Panacea: Chapter Two

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Vincent wrinkled his nose as he stepped into the lab. Danya had left the remains of her failed experiment scattered around the room, as usual. Vincent sniffed. And she had the audacity to say he was the one with poor lab habits.

He gingerly stepped around her workbench, noting with a frown that she had left a flask of some yellow liquid open to the air. He stopped long enough to place a stopper into the neck of the flask. Danya, he knew, was too smart to leave toxic substances lying around where anything could happen to them, but it was better to be safe. He noticed, with some satisfaction, that she had at least remembered to turn the bellows off so that nothing was left heating unattended. He absentmindedly counted the frogs they kept in an aquarium and used to test their newer and more uncertain products. Fourteen, same as yesterday.

His own workbench was a complete mess, but he told himself it was so in a very different way from Danya’s. He knew the names and properties of every substance in every bottle, and all of them were properly, if a bit haphazardly, stored as they should be. He glanced back over to Danya’s work area and wondered what she was working on this week. The girl was a fine assistant, but Vincent despaired of her ever becoming anything more, if only because she was too unfocused. Of course, that meant that she would always be there to assist him, and he wouldn’t have to go through the trouble of finding and training another assistant.

Still, Vincent was slightly sad that Danya hadn’t found her life project yet. In Vincent’s experience finding a life project wasn’t the hard part; it was completing the life project. Danya was already in her mid-twenties and hadn’t even figured out what she wanted to work on, instead seeming to prefer to pick up new projects and discard them as one would dump mere waste.

And the projects were . . . not worthy of a life’s goal. Last week she had posited that the right combination of herbs suffused with mercury would counter the metal’s poisonous effects, and many frogs had met their deaths from her attempts. Nothing had come of it except a lot of vaporized mercury, and Vincent had made her stop before she managed to poison the both of them.

The week before that she had been convinced that heating and distilling ashroot, a plant commonly used for blue dye, and imbibing it with a calcified blue lead alloy would produce a more vibrant and long-lasting dye. Vincent had kept a close eye on that project; he’d been trying to get a hold in the textiles market, especially now that the Perritor had disbanded all the guilds and outlawed business monopolies. Of course the guilds still existed in an underground state; after all, people already knew who to go to for their services and it wasn’t as if disbanding the guilds would also strip former members of those guilds of their skills. It also wasn’t as if those same former members wouldn’t collaborate with each other.

Still, though, Vincent quite liked the free market idea, as it did allow some room in certain markets to open up, and as long as he wasn’t able to earn a stipend doing pure research for a Society, Vincent had to put his skills to some commercial use. He absolutely hated the idea, but when principles and hunger went to war, hunger always won. So he had hoped Danya would make some breakthrough with her dye idea, maybe give them some customers from the textiles market, but all that had come from her attempts was thick bluish smoke that diffused throughout the room and left a greasy layer of grime all over everything. Some of the stuff was still clinging to the curtains. Then she’d tried to capture the smoke in a flask and cool it to a liquid, but all that had come of that was both she and Vincent covered in the same grime.

She had accidentally discovered a fantastic stain-remover, after all attempts to scrub the grime away with soap and water failed, and she, in frustration, poured a chloride solution into what she thought was water but which turned out to be essence of oak herb—her own fault for not labeling things properly—and threw it at a particularly frustrating spot on the floor. The stuff stripped the grime right off the floor. Unfortunately it also stripped the skin off one’s bones, as the deep painful burn on Vincent’s left shoulder attested to.

“We could sell this,” Danya had said while bandaging Vincent’s arm.

“It would need a warning label,” Vincent had replied.

“I suppose ‘Not recommended for use as a hand soap’ would be good,” she had said, and then, “Oh, it’s crooked,” as she ripped the bandage from his arm and set about reapplying it, ignoring his cries of pain.

In the end, though, she had lost interest in that, too, and the cleaning solution sat on a shelf in the back of the room with all the rest of her half-successful projects, pushed far away from the edge and out of reach of careless hands.

Still, she was a good lab assistant, and might have actually been doing more than her fair share of making the simple healing salves and potions they sold to a select few customers.

A very select few, Vincent now thought with a frown, sitting on the wooden stool set in front of his workbench and turning the pages of his notebook. Not because Vincent and Danya were particular about their customers, or because they charged steep prices, but because not many people came to them with orders. There were many chemists in the apothecary business, and Vincent had not only a very small shop but a reputation with his customers for being difficult. He wasn’t sure where they had gotten that impression from; certainly he preferred doing important, ground-breaking, pure research as opposed to peddling simple potions a well-trained monkey could mix together, but surely anyone would understand that?

Danya, however, had forcibly taken control of the business from him, and he hadn’t minded at all, as long as she kept bringing home food.

Vincent eyed the corkboard Danya had nailed to the wall next to the lab door so that they could keep track of orders. He hadn’t seen the need for it; she had pointed him to a list she had made of all the sales he had lost because he had forgotten about them. He had to admit she had a point, so he allowed the board to stay.

There were no other orders on it, just as he remembered. He sighed and turned back to his notebook. The sight of this cheered him up despite himself. There, within the ink-stained pages, cramped, spiky letters forming words that flowed smoothly around acid burns in the paper, was his life’s project.

Growing up Vincent had been subjected to his mother’s fervent religious beliefs, her faith in Chanossy, the Mother of the afterlife, and her refusal to put her health and safety into anyone’s hands but hers. And then she had died from the wasting disease, refusing up to the day of her death all medicine, even that which would only ease her pain.

“Chanossy has a plan for us all,” she had croaked, her mouth dry, her parched lips cracking and oozing a tiny bit of blood. “Who are we to interfere?”

Vincent hated Chanossy. No, not the Mother herself, because of course such a being did not exist. But he hated the very idea of her, the presumption people made that some being of higher power watched over them, cared for them, as if any of them could possibly matter to being like that. He hated that people turned to her upon their deaths instead of to their loved ones, or to doctors who could help. So he had set out to put his skills to good use, to create the medicine that would cure all illnesses. He would save thousands of people with his medicine, and if, in the process, he obliterated the silly worship of an imaginary figure, so much the better.

“Lord Vincent Prader,” he muttered under his breath, then thought better of it. “Doctor Vincent Prader saves lives with his miracle medicine. Chanossy, supposed all-powerful Mother of the afterlife, merely takes them. What kind of choice is that?”

He hadn’t gotten very far into his experiments, however, but he hadn’t despaired. His thirtieth birthday was still half a year away. He had plenty of time to perfect his medicine, and of course it was a life’s work. What good was that if it only took a few years to complete?

He thumbed to the back of his notebook, rereading his last experiment and noting with some dismay that it had been a whole week since he was last in the lab, and that had been helping Danya vent some of the mercury fumes out of the room. He had spent too many days preparing his presentation for the Chemical Society. Waste of time that had been. The invitation from the Society was still carefully folded and tucked into the back of the notebook, and he took it out now. Holding the vellum between his fingers as if it might poison him, he thought briefly about reading it again. But he had already memorized it, and reading it again would only remind him of the pain of that disastrous presentation.

No one knew genius when they saw it anymore. His ideas weren’t insane, they were ahead of his time. He knew this. He had spent his whole life learning the chemical sciences and the precise balance of the elements with life. A cure-all was possible. It was just that no one had come across the right ingredients and combination of procedures yet. That didn’t mean it couldn’t happen. Wasn’t that the point of research, to learn something that no one else had ever known?

“The Society is nothing more than a thinly-disguised guild,” he said out loud, to make himself feel better. Societies were allowed to exist when guilds weren’t because Societies were technically supposed to be dedicated to pure research, not economic profit. But the government gave only limited funding to the Societies, and breakthroughs in research were rare, so Vincent knew that the Chemical Society, like any other Society that wanted to keep its pretty marble building on Haven Street, had its own business. It was a necessity. But it was a business that only those interested took part in, as Vincent had thought. Other members who, like himself, detested the economic side of things were supported in their research by the Society, with no other contribution required except for reports and updates on their work.

Or so Vincent had thought. When he was laughed out of the Chemical Society’s lecture hall, he knew that it, like everything else in this world it seemed, was driven by nothing more than economics, politics, and money. It was enough to almost make Vincent want to give up his research. But his desire to prove them all wrong overwhelmed all else.

And, well, he wasn’t going to get anything done by sitting here brooding. He hadn’t done anything in a week, so he had to make up for lost time. His finger trailed down the last written page of his notebook until it rested on the last line, and he reread what experiment he had run that day.

“Lead infused with phosphorus and gold,” he muttered. “Heated to brittleness, cribation through a sieve.” He stared at the words he had written for a moment, then crossed out “gold” and replaced it with “silver.” He had used up all his gold, and couldn’t afford more.

“Wouldn’t have this problem in the Society,” he muttered, then remembered that the Society was nothing but a bunch of greedy pseudo-chemists who would rather line their pockets than save the world. What good was gold, anyway? No one had ever shown that it did a damn thing to promote health.

Before he could make another note in the book, however, there was another knock on his front door. Vincent started, then, grumbling under his breath, made his way to the living room.

“What is it?” he said, pulling the door open more harshly than he had intended. He noted briefly that the rain had stopped, and though the street was wet, the sun had finally come out. “I was in the middle of--” He stopped short as he took in the person standing before him.

The man was short, dressed in a smart business suit and a black cap, which he removed from his head as soon as Vincent opened the door, revealing equally black hair cropped short to his head. His eyes were a startling blue, but Vincent’s gaze was drawn to the medallion hanging around the man’s neck, the pattern of two lines crossing a third outlined in blue. The medallion marked him as a member of a Society, the blue identified him as an apprentice, and the symbol . . .

Vincent realized he was staring with his mouth open slightly. He snapped his jaw shut, cleared his throat, and held his head up straighter. He only then realized that he had never shaved nor combed his hair, and he was still in nothing but an overcoat and slippers. Then he remembered that he didn’t like the Chemical Society, anyway.

“What do you want?” he said, pitching his voice to be more regal-sounding. He thought he had a fair idea.

“Vincent Prader?” said the man. He seemed very young, barely out of his teenage years, and he sounded nervous. “Sir? I come as a representative of the Chemical Philosophers Society, and . . .” he paused, looking furtively left and right as if he wanted to be anywhere but there. “And, um . . .”

“I have no interest in your Society,” said Vincent in the loftiest tones he could manage. “Tell them they had their chance.”

The man stared at him for a minute, as if he was a bit slow and still trying to process Vincent’s words. Vincent shook his head. More evidence of the corruption of the Society, then. They’d take any moron these days, but not true genius. Sad.

“Oh,” said the man. “Well, sir, you see, um . . . the Society is very sorry about what happened and they want you reconsider.” He thought for a moment. “Please?”

Oh, this was better than his dream. Because it was real. Vincent allowed a patient smile to appear on his face. “I understand. They are mere men, after all, and even the most learned among us can make mistakes. Can be . . . blinded by other ambitions to what’s truly important.”

“Yes,” said the man vaguely. “Ambitions. So you’ll come with me?”

“Huh?” said Vincent. “Now? I haven’t said I would reconsider the Society.” You haven’t groveled enough yet.

The man looked a little confused, and started twisting his cap between his hands, still making sudden little glances up and down the street, as if he was looking for something or someone. Vincent suddenly got very suspicious.

“Who are you, really, and what do you want?”

“What do I want?” the man repeated back at him, and Vincent was just about to chalk the man up to a half-wit and shut the door in his face when he spoke up again. “Oh, yes. What I want. What the Society wants. The Society wants you to come. With me, that is.” He gave an entirely unconvincing smile.

“I don’t think so,” said Vincent, moving to close the door.

“No, no, please!” cried the man. “I-I’ve made a bad impression, I see that now. It’s just that I’m so nervous, and, well, meeting you and all . . .”

Vincent frowned at him. He would very much like to think that the reputation of his sheer brilliance would drive anyone within a ten foot radius of him into nervous fits, but the more rational part of him knew better. He was wearing slippers, for Arrod’s sake!

Suddenly the man seemed to perk up. “Although you should wear something other than slippers if you want to meet with the Society again.”

Vincent chewed on his lower lip, thinking. That was the first thing the strange apprentice at his door had said so far that made any sense.

“Please,” said the man. “There are those within the Society who felt you were . . . not given proper consideration for membership. They have decided to hold a special meeting, just for you, in an hour. I’ve come to take you there.”

Vincent felt the blood draining from his face. “I haven’t prepared a presentation,” he said. This was just perfect, wasn’t it? He got another chance from the Society, and he was only going to be laughed out again because this time he didn’t even have anything to present.

“They understand that, and they are willing to let you use the same presentation as at your last meeting,” said the man, smiling widely.

“Why? They’ve already seen it.”

The man started looking up and down the street again, and he was clutching the cap so hard his knuckles were turning white. “Please, sir, I’m just an apprentice, I don’t know why they’ve decided what they’ve decided . . .”

Suddenly, Vincent understood. The young man was only an apprentice, sent on a mission that should have probably been relegated to someone with more authority, or at least someone Vincent would recognize. He smiled at the man to show his sympathy, but inside he was seething. So they wanted him back, did they? So they thought they had made a mistake? They thought they could get him back by sending a frightened half-wit apprentice to do their jobs?

“It is a shame the way they’ve treated you,” said Vincent. “Sending you instead of a professional! To my house!” He shook his head.

The man smiled. “Uh, yes, sir.”

“Well, I’ll certainly come with you,” said Vincent, “if only to give them a piece of my mind.”

“Yes, sir,” said the man, grinning and bobbing his head so hard Vincent feared it was going to come flying off. “Yes, terribly intimidated, sir.”

“Let me get washed up,” said Vincent. He would certainly bring the Society to task for begging him to come back while still not showing him the respect he deserved. And just for that, he would bring along his presentation and make them listen to it again.

Twenty minutes later he was shaved, his hair was combed, and his overcoat and slippers had been replaced with his best suit and black shoes. He decided to not wear a cap. It wasn’t like he was going to try and impress anyone today. He was just going to make a point. It was the principle of the thing. He gathered up the notes for his presentation and headed toward the door, where the young man still stood, waiting.

“Let’s be on, then,” said Vincent. “Haven Street’s a twenty-five minute walk away.”

“Don’t worry, sir, I know a shortcut,” said the man, nodding happily.

“Do you?” said Vincent, fumbling with the lock on his door. It had never worked right since that time Danya had made something to lubricate the door hinges. Vincent wasn’t sure how that had affected the lock, but . . . wait, Danya.

“Oh, drat,” said Vincent, just as the lock clicked. “I’ve got to leave Danya a note or she’ll be worried about me.” And rip my head off when I get back. He started struggling with the lock again.

“No, sir, we have to leave now,” said the apprentice, sounding urgent. “You can’t keep the Society waiting.”

“I very much can, and I will,” said Vincent, giving up on the key and searching his pockets for something to pick the lock mechanism with. “They don’t treat me with respect, I don’t treat them with respect.”

“Fine,” said the man, sounding like he was going to cry. “I was only trying to do my job.”

Vincent felt a little pity for him, and turned to say that of course he wasn’t including the hapless apprentice in his anger. After all, the apprentice belonged to a whole other class of moron that Vincent wasn’t, at that moment, angry at.

But he never got to say anything, because when he turned the apprentice was pointing a pistol at his face.

“What?” said Vincent, not quite sure what had happened. “If you want me in the Society that badly, you could have just said so instead of waving weapons around . . .”

“You will shut up and come with me, Prader,” said the man, no longer sounding like a nervous apprentice. His voice had hardened along with his eyes, and he carried the pistol with a long-practiced ease. He used it to motion toward the alley that ran alongside Prader’s townhouse. “Move, or I’ll kill you where you stand.”

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