Archive of Our Own ^beta

The Historian

Avram Ivanov smiles at the woman as she shows him his new home. "We took note of your suggestions," she says, "and we hope that this will be appropriate for your needs."

"It looks charming," he says, and it is. These people have made a glorious virtue out of the need for natural materials and a preference for simplicity. Perhaps that will change as they enter more into the Nine World's ambit, but for now this mellow house is all he could wish for.

The woman, Grace Tuvai, indicates the info console. "I was told you enjoy history, and with the permission of my superiors, I set up some specific reference links that we hope you'll find interesting." Her smile grows shy. "Some of the events relate to my own family history. It's one reason I entered the Foreign Corps."

He nods. "Thank you. I very much appreciate that I'm benefiting from Cascade's new outreach policy."

When she's gone and he's alone, he unpacks. He prepares a report for his own government, suitably encrypted, prepares a meal. And then he decides that he might as well have a look at these historical references. His daughter teases him that he ought to have been an historian instead of a diplomat - but he loves both experiences, and it is far easier to be an amateur historian than an amateur ambassador. When he can combine the two, so much the better. He may as well get some idea as to how much these people are willing to reveal before the official dinner next week.

He raises his eyebrows when the screen comes up. There is a lot of information sign-posted for him. He remembers Grace Tuvai's shy smile, and shakes his head. There was pride in her face too, and he wonders if her superiors know just how thorough she was. No matter.

He picks an earlier reference - nearly seventy years ago, now. There are cross-links attached - 'party coup', 'isolation policy' among others. He suspects that Grace Tuvai is also an historian. He brings it up - a vid of a political speech. The speaker is in his middle-fifties, perhaps, and as handsome as nearly everyone on this planet is. The beauty of this people would be farcical if it wasn't part of their tragedy. The speaker stares, not at the archivist, but at his audience. His face is determined, his manner charismatic.

"Nearly eight hundred years ago, this assembly had its genesis in a group of stolen people, shamefully used and experimented upon. Seven hundred years ago we escaped. We made our way here, exploited, traumatised, poorly resourced and we built for ourselves a community and then a nation. And the underlying foundation of this nation is that we belong to ourselves, and only ever ourselves." He grips the podium as if his anger is almost too much to bear without its support. "This outrage, this contempt for the most basic tenets of our society, will not go unmarked. We will not resign ourselves to it." He shuts his eyes, apparently overcome, and then stares out at his listeners once more. "We are the children of Cascade. Our children are our own. And we will bring this child home!"

The archivist moves focus to the audience - the hall of representatives, which Avram recognises from the information sent him before he ever arrived here, seated in tiers of seats. They respond enthusiastically, hysterically even, to this rallying call, some of them standing to applaud. The vid ends.

He casts his eyes down the list. There are plenty of text references, but he is tired. The vid references tend to be short, and clearly marked. He will just dip his toe in the tempting pool of all this information. The next one he chooses says, 'Private Log submission to Commission of Enquiry #51.' It's dated nearly thirty years after the first vid he watched.

It's very clearly a private log. The light is dim, the background looks like someone's living room. A man's voice comments, "Conversation between Agent Director Simon Banks and Agent Protector James Ellison", before two men come into the frame, sitting opposite from each other across a low table. Avram saw James Ellison once, about ten years ago. He decides that he needs to research Grace Tuvai's background. Ellison is a comparatively young man here, in his thirties. Simon Banks is imposing in his size, and about as much Ellison's opposite in appearance as anyone can be, except that he too is a handsome man.

Ellison is holding what looks like a small, silver pack of pills in his hand.

"I've already strongly expressed my concerns that I was chosen as Blair Sandburg's liaison. I advised that I was bonding to Sandburg, if not already fully bonded to him, and I was advised in return that this was not possible, as I was taking suppressants." Ellison's tone is level, an official stating facts. "I was advised that despite the difficulties of my 'emotional involvement'," the level tone deepens to bitter sarcasm, "that I was still regarded as the most appropriate person to act as Sandburg's liaison."

Ellison's opposing hand flicks at the pills he holds in a mindless tic. "I'm requesting Agent Director Banks to investigate the nature of my medication, which I personally believe to be placebos. I attach a medical report carried out by an independent doctor, attached to the household of William Ellison, which confirms that I show physiological changes indicative of bonding."

He hands the pills and report to Banks, who says, "I undertake to investigate as requested by James Ellison. I confirm that the medication he has given to me has the official seal of the Foreign Corps, and that the packaging shows no evidence of tampering to the naked eye. I undertake to confirm the credibility of this medical report in all due confidence."

Both men drop out of formality. Ellison seems to sag and Banks says, "Jim, you know what this means?"

Ellison scrubs his face with both hands. "Do I look stupid, Simon?"

Banks sighs. "Hell of a mess." He reaches across the picture to turn something off, and the vid ends. Avram cross-references 'James Ellison', to find a slew of items. Referencing Blair Sandburg gives him the same. He finds a still-shot, Sandburg with a group of Cascade dignitaries, looking very young and tired and small. When Avram attended Solana for his post-graduate degree he saw Sandburg speak to assembled academics and his effacement in this picture is a far cry from the force of personality that the man radiated then. He supposes that Ellison must have been there, even though he doesn't recall seeing him.

Last vid for tonight, perhaps six months after the previous one. A record of Commission of Enquiry #51, interview excerpts #16/i-xxii. He fasts-forwards through some of it until he comes to a scene of James Ellison sitting in a chair. Ellison looks tired, ill even. He wears a heavy coat indoors and it sits on him as if he's lost a lot of weight recently.

Someone off-shot is speaking. "You understand that there could be accusations that you willingly initiated bonding with Blair Sandburg after your first contact on Solana indicated the possibility of a bond. Given your father's place in Cascadian society, there would have been considerable potential for influence in such a situation."

Ellison pierces the speaker with a disdainful stare. "If I'd broken one of the most fundamental rules of our society for financial gain, I'd expect to be accused before this enquiry. Instead, I'm a witness. My efforts to avoid contact with Sandburg are a matter of record, as is the evidence to this Commission that I was purposely given ineffective suppressants for reasons of illegal experimentation. Are we done here?"

The next question comes out with baffled malice. "So you willingly broke your bond with Blair Sandburg? Because you certainly protested when you were removed as his official liaison." Another voice out of shot makes a protest. Ellison's gaze moves in that direction, as if in reassurance, although when his glance returns to the questioner, there is no doubting the suppressed fury in his face.

"I was employed and then removed as Sandburg's liaison for reasons which this Commission will fully investigate." There's a satisfied emphasis on the word 'fully'. "There was no ethical option but to break the bond, so it was broken." The anger that gave Ellison energy dissipates, leaving him looking exhausted and fragile. Someone approaches and helps him stand so that he can leave.

***

The Child

Blair had promised himself a decent lunch and nothing, not complaining students, or disapproving Heads of Departments, was going to stop him. Today, he was a man on a mission as he traversed the main campus of the University of Solana, premier educational institute of the Nine Worlds Consortium. Or so the advertising said. Blair crossed Gibson Courtyard, which was graced with an abstract sculpture that sang in minor tones with the wind, and zipped across the Xian atrium with its famous botanic samples, which included one of the more glorious examples of the kutray to be found off its native soil. Blair liked the kutray, with its pale, spreading branches and spicily scented leaves. It was a good tree for flirting under.

The fifth floor cafeteria was still comparatively quiet, which was Blair's grand plan. He stood in front of the self-serve counter and loaded his plate, which nearly tipped off the shelf as some idiot barged into Blair from behind. A scatter of food spilled onto the shelf and the floor as well.

"Damn, I'm really sorry about that." The voice was deep and pleasant, and accented in a way Blair didn't know. He looked up, some of his irritation already dissipated by the genuinely apologetic tone he heard, and decided that the gorgeous being looking back at him could bump into him anytime.

"Hey, no worries," he assured the other man.

Clear blue eyes crinkled engagingly. "Let me at least buy you lunch." The stranger raised an eyebrow at the young man behind the cashier's table, "And make your apologies to the staff. I've made a mess here. Sorry."

"I guess you can do that." Blair had no objections. He had planned to read an article by a researcher he found particularly interesting, but opportunities like this exceedingly beautiful man didn't drop into Blair's lap everyday. At the least, he could look forward to a pleasant view during lunch.

"Any recommendations?" Blair's new companion enquired.

"Any special dietary requirements? I can tell you're not from here."

"Not too spicy, otherwise I'm relaxed. And you're right. I'm from Telarcum."

Blair indicated his own plate. "This is pretty good. It's a rice dish - local delicacy, and not too spicy at all." He watched as the stranger's long, graceful hands dished food, and handed over a traveller's card for payment.

They sat, and Blair divided his attention between his food and the man opposite him. Retired military of some sort, or maybe somebody's government? All kinds came to Solana, for education and research, tourism, or for political and commercial exchange. The very short hair was something of a giveaway, as was the air of quiet alertness. Blair tried to remember what he could about Telarcum, but the only thing that came to mind was a recent political scandal. Selling citizenship or passports, wasn't it?

"I'm Blair. Blair Sandburg."

"Pleased to meet you, Blair Sandburg. I'm Jim Anders."

"Of Telarcum."

"Yep, Telarcum."

"That is one long way away."

"Well, we out-ways boys come in to the hub now and again to be dazzled by civilisation."

The teasing good humour made Blair laugh. Anyone less dazzled than this long-limbed, lazily flirtatious man would be hard to imagine.

"Yes, I can see how overwhelmed you are."

"Oh, I've managed to become a man of the worlds over the years."

"So what does a Telarcum man of the worlds do?"

"I work in the family business, import and export. And I scored a junket, much to the envy of my little brother. I promised a friend I'd check out Solana for him on my way back. He has money in trust for his daughter's education and they're considering an off-world option for her post-graduate studies."

Blair leaned back in his chair. "Great. Solana is a good place."

"It's certainly prestigious. What about you? Post-graduate studies?"

"Behind me now. I'm a doctor of anthropology - very junior amongst the staff of course, but hey, I'm here." Blair grinned broadly. "At this prestigious institution."

"Then you're making a good start to your career."

"That's the plan. Onwards and upwards." Blair decided that it didn't matter if he made a fool of himself. This man would be leaving Solana soon enough anyway. "What about your plans?" He consciously let his voice drop into intimate tones, and watched carefully for the results.

Amused blue eyes met his without any defensiveness or concern. "I'm into the holiday side of things now. Checking out the university for my friend and playing tourist."

"So, are you in need of a trusty native guide?"

The handsome face broke into another of those breathtaking smiles. "I don't need one, but touristing is more fun in company, right?"

"Absolutely," Blair replied. "I have lectures this afternoon, but I'm free from about four." He'd have to pull some all-nighters to catch up with his work, but Blair thought that the chance at another sort of all-nighter would be worth it. "Are you a gallery or a nightclub sort of guy?"

"I prefer somewhere quiet - my tolerance for loud noises isn't improving as I get older." Jim said this with droll self-deprecation, and Blair smiled and indicated with a bold pass of his eyes that he didn't see any signs of decrepitude.

"There's an interesting art show at the museum here, and I can guarantee that I know some good places to eat."

"What if I come back and meet you at the museum about five? We can feed our minds and then our stomachs and decide what to do with the rest of the evening once we've done that?"

Blair nodded, while he made frantic plans involving the purchase of a clean shirt and the use of the anthro department's shower facilities. His own rooms were too far away to get there and back in time. "Sounds great."

Jim stood. "I'd better go. One of the staff in the Bursar's department has some resources for me to collect. But I'll see you later."

"Oh yeah, see you later." Blair didn't care if that maybe came across as overly enthusiastic, just watched with deep appreciation the loose, easy stride that carried Jim Anders out the door. Then he smiled with giddy happiness at the remains of his lunch and let his mind be carried away on a wave of pleasant speculation.

***

There was art that Blair appreciated aesthetically, and art that he appreciated anthropologically, and this showing would come under the heading of anthropologically interesting if it weren't for the distraction of the man in his company.

The two of them contemplated the giant half masks and cross-sections of faces and skulls, filled with a jumble of miniaturised consumer goods, surgical implements and pornographic images. Blair was trying to judge how much was gratuitous and how much was genuine commentary on Solanan society.

Jim's face was marked with fascinated distaste. "I think I liked the portrait gallery better." That had been an historical retrospective with reproductions of ancient photographs, complete with manipulations and collages. Certainly, it had been more accessible than this.

Blair briefly shut his eyes in recall. "I'd agree with you, but I can remember one review which raved over the 'sophisticated evocation of the restless search for meaning in a society increasingly obsessed with shiny surface appearances'.

Jim dipped his head and smiled. He was close enough that the two of them moved intermittently in and out of touch and body warmth, and Blair's sense of smell no longer registered the pleasant cologne Jim wore because of that close and constant contact. "Sounds like you're really interested in this exhibit."

"Not really. Just mnemonic training. It's not always convenient to take notes in the field and there was one occasion where I would have lost any notes I had taken, so I chose to study reliable recall techniques."

"Useful."

Blair shrugged ruefully. "More than this exhibit."

"Art isn't supposed to necessarily be useful. But I prefer art that's more - sensually appealing. When I said we could feed our minds, I don't know if I intended something as cerebral as this."

"When I was an undergrad I worked in the children's discovery section here. They had a lot of touchy-feely exhibits, and I ended up writing a paper on how they fascinated the adults just as much." Blair's stomach felt hollow, and he changed the topic. "It's still early but what do you think about feeding our stomachs?"

"More of that recall, huh?"

Blair looked up into Jim's face. "Just paying close attention."

"Very scholarly of you," Jim murmured, and hooked his arm through Blair's as they walked out of the museum. Blair barely refrained from punching the air in triumph. The only important negotiation now left between Blair and Jim was the place, not the place where they would eat; Blair didn't really care where that was. He had a feeling for people sometimes. It was useful as a lecturer that he could gauge the mood of a hall and adjust his lesson accordingly. The feeling that he had now was that liking and desire was mutual, and if there was some regret that this could be nothing more than a pleasant interlude, well, that was life. People came and went in Blair's life, just as he and his peripatetic mother had come and gone in the lives of others when he was a child.

Blair suggested a restaurant and they enjoyed their meal. The restaurant was well-known for the subtlety of its desserts, and Blair smiled in delight at Jim's reaction to the citrus tart served there. "Good, is it?"

Jim's face was that of a man seeing the First Forces at work. "You know that it is or you wouldn't have recommended it." He took another forkful and closed his eyes in what looked very like ecstasy. Blair stirred slightly in his seat and reminded himself that even on hedonistic Solana displaying an erection in a public place was bad manners.

Jim looked across the table with devilment in his eyes. "Am I distracting you?"

"You know you are."

"Some things shouldn't be rushed."

Blair's breath caught. "Oh, totally in agreement with you there."

"Good."

Blair reminded himself that Jim was enjoying his dessert, and it wouldn't be fair to drag him out to the nearest alley for a quick hand or blow job. Jim was right. Some things shouldn't be rushed; so Blair watched Jim eating as if he was attending some subtly erotic drama. The last smear disappeared from the fork, and Jim gave somewhat more of his attention to Blair.

"That was delicious. This place was a good idea; thanks."

"You're welcome." Blair leaned back in his seat, and tapped his index finger against his jaw in what he knew was a speculative way. "Now, what do you think you want to see next in Solana's bustling metropolis of Rainier?"

Jim propped his elbows on the table, closing some of the distance between them. "I'm tired, to be honest. I spent most of the day out and about, and I'm ready for a quiet drink in my hotel room." He paused for a beat, and Blair stared into those wonderful blue eyes. "Care to join me?"

"A quiet drink sounds like an excellent idea." Blair stood, as did Jim, and they settled the bill, standing far closer than they had to at the counter. It was a short walk to a metrotrans station, and an even shorter ride to another stop. They sat together, making small talk - more discussion of the exhibits and the meal. Blair mentioned some of the weirder items he'd eaten on fieldwork; Jim described his pleasure at being on a central world, after some of the more primitive places he'd visited. He winced once or twice.

"What's wrong?" Blair asked.

"They need to reconsider the soundproofing in these carriages. Or maybe I was too long on worlds where they're still using draught animals. This smells better anyway."

Blair laughed, and leaned comfortably against Jim's side until they reached their stop. He walked arm in arm with him all the way to the hotel, across pavement where footfalls echoed, and across carpeted hallways where everything was discreet silence. Jim's room was small, but of a high standard, and Blair sank appreciatively into an easy chair.

"I've stayed in worse," he said. "Hostels. Tents. And the bed looks comfortable." Oh, that's smooth, he scolded himself. Even if sex was clearly on the agenda, there were times when his mouth was all too immediately connected to his brain.

Jim didn't look put out. Instead, he sat on the bed, and took his shoes off. Then he leaned against the padded headboard, settling his body into the mattress. "You're right," he declared in mock surprise. "This bed is comfortable." He reached out his hand. "Come here." Blair didn't need a second invitation, and dragged his own shoes off before practically bouncing onto the bed and into the crook of Jim's arm.

"Hi there," he said, mildly embarrassed by his enthusiastic clamber.

"Hi, yourself," Jim said, and kissed him. It started gently but it didn't end that way.

Blair made a quiet, hungry noise that almost startled him even though he'd made it, and clutched at Jim's hard-muscled shoulders. "Take this off," he demanded, plucking at Jim's shirt.

"Take it off yourself."

"Now, that, that is a great idea." Blair leaned up on an elbow as Jim lay on his back, giving Blair access to shirt fastenings. Blair pulled fabric away, to gaze on a torso that was far more a work of art than anything he'd seen at the Solana campus museum. He passed his hands across smooth skin, and the small peaks of pale brownish-pink nipples. "You're beautiful."

Jim smiled, but something sad rose briefly from under the charm and the arousal. His hand ran across the back of Blair's. "So are you."

"Nah. I'm cute; it's different." He lifted Jim's hand to kiss it, and wondered just for a moment where that came from. He was enjoying a fling with an attractive stranger, nothing else. "But I'm talented, too. I'll show you."

He busied his hands at the waistband of Jim's trousers. He was all concentration and focus, still disturbed by the quick surge of tenderness he'd felt. This wasn't going to go anywhere in the long, or even short term; it wasn't as if he'd ever shown any skill at commitments that weren't academic. Jim obligingly lifted his hips, and then raised himself on his elbows to watch.

"That was a hell of a show you put on at the restaurant."

"Was it?" Jim enquired.

Blair made himself comfortable and wrapped his hand around Jim's cock, which was already fully erect. "Yeah, and you knew it was. Fucking tease." He bent his head and took the dark, rosy cap into his mouth, tempted to be a tease right back.

Jim's voice was breathy, undercutting the attempt at nonchalance. "Hey, the chef knew his business." When it came to cock-sucking, so did Blair, and he set out to prove his skill, successfully, if the sounds Jim were making and the trembling thighs told a true story. Jim's hands stroked over Blair's head, not pushing, but playing in the strands of hair, finally gripping maybe too tightly, but Blair didn't care by then. This man would have forgotten him in a few weeks time, but for now Blair held his full attention, and he liked it. He liked it a lot, delving one of his hands into his own trousers to hold and stroke his own cock. When Jim came, with a noise of futile protest, Blair didn't care. This was enough, this sweet fullness held between his lips, and his mouth slackened to cry his own orgasm out around Jim's flesh.

He lay back, but one hand stayed possessively on Jim's hip. Jim's hands relaxed to stroke gently once more against Blair's hair. "So when did you start leading this dance?" Jim asked, but his voice thrummed like a mellow chord of music.

Blair tilted his head up, just enough to see Jim's face. "It seemed like a good idea at the time," he said contentedly.

"Come up here. That was fun but you're too far away."

"Good idea, man, but I think I'll take these clothes off first." Blair couldn't help the grin which spread over his face. "So much for not rushing."

"You have an impetuous streak."

The rest of Blair's clothes were thrown aside and he was drawn into Jim's arms. It was oddly comforting, and Blair sighed and rested his head on the offered shoulder.

Jim's voice felt as if it was vibrating through his skin. "Being the old man that I am, I need a break."

Blair snorted. "Unless you're taking something spectacular in the way of anti-agathics I'd say you're not a day over forty."

"Thirty-six as it happens."

"Ah shit."

A small kiss brushed over Blair's temple. "It's the hairline."

"You're welcome to some of mine."

Jim's voice was amused as he answered, but Blair felt sudden tension knot the arms that held him.

"I'll keep it mind."

***

Jim recovered his strength later in the night, and again in the morning, and even the minor annoyance of Blair's hair getting caught in the decorative cufflinks of Jim's shirt had charm as a memory. "I didn't mean it literally, you know," Blair had teased.

Jim had laughed, and said, "On the other hand, I never say what I don't mean. Now get over here." But he was gone now, had been gone for a month, and it annoyed Blair that he kept on turning the memories over, and not just as something to fantasise about when he was alone in his bed. The memories were certainly worth fantasising over. The sex had been full of the delight of discovering a new lover, mixed with a surety on Jim's part as if he'd been making love to Blair for years. It was a potent memory.

Blair's campus life involved any number of calls from professors and friends and students. When he peered into his cell-screen and saw Jim, he was almost irritated by the pleased jump of his heart. "You're a face I didn't expect to see again. Not that I'm not very happy to see you."

"I know I'm a surprise. But I enjoyed Solana and the company I found there, and I was due a real holiday. So, here I am." Jim's face was almost shy, and Blair was touched.

"Here you are. On my cell-screen. Where are you now?"

"Averiel. With a booking to one of the private resort islands. And I wondered if you'd like to join me."

Averiel was an archipelago in balmy climes, which made its money out of high-class tourism. "Averiel? Your importing and exporting must be going well."

"Well enough. And since it is going well, I insist on you being my guest."

You don't really know this man, a very tiny, sensible voice whispered in Blair's head. He's good looking and good company, and very good in bed and that's the total of your knowledge. But that sensible voice was drowned out by Blair speaking into the screen. "I'd still want to pay at least some of my way, but it sounds like a great idea."

A smug smile spread across Jim's face. Yeah, Blair thought, as if many people would turn down all expenses paid trips to Averiel.

"When can you make it?"

"I'll need a couple of days to make arrangements. You're lucky I'm in a lull at the moment."

"Lucky indeed. Check the reply code and get back to me when you're ready."

Getting ready passed in a whirl and still took way too much time, until Blair finally stood under the low, blue-fronded trees that featured in most of Averiel's marketing, and looked at the small personal flyer standing out under the bright sun.

"You really know how to fly one of those things?" he asked dubiously.

Jim's hand brushed a few strands of hair off Blair's sweat-damp forehead.

"I've been a jack of all trades in my time."

Blair eyed Jim's short, military-styled hair and had a moment's qualm. But he looked around at the scenery, which included a smiling Jim Anders set in the closest thing to paradise that the corporeal world offered, and decided that if he trusted in anything, he certainly trusted in the competency of the tall man standing next to him.

"Is it air-conditioned?"

Jim rolled his eyes. "Why no, the manufacturers decided that passengers could either fry or freeze, depending on the conditions."

Blair blushed and then recovered. "How about you educate my ignorance with a tour?"

Jim bowed and flourished one hand in the flyer's direction. "All aboard."

The interior was very comfortable, and very well appointed.

"There's a refrigerator with plenty of drinks," Jim said. "I should concentrate on operations for now, but you help yourself."

Blair saw the attraction of that idea, and pulled out an alcohol/fruit juice blend and sat back in the padded seat with a sense of satisfaction. This couldn't last any more than that night in Jim's hotel room had lasted, but for now...He sipped at his drink, enjoying the mix of flavours, the sweetness of the juice and the kick of the liquor. He yawned. "Oh, man. Sorry."

Jim turned to smile. "Hey. If you want to sleep now, feel free. I plan to keep you busy when we make land."

Looking out over the increasingly blurry, cobalt sea, Blair thought that maybe he could sleep. Of course he could.

***

It was an awakening in more ways than one. Blair's eyelids dragged themselves up unwillingly, and he stared in confusion at a curved, pressed-plastics bunk ceiling. Not the faux tropical hut that his muzzy brain expected, but undeniably a ship's cabin interior. His heart beating sickeningly, he sat up, minding his head. He was in a small, two bunk cabin, everything stowed away with no sign of occupancy except for his own increasingly frazzled self.

"Okay," he tried to say. 'Okay, this is not good' is what was meant to come out, but his voice croaked, and he realised that he was dry-mouthed and thirsty. There was a tender patch on the back of his hand, and a tiny dot of scab that looked like the remains of an intravenous link-up.

He fumbled at the locker nearest his bunk. Yes, water. He looked at it suspiciously, and then decided that it probably wasn't drugged, as the drink on the flyer clearly had been. He gulped it down, cool and cleansing, refreshing to his mouth if nothing else, and then looked around. Where was Jim? That was the important question, the hard question. Just how much of a fool had Blair been? He stood on unsteady legs and walked over to the door. There was an intercom, and he flicked some switches, but heard nothing that indicated that his increasingly angry words were going anywhere. Eventually, he gave up on that, and began banging his fists on the locked hatchway. "Hey, is anybody there? Someone answer, come on!" There was silence, and in frustrated fury, Blair kicked at the door with a howled, "Fuck you!"

It accomplished nothing except hurting his foot. With a growl, Blair started turning out the lockers. He couldn't open two. The others revealed normal shipboard paraphernalia, and his own belongings that he'd packed to take to Averiel. Besides them, there was another bag that he recognised from his rooms. There were more clothes in it, suited to colder weather, and his personal 'puter.

"Oh, now this is considerate. Bastard!" Tears stung his eyes, but he blinked them back. Blair Sandburg, he told himself, you are one of life's prime, grade-A fools. He sat sprawled on the floor, his bag between his knees, and tried to work out what he was doing here, what this abduction was all about. Lurid fantasies spun their way through his mind, but nothing that had the ring of likelihood. The heat of fury dissipated and he shivered. He was in trouble; that much was clear, but the sort of trouble? He was abjectly confused.

The sound of the hatch opening sent him scrambling to his feet, back to the wall. Jim stepped through the hatch. His expressionless face told Blair nothing, any more than the insignia on his shirt, but Blair knew the generic look of uniform fatigues when he saw them.

Jim nodded with grave formality. "Blair Sandburg."

"Yeah, that's my name." Blair snarled. "What's yours? Your real one?"

"James Ellison, Agent Protector of Cascade."

"Cascade? Where the…" Blair broke off. "Cascade. That's even farther away than Telarcum." He'd heard, barely, of Cascade; it was on the very edge of reclaimed space, and reputedly inclined to keep itself to itself. Why anyone from Cascade should have gone to the obvious trouble of this operation to get Blair into an interstellar craft was completely beyond his understanding.

Blair took a deep breath, and tried to ignore the weakness of his knees. "What's going on? Why am I here?"

"You're going home to Cascade."

Blair blinked. This was surreal. "Home! My home is on Solana. How about you try making some sense." He grabbed at the edge of a bunk with one hand, suddenly light-headed.

Jim - James Ellison - hurried forward and sat Blair on the edge of the bunk. "You've been under for several days, and you'll feel weak for a while. If you tell me what you'd like, I'll get you a meal."

There were spots in front of Blair's eyes, but he pushed out some words. "What I'd like is to never have met you." The next thing he knew, he was lying on his bunk, looking into Jim's concerned face. He was helped up by strong, familiar arms, and more water was offered to him.

"I'm sorry. I know that this is a shock, but this is something very important to my world."

"What?" Blair struggled away from Jim. "Let go of me. I don't need your help."

Jim's face became unreadable. "If you say so. You do need food. Any preferences?"

"Hot. And eaten in my own rooms back on Solana."

"I can do one of those things."

"You do that," Blair said, and lowered his head back onto the pillow, feeling only a little better for the water. The hatch opened and shut once more, and Blair drifted in miserable anger until, needing some sort of action, he leaned over the side of the bunk to fish his 'puter out of his bag. He turned to the wall, switched on the projector and accessed the general database with its very small entry on Cascade. Squinting, he considered the words and pictures thrown onto the wall's shiny plastic surface.

Cascade: standard habitable planet, plenty of water and rainfall, but apparently named for a spectacular series of waterfalls on one of the continents. Geologically active in several areas. Self-sufficient in food and simple technology, small population by Consortium standards. Only contacted in the reclaiming in the last fifty years, although in contact with some of its closer neighbours before that. Restricted contact, off-worlders permitted only in two enclaves attached to the space port. No permanent diplomatic bases on the planet, with one incident some twenty-six years ago when a diplomat and his family were detained, and were only finally able to leave following some carefully coded gunboat diplomacy. There were follow-up links. Blair tried them, but he wasn't surprised that there was no connection.

Major trading partner - Telarcum. "Oh, look, a small kernel of truth in the lies. Did your government do a deal for your ID, Jim?" The projected screen went awry on the wall as Blair's hand dropped to the mattress. He felt exhausted and close to tears again. He wanted to tell himself that it was the after-effects of drugs and stasis-sleep but he wasn't so sure.

The hatch opened, and Jim returned, holding a food-pack which spread a savoury smell through the cabin. Blair's gut twisted in the way that a stomach that was both queasy and desperately hungry often did. He turned and leaned up on his elbow and accepted the silently offered pack without any acknowledgement. He tore it open and began to eat, slowly at first, but with steady intent.

"Better?" Jim asked.

"I'm fed, but then you clearly want me alive so that's not saying much."

"Did you find the hygiene cabinet?"

"Yes. It's only a commode and wash basin. Will I get to have a shower at some point?"

"There are communal facilities nearby. When I'm sure that you won't faint on your way to them, you can shower if you want."

"The generosity. Be still, my heart."

"Sandburg…"

"Oh, not Blair anymore?"

Jim's face was not so much unreadable as stiff with restraint.

"We don't use general honorifics. I might address you as Professor Sandburg, or Blair Sandburg or just Sandburg, but using your first name implies informality or intimacy. I'm assuming neither of those options is appropriate right now."

A bitter laugh ground its way out of Blair's throat. "Appropriate. That's one way of looking at it. Abducting me was appropriate, though, and fucking me?"

That hit a nerve. Jim's jaw lifted, and Blair saw the twitch of a muscle in the side of his jaw. "We needed access to you to make DNA checks."

"DNA checks? You couldn't have just broken into my rooms and stolen something? Hair out of my brush? There's enough of it."

"Your housing complex was under close surveillance because of threats against another occupant."

Blair felt stronger as the effect of the food made itself known, and he didn't want to be lying down in front of this familiar stranger any longer. He sat on the edge of the bunk.

"At least you got plenty of my DNA, man. Congratulations." He swiped his hair back from his face. It felt disgusting. He so needed to wash, almost as much as he needed to know why his life had just so spectacularly turned to shit. "I'd like a shower, and then some explanations. Is that possible?"

"I can give you some general information, but a full debriefing has to wait until we reach Cascade."

"Why am I not surprised? So show me where the showers are, huh."

He was led to the showers down the hallways of a cramped but serviceable ship. He washed in the sealed cubicle, threw an unsatisfactorily skimpy towel into the chute and returned to his attentive guard, who was irritatingly attractive in the dark blue clothes he wore. A gorgeous-looking banquet of a man, Blair thought. Pity he makes you sick.

"How long 'til we get to Cascade - or wherever we're going?"

"Two weeks."

Blair shook his head. Two weeks cramped in that tiny cabin - and that might be the best he had to look forward to.

"I guess I'm ready for any general information you can give me now."

Jim gestured. "In the cabin then." He followed Blair on the way back, a silent, soft-stepping presence that Blair was terribly aware of the whole short walk.

Blair sat on his bunk and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. Jim sat in the other bunk, which was set at right angles to Blair's.

"So. What the hell am I doing here?"

"What I said before. You're going back to your people. You'll be welcomed and cared for."

"Cascade is nothing to do with me!" Blair's voice cracked with anger and dazed desperation.

"Cascade is everything to do with you. Your father was a citizen of Cascade, and you belong with your people."

"My father is dead. He died on Tsongai when I was a small child."

"He died two years ago in Independence in an accidental fall. And he always regretted your loss." Jim's voice was calm; compassionate even, as if he was a civil enforcement officer breaking bad news.

"This is crazy. This is totally crazy and you and your people of Cascade are insane!"

"We're not insane. But we have strong ideals and beliefs, going back to our foundation. Our children belong to Cascade." It had the tone of something ritual.

"I'm not a child and I don't belong to Cascade or anybody else." Blair tried to moderate his voice. "Come on, it's not too late," he coaxed. "You could get me back to Solana and I won't - I won't mention any of this, I'll put out some cover story that's acceptable to you and your government. This is going to be one hell of a mess, and it doesn't have to be that way."

"There won't be any mess, Sandburg. You and Jim Anders are dead. You were killed when the flyer crashed into the ocean."

Blair stared in horror. The news would go back to friends, his mother. Naomi would be terribly distressed. He thought of the competence he'd seen in the fake Anders, by the flyer. At least his confidence in the man's abilities hadn't been misplaced.

"You're very efficient."

The dim light of the cabin threw shadows over Jim's face, blurring the sharp cast of bone, and hiding his expression. "So it would seem." He gestured at the 'puter still lying on Blair's bunk. "That's why I got that for you. Because I'm efficient, and you'll need something to fill in your time."

"Strangely enough, I can't bring myself to be grateful." Blair threw himself back against the mattress and laid a denying arm over his face. "You know what? I'm tired. And I have a lot to think about. So I'm just going to lie here quietly and think and rest, and hope that this is an incredibly strange nightmare."

It wasn't a nightmare, at least, not the sort that Blair could wake up from. After two days and nights, Blair was more than sated with the entertainment options offered by his 'puter. He was bored, and listening to Jim's steady breathing in the night was a very special refinement of torture.

"Do I have to share a cabin with you?"

"There are no spare rooms. And it wouldn't be suitable for you to share with another crewmember."

"Worried I might suborn them?"

"No." The simple certainty of that shook Blair. "But there's no need to put anyone to the embarrassment of listening to your approaches and then reporting them to me." A glint of wry humour shone out of Jim's eyes. "Maybe we could set up a makeshift brig, but I doubt you'd find it comfortable."

"Do I have to stay in here all the time? I'm just about ready to crawl the walls. Come on, where would I go? I don't exactly have my navigator's licence, even if I could take over the ship."

Jim bent his head in thought, a frown marring his face. "It's possible you could join the crew in the mess. But if you make any difficulties, you'll be removed."

"Why would I make any difficulties about being abducted?" Blair muttered.

"Sandburg…"

"I get it, I get it. Be polite. Yes, Mother."

Maybe Blair's eagerness when he saw an entirely new set of ship's hallway was pathetic, but he didn't care. It was different, and it was leading him to people, and to all sorts of opportunities: the relief of boredom with new faces to look at; the gathering of more information; and with information, maybe a chance to get himself out of this mess.

The ship puzzled him. In its size and look of painstaking maintenance, it was the product of a low-tech, poorer world. But there was a sense of aesthetics in the lines and layout, and in the lack of ship noises and smells, that reminded him of the high-class cruise ships he and Naomi had travelled on. Somewhere there was a very efficient set of scrubbers and air-filters.

Jim led him into a cabin that was huge in its airy space compared to the rest of the ship. There were six men and women gathered there, dressed in the same kind of blue fatigues as Jim wore. Blair felt as if he'd been placed in the middle of a broadcast drama. They were of a variety of heights, but everyone was as ridiculously good-looking as Jim. One man stepped forward to meet them, a flush darkening his olive skin. His appearance, and solid body, was quite different to Jim's fairer, chiselled beauty but just as appealing. The crew all had hair cut close to their scalps just as Jim's was; the harsh style didn't at all detract from their attractiveness.

"Blair Sandburg. We're very pleased to meet you."

Sheer surprise restrained a sarcastic retort. These people were looking at Blair as if he was the drama star, and an uncomfortable feeling it was.

"Uh, thank you."

"And you've recovered? It's regrettable that so much subterfuge was needed." This came from a small woman, whose gorgeously liquid brown eyes shone from a rich, dark skin. Blair didn't miss the look that passed between Jim and the other man - the captain? There was subterfuge going on that not everybody on this ship knew about, and Blair felt hope rise that he might be able to reason with some of these people.

"Yes. Thank you," he repeated, feeling like an idiot.

Jim stepped forward. "Blair Sandburg, the crew of the ship, Vigilant." There was no offering of names.

Each of them came up to Blair, and took his hand in a double grip of his or her own, pressing their foreheads to his. This at least put Blair on familiar ground - greeting rituals he could comprehend. Although the sense that he was being thoroughly sniffed by at least two of the crew, the man he assumed was the captain, and a woman, made him uncomfortable all over again.

"Please, sit," the captain invited. He was a shy host but determined to do his duty, it seemed. "I know that everything must be very new to you, but once we get you home you'll soon become accustomed to our ways."

"That's very - uh - kind of you," Blair muttered. This was ridiculous. These people had kidnapped him. Jim had kidnapped him, and that stung at a shockingly personal level. "But to be honest, I don't want to become accustomed to the ways of Cascade, however excellent they might be. I want to go home to my own place."

There was little anger, but a great deal of shock on some faces, and resigned disappointment on Jim's.

The woman who had so clearly sniffed at Blair spoke first. "But Cascade is your home! Your heritage - it shines out of your face and your scent."

She looked like a child just told that her deepest belief was a pretty lie. Sense and policy demanded that Blair be conciliatory, but outrage came to the fore instead.

"Cascade is not my home! And carrying me off there like some ancient ritual of rapine isn't going to make it my home. What is it with you people?"

But Jim had already hoisted him to his feet, with assistance from the captain, and Blair was hustled from the cabin to stand in the hall in sullen silence. There was no shyness about the captain now. "James Ellison warned me. I should have listened. My apologies for your distress." He made a short bow and returned to the mess-room.

Jim released him with one soothing stroke against a sore spot that Blair hadn't even noted amongst the general pain and humiliation, until that would-be comforting touch. He pulled his arm away.

"Let me guess. Back to my cabin?"

"If this was your idea of no difficulties, I don't want to see you when you are setting out to make trouble."

"Oh, you have no idea."

"I think I'm starting to."

After that, it was a very boring, very lonely evening.

Blair and silence weren't really compatible, and the brief scene in the mess-room had given him an idea of the mindset he was facing. So the next morning, with the intention of both apology and strategy, he set out to make conversation, as Jim worked at what Blair presumed was a report.

"Do all your people wear your hair as short as that? Because I'm certainly going to stand out if close-clipped is the planetary style." He flicked a finger underneath his long tail of hair.

Jim's eyes seemed to look straight through him, and note both his intentions. There was a rueful smile on his face as he answered. "No, Cascade has a variety of fashions. Short hair marks anyone in the Foreign Corps, or attached to it. People admire our bravery, but they're suspicious of our exposure to dangerous off-world ideas."

"Does that include kidnapping, Agent Protector Ellison?"

"Sandburg, I'm sorry. But your return - it's been a dream of my people for a generation."

"Then I guess there'll be a lot of prestige for the man who brings me back."

Distaste, and maybe even a flash of hurt showed in Jim's face. "I don't do what I do for the praise or the prestige."

"You're just following orders."

Blair imagined that Jim's eyes would look exactly that cold when he was sighting down a weapon stock.

"That's right," he said and picked up his gear and left the room.

He didn't return until later in the ship's day. "Would you care to join the crew in the mess after main-meal?"

You can't achieve anything if you go crazy from isolation, Blair told himself. "Yes, thank you. And I'll try to avoid controversy."

"That would be helpful."

The evening began as before - the handshake and head touch. Blair made no reference to the previous evening and neither did anyone else. Instead, he indicated his willingness to sit quietly and listen. "I'm not really ready for talk, just a change of scene."

The crew sat and chatted amongst themselves. They looked stiff and uncomfortable at first, and a lot of not so covert looks were sent Blair's way. But gradually the group relaxed, with much of the tone set by Jim, who asked several leading questions. Steering his people away from dangerous waters, Blair suspected, but he heard something of the recent adventures of the crew on some of Cascade's neighbouring worlds, and a recent battle with raiders.

"I thought they were a thing of the past."

Jim shrugged. "In central regions, maybe. But they've been a problem for a long time out here, and the Nine Worlds is harrying them to the outer systems. Providing body guards and merchant protection has been a mainstay of our economy for about a hundred years, so we can't complain too much."

"And that's what you do?" Blair gestured at the crew.

"Some of the time." That was the cue for the blonde woman, Geary the others called her, to pull out a small flute. She played a beguiling, melancholy tune, with the clear intent of deflecting any more questions about what it was that the crew of the Vigilant actually did.

Over the next week, Blair was gradually allowed more freedom around the ship. He never saw the bridge, or engineering, or life-support, although he did see the tiny hydroponics room. "You don't often have this on a ship this size," he said to Jim.

Jim's long fingers stroked a fat, fuzzy leaf on one of the few plants that was more than fifteen centimetres high, releasing a sharply herbal scent into the air. "We think it's worth it." He stooped, practically burying his nose in the plant, and Blair held back a smile. He ought not to be amused at the sight of this stern man lost in aromatic pleasure.

"It does smell good," Blair said. "What's it called?" There was no answer. Jim stayed where he was, his eyes shut, his face transfixed in pleased concentration. "Uh, Agent Ellison?" Still no answer. Blair put a hand on Jim's shoulder. "Hey, are you okay?"

Jim's eyelids fluttered and he straightened abruptly, one hand grabbing at Blair's in a painful grip.

"Hey, stop, ow! I didn't do anything; you were the one doing the weird stuff." Jim stared at him as if he'd never seen him before. "Will you lighten up the hold? I like having circulation in my fingers."

Jim released Blair's hand with slow confusion, his eyes following his action with complete astonishment. "This isn't happening." He looked at Blair to say, "I - I'm sorry," before he left the room, his gait as stumbling as his voice.

When Jim appeared later in the evening, he still looked shaken.

"Are you all right?" Blair asked.

"I'm fine. It was a mild allergic reaction to the plant."

Mild reaction. Fine. The only reason you care, Blair thought, is captor dependence syndrome. Jim's familiar to you, you're latching onto him as a friend. He's not your friend. Blair shut his eyes. He needed to care about what happened to him, Blair Sandburg of Solana; not Agent Protector James Ellison of Cascade.

***

There was a flyer waiting for them at the spaceport. The Vigilant's crew offered their goodbyes with handclasp and head touch. They all wished him well, but Blair could see a touch of confusion in some; perhaps they wondered at his lack of enthusiasm. He lifted his eyes to take a look at the alien sky of his so-called home. There was the faintest touch of purple to the cloud cover and he wondered if that was normal or meant that wild weather was on the way. On Solana, a sky like that would have cleared the streets.

Two men stood by the door of the flyer. Blair climbed in and sat in a seat festooned with a confusing number of straps. He didn't get a chance to even try figuring out the arrangement before Jim was there, wrapping the safety restraints around him with focused efficiency.

"I'm not five years old."

There was a tiny duck of Jim's head that Blair had learned meant suppressed amusement. "I know you're not, but you're more used to civilian transport. Just let me do this." Blair submitted to the touch of Jim's hands around his body. For all he knew, this might be the last time he saw him, and that scared him. Brave new world, he thought, and stared out the window at the buildings of the spaceport, before they dropped away beneath him.

"It's early evening, is it?" Blair asked. The idea that it might be this gloomy all the time was depressing.

Jim sat opposite him, his face turned to view the place that truly was his home. "Yes, that's right." Blair didn't know what to make of the way that Jim looked at him, or refused to look at him, especially in the days since the 'allergic reaction'. Yes, he knew that, psychologically speaking, Jim might have his own attachment issues, but surely not after the short contact they'd had.

"I suppose that I won't see you again after this."

Jim gave him another of those inexplicable looks. "Probably not."

He'd never asked before, partly out of stubbornness and partly out of fear.

"Do you know what's going to happen now?"

Jim's face softened. "You're an honoured citizen of Cascade. Whatever happens, you'll be treated well. Don't worry."

See, Blair told his racing heart, don't worry. He wished he could believe it, and concentrated on looking at the ground below with an academic eye. Orderly street grid, small population centre. He could see lights flowering below as the sky darkened. They flew perhaps half an hour, until they were passing over what appeared to be a city, although still small by Solanan standards. There they landed, and Blair was escorted by the other two men from the flyer into chill night air. He had the feeling that an open space flowed away behind him to city lights, and a noise of muted cheering reached his ears. He was led towards a tall, graceful building and into a lofty hall, to see a small group of what were clearly dignitaries. No bands, no parades, no fireworks. He was grateful for that. He didn't look behind him to see where Jim had gone.

There was a flurry of greetings - handshakes and head touches, short and infuriatingly smug speeches of welcome. He wondered if Jim's report had been handed in yet, or if he'd simply not mentioned Blair's considerable ingratitude at being the returned lost child. He felt too depressed and too lost to try and deflate the self-congratulation that was wrapped around everyone in the party except him.

"We'd like to take some pictures for our records, Blair Sandburg." His panicked gape was at least partly understood. "Oh, not yet for publication; we understand that you will need a gradual introduction to your people."

Chilled, Blair thought of the crowd that must have been standing back somewhere beyond the grounds of this parliament or palace or whatever it was; he stared towards the photographer with sullen confusion. He was placed next to a tall, maturely beautiful woman, clearly someone very important. She murmured to whoever was on the other side of her, "Where's Agent Protector Ellison?"

"He was indisposed."

She was silent, whether in disapproval or surprise, before she turned to smile graciously on Blair. Pictures were taken, and the party moved into another room, this time set with tables of food. Blair had a foggy impression of pleasant proportions and colours, and piquant smells before it all became too much. He turned in panic to the woman, and muttered, "Is there somewhere I can be alone? Please, this is too much."

She looked startled then gestured to one of Blair's escort, and another man, gray-haired and urbane. "Please take Blair Sandburg to his quarters." He was discreetly led out a side door, down some corridors and into a lift, before he was deposited in what he could only call a suite.

"Do you need medical attention?" the gray-haired man asked, all concern.

"No." Blair didn't want to sound like a petulant adolescent wanting his space, and he was angry at being reduced to feeling exactly like that. "I just need some peace and quiet." The two men made small bows of their heads, and left the room.

He sat down on a very comfortable couch, and repetitively rubbed his hands over the upholstery because it was better than throwing up in sheer terror. Here he was, being well-treated. Jim had promised that he would be. "I don't want to be here," he announced to the walls. He stood, pacing over a cunningly laid wooden floor which was buffed to a warmly golden shine. "I said that I don't want to be here!" he shouted. Somewhere in this building people were celebrating his presence on Cascade, but his words were swallowed into silence.

***

The quarters he was taken to three days later were less obviously palatial than his suite in the Commonwealth Building, but still very comfortable, very tasteful, very spacious. The small staff that accompanied him was quiet and respectful, and not very communicative. Blair wondered if jailers had always been the plan, or if his furious anger at the end of his first 'orientation' session had finally enlightened whoever was responsible for this venture.

He sat with appalled frustration in front of what passed for a 'puter screen here. A solid screen! Yet another reminder that he was not in civilisation anymore. So, he was out on a field expedition, he told himself. The idea had a sour appeal, and he ignored the screen and sat back, shutting his eyes and envisaging an outline for a study on Cascade. 'Paranoia and Patriotism as Vehicles of Society-wide Delusion'. He'd need a less biased title if he ever escaped his solicitous caregivers but it would do for now.

He heard someone approaching him and let the idea sink into that place in his mind where he could retrieve it when he needed. Opening his eyes, he looked into a familiar face.

"Blair Sandburg."

Blair didn't stand. Instead he lolled on his chair and drawled, "Now you're a face I didn't expect to see again."

Jim looked back at him. "I expect you didn't. I didn't expect to see you again either."

"Life is full of disappointment."

There went that muscle twitch in Jim's jaw again.

"Sit down, Ellison. Make yourself comfortable."

Jim remained standing. "I've been appointed your liaison."

Blair stood himself, then. "My liaison with whom? Does this mean that I'm going to be allowed loose out in the big wide world?"

"Gradually," Jim replied. There was an edge to his voice that Blair noted for future consideration.

"And was that your recommendation?"

"On careful consideration, it's been decided that your gradual integration into Cascade society will be best." Blair smiled joylessly. There really had been some shocked faces at his orientation.

"Great. Great. I'm looking forward to some integration. Will that include some conversation? Because my current jailers are strong and silent types, and it's getting boring. And you know me and boredom."

Jim's mouth quirked into an unwilling grin. "Yes, I do."

"So, as my liaison have you already seen my domain, or would you like the tour?"

"It's all new to me and I ought to familiarise myself with your situation."

Blair gestured. "Familiarise away. As you can see, this is the private living space - very comfortable and attractive, but, man, Cascade is way behind on its information technology. Or am I just being restricted in what I have access to?"

"Something of both."

Blair clutched at his chest in mock astonishment. "An honest reply. This liaison thing might even work. Although I'm surprised that you got the job. Being my kidnapper and all." He ought to give that a rest, he really ought. Jim had been acting as he thought right, as he'd been ordered by his government. Blair's bitterness was becoming a habit, a negative one, and anger might offer strength but it also wearied a body and mind.

"I was surprised, too. But I have experience with off-world customs and my superiors decided that I'd be the best person to work with you." Again, there was that undercurrent to Jim's voice, and Blair wondered if this assignment was maybe a punishment. He remembered the query of the woman he now knew was the Speaker for Cascade - the leader, the ruler, the president - 'where is Agent Protector Ellison?'. He could imagine that babysitting an unhappy off-worlder might lack shine and glamour compared to travelling on Cascade's behalf among the planets.

"Here, I'll show you around the rest of the place." He didn't bother with the large entrance hall and attached lounge. That was the purview of his 'security detachment'. Instead he showed Jim the bedrooms, bathrooms, and the well-stocked kitchen area. Blair tried to consider the house with less jaundiced eyes as he led Jim around. It was beautiful - airy and well-proportioned, decorated with luminously polished wood, colourful tile, and subtly coloured panels which were woven out of some sort of fibre into geometric patterns. Outside was pleasant, too; the house gables rose harmoniously to the sky. The garden wasn't large, but cunningly landscaped, complete with tall, screening plants and a pool and small fountain. Blair sat on a low wooden bench. "Far more comforts than home," he said, desperately homesick for his shabby, cramped apartment on Solana, the data-files, the printed books, and favourite artefacts.

"Except it's not what you want." Jim was staring into the depths of the pool, which wasn't hard because it was only about two foot deep. But Jim's eyes seemed to look far further than that.

"Give that man a prize." Blair took a breath. "That's what I thought you were at first. Am I going to see the real you here, any more than I did back on Solana?"

The pool was surrounded with small, pale pebbles. Jim crouched and picked one up, rubbing it over and over between his fingers.

"You saw more of me than you ought to have before. I didn't have to pretend to enjoy your company." Blair thought of those hours that Jim had spent with him on the Vigilant, that maybe weren't simply a matter of guarding a prisoner.

The pebble arced from Jim's fingers to land with a tiny splash in the water. "Sandburg, I'd send you back if I could. But my people made a decision, and I chose loyalty and I still choose loyalty and I have to make the best of my choices."

Blair watched the ripples spread out across the pool. "At least they are your choices."

"It makes a difference, yes." There was sadness wound around Jim's voice.

Blair shouldn't care, but he asked anyway. "Is this a punishment? Being planet-bound and nurse-maiding me?"

Jim smiled. "It's intended as an honour. Very prestigious."

The teasing voice clearly recalled Blair's taunt on the Vigilance. "My mouth runs away with me sometimes."

"So I was advised." Jim's face was warm with the easy humour of the man who chatted with Blair in the restaurant on Solana.

"I shouldn't have been so surprised. Cascade's been an insular, self-sufficient culture for a long time. Naturally, you think that your culture is the best way."

"It works for us."

It doesn't work for me, Blair thought, but kept that to himself.

"Is all of Cascade like this?" Blair's hand indicated the spare lines of the house behind him, the quiet peace of the garden.

"We like our contact with the natural world, if that's what you're asking. We don't like waste or obsolescence. It meets a need in us, and it's a conscious affirmation that we're more than our lab animal origins."

Blair sighed. "It's a terrible story, but it was seven hundred years ago. You don't think that your people are…"

"Paranoid about discovery?" But there was still humour in Jim's voice. He was a man of the worlds, after all.

"Unnecessarily concerned about secrecy," Blair said with dignity, and didn't think of his bitter little presentation behind its locks in his mind.

"It's still recent history to us, Sandburg. Seventy years ago, the raiders were a major problem out here. They made targeted attacks, most of them on schools and educational facilities. We think that they were only concerned with the fact that we're apparently a good-looking gene-pool, but…That was the start of the major controls on off-world contact. It cost us a lot of money, a lot of effort."

The idea of any group of young people sold into slavery was horrific, but there was a special distaste to it given what Blair had been told about the special gifts of some of the people of Cascade. He wondered if the raiders had known, or guessed.

"Jim. Ellison," Blair corrected himself. "I'm not saying that people wouldn't be interested in Cascade from a scientific viewpoint, but the extremes your society seems to think are appropriate..."

"On Athena, one of the corporations owns forty percent of the genes spread among the population on the planet."

"They own the genes. Not the people." It was a fine distinction, and Blair had heard, and participated in, strong argument about it.

"We won't be owned by anyone but ourselves, Sandburg. And we don't like our people's genetic heritage anywhere we don't know what's going to become of it."

There was silence, except for the rustle of the wind through foliage.

"The woman I saw - she said that up to fifty percent of your planet are gifted with sensory abilities beyond the norm." He thought of Geary on the Vigilant, who'd scented him, and clearly smelled something that satisfied her Cascade sense of belonging.

Jim shrugged, still gazing at the pool. "That's the proportion. Yes, I have heightened senses, all five. It's useful for what I do."

Blair thought of how Jim had known perfectly how to touch him, and even here, his whole body heated at the memory. Jim looked at him. "And yes, I used them on you."

"And I thought we had that special connection," Blair scoffed. To his utter surprise, James Ellison of Cascade blushed a deep, painful red; more proof that Jim hadn't been comfortable with the playacting on Solana. Blair felt a disconcerting pang of pity.

Jim stood. "Your full orientation was interrupted. I brought various resources with me. Let's see if I can get something worthwhile for you out of our backwards technology."

***

Routine was reputedly a good thing, and yes, Blair had his routines back on Solana; teaching, study, friends. But he was going to explode with frustration soon if he didn't see some break in his routine here. Wake, meditate, cook breakfast, spend time accessing what he could through the Cascade infotech system, cook lunch. After food and cleanup Blair would meditate, see Jim, cook dinner, and pretend to access infotech while actually taking notes and composing presentations in the privacy of his head. Seeing Jim was one of the two things that kept him from going insane, and that was worrying on all sorts of levels, especially since his other keeper of sanity was the hope that he would somehow get off the planet. And if he kept eating the way he was, he was going to have trouble fitting through the doors one day.

There were only so many circuits he could make of the house and garden, and finally in desperation, Blair decided to appeal to his guards, who surely must be as bored as he was.

He judged the younger man the more approachable and went up to him. He was about Blair's age, and watched Blair with polite wariness.

"Blair Sandburg?"

"I know that my contact with your planet is supposed to be carefully controlled, blahblah-yahyah, but I need to get out the door some times." This request produced a disconcerted expression, which was quickly wiped away into impassivity.

"I need to confer with Agent Protector Ellison."

"No you don't, because I'm not asking to be integrated anywhere. There are some perfectly empty hills rising up behind this house, and all I want is some fresh air. How insecure can it be?"

There was a moment of unprofessional blankness before the guard said, "I'll accompany you."

"Never expected anything less." Blair went back to his bedroom to grab a light jacket. His guard - no, let's be nice, Blair thought - his companion waited for him.

"So, you know who I am. What's your name?"

"Agent Protector Bryden Rafe, Blair Sandburg."

"Nice to meet you, Rafe. Are there any tracks or do we jump somebody's fence?"

Rafe maintained an impressively non-expressive face. "I believe that there's an access gate some hundred feet down the road."

"Excellent. Let's go."

Blair's heart nearly burst with excitement when he opened the latch on the gate at the border of the small formal garden and the footpath outside. Hey, look, he was stepping on yet more Cascade soil. How far away could 'integration' be?

"This way, please," Rafe said.

It was a beautiful day, but there was a bite to the wind. Blair was glad of the jacket he wore. The sky was a pale, eggshell blue, and a small wisp of cloud was delicately lavender in colour. He wondered what the science was behind that, before he took a deep breath of air.

"The Agent Protector thing - I thought you people had the really short hair?" Rafe's was hardly long, but neither was it the crop that Blair was used to seeing on Jim. The word 'dapper' came to mind when looking at Bryden Rafe.

"Only if we go off-world, Blair Sandburg."

"So you're more local security, then?"

"I don't believe I should answer that question."

Blair sighed. They had reached the end of the paved path, and passed through the gate. A rough walking track wound its way up the hill into scrub and a few taller trees.

"Ooo-kay. So tell me, Rafe, how are you on botany?"

There was the tiniest sign of both humanity and a smile. "I know about two tree names and a few common weeds, and the names of the types of flowers I can afford to send my mother on her birthday."

"Then I guess I'll take some mental notes and see what I can track down on my screen this evening."

Rafe had no answer to that, nor, annoyingly, was he breathing as heavily as Blair as the slope began to tell.

"Think that you'll be okay with this every day? " Blair asked. "Because I'm going to get so out of shape otherwise."

"I don't believe that there would be any problem."

"And it gets you out of the house too, right?"

There was a smile that might even pass for amused. "As you say, Sandburg."

They reached the top of the hill. In front of and below them, the trees and shrubs petered out into what looked like farmland. The hills were planted with tall, thick clumps of broad, spear-like grass. Blair turned to survey the ground they'd just covered.

He'd been brought to his new home in a car, seated in the back between two security men. Cascade wasn't much for cars - he presumed they were expensive. Instead they'd passed a great many pedal-powered two-wheelers and three-wheelers. Men and women had towed small carts behind as often as not, carrying anything from children to plants to parcels.

Looking back now over the city, he could marvel at the clearness of the air. The city area was compact, but after the drive he could estimate the approximate size of the population, especially now that he could see roughly how far buildings and streets stretched away on the plain below his hill-top vantage. Somewhere between 500,000 and a million people, he thought. Tiny by Nine Worlds' standards. The sun reflected off a long, travelling snake of metal. Mass transit of some sort. He took a deep breath. These people would get used to him eventually. Maybe he could ask for one of the two-wheelers. Maybe he'd be permitted to travel on that transit system, on his own. Maybe he'd have a chance to get to the spaceport, or to the enclave surrounding it, where Cascade herded the few foreign purveyors of doubtful outside influences who ever found this far away spot worthwhile. But for now, for however short a time, he was outside the beautiful, gracious prison of his house.

"We should head back."

Blair nodded. They tramped back down the hill, and Blair thought of the two-wheelers that there must be in this city. Surely, somebody might be careless with one of them. He had a mad vision of himself pedalling his way across the void between Cascade and Solana, and chuckled.

"Blair Sandburg?"

"Sorry, man. Private joke."

***

It was an obvious option to ask if Jim would accompany him on the silly little excursions up the hill. There was no other 'liaising' to be done, and at least Jim knew something about Cascade botany, and was even willing to confirm some of Blair's guesses about the city beyond - named Independence. One day, Jim brought a bag with him, and opened it to reveal clothes in the styles that were currently fashionable on Cascade.

"I'm getting tired of the view from that damn hill. I thought we could walk along the streets. It would make a change of pace."

A bag of clothes shouldn't make Blair this happy.

"A change of pace. Yeah, that'd be a good thing." He laid the clothes out on the bed. There were several changes of outfit. "Any suggestions? What does the well-dressed walker wear in Independence these days?"

"They're clothes, Sandburg. Pick what you like."

So Blair did, and the two of them set out, farther into the streets of this outlying fringe of the city. Some compact houses, like Blair's, other buildings that were far more sprawling and reached as high as three or four storeys; Blair looked at and noted it all. There was also a rail system, and a station shelter. "Public transportation. You people are civilised after all," he teased.

"I've always thought so," Jim shot back.

"I guess that I don't get a ride any time soon?" Blair asked wistfully.

"You guess right."

"In that case… that way looks as good as any."

They sat and rested in a small park. Again the land lay at a slope and Blair had that urge to be high - to be able to see, he supposed. Interesting neurosis you're developing there, Blair.

There was a gaggle of small children and adults at the bottom of the slope, by the play equipment. Blair gestured towards them.

"Family or school group?"

Jim's head tilted. "Family group."

"Local knowledge?"

"Good hearing." Jim grinned.

Blair leaned up, fascinated. "How good?"

"Good enough."

"No fair." Blair thought about further challenging Jim's unsatisfactory answer, before another question occurred to him.

"Do you have any family here?"

"Cascade does some gene tech but we don't clone, Sandburg."

"I was just wondering if you had any significant others, given that you had to take me to bed for the cause."

Jim ignored the jibe. "My father is still alive. I have a brother, who's married, I suppose, by off-world definitions. He and Kyla have two children. They share a house with Kyla's sister, Jenda, and her spouse." Blair noted a small hesitation around that word. Not a normal Cascade usage. "Jenda's with another woman, and Stephen asked me if I'd consider fathering a child for them."

Blair's mind fell into formal note-taking mode. "This would be a normal arrangement on Cascade?" A kinship structure template sat before his closed eyes, tempting gaps asking to be filled. He paused, then assumed the question must be all right if Jim had brought the subject up. "Did you?"

"Yes, I did. Via insemination. Everybody was happy, even my father."

"Your mother?"

"She didn't plan on having children and I was something of a surprise. There hasn't been a lot of contact." Interesting undertones to Jim's voice, there. "Dad was in another relationship with a woman called Sally. Sally was as much mother as I needed."

Blair gave up looking and thinking to simply lie back on the ground and feel the sun on his face, to admire the bright red flare its light made against his closed eyelids. Enough academic distraction. Enough personal distraction, no matter how interesting information about Jim was.

"You're my liaison, Ellison, so I want you to liaise. What the hell is going on, besides you and me inaugurating the Independence Suburban Walking Society?"

Jim was silent, and Blair felt a big hole open up within his chest. Not good; absolutely not good.

"Your position is being given a lot of thought," Jim finally said, with delicate imprecision.

Blair leaned up on his elbow and looked at Jim, who sat beside him on the grass, his hands clasped across his knees, his handsome face in profile as he too took in the view.

"Don't give me the bullshit. Please."

Jim still looked out at the roofs and streets. "A small group suggested that you be permitted to leave, but they've been overruled."

The big hole in Blair's chest was suddenly filled with a cold, spiked stone.

"Overruled."

Jim shrugged. "I doubt you would have liked their conditions. You would have had to agree to be sterilised. They would have preferred that you wear your hair in Foreign Corps style."

"All the better to not spread any of that precious Cascade DNA around. Oh, that's funny, that is absolutely hysterical." And it was, it was so funny that Blair flopped back onto the pale green grass and began to laugh. He quieted, although something still bubbled around in his throat, and then he said, staring up at the sky, "They don't have a clue what to do with me, do they?"

"No, I don't think that they do." Jim delivered this bleak piece of honesty still seemingly unable to look at Blair.

"That's me, man, making trouble for the good politicians of Cascade since I was in utero. I guess that being my babysitter isn't going to be quite so prestigious a position after all." So maybe Jim would seek a new position; or maybe he was going to be tainted by his association with the inconvenient outsider. He might stay or he might go, but Blair clearly wasn't going anywhere; he was going to stay and moulder in his charming house to the end of his days. That seemed oddly funny too, and Blair started to laugh again. He laughed so hard his stomach hurt and his eyes blurred with tears; and then Jim was leaning over him, hands on his shoulders pulling him up into a rough hug. Jim's voice was rough too, and he commanded, "Stop it! Come on, stop it."

Blair's stomach hurt, and Jim - Jim had no right to tell him to do anything. He pushed at the confining arms, as sick amusement turned to rage. "You let go of me!" He rolled away and jumped to his feet. "You just let go of me!" he shouted, and took off down the slope towards the street at a run. He had nowhere to go, but running was all that mattered. Once he hit the footpath, he could hear Jim's steps behind him, and then a pincer grip on his upper arm swung him around. Blair did some swinging of his own, several blows that Jim blocked easily, before again Blair's arms were locked between his body and Jim's, and Jim rocked him while Blair moaned and protested how this was so completely screwed and how the fuck did he end up in this mess.

A stranger's voice, a woman's, broke into his misery. "Do you need any help?"

He couldn't be bothered to lift his head to see who the enquirer was. Jim made his excuses.

"No. I had to give my friend some bad news. But thank you." Kindness, politeness, and scrupulous honesty. Such admirable people they were on Cascade.

"I think that we should go back, Sandburg."

Blair fought for something even vaguely like control. "Not like I have anywhere else to go."

Jim fished into a jacket pocket. "Here," he said, offering a handkerchief.

"Primitive and revoltingly unhygienic." Blair took it anyway.

"By your own admission, professor, you've lived far more dangerously than using a snot rag."

That crazy laughter threatened a return, but Blair was calmer now. He blew his nose.

"That was - I don't think I've freaked out like that in a long time."

"You had cause. I'm sorry."

"Not your fault." Blair meant that, despite the fact that Jim's were the hands that had brought him to Cascade. He thought of the roughness of Jim's voice while he held him, the two kisses to his temple that perhaps Jim thought he hadn't noticed. He didn't think that Jim was consciously seducing him, the way he had on Solana, but if it was a genuine offer, it was all the more a desperate mistake. Even if Jim didn't intend his companionship and affection to be a trap, Blair could well imagine that it could be used as one. The fact that, yes, it could be used against him struck in one deep flash of feeling He drew back from the arm that still rested across his shoulder, and took an unsteady breath. No getting away from it - whatever happened, nothing was ever going to be the same again.

Blair gestured, more energetically than he needed to. "The way back is down that road, right?"

Jim pointed to the next street down. "That one."

"So my navigation skills need work."

"Looks like it." Jim crooked an elbow, and Blair linked his arm in Jim's. But Jim let him set the pace.

***

A week after Blair's major freak-out, (and one day after an intense but more private freak-out in his bedroom at about three o'clock in the morning) Jim made his usual daily visit but this time he wasn't alone. His companion was the woman that Blair remembered from his aborted 'orientation', Lyra Harris.

"Blair Sandburg," she greeted.

"Lyra Harris." Blair was watching Jim more than Harris, and while Jim's expression was carefully blank, there was something like - anticipation? - leashed behind it.

"We have received a request from Serayne Tuvai to visit you, and we've come to obtain your authorisation."

Blair waited, but there was no other information. Jim lifted his eyes to the ceiling in quite unprofessional exasperation, but Harris wasn't looking at him. "And who's Serayne Tuvai?"

Jim replied. "She's your sister, Sandburg."

"My…" Blair pursed his lips. "My half-sister, more correctly?" Hair-splitting; attention to unimportant detail. Shock took people like that sometimes and when it did they chose to deal with the little details, rather than the big picture that had just completely changed the view of the world.

"Are you all right, Blair Sandburg?" Harris enquired.

"No, I'm not all right. I've just discovered I have a sister that I knew nothing about. Hell, how do I know that she really is my sister?"

Harris's lips thinned. She really didn't like Blair, but then he'd popped her bubble of self-consequence with exceeding pleasure in the Commonwealth Hall. "Serayne Tuvai's descent is in no more doubt than yours."

Blair's hands flew up in frustration. "Fine, fine, I have a sister. And she wants to play happy families and you need my permission. Fine. She can come. Whatever."

Harris made a tiny bow of her head that looked like it hurt. "Thank you. I'll make the arrangements." Another arthritically token bow. "Agent Protector Ellison." She left Blair to his astonishment.

"Kitchen," Jim said.

"What?"

"Tea."

"You think that tea is going to fix this?"

"It won't hurt."

"No way; I need some air."

"A walk in the paddocks in the drizzle. Just what I need."

Blair looked at Jim's clothes. Usually Jim dressed in what Blair had come to recognise as good quality casual attire, but today, he looked a lot more formal.

"The fancy duds in honour of Administrator Harris, are they?"

Jim's shoulders shrugged the smallest bit. "I was told I should dress appropriately for the occasion. But now that she's gone…" The high collar was loosened.

"Jim. I have a sister. And I need a walk, or something. And you can do whatever the hell you want."

Blair stalked out to the foyer, heading for the main door. His usual security detail looked past him, confirming Jim's permission that they should let Blair outside, and then Jim was at his elbow, there all the way as Blair walked up his hill. His hill, but no more his than anything else. He scanned the view over the city. Somewhere out there, in this city or another, there was a woman who was his sister, descended from that father that Blair didn't want to know anything about. He shivered. Water drops sat on the surface of his clothes and hair, just waiting to sink in and saturate him. Jim at least was wearing a coat.

"How far can you see?" Blair asked, apropos of nothing.

"A long way."

"Don't the rest of your people who can't do that ever get jealous?"

Jim turned, and his hand wiped Blair's wet, lank hair back from his forehead.

"Sometimes. But they know that there are vulnerabilities to the gift, too."

"Such as?"

Jim shrugged. He looked suddenly as if he regretted the touch to Blair's hair, and Blair didn't know which infuriated him more - the regret or the silence.

"I am getting so sick of this. You people aren't going to let me go, and you're not going to let me in. Why the hell is this sister of mine even bothering? Why are your paranoid superiors even letting her try?" Why not shout his anger from the hilltops? Why did everything have to be a secret?

"I don't know!" Jim roared. He took an aborted step closer to Blair and then stopped, his hand swiping across his eyes.

"Sandburg, I'm sorry. It's complicated, and if you haven't figured out that then I've badly overestimated your intelligence."

The apology calmed Blair only a little. "Yeah, well you couldn't possibly over-estimate my frustration. I'm not kidding here, I am going crazy!"

Jim looked out across land and buildings before he rested his gaze somewhere a moment. The light of an idea shone on his face, and he turned to Blair with sudden determination.

"Sandburg, I think you need a bath."

"Excuse me?"

Jim was already heading down the slope. "Come on," he called back.

"I'm not the only one going crazy," Blair muttered under his breath. Jim didn't turn but his hand twisted back in a gesture that could start bar fights on Solana.

"Oh, evidence of wit and cosmopolitan experience. I'm a truly blessed man."

"Hurry it up, Sandburg. You'll want to change your clothes."

"For a bath?" They'd reached the bottom, and Jim held the wide gate open. "What are you planning, Ellison? Because you are planning something."

There was a sly curve to Jim's lips. "There's an axiom that written agreements over-rule spoken agreements. And I've read my briefing as your liaison very thoroughly. And since your further contact with the people of Cascade has been initiated by Administrator Harris, I think that I'm within my purview to carry on with her initiative - in a small way."

The air of amused conspiracy warmed the cold in Blair. "Oh, man, you are planning something and you are so pleased with yourself."

Some of Jim's self-satisfaction fled. "I should have done this before."

"Done what?"

Jim opened the door of Blair's house, nodded to the woman on station.

"Go get some dry clothes on, and I'll show you. Bring a coat."

When Blair returned to the entranceway in dry clothes, Jim was waiting for him. Rafe had appeared from somewhere, and his look was one of worried amusement.

"I have to log this."

Jim's eyebrows raised. "Did I suggest that you shouldn't follow procedure?"

Rafe gave him a harried look. "Director Banks confirmed. But you know that…"

Jim ignored whatever it was that Director Banks had to do with the situation. "Sandburg. You're ready. Good. See you later, Rafe. We'll be back for the evening meal, I promise faithfully."

"Yeah," Rafe drawled. "Sure you do." He nodded at Blair, and then shook his head.

They were out on the street when Blair said, "I have a perfectly good bathroom, you know. Luxurious, even."

"I've seen it. I want it installed in my own apartment, but first I need a substantial raise." Jim checked his watch and took Blair by the upper arm. "Come on, if we hurry we won't have to wait for the later transit car."

A fast-paced hustle along damp streets saw them at the transit station. Jim dragged out a card case, and Blair took what chance he had to take a look. "Any word on when I might be permitted a little pocket money?"

Jim shrugged. "Not any time soon."

"Now there's a surprise." But Blair was too happy at this extension of his boundaries to be truly sarcastic. The station was very clean, free of any vandalism. What looked like advertising hoardings were surprisingly discreet.

"Is all of Cascade this well-ordered?"

"We're still a tight-knit community."

"Uh-huh." Blair grinned, struck by an idea. "And half of your community has built-in monitoring equipment. What kind of privacy taboos do you people have?"

Jim laughed out loud.

"I'm glad to know I'm amusing. Want to share the joke?"

Jim was still smiling like an idiot. "We have a variety of etiquette when it comes to privacy, Sandburg."

The transit cars whooshed into the station, as hushed as anything on Solana. Blair was unwillingly impressed. They rode for perhaps half an hour, and Blair gave up any effort to maintain the illusion of personal space after about half a minute, and just enjoyed leaning against a warm, solid body. Aside from the occasional greetings, hardly anyone except Jim had touched him here. Blair had always enjoyed hugs, the press of people meeting together, sex; and the comfort of this small moment of normal life was inexpressible.

Another suburban centre was apparently their destination, and they were one of a small number of people who debarked. "Up the walkway," Jim murmured. They stepped onto a moderately busy street and Jim pointed up the road towards a long building, all brick and glass. "The nearest public baths," he pronounced.

"I don't see us carrying any towels, or anything," Blair said, beginning to suspect what Jim had found so funny.

"Towels can be hired." Jim made no mention of anything else that might need to be hired.

"And, of course," Blair said nonchalantly, "it's not like there aren't plenty of nude beaches on Solana." In a mix of mortification and amusement, he whacked Jim on the arm. "You jerk! You couldn't have told me before now?"

"I figured that an academic like yourself would prefer an unbiased approach to your observations of wider Cascadian society."

Blair made as if to pull out a hank of hair. "You're all consideration. Okay, lets go swim, or bathe, or whatever." He looked at Jim suspiciously. "Just bathing here, right?" He meant it as a joke as much as anything, but Jim's good humour vanished.

"I'm not that much of a jerk, Blair Sandburg."

Both names. Blair suspected that was about as good a sign as when his mother used his full name, and felt his throat tighten at the thought of Naomi.

"What's wrong?"

"If you have privacy taboos about how you use your senses, then now would be a good time to exercise them," Blair snapped.

Jim said nothing, not even his usual 'sorry'. His face was pale, and he swung the entrance door open hard enough that it nearly connected with a woman coming out. "My apologies," Jim said, and stalked up to a man whose job was handing out tokens, towels and various snacks. "Two bathers, two..." Jim took a look at Blair's hair. "Three towels."

Aside from that purely practical glance, Jim didn't bother looking at Blair again and that, Blair told himself, was fine. Blair followed Jim through another door, already starting to become overly warm in the humid air. The changing area was remarkably open, and there was no obvious division between the men's and women's areas, except that one group tended to gather on the right, the other to the left. Blair took a breath. Nudity was no big deal here. He and Jim had seen each other naked before; and when they had, they'd been enjoying some very intense sex.

He took off his clothes, and piled them into the locker Jim indicated. Then he took a look around at everything except the tall, naked man standing next to him.

"There's swimming as well as bathing here. Would you like to swim?"

"Yeah, yeah, I can swim."

"That way."

First was a thorough shower with soap that smelled of nothing in particular, and a wade through a footbath. They went up a broad stairway, one way for upward traffic, the other with men and woman coming back down again. There were indeed nude beaches on Solana, and Blair had been at places where clothing was very nearly as optional. The variety of naked bodies, young, old, and middle-aged shouldn't be a problem. It wasn't, except for Jim's silent presence just beside him.

Swimming, Blair decided, was exactly what he needed. He wasn't a strong swimmer, but he set up a slow, steady stroke. Just another form of meditation, easier than he might have expected because whatever they used to purify the water here didn't sting his eyes. He moved through the water, suddenly sensitised to the brush of currents against his skin. Finally, he couldn't swim any longer. He stopped for breath at one end of the pool. Jim was still cutting through the water, his arms strong and defined, teasing flashes of the rest of his body appearing as he moved.

He stopped when he saw that Blair was no longer swimming. "Better now?"

"Maybe." Blair wondered who had needed the physical activity more, and took another look around him. The building was all brick and concrete and wood, and it echoed the way he'd expect. "Doesn't this sort of thing bother your hearing?"

"Potentially. But we learn techniques to let the sensitives in our population have as normal a life as possible."

The baths weren't busy. Blair assumed that most people were working. Certainly, there were a fair number of older people, as unselfconscious about their nudity as everyone else; although there were two men who stood out in their brief shorts. Some sort of religious prohibition? There was one obvious way to find out.

Asking the question discreetly meant leaning up close to Jim. "So why are those two guys wearing clothes?"

Jim followed Blair's gaze. "Mourning. They've lost a - spouse - recently." A shadow passed over his face.

"Have you ever worn mourning?" Why the hell should Blair care? But he did.

"A few years ago. Her name was Lila." Jim indicated another set of pools. "If you're tired, there's warmer water over there. People sit there, socialise."

"But I don't get to socialise, do I?"

"Observation is as good as it gets right now."

"But what if someone approaches me? Me and my weird accent."

Jim grinned, but it was sour. "Don't worry, Sandburg. I'll protect you."

It seemed that Jim was as good as his word. On the walk to the other pools, a young woman smiled at Blair. She was pretty, with long, straight, dark hair, and Jim was somehow very close at Blair's shoulder. She pouted.

"You don't share by any chance?" Her voice was light, almost a little girl's voice, but there was nothing childish about her body, or the look in her eye.

"Not at the moment." Jim's voice was courteous.

"Pity," she said, and walked on.

That gave Blair some data to consider, while he leaned his head back on the wall of the pool. The water was very warm, and after the exertion of his swim, he felt happily relaxed.

"Am I mistaken or are you 'protecting' me by implying that we're in some sort of a relationship?"

"If we're too bound up in each other to pay attention to anyone else, no one is going to be surprised. As long as we maintain public decency, no problems. And your weird accent won't bother me."

Jim's arm was leaning along the top of the pool edge, and Blair decided that in the interests of discreet conversation, that he should get a little closer. Jim had no hesitation in dropping that arm onto Blair's shoulder, and Blair leaned back and wondered just how stupid an action this was.

"So what's defined as public decency?"

"Anything more than this, and the attendants will approach us."

"Must be a tough deal for your young people."

Jim's voice was amused. "There's some allowance for the fact that adolescent boys can get aroused by practically anything. But if they appear to be taking advantage, there's not much mercy shown."

Thinking of mercy and taking advantage…"How much does your public know about me?"

"You're in seclusion. Our ways are strange to you, and you've been unwell."

"How unwell? Unwell enough to provide an excuse for me to never appear in public? Unwell enough that I can just drop out and be forgotten? That would be convenient for the powers that be, wouldn't it?"

"No. No, it wouldn't."

"You and the powers that be aren't the same people. You're stretching the rules doing just this, even though I'm not interacting with anyone else."

"Your well-being is part of my work."

Blair tilted his head and felt his cheek press against Jim's skin. "For how long? Until they decide to send me back? Until they decide that I get to be brainwashed into being a good little citizen, or they find some other creative solution to a problem that wouldn't exist if they'd just let me alone!"

Jim's hand leaned against Blair's mouth - just for a moment, just for the briefest touch. "Keep your voice down."

Blair shut his eyes. "This has been great. Thank you. But it's time to go back."

He heaved himself out of the pool, heavy and cold now when he stood at the side once more. He and Jim returned to the subtly tiled showers with the scentless soap, the lockers. They dressed and walked down the street to the transit station, sat in the transit car that returned them to a part of the city that Blair recognised. On the walk back, Jim cleared his throat.

"Sandburg. I'll be in contact with you for as long as you need or want. I'll go, too, but only if you say so. I promise."

"It's a stupid promise to make."

It was growing dark, and Jim's face was grey in the dim light. Streetlights lit like beacons above them.

"I'm making it anyway."

There ought not to be comfort in believing him.

***

What did you wear to be introduced to your long-lost sister? Should Blair wear his clothes from Solana? Should he wear some of the clothes Jim had provided, and look like a solid citizen of Cascade? In the end, he compromised. Shirt and trousers from the clothes that Jim had taken from his home, overcoat in the Cascadian style laid on the bed ready for when he left. Blair tied his hair back and looked at his face in the mirror. He could see his mother in his high cheekbones and the width of his face, the definition of his jaw, and the blue of his eyes. But the square build, the sometimes embarrassing lack of height, and the frizz of hair caught at his nape - those came from somebody else. Certainly not his grandfather, who was a dim and frankly intimidating memory.

Jim knocked at his door. "Sandburg, we're going to be late."

Ready or not, here I come, Blair thought, and pulled his coat on. He opened the door. "Will this pass muster?"

"Nice shirt." Blair looked suspiciously at Jim's face. Jim checked his watch and fiddled with the ear-piece he was wearing. "No, you look fine. Come on." Blair's sartorial elegance clearly wasn't his first concern.

"Away we go, then." Blair wished that he didn't feel so nervous.

No transit this time. Blair was loaded into a discreet, dark car, with Rafe driving, and he and Jim in the back.

"How come you never arrive in one of these?" Blair asked.

"I haven't been issued a pool vehicle," Jim said. "And my own car is," he paused and then grinned, "not really suitable to park outside your house." He shrugged. "The transit is good. I like travelling on it, seeing my city pass on by the windows."

"So you have one? A car, I mean?"

Jim tried to stretch his legs, which didn't have a lot of room. "I had the chance to choose a luxury, and that was the luxury I chose."

It was a slow trip at first. The car had a right-of-way, in that the two-wheelers made way for it when they noticed it, but they had to notice it first. Crossing intersections was a cautious business. After perhaps ten minutes, the car reached a road with lanes that were clearly intended for motor-powered rather than people-powered transport, and the speed of the journey picked up.

Blair took a good look out the windows. The study of Cascade that he'd started as a vindictive private joke was growing, becoming something more than its origin. City structure suggested many possibilities for social organisation, although he'd need to be allowed to speak to people to draw any definite conclusions. But for now, he garnered what he could, built and stored or discarded theories about any number of things. One day, he would not be a prisoner in a pretty jail cell. He'd be able to go where he wanted, and say what he wanted, and Cascade would be a subject of purely academic interest.

Except for Jim. Blair bit his lip in irritation.

"It'll be okay," Jim said, seeing his agitation but misunderstanding its cause.

"Yeah, sure."

The Hall of Government presided over the city from a low hill, but they didn't go that far. Instead they halted behind a concrete high-rise - if ten storeys could be justifiably described as high-rise. Blair got out of the car, and vigorously brushed at nonexistent fluff on the sleeves of his coat. Time to meet the new member of the family, his baby sister.

He and Jim were ushered into a room furnished with a large table and a selection of chairs. Blair looked out the window, at the street below, the buildings opposite. Concrete construction mainly, some brick in the smaller buildings, no large expanses of window glass.

Blair turned back to face the table.

"This is homely," he said.

Jim looked around with distaste. "I'll see if there's a more suitable room available," he said, but his move towards carrying out this mission was aborted by the entrance of another two people. The man was maybe not Foreign Corps, but he held himself with a dangerous authority that emphasised the youth and small size of the young woman he accompanied into the room.

Blair stared. She was maybe twenty, probably less, and he made the long-denied connection that if his mother had been younger than this girl when she had Blair, then the same had to be said of his unknown father. She stared back at him and then ducked her head.

"Blair Sandburg, may I present Serayne Tuvai." The man nodded at Jim. "Agent Protector Ellison. I'm Agent Protector Harley." Blair barely registered this, or any response that Jim made.

The table felt like a ridiculous obstacle, and Blair started edging his way around it. The young woman looked so desperately unsure, and he stopped short of her, before she stepped closer and with considerable caution took his hand. Blair lowered his head - she was tiny - and they gingerly touched foreheads.

"Hello." Blair tried the professionally friendly smile he used on nervous undergraduates. It seemed to help. "Maybe we should sit down," he offered a chair, "and then we can figure out which one of us feels more awkward about this."

She smiled, teeth very white against the tawny radiance of her skin. Her hair was short-cropped, and might have curled in coarse, dark waves if it was long enough. Blair gestured at it. "Does that mean you're with the Foreign Corps?"

She laughed at that. It bubbled out of her throat in a very engaging way. "Oh, no, but all performers do stints in the Cultural Groups that perform at the Outworld enclaves. The haircut is a condition. I started dance and singing when I was little, and I still haven't decided which one I like best."

"You're a performer? That must be very interesting."

"I love it. Perhaps you could come and see the troupe. We're in Indep…"

"I believe that's not possible at this time, Serayne Tuvai." Harley's voice was flat.

Annoyance appeared on Serayne's face.

"Our father was a performer, too, a Singer." Her voice gave the word 'Singer' portentous respect. "I brought a key with pictures and vids, but Agent Protector Harley told me that they have to check it first."

"I believe we explained the conditions of this visit, Serayne Tuvai."

She rolled her eyes, and Blair decided that she was definitely less than twenty.

"I'm not even going to pretend I understand the security considerations. Agent Protector Harley will just have to interrupt if we tread on dangerous ground." Her voice had youth's blithe unconcern that there might be dangerous ground, before it turned to concern.

"They say you haven't been well. In the news, that is."

Blair played with the idea of saying straight out that the only things he was sick of were duress and paranoia. This girl implied that she had some sort of public role, knew other people with a public role. But he didn't know enough yet, and he could feel as much as see Jim tense from across the table.

"Pre-existing condition. I'm taking it easy. Thanks for asking."

Big eyes lifted to Blair's. "Did you know anything about us?"

"Not a thing," Blair replied, feeling uncomfortably as if he was trying to dance with a small, vulnerable animal continually under his feet.

"That makes two of us." Serayne rubbed nervously at the backs of her hands. "I didn't know about you until I turned eighteen." Which Blair judged hadn't happened too long ago. "Well, of course I knew about the Child, but not that Papa was his father or any of that. I don't suppose he expected that my majority and you coming home would happen within a couple of weeks of each other." Her head ducked again, before she said plaintively, "Mama was surprised, too. I think that she's angry with him for not telling her about this."

"I see." Blair sighed. In retrospect, it might have been a good thing for Naomi to have told him some of the truth, too. He and his mother were the cause of the diplomatic incident mentioned in passing on his 'puter. However, at least Blair had some inklings as to why he was having this meeting. He had no sympathies for the security agencies that must have been caught flatfooted by this little surprise. He turned his head, in search of nonexistent privacy, and Serayne gasped.

"What?" Blair asked.

Serayne giggled, before her hand covered her mouth. "I'm sorry. You don't look like Papa so much face-on, but in profile... It's a bit uncomfortable."

"I guess we can agree on that." Silence ensued.

Jim spoke up. "Perhaps Serayne Tuvai and Blair Sandburg might enjoy a cup of tea. Some pastries." He looked across at Harley. "You'll be more familiar with the facilities of this building than I am."

"I'm required to supervise the visit at all times. But I can request some refreshment." Harley dragged a small device out of his pocket and made the request.

Serayne turned to Harley, but before she opened her mouth, Harley said, "Your pictures and so forth will be ready soon."

"Good." She turned back to Blair. "I thought you might like to see a picture of Papa. I have some capture of him singing, but all this security…" She looked puzzled and irritated.

Harley said soothingly, "Our ways are still strange to Blair Sandburg. Given his health, we're introducing him gradually to the various facets of our society."

The door opened, and a woman brought in what looked to Blair like a blocky, overlarge 'puter. She murmured something in Harley's ear, and he smiled at Serayne.

"There have been some edits, but you can show Blair Sandburg your information now."

Serayne nodded, clearly ill at ease with the idea of edits. She turned the 'puter towards Blair, played with the controls. "They weren't joking about the edits. But this is my - our - father. Salo Jennsen."

A man, in his early forties perhaps, stared out of the screen. His skin was darker than Blair's, lighter than Serayne's, the blue eyes startling; the full mouth curved up in a smile. Blair stared right back at this father who was still dead, whether it happened when he was a child or two years ago.

"He was sad, sometimes, and I never knew why until now." Serayne clicked to another file. "Oh, they've butchered this. But it'll give you an idea, anyway."

For about thirty seconds, Blair watched and listened as the man on the screen sang. It looked like a record of a rehearsal, if the clothing and people milling nearby were anything to go by. Blair didn't know much about this style of singing, but his father's voice was very good. His stage presence, even in the rough vid, was amazing.

"Do you sing?"

Blair started. "Uh - no, at least," he remembered his smile again, "not where anybody can hear me."

Serayne smiled back. "I'm not as good as Papa, but maybe good enough for solos in minor parts some day. For now I fill out the choir."

"Serayne Tuvai," Harley droned. This was clearly another warning, and there was yet another pause.

"What did you do, before you came home?" Serayne asked the question like a polite child making conversation with an aged relative. Blair didn't expect to feel old at the ripe age of twenty-six, but he felt old now.

"I was," Blair swallowed and made a small declaration, "I am a professor at the University of Solana. I'm a very junior professor, though. I teach anthropology - the study of humankind."

"But that would mean practically teaching everything." There was a hint of teasing in Serayne's voice.

"Not quite, but Solana does believe in a fairly general course of study before you can enter post-graduate work."

"Blair Sandburg," Harley said.

"Oh, for…" Blair stood. "What's the point of this meeting if we can't even talk to one another? It's ludicrous." He turned to Serayne. "I'm sorry, but this seems pretty pointless."

Serayne looked nervously between Blair and Harley. She looked at Jim, who had also stood by now, and a small shock of undefined emotion crossed her face, before she said, "Everybody said this should only be a short visit anyway." She pushed back her chair and stood, too.

At this point, a man came into the room, pushing a small trolley in front of him; the refreshments. "How do you like our food?" Serayne asked, and then blushed at the inanity of the question.

"I like it fine," Blair said, "but I'm not sure that I'm in the mood to eat or drink anything now."

Serayne leaned across the table and removed the key from the 'puter. "Would you like to take this back with you? You can."

"Thanks."

"Perhaps we can meet again, sometime. Although I'm not sure what we'll talk about."

"Perhaps we could do that," Blair said. There was another handclasp and forehead touch, and then Serayne and her 'advisor' left, leaving Blair and Jim and the annoyed looking man with the trolley together in the meeting room.

"I'm sure someone else in the building will enjoy that," Jim said, and steered Blair out of the room.

"Stair, not lifts," Blair requested.

"Did you ever stand still during your lectures?" Jim asked.

"No, not always. And don't patronise me."

They clattered down the stairs in silence, and Jim indicated the route to the back parking area. Jim flicked the headset he still wore, and Rafe appeared to drive them back through the city of Independence. It was a quiet ride. Blair wasn't going to say a word in front of anyone else.

Blair's house had a deceptive look of home, but he wasn't ready to go inside yet.

"Willing to ruin a good pair of shoes for my mental health?"

Jim nodded. "Perhaps I can claim it on expenses." He gestured with an arm down the road towards Blair's hill, almost courtly in manner and followed behind Blair, a silent, sympathetic shadow.

Blair looked out over the familiar view from the top of climb. It was nice to see some familiar things; the view, and the tall man standing at Blair's side with his hands jammed into the pockets of his coat

"If I asked you to explain all the undercurrents of that meeting, would you?"

Jim sighed. "You know that I can't."

"Why do I know that?"

"Because I have clear instructions and I'm working with them as best I can. Because Rafe could probably hear us from the house if he tried. Because when I face people who can read every twitch I make trying to control autonomic reactions, it's best for my protection and yours if they believe that I'm not actively undermining my orders."

"Rafe could hear us." Blair felt very stupid. "How do you people live like this?"

"I told you, we have our own etiquette, our own ways of management. But I'm Foreign Corps, I've worked in security agencies of one sort or another all my adult life. They do things differently to the rest of the populace."

"Divided loyalties are a pain in the butt. I get it." Blair did get it, he really did. Maybe Jim sensed that, because his sturdy warmth was right behind Blair, and his arms wrapped across him. Blair leaned back and shut his eyes. "This is such a mess. Such a mess."

Jim's cheek pressed against Blair's temple. "Would it surprise you that it's an even bigger mess than you know?"

Blair laughed. "Oh, hell, no. No surprise at all."

"Don't judge a whole people by the actions and beliefs of a few." Blair waited, but Jim said nothing more. He disengaged from Blair and gestured back down the hill. "There's a warm house and some food waiting back there."

"Yeah, guess there is."

Jim looked like he was readying himself for something. "I'll be coming in less regularly. I'm still assigned to you, but another issue has come up. My superiors wants me working on that."

"Oh." Blair tried to make a 'don't-care' shrug. "Well, I shouldn't be surprised. You're an experienced, talented professional. Stands to reason you've got more important things to do than come and make conversation with me for an hour every afternoon."

'I'll still see you - just not so often."

"No worries. Maybe I should start cultivating the rest of my staff, instead of sulking." Blair smiled with broad joylessness. "I can't be much of a fun assignment. Maybe we could play cards, watch movies."

"Watch out for Li. She'll take your shirt."

"I'll remember that." Blair nearly slipped, and Jim steadied him. "Not the best clothes for this, huh? Serayne seemed nice. For a little sister that I never knew that I had."

"Yes, yes, she did." Jim sounded approving, glad that Blair had discovered a presentable relative. Somehow, Blair just couldn't take the same pleasure in the experience.

***

Time passed with no evidence that Blair's life was ever going to move out of its limbo. He learned how to play Tryst, and discovered that Jim was quite right. Blair did have to watch Li. He asked her straight out once if she had enhanced senses. She smiled and declared herself ungifted, 'except for cards'.

Blair spent time in a renewed cajolement of the infotech system. He discovered that his father had died in a performance rehearsal gone wrong, but any search of 'performers' in general came up frustratingly short. Jim's quiet words kept whispering in the back of his mind - 'an even bigger mess than you know'; 'my protection and yours'. He stretched back on the sofa. "It's official. Now, I'm getting paranoid."

He made a couple of approaches to his minders about his chances of watching vids, movies; whatever passed for mindless entertainment on Cascade. He didn't use that expression, but he might as well have. After a discreet period of time he was advised he could access a few items and he did. The result of that was two sessions sitting down with one of his 'staff' jeering at plot holes, unlikely action scenes, and bad acting. It made small breaks between the tedium of existence and Jim's less common but still regular appearances.

Once, Rafe produced, with an amused smile, a drama that purported to be about the Cascade mercenaries who were the planet's major source of foreign currency at one point.

"It was made in Telarcum," Rafe said, which explained everything to Blair as to why he was allowed to watch this apparent contraband, but he settled down to see an outsider's view of the planet of Cascade. Apparently Cascade was peopled by paired agents of near telepathic abilities, inhuman fighting skills and a predilection for sweeping, black coats.

"I thought your people in official uniform wore dark blue," he commented to Rafe.

"Black is presumably more symbolic. Now wait, this bit made people in my precinct laugh for days…"

"Forgot about the outing, I take it?" Jim questioned. Blair looked up, startled. He'd been too caught up in trying to analyze the truly awful entertainment to even notice Jim's entrance. Blair was unwillingly impressed by Jim's appearance in what was clearly formal wear - charcoal grey jacket and trousers over a pale grey shirt, topped by a long dark coat. The only colour was a red badge pinned to the lapel of the coat, gleaming with the rich translucence of good enamel between a filigreed pattern of gold. Blair felt uncomfortably scruffy; never mind that he'd lost track of the time.

"Sorry, sorry. I'll be quick as I can." Of all the times not to be bored out of his skull. He hurried into his room and from there to the bathroom. The light played unflatteringly on his early evening beard and he smeared on depilatory cream and carried out a speedy sluice of his body, his skin goose-pimpling. Rinsing his face followed, and thinking that he must look at least a little more civilised he returned to his room to choose what he judged to be formal clothes and lay them on the bed. Jim had promised an evening out, seeing a few sights of Independence. He'd have to trust that Jim would tell him if what he wore was inappropriate, but he sighed as he realised that while he was reasonably sure that his choices met propriety he had no hope of measuring up to Jim's austere elegance. He tucked in a dark green shirt and dragged his own coat over the top. What did it matter anyway? He had no answer for himself, but he still knew that yes, it mattered. He scraped his hair back into a tie and walked back to the main room.

"Ready as I'll ever be," he declared. Jim's face changed from impatience to something almost like disapproval and Blair opened his mouth to ask what was wrong when Jim said, "Come on, we'll be late," and ushered Blair out the door with a hand under his elbow. "We'll take the transit," he said.

"Oh, we will, will we," Blair retorted, nettled by the way he'd been shepherded out the door like some child. They walked down the pavement, their steps loud.

"Yes, we will, and as soon as we get off in town we'll buy you another shirt."

"Oh for - if there was something wrong with this shirt you could have just said. I have an excellent laundry service and I do have at least one change." Blair's voice was acerbic.

"You can't wear green to a Remembrance, Sandburg. And if Rafe didn't question the need for the change, I'm pretty sure that somebody else would."

"What the hell is a Remembrance?" And then he realised the import of the rest of what Jim had said. "Just how much surveillance am I under? Besides the oh so charming run of jailers?" he hissed.

"Thorough surveillance."

"Shit."

Jim looked down at him, a little surprised. "I didn't expect it to be such a shock to you given the high opinion you hold of the Cascade government."

"I shouldn't have been surprised. Damn it!" Blair's voice rose in irritation. "Auditory or visual? I knew my terminal use would be monitored but... Damn it. Fuck!" Uncomfortable memories of what amounted to small hours tantrums rose to his mind.

"Trying to discover state secrets?"

"Oh, very funny. As far as I can tell, everything on your damn planet is a state secret. I can access a clearly filtered list of appalling vids but anything useful…"

Jim shrugged. "I promise Remembrance won't be appalling. At least, it's not to our sensibilities."

"Don't try to humour me." Blair stomped on in angry silence, before returning to his first query. "So what is Remembrance?"

"Something that you're not supposed to see," Jim replied, "but I decided that tonight we have some new ground rules. If nothing else you'll have a conversation opener with Serayne Tuvai. She's one of the performers."

Harley's bored, bland face rose in Blair's memory. "Could you get into trouble over this?"

"Maybe." They had reached the transit station by now. "But I still think that you need to see it."

Jim bought their passes and they stood on the softly lit platform waiting for the train.

"Why? Why do this? When you could just as easily do what you said you were going to do and take me to some stupid restaurant or other?"

"Because you have a point about some things. If we want you to belong here then you need understanding and a stake in the culture."

"And watching my long lost family's art troupe in action is going to provide that, is it?"

"It's a start."

"Yeah." Blair sighed. "Thanks. For taking the risk. I don't actually want you to get in trouble."

Jim smiled, and it was like the sun shining unexpectedly. "I know. But sometimes trouble is necessary, right?"

The train whooshed into the station with its usual quiet efficiency, and Blair spent the journey trying not to depress himself by remembering how it felt to travel on Solana. Once whisked into the centre of Independence, the two of them made a brief stop to buy food from a stall, set tidily against the wall of the station. Jim proffered something spicy-smelling wrapped in what looked like flatbread. "Here. I think you'll like this, if your kitchen experiments are anything to go by." Blair did, although he liked being propped against a pillar watching the activity of the central station too. Jim ate quickly and economically, with barely a crumb disturbing his turnout. Blair, on the other hand, barely avoided sartorial disaster.

Next there was a very speedy purchase of a plain, pale blue shirt. Blair looked around the streets and the shop as if they were exotic wonders, uncomfortably aware of the last weeks of isolation.

"Much better," Jim said with satisfaction.

"I don't know. It's a fairly boring shirt."

"It's a good colour on you, and restraint's approved of for tonight."

Blair rolled his eyes. "Lead me on to the restraint," he said and tucked the parcel that contained his unacceptable shirt under his arm.

"Don't make assumptions." Jim's expression was droll because after all, he clearly knew something that Blair didn't know. For once that didn't exasperate Blair. They walked on comfortably together, through reasonably busy streets. Blair kept watching everything around him with a deep sense of pleasure. Night life in Independence. His gregarious nature had suffered in the last few weeks of luxurious house arrest, and he enjoyed reasserting the right to people-watch en masse.

A group of young men and women came towards them, noisy with chatter and horseplay. Blair had no words to define their style, but it seemed to involve a lot of green clothing and hair dye. They passed on by, and Jim growled, "If I was their parent I'd see them bald and naked before I let them go out like that on a Remembrance Night."

"I don't know. They're a healthy looking bunch. I think they might put up a fight if anyone came after them with a handful of depilatory cream."

Jim said nothing, but he cast a disgusted backwards glance at the group.

"This would be one of those cultural things that I don't have any clues about yet, clearly?" Blair queried.

Jim shrugged. "Yeah. Green isn't exactly a well-omened colour on Cascade. It's for funerals and vid villains. You'll see." Which brought Blair's memory back to one of the vids he'd seen, where the villain had indeed worn green. They walked on.

Their destination was a substantial and graceful covered stadium faced with honey-pale stone. There was the occasional piece of statuary placed in niches in the second storey levels.

"So what's all that," Blair asked, tugging on Jim's sleeve.

"Famous Singers," and there was that same capital S in Jim's voice that had been in Serayne's, "artistic representations of memory and patriotism, loyalty and discipline. The usual." Jim's face was proud and maybe a little wistful. He wanted Blair to admire, to enjoy what he saw; that much was clear.

Inside was busy, abuzz with conversation and an air of anticipation. They took their seats, and Jim leaned to murmur quietly into Blair's ear, "There's a mild euphoriant released into the air during the performance. Don't worry if you notice it. Nothing stronger than the buzz you might get off one glass of wine on an empty stomach."

Blair grinned in amusement. "So how bad is this going to be that you bribe the audience with drugs?"

"Not so loud, Sandburg."

Blair subsided, his pleasure deflating a little. He recovered his better mood soon enough. He was once more outside the over-familiar walls of his house, he was surrounded by a mass of interesting human interaction, and he had Jim Ellison sitting next to him. That was garnering the occasional approving and even frankly envious look, and Blair wasn't so blinded by his resentment of his situation that he didn't acknowledge that there was a lot to approve of in Jim. He looked around the arena, wishing suddenly that this wasn't what it was; wishing that Jim had been the simple businessman he'd claimed, or that Cascade wasn't a planet of paranoids. Blair could have been a tourist, a visitor; he could have met a stunningly handsome man and enjoyed a civilised night's outing, followed by who knew what less civilised enjoyments afterwards. Instead, he suspected that Jim was committing sedition or treason by taking him to a concert.

His eyes smarted. Why this? Jim could have just led him to a public info-terminal - he presumed there must be some, and Blair could have contentedly researched and tried to answer the million and one questions that he had. He looked down towards the stage, set with complicated screens and frameworks and backed with what looked like a huge projection screen. Jim thought that this was going to provide some answers. Okay, he was ready for those.

The lights dimmed and the audience noise hushed into the darkness. Music struck up, simple and stirring, and the crowd stood as one and began to sing. Blair was reminded once again that Cascade's version of Standard had developed its own idiosyncrasies in the years of isolation. He caught familiar words, but the cadence and accent often defeated him. The general impression was one of unity, standing fast, the people turning to face a hostile world, but the finer nuances eluded Blair. The music ended and then struck up at a quieter level and the crowd sat.

A man came and stood on the empty stage. He opened his mouth and sang in what Blair thought was probably a remarkable trained voice, although he didn't have the knowledge to fully appreciate it. Between the style of singing and the Cascadian diction, again he caught very little, but it appeared to be a recap of hardship. Others began to appear on the stage, and the screen above them lit into life, displaying their actions in more detail. These people were dancers, men and women wearing no more than briefs, some in red, some in blue. Despite the skimpy clothing there was nothing erotic about them after the first shock. They disposed themselves across the stage in poses that suggested torture and suffering, those in blue appearing to offer some comfort to those in red, whose sufferings appeared the more marked.

He saw Serayne, her skin and short cap of hair already damp with sweat. She wore blue, and leaned over another woman in red with an expression of agonised entreaty. The tone of the music changed, became more ominous, and figures in what Blair realised were stylised green lab-coats, carrying staffs, danced and strutted amongst the crowd, touching the staffs to all the red and blue dancers, who would jerk as if in galvanised pain. They left, and the red and blue dancers huddled into a great circle. Some of the green dancers returned and were hidden within the circle.

The music changed in theme again, and the circle of dancers moved together before exploding outwards like thistledown blown by a mischievous child. The purpose of the framework became obvious as the dancers, red, blue and a few green began to climb upwards, to the triumphant swelling of the music. Before they climbed, the green dancers cast aside their coats. Blair didn't need any gloss to explain this scene - the escape of the captives from their torturers, with the assistance of a few of their captors turned sympathisers. The dancers ran to the side of catwalks and disappeared from the view of the audience.

The singer, the Singer, Blair understood now, remained on stage. His voice turned poignant, the background music no more than a gentle underpinning to his song. The screen showed a planet view from space: Cascade. The Singer burst into a bravura performance of vocal gymnastics, as the dancers poured back onto the stage, clothed in red and blue tunics, to perform some astonishing, joyful gymnastics of their own. People with a home and a place - the free men and women of Cascade.

Blair could feel something cool on his face and the sense of crowd-feeling that made him an effective lecturer swung across his perception of the people around him. That cool moisture must be the euphoriant that Jim had mentioned. It was hardly necessary. He could feel the wound-up emotions of the audience, the pattern of expectation and satisfaction as it rolled across the stadium.

The crowd of dancers moved to flank the stage. A montage of pictures flickered across the screen as quick adjustments were made to the surrounding frameworks. The crowd murmured amongst themselves, the tranquil mutter of lovers in the aftermath, before the performance started again.

Two dancers returned to the stage, a man in blue, a woman in green, their clothes and movement suggestive of youth and passion. The dancers, some at least, had become a choir, as the couple came together. The stage darkened, and the young man danced alone while the choir swayed, their voices mournful. Lights focused on another framework: stairs. The woman, her belly rounded with pregnancy, climbed with delicately precise steps, her hands held in a gesture of rejection to the imploring crowd on the stage. The floating green panels of her gown moved with her; her long red hair, surely a wig, fluttered in a breeze.

Blair thought stupidly that there was a very quiet fan somewhere directing the air currents. But this was Cascade, where all the machinery was efficient. This woman in ill-omened green was Naomi. This dancer with her vaguely sinister make-up was his mother, who was all of about sixteen when this myth was history. She reached the top of the frame of stairs, and with a mournful 'Ohhhhh' from the Singer, the choir and even some parts of the audience, she leapt for the stars. The dancer hung in the air, suspended by the force of her leap, her rounded belly clearly defined in her swoop, before she dropped out of sight behind a screen, no doubt to mundanely break her fall.

The dancing on stage became frenzied, hands raised in seeking gestures; the voices were urgent and grieved. The music rose in triumph once more, and a young man in blue, whom Blair was utterly, utterly relieved to see looked nothing like him, was led onto the stage, and welcomed by the people.

The singing broke into a chant. Cascade hadn't moved so far from Standard speech that Blair couldn't understand the words very clearly.

"The Lost Child is home!" The choir and the music cut off into silence. The Singer stood at the front of the stage. "The children of Cascade belong to Cascade!"

The choir and the crowd chanted back, with a roar that lifted hairs on the back of Blair's neck, "The children of Cascade belong to Cascade!" The Singer lifted his hands as if to bless the crowd, and they once more stood. Blair's hands were grasped, by Jim and by the anonymous woman on his right, and hauled into the air in echo of the Singer's gesture. Thousands of men and women, Jim among them, stood and chanted exultantly, "The children of Cascade belong to Cascade!"

Blair's hands were frigid in the warm hands that held his. His guts and his face flashed hot and cold. He looked up at Jim's face, its profile austerely serene in the light reflected back from the performance. The stage darkened, the lights came back up, and the crowd subsided into individuality once more. The raised hands lowered, voices rose. Some people were crying. A couple of rows in front of Blair, two women kissed passionately. The memory of the woman in green hung in Blair's mind with none of the grace with which she had hung in the air. Feeling ill, he leaned his head against Jim's shoulder.

Jim turned. "What's wrong?"

Blair shook his head. "What the hell do you think?" He kept his voice quiet, aware of his alien accent. He imagined the crowd in the stadium embracing him, enveloping him the way the dancers had the man on the stage, and he shook with anger and fear. He hadn't asked for this; he didn't want to be their great symbol of Cascade's power of self-determination. The utter impossibility that they could ever let him go crashed over him. "Get me out of here."

Jim put his hands on his shoulders and guided him out of the row of seats, one arm around Blair's shoulders as they walked down the stairs. They stood against the wall in one part of the teeming lobby and pulled their coats on against the cold air outside. Blair leaned his head against the wall and shut his eyes. It was smooth and cool, and he supposed that he would be leaving traces of himself obvious to any sentinels present; oil from his hair, maybe a few flakes of scurf. Cleaners must surely be more honoured here than anywhere in the known worlds.

"I don't want to go back."

Jim leaned in close. "It's not something you have a choice over."

"Just not tonight. Please." Blair looked up at Jim's face. The face of his betrayer, his jailer, his friend. "It's not exactly private." He cupped Jim's jaw in his hand, rested his other hand against Jim's hip under the cover of the heavy coat. "Not as if you haven't fucked me before for the good of Cascade." Blair's mouth twisted at his tactlessness, but he didn't care. He didn't want to lie in bed alone and work out the full meaning of his new knowledge. Not tonight.

Jim's mouth almost touched Blair's ear. Jim's breath blew gently against Blair's skin, but his voice was a feral rumble. "If I fuck you, it won't be for the good of Cascade." They stayed like that for a frayed, stretched moment, before Jim drew back.

"Blair…" Jim began. "I didn't know that they'd added that scene. I'm sorry."

"Don't worry about it. The idea was to teach me about Cascade and its culture. Succeeded pretty well."

Jim took his hand. "Come on. I know somewhere we can go."

They joined the crowd streaming out of the stadium into the streets of Independence. Blair leaned into the hold Jim had of his hand, let himself be drawn along the streets to a transit station. They barely found a seat. Blair sat next to the window, not that there was a great deal to see, except for the reflection of the interior of the carriage. Besides all those seated, there were another perhaps twenty people standing. Couples, threes. There was a family group of five spread out in two seats in front and across from Jim and Blair's seat, and Blair's eyes flicked over the three adults and two children, over the faces of everyone. He looked at his hand, still grasped in Jim's, felt the warmth and weight alongside steady him. He looked around at all the children of Cascade and felt as alone as he ever had in his life.

Jim was looking at him, concerned. Blair saw his face in the reflection of the window, and turned to him. "Guess I'm freaking out on you again, huh?"

"Guess you are," Jim replied. His voice was resigned, but his grip tightened around Blair's hand.

Blair leaned close to murmur softly, "It's private, this place we're going to?"

Jim changed his grip on Blair's hand from his left to his right hand, and his left arm curled across Blair's shoulders. It was pathetically, ridiculously easy to lean into Jim's hold, to forget the miserable realities of their situation. He was using Jim but if Jim didn't mind… Jim's breath tickled across Blair's skin. "Yes, it's private." Blair realised that the arm across his shoulders was hard with tension; saw something more than worry in the blue eyes that looked at him.

"Good."

They rode on, exited into quieter streets, and walked hand in hand, Jim's grip firm, as if he expected his prisoner was about to execute some escape attempt. They entered a hotel; Blair's growing awareness of Cascade aesthetics registered a look of discreet expense. The desk attendant was matter-of-fact: "Only some of the higher standard rooms, it is a Remembrance night,"; Jim's demur that there was any problem, that an expensive room was fine, the enquiry that level 5 facilities were available; the attendant's smiling rebuke that of course level 5 facilities were standard at such a price; all of these negotiations ended in the transfer of cards. Blair tried to figure out if the professional blandness over their lack of luggage expressed normal mores on Cascade, or the high standards of the hotel.

They went up to the room, which wasn't so very large, and was dominated by a huge bed, its expanse of covers and pillows reflected in the sliding mirrored doors of a closet. Jim dragged a com-unit out of his pocket. He spoke into it with shockingly casual tones.

"Rafe. Looks like the local alcohol has laid Sandburg low. I'm tucking him up in a room at Repose to sleep it off." There was a pause, then Jim said, "I'll argue the expense chit later, it's a busy night in town; we'll be back in the morning." Blair wondered if he laid a hand on Jim, if there would be any sign of disturbance, or just that same easy calm. He used the time Jim spent in talking in laying down his nearly forgotten parcel, that green shirt that was so unsuitable to wear to a Remembrance ceremony, before he pulled back the cover of the bed. Dazzlingly white sheets were turned back against gorgeously woven blankets in creams and browns. That done, Blair dragged at the buttons of his coat with suddenly clumsy fingers.

"Here, let me."

Blair shook his head, even though there was at that moment, nothing more desirable than those long fingers pressing against the cloth of the coat, spreading warmth and sensitivity down the line of his breast bone to his restless gut, his tingling sex. "Some things I can do for myself."

Jim stopped, and stepped back, leaning against the wall, his arms crossed. "Then do it." There was sudden challenge in his face.

Blair dragged off his coat and pulled off his shoes and socks while trying not to feel like a fool.

"If it's a striptease you want, there's probably something far more suitable out there somewhere." Blair's hand gestured out to the city, before he started on the fastenings of his shirt.

"No, there's nothing more suitable."

Jim's voice was low, and something about it made Blair look him in the face. More heat washed through him, lust this time. Jim's stare was unwavering and fascinated, and Blair wanted those bright blue eyes on his bare skin as if it were some more refined form of touch. Shirt, trousers, underwear; all of it was gone, and Blair spread his hands, invited Jim's gaze.

Jim shrugged off his own topcoat and laid it over a chair, before he took the one short step he needed to be able to touch Blair. Long-fingered hands rested on the curves of Blair's shoulders. Jim muttered one word that might have been 'beautiful' before he kissed Blair, nibbled at his lips the way he'd eaten that dessert back on Solana, a slow deliberate savouring that was meant to last a long time.

Blair wasn't having any of that. He was starved for touch, for warmth, and he threw his arms across Jim's back, and bit back at Jim's lips and jaw, rubbed himself against Jim's still clothed body. He put his hand on Jim's groin, watched Jim's eyes flutter shut. Blair's hands moved to pull at clothes. Why should he be the only one here naked? Cloth was rough against his hands, awkward, refusing to come away from Jim's body quickly enough until finally, it was all smooth skin under Blair's hands.

Jim put up with this up to a point, before Blair found himself borne back to the bed, and covered over with Jim's weight and heat. This was a fine thing so far as Blair was concerned, and nearly frantic, his hands went everywhere, his mouth sucked and kissed wherever he could reach, until unexpectedly he was immobilised, one hand stretched above him and caught in a solid grip. "Stop it," Jim reprimanded.

Blair wriggled as best he could. "Why? You're not going to tell me you're not enjoying yourself." He made an aborted arch against the proof that some part of Jim was enjoying what was happening. Jim's face was grim, but his free hand played with Blair's hair, almost absently.

"I'd enjoy myself better if I thought that you were with me, and not the nearest available warm body."

Blair knew his smile was unpleasant, and he didn't care. "Hey, my options are limited, after all."

Jim's face became mask-like, as set as the statues in their niches at the stadium. Blair was left cold as Jim moved to sit at the edge of the bed, his elbows resting on his thighs, his head bent. Guilt squirmed in Blair's gut in the place of desire, but he didn't know what to say. Any effort at comfort would likely be interpreted as self-interested wheedling. "Sorry. That was a stupid thing to say."

He sat up on the bed, embarrassed by the persistence of his erection. Jim twisted his head, and the emotion in his face made him seem far more naked than he had just a moment before. When he spoke, his words unconsciously echoed Blair's thoughts at the Remembrance service. "Can we pretend - that this isn't what it is? Just you and me without any of the rest of crap we're stuck in?"

Blair shrugged, and tried for a better smile than before. "Pretend. Yeah, I can do that." He put out his hand. Jim hesitated still, and Blair climbed over the bed to press himself against Jim's back, loop his arms across Jim's chest. He rested his forehead against Jim's shoulder, and sighed. Jim's thumb stroked up and down one of Blair's forearms before he turned his head to nuzzle at Blair.

"Lie down."

"Why?"

Jim huffed out an exasperated breath. "Why the hell do you think?"

Blair backed up the mattress, wanting sex, glad that Jim wasn't simply going to stalk out, but now nervous and, as a result, talkative.

"Well, I'm assuming that touching and kissing and sex is still going to happen, despite me being an idiot, but it's all pretty open-ended right now, and…"

Jim straddled him and put two fingers against his lips. It took only the slightest tilt of Blair's jaw to encourage the fingers into his mouth. Jim's breath hitched, while Blair shut his eyes and played with those fingers, tasted them, ran the top edge of his teeth along the nails. Jim's fingers left his mouth, trailed damply across his chin and jaw.

Blair smiled, nervousness not quite gone, but transmuting into a more sexual energy. "You have more to offer than that. I have more to offer than that. Come here." His hands pulled at Jim's shoulders, dragged him down to cover Blair once more.

Skin. Lots of gorgeous, bare skin, and the solidity of muscle, and little noises, not from Blair, from Jim - tiny grunts, the smack and suckle of his lips on Blair. Lots of touch, delving into the hollows and clefts of each other's body - Blair finally had his chance at forgetting, and he took it with both hands.

Jim's voice hummed against his jaw. "How literal were you about me fucking you?"

"Literal as can be, man." Blair emphasised the answer with an arch and writhe of his hips.

"Good." There was the slide of a drawer opening, and Jim lifted out a small tube.

"Definitely a well-appointed establishment."

"There are some things we don't have illusions about."

Blair gasped at the first touch of Jim's fingers.

"Do you know what else you get with the 'appointments' here?"

"No." Blair's voice roughened; he had to think about pushing sound out because his body wanted to concentrate on other things - the feel of Jim's hands on him, the blue suns of his eyes watching every expression of Blair's face.

"Special filters, thorough soundproofing. It means that right now, all I smell is you and me. All I hear is you and me. Everything about us is contained in this room."

Jim's hands pulled Blair's hips up, and Blair leaned his head on clasped arms and shuddered as Jim entered his body. There was nothing else, he wanted nothing else, except for physical sensation, Jim's body filling him, touching him, warming him. When he lost those things, he complained.

"Hey, why'd you stop?"

He squawked as he was dragged down the bed, positioned to face the mirror. "Oh, this is fine, no problem, nuuhh..." Any more encouragement was lost with the feel of Jim pushing into him once more, before a strong arm grabbed across his chest and hoisted him upright, splayed and kneeling across Jim's lap.

"Look in the mirror. Look, Blair." Jim's face leaned over Blair's shoulder, strained with effort and pleasure. He licked a wet swathe up Blair's throat to his ear lobe, and smiled at the way that Blair writhed at the touch. Blair looked - looked at the two of them entwined, at the way that his body was propped, connected with Jim's. He felt for one odd moment like a figurehead on some ancient ship, leading the way. To what, he didn't know. "Do you see?" Jim whispered. "That's us. Do you see it?"

Blair had no answer, but he leaned his head against Jim's, put his hand on his aching cock. Jim moved inside him, small jerks, guided Blair to lift and tilt his own hips.

"Yeah, touch yourself. Let me see it."

Blair needed this, needed it so badly, needed a release that came from the help of another, that wasn't solitary and monitored, needed Jim to touch him. He whimpered, not even words, and Jim's hand gently displaced his own. "It's okay; right this moment I know everything you need. I know." Blair shut his eyes. Jim had him, Jim would make this right, just for one shining moment. One shining moment, going on and on, but never long enough.

Breathless, his chest heaving, Blair bowed his head, looked down to see Jim's hand gently cradling him. Jim's hands moved to Blair's hips and pushed gently. Blair slumped forward to his hands and knees, his belly, Jim still joined with him all the way. Flat on his belly, he laid his head to the side, his view blurred by tangles of hair, as Jim finished it for himself, while Blair watched his lover's body rise and fall above his own in the mirror. Finally, Jim was still, his breath heavy in Blair's ear. With a long sigh, Jim said, "Mine. As I am yours," before he rolled away to rest on the bed, one arm stretched across Blair's shoulders.

They lay there, quiet, for long moments. Blair knew that he ought to question Jim's words - they had the sound of ritual, of something as deeply held as a belief that the children of Cascade belonged to Cascade, but he was too tired to think about anything except the need to scramble under the covers and huddle together until sleep took them.

Blair woke to a dim light that was still excessive, and the feeling of early morning. Jim was standing by the bed, putting on his clothes. He smiled at Blair with bland friendliness.

"I let you sleep, but I think a shower would be a good idea now that you're awake."

"I think you could be right." Blair sat up in bed, cataloguing the remaining effects of last night on his body.

"Breakfast?" Jim enquired. "It's still early but..."

"Maybe something hot to drink, but that's all. Besides," Blair smiled, "you don't want any bigger arguments over the expenses chit than necessary, right?"

Jim nodded. "Fair enough. Red tea? I'll have it brought up."

Blair loved red tea. "Sounds good." He felt terribly unwilling to get out of the bed, which was nothing to do with being embarrassed about being naked in front of Jim, and everything to do with knowing that his brief respite from captivity was nearly over. But he had to do it, had to leave his refuge. He dragged himself out of bed, but the intended walk to the bathroom became a walk into Jim's embrace instead.

Jim held him very tight for a moment, and then carefully pushed him away. "Go on."

Blair walked into the bathroom - again, not large as far as space went, but warm and luxurious and soothingly lit. Fans had cleared away the worst humidity from Jim's use of the room but there was still a mild scent hanging in the air. Blair opened bottles on the counter, and sniffed experimentally to find what items Jim had used. He showered, took off his beard, and used the comb that was there to work out the tangles in his hair. Jim brought in his clothes, including the green shirt, not the blue shirt that he had worn for much of the night.

Dressed, Blair came out again to find the small table set with white, glossy pottery - teapot and cups, all the items brushed with delicate black strokes depicting some flower or other. "Tea's here," Jim remarked unnecessarily. A crumpled parcel, presumably the shirt Blair had worn last night, lay padded small and insignificant on the bed.

"Yeah." Blair sat, looked across the table. "Thank you."

Jim's face turned bitter. "What have you got to thank me for, Sandburg?"

"A lot of things." Blair got the words out and busied himself with the pot and a cup, before he asked a question. "What you said last night? Was that another one of those cultural things that I don't know about?"

Bitterness drained away to leave an absolutely blank face. "It's just something that we say when we fuck, Sandburg. Don't worry about it." Blair didn't believe a word, and indicated his scepticism with raised brows. Jim looked right back and sipped his own tea. Stalemate.

"You were willing to take me to the Remembrance service, but you won't tell me anything directly. Why?"

Utter calm. Jim might have been discussing something of no import, something intrinsically boring even. "It's like I said. It's complicated." There was a low hum, and Jim picked up the com-unit. "We have to go. There's somebody waiting for us downstairs." He rose from his chair, stood over Blair.

Blair looked up, tired despite his good night's sleep. "There's always going to be somebody waiting, isn't there?"

There was something harsh in Jim's eyes. His hand rested briefly against Blair's nape. "Maybe not always."

Blair stood, anger roiling in him. "Oh, it'll be always. Waiting and watching because I don't belong here, and either they're scared I'll try to take my precious Cascade DNA out of their control or scared I'll try to stay with all my foreign ways." His fists clenched.

Jim looked tired, too. "If you could leave, would you?"

The terrible unity of the people in the stadium surrounded Blair again. "It's not going to happen, so why think about it?"

"Come on. Time to go." Jim snagged the parcel from the bed, jammed it inelegantly under one arm and escorted Blair from the room.

They left from an underground parking area, tucked into the back seat of one of the small official cars. The sky was still an indeterminate colour in the dawn light, and Blair looked out the window at the early morning scenes. He shut his eyes and leaned his head against Jim's shoulder, smelled the scent of Jim's coat overlaid with the dampness of the morning air, and started thinking. It wasn't easy figuring out a people from what they refused to tell you, but Blair was going to try. He had nothing else to do, and Jim's words, half remembered phrases from the songs last night, and the swirl of dancers in red and blue jumbled together in a tangle of ideas.

Jim didn't get out of the car when they reached Blair's house. "I'll see you later in the week, Sandburg." He looked drained, and his face was sharply limned and sallow under the rays of the car's ceiling light.

Blair felt as if he was waiting for something, but nothing happened except that the moment and the stare between them grew tense. "Yeah, see you later."

Blair went inside, and walked to his bedroom and had a thorough hunt for surveillance devices, his hands clumsy. He found something that looked likely, set into a light fixture. He waved, and said, "Hi," for good measure. Then he went to the infotech console in his living room and sat at it with a sigh. Words spoken and sung, men and women climbing to freedom, all of it ran through his head. "Search: 'sentinel'." He wiped at his face. "Search: 'guide'. Search: 'red'. Search: 'blue'." He paused before saying, "Search phrase." Jim's voice, hoarse, almost despairing, was in Blair's ears in eidetic detail; 'Mine, as I am yours.'

"Cancel search phrase." Not that it mattered, because his system promptly crashed. "Fine," he announced to the walls and ceiling. "I get the message. Damn it."

He got another indirect message three days later. "I haven't seen Jim for several days," he said to Li. It was weighing on his mind. If a man who was ostensibly supervising another man took that man into town on a night when something was happening that he wasn't supposed to see... Nothing he had seen of Cascade so far suggested stupidity, just a rigid inability to see outside certain societal assumptions and expectations. All of which was merely academic explanation of the nervous fear that people - People - knew exactly where he and Jim had gone, even without Blair's search questions. Li's professionally blank face told him more than he wanted to know, but he needed to hear it anyway.

"I believe that Agent Protector Ellison has been placed on other duties."

"Not much call for a liaison when I'm not going anywhere or doing anything, huh? So tell me, where's the closest listening device?"

"Blair Sandburg?"

Blair grabbed at her arm, before she twisted out of his reach and stood in a stance that didn't quite suggest that she might attack.

"Oh, for..." Blair walked stiff-legged into the foyer, where his other 'supervisor' sat. "Okay," Blair declared, "you two count as witnesses, and I know that there's other surveillance, so let me just say a few things. This is fucking ridiculous. When I first got here, Agent Protector Ellison reassured me that I was an honoured guest. Way to prove a good man a liar. If this is going to be the sum total of the rest of my life, then I would rather someone simply politely shot me in the back of the head, because this - this is not the way to do things."

Li and her companion were looking distinctly uncomfortable, which was obscurely comforting. Maybe part of this mess was simply bureaucracy grinding slowly, and Blair knew that with bureaucracies the squeaky wheel got the oil. "And if I'm a guest, that I'm entitled to some friends, and I regard James Ellison as a friend, and I would like to know what the hell is going on. And I'm now going for a walk, in the streets of Independence - not that I'll be going any farther than I can go on foot, because I have no money or anything else negotiable." He wasn't quite shouting, but his tones weren't conversational either. Trying not to feel totally anticlimactic, he walked to the door, glared at his companions, and opened it. Outside was suburban Independence, with its pleasant houses on the fringe of farmland. He stepped out the door, and started walking. Just for some fresh air.

***

The Historian

Avram finds himself caught up by the story unfolding in the documents Grace gave him. He wonders at her motivations sometimes. It's a risk that could so easily have backfired on her. But then he wouldn't have sought this post if he hadn't been interested in the wider history of Cascade, and how the personal history of Blair Sandburg rests within it.

'Commission of Enquiry #51, interview excerpts #8, iv- vi, together with exhibit #2'.

Exhibit 2 is a transcript of written notes by Science Director Finn Hester. Avram flicks to read them before he watches the vid of the interviews. "Perpetual conundrum - instinct versus societal expectation and experience. How does the knowledge that you can bond, should bond, affect ability to bond? Brain/hormonal changes - do they start the bonding process or are they result of bonding process? There are times when I could strangle the forebears. Reinventing the wheel, destroying valuable data, and now any investigation - damn it!" The notes are annotated by hand, dated three years after the original. "Possibilities. Definite possibilities. Talk to Soha."

Avram returns to the interview record. The picture focuses on a woman who looks pale and harassed. Her fingers drum nervously on her thigh throughout the questioning.

"You presented Hester's proposal to Oliver?"

She nods jerkily.

"Yes or no, please, for the record."

Her voice is hardly more than a whisper.

"Yes."

"And what was his response?"

"He declined permission."

"But then Hester approached another Director, and arranged the suborning of a pharmaceutical supplier to the Foreign Corps."

It's not really a question, but the woman says "Yes," once more.

"And what was Oliver's response when he discovered these facts?"

"He took action."

"Did he discuss his actions with you directly?"

"No." She stares at her hands.

"How then do you know what he did?" There is no answer.

The unseen questioner says, "Jena Lebbece, we've already advised you that you are released from normal privacy obligations under the terms of this enquiry. You are obliged to answer all questions."

"I overheard him speaking about Science Director Hester's accident." Her head bows even lower.

"You ignored privacy obligation and protocol and spied. Why?"

Her head shoots up. There are tears in her eyes. "Accident? He had Finn killed!"

Avram pauses the vid and sighs. It's a fascinating story. It's the same story that it always is in some ways - obsession, greed, blindness, bigotry, self-protection. But there's always a new version to be found.

***

Grace Tuvai visits now and again, and she and Avram share tea. He likes her, likes her broad, handsome features, likes the way she sits in his chair as if she's genuinely a welcome guest, which she is.

"May I ask a question?"

Grace's dark eyes crease with amusement over the lifted cup. "Of course you can, Ambassador."

"I was fascinated by the information you gave me about the Commission of Enquiry events."

"Those events directly lead to your presence here. But these are statements. What's your question?"

"You gave me a great many historical references, but I don't always have a context for them. I was thinking especially of the way your people manage the sentinel and guide bonds. It's ironic that I'm permitted access to something that most societies would regard as secret but not to information about your day-to-day lives."

Grace sighs. "And your question is whether you can know more about our day-to-day lives. Cascade has changed in my lifetime, but some things are still - private. I'll see what I can do."

A few days later she brings him two actual bound books. One is a book of scientific essays, the other appears to be a school textbook. He lifts one eyebrow, and she says, half apologetically, half teasingly, "It's the teachers' notes edition."

"Oh, the teachers' notes. That's all right then." He reads them in his spare time, and spend more of his time working out how he can pass on as much of the information as is practical, within the letter of the confidentiality agreements he's committed to.

'Excerpt from "Pre-Guidance Options for the High Latency Sentinel Child" by Avis Wing.

'The special needs of high latency children are not just limited to the requirement for unassisted physical control at an early age. Parental or clan bonding may help, but of course a high latency child is highly likely to be the product of a sentinel/sentinel bond. I am well aware that the preferred word for these bonds is 'connection' but that term is a euphemism which hinders the proper consideration of this phenomenon. It is regrettable that as we refined the development of bonding between sentinels and their guides, that there was increasing discomfort about the intense temporary bonds which arise between sentinels.

These bonds are as natural and as necessary as the long-term bonds between sentinel and guide. Indeed, there is something to be learned from some of our more isolated communities where three-bonds of sentinels sharing one guide are at least tolerated. A sentinel/sentinel bond produces children with strongly dominant sentinel genes, something which is an ambiguous blessing for the individual concerned. High latency sentinels are disadvantaged when a perfectly appropriate preference for privacy develops into a prurient and prudish secrecy about the circumstances of their conception..."'

The textbook is a pubertal and sexual guide for young adults. Avram isn't offended at all. Indeed, he's fascinated.

"Sentinel/sentinel bonds and forced bonds are popular subjects for both pornography and formal drama. Forced bonds are relegated to history and very occasional criminal cases, but sentinel/sentinel bonds are still with us."

***

The Child

"May I introduce you to your new liaison." Lyra Harris was as stiff-necked as ever, but this time Blair sensed that she wasn't annoyed so much as she was intimidated. "Agent Harley. Of the Home Security bureau."

"We've met. You accompanied my sister, Serayne Tuvai."

Harley nodded. He was a blocky man, taller than Blair, with short, bristling sandy hair. "That's correct. And I must offer my apologies, Blair Sandburg, that events have taken so long to reach this point."

"Thank you," Blair said stiffly. "But what point exactly have things reached?"

Harley smiled, and drew out of his pocket two small cards. "No more than pocket change - but that will change. And I believe that you will find that your console now enables connection to the transit schedules, maps of Independence, and a directory of shops and services."

"That's very kind of you. Now that the powers that be have arranged this about-face, what about my chances of returning to Solana?"

Harley smiled politely, as if at a superior's poor joke. "Blair Sandburg, the government of Cascade wouldn't have disrupted your life if your presence wasn't very important to us."

"The life I had on Solana was very important to me."

"Blair Sandburg - every effort will be made to integrate you into Cascadian society. We regret the circumstances of your arrival, but we hope to offer you appropriate compensation."

"Compensation," Blair said thoughtfully.

"All these things will be negotiated as you develop a greater understanding of our culture."

Blair looked Harley up and down. The man had worn a look of bored resignation when he'd escorted Serayne; he'd looked like a man doing a make-work job and Blair didn't trust this smooth encouragement. But it was still a step up from what he'd had twenty minutes ago.

"What about Agent Protector Ellison?"

"It's been decided that there are better uses for Agent Ellison's skills. He might have been a good choice at the start, more experienced in foreign thought due to his work," and there was a twist to Harley's mouth at the words 'foreign thought', "but as you yourself have pointed out, we need to bring you more into our society."

"And as I also said, I regard Jim as a friend. Even if it's no longer appropriate for him to serve as my liaison, I'd like news of him, contact." Harley's face remained noncommittal. "Lyra Harris?"

"Agent Protector Ellison is currently mid-operation, and cannot be contacted. When he is available, someone will advise you."

"Uh-huh." Somehow, the prospect of increased freedom and 'compensation' didn't stop Blair from feeling as if some essential prop had just been kicked out from under him.

Harley's face creased into a smile as he moved into distraction mode. "Perhaps I might guide you through the options you have, Blair Sandburg. And then you might wish to plan some small outing to celebrate your new freedoms." And perhaps Blair might wish to say something ungrateful, but he couldn't deny the lure of what was being offered, if only to see what the promises amounted to. Small as they were, the concessions were genuine. There was even some impromptu practice at ironing out the more noticeable aspects of his accent. Li was deputed to this job, and Blair had to admit that it was almost fun.

A week or so passed, marked with small trips to shops, to baths, always with an escort, but with Blair generally being able to pick his itineraries. He wasn't tempted to actually ask Harley about his chances of researching sentinels or guides; memory recall techniques suggested that the words and concepts appeared in pivotal points in the lyrics of the Remembrance service. Blair wasn't sure if his search questions had crystallised the decision to removed Jim from his ambit. He knew that he'd sat in front of the console with questions in his mouth like a petulant child saying rude words to shock a room of adults; but that was how he'd felt and it seemed he'd succeeded. Time in bed in the dark was filled with memories of Jim's hands on his body, memories of Jim's smile which was always a million times more welcoming and genuine than Harley's. Jim's 'operation' continued. Blair heard no news of him.

One day, Harley turned up wearing an especially unctuous smile. "Blair Sandburg, your sister is performing in the foreign enclave this evening. Would you be interested in attending?"

"Yes, yes of course." Blair refused to get too excited about the prospect of seeing the enclave. He knew that he'd be supervised; but it was still a start, a chance to learn more, and besides, he was curious to see Serayne again. He'd liked her, so far as he'd been able to make any judgement in their meeting. She'd dealt better with the situation than many other people he could have named.

He was driven, in a car, for several hours. It was hard not to compare the ride, with Harley silent in the back seat beside Blair, to the shorter trip in the flyer, held by the straps that Jim had competently fastened. Cascade had two small moons, and they were neither of them bright enough that Blair saw more than gray shapes in the countryside, before the lights of the enclave came into view.

The enclave's buildings were architecturally more businesslike than Blair had seen in Independence; square and squat was apparently good enough for foreigners. Blair was ushered into a small theatre, which reminded him of some of Solana's shabbier, more compact lecture rooms, and he was led to sit at the very top and back.

The audience was small; enthusiasm was not its keynote. Blair couldn't help a comparison to the stadium in Independence. The lights dimmed, and soon a short, but professional concert was under way. Songs, dances followed, with Serayne taking part in most of the set pieces; and the applause was at least polite. Serayne sang in a pure voice, at the deeper end of the scale for a woman's timbre. Blair was mildly amused and impressed at the depth of sound coming out of such a young, small woman.

The performance ended, the audience filed out, but Blair and Harley remained in their seats. "Just a moment, please, Blair Sandburg." Harley walked down the steps, and returned with Serayne. Blair stood as she came up the steps.

"Blair! This is a surprise."

Blair took her hand and squeezed it gently. It was hot and still a touch sweaty from her exertions on stage. "Strange are the ways of the government of Cascade."

His sister giggled and then looked disconcerted at her indiscretion. "I'm almost afraid to ask this, but can you come backstage? I have to finish dressing, and..."

Blair felt a moment of panic. "How will you explain me?"

Serayne put a hand to her mouth. "Oh, I hadn't thought of that. I take it you still want to be incognito?"

"Very much so," Blair breathed.

Serayne smiled, as if at a joke. "Come be my cousin, Blair. Who's visiting from Artanicky. That'll explain the accent. Everybody speaks strangely there."

"Your cousin from Artanicky, am I? Come to see backstage? All right." Blair had been braced through all this conversation for Harley to naysay any or all of it, but he simply nodded and accompanied them. New broom indeed, Blair thought sourly.

"Where's Agent Protector Ellison?" Serayne asked, almost too obviously looking around for him.

This was a touchy subject for Blair. "I'm not able to see him at the moment. Some special operation or other."

She looked surprised, and then deeply sympathetic. "Oh, that is a shame. The Foreign Corps asks a lot of its people, we all know that. But you're keeping well?"

Yes, of course, Blair thought, my illness that keeps me out of the public eye. "Well enough, thanks." They entered the cramped dressing room, and Blair was reminded once again that the nudity taboos on Cascade were fairly relaxed. No-one was surprised or startled at two men appearing, while a chattering group of mixed men and women showered, and wiped off makeup, pulled off costumes and pulled on street clothes.

Serayne clapped her hands. "This my cousin Blair Sandburg, visiting from the back of beyond. Be nice to him." She turned to Blair with a flashing smile. "I totally have to shower. You don't have to be a sentinel to smell me." Harley stood by Blair's side, unnerving and silent. Blair took a look around the crowded room and wondered why he was permitted here. The men and women, all young, made various gestures of greeting, and one, who must have been first into the showers which spattered away at the back of room, approached.

"Greetings to you, Blair Sandburg from the back of beyond. I'm Vanera Sovann."

She was attractive - hardly a surprise; taller than Serayne, with a dancer's wiry musculature and the ubiquitous cropped hair of anyone from Cascade who went amongst strangers. Blair was suddenly very aware of his own long tail of hair. Vanera flirtatiously flicked it with her hand. "I'm jealous, Blair Sandburg. How did you get here with that?"

"Special dispensation," Harley said, before lapsing back into silence. Vanera eyed him and then ignored him.

"There's a light meal prepared for us. Of course Serayne invited you to that." Vanera took him by his arm, chattering with cheerful self-absorption. She was older than Serayne, Blair judged, and certainly not as guileless as his sister.. An older man appeared from somewhere, spare of body, with shrewd, hooded eyes.

"Greetings. I am Thomas Ng." He made the more formal greeting, the hand-hold and the brief touch to the forehead. Blair wondered dizzily if his recent weeks of comparative isolation had created a tendency to social phobia because he felt suddenly crowded to the point of suffocation.

"Ah - greetings." He felt like an idiot, like Serayne's retarded country-cousin from the boondocks. The man was looking at him with speculation, and Blair realised that this man was old enough to have known his father; and if he was some sort of supervisor for Serayne's troupe, then perhaps he might have been her confidant in the first shock of information.

"As this sparkler indicated, there is food in a room three doors down the corridor. Why don't you show Blair the way, Vanera?" Tugging at his arm in a proprietary way, Vanera led Blair to a room set with a buffet table.

"So, come to the big city to seek your fortune, or your sentinel?" More guileful but not more clever than Serayne, Blair concluded.

"And why would I need to do either?" he asked with a smile.

"Oh never say that you're already bonded, a gorgeous young man like yourself? If I had you for mine I wouldn't let you out of my sight."

If he were on Solana, Blair would have been measuring up whether the fun now would be worth the undoubted complications that would follow. But he wasn't on Solana. He was on Cascade, and half dazzled, half terrified by this small, shabby room and this obvious flirt, who ordinarily would have been a night's entertainment of one sort or another. More of the troupe appeared, but not Harley. Serayne made a move towards Blair and Vanera.

Serayne's smile was cheerful, with a look of helpfully rescuing someone from a socially awkward situation. "I suppose Vanera's been too busy trying to seduce you to let you get to the tables."

Vanera pouted. "You're foolishly austere about sex, my dear, and you won't be doing that triple lift with Eric if you have too many of those meat rolls."

"I haven't see much of Blair recently, so I'm carrying him away without guilt." Serayne hooked her arm through Blair's and led him to the table. "Sorry about that. It's not that Vanera's not fun, but she is voracious."

"Heard that," Vanera warbled.

Serayne giggled and made a dismissive gesture with her hand. "Then turn your satellite ears somewhere else. I call privacy."

"Where's Harley?" Blair asked, still not entirely convinced that his shadow wasn't about to swoop down and carry him away from this outstandingly frank situation.

"Standing in the hallway looking very bored. Stop looking so worried, Blair. This is a lovely surprise, and maybe it's a good thing that it's a group situation. You get to learn about - whatever you need to know, and we're not staring across a table at each other like a pair of fools."

"Yeah," Blair muttered, looking at the food on the table. He wasn't at all hungry.

"The meat rolls are very good. But I'm having just the one - there's only so much that regular training can do for your metabolism." She took a plate and a roll. In a lower tone she said, "It looks like the strong ones have changed their approach. That must be a good thing, right? Especially if my minder isn't my minder any more."

"He's my minder, instead."

Serayne nodded her head. "He's deadly, isn't he?"

Blair nodded, recognising an idiom, but still wondering how literally Harley might apply that 'deadly' quality if needed. "Do you do much of this? Performing in the enclave?"

"It's part of the apprenticeship for young performers. Practice is good enough for the foreigners." It was offhanded and then Serayne realised her blunder. "That was rude of me. I'm sorry."

Blair smiled. "It's nice of you to not remember all the time that I am from off-world. We haven't had a lot to do with each other, but you've still been pretty good about having an unknown brother thrown into your lap."

Serayne shrugged. "You look like Papa - that helped more than I thought it would." She smiled, combining it with a little twist of her shoulders. "Thomas pointed out that the situation wasn't exactly your fault so I threw my tantrums in private, after calling privacy. "

Blair hadn't met that idiom either, but he could guess what it meant. "And the people with the satellite ears respect that, do they?"

Serayne looked quite shocked. "If they don't, then they'd best keep it to themselves." Jim's voice sounded in Blair's head. 'We have a variety of etiquette when it comes to privacy, Sandburg.' Trying not to feel like a prurient adolescent, Blair steered Serayne out of a set of doors. They ended up in a drafty corridor. "Serayne, I'll apologise in advance if I'm asking something stupid or inappropriate, but what can you tell me about the phrase, 'Mine, as I am yours'?"

Serayne looked startled and then embarrassed, before she giggled like the very young woman she was. She clapped her hand over her mouth, a bright blush spreading across her face.

"Okay," Blair drawled, "stupid and inappropriate." In the back of his mind, in some academic alternative to comforting self-rocking, he was shuffling data, putting together and discarding theories, filing away information.

"I'm not likely to forget that you're an off-worlder when you come out with a shocker like that." Serayne gathered herself with touching dignity. "It sounds like Agent Protector Ellison is a traditionalist. But I'm glad for you, Blair, really I am. Papa had a strong guide-gift, too."

"Yes," Blair felt very numb. "Thank you." He had facts, but he desperately wanted a context for those facts, instead of suspicion and obfuscation. He wished he knew which Jim wanted him - the private man, or the sentinel who worked for the good of Cascade; and how did Blair separate out those two sides of Jim anyway?

There was a burst of laughter, but muted, not from the room they'd just left, but from somewhere further along the corridors.

"Sounds like the off-worlders are having a good time. Maybe it's the wine dealers' turn for representation."

Blair looked up the corridor. Not so very far away, there were men and women from places other than Cascade, men and women who would get into their ships and leave this place, go about their lives.

"Uh, where are the toilets here?"

Serayne pointed down the hall. "Unless you want to go back to the changing room."

Blair shrugged. "These are closer. Thanks."

He walked down the hall; he heard the noise of the door into the supper room as Serayne went back in, and with one quick look over his shoulder he headed for the noise from the off-worlders. The hallway was narrow; Blair's feet scuffed over a tightly woven matting that might have been made from dried grasses. He came finally to a set of double doors, hinged, paned with frosted glass. He reached out. They were locked. He rattled at them in frustration and saw the shadow of a man on the other side of the glass. There was the sound of door catches, and then a man in a dark blue uniform peered out.

Blair had a fast run of obfuscating words all ready to go, but the man forestalled him. "Blair Sandburg, I believe that you need to return to your own section." He stepped through, shutting the doors behind him.

Blair told himself that he wasn't disappointed. He'd told himself that anything was possible, that he'd been ready for any number of possibilities. The way that his eyes burned with tears was shocking to him.

The stranger touched his hand to a headset. "I'll stay here until your protector arrives."

"Oh, is that what he is?" The burn in Blair's eyes travelled to his chest when Harley arrived from behind that same door that Blair had sought. "Games, is it? They're more fun when I know the rules."

"Perhaps I should make your excuses to the troupe," Harley said.

"Perhaps you should," Blair muttered. He was escorted out another set of doors, to the small car they'd arrived in. Blair's temper had been hanging by a thread through all the walk, and the snick of the door shutting him in the car severed his control.

"What was that? What do you people think you're playing at?" He shouted it, and had a moment's satisfaction when he saw Harley wince. It surely wasn't at Blair's anger; it must have been at the noise. Fine, Blair thought, hope I made those sensitive sentinel ears sting.

Harley recovered his control and looked at Blair, quite calmly. "You still want to leave Cascade, return to your old life?"

Blair's hands gestured wildly. "And what's Cascade offered me besides imprisonment and surveillance and a bunch of bullshit? What the hell is there for me on Cascade?"

The car had started up, taking Blair on his return journey. He huddled into the corner of his seat, as far away from Harley as possible. He wished, for one futile moment, that it was Jim sitting there; Jim would be warm and solid; his thick cloth coat would scratch against Blair's face when he leaned against Jim's shoulder.

"Your views will be reported."

"Reported. Everything I do is reported, isn't it? What's new about that?" Blair's words squeezed out of a suddenly tight throat.

"Your situation is always under consideration. Perhaps we might need to look at it in a new way."

After the disappointment of the door, Blair wasn't going to hope and he wasn't going to assume anything at all. But sometimes, it paid to ask - or at least to tell.

"If there's an option that means I could leave Cascade, I'd be prepared to consider any reasonable conditions."

Harley smiled, a small, tight twitch of his lips. "Those views will be reported, too."

Anger was settling to a dull resentment. "Is Jim Ellison able to be contacted yet?"

"No, not yet. So, isn't James Ellison something that Cascade has offered you?"

"What's that supposed to mean?" Blair lifted his eyes to actually look at Harley's face. There was a twist to his expression that Blair recognised as discomfort; no, not discomfort - dislike.

"You indicated that he's your friend. So, it would appear that Cascade has offered you something of value. And, of course, you've made contact with the family that your mother separated you from."

"My mother wasn't even a legal adult when she fell pregnant, anymore than my father was, by the looks of it. She has nothing to do with this."

Harley's eyebrow rose at this. "As you say." There was a brief silence. "An interesting man, Agent Protector Ellison."

Blair didn't naturally tend to stillness, but he felt himself stiffening, like an animal trying to not attract a predator's attention.

"You'd have a better frame of reference to understand Jim than I do. Given how little I know of Cascade society."

Harley was amused at that, but Blair still saw a twist of dislike about his mouth.

"Oh, I think that you have a far better frame of reference than I do."

Blair shrugged. Harley went on. "He's always been a valuable man - he's high latency. Still, quite aside from the distress to Ellison, it was unfortunate when Lila Vander died. Considerably reduced his usefulness."

Looking out the window at the dark was fast becoming the only option for this conversation. Blair didn't want Harley to see his face. "Lila was his guide?"

"That's right," Harley replied; he was quite straightforward. 'Guide' might never have been a word that Blair was forbidden to know. "They made a good team. But Ellison works well enough on his own. His senses lack the power and precision they'd have with the guide bond, but you can't have everything."

"No," Blair said, "you can't have everything." He'd spoken truer than he knew when he'd mentioned games to Harley. He didn't know the rules here, but he tried a move anyway.

"Wouldn't there have been a risk of Jim bonding with me? When he brought me back from Solana?"

Harley chuckled; amused, disparaging.

"Bonding is a solemn ritual, not something that you do by accident. Agent Ellison recognised the potential between you and requested suppressants before your retrieval. He couldn't have bonded with you even if he'd wanted."

'Deadly' indeed. Blair would have liked to know why he had to hurt like this on top of everything else. "It's a fascinating concept. Not that I understand much of it." He thought that he understood enough. 'Mine, as I am yours.'

"Perhaps you don't need to understand it."

"That's been made clear to me." Have to watch that bitterness, Blair told himself. He couldn't trust anything that Harley told him. Jim had merely been sparing with the truth. Sins of omission, sins of commission - ancient terms, but they had a place.

"You wouldn't need to understand it if you were on Solana once more. So long as you were prepared to meet some reasonable conditions."

"You're joking." Blair shut his eyes and shielded his face with his hand. Then he faced Harley once more. "You have got to be joking. After all this, you'd let me go? After all this bullshit, and testing..." His voice died away.

"You haven't settled here, Blair Sandburg."

"I've never been given the chance!" Blair protested.

"You want to stay? " Harley asked.

Blair sat pinned between two opposing ideas. There was Solana and everything there that was familiar; his career; his friends. He could contact his mother; he had a lot of questions for her now. And then there was all the strangeness of Cascade - fascinating as it often was. There was Jim, and maybe even Serayne. He liked her, could grow fond of her. He sighed. Jim. Jim, who had been his friend, his lover. Jim, who had brought him here, Jim, who had maybe purposely bonded with Blair to improve his sentinel abilities. That was what Harley was implying. Blair knew that he couldn't trust Harley. He knew that.

"I could leave? Go back to Solana?"

"We would give you a cover story. The Jim Anders persona was always going to be sacrificed to this operation. Whether it's Anders' life or his reputation, it doesn't matter."

It was a harder choice than Blair had expected. "All right, then."

"We'll need to make arrangements. I'll advise you more fully in about a week's time."

***

Blair wasn't sleeping well. He heard nothing back from Harley, and four days after the visit to the enclave he woke with a grinding headache. Aching joints and lethargy added to the fun over the course of the day. Blair stumbled out to the foyer, only to see unfamiliar minders. "So what do you guys do for a headache?" he asked, trying not to wince at the way his voice thundered in his head.

"You're unwell?"

"Headache? Sore joints? Yeah, I'm unwell."

The unknown woman stood and took up a comm unit. "I'll arrange for a doctor." She nodded at the man with her. "Go and help Blair Sandburg get comfortable. Fluids, anodynes."

Blair was propped on the sofa, given pills and tea, and in a surprisingly short while, Harley appeared with a man Blair presumed was a doctor. Some of the equipment was unfamiliar, but medical examinations were the same wherever they happened.

"A mild illness, probably a virus. You'll recover in a week or so." The doctor left, seen to the door by Blair's minder. Harley remained.

"Tomorrow night. You'll be taken to Telarcum. There's a Nine Worlds Consulate there - we'll deliver you with an explanation of abduction and escape. You will not mention Cascade. Ever."

Blair nodded. He wasn't about to argue but he wasn't going to be bound by any conditions, either. He'd play out events and see what happened. There was a great deal of data stored in his mind, and he'd have to choose what to do with it - once he was off Cascade.

"How are you going to explain my leaving to Cascade people?"

"That's not your concern."

"Now there's a surprise." Harley stood to go, and Blair put out his hand. "Wait. Look... can you tell Serayne and Jim...tell them I was glad to meet them."

Harley simply looked at Blair. "They'll be told everything that's appropriate."

"Okay," Blair said, and leaned back against the cushions. His head still hurt very badly, despite the medicines. It would be ironic if he brought Cascadian germs away with him, as well as his precious DNA. He slept for a while. When he woke, it was to various pains crawling across his back and thighs.

"Damn it." He sat up in front of the infotech screen. He experimented with search words, and found access to a vid of Cascade history. It was oddly choppy - either they had an unfamiliar aesthetic with their documentary presentation, or it had been edited. He smiled grimly. Even now, especially now, he supposed, he wasn't going to be allowed to take away any more knowledge than they wanted him to. But nearly everything that he'd experienced lay waiting in his mind, ready to be recalled, analysed. The clothing that people wore, their body language, the layout of the city, every little clue of their culture that people unconsciously offered up just by living in it - it was all in Blair's memory. Every word that Jim had ever said to him, if he chose to remember it.

He slept again, waited out much of the next day in a doze that was partly the effect of illness, and partly a choice that he should stay calm and be ready once again for disappointment. When Harley ushered him into a car, Blair was irritable rather than anticipatory. He still felt ill, and tired.

It was odd, taking a look at the streets of Independence for the last time. He tried to think about Solana, to distract himself from his aches and pains and foolishly ambivalent feelings, but memories of Solana just raised detached concerns - how to explain his absence, how to raise himself from his presumed watery grave.

"No flyer, this time," he said, as much from boredom as any other reason, as farmland went past in fast dimming daylight. He'd seen this land in early evening light when he arrived; he was seeing it in the same greyness now.

"Your departure is going to be simpler than your arrival."

"At least I won't be drugged."

"No, Blair Sandburg, no drugs."

The buildings of the enclave looked as square and unwelcoming as they had previously. The car drove through the substantial doorway of what Blair presumed was a warehouse. It stopped and Blair got out as the building's heavy doors rumbled shut behind him with an underlying whine of hardworking engines. No need for Cascade's quieter tech in this place where foreigners came and went and laboured. There were straggling stacks of crates and drums and Harley indicated a path through them to what looked like a small office, protruding cube-like from a corner of the building. Blair stepped through the door before he stopped in surprise. Serayne was there, sitting on a chair. He took another step towards her and looked over his shoulder to see the office door shut behind them both. There was an ominous sound of locks, and he quickly turned, ignoring the sudden spike of pain in his head, to test the door. He couldn't open it.

"Great. Just great." Blair turned to his sister. "What are you doing here? I didn't think that good-byes were on the agenda."

"Good-byes?" Serayne looked utterly confused. "Where are you going?"

Blair felt unexpectedly ashamed. "Home. I'm going home to Solana."

Serayne shook her head. "They didn't say anything about that. They just told me I had to come with them. I've been waiting here for more than an hour." She paused. "Why would you want to leave?"

Blair's impatience and frustration boiled over. "What did they tell you about my coming here? Did they tell you that I was kidnapped and drugged, and that I never had any say about anything? Did they tell you that?"

Serayne again shook her head, her eyes wide with disbelief. "But why would they do that?"

Blair sat on the edge of a desk, and tried to blow away his anger. He needed a clear head. "Because there are people on this planet with some fairly weird ideas about outsiders, and I'm talking as someone who's studied several cultures as an outsider."

His sister's total confusion increased Blair's foreboding. Why was she here? For that matter, why was he here? He'd assumed that this was an appropriate place to wait for a ship to be ready - but why not simply board? The locked door assumed more sinister implications than an orderly Cascadian desire for a troublesome charge to stay put.

Blair got off the desk and went to try the door. Definitely locked. He banged on it, hard. "Hey. Hey. What's going on?"

Serayne stood, too. Her face betrayed increasing uneasiness as she echoed Blair's question. "What's going on?"

Blair ran a hand across his hair. He wished his head didn't hurt so much. "I don't know," he growled. "And I have a hell of a headache, which is not helping the thought processes."

He turned back to the desk and pulled out the drawers, looking for he didn't know what, until he pulled out a pair of scissors. "Low tech has its place," he muttered, and started jiggling the scissors against the catch of the door, trying to force the lock, even though he knew it probably wasn't going to work. "Have a look and see if there's anything else in the desk we could use on this." He stood and looked at the chair, wondering if he could use it as a battering ram. Experimentally, he kicked at the door, trying to judge how solid it was.

Serayne stood at his side, a couple of what might have been pens or styli held in her hand. "They really kidnapped you?"

Blair considered the door with growing frustration. "Yes, they really did. And I am getting a nasty vibe out of this whole situation. Really nasty." He took a tighter hold on the scissors, glad that he hadn't broken off the blades, while he sized up the possibilities of the hinges.

"You're being stupid. This is my government, Blair, not some bunch of pirates off a bad vid." Serayne's nervous chuckle suggested she wasn't so sure.

Blair's certainty that he had indeed been stupid only worsened his temper. "Damn it, I know what happened to me. And I am so not in the mood to help you maintain your illusions about the greatness of Cascade!" Guilty fear swamped Blair's anger. What if they assumed that he'd told Serayne these things long ago? But he'd never sought her out. The government of Cascade had brought her to him, just as Harley had brought them both here to this empty, echoing building and this tiny office of a cell. "Serayne, I think that you need to be ready to run."

Serayne paled. "You're joking."

"Wish I was," Blair said, before he held up his hand in a warding gesture. There was the sound of someone outside the office.

"Please stand away from the door." Harley's voice. Blair pushed at Serayne with his hand, forcing her away from the door.

"What's going on?"

"Stand away from the door." Blair took a step back, fingers hurting from the grip he had on the scissors. "Farther." He expected the snick and rattle of the lock, the door to swing inward to reveal Harley, maybe with a gun.

The door swung inwards, for sure, a swift movement that was preceded with the bang of a vicious kick. There was a sharp shriek of surprise from Serayne. Harley charged through the doorway, and Blair hardly had time to register the arc of something heavy whistling through the air. He lurched back, jabbing half-heartedly with the scissors but more concerned with getting out of the way.

The abortive movement briefly startled Harley into taking a more defensive position. He was carrying something long and metallic, some mechanic's tool by the looks of it. At least, Blair thought wildly, Serayne wouldn't have any doubts about the need to run for her life. First, though, they had to get out the door and, with some vague idea of giving his sister cover, he lunged at Harley. There was something wrong with the universe when office supplies were his only defence against a man who probably knew a dozen easy ways to kill.

Harley contemptuously swung at his arm, and Blair cried out in shock as metal crashed against skin and bone. He stumbled sideways, crashing into the desk and landing roughly on the floor. Looking up, he saw Harley advancing on him, but he also realised that Serayne was no longer in the office. He hoped that she could find a way out of the warehouse. He hoped that Harley didn't have too many colleagues. He wished...but it was too late for wishes as Harley snarled, "Half of Cascade is nothing of Cascade," and readied himself to bring down his weapon. Blair lifted his good arm, waiting in a frozen moment for the descent, for the next blow. He waited forever, before the metal tool fell out of Harley's hand and clattered to the floor, as the man himself crumpled to the ground, his torso landing heavily across Blair's feet and shins.

Blair couldn't make sense of it. Harley should be beating him to death right now. Serayne called his name, and angry at her, he shouted, "Get out. Run."

She appeared at the door, white-faced and breathless.

"Oh, god. Oh, Blair," she blurted, before she crouched beside him. She jolted his right arm, and Blair whined - but it hurt, it hurt terribly; the numbness of shock was retreating far too quickly.

A figure loomed at the door. Blair tried to his jerk his feet from under the weight of Harley's corpse, before he realised that it was Jim, who made unceremonious work of hauling Harley's body out the door before he knelt beside Blair.

"How badly are you hurt?" Jim's voice was hoarse, and even as he asked, he was running his hands over Blair's body, his face intent, using eyes and ears and, Blair realised, his sense of smell to investigate him.

"Broke my arm."

Jim pulled off his own jacket and shirt, which left Blair befuddled until, with extreme gentleness as well as speed, Jim's shirt became a makeshift sling. Blair concentrated on Jim's face while this was done, but still choked out another pained noise when Jim moved his arm. Jim hoisted Blair to his feet, and Blair found breath for an important question.

"What happened to you?" Jim's left eye was misshapen and dark with swollen bruises. There were grazes down one side of his face.

"People have been trying to kill me." Jim sounded almost cheerful about the fact. He looked over his shoulder at Harley, visible only as a prone set of legs and feet a short distance from the door, and smiled at Blair with feral pleasure. "Hasn't worked out so well for them." He gestured. "Serayne Tuvai, if you'll come and help Blair, please."

Serayne's face looked skull-like under her cropped hair but she followed instructions, and positioned her thin strength against Blair. Jim smiled approvingly, and then lovingly stroked Blair's cheek with a thumb. "She's only there to keep you oriented. Faint and you'll take her down with you."

Blair would have liked to protest that no way was he going to faint; vomiting, on the other hand, was a scarily imminent possibility.

"Time to move out." Jim must have put his weapon down to tend to Blair. It was back in his hands, something dark and snub-nosed.

"Where are we going?" Serayne asked.

Jim spared her a brief glance, seemingly more concerned with looking around the open space of the warehouse. "Hopefully closer to my backup, and farther away from theirs. Which will be checking soon when they don't hear from our friends there." Blair could see another body lying on the ground, a woman.

"His guide?" Serayne sounded sick.

"Yes." Jim led them past the corpse, heading for another set of doors intended for people rather than vehicles.

"Harley's car," Blair gasped.

Jim's expression was sympathetic. "Not a good idea. Even if the shithead had broken your leg and not your arm." His voice was encouraging as he opened the door. "You'll manage."

Serayne turned her head to stare with unhappy fascination at the woman on the floor. "Gone together," she said.

"It's the best they could expect out of this mess," Jim muttered, and led them cautiously onto the dark, chill street.

They walked for a long while, although Blair considered that about five steps counted as too long. Every movement made his arm throb. Serayne's warmth and determined grip was only a small comfort. Blair found it easier to live up to Jim's expectations of 'managing' by looking at his back as they made their trek in the shadows, and heating the cold of shock with a surprisingly powerful anger against whoever had put those marks on Jim's face.

Finally, Jim led them to a small alley, and settled Blair into a sitting position on the steps of a doorway. "We can wait here," he declared, before he jogged to one end of the alley, and stood very still, barely noticeable if you didn't already know he was there. He came back and sat beside Blair. Somehow, Blair was propped slightly in front of Jim, and then Jim's head fell forward to rest gently against Blair's good shoulder. Sighing, Jim encouraged Blair to lean all his weight back and, exhausted, Blair took advantage of the offer, although Jim's quiescence worried him.

"Are you all right?" he asked.

"I'm fine, but I'm listening."

"Okay," Blair said although he had no idea whether Jim was listening for pursuers or to Blair's body and the beat of his heart. He resisted the urge to move - it wouldn't help the sickening throb of his arm; but at least the terrible headache had started to recede.

He'd almost forgotten Serayne, who was a silent, miserable figure, still standing.

"But you're bonded," she said confusedly. "How could you want to leave?" With the same aggrieved confusion, she said, "They were going to kill us," and sank into a crouch, before she started to sob, quietly but persistently. Blair put out his hand, which felt very heavy, and awkwardly patted her knee. Jim said nothing, but Blair felt movement on his left side; it was Jim taking a bigger handful of Blair's jacket.

They waited in their strangely intimate limbo, until Jim finally moved to stand. "They're coming - my backup," he added. He fished into his pocket and took out a clear, archive-style bag. "Serayne Tuvai, I believe you'll find that there are enclave passes in your pocket. Can you carefully give them to me, please."

Serayne looked up. "What passes?"

Jim's voice was patient. "Check your pockets."

Serayne's voice was shaky as she reached into her jacket. "This is stupid, I don't - oh." She drew two small oblongs out of one pocket. Jim held the bag towards her, and fumbling slightly in the dimness, she put the passes into the bag.

"Thank you," said Jim.

"I didn't put those there."

"I know."

Blair could hear the noise of car engines now; it wasn't long before beams of light lit the street intersecting their waiting point. A tall man blocked one entrance to the alley, and bellowed, "Ellison! If I have a stroke before I'm fifty it's your fault."

Jim sounded unfazed by this accusation. "You're in perfect health, sir."

The figure wore a long coat, which flapped as he strode his backlit way down the alley. "Which is more than you'll be if you pull a stunt like that again. You leave the transmitter on at all times. All times, damn it!"

"They could have tracked the frequencies, too. I wasn't ready to take the risk."

"That risk, no."

Blair stayed huddled in the doorway, which made this irate man even taller.

"You found our lost items."

"Yes, sir. Blair Sandburg needs medical attention. Broken arm; shock. He should have severance sedatives too."

There were more lights shining down the alley, and Jim's superior, supervisor, whatever he was, ran a distracted hand over his head.

"Just the start of the cleanup. Like I needed my career mentioned on the same file as the scandal of the century." Serayne flinched as the man shouted down the alley, "Rafe! Get a car around the other side and take these very important witnesses somewhere safe. Get an aid kit for Sandburg and make sure there's a doctor at the other end - Wolf for preference. And make sure that Ellison sees him, too."

***

It was a long trip back to Independence, even with a proper splint on Blair's arm and some carefully doled out pills. Jim sat correctly separate from Blair during the journey; the company of several other agents might have had something to do with that. The car that Banks had ordered up was large and square and had seating for about ten. Almost all the seats were taken, and those passengers who weren't Blair and Serayne were conspicuously armed.

Even if it had just been the two of them alone, Blair was busy juggling pain, insufficient drugs and a strangling tangle of emotions. The silent closeness of the doorstep might never have been, and Blair hardly knew how to think about it anyway.

Hospitals, doctors; treatment methods might vary but the attitudes were familiar. Serayne was shepherded away under the care of a big man with a gentle face. She nestled under his fatherly arm and gave Blair a wan smile as she left, the hand of her protector dark against the cloth of her light-coloured jacket.

Blair found himself shunted from one carefully lit spot to another until, very late at night, he was ushered to rest in a lounge in an entirely different building, with one other occupant: Jim.

He looked up as Blair entered, and pierced him through with a stare. "How are you doing?"

"Adequately," Blair replied, and sat gingerly in one of the chairs. 'Adequate' seemed to be the best that could be said for Jim as well. Jim's face was dark with unshaven beard as well as bruises, and there were shadowed hollows under his eyes.

Blair leaned his head against the back of the chair. "Man. I thought I was an embarrassment to your people before." He spat out his next words. "How long before somebody else decides that half of Cascade is nothing of Cascade?"

"That sense-dead moron didn't know what he was talking about."

"Well, of course he didn't. You proved that, didn't you? A snort of Blair Sandburg a day, or hell, a good fuck helps return sentinel agents to top form."

A hard crack resounded through the air as Jim's hand smacked down on the table in front of him.

"That is not how it is."

Blair was alight with febrile energy; spoiling for a fight. Anger pulsed through him in time with the pain in his arm. "Oops, an incorrect hypothesis. Fill me in, Agent Protector Ellison. Am I going home any time soon?" He laid his hand under the cast on the broken arm and lifted it forward as if for inspection. Even that gentle movement hurt. "On Solana I'd be getting more sophisticated medical treatment, that's for sure."

Jim shook his head. "You'll stay here. That's decided."

"What's the point of that?" Blair's voice was growing ragged. Disappointment; despair; fear for the future: they all ran riot in Blair's head and he despised himself for wanting something as simple as a hug from Jim. "There wasn't a place for me before, let alone after this. Or am I going to end up in my cosy prison with the added benefit of regular conjugal visits? Since I'm bonded to you, and you're a traditional sort of guy."

"I'm not authorised...things will improve now. I promise." The words came out in a pallid voice, to accompany Jim's pale face.

"You're not authorised to what? Tell me what's going on? Fuck my brains out again? Was that authorised, the night in Independence? Was it?" Jim's exhausted calm had dropped away to be replaced with something that looked like horror. Blair rejoiced. After weeks, months, of being used and manipulated and lied to and nearly murdered, it felt good to know that he had the power to affect something.

"No, it wasn't. You know damn well that was my idea."

"Funny," Blair said, very quietly. "I thought it was mine."

It was almost like magic. One moment Jim was sitting in his chair across the room, the next he was looming over Blair. Blair was caged in his chair, as Jim leaned over him with his hands gripped across the arm rests. Jim's bruises puffed out his brow, made something brutish of the handsome face.

"Do not play your academic mind games with me. You don't have the first clue what's going on here."

They stared at each other. "And here I thought that was my point all along." Blair broke first and turned his head to look somewhere that wasn't Jim and all the confusion he aroused. "I don't know what to do with this, Jim."

One of Jim's legs was pressed up against Blair's. Jim was trembling. "That night in Independence...I was trying to pretend that this wasn't what it is. Stupid."

"So what is 'this'? Because I am still pretty much in the dark here, and I don't like stumbling around." Blair's emotions somersaulted again. He hated seeing Jim in such obvious distress and he attempted a caress to the man's hard-set jaw, but Jim reared back like a startled animal.

"I'll tell you what it was. It was illegal experimentation, and forced bonding, and cover-ups, that's what it was. And now it's over." Jim's voice was a snarl, and he looked at Blair as if he was one breath away from making a decision to either fuck him or kill him. " I told Banks to make sure that you get the severance drugs. They'll help."

"Help what? Break the bond? Is that what they do?"

"Felt sick recently, Sandburg? Headaches, aches, and pains?"

Blair nodded, watched as reserved control returned to Jim like a creeping sickness.

"Then the bond is already breaking. Congratulations." Jim's palm swiped across his jaw. "The drugs take the edge off, that's all." Jim was backing away towards the door. "You'll have proper access to what you need to know shortly, and the sooner I'm out of this the better." He was gone.

Blair heaved himself up from the chair. "Jim. Wait."

He barged out the door and straight into Lyra Harris. The jolt hurt his arm, and he bit back a grunt as Jim made his escape around a corner and out of sight.

"Blair Sandburg. I'm very sorry."

"Yeah, fine." Blair gritted his teeth. "Just an accident."

Harris fussed Blair back into a chair. There was another woman, and a man with her, presumably some sort of security. "Can I get you anything?"

"No, no, I'm fine."

Harris's flustered state might almost have been funny, especially given her previous disapproval of Blair.

"I can't say enough how shocked I am by this. Terribly, terribly shocked."

"Yes, thank you. About Jim?" Harris looked blank. "James Ellison, my former liaison..."

Harris's face grew, if possible, even more embarrassed than it had been when she bumped into Blair.

"Blair Sandburg, I must apologise; if I had understood the agenda behind limiting your access to information..."

"Yes, sure, about Jim..."

"Agent Protector Ellison will be taken care of, and we will be ensuring far more suitable arrangements for you. But you'll be very tired, I know, and I'm here to get you safely back to your home."

Home. It wasn't really his home, but at least it would be familiar and the bed would smell right. He could ask about Jim tomorrow, when he wasn't so tired, and Lyra Harris had hopefully recovered from some of her shock.

***

Blair liked information, but the tidal wave of it that swamped him in the next few days and weeks sent him, intellectually and emotionally, end over end. When Cascade did secrecy it was thorough, and when it did openness it was equally efficient. So Blair steadily read text and watched vids and swallowed painkillers, and considered how information wasn't at all the same thing as understanding. He made several enquiries about Jim, and one day Lyra Harris came to see him, more collected but still surprisingly subdued. She'd always seemed more than willing to regard Blair as ungrateful for his abduction and deception, but she was still shocked at the Home Security agency's conspiracy, and apparently beyond shocked at other occurrences.

"The thing, Blair Sandburg, is that while we very much appreciate your concern for Agent Protector Ellison, we really feel that a period of separation is best."

Blair's arm was out of the cast, and deciding to ache now that the familiar support was gone. "We. Who's we? That's not exactly encouraging me that things are going to change here. What about what Jim and I feel?"

Lyra Harris's shoes scuffed along the floor in fidgety distress. "There is no blame attached in this situation, but it's simply not appropriate to have further meetings. Agent Protector Ellison certainly accepts that. You're fully informed about bonding now, so you understand," Harris' hands twirled in uninformative circles, "the very delicate issues involved here."

"Jim accepts that? That we should keep our distance?" That was hard to fathom given what Blair remembered. The night in Independence hadn't been about distance, but then Blair's memories threw out Jim's words about 'pretending', about the situation not being what it was.

Harris nodded a decisive 'yes' to Blair's question. "He is deeply regretful about the circumstances."

Regretful. Blair had spent a lot of time in thought about instinct and emotion and how they might weave together in the feelings he and Jim had about each other. Now he felt as if he'd been doused in cold water. The implication was that the bond in question wasn't just inopportune but mistaken, false; wrong. The implication was that Blair and Jim were a couple of addicts who had to be separated from each other for their own good. Except that it didn't feel like that to Blair, but apparently it did feel like that to Jim, because here was Lyra Harris making his excuses.

Anger surged through Blair. Simple addiction, that's all it was; he'd even had the withdrawal symptoms to prove it. Wanting Jim? Just an itch to scratch, a neuron to tickle, like wanting something sweet to eat; like wanting air to breathe. He wondered if Jim was regretful that Blair was staying on Cascade. He shut his eyes.

"Blair Sandburg, are you all right?"

Blair opened his eyes again, and took a clear look at his circumstances. "Sorry, distracted today. But I'd like to discuss the proposals you brought yesterday; I've been thinking about my options and I have some ideas of my own to put forward."

Harris looked wary rather than anxious, now. "Please, go on,"

Blair settled back into his seat. "The pension offer is very generous, but I still want to have some sort of employment, preferably in teaching or academic study." He smiled with a careful edge of self-deprecation. "A doctorate from Solana makes me a social sciences faculty in my own right on some worlds."

Harris nodded. "It's understandable that you want something that reflects your academic skills and status, but I doubt that there are any suitable positions in our higher institutes." Blair wasn't surprised. They were hardly going to let the outsider with the strange ideas loose upon the impressionable young minds of Cascade.

"I was thinking more along the lines of working in the Foreign Corps, or even Home Security. An advisor on the Nine Worlds, someone to help your traders and travellers acclimatise to that big old galaxy out there. An analyst for information your people bring back. They'd have clearance, so me being who I am wouldn't matter." And the Cascade government would have an absolutely tailor-made excuse for keeping an eye on him, which he'd just have to deal with. He suspected that they'd be keeping an eye on him wherever he was. He'd rather not have any pretence about it. And if he was somehow attached to the Foreign Corps, he might run into James Ellison.

Harris smiled approvingly at this offer of collaboration. "It's a possibility." Blair didn't know if the apparent willingness to accommodate him meant that Jim's absence was purely his own decision, or was yet more politics. "Speaking of who you are," Harris said, "have you made any decision about publicly presenting yourself as the Child?"

Cascade wasn't inclined to celebrity cults in the way of some planets, but Blair still couldn't think of massed voices shouting 'The children of Cascade belong to Cascade' without wanting to shudder. Seeing his hesitation, Harris said, "Of course, your privacy choices will be respected; but you might find that it opens doors for you."

Blair could imagine. It hadn't escaped him during his orgy of study that an election campaign was getting into gear. The Child sitting with a smile on his face next to the current Speaker for Cascade at some state dinner might well open doors for more people than Blair Sandburg.

"I think that I'd like more time before I make any decision about that." Harris looked frustrated. Blair had no sympathy for her. He'd rationalised his way to a state of mind that accepted staying on Cascade. It wasn't as if he'd had strong ties at Solana. Cascade was a fascinating place, and he was still working out the implications of his genetic heritage, wondering how many people with the hyper-senses, or the capacity to enhance those senses might exist in the wider population outside of Cascade. The progenitors, as the culture that experimented on the original population was known, couldn't have harvested every person with that genetic makeup. And perhaps some of the children stolen by slavers might have escaped, or had children of their own. The whole field was ripe for study and speculation.

Sure, he'd accepted that he was staying on Cascade, for now at least, but he was going to have it on his terms for as long as this spasm of official guilt would give him the chance.

Harris gathered up her files, the tiniest frown of annoyance visible on her brow.

"I take it that Agent Protector Ellison knows how to find me if he wants."

Blair nearly cracked a grin at Lyra Harris's obvious effort to restrain her exasperation. "I'm sure he does. If he wants." And that was a more than effective retaliation for Blair's little attempt at needling.

When she was gone, Blair made himself some tea, and sat down with his own 'puter, filled with its encyclopaedia of Nine Worlds' data, ignored for a while now as he'd grappled with life on Cascade. He opened up the entry on Cascade, read once more the entry about the diplomatic incident all those years ago. The Nine Worlds' citizens weren't mentioned by name, but Blair was willing to bet that Naomi's name wasn't originally Sandburg. He sighed. By the customs of Cascade he could call himself Blair Jennsen, but his father was no more than a picture and a few minutes of performance, and Serayne's reminiscences couldn't really make him more than that.

Blair sank to the floor, arranging his body in a meditation posture. He shut his eyes, and sat calmly, while his emotions swirled around him, considered but not felt; anger, regret, hope, grief. His mind offered up thoughts and memories, and he accepted them and let them go, and sat in peace. When he was done, he made himself some more tea; red tea; and he remembered that Jim liked red tea, too.

***

Serayne's face was high-coloured and slightly sweaty when she answered Blair's call.

"Someone making you work hard, little sister?"

"I don't need to be made to work hard. And you have nowhere enough charm or authority to carry off calling me 'little sister'."

Blair clutched at his chest, a gesture that would just be visible on Serayne's screen. "I am so wounded."

"And so you should be. What about you, oh, Child? Working hard, too?"

"For the greater good of Cascade, what else?" Blair said, and knew that there was too much sarcasm in his tone. Serayne ignored this with her usual consideration.

"As it should be. They've confirmed the schedule. This tour ends in another two weeks, so when we get back to Independence I expect to see you. You can cook me one of those foreign meals. The last one wasn't bad."

"One advantage of two guides eating together - the chance to be exploratory with the spices."

Serayne smiled. "I've to go, Blair, my part in the rehearsal's coming up. Take care, and I'll call you when we come home."

Blair ended the call, and leaned back in his chair, which he'd picked out himself, and contemplated the walls of his small apartment, decorated with some hangings and woven panels that he'd also picked out for himself. There were even some actual books on a small shelf; illustrated atlases and a history of art. Sometimes, you simply had to hold the historical continuity of a real, bound book, even if they weren't made out of wood-based paper anymore, even on Cascade.

Blair stood. He was restless, and lonely in a way that couldn't be solved by visiting any of his neighbours. And there was a city of beautiful men and women out there. He threw on a coat and set out into the streets of Independence, which he knew pretty well by now, between the transit system and his own marathon walking sessions. There was a place that he'd found, a mix of bar and symposium. He'd gone there a few times, and joined groups of people for conversation and drinking, even if he'd spent more time listening than talking. If he wanted sex, he could find it there. And tonight, for the first time in too long, he wanted sex.

His destination was called 'The Meeting Place'. Blair granted full marks for straightforward description. It was pleasant and roomy, and Blair suspected that the baffles and interesting ceiling shape had something subtle to do with acoustics that he was never going to appreciate.

There was a group of people milling around a singer, a woman who played a stringed instrument with a mellow tone, and accompanied it with an equally mellow voice. Blair propped himself against the bar, sipping at a local spirit which disguised its kick with a sharp, almost grassy tang, and just let himself look. A woman came up to the bar, requesting a tea, and Blair smiled at her. She smiled back, but bought her drink and went back the way she came. Down but not yet out, Blair told himself. There was a man standing close to the singer, tall and slimly built. He had his head tilted, his eyes looking inward with an expression that Blair remembered seeing on Jim, and hastily he looked away from the man. Hell, he told himself, he didn't have to leave here with anyone. He could enjoy the music, watch the people, maybe insert himself into some of the groups conversing around the room. Cascade custom was fine with that in a place like this. They could be a very sociable people.

Blair gazed around. There was a group sitting across the room - men and women, touches of both blue and red accents amongst their clothes and jewellery. Why not, he thought, and wandered over to perch on the arm of a sturdy couch. One or two of the group smiled at him, but most were either watching or commenting on the screen in the corner which showed a ballgame, the teams mixed with men and women.

"Do you play?" he asked the woman sitting next to him.

She tilted her head to smile up at him from the depths of the upholstery. "Not this game. It's fine to watch, but I play Siefer-rules carry-ball."

Blair had seen a game of that from the comfort of his chair in his apartment. "Bruising stuff."

She grinned. "Compared to the rules of this game, but it's fast and loose with non-contact tonight." She waved a hand in the direction of the screen. "The referee will be disciplining soon, and then hear my brother yowl." Her hand, broad-palmed and long-fingered, pointed in the direction of a blond man sitting closer to the screen.

"Blair Sandburg."

"And that would be you, rather than my brother?"

"Yes, I believe it would be," Blair replied, enjoying the teasing. She had a pretty voice, and a gorgeous skin, almost pearlescent. The sleeveless top she wore revealed the broad shoulders and sleek arm muscles of a swimmer, and a heavy plait of honey-gold hair, threaded with a strip of deep red cloth, wound its way down her back.

"Lena Roh," she offered.

"That would be you, rather than your brother?"

"I believe it would," she drawled. "So, Blair Sandburg, are you a sports fan or just trying your luck in conversation?"

"A little of both. I've escaped from Artanicky, and I'm trying the delights of the big city." It had amused Blair that his sister and his liaison had come up with the same background, until he'd read a little of Artanicky Prefecture's history, especially its interaction with the Home Security Agency. But he couldn't deny that as an excuse for odd gaps in knowledge and accent, it was a good background.

"And have you been delighted?"

"Right now, very much so."

Lena laughed. "I think that they can't be so very backward in Artanicky."

"Not all of us." Blair took a chance and lightly stroked the braid she wore. "I don't see many people with hair longer than mine."

"I like it. I like the way it feels, even if it is a bother to take care of sometimes." Her hand tugged lightly at a lock of Blair's hair. "You must feel the same."

"It certainly makes me stand out where I work. I'm in the Foreign Corps building - just office work."

"Oh, the Department of Short Hair and Long Journeys. I'm glad that you don't have to cut your hair to step in the door. It looks very...touchable."

Blair's pleased smile was as much the satisfaction of a mission accomplished as it was pleasure at the compliment. He'd been accepted into the figure of the dance. He was sure that he knew the steps from here on. They included more talking, and maybe some shared drinks and food.

"Lena," said a voice. "Maybe you should take the conversation somewhere else. The talk might be seemly, but the scent isn't." It was the blond man, distracted from his viewing, but good-natured about it.

"Perhaps I should," she shot back. "That isn't really my game anyway."

One of the women of the party giggled, and said, "Looks you've found something that is."

"The bar?" Blair suggested. "Some drinks to prime the conversation?"

"Why not, Blair Sandburg? You can tell me about Artanicky."

He took her hand as she stood. "Artanicky is boring. Why don't you tell me about you, instead?" It wasn't even that much of a ploy. He liked her, liked her beauty and liveliness, liked the strength of her hand around his, liked the bright intelligence he saw in her face. Why not find out a little more about Lena Roh?

So, talking; Lena's work as a teacher, her interests, her history. And then there was walking, and teasing touches, and then there was Lena in his little apartment, sitting on the chair and undoing her long braid of hair, while Blair leaned against the wall and watched as it all spread out across her shoulders and back. He knelt behind her, and gently smoothed the mass of hair through his hands. So completely opposite to the short pelt of Jim's hair.

"You're beautiful, Lena Roh."

"As you are, Blair Sandburg. But don't you think that you could call me Lena at this point?"

He stood and kissed her neck. "Beautiful Lena." They walked together into the little bedroom to an accompaniment of kisses and touches, the old familiar dance, and lay down on the bed, and kissed and touched some more. Lena's hands were firm on his skin. Blair had always liked strength behind caresses. Jim had always known exactly what pressure to apply, but then Lena was a sentinel, too. Not the thoughts he should be thinking now, he shouldn't be thinking anything right now. But this was suddenly an obligation, and he was glad that Lena wasn't shy about showing what she needed. When she shivered and moaned under him, he had to sigh in relief.

He wanted to drown, to sink under the waves of lust and not think about anything else, but there was a spar of awareness bearing him up, reminding him that this warm, welcoming body wasn't Jim's. There was strength supporting him, but it wasn't the strength that he wanted. He gasped as he worked his body, needing to come, maybe too rough in the moment before he said Jim's name; Lena's murmur of protest was nothing like Jim's voice.

Her small noise left him far away from even the chance of coming, and angry and ashamed, he got off Lena, and threw himself onto an empty space of the bed. "I'm sorry." His head was turned away, and he stared unseeing at his wall, at a painting of the Remembrance Hall at Waterside; one of the places he might visit one day. The mattress shifted under him as Lena left the bed, and Blair miserably listened to the rustle of her dressing, and her hitching breath.

He found some courage and sat up in the bed, then pulled the covers up over his waning erection. "I really am sorry."

Lena looked at him, anger and some pity to the fore. "It might be kinder if you go back into mourning for a while longer. And stick to guide games. Don't tease sentinels with something they don't have a chance at."

He put out his hand in protest. "Lena..." Her reproach stung.

"I could feel the yearning pouring off you, thought you were seeking; but it's all for someone who's dead and gone."

"Jim's not - " Blair said and then broke off. Jim wasn't dead, even if he wasn't here. But Blair had been presented with plenty of strictures about his status as the Child remaining unspoken unless he chose some public status, and had been just fine with that. He liked Lena, and was sorry he'd hurt her, but he quailed at the idea of trying to explain his history and all the complications of it.

"For what it's worth, I'm sorry, too." Then Lena was gone, a quick, stiff-backed stride carrying her out of the bedroom. She didn't slam the door, but Blair heard her go anyway, before he flopped back onto the bed and tried to hide from the mess he'd just made behind an arm slung across his face.

Jim wasn't dead, and Lena's assumption that death was the only way that he could be lost to Blair dropped a smothering weight on his chest. Smug, know-it-all people; so damn sure that they'd worked out the best and only way for their culture to do things. It wasn't the first time he'd wanted to shake a few assumptions. He felt a terrible mix of anger and pity about his mother, and wondered with a grim smile if this was what Lena had felt for him. He could understand keeping the secret from him when he was young, but he hadn't been a child for some years now.

Damned if he was keeping secrets forever. And damned if he was taking anyone else's word for what was going on. If Jim didn't want Blair, if what might have been was aborted in a tangle of lies and broken customs, then Jim could tell Blair that to his face. Whatever Jim said to him, it would be a relief to see the only person who knew all the parts of the past that mattered to Blair.

***

Blair knew that he'd made Lyra Harris a happy woman when he offered to initiate some discussion about his 'public status'. He suspected that she'd be less happy when, or if, she heard about other activities but this was something that he wanted to do for himself, not have handed to him as a gift from the ever generous people of Cascade. So he had searched directories and left messages, and the end result of that was this meeting, in an office in the Foreign Corps building. Not as if he didn't normally have business in this place anyway.

Agent Director Simon Banks was as intimidating a man in his office as he was striding down a narrow alley. Taller than Jim, broader than Jim, dark of skin, his hair foreign-corps short, he looked at Blair with an expression akin to a polite thundercloud.

"I'm honoured to meet you again, Blair Sandburg."

Blair accepted this courteous fiction. The brief glimpses he'd had of Banks in the aftermath of his rescue suggested a man harassed by difficulties, and none too well-disposed to the cause of them, regardless of how innocent a catalyst Blair might have been.

"Thank you. I'm sorry that the circumstances of our previous meeting were so unfortunate."

Banks' raised eyebrow suggested that this was the biggest piece of understatement that he'd heard for some time.

"What can I do for you, Blair Sandburg?"

"I need your advice about James Ellison, and how to find him."

"And why would you want to do that?" Banks' tone was innocuously bland, and Blair wasn't fooled for a moment.

"Because I regard Jim as my friend, and I never made any bones about that, whatever...cultural misunderstandings occurred. I know it's been a while, but everyone got real busy about diverting me away from Jim, which I understand because of the bond thing, but it's not like I didn't ask after him." He shrugged. "I want to know how he is, that he's okay, and I want to do it as a friend, and I got the impression, the way the two of you spoke that night in the enclave, that you might be a place to start. As a friend."

"As a friend." Dark eyes stared at him, like a professor assessing the capacity of an unlikely looking student. "It's my understanding that you made it clear that the bond was displeasing to you. Entirely expected, given that you weren't in a position to give consent."

Blair gaped at that. "Where did I get to give consent to anything? Everyone seems to be so damned worried about the bond, and they forget exactly how I arrived here and everything else that happened!" He tried to quieten his voice. "The bond, sure, it was a surprise, but kidnap and attempted murder weren't exactly in my daily round either." Blair put his head in his hands, before looking back at Banks. "Look. All I want is a place to start enquiries. If you can't help, then I'll find someone else. I'll get all official about it if I have to, but I can't help thinking that Jim and I have had enough officialdom in our lives."

"What do you know about comforters?" Banks asked.

Blair raised his eyebrows in confusion. Another time he'd have been all for a discussion of custom, but not now. "Something to do with your funerary and grief practices, aren't they? Somebody to see a bereaved person through the withdrawal of the bond."

Banks' face creased into a frown. "I see they're still 'our' funerary practices."

"I haven't even been here a year, yet. Certain things take time."

"Yes, well. You have the big picture about comforters. Cascade doesn't see many cases of," Banks' mouth twisted in distaste, "inappropriate bonding. Usually, a bond ends only with the death of one partner. It has physical effects on the survivor."

"That, I do know," Blair interrupted.

"So," Banks continued in a rush, "part of the comforter's job is to ensure the ritual sorting and disposal of the dead person's belongings, the cleaning of the home, especially if the person left is a sentinel. A short, uncomfortable period of separation shock - it's the safest way. The comforters make sure everything is dealt with, and keep an eye on the bereaved."

"So, yes, Jim was sick like me, but he's okay now? Somebody helped him out." Banks was shaking his head, looking deeply ashamed. "Right?" Blair asked, but he already knew the answer. Never assume. He'd read and he'd studied, and he thought he had it figured now; but he'd known nothing for sure until after that quarrel in the waiting room, until after Jim was gone. Jim had known that, but it looked like he'd still made assumptions as well. Cultural clashes, Blair reflected, were a bitch.

"Sandburg, have you any idea just how inappropriate a forced bond is?"

Blair nodded. "Massive taboo. I get that, and I get that this isn't a comfortable subject for you, and I get that the freak-out is part of why Jim decided to keep his distance, although ..." Blair shut up. It was clear that this conversation was about to end in bad news.

"Technically, unknowingly, Jim committed a crime." At Blair's protesting noise, Banks raised one finger. "Technically, unknowingly, and without liability. But legally, socially, he had no bond, he'd lost nobody, because you are still alive." Banks paused. "I told him to make sure he got help. I should have followed up, but it was a wild time. And it wasn't easy to think about Jim in company with some of Cascade's worst perverts."

"How bad is it?"

Banks replied, "He had one of your shirts."

Blair assumed that this was intended as some sort of answer. He tucked his knuckles against his mouth, something he often did when thinking. "Yeah, the blue shirt he made me wear to the Remembrance service, because green was the wrong colour."

Even against the dark skin, Blair could see Banks' blush. The man glared at Blair, as if his discomfort was entirely to do with Blair and nothing to do with Cascade customs and mores. "He used it to delay bond severance when he was removed as your liaison. I didn't know that at the time. I should have suspected something when he stayed on top form, but he was too useful. He'd been bucking physicals all along, perverting the results when that damn mad scientist tried to get him tested." Banks frowned. "And that stays under privacy because it's another thing that's technically illegal."

"So he kept my shirt." Blair thought about that. He'd only worn the shirt for a few hours, but at an intensely emotional time. "And what, he'd take it out and sniff it when it all got too much?"

"Yes." Banks looked very uneasy. "And drawing severance out like that - it's toxic. He's high latency, which made it worse, and the upshot of it all is that he had to be hospitalised."

"Hospitalised?" Jim was in hospital? Jim was that sick?

Banks' manner changed. Speculation once more overtook embarrassment. "How serious are you about this?"

Blair didn't want to lie in anyone else's arms thinking about Jim. One way or another, he wanted this dealt with and he had a plan for every likelihood he'd been able to work out. "Serious as I need to be. How ill is he, anyway?"

Banks didn't answer that. "I'll give you an introduction to Stephen Ellison." And that was a likelihood right there which Blair hadn't taken into consideration, and should have.

***

Stephen Ellison came to see Blair in Independence three days later, after a vid call to make the arrangements. He was like Jim in his height and long-limbed build, but his hair was darker and longer, flopping over his forehead and covering his eyes, until it would be pushed back. Blair ushered him into his little apartment, trying to keep his nervousness under control. The only comfort was that Stephen looked just as nervous as he did.

"I'm pleased to meet you." Stephen extended his hand and bent his head, and they exchanged the customary, formal greeting.

"I'm pleased to meet you, too. Really," Blair replied.

Stephen smiled wryly. "That would be why you smell as if you're about to leap off a tall building?" At Blair's double-take, he said, "I'm not as impressive as Jim, but some things just aren't that hard to tell."

"Yes, of course. Please, sit down."

Stephen sat, all rigid, wary lines. "Forgive my bluntness, Sandburg, but why have you approached my family?"

There wasn't a strand of hair anywhere near Blair's face, but his hand nervously swept back over his head anyway. "What do you know about me?"

"About you, personally? Not much. Agent Director Banks told me who you were. That you're the Child. It doesn't explain what happened to Jim, but at least it gave my imagination some scope."

"Your imagination would need a lot of scope." Blair's fingers fidgeted in his lap. "There are so many things I can't tell you, it's crazy, but I know you're wondering why Jim left, why I didn't contact you before, and..."

"Jim left?" Offence and disbelief appeared on Stephens' face.

"Hell, yes, Jim left! Your brother was my fucking lifeline in the biggest mess you ever saw, and then he walked out without a backward look!" Jim had promised he'd stay unless Blair sent him away. A fine time to admit how much that broken promise hurt, and Blair hated it that Stephen Ellison had made his own assumptions about where blame lay here. Blair tried to calm himself. "It was a very complicated situation."

Stephen sighed. "Somehow it always is with my brother. I didn't even know he was ill until I had to be called to sit in authority over his treatment. He wouldn't talk about you at all."

That was another piece of discouraging news to Blair; but he had to at least try, to know for himself. He had his schemes and options, but they all depended on him getting close enough to Jim to talk to him. "The privacy issues and the political ones - they're all tangled up in this one."

"I gathered that from Simon Banks. I was angry at you, as well as Jim. Didn't know a thing about you, except that Jim was sick because of a failed bond between you two."

"How sick is he?"

Stephen looked very carefully at the wall just behind Blair's head. "He's pretty bad."

"I want to see him."

"Blair Sandburg, any short visit will just distress him. Might even adversely affect his condition."

"I know." Blair swallowed. "But if I wanted to bond with him again - that would give him a good chance of recovery, wouldn't it?"

"I've heard of the possibility." Stephen wasn't hedging about a decision; he sounded genuinely unsure.

"So it's a chance, right? Because, there have been cases where people have gone into bond stress because of separation from their partners, a man lost at sea, his partner was sick and then he was found, and the partner got better."

Stephen sounded disbelieving. "You'd be willing to do that?"

Blair certainly was. He just hoped that the same could be said about Jim. "Yes, I would, and please don't ask me why it couldn't happen before, because I'm certain that I'm not allowed to tell you. Not yet, anyway."

Stephen shrugged. "There are rumours about a corruption scandal. Anyone with contacts in the Foreign Corps knows that there's an enquiry going on. My family's business has expanded to off-world export, so we know some people."

"That was what Jim told me, when we first met. That he was a businessman."

"Jim? In Ellison Merchanting? Entropy will have reversed before that happens." Stephen stood, looking somewhat dazed. "I'll make some arrangements. If this works, then I guess it's 'welcome to the family', if not the clan." His face quirked in an almost unwilling smile. "The Child. Bonded with Jim. That's something I'm telling my father from a safe distance, whether he thinks it's good news or bad news."

"No!"

Stephen frowned. "Why not?"

"I mean, not yet; this is a personal thing to us, and we don't even know if it's going to work."

"Blair Sandburg, my father and Jim may not always get along, but I can't not give him this news."

"Let Jim give him the news, if it works."

Stephen looked undecided before he made a gesture of agreement. Hey, look, Blair thought, divided loyalties again. But as far as he was concerned, he only owed loyalty to one person.

***

Clouded haze lay to the north, all the noise and magnitude of The Cascade, which was impressive enough to have inspired the planet's name, hidden by distance and the veil of water vapour that immense forces threw into the air.

Stephen Ellison pointed to it. "It makes a sort of natural white noise. It's therapeutic if you're the right distance from it. There are spas and resorts in this area, as well as the hospice."

Blair nodded. Another time he might have been impressed by the primal power of it all, but right now he wanted to see Jim.

He'd spent much of the last two days as a guest in Stephen Ellison's home, and that had been fascinating, but not what he wanted. After trying to live on his own in Independence, the want had become a need that obsessed him, especially once he knew Jim was ill. He couldn't be distracted by enough extended family interaction to kindle the enthusiasm of the most jaded anthropologist, or even the antics of the small boy he realised was Jim's son.

"There's a lot of forest down there," Blair commented, as much to be polite as anything. He needed Stephen Ellison's good will, until Jim was declared competent to determine his own interests. He tried not to be worried by comparisons with this situation, and the way that, not so long ago, Blair's best interests had been determined according to somebody else's definitions.

Stephen smiled and nodded, his dark hair once again flopping over one eye. "And a lot of fences and repulsor signals around the clearings. There are some very large animals with very large teeth and claws living in and under those trees. There are hunting lodges out here too." Polite chitchat couldn't hide Stephen's anxiety, or his obvious continuing confusion as to what sort of relationship there was between Blair and Jim.

The flyer came in above a large complex - buildings, gardens, a small landing area - and swooped down to deposit its passengers. Outside it was mild; a small breeze chased mauve wisps of cloud across the sky and barely carried the roar of The Cascade to any listeners who weren't sentinels. Blair inspected the buildings before him. He was both impressed and irritated. The architecture was beautiful, gracious, and harmonious with the surrounding landscape almost to the point of parody. Perhaps his own sensibilities were biased by his knowledge of what this place was for; the last resort for sentinels who, for whatever reason, couldn't handle their gifts.

"There're quarters for visitors and family, since this place is so far out."

Blair picked up his bag, filled with impatience. "When was the last time you saw him?"

"About two weeks ago."

Jim was inside somewhere, and Blair had given up wondering or caring why he wanted to see Jim; he'd walked a mental labyrinth looking for the reasons for long enough.

"Then you'll know how to get me to see him as quickly as possible."

Stephen picked up his own gear. "Follow me. It's not as if they don't know we're coming."

The main building was hushed and tranquil, as were the corridors they were led through by a doctor. The quiet was broken by muted cries from behind one doorway. Stephen's shoulders tensed, and Blair wondered who was making those desolate noises, and why. But they moved on from that area, until finally, Stephen opened the last door for Blair. The doctor had warned that Jim was sedated, following a bad night, and not to expect any sort of response. Blair understood that, but it was still a shock to see Jim lying so still, to see his eyes stay closed and not open to observe his visitors.

Blair stepped closer to the bed. He noted the evidence of sickness and strain, and then gently took one of Jim's hands in his own. It was cool and lax in his grip. "Hey," he murmured. "I'm here." Carefully, he perched on the side of the bed, taking Jim's hand into a double grip in both of his. He looked back at the doctor.

"What should I expect?"

"I wish that I knew. If the bond renews, then I'd expect a steady recovery along with some of the usual hiccups of a new bond - zones and spikes, but then we've already been dealing with those. It's an atypical situation, and there are likely to be atypical responses."

"Okay." Blair sighed, and freed one hand to touch it lightly to Jim's chest, to feel the shallow movement of his breathing. He looked around him, and paid more attention to his surroundings. "This is a big bed for one person."

The doctor, Norus, looked bemused. "When Stephen Ellison approached us, we arranged that his brother be put in a room suitable for couples or family."

Blair smiled. "I hoped you were going to say that." Then he turned back to Jim. "If I thought I could kiss you awake, then you wouldn't know what hit you. But for now, I'm just going to put my things away, and keep talking to you, and then we'll see what happens."

"First, we have the legalities to deal with, Blair Sandburg. Stephen Ellison has primary control at this point, and is signing the necessary authorisations, but we'll need you to do the same."

"Authorisations?"

Doctor Norus' professional calm slipped into irritation. "Privacy has been called so many times in this case by both Ellisons and by various government agencies that it's a wonder we've been able to do anything for the man at all. We don't know the likely outcomes here."

"I'll sign whatever you like if it keeps me here." Blair bowed his head. When had he decided to throw himself over the cliff rather than be thrown? But he sat holding Jim's hand until he was briefly taken to another room where he went through what counted as legal rigmarole on Cascade. Then he went back. He sat cross-legged on one side of the bed, after assurances that Jim was still too far under sedative influence to be bothered by the movement, and he talked himself hoarse. Jim was told about Blair's experiences in setting up his apartment, the vagaries of the men and women Blair knew in the Foreign Corps, together with unanswered queries about whether the names were familiar to Jim; books Blair had read, vids he'd seen, performances he'd attended. A day or so for the sedatives to work out of Jim's system, and then it would all depend on whether Blair's physical presence triggered bond changes.

He slept next to Jim that night, snuggled loosely up against the still body. The lack of obvious medical paraphernalia in the room bothered him, but he'd been assured that the regular and unobtrusive visits from staff were all that were needed. It was very quiet, which oppressed Blair. He spoke sometimes to Jim, dropping words into a silence which would otherwise have only sounded with the barely-there breath of the man beside him. "Third time we've slept in the same bed, man. I like it better when you cuddle back." He leaned his forehead against Jim's shoulder. "Wake up, Jim, even if all you do is tell me to go to hell."

Blair slept eventually, but not well. He was too anxious, and the regular appearance of staff on their medical vigils disturbed him, despite how quiet they were. Finally Blair awakened to see a suggestion of daylight creeping around the heavy blinds on the window. He looked at Jim, expecting to see him still in repose like a handsome statue. Instead, the blue eyes were open, watching the ceiling. Then Jim's head turned, leaving them face to face.

"What are you doing here?" he rasped.

"Sleeping?" Blair suggested weakly.

Jim rolled over, wincing at the movement.

"You snore," Jim said, before his eyes closed again. Startled, Blair stroked a hand over Jim's face, but he didn't stir. The brief moment of lucidity followed by the lapse back into apparent sleep played on all Blair's worst fears, and he reached across the bed and pushed the discreet call button. He was pulling on some clothes when a woman appeared, a nurse if he was reading the clothing and insignias correctly.

"He woke up for a minute, but then he went back under again." To his embarrassment, he had trouble co-ordinating getting words out of his mouth while putting his arms into his shirt.

The woman laid a hand across Jim's head. "He's fine." She walked across the room to Blair, and gestured. "Your hand? If I may?"

"Ah, sure." Blair put out his hand. The woman took it in her own, held it for a few beats of Blair's heart and then, much to his fascination, lifted it to her face and sniffed at it.

"I'll have Doctor Norus call in later, but it looks promising. Breakfast will come to you in about another half an hour."

"Thanks. You do things differently here to the Casualty Room in Independence."

She smiled. "They have their specialists and we have ours." She was gone, presumably to sniff other patients.

Blair thought that a shower and some clean clothes might be a good thing; but before he gathered up his belongings he leaned over Jim as he lay in the bed, and examined the sharp-cut face in profile against the pillow. Jim lay on his side with his legs slightly bent and his hands curled under his chin, like someone who was at last truly sleeping, rather than resting like an effigy on top of a tomb. Blair smiled, despite all the worry that weighed him down.

"I do not snore, man." All the times that Jim let him have the last word; but Blair suspected that having the last word, and getting the final say, were two different things where James Ellison was concerned.

***

Blair knew that at some point there was going to be an argument, a free and frank exchange of views, even. But he enjoyed the calm before the storm as Jim gradually grew more alert and spent more time awake than sleeping. Blair spent time recapping his first day's monologue. Jim sat quietly and simply listened, his expression first filled with distraction and then suspicion.

"Did Stephen put you up to this?" he asked, two days after Blair's arrival. They were having lunch, and Blair sat in what was becoming his habitual place, cross-legged on the bed next to Jim.

"Strictly speaking, if anyone put anyone else up to anything, I put Stephen up to this."

"And he agreed, why?"

Blair was doing a good job of being calm and serene around the invalid, but his temper sparked at that. "I don't know, Jim. Maybe he prefers his brother alive rather than dead."

Jim made no reply, but he pushed away the plate of food he'd been picking at.

"You shouldn't have had to do this for me."

Blair carefully edged a little closer. Everyone seemed optimistic that the bond renewal would go well, but Jim was still sensitive to unexpected stimuli. There was still a long way to go before Jim returned to full health.

"Who says so? If it comes to that, I prefer you alive. Anyone who doesn't prefer you alive can do open airlock ballet without a suit."

Jim said nothing.

"I wanted to see you again before I knew you were ill. Finding out you were ill added a little urgency, but..." Blair stopped and swallowed down the lump in his throat. "What were you thinking, Jim? You knew what you were doing was dangerous." He half expected Jim to claim that he'd needed the advantage that his improved senses gave him.

"I was thinking that I missed you."

The words flicked hard on the rawness of Blair's own guilt and remembered loneliness. "Then why didn't you tell Harris and the rest of the suits to go to hell, and come back! Actually, don't answer that. I know why. Everyone made you feel like a pervert, me included, and you went off to lick your wounds in private."

"And wasn't I a pervert?" Jim's voice was tiredly miserable, exhausted by the conversation before it had even begun.

"No!" Blair protested. "You were just as used and manipulated as I was, and it makes me so angry. With myself, too, because it took me so damn long to figure all this out."

Jim smiled sourly. "You were missing out on the advantages that the rest of the planet had."

"So it took a while before I got the big picture of life on Cascade Which is still being filled in, by the way. But you knew what was happening." Jim had been quiet and passive, accepting Blair's occasional experiments with kisses and touches, but not offering any back. Blair had assumed that he was simply too weak, but now he wasn't so sure. Jim had spent much of the conversation staring at the bedcovers, but he raised his eyes and looked Blair in the face.

"Yes, I knew."

"Ah, Jim." Blair didn't even think about the action, just threw himself astride Jim's lap and pulled the other man close; Jim's arms didn't have the strength that Blair remembered, but his hands took anchor in Blair's shirt. They clung close, the solidity of Jim's jaw hard against Blair's collarbone. Blair thought about the things he wanted: Jim healthy once more; Jim in his arms like this all the time. But Jim had the traditions of Cascade bred into him body and soul, and Blair had ideas that were going to buck against expectations and tradition. More than anything, he wanted Jim to have a choice.

***

Lyra Harris tracked Blair down, of course. Not physically, as access to the hospice was strictly regulated, but he had a draining vid conversation with her a week and a half after his arrival.

"Blair Sandburg, your actions are very inadvisable."

"Thanks for your concern. You've advised me, I won't pretend that you haven't, so you don't have to worry about that."

Her lips were compressed into a hard, straight line. "How is everything progressing?"

"Satisfactorily," Blair said blandly. There had been a slow burn of anger growing in him throughout the conversation. "You knew that Jim was sick, didn't you?"

Harris's glare remained steely and unrepentant. "Agent Protector Ellison gave evidence at a preliminary enquiry. It was clear that he was unwell, but he was fit to testify."

"I see." Oh, he saw, all right, and what he saw made him fume.

"We hoped that you would attend a function in about two weeks' time."

Blair considered Jim's progress. "I wouldn't require Jim's attendance. I doubt he'd be well enough." Harris couldn't hide her relief. "He and I still need to finalise a few things anyway. But I'm sure we can put an appropriate slant on everything."

There had been the tiniest flicker of interrogation from Harris when Blair had said 'finalise' but Blair was getting tired of going around in the circles of this conversation.

"I'll contact your office in a few days time, Lyra Harris, but if you'll excuse me, I have things to do." He ended the call and leaned back in the chair, then wiped his hands across his face. Politicking had been his least favourite activity at the university, but he'd played the game in between the more important things like study and teaching. He'd been better at study and teaching.

He went back to the room he shared with Jim. Jim was out of bed, and dressed in a loose shirt and pants.

"Hey," Blair said. "Looking good."

A sceptical look crossed Jim's face.

"Looking better?" Blair ventured.

"That sounds more likely," Jim said. "What did the esteemed Lyra Harris want with you?"

"That's something I need to talk to you about," Blair said.

"They want you to go public."

"Now that I've accommodated myself to the reality of life on Cascade, yes."

Jim didn't address that. Instead he went to the window and looked out. "I think I'd like to see something other than the inside of this room. Want to go explore the grounds?"

Jim had been having physical therapy since he came out of the sedative-induced coma, but he didn't have a lot of stamina yet. Still, Blair didn't have the heart to naysay the suggestion.

"If you're prepared to sit down and rest when you need to."

"Which will be about every five minutes. I know. Norus and Sovay have already had this talk with me." Jim reached out a hand, a brief, sweet smile flitting across his face. "Come on. You can help hold me up."

Hand in hand they made their way outside. The weather was warm, and lawns of pale-green grass spread out, dotted with shrubs and flowers, with a path leading to a small patch of woods. Jim took a deep breath, head back, his face peaceful, before he looked towards the trees.

"You did hills, I do forests. Or the next best thing, anyway."

"Lead on."

They walked in silence for a while, until Jim spoke.

"Considering all your news, it sounds like people have been falling over themselves to make up for past offences."

"Up to a point. I may have gone a little power mad and taken advantage of that," Blair admitted.

Jim's brows rose in amusement. "You don't say?"

"Well, not that power mad, because I'm not President-for-Life of Cascade, but I figured that in the scales of universal balance I was entitled to throw my weight around, so I did. Still am."

"You'll be something new in the Foreign Corps, that's for sure."

Blair squeezed hard at Jim's hand, finally warm and responsive in his, and knew that it was time to tell Jim the whole truth.

"Jim, I wasn't completely honest with Stephen and the staff here." Jim looked at Blair, his face suddenly set in chilly repose, and let go of Blair's hand. Blair wondered if it was solely the words, or if Jim was picking up on more: the sudden surge of Blair's heartbeat; whatever the physical reaction was that made that cold, hollow space Blair felt in his chest.

There was a bench up ahead under a huge, spreading tree. Blair indicated it, and said, "How about we sit down, and sort some of this stuff out."

Jim sat attentively upright, with his hands on his lap. His face remained inexpressive, as did his voice. "So, confession time it is."

Sitting down next to Jim was impossible. Blair stood.

"When I finally got the chance, I did as much reading on sentinel/guide bonding as I could. And I take information in fast. And my understanding was that while yes, bonding is in general a lifelong commitment, that there's room for temporary bonds, for, well, therapeutic purposes."

"And a few weeks reading made you an expert, did it? This isn't something we study, professor, this is how we live our lives!" Speech seemed to take all Jim's energy. He pushed himself up from the bench like an old man, and would have begun to walk back inside except that Blair planted himself in the way. He knew that he should have found some way to lead up to this, but he'd been taking too much pleasure in Jim's company. Ingenuity and planning had deserted him until Lyra Harris reminded him of the world outside the hospice.

"No, stop, just - just listen."

The only colour in Jim's face was a thin streak of red across his cheeks. Even his eyes seemed dimmed into grey.

"To what? Do you think that Stephen and the staff here didn't make the exact same suggestion? Bond again and then wean me off with controls and drugs? I told them no. If you'd been honest with people, they would have told you the same, and it's a great and wonderful thing that you signed releases and waivers, because if I thought the hospice knew about your little plan I would sue their asses off."

"You were going to die!" Blair shouted.

"Is that supposed to be the worst thing that can happen? Maybe back on Solana, but we measure things differently here. You should have stayed away." Jim put out his hands and Blair thought he was gong to shove him out of the way, before Jim dragged him closer and kissed him. It was rough, and Jim was leaning on Blair as much as holding him, and the movement of his mouth was like a starving man gorging himself on desperately needed food.

The kiss ended, but Jim didn't let go, and neither did Blair. He snugged his head against Jim's neck, felt the pulse there beat against his temple. "Jim, I'm going to go public, and they think that they're going to get a performing monkey, but I'm not, I am so going to bite the hand that feeds me." Jim's arms around him were bands of fire, but Blair couldn't move, didn't want to move. "Maybe I'll change a few things and make a lot of enemies, or maybe I don't change anything at all and I get bitter and twisted, but either way, I can't see that you're going to have a lot of fun being my official sentinel."

Jim's hold tightened, but Blair felt a gentler intention in it this time. "Not everything is about fun, Blair."

"No? What about choice, Jim? You were dying, and the only reason Stephen let me here is because he was desperate. We all know that."

"Yes, we do, and my little brother is going to hear some hard words from me. Seems you weren't the only person who was withholding some of the choicer bits of the truth."

Blair lifted his head, once again able to look Jim in the face again. He had more arguments ready. "How will this affect your work? It's what, anywhere from a couple of weeks to a month before separation stress sets in, and they sure as hell won't let me off world to keep you company. You like what you do."

"I can do other stuff. And I don't expect to be on the fast track in the Corps anymore. No one appreciates the bearer of bad news." A shrug accompanied the words.

"Jim..." Blair was going to go crazy. He'd argued against his true opinions and beliefs before; debating games where the outcome was a question of points and position, and the approval of teammates. This was different, and he didn't know how much longer he could keep being the voice of reason.

"Blair, I think I should sit down." The two of them settled back on the bench. Jim was very pale, but he looked far more tranquil, for all that he was breathing hard and his weight was heavy against Blair. "It's all right. I'm just tired. I call privacy."

"What?" Blair asked.

"It's okay. We were shouting and the staff noticed. I'm just ensuring we're not interrupted."

Blair looked at the enclosing shelter of the trees. "It's going to take a long time to get used to that. And that's another thing; I may be a quick study, but your people, they spend their education and their whole lives saturated in knowing how your society works, how bonding works. How am I supposed to be an effective guide?"

Jim lifted a hand. His meaning was clear and Blair subsided. He'd done his best.

"Okay, let me get this straight. This generous offer of yours to withdraw the bond," Jim's voice was sharp-edged with sarcasm, "is not because you don't want to be my guide? No skittish off-world claptrap?"

"No! I mean yes! I..."

"It's okay. I get the picture." Jim pondered for a moment. "You want to be my guide. Personally, you want us bonded, except that you're worried that your grand plans for the redirection of Cascade society are going to be a barrier."

Expressed in Jim's dry tones, Blair's ideas appeared hubristic in the extreme. It wasn't the first time Blair had been censured for overly big ideas, but he felt very small all of a sudden.

"Something like that."

Jim nodded. "I think we should take that walk we planned. And then, when we go back inside, and I'm horizontal and braced for all the likely shocks, you can tell me exactly what you're scheming." He sighed. "Although when I think back on all the talks we had tramping up and down hills in Independence, I can guess some of it." At Blair's look, Jim chuckled. "What? You think I didn't listen to you?"

"Sympathetically - yes. Analytically - no."

Droll amusement lit Jim's face. "Life is full of surprises."

Blair wryly reflected that James Ellison wasn't the least of those surprises. He still had misgivings, a lot of them, but for now, he sat in companionable silence, and realised just how relieved he was that Jim had rejected his idea of a purely temporary and medical bond.

Jim leaned back and looked up into the rustling, bright green-yellow leaves above their seat. "I walked this trail a few times when I first came here. They had me stabilised for a short while, before things got bad again. It goes in a loop, comes out at the other end of the grounds. Ten minutes, even at my speed." His voice reflected impatience with his frailties, not for the first time.

"The sooner we get going, the better then," Blair replied, and they made a slow progress back inside. Back in their room, Jim 'braced' himself on the bed, and Blair found that he wasn't so much explaining his ideas as undergoing an interrogation. There were, to his mind, too many moments that had Jim frowning or plainly wincing, but they kept on talking, until Sovay made one of her regular visits and declared that it was time for Jim to rest.

Jim slept a couple of hours, while Blair took the opportunity for a badly needed session of meditation. He was calm. He was relaxed. He was terrified that Jim might rethink the situation now that he had more of a handle on Blair's intentions. Blair knew his perceptions of how Cascade regarded the wider worlds were biased, but that didn't mean he had to accept certain attitudes without question or complaint. And there was so much about Cascade that was admirable. He had vainglorious ideas about being the quiet power behind a move to a much more positive way for Cascade to interact with the Nine Worlds, because he had no doubt that slowly, the conglomeration that was Nine Worlds would reach out further and further. He shook his head, half pleased and half embarrassed by his daydreams.

He watched Jim, who had refused to admit his exhaustion even after Sovay's examination, but had dropped off into quiet sleep anyway. Leaning down alongside him, Blair stroked gently at Jim's hair. "I don't know. Do you really want to get into all this? Do I?" He sighed and lay next to Jim, one arm loosely slung across his hips, until one of the staff announced the evening meal. Jim stirred and stretched.

"I think I've been following the smells to the kitchen while I slept." He grinned. "Congratulate me. I'm hungry. And ready to eat at a table and not in bed." He rubbed his palm over his brow. "And then maybe sleep again."

Blair smiled in pleasure. "That all sounds great. Even the sleep part."

"Yeah." Jim paused. "All the stuff we talked about today... tonight, I want to sit and eat with Blair, not the Child."

"Sure. Always put off to tomorrow what you don't want to think about today." Blair tried to make it a joke, but realised he hadn't entirely succeeded.

Jim said nothing, but his hand gently rubbed over Blair's nape under the pulled-back hair. He grinned at the little shudder that travelled Blair's skin. "I want to do other things with you, too, but I need a few more good meals and rests behind me."

"Promises, promises."

"Count on it."

"Damn it, Jim, I have to sit at a table surrounded by people with ultra-sensitive noses and I can live without leaking pheromones all over the place."

"You're going to have to redefine those off-worlder ideas of privacy. Might as well start now."

The dining room was done in colours of pale green and brown, furnished as a space to linger in. Blair realised how little time he'd spent in any other part of the complex except the rooms he shared with Jim. It appeared to be mainly staff there, and true to Cascade form, the tables were set up to accommodate groups rather than couples. Sovay waved at them and they sat with her.

"Rejoining the social whirl, James Ellison?"

"Briefly," Jim replied. "I decided it might be worth trying real food in a shared space."

"A good sign."

Jim smiled at her, even as he edged his chair up as close to Blair's as possible. Savoury food-smells wafted over from a table against one wall, and Blair sniffed in appreciation. "It all smells good," he said.

"Then how about you and I investigate. Come on." There was a wide selection to choose from, some items familiar to Blair, some not, but Jim was happy to advise Blair on what would make a good meal. They put food on plates, and through it all, Jim crowded into Blair's space, and put a hand on him when he had one to spare. They sat back down to eat, and Blair watched Jim intently, enjoying the steady transfer of food from Jim's plate to Jim's mouth.

Blair was using a deliciously flaky bread to mop the last smear of sauce from his plate when Jim stiffened beside him. Sovay said, "What is it?" Jim lifted his head, and tilted it in that listening pose that Blair had seen before. A low buzzer sounded, repeating in a pattern of one long and one short, and Blair watched, startled, as Sovay and two other people bolted from the room, almost literally running. Then Jim's hand closed around Blair's wrist, and dragged him up from the table.

"Jim? What's going on?" Jim made no answer to Blair's increasingly noisy protests, just simply kept that grip on his wrist and propelled him through the corridors back to their rooms, and shoved Blair through the doorway. Jim yanked the door shut behind them and locked it. Then he leaned his back against the door, and pounded his fist there, once. "I hate this fucking place."

Blair approached him warily. "What's going on?" he asked again. Jim was breathing hard; how much was exertion and how much was stress, Blair couldn't tell.

"They have a ward here, for psychotics. I spiked, and I could hear him" the word 'him' was threaded with deep revulsion, "screaming about how he'd kill all the guides. Sounded like he'd got out of his restraints." Jim looked at his fist and cast a quick look down his body. "And like this, I wouldn't be able to stop him."

Blair put his arms around Jim. "Whatever that poor crazy wants, he's probably buried under a pile of doctors and nurses and security by now. He can't hurt me and he can't hurt anyone else."

"I know. I know it's not my job here." A heavy sigh gusted across Blair's skin. "But that door stays locked."
"Fine," Blair said, "the door stays locked. We had eating on our list of things to do, and then you thought you should sleep."

"Sleeping my life away," Jim complained, but he headed for the bed anyway, one arm snagging across Blair's shoulders to pull him along with Jim. They settled onto the bed, not even under the covers, and Jim enveloped Blair in a tangle of arms and legs before dropping off into sleep.

Blair fell asleep soon after Jim, but he didn't need anywhere near as much rest, and he awoke, alert and restless, still in the night watches. Very carefully, he eased out of Jim's hold, and whispered a few reassurances when Jim muttered and stirred. Then he settled down to work. He had both his own 'puter, and a Cascade version, and he sat quietly on the bed, working on papers, proposals, journal records, until Jim finally woke several hours later.

"It's okay, I'm not crazy this morning."

"You weren't crazy last night," Blair replied. "Just - oversensitive."

"When you enter your public career, avoid the puns. Trust me on this."

Blair sighed. "My public career. I'm the crazy one."

Jim sat up, and moved closer to Blair. "If I said it was a bad idea, that it would never work, would you give it up?"

Blair sat frozen, the words on the screen in front of him suddenly turned to meaningless scratches. "Is that what you want me to do?"

Jim didn't answer that question. "Would you give up the idea if I asked you to?"

Blair put the screen away to the side with cold, clumsy hands. "I don't know." He shut his eyes. "Yes."

"Why? Why would you do that, when I've taken away so much else from you?" Jim's voice was hard, even more of the interrogator's voice than yesterday.

"Because..." Blair stopped, and then started again, trying to ignore the sudden shakiness of his own voice, the tightness in his throat. "Because you're the only thing that I know is worth it. The rest could just be drug-dreams, but you're real." He turned towards Jim, and shrugged. "You're real."

Jim pulled him into his arms, and laid them both down on the pillows.

"I think we should announce Intention."

Blair was blank for a moment, before memory supplied information, if not comprehension. Intention: a formal, and now somewhat old-fashioned process of ensuring that a bond would be suitable, requiring contact and questioning from family and friends of both parties.

"You've been anxious about the choice angle of this," Jim continued, his voice business-like. "I'll make this clan-wide, which means that we'll have my father's involvement. If that doesn't scare either of us off then there'll be no doubt that the bond is solid. You'll presumably want to bring Serayne into it."

"But we're already bonded."

"We're not going against the spirit of Intention. We'll be proving to family and friends that we're suited. Besides, I'm a traditional sort of guy." Blair shifted uncomfortably. They hadn't truly discussed that fraught argument after Blair's rescue from Harley, but clearly neither of them had forgotten it. "It'd be a good political move for you too: the iconoclast outsider taking on one of our older customs. And it would take some of the sting out of any comment on how our bond started, because you're right, you'll make enemies, and they'll dig for dirt."

Blair felt stunned. "I - Jim. Are you sure?"

"I was sure from nearly the first moment I saw you. Across the campus on Solana. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry." Jim kissed Blair's temple, a sweet brush of lips spiced with a tiny, damp jab of tongue.

There was a gentle but persistent knocking on the door. Jim rolled his eyes in exasperation.

"We are both of us getting out of here." He sat up. "Just a moment," he called out to whoever was waiting in the hallway.

"I'll do it," Blair said, and scrambled off the bed to unlock and open the door. It was Sovay on the other side.

"Everything is all right?" she asked.

"Everything is great," Blair replied. "But no offence, we're kind of occupied right now."

Sovay smiled. "I'll be sorry to see you go. But glad. Not so many people leave us as we'd like sometimes."

Blair smiled, but he gently shut the door on her.

Jim was leaning back against the bed's headboard. "We need to sign Authority for each other. Stephen will be relieved to pass that job onto somebody else. And then we get the hell out of here, and start the process of Intention."

"A man with a mission," Blair teased.

"Wouldn't be the first time."

Blair figured he could let Jim have the last word.

***

The Historian

Grace visits often. They've grown to be friends, Avram and Grace, to the point of sharing a bed. "I know that you'll go, and I'll stay," she had told him, "but why not enjoy this for now?"

Avram sees no difficulties. He's careful to maintain security and discretion. He has no intention of putting Grace, or himself, in an awkward situation. Besides, he enjoys her company, whatever they happen to be doing. Tonight, they lie together, relaxed and happy, and he strokes the smooth skin of her shoulder.

"I'm curious. I remembered that you implied that you were related to some of the players in the outreach policy. Who are they?"

Grace smiles. "You're incorrigibly curious, and you never forget anything." She looks unexpectedly shy. "Blair Sandburg is my uncle."

Avram had suspected it. "And you spend a great deal of your career proving that you didn't get your position because of nepotism."

The kissable mouth twists in a moue of irritation. "Quite." Grace's expression turns impish. "Would you like to meet him?"

"That wasn't the reason for my enquiry."

She shakes her head. "Avram..."

"It wasn't," he insists, "but I won't turn down an invitation."

"I'll ask. I don't think it will be a problem. Blair doesn't lack for company, but he enjoys new faces."

They drop off to sleep. New days come, and Avram waits to see if Grace will follow up on her offer. She calls him one morning. "I'm visiting the clan in a couple of days. It's fine if you come as my guest. Interested?"

"Of course," he tells her. So arrangements are made, and Avram and Grace travel on the transit to Riverhead, and then take a taxi. "Betsan would have collected us," Grace says, "but I thought we could fit our schedule to our own preferences without putting her out."

"This is fine," Avram says, which the taxi is, if a little cramped. Manufacturing is a costly business on Cascade, where they refuse to sacrifice environmental concerns to short-term convenience. "You'd better go over the party for me again. As a diplomat I have a reputation for remembering names and faces to maintain."

Grace snorts. "There's plenty to remember." She steeples her fingers against her mouth. "Jim and Blair, of course; Jim's brother, Stephen, and his guide, Kyla; Jenda, who's my foster-mother. Mama jokes that she inherited the family gift for unexpected fertility, and Jenda took me on until I was old enough to travel with Mama's troupe and not get into trouble." She grins. "If you have the time and want to bother with the permissions, I'll take you backstage with the troupe one day. It's an education. Then there's Rishka, Jenda's son by gift with Jim, and his guide, Betsan, and their three sons. Plus Stephen's daughter and her family may be there, too. I hope not, because Tamsin, that's Elana's child, is a spoiled brat. Not even Blair gets on with her, and that's a black mark against Tamsin as far as I'm concerned."

"I presume it's a large home?" Avram asks dryly.

"It rambles," Grace says. "Clans tend to gather in neighbourhoods in the towns, but country houses - you add a room here, and a cottage there, as you need it. And there it is." She points to her right, where a low house, some of which looks like it's built into the hillside, spreads its way across the slope. The taxi pulls up outside one of several entrances, and the driver places their bags on the steps, but there is no sign of anyone about.

"Hello?" Grace calls. "That's odd." She shrugs. "They're probably all in the garden. The weather's warm enough for it." She gestures, and Avram follows in her wake, through a hallway of tiled floor and wooden panelling, that leads to a large sitting room with wide-open doors to the garden outside. From here, Avram can hear the lusty crying of a child.

"Family crisis," Grace mutters. "I just hope it's nothing serious, although you can never tell with Rishka's spawn." They step outside onto a stone terrace. What seems to be most of the household is gathered at the far end of the garden, milling around somebody sitting on the ground. Avram catches a glimpse of what looks like an elderly man and a small child, before someone moves and blocks his view.

"Oh, what's Nathan done now!" Grace exclaims, but her voice is more concerned than irritated and she breaks into a jog, with Avram trailing behind. A man's voice cuts through the worried noise and crying. "Elana, take Tamsin into the quiet room until she calms down. She's not the one who's hurt, and it's not helping Nathan, or anyone else. And Stephen, you'd better tell Kyla that it's one of my grandchildren, not hers." One of the women leads the crying child back to the house, much to everyone's relief, and another elderly man, Stephen Ellison presumably, shepherds the rest of the children away.

Avram recognises the man now. Time might have blurred the features, but the sharp profile is clearly James Ellison's. Time has taken much of his hair, too, but a strip of it runs down the centre of his scalp. It's startlingly white and no more than half an inch long, but the effect is like a crest on the helm of some ancient warrior. Sharp, blue eyes take in Avram and Grace's arrival. A small boy, maybe six years of age, is cradled between the crook of Ellison's legs, held securely against the man's chest. A big, gentle hand supports one of the child's arms.

"Hello, Grace. It looks like your visitor's here, Blair."

"I can't say much for your timing, Nate," Sandburg says, but a stroke to the child's cheek negates any reproach. He stands, and smiles apologetically, his hands spread wide in humorous embarrassment that a visitor should have such a reception. "We think Nathan's broken his arm." Avram would know this man, too, despite the changes wrought by time. The mop of grizzled hair is pulled back from his face, and the voice is as mobile as his expressions.

"Ambassador, I know I'm ripping away the only person you actually know here, but can Jim borrow Grace to calm Nate, and I'll find you somewhere to sit down out of the way of all the drama?"

"Of course," Avram says, politely concerned for the child, but also amused by the bustle of this small domestic tragedy.

"Do your favourite aunty and guide thing, sweetheart," Sandburg says, giving Grace a quick hug. "Betsan and Jenda went out on errands, but they'll be back soon." He looks across the lawn. "And here comes Mara with the aid kit. She'll take Nathan to the doctor if his mother doesn't get here in time."

Sandburg puts a friendly hand under Avram's elbow to lead him away, as Grace sits on the ground beside James Ellison and begins talking soothingly to the child. The other woman, Mara, nods distractedly at Avram as she heads for the people still sitting on the grass.

"Jim says it's only a greenstick fracture," Sandburg explains. "But the place went into uproar anyway. Just as well that Jim doesn't panic easily." He grins engagingly. "Welcome to our house."

"Thank you," Avram replies.

"Hopefully we'll be able to offer you that quiet weekend in the country that Grace promised you. She warned me that you're here to pick my brains, too."

The straight-talking discomfits Avram. "I wouldn't be here on Cascade if it weren't for you, Professor Sandburg. And I'm sure that Grace expressed herself with far more finesse." The implied criticism is a risk, but he thinks he's judged this man's good nature correctly. A mischievous smile is the only reply.

Sandburg leads him to a room on the other side of the house, a study by the looks of it. "Sit down, please," Sandburg says, and then pops his head out the door and roars down the corridor, "Jon! Your mother set up some food for the ambassador. Bring it in for me, will you?" He comes back in. "They hate it when I do that, but I know they hear me, and they know I know they hear me. Jon is Nathan's eldest brother, but don't worry, we don't expect you to remember everybody."

Sandburg sits down in an easy chair, and stretches out his legs. "It's a pretty planet out of the merchant enclave, isn't it?"

"Yes, I'm glad to be privileged to see it."

Bright, shrewd eyes survey Avram. "You're a big deal for Cascade, but I'm sure that we're not a big deal for Nine Worlds. Why this posting, Ambassador?"

"Nine Worlds has its priorities, but no posting is a small deal."

"You're far better at being diplomatic than I am, but then it wasn't my preferred career option. So why is Cascade yours?"

Avram smiles. "I heard you speak at Solana, quite a few years ago, now. I was interested in the idea of a community where hyper-senses are common, because my uncle had what everyone regarded as practically super-hearing. It was just idle curiosity, but you're a good speaker. My interest was piqued. And when this opportunity arose..."

"You were one of the few who regarded it as an opportunity rather than an exile to the ends of the universe," Sandburg suggests. His eyebrows lift in a question. "I feel at a disadvantage. You know more about me than I know about you. I hope you weren't expecting to meet a great Cascade public figure, because this is all you get." His hands gesture, indicating a sturdy, clear-skinned man nearing seventy, still hale and energetic, who is seated in a room filled with academic clutter.

"Separating the individual from his achievements is part of the historian's work," Avram says.

"But why me?" Sandburg asks. He seems genuinely confused. "Why not talk to Hall, or Wong? They were the people who actually did the work, who pushed the outreach policy forward."

"But you were the person who introduced new ideas to the intelligence and political arms of Cascade's bureaucracy. Hall and Wong both name you as a mentor and an inspiration."

Sandburg shrugs. "I ended up more of a figurehead than anything." He seems tired, suddenly, his eyes shadowed.

"All causes need a focal point."

Sandburg's gaze sharpens. "A myth to rally round. But which myth? Because I'm here, both in the physical sense and the political sense, because two teenagers let their hormones run away with them."

"But that's only the simplest form of the truth, and I don't believe that you're that simple a man, Professor Sandburg."

Sandburg leans forward; his face brightens with the spirit of debate. He's about to speak when the door opens. James Ellison enters, followed by Grace, who's pushing a beautifully made wooden trolley, laden with cups and plates and other crockery.

"Blair, what the hell were you thinking telling Jon to bring the food in?"

A dazzling smile appears on Sandburg's face. "Jon's a competent kid. And I didn't know how long you and Grace would be with Nathan."

Ellison is unmoved by this appeal. "There's informality, and there's slipshodness." He turns to Avram. "My guide forgets that retiring from public life doesn't entirely exonerate him from appropriate behaviour." Despite the pomposity of the speech, there's more than a touch of humour in Ellison's face. Grace certainly appears unfazed. She wheels the trolley closer to Avram and says, "The seed crackers are one of my favourites, but there's plenty of other things to choose if you don't like those. Tea?"

Avram nods, and watches as Ellison and Sandburg exchange a quick clasp of hands. "Nathan's on his way to the doctor," Ellison says, before he addresses Avram again. "Has Blair let you get a word in edgeways?"

"Professor Sandburg has been courteously letting me have more than my share of the conversation."

"He's just softening you up. Wait and see." Ellison bends like a hawk swooping on prey, but his aim is to kiss Sandburg's brow, before he pulls a chair up and sits down. His face suggests that he anticipates a rare entertainment. "Pass Blair some tea, Grace. We wouldn't want his throat to get sore now, would we?"