D Carpenter - Infertile Grounds

“I’m not sure that’s what I was signing up to,” Mike shook his head.

“It’s exactly what we signed up to,” Phillip said. “But I’m not happy that it sounds like the cure for this is pretty simple. I didn’t invest millions for a virus that can be wiped out with an ice-cube.”

Sarah pushed her chair back and stood up, hands on the table she towered over her audience. “You’re just not getting it,” she said through clenched teeth. “What I have created here is truly genius. We need the virus to be as effective and far reaching as possible. Gen96 is all that. Yes, within months Gen96 could render every man in the world sterile. That’s how we control the population. The beauty is that I’ve created a virus for which there is a cure, but only those who really want a child, and make a conscious decision and put in the effort will be able to have a child. That’s the genius here. No more unwanted pregnancies, no more pregnancies due to ignorance or lack of main stream birth control. Only 30% of women use birth control in Africa, yet over 50% would use it if it were available. It’s not just availability – its religious control, spousal disapproval, misinformation, so many reasons. There’s over 220 million women in the world that are not able to access birth control, 53 million of these are in sub-Saharan Africa and 97 million in Asia. Gen96 will turn that on its head. Now everyone has birth control and the question becomes access to treatment to have a child, not to prevent a child. It’s brilliant don’t you see?”

Mike nodded slowly in agreement. Phillip nodded his head and mumbled an indistinguishable affirmative.

Frazzled from the stress of this meeting, Sarah asked Camilla, “Would you mind if we continue this conversation later after I freshen up a bit?”

“I’m sorry, Sarah. You’ve had a long trip, and we started in on you right away,” Camilla said as she stood. “Follow me.”

Once they were out of earshot of the others, Sarah said, “He’s a tough old bastard.”

“You don’t have to tell me. But that’s how he got to where he is. Don’t take it personally. He’s really a teddy bear, just blunt and direct. Once you get to know him you’ll see.”

“Teddy bear? He seems more like a prick,” Sarah said as she grabbed onto Camilla’s shoulder and spun her around. They were alone in a hallway and she paused for a moment, trying to put some sort of order to the raging jumble of thoughts racing through her mind. “I need to know the truth, did you use me from the beginning? Was I just an enabler for you and Phillip’s project? A means to an end?”

Camilla shook her head. “No, Sarah. It was—”

“You did. I can see it on your face.”

“No, it wasn’t like that. I told you.”

“Bullshit,” Sarah spat. She was furious. Her heart was sacred ground. Very few people had ever seen it and even fewer had touched it. And now, understanding that what she had considered to be one of the special few had actually been part of a cold, manipulative scheme, sent a shudder of rage down Sarah’s spine.

Camilla met Sarah’s angry glare and said, “I’m not going to say this again, Sarah. Recruiting you was the initial plan. Okay? Great. You figured it out. But I had no intention of falling in love with you. That wasn’t in the plan at all. I wouldn’t trade those memories for anything. Even if you hadn’t succeeded it wouldn’t change that. I loved you and I don’t love a lot of people like that.”

“That’s easy to say.”

“No it’s not,” Camilla snapped. “I knew you’d figure this out. That we’d have this fight at some point, but there’s no need. Everybody uses everybody, Sarah. This isn’t news. It’s the way the world works.”

“That may be but I thought we were … that what we had was real.”

“It was real. As real as any relationship I have ever had. Maybe even more so,” Camilla said. Her voice was pinched, tight. Tears welled up in her eyes. She was visibly trembling.

Sarah thought back on what they had been – lovers, friends, dreamers. It had been so emotionally consuming, so sexually freeing – all of it fueling Sarah’s intellect. The attraction had been so compelling and irresistible. She had never expected that type of a relationship and spent many hours contemplating it. Fate, destiny, words like that had no meaning to Sarah until she tried to reconcile her feelings for Camilla. They were too strong, too primal to have been faked. She had started out as a pawn but ended up as much more. Camilla was telling the truth. Lines had been crossed but the connection had been real and that’s what really mattered to Sarah. Her heart hadn’t been misappropriated.

Sarah flashed back to those days. On the surface of it, they were polar opposites. Sarah a nerdy, introverted scientist who at that time had led a very limited and somewhat forced heterosexual existence and Camilla, a free spirited, passionate, sexually liberal extrovert. No sane matchmaker would hook the two of them up. It could never work but it did and it did so on many levels. The more their friendship grew, Sarah was constantly confounded at the conflicting emotions she was experiencing and she set them aside, ascribing them to her own lack of social awareness and skills, and her persistent ability to misread interpersonal situations.

Their complementary senses of humor, Sarah’s ever present intellect and Camilla’s ditsyness – incompatibility and conflict at every turn but Sarah soon found herself looking forward to each encounter, knowing it was going to bring her joy on some level and Camilla rarely disappointed. Their first kiss had been late at night and after a few too many drinks at the Student Union under a street light in a summertime downpour. Camilla was leaning against the lamp post, the rain soaked her through and she was laughing, that infectious laugh that put a smile on anyone within earshot’s face. Her eyes were closed while she laughed and when she opened them, Sarah realized what had been happening to her. It hit her like a bolt of lightning. She was in love. For the first time in her life she felt what all those sappy love poems were about. The tingling, the expectation, the desire to know more, to know everything, to please, to have, to want more. Love entered her life in that downpour in Cambridge as if it were a discorporated piece of her soul finally rejoining her, making her whole for the first time ever.

She leaned forward and kissed Camilla who stopped laughing, wrapped her arms around Sarah’s neck and pulled her close. They kissed for some unquantifiable time and when they parted Camilla said, ‘It’s about fucking time.’

“You loved me?” Sarah asked.

“I did and I still do,” Camilla replied. “I’m sorry about not being completely up front with you back then.”

“I guess I understand.”

“You sure?”

Sarah nodded. As sure as she could be.

Camilla hugged Sarah to her. “Let’s not fight any more,” she said as she turned and opened a door that led into what could possibly have been the most beautiful bedroom Sarah had ever seen. Light flowed in through French doors that led to a small balcony overlooking the sail-dotted ocean. Sarah walked outside and leaned over the railing. She breathed in the ocean air and reveled in the beauty of the view from here. The blues of the ocean and sky, the green from the hills, the white sand – nature’s palette couldn’t have been better. It was a straight shot down the lush hill to the inviting beach. She raised her hands and tried to grab the sky. The stress of the past half hour flowed off her, carried away by the soft breeze like the petals of a turned flower.

Camilla walked up behind her and slid her arms around her waist.

“It’s so beautiful here,” Sarah said. Camilla’s arms felt foreign wrapped around her.