by James Axler
Jak had volunteered to scout the woods to try to bring back advanced warning of any encroaching parties. The albino had disappeared silently into the undergrowth sometime previously and Ryan now could feel the tension and suspense spreading through the Pilatans as they were—literally—suspended from the foliage.
Jak appeared suddenly and without warning, seeming to melt like a shadow only to reform to shinny up the tree where Ryan was waiting.
“Coming. Down to mebbe forty-five, forty-six. In one party. Not all men, either. They have one woman.”
Ryan smiled slowly. It was working out better than he could have hoped. The opposition was seeking safety in numbers and was traveling in one phalanx that would keep them together and all nicely in one place for the ambush. It was puzzling that no one had spotted the woman before, and odd that she should be the only one as sec forces that used women usually had a more equal mix. But no matter. She was still the enemy and that was all that counted.
Jak moved from tree to tree, spreading the message. Ryan settled in to wait. There was no longer that air of apprehension. Action was coming, and soon.
Within minutes it was possible to hear the outsiders moving through the undergrowth, their mass making more noise than previously. Slowly they came into view. In a pyramid formation, watching the area around them closely and never thinking to look up. Ryan caught sight of the woman. There was something familiar about her that he couldn’t place. He put it from his mind as the two men in front reached the lip of the clearing and saw the people gathered in the center.
“They pulled right back, man, easy pickings,” the front man whispered, the words reaching Ryan’s ears, he was waiting so close to them.
“Let’s charge them, get it done, before they have a chance to open up and fight,” came another voice.
And then the action began. The outsiders charged into the clearing, opening fire on the covered wags. The Pilatans inside began to return fire. It was a calculated risk, as they had padded the walls of their enclosure as much as possible, but were still at risk from injury or buying the farm from heavier caliber blasterfire. But they had only to hold out until the offensive party had come completely into the open.
Which was now.
At a signal from the one-eyed man, the Pilatans in the trees dropped to the ground and began to fire at the outsiders. In the sudden confusion of noise and the hail of fire that hit them, many of the offensive party didn’t realize what had happened. Those who did whirled around and tried to return fire, but realized that they were in no position to defend themselves.
The phalanx broke apart, as the offensive party made a break for the woods, trying to circle the Pilatans while still returning covering fire.
Very few made it to the woods. The clearing was littered with the chilled corpses of the offensive party, caught up in the crossfire of the two Pilatan groups, with some also suffering at the hands of their own as the confused party tried to return fire in opposing directions.
The Pilatans broke, also, following the opposing force through the woods. Some escaped, starting the wags and speeding across the plain to wherever they had come from, but most were still and chilled either in the clearing or in the woods.
When they were sure that the woods had been secured, the companions and Markos assembled the Pilatans in the clearing, moving the corpses.
“We have done well and we have learned much today,” Sineta said to the assembled throng. “We must move on now, before we invite further hostilities, which would be unnecessary on both sides. We will attempt to find ourselves a place where we can build our own ville, and then perhaps we shall not be treated with such disdain.”
“Well, I wouldn’t bet on that,” Dean murmured to his father as they split into groups to bury the chilled and prepare for departure. There were only a few Pilatan casualties, but Sineta wished them to afford their enemies the same respect.
“Neither would I,” Ryan replied as he began to dig. “But mebbe they’ve learned a lot about the mainland in one nasty, quick lesson. What do you reckon? Dean?” he added, when his son didn’t reply.
Ryan looked at his son, who was staring in open-mouthed disbelief at the edge of the clearing. Following his son’s gaze, Ryan could see the woman from the war party standing at the edge of the clearing. There was something familiar about her, but more importantly, why was she still there when the others had long since departed?
“Dean, what is it?” Ryan asked again.
Dean shook his head in disbelief and said only one word by way of explanation and reply.
“Rona…”
Chapter Fourteen
“Sharona?”
Ryan couldn’t believe that his son was correct. The woman at the edge of the clearing seemed much older than Dean’s mother would be, if she had lived. But she had bought the farm. Rad sickness was why she had sent the boy away from her. This woman appeared gaunt, different than he remembered. Although there was something about the eyes…Perhaps that was why Ryan had looked twice at her, with an uneasy sense, when he had seen her in the war party.
But why had this woman remained behind?
Even as those thoughts crossed Ryan’s mind, the woman was stepping forward into the clearing, so that both he and his son could see her clearly.
“Dean…” the woman said softly in a voice that sent a chill up Ryan’s spine, a voice that dragged up echoes from the past.
“I knew you were coming,” Dean stated flatly. He didn’t know what to think. All those dreams and that sense of longing.
She walked forward slowly toward the younger Cawdor. Dean broke from beside his father to run to embrace her.
Ryan watched, still stunned at the sudden reappearance of a woman he had long since believed chilled. Away to one side, both Jak and Krysty stopped in their work, seeing what was occurring.
“Who’s that?” Jak asked.
Krysty shook her head, feeling her hair tighten to her as she did. “I don’t know, but I’ve got a feeling it’s going to be nothing but trouble.”
MILDRED, DOC AND J.B. had no idea of what was taking place on the edge of the clearing as they were esconsced in the center of the activities taking place where the Pilatans were preparing to leave. They were helping to load the livestock with their packs when Sineta and Markos approached them.
“Leave that for a second,” the baron said, “we have something we wish to discuss with you.”
“Ah, joy, surely you wish to inform us of your impending nuptials,” Doc announced happily.
Markos furrowed his brow and gazed at Doc, not sure if the older man was being humorous.
“May I ask just what you mean by that?” the sec boss requested gravely.
“Don’t you take any notice of the old coot. He’s just having one of his crazy moments,” Mildred said hurriedly, not wishing Doc or the sec boss to derail the conversation before it had begun in earnest. “What is it?” she added to Sineta.
“We have been discussing seriously the future of our community and we would wish for you to travel forth with us in perpetuity,” Sineta said.
Mildred whistled. “That’s something I wouldn’t have expected. I wouldn’t have thought you would have wanted us hanging around forever.”
“Especially as we’re not part of you,” J.B. added. “There’s still a lot of people here who think we’re outsiders and should stay that way.”
“But that is precisely the point,” Sineta interjected. “We do not wish you to travel with us as outsiders. We want you to become part of Pilatu and to join with our community.”
“I think you may find that quite a sizable proportion of your people may find this hard to come to terms with,” Doc pointed out. “There is still—at the very least—a residual resentment against us.”
“I know this, and I also acknowledge that you are aware of it, too,” Sineta said, speaking with great care and thought, “but if this is ever to change, then we will have to start teaching these recidivists at some point
.”
“So we’re to be instruments in a lesson?” Mildred queried, amused at the manner in which Sineta had put her point.
“Not quite like that,” the baron replied, acknowledging her clumsiness with an embarrassed smile. “You have much to offer us in terms of knowledge and understanding, and we want to learn from that…most of us. The others will realize in time, as we have. In return, we can offer you a kind of security. Something, perhaps, that you have been searching for, a kind of peace and belonging. Is that not true? I could see it in you when we were on the island,” Sineta implored to Mildred.
Mildred felt uncomfortable for a moment. She had to pick her words carefully when she replied. “There is a certain degree of truth in what you say, but I have my own commitments and belonging. Maybe I’ll tell you about them later, when we’re not in the middle of packing to move on.”
She had hoped to stall indefinitely, unwilling to have to explain herself, but Markos’s words cut short any hopes.
“This is good. We will all discuss this matter—ourselves and the rest of your people—when we pitch camp tonight.”
“That wasn’t exactly what we had in mind,” Mildred said to the Armorer as they finished loading the cattle and moved out.
“Yeah, well, mebbe there are things that are going to make having to explain that unnecessary,” he said slowly.
Mildred followed his gaze to where Dean was walking with Sharona, Ryan and Krysty some distance behind.
“Hmm. I’d like to know what that’s all about, and who that woman is,” Mildred mused.
“She looks vaguely familiar,” the Armorer said. “This could be trouble.”
THE PILATAN CARAVAN moved out of the clearing and away through the woods. They took a route that carried a direction contrary to the direction of the ville from which the war party had arrived earlier in the day. They had no wish to encounter more raiders and indeed desired to put as much distance between the ville and themselves as possible. Wherever their fate lay in the search for land to build a new Pilatu, it certainly wasn’t in that direction.
By the time they had packed and begun to move, it was already into the late afternoon. The baron and the sec boss made a conscious decision to carry on marching through most of the night to put distance between themselves and any war parties bent on revenge. But by the middle of the night, it became apparent that the exhausted Pilatans would need to rest. Scouting sec parties that had been sent ahead, and also to track back to warn of any approaches from the rear, had nothing to report. There was even a lack of predatory wildlife in this part of the plain and woodland. Stretches of flat, open land had been punctuated by sudden bursts of woodland, which the Pilatan caravan had skirted around rather than risk becoming entangled. It was in the shelter around the edges of one such outcrop that Sineta and Markos brought the caravan to a halt, to allow the exhausted people to take some rest.
As the caravan settled to rest for the remainder of the night, Markos and Sineta once again broached the subject they had raised earlier with Mildred, Doc and J.B.
Having posted sec sentries for the night, the sec boss came over to where the companions had settled with Sharona. Ryan was about to tackle the matter of who this woman was, and why she had seemingly arrived out of nowhere when believed chilled, when the sec boss requested that he and the baron talk with them.
In truth, Ryan was relieved for the distraction. He hadn’t been looking forward to tackling the subject and had had no idea where to begin. Come to that, he still had no idea of where Sharona had been or how she had landed in the same place as the companions—and he had absolutely no idea what her intentions were with regard to her son and to the rest of the traveling party. She had been reticent on the matter during the day’s march, refusing to be drawn on her own life and instead pumping Dean for details of what had occurred to him during the time that they had been parted.
While the rest of the companions were waiting for Ryan to explain, they were stunned when he told Markos that it would be fine to talk to the sec boss and the baron.
“What the hell did you do that for?” Krysty asked angrily. “We’re owed an explanation, aren’t we?”
“And I’m sure we’ll get it—in time,” Ryan said pointedly, staring at Sharona. “But first let’s hear what Sineta and Markos have to say.”
“I think we know some of it,” J.B. ventured.
Ryan frowned. “So we’ve all been keeping secrets. Fireblast, this had better not become a habit.”
Any argument was cut short by the arrival of the baron and the sec boss, who outlined the proposition put to half of the companions earlier in the day.
Ryan whistled. “There’s a lot of your people that could make it rough for us, if we agreed,” he said.
Markos nodded. “That much is true, and I acknowledge that we are not asking you to undertake that which is easy, but I feel that we could learn so much from you. Speaking personally, I know that I have learned much.”
Ryan grinned. “I told you about that. You learn about tactics as you go along, and you’ll learn about the mainland as you go along. Anything that we say or do right now is no substitute for actually living it and learning from experience.”
“This much I have gathered,” Markos said with due consideration. “But that is not the only thing I have learned, and in many ways, it is the least of my concerns.” He continued in a halting tone, stopping to consider every word. “My brother—in the days when I believed him to be a man of honor and integrity—taught me that the black man and the white man were completely separate and that never the twain could meet. That is something that was deeply ingrained in me, perhaps even more than I was fully aware. But I do not feel that way anymore. We are different, but we are equal. That feels so strange, even now, for those words to pass my lips and to be more than just hollow.
“It is strange to consider that just a few short weeks ago, when I first encountered you in the Pilatan woods that I shall see no more in this life, I thought of you as little more than scum who were trying to oppress, if not chill, Mildred. And I did not believe that it was possible for you and she to exist within the same group without a hierarchy of some manner to intrude. But I was wrong. I have learned, more than anything, that it is not your origin—in either a racial or geographic sense—that matters, but rather the manner in which you act and conduct yourself that is important. It is not where you consider yourself to be in terms of origins, but rather how you consider yourself and conduct yourself…how you act toward yourself and others as we all try to survive and make a life in what can be an extremely prejudiced and hostile environment.
“And that, my friends, which I am proud to call you now, is why I feel it important that you become part of Pilatu and travel with us not just as yourselves but as a part of our community. There are still those who feel as I once did. Still those who would have us stay separate from the other races—whatever they may be. Perhaps they have learned something from our encounter with the sec force last night. But then again, some attitudes are hardily ingrained. Only a long-term process can help that.”
There was a silence after the sec boss had finished. It had been a difficult speech for him to make, as he was a proud man who was admitting to mistakes. But it had been undoubtedly heartfelt.
Sineta added her voice to his before any of the companions had a chance to reply.
“It is not just for this reason that we wish you to become part of us. In the time since I have known Mildred I have come to look upon her as the sister with which I was never blessed, and I value her opinions and counsel. With her greater experience of the world in which we have entered, I would be a fool to wish you a speedy parting. She is of great value to me as baron of Pilatu and also as a person I love deeply.”
Mildred embraced Sineta. “I think of you in the same way, but I don’t know if it would work. We’re not ready to settle down, any of us. We don’t belong anywhere yet.”
“But why not belong here?” Sineta queri
ed, noticing the manner in which Dean looked at the new arrival as Mildred spoke. For a moment the baron was distracted with the feeling of foreboding that the boy’s glance gave her. She wondered if any of the companions had noticed as she continued. “You told me when we on the island that it was the first time you had felt as though you had a sense of belonging for a great amount of time.”
Mildred smiled wryly. “Greater than you’ll ever know. But I was wrong. Part of the belonging was only in my mind. In the real world, in day-to-day terms, this is where I belong…” Mildred looked into the distance, seeing something that no one else could, before continuing in a wistful tone of voice. “You see, the island, and the way you had lived for so many generations, was like a chasm of time, a gap into which you had fallen, where so much had stayed still for so long. You’d been in this chasm, and had preserved so much of the way you had always been, never really changing or having to change. But there does always have to be change, and that was brought home to me when you had to leave the island. There’s so much that you’ve had to face up to and assimilate already since leaving Pilatu, and there’ll be so much more.
“And it wasn’t just the island and the people that were part of that chasm. I had it in me, too. There was something in me that had been cast into that pit so long ago, before I even knew it myself. I had to lose something of myself to fit in, hide some part of my identity to operate in the world as it was. That chasm was a real thing, as well. I lost so many years, lost the world that I used to know, and maybe I lost even more of myself. Then I came to Pilatu and found a part of myself that I didn’t even know was there anymore, and I felt like I’d gone from being blind to being able to see with the clearest, most incredible vision that I’d ever known.