“Then you plan on handing this alleged theft over to the D.A.?”
Leisha hesitated. She knew, and probably Jennifer knew, there was insufficient evidence for even a grand jury session. The papers were gone, but the bank record showed that Dr. Walcott had been the one to remove them. The best she could possibly do was establish that some new employee or other at First National also had access to the receipts—if it had even been a new employee. How thorough was Sanctuary’s advance planning? Their covert information net was extensive enough to cover minor researchers working in third-rate biotechs, if the minor research concerned Sleepless. And Leisha would bet her eyes that no new employee at First National had ever been an old employee at Samplice. She had nothing but hearsay—and, of course, her knowledge of what Jennifer, a Sleepless, would do. But the law was not interested in her inner knowledge. That, too, was only hearsay.
Hopelessness swamped her, frightening because it was so rare, followed by memory: Richard at seventeen, running in and out of the surf with her and Tony and Carol and Jeanine, all of them laughing, sand and water and sky opening up all around in infinite receding light… She sought Richard’s eyes.
He turned his back.
Jennifer said composedly, “Why exactly are you here, Leisha? If you have no legal business to transact with me or Richard or Sanctuary, and if your client has nothing to do with us—”
“You just told me you took the papers.”
“Did I?” Jennifer smiled. “No, you’re mistaken. I would not do or say that.”
“I see. You just wanted me to know. And now you just want me to leave.”
“I do,” Jennifer said, and for a bizarre moment Leisha heard echoes of the marriage ceremony. Jennifer’s mind was opaque to her. Standing in her living room, watching the green swirls form and break and reform on the window, watching Richard’s hunched shoulders, Leisha suddenly knew she would never stand anywhere in Sanctuary again.
To Richard—not Jennifer—she said, “The research is still in Walcott’s and Herlinger’s heads. You can’t stop this from coming, if it’s real. When I go back to Chicago, I’m going to have my client write it all out and put multiple copies in very safe places. I want you to know this, Richard.”
He did not turn around. She watched the bent curve of his spine.
Jennifer said, “Have a nice flight.”
Adam Walcott did not take disappointment well. “You mean there’s nothing we can do? Nothing?”
“There’s insufficient evidence.” Leisha got up from her desk and walked around it to sit in a chair opposite Walcott’s. “You have to understand, Doctor, that the courts are still struggling with the limitations of electronic documents as evidence. They’ve been struggling with it longer than I’ve been alive. At first computer-generated documents were treated as hearsay because they weren’t originals. Then they were barred because there were just too many people who could break systems security. Now since Sabino v. Lansing they’re treated as a separate, inherently weaker category of evidence. Signed hard-copies are what count, which means burglars and thieves who can manipulate the tangible are kings of even electronic crime. Right back where we started.”
Walcott did not look interested in this informal judicial history. “But, Ms. Camden—”
“Dr. Walcott, you don’t seem to be focused on the main point here. You have all the research in your head, research that could change the world. And whoever took your documents has only nine-tenths of it because the final piece is only in your head. That’s what you told me, correct?”
“Correct.”
“So write it down again. Now. Here.”
“Now?” The wispy little man seemed taken aback by this idea. “Why?”
And Jennifer thought that Leisha was an innocent. Leisha spoke very carefully, choosing her words. “Dr. Walcott, this research is potentially a very valuable property. Worth billions, over time, to you or to Samplice or, more likely, to you both in some percentage deal. I’m prepared to represent you with that, if you so choose—”
“Oh, goody,” Walcott said. Leisha looked at him hard, but he truly did not seem sarcastic. His left hand wrapped absently around the back of his head to scratch his right ear.
She said patiently, “But you must realize that whenever billions are involved, thieves are involved. You’ve already seen that. And you’ve told me you haven’t yet filed for any patents because you didn’t want Director Lee to know what you were working on.” After a moment she added, “Correct?” There was no point in assuming anything with this man.
“Correct.”
“Fine. Then what you must also realize is that people who will thieve for millions might also—I don’t say this would happen, only that it could—might also—”
She couldn’t finish the sentence. The pains in her stomach were back, and she folded her arms across her abdomen. Richard, holding her in his shabby bedroom in Evanston, she fifteen years old, meeting a fellow Sleepless for the first time and filled with exhilaration like light…
Walcott said, “You mean the thieves might try to kill me. Me and Timmy. Even without the final part of the research.”
Leisha said, “Write it all down. Now. Here.”
She gave him a free-standing computer and a private office. He was only in it twenty-five minutes, which surprised her. But, then, how long could formulas and assumptions take to write down? It wasn’t like a legal brief.
She realized that she’d been expecting him to fumble over the task because he was a Sleeper.
She made eight hard-copies of the papers on the small free-standing copier she used for privileged client-attorney information, resisting the desire to read them. She probably wouldn’t have understood them anyway. She gave him one copy, plus the free-standing deck. “Just so there’s no misunderstanding, Doctor. These seven copies will go into various vaults. One in the safe here, one at Baker Enterprises, Kevin Baker’s firm, which I assure you is impregnable.” Walcott gave no sign of knowing who Kevin Baker was; it wasn’t possible for any genetic researcher to not know who Kevin Baker was.
“Tell as many people as you like that there are multiple copies of your current unnamed research project with different people. I’ll do the same. The more people who know, the less of a target you are. Also, I urge you as counsel to tell Director Lee what you’ve been doing and to file patents on this work, in your own name. I should be with you when you approach Lee, if we’re going to establish personal ownership of part of this work apart from Samplice.”
“Fine,” Walcott said. He combed his hand through his negligible hair. “You’ve been so frank…I feel I have to be frank, too.”
Something in his tone made Leisha glance up sharply.
“The fact is, I…the research I just wrote out for you…” He ran the other hand through his hair and stood on one foot, an embarrassed diminutive crane.
“Yes?”
“It’s not all there. I left off the last piece. The piece the thieves don’t have either.”
He was more cautious, then, than she had suspected. On the whole, Leisha approved; reckless clients were worse than untrusting ones. Even when the person untrusted was the client’s own attorney.
Walcott looked past her, out the window. He still stood on one foot. The weirdly intermittent forcefulness returned to his voice. “You said yourself you don’t know who stole the first copy. But it’s potentially very valuable to replicate. Or not replicate. And you’re a Sleepless, Ms. Camden.”
“I understand. But it’s important that you write down that last piece as well, Doctor, for your own protection. If not here, then somewhere else completely secure.” And where, she wondered, was that? “You should also—this is an important point—tell as many people as possible that all the research exists somewhere else besides your head.”