Meryl had always been an early riser, not necessarily a morning person perhaps, but all of her life she'd been in the habit of getting up around dawn. As a child she'd been woken by a servant or governess on her fathers orders. The man's life ran like a well-oiled machine, structured, dignified, and he was not a man who would not countenance his children becoming lazy lay-abouts. In college Meryl had been in the habit of taking her classes early in the morning so that she could work in the afternoon and then study in the evening, as an adult the habit hadn't changed due to the hours the office kept, and even on the wild frontier Meryl was still accustomed to rising early; she had a lot to do in a day. So she was up a little before dawn, wishing to make it out of the Grounds before the house woke up. She dressed quickly and quietly in the dark, packed a small bag with a long-disused analysis kit and some other useful tools and shook her best friend and partner awake.
"C'mon, we need to get going," she whispered, shaking Milly gently. "I don't want to wake anyone."
Millie rose reluctantly as ever. The dear girl was not what anyone would call an early riser, which surprised Meryl since Milly came from farmer stock and those were some people who lived to see the crack of dawn. The two of them dressed and snuck down into the kitchens to "borrow" a small sack of portable lunch items, then Meryl showed Millie one of her favorite back exits; the one that was out of sight of any of the main rooms or bedrooms in the main house, leading along a wall to a narrow passageway between two stone buildings, past the Yard where the Tomases were trained for riding, and on to the stables.
The head hostler was already up and at his business of course, field and farmhands kept farm hours; up at dawn and work till dusk. Meryl cast a lingering, regretful look at one particular pen until the man straightened from his work and spied her, his aged face lit up with pleasure.
"Miss Meryl!" he said, in real delight. "I'd heard rumor you were going to be returning at last, it's great to see you lass!"
"It's great to see you too Mister Clyde," Meryl said with a warm smile. A handshake wouldn't do for the vigorous old man and the short insurance girl was wrapped up in a rib-cracking hug. When she was at last released the man asked
"What can I get for you and your lovely friend?"
"Oh, where are my manners? This is Millie, my partner and best friend," Meryl said introducing the two of them then got on to matters. "We need two tomases for a long ride this morning."
The man didn't evidence much more curiosity than a raised eyebrow at her request but obviously knew well enough not to ask questions; what he didn't find out now, he wouldn't have to lie about later.
"Well, none of these beasties are a match for dear old Temper," he said heartily, but with a look of pitying commiseration on his face as he caught Meryl looking again at a particular stall. "Haven't had the heart to put a new beastie in old Temper's stall, not with the way things fell out for you missy."
Meryl smiled a little sadly at that and said
"You don't have to hold it empty on my account, I probably won't be here for much longer than it takes to give my well-wishes at the wedding. But you're right; it just doesn't seem the same in here without him."
The man ordered a nearby boy, groggily rubbing sleep from his eyes to take out Seftu and Corth and get them tacked up. He was obeyed with alacrity while Meryl filled up a water pack and some canteens to add to the saddle packs. Millie and Meryl, long accustomed to long tomas rides settled into the saddles and were off just as the sun was halfway above the horizon.
"Meryl?" Millie asked once they were well on thier way down a dusty trail wending its way through the different kinds of orchards laid out in neat rows along their plantation.
"Yes Millie?" Meryl asked, turning her head to regard her friend.
"I got the feeling that you didn't want anyone else along on this trip..." she said hesitantly.
"You're right, this is one trip I'd prefer to make alone, except that that would be foolish. There quite a bit of desert between us and Sandiville and there are people who would be more than willing to attack a lone traveler, especially when that traveler has a high chance of being wealthy. Lots of rich people here as well as hands willing to spend their salary as soon as they can make it."
"Is that the only reason?" Millie questioned.
"No, I'd also like you along for support. I'm not sure what I'm going to find when I get there and would just as soon have another pair of eyes... and another pair of guns if it comes to that. I don't think it will but there's no saying for certain."
"Are we on a secret mission?"
"No, private business," Meryl replied enigmatically.
"If you needed another pair of guns we should have asked Mister Vash to come along," Millie argued.
"No way," Meryl said flatly. "He's enough of a lighting rod as it is; I don't want to add the possibility of glycerin and other explosive material. Besides, he deserves a break; there aren't likely to be any bounty hunters brave enough to risk the potent and long-reaching wrath of my family by causing a stir at one of the biggest formal events this place has hosted in years. Vash will have a rare opportunity to take a breather without having to worry about being ambushed, and after all he's been through recently I think he deserves it. He should be fine back there as long as he doesn't let slip his real identity."
They rode in silence for a while longer, the suns gradually gaining in height and intensity the air went from cool the tepid to warm as the pinks and oranges faded from along the horizon. It wouldn't be long before the scouring eyes opened up; meaning that the heat would become so intense that it would feel like a suffocating blanket, sucking the breath and moisture out of the body.
"We've been riding for almost an hour and we still haven't reached the edge of your farm, this property is pretty big!" Millie noted in awestruck tones.
"It's big alright," Meryl agreed. "It takes a lot to run it."
"I grew up on a farm too, I had no idea that our backgrounds were so similar."
"I'm not sure about that, I'm sure you've guessed by now that this place isn't a tiny family-run farm... no offense or anything. The Trevino's might run it but for a lot of the manual labor they outsource, bring in desperate migrant workers who will work for a pittance of a wage and then let them go when they are done with them. That was another thing that my father and I do not agree on. I have this odd notion that people deserve to be treated well and make a decent wage so that they can support their families." Meryls voice was laced with heavy irony, she clearly did not approve of the way her father ran things.
"You and your father... you don't act much like me and mine do," Millie said hesitantly.
"No, I imagine we don't," Meryl said and left it at that.
Millie looked sideways at her partner and friend. Vash was right, Meryl played her cards too close. There were obviously more than a few unresolved issues between Meryl and her family.
Another long silence stretched in which they finally reached the border of Trevino Vineyards. A lone dusty trail wended its way through scrubby brush, cactus patches and gritty hard-packed dirt and Meryl started the two of them down it without comment. After another hour, in which the weather shot to sweltering, they reached a place where the road widened out and Meryl abruptly reigned her tomas to a stop.
"We're almost there," she said to Millie. "If you don't mind, I'd like to circle around that rock outcrop over there and get a better look before we ride in."
"Sure," Millie said agreeably. "Why so cautious though?"
"Experience. I's rather have done something like this unnecessarily than not to have done it and later wish that I had."
"Makes sense... sort of," Meryl smiled whitely at her friend and the two of them led the tomas over to the shade of the rocks, watering them and giving them a rest while Meryl climbed to the top of one pile and nestled herself in a cook of a nearby taller pile, hidden away from observers on the road and indiscernible (even in white) from the town. Out of a pack she hauled out a very heavy, very expensive pair of sighters; electronic digital-image binoculars that could not only zoom in and out feet away but see at night, give exact distance and range in a little screen to the side, switch to heat or infra-red sight, take pictures in any of its modes and a host of other things as well.
"They'd be more useful if they weren't so damned heavy," she muttered as she set up the special stand for them. "As well as being tetchy as all get-out; hit them wrong and you have send them in for repairs."
"Wow!" Millie said, when Meryl handed them over to her partner to play with after she was done. "This is a nifty toy! Where did you find something like this?"
"I know a guy who knows a guy," Meryl said smugly. "Fancies himself a bit of an "Indiana Jones" kind of fellow. He actually runs around in khakis and a fedora if you can believe it. I tipped him off about that one place we found that first time with..."
"Nicholas, Meryl. It's okay. You don't have to walk on eggshells on my account," Millie said.
"Well, you could say he was grateful... you could also say that the suns rise in the west. He sent me these (and a few other useful items I might have mentioned) as a token of his appreciation; I sent him out there because I figured since it was closed down there was only so much trouble he could get into. He seems to have hit paydirt anyway; I saw a picture of him on the cover of Time Magazine a while ago." All of this while they packed away the special sighters.
"Well, I don't see anything overtly suspicious," Meryl said. "The situation looks normal enough. Unfortunately I don't know the actual area well enough to make a perfectly accurate judgment; they could be undercover, or dressed in plain clothes."
"Who could be, Meryl?" Millie asked curiously.
"I think that the groom might have brought along a few extra guests who aren't on the list; they might just be here to scope out the area or they could be up to something. I don't know and we'll have to be careful if we ask around. First off let's just ride in and see what we can see."
The town wasn't much to write home about; in fact it looked a lot like every other one-tomas town they'd visited in recent years; a single unpaved dusty mainstreet with stores and shops lining either side of it; a grocer, a dry goods, a butcher, a baker, a post office and stationers, a saddlery, a gun-shop and the inevitable saloon. There was a well in the middle of town, some houses on the outskirts and that was about it.
"Where to first Meryl?" Millie asked as they rode quietly down one side of the mainstreet.
"I think we should check the well first," Meryl said, leading the two horses over to the well and trough in the center of town. "Pretend you're watering them, but use the stuff from our packs just in case." Millie looked a question at her friend but acquiesced with a shrug. Meanwhile under cover of fiddling with her canteen, Meryl pulled out two vials and a sampling strip, then pulled up a bucket of well-water.
"Done," she said after a moment. "It'll take a while to know anything so lets keep looking."
Millie looked sideways at her partner as she bent to tie her shoe... only Meryl didn't wear the kind of boots that one tied on, instead she seemed to be surruptiously doing something under the cover of her cloak. There was a small whir and a click as she took a picture of something.
"Hey Millie, go stand over there," Meryl said brightly. "Back up a little... little more... perfect!" Meryl took a picture with a small hand-held camera. "Okay now let's get one over here... isn't this an exciting vacation?"
Millie tried not to look puzzled until she saw the small knot of observers sitting on a nearby stoop out of the corner of her eye. Meryl was even inventing some kind of cover story... she must be worried about something.
Meryl took several more picutres of Millie in differnt places and Millie figured that her friend was just using the tourist bit as a ruse to get pictures of whatever it was that interested her without arousing suspicions or curiousity from passersby. She also took several more pretenses to scuff at the ground for something then gestured that the two of them should step into a nearby diner with the words
"Since we're here, let's have lunch."
"Okay Sempai," Millie said brightly.
"...heard that Maffie Owen's little boy Zeks caught sick with it shortly afterward," one old matron at the counter was saying to her best friend. Meryl sat down at the counter next to them and the waitress, a tired-looking woman with bleach-blond hair and a cigarette hanging from her mouth asked what they'd have.
"We'll take our order to go please," Meryl said immediately. "Two specials."
Millie looked again at her partner in puzzlement but shrugged. She probably had her reasons for doing whatever it was she was doing.
"Has the doc been able to figure out what it is that's making all the kids so sick?" the second questioned and Meryl frowned, then quickly covered it with a smile.
"No," said the first. "He's stumped. Said he's never seen anything like it before."
"Odd that it only seems to be affecting kids and the elderly," the second noted over her bite of apple pie. Meryl nodded, looking momentarily grim and pushed away from the table taking the lunches with her.
"Come-on," she said briskly. "I'd like to have a word with the town doc, then we'll have to head back. I think I've got all I need here anyway."
The visit to the tiny infirmary was a little unsettling. There were a lot of sick children in the beds, old men and women slouched in chair and reclining on benches.
"Howdy," said the doctor, a slim goat-visaged man with kindly yet piercing eyes.
"Hello, I'm from the Bernardelli Insurance Society. This is Millie Thompson my partner. We'd like to ask you a few questions if we might..."
From there Meryl proceeded to glean the man for information in her usual thorough and efficient manner, taking everything down in her notebook for later reference. She concentrated mainly on the illness sweeping through the town; who were the people afflicted, what area of town did they live in, what activities did they pursue. Then went on to get exact symptoms in all of the patients, what body and blood types did they have, which systems were affected first or worst and so on. It wasn't until half an hour later that she seemed satisfied with her questions and thanked the man for his time.
"Millie," Meryl said softly on their way to pick up their tomases from the nearby trough. Her voice was soft but her tone urgent. "We have a tail at four o' clock and another at seven. Observer on the roof."
"I see them," Millie said tightly. "I told you we should have brought Mister Vash; if nothing else he makes a great distraction."
"Or a decoy," she agreed.
"What should we do? If we ignore them will they go away do you think?"
"Hard to say," Meryl said after a pause to consider. "They might. I doubt they have standing orders to eliminate people out of hand on a suspicion, and I took pretty good care to hide my real purpose here. They probably just have orders to tail all newcomers into town and keep an eye on them. Our guests must be expecting trouble. Nah. We'll keep up the ruse; I doubt they'll have an ambush laid out to exterminate us in the direction we're going."
"Exterminate Meryl?" Millie said, alarmed.
I knew she'd been playing her cards too close to her chest! Millie thought. For whatever personal reason she might have, Meryl felt the need to keep quiet about whatever this little side-investigation was about. She'd kept very hush-hush on the details, even with Millie, and Meryl told her everything.
I'll bet it has something to do with her family, Millie thought. Meryl is worried about them for some reason. I can't fathom why; with all that fertile farmland and that enormous mansion and all those silk dresses and things the business has to be doing well... But Meryl wasn't in the habit of worrying over nothing either; and she certainly wouldn't go out of her way to do whatever it was she was doing without having a solid reason for it.
"Meryl, you should tell me what's going on," Millie said.
"I will later. I don't want you getting caught up in it if things go bad. If you don't know anything about that thing then chances are they'll just let you go... Although with Mori-Korin's boys I'm not so sure about that anymore. Look, if anyone asks you anything just tell them that I came to show you around. In fact... yeah..."
Meryl raised her voice a little, for the benefit of the people following her.
"You might not believe it my friend, but you are wandering the streets of my rebellious youth!"
"Rebellious Meryl?" Millie questioned, trying to take her cue from her partner and falling in with the act. They'd had to bluff their way out of some tight situations before so they were accustomed to working things out in the spur of the moment.
"Well let's just say that when I wanted to get out and experience something other than academia I'd sneak out to the stables, saddle up Temper and sneak away here for a couple of hours. You'll never believe it but I was a bit of a wild child..." and Meryl went on to spin a yarn involving her governess in hot pursuit of her, a herd of tomases from a tomas-drive passing through and a few women of negotiable virtue in a nearby saloon. There was no sign of pursuit or watchers as they rode out of town towards Trevino Vineyards.
"What's this all about Meryl?" Millie demanded as soon as she was sure they were alone.
"I can't tell you that," Meryl said, sighing heavily. "At least not yet. It's not that I don't trust you, you know I do, but I have a conflict of loyalties to wrestle with presently."
"Alright," Millie said acceding reluctantly to Meryl silent plea to let it be okay. "I guess I can go with that for now."
"Thanks Millie," Meryl said, looking relieved.
"You should at least tell mister Vash though," Millie insisted. "You know that he of all people can keep a secret and the way things are going it looks like this could turn out to be trouble. You might need his help."
"You're right about the trouble part anyway. I should just keep my nose out and let them make their mistakes except that I have this darned conscience nagging me," she grumbled, sounding very vexed. "Well we should go anyway, if I'm late for that damned dressmaker's appointment my stepmother will have kittens. For the record, they're wrong if they think they're measuring me for a bridesmaids dress for my sisters wedding; I'll show up and give my well wishes. I'll even smile and pretend to play nice but I'll be damned if I have to participate in this farcical ceremony. Besides... did you see the colors that she picked out for her "spring theme?" uhg..."
Talk turned to lighter things on the way home and arrived shorlty before noon. They dropped the tomases off at the stables, taking care to remove the saddle and give a rub-down themselves before parting ways. Millie was off to lunch at the manor and Meryl said she'd walk to the dressmakers.
I hope she knows what she's doing, Millie thought as she looked back over her shoulder to see Meryl patting the neck of one of the tomas at the fence near one of the stable-buildings.
I still have time, Meryl thought consideringly. She looked covertly about her again but there was no-one who could see her so she quickly ducked between the building and the full-wood door of the fence. With a feeling of nostalgia for days passed she crammed down in between the bales and boxes, slid and scooted her still-small form underneath the shell of an old jeep that had been hidden under a tarp for as long as she could remember, and finally after pausing for a few minutes to listen for anyone moving about trying to detect her (another old habit to keep all of her old secret hiding places a secret) she slid out the floorboards under the middle of the jeep then rolled and dropped down into the tiny crawlspace below.
The sliding trapdoor that led to a tiny hidden crawlspace was located in the floor of what was now a garage and storage shed for outmoded equipment, farming implements and other various paraphernalia that an estate this size tended to accumulate over the course of time. Meryl had discovered it at a young age in the process of hiding from one of the more horrid of the governesses her father (and later her stepmother) had hired to raise her in the appropriate manner. The old woman had been of the "spare the rod, spoil the child" school of governance and Meryl had hated her with a passion, taking any opportunity she could to get away from the old womans tyranny even if had meant a tanning later that was twice as bad as what the old woman would have given her.
I think in the original plans for this old rock, this place was supposed to be a shelter from the dust storms, before they got the field up and running, she thought absently as she paused to listen for any movement nearby. It wouldn't do to give away such a useful hiding place now when she might later need it to save her life rather than merely hide away from a mean governess.
The estate grounds, not to mention the manor house itself, had undergone several changes from its somewhat humble roots. Each successive generation of Trevino had seemed to take it upon themselves to change, modify, or add on to the enormous pile that the family resided in as well as the outbuildings. These changes, all without consulting the original blueprints, had lead to making the place a veritable labyrinth of secret cubbies, hidden rooms or passages, and concealed exits. Meryl, who had taken it upon herself to dodge her governesses for some much-needed free-time growing up, knew a lot of them. She wasn't sure that she knew all of them, but she knew a good number. She'd picked this one, not for it's location near the stables, but for the lock it had from the inside.
She squeezed down and in with wriggle of her shoulders and a twist of her hips and thought
Funny, I remember it being a lot bigger.
She squeezed herself into the cramped, dank little hole, made certain there was no way for any light to peek out to the surface, and pulled out the ancient analysis device that her friend had pirated from an old ship. The thing could do all of the things that it took a fully equipped crime lab to do now days; chemical analysis, comparisons, DNA testing... you name it, all in a device about the size of an average hardback novel. Any federal Marshal would probably give their right arm for one.
She loaded the samples (including the surreptitious tissue samples from the patients at the clinic) that she'd gathered from the town and set it to analyze its molecules, looking for something in particular. She was secretly praying she wasn't going to find what she knew she was entirely likely to find. She knew that it was probably going to take a little while for it to find (or hopefully not find) what she was looking for; a simple chemical analysis would have only taken a few seconds, a DNA analysis only a little longer, but she was going farther than that, looking at the very particles that made up the molecules in the samples and that usually took longer.
After about twenty minutes or so, Meryl started to fidget, worrying that she'd be late for her appointment but she stayed put; as soon as she left for her appointment she knew very well that she wouldn't have the unsupervised free time afterwards to come back and check and she had to know for sure. At last the thing pinged and announced that its analysis was complete. Meryl quickly scanned the results...
Her heart plummeted. There had been more protons than electrons detected in the molecules of well over half of her water and sand samples and in all of the tissue samples. Nuclear decay was occurring; the protons were breaking off into smaller molecules; and in the case of the organic samples, cancers were developing. In short... nuclear radiation poisoning.
Meryl muttered a long string of such vituperation under her breath as would turn the air blue cursing Mori-korin and her father both for their short-sighted idiocy.
How could they? How could he? she thought, feeling sick with a sense of betrayed honor. He promised that the family would always be responsible for that thing, that they were the stewards of it and under their purview would never allow it to reach beyond its means, would never allow it to harm innocent people. He promised that it was the family's responsibility to see that it was forever shielded. How could they not only fail in that, but not have even enough honor to warn or evacuate the nearest town?! Those rat-bastards!
Meryl was not going to let them get away with it.
I'll bet it's mostly that Dylan Mori-Korin's fault, she thought furiously. He probably thought that since he was marrying into the family and was the future heir and steward of Trevino Vineyards he could just do whatever he wanted.
But my father doesn't exactly have one foot in the grave, she thought. When I take my findings to him he'll be sure to turn whatever is happening around. He'd do anything to avoid disgracing the family name; if he doesn't want to cooperate with his own responsibilities then I'll just remind him of the scandal that would commence announcing the mysterious "illness" going on in the nearby town and where it comes from. He may be a business man, but I'm sure he'll do the right thing.
That still, small, cynical little voice in her head told her not to be so sure about that.
Better make a back-up plan just in case he's less than cooperative.
A.N. Sorry I took so long to post this, but i started college again and sort of just forgot to post it. So here it is, the plot thickens... wow, this thing now has an actual plot, sort of. Please leave a contribution in the little box (or you can just tell me what you thought and pester me for the next chapter, whatever works for you).
Nightheart.