"Do you think you can win the trial against such a brash young lawyer?" a woman hollered.
"Do you think the expert witnesses harmed your case?" shouted a spectacled man. Ron led with one elbow jutting forward like a ship's prow, cutting through the sea of faces. His other arm twined with one of Valerie's to keep her close.
"I won't comment on the trial," he said loudly. "I have a worthy opponent, but we shall win nonetheless. Valerie is the true mother of Renata. Nothing can change that." He barged through the swirl of reporters that seemed to move with them toward the exit.
"How painful was your bone-marrow transplant?" another woman shouted, jabbing a microphone at Valerie.
"It hurt," she said. "It still hurts."
"Why did you want an abortion?"
"Did you ask your boyfriend's opinion?"
"Do you plan to have other-"
"Hey!" one of them shouted. "There they are!"
The tide suddenly went out on the ocean of newshounds. Lights and equipment bobbed hastily back toward the court-room to surround the defendants. Ron lowered his arm and walked briskly with Valerie toward the exit. He glanced back at the crowd and smiled. Let him get grilled for a while. Johnson welcomed the barrage. With Evelyn on his left arm and Karen on his right-protected on her other side by David-the young man forced a winning grin onto his face. Inwardly, though, being the center of such a crowd made him nervous.
"Of course we can't read the minds of the jurors," he said loudly to the microphones, "but we're certainly putting our point across."
"What point?" shouted a voice from somewhere in the knot of questions.
"That Dr. Fletcher helped Karen and David Chandler res-cue a defenseless baby from the jaws of death and that they would be better parents than the plaintiffs."
"Mrs. Chandler," a blond woman called out. "Do you feel that carrying Renata to term makes you more of a mother than the woman who conceived her?"
"How did you feel when you found out your blood couldn't save her?"
"Dr. Fletcher! Will Renata survive all this?"
"Will she need more transplants?"
Terry increased his pace in an effort to move toward the exit. It was like moving through the tar pits.
"Please," he said. "Let my clients through. Contact me and we'll set up interviews." His clients stared at him in shock. "I'll explain over dinner," he said in low tones. The promise did nothing to abate the storm of interroga-tion. Sighing, he raised his elbow and began his charge.
"
Czernek thought he and Valerie would be safe once past the reporters. Then he saw the crowds outside.
Two lines of picketers, separated by a double line of blue uniforms, shouted at each other and the police. Pro-life to the left, pro-choice to the right. And the police opening a corridor right down the middle.
He was unsure which group would give them worse treat-ment. He read the pro-lifers' signs. If She Hadn't Aborted, This Wouldn't Have Happened
Transoption Is Baby Stealing
Abortion and Transoption: High-Tech Child Abuse
Stop Nazi Experiments! Fletcher = Mengele!
He couldn't tell if they were on his side or not. He scanned the pro-choice side. Transoption Is Not an Option!
Fletcher Steals Our Right to Choose
Women Are Not Cattle
End Reproductive Slavery
Stop Nazi Experiments! Fletcher = Mengele!
Ron stared at the last sign, then back at the pro-life group. Great minds think alike, he mused. Fear rushed through Valerie as she and Ron walked slowly down the courthouse steps toward the crowd. It was a bright, sunny afternoon. A fresh sea breeze blew over the shouting, turbulent crowd. It should have been a beautiful day, but the rival factions turned its loveliness into a mocking counterpoint. She could make out individual voices.
"Hey, hey, AMA-How many babies d'you kill today?"
"Our bodies-our choice!"
"God said thou shalt not kill!"
"Gods and governments enslave women!"
"Sez you!"
Then the picketers saw Dalton and Czernek enter the blue-bordered no man's land. Valerie didn't know what to expect. The pro-lifers probably hated her for having the abortion in the first place. The pro-choicers probably hated her for wanting the baby back. Both sides merely grew quiet. They watched the pair pass between their warring camps. It was an uneasy truce, with scattered troops on both sides clapping here and there, boo-ing there and here. The ranks were divided, cohesive action impossible.
Valerie and Ron passed unchallenged. Then the rival pro-testers' collective attention shifted to the four people at the top of the steps.
The cries and epithets from both sides erupted with such forceful outrage that no intelligible word or phrase escaped the crowds. Raised fists shook. Angry hands waved signs. The police locked arms and stared over their shoulders in red-faced, strained frustration at the opposite blue shore. Johnson led the quartet into the narrowing chute. The thin lines of police were no match. The people, united, could not be defeated. They overcame from the right. Onward marched the Christian soldiers from the left. They converged on the mutual enemy.
The police closed ranks around the four, the outer shell of officers raising their batons to threaten. The circle moved to-ward the parking lot as if it were a single cell.
"Get back on the sidewalk!" shouted an officious voice on a bullhorn. "Get back or face arrest." The threat worked. The picketers quieted down one by one and returned to a more orderly arrangement on the sidewalk. The police drifted back between them.
"Thanks, Officer," Evelyn said to the last man to leave.
He looked at the doctor with a hateful gaze on his gnarled, tanned face. "Don't thank me. I'd have to protect you if you were Satan's stepdaughter. And I think you are." He turned away and returned to the crowd, stopping for a moment to spit in the gutter.
Johnson shook his head. "I've always wondered why public servants treat their employers so poorly." He put an arm around Dr. Fletcher's shoulder and said, "Let's all go eat and plot our strategy." " They sat in a booth at Doolittle's Raiders, a restaurant hid-den from the Pacific Coast Highway by the Torrance Munici-pal Airport's landing strip. Small planes lifted off and touched down outside the tinted windows. The faint sound of engines augmented the World War II music and decor. Among Hallowe'en decorations and costumed waitresses, Terry laid out his plan.
"We have ten days. I think we're winning the fight in the court, but the biggest battle is going to be in the press. That's why I want us to do as many interviews as we can."
Karen shook her head in a near tremble. "I don't think I could do-"
"Not you," he said. "Just me. And Dr. Fletcher. We're going to skip the question of custody entirely to concentrate on the moral question of transoption." He turned to Evelyn. "Did you go through all this just for the money they paid you? Of course not. You did it because you thought it was right. If we can seize the moral high ground, public sentiment will slip right into our pocket."
"The way Burke and Decker did?" Fletcher asked.
Johnson frowned sourly. "
Valerie said little on the trip home. Ron did most of the talk-ing.
"There's an old saying: Ìf the law is against you, argue the facts. If the facts are against you, argue the law. If the law and the facts are against you, pound on the table.' That's what Johnson's doing. A lot of pounding. It may look great on the evening news, but it's not going to win the case for him." He pulled into another lane to go around a slow car. He watched the road with a detached intensity that revealed his thoughts to be far removed from the act of driving.