Race Across the Sky (21 page)

“So, what did Shane say?”

“Shane?”

“When you told him?”

Caleb looked down at his shoes. He felt weighted down and besotted.

“Oh, Caley. You never told him we're not coming?”

“I haven't had a chance. I don't work at O'Neil's anymore.”

“You need to find a phone somewhere and call him. He thinks we're coming.”

She hesitated. Was there something in her eyes, he wondered? Was this a struggle for her? He looked for something that might tell him it was.

“Lily's really missing you. She wakes up saying ‘cay-cay.' Do you think you can play with her while I'm out?”

“Of course.”

“That would be really great.”

Caleb washed his glass in the sink, set it on a rag. When he had watched her jog down the wood steps and across the snowy field to catch up with everyone, he turned and pushed through the swinging door for the main house.

“Hey,” Makailah grinned when he walked into June and Lily's room.

Lily turned her head to him right away, made a high-pitched and happy sound. A drop of saliva spilled down her chin when she reached out for him.

He sat on the rug, and joined Makailah in rolling a ball back and forth.

After a time Makailah yawned. “Mind if I go to the bathroom?”

“I have her.”

“Yeah? Okay,” she waved to the baby. “See you soon, sweetie.”

Alone with Lily he wrapped her in his arms, buried his nose into the soft skin behind her neck, and held her, swaying her gently back and forth, listening to her scratched short breaths. He wondered if he had ever missed anyone so badly in all his life.

He was watching her fall asleep when some noise from downstairs snapped him out of his thoughts. Knowing it was probably Mack, he went downstairs to check.

“Ah!” Mack was shouting, “some help from the constabulary!”

Just behind him, two wide and well-muscled men carried a pony keg each into the house. On Juan's direction they walked across the large room and placed them by the fireplace. Music switched on from the boom box. As he descended the stairs Caleb saw at least twenty people standing around, red cups of beer in hand.

“Caley!” Mack called, waving him over. “Meet Superior's finest.”

Caleb was introduced to the police officers, both off duty. He wondered how Mack had befriended them.

One of them was looking at him strangely, his head cocked. “You really run a hundred miles?”

“Not every day,” Caleb smiled. He was feeling off-balance. Something of Lily remained in his arms.

At this point, Caleb would normally have excused himself. But the pain of having lost Lily and June erupted out of him now. He looked instinctively to the front door, considering plunging into the dark roads. Then someone handed him a red plastic cup; right, he thought, there was another cure for agony, and it was all around him.

He drained the cup, and helped himself to another.

Alice touched his shoulder, concerned. He shook his head, smiling to her.

Then he reached for the whiskey and shut his eyes tight as he tilted the bottle back.

• • • • • • • • • • • • 

T
he offices of Zouali and Rice were filled with the kind of light only San Francisco might bestow upon lawyers.

Floor to ceiling windows looked down at the foot traffic on Geary Street. The downtown office buildings built on the hill seemed to open their arms. This was all visible from the reception area; however, the office of Brad Whitmore, who was not yet a partner, was small and bereft of sun.

Brad seemed to Shane to be around thirty years old, a bit too lean, with a sharply jutting Adam's apple. A desperate pile of thinning blond hair lay on his head. His long face bespoke a Northeastern lineage. He came recommended by friends of Janelle's.

Shane and Prajuk sat in difficult chairs, facing the lawyer's desk. Prajuk had needed to be dragged here; this was a step beyond what he had agreed to do. But Shane had persuaded him that he could answer questions, clarify, use the proper terminology, that Shane never could hope to. So Prajuk had come but he did not want his name on any document of any kind and seemed convinced that someone would surely force him to sign one. A line of perspiration ran down his brown temple.

Brad was looking at both of them, with an excited look on his thin lips. “So this protein you're using. Tell me exactly where it came from.”

“My team and I studied, isolated, and cloned it while we were working on a new drug,” Prajuk answered tersely, in his high-pitched voice.

“You first isolated it at Helixia,” Brad repeated, scribbling this information down. “Is it patented by them then?”

“Yes,” Prajuk nodded, shifting his weight. “I removed this gene straight from the vector and I took it to our lab. I understand that we are violating their patent.”

Brad Whitmore shook his head. “No, I don't see it that way.”

Prajuk glanced at Shane as if to suggest that they should ask someone more experienced.

Shane leaned forward. “How do you see it?”

“You guys are using this protein in a drug for”—he glanced down at his notes and seemed to suffer a hard time reading them—“alpha-one antitrypsin deficiency. But at Helixia, the protein was used to treat asthma?”

“Yes.”

“How different are these two drugs?”

Prajuk replied, “Very different. They cause different reactions in the body.”

“Do you think Helixia also patented it as intended for use for alpha-one antitrypsin deficiency?”

“No, most definitely they are not interested in using it for this purpose.”

“How do you know?”

Shane cut in, “I asked them. Several times.”

“Okay.” Brad folded his hands. “You can claim a new composition of matter. See, it's like music. You can't copy someone else's melody and claim it as your song, right? But you can change just a note of it, and technically it's a new composition. This happens all the time, it's how commercial music houses work. And then also, you can patent musical notes in a specific sequence, but you can't patent a G note. That belongs to everybody.

“American genetics patent law works the same way. You can patent a gene or protein you've discovered in the specific composition of the drug you're patenting. But you can't patent the gene itself. That's everybody's property. A gene”—he smiled, unfolding his fingers—“is a musical note.”

“Ah,” Shane nodded.

“If you use this patented gene in a drug with a different composition, no matter how slightly different, then well, you're good.”

Shane shot him a sideways glance.

“That is your opinion?” Prajuk asked nervously, “or this thing, it is legal fact, definitely?”

“Fact.”

Shane smiled, thinking it was very possible that he loved Brad Whitmore. He started to stand. The cost of the attorney's hourly advice was out of the scope of his hundred-thousand-dollar investment, which had already been spent. These were bills he could not pay.

“And,” Brad said, looking to him, “there's a whole other play here.” He swung around on his chair, produced an impossibly thick pine green book, began turning pages. Shane heard the subtle click of a clock that he had not noticed before was there.

“Could you argue that a Helixia shareholder is being deprived of proper value by the revenue you guys will be taking from them with your drug?”

“What revenue?” Shane asked.

“In their eyes, think of greedy little eyes now, are you stealing something of significant market value from them?”

“Absolutely not. They would lose hundreds of millions on our drug, they said so themselves, all the way up the ladder. That's why they said no to producing it, or even applying for an NIH orphan grant. Our drug will do no financial harm to Helixia, believe me.”

“Because . . .” Brad read to himself, moving his lips, and then looked sharply up at them. “A company's patent is limited in cases where the benefit to the public outweighs the harm to the inventor.”

He snapped the large book shut and gave them a proud smile. “There's miles of precedent for this, guys. If I spent a day in a research library I'd find a brief's worth. In fact, a new use for a known protein is fully patentable. You guys can patent this usage, your, you know, drug, yourselves. You could sell it to some big pharmaceutical firm. I'll draw a patent application up for you.”

Prajuk shook his head. “No. There is definitely to be no record of what we are doing. This was our agreement.”

Brad held both hands up. “No application. Now, let me be clear. What you're doing is legal. But they will fire you for this.”

“You just said we're doing nothing illegal.”

“They can fire you for bringing the wrong Munchkins to Doughnut Day. California is a Right to Work state. Your jobs are not secure. If they find out you took this vector from their lab, you're both gone. But they can't sue you. Well, they probably would, but they can't win. Just know that the law is on your side.”

“They would send waves of lawyers and appeals until they bankrupted us,” Prajuk said.

Brad looked away from them. “Yes, well,” he nodded. “They could do that.”

Outside Prajuk smoked a cigarette, sucking deeply from his compressed fist, held an inch from his lips. Shane slapped his back.

“I should not be gone this long,” Prajuk told him tensely.

“Okay.”

“This whole project is taking significantly more of my time than I had anticipated.”

“We're almost done though, right? Should I call my brother?”

Prajuk nodded. “You should tell him to make arrangements.”

Shane looked quizzically at him. “What is it?”

“I have to tell you something.”

“What's up?”

“Jon Benatti came by,” Prajuk whispered, his breath full of smoke. “He never comes to my office.”

Shane smiled, trying to relay a gentle calm.

“He was very curious. How are things going? How is Airifan doing in clinicals? There are people he should ask about this thing, but I am not part of that. Is everything okay? This thing, Benatti, he is very concerned with me.”

“To know you is to love you, Prajuk.”

As they climbed into the car and began driving back to work, Shane continued. “You work on the most important projects here. You've worked with Steven Poulos. There are rumors about Roche buying us. He doesn't want to lose you to Amgen or somewhere.”

“Yes, maybe. But this little man Benatti,” Prajuk nodded. “He is quite a fucker.”

“He doesn't know anything,” Shane assured him, forcing his best sales confidence up through his eyes.

“He saw me with the centrifuge. He may have run inventory. I told you, if I had even a suspicion of this, I would stop immediately.”

Shane felt a surge of panic.

“Healy is sufficient for you from this point.”

“No, he's not.”

They finished the drive in silence. Half an hour later he pulled into the Helixia lot.

“Hey, Shane,” a woman's voice called.

He glanced quickly behind him and saw Stacey waving to him from the lobby doors, where she was opening an umbrella. He felt as if he were caught in the middle of some parking lot drug deal. Which in a way, he supposed, he was.

It was true, their absences were starting to be noticed. Their minds were elsewhere. People might be able to sense that there was something between them worth looking closer into. He patted Prajuk's skinny shoulder, and the smell of nicotine encircled him like a child's affection.

Above them rain began to fall. Funny, Shane thought, glancing up. There hadn't been a cloud in the sky.

•   •   •   •   •   •   •

The mouse's blood came back positive for alpha-one antitrypsin deficiency.

Shane was elated. This was terrific news, it meant that they had a living creature on which to test Prajuk's drug. Shane read the e-mail from Prajuk on his phone and virtually danced in circles in the elevator.

They met at Greenway Plaza after work. Healy brought a paper bag containing three forty-ounce bottles of his favorite malt liquor. They were opened; ceremonial foam bubbled forth.

“To Thailand,” Shane toasted.

“Are you guys going on vacation?” asked Healy.

He pointed at the mouse. “Thailand!”

“You named the mouse?”

“Definitely,” Prajuk grinned.

“We don't name the mice, man. That's not right. Seriously. You don't want to bond with the thing.”

Shane laughed, taking a great pull of the liquor.

Healy frowned. He lifted his bottle, then hesitated. “Why Thailand?”

“In honor of Doctor Acharn.”

“Mot kiao,” Prajuk toasted.

Shane raised his bottle, watching the scientist. The news of the mouse had proven strong enough to overcome his desire to stop. But gray half-moons had formed under his eyes. The smell of his hard-inhaled Parliaments preceded him into the lab. Shane thought a week in Phuket would do him wonders. Before he could suggest it, Prajuk gestured to Healy.

“You want to do it?”

The stout and ripped postdoc shook his acne-marked head no. “You go for it.”

With a grimace, Prajuk opened the small cage, lifted Thailand by the tail, and handed him to Healy. Then he removed a syringe from a metal drawer. He took up a vial of opaque liquid and inserted it into the top.

“What's that?” asked Shane, feeling he was missing something of vital importance.

“This is your drug,” Healy told him.

“Holy shit. For real?”

Healy nodded. Prajuk held the syringe up to the fluorescent light. His small eyes focused intensely as he tapped it. The wheezing mouse, seeming to sense something coming, thrust wildly in Healy's hand. Prajuk injected its flank with the fluid containing his isolated protein, which, mixed with media and transplanted into a bacterial E. coli cell, altered the instructions in his DNA.

Shane stood slack-jawed. He half expected the mouse to convulse and die right then. Healy placed Thailand back into his cage, and swept out some pellets of shit while he was at it. He went to the double sink, washed his hands, and refreshed the water bottle from which Thailand could drink as he either began a new life, or ended this one.

Shane watched Prajuk, looking for some sense of reverence. But if the scientist felt the presence of a momentous act, he kept his awe well hidden. Cold distance, Shane realized, was the order of the lab.

And then, to his surprise, Prajuk took his malt liquor and drank it dry.