Camden's Knife

by John Patrick Kavanagh

  “Back on the record. So then Camden was free to find the cure himself?

  “In his contract there was a noncompetition clause in which he promised not to join up with one of our competitors for the period of one year after he left the company. That period, I believe, is about to end. He could conduct his own private research or hitch up with a school, which he didn’t do, and we paid him a small fortune to fulfill our part of the deal regarding royalties. People like to make the guy out to be a big martyr, but he isn’t. He lives a lot better than you or I do, that’s for sure. He walked away with a package worth close to…a bunch. That’s not bad for a years’ vacation. Wherever he went. Atlanta or somewhere. Be near the CDC types.”

  “Yeah. He went to Georgia. So what’s new with Blue?”

  “As I’m sure you know, the first ones, the 100’s though 500’s are no longer in production. Check that. We sell some of the 400’s and 500’s in third world countries but not for CYD. Six hundreds and 700’s have been over-the-counter products for a year. Very big market for those, bigger than we thought. Eight hundreds and 900’s are both available through doctors and health services. One thousands are just coming out and 1100’s are in the early stages of development.” He held up his palms as if all of this was self-evident.

  “I saw some. On the street. Light blue-dark blue capsule. SUE, then FF1100 in light green lettering.”

  “That sounds right. I’ve just seen a picture of them.”

  Robin’s seen them. Where?

  Back in the kitchen, McReynolds poured some fresh coffee and they sat at the table for a few minutes casually discussing the questioning. McReynolds seemed fixated with the subject of Camden’s departure from SUE so Stonetree figured he’d probably met with Camden and got a sob story from the scientist. He knew, though, that the entire Camden affair was a sore spot with a lot of people and decided the less he talked about it, the better off he’d be. He was amazed by the fact that McReynolds insisted on having seen Febrifuge Blue 1100 outside of SUE. Febrifuge Blue 1100 was considered to be a breakthrough in the treatment of CYD. Rather than simply being a change in the chemical composition of an ancestor compound, 1100 went much further, augmented with a new substance synthesized by the research team. The first human test results were supposed to be tremendous.

  The Febrifuge Blue 1100 research was being guarded with an almost paranoid amount of security so McReynolds’s story of being shown capsules didn’t seem to ring true. Stonetree had never seen them and strongly doubted his friend had. He asked who’d shown him the capsules and was given a description that could fit half the employees at SUE.

  McReynolds talked about a woman he was dating and Stonetree told him about London and Sharon and the bowling ball story. They agreed it had been too long since they’d gotten together for lunch.

  After pouring a bit more coffee and moving back into the living room, the questioning continued.

  They covered the abuse issues, both by users afflicted with CYD and by those who weren’t. Stonetree admitted to the fact that 32% of the product was consumed by the 26% who used it recreationally. SUE officially spent millions of dollars on preventative advertising a year, though the results were inconclusive.

  He again looked down to the street and stared at the group of kids he’d watched earlier. None of them appeared to have moved except one who was now lying motionless near the curb. Passersby didn’t hesitate or even bother to look. They had seen it all before, he thought. He made a comment to Robin.

  “Yeah, I know what you mean. But getting back to the newer stuff, I think you’ve taken a giant leap forward with the 1000 series. Maybe you pill pushers are really onto something for a change.”

  “Have you done any 1100?”

  “Who wants to know?”

  “I do.”

  “Well, we journalists have to protect our sources. You know, confidentiality and all that.”

  “I don’t give a shit about confidentiality. All I want to know is have you tried the 1100?”

  “Maybe I have and maybe I haven’t.”

  They discussed the continuing research on the issue of why Febrifuge had such a seductive effect on Class D users which had yet to yield many indicators. It was thought, however, that as the unraveling of envirus mechanisms continued the answer might come into focus.

  They moved on to one of the trickier subjects at the juncture of CYD, its treatments and society, that being the uncomfortable and growing sense of unrest throughout the nation. The reversals in racial dominance and the financial adjustments accompanying them were easy targets, as were the ponderous increases in the costs of medical care, both short and long term. The basic fact that routine, everyday life had changed so much in such a brief time and was becoming dominated by obsessions and cults also entered the picture. But there was something more in the background and that something, many believed, was that the United States was reaching a boiling point; that the pot could explode at any time with unforeseeable and tragic consequences.

  Unless salvation arrived. Unless a savior appeared.

  “Some people think Wexford is the Messiah,” Stonetree offered.”Or a prophet.”

  “What a great transition!”

  “The man’s a pop singer. A great one, to be sure. Maybe one of the best, but he’s a singer. That’s it. Same as all of us. We’re all the same.”

  “No, we’re not all the same, Dave. That’s a fact. I wouldn’t complain if I were you.”

  “I’m not complaining. It’s just, I don’t know. What else are we going to discuss? I’m getting tired.”

  “The man who brought Trisha into our lives.”

  “I was surprised to learn that she doesn’t have much to do with him anymore. She signed him with Court Records, and once he took off, she went on to other things. She’s not as concerned with the Media Division anymore, much more involved with Pharmaceuticals. She made the transition look like she’d done it her whole life. She deals mostly with Wexford’s manager, uh...”

  “Doug Smite?”

  “Yeah, that’s his name.”

  “Wexford has become a recluse?”

  “Well, he started that about the time his second album came out. You start going onstage and people shoot at you or try to blow you up, I imagine the paranoia sets in. I don’t blame him.”

  “Go on.

  “So we put out his first album Wexford, and he was off and running. Charted seven songs, all of them Top Ten, five number ones. That debut’s sold 50 million copies. It’s still selling 10,000 a week. Real popular.”

  “I bought a CD and wore it out. Bought a DMD and that may be wearing out too.”

  “Then a year later he puts out...”

  “Tomorrow Comes the Dream.”

  “Right. Didn’t do as well as the first. Only 40 million. Can you imagine that? Forty million copies and they thought he was washed up.”

  “Quote you on that?”

  “Not on your life. That’s still my favorite album. I don’t care what they say. That was around the time of the first attempt on his life, when his bass player got shot. I think that must have got him thinking about his life, put everything into perspective, gave him a new slant. He did that real strange piece for Playboy. I think he must have turned the comer about then. He was imbued with a spirit. He invoked his muse.”

  “I’ve got a feeling you are building up to a climax.”

  “By anyone’s standards.”

  “A drumroll, please. And…hold that thought.”

  McReynolds stepped to the stereo system, powered it up then pointed the remote to cursor through his collection and queue up his selection. In a moment the singer’s unique voice, which could range from tenor to mezzo-soprano, filled the room as he sang the title song from The Shortened Life.

  “Let us bow our heads as we praise the Lord. Tell our readers, David, about the scope we’re looking at.”

  “Well, Eagles and Michael Jackson went back and forth for years as the top seller ever, their Gr
eatest Hits and his Thriller. Then when Jackson died, sales of Thriller went through the roof and everybody figures it’ll never be matched. Before Shortened, RIAA certified it at around 72 million copies.”

  “And time passes...”

  “And along comes this unemployed sandwich maker…I’ve got to tell you a story later concerning sandwiches…the man needs psychiatric help.”

  “For the record?”

  “No. And he records this interesting little set of songs.”

  “Which has sold how many units?”

  “Total sales as of December 31st, all formats from vinyl through DMDs…RIAA certifies Shortened a shade over 129 million units. Plus it still does 30,000 extra units every week, like clockwork.”

  “And now, the big question.”

  “I know what you’re going to ask. We’ve had this question before. I’ll give you the party line and nothing more.”

  “Okay. Let’s get the party line. Do you think the only reason the album sold so phenomenally well was the hysteria it helped generate in promoting the first Search for Survival blood drive, which in turn generated hysteria about the album?”

  “No.”

  “So I suppose you won’t tell me that Wexford was directed to write songs specifically designed to urge kids, albeit metaphorically, to give their precious pints of blood to a pharmaceutical company…a company that just happened to own his record company and also just happened to spend the largest amount of money that has ever been spent on the advertising and promoting of an album in the history of the recording industry…which in turn further fueled the sweet SUE money-printing presses.”

  “No.”

  “And I suppose you won’t tell me…”

  “I can’t tell you that because it’s not true.”

  “That it was successful? Come on.”

  Stonetree glanced out the window again. All the kids were gone except for the one still lying silently on the sidewalk.

  “There’s a kid down on the pavement. Been there awhile.”

  “Oh, yeah?” McReynolds replied, getting up and standing next to him.”Doesn’t look like any blood. His head…is that a guy or a girl?”

  “Looks like a girl.”

  “Her head still seems to be attached. I didn’t hear anything. I guess she didn’t pipe herself.”

  Piping was the latest fad in suicides. It started in Florida and quickly spread throughout the country. It was quick, effective, dramatic and affordable, all qualities of popular exits.

  It didn’t take much to complete a pipe job. All one needed was a twelve-gauge shotgun shell, about two feet of metal tubing, and a cheap firing mechanism that could be bought for $10 after an hour of asking around.

  The piper then went through a simple procedure. The shell was inserted in one end of the pipe, held in place by its lip. The mechanism, the crackerjack box, was fitted over the end of the pipe holding the shell and clipped in place while the other end was held against the forehead. Then all the victim need do was fall forward.

  A firm grip was a virtual guarantee of eternity, if the victim believed in it. The hospitals and homes were crowded with those who slipped or those who didn’t hold the pipe when it hit the pavement. Then there were the ones unfortunate enough to be standing nearby when a piper messed up.

  “So what was the problem with Trisha and…”

  “Do you think we should go see if we can help her?”

  “Trisha? No, I doubt she needs our help.”

  “No, asshole. The kid down on the street!”

  McReynolds sighed.”So what are you going to do for her, Dave? Maybe she’s dead. Maybe she just did a Bradean shuffle. Maybe she’s taking a nap. Who the fuck cares? When did you become the great humanitarian?”

  Stonetree tried to picture himself sprawled out on the sidewalk. He couldn’t. Then he tried to picture Sharon. He couldn’t.

  “I don’t know,” he finally said, returning to his chair.”Sometimes I think our priorities get a little screwed up once in a while.”

  “Well, I know where my priorities are and I have to finish this article. Now sit down and answer these questions so we can get out of here. Tell me about the first blood drive. How many pints were donated?”

  “Just about five million. And I trust you’re using the word donate in a broad sense. We did pay out an average of about $80 a pint. Plus we could use only a tenth of them.”

  “So the blood could be used in research so SUE could produce better drugs than the competition and make billions more?”

  “A better product was certainly a goal. That doesn’t make it bad. Other companies and agencies have collected blood to use in treatment and cure research just as we have. No one has ever been as successful as SUE.”

  “But you have Wexford.”

  “Yes, we do. That makes, say, the Centers for Disease Control better somehow?”

  “No. I just wish I could break the story. I can see Wexford and Picard sitting in the mountains somewhere planning it out. What do you do with the blood, anyway?”

  “I can give you a rough outline. The technical aspects are beyond me.”

  “Please.”

  “Although we’re still not sure what an envirus is, we’ve found that it leaves something in its tracks like coal falling off a coal train. This byproduct is what’s been used up until now as the medium against which a lot of the experiments are conducted. They use it to see how a given compound will respond under different sets of conditions, how a formula will act. They’ve also, I’m told, used it to try to develop a vaccine.”

  “Which is called what? The medium, I mean.”

  “It’s designated CY6A4. The trouble is, it’s incredibly expensive to distill because of all the equipment and chemicals that go into the various reduction processes. Plus it’s practical to do it only with batches of ten, 15,000 pints of raw blood…otherwise the expenses go off the charts. Plus the blood has to be tested to confirm that the donor was experiencing symptoms at the time of donation.”

  “Then?”

  “After all is said and done, and done and done again, 10,000 pints of raw blood will yield approximately one tenth of an ounce of high-grade CY6A4 distillate. And even a lot of that one ounce is just a medium to suspend it in. Once you’ve got it, though, it has a long shelf life.”

  “Pretty expensive stuff.”

  “But the really hard part is getting together a 10,000 pint batch quickly enough to get it processed. Ten thousand pints of blood, collected and processed in, say, 48 hours is an incredible undertaking.”

  “Hence, the SUE Search for Survival drive. But that’ll be the last one, eh?”

  “Yup. Outlawed by ProTac.”

  “None.”

  “And isn’t it true that Camden was held responsible for the destruction of four ounces of that CY6A4? The distillate?”

  “In an incredibly stupid move he decided he was going to do a spot check on the condition of the stored liquid. You’re supposed to get three signatures to just look at a drop of it. So he has four ounces of the stuff and because of the difficulty in getting 10,000 pints of blood at the local drugstore, it’s priceless. So he’s screwing around with the four ounces, there’s a fire in the lab, fire extinguishers, minor panic, and the stuff gets knocked into a drain. There is no excuse for that. I mean, I know it was an emergency and it could happen…”

  “It could happen to anybody.”

  “Are we done?”

  “So what’s the sandwich story?”

  “I heard Wexford had this little cafe built inside his mansion, maybe ten tables, and he has guests over occasionally and tells them they should go to this great little restaurant in town, and then one of his stooges takes them to this cafe. You know, in another wing of the house. They sit down and he shows up and he’s like the owner and chef and somebody is a waitress. So they look at menus, it’s all sandwiches, and they order stuff and he makes the sandwiches and comes over and asks if they like the place, will they tell their friends abo
ut it.”

  “Somehow I’m not surprised.”

  “Me either. And so they sit there for a while and then the waitress brings them a bill and they all laugh and then she says no, it’s not a joke, pay up. So they do and then a stooge escorts them out of the house to their cars and says good night. They think it’s all part of the gag till they sit there and no one comes out and they aren’t let back in the house. And I’m through. I’m beat.”

  As he reached for the tablet, McReynolds pointed to a picture hanging on the wall.”Remember her?”

  “Good old Sasha. Heard anything from her lately?”

  “No.” McReynolds sighed.”She called a few months back. Said the kids were fine and all that. Asked how I was, what I was up to. That’s about it.”

  “That must be hard on you.”

  “Sometimes. You look a little run-down yourself.”

  “This past week has been a nut cruncher. I’ve never worked so hard in my life. She’s still out on the road, gets back tonight I think, but the pressure has already got me crazy.”

  “A little hard work’ll be good for you.”

  “Maybe for someone else, but I don’t think it’s for me. Doubt I’ll get used to it. It’s too much. I’m already starting to regret it.”

  “Just because of the hours?”

  “That, the pressure. The fear of doing something wrong. I made a mistake.”

  “It can’t be that bad.”

  “Believe me. I was talking to a guy I know who knows the woman I replaced. Somehow I’d got it in my head that Julie, that’s her name, decided she wanted to move on to something else. Turns out she and Lane had been at a meeting with Picard and a couple of other people and Julie started laughing about something. So Lane calls her up that weekend and says by Monday she wants an explanation of her behavior, why she was mocking her in front of him. So Julie sits out the weekend, goes in on Monday, and says it was a delayed reaction to an obtuse joke one of the other people made.”

  “You’re kidding?”

  “No. She just got the joke a minute after it was told. That’s all. Trisha didn’t buy it. Told her to clean out her desk by noon.”