Mr Potts' eye twitched. "I suppose you mean to try to give my girl some kind of medicine."
"Believe me, Mr. Potts, you don't want to do anything to prevent me from vaccinating your girl."
Dr. Rhodes took a breath. He concentrated to still his thumping heart. He realized he was dealing with a very fervent follower of Zeb Griffin.
"I know they are tiny robots in that medicine. What if I think you and the United Systems are using this blight as an excuse to use those tiny robots to plant an idea in my girl's mind, to grip her brain so she can't think for herself, so she has to think like any other person wearing the United Systems uniform?"
Dr. Rhodes sighed. "You can't actually believe that. Listen to what you're saying. You wouldn't dare believe such a thing if you had witnessed half of what I have concerning this blight."
Mr. Potts shook his head. "Wouldn't I? I'm no fool. I've learned well enough that a man can't trust anything the United Systems has to say. There are always hidden secrets and shrouded reasons whenever it comes to the United Systems."
"I'm only a doctor. I don't wear a United Systems uniform. I am no civil servant. I'm no bureaucrat looking to reappraise your home before demanding that you pay a tax. I'm not concerned with giving you any citation because your girl might've missed too many days at school. I'm only here to help your girl. I'm only here to help your family escape the blight."
Mr. Potts waved for the doctor to follow him. "I've got something I want to show you."
A portion of Dr. Rhode's mind shouted at him not to follow Mr. Potts around to the back of the home, that he had to always be on guard, that he could not trust any settler he wished to save. But he was tired, and he failed to act upon the suspicion as a follower of Zeb so easily might. He felt exhausted after having for so long wrestled with the morality and the self-righteousness of the Griffin settlers over something as simple as a vaccination, over a medicine that would save their lives from a horrific disease.
Dr. Rhodes was not surprised to see as he stepped behind the home that Mr. Potts had unholstered his gun and placed its sights upon him. He was, however, surprised by the hole dug in the back of the yard. He was a doctor, and he instantly recognized the threat implied by the hole's dimensions. He thought he had seen it all since tracing the source of the blight, since the United Systems delivered him upon Geralt to do what he could to vaccinate its settlers. Evidently, he had not.
"Really? You greet me with a grave? You can't be serious, Mr. Potts. You can't be so stupid."
"How did you think I would welcome you?" Mr. Potts sneered.
The doctor's shoulders slumped. "I've devoted everything to help fools like you resist the blight. I'm the poor soul who drives through these grasses filled with the sickness, begging parents to let me give their children the medicine they need to have a chance to survive against the alien disease. Every home I call on greets me with scorn. And this is how you choose to greet me. You greet me with an open grave."
Mr. Potts kept his gun aimed at the doctor's face. "I want to make sure you understand what's waiting for you if my Maggie, my Marigold, gets sick after getting your shot. I want you to be sure about what I have waiting for you if you try to brainwash my girl to think like the United Systems."
"Go to hell."
Mr. Potts blinked at the doctor's response. The hand holding the gun trembled. He had not dug that grave to motivate a representative of the United Systems to so boldly respond.
"What did you say?"
"I told you to go to hell," and Dr. Rhodes passed that package of photographs showing the horrific forms of men and women transformed by the blight at the settler's feet. "You have no right threatening me with an open grave."
"You've come to my home!"
Dr. Rhode's smile twisted crooked. "Your home? The United Systems supplied every bit of lumber for your home, gave you every counter, sink, vanity and faucet. The United Systems gave you all the concrete for the foundation, all the wire for your electricity. The United Systems gave you every shingle for the roof, every carpet for your floors. They gave you the land to set your home upon. You only had to build it. All you had to do was lift a hammer, or weld a seam. Yet all you people of Zeb claim it all belongs to you, that everything has been supplied and built by only your hands. You all so easily forget that it was all given to you."
Dr. Rhodes held his chin high as Mr. Potts' finger danced about the gun's trigger.
"I won't listen to you defame us. Your kind is always defaming us."
Dr. Rhodes spit at Mr. Potts' feet. "How many worlds have been spoiled by the followers of Zeb? How many colonies founded by those who call that idiot their teacher still stand?"
"I won't listen to any more filth seep out of your mouth. I'm warning you."
"How many more worlds will be squandered by the teachings of Zeb?" Dr. Rhodes could not go quiet. "This is the closest thing to Eden any of the starships have found since our engines made their first jump to the stars. It's the very thing we've been searching for since wasting our home world so long ago. Your are given such a gift, and yet you would jeopardize all of it so that your little girl doesn't have to face the sting of a needle, a pinch of something far larger than her, of something far larger than you. Half of this world has already burned, and you still threaten me with an open grave."
"I'm warning you."
Dr. Rhodes took a step closer to the gun. "You're all such idiots. Don't you see? Don't you realize the United Systems is orbiting overhead in their starliners? Don't you know they're sitting in their air-conditioned chambers just hoping one of you murders me? They're just waiting for the blight to finish all of you off so they can burn everything clean and swoop down to take whatever's left of you construction. Why do I even bother with folk as ignorant as you? Zeb Griffin be damned."
"I'm not telling you another time."
Dr. Rhodes walked up to Mr. Potts, walked so close that the barrel of that gun rested against his forehead. "Stop groveling. Show me the courage and the strength all the folks of Zeb are constantly bragging about. Pull that trigger. Show me the legendary stupidity. Put me in that grave. Doom your girl to the blight."
Mr. Potts' forehead was wet with sweat. He wanted to hear no more from the strange doctor who wasn't wise enough to fear his weapon. "Get off of my property."
"Not until I vaccinate your daughter."
"Get off my land!"
Dr. Rhodes grinned. "You're not worth it. None of you are. To hell with your girl. Let her swell and burst while you watch her transformed into an alien weed. To hell with her!"
Hanson Potts pulled the trigger a few seconds after Dr. Rhodes turned his back and took the stepped towards the front of the home and the magcar that waited to take the doctor to his next stop. The laser hummed for a fraction of a moment. Hanson hardly saw the blur of light that flashed from the gun's barrel, that blur of light that pierced through Dr. Rhode and vaporized his heart. Dr. Rhodes died in an instant, but he refused Hanson Potts the courtesy of falling forward into that open grave the settler of Zeb had dug with only the intention to threaten. Hanson's numb hand dropped the weapon. Hanson had never killed a man. He had never fired his gun at anything but a shooting range target. And now he had killed a doctor sent by the United Systems.
Hanson didn't look into the doctor's face as he grabbed the corpse's ankles and pulled the body into the grave. He panted as he hurried to shovel and refill the grave. He expected the United Systems to fall upon him at any moment. He was even further terrified when the United Systems did not.
"What have you done, Hanson?"
Lacadia interrupted Hanson before her husband finished closing the grave.
"You didn't hear the things he said, Lacadia."
Lacadia picked the package of those terrible photographs from the ground. She gasped at what those images contained. Her face paled as she looked upon what was left of those bodies contaminated with infection. She scratched her arms until her nails drew blood. She scratched until Han
son tossed his shovel aside and buried Lacadia in his arms to prevent his wife from doing further harm.
Hanson gripped Lacadia closer. "You'll see that it will best in the end that I killed him. He was from the United Systems. He told lies. He tried to deceive us to get to our Marigold. His medicine would've taken Marigold away. I couldn't let him do that, Lacadia. I had to kill him because of the lies."
Lacadia shook her head. "I think you killed him because you were afraid he spoke the truth."
Lacadia ripped herself from her husband's embrace and threw that package of pictures at her husband's feet before stomping into her home. Hanson didn't look at those pictures until he finished covering that grave behind his house. He told himself the images in those pictures were not real, that those photos were fabricated by the United Systems' propaganda machine, that all of it - the blight, the vaccinations, the fires - were but cogs in some elaborate trick the United Systems hatched to deprive the settlers of Zeb from their land and from their freedoms.
Still, Hanson Potts could not kill the worry that the opposite would prove true. He feared there was a chance that the doctor spoke the truth, and he couldn't keep from fearing that he may have doomed his family, and the rest of the planet, to that terrible and bright color of orange.
* * * * *
Chapter 7 - Another Patriot Rewarded
"I'll never forgive you if anything happens to Maggie."
"I'll sit with her through the entire night, Lacadia. I promise nothing will happen to her."
"You believe you can make such a promise?"
Hanson and Lacadia sat before their kitchen table as the purple sky of Geralt turned black. Maggie had mentioned that she felt tired, and she had excused herself early to bed. Hanson tried as he could to convince himself that a thousand reasons other than blight existed that could make his Marigold feel weary. There were many maladies less lethal than the blight - the common cold, a fever, allergies to the planet's golden grasses. But Lacadia's eyes refused to let Hanson forget his terrible fear that Maggie may have somehow been exposed to the orange blight.
"I'm defending our way of life." Hanson reached across the table for his wife's hand, but Lacadia drew it away. "The doctor had no right to step onto our land, to ask us to vaccinate Maggie. I defended everything Zeb Griffin teaches."
Lacadia's eyes flared. "Stop hiding behind that ghost."
"I'm not hiding behind anything."
"Aren't you?" sneered Lacadia. "His memory has become so convenient for all of us. We just hide behind that name every time there's a law we don't like because it will make our life a little inconvenient. We just say old Zeb's name whenever we're asked to think of anything but ourselves, or if circumstances challenge us, even temporarily, to change our custom. We're always talking on and on about how challenging it is to live up to old Zeb's expectations, of how hard it is to live free of the United Systems. But if you ask me, we hide behind Zeb's name because it's the easiest way to live."
"I'm doing my best to protect our freedoms. Don't you want our Marigold to live in freedom?"
"For Maggie's sake, for the sake of every living thing on this planet, I hope that freedom is all you claim it to be," Lacadia answered. "I sure hope that freedom means a little more than simply getting your way all the time."
Hanson sighed and cast his eyes upon the table. "I'll stay at her side through the night. I'll make sure nothing happens to her. I promise."
"And tomorrow? What happens when the United Systems comes looking for their doctor?"
"We'll think of something."
Lacadia stood from the table and strode down the short hall to the room she shared with her husband. Hanson heard her fasten the lock after slamming closed the door.
Peering out of his kitchen window, Hanson thought the golden, swaying grasses looked so harmless. Geralt was supposed to be an Eden, more like native Earth than anything found circling a distant star. He couldn't accept the thought that such a blight could tarnish such promise. He was thankful that the purple sky turned dark as night descended, for he had no wish on that night to see color of any kind. Hanson doubted he would know how to respond should he see a trace of orange lingering outside that kitchen window.
* * * * *
Hanson stared at his daughter, his Marigold, while Maggie slept so peacefully.
Maggie didn't stir when her father turned on the bedside lamp to check if any orange touched his Marigold's cheek. Maggie didn't stir when her father's trembling hands pulled back the sleeves to her pajamas to insure there was no rash on the girl's forearms.
Hanson stared at his Marigold while she slept. Come morning, Lacadia would better understand how he had done his duty as a patriot, as a true student of Zeb. The United Systems claimed the vaccination would protection their children from blight, but why would the United Systems only administer their medicine to children? Hanson would explain that they did so because their girls and boys remained naive, that they would be easy prey to the propaganda robots the vaccine would introduce into their children's blood. Of course the doctor said the vaccine only fought the blight. The doctor may well have believed what he said, but that was no reason to trust the United Systems. Perhaps, Hanson thought, the blight itself was far from the crisis the United Systems claimed it to be.
Lacadia would understand in the morning. She would be proud of him. His neighbors would be proud of him. His stance would remind all of those who claimed to follow Zeb to always stand against the bureaucracy that defined the United Systems.
Tomorrow would be a busy day. Maggie was fine, and so Hanson closed his eyes and dreamed about freedom.
* * * * *
Lacadia's scream wrenched Hanson out of his sleep.
Hanson fell from the stool propped next to Maggie's bed, and his numb limbs crumbled him upon the floor. Lacadia wailed at the door. Her shrieks jolted adrenaline through Hanson, shook him awake as her hands rose to cover her face, to suffocate her sight, while she trembled and screamed.
Hanson grabbed the window ledge and pulled himself from the floor. He caught a peek of the morning light and fields surrounding his home as he did so. Orange surrounded his home. The blight conquered the grasses during the night.
Lacadia continued to shriek.
Hanson's mind froze as he forced himself to turn and look upon his Maggi, his Marigold. Maggie's body was broken into contorted angles. Her back arched her stomach towards the ceiling. Her neck was broken, so that her chin rose too far away from her chest. She had made not a sound as she had suffered. All the same, her skin was turned to that vibrant shade of orange those on Geralt so dreaded. Her eyes were swollen and shut. The skin of several of her fingers had peeled away to reveal the underlying bone. Hanson choked as he looked upon the stalk that rose from Maggie's intestines. He cried to see a second stalk rising up from her throat, beyond her teeth and through her mouth.
His mind attempted to shut down to save whatever remained of his sanity from obliteration. But his mind could not, and Hanson was forced to suffer the complete trauma of his folly.
The two flowers that topped each stalk pulsated in a brilliant orange. They were massive flowers, rising so high to nearly scrape against the ceiling, filling much of the room with their fragile pedals. The flowers grew larger as Hanson stared at them. Their color turned darker and richer. Until, they almost appeared crimson as they grew from his Marigold's corpse.
Lacadia screamed, and a pop echoed in Hanson's ears - the sound of the first flower exploding to fill the room with spores. Hanson's throat immediately itched. His next breath struggled out of his constricting throat. His eyes watered as they tried to focus upon the remaining flower, and before darkness took him a few seconds later, Hanson's fervent devotion to Zeb was rewarded to see that second flower burst.
* * * * *
Chapter 8 - Achievement
The three individuals in United Systems uniform gathered in the posh, comfortable and sterile conference room located in the bowels of a starliner orb
iting Geralt. A holographic representation of the planet hovered above the polished, mahogany table that stretched through the room's heart. The orb slowly twirled, showing those seated at the table the continents of Geralt. The three individuals in their United Systems uniforms smiled.
All of the grasslands that had once been golden were now a vibrant shade of orange.
"Incredible," whispered General Aldridge, whose .chest was covered with the ribbons of commendations, "We haven't lifted a finger, and once again, another colony is cleared of those zealots of Zeb."
"Law and order will bring another planet into the fold," nodded Ambassador Kile, his shoulders elegantly framed by the cut of this dark suit. "We've had very good fortune. The settlers completed their construction contract in record time, their work proving as dependable as always. And we only had to sit back and wait for the inevitable."
General Aldridge peered at the orange grasslands glowing on the holographic replica of the planet. "Will we be able to cleanse the planet of the blight? Or is there always going to be the danger of the orange making a return now that it's completed its first invasion?"