Hope and Despair
“Swamp Gas?”
Izzy’s guide nodded solemnly at her with an expression that certainly conveyed ‘I told you
so’. He looked down at the man lying on the ground covered in boils and then looked back at Izzy.
He nodded again, causing her to have the strongest desire to throttle him. Sure, he was a
settler and yes, they were known to be eccentric,
but after what she’d been through, Izzy did not feel it incumbent upon her to be so tolerant.
“You’re telling me that swamp gas did this to the man?” she asked cocking her head to one
side as she tended to do when exasperated. Her students knew that at these moments it was best to
give the doctor room, let her think and speak as she felt necessary. Arguing with Doctor Izzy
Ingerland was fruitless when her jaw set. Clearly the colony guide didn’t know as well as her
students.
“It is swamp gas, Doctor Ingerland. We here on Zeradral I are immune to the plague.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. We are immune.”
Izzy could bear pain, sorrow, embarrassment, and many forms of hardship. Such was the
natural result of spending most of her life alone in the pursuit of her study. What she could not
endure was ignorance and stupidity that put lives at risk. Her artificially blonde hair was losing its
color, dark roots beginning to show clearly giving her a wild look that served to enhance the
vehemence with which she lashed out at the guide.
“Now you listen to me. I did not come all the way to this little ball of water and mud with a
serum that nearly cost me my life to get only to have a stupid little ant like you tell me that I’m
wrong! This person has the worker’s plague. I promise you.”
The guide regarded the woman with caution clearly taken aback by the fact that she’d just
jabbed him in the chest with her index finger to punctuate her words.
“Doctor Ingerl...”
“Oh no. I am going to vaccinate this man and you are going to keep your colonial mouth
shut. Clear?”
The guide looked from Izzy to the worker lying on the ground in agony then back. His
mouth opened and closed several times before he gestured toward the man without another word.
“Finally!” Izzy breathed giving him one last look of utter contempt.
She knelt down on the soggy ground and immediately felt the knee of her pants soak
through. Like the rest of the jungle the ground had an enormously high amount of moisture and the
surrounding land passed from land to bog to swamp and back with regularity. Zeradral I was one of
many swamp planets she’d seen in her travels and to Izzy they all looked a like. Just one more
place to get yourself deathly ill.
A vine had started reaching around the writhing worker and had so far entangled his right
hip in it’s grasp. Izzy withdrew a long knife and slashed the vine with one stroke. The vine hissed
as air and liquid oozed from it’s end and flowed around the worker’s leg. Somewhere, the core of
the vine system owning the offending arm wailed in agony, its cry echoing throughout this section
of the swamp.
“Was that really necessary, Doctor Ingerland?” the guide whispered looking around in fear
as the echo faded.
Izzy looked at him.
The guide shut his gaping mouth and took two good sized steps backward.
Izzy wiped the vine remnants away from his leg and then moved closer. His face was
covered in watery boils as were his hands. She could only guess that the rest of his body was also
afflicted in the same manner. He was moaning softly now, mumbling gibberish and occasionally
murmuring the name of a female Izzy assumed was his wife. Momentarily she wondered whose
name she’d murmur in such a state. The thought lasted less then a second as Izzy continued to
visually survey her patient.
She leaned close listening to his breathing, irregular but strong. That was a good sign.
Infection must have been recent. She looked up at her guide who was staring off into the jungle,
sweat beginning to bead on his forehead. The heat was bad, but not the worst Izzy had come
across.
From her side bag she withdrew a silver tube. She shook it and swiped her finger down a
metal strip on one side. The polymer tube became warm to the touch, and she unscrewed the cap.
The contents of it, a thick gel substance were steaming inside. She upturned the tube and squeezed a
teaspoon or so onto the back of her hand. Holding it up in the light she watched as the substance
spread down her fingers and up her wrist, wrapping itself around and covering her hand and
forearm completely before slowing down to a stop. She did the same with the other hand and then
put the tube away.
She next withdrew a phial of golden liquid. This she held up to the light also, this time to
judge it’s continued quality. The vaccine was prone to contamination and was deadly if it became
so. The vile was apparently intact though so she inserted a needle into it and prepared the injection.
Standing up she went to the guide whose back was to her as he scanned the edge of the dense
foliage around them. Without a word she stepped up next to him.
“Don’t move,” she whispered.
The guide tensed, “Oh no. What is it?”
Izzy simply repeated, “Do not move.”
The guide nodded.
She raised the needle and brought it down firmly into his neck depressing the plunger and
withdrawing it as quick as it went in.
The guard spun around, “In the name of all holy...”
“Wrong,” she said dropping into a crouch next to the worker, “there is nothing holy about
this place. Or the universe for that matter. May as well give that thought up right now.”
“What was that?”
Izzy took a second vile from her bag and inspected it as she’d done with the first, “The
vaccine. You’re sweating.”
“It’s hot!”
“Not hot enough for the amount you’re sweating.”
He wiped his forehead with this hand.
“You’d have been like him, this time tomorrow.”
The guide failed to produce words.
Carefully Izzy placed her hand on the worker’s forehead and then felt his pulse. He was
running a fever but his heartbeat was strong and regular. Lucky man.
She injected him in the neck as she’d done for the guide, and could almost immediately see
a calm pass over him.
“See?” she asked motioning toward the worker, “He’s getting better.”
The guide was feeling his neck gingerly, the vaccine having made him sore, “I’ll be ok
then?”
Izzy shook her head at him frowning, “Not if what’s making you people sick is swamp gas.”
She stood up and marched off into the swamp in the direction they’d come, calling back
over her shoulder, “Make sure he gets to lay somewhere comfortable for a while. He’ll be fine
though.”
The guide watched her leave dumbfounded for a moment before motioning to the two
guards lurking in the swamp at the edge of the clearing. They were thickly built, stocky men. Both
wearing brown and green clothing that blended with the vegetation. The guide waited until they
were close.
“Follow her,” he instructed, “and signal Mister Merlinius. Let him know the doctor he’s
looking for has arrived on Zeradral I as he predicted.”
The guard nodded, “Anything else?”
The guide thought for a moment, “Tell him I’m tripling the price of his trap. This plague is
worse than he described when we agreed to let him introduce it.”
Saluting, the pair went off after Izzy.
Izzy wondered if she’d been too hard on the man. He was after all, just a guide hired to take
her to the sick man and retrieve him. His superiority and knowing glances though had made civility
nearly impossible though. Izzy knew she wasn’t the easiest person to get along with, but she also
knew she hadn’t warranted his suspicion and disdain, when the colony had called her!
The narrow path in front of her was lit by sparsely placed florescent rods stuck in the soggy
ground by hand. One followed the curving winding footway, even in the daytime, by tracking from
one to the next, moving with short careful steps to avoid tripping on any of the thousands of snaking
writhing vines worming their way through the mud and water. Their presence was eerie, like a
thousand zombie serpents crawling around her feet. Izzy shuddered.
Full and complete, the canopy overhead provided complete coverage from the blazing
sun of Zeradral. Only the most vague brownish green glow penetrated the swamp ceiling and
filtered down to the floor below. The pools of water reflected the scant light and produced a ghostly
glow. Wondering why humans could possibly want to live on such a dull depressing planet, Izzy
trudged onward, her shoes sticking and pulling the mud, noisily with each step.
Her head throbbed in the heat and she felt an imposing desire for water, or any kind of
beverage, feeling it ironic to be parched and surrounded by water, muddy though it was. Her ire
that she’d felt for the guide was exaggerated, she thought. The fear and danger of getting the
vaccine from the lab and sneaking it across space to this remote planet was giving her an edge that
she wished to dull. She had always been stubborn, but she could feel herself becoming hard. A
year in Merlinius’s labs developing a vaccine that wasn’t going to be used had done that to her.
She passed a light rod and paused gripping it for a moment, memory passing behind her
eyes. The talks between the Cinnhilif government and Merlinius enterprises had just shut down.
Angus Merlinius had declared the vaccine to be unavailable and the government had, rightly so in
Izzy’s mind, threatened to take it by force. Entrenched on Leofmael IV as he was Merlinius would
have compelled the local government to fight. The billionaire was so involved in the politics of
Leofmael, the system would have had no choice and the bloodshed would have been enormous.
Izzy had developed the vaccine to the worker’s plague with three other scientists. They had
been paid handsomely to compensate them for months on end locked away deep inside Leofmael
station. It had been an easy choice for her though and leaking the vaccine out of the station had
proved easier than she’d hoped. At the time she had congratulated herself for stopping a war.
Izzy paused and looked around herself, making a futile effort to see into the shady swamp.
It must, she guessed be evening by now. She’d been on the planet nearly twelve hours and at
Zeradral I’s solar position it seemed a reasonable guess. She heard something though. The
sloshing sound of her footsteps had seemed to become richer, more voluminous.
“Anyone there?” she called, “Deeter?”
The guide’s name was Deeter Hoff, a name she found hard not to laugh at though she
couldn’t fathom why.
Another few steps taken, returned the sound to it’s singular nature. One foot, then another,
she moved forward toward the next florescent rod hearing nothing out of the ordinary. Very odd,
she thought.
She passed the next two rods with no change and then pressed onward, thinking that there
couldn’t possibly be any further to go. Traveling alone, the way back to the colony seemed much
longer than it had going out. Her hope was rewarded though and moments later she emerged into
the wide open lagoon, in the middle of which sat YenCol Center.
The bubble shaped building protruded upward from the surface of the water and stretched up
toward the canopy, hundreds of feet. Within Izzy could see the bright lights of a small, enclosed,
and yet bustling city. Buildings of several stories lined streets that, were it not for the
environmental dome, would have been deep under the murk.
Izzy had to admit that it was an impressive sight. She walked forward out of the dense
swamp and heard her steps deepen again. She spun around quickly and caught a glimpse of the
foliage rustling off to the left. She waited and then heard footsteps moving at a jog away from her
toward the other side of the lagoon. Watching for a moment she considered, only briefly, following
them.
Deeter Hoff, emerged seconds later, smiling a warm smile that until this moment he’d not
afforded her. He approached her and put a hand on her shoulder in a collegial manner.
“I hope there are no ill feelings between us Doctor Ingerland.”
Izzy shrugged eyeing the man, “No. None at all.” She paused and thought, then spoke, “In
fact I was going to say the same thing.”
The pair began walking toward the edge of the lagoon a hundred meters away, “These past
few days have not been easy for me, so, I’m not exactly in top form. I hope you’ll forgive me.”
Deeter smiled widely, “Of course. They can not have been easy times for you. Travel by
freighter. No baggage. I can only imagine what you’ve been through since leaving,” he paused and
then leaned forward whispering, “Leofmael Station.”
Izzy’s eyes went wide and then looked around as if expecting police, guards, or even Angus
Merlinius himself to suddenly step out of the swamp, “I don’t know what you mean.”
Deeter laughed and his eye twinkled, “No need to worry Doctor. When you contacted us,
while we disputed your claim, we confirmed you were who you said you were. We have friends on
other colonies whom you have, helped.”
Izzy regarded Deeter skeptically, “Well, then you know what I’ve risked coming here.”
“Of course,” he said bowing deeply, “and we thank you for your sacrifice. That you would
do so at the risk of your career, your...safety perhaps. We are all grateful.”
Nodding, Izzy continued toward the water’s edge, “I didn’t have much choice.”
Deeter followed, quickly catching up, “How so?”
She shrugged, “They must have found out how the vaccine was being leaked. We were
suddenly completely shut off from the rest of the station. Nothing went out without being throughly
checked. Nothing.”
Deeter smiled, “Except you yourself.”
“Exactly. Luckily the privacy accorded to women is a powerful thing.”
At the edge of the lagoon was a metal plate, square with no markings. It was raised a few
centimeters from a concrete slab almost it’s exact size but large enough to form a border around the
plate. Deeter stepped forward, placed his foot on the metal plate and then spoke a code aloud.
There was a low groan and the ground beneath their feet began to rumble and shake. Izzy stepped
back cautiously as the lagoon in front of them began to bubble.
A straight concrete edge broke the water’s surface and then a low, long curving corridor
appeared. A doorway before them was shut tight as it rose into place with a resounding crack and
bang. The echo passed throughout the surrounding area. Deeter stood unmoving as if nothing
remarkable had just happened.
The steel door hissed as its airtight seal broke and slow, it opened before them allowing
Izzy a view of the same long white corridor they’d come through to enter the swamp. She could
have sworn it was on the other side of the lagoon though as she knew they’d walked at least
halfway around it’s circumference. She also had no memory of such an exit. At least, she hadn’t
seen the exit they’d used before sink into the lagoon.
“It is a long rotating arm, Doctor Ingerland. It allows ingress and egress from various points
of the colony without the need for long walks around the lagoon.”
Izzy gave him a long look, “But we must have walked halfway around it...”
Deeter nodded apologetically, “Yes, sadly, it was necessary. You see, I wanted a chance to
get to know you before we came upon our man.”
“Who...where is he, by the way?”
“He is being taken care of, I assure you, Doctor.”
Izzy shrugged and walked ahead of Deeter into the pure white hall.
The walkway was deceptively long. They walked for what seemed like an eternity to Izzy.
Deeter chattered about colony issues she was neither interested in nor cared about. She needed to
get the rest of the vaccine to the colony’s chief of medicine and get off Zeradral I.
Izzy reckoned that she had about a Cinnhil week before Merlinius Security tied the missing
supply of vaccine to her and tracked her to the Zeradral system. She needed to get out of the system
as soon as possible.
Deeter noticed her lapse in attention and coughed politely, “Something bothering you,
Doctor Ingerland?”
Izzy shook her head, “No, not really no. The boxes I asked you to deliver to my rooms.
Those contain enough vaccine to help a large portion of your people and get your medical staff on
the road to replicating it. They must get to the chief of medicine immediately.”
“It has already been done, Doctor.”
Izzy stared at the man and nearly tripped at the end of the corridor. She stumbled forward
and out into the artificial daylight of the colony dome. She’d guessed wrong. From the light it
must have been late afternoon.
“You took my boxes?” she asked livid with anger jabbing him in the chest hard. “What gave
you the right to...”
Deeter calmly stepped out of range of her finger and smiled, “Your intent was to help us.
You said you were bringing a vaccine. Since you had no other luggage we assumed the boxes were
the vaccine. If they were not, you meant trouble. Either way, we needed those boxes.”
The logic was sound but Izzy was still angry. She set off at a brisk pace away from Deeter
into the center of the colony.
“Allow me to guide you to...” Deeter called.
“I’ll find it myself!” she yelled over her shoulder.
The Medical Sanctum sat at one edge of the great YenCol dome. The great duraglass walls
allowed full light to enter from one entire side of the complex. Given that the natural light was
limited it helped to get as much as possible. The Sanctum has been built shunning the artificial
daylight of the dome completely opting instead for either soft accent lighting or natural light. Full
fluorescents were used for surgery.
Izzy finally had found something to admire about the colony. As she walked into the
Sanctum she could feel her spine relax as the accent lights bathed her in their soft yellow glow
letting her pupils expand and the tension wash from her head.
She passed through the outer waiting room and nodded to the nurse at the desk who watched
her walk by warily, but had clearly been told she was coming. There were no patients waiting.
Hallways were curved throughout the complex running in compliance with the curvature of
the dome against which the Sanctum was built. The cross hallway she passed down led through the
building and ended in another waiting room. She’d expected to find someone she could ask for
directions inside. Instead she found no one. Swearing under her breathe she walked back to the
first waiting room and stopped at the nurse’s desk.
“I’m looking for the um...”
The nurse looked at her with a cocked eyebrow expectantly.
“...for um, the chief of medicine here.”
The nurse took a deep breathe and ran a cool gaze up and down that made Izzy shiver, “He’s
out.”
The nurse was a thin, angular woman with boney gaunt features. Her greying hair was long
and tied back in a tight bun, wound so that he scalp was being pulled back unnaturally tight. She
looked tired and nervous.
“Then I’ll see anyone really, but I don’t see anyone at all.”
The nurse said nothing.
“I’m Doctor Izzabel Ingerland.”
“Yes. I know who you are.”
“Then I want to be taken to my boxes. Surely they’ve been brought here.”
The woman was sweating now, profusely. She blinked slowly as if in some sort of trance.
“Are you alright?”
The nurse nodded yes and the slumped forward before catching herself and returning
upright, “I’m fine. Please proceed down the hall.”
The nurse stuttered, “...turn left. Roo...room on the right. Door is...open.”
Izzy looked at the woman for a long moment and then took a syringe from her pocket.
Taking a vile from her other she connected the two and leaned forward jabbing the woman in the
neck. She blinked. Without objection the woman leaned back in her chair and her eyes closed.
Color drained back into her face.
Izzy smiled as warmly as she could and patted the woman across the desk, “You’ll be ok.
Seems you had the plague too.”
The nurse opened her eyes and looked at Izzy sadly, “Go, now.”
While she hadn’t committed herself to medicine for the thanks, she thought it would be nice
now and again. At first she was inclined to be a bit annoyed, “I probably saved your life, ma’am.”
The nurse nodded, “Yes. Thank you. Now go!”
There was fear in her eyes. Izzy whispered, “Are you alright.”
Insistence was replaced in the nurses voice with pleading, “Just go. Please!”
Not needing further prodding, Izzy left the desk at a trot and returned to the cross hallway.
She traveled down to the second waiting room that dead ended against the dome wall. She was no
longer calm from the atmosphere of the Sanctum. The place was deserted.
Making the left the nurse proscribed, she traveled until she found a door on the right that
was also open. After four doors, she found it.
The room was lit by a combination of accent lighting and the strange dim glow of the
swampy lagoon outside. A long table filled the center of the room surrounded by padded high backed
black chairs, all of which were empty. Izzy cautiously entered the room and looked out into the
natural landscape beyond the dome wall.
“Hello, Izzy. I’m pleased to have caught up with you and...so much sooner than I think you
probably guessed I would.”
Izzy turned slowly recognizing the deep luscious voice that had soothed and seduced a score
of women. She hated it as it played in her ears and caused a sick shiver down her spine.
The tall muscular man smirked at her his mustache curving on his upper lip as he
unconsciously toyed with his goatee. His hair was jet black, impossibly so, giving him an
artificially suave chiseled look, “Izzy, my darling, it’s been so long.”
“Technically it hasn’t.”
A questioning eyebrow twitched on Merlininus’s forehead.
“We’ve never actually met, Mister Merlinius.”
“Oh please, call me Angus,” he said in a purring tone of voice walking up from the back of
the room where he’d been lurking in shadow.
Izzy retreated further into the room to the dome wall, “No thank you.”
He sat down in a chair and motioned for her to sit.
“I’ll stand thanks.”
Merlinius shrugged, “Suit yourself.”
“I will. What do you want?”
The billionaire shrugged, “Oh nothing much. I’d like my employees not to steal from me.”
Izzy considered denying it but knew she’d look stupid. She was caught and there was no
escape. “People were dying...were going to die. We were sitting on the vaccine over some business
deal!”
Merlinius nodded and paused as if considering her words, “Izzy. Do you mind if I call you
Izzy?”
“Yes.”
“That’s a shame. It’s very pretty, as are you.”
Izzy stared at him coldly, “Look. Arrest me. Sue me. Fire me. I don’t care but I will not be
one of your women.”
Laughing he rose and walked to look out at the lagoon, “My dear, you are not my type. I
like women less intelligent than me and while my intelligence is, I assure you, vast...I’m not willing
to place a wager on a cage match with you.”
Izzy said nothing.
“That was a compliment.”
Again she said nothing.
“No matter how you look at it Izzy, you owe me. I won’t waste time suing you or pressing
charges. Honestly, I don’t need to.”
“Then what?” Izzy asked impatiently, “Shall I just go then?”
Merlinius smiled over his shoulder, shadows draping him in their cloak, “Oh no. No. I
could simply have you disappear. No one would know where you’d gotten to and I could have you
rot in a cell for the rest of your life. I’m very powerful, you see?”
He walked to the other side of the room and watched a long tailed bird glide on a gust above
the dome, “And even that I believe, would not deter you from defying me so let me say this. I have
a job for you Doctor Ingerland.”
“A job?” Izzy asked.
“Yes.”
Merlinius withdrew from his pocket a data card and handed it to her, “I need this delivered
to a contact on Cinnhilif IV.”
“What is it?” she asked taking it from him and turning the small square over in her hands.
“Data. A few schematics for a secret project. Nothing more.”
Izzy dropped it onto the table, “No. Sorry. I’m done working for you.”
Nodding Merlinius walked over and picked it up. He pressed it into her hand and smiled,
“If you don’t. Every soul on this miserable little ball of mud will die.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“My dear I would think by this moment you would clearly know that there are a great many
things I will do, some very horrible and unthinkable even, in order to protect my interests and those of
Leofmael.”
“You’d orchestrate an attack on the colony?”
“Nothing so showy. I’d simply not cure them.”
Izzy laughed, “They have the vaccine, already.”
Merlinius walked to the door of the room, “This is boring me.”
He motioned for her to follow him.
They wound their way through the Medical Sanctum, up several flights of stairs and ended
their impromptu journey after a brief lift to the roof. Over head the dome stretched majestically
over them, the massive lights which produced daylight for the colony burning brilliantly and cool.
The colony was a small bustling city with somewhere around twenty thousand people and the traffic
of the day bore that out.
Merlinius pointed to a factory outside the dome but attached on one side. It was churning a
thick dark smoke into the air at a ferocious pace, “I’ve given the people of Zeradral I some new
technology to test for Merlinius Corp. Forty systems were competing for the tech, and I handed it
to Zeradral.”
Izzy was half afraid he’d push her off the roof and she stayed cautiously back and away
from the man standing on the edge of the roof projecting a god like image.
“Why would you give it to them? What was the catch?”
“Not much. They get to terraform their mud ball into a green paradise and all they had to do
was let me introduce the worker’s plague into their colony.”
Izzy took a step forward nearly succumbing to the urge to strike the man, “You used them to
lure me here?”
“Yes.”
“Well they have the vaccine!”
“To the worker’s plague, yes. And it will ease the pain. Relieve some symptoms. But what
they have is my worker’s plague. An engineered version of the plague you’ve worked so hard to
cure.”
“You’re a monster!”
“Great men are usually called so, yes.”
Merlinius turned from the city to face Izzy, “Deliver my disk, Izzy. Save their lives. I don’t
want them to die, but I need that disk delivered to Cinnhilif IV.”
“Why me?” she asked looking down at the disk in her hand.
“Because you are legitimate, my dear. You know people everywhere...charitable
people...people like you. You will not be given a second glance passing through Cinnhilif Customs,
and upon need I have little doubt you could produce a classroom of equally wonderful individuals
to vouch for you.”
“What is on the disk?”
“I don’t need to tell you. You’re going to do it.”
Izzy closed her eyes and screamed in her head feeling caught, caged, and torn, “I’ll do it.
Tell me what’s on the disk.”
Merlinius smiled, “Weighing the evils. I like you, Izzy.”
Izzy glowered up at him feeling sick.
“On the disk is the complete schematic for the Cinnhilif Grand Council Chambers. Within
the building at any given time are thirty individuals, all adults, no children, plus the council
members themselves.”
Izzy looked into his cold brown eyes wondering what could be in his head.
He stared back as if looking into her soul, “The man whom you are taking that disk to is
working for me.”
“To do what?”
Merlinius smiled, “Connect the dots Izzy. Those men made a disaster of my colony ship.
The galaxy knows it and laughs at me! I’m going to destroy them.”
Izzy gaped at him.
“At the most forty people will die, all adults, all guilty of something. If you don’t do this. I
will let these people die. Men. Women. Children. All are innocent here.”
Izzy closed her hand around the disk. Rationally, her scientific mind made the choice for
her, but her heart shattered.
“Get going now,” Merlinius said quietly, “your shuttle is waiting for you. It will wait for
you and return you to Leofmael Station and your cozy lab when you’ve completed this task.”
She turned and walked away, numb, and disquieted as Merlinius called from behind,
“You’re making the right decision, Doctor Ingerland!”
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