Kingdom of the Seven Read online

  Karen swallowed hard. “I was able to find alternative methods to fund the preliminary human-stage testing.”

  “I’ll take responsibility for that,” Alexander MacFarlane interjected. “Dr. Raymond came to me with a bare-bones budget to pursue the project, and I approved it.”

  “Without our consent, obviously,” Updike snapped.

  “I didn’t feel it was necessary to inform you.”

  “And neither did you feel it necessary to keep us updated on the progress of the project.”

  “On my insistence,” Karen said firmly. “I elected to hold that information back from all of you, including Mr. MacFarlane, as a matter of security.”

  “Security?” raised Updike, veins pulsing along his temples.

  “Until we were sure, you understand.”

  “No, Dr. Raymond, I don’t.”

  “We had to avoid leaks at all costs,” Karen told him. “Unwelcome scrutiny would have burdened us with more attention than we could afford as we took Lot 35 to the human testing stage.”

  “Lot 35?” Updike questioned.

  “That’s the clinical name we have given to the vaccine.” “Actually,” Alexander McFarlane corrected, “vaccine candidate at this stage.”

  “A very good candidate, though,” Karen said, a slight layer of defensiveness lacing her voice. “The results are all there before you, but let me summarize them. We gave the vaccine to thirty healthy volunteers. Twenty-seven of these developed antibodies that neutralized the AIDS virus in test tubes. Furthermore, we observed no significant side effects in the volunteers themselves.”

  Karen moved to the VCR and popped in the tape she had brought with her.

  “Alex, if you could get the lights, please …”

  MacFarlane flipped switches until the only light was the glow off the television. The screen went black briefly and then lit up with what might have been a scene from a science fiction film; dozens of pinkish gray forms battling for space amidst a black grid.

  “What you are about to see, gentlemen, is a computer simulation of how HIV invades the system,” Karen narrated. “Each of the forms displayed before you represents a cell. The virus has to be able to bond to a cell in order to multiply and spread.”

  Suddenly on the screen small blue shapes appeared. They slid about between the digitized cells like characters in a video game, ultimately lodging themselves against the outer walls of perhaps a quarter of the pinkish gray cellular forms and then slowly penetrating them.

  “We have known for some time,” Karen continued, “that the HIV virus will bind to certain cell shapes before others.”

  “But all these look the same,” interrupted Roger Updike.

  “I was speaking of molecular shape and composition, Mr. Updike, not physical structure. It’s nothing you can actually see and, until very recently, even were able to detect.” She turned toward the screen, where all the blue invaders had found homes within the pinkish gray cellular forms. “We thought the invasion process was simply random. The discovery that something far more specific and identifiable was going on became the launching point for our research. As you can see in this computer-enhanced demonstration, the infection spreads by reproducing itself in the cell and then entering the blood once the cell dies. But if it were trapped in the receptor and couldn’t get out, then the virus would be rendered impotent. And we know there are many more receptors than free virus in the blood.”

  As if on cue, the screen changed to a fresh scene of untouched cells. This time forms outlined in white had joined the pinkish gray shapes in battling for position across the black grid. Karen waited silently for another wave of blue simulated HIV viral capsules to make their appearance, repeating the same swimming dance as before. This time, though, the only cells they lodged against were the ones outlined in white.

  “The white forms that the HIV has bonded to this time are modified human blood cells,” she explained, “modified to contain attached receptors that mimic the molecular structure that HIV is unalterably most attracted to. But since they contain no DNA, there is no way for HIV to reproduce—a deadend. In essence, we defeat the virus by tricking it. Once injected, our vaccine produces the mimic receptors that attach to the red blood cells, which then act like magnets for any HIV cells entering the body. If infection does occur, it can’t reproduce and thus it can’t spread.”

  Karen hit STILL and the picture froze in place. “This is an offshoot of the Trojan horse approach that’s been tried unsuccessfully in the past with AIDS vaccines, both preventative and therapeutic. Because the federal government saw our methods as just another variation, they refused further funding. I admit it was a long shot. All the hard work aside, the bottom line is we got lucky.”

  “So did Salk with polio,” MacFarlane reminded.

  “Are you saying Lot 35 is actually a therapeutic vaccine as well as a preventative one?” asked a third director, the youngest on the board.

  “I’m afraid not. Our research has found that once HIV begins its rampant invasion of the body through the blood, its virulence is such that it is no longer limited to a narrow choice of receptor shapes. Any, in fact, will do, so the Trojan horse approach would have only a limited impact.”

  “But what you are saying,” picked up a suddenly conciliatory Roger Updike, “is that Lot 35 never gives the virus a chance to get that far in previously uninfected subjects.”

  “In fact, Lot 35 never gives HIV a chance to get anywhere at all. Keep in mind, gentlemen, that this is a treacherous disease we’re dealing with, treacherous because it doesn’t play by the normal rules. A vaccine that tests positive in one person may not in another because of the infinite number of forms the virus is capable of taking on. But the principles Lot 35 was founded on suggest it will work on all of them, because Lot 35 lets, actually encourages, the virus in any form to do what it does best: bond to the cells it is most attracted to.” She paused long enough to swing her gaze about the men before her. “I called you all here today because, in spite of all this, we still lack the hard documentation needed to change the government’s mind about further funding for this project. Proceeding thus means doing so on our own.”

  “Entailing …”

  “Entailing, Mr. Updike, a large-scale study involving in the area of one thousand test subjects.”

  “Timetable?”

  “Eighteen months before we could present the necessary documentation to the FDA.”

  “Cost?”

  Karen didn’t waver. “Seventy-five million dollars.”

  The members of the board of directors traded uneasy glances.

  “That’s a tremendous amount of money for us to come up with, Doctor,” Updike said. “Failure on your part could mean the bankrupting of Jardine-Marra.”

  “And success could mean a hundredfold profits for the next decade. The seventy-five million is simply an investment.”

  “More like a gamble.”

  “The most lucrative investments often are.”

  Updike traded glances with the other directors and then with Alexander MacFarlane. “Could you excuse us briefly, Dr. Raymond? …”

  Briefly turned out to be nearly an hour. Updike had taken the chair at the head of the table when Karen reentered the room.

  “Fifty million, Doctor,” he said, somewhat reluctantly, as she faced him. “That’s the best we can do.”

  Karen Raymond left the boardroom physically and emotionally drained. It seemed as though a great weight had at last been lifted from her shoulders, a lifelong struggle coming to an end.

  She had been struggling against something for as long as she could remember. First there was the struggle to get the best grades in high school to win a scholarship to college. But when Brown University accepted her, she couldn’t say no even though their financial aid offer came up significantly short of what she needed. Her next struggle became working to help support herself. As an undergraduate this meant several school-sponsored jobs, but as a graduate student she was
offered a position as a teaching assistant to help her make ends meet.

  Karen did her doctoral work at Columbia, and that was where she met Tom. She had been so lonely and starved for affection for so long that she must have worn her vulnerability like a collar, because he leashed her hard and fast. He was finishing his final year in the school of film when they met, certain that a brilliant future as a screenwriter and then as director lay before him. He was undeniably brilliant, but equally mercurial. His disordered thinking, the wonderfully creative chaos of his mind, drew Karen to him instantly. He was her antithesis, and that allowed him to bring alive in her a part she had forgotten could exist.

  Karen fell hopelessly in love.

  She did not lose sight of her work and career; she simply had something else in view as well. When Tom graduated a year ahead of her, she agreed to move with him to California and enrolled at UCLA. Its program wasn’t Columbia’s, but it would do. Besides, Tom was making good money doing freelance work: selling some options and a few television episodes. Making the right contacts. Seeing the right people. They lived spartanly enough in a nice studio apartment in Westwood, and on Sundays they would sometimes stroll about Beverly Hills trying to pick out the house they would someday buy. They got married six months into their life together. Making it big, all the way to the top, seemed inevitable. For Karen the constant struggle at last seemed on the verge of ending.

  Instead, the most painful struggles were just beginning. Not long after their wedding, she returned home to find Tom cradling himself in the middle of the living room with a nearly empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s between his knees. She had just come from the doctor’s office, where he confirmed she was pregnant. She was thinking of putting off school for a while anyway. The timing couldn’t have been better.

  Or worse, as it turned out.

  The truth emerged as Tom sat there rocking on the rug. He had not sold a single script or been paid so much as a dollar since they had come to Hollywood. All his achievements had been fabrications and lies. The money he brought home came courtesy of a trust fund left him by a grandparent. The parents he had tearfully told her had died years before were only estranged; they had thrown him out and cut him off years before. The trust fund had got him through school and financed his honest attempt at building a writing career. But now it was gone, all gone.

  In retrospect, Karen should have ended things there and then. Except there was the baby to consider and, more, her own romantic ingenuousness. In spite of everything, the lies and tales, she convinced herself that Tom Mitchell was still the man she had loved and married. Her need for affection, coupled with the fear of being plunged once more into a life of aloneness, made her believe that she could salvage the relationship. In another year her doctoral work would be complete and she could begin what would eventually be a lucrative career. If in the meantime Tom could hold down any job at all, they could get by.

  It was a good plan, but it was doomed from the beginning. For one thing, her difficult pregnancy forced her to postpone her schooling indefinitely. For another, she failed to consider the depth of her husband’s problems. The lies continued. He couldn’t keep a job for longer than a single month and dove headfirst into the bottle each time he quit or got fired.

  She transferred to the University of California at San Diego and they moved south, first to a run-down apartment and then a trailer park in Sanpee, where their closest neighbors were the members of a motorcycle gang called the Skulls. Hard chords and riffs of rock music dominated the day and night, intermixed with the revving nightmare of chopper bikes coming and going. Karen’s first son, Taylor, was born in the spring, and eight months later, thanks to a faulty diaphragm, she was pregnant again.

  Again, in retrospect, she seemed so stupid. Why had she put up with Tom Mitchell for as long as she had, long after he revealed himself as a ne’er-do-well, a do-nothing? Just having him there was a comfort, she supposed, although it was difficult today to understand why. By the time her second son, Brandon, was born, she was inching her way through her doctoral work. She waitressed at a local restaurant to put food on her own table while Tom tried to get back to his writing. His talent had never been in question, and seeing him at least taking a stab at productivity made the day easier to get through. The arrangement enabled Tom to care for the kids, while she worked and studied.

  The end came abruptly on a day she returned home to the trailer to find both babies crying and her older son, Taylor, bloodied and bruised. Tom tried to explain it away with his usual lies, but this time she wasn’t buying the tale. The argument that followed must have risen above even the Skulls’ music, because the door burst open just as Tom was about to strike her for the second time. A huge shape decked out in black stood in the threshold, had to duck to step up inside.

  “This punk givin’ you trouble, miss?”

  The man’s oversized lips barely moved as he spoke. A black beret stretched tightly over his massive scalp, adding to the menace of his bearded, bearlike face.

  “Mind your own fucking business.”

  If Tom hadn’t said that, he might have turned and left. As it was, Karen saw the slightest of smiles cross the biker’s face. He advanced deliberately forward, his leather chaps cracking and creaking, boots clip-clopping across the trailer’s cheap tile floor.

  He was the biggest man she had ever seen!

  Tom’s eyes followed him meanly the whole way. Liquor fueled his courage and he wasn’t backing down.

  “Get the fuck out!”

  “Sure, mister.”

  The biker closed the last of the way in a quick surge and fastened his hands over Tom’s shirt. Tom was airborne in the next instant, looking like a rag doll. He slammed into the folding utility table upon which rested his useless Smith-Corona Typetronic, and spilled over it into a pile of crumpled pages lying in a heap on the floor.

  When he staggered to his feet, the biker threw him against the wall. His back hit with a thud and he slumped down. The biker looked over at Karen.

  “You want me to kill him?”

  “No,” she managed, the flatness of his question unnerving her.

  The biker stole a glance at the two wailing babies in their cribs. “I throw him out, he might come back.”

  “No,” she repeated. “No, I don’t think he will.”

  The biker looked briefly at Tom. He smiled, showing gaps where some teeth had been. The smile was the coldest gesture she had ever seen. Karen shuddered.

  “Yeah. I think you’re right.”

  Tom made it upright again, using the wall for support.

  “Get out,” the biker ordered in that same soft, immovable voice. “Don’t bother packing.”

  Tom’s feet fumbled toward the door. He stopped to lean against a second utility table they used to eat their meals on, looked at Karen, but didn’t speak. Then he pulled himself through the still open doorway and disappeared into the night past a crowd of bikers drawn there by sounds of the brawl.

  It was the last time she ever saw Tom, but hardly the last time she ever saw the big biker. His name was T.J. Fields, but everyone called him Two-Ton. He’d been an Olympic-class power lifter until his knee gave out, after which he tried a stint as a professional wrestler. Trouble was, he didn’t like losing on purpose. He put up with it for a time until a match he was supposed to tank to a little gymnastic squirt who called himself the Tumbler. The Tumbler hit him in the groin by accident, and when the crowd cheered, he slammed him there again on purpose. As soon as T.J. got his breath back, he took the Tumbler apart. Literally. Dislocated both his shoulders, redesigned his nose, and left him with a mouthful of teeth to spit out onto the mat. Then he stepped out of the ring without even bothering about the pin. The three-count just didn’t seem important.

  T.J. and the other Skulls, under the leadership of their limping, ageless founder, Papa Jack, adopted Karen and her kids as their own. After some coaxing, she agreed to let some of the women who rode with the gang take care of the boys so sh
e could devote her time more fully to her studies. As a result she managed to finally complete her doctoral work and landed an excellent starting position at Jardine-Marra, thanks to Alexander MacFarlane. The Skulls never asked anything of her and refused to accept any form of compensation once she began to earn real money.

  The day she moved out of that Sanpee trailer park for the first of their three real homes was one of the saddest of her life. She might have stayed longer, except Taylor was ready to start kindergarten and there was no nearby school decent enough to suit her tastes. Of course, the Skulls again offered their assistance, but the thought of her boys being chauffeured on the back of Harleys was a bit much for even her to take.

  She stayed in touch with T.J. and the others regularly for a while. Lately, though, it hadn’t been more than once a year, if that. Since her work on Lot 35 had come full circle, there had been little time to think of anything else. Yet somehow she had felt better about leaving her boys with leather-clad biker moms than with the endless succession of day-care centers and baby-sitters that had followed. The long hours her position demanded left her with few to be at home.

  The baby-sitter of this month took her leave as soon as Karen stepped in the door of her house in the North City West sector of Del Mar, a bustling development of high-end tract homes layered across private cul-de-sacs on the east side of the freeway. The easy five-mile commute from Jardine-Marra’s offices in Torrey Pines inevitably made her reflect back on the maddening rush-hour rides into UCSD from Sanpee across divided highways and two-lane dinosaurs that begged for accidents. And yet, and yet …

  “Mommy!”

  Ten-year-old Brandon’s hug remained tight as ever, but she counted herself lucky on those days Taylor had one for her as well. Now that he was almost twelve, hugging his mother was on the to-be-phased-out list. That in itself wouldn’t have been so bad if it weren’t for how much he looked like his father. He had Tom’s dark eyes and sultry features. Every time she looked at him lately, she saw his father and felt the vulnerability he had revealed in her. Taylor knew how to wrap her around his finger, just as Tom had, to get a third chance when he plainly didn’t deserve a second.