Warren Murphy: Deadly Seeds

A woman up front looked to her husband and asked if she had heard correctly. In the back row families buzzed in confusion. At the door, the corporation counsel blew air out of his mouth and stared at the ceiling.

Fielding assumed the sincere concerned expression he had perfected earlier in the day before the silverframed full-length mirror in his dressing room.

"That's the good news. Now the bad news. There is no way we can continue operations of Fielding Conduit and Cable."

At a main lathe fifty yards back, a middle-aged man in a red checked jacket cleared his throat. Everyone heard him.

"Ow," said the union negotiator. And everyone heard him too.

Fielding nodded to a white-jacketed busboy that he might start serving the ice cream. The boy looked at the crowd and shook his head.

A man in the front row jumped up onto his seat. His wife tried to tug him back down but he freed the arm she held.

"You ever own a plant in Taos, New Mexico?" yelled the man.

"Yes," said Fielding.

"And did you shut down that one too?"

"We had to," said Fielding.

"Yeah. I thought so. I heard about this ice cream trick you pulled in Taos. Just like tonight."

"Gentlemen, my counsel will explain everything shortly," said Fielding and leaped from the little platform at the front of the factory and made his way quickly to the door before the rush of workers could get at him.

"Tell them about our tax structure," yelled Fielding, pushing his lawyer between himself and the surging workers and just making it out the door. He ran to the car and made a leisurely mental note that he should phone the El Paso police to rescue the lawyer. Yes, he would call. From his doctor's office in Denver.

At the airport, Oliver was waiting in the Lear jet. It had been checked out and readied by airport mechanics.

"Everything turn out satisfactorily, sir?" asked Oliver, holding out the suede flying jacket.

"Perfectly," said James Orayo Fielding, not telling his manservant about the stabbing pains in his stomach. Why give Oliver any joy?

If he did not have the appointment that evening, he would have taken the slower Cessna twin-engine prop job. With that one, he could leave the fuselage door open and watch Oliver clutch his seat as the wind whipped at his face. Once, during an Immelman turn, Oliver had passed out in the Cessna. When Fielding saw this, he leveled the plane and undid Oliver's safety strap. The manservant recovered, saw the unbuckled strap, and passed out again. James Orayo Fielding loved his old propeller plane.

Doctor Goldfarb's office on Holly Street shone like three white squares against a dark checkerboard of black square windows. If any other patient had asked for this evening appointment, Dr. Goldfarb would have referred him to someone else. But it was James Orayo Fielding who had asked for that specific appointment to get the results of his every-six-months physical, and that meant that Fielding had no other free time. And what else could be expected of a man so fully occupied with the world's welfare? Wasn't Mr. Fielding chairman of the Denver chapter of Cause? Hadn't he personally visited India, Bangladesh, the Sahel to see famine firsthand and come back to Denver to tell everyone about it?

Another man with Fielding's wealth might just have sat back and become a playboy. But not James Orayo Fielding. Where there was suffering, you would find James Orayo Fielding. So when Mr. Fielding said he was only free this one night of the month, Dr. Goldfarb told his daughter he would have to leave just after he gave her away at the wedding ceremony.

"Darling, I'll try to be back before the reception is over," he had told her. And that was the easy part. The hard part was what he was going to tell Mr. Fielding about the checkup. Like most doctors, he did not like telling a patient he was going to die. But with Mr. Fielding, it was like being part of a sin.

Fielding noticed immediately that the runty Dr. Goldfarb had trouble telling him something. So Fielding pressed him on it, and got the answer.

"A year to fifteen months," said Dr. Goldfarb.

"There's no operation possible?"

"An operation is useless. It's a form of anemia, Mr. Fielding. We don't know why it strikes when it strikes. It has nothing to do with your diet."

"And there's no cure?" asked Fielding.

"None."

"You know, of course, I feel it's my duty to myself to check other authorities."

"Yes, of course," said Dr. Goldfarb. "Of course."

"I think I'll find you correct however," said Fielding.

"I'm afraid you will," said Dr. Goldfarb and then he saw the most shocking thing from a terminal patient. Dr. Goldfarb had experienced hostility, denial, melancholy, and hysteria. But he had never seen before what he encountered now.

James Orayo Fielding grinned, a small controlled play of life at the corners of his mouth, a casual amusement.

"Dr. Goldfarb, bend over here," said Fielding, beckoning the doctor's ear with a wag of his forefinger.

"You know something?" he whispered.

"What?" Goldfarb asked.

"I don't give a shit."

As Fielding had expected, Dr. Goldfarb was right. In New York City he was proven right. In Zurich and Munich, in London and Paris, he was proven right, give or take a few months.

But it didn't matter because Fielding had devised a great plan, a plan worth a life.

His manservant Oliver watched him closely. Fielding had rented a DC-10 for their travels and turned the tail section into two small bedrooms. He took the seats out of the main section and installed two large working desks, a bank of small computers, and five teletype machines. Above the main working desk, Fielding had installed an electronic calendar that worked in reverse. The first day had read one year (inside) to fifteen months (outside). The second day of flight on the short hop from Zurich to Munich, it registered eleven months, twenty-nine days (inside) to fourteen months, twenty-nine days (outside). It was the countdown, Oliver realized, to what Mr. Fielding had called his termination.

As they left Munich, Oliver noticed two strange things. The outside date had been changed to eighteen months, and Mr. Fielding had Oliver shred a three-foot-high computer printout, which Fielding had studied for hours before angrily writing across the top: "Money is not enough."

"Good news, I trust, sir," said Oliver.

"You mean on the new outside date? Not really. I'm hardly even bothering myself with the outside date. What I've got to do has to be done within the inside date. The doctors in Munich said they had seen someone live eighteen months with this, so maybe I'll live eighteen months. You'd like that, wouldn't you, Oliver?"

"Yes, Mr. Fielding."

"You're a liar, Oliver."

"As you say, Mr. Fielding."

On a flight from London to New York City, Oliver was ordered to shred three days of teleprint from the teletypewriters that clacked incessantly in the main section. On top of the thick pile of papers, Fielding had written: "Chicago grain market not enough."

"Good news, I trust, sir," said Oliver.

"Any other man would give up at this point. But men are bugs, Oliver."

"Yes, Mr. Fielding."

In New York City, the plane stayed parked three days at the La Guardia Marine Air Terminal. On the first day, Oliver shredded heavy reports topped by Fielding's note reading: "The weather is not enough."

On the second day, Mr. Fielding hummed Zippety Doo Da. On the third day, he danced little steps between the computer and his desk, which had become a meticulously organized pile of charts and reports. A very thin manila envelope on top of the pile was labeled:

"ENOUGH."

Oliver opened it when Mr. Fielding bathed before dinner. He saw a single handwritten note.

"Needed: One average public relations agency, radioactive waste, construction crews, commodities analysts -and six months of life."