Next: A Novel (41 page)

They drove slowly forward.

“I don’t know,” Dolly said. “Doesn’t look quite the same.”

“It’s the baseball hat. Just ask him,” Vasco said.

Dolly rolled down her window. She leaned out. “Jamie, honey?”

The boy turned. “Yes?” he said.

Dolly jumped out of the car.

Henry Kendall was working at the computer, activating the TrackTech, when he heard the high-pitched scream from outside. He knew at once that it was Dave. He bolted up and ran for the door. Behind him was Lynn, running from the kitchen. But he noticed that Alex stayed in the kitchen, with her arms around her son, Jamie. She looked terrified.

Dave was confused by what he saw. Jamie spoke to the woman in the big white car, and then she jumped out and grabbed him. Dave was not inclined to attack females, so he watched as the woman scooped up Jamie, took him to the back of the white car, and opened the back doors.

Dave saw a man inside in a white coat, and he saw lots of shiny equipment that frightened him.

Jamie must have been frightened, too, because suddenly he was screaming, and then the woman slammed the back doors shut.

Before the car started moving, Dave screamed and leaped onto the back, grabbing the handles on the door. The white car accelerated forward, going fast. Dave held on, struggling to keep his balance. When he had a good grip, he pulled up, so he could look through the rear windows. He saw the man in the coat and the woman pushing Jamie onto a bed, trying to tie him down. Jamie was screaming.

Dave felt rage flood through his body. He snarled and banged at the doors. The woman looked up in alarm. She seemed shocked to see Dave. She yelled something to the driver.

The driver started to swerve the white car. Dave was flung sideways, barely able to hold on to the recessed door handles. When the car swung him back once more, he reached high, grabbing the lights above the doors. He pulled himself onto the top of the ambulance. The wind blew hard.

The surface was smooth. He lay flat, inching forward. The car straightened out, drove more slowly. He heard yelling inside.

He crept forward.

“We lost him!”Dolly yelled, looking out the back window.

“What was it?”

“Looked like an ape!”

“He’s not an ape; he’s my friend!” Jamie yelled, struggling. “He goes to school with me.”

The kid’s baseball cap fell off, and Dolly saw that he had dark brown hair. She said, “What’s your name?”

“Jamie. Jamie Kendall.”

“Oh no,” she said.

“Aw Christ,” Vasco said, driving. “You got the wrong kid?”

“He said his name was Jamie!”

“It’s the wrong kid. Jesus Christ, you’re an idiot, Dolly. This is kidnapping.”

“Well, it’s not my fault—”

“Whose fault do you think it is?”

“You saw the kid too.”

“I didn’t see—”

“You were looking right out there.”

“Christ, shut up. Stop arguing. We gotta take him back.”

“What do you mean?”

“We gotta take him back where we found him. It’s goddamn kidnapping.”

And then Vasco swore, and screamed.

Dave was on the roof of the cab, wedged between the light bar and the slope of the ambulance.

He leaned over the driver’s side. There was a big side mirror there. He could see an ugly black-bearded man, driving and shouting. He knew the man was going to hurt Jamie. He could see the man baring his teeth in a sign of rage.

Dave leaned down, resting his weight on the side mirror, and swung his arm in through the open window. His strong fingers grabbed the bearded man by the nose, and the man yelled and jerked his head. Dave’s fingers slipped, but he lunged back and bit down hard on the man’s ear, and held on. The man was screaming at him in rage. Dave could feel that rage, but he had plenty of his own. He pulled hard, and felt the ear come away with a gush of hot blood.

The man screamed, and spun the wheel.

The ambulance tilted, the left wheels came up off the ground, and the vehicle slowly turned over and crashed down on its right side. The sound of screeching metal was incredibly loud. Dave was riding the ambulance down as it fell, but he lost his grip on impact. His feet slammed into the face of the bearded man and one of his shoes went right into his mouth. The vehicle slid to a stop on its side. The man was biting and coughing. The woman inside was screaming. Dave pulled his foot out of his shoe, leaving it in the bearded man’s mouth. Blood was gushing everywhere from the man’s ear.

He yanked off the other shoe, scampered around to the back of the ambulance, and managed with some effort to get the doors open. The white-coat man was lying on his side, bleeding from his mouth. Jamie was underneath the man, yelling. Dave dragged the white-coat man out of the car, dropped him onto the street. Then he went and got Jamie, put him on his back, and ran, carrying him back to their house.

Jamie said, “Are you hurt?”

The ear was still in Dave’s mouth. He spit it into his hand. “No.”

“What’s that in your hand?”

Dave opened his fist. “It’s an ear.”

“Ugh. Eeeew!”

“I bit his ear. He was bad. He hurted you.”

“Uck!”

Up ahead, they saw everybody standing out on the front lawn of their house. Henry and Lynn and the new people, too. Dave put Jamie on the ground, and he ran to his parents. Dave waited for his mother, Lynn, to comfort him, but she was entirely focused on Jamie. It made him feel bad. He dropped the ear in his hand on the ground. Everybody was swirling around him, but nobody touched him, nobody put their fingers in his fur.

He felt more and more sad.

Then he saw the boxy black car barreling down the street toward them. It was huge, high off the ground, and it drove right up onto the lawn.

CH086

The Oxnard courtroom was small and so cold Bob Koch thought he would catch pneumonia. He was feeling none too good anyway. His hangover had left a very sour feeling in his stomach. The judge was a youngish guy, about forty, and he looked hungover, too. But maybe not. Koch cleared his throat.

“Your Honor, I am here representing Alexandra Burnet, who is unable to be here in person.”

“This court has ordered her to appear,” the judge said. “In person.”

“I am aware of that, Your Honor, but she and her child are presently being pursued by a bounty hunter who intends to remove tissue from their bodies, and she is therefore in flight to prevent that.”

“What bounty hunter?” the judge said. “Why is there a bounty hunter involved in this?”

“We would like to know exactly that, Your Honor,” Bob Koch said.

The judge turned. “Mr. Rodriguez?”

“Your Honor,” Rodriguez said, standing, “there is no bounty hunter per se.”

“Well, what is there?”

“There is a professional fugitive-recovery agent at work.”

“With what authorization?”

“He is not authorized per se. In this case he is making a citizen’s arrest, Your Honor.”

“Arrest of whom?”

“Of Ms. Burnet and her son.”

“On what basis?”

“Possession of stolen property, Your Honor.”

“To make a citizen’s arrest, the possession of stolen property has to be witnessed by the person making the arrest.”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

“What has been witnessed?”

“The possession of the property in question, Your Honor.”

“You are talking about the Burnet cell line,” the judge said.

“Yes, Your Honor. As previously documented before this court, that cell line is owned by UCLA and licensed to BioGen, in Westview. The ownership is attested to by several prior court rulings.”

“How, then, is it stolen?”

“Your Honor, we have evidence that Mr. Burnet conspired to eliminate the cell lines in possession of BioGen. But whether that is true or not, BioGen has the right to restore the cell lines that it owns.”

“It can restore them from Mr. Burnet.”

“Yes, Your Honor. Presumably so, since the court has ruled that Mr. Burnet’s cells belong to BioGen, they can at any time take more. Whether the property is actually within Mr. Burnet’s body or not is immaterial. BioGen owns the cells.”

“You are denying Mr. Burnet’s right to the integrity of his body?” the judge said, raising an eyebrow.

“With respect, Your Honor, there is no such right. Suppose someone took your wife’s diamond ring and swallowed it. The ring is still your property.”

“Yes,” the judge said, “but I might be required to wait patiently for it to reappear.”

“Yes, Your Honor. But suppose for some reason the ring becomes stuck in the intestine. Don’t you have the right to retrieve it? Clearly, you do. It can’t be kept from you. It’s your property wherever it is. Whoever swallows it assumes the risk of retrieval.”

Koch thought he’d better move in. “Your Honor,” he said, “if I remember my high school biology correctly, anything swallowed is not actually inside the body, any more than something inside a doughnut hole is inside the doughnut. The ring is outside the body.”

Rodriguez began to sputter. “Your Honor—”

“Your Honor,” Koch said, raising his voice, “I trust we can all agree that we are not talking about diamond rings that have been stolen. We are talking about cells that reside inside the human body. The notion that these cells can be owned by someone else—even if the appellate court has upheld a jury finding—leads to absurd conclusions, as you see here. If BioGen no longer possesses Mr. Burnet’s cells, then they have lost them by their own foolish actions. They are not entitled to go back and get more. If you lose your diamond ring, you can’t go back to the diamond mine and get a replacement.”

Rodriguez said, “The analogy is inexact.”

“Your Honor, all analogies are inexact.”

“In this instance,” Rodriguez said, “I would ask the court to stick narrowly to the issue at hand, and consider the previous findings of the court that are relevant to the issue. The court has held that BioGen owns these cells. They came from Mr. Burnet but they are the property of BioGen.

We argue that we have the right to retrieve these cells at any time.”

“Your Honor, this argument directly conflicts with the Thirteenth Amendment, against chattel slavery. BioGen may own Mr. Burnet’s cells. But they don’t own Mr. Burnet. Theycan’t. ”

“We never claimed to own Mr. Burnet, only his cells. And that is all we are asking for now,”

Rodriguez said.

“But the practical consequence of your claim is that you effectively own Mr. Burnet, since youdo claim access to his body at any time—”

The judge was looking weary. “Gentlemen, I see the issue,” he said, “but what does any of this have to do with Ms. Burnet and her son?”

Bob Koch stepped back. Let Rodriguez bury himself on this one, he thought. The conclusion he was asking the court to draw was inconceivable.

“Your Honor,” Rodriguez said, “if the court accepts that Mr. Burnet’s cells are my client’s property, as I believe it must, then said cells are my client’s property wherever they are found.

For example, if Mr. Burnet gave blood at a blood bank, the donated blood would contain cells that we own. We could assert ownership of those cells, and demand to extract them from the donated blood, since Mr. Burnet is not legally able to give those cells to anyone else. They are our property.

“Similarly, the same cells that we own—the identical cells—are also found in Mr. Burnet’s children and descendants. Therefore we have ownership of those cells as well. And we have the right to take the cells.”

“And the bounty hunter?”

“The fugitive-recovery specialist,” Rodriguez said, “is making a citizen’s arrest on the following basis. If he sees Mr. Burnet’s descendants, then, since they are by definition walking around with our property, they are self-evidently in possession of stolen property, and can be arrested.”

The judge sighed.

“Your Honor,” Rodriguez said, “this conclusion may strike the court as illogical, but the fact is that we are in a new era, and what seems strange to us now will in a few years not seem so strange. Already a large percentage of the human genome is owned. The genetic information for various disease organisms is owned. The notion that such biological elements are in private hands is only odd because it is new to us. But the court must rule in accordance with previous findings. The Burnet cells are our cells.”

“But in the case of descendants, the cells are copies,” the judge said.

“Yes, Your Honor, but that is not at issue. If I own a formula to make something, and someone Xeroxes that formula on a sheet of paper and gives it to another, it remains my property. I own the formula, no matter how it is copied, or by whom. And I have the right to retrieve the copy.”

The judge turned to Bob Koch. “Mr. Koch?”

“Your Honor,Mr. Rodriguez has asked you to rule narrowly. So do I. Previous courts held that once Mr. Burnet’s cells were out of his body, they no longer belonged to him. They did not say that Mr. Burnet was a walking gold mine that could be plundered at will, again and again, by BioGen. And they certainly said nothing to imply that BioGen had a right to physically take these cells no matter who carried them. That claim goes far beyond any implication of the court’s prior finding. It is, in fact, a new claim made out of nothing but wishful thinking. And we ask the court to require BioGen to call off this bounty hunter.”

The judge said, “I do not understand on what basis BioGen has simply acted on its own, Mr.

Rodriguez. This appears hasty and unwarranted. You could certainly wait for Ms. Burnet to appear before this court.”

“Unfortunately, Your Honor, that is not possible. The business situation of my client is critical.

As I said to you, we believe we are victims of a conspiracy to deprive us of what is ours. Without going into details, it is urgent that the cells be replaced immediately. If the court forces a delay, we may lose an enormous business undertaking in the meanwhile, such that our company goes out of business. We merely attempt a timely response to an urgent problem.”

Bob could tell the judge was going for it. All that timeliness crap was working on him; he didn’t want to be responsible for putting a California biotech company out of business. The judge swiveled in his chair, glanced at the wall clock, swiveled back.