The consultation between Ryan and Gloria occurred on the second evening, as the men of the Gate tribe assembled camp for the night in a small clearing. Despite the fact that they had encountered nothing more dangerous than a few low flying birds or a swarm of mosquito derived insects, the women of the Gate kept up their vigilance, not allowing the quietude to lull them into a potentially dangerous sense of security.
The camp was built around the spot where the four people, including J.B. and Doc, were seated on a groundsheet, with a few scraps of paper spread around them. The papers consisted of a map Doc had carried with him from the redoubt, and some faded and almost parchmentlike maps that Gloria carried. When she didn’t consult them, they traveled in her few belongings, parceled carefully and carried on a pack mule led by Petor, a young man of the tribe that Gloria favored.
“I never birthed any child of my own, and his mother, Kaya, was a good friend. When she died in combat, I swore to take him on as my own, and so it has been,” she explained. Certainly Petor was a testament to the caring side of Gloria, as he was a tall youth with sleepy eyes and a deceptive quickness of wit and limb, who had already bonded with Dean. Petor knew the honor that Gloria had bestowed upon him, and so was fastidious in his care of her belongings… particularly the documents that she carried, as these were sacred to the tribe and had been handed down. As Gloria explained to them when Petor brought her the documents and laid them out carefully on the groundsheet, “These are all that remain of the documents that define us. They were carried from the underground when our people emerged into the light, and they are both guide to the future and reminder of the past.”
The documents were faded and worn, with almost nothing readable along the creases where the documents had been folded for many years, even though Petor now kept them in a metal cylinder, rolled to prevent further damage. The ink had faded over time, and the pulped paper yellowed, so that the maps were sepia, with some color tones blending into a faded mush that made parts hard to read.
However, there was enough still legible for Ryan and Doc to be able to trace the route they had so far journeyed, and also to tell that the map carried on it details of old U.S. government redoubts, and also another set. Doc pointed out one that lay near a city marked as Seattle, in the northwest corner.
“Dear boy,” he remarked softly to Ryan, “I have the strangest feeling that somewhere in the darkest recesses of my foul imaginings, there is something to do with our course and these redoubts that I once heard of. Something that I should recall but that remains as ever elusive as the merest wisp of a dream.”
“To do with the Illuminated Ones?” the one-eyed warrior prompted, aware that pushing Doc for answers would only make the old man fret and lose his grasp of his own mind.
Doc frowned, as though the very act of concentration were physically painful. “I think—no, I’m sure—that it has a connection, but perhaps not directly. If only I could…” He tailed off with a sad shake of the head, the frustration showing in the distraught gaze he cast upon his friend and leader.
J.B. cut in, his voice barely a whisper. “Dark night, with maps like this, it should be easy to find the place you’re looking for,” he said to Gloria. “I don’t get why you haven’t just read the maps and gone. Why the following of energy lines?”
Gloria smiled, which carried both sadness and amusement. “You think we wouldn’t have done that generations ago if we could?” she said. “Why don’t you think we did?” she asked, her fingers unconsciously trailing over the paper.
Doc looked from the paper to the face of the warrior queen and her piercing blue eyes. Then it came to him. She had been tracing the map with her fingers all the while they had consulted, but had never once actually looked at it.