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Driving downtown, he glanced at the cylinder protruding from the lab coat, which he had tossed onto the passenger seat. To stay within the protocol, Josh had to return to the lab and expose the remaining rats before five p.m. That kind of schedule and the need to keep to it seemed to represent everything that separated Josh from his older brother.
Once, Adam had had everything—looks, popularity, athletic prowess. His high school days at the elite Westfield School had consisted of one triumph after another—editor of the newspaper, soccer team captain, president of the debating team, National Merit Scholar. Josh, in contrast, had been a nerd. He was chubby, short, ungainly. He walked with a kind of waddle; he couldn’t help it. The orthopedic shoes his mother insisted he wear did not help. Girls disdained him. He heard them giggle as he passed them in the hallways. High school was torture for Josh. He did not do well. Adam went to Yale. Josh barely got into Emerson State.
How times had changed.
A year ago, Adam had been fired from his job at Deutsche Bank. His drug troubles were endless. Meanwhile, Josh had started at BioGen as a lowly assistant, but had quickly moved up as the company began to recognize his hard work and his inventive approach. Josh had stock in the company, and if any of the current projects, including the maturity gene, proved out commercially, then he would be rich.
And Adam…
Josh pulled up in front of the courthouse. Adam was sitting on the steps, staring fixedly at the ground. His ratty suit was streaked with grime and he had a day’s growth of beard. Charles Silverberg was standing over him, talking on his cell phone.
Josh honked the horn. Charles waved, and headed off. Adam trudged over and got in the car.
“Thanks, bro.” He slammed the door shut. “Appreciate it.”
“No problem.”
Josh pulled into traffic, glancing at his watch. He had enough time to take Adam back to their mother’s house and get back to the lab by five.
“Did I interrupt something?” Adam asked.
That was the annoying thing about his brother. He liked to mess up everyone else’s life, too. He seemed to take pleasure in it.
“Yes, actually. You did.”
“Sorry.”
“Sorry? If you were sorry, you’d stop doing this shit.”
“Hey, man,” Adam said. “How the fuck was I supposed to know? It was entrapment, man. Even Charles said so. The bitch entrapped me. Charles said he would get me off easy.”
“There wouldn’t be any entrapment,” Josh said, “if you weren’t using.”
“Oh, go fuck yourself! Don’t lecture me.”
Josh said nothing. Why did he even bring it up? After all these years, he knew nothing he said mattered. Nothing made a difference. There was a long silence as he drove.
“I’m sorry,” Adam said.
“You’re not sorry.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” Adam said. “You’re right.” He hung his head. He sighed theatrically. “I fucked up again.”
The repentant Adam.
Josh had seen it dozens of times before. The belligerent Adam, the repentant Adam, the logical Adam, the denying Adam. Meanwhile his brother always tested positive. Every time.
An orange light came on on the dashboard. Gas was low. He saw a station up ahead. “I need gas.”
“Good. I got to take a leak.”
“You stay in the car.”
“I got to take a leak, man.”
“Stay in the fucking car.” Josh pulled up alongside the pump and got out. “Stay where I can fucking see you.”
“I don’t want to pee in your car, man…”
“You better not.”
“But—”
“Just hold it, Adam!”
Josh put a credit card in the slot and started pumping gas. He glanced at his brother through the rear windshield, then looked back at the spinning numbers. Gas was so damn expensive now. He probably should buy a car that was cheaper to run.
He finished and got back in the car. He glanced at Adam. His brother had a funny look on his face. There was a faint odor in the car.
“Adam?”
“What.”
“What did you do?”
“Nothing.”
He started the engine. That smell…Something silver caught his eye. He looked at the floor between his brother’s feet and saw the silver cylinder. He leaned over, picked up the cylinder. It was light in his hand.
“Adam…”
“I didn’t do anything!”
Josh shook the cylinder. It was empty.
“I thought it was nitrous or something,” his brother said.
“You asshole.”
“Why? It didn’t do anything.”
“It’s for a rat, Adam. You just inhaled virus for a rat.”
Adam slumped back. “Is that bad?”
“It ain’t good.”
By the time Josh pulled up in front of his mother’s house in Beverly Hills, he had thought it through and concluded that there was no danger to Adam. The retrovirus was a mouse-infective strain, and while it might also infect human beings, the dose had been calculated for an animal weighing eight hundred grams. His brother weighed a hundred times as much. The genetic exposure was subclinical.
“So, I’m okay?” Adam said.
“Yeah.”
“Sure?”
“Yeah.”
“Sorry about that,” Adam said, getting out of the car. “But thanks for picking me up. See you, bro.”
“I’ll wait until you get inside,” Josh said. He watched as his brother walked up the drive and knocked on the door. His mother opened it. Adam stepped inside, and she shut the door.
She never even looked at Josh.
He started the engine and drove away.
CH007
At noon, Alex Burnet left her office in her Century City law firm and went home. She didn’t have far to go; she lived in an apartment on Roxbury Park with her eight-year-old son, Jamie. Jamie had a cold and had stayed home from school. Her father was looking after him for her.
She found her dad in the kitchen, making macaroni and cheese. It was the only thing Jamie would eat these days. “How is he?” she said.
“Fever’s down. Still got a runny nose and a cough.”
“Is he hungry?”
“He wasn’t earlier. But he asked for macaroni.”
“That’s a good sign,” she said. “Should I take over?”
Her father shook his head. “I’ve got it handled. You didn’t have to come home, you know.”
“I know.” She paused. “The judge issued his ruling, Dad.”
“When?”
“This morning.”
“And?”
“We lost.”
Her father continued to stir. “We lost everything?”
“Yes,” she said. “We lost on every point. You have no rights to your own tissue. He ruled them ‘material waste’ that you allowed the university to dispose of for you. The court says you have no rights to any of your tissue once it has left your body. The university can do what it wants with it.”
“But they brought me back—”
“He said a reasonable person would have realized the tissues were being collected for commercial use. Therefore you tacitly accepted it.”
“But they told me I was sick.”
“He rejected all our arguments, Dad.”
“They lied to me.”
“I know, but according to the judge, good social policy promotes medical research. Granting you rights now would have a chilling effect on future research. That’s the thinking behind the ruling—the common good.”
“This wasn’t about the common good. It was about getting rich,” her father said. “Jesus, three billion dollars…”
“I know, Dad. Universities want money. And basically, this judge held what California judges have held for the last twenty-five years, ever since the Moore decision in 1980. Just like your case, the court found that Moore’s tissues were waste materials to which he had no right. And they haven’t revisited that question in more than two decades.”
“So what happens now?”
“We appeal,” she said. “I don’t think we have good grounds, but we have to do it before we can go to the California Supreme Court.”
“And when will that be?”
“A year from now.”
“Do we have a chance?” her father said.
“Absolutely not,” Albert Rodriguez said, turning in his chair toward her father. Rodriguez and the other UCLA attorneys had come to Alex’s law offices in the aftermath of the judge’s ruling. “You have no chance on further appeal, Mr. Burnet.”
“I’m surprised,” Alex said, “that you’re so confident about how the California Supreme Court will rule.”
“Oh, we have no idea how they will rule,” Rodriguez said. “I simply mean that you will lose this case no matter what the court holds.”
“How is that?” Alex said.
“UCLA is a state university. The Board of Regents is prepared, on behalf of the state of California, to take your father’s cells by right of eminent domain.”
She blinked: “What?”
“Should the Supreme Court rule that your father’s cells are his property—which we think is unlikely—the state will take ownership of his property by eminent domain.”
Eminent domain referred to the right of the state to take private property without the owner’s consent. It was almost always invoked for public uses. “But eminent domain is intended for schools or highways…”
“The state can do it in this case,” Rodriguez said. “And it will.”
Her father stared at them, thunderstruck. “Are you joking?”
“No, Mr. Burnet. It’s a legitimate taking, and the state will exercise its right.”
Alex said, “Then what is the purpose of this meeting?”
“We thought it appropriate to inform you of the situation, in case you wanted to drop further litigation.”
“You’re suggesting we end litigation?” she said.
