Cardomon: Mellisa and Glatz

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Jody drove a final tractor from Firstown to the Golden Hoard on the morning scheduled for the ship’s departure. It did not have a trailer and carried a lone passenger.

Delevan Glatz was drowsy and irritable, he hated riding in tractors and didn’t want to chatter, he already knew most of Jody’s conversation. He tried to sleep and closed his eyes for the first twenty minutes. The motion was too uneven, the tractor seat uncomfortable.

The colony’s farms slipped past, then the marsh and the machine lumbered into the hills. Glatz let his eyes drift away to the sandstone cliffs slipping by: a boring succession of flat yellow surfaces. He nodded.

He had a right to be tired, female colonists gave him little time for sleep during his visit. He could have returned the night before with Fredegar, but there was Missy SheilaMarie needing company.

The tractor crawled through stony canyons, a whistle of breeze drowned the motor noise.

An alarm made an annoying tone for ten seconds and the tractor lurched to an automatic halt.

Jody opened his eyes: “What did we hit?” He blinked and looked.

Glatz frowned at the sight.

Mellisa stood in front of the machine, one hand held her staff and the other was up palm forward signaling ‘stop!’

Jody got from his seat and went out onto the catwalk: “Doc?”

“I need to speak with Mr. Glatz. Please send him down.”

Jody returned to the door and faced his passenger: “Will you go see the Doc?”

“She’s wasting my time here… What does she want?”

“I don’t know.” He turned away and started forward.

An impatient Mellisa threw down her staff and scrambled up the driver side ladder. She reached the top as Jody got there from the cab. The physician brushed past the young man, rudely crowding him against the handrail and stood in the doorway, faced Glatz: “Get up! I want a private talk with you!”

“I’ll go nowhere with anybody in such a mood… ”

His voice failed when Mellisa drew a large knife from a hip scabbard and pointed it at the center of his face: “Out! Go to the other door! Now!”

Jody responded to the knife and rushed at the physician.

She spun and her free hand yanked the sliding door. It slammed against his reaching forearms and bounced.

Jody recoiled with a yelp and she closed the door, set the lock.

Mellisa returned attention to Glatz: “Get up!”

The merchant rose and crossed to the passenger door, opened it.

“Go on! Go to the ladder!” She moved with knife at eye level.

Glatz complied.

She was close behind. Jody came around the front of the catwalk and Mellisa faced him: “Don’t try to stop me. I might hurt you and I don’t want to. I will see that Mr. Glatz gets to his ship.”

Glatz: “Where are you taking me?”

“For a walk. Get down that ladder!” She gave him a hearty shove and he fell—six feet. The merchant landed on his knees and tore his fine uniform pants.

The physician came down and was on top of him before he got to his feet. She picked up her staff and shouted back to Jody: “Turn it around, go home—there’s nothing you can do.” She faced Glatz and waved towards her left side: “Move! Head for that gully and follow it down between the hills.”

He obeyed.

The drainage led between a pair of sandstone buttresses and opened up as it descended into the wetlands. The soil turned moist and then they splashed in mud and inch-deep water.

They heard the tractor start up and drive away.

Mellisa led from behind: she pointed out the shallows and the hummocks, islands and brushy breaks. On either side were thick mud and silty water, tules hemmed in ponds and flats.

A terrified and helpless Glatz moved in a state of shock. The violence was insult enough, but immersion into the wilderness was even scarier. He experienced a lot of phenomena new to him: soggy shoes, sweat, bug bites, sunburn and blisters, for starts. He removed his gold braided and diamond encrusted jacket and draped it over his shoulder.

A couple hours of progress brought them to the top of an island, ten feet above the mire.

Mellisa indicated a prostrate tree and Glatz sat on the trunk.

His breath heaved and his mind swirled with panic, he saw the knife still in her hand and understood that he was about to die. Inwardly he cursed his libido and vanity—they left him vulnerable—the only reasons he went into the colony without a security officer.

Glatz eyes went up to the horizon and his spirit did a brief rebound. The Golden Hoard was there, just another few miles away… He saw the intervening country: an unbroken sea of muddy water and tules, no high ground at all, only twining channels and wet expanses. It looked hopeless again.

He turned toward his abductor: “Why did you bring me here?”

“We need to get acquainted: you, me and the marsh.”

“The swamp? I’ve seen it now—thanks.”

“Really? What did you see?”

“You should know, you were right behind me.”

“So you do have some powers of observation. What did you see? How many different birds?”

“I got no margin on birds. What do I know about birds?”

“I’m asking you. We only saw a fraction of them, I’ve identified over three hundred species unique to this wetlands.”

“You must be pleased.”

“I was. Then I saw in your development plans a water project that diverts the major headwaters stream. Without water the wetlands become dry lands.”

“Did you bring me here to watch me cry over that? One less swamp is what I see.”

Mellisa stared cold silent eyes and Glatz realized he may have pushed back too hard—the knife was only a foot in front of his nose.

“You really don’t care?”

“For birds? No—they’re everywhere. When I corner the market, then I’ll care.”

“I’m talking about life—the planet. I live here and I love this place. You are a dangerous predator, shouldn’t be on the loose—not on my world!”

Glatz snorted derisively: “Now I have your opinion, for whatever it’s worth.”

“I wish I had the courage… ”

He hung his head, closed his eyes and waited for the knife.

“I don’t. Probably a good thing. I bet your ship has powerful weapons—they would retaliate, wouldn’t they? Against the entire colony.”

Glatz looked up again: “I can burn your town off of the planet—every last tamned colonist, turn ya all to biscuits. And why shouldn’t I?”

“Because you see profits here. I’m equally certain that the Planetary Foundation is watching your mission. They disapprove of genocide, I believe.”

“Don’t count on them—I’m a Trustee!”

Mellisa shook her head: “The entire Galaxy is a tangle of influence and connections. I know a little of your life—my father is Reginald Shannon.”

“Oh,” his eyes went back to the knife in his face: “I’ve heard of you… ”

“Then you know that I’m serious. And I’m going to stop you—cut so deeply into your precious margins that you bleed away all the profit. We’ll see how long Glatz Enterprises holds out.”

“Good luck.”

“You will be needing the luck, soon. I’m going to leave you here.”

“You do lack courage. I’ll die without a guide. If you believe what you say you should just kill me.”

“You won’t die. You told us you read maps.” She opened a breast pocket and removed a folded paper: “That topographic data we shared… Here it is again.” She spread it and handed it to him, came behind, leaned over his shoulder and pointed out the route. She spoke at length.

“That’s too much to remember.”

Mellisa gave him a pencil: “Make notes. I’ll start at the beginning: Down this way—south—follow this line of reeds until you are directly opposite that tree stump. Look up—along my finger—see the stump. That gets you out there. Then you go west and cross a clearwater channel, you should find two mossy boulders at the right spot… here, on the map… ” she talked on for ten minutes.

Glatz wrote furiously: notes on the back of the map and line figures on its face. He wrote with the paper across his thigh, the pencil poked through and stabbed him repeatedly. All the while he felt the knife, she rested her hand on his spine, the back of the blade rubbed the back of his neck.

Mellisa picked up her staff and stood in front of him, took a final look: “You’ll remember this day, and me. Likely we’ll never meet again. I’ll oppose your operations and maybe run you out. Your margin here must be slender to start with, I will undermine it in any way that I can.

“As a Public Health officer I am duty bound to advise you against drinking the marsh water. The microbes will turn your guts inside out—it’s gruesome.” This was a lie, intended to make his ordeal worse.

She turned away and went down the slope east, disappeared between reeds at the edge of a pond full of black water.

Glatz looked at the map, looked ahead at dark water, at the reeds and the stump a quarter-mile beyond.

One step forward, his left foot disappeared into the water and he felt the semi-solid bottom. Bubbles arose, they smelled of rotten eggs. His shoe stuck. He pulled and struggled, it didn’t yield. He put the map in his teeth while he knelt and unfastened the shoe, wriggled his foot loose. He splashed up to his whiskers and the map smudged.

Then his right shoe stuck and he repeated the mess.

Eventually Glatz waded barefoot in hip deep water. The heavy jacket on his shoulder was a burden, it was wet and chafed the base of his neck. His underwear bunched up and made a raw hot spot of his crotch.

The sludgy liquid was up to his waist, holes dropped him to the armpits.

It was brilliant with sun glare, his eyes burned and the afternoon turned hot. He was thirsty, surrounded by water he feared to drink.

Glatz’s emotions seesawed—exhaustion and mucky misery bred despair, the idea of just laying down in the ooze and disappearing had a certain charm. But he imagined water-rats, maggots and leeches, skin-eating molds and fought his way to survival by thinking of justice. The woman was going to pay—least of all for the diamonds and gold lost with the jacket he discarded in the first couple of miles.

Glatz enjoyed punishing disrespectful women, he indulged revenge fantasies on Mellisa. That propped him up for another hour.

The sun moved ominously near to the horizon and the despair returned. After all of the struggle he feared a bitter, wet, ending.

The reeds were twice his height, cloaked the sight of the Golden Hoard until he was nearly at her flanks. The ground rose above the level of the waters, grass filled in for the reeds and his ship loomed ahead.

Sentries spotted him and shouted as he collapsed in heaving exhaustion.

Jody watched the two figures move down the creekbed until they passed behind a screen of vegetation. His forearms throbbed from the slam of the tractor door and his head was spinning through a variety of responses.

He went back into the cab and started the motor, turned the tractor around, a complicated maneuver atop the narrow road, ten minutes of back and forth jogs.

Jody needed an authority figure, there was only one in the colony: Homer.

The tractor had a radio, but it was short-range, for job-site communication. And the other colony radios were all on the tractors working in the fields—nobody that Jody cared to report to. He drove past the farms and on toward town.

Half an hour later he drew up inside the tractor barn to look for the Administrator.

Homer was in his office, he went out into the barn at the tractor’s approach and looked up.

The machine stopped, Jody stepped out onto the catwalk: “The Doc grabbed Delevan Glatz!”

“I’ve just been in contact with his ship. They told me you didn’t get there. What happened?”

Jody climbed down: “She turned up out on the road. In the hills near the swamp. Came into the tractor and pulled a fat knife on him. She was in some kind of a state!”

“She took him away?”

“Out to the swamp—she said she would get him to his ship—didn’t say ‘alive’. But that was the direction they went.”

“Can you get people?—let’s do a search. I’ll contact the Golden Hoard again.” Homer went back into his office.

A dozen colonists made a cross-country sweep starting at the location Mellisa and Glatz vanished. Four hours into the search they discovered the merchant’s jacket.

Then Homer received a message that Glatz arrived at the Golden Hoard, safe. The Administrator rode a tractor to the ship to return the precious mud spattered garment. He estimated the jacket’s value exceeded all of the material assets in the colony, more dirty money than he ever saw in one place.

A squad of officers stood outside the ship. Fredegar waited for Homer to reach the ground. He received the soiled jacket and escorted the Administrator into the vessel, to a small compartment.

Glatz sat behind a desk. He was freshened and in clean new garments identical to the ruined outfit—even the jacket.

Homer and Fredegar took seats. Glatz had a bottle of single-malt whiskey from Manton—the Galaxy’s finest. He offered a drink to the Administrator—declined. The merchant had a small glassful over shaved ice. It wasn’t his first of the evening.

“I have been violated! Grossly assaulted by one of your colony. What do we do?”

“We don’t know all of the facts yet… ”

“Only one important fact to think about: that madwoman tried to kill me! I need satisfaction. Where is she?”

Homer spread his hands helplessly: “I don’t know—she’s good with the terrain. But we will find her, there is no place to go.”

“My time is my most valuable commodity—personally I deal in time, money and power. My time—you understand?”

Homer nodded.

“I’m staying on for a few days. I want to give you the chance to bring me that madwoman—to me. She’s going to face my justice—my time is for my justice. Got that?”

Homer nodded: “Our basic plan—the model for our system: it guarantees rights and legal protections.”

Glatz put his glass down and hissed a breath: “Legal protections? You don’t have any laws!”

“Not yet. The crisis will force the development of a code. We’re good at building things. We can satisfy you.”

“I doubt it.”

Fredegar entered the talk: “Delevan, we came here on a Foundation mission… ”

“So we did.”

Fredegar addressed Homer: “It is in our best interests to cultivate the rule of Law everywhere. Mr. Glatz has business abroad in the Galaxy. We can postpone departure for… five days, no longer. We can even resume trade. In that time we expect solid progress: the woman must be captured. And we must see demonstrations of effective administration of justice. We will not accept token gestures and sweet assurances.”

“Five days? What do you expect?”

Glatz: “Creative justice.” He still had a pencil given him earlier in the day. He took it from the desktop and snapped it in half.