D Carpenter - Infertile Grounds

“Yes, I’m sure. It was right back there, you must have missed it.”

The pilot and Pell exchanged glances.

“We need to turn around?” Chris said. “Somehow we’ve gone right over it.”

The pilot banked the chopper around, and they eased down the river.

“It’s going to be there on the left,” Chris said. As the chopper hovered exactly above where the plane should have been, there was nothing below them but nature.

Pell glared at Chris, his eyes narrowing to angry slits before he turned around and grumbled something to the pilot.

“I don’t understand,” Chris shouted into the microphone on his headset. “Someone must have moved it. I’m telling you it was right there.”

“So what do you want to do?” The pilot asked Pell.

“Let’s land,” Chris pleaded. “They must have removed the wreckage, but they couldn’t have totally cleaned up the mess. There’s got to be some tell-tale signs down there.”

Pell looked out the window again, scanning the area. “I don’t see anything. Nothing! Let’s get the fuck out of here,” he said to the pilot, who rolled his eyes.

“Wait a second!” Chris screamed. “I’m telling you that a plane went down right there not twenty-four hours ago.”

“I know what you told me, Chris. I believed you, that’s why I’m out here on this wild goose chase,” Pell snapped as he turned and made a quick motion with his head that said ‘fly’ to the pilot.

The pilot pulled back on the stick, and the chopper started to rise. Before Chris could think about what he was doing, he swung open his door, unbuckled his seat belt, and jumped out, falling the twenty or so feet into the river with a scream.

Camilla shook her head violently, “No, it wasn’t like that, Sarah.”

“Wasn’t like what? I always wondered how you managed to get into Harvard with your grades. You bought her way in, didn’t you, Phillip? Was that part of your endowment deal too? Get her in, get her close to me, take me on a world tour over that summer that just happens to pass through the most desperate shit-holes in the world, indoctrinate me good. Is that what it was? Fuck!”

The more she spoke, the more pieces fell into place. Sarah had been used from the beginning. Her guts twisted into a knot and she resisted the temptation to hurl her glass at the massive window.

“Camilla, can you excuse us for a minute?” Phillip said. His voice was smooth, his tone even. Phillip G. Spencer II did not get rattled easily.

Camilla opened her mouth to say something but then closed it again as she rose and left the room without looking at Sarah who leveled her hard stare at Phillip. Billionaire be damned. He was a bastard.

“I knew you’d figure this all out. I wanted you to,” Phillip said. “Now that you’ve done it and we’re finally ready to move forward, we don’t need any skeletons in the closet. We have to own up to our past, clear the air and move forward as a team. I don’t want to spend my last days on the run or in jail and you’ve got more days left than I do.”

Sarah pursed her lips and crossed her arms on her heaving chest. She did not like Mr. Spencer and her opinion was going downhill each time he parted his wrinkly, prune lips.

“You’ve got a right to be pissed off. I did send Camilla to find you, to recruit you, although I’d argue that those words are pejorative, but I can tell you right now, without any doubts or reservations, she fell in love with you. That wasn’t in my plan. It worked, granted, but it wasn’t part of the deal. She’s motivated just like I am. Her parents truly believed in Phil’s vision, they might not have believed enough to put their lives on the line but shit happens, even to the beautiful people, and they did sacrifice and so did Camilla and so did my son. Phil was brilliant. I can only imagine what he could have accomplished through his natural philanthropic leaning.”

“He wanted to make a difference. If I were completely honest, I’d say his motivation was me. Don’t’ get me wrong, I wasn’t an inspiration, he was doing it to make amends for how I’ve lived my life.”

“Oh, come one,” Camilla said. “That’s a bit harsh.”

“I don’t think so but we’ll never know will we?” Phillip licked his lips and was clearly upset but he continued. “He’d seen it all. Christ, he traveled to more countries than I can count. He truly believed that if we could control the population, we could give these places an opportunity to dig themselves out of their holes.”

“Like I started to say earlier, on the one-year anniversary of his death I was standing at his grave when I had an epiphany – hit me like a vision from the bible. His death opened my eyes to what’s really important. Too late for sure but I finally understood that money isn’t the be all and end all. I picked up Phil’s cause and carried it forward, not in the public way he did but in my own way. I did it because he was my son but also because I believe. I’ve spent a lifetime studying the dynamics of economies – micro and macro – and I know that the only way to move the entire world forward is to address the fundamental issue of overpopulation. It’s an inescapable trap for the third world – an uncontrollable, self-sustaining cycle that will keep them down forever.”

“When I saw that your simulation proved eradicating the bacterial and viral diseases plaguing the third world actually compounded their problems in the mid-term, I knew you were the one. You got it. Christ, how many people would understand that death by disease is necessary – particularly in the third world – it’s natural selection, nature taking care of business – unpleasant as that business may be.”

“I know Camilla came to the same conclusions. Her parents gave their all, willingly or unwillingly – it doesn’t matter – and she’s fulfilling their dreams. Her job was simply to see if you would be willing to work with us. She did much more than that and what she did, she did on her own. Talk to her about it. She has no regrets and neither do I. So many things happened to get us to where we are today. Some bad, some good, some calculating and some naïve but we can’t change any of it. If some sick sons of bitches hadn’t murdered Phil and the Haywood’s, we damn sure wouldn’t be sitting here right now and I most certainly wouldn’t have poured thirty-five million dollars into a high-risk project like this.”

He paused to take a drink. His gaze locked on Sarah as he raised the glass in a toast, “And here we sit. Salut.”

Sarah stood up, stomped over to the window and stared off beyond the horizon, through the atmosphere and into deep space. She felt like she had been sucker-punched. Everything she had believed was now in question – the fundamental thought process that had spawned The Cause and the relationship that had changed her forever. A shudder rolled down her body as she rested her forehead against the window. She shut her eyes and let her mind follow the many thought threads. Why? Why now? How had she missed it? Had it been love?

It was over-whelming but she kept coming back to Phillip’s speech – ‘we have to move forward as a team.’ It rang true. He was sincere but that didn’t mean that it didn’t still hurt. Her first true love – the first to show Sarah the previously hidden path to the beauty and power of opening yourself up totally to someone, the first to show her the capabilities of her own sexuality, the first in so many wonderful ways – but Camilla had been a plant, a Trojan Horse, or a Trojan Whore, snuck inside Sarah’s carefully constructed emotional walls for nefarious purposes.

Sarah turned from the window to find Camilla sitting quietly back in her chair. She had no idea how long she had been standing against the window. Camilla looked at her as she always did, she had nothing to hide – she was who she was, who she always had been. She offered Sarah a somewhat sheepish smile and raised her eyebrows as if to say ‘Well?’