End of Women: Part Five

Days Gone By

A film of dust fell away from the frame as Robin turned the handle of a door marked COMPOUND DIRECTORATE.

Though he had  never been there, the room inside seemed oddly familiar. He had heard stories about the place. Every boy growing up knew about Wilkes and Degan, about Nate Howard and the battle of Mars Station. There were other stories told, as well, and fondly. How much was true, Robin neither knew nor cared to find out. The legends were what had made the world, and his father had told him that all of it had started here, right here, in the Ekpow Directorate.

The room was hemmed in with great dividers of glass. A disused console sat propped up in the corner beside a grand oak desk, and behind it an empty leather seat cast all dark from the setting sun coming in through the rear balcony window. Robin touched the arm-rest of the chair, pausing, considering whether or not it was some sort of blasphemy, or sitting in a man's grave. In the end he gave in to the temptation, and sat.

He gripped the rests and laid his head back on the soft leather, scanning the room slowly. A dusty oil painting of a great wooden ship hung on one wall. Beneath that were trophies, commendations or trinkets of one kind or another. Robin slid open the desk drawers, finding them empty, one after the other. All of them, save for the last one at the bottom, on the right-hand side.

It was a letter, half-opened, and stowed at the back of the drawer. The white of the paper had faded and turned a parchment yellow after thirty-two years ignored or forgotten. Robin picked it out and laid it on the table in front of him. 

Degan

The handwriting was neat and thin. Robin took the letter out of its envelope and unfolded the paper, checking the open door and in all directions before beginning to read.

Dear Degan,

I have no idea if this will ever make its way to you. At this moment I'm not sure I know where you are, or even if you still are anywhere. Its possible that in the next year or so, neither of us will be alive. This, then, is my pitiful attempt to make some kind of final word. You know how much I like having that.

I remember being incredibly angry with you for what you did. You turned away from us, threw it all in with the worst of them. I kept telling myself to forget my old friend, to abandon you to the dogs you lie with. 

A lot has happened since then, my friend. You have a child. I hope by now you know that. A real, human child. So much changed in you so quickly that I struggled to understand it. But then I must understand it. One thing I liked about our meetings up in the retreat, before any of this, when Bluenorth was just a private playground for our kind, was that you never asked me or anyone else about our backgrounds. You didn't care what we had done or where we had been. You only judge men by what they are, not what they were. I'm going to try to live by that example. 

I had a family once, many years ago. I think I still have a son. I hope you will be a braver man than me, and look for your boy, when the time is right.

Robin stopped at that, gaping with disbelief. Wilkes, THE Wilkes, had a son? How had no-one ever uncovered that? Did the kid know? After a few moments frantic thought Robin returned to the letter.

You turned your back on us because you blamed yourself for everything that went wrong. You never saw how much we achieved, how all of those setbacks were nothing but setbacks after all. If I am sorry for anything, its that I never managed to help you see how much you did for this world.

I hope our New Republic stands for a thousand years. But if it stands only for ten minutes, it will still have been the best thing you or I ever did. 

I love you, old friend. Take care of yourself.

Robin read and re-read the letter at least ten times. His heart was thumping rapidly. He quickly folded the letter and put it into his windbreaker pocket, thinking only as an afterthought how incredibly valuable it most likely was to a collector of Bluenorth memorabilia.

Symon's round face burst into the doorway, snow caking his boots and gloves and cold air misting from his bated breath.

"Hey, you coming?" He rasped.

"Coming... coming where?" Robin replied absent-mindedly.

"To dinner. The Director is hosting some kind of big thing over at disposal."

Robin grunted in agreement and followed Symon out of the door.