching me.

But not to be able to sleep in a strange place just because across the hall was too far away?

I toughed it out another half hour before giving in. I threw on a bath robe and headed across the hall to knock on his door. He peeked out, shut the door, undid the chain, and opened the door again. "Jim? Man, you OK? What's up?"

"I can't sleep," I muttered, suddenly embarrassed, wondering how I was going to explain.

He just frowned thoughtfully and asked, "Anything in specific? Do you feel all right? Oh, is it the sheets? Because I have the emergency sheets still packed here somewhere."

"You brought sheets?"

"Well, yeah, just in case. You need them?"

"I don't need my own sheets! I've slept on cots. I've slept in cars. I've slept on the ground, fully clothed, while--"

"Yeah, yeah. Big, bad soldier." Sandburg put an arm around my waist and led me back to my room.

"Hey!"

"Jim. Come on. It's not a big deal. You're in a strange place, you're a little tense." He shoved me down onto the bed and pulled up the covers. "It's not like this has even been much of a vacation. Yeah, just close your eyes. How about a couple of deep breaths...." One of his hands was

still on my shoulder, warm and reassuring through my tee-shirt. "Just relax. You're OK."

"I don't need my own sheets."

"Of course not. Breathe."

I didn't hear him leave, but when I woke up it was morning and he was sound asleep across the hall.

We spent the next three days hiking in the national park, spotting new flowers and baby animals, and eating picnic lunches beside swollen streams. It was the best vacation I ever had. The headache that had been coming and going for over a month faded away completely. I even managed to stop waiting for the next murder or mysterious stranger or natural disaster to show up.

This is Janet from Dr. Stoddard's office. Dr. Stoddard needs a final answer about Borneo. If you're still interested, please call us at 555- 4678.

*I guess you should call him back. *

*Well, actually, I've already decided not to go. This sentinel thing--You know, it's more than just a research project. Uh. It's about friendship. I just didn't get it before. *

So he'd caught on. I'd wondered if he would.

I'd wondered what would happen first--if he'd figure out he had a crush on me or if his attention span would give out and he'd move on to something else exciting and special and unique. For now, though, it looked like he was staying.

Somehow, that almost scared me as much as the idea of him leaving.

Or was it just everything at this moment that was scaring me? The damn cat had followed me home. It was pacing up in my bedroom, watching me. As good as Blair was, there wasn't a damn thing he could do about that. How would I even ask? I mean really, what do you say? Hey, Chief, I'm having hallucinations? Or maybe, I feel like I'm falling and I don't know what to do?

He was on the phone, arguing with some administrator over at Rainier. We'd been gone for over a week; apparently he'd missed some kind of spring orientation. His department wasn't pleased, although Blair claimed it wasn't really a problem. "It's totally bogus. Orientation? I've been doing this for three years, I think I'm 'oriented' already. They just want universal attendance to show how gung ho we all are."

I did laundry. I ate dinner. All we had that hadn't gone bad besides beer was ice cream and microwave popcorn, but if you eat it in the evening, it's dinner. I took a shower and got most of the airplane smell off.

Sandburg puttered unhurriedly around the place, as content and serene as a duck on a lake. Why shouldn't he be? Simon and Daryl were fine. The villagers were free. He had survived his first solo skydive. I was on line and functioning normally. All was right with the world.

At ten he smiled at me and called it an early night. I went to bed not long after. I wasn't eager to get to sleep, but I didn't want to be rattling around awake by myself, either.

I couldn't get comfortable. The bed was too soft. The air was too cool. The sheets were too binding. To be expected, surely; I'd done a lot of traveling lately. Naturally things seemed a little off.

I breathed in and tried to relax. Everything was fine. I was home.

It didn't smell like home. There should be wood smoke. The damp rich smell of the ground. The tang of bodies. It was all wrong.

I listened outward, seeking danger or some reassurance that there wasn't any. The whisper of tires on the street, one car and then another. Wind against the windows. A soft tone now and then, tiny reverberations in the pipes.

No children whispering. No small animals checking out the refuse heap or nesting in the roofing. No Kichta arguing with his wife. No old Malnu snoring and wheezing two huts over.

I sat bolt upright, sweating. What the hell was that? Not the village where we'd found Kimberly and the children. That place had sounded like crying children, had smelled like spilled food that wasn't cleaned up. I hadn't had the senses in the village, not at first. It wasn't so vivid--

Incacha, laughing. The smell of fermented yucca.

No. No.

Reischer's "logging" camp, I reminded myself desperately. Reischer's drug lab. Kimberly Ashe, a graduate student, like Sandburg. Sandburg. He and I parachuted in, looking for Simon and Daryl. We found the village Reischer had raided. We found the site where Simon's helicopter went down. It smelled of burnt plastic and nylon and...

Fire. Gunpowder. Blood.

No. Please. Simon's wreck, Simon's, not--

Mine.

Blood and gunfire.

Then it was all quiet. Pigeons roosting near the skylight. The hamster downstairs running in its wheel. Blair turning over in his sleep.

Aw, fuck. Flashbacks. Full blown hallucinations.

I started to get up and froze, not trusting this sudden silence. We might not have gotten them all. It was so easy to hide in the jungle. They could still be waiting.

But Baker had been hit. I'd heard it. I had to get to him--

"Jim? Jim, what is it? What's wrong?"

Sandburg?

"Jim? Jim?" Hands on my shoulders. Hands on my face. "Are you sick? Is it your senses? Are you spiking?" Hands over my ears. They didn't stop the sound of shooting, of shouting. Blair, help me.

"Jim, talk to me. Tell me what's wrong. What do you need?"

I want to go home.

"Jim, you are home. We're home."

Was I talking? Or was he just reading my mind? God, hallucinating and--Blair can't see this. He can't--

Baker! Report, damn it. Where are you?

"Jim. Breathe. In. And out." Sandburg shook me, hard. "You're home. You're safe. We're home."

"M-make it stop."

"Oh, Jim." His arms, tight around me, the smell of him strong and incontrovertible proof of where I was. "Talk to me. Tell me what's happening."

"No. No. Make it stop. Make it stop."

"Jim, they're just memories. They can't hurt you. It's over."

"They're dead."

"It was seven years ago. It's over. It's just memories now."

"Please. Make it stop."

"Jim, if you can't make it stop anymore... I just don't think I can. The memories are coming up, but that's OK. It's OK to remember. It's all over, now, it can't hurt you. Over. So, so long ago, just memories."

But I had remembered. I could remember the debriefing--an endless, flat monologue I'd repeated over and over. My detailed report, colorless and factual, like words on paper. I'd told it over and over, in the too bright rooms that smelled like sweat and tin and gun oil and paper. The facts of my mission, I'd kept them. Remembering them was nothing like this.

"The intel was bad." Words I'd said over and over. "We came down right in the middle of the guerrillas." Only half my team was on the ground when they struck. They had rockets. We lost the chopper--I lost three men--in less than a second. "The area was supposed to be clear. The intel was bad." They opened fire, trying to clean up the rest of us.

"Listen, it's not such a surprise that you're remembering now. In Peru--all the smells must have been the same and the sounds and the food. It stirred things up in your subconscious, and now that Simon's safe and you're not running on adrenaline anymore, it's just all coming up again."

Obviously he was right. So? What good was that going to do me? I was losing my mind. I was losing everything. I could feel the weapon in my hands, feel the return fire slam into the fallen tree I was using for cover. Knowing exactly why I was going crazy wasn't going to stop me from being destroyed.

"But it's just memories. It's all over. You grieved for those men. You finished their mission. You came home. Jim. You made it home."

"Help me."

"Don't try to fight it. Just let it flow through you. It'll pass. Just let it go."

"I can't." I couldn't recognize my own voice.

"You can, you can. This is just a memory. It can't hurt you. Just breathe through it and let it go. Where are you, Jim? What are you seeing?"

I was seeing Sarris, with four bullets in him, one in his neck. "Don't. Please. Help me."

"You've already survived the real thing. It's over. It's safe to remember."

"Blair, please--"

He was silent for a moment, and I was afraid, suddenly, that he was angry. I couldn't do what he asked; maybe he would leave. But he grasped my head and moved it gently sideways. "Jim, open your eyes. Can you see me?"

I nodded.

"How well?"

"I--see you--I see you fine."

"Count my eyelashes. Out loud for me, so I can hear it."

A laugh that wrenched and hurt like a sob slipped out of me.

"I'm serious here. You miss one and I'll make you start over."

"They're wet," I whispered, lifting one hand to his face. "They're sticking together."

"I did it on purpose. To make you work for it. Count."

"One, two...."

"Jim. Pay attention."

"The trees... smelled the same." Blair's face blurred, his eyes disappearing in a soft haze. "They smelled just the same."

He wiped my eyes with his thumbs. "Start again. Pay attention."

"One, two, three, four...." The line of curved hairs blurred again, this time with water from Blair's eye. "Don't cheat," I managed. "Five, six."

I had to start over again and again, even though I could sometimes count through the vivid flashes of grief and fear and homesickness. My friends. Some of them had been my friends. It wasn't that I'd forgotten them. Not really. But I hadn't hurt for them. Hadn't dwelled on how I missed them, how I feared for them, trying to get by in a country ground down by war. Old Malnu and his sons, who'd been displaced Aymara, not Chopec at all. Incacha, my teacher. I lost the count, stuttered, and began again. Nanto and Moi, who'd been half-brothers. "They were so serious until you got them drunk, and then they'd play practical jokes."

"Jim, pay attention."

Nanto got badly hurt during a raid we made on an insurgent camp at the edge of our territory. I'd forgotten that until just now. He had had a thigh wound that got infected. My stomach knotted at the memory of the smell. Nanto was still ill when I was relieved. I had no idea what had happened to him, whether or not he'd lived.

"Jim? Stay with me, buddy."

I was supposed to be counting. Instead, I lowered my head to his shoulder and cried. I clung to him, for warmth as much as for the solidity and safety. I was cold to the bone. He sighed under me and murmured in my ear.

When I pulled away, he released me slowly. I was still cold, and I felt like hell. The clock beside the bed said 3:24.

"Jim? You OK? Can you talk to me?" I didn't want to; what could I say? How could I explain any of this?

"Jim? Are you here with me?"

Oh. "Yeah."

"Are your senses giving you trouble?"

"No," I said, because I didn't want to think about the possibility that they might.

"You're shaking. Are you cold?"

"Yeah."

He guided me down to the pillow, then pulled up the blanket and the comforter. "That going to be enough?"

I was never going to be warm enough.

"Jim, will you breathe for me? Nice and slow." A hand on my forehead, a hand on my chest. "Is it OK, Jim? Can you handle being touched?"

A tear leaked out and slid down into my ear. The wet line felt icy cold.

"Easy, Jim. Breathe for me."

So I breathed, letting my stomach rise and fall, obeying when he softly prompted, "Slower, a little slower...." Eventually, I fell asleep.

It was after one the next afternoon when I woke up. I was unsteady and stiff as I climbed to my feet. He heard me almost at once, calling very softly, "You OK?"

"Fine," I said. But I froze. I couldn't go down stairs to face him. I didn't want to look into his eyes. It turned out Dad had been right all along--I just couldn't cut it. Now Sandburg knew it.

It was almost funny, how wrong I'd been about Sandburg. I'd thought he was just a kid, kept innocent and ignorant long past actual childhood in his university that taught people that they knew everything. Liberal-hippie-pacifist-bookworm. I almost had to laugh. He was all of that. But where he should have broken, where all that psychobabble should have been crumbled by real life--

Instead that child had stood up to Kincaid without flinching--neutralized two of his men and taken the helicopter pilot and the liberated convicts prisoner. He'd kept it together when he was captured by Lash--completely helpless except for his mouth, but even with just that, he'd still fought. He'd looked a serial killer in the eye and hadn't backed down.

If it had been Blair in Peru and not me, he wouldn't have turned into a basket case. Or rather, he would have been a healthy, unrepressed basket case. He would have faced his horrors and coped and fucking processed them. You wouldn't have found Sandburg five or six years later mixing up the past and the present, crying like a baby, unable to make it through the night without someone holding his hand.

Yesterday Blair had been enamored with me. Yesterday I had been his hero, his sentinel, the warrior who went after Simon and Daryl and brought them back. His holy grail. But now he knew I wasn't what he hoped. Now he knew I couldn't cut it.

"Jim?" He was coming up the stairs behind me, keeping his voice down the way he did when he was worried about my senses.

"I'm. OK. I'll be right down. We're late getting in."

"I, uh, I called in, actually." He came around the bed and squatted beside me. "Told them you'd picked up a bug in South America and would probably need another day or two." After a moment, he added, "The acting captain said to stay away anyway. They've got a little press. I asked Simon, to, um, take up as much of the exposure as he could. I figured you could do without the media attention. Um, it should all settle down in a few days."

I glanced up. He was watching me anxiously. Shit, he still wasn't sure I wasn't falling apart.

"Anyway," he added almost defensively, "It wasn't quite a lie. You should get checked out. We didn't have time to take anything beforehand. And I had some, well, bowel problems this morning. Can't vaccinate for that. So. You might--" He sounded very tentative, and I realized that he wasn't unsure of my sanity, he just thought I might be annoyed.

I caught his wrist and pulled him down in front of me. I sniffed slowly over him, starting with the top of his head. Incacha had taught me the smells of illness in the jungle. I could smell his physical distress, hear his bowels knotting. But he wasn't sick. "Dietary change," I whispered. "All that strange food, the spicy stuff when we got back to the city. Then all that greasy crap you ate at the airport between planes. I'm sorry, Chief. We should have walked up to terminal C for sandwiches after all." Daryl and Simon had wanted hamburgers, and I'd sided with them.

"So--wait! You can tell? You can, what? Hear bacteria or parasites or whatever?" He was grinning up at me, eager and excited. "This is so amazing! We have got to test this--" He stopped, reining himself in with effort. "Sorry. Sorry. You're probably not feeling real great right now."

"I'm fine," I said quickly.

"Oh, yeah. I know. But still, it would be OK. I mean, if you weren't fine. You don't have to do this overnight."

I didn't? Was he sure? "How about some breakfast?"

"Great. Except all we have is coffee and dried fruit. Well, cereal, but no milk. And homemade granola, but it's stale and you wouldn't eat it anyway. So I think we're going to have to eat out."

"Right. Well, since we have the day off, we can go shopping after we eat. Very convenient. Just, um, let me get dressed."

"Sure. I'll wait downstairs."

Jim, Blair says that when Indian women used to give birth to a baby, they'd eat the...the...what is it called?

The placenta.

Yeah. Is he lying to me?

I don't think so. Usually, if Blair says something, it's true.

I get him in and out of Peru with hardly a scratch on him, and barely a week after we get back he gets a concussion. The ER hadn't let me take him home until after nine am--it had been after dawn before we could leave the scene, and the ER had been busy. I sent Sandburg to bed and set my watch to go off hourly, so I could wake him and make sure he hadn't gone into a coma or anything while he was asleep.

Each time I woke him, he grumbled and turned over, calling me progressively more unflattering names. The fourth time I disturbed him he changed tactics. "Jim, I'm fine. I swear. I'm just tired. Please, please let me sleep."

"Chief, it's not like I have a choice here. You know I have to do it."

He grunted and covered his head.

"Look. Tomorrow we can do some testing, how bout that? We haven't done any taste thresholds lately. You up for it?"

One eye appeared. "Um. Look. About that. I don't think there'll be any more taste tests."

"Why not? Did I get down as far as they could measure?"

"Um. No. I sort of had a falling out with my food science guy."

I smiled slightly and Sandburg scowled. "What?"

"Sorry. Just wondering what you might have said about preservatives or whatever to get you blacklisted."

"It wasn't about food. It was sort of... personal."

"Oh." I was suddenly embarrassed, teasing Sandburg about having a fight with his friend. "Sorry."

"Nah, no big deal. It was pretty amiable. He just wanted a commitment, and I wasn't ready."

"Oh." Blair and the food science guy. "Oh."

"So. No more samples for a while. Sorry about that. But I can't just--"

"Well, no. I guess it would be awkward."

"We'll do something else, though. I'll think of something." He sighed and turned over, already asleep.

You know, you have a very good look, Detective -- solid, capable... but not dull. Tough, yet sensitive. If you'd only smile a little more often.

Except for the year I was dating Carolyn, that was the best summer I could remember having. Not the easiest, certainly. We had everything but a plague of locusts. First, the Brackly case came up again. All of that stuff about Jack. But even as sad as it was to find him four years later in a nameless grave--it could have been so much worse. Dead but still on the side of angels is better than alive but dirty, isn't it?

Then Simon got shot. The long weekend Sandburg and I had planned to spend on the river, we spent instead in a crappy little town trying to protect Simon from the police. Clean is definitely better than dirty. Somebody bleeding out--it's not like old blood at a crime scene. It makes a sound as it flows, a thick, soft trickle. The smell of living blood is different. It's hard to think, trying to blot all that out. It doesn't dial down at all.

Then Carolyn left. She came over one day after work to tell me that she'd gotten a better job offer in San Francisco and she'd decided to take it. I said I was sorry she was leaving. She said she wished me the best. Three weeks later she was gone. It was harder than I would have expected.

But most of the summer wasn't so bad. Active caseload, a couple really tough puzzles, the usual amount of petty shit. Still, the good guys always won in the end, or seemed to; my solve rate was better than 90%. Blair started getting good coffee for the break room. Simon was back at work in a couple of weeks. I could sleep at night. Made complicated chili on my days off. Let Sandburg drag me to some baseball games. We finally got to go canoeing. I even dated once or twice.

I wasn't looking forward to Sandburg going back to school and only being around the station part time. But even though he taught Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings, was supervising two undergraduate projects and was taking a graduate seminar on "ethnography in industrial society" he was still around quite a bit, he still made the late night stake-outs, he still tested me persistently. Point of interest: Apparently, I could read the numbers on the circle test thingy that are only supposed to be visible to people who are colorblind. Since I am obviously not color blind, Sandburg has no idea why I can do that or why it might be significant.

A couple weeks after the semester started, he adopted a working girl. Despite his baser tendencies, I think only a small part of his interest was prurient curiosity. Of course, Amber reacted to him the same way everybody else does. I mean, come on. Does she trust the big, bulky, highly trained cop with a gun? No. For help she comes to the little pacifist civilian. I didn't even find it surprising. Just kind of... amusing.

*Jim? What's going on? *

Water.

What?

I've never told you this. Hell, I never told anybody this. I've always had this thing about open water. Deep water.

What? Like a phobia?

The coast guard had jurisdiction, which meant most of the paperwork would be theirs. After they finished interviewing us, they shuffled me and Sandburg off on one of the smaller boats and sent us back to the mainland. We weren't traveling with either the prisoners or the rescued oil workers, which was fine, I'd had enough of both of them. But the boat we were on was small enough that I could feel us bouncing on the waves as we went. Up and down. Of course, the obvious answer to my rapidly evolving sea sickness was to get out of the little windowless room behind the galley they had given us and go up on deck instead. But I had seen enough open water for a while.

Sandburg had folded down a narrow bunk from the wall and gone to sleep like an innocent baby. The rocking boat didn't bother him at all. Really, he made sleeping look pretty attractive. But I was still wired on adrenaline. The coverall I had borrowed from some seaman itched. I was sea sick. The engine was setting up a vibration that gave me a headache.

Every time I closed my eyes I saw the oil rig going up in a fireball, with Sandburg aboard and half a mile of open water between me and him. I left him behind where he'd be safe. He was supposed to be safe.

There he was, sleeping, as calm and comfortable as if he were home in bed. As if he hadn't almost gotten blown to Kingdom Come a few hours ago.

After we got in to port, the station chief wanted to have a word with us. Then we had to wait till they could get us a ride back to the truck. It was afternoon by the time we got home.

I fled to the bathroom as soon as we walked in the door. I wanted a hot shower to clean all the--the foreign everything that seemed to cover every inch of my skin, all the way down to my soul, but the hot water was too much stimulation, and I was shivering from my tepid shower by the time I got out. Sandburg had left a clean pair of sweatpants and a tee shirt on the toilet seat. When I came out I found the table laid out with sandwiches, brown rice chips, and sodas. My stomach tightened.

"Ah. Chief. It's not that I don't appreciate this, but I'm still a little seasick here. I think I just want to go to bed."

He frowned and stalked over to me. "What's wrong with your arms?"

I looked down. I had a fine, sandpapery rash coming out all over me, but it was so pale I had assumed Sandburg couldn't see it. "It's nothing. Just a little reaction to the synthetics in that jumpsuit. Or the soap at the rig. Or the rubber wet suit. It itches a little."

"Or the crude oil? Or the chemical weapons?" He seized my arm and ran his hand over the irritated skin, narrowly watching my face to gauge my response. "Your stomach is upset? What else?"

"I'm fine."

"Ellison--"

"A headache. It's not bad. I get them all the time."

"It's been almost a month. Come on. We're going to a hospital."

"No. I'm fine. I just want to get some sleep."

"Jim, you could be in real trouble here!"

"And when they can't find a reason why because the amounts of the toxins involved are too small to actually measure, what are you going to tell them?"

"We'll tell them--something."

"What? Come on. I'm curious. How are you going to explain my condition? Some kind of genetic throwback? A headcase who gets poisoned by cold medicines and imaginary contaminants?"

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"It's one thing for me to be some kind of freak when we keep it between just you and me. But not everybody is as forgiving as you are. In the real world--" I stopped. Sandburg was staring at me in stunned silence. His eyes were icy and reflective and he smelled... kind of like the way Simon smelled when we had a serial killer loose. It was a little scary, actually, coming from Sandburg. I back-pedaled a bit. "Look. It isn't that I don't appreciate. I mean, I know. You've never. You've done a lot for me."

"Be quiet."

I shut my mouth. Sandburg circled me slowly. At last he said, "Just what do you think is going on here?"

"Going on?"

"Yeah. With you. What do you think you are?"

I shrugged. "I dunno. An anomaly. Some kind of mutant? It's genetic, you said? Some kind of birth defect."

His eyes narrowed. "I said it was a gift. Repeatedly."

"That's just some kind of euphemism, isn't it? Like 'special'? Look, I appreciate all you've done to give me a life, but I'm not normal, am I?"

His eyes slowly darkened with disappointment and he reached behind him to sit unsteadily on one of the kitchen chairs. I realized that I must have just failed some important test. Very important, whatever it was, because a sadness was settling over Blair like a pall.

I stepped toward him hesitantly. "I'm sorry--" I stopped, unsure what to apologize for.

"Shhh."

Oh. I'd already said too much then. This had happened more than once with Carolyn, too. Persistent demands for communication, but in the end, the wrong thing got said.

"Jim, what do you think normal means?"

But I shook my head. I had already stepped into one trick question. I wasn't going to make that mistake again.

"It's normal for people to vary, Jim. Even a standard bell curve is just a range in which about eighty percent of the population falls. A range. By definition, some people fall outside that normal range. I mean--do you think everybody but you sees the exact same way? There are always little differences. 'Normal' is just a convenient way to talk about things that skips over those little differences as unimportant!"

"Little differences, Chief. I can count your nose hairs from fifty paces."

"That's a gift, a talent. An ability. It's normal for people to have those."

I didn't say anything. I knew he was just doing his best to be kind to me. It would be ungrateful to call him on it.

"Joel has perfect pitch. Did you know that? Most people don't have it. Is something wrong with Joel?"

It wasn't the same.

"Norm down in computer services can translate decimal numbers into hex and back in his head. He's also red-green colorblind and one leg is shorter than the other--"

"Now you're being ridiculous--" I turned away.

He was on his feet at once, hauling me around. "I'm not mocking you, damn it. It's not different. There is nothing radically different about you! You just have a gift--like being able to write music or pitch a no-hitter!"

"How many people have pitched a no-hitter, Chief? But there are no people like me."

"The Chopec knew about people with your gifts. It was normal to them."

"So I'm normal for a primitive?"

He threw up his hands. "Is that what you want to call them? It's what Burton said, but it was the nineteenth century. Before Boaz, anthropologists were as racist as anybody else. But I sure as hell am not calling your friends 'primitives.'" He stopped, taking a deep breath. "I don't know where the others are, Jim. I looked for four years. Longer. Maybe it's because we don't send our kids on vision quests or anything. Maybe it's because we lock up people who don't conform to our arbitrary standards. Maybe we cleaned most of it out of our gene pool by burning sentinels as witches during the middle ages."

I blinked, my anger derailed. "What?"

"Well, think about it: people who knew things other people didn't? Who could find things other people couldn't? Who went into strange trances? Western Europe was paranoid then, absolutely crazy. They killed people at the least excuse." He took a deep breath. "The point is... the point is, there is nothing wrong with you. You have an amazing talent, a gift that has saved countless lives and if it wouldn't spoil my study and make you vulnerable at work, I would be standing on the roof shouting to the world." He closed his eyes and sighed. "How do you feel?"

"I don't know. I need to think about it some more."

"No. I mean, feel. Are you sick?"

I was tired. My shoulders ached. It had been years since I'd swum any distance. It used different muscles than working out. My head still hurt. I itched. And I was cold. "I'm OK."

"Jim, you were exposed to a lot of crap. I'd be worried even if you weren't a sentinel."

"I'll just lie down here on the couch. Where you can see me. How's that." I went and lay down before he could come up with a compelling argument or resort to emotional blackmail.

He did watch me. He covered me with a blanket from his bed and sat down

on the other couch. I slept badly, and every time I stirred or turned over, I could hear him look up. Well, once I woke briefly to glimpse him balled up in the corner of the couch, sound asleep. But when I woke from a nightmare of fire and water, he was right there, crouched beside me. Sandburg, alive only by luck. Because neither skill nor genius could have saved him if that bomb had gone off, and I didn't believe in miracles.

Luck can't be counted on either.

I blinked at his face, dry and whole, not floating in the wreckage of the ruined oil rig. He patted my shoulder and offered me his own glass of water. It was tepid, but I was thirsty, and drained it. "Don't do that again," I whispered as I handed him the water back.

"Give you water?"

"I'm not kidding. When I give you an order, you follow it. You're a civilian, goddamn it. You were my responsibility. Staying on that rig was not your decision."

I thought he would argue. Or placate me. Or just ignore me--he was good at that. But he crumbled at once. "I didn't know what to do! Jim, I was so scared, and all those people! I just--I just--"

I sighed and pulled him into my arms. I could feel his blood blasting through tightened arteries as his heart raced. Open and unashamed and scared shitless. "It's OK," I whispered. "It's over now. You did it."

We spent most of the next two weeks trolling for car-jackers. We'd drive around town shadowing a decoy Ferrari, taking turns with Brown or Morse so the tail wasn't too obvious. At first it seemed like Blair had completely recovered from the nightmare night on the oil rig and the near miss with the bomb. He ate. He slept. He watched me closely for two days until the rash faded. He spent a weekend in the woods helping some professor supervise a bunch of undergraduates who were building a hut in the wood for an ethnolab. Or maybe archaeology lab. He came back with questions about how the Chopec built their villages, and whether they used raised platforms and so on. (Knowing Sandburg, it might have been an excuse for asking me innocuously about my past in order to check my state of mind. I wasn't always sure. But whichever, he didn't smell worried so I assumed I passed).

But I think the whole bomb thing did bother him more than he let on at first. He totally balked at going undercover in the car theft ring with me when he inadvertently got sucked into it. Yeah, they were professionals and they did play for keeps, but it wasn't any worse than a lot of things he'd done before. It certainly wasn't anything he couldn't handle. If his mother hadn't shown up and forced the issue so he had to get back on the horse right away, we might have had a problem.

Which went to show that even the most appalling people could be useful.

Which was petty of me. Actually, as Blair's mother, Naomi answered a lot of questions. It turned out that Sandburg wasn't a vortex of chaos because he was rebelling against a regimented childhood. He was a vortex of chaos because he had been trained to it. Naomi took perfectly fine, orderly, functioning things--like, for example, air--and turned them into something you would never expect and practically useless--like, for example, an itchy, stinging fog similar to tear gas. And she could do it with something innocent and normally benign--like, for example, sage.

She was beautiful. Stunningly, shockingly beautiful, even though she must have been ten years older than me. Sandburg was completely weirded out that I found his mother attractive, but really, he didn't need to worry. I wasn't attracted to her, I was just amazed that somebody's mother could look like that. All I really had for comparison were Simon's mother and Henri's mother, who I'd met at some mandatory department picnic or Christmas party or something. Simon's mother was old and formal and stiff; she only said polite things and had actually brought her knitting. Henri's mother was about a hundred pounds overweight and was earthy and comforting and soft-eyed. About what I assumed mothers would be like.

Mothers should not look the way Sandburg's mother looked. Ever.

They should not wear transparent clothing. They should not be supple. They should not be as beautiful as Sandburg.

Mothers should say things like, "you'll put your eye out," and "take your jacket." Not "start from where you are," and "all that hostility is darkening your aura."

I didn't let myself be unfair enough to hold that against her. Naomi was deeply weird, but smart and flexible and pretty unflappable. Yeah, she moved the furniture and cooked tongue (while eating tofuburger) and tried to talk Blair into composting (Where, in a condo, where?), but if she had been anyone else, we would have been shit out of luck. Could Simon's mother have convincingly gone under cover as the head of a crime family? Could Henri's? Naomi being Naomi was a godsend, even if she hadn't been Blair's mother.

She was Blair's mother. And she loved him. Deeply. Even when he did things she profoundly disagreed with, well, she nagged and fussed, but she went out of her way avoiding telling him he was 'bad' in any way. She didn't push him away. She wasn't afraid of him. In a tug of war between her moral standards and her son, it looked like her son was going to win. It was amazing, and I would have worshiped her for that alone.

There was one more thing she did, for which I owed her big time. When I trashed the F150, neither Simon nor Blair was able to tease me about my driving. Oh, I knew Simon quietly collected a five from Joel, but they couldn't rag me where Naomi would hear; no one wanted to sit through what Naomi thought of her baby riding with a reckless driver who had already gone through two cars this year. So I got away from the crime scene with nobody humming the theme from the Dukes of Hazzard and Sandburg, at home, was restricted to a simple, "Guess you're going car shopping, huh." As though sacrificing a beautiful vehicle to make a collar was the same thing as being unsafe on the road.

I got him back for that. I pretended to respond to Naomi's casual flirting. The look on Blair's face when he found us in bed together would have been reward enough, but I also got a look at his baby pictures and got to know her a little better. For all the overt weirdness, it turned out she was a lot like him--sweet and warm and eager to find the best in people.

Why don't we start at the beginning?

At the beginning, you arrested my father and put him in jail.

You know why that happened.

Yeah, I know. For gun smuggling and murder. Well, after that I went back to Chile to start my life over again and forget that I was Hector Carasco's daughter. As if they'd let me.

Who?

The cartel in Santiago -- the one my father worked for. A few days ago, I got word that they intended to kidnap me.

Maya Carasco.

Really, it was a shame I didn't just deport her when we picked her up off the street. Or shoot her. I did hand her off to Simon as soon as I could. Surely, that should have been enough.

Blair didn't want to blame her. He said she was confused and vulnerable when her father was taken away. That she didn't know what Francisco was doing, that of course she trusted family, that Rivera had us all running around and Maya was just another victim, an expendable pawn.

I didn't really care. She was an accessory before, during, and after the fact to murder. Whether she knew it was murder or not, she was willing to deceive us--deceive Blair--for money or to make her new boyfriend happy or to get back at daddy. She played illegal games without a twinge of conscience. She used Sandburg. Sometimes I have to wonder if he is generous and forgiving and optimistic, or just so fucking stupid that he will--

He was willing to be tortured for her! He would have stood there and let them--

Yes, it was my job--but it wasn't his!

Blair is just too smart to be sucked into crap like this. Sure, I was fooled into thinking Maya was an innocent kidnapping victim. Simon was. Even her own uncle was. But Blair--he has to be more careful than that. He's smarter than any of us, but if he doesn't learn some common sense, he's going to get badly hurt.

The fall just kind of went downhill from there. I lost a kid. A girl a couple years younger than Maya, and another one for really horrible mistakes at an early age. She got into a new designer drug and took a flying leap off a dam.

I almost saved her.

I had a brilliant plan for making sure that didn't happen to anybody else. Narcotics hadn't really moved on golden yet--in retrospect, I guess they were busy with other things--and Simon had an easy time getting the case assigned to us. It started out very promisingly; it's easy to find worms if you know what rocks to turn over. Finding their penny ante distribution network was a piece of cake.

Then I fucked it up just as I was getting started. These senses again, of course. The package containing the sample of the drug--which I had gotten on my first fishing trip--was leaking, just a little. Enough. I got some on my hand. I touched my face, my eyes.

Well, that was it. Everything went yellow and hazy. Perspective reversed, so that things that I was damn sure were far away were suddenly right up in my face. It was snowing. The flakes blowing on my face looked like they were miles away and felt like rough pebbles scattered on my skin. I panicked and clung to Blair. Not that he was any less obscured and distorted than the rest of the world, but I knew that he would get me home, that he would take care of it.

He managed me somehow, blind as a mole and swinging between terror and lunacy. He got me home, got me cleaned up enough to get that crap off my skin, and put me to bed in his room. He was afraid to take me up the stairs, he said later, but it turned out to be a mistake. I came to myself once or twice panicking, unable to tell where I was. I broke his lamp. It could have been worse.

When the bad trip ended Sandburg was gently holding both my hands, talking softly about a roommate he'd had as a freshman who'd gotten into a batch of particularly strong hallucinogenic mushrooms.

I was shaking and hot and everything hurt. I also couldn't see. I forced myself to follow Blair's story while I waited for my vision to clear. The air burned as I breathed it, and my throat felt very dry.

"Hey, Jim? You in there with me?"

I meant to say "Yeah," but that wasn't the sound that came out.

He laughed weakly and squeezed my hands briefly before letting them go. I felt bereft at once, and reached after him, my hands fumbling on empty air.

"Jim? What's wrong?"

I found his hand and held on tight. "Can't see."

"What? What do you mean?"

"I mean I can't see." I swallowed. My head hurt. "It's all bright and gold and unfocused."

"OK. OK. Well, your eyes are sensitive. Right? And golden is reputed to mess up sensory input anyway, particularly visual input. It's just taking a while to wear off."

Taking a while to wear off. Right. I tried to swallow again.

"Thirsty? Why don't I go get you some water? Yeah? You just wait here."

Where would I be going? But Sandburg had already let go. He stood up and was gone, making the bed rock and leaving a cold spot at my hip.

It was hard to focus my hearing. The sound of his sneakers on the floor was clear, the sound of the fridge opening, the sound of the seal on a bottle being broken, but I couldn't track where all this was happening, and the sound of the next door neighbors making out got mixed in.

Before I could get good and confused, Sandburg was back, guiding me to sit up, putting the bottle in my hands. "Easy, Jim. Nice and slow. Yeah. You're doing fine."

I took three big gulps before he gently tugged the bottle away. "Easy. Don't make yourself sick."

"How long?"

"Only about two hours. I'm kind of surprised, but you got a really small dose."

"Then why can't I see?"

He let me pull the water away. "Geez, give it a few minutes. Although--we could take you to the hospital."

"Yeah? What would we tell them?"

"How about, 'You're an undercover cop. A drug buy you were trying to organize went bad and you got some of the product in your eyes.' We could even get Simon in to make the whole thing official."

I gulped the water. "You mean, go with the truth?"

"Novel thought, huh? It's a new drug. They wouldn't notice if you had an atypical reaction."

"Chief, I don't think I can handle a hospital right now. If things still aren't all the way right tomorrow--"

"OK."

I closed my eyes, blotting out the fuzzy brightness. Blair put an arm around my shoulders. "How do you feel other than that? You OK?"

I nodded and handed him the empty water bottle.

"Need a trip to the head?"

"No, thanks. I just want to go to bed."

"Yeah, about that. I think you're gonna have to stay down here."

"I'm fine."

"Oh, yeah. I know that. I just didn't see any point in tackling the stairs if you didn't have to."

"Uh, huh. Where are you going to sleep?"

"Well, I've got this gorgeous guy in my bed--"

The laugh was huge and unexpected, and screwed up my balance. Even having to clutch at Sandburg so I wouldn't fall over didn't sober me, though. The idea of me being gorgeous was even sillier than the idea of Blair making a move on me. Oh, I knew he found me attractive; I could smell his casual appreciation of me just as I could smell his casual appreciation of half a dozen other people every day. But gorgeous? He wished, I'm sure. "I think it'll be a little crowded here, Chief."

"Funny? You think it's funny? Well, if you're going to reject me you can have the whole bed to yourself!"

He sounded so stricken that for a moment I was trying to catch his scent to see if he was actually hurt. Before I could focus, though, he started laughing and punched my shoulder. "Man, you are so easy."

"Sure, pick on the drugged blind guy."

"As soon as I get you settled, I'll go to sleep on the couch. Just to keep your virtue safe."

But in the morning when I woke up I found him in a sleeping bag on the floor beside the bed.

Despite the teasing and the bright optimism, I could tell he was worried and would have preferred it if I'd admitted myself to the hospital for tests. Like that wouldn't be miserable enough if I could see! But there wouldn't be anything the doctors could do, even if they could figure out what was wrong, and the prospect of spending several days in enforced confinement wondering if I was going to be blind for the rest of my life was unthinkable. Besides, my suspects would get away if I dropped the trail now. They had my number. If I finished what I had started, I could stop this thing before it got out of Cascade. Maybe it wouldn't kill any more children.

I could see Lisa's face, even though I couldn't see anything else.

Simon was expecting a meeting. We would just have to pretend nothing was wrong, bluff our way through. I held it together, somehow, clinging to Sandburg and following his cues. It got away from us, of course. Simon was suspicious even before I brained Sandburg with the door. Blair! The shockwave made a tangled picture--smooth pattern of bone and brain that vibrated up through the door and into my hand. I didn't care what Simon thought then: I had hurt Blair, there was no direction in which I could move that didn't feel like a trap, I could not defend myself from a mosquito, even though I was armed--

I groped desperately for Blair, but I was almost afraid to touch him. I was clumsy, I'd hurt him--

"All right, one of you tell me what the hell is going on," Simon said.

"Uh. OK. Just give me a second." Sandburg's hand closed on my forearm and squeezed. Hold still. He picked something up off the floor and set it aside. He took my coffee cup and set that aside too, and then led me, gently, to Simon's desk, patting me to keep me still before letting go and shutting the door.

Simon stood up unsteadily. "Jim? What's wrong?"

"The, um. The sample, Simon. There was an accident and Jim got it on his face."

"Yeah, and?"

I could hear Simon coming closer. I resisted the urge to pull away. "I can't see," I said.

"You can't see?" He leaned over me and I ducked back, going for the sunglasses again. "Sandburg?"

"It's probably temporary," he said quickly. "He seems to be OK otherwise. It's just his eyes."

Simon groaned, pacing. "Well, have you taken him to a doctor?"

"Uh, Simon. I am in the room."

"Of course. What do you take me for? They couldn't find anything."

"Damn. Damn." It was hard to track him. His footsteps echoed around the little room and made me dizzy without a visual picture to anchor them. "Well, obviously Ellison is on medical leave as of now."

"No! Simon, I'm getting close on this golden thing, I know it."

"Look, Jim, I want you in the hospital. The whole case will just get reassigned."

"Sir, I had to work pretty hard to get them to accept me as Cyrus' contact. We bait and switch now, the game is over!"

We went round and round on it for a while, but I was clearly losing, and it would have been all over if Sandburg hadn't stepped in, sounding all calm and reasonable. All I had to do was go out in the bullpen and fool my colleagues into thinking I was fine--without any help.

It wasn't as hard as it sounded. I knew the layout of the bullpen. Each desk was marked by the hum and heat of its computer. Each door by cooler, flowing air. Each moving, breathing, swallowing person was like a small, clamoring hurricane. All I had to do was listen to and feel and smell all of this at once while pretending to be casual and not trip over anything.

And make a pleasant first impression on a woman. (A woman I had been interested in before I had smelled her; it couldn't just be chemical. How often could you be sure of that?) She was average height. She had a normal voice. I didn't put my foot in my mouth.

Heh. A blind date.

I faked my way through the day: in and out of the station, through the initial meet, through an impromptu date. If I was waiting for Sandburg to put his foot down and stop any of this insanity, I would have been disappointed. Every idiot thing I suggested, he went along with, even though he smelled hysterical. I assumed he didn't argue because he thought I would go out with or without him and he wanted to keep an eye on me. Surely, he didn't agree because he imagined that I could actually pull any of this off.

Although, impossibly, I seemed to be pulling it off. No one was the wiser. Nobody questioned the fraud. To all appearances, my life went on as before.

Maybe nothing had to change. I'd been faking normal for half a year now. I could pull this off. If it were permanent.

Except Simon wasn't going to let this go on much longer.

Except sooner or later, Sandburg was going to notice that babysitting a blind sentinel wasn't what he signed up for.

Except I was running on luck alone, and luck isn't worth spit. Sooner rather than later, I was probably going to step into traffic or something and that would be it.

Except it would be better to be dead than to be helpless and scared and useless for the rest of my life.

Blair said it would get better. Blair said if I tried--

I got rid of Margaret as soon as was polite, claiming to be tired, giving my best smile, walking her to the door. I actually managed to find the door--but hey, my spatial memory is fantastic. Blair said so this morning.

I crept up to the loft to wait for Blair in bed. He stayed out, well, late. I couldn't see the clock, but judging from what I heard from other people's televisions, it was after one when I heard him in the elevator.

"Jim?" he called softly as he opened the door.

"What if I had a date here, Sandburg?"

"Her car's gone, man. If she's still here, she probably wants to know she's been robbed."

He bounced up the stairs, fast and light. It was so easy for him to move. He wasn't afraid of where he put his feet, or that he would fall. "So? Jim? How was it? Did you get any, you know?"

'You know.' Sometimes he seemed twelve. "No. We just talked. It was fine. I'm fine. Leave me alone."

He ignored me. Sitting on the bed, he put a hand on my shoulder. Something in my stomach that had been knotted for hours melted and I took a deep breath. Beside me, Blair relaxed a little too. "How are your eyes?"

"The same."

"Well, it's soon yet. You just have to--"

I sighed. "Sandburg, I'm tired. Let's talk about this tomorrow, OK?"

"Oh. Sure. Fine, man." He patted my arm and stood up. I managed not to grab his hand and haul him back.

The next day was Wednesday. Sandburg let me oversleep, and then took me with him to his morning class. I'm sure the lecture was riveting, but I didn't hear any of it. Afterwards, he took me for donuts (for 'being good,' he said. Naturally, he wasn't humoring me because my life was essentially over and he was overcome with pity.) While we were eating the drug manufacturers called to arrange the buy. If things had worked out, it would have been over that afternoon.

It didn't work out. That night we went home with the case blown, no new leads, and everything in the toilet.

After dinner, Sandburg wanted to drill me on echolocation and spatial memory. Instead, I told him everything I could remember about the first time my senses came on line. Everything I remembered about using them in Peru, everything the Chopec shaman had taught me. I still didn't remember everything, and so much of what I did remember I couldn't explain. But whatever I had, Sandburg would need it for his study. I didn't know how much longer he'd have a chance to get it.

He didn't ask many questions. Through all of it, he was oddly subdued. More than once, his pencil stilled and I had to remind him to keep taking notes. Finally, during a pause, he put down his pad and came over. "Jim, enough. We're both tired. Let's go on to bed."

The next day he came in with me, walking just a step ahead to give me a trail of sound to follow, checking files for me and reading the best parts aloud, keeping a soft, running commentary of activity in the bullpen.

Then I left him alone for half an hour, and while I wasn't there to protect him--

They got to him. With that poison that kills children.

The drug made him completely crazy, and then his body completely collapsed. I lost my mind, a little. I had been sitting beside him in his hospital room for hours before I realized that without him I couldn't leave, couldn't manage anything.

It was a good thing I wasn't interested in going anywhere.

On the way to the hospital, he'd stopped breathing in the ambulance. His heart had raced, tripping and stumbling over itself. It was slower now, but still so uneven. He lay in front of me, not moving except for the machine that breathed for him. I had been touching him, for a while. But my senses had focused on him more and more sharply: the smells, of drug, of sickness, of poison, of the plastic tubing, of disinfectant, and under all that, the smell of Blair; the sounds, of his heart, of the air in his lungs, of the movement of fluids throughout his body; the feel of him, the skin drying slightly in the hospital air, the tiny hairs, the pulse that seemed to rock him like an earthquake. It was the most vivid, most solid, most real thing I had ever perceived. Touching--as badly as I wanted to be near him--overwhelmed me, drowned me in him so badly that I couldn't make sense of the input. Even sitting a foot away, his body heat was like sunshine on my skin and I could feel the air displaced by his body.

So weak. Not dead, but, oh! So close. I could do nothing for him.

He stirred faintly, his hand reaching out unhappily before he slid under again. I stared, trying to see his face. The image was too bright, still shapeless, still golden. I was so sick of that color.

While they were taking Blair off the respirator, I was out rounding up Jacobs and Kaminski. I managed to flounder along without him, although I was still mostly blind and incredibly scared. I wanted to stop the people who did that to Blair. I should have been with him, instead. The nurses said he had a hard time of it--not where they thought I could hear them, of course, but they weren't used to sentinels. It was hours before the scene was secured and the suspects locked away and Simon was free to take me back to the hospital. To Blair, who'd come around enough to whimper and struggle against his nightmares.

Two days ago he'd been teasing me, he'd been my rock, strong enough that with his help, even blind I could do my job, and now--

I held his hand, trying to comfort him as he slipped in and out of bad dreams, begged for me to come to him, but didn't hear when I answered, complained that he hurt and asked me for help. They wouldn't give him anything for the pain--they couldn't, they said, with golden still in his system.

It wasn't until late the next morning that he finally woke up. I was watching his face through that eternal golden haze when he opened his eyes. I couldn't see well enough to tell if he was finally seeing me back, so I squeezed his arm. "Chief?"

"God, Jim," he croaked. "What happened to everything?" Then, "Was I hit by a car?"

The sketchy gold on gold image blurred and ran. I brushed away the wetness on my face and felt around for his call button. "What do you remember?"

"I don't know. We were at the station?"

"You ate some of the pizza."

"Yeah... wasn't very good. Hey--not food poisoning." He'd meant to sound surprised, but his energy was already failing.

"It was dosed with golden."

"Wha? Really? What happened?"

"It doesn't matter." I could hear his nurse coming. "It's all over now. You're going to be fine."

"Who else? Jim?"

"Nobody. Nobody else. I got to it before anyone had a chance."

"Oh... yeah... good. From now on, you eat first."

Two days later they let me bring him home. Or, rather, let Simon take us both home, since I wasn't ready to drive. By Wednesday he was dragging himself to class, but he was pale and quiet for another week. I had an easier time. By Friday, my vision was better than 40/10 again, I was back at work full time, and ADA Sanchez had her case against Paul Jacobs and Andrew Kaminski tidy and ready to take to the grand jury.

I dated Margaret a couple more times. It was... nice, but nothing special, even though we were compatible and she turned out to be gorgeous. Maybe we just didn't have the 'chemistry.' No big deal, though. It was nice, going out with a lovely woman, having dinner in a restaurant with my date like any normal guy, but it wasn't meant to be. We parted on friendly terms.

The good times were short lived. At the end of November, Simon sent me for my annual physical, which I had been happily putting off since August. A nuisance--a damned painful and dangerous nuisance, since it led to my hearing being jacked up by (Sandburg's final estimate) about thirty percent. Intense headaches, disorientation, and loss of concentration were the least of my problems. That week we found out why narcotics was so copasetic about Major Crimes snaking the golden case; they had a little action going of their own, and were too busy building their own drug empire to care about the kids dying on the streets. It was ugly, when we finally closed in on them. Turned out the division chief and more than half of 'the crew' were in on it. Nasty, dirty business. Everybody in the department felt betrayed--some of them by Simon and me, who had dragged this out into the open. The press tore the CPD apart. Chief Warren resigned--not that he knew anything about it, but for something like that to be going on in his own police force was pretty much the end.

At the worst of it, through most of December, when everyone looked at everyone else with suspicion and fist-fights were nearly breaking out in the hall, I had Sandburg stay at home. It was best that his face wasn't associated with any of this. He pushed to come back to work with me, so I signed up for evening shift for a while. It was a little quieter.

I wasn't a lot of fun. Christmas wasn't my favorite holiday, and this year I was more sullen than usual. Sandburg was pretty tolerant, all things considered. We worked every holiday--well, I had no family to disappoint, after all. Sandburg didn't complain or ask questions. He made Cornish hens for Christmas. Beans for New Years. Some--weird thing for Kwanzaa.

By January things had calmed down, and I was ready to shift back to working more during the day, just about the time a big case came along and we switched back anyway. One night we didn't get all the suspects processed until after two, and then stumbled on a fire while looking for some weird all-night diner of Sandburg's. It turned out to be arson, and Simon gave us the case--"us" being me, Sandburg, and an

arson investigator named Debra Reeves. She was a pain in the ass, but also, oddly, kind of comforting to work with. Oh, sure, she was as subtle as a freight train and a royal pain in the rear.

But she didn't trail that cloud of intoxicating confusion most women seemed to. She wasn't polite and she had a chip on her shoulder and she took stupid chances, but I understood her. Her methods were occasionally clumsy, but her goals were completely clear. It was almost a relief to work with her. She made sense.

Her father was investigating the case, too. Another one who made sense to me. He was killed by the arsonist, a fireman named Dan Matson, Reeve's friend of twenty-five years and a shoe-in for the next fire chief. Lovely, huh?

By then, the miserable fall had turned into a miserable winter; more rain than snow and always cold and grey. By spring break Sandburg was pushing for us to take a vacation, get away. We planned to take a long weekend and go fishing up the coast. We both badly needed the break. Sandburg was so excited. He had this Cree fishing spear....

It didn't work out, of course.

An old army buddy called to say he was in trouble. I went to meet him, but I didn't do him any good--in less than five minutes after I got there, he was dead and I was snatched.

Norman Oliver, of course. All the things I couldn't prove, all the things I told myself couldn't possibly be true, all the things I'd made myself ignore because nothing could be done anyway.

It was all worse than I'd thought.

When it was over--when Oliver was dead and I was holding the gun he'd intended to frame me with and Simon was below arresting his accomplices--I didn't feel any better. I didn't feel free or relieved or vindicated.

The only saving grace in any of it was that the PD had found me. I hadn't expected help to be coming--Oh, I'd known they would care, known they would search. But not for a second had I believed that anyone would arrive in time to take any part of that mess off my hands.

Yet, there they were, stopping the bad guys, frantically demanding that they produce me. Wow. Then Sandburg looked up and saw me. He dove in the back door and ran up the stairs. I was sure I had taught him better than that. You don't rush into an unsecured scene, particularly if you are an unarmed, civilian police observer and not a cop.

He pelted onto the roof, panting but still running full tilt. "Jim? Are you hurt? Oh, my God. Jim." I gave into the dizziness, finally, as Blair held me up. I'd had nothing to eat or drink since the day before and the drug was making me sick. I buried my face in Blair's hair, trying to forget how Oliver had smelled, wishing I could forget.

"He set us up, Blair. He didn't want us to interfere with the drug cartel, so he put us down where the insurgents were waiting for us. They all died...."

"I know, Jim, I know, I know."

"What do you know? How could you know? He set us up--"

A shudder ran through him, and it was suddenly unclear who was holding whom upright. "Jack Kelso figured it out. He just needed one or two pieces to put it all together for us. Jim, oh, God!"

I heard Simon and the feds on the stairs. I squeezed Blair's shoulders and stepped back. We managed to collect ourselves before they arrived, with their suits and badges and notebooks and questions.

It was hours before we got home. In the end they only let up on the questions because I kept zoning on Sandburg's voice, in another part of the federal building giving his statement. They thought I might be going into shock or something. Hell, what Sandburg was saying was enough to put me into shock.

Oliver had sent his thugs to the loft. Sandburg had gotten out by the skin of his teeth. He got to Simon, who had sent him home with Joel to baby-sit. Apparently, Blair had taken advantage of Joel's indigestion and trust to slip away from his bodyguard and run to the university to get some advice or something from a friend. The thugs followed him, and opened fire in the quad near the student union. The story just got wilder from there. I didn't want to hear it, but I couldn't help myself. The sheer number of people Oliver had endangered, had hurt-- Lord, Holland was dead, it sounded like Kelso was in a hospital, he'd nearly killed Blair twice--no, three times, once while he was with Simon.

We never did make it fishing. Right through Blair's whole spring break they were asking more questions, looking for more details. For a few days I managed to pretend to cope with all of it. After all, Chavez made it in to give his report, Oliver was dead, his accomplices were arrested, the loft was cleaned up and on the way to completely repaired. What was there to be upset about? I even had my answers, at last, and my revenge. But it was hard to stay cheerful, to show the appropriate satisfaction.

More and more of Oliver's dirty dealings kept coming up, more and more of his treason. A lot of it made the news; I couldn't turn the TV on in the evenings. Joel wasn't speaking to Blair, now that the danger was over and they didn't have to work together. Jack Kelso developed pneumonia. Half the time when I got back from yet another visit to the federal building, Blair wasn't at the station, but over at the hospital.

In the evenings, Blair alternated between asking me to talk and ostentatiously not asking me to talk. Finally, after about two weeks, Blair disappeared after work to go "shopping" and Simon took me out drinking. Simon didn't ask me to talk, and I didn't. But I got roaring drunk, and that did seem to help.

Ellison.

Hey, Jim. Doesn't look like I'm going to make it to lunch.*

Don't tell me you're on that elevator.

Yes, I am, actually. Yeah, I was here getting a figurine appraised for the university. It's Chinese, 3rd century. It's supposed to be a good luck charm.

Good luck? Remember that breathing exercise you taught me, the one to relieve stress? Start doing it.

Why?

Some schmuck is threatening to drop that elevator car you're on unless he gets five million bucks.

Well, that's, uh, that's interesting. I assume that you're on top of this. You're on top of this, right, Jim?

Normal. Right. Normal means the rain never stops.

I kept trying to listen for him, the whole time I was in Wilkinson Tower. In order to focus and do my job--in order to save all those people, all of them--I had to leave my emotions outside. It was so, so hard, though. Blair was afraid of heights. Every time Galileo cut that elevator loose, Blair knew it might not stop before hitting the bottom. If it did go, he would die in terror and probably screaming for me to help him.

You try to work while thinking about that.

While trying very hard not to think about it.

We had begun the operation assuming it was simple extortion, but the motive wasn't financial gain at all. It was all a big tangled mess of personal vendetta. Daddy was mad at his Angel for having a mind of her own. The Angel was mad at Daddy for disinheriting her. The villain in all this was mad at everybody; his father-in-law for cutting them off, his unborn baby for not being his baby, and his own brother and wife for cheating on him.

Frank Rachins was a sociopath who hated everyone so much that, when I cornered him, he detonated the bomb he had planted in the elevator. For spite. I wasn't fast enough to stop him.

The world dropped out from under me when I heard that bomb go off. For about three minutes my life had ended. I cuffed and Mirandized Rachins on a kind of autopiolot and dragged him back to the stairwell.

Where I heard Blair's voice.

I knew it wasn't an hallucination or a mistake. I knew. Brown and Reilly were coming up the stairs. I shoved Rachins at them, motioning behind me at the mess on thirty-seven, and then fled down to thirty-six. Alone, I started shaking, my hands braced against a wall because my legs had turned to water.

I could hear Blair. He was talking rapidly, his voice high and tense: "Just a few more minutes. They just have to take care of the bomb on the roof, and then, poof, just like that! We get out of here. Come on, come on, it's OK. We're almost done, just a little longer...." He sounded exhausted and more than a little punchy. I needed to get to him, he needed--

Why was he alive? I'd heard the explosion. I'd felt the building shake with it. Another explosion?

I'd seen Rachins push the button. I'd smelled his triumph. He had killed those people.

I was just down the hall from the elevator bank. I could hear Joel in the shaft, his breathing a little fast and echoey. His tools resonated softly with each movement, the sound vibrating up and down the cables. Then he paused and called, "Hey, Blair. It's not about me."

Sandburg's hysterical laugh. "Damn right. It's about me. Get me the hell out of here, Joel!"

I had to get to him. They would have them out soon, and Blair would--he'd need--

I was sitting on the floor, shaking so badly I couldn't get up. I tried to take a couple of deep breaths, the way Blair had taught me. They sounded like sobs and felt like being stabbed in the chest.

More activity in the shaft, as the deactivated bomb was packed up and removed.

Then the roof door opened, and I could hear Blair clearly.

They lowered a fireman in first, a paramedic, to supervise the extraction. As interminable as this rescue was seeming, they would be out soon, and then Sandburg would expect to see me.

"Jim! Brown said he thought you were up here. What are you doing?"

"He pushed the button, Simon. He detonated that bomb."

"Sandburg cut a hole in the floor of the elevator. They dropped the bomb down the shaft. Joel says it wasn't a very big charge; you wouldn't need one inside an elevator car." He squatted beside me on the floor. "Sandburg's fine. Come on. They're getting them out now. Can't you--can't you hear them?"

"Yeah. I can hear them." But I couldn't move yet. Cut a hole in the bottom of the car. Why hadn't I heard-- But I'd been trying not to hear, hadn't I? I'd focused on the job at hand, left my feelings at the door. For all the good it had done. I'd been too late.

Simon put a hand on my shoulder. "Jim. Come on."

"Well, you know that parachute ride down at the Cascade Pier? Try it blindfolded, with a bomb in your lap, and three hysterical people hanging on to you." Out. Alive and out. "Joel, I'm sorry. I know you were just doing your job, and if I hadn't--if there had been some other way--but I just had to!"

"Sandburg, I do understand. I understood it at the time. Jim--"

"No, this wasn't about that. This was about Simon treating me like a civilian when there was something that I could do. Something that would help. And you went along with him. Yes, OK, it was your job and I'm sorry I got you in hot water with Simon. But I had to do it. I would have done it for you, too."

Simon hit me. "Goddamn it, Ellison. Don't you be pulling any of this zoneout shit! Now get on your feet and get down those stairs or I'll throw you over my shoulder and carry you out of here."

"Yes, sir." I managed to stand. "They're already out."

"Well, come on then. We'll meet them in the lobby. Some of us have work to do."

After all that and it was only a little past two o'clock. I collected my partner and we headed back to the station. I managed to keep it together. While I wrote up my report, Henri took Blair's statement at his desk. While he talked, Blair snarfed down a stale muffin and a cup of coffee Joel brought him. I was astonished. I'd missed lunch too, but I couldn't imagine my stomach would ever be settled enough to eat again. I hit 'save' on my half-assed report and, snatching up my jacket, went to stand over Blair who was chatting with H.

"Hey," he welcomed me.

"Are you done here? 'Cause I'm through."

"Yeah. OK, I guess." He glanced at Brown who nodded. "Yeah." He gathered up his stuff and followed me toward the door. "Man, I am on the weirdest post-adrenaline high! Say, can stress kill brain cells, because I feel--" He stopped, and I glanced back. He was staring at the elevator. Before I could say anything, he turned on his heel and fled for the stairs. I could hear him muttering, "OK. OK, fine. Everything's cool."

When we got home, I asked him, "Do you want to talk about it?" because he wasn't fine, and there was nobody handy for him to talk to but me.

He frowned. "Jim, did something happen today? I mean, while I was... you know?"

"No," I said automatically. Then, "Just, you know. Stuff. Why?"

"Because you're acting funny."

"I'm acting funny?" I briefly considered a beer. I briefly regretted that I didn't have any really high proof vodka on hand. "What do you mean?"

"Well, you seem a little tense."

"Why should I be tense?" I began to go around opening windows.

"I don't know. You do this shit every day. I'm the one bouncing off the--"

He stopped, staring at me. I must have looked pretty scary. The shakes were coming back, and I really shouldn't do that to Blair. I needed to say something bland. "I had kind of a bad day."

"You had a bad day?"

The look on his face--I had to laugh. He came over and put a hand on my arm. Carefully, like he was worried I was spiking. Sure enough, his next question was, "Does anything hurt?" Blair being wrong struck me as funny, and I laughed at that too. He began to lead me to the couch.

I went to the window instead, pulling him after me. "Jim, I'm trying to be patient here, but couldn't you throw me a hint?"

I grinned down at him. "I was wrong. It wasn't a bad day."

"Jim."

"He detonated the bomb, Sandburg. He pushed the button. I couldn't stop him."

"Oh. But--" He stopped, blinking at me. "It was on a timer, Jim. It would have gone off anyway. And we'd already gotten it out."

"I didn't know that. I didn't know. I heard the explosion, and for a moment... I didn't hear you."

"So you--"

"Yeah."

"Shit."

"No kidding." I sighed. "Thanks."

"For what?"

"For not being dead. It could have been a -- really bad day."

Then he began to laugh, holding on to me to keep from falling. He laughed for a long time.

The next few months were... interesting. The crooks got creative. For a while it was one convoluted scheme for making money after another and with, it seemed, no real thought for the consequences. Idiots playing around with radioactive material, genetic engineering, dangerous insects. Never mind what would have eventually happened if they had succeeded (global thermonuclear war, anyone?). How could they imagine that nobody would notice? How could they think they wouldn't get caught?

Blair was a big help in all of this. He did have contacts in the university, and he knew the community. With the Russians.... I'm used to people who distrust police. I'm used to people who won't talk. But these people! I couldn't figure out where to apply the pressure. I didn't know what the carrot and the stick were, let alone how to use them. But Blair--he just paid attention to whoever he was talking to, found something in common, stayed unfailingly polite, and bang! He got more than I could have gotten from three hours in an interrogation room with Rafe playing good cop. Go figure.

Blair and I discovered new sensory abilities--apparently I can feel radioactivity. Scary as shit, to have my hand on that funny heat and know that warm isn't what I was feeling. Worse, though, was learning to diagnose radiation poisoning by smell: the general illness smell, strong, and overlaid with decay. Then a weird sweetness that turned my stomach even before I knew what it was.

Honey, it looks like you and I are going to be working on another case together. Talk about good karma. Hi, Jim!

The summer was cold and wet. Sandburg opted out of summer school again. I had him full time at work, and his love-life blossomed in the off-hours. He dated Molly from the university for a while, then Myrtle from Harvest Market, then he was on again with Sam from forensics. He threw himself into it all with happy abandon, giving each effort a hundred and ten percent and achieving what I could only think of as mixed success.

Sandburg's mother came to visit. She brought a creepy nut with her who interfered in one of my cases. Bad enough he was an obnoxious, self-aggrandizing publicity hound, but he was also--

No. Never mind. So what if he sort of found the girl; that was just coincidence. It certainly didn't mean anything.

It was a hairy couple of days, and one of the enthusiastic amateurs who planned the job managed to get himself killed. But we found the girl and picked up a heavy hitter in the local mob and three of his cronies as a bonus. All things considered, it wasn't a complete disaster.

Despite the miserable weather, life was pretty good. Better than pretty good; how often do you have the chance to undo mistakes? I mean, who gets the chance to go back and put things right? But Gordon Abbot turned up alive. And his family was alive. I got to bring down the bastards who I let screw them over two years ago.

The cases kept coming, and our solve rate stayed steady; a series of petty but unusual robberies that turned out to be some creative teenagers, a political-looking murder that was personal after all, a convoluted armored car robbery/counterfeit ring orchestrated by a slum lord.

Grey, damp summer turned into grey, damp fall. Samantha and Sandburg broke up again. I felt sorry for him, but also relieved; that woman was a little crazy. He started teaching again--an intro class once a week, three hours on Wednesday evenings.

Jim! Hey, buddy, hang on, man. I need a couple minutes. My head is killing me, man.

What's going on? Ooh, yeah, you got pretty well banged up there. All right, this is a good place. It's good shelter. I'm gonna see if I can get back on their trail. And I'm gonna double back for you in a little while.

Are you going to think less of me if I actually take you up on that offer?

I'll probably think of you as some self-serving, spineless goober.

I can live with that.

I don't know what possessed me to bring him along. No, he wasn't a novice at the wilderness thing, but he wasn't a trained hunter, either. I could not afford to be slowed down by a civilian and as for needing him, well, my senses weren't new anymore, and off in the mountains like that was one of the places I was least likely to get in trouble with them. He had trained me for terrain like this, conditions like this, that first summer. Compared to, say, attending a basketball game in Cascade, this was a walk in the park. Besides, what we were doing was dangerous. Where I was concerned, Sandburg had no judgment at all. No sense of self preservation. No sense. He would do any stupid, dangerous thing for me, follow me anywhere.

And yet. Despite the fact that he didn't have the skills or the endurance for this, despite the fact that I probably wouldn't need him and even if I did, it wouldn't warrant endangering him, despite all that, I gave in and let him come. Just like I did almost every time something like this came up. I had no idea why. I told myself that he'd follow me anyway, and at least if he were right next to me I could protect him. But I had no real evidence that I wasn't just being selfish and stupid.

Even having him there, my awareness of him seemed to recede. I was projecting forward, focusing on far-off perceptions so single-mindedly that I barely seemed to be in my body. It was easier than tracking Simon in Peru had been. I would say that I made better time this time around, except I wasn't really aware of time or speed or distance--except for my pursuit of the trail. Simon's tobacco. The polish of Simon's shoes.

I realized that I was seeking the victim and not the kidnappers, and not just because Simon's smell was more familiar. Quinn's weapons and filth smell, his girlfriend's perfume, were just as vivid about the remains of the helicopter. At one time, I might have narrowed in on that--protect the victim and solve the problem by ending the threat--but now, even as badly as I wanted Quinn, whether I got Quinn or not, I had to get to Simon.

That was rough, because I was still thinking of Brody. Still feeling responsible because of what Quinn had been able to do to him. I had to stop Quinn this time, before he killed anyone else. I spun myself out forward, rifling through the smells and sounds of the far distance, looking for a trace of my boss, my friend.

I hated leaving Blair behind. Even though he had only been a warm, squelching blur behind me, it was a blur I missed. But it was just before dawn when I got back to him. I had finally found the trail and had a fair picture of where Quinn was going. As I approached the place I had left Blair, I heard him haring off to the west in a panicked run, and somewhere behind him there was gunfire.

I angled to the side, following the thunder of his feet and caught him. He wasn't watching where he was going--another reason he shouldn't be out there. I snagged him and held him still, although he gasped and tried to get away. "Whoa. Whoa. Easy, easy, Chief." He wilted slightly, clinging instead of fighting, but he still smelled of terror and pain and hunger. My hands tightened. "Chief. It's me. Settle down." He shuddered, trying to breathe through the panic. His heart was beating so hard his body fairly shook with it. "I heard a shot," I said, "What happened?"

"It's those guys from the river, man, from the river. They shot at us. It's gotta be them." He was looking around frantically, as though I wouldn't know if someone were coming. "They knocked me out, man." He was moving too fast to examine properly, gripping me with desperate hands and then trying to push me away, scanning the woods. I could smell his blood, but his eyes were moving so fast I couldn't tell if they were evenly dilated. He was also moving around so much I could hardly hear past him to see what this new enemy was doing. "They were going to kill me. But they got in this fight and they were--"

"Whoa, whoa. Shh." I had them finally. "They're moving away." One, only one. I could hear one. Where was the other? But no, now I could smell blood and the other smells that came with a human dying. I pulled Sandburg tighter against me and looked around for cover. The one who was still moving was about fifty yards away, on the other side of a thick stand of pines. He was muttering to himself, and as he passed upwind I could smell his rage and misery.

We had better luck after that, for a while. We caught up to Quinn before noon, but that was when things went downhill. I was almost out of ammo. Quinn and the surviving hick joined forces for a while. Sandburg got shot.

Which was not something I could even think about later without going cold. But at the time, I just got him to cover and gave him what first aid I could before heading back out to take care of Quinn and the others.

Man, Quinn was a piece of work. The people he used and cast away, from his best friend to the ally he'd made less than an hour ago. The man didn't have conscience or honor or even human decency. He was ready to kill Simon and Blair just for the hell of it. What had happened to Brody hadn't been because I'd made a bad decision, but because Quinn was the worst kind of thug. For a few moments, I'd wanted to kill him. Because of what he'd done to Brody. So that he wouldn't get the chance again.

But he wasn't going to get the chance again. Simon helped me pin and cuff him.

It wasn't a long wait after that. Air support saw the explosion and sent in backup and rescue personnel. They gave Blair some mild sedation and airlifted him out. Not nearly enough sedation. He was scared, a desperate, enthusiastic panic I almost envied. Blair knew what to do with his fear, and he was completely unashamed of it.

I shouldn't have brought him. He didn't have the training. It wasn't his job. This--all of this--was too much to ask. The fact that I didn't have to ask just made it worse. So did the fact that he wouldn't blame me.

God, Sandburg.

It was two in the morning before I caught up to my partner in the hospital. The staff were reluctant to let in someone looking and smelling like me after visiting hours, but I flashed my badge and claimed Blair as an important witness in a kidnapping case and stormed on past.

He was asleep. Sedated, I decided, leaning over to smell the exposed skin of his arm. Also sulfa drugs. Someone else's blood. But I didn't smell infection or pain or fear. He was OK.

Exhausted, I sat down in the chair in the corner and closed my eyes.

That bullet messed up his leg for the next six weeks. For the first three he couldn't even drive. Sandburg was awkward on crutches, and a snippy jerk when he was in pain, although I could tell he was trying for graceful and patient. He whined about his PT, groused about my cooking, and frequently had to remind himself why his undergraduates warranted pity and a review session, not simply being staked out for fire ants.

He got a great deal of sympathy, though. At both Rainier and at the station people tended to fuss over him. Rhonda and Rafe in particular were very attentive, and Sandburg lapped it up, despite the fact that Rhonda was happily married and Rafe was straight.

Probably straight. As far as I knew. That thought nearly made me drop the folder I was holding.

"Something wrong?" Simon asked.

"Uh. No. Sorry, sir."

"So? What's your opinion?"

Despite myself, I sneaked a look out the window into the bullpen. Sure enough, Rafe was standing at my desk offering Sandburg a muffin. Simon cleared his throat, and I dragged my attention back. "About Merkle, sir?"

"Yes. About Merkle. Is something bothering you, detective?"

"No. Of course not. The Merkle case was an inside job. Which pretty much only leaves us with three suspects. I'm going to talk to them again later today. I'll know who the perp is by tonight, although it may take a couple of days to get the evidence."

At my desk, Sandburg was telling Rafe about the history of breakfast foods, which is not as boring as you might think. It involved a brilliant but eccentric doctor living in Michigan at the turn of the century. He thought the key to long (and moral) life was abstinence from alcohol, caffeine, tobacco, meat, and sex; chewing things until they were liquefied; and clean bowels. The stultifying boredom brought on by this diet and (lack of) sex life was relieved by lots of healthy exercise and yogurt (not always eaten). Depending on which details he included, this could be an either horrifying or hysterically funny story. Rafe had dropped into my chair to listen.

"No, no, no. It wasn't like that. It wasn't theft. The younger brother had been doing lots of work on all of this for years. The doctor paid him peanuts and had him working sixteen hour days. He did scut work in the hospital, worked in the test kitchen, and was his brother's secretary--He used to take dictation while running along beside his brother's bicycle! So when he was put in charge of this project, he took it! He totally went to town."

"You're sure it's not connected to the other robberies?" Simon asked.

"Positive." I glanced out at Sandburg again; he was still chatting with Rafe while combing through the files on the other robberies looking for connections. Did I treat him like the younger brother? Was dragging him through the woods with no close backup like making him run beside the bicycle? Was having him work on my cases the equivalent of making him work in the test kitchen trying to devise an edible meat substitute? Surely getting shot was above and beyond the call of duty for an anthropologist.

Why didn't I bring myself to leave him behind, even when it was clearly the right thing to do? Why couldn't I say no to him?

I sighed and turned back to Simon. "Was there anything else, sir?"

He studied me for a moment and waved his hand. "Nope. Get on it."

The days came and went. Sandburg graduated from crutches to a cane and began to drive himself again. The leaves finally turned at the end of October, and the rains came back, harder and colder. In mid November the Derek Wilson case came to trial. Was that going on two years ago already? I shook my head and thanked God I wasn't responsible for protecting him this time: I was a witness myself. So was Sandburg. They didn't get to us soon. Jury selection dragged on for days, and then the testimonies. Pleading guilty just wasn't an option because the federal prosecutor was not at all inclined to cut him any breaks, so the little weasel was pleading a complicated combination of extreme duress and diminished capacity or something--apparently hoping that the jury would be either confused enough or sympathetic enough not to give him life.

I didn't see that it mattered too much. If Murdock was still angry, a life sentence would be pretty short. Actually, I was surprised Wilson had lasted this long. As it turned out, the jury was not composed of idiots, and they didn't take kindly to the idea of someone conspiring to abduct an entire train and trying to flee the country with a couple of million dollars he'd stolen from organized crime.

By Thanksgiving, Blair was off the cane, dating again, and happily making up his final exam. I was in hell.

Christmas season. The year before it just hadn't seemed quite as bad, somehow. Maybe the senses were still new enough then that I was just ignoring everything I could. But this year, things had settled down. It seemed natural to hear Blair breathing in the room below or identify Simon's laundry soap by smell. For the most part, things had seemed normal. Livable. The holidays took me completely by surprise.

'Cinnamon' candles--which were popular that year and burning even in offices--smelled nothing like cinnamon to me. 'Pine' air fresheners smelled like a caustic mint mixed with bug spray. I had no idea what 'bayberry' was, but I doubted it was supposed to smell like petroleum products.

You couldn't walk into a mall or store without some idiot spraying perfume at you. It wasn't just that it smelled strong or even bad. Some of them burned like tear gas and one made me dizzy and see spots, even though its actual scent wasn't all that offensive. After the third consecutive time I'd been attacked by a bimbo with a spray-bottle I gave in and asked Blair to do my shopping for me. Fortunately, my list was short, but the poor guy actually had to buy his own present. (After the holidays we spent six weeks trying to refine my control over my nose. No luck. A specific smell may fade with exposure, and the length of time it lasts is twice as long for me as for anyone else, but smells don't dial down. The best I could do was practice working while being irritated by foul aromas. Checkers again, this time with a continuous rotation of dog poop, sour milk, a sliced habanero pepper, and some nasty European cheese.)

I did remember to get him a Chanukah card. He patted me on the head and thanked me in the kind and solemn way you'd thank a little kid for a drawing he did all by himself.

In mid January it started to snow. Sometimes several inches of it collected. It came down almost every day, and on days it didn't snow, it sleeted, which turned snow into melty ice. It didn't just constantly change the landscape and the temperature and the air pressure and the humidity. It changed the, well, you could say the 'soundscape,' too. Depending on how much snow was on the ground, the distance sound traveled and the amount it echoed changed radically. On the street--or even at home--I could never tell when a noise was right next to me or three blocks away. There was so much noise in the city, and yeah, it was mostly a little quieter, but it was also completely wrong.

I grew reluctant to go out on calls. From Major Crimes you can't hear the street really well, and that was a relief. But at work I could taste the chemicals used to melt the ice that people had tracked in on their boots, and every time I passed a window, the temperature differential between the inside and the outside made the cheap glass hum.

Sandburg, of course, caught on pretty quickly. He was supportive and reassuring; this would pass. I would adjust. Everything would be fine. For the first two weeks this attitude irritated the hell out of me; I was not a child. I had handled worse than this before. I didn't need anyone's sympathy.

But it did wear me down, finally, being twitchy and nervous all day, coming home with a headache and at least three out of five senses spiking, not being able to sleep properly in a world that should sound familiar and didn't. By the end of the first week of February, Blair's confidence and gentleness were all that were keeping me from completely giving up. Unless he was in class or holding office hours, he was with me, a constant reassurance that even if he didn't sound normal, he was normal. His presence was a promise that if I got into trouble, he would get me out of it.

It kept snowing.

Blair had to drive, because the sight of a hundred different, spinning snowflakes rushing toward the windshield every half second made me afraid I'd zone or overload and kill us both.

Blair took over the cooking. In the evenings, I finally let him start pinching my hands to make the headache go away--aspirin wasn't cutting it any more. Blair had strong fingers so the cure hurt almost as much as the problem, but at least it gave me some variety in the pain. He pushed drinking water, tried to distract me with odor drills, and took copious notes.

One day, instead of heading to the precinct, he detoured us to the coast and stopped at an empty beach. I looked out at the grey sky, the grey snow, the grey ocean, the grey sand, and said, "Whatever this is, it isn't going to work. Listen, if you miss the beach that much, then

as soon as it's warm--"

"Jim. Get out of the truck and stop whining."

I wasn't whining. I got out of the truck. He led me down to the edge of the water and folded his arms. Despite the heavy jacket and Elmer Fudd hat, I could tell he was already cold. I sighed. "What now?" It was starting to snow again, big fat flakes that stuck together into little ragged balls that fell slowly. I tried not to look at it.

"I think I see what part of the problem is."

"Oh, really?"

"You depend on certain patterns to interpret input. But the patterns change every day, so nothing makes sense and you have to struggle for every meaning."

"I'm trying not to rely on my assumptions. Every day I pay attention and try to sort it out. I do. And every day--"

"Every day it falls apart because you're trying to build new patterns. You wind up relying on models that are only half-learned and several hours out of date. You've got to stop figuring everything out and just take it as it comes."

"Oh, please. I can't live like that. Take it as it comes!" The idea was horrifying. Take every incoming sight and sound and smell as new. Nothing would mean anything.

"Jim, it's not forever. The weather will change."

"It's the changing that's driving me crazy!"

"That's why you have to relax. The snow will go away."

I didn't answer that.

"Jim, you can handle rain. Rain changes how everything sounds. It has to."

"I understand rain."

"It didn't give you this much trouble, even in the beginning, though."

"Rain is different. I understand it," I repeated.

Blair frowned at me. "How could you? I mean you grew up with rain and not snow, right? We never get this much snow. But it would all have been completely different once your senses came on line. Completely different. OK. OK, it rained in Peru, but... I don't see how rain in the jungle could be an experience that would translate into a useful skill for rain in a city. The surfaces are completely different. The way noise travels here."

Of course I had nothing useful to add.

"Never mind. Our problem this time is snow. You have to stop trying to file your experiences of it into neat little boxes and just--just experience the experience."

"What do you-- Oh, no. No."

"Yes. You can. It's going to be all right."

"Sandburg--"

"Just look around. Listen. Take it all in."

"No."

Instead of answering, he slid an arm around my waist and leaned into me. I looked around.

Grey on grey on grey, but here and there the muted light glinted on ice crystals--a snow flake or a bit of freeze at the edge of the waves. The motion of the water wasn't a mushy shushing broken by thunder--I could hear dozens of individual wavelets lapping on each other, smashing on the shore. The snow, as it hit the water, had a light hiss. The snow, hitting the sand, had a tiny tapping. The snow hitting snow, further up the beach, made almost no sound at all.

I glanced upward. The clumps of snowflake showered like rain, but

slower. Dozens of tiny parachutists. Each uneven clump was a composite of several broken snowflakes jammed together. Each tiny snowflake was a lace of facets, reflective like glass.

One hit me in the eye, and I staggered backward only to be caught and supported by Blair's strong arms. It froze and burned at the same time, and was sharp, but even as I registered the pain, it melted into a cool, stinging, roughness of not particularly clean water.

The snow was still falling on my face, tiny, sharp needles of ice that melted and boiled off my slightly warmer skin. Blair's arms around my waist tightened and he whispered, "Easy, buddy. It's OK. It's just sensation. It's strong, but it can't hurt you." The wind blew, crashing snowflakes into each other. I felt slightly cold. "Easy. Just stay in the moment. All you have to do is notice, and then you'll understand it."

I reached down and gripped his arms. "Yeah. OK."

It snowed for another week. I got through it. The truth was, after communing with the snowflakes for a while it really wasn't quite so bad.

End

The Sentinel is owned etc. by Pet Fly, Inc. These pages and the stories on them are not meant to infringe on, nor ar braey endorsed by, Pet Fly, Inc. and Paramount.

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No Big Deal Part I

Dasha (Dasha_mte), Dasha_mte

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