Soulminder (9 page)

“Good evening,” Sommer nodded, coming up to the group and scanning their faces as they turned to face him. Concern—awkward concern, even—from the medical people; quiet anger and suspicion from the man in the suit, who wasn’t quite as young as he’d looked from a distance. “I’m Dr. Adrian Sommer of Soulminder,” Sommer continued. “What seems to be the trouble here?”

“It’s called illegal restraint,” the suited man bit out before anyone else could speak. “Your people are preventing, by threat of force, the lawful performance of legitimate medical duties, and in doing so are threatening the well-being of at least four other people.”

Sommer cocked an eyebrow. “I take it you’re a lawyer.”

He hadn’t intended it to sound like an insult, but the other apparently took it as one, anyway. “My name is Tyler Marsh,” the other said coldly. “I doubt that that means anything to you, but yes, I
have
had a certain amount of legal experience. Enough to know that you have no right to interfere with the carrying out of a deceased man’s last wishes.”

“Mr. Ingersoll is not yet deceased,” the Soulminder lawyer interjected. “That’s the whole point of—”

“Then what is
this
?” Marsh cut him off, waving a paper in his face.

“What
is
that?” Sommer asked him.

One of the doctors cleared his throat. “It’s a death certificate, Dr. Sommer,” he said.

Sommer regarded him. “Signed by … ?”

The other sighed. “Me.”

“And it’s perfectly legitimate,” Marsh put in. “By every legal and medical definition in the book, Wilson Anders Ingersoll is
dead
.”

Sommer pursed his lips and turned to the Soulminder lawyer. “Mr. Walker, why don’t you fill me in.”

“Yes, sir.” Walker took a deep breath. “Mr. Ingersoll came down from New York two days ago on business. Early this morning he suffered a heart attack at his hotel and was rushed here in critical condition. Dr. Raines”—he nodded to the doctor—“was in charge of the team who treated him. They succeeded in repairing the damage to the heart muscle. Despite that, two hours ago his heart abruptly stopped again—”

“And Mr. Ingersoll died,” Marsh put in.

“And Mr. Ingersoll’s EEG trace went flat,” Walker corrected, an edge to his voice. “Dr. Raines declared him dead and filled out a death certificate, and the body was put on neuropreservatives and a life-support machine.”

“He was carrying an organ donor card,” Raines explained. “Liver, lungs, and corneas. Dr. Bartok, here”—he indicated the woman standing beside him—“has been assigned to remove the organs.”

Walker nodded to the door behind him. “The nurse in there monitoring the body called us, and Mr. Porath sent me over here to prevent any irrevocable action from taking place. That’s about it.”

“Death is as irrevocable as you get,” Marsh snorted. “All you’re doing by your grandstanding is preventing Mr. Ingersoll’s last wishes from being carried out and denying four sick people the organs they so desperately need.”

“Maybe we shouldn’t be quite so quick to dispose of Mr. Ingersoll’s property,” a new voice came from behind. Sommer turned to see Murray Porath stroll up, dapper as always in a three-piece suit of his own. “Especially since he may not be done with it yet.”

Marsh glared at Porath, and for an instant Sommer had the sense of two fighters sizing each other up. “You’re with these other ghouls, I take it?” Marsh asked.

Porath raised polite eyebrows. “That’s hardly the term I would use,” he said calmly. “At least, not for us. I’m Murray Porath, chief legal counsel for Soulminder. Tell me, Mr. Marsh, did you know Mr. Ingersoll was on file with us?”

“Mr. Ingersoll’s been into a lot of fads,” Marsh said shortly. “Cryogenics, crystal healing, sub-sonic bio-feedback—you name it, he was probably into it at one point or another. Usually he’d go through all the motions, read all the literature, even sign the papers; then his interest would fade, he’d let his memberships lapse, and that would be the end of it. As far as Soulminder was concerned, he told me at least twice in the past month that it was a waste of money and that he was going to dump it.”

His eyes and face were hard, the very essence of righteous anger and honesty.
Liar
, Sommer thought.

“Indeed,” Porath said. From his tone, Sommer guessed that he thought so, too. “I don’t suppose there were any witnesses to this conversation?”

“Not that I recall,” Marsh said, his tone frosty. “Are you questioning my memory? Or just my word?”

“Oh, heaven forbid,” Porath said soothingly, almost as if he really meant it. “It would have been nice to have some corroboration, but we all understand how these things are. Incidentally, if you’d rather have your lawyer present before you answer any more questions, by all means give him a call.”

“I don’t want a lawyer,” Marsh snapped. “And I don’t want any more of these stupid and totally irrelevant questions. Mr. Ingersoll was more like my father than my boss, and I’m damn well not going to sit by and let him be robbed of the respect and dignity that he deserves. He’s been certified as dead, I’ve officially claimed the body, and
that
is
that
. The funeral home in New York has been notified and the service has been scheduled, and I want whatever organ removals he specified to be done
now
.” He glared at Bartok and Raines. “Or else I’m going to go in there and shut down all that hardware and take him out myself.”

Raines took a deep breath, glanced at Bartok, and took an uncertain step toward Walker and the door behind him—

“Funeral already scheduled, eh?” Porath said interestedly, moving smoothly past Sommer to stand beside his subordinate. “That’s fast work, I must say, Mr. Marsh. Almost as if you were expecting his death. Hmm?”

“This was his third heart attack,” Marsh grated, “and he died two hours ago. He set up the funeral arrangements himself, incidentally, over two years ago. Not that you seem to have much respect for personal wishes. Dr. Bartok?”

“Tell me, Dr. Raines,” Porath said, “didn’t you notice that Mr. Ingersoll was wearing a Soulminder ID bracelet before you signed that death certificate?”

“It would have been hard to notice something he wasn’t wearing,” Raines growled, irritation beginning to shade into the uncomfortable defensiveness in his voice. “There was no Soulminder bracelet. Not here, not in the ambulance.”

“It was seven-thirty in the morning,” Marsh put in, “and Mr. Ingersoll was still getting dressed when he had his attack.”

“And you didn’t think to mention to the paramedics that he was on file with Soulminder?” Porath asked pointedly.

“I told you, I assumed he’d dropped his registration.” Marsh took a long step forward, his hand coming to rest, not quite heavily, on Porath’s shoulder. “And I am
finished
with your stalling. The law is on my side, Mr. Porath. You know it and I know it. And you’re going to move aside, or I’m going to
move
you aside.”

“There’s no need to get dramatic,” Porath said calmly, his eyes flicking over Marsh’s shoulder. “No need at all. James! Over here!”

Sommer turned to see a young man striding toward them, an envelope clutched in his hand. “Mr. Porath?” the other asked tentatively.

“Right here.” Porath raised a finger. “That goes to Dr. Bartok—that lady right there.”

“What is it?” Bartok asked … but it seemed to Sommer that some of the tension in her face smoothed out as she accepted the envelope.

“It’s a temporary injunction,” Porath told her, his eyes steady on Marsh. “It bars you or anyone here from releasing the body of Wilson Anders Ingersoll—to anyone—and from taking any surgical action on it. So that, at least for the moment, is that.” He looked at each of the medical people in turn, then nodded briskly and turned to Sommer. “Well, Dr. Sommer. Shall we go in and see how our client is doing?”

The media were on the story less than an hour later, and for the next day and a half Sommer found himself besieged by reporters and news services in a blitz strongly reminiscent of that following the original Soulminder breakthrough. Then, it had been a floodlight he’d been totally unprepared for. Now, with concerns of prejudicing the case weighing heavily on each word, it was no less difficult.

Finally, late in the afternoon on the second day, the flurry began to fade and he was able at last to sit down with the others and find out what had been happening in the background while he’d been facing the cameras.

“The preliminary deposition dates are all set,” Porath said, readjusting his feet on his desk and sipping at a cup of tea. “We’ve got Marsh, Ingersoll’s executive secretary, Doctors Raines and Bartok, the head of the hospital, and the nurse whose call originally got us onto this in the first place.”

“I never did hear just exactly why she did that,” Sommer told him.

Porath shrugged. “She just had a hunch, I gather. She told me that something about Marsh’s manner just popped the thought into her head.”

“Just one more bit of proof that Marsh knew damn well that Ingersoll was still on file,” Sands growled. “As if we needed it.”

“Hunches hardly qualify as proof, Dr. Sands,” Porath reminded her. “We’re almost certainly not going to be able to prove that Marsh lied about that, incidentally, so abandon any thoughts you might have of nailing him to the wall. Keep your eyes on the main point—getting Ingersoll back together again—and be glad that he had the blind luck to draw a nurse willing to play her hunches. Otherwise, Marsh would have just waltzed out with the body, and we’d have been left literally holding the bag.”

Sommer shuddered. To be left with a hopelessly disembodied soul in their care … “Blind luck, or an act of God.”

“Better call it luck,” Porath said wryly. “Events defined as Acts Of God have a peculiar status in the law, and they almost always wind up working in your opponent’s favor in court.”

“If this ever gets to court,” Sands said.

Porath snorted. “Oh, it’ll get to court, all right. Marsh isn’t likely to give up now.”

“Not even when he’s lost?” Sommer asked. “I mean, couldn’t the judge just handle it on a pre-trial basis?”

“He could, but he probably won’t. You see, Dr. Sommer, as a strictly legal matter, I have to tell you that Marsh has a pretty strong case.”

“He
what
?” Sands growled.

Porath shrugged. “Look at the facts. By all accepted medical and legal definitions, Ingersoll died when his EEG trace went flat. Everything else flows directly from that: the death certificate, Marsh’s claiming of the body, the card authorizing the hospital to remove Ingersoll’s organs—all perfectly legitimate.
We
, not him, are the ones walking on loose sand here.”

“That’s crazy,” Sommer told him. “Haven’t erroneous death certificates been issued before? People who eventually recovered, or even just clerical errors?”

“Oh, it happens all the time,” Porath agreed. “But in every one of those cases, the supposedly dead person is able to get up off the table and announce that he is, in fact, alive. Ingersoll can’t do that, and unless and until he does, Marsh has legitimate claim to the body.”

Sands muttered something under her breath and shifted her attention to the fourth person in the office. “Everly? What have you dug up on Marsh?”

Everly shook his head. “Hints and innuendoes, but nothing solid. He started out as a lawyer at Drummond Information Services about fifteen years ago, quickly became Ingersoll’s protégé, and has been his heir apparent for about three years. There was a certain amount of low-key friction between them earlier this year, centering on whether Ingersoll was keeping Marsh on too short a leash, but that seems to have faded away a few months back with Marsh accepting the limits set for him.”

“And then came Marsh’s lucky break,” Sands said sourly. “Ingersoll has his fatal heart attack on an out-of-town business trip, with a doctor who doesn’t know he’s on Soulminder.” Abruptly, she sat up a little straighter. “Unless … ?”

“Don’t even think it,” Porath warned her. “You start even
thinking
that Marsh might have committed murder here and we’ll all wind up on the short end of a major defamation suit.”

“Unless we can prove he actually did it,” Sands countered.

“He’s not stupid enough to take that kind of risk,” Everly said. “Especially when there was no need for it. The handwriting was on the wall—Ingersoll had already had two heart attacks and was bucking for a third. All Marsh had to do was to bide his time and not rock the boat.”

“Agreed,” Porath nodded. “The police will be looking into that, but it’s almost certainly just blowing smoke rings. Regardless, we need to stay totally clear of it.”

“So where does that leave us?” Sommer asked.

“Like I said, walking on loose sand,” Porath conceded. “The original injunction will keep Ingersoll on life-support as long as the court is mulling it over, and the follow-ups will keep Marsh away from the body—just in case he
does
intend anything,” he added, nodding to Sands. “So that’s one for our side. On Marsh’s side is the fact that Soulminder’s own position in this case is fairly ambiguous—we’re not Ingersoll’s next of kin or his corporate partners or his heirs, or anything else that comes in a neat legal package.”

“Friend of the court?” Everly offered.

“I’ve already filed us in as a trustee,” Porath told him. “After all, we
are
holding something in trust for him.”

Sommer shivered. “Yeah. Himself.”

Porath nodded, and for a second the logical legal facade seemed to bend a bit. “Yes, well … anyway, the judge is still considering what status to grant us.”

“Can’t we simply show that a Soulminder trap does indeed hold a person’s lifeforce?” Sands asked Porath. “We’ve done, what, six successful transfers?”

“Eight, if you count Dr. Sommer and the Coleman boy,” Porath said. “I’ve filed them as part of my petition to have the judge turn Ingersoll’s body over to us, on the grounds that Soulminder is a life-saving technique and that its use wouldn’t in any way violate any of his last requests. But again, the judge is under no particular obligation to consider the data, just as he might not give much weight to the overall statistics on some surgical procedure in a particular malpractice suit.”