Destroyer - Deadly Seeds Part 1

THE DESTROYER: DEADLY SEEDS.

Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy.

CHAPTER ONE.

When James Orayo Fielding looked at people, he saw bugs. Except bugs didn't cry or quiver or try to hide their terror when he fired them or told them he might fire them. Bugs went squish when he stepped on them. And then his manservant Oliver would clean up the little blotches with his thumbnail and James Orayo Fielding would ask: "Don't you hate that, Oliver? Doesn't it make your stomach turn to put your fingers in a bug's belly?"

And Oliver would say: "No, Mr. Fielding. My job is to do whatever you wish."

"What if I told you to eat it, Oliver?"

"Then I would do as you wish, Mr. Fielding."

"Eat it, Oliver."

And James Orayo Fielding would watch very closely and inspect Oh'ver's hands to make sure he hadn't pushed a remnant of the insect up into his sleeve, or in some other manner deceived his employer.

1."People are bugs, Oliver." "Yes, Mr. Fielding."

"I'll wear grays today."

"Yes, Mr. Fielding."

And James Orayo Fielding waited by the immense picture window that gave him the glorious view of the Rocky Mountains, stretching in white peaks right to Canada and left to Mexico. The Fieldings were one of the old Denver, Colorado, families, descended from English n.o.bility on the father's side and French on the mother's, although it was rumored some Arapaho had made its way into the bloodstream, culminating in James Orayo Fielding, owner of the Fielding ranches, Fielding sugar beet plants, and Fielding Enterprises Inc., which included manufacturing plants in New Mexico and Texas which few Denverites knew anything about. James did not discuss them.

Oliver knelt as he held out the soft gray flannel pants for Mr. Fielding to step into. He fitted the Italian shoes over Mr. Fielding's feet, then the broadcloth white s.h.i.+rt, tied the black and orange stripes of Princeton around Mr. Fielding's neck, slipped the Phi Beta Kappa key into Mr. Fielding's gray vest, and b.u.t.toned the vest down to Mr. Fielding's belt. The gray jacket went on over the vest and Oliver brought the mirror for inspection. It was full length and silver-framed and rolled on wheels to the center of Mr. Fielding's dressing room.

Fielding looked at himself, a man in his early forties, without gray in his temples, full soft brown hair which Oliver now combed to that casual neatness, a patrician countenance with delicate straight nose, an honestman's mouth, and a gentle cool in his blue eyes. He formed a sincere involved expression with his face, and 2.thought to himself that that expression would be just fine.

He used it that afternoon in El Paso when he told union negotiators that he was closing down Fielding Conduit and Cable Inc.

"The costs, gentlemen, just don't allow me to continue operations."

"But you can't do that," said the union negotiator. "There are 456 families that depend on Fielding Conduit and Cable for their existence."

"You don't think I'd close down a factory just to watch 456 families wriggle and squirm, do you?" asked Fielding, using the expression he had practiced earlier in the day in his Denver home, "If you wish, gentlemen, I will explain it to your members.h.i.+p in person."

"You'd stand up in front of our members.h.i.+p and tell them they're all out of jobs? In an economy like today?" asked the union negotiator, trembling. He lit a cigarette while one burned unfinished in the ashtray. Fielding watched it.

"Yes, yes, I would," said Fielding. "And I think you should bring the families too."

"Sir," said the corporation counsel for Fielding Conduit and Cable. "You don't have to do that. It's not your responsibility. It's the union's job."

"I want to," said Fielding.

"What if we took a pay cut?" asked the union negotiator. "An across-the-board pay cut?"

"Hmmm," said Fielding and had the company's profit-and-loss statement brought to him. "Hmmm. Maybe," said Fielding after examining the printed sheet.

"Yes? Yes?" said the union negotiator.

"Maybe. Just maybe," said Fielding.

3."Yes!" said the union negotiator.

"We could use the factory itself to inform the families we're closing. You can get them together in two hours, can't you? I know almost the entire members.h.i.+p is down at the union hall."

"I guess we could do that," said the negotiator, crushed.

"Maybe in two hours, I can work out something. Okay?"

"What?" said the negotiator, suddenly revived.

"I'm not sure yet," said Fielding. "Tell them it looks as if we're going to shut down but I may work out something by this evening."

"I've got to know what, Mr. Fielding. I can't raise their hopes without something concrete."

"Well, then, don't raise their hopes," said Fielding and left with his corporation counsel for dinner in a small El Paso restaurant he favored. They dined on clams oreganato, lobster fra diavolo, and a warm runny custard called zabaglione. Fielding showed his corporation counsel pictures he had taken of the famine in India as part of his famine study for the Denver chapter of Cause, a worldwide relief agency.

His meal ruined, the corporation counsel asked Fielding what he gave one of the children he saw, a child with protruding ribs, hollow eyes and starvation thick belly.

"A fiftieth at f/4.5 on Plus-X film," said Fielding, dunking the crisp golden crust of fresh-baked Italian bread into the spicy red tomato sauce of his lobster fra diavolo. "Aren't you going to eat your scungilli?"

"No. No. Not now," said the lawyer.

"Well, considering the starvation in the world, you ought to be ashamed of yourself wasting food. Eat."

4."I-I-".

"Eat," ordered Fielding. And he watched to make sure his corporation counsel ate every last bit of his dinner for the sake of the starving children in India whose pictures he left displayed on the table.

"Look," he said. "I'm suffering too. I've had stomach pains for weeks. Going to see my doctor tonight back in Denver. But I'm eating."

"You're going home tonight?" said the lawyer. "Then you don't have a plan for the workers?"

"I do have a plan. In a way," said Fielding.

When they arrived at the factory, the low whitewashed building was lit and buzzing with families packed lathe to drill press. Children stuck fingers in lathes and mothers yanked them back. Union men talked among themselves in that low choppy talk of men who know that all has been said and anything more is a waste of time. Their lives were out of their hands.

When Fielding entered, the main factory building hushed as if someone had turned simultaneous dials in nearly a thousand throats. One child laughed and the laughter stopped with a loud motherly smack.

Fielding led four white-coated men wheeling carts with round tubs on them to a raised podium in front of the factory. Smiling, he took the microphone from the nervous union negotiator.

"I've got good news for you all tonight," he said and nearly five hundred families exploded in cheers and applause. Husbands hugged wives. Some wept. One woman kept yelling, "G.o.d bless you, Mr. Fielding," and she was heard when the cheering subsided and that energized more cheering. Fielding waited with a big warm smile on his face, his right hand tucked into his 5.gray vest, safe from the grubby Teachings of union officials. The corporation counsel waited by the door, looking at his feet.

Fielding raised both arms and was given quiet.

"As I said when I was interrupted, I have good news for you tonight. You see the gentlemen with white coats. You see the tubs on the carts. Ladies and gentlemen, children, union officials, there's free ice cream tonight. For everyone."

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 a.s.sumed 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?"

6."We had to," said Fielding.

"Yeah. I thought so. I heard about this ice cream trick you pulled hi 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, pus.h.i.+ng 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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 7.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 tune. 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.

8."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 amus.e.m.e.nt.

"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 s.h.i.+t."

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 hi reverse. The first day had read one year (inside) to fifteen months (outside). The second day of flight on the 9.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 10.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 a.n.a.lysts -and six months of life."

Oliver did not see the single small gray hair that had been atop the envelope. James Orayo Fielding did when he returned. The paper hair was now on the desk. It had been moved from where he had placed it on the envelope.