Untitled fr12, p.16
Untitled.FR12, page 16
The day after the depositions he got a long letter from Razmic Mukerjee.
Calcutta Aug. 1, 2006
Dear Paul:
If you’ve been following the news, you know the novarella epidemic leapfrogged over Cuttack and is now here in Calcutta.
I’m heading up the NIH team here. Last week we distributed 25 kilos of cis-trialine to the local clinics and showed them how to use it. We now complex our cis-trialine with its purine cousin, xanthine, which is 2.6-dihydroxypurine. This permits oral administration. The complex dissociates slowly and permits the trialine to be taken up in the appropriate cells over a period of several hours… . We made a special trip to the U.S. consulate. Dosed everybody in sight, including some visitors from your Patent Office….
23
The Hearing
The last week of September was unseasonably warm on the eastern seaboard. When the trialine final hearing was called, Paul was uncertain what to wear. The interference rooms at the Patent Office in Virginia were of course air-conditioned, but the weather outside was sure to be hot and muggy. He had heard that the girls were even sunbathing by the pool at Crystal Plaza Apartments, across the mall from the Patent Office.
He picked up Mary Derringer in New York, and together they canvassed the downtown haberdasheries for a new suit for the hearing. She found a light worsted, mostly brown, but laced with a faint greenish iridescence. He liked it instantly.
“Would you like me to come down for the hearing?” she asked.
“How could I think straight with you in the same room?”
“That’s very gallant, but I get the message. How about afterward?”
“Fine. I’ll get you a reservation for Friday night. We can have breakfast together Saturday morning.”
The next day, back in his office, he called the interference clerk and got the names of the three examiners who would preside over the hearing: David King, Sheila Ward, Walter Abrams.
He burst out in wild cackling laughter. King was going to kill him because of Alessa King Serane. Perhaps he could get King disqualified? No. Out of the question. And/or, should he ask Sheila to disqualify herself because she had slept with counsel? He doubted that it would be an appropriate matter to address to Madame Commissioner. And Abrams? Abrams. Ah, yes. Now he placed him. The Patent Office representative at the Calcutta conference, to bring India into the International Patent Convention. But was that all? Somehow, some buried part of his mind was trying to connect Abrams to something very close at hand. But it eluded him. He felt stupid. Well, anyway, presumably the man knew his chemistry and law. Hopefully, he would listen.
Paul wondered how the computer would have evaluated all this. Except that he doubted there were any spaces on the tapes for the sex lives of the examiners.
But it was useless to speculate. He buzzed Evelyn Haslam and told her the reservations he wanted.
That night, in his room at the Marriott at Crystal Plaza, he went over his summary carefully. He was determined to make a few crucial points. He had a good corroborated reduction to practice one day before Deutsche’s convention date. He would outline this, and then stop. There wasn’t any other sensible way to present his case.
The problem was credibility.
Next day, he chatted amiably with Ed Kern in the hearing room while awaiting the entrance of the interference examiners. The clerk was already there, adjusting the reporter. This machine converted speech into print and made six copies—one each for the three examiners, one each for counsel, and one for the clerk.
The conversation of the two attorneys was humdrum, banal. How’s the firm … the company … the family? Still a bachelor, Paul? How did you come down? Where are you staving? They talked about everything but the case. Afterward, they might talk to each other about the case.
They stood up as a door opened in the back of the room.
King walked in first. He nodded grimly at both of the attorneys. And what was that for? thought Paul. He can’t decide against both of us!
And then Abrams, who smiled faintly at each in turn.
Sheila was the last one in. Blue dress, blue wig, blue contact lenses, blue nails. Ah, Sheila. His heart beat faster as he watched her step up to her seat on the dais. She moved with the same lithe grace as when he had last seen her in New York. She could pass easily for a girl just out of college. How did she do it? She seemed preserved in a condition of eternal flowering. A kind of perpetual youth.
“Mr. Blandford?” It was King.
“Sir?”
“You have thirty minutes. You can use it all in direct summary, or you can save some for rebuttal. Your choice. Will you start, please?”
“Thank you, Mr. King.”
He began with Serane’s Friday morning lecture, now so many weeks ago, and how he, Paul, had found the two catalyst ingredients ready at hand and had given them to Bob Moulin to process. “Yes,” he said, “the animal ashes were indeed those of my brother. And I am well aware that this one contention is supposed to throw out my entire testimony. For who would do such a thing? Well, I did it.” He continued and told them how he had come back to the lab after Serane’s farewell dinner and got the catalyst out of the oven, and used it, and how he had called Serane to announce success.
By now he had told his story so many times that he himself wondered whether it had really happened. Did any of them believe him? And if they didn’t believe what he had chosen to tell them, what would they think if he told them about the figure who came out of the holo screen and adjusted the heater?
From the very beginning, King, when he looked at Paul at all, had considered him with grave distaste. Sheila listened to him with apparent sympathy. But you could never be sure about women. And Abrams wouldn’t look at him at all. He took occasional notes, and that constituted his only recognition that he was listening to the conclusion of the most important interference in a decade.
Ed Kern had been busily taking notes, too, and shaking his head.
Paul looked at his watch. It was time to close if he wanted to save a few minutes for rebuttal. “That’s my case for the moment. Thank you.”
It was immediately evident that Kern was determined to earn his fee. He was devastatingly thorough. He attacked the Serane proofs item by item. He did not like the use of an attorney’s testimony to corroborate conception, or for proof of reduction to practice. Paul, in short, did not have to requisite technical background to know what he was doing. Nor was it the function of the attorney to be responsible for technical matters. If it was so important to Ashkettles Chemicals, why had they not given Serane adequate help? “And yet,” reasoned Kern, “these questions recede into the background when we proceed to the basic issue, which is the credibility of the principal witness. Can we believe this man? If we don’t believe him, then, in that case, the junior party Serane has neither corroborated conception nor verified reduction to practice prior to the priority date of the senior party Deutsche.
“Take the matter of the two crucial catalyst ingredients, lying on Mr. Blandford’s bureau, just when he happened to need them. Coincidence, he says. Well, let’s consider that for a moment. Both of these unusual things he had in his possession, and he could produce them at a moment’s notice. He had to have porous, biologically imprinted silica. He claims he had an ammonite. He had to have animal ashes. He claims he made available the ashes of his dead brother. Oh, madame, gentlemen! Can these things be? I say, No! The coincidence is just too, too much. He says he had a porous ammonite. This we know would have been actually a museum piece. A great rarity. How many of us have in our possession an ammonite, porous or nonporous? One in a million? That seems a safe and conservative estimate. And then, those ashes. How many of us keep in our houses, as part of our treasured possessions, the ashes of our siblings? One in a million? Surely, much less than that! But let’s call it one in a million, anyway. And now, if we must multiply these improbabilities by the cold mathematical laws of chance, we get a million times a million, which is one followed by twelve zeros. This, madame, gentlemen, is approximately the same probability that all the molecules of air in this hearing room will suddenly, in a given instant, collect in one-half of the room. It is not entirely a mathematical impossibility, yet from experience, we know that it just is not going to happen. One chance in ten to the twelfth power is not the preponderance of the evidence which the junior party Serane must offer if he is to prevail in this interference.
“We are asked to believe, madame, gentlemen, a midnight ride to the laboratory, made conveniently exactly one day prior to Deutsche’s convention date. And what does the chief witness find when he gets inside the lab? One of that strange crew, a Mr. Robert Moulin, has already crushed the ammonite and coated the pieces with an aqueous slurry of ashes—ashes of Mr. Blandford’s own dead brother, mind you!—so that all our witness has to do is take them from the drying oven and put them in the catalyst chamber. How marvelously convenient! He then connects up the urea vaporizer. The pyrolysis products come through the catalyst chamber. He collects a copious precipitate of a material which he identifies as trialine by its picrate, although he is not an analytical chemist, and in fact has seen only two or three different pic-rates is his lifetime.
“Madame, gentlemen, you have listened to opposing counsel. You have read the testimony. Does it not compare favorably with anything you have read in
Baron von Munchausen? Are the fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen or the Brothers Grimm superior in any way? I am saying this in sorrowful amazement: Never in my professional career as a member of the patent bar have I ever heard so wild a tale. And I move that the Blandford testimony be stricken in its entirety and that priority be awarded to the party Deutsche. Thank you.”
“Mr. Kern,” said Sheila, “you were concerned about Dr. Serane’s veracity during his deposition?”
“Not really, ma’am, though I did ask the reporter for a voice stress test.”
“Purely routine?”
“Purely routine.”
“But you were concerned about Mr. Blandford’s veracity during his deposition?”
“Well, yes, ma’am.”
“But you didn’t ask the reporter for a voice stress evaluation?”
“No, ma’am. The stress test is merely advisory. It is in fact inadmissible at this hearing. Furthermore, as a fellow attorney, I did not want to embarrass Mr. Blandford.”
“Yes, of course.” Sheila looked at Paul. There was the barest hint of a twinkle trembling at the comers of her eyes. “Any rebuttal, Mr. Blandford?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Paul stood up. He had saved ten minutes for rebuttal. He was determined to make the most of it. He began slowly. “The rules of evidence in interference cases are stricter than in murder cases. A murder suspect can be acquitted on his own testimony, if the jury believes him. This is not the case in a patent interference. The inventor’s testimony standing alone is not enough for him to win. It must be corroborated. But there the law stops. The one who corroborates need not himself be corroborated. If this were required, there would be no end to the number of corroborators, in sequence, each corroborating the one before. Why should we believe the last one? If that were the law, the corroboration would never come to an end. Someone would have to corrobrate me, then someone else would have to corroborate him, and it would go on endlessly. If we are ever to decide priority by taking testimony, we must draw the line somewhere. And according to law, we draw it one person removed from the inventor. Granted, the inventor we will not necessarily believe. The law assumes that the inventor himself may be under great subconscious pressure to recall things that never happened, or to imagine that they happened before they actually did happen. But the next man testifying for him, we will believe. I, personally, am Serane’s corroborating witness. And I respectfully submit that this honorable board, following its own rules of evidence, is required to believe me, unless it is aware of some catastrophic reason why it should not.
“I agree with learned opposing counsel to some extent. It is a wild tale. It is difficult to believe. If it is true, there are those who would hold me a monster. If it is not true, I should be disbarred. To end on an apologetic note, I share the all-too-human heritage … there is something dark, and with bizarre intimations, in all of us. Was this balanced to any degree by the objective I had in mind—to justify the name of a great and good man? I don’t know. Perhaps the mills of history will some day grind out an answer for us. Meanwhile, and in conclusion, I must tell you that if I had it to do over again, I would do it again, exactly the way—”
King interrupted. “Before you conclude, Mr. Bland-ford, I’d like to ask you about your recital of utility. In your specification you state that your trialine is in the cis form and is useful in the treatment of novarella. Page—ah—five, I think. Yes. Do you see that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“That was sheer footless speculation, wasn’t it, Mr. Blandford?”
“Prophecy would be more accurate, Mr. King.”
“We don’t give credit for prophecy, Mr. Blandford. The record is already sufficiently strange.”
Kern’s face was buried in Ms notes; Paul knew he was smiling broadly.
“Didn’t we read about something in India?” asked Abrams mildly. He seemed to voice the question to no one in particular.
Paul thought rapidly. India … Mukerjee’s novarella program in Calcutta. Of course! And now Abrams came suddenly into focus. He had it. The man had represented the U.S. Patent Office at the International Patent Conference in Calcutta earlier in the year, and he had probably been one of the “visitors” that Mukerjee had “dosed” in the American consulate.
“There was indeed a great deal in the papers, Mr. Abrams,” said Paul. “There were also the official WHO report to the UN and the NIH report to Congress, both by Dr. Mukerjee, the head of the American novarella team. All of them started with Dr. Mukerjee’s original experiments on an animal fetus in Ashkettles Chemical’s laboratory, using cis-trialine, made by the process of this invention. The results speak for themselves. In the Calcutta program, all of the people receiving cis-trialine lived. Of those not treated, all died.”
“Irrelevant, Mr. Blandford,” grumped King. “Anything further of a relevant nature?”
“No, sir.”
“Then these proceedings are closed.”
Paul felt light-headed. Abrams was alive today and sitting at this hearing because of Serane and Mukerjee —and because of Paul Blandford. And Abrams knew it.
Abrams smiled cryptically at Paul as he closed Ms files.
And that was it. The examiners arose and filed from the dais. King hurried ahead to open the door for Sheila. And she gave Mm a smile so exquisite that
Paul felt a momentary pang of jealousy. And then she turned and looked full at Paul. And was gone.
As Paul and Kern collected the record from the clerk, they agreed to have lunch at the Hot Shoppe in the lower level, under the Patent Office.
Kern had long entertained premonitions about this interference. He was not a superstitious man, but there did seem to be something eerie about it, and he sensed it strongly. The bond between Ashkettles’s attorney and its inventor was something he had never before encountered. And he doubted that he ever would again. And that wasn’t all. He suspected that to understand that bond was merely to scratch the surface. That matter of the ashes. God! It drove him up the wall just to think about it. How could he be expected to compete with testimony such as that? He couldn’t. But he was a pro. He would never let Blandford suspect his misgivings. Quite the contrary. Right to the bitter end, he would continue to give his brother attorney a hard time.
As they are, Kern looked up at Paul sympathetically. “I believe you, Paul, but they are not going to believe you. Nobody, looking at that record, is going to believe your testimony. It’s just too wild. And why I believe you, I can’t quite say. I guess it’s Serane. He must be quite a guy. Listening to him, I get that impression. It is easy to like him. I guess you fellows found it easy to work with him. Put out extra effort, I mean, such as you did. A very inspiring man. It’s the kind of thing his friends would do for him. But our three friends on the board are not going to be able to understand this, merely looking at the cold transcript. They won’t be able to get the feeling of how he inspired people to do this kind of thing. So they won’t believe you. Oh, of course, they won’t say they don’t believe you. They will base their decision on something else, such as inadequate identification of reactants or products, or failure to take a temperature reading every five minutes, or something like that. But the real reason will be, they think you are a gorgeous liar. Too bad.”
“Yeah,” said Paul.
Kern continued thoughtfully. “The whole thing is—” he searched for words, “gothic … medieval. It belongs way back there with monks, saints, miraculous relics, penitential pilgrimages. Paul, you’re a thousand years too late. If you had done this in the year 1006, they would have canonized you, or they would have burnt you at the stake, or both. But you’ve got to realize, this is the twenty-first century, the age of total enlightenment, The age of computer-augmented intelligence. There was no need to do what you did. … It doesn’t fit into the times, and you don’t get extra points for it. This is the rational century. No ghosts. No miracles. No supernatural.”
“Courtesy of International Computers,” mused Paul.
“Exactly,” said Kern.
After lunch Paul went up to the patent office scientific library to check some ancient British patents. This room of the library faced the mall, Crystal Plaza Apartments, and the Crystal Plaza Apartments swimming pool. No one was in the water, but several people—mostly women—lay on beach rolls around the poolside, taking the sun. His attention was drawn to one figure in particular.
