It wasn’t only true, but it broke the tension and caused a ripple of laughter. Certainly, the Gate had defended its position so well that their tribe’s exact whereabouts was unknown.
The only one of the companions not laughing was Doc. He sat perfectly still, staring at the floor. It was only as the laughter died that he finally spoke. “There is one thing that we all seem to be overlooking,” he said softly.
Mildred felt a shiver run down her spine at his tone of voice. “What?”
Doc looked her in the eye. “It’s more than a trifling coincidence, wouldn’t you say, that both ourselves and the Gate find it relatively easy to arrive in the same place, given that the mat-trans chambers were supposed to send us to random destinations? Not so random, would you not think?”
“You mean the comp settings didn’t change that much?” Dean queried, and when Doc agreed, the young Cawdor exclaimed, “Hot pipe! Then that could mean that they didn’t vary that much from the original settings!”
Doc nodded slowly. “And do you know what that could mean?”
Ryan answered before Dean. “It could mean that the Illuminated Ones are nearby.”
“Exactly. And who better than a bunch of accursed whitecoat spawn to unleash such a vile disease, which was supposed to have vanished a long time ago?”
There was silence while everyone digested the import of this notion. Finally, Ryan spoke.
“If the Illuminated Ones are near, then we have two aims. First, we need to find the Gate to see if they’re infected. Second, we need to track down the redoubt where those scum suckers are holed up and finish what we started. In that order. But before we do that, we need to try and find out as much as possible for the people here.”
The one-eyed man turned to Mildred. “How much time do we have?”
She shook her head almost imperceptibly. “Hard to say for sure, but certainly not long. The pox seems to run its course in about three weeks. We had the first two dead tonight. Their bodies seemed to be convulsed with muscle spasms, and they were running temperatures that shouldn’t be possible.” She closed her eyes, trying to shut out the picture in her mind. “The pox marks get worse toward the end, running alive and open. It’s impossible to make them comfortable, I’d say. It must be a horrible way to die.”
“And there is no cure,” Doc prompted. “We could already be incubating. I agree with you, my dear Ryan, that we cannot rush into this. But be cautioned that we are on a finite time scale.”
“He’s right,” Mildred agreed. “The clock is ticking…”
THE NEXT DAY, while they were in the med building, Mildred bided her time before asking. It had been a difficult night for Hector, and two more of the initial contractees had bought the farm during his spell on duty. The exhausted ville healer, who had no ideas on how to combat the disease, or even to alleviate the suffering he could see in front of his eyes, had retired to his shack to try to get some rest. The ville women who had assisted him had returned to their homes, sworn to secrecy. Chances were, they were too scared by what they had seen to raise the subject.
For a while Mildred, Krysty and Doc had been on their own in the med building, tending as best as possible to those who were ill. There were three new cases, all with the mildest of blisters and a high temperature. A casual observer would have put it down to chicken pox, and none was more surprised than the patients themselves when they had been detained.
However, the mounting problem was causing the conscientious ville healer acute anxiety, and it was only a few hours before he returned to the fray.
“You’ll make yourself ill if you don’t rest,” Mildred said when he first returned.
He gave her a crooked grin. “Chances are I’ll get ill anyway, being around here all the time.”
“Fair point,” Mildred agreed, allowing a silence to fall. On the far side of the med building, Krysty and Doc were arguing about the contents of a poultice that the red-haired woman wanted to use. Doc, despite his distrust of whitecoats, had an almost religious faith in the use of plundered medical supplies, and was arguing his corner while Krysty attempted to use her herbal skills, learned from Mother Sonja in her home ville of Harmony. From the corner of her eye, Mildred noticed Hector deriving some amusement from the exchange between the two, and she judged that now was the moment for her to ask.