Runaway Heart

THIRTY-ONE

They stopped at a gas station, and while Jack filled the tank Herman changed out of the hospital gown and placed a call from the pay phone to Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen's Hollywood office. They had donated money to the Institute in the past and were fierce environmentalists who worried about the destruction of the ozone layer, global warming, and the pollution of the oceans.

He didn't expect to actually get them on the phone, because when they weren't in production they were at their home on Martha's Vineyard. Their secretary, Louise, answered.

"It's Herman. How ya doing?" he said as soon as she picked up.

"Jeez, Strock, we were just talking about you. Mary wanted to invite you to a Memorial Day party on the Vineyard, but we didn't know where to reach you."

"Send the invite to the office in D.C. I'll be sure to make it if I can," he said. Then he told her that he wanted to borrow Ted's fishing boat for a few days because he needed a quiet place to work. Louise put him on hold while she got her bosses on the phone.

She came back a few minutes later. "Ted says okay. Just be sure to lock up when you leave, and reset the alarm." She told him where the Hide-a-Key was and gave him the alarm code.

Minutes later they were back in the rented Chrysler heading to Lido Island in Newport Beach.

As he rested in the backseat new strategies and plans were forming in Herman's head. He was considering filing a temporary restraining order against the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. A TRO was only good for ten days, renewable for an additional ten. Twenty days just might be enough time to do what he needed to do. There were federal laws already on the books prohibiting genetic cloning, and, although those laws were rarely enforced, Herman could still file under them.

He made a mental list of things to do. He needed to retrieve his computer that was still at the beach house and download the gene map that Zimmy had e-mailed. He also had to contact Sandy Toshiabi, his animal-rights expert. He would need to talk to his secretary, Leona Mae, get her to pull together all the background material, legal precedents, and any other laws restricting genetic research or genetic engineering. There was a helluva lot to do and almost no time to do it.

Also hovering in the back of his mind was what Dr. Adjemenian had said. This new animal, this chimera, was 99.1 percent human-only nine tenths of one percent different from Homo sapiens.

His preliminary strategy was simple yet compelling. Animal-rights activists had been trying to achieve legal standing in the courts for gorillas, chimps, and other primates for a long time. Legal "standing" currently only applied to Homo sapiens under the U.S. Constitution.

Because no other species on the planet enjoyed legal standing, they had to seek injunctive or compensatory relief through an organization that would sue for redress on behalf of the animal. It was this very fact that had compelled Herman to create the Danaus Plexippus Foundation.

The legal history on standing was fascinating and taught to every first-year law student.

At one time even slaves could not avail themselves of the benefits of the United States Constitution. In 1857, a slave named Dred Scott attempted to go into court to sue for his freedom. The Supremes ruled that he was property and, as such, had no rights under the law.

Later the Dred Scott ruling was reversed.

Using that as the historical reference to show the fallibility of the Supreme Court on the issue of standing, animal-rights activists like his friend Sandy Toshiabi had been trying unsuccessfully for years to obtain legal standing for primates. But the courts were constantly shifting the boundaries that defined humanity. At one point the federal courts said that humanity was simply the ability to walk upright. But then when chimps were taught to do that, they said that speech was the threshold. With Lucy, the "talking" gorilla who used American Sign Language to communicate, a new threshold was found. A species had to be capable of believing in God to claim standing. Sandy Toshiabi fought that one and had managed to prevail. "What is God?" she had argued. "When your dog looks up at you, does he see God?" Currently there was no standard… but for one: beings must be classified as Homo sapiens to have legal standing. But what, Herman wondered, constituted Homo sapiens?

He had one other thorny problem to overcome. He had no attorney-client relationship with the chimera. His lawsuit could be voided on that fact alone. In order to represent these chimeras, one of them had to ask him to represent it. He needed a creative loophole.

The boat was at a yacht anchorage on the eastern tip of Lido Island, in Newport Beach. There were several hundred slips just across a parking lot from a high-end trailer park. It was 7:00 p.m. when they found Ted's fifty-five-foot Bertram Sportfisher stern-tied to the dock. When they parked behind it they saw the name printed in foot-high, gold-leaf letters: The Other Woman.

Jack walked down the ramp to the dock, listening to the halyards on the surrounding sailboats rattling against their metal masts in the sharp evening breeze. He went aboard and found the keys hidden where Louise said they would be. After Susan turned off the alarm, Jack opened the rear doors and they entered, flipping on lights.

The main salon was beautiful: dark mahogany cabinets filled with cut-crystal glasses backed a mahogany bar, beige carpets, an antique table with chairs, and a beautiful, off-white silk sofa completed the decor. It seemed more like a stylish New York condo than a fishing boat.

Susan went below and forward where she found the master suite. A brass plaque on the door read: Ink-an homage to the show Ted and Mary had co-starred in. The suite had a queen-size bed and a large bathroom featuring a shower complete with steam heads. There were two guest staterooms aft.

They went back outside to help Herman onto the boat, then settled him in the master suite, where he flopped back on the quilted bedspread, still exhausted from the surgery.

"I'm starved," Susan complained, looking at them. "How about you, Dad?"

"There's nothing in the fridge," Jack said. "I already looked. We could go out and get something."

"Why don't you two get dinner?" Herman suggested. "Get me something to go. Bring it back after you've eaten. I saw a fish restaurant on the way in just a block from here. You could walk it." He wanted to get them out of there so he could work.

"What do you want?" she asked.

"Surprise me, honey," he answered, then closed his eyes, put his hands across his chest, and feigned sleep.

Susan stood there for a long moment, then hesitantly turned to go. "Okay, if you think it's all right."

"I'll be fine," he said. "Just turn off the light."

As soon as he heard them leave the boat, Herm pulled himself upright, turned on the bedside lamp, opened his PalmPilot, and began scrolling for Sandy Toshiabi's number.