D Carpenter - Infertile Grounds

“You were going in a radical new direction. I could see it. It was rough, raw but fantastically stimulating. The solution I sought was buried in your work. What you needed was time, money and the freedom to work it out.”

“Why did Maurice give it to you?”

“Maurice was, is, a good man. One of the best at the University and he liked you, Sarah. No, let me take that back – it was more than that. He loved you, your intellect. He repeatedly expressed just how rare a mind like yours was – free-thinking, unbounded, preconception wasn’t part of your makeup, a pure scientist – like Oppenheimer. And beyond that, you understood the practical applications of the technology. Your computer model blew me away. The simulation showed just how far off the current aid efforts were but no one would buy into it. You would have been labeled a nut or worse if you’d taken it public. The culture of the aid organizations is too entrenched across political and religious spectrums. They’re perceived as above analysis, above reproach because of their goody good intentions—”

“You saw my model too?” Sarah tried to stay calm but couldn’t. “I don’t understand, Camilla. What’s going on here?”

“Cool down, Sarah, this all happened a long time ago. Phillip saw what he saw but that’s why we’re here – plain and simple. I understand what you’re feeling but at this point it’s all water under the bridge.”

Sarah seethed. Maurice, the one man she trusted unequivocally back then had betrayed her. Son of a bitch! The model was brilliant, as was her thesis but it was not finished and she had not wanted it made public until she had fully completed it and earned her doctorial. Maurice had repeatedly pushed her to publish it as it was, but she hadn’t been ready. There had been more work to do, much more research before it was ready to be laid bare. To find out he had shared it after all was a complete betrayal of trust.

The conversation paused as Albert walked in and served the drinks – his stare darting from the pouring liquid to Sarah in spastic flits. His face looked strained, as if the lemonade pitcher weighed a lot. Sweat beaded up on his bald scalp. He glided out of the room once all of the glasses were filled.

“I’m sorry if this is upsetting you, Sarah,” Phillip said as he took a sip from the glass. “Maurice was under intense pressure to show me a reason why creating a twenty-five-million-dollar endowment in the name of Phil Junior was a good idea. I almost pulled out. I wanted to see the value; just like I do in any business venture and you were it.”

“So it was for money,” Sarah said.

Phillip studied the distressed woman until she met his gaze, then he turned away. Silence filled the room. Sarah was untangling the different scenarios presented by this surprising bit of information and the big one that jumped out at her was Camilla. Her relationship with Phillip’s son was well known. She was certainly not the only young woman who fell under Phillip Junior’s well-practiced charms.

It had been the savage murders of Phillip’s twenty-four-year-old son and Camilla’s idealistic parents, the public faces of Phillip G. Spencer III’s upstart foundation, that had brought these two together – him out of guilt and her out of a completely understandable desire for sanity under insane circumstances.

Phil Junior’s foundation, In Your Hands, had been his brain child, his passion and his way to give back some of his vast privilege to the world. IYH was solely dedicated to providing reproductive services to the developing world – a nontrivial task given the political, religious and cultural considerations but Phil Junior wasn’t the type to back away from a challenge, particularly one he was passionate about.

Philip Junior had been smart and very well connected and he knew that sharp, crisp and culturally sensitive marketing coupled with recognizable and beautiful figureheads were critical to the sustainability of any charity. He very pragmatically used his connections to win over the support of Camilla’s parents who were Hollywood royalty and instantly recognizable around the world. He offered them seats on the Board and the opportunity to churn out what, for the very volatile couple, would be supremely positive PR in return for the relatively simple contribution of their faces and little snippets of their time.

One of the first of these snippets was for the gala grand opening of the first IYH field office on the African continent in Abuja, Nigeria, ground zero in the population explosion on the continent and a conflicting religious environment with almost an even split between Christians and Muslims. Phil Junior couldn’t have picked a more challenging country but he believed deeply in what he was doing. The well refined message, the noble reasoning and the opportunity to nudge the nation toward manageability and sustainability. He had done his homework, had all the facts and figures, had the money and the plan but he dramatically underestimated the reaction on the ground.

That night after the celebration, Camilla’s mother, father and Phil Junior had been kidnapped from their hotel rooms and ultimately hacked to death in a remote field by unknown assailants. Their naked bodies hadn’t been found for four days. The viciousness of the attack and the ever-present four-legged African scavengers had ensured a horrifically gory scene.

The murderers were never caught, although rumors and conspiracy theories ran rampant about who had done it – the nastiest of which ended up on the doorstep of the Vatican. That theory always sounded far-fetched but there was no shortage of freaks convinced that giving women personal control over their reproductive systems was a terrible thing. She had always suspected that it had been Muslim fanatics – jihad peddling, Insh’Allah chanting hate mongers with apparently limitless sexual issues.

But if Phillip knew about Sarah’s work before Camilla had come to school… Sarah turned to Camilla, “You were sent to recruit me?” She exclaimed. “You conniving—”

The state police chopper was airborne in a matter of minutes. The dark stone peak of Mt. Katahdin was immediately visible, jutting out of the hilly timberland like a stone schooner under full sail on the horizon, and they raced toward it as if it were their destination. Pell sat up front with the pilot, and Chris was in the backseat enjoying his second helicopter ride ever. He had always loved to fly. One of the items on his do-before-I-die list was take pilot lessons and own a private plane. He had the cash for both now but not the time.

“Is he going to be able to set this thing down in the river?” Chris asked Pell who turned to the grizzled pilot and repeated the question.

“Shouldn’t be a problem. I’ve done some hairy LZs before. How far up the river did you say it was from route eleven?”

“About seven miles,” Chris replied.

Forty-five minutes after leaving the airport the ground below them became familiar. Instead of flying up the river, as he had expected, the pilot had simply cut over the forest to just below his cabin.

“That’s my camp,” he said pointing out the window. “It’s up the river about a quarter mile.”

The pilot slowed the chopper, and they descended as they came around the bend in the river that David had rounded just over twenty-four hours ago. As they cruised up the waterway, Chris looked for a place to land while the two men up front scanned for the crash site.

“Are you sure that this is where it was?” Pell yelled over the thump, thump, thump of the rotor.

“What?” Chris asked.

“The plane,” the pilot said. “Are you sure that this is where it went down?”