Gabriel's Stand

by Jay B. Gaskill

“You always were the first, Rex,” Fowler said.

  “Hear, hear,” someone said.

  Longworthy continued. “Now seriously, boys and girls. I think, as a society, we are doing far too effective job in preventing and curing disease. Think about it. The planet is carrying one billion too many people, at least that. There are food issues, destruction of habitat issues, global climate change driven by human activities, species extinction, you all know the scenario. This is a bad record, and it is a direct outcome of population growth. We talk and talk and talk and nothing is happening. So what would be wrong, really, with cutting back on medicine for a while?”

  “Actually, Rex, that is not so outrageous as it first sounds,” Fowler said. “In a way, it will seem less drastic than trying to control people’s reproductive behavior, which has failed everywhere it was tried.”

  John was paying full attention.

  “Hear, hear!”

  “Exactly. In effect, nature takes care of the problem itself,” Rex said.

  “About time!” another voice said.

  John’s temper finally got the better of him. “Did I get invited to the wrong meeting?” he asked, using an icy calm voice that barely concealed his rage. “Or did I accept the wrong invitation? I don’t believe what I’m hearing from you. Of course, the population load on the planet’s resources is somewhat too high. But computer projections show global population has peaked. The birthrate has been below replacement in the developed world for decades. The developing world is now headed in the same direction. China is actually experiencing a population implosion. Given our ability to avert the pandemics, withholding treatment would be a form of murder. So, why are you talking about large scale homicide now?”

  “Now, now,” Fowler chided.

  “And why now, when the population numbers are getting better?”

  “The numbers are skewed. After all, India had help from the plague.” It was the obnoxious young man with the denim shirt, sitting on the end.

  “My God, you call that help!” John carefully folded his napkin.

  “I don’t know where you’re getting your information, John,” Fowler said, his tone patronizing.

  “Sounds like drug company research to me,” the young man again piped up.

  Laughter erupted at the table.

  Who are these people? “I would be more than happy to send you the research,” John said evenly. “The medical and pharmaceutical industries had nothing to do with it. These are unbiased facts.”

  “Facts are beside the point,” Rex said.

  John could almost feel Rachael’s restraining hand on his shoulder.

  “I agree,” Fowler said. “Let’s take these developing countries. How much damage can they do before they move into our column? If they ever can. Seriously, John, if, as you say, this problem is solving itself; it’s happening too damn slowly.”

  “Quite so. Much too little, much too late,” Rex said.

  “India is an excellent model,” someone said.

  “Yes. What we need is an accelerant!” That was that young asshole. Laughter. “A new plague!” It’s somebody’s son, John thought. I’ve met him, What’s his name? John Owen was deeply regretting the whole trip.

  “John,” Fowler said, “maybe we should restrict these high tech medical advances to the developed countries, the ones where the birthrate is low.”

  “Now there’s a promising idea,” Rex said. “Just price them out. Aren’t you doing that anyway?”

  Laughter.

  “As a matter of fact, we are not,” John said.

  “Maybe it’s time to stop all that,” Rex said. “One way or the other. I think we should selectively ban some of these medicines altogether on a regional basis.”

  “You—you’re not serious. And who is this ‘we’? Maybe you should just kill these people outright.”

  “A swell idea!” I do know that kid, John thought. “Pest control!” John turned and gave the kid a hard stare. My God, that is Ed Gosli’s kid.

  “Do the first born,” a female voice said.

  Laughter.

  “Look, my good fellow,” Rex said smoothly, “I understand that your profits are at stake.”

  “And I, for one, am not unsympathetic about profits,” Fowler added.

  John finally let his fury show. “Profits?” He had spoken coolly, forcefully, and there was steel in his gaze. Fowler actually flinched. Then John dropped his voice to a light, conversational level. The room was totally silent. “You don’t have a clue what motivates someone who makes his own money.”

  Fowler sniffed. “Yes, I am fortunate to have certain financial resources at my disposal. And my mission is to make the world a better place with them.”

  John just sat, poised, his jaw muscles knotted, staring the other man down.

  “Now, now gentlemen,” Rex said. “Maybe we should just slow down a bit with this high-tech medicine everywhere. Treat everyone equally. Common sacrifice for the common good.”

  John meticulously placed his napkin in the middle of his mashed potatoes. “I see we have very different motivations,” he said softly.

  As Dr. John Owen got up from the table, the silence that followed among those left sitting at the table was reminiscent of the time an unwashed homeless man found his way into the exclusive bathroom in Fowler’s favorite club. John turned his back on them and left the room. The door closed slowly behind him, allowing the next few comments to leak into the hallway.

  “What was that about?” A female voice.

  “His wife got sick in India. That plague. His own labs are still unable to find a cure.”

  “That explains it. He’s unhinged.”

  “Rex, you should watch the guest list more closely. I thought that Gabriel fellow, the one with the Indian name, the Senator from Iowa or Idaho, was finally coming this time. That nice Indian.”

  “Naughty, naughty.”

  The door finally closed and Dr. Owen strode down the hall. He could hear Rachael’s voice beside him. Forget it, John, the world is full of assholes.

  ——

  Seven hours later John eagerly headed to the sealed door to Rachael’s bubble room. When he was met by Dr. Weintraub, John stopped cold. The attending physician’s face was grave. “John, I’m so sorry. I tried to reach you,” he said.

  “What’s wrong?” Dr. Owen said, feeling suddenly dizzy. “I am so very sorry, John.” The rest of Weintraub’s answer was unbearable. John’s world began slipping away…

  ——

  The next day, Alice Canyon Hawke took a call from Seattle in the Lakefront Lodge restaurant near Sandpoint, Idaho. She and Snowfeather were taking breakfast inside, while Gabriel stood on a dock, smoking a cigar and staring at the shimmering water, on fire with the morning sun. As Alice held the tiny phone, her face suddenly aged a decade. “Snowfeather…” Alice spoke with a quiet urgency that chilled her daughter’s heart. “Get. Dad. Now.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s about Elisabeth’s mother…” Alice sighed.

  “Mom. What happened to Mrs. Owen?”

  “She…died last night. Go get Dad…”

  Chapter 6

  The day was typically Puget Sound overcast. With Rachael’s funeral behind them, the old friends were together again, minus one. Once again, John Owen’s boat was outfitted for a long run with lots of food and fuel. Just ahead of them a break in the clouds admitted a single shaft of sunlight, lancing down at the gray water like a searchlight.

  “I’m still numb as a dead toe, Gabriel,” John said. “I turn around in the boat, expecting to see Rachael. And Elisabeth, well she…” His voice cracked and he let the sentence trail off. It was still too much to bear.

  Gabriel was standing next to his old friend, as if to shelter him from grief; both were wearing yellow slickers. John was wearing his favorite crumpled fishing hat, while Gabriel’s braids flapped in the wind. Newly-pregnant Elisabeth and Snowfeather sat talking softly at the stern of the boat. When Elisabet
h slumped and began crying, she shook her head and turned to look out at the water. Snowfeather put her slender arm over her friend’s shoulder.

  Dr. Owen looked back at his daughter’s husband. Josh was a tall, sturdy, thirty year-old man with clear, kind eyes, preoccupied with the tackle box. When Josh immediately got up to comfort his wife, John looked away. Alice, dressed in her favorite crimson parka, approached John and Gabriel with two steaming metal cups. She projected cheer, but her eyes were dark.

  “It’s very hot, guys. Strong coffee and trace amounts of cocoa.”

  Gabriel kissed his wife on the cheek and John took a cup with one hand while still holding the wheel in the other. “Thank you, Alice,” he said. “It means everything to have friends here right now.”

  “Ready for a break, Capt’n?” Alice asked. “I’d love to take the helm. This thingy is the helm, isn’t it?” she added impishly. John’s bleak solemnity gave way to a smile, his first in ten days. “Get ye aft Capt’n, and have a drink.”

  “Yes’m,” John said. He yielded the wheel. As Alice steered and the Seattle skyline dropped below the horizon, the two men sat in a shelter near the stern, across from Josh and their daughters, and sipped from their battered metal cups. After several silent minutes, Owen slipped his empty mug into a holder. His movements were excessively careful, like in a dream. Then he bent forward and covered his face with his hands. “Damn, damn, damn,” he said, his voice muffled. “I knew Rachael shouldn’t have ever gone into that godforsaken clinic. I knew it. I knew it…” He shook, trying futilely to hide the sounds of his sobbing. Gabriel reached out, patting John’s back. Then John raised himself up, trying to smile. Tears were running freely. “God, I miss her.”

  Gabriel started to say something, but held his silence. Moments passed, with John looking out at the water, Gabriel feeling helpless. A minute later, as if by unspoken agreement, Elisabeth and Snowfeather quietly joined them on either side, each young woman settling next to her father. Josh stood awkwardly at a distance. Dr. Owen had stopped shaking but Gabriel could see the tears still streaming, and he began rubbing his friend’s shoulders. John eventually straightened, reached over and patted Gabriel. “I’ll be okay,” he said, attempting a smile. Elisabeth leaned her head against her father and started crying softly. Josh approached, then, and patted Elisabeth.

  Gabriel wanted to look directly at John, but forced himself to join him looking out at the distant water. Gabriel started to say something, but the words died.

  “It hurts,” John whispered. “It hurts so damned much.”

  Snowfeather squeezed her father’s hand. The boat plowed on through the gray water, heading toward the column of sunlight. “I know,” Gabriel said, “I know.”

  “In a way, they killed her,” John said.

  “Who killed her, John?” Gabriel asked.

  John Owen just stared ahead.

  Chapter 7

  One month later

  John Owen opened a crisp white envelope which contained an invitation to an exclusive meeting to be held at the Conference Center of the Fowler Enterprises Building in Boston, hosted by the Captains of Technology, Stewards of Gaia. At the bottom was a personal inscription from Fowler. Apparently, all the major pharmaceutical makers had been personally invited by Knight Fowler. John politely declined, citing his family tragedy. In truth, he would never again agree to be in the same room with Fowler, Longworthy or any of those other idiots. John asked an assistant to line the front office bird cage with the invitation.

  The next week, Ed Gosli, CEO of General Advanced Technologies, called John to pay his respects. After John thanked him, Ed asked whether John would be going to “Fowler’s Boston Show.” Dr. Owen had replied with a remarkably eloquent and varied string of expletives.

  “I’m guessing, that means, ‘Thanks, but no thanks’?”

  “Call me when you get back, Ed,” John said. “I hope you find the experience…fulfilling.”

  ——

  A week later, Ed Gosli was dropped off by his driver at the Fowler Enterprises Building in Boston. When Ed spotted an empty seat in the small auditorium, he smiled as he thought of John Owen. He watched in bemused silence as the remaining CEOs were seated. Better me than you, old friend, he thought. When Knight Fowler gave the sign that the informational video was to begin, the room darkened.

  The screen remained blank as the soundtrack began softly with a remote, pitiless tattoo from snare drums, pedal notes from trombones, and muted snarls from the French horns. In total darkness, the music swelled menacingly on all sides. Suddenly, in huge, blood red letters, the words “EARTH AT RISK” glowed against the black screen. Drums beat a march to the gallows as the red words dwindled, fading out as the screen was filled with a brilliant, electric-blue sky.

  An instant later, the sound of rushing air replaced the music. A spinning, blurred horizon followed as the camera tracked a dizzying fall from the sky. Then the image froze. Silence followed.

  Ed Gosli’s eyes had adjusted to the dim light and he took the moment to survey the audience, recognizing several other top executives. Helluva lot of industrial players here. Looks like every drug maker except John Owen is here. What is Knight Fowler up to? I didn’t come here for some damn movie.

  Fading in, the unmistakable whump-whump of helicopter blades heralded the approach of a shoreline. Gosli turned his attention back to the screen. The noise became deafening, as a suspended camera carried the audience over acre after acre of blood-red sand, a charnel beach captured in horridly exquisite detail, the sand stained and blotted. Grotesque images of squirming, dying and dead creatures passed relentlessly below. The camera scanned heaps of dead fish, clouds of flies, sprawled, fat, pale carcasses of whales, some still twitching slowly in agony. Other creatures, less identifiable, lay still, like Dantesque cartoons.

  The helicopter stopped in the air, hovering at thirty feet, its camera savoring the image of a single human limb. Then a black screen and sudden silence. After a moment, ocean sounds accompanied a remote shot. Zooming in, the remote camera panned carnage tossing in the surf—a sea lion, the body of a small child, and other bobbing things expelled from the deeper waters. Finally, a wide angle took in the wounded chemical barge, the Tong 334, floundering a mile off-shore. The infamous Chinese vessel was bleeding into the water, listing to the stern. Taking water, it sank further, its contents boiling into the sea, steaming as from some superheated cauldron.

  The barge disappeared. The camera conducted a 200 degree pan, showing death clotting the sea all the way to the horizon. A stranded fishing boat bobbed alone in the midst of the debris, a man waving futilely from the deck for help.

  A voice-over proclaimed, “This was the Tong Shipping disaster, the underwater explosion and toxic waste spill, just ten years ago. This section of the Australian coastline—all four hundred and fifty kilometers of it—remains a deadly health hazard today. There is still no fishing industry in Western Australia.”

  The percussion returned, picking up pace, a heavier bass drum beat, accompanied by sharp, dissonant chords from the brass, a steady drone in the high strings.

  Like insects, Ed thought.

  Then the camera’s eye visited a long supermarket line in Toledo, Ohio. As snow began to fall, the queue of women, men and children had surrounded the entire building and folded back on itself. Someone screamed. The eye zoomed in on a disturbance near the side supermarket door. A fight had broken out between two men. As they rolled on the snow-covered street, the crowd surged against the closed front doors to the supermarket, ignoring the struggle. The scene cut to a spot of blood on the sidewalk, then to the sale signs.

  CHRISTMAS EVE SPECIALS!…WHOLE WHEAT BREAD: $25 A LOAF…ORGANIC CARROTS: $12 PER POUND…SORRY NO RATION CARDS ACCEPTED TODAY

  The first window was shattered by a rock, large chunks of glass plate falling inside. The crowd pressed forward. The second window shattered. Someone cheered. Then the store’s front doors were forced open and the crowd surged inside. A
n alarm rang. Sirens pealed in the distance. A hand reached for the camera. It was followed by a black screen.

  Another voice-over: “Remember the Toledo food riots? Sixty three casualties. Seventeen fatal. Martial law. Is it over? Food rationing is still in place in Mexico and parts of the U.S.”

  The soundtrack communicated tension through dissonance in the high strings, an uneven percussion and the howl of a distant horn.

  Briefly the word “SIMULATION” flashed on the screen.

  Another fly-over. The helicopter descended over an immense dam across the Yangtze River. As the camera scanned the dam, a gaping crack in the center appeared and dramatically widened. Zooming in, the picture captured the dam finally giving way, allowing a biblical torrent to gout through, sweeping everything in its path. The room was filled with the deafening rush of water.

  A scroll of text appeared under the image of the simulated disaster:

  The Three Gorges Dam in China was constructed over a major earthquake fault. De Kaph Engineering of Hamburg was retained by the PRC to perform a confidential earthquake audit. The results, suppressed by the Chinese government, have been obtained by Fowler Enterprises. The De Kaph report predicts that a catastrophic dam failure of exactly the type depicted here is likely within the next decade.

  Over the next five minutes, the helicopter followed the water, sweeping low as a trapped sea emptied itself into the densely populated corridor leading to Shanghai. A car spun in the water like a tiny top. Silence. The screen cut to a simulated satellite image showing the entire damage, while an inset picture followed the spinning car. An overlay appeared showing whole cities inundated in the path of the flood. The car in the small picture spun out of sight.

  The voice-over continued, “You have just seen a depiction of the failure of the world’s largest dam. This is a seemingly masterful feat of engineering, dwarfing the Hoover dam. Experts agree: The dam will fail. One million people were evacuated to make room for the reservoir. When the dam eventually fails, more than five million people will be displaced, and at least two million will die, not including uncounted deaths from disease and starvation in Shanghai itself.”