Separation

by James Axler

  Mildred and the sec boss arrived back at Sineta’s quarters and entered. As Mildred had expected, the baron’s daughter wasn’t there.

  “You’d better get on with your own tasks,” Mildred said wearily. “I’ve kept you from them enough. Lord knows, if I’m tired, you must be exhausted by the time you finish your working day right now, having to nursemaid me, as well.”

  Markos lingered for a moment, as if shaping the words that he spoke. “On the contrary, I would argue that it is a vital part of my duty—and a part from which I derive great satisfaction—to work alongside you.”

  Mildred allowed herself a smile before answering. “It’s good of you, but it must be a real pain in the ass to have to follow me around.”

  “It is something I would do from choice,” the sec boss returned.

  He was looking at her intently, and as her eyes locked on to his, she felt a wave of emotion sweep over her. Qualms she had felt about consequences of any actions on the companions were swept from her mind.

  Markos crossed the room and embraced her, bending so that his lips could meet hers. Mildred responded eagerly, pulling him to her fiercely.

  As Markos’s hands slid down Mildred’s back to cup her buttocks, the couple was distracted by the sounds of a gathering crowd outside. He broke the embrace, shot Mildred a puzzled glance, then rushed to the door.

  Mildred followed and was astounded to see J.B., supported by Ryan and Krysty, hobbling across the main square, his wound still bleeding, while the growing crowd stared at their captive fellow Pilatan, with Elias holding the Glock steadily trained on him.

  “Mildred, J.B. really needs some attention,” Ryan yelled as he caught sight of her.

  “And I have something that I think, equally, is in need of your attention,” Elias added, gesturing with the Glock.

  Chapter Nine

  “Millie, where are you going?”

  Mildred turned at the sound of J.B.’s voice. It was the afternoon following the blaster incident by the river, and after she had dressed his wound and shot him full of painkiller, it was decided that he would be unable to return to tree felling until it had healed. In fact, with the time scale under which they were now operating, it was likely that J.B. wouldn’t be able to take part in the evacuation procedures.

  It was Mildred’s suggestion that he remain in the ville, where he could make himself useful by utilizing his skills to supervise the cleaning and packaging of the Pilatan armory. It would also give him a chance to restore to full working order the companions’ own blasters, which were currently lying idle. Markos had bristled when she outlined the plan, but as the Pilatan armorer, a man named Simeon who was known to be sympathetic to integration, had raised no objection, Sineta had overruled the sec boss’s objections.

  Mildred had just left Sineta’s quarters on her way to a meeting with Barras. She was spotted by J.B. as he left the armory to fetch more packing cases while Simeon went through the spare H&Ks.

  “John, I can’t stop right now. I’ve got to see Barras,” she said in a bright tone, one that sounded false to her as soon as the words left her mouth. From the change in the Armorer’s normally taciturn expression, she could see that it was equally obvious to him.

  “Guess if it’s that important,” he replied, not even bothering to keep the sarcasm out of his voice.

  She changed direction and walked toward him. “It’s not like that, John, and you know it. But I’m under a lot of pressure here.”

  “We’re all under pressure,” J.B. answered quietly. “You’re not alone. How do you think it is for the rest of us, being in such a minority?”

  “You know my views on that,” she snapped, then sighed as she realized how it had to have sounded. “Shit, you know that’s not what I mean. Look, if this is going to come off, then I’ve got a thin line to walk, as Sineta has left it all to me while she looks after her father.”

  “Quite convenient for her,” J.B. mused. “If it turns to shit, then who’ll get the blame?”

  Mildred shrugged. “Yeah, I know it looks that way, but trust me when I say that it isn’t.”

  J.B. mirrored her shrug. “Whatever you say, Millie. Point is, we don’t actually see enough of you to actually be kept in the picture.”

  “It’s hard, John. There’s so much to attend to.” As she spoke, she looked around the square and could see Markos talking to a sec guard outside the baron’s quarters. His eyes kept flicking across to her and she became acutely aware that she was being watched. “Look, I can’t stop to talk now. I really have to be getting on with things. After all, he is still baron, and I can’t afford to piss him off…for all our sakes.”

  “I guess not,” J.B. said, sounding far from convinced. “I suppose I have my own work to do.”

  There was an awkward pause and finally Mildred said, “Look, I’ll tell you what we can do. Meet me here at about nine tonight. I’ll fill you in on what’s been going down, and you can let the others know what plans have been made.” There was also the unspoken subtext that she would be seeing J.B. on his own. Right now, she wasn’t sure how she felt about that, but she didn’t want to hurt the Armorer at a time when they all had to pull together.

  When they all had to pull together? Who? The Pilatans? The companions? Which camp was she in, and who was she thinking of when she used the term “we”? Issues that she had pushed to the back of her mind came bubbling to the surface. Issues with which she didn’t wish to deal at the moment.

  “Yeah, okay,” J.B. agreed, snapping her out of her reverie. “That sounds good. I’ll tell the others when I see them, but I guess I’d better be going. Till later…”

  The Armorer moved off and Mildred watched him go, aware that Markos was watching her. She turned and walked toward the building, trying not to meet the sec boss’s eye.

  “So you will be meeting with him later?” Markos questioned as she approached.

  “Is it necessary for me to answer?” she returned.

  He winced at her tone. “Yes, I believe it is. Partly because of what is between us, and partly because I have larger concerns to oversee. What will you be telling him?”

  “Nothing that will have any bearing on your responsibilities in either sphere,” Mildred replied. “Now, if you have no objections, the baron is expecting me.”

  “I know. I have been informed.”

  “Is that why you’ve personally taken this watch?”

  He shook his head briefly. “I dismissed the guard so I could speak with you in some degree of privacy. Now I shall have to cover until the next watch.”

  “So you don’t lose face or appear human in the eyes of the men you command?” she asked.

  Markos didn’t answer.

  Mildred knocked on the baron’s door and heard his feeble voice bid her to enter. She left Markos resolutely looking away from her so as not to betray any feelings.

  The baron’s quarters were in almost complete darkness. One oil lamp, suspended from a bracket near the door, lit the interior and the shutters on the windows were covered with thick curtains to prevent any leakage of light. It took Mildred’s eyes awhile to adjust, during which time she made her way unsteadily and carefully across the room.

  “It takes a few moments,” Barras’s healer said as she appeared from the shadows, her hand gently taking Mildred’s arm to guide her to the baron’s bedside without bumping into anything. “I am almost blind for the first minutes of duty. Thankfully there is never anything of any importance during those minutes,” she added.

  When Mildred was seated by the baron’s bedside, and her eyes had become accustomed to the low level of light, she was able to see that Sineta hadn’t exaggerated when she had described how ill her father had become. Barras’s eyes were wild and bloodshot, staring out into the darkness with an almost scary intensity, seemingly fixed on some distant point. It was almost as if he had swathed the room in Stygian gloom because the river and the boatman were already fixtures on his horizon. His eyes, with their hallucina
tory air, had sunk even farther into his skull, which seemed to be now devoid of flesh. He had grown, if anything, thinner than the first time she had seen him, and the painkillers were no longer of any use as anesthesia. They could keep the level of pain such that he could bear it, but they no longer dulled or deadened it. His skin held a ghostly gray tinge and had started to break out all over in sores as the cancer broke through as if fighting its way out of his body and taking him over, transforming him into something alien.

  “Mildred, I’m glad you came,” he said in a hoarse croak. “I fear I cannot hold on to my reason for long. Even now, it would seem that I drift in and out of this world. Sometimes it is as though my dreams become flesh, or I become a dream. I see my mother and father…my wife…they wait for me, as beautiful and noble as they were in their prime. Perhaps they will see me in that way when I finally arrive and not as I am now. Layla,” he added, trying to turn his head with a painfully slow rotation, “where are you?”

  “I am here, my baron,” the healer whispered, coming close.

  Barras nodded slowly. “You may leave us for now. Mildred is able to care for my needs while I talk, and we must have privacy. She will call for you when I am done. Perhaps,” he added with the sudden reappearance of a mischievous glint, “Arun will be on duty. I know you have feelings for him from the way you mention his name.”

  “Thank you, my baron.” The healer giggled, leaving them alone. Mildred watched her go, thinking she would be disappointed when she saw Markos outside. But it did, in a flash sadly growing rarer, show her again how the baron had to have been in his prime, and why he had been a popular leader.

  Barras waited for the door to close before grasping Mildred’s hand tightly. He spoke rapidly and with urgency.

  “I must say this, and quickly, for I do not know how long it will be before the dreamtime once again descends upon me. And the next time may be the final time, and I become as a dream once more. Now, I am lucid, and I want you to listen carefully.”

  “You’ve got my full attention. But why can’t Sineta know this?” Mildred couldn’t help but ask.

  Barras shook his head impatiently. “In the regular course of events, it would have been told to her and her husband before the time came for me to die. But I do not know if she will take the hand of Markos, or Elias, or will opt to continue alone. If alone, and at such a time, the knowledge of this secret would put her in more danger than a wild bore with the hunt on its tail.”

  “Why? Why now?”

  Barras grasped her hand harder, his bony fingers indenting her flesh. “Listen, and you will understand. When this ville was first built, and the island first inhabited by those escaping bondage, they did not come empty-handed. The concept of money and riches have meant little on the island as we are insular, but our forefathers came from an outside world where such values were paramount. They knew these things meant much to those who had enslaved them, and they knew that to survive in such a world they would need riches of their own. So they took from their masters whenever possible, when they were to escape. Arriving, it soon became obvious that these things were superfluous here, and that they would have no practical use. So they were gathered and kept in a secret place known only to a few, as they would serve if we should ever need to leave the island to deal with the whitelands again.

  “The store of such riches was added to when people arrived with more stolen treasures. It was always presumed that these things would be useful one day.

  “And then came skydark and the hard years after. In the struggle to survive, the store of whiteland riches—for that is what they were, having no meaning to us outside of that—was largely forgotten, the location becoming a secret that was passed only from baron to baron, so that it would be known if ever a time came when the treasures of the whitelands became needed.

  “So it would have continued. I would pass the secret on to Sineta and whoever became her husband, and they would pass it on to their children, and it would always be there for times of need.

  “But that has changed. Now the Pilatans must move to the mainland, and the riches may be needed. I am no fool—I know that some of the treasures will mean nothing and have no value in the whitelands. Priorities for all have changed since the nukecaust and the long darkness that followed. The value of things is relative to need and desire, I know this. Those treasures have only a fraction of the value they may have held at the time they were first brought here. But they still have value at least to barons, and I have seen the horde. I have seen it, and I will tell you that it will still have value in the whitelands, and that this is the time for it to be disinterred and taken with the islanders into the whitelands.”

  Mildred said nothing for a moment. Barras fought for breath, exhausted by his efforts to tell his story, forcing it out while he was still lucid. She found it sad that he referred now to the islanders and the use of the treasure in the third person, as though it no longer had any direct meaning for him. It was, she supposed, an acknowledgment of impending chill.

  “I still don’t get why you’re telling me and not your daughter about this,” Mildred said finally.

  Barras allowed himself a small smile. “The timing is all wrong. She has no husband, no ally to watch her back. This is the perfect time for the treasure to be taken from the people for private gain, when the white-lands are reached. There are too many possibilities for it to be snatched away. No, it must not be revealed until the Pilatans are settled upon the mainland and there is order restored after the chaos of travel. Sineta will be established as baron by then, no matter what, and it will be harder to resist her status in taking the riches.

  “I want you to take the treasure…you and your companions. You are outsiders and will be able to take the treasure and protect it until the whitelands are reached. And you, Mildred, will then be in the perfect position to reveal the secret to my daughter.”

  “You would trust me…trust my friends, who are pale ones…you would trust us with the riches of Pilatu?”

  “Perhaps I am a stupe old man whose mind is muddled by the long chilling, and you would take the riches and run, using them for yourselves. Perhaps. But I think that is not the case. I have seen you, have heard about you…and your friends. They have been misjudged by many in this ville because of their skin, but that is an attitude that will have to be changed when my people are out in the whitelands. Things are not as they were. On the whitelands, much has changed—although I grant you that much will always remain the same—whereas on this island we have been enclosed in a bubble of our making where almost all has always remained the same. Perhaps your way is better.”

  “Perhaps,” Mildred said softly, “but if you knew my history—my real history—then you would know why this island has cut so deeply with me.”

  “That is good for you, Mildred Wyeth, but I must look forward to the future for my people, even if I will not be there to see it. You must promise me that you will do this for me,” the old man said.

  Mildred sighed. Things were getting more and more complicated at a time when she least needed it. But at least she would be able to discuss this with J.B. when she met with him later tonight.

  “Very well, tell me where it is, and I promise you that it will be done.”

  The old man squeezed her hand. “I knew that I could rely on you. You have a nobility that runs deep. In many ways, you remind me of the woman I married.” For a moment a twinkle lit his glazed eyes. “But that was all a long time ago. I must dismiss these thoughts from my mind so that I may tell you. Past the point where the trees are being felled for boat building, you will find a river—the river where one of your friends was wounded yesterday. Go upstream for half a mile and you will come to a rock cluster that has a cave entrance. Inside the cave is a fork. To the left, it becomes so narrow that only a slender man or woman may squeeze through. Once through, there is a simple lever system that lifts this shelf of rock so that many may enter, and move the treasures within freely.”

 
“It sounds simple enough—as long as we aren’t followed.”

  “That is your province. It is simple, true, and has only remained undisturbed for so long because none except the barons have known of its existence.”

  “We’ll do it. In the next day or two. I’ll tell you when it’s accomplished. And, believe me, I’m honored that you’ve trusted me with this. I’ll do my damnedest not to let you down.” With which, she leaned over and kissed the old man on the forehead, a gesture heavy with respect.

  “Go now, for I feel I am slipping into the dream-world, and I am ashamed to let any except my healer or my daughter see me when I am like such.”

  “I understand. Until the morrow or day after,” Mildred said gently, taking leave of the ailing baron. Looking back as she made her way to the door, she saw his eyes glaze over, becoming unseeing as he entered the world that was his gateway to the beyond.

  She had no time to dwell on this, however, as more earthly matters took the imperative. As she neared the door, she could hear voices on the other side. They were whispering, but the door wasn’t of a thick wood and she could hear them clearly. One was Markos, and the other—similar in timbre, but slightly higher in tone, she couldn’t place.

  “Things are as they are and that cannot be changed,” Markos was saying.

  “But you are changed, and the changes are like those of the snake that sheds skin as it grows fatter.”

  “You dare to say such things to me, with their implications?”

  “I do, and gladly. You know that her influence will pollute the purity of the idea and moral that I have—”

  “You dare to speak of purity?”

  There was a silence. Then the speaker broke the silence with a low hiss pregnant with suppressed menace. “That is the matter of which we never speak. Indeed you are lower than the snake to bring that into the argument. I cannot reason with you when you are in this temper and I feel so disturbed. We will continue this later.”