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                                                     ISSN 1054-0695

                       SHAREDEBATE INTERNATIONAL
                       =========================
                              Volume 3(2)
                              Summer 1993

                           Diskette number 10
                        (BBS Filename: DBATE010)

                       Roleigh H. Martin, Editor
                Copyright 1993 by Applied Foresight Inc.
                          All Rights Reserved.

                    (Material by Individual Authors
                    May Be Copyrighted Differently)

                              Published by
                        Applied Foresight, Inc.
                             P.O. Box 20607
                       Bloomington MN 55420, USA
                       CompuServe ID: 71510,1042

        -----------------------------------------------------------
        -- A Freeware Diskette-Magazine of Nonfiction & Fiction ---
        ------- Original & Reprints -- Published Quarterly  -------
        ------                                               ------
        ----- "An International Debate Forum for Computer Users ---
        -------- Concerned about the Present and the Future" ------
        -----------------------------------------------------------
        -----------------------------------------------------------

                        From the Editor's Desk:

        Hello again!  This issue carries two items.

            First is part two of the lengthy excerpt from the
        book that won the Prometheus award for science-fiction
        author, Victor Koman.  Part one reprinted chapters 1-8
        and appeared in Issue 8 of ShareDebate International
        (DBATE008.* in BBS and Shareware archives).  This issue
        reprints chapters 9-15.  The book is 23 chapters long
        and ordering information for the whole book, electronic
        or paper, is provided at the end of the two excerpts.

            A word about editorial philosophy.  Just because an
        entry appears in ShareDebate International doesn't mean
        that I wholly or partially endorse what that writer is
        proposing.  The article might be included because I
        think the writer uses good writing and/or argumentative
        techniques, or the writer addresses points needing
        addressing (regardless of the writer's
        recommendations), or otherwise.

            For instance, because abortion is such a tremendous
        controversy, Victor Koman's novel is being presented
        not because I think his solution is flawless and
        without problems---I doubt if he would assert that--but
        it shows how what many consider a two-sided argument
        can have additional sides.  I'll present my own
        viewpoints on Abortion someday--not now. Suffice it to
        say, I take the Christian Libertarian stance on
        abortion, which is also another independent stance that
        differs from the normally-media-presented two-sides of
        the abortion debate.

            Second is an excellent reprint of a paper by
        Sheldon Richman on eqalitarianism, which is a socialist
        aspiration for income equality that underlies the class
        warfare rhetoric of the Clinton administration.

        -----------------------------------------------------------

                            SOLOMON'S KNIFE

                   An Excerpt from the Original Novel
              (Chapters 1-15 of the original 23 chapters)

           (This issue of ShareDebate International presents
              chapters 9-15.  Chapters 1-8 appeared in the
                 issue 8 of ShareDebate International.)
                            by Victor Koman
                   Copyright (c) 1989 by Victor Koman
                          All rights reserved.
                   Logoright (L) 1989 by Victor Koman

                Reprinted by permission of Victor Koman


                            SOLOMON'S KNIFE
                                a novel
                                   by
                              Victor Koman

          Solomon's Knife is currently available in a diskette
           and modem-downloadable format from KoPubCo and is
                      distributed exclusively by:

                   SoftServ Publishing Services, Inc.
                              P.O. Box 94
                       Long Beach, CA 90801-0094

                    Copyright 1989 by Victor Koman.
            Hardback edition available from Franklin Watts.
                  First edition published April, 1989.

              Library of Congress Catalog Number 88-34900


                           FORMAT CONVENTION

        Italics  or  underlining are represented by a
        \backslash\  flush against the beginning and end of
        material being \emphasized\, and slashes should come
        before \punctuation\.

        \\Boldface\\ is represented by double backslashes.

        \\\Boldface-italic\\\ is three backslashes.


                            SOLOMON'S KNIFE

                                   IX

        Dr. Jacob Lawrence sought to avoid controversy the way
        most men sought to avoid death. He didn't think about
        it much when it wasn't present, but when it seemed
        imminent, he marshaled every resource to combat it.

             Mentally, he tried to envision a way out of the
        mess caused by the woman across from his desk. To his
        left sat Dr. Leo Cospe, the staff neurosurgeon. To his
        right, leaning against the windowpane, stood Shawn
        Deyo, the medical center's legal counsel. It was time
        to work on damage control.

             He cleared his throat. "Dr. Fletcher, I don't want
        to be placed in the position of grand inquisitor, but
        your actions leave me no other choice." He gazed across
        his desk at Fletcher, who sat stonily in the leather
        chair. She stared at him coldly.

             "None of this would be happening," she said, "if
        the ethics committee had agreed to discuss the merits
        of transoption \eight years ago\."

             Lawrence sighed. "We'll discuss it now. I've asked
        Shawn and Leo to be here as a special ethics
        subcommittee."

             "I have nothing to say." Dr. Fletcher stared
        quietly into the administrator's eyes with a gaze of
        arctic steel.

             "It would be in your interest," Lawrence said, "to
        be forthright about all this so that we can head off
        any publicity that may damage this institution."

             Fletcher shook her head. "You're going to get
        publicity no matter what I say or do. The lid's just
        been torn off the biggest controversy of the decade."
        She swiveled to look at the lawyer. "What charges have
        you concocted for me?"

             Deyo--a tall, husky man in a fine grey pinstripe
        suit--glanced at a notebook in his hand. His voice was
        rich and deep. "Nothing's concocted, Dr. Fletcher. By
        \your\ actions you've left us with no other choice but
        to notify the district attorney's office. Bayside
        cannot be perceived as an institution that condones
        illegal, clandestine experiments. Some likely charges
        will be performing experimental surgery without
        authorization. Failure to secure informed consent for
        same. Battery. Kidnapping. Child endangerment. Improper
        disposal of fetal tissue samples--"

             Fletcher's voice growled low and surly. "Renata
        wasn't a tissue sample, damn you. She was a \baby\."
        She stared at him with a strange, murderous gaze.

             "Well, if you want to go that route, they can get
        you on the other charges I mentioned." He leaned toward
        her. "But let me tell you this. The DA's going to get
        you on something. You ripped a baby out of a woman and
        sold it. And make no mistake, that's how the newspapers
        will present it."

             Fletcher continued to gaze at him, unblinking. "I
        saved the life of a child who'd be \dead\ now if not
        for--"

             "I suggest," Dr. Lawrence interjected sharply,
        "that we hold such arguments for the DA and right now
        just find a way to moderate the impact of all this.
        Surely you must see the sense in that, don't you,
        Evelyn?"

             Fletcher laughed. "There's no way you can moderate
        this. You had eight years to consider all the arguments
        pro and con. You waffled and fence straddled until
        transoption finally rose up to bite you."

             "Evelyn." Dr. Cospe spoke in level, sympathetic
        tones. He was smaller than Dr. Fletcher, spare and
        balding. He sat in the chair next to Dr. Lawrence and
        gazed at her calmly. "What you don't seem to understand
        is that such delays are an important part of the
        ethical review process. A cooling-off time, if you
        will. We're dealing with a procedure that involves a
        high degree of morbidity and risk to the reproductive
        potential of two women per operation. It is obvious
        from your initial proposals that you viewed surgical
        embryo transfer as some sort of universal solution to
        the problems of both abortion and infertility."

             He leaned one elbow on an armrest to support the
        side of his head in the palm of his hand. In that
        position, he continued.

             "That was eight years ago, as you noted. In that
        intervening time, such procedures as \in vitro\
        fertilization and non-surgical ovum transfer have
        solved virtually all problems of infertility. The
        prospect of safe abortifacient drugs promises to
        resolve the abortion debate."

             "It does \not\," Fletcher said. "It just hides the
        problem--"

             "May I finish?" Cospe's voice never shifted from
        its soft timbre. "All right, then. Contraceptive
        technology is proceeding at such a pace that unwanted
        pregnancies will soon be a thing of the past. Will you
        admit that at that point transoption will be obsolete?"

             "Mostly," Evelyn said grudgingly. "But there'll
        always be someone who--"

             Cospe raised his other hand. "Just let me finish.
        The reason ethics committees grapple so long with such
        difficult questions as the right to life of a fetus or
        of risks of morbidity to the mother is that
        occasionally the passage of time will make such
        questions moot. You acted in haste. You chose to
        perform an operation that in a few years will--in all
        likelihood--be useless or at least extremely rare."

             "Well," Fletcher said, lighting up a cigarette,
        "it's damned useful \right now\. And if I had done this
        five years ago and it had caught on, there might be a
        few million kids alive today who are dead now."

             "Oh, that'd be great," Deyo said from a corner of
        the office. "Think of the population mess we'd be in.
        The world's overcrowded now. Abortion may be the only
        thing keeping us from Malthusian disaster."

             Dr. Lawrence cleared his throat. "Do you see what
        overwhelming issues we've had to contend with in this?"

             "None of these considerations were in your
        report," Fletcher said. She blew a puff of smoke in
        Lawrence's direction. "You're making it all up on the
        spot." She turned toward Deyo. "As for overpopulation,
        I've heard predictions of doom every time the world
        added another billion. Did it ever occur to you that
        one of the children from those extra millions might
        grow up to be the genius who'll find a solution to
        hunger or war? How many potential Einsteins have been
        aborted in the last eight years?"

             Deyo snorted. "About as many as potential Charlie
        Mansons."

             Fletcher narrowed her eyes. "We obviously have two
        different views of human potential. If an abundance of
        people worries you so much, you can always rectify the
        matter, starting with yourself."

             "\Doctor\ Fletcher," said Lawrence in a strict
        tone. "There is no need to stoop to insult. The ethics
        subcommittee has no choice in this matter but to notify
        the district attorney immediately. To do otherwise
        would expose this institution to a severe liability."

             "Which we may not be able to avoid, anyway," Deyo
        added. "If Dr. Fletcher's criminal intent can be
        demonstrated--"

             "What crime?" Fletcher asked, stubbing out her
        cigarette angrily. "Show me where the crime is. Valerie
        Dalton came in for a pregnancy termination. She
        received one. Karen Chandler came in to get pregnant.
        She got pregnant. If there's any crime there, I can't
        see it. If anything, I made efficient use of lab
        equipment by recycling the fetus."

             "That's enough!" Lawrence picked up the telephone
        and punched a button. "Sherry? Get me the district
        attorney's office. Yes. Frawley himself." He gazed at
        Fletcher. "We'll see what he has to say."
                                   #

        Someone had called the reporters. Lawrence and the
        others watched from the administrator's office window
        as two screaming police cars, lights flashing,
        screeched to a halt in the parking lot. Television
        remote vans pulled up. Station wagons driven by radio
        reporters and smaller cars loaded with newspaper
        reporters and photographers disgorged their loads with
        vomitous urgency. They had not descended
        simultaneously, but it was obvious that someone had
        broadcast word of the DA's arrival.

             "Election year," Fletcher noted. "And a slow news
        day, too."

             Lawrence sighed. The reporters headed toward the
        police cars with the giddy expectation of heirs around
        a deathbed.

             Big trouble was brewing, and the administrator was
        determined to control not only what he said but what
        the DA perceived.

             "I would advise everyone," he told the other
        three, "to remain calm and let me handle the DA."

             His intercom buzzed. He pressed a button. "Is that
        the DA, Sherry?"

             "\Yes\," a tinny voice said over the speaker.

             "Please send him in."

             The door opened to admit Malcolm Frawley, an
        impressively large man who was once a college football
        star and radio announcer. He nodded his head of
        thinning red hair at Lawrence.

             "Dr. Lawrence," he said. His voice had the rich,
        deep tones of a professional orator. "Is this the
        woman?"

             "This is Dr. Evelyn Fletcher," Lawrence said. "Dr.
        Leo Cospe, Mr. Shawn Deyo." Frawley shook the men's
        hands. He sat in the chair that Dr. Lawrence indicated.
        The others returned to their own.

             "I must admit, Dr. Lawrence, that your call
        knocked me off my feet. I haven't heard anything this
        monstrous since.. well, for a long time. Are you sure
        it's as you say?" He produced a notebook and a gold
        Cross ballpoint.

             "I'm afraid so. I received a call from a lab
        technologist who voiced suspicions that confirmed some
        of my own. I confronted Dr. Fletcher, and she admitted
        everything. I called you only minutes later. You have
        my assurance that the medical center knew nothing of
        this." He eyed the DA with earnest intensity. "You must
        understand that we wish to avoid publicity if at all
        possible. It's the policy of Bayside to assist in the
        prosecution of doctors who engage in unethical or
        illegal practices. An ethics subcommittee has
        already--"

             "Railroaded me," Fletcher said.

             Before Lawrence could continue, his intercom
        buzzed again. This time he picked up the phone.

             "Yes?"

             He listened for a moment, thanked the secretary,
        and cradled the phone. His puffy fingers tapped a few
        times against the black plastic.

             "There you have it," he said. "The valiant press
        decided to interview members of our permanent floating
        picket line. They naturally found out what's going on
        up here. Someone just decided to heave a bench through
        the lobby window."

             Frawley nodded wearily. "I think you'll want to
        issue a statement that my department has everything in
        hand." He turned toward Evelyn. "As an officer of the
        court, I'd like to inform you of the following rights.
        You have the right to remain silent. If you give--"

             "If you had any understanding of or respect for
        rights," she said icily, "you wouldn't be here doing
        this."

             Frawley shrugged. Rising to stride over to the
        office doors, he poked his head through to signal one
        of the young officers. He promptly entered with a pair
        of handcuffs.

             "Must you?" Dr. Lawrence asked.

             Frawley nodded. "It's for her own protection."

             Fletcher held out her hands. "What he means is it
        looks good on TV around election time."

             The DA shook his head with a disappointed
        expression and removed his navy-blue jacket, offering
        it to the manacled woman.

             "What's that for?" she asked.

             "To cover your face when we go past the
        reporters."

             She threw him a withering glare. "I had reason to
        be secretive. I have none to be ashamed."

             "Have it your way," he said, slipping back into
        the jacket. "Gentlemen."

             The two officers flanked him by the door. He
        grasped Evelyn by the arm and said, "Keep your head low
        and walk with me as fast as the boys can clear a path."

             The doors opened. The two officers pushed into the
        throng, politely asking everyone to stand aside,
        please, as they shoved with hands and forearms against
        the human sea of reporters. Frawley pushed forward on
        Fletcher's arm to set up a quick pace.

             She resisted. Rather than cowering to avoid the
        cameras, she held her head high and walked with a slow
        gait that Frawley found impossible to quicken. He took
        a deep, irritated breath and fell in step with her
        pace, tugging at her arm every so often in an effort to
        make her appear unsteady. She seemed to sense his
        strategy and to counter each tactic he attempted to
        employ.

             This was the day she had anticipated for so long.
        Anticipated, feared, and rehearsed for. She was not
        going to act the criminal's role.

             A raven-haired woman shoved a microphone past the
        officers while her partner pointed a glaring videocam
        at the doctor. Amidst the din of questions, hers rang
        through clearly. "How many babies did you steal?"

             "Our only comment," Frawley said, "is that a
        complete investigation is underw--"

             "After performing three thousand six hundred
        eighteen pregnancy terminations," Fletcher said in a
        powerful, level tone, "I managed to save one baby from
        death. I welcome being convicted of such a crime."

             That was enough for Frawley. With a subtle but
        firm tug at her arm, he caused her to stumble over her
        own feet. She recovered, glared at him, and resumed her
        tall stride.

             The cloud of reporters orbiting around Dr.
        Fletcher encountered a choke point at the elevator. The
        police cleared out a car, and the four descended.

             "I know," Fletcher said, "that it's in your
        interest to make me look bad before the press. Battery
        complaints go both ways, though. Don't set the grounds
        for a civil suit against you when all this is over."

             Frawley rubbed his nose and stared at the elevator
        door. "You're right. That was a lame trick. But don't
        \you\ get your hopes up. You doctor types get so
        wrapped up in your experiments that you think the rest
        of the world will welcome you as a god floating down
        from Olympus. Don't count on it. You're a cold,
        calculating demon, and I'm personally going to see you
        raked over the coals for this."

             The doors parted before another swarm of
        reporters. The faces were familiar, if a bit flushed,
        from the third floor. They continued their questioning
        with labored breath. The entire knot of people moved
        outside.

             "Were you driven to this by religious
        convictions?" shouted one voice.

             "How much did the parents pay you?" hollered
        another.

             "How do you justify breaking the law?"

             "I broke no law," Fletcher said in a loud and
        level tone. "Except the unwritten one that thou shalt
        not act on conscience. I delib--"

             Something hit the side of her head with stunning
        impact and exploded in a cloud of brown dust. She
        stared incredulously at the man who had thrown the dirt
        clod. A member of the picket line, he carried a sign
        that read ABORTION IS MURDER--SAVE THE FUTURE.
                                   #

        The attack, caught on video, played for the noon news
        viewers.

             Terence Johnson sat in his cluttered Long Beach
        apartment, watching with intense fascination.
        Surrounded by stacks of law books upon which rested
        empty fast-food containers from Popeye's, Del Taco, and
        Gourmet to Go, the twenty-six-year-old man observed the
        scene with sharp black eyes. His curly almost coal-
        black hair was longer than was currently fashionable
        for his profession, and the cramped quarters of his
        Seventh Street lodgings gave lie to the canard that all
        lawyers made a fortune. As if any further proof were
        needed, he wore aging acid-wash jeans that had
        apparently seen more acid than wash. The T-shirt
        clinging to his trim frame bore the smiling face of
        Captain Midnight, urging everyone to drink their
        Ovaltine.

             He scooped up another mouthful of \yakisoba\ with
        chopsticks, set the nearly empty carton on his copy of
        \Black's Law Dictionary\, and concentrated on the
        woman's expression. He tried to read her personality
        from her body language and neurolinguistics.

             He might as well have used her sun sign for all
        the information he was able to glean. He was intrigued,
        though. Enough to reach for his briefcase, shove a few
        notes into its crammed interior, slip on a reasonably
        clean, natural-hued knit sweater, and listen carefully.

             The camera shifted to the reporter at the scene.
        "This bizarre story of medical experiments and stolen
        babies has only just begun to unfold. Dr. Fletcher will
        be interrogated further in the DA's office downtown.
        When further word develops on this astonishing--"

             Johnson heard nothing more. He slammed the door
        running and rushed to his battered white Volkswagen.
                                   #

        "You can't make any of the charges stick, Mr. Frawley."
        Dr. Fletcher addressed the DA in cool, precise tones.
        She was calm now, sitting in a comfortable leather
        French Provincial chair inside Frawley's well-
        appointed, wood-paneled downtown office. Lawrence and
        Deyo sat in similar chairs off to the side. Dr. Cospe
        had elected to stay behind at the hospital, his stint
        as a member of the \ad hoc\ subcommittee at an end.

             The police officers, at a glance from Frawley,
        unshackled Fletcher and promptly retired to the outer
        room.

             She spent ten minutes silently listening to what
        the DA had against her, then struck back.

             "Any charge," she said, "related to kidnapping,
        child abuse, child endangerment, or indeed any charge
        that implies what I withdrew from Valerie Dalton was in
        any way human will directly conflict with the Supreme
        Court's rulings on abortion. If a fetus is human enough
        that you can accuse \me\ of kidnapping, then \I\ accuse
        the hospital's other abortionists of murder in the
        first degree. A charge that others have brought with no
        results." She glanced at Dr. Lawrence for support; he
        merely stared ahead at Frawley.

             Frawley glared back at Fletcher. "For criminal
        purposes, a fetus \can\ be considered a human being. If
        you'd shot Ms. Dalton in the abdomen, wounding her and
        killing the fetus, I could easily charge you with
        murder."

             Fletcher smiled a smile that failed to conceal her
        contempt. "The problem is that she \asked\ me to remove
        the fetus. And it's alive. You can't have it both ways
        or you'll be playing right into the antiabortionists'
        hands. You can't arrest me for kidnapping someone I was
        legally permitted to kill." She drew her cigarette
        package and Zippo lighter from her lab coat.

             Frawley cleared his throat. "There's no smoking in
        city buildings."

             She grinned, lighting up. "If you really want to
        get coverage, add aggravated smoking to the charge of
        fetal kidnapping. The press loves little touches
        like--"

             The sound of arguing voices drifted into the room.
        From outside the office a policeman thrust in his head
        to say, "Sorry, sir. There's a guy out here claims to
        be her lawyer."

             Terence Johnson peered inside, waved at Fletcher
        as if they were old army buddies, and nodded at the DA.

             Evelyn looked back at him with a blank stare.

             Frawley cleared his throat. "Is he?" he asked.

             Tapping cigarette ash into an empty coffee cup,
        she smiled with wry anticipation. "He said he was,
        didn't he?"

             "What's his name?" Frawley asked her.

             "Terence Johnson," the lawyer spouted before
        Evelyn could react. He let himself in and dropped his
        briefcase beside an empty chair. "But everyone
        including Dr. Fletcher calls me Terry." He looked at
        the bemused doctor. "You really should give a guy a
        call. I had the toughest time finding you."

             "I'll remember the next time I'm busted," she
        replied, sizing him up with cautious eyes.

             He looked to be fresh out of law school, full of
        energy and spirit. If he had legal skills to match his
        enthusiasm and ingenuity, he might be worth retaining.

             He pulled a canary-yellow notepad from his
        briefcase. "How much have you told them?"

             She reiterated the conversations nearly verbatim.
        He switched on a tape recorder and took simultaneous
        notes. Occasionally, he used his Pilot Razorpoint pen
        to brush a curly lock of black hair away from his eyes,
        back with the rest of his mop.

             "Well," he said, jotting quick, almost unreadable
        notes, "it seems that you don't have any charges
        centered around child abuse." He looked up at Frawley,
        then at Lawrence and Deyo. "What else have you got left
        to try?"

             "We've got plenty. Failure to receive informed
        consent--"

             "From whom?" Fletcher asked.

             Dr. Lawrence folded his arms and gazed down his
        nose at Fletcher. "From the women. You'll naturally
        point out that we can't accuse you of failing to
        receive informed consent from a fetus since they are
        not considered humans capable of granting informed
        consent. But the women were involved in highly risky
        experimental surgery. The `donor mother,' as you call
        her, faced the risk of--"

             "Valerie Dalton faced the risk," Fletcher said,
        "that any woman seeking an abortion faced. Pain.
        Bleeding. Severe cramping. Possible hemorrhaging and
        loss of blood requiring transfusion. Even the chance of
        being rendered sterile by the procedure. She signed--"

             Johnson cut in. "You don't have to say anything
        else. I'll handle it from here."

             "Don't interrupt me." Her voice was harsher with
        him than with the DA.

             "As your legal counsel, I strongly urge you to--"

             "When I hired you," she said in a sharp tone,
        "didn't we agree that I'd handle this my way?"

             Johnson gazed at her silently for a moment. The
        trace of a smile appeared at the edges of his mouth.

             "I was hoping you'd changed your mind," the young
        man said, bending over his notepad. "Do as you like."

             Fletcher turned toward Frawley. "Ms. Dalton signed
        the proper paperwork that's been approved by the ethics
        committee."

             "I looked at those." Lawrence quickly said to
        Frawley. "They were nonstandard. Wherever the word
        `abortion' had been in the original, the term
        `pregnancy termination' was substituted."

             Fletcher took a drag of her cigarette and blew
        smoke toward an empty part of the office. "The
        committee approved the use of the euphemism six years
        ago, if you'll bother to look at the revision number on
        the form. Since they were unaware that any other form
        of pregnancy termination existed, I was able to push
        that through. All your doctors have been using it." She
        began to look as if she were enjoying the exchange.
        "Nothing in the contract required that I kill the fetus
        or inform anyone of the uses to whi--"

             "The recipient mother ran just as much risk, if
        not more, from the implantation procedure." Dr.
        Lawrence unfolded his hands and leaned forward in his
        chair. "Don't tell anyone who's had more than a week of
        medical school that this transoption technique is safe.
        Anytime you surgically attach foreign matter into a
        healthy human being, the capability of tissue
        rejection, trauma, infection, and morbidity exists. You
        had no experimental basis for this procedure. No animal
        research, not even peer-reviewed experimental protocols
        for establish--"

             "What do you propose to do?" she asked him.
        "Convince Karen Chandler to press charges against me
        for giving her what she most fervently wanted?" She
        dropped the cigarette in the Styrofoam cup. "Go to her.
        Tell her what you plan to do. Tell her you want to
        imprison the doctor who gave her what no other
        fertility program could. Wait for her answer. Then take
        a good look at the waiver she signed. The language is
        legal." She turned to Johnson. "Did you review the
        copies I sent you?"

             Poker-faced, he replied, "I'll need more time, but
        they seem airtight on first glance."

             Deyo gave Johnson a curious once-over. Dr.
        Lawrence stared emotionlessly at Fletcher, drumming his
        fingers on his armrest. "There are noncriminal ways of
        handling this, as you well know. The principle of \non-
        surgical\ ovum transfer was established in 1983, under
        the most rigorous of guidelines. You've chosen to
        expand that frontier of research in a clandestine,
        surreptitious, and completely unprofessional manner.
        This is clearly a matter for the Board of Medical
        Quality Assurance. I can virtually guarantee the
        revocation of your license to practice in the state of
        California. That would effectively bar you from
        practice in the United States."

             "Fine," Frawley said with a relieved nod. "We'll
        formulate any criminal charges based upon the findings
        of the board." He looked at Lawrence. "That should keep
        things out of the limelight for a few weeks. Time
        enough for things to cool down." The D.A. relaxed--at
        least \he\ was off the hook awhile.

             Johnson cleared his throat for attention. "Is that
        what you intend to tell the press out there?"

             Frawley eyeballed him. "Why?"

             Johnson ran his hands through his hair and leaned
        back, notepad and pen resting on his lap. "Because the
        subjects of abortion, host mothers, and radical new
        forms of fertility are all violently emotional
        subjects. You've got people smashing up your hospital
        just on the \rumor\ that something strange is going on,
        fetuswise. What sort of publicity will you generate if
        you let Dr. Fletcher walk out of here with nothing from
        you but a `We'll look into it' statement? Everyone
        would view your position as a wrist slap or as cowardly
        stalling." He looked at Frawley. "They'll be knocking
        in \your\ windows tomorrow. Maybe tonight.

             "But any of those major charges you arraign her on
        \I'll\ get shot down in pretrial because no judge is
        going to go up against the prevailing opinion on the
        nonhuman status of the unborn." He glanced from
        Lawrence to Fletcher. "The AMA has too much riding on
        the billion-dollar-a-year abortion industry. And that
        charge of battery is ridiculous. Dalton \paid\ for the
        operation. She got what she wanted. She wasn't touched
        without her consent and I'd love to see you try to
        prove criminal intent to \save\ a baby's life."

             Lawrence's face turned the color and texture of
        unpolished granite. Fletcher merely looked at the
        bookcase across the room. Her eyes seemed to be looking
        somewhere far beyond the office.

             Frawley turned to gaze questioningly at Lawrence.
        The doctor shook his head resignedly, peering at a
        poker-faced Fletcher. "All right," the DA said. "It's
        pretty obvious that you've thought all this out rather
        thoroughly. You must have figured you'd get caught
        someday." He sat back in his chair with weary
        heaviness. "You've committed what I personally consider
        to be a repulsive medical experiment, and you've
        covered your ass admirably. I'm turning this over to a
        grand jury, and I'll let \them\ issue any indictments.
        Until then, you're free to go. And I hope you don't
        have anything put through \your\ windows."

             Johnson smiled. "Thank you, Mr. District
        Attorney."

             "And you--" Frawley said. "You just watch your
        step. If I have to deal with you at all, just remember
        that we're both officers of the same damned court."

             The young man tried to suppress a sardonic smile.
        "I'm fully aware of that, sir." He switched off the
        recorder, putting it and his notepad back in the
        briefcase.

             Evelyn stood and turned to go.

             "Oh, Dr. Fletcher," Frawley added. "Don't leave
        the county of Los Angeles without giving us a call,
        will you?"

             "Of course I won't leave," she said. "I have
        patients to care for."

             "You certainly do \not\!" Dr. Lawrence stared at
        her in shock. "Your privileges are suspended pending
        full BMQA review. And I'm going to find a way to sack
        you regardless of any outcome."

             "That's absurd," she said. "Renata requires--"

             "Newborn babies are not uncommon in medicine," he
        shot back. "I'm certain that we--"

             "You're certain of \nothing\ because you have no
        \facts\!" Her gaze smoldered for a moment. "I know you
        view the Hippocratic oath as a joke, considering how
        you have your doctors ignore the part about never
        conducting abortions--"

             "I took the oath of Geneva," Lawrence said. "It
        had nothing about abor--"

             "--but think of the publicity crisis you'd have if
        Renata died because I was barred from helping her," she
        continued without interruption. "Bad for funding."

             "Why does it always come down to money and
        publicity with you?" he asked.

             "Because that's what it comes down to with you."

             "Until the outcome of the inquest," Johnson
        interjected, "showing cause for suspension under such
        circumstances would be diffic--"

             "Shut up," Lawrence snapped.

             "See you in court," Johnson said with a grin.

             After a pause, Lawrence spoke in a quiet, steady
        tone. "All right. Dr. Fletcher, you may remain on staff
        under strict supervision and with the stipulation that
        you desist from any further medical experimentation.
        Agreed?"

             Fletcher nodded eagerly. "I agree. As long as
        neither I nor Nurse Dyer are required to perform or
        assist in any abortions."

             "Oh, you can rest assured on that point."

             "Then," Johnson said, "in the interest of avoiding
        any untoward publicity until the grand jury convenes,
        how about showing us the back door?"


                                   X

        Valerie switched on the bedroom TV with the remote. The
        lunchtime news appeared with an image of anchorwoman
        Sally Lin, who spoke while a piece of artwork hovered
        over her left shoulder, depicting a fetus and the words
        \ABORTION SCANDAL?\ at an angle in red.

             "--still unclear," the anchor said. "The doctor,
        Evelyn Fletcher, is head of the medical center's
        fertility program. She also apparently ran the center's
        family-planning clinic and performed abortions, thus
        giving her access to live fetuses. Hospital officials
        have no comment as yet, but sources reveal that the
        purportedly clandestine experiment came to light when
        the baby, delivered by alleged surrogate mother Karen
        Chandler of Torrance, fell ill and required blood from
        the alleged real mother, Valerie Dalton of Palos Verdes
        Estates."

             Valerie felt as if a charging bull had gored her.
        Her stomach tightened, her breath caught in her chest,
        her heart pounded as if she were being truncheoned
        every half second. The anchorwoman continued, unaware
        of the effect she was having on a member of her
        audience.

             "There is no word on how many operations of this
        nature may allegedly have been performed, but we'll
        keep you informed on this bizarre story as it unfolds."

             The scene switched to the other anchor, Jerry
        Thompson, a middle-aged man with grey at the temples.
        "Now you said `surrogate,' Sally, but this was actually
        a mother who wanted to have a child, correct?"

             "That's right, Jerry. This seems to be different
        from surrogate mothering in that the woman who wants to
        keep the child gives birth to it. I think the term they
        used was `recipient' mother. But in both cases the real
        mother gives up the child. The term we heard used was
        \transoption\, though our medical expert, Dr. Joseph
        Schulman, says he's never heard the word before."

             Thompson gave Lin a concerned and probing look.
        "And no word as to why this recipient mother quietly
        went along with what she must have known was an illegal
        procedure?"

             "No word yet. She presumably wanted a child in the
        worst way."

             Thompson nodded. "And that's how she seems to have
        gotten it. Shocking story coming out of Harbor City.
        Something we'll follow up on tonight at six. Thanks,
        Sally." He turned to face the camera. "And a shocking
        loss for the Raiders in Denver, as Mauricio Sanchez
        tells us when we return with sports after these--"

             The phone rang. Valerie switched off the TV and
        picked up the cordless hand unit an instant before the
        answering machine could intercept the call.

             "Val!" Ron's voice was distant but alarmed. "Are
        you all right?"

             "Where are you?"

             "I'm calling from the car. I'm at PCH and Beryl.
        I'll be home soon. I heard your name on the radio. Is
        everything all right?"

             "I'm okay. Just hurry home."

             "Fifteen minutes," he said. "I'll cut it to ten."

             "Drive safely. I don't--"

             Someone pounded on their front door. She walked
        over to look out the beveled-glass rectangle set in the
        center.

             A man with a microphone gestured at her. Another
        man hefted a video camera on his shoulder. Behind them,
        a van pulled to a stop, its tires screeching and
        thumping to a halt.

             "Ms. Dalton, could you step out here to comment--"

             "Oh, God, Ron. They're showing up \here\!"

             "Don't let them in!" shouted the tinny voice.
        Somewhere in the static she heard the whine of the
        BMW's turbine. "I'm coming!"

             She watched as more gangs of reporters, cameramen,
        and sound engineers trooped onto her front lawn.
        Curious neighbors gathered at the fringes. So much for
        Palos Verdes people not prying.

             Her stomach tightened and began to heave. She
        controlled the urge but ran to the bathroom anyway,
        slamming the door.

             It was quiet in the bathroom. The knocking on the
        front door was almost imperceptible. She turned on the
        faucet in the sink to drown out the last of it. She
        sat, numbed, waiting for Ron to return.
                                   #

        Ron hit the left turn from Palos Verdes Drive to Via
        Zumaya at nearly full speed, ignoring the oncoming
        northbound cars a few yards ahead. He punched the BMW
        to full power across the two lanes of traffic and
        slammed onto Via Zumaya at fifty miles per hour. He
        took his foot off the gas and downshifted for the turn
        onto Via Carrillo.

             And nearly collided with the knot of vehicles
        jamming the tree-lined street. Brakes squealed in
        protest, but the antilock system prevented a skid. Even
        so, he bumped into a station wagon bearing the call
        letters of the radio station to which he had been
        listening.

             He didn't give a damn.

             He slammed the door and ran to the cluster of a
        dozen and more Pecksniffs loitering on his doorstep.

             "Move it!" he shouted in his deepest, most
        authoritarian courtroom bass. "Get your asses to the
        property line or be arrested for trespassing. Now!"

             The reporters surrounded him, hollering their
        questions and shoving for position. Awash in a Sargasso
        of journalists, Czernek pushed toward the door while
        fumbling for his keys.

             "I said \no comment\. When we're ready to talk,
        you'll know it. Get off the lawn and find some carrion
        to circle around."

             He unlocked the door, entered, and slammed it
        forcefully shut. "Val!"

             He heard the water in the bathroom and ran toward
        it. "Honey!" he shouted.

             She sat on the small French seat in front of her
        vanity, gazing in the mirror.

             He knelt down to wrap her in his powerful arms.
        His hand stroked her soft hair, his voice even softer.
        "I'm here now, babe. Everything's all right. I know
        just what to do. Give me a couple of hours at the word
        processor. I have to get something stamped at court
        before it closes."

             He released her almost as quickly as he had
        embraced her. Seconds later, he sat in their office.
        Valerie heard the whine and chunk of the computer and
        knew that she would sit alone once more until he was
        finished. She gazed at her image in the vanity mirror.
        Her eyes, she noted, looked older, wearier, less alive
        than they ever had before. In a robotic daze, she
        brushed at her hair only to see that the polish on her
        long nails had grown dull and chipped over the course
        of the day. She laid down the brush. To the sounds of
        running water and Ron's feverish typing, she sat
        staring at the woman in the looking glass.
                                   #

        Evelyn, alone, took a long, meditative lunch at CoCo's
        after the interrogation, mulling over the conversation
        she and Johnson had engaged in during the rush to her
        car.

             "I saw you on TV," he said, riding down the
        service elevator with her. "I didn't know whether you
        already had an attorney, but I knew I had to give it a
        try. And I'd like to represent the Chandler's, too, if
        you and they won't see any conflict of interest there."

             "Are you a specialist in reproductive law?" She
        was fighting for her professional life, she thought,
        and here was a kid offering his services.

             "I will be by the time we go to trial." The
        elevator doors parted. "There's really nothing to being
        a lawyer except the ability to apply clear logic to
        muddled legislation. Add a good head for research and
        rhetorical skills and you've got a winning lawyer."

             "You need one more thing."

             "What's that?" he asked.

             "A jury willing to believe you."

             She ate her meal slowly, spending more than two
        hours in the restaurant. She had managed to elude the
        reporters and she wanted her privacy to last. As
        daylight began to fade, she paid her tab and used the
        public phone to call the lab. After fielding questions
        from a concerned technologist and assuring him that she
        was fine, she heard the news that managed to lift her
        spirits.

             Dalton's serologies were fine. And--crucially
        important--her HLA matched Renata's rare type on five
        points. That was close enough to make a marrow
        transplant possible. Relieved that at least one good
        thing had happened that day, she paid her tab and drove
        home.

             She maneuvered the Saab into the alley behind her
        apartment, parked in the carport, and climbed out. A
        buzz in the twilight air, different from the usual
        noises of the neighborhood, alerted her to a crowd in
        the front of the building. Suspecting reporters, she
        looked this way and that. The back entrance was
        deserted. She headed for the door.

             A figure shifted in the shadows.

             "Dr. Fletcher?"

             The voice startled her. She gasped inadvertently,
        drawing her key ring to hold beside her as a ready
        weapon.

             "Who are you?"

             A man dressed in dark blue jeans and a navy
        turtleneck sweater stepped out of the darkness into the
        yellow light of the walkway. He handed her an envelope.
        "This is for you."

             She reflexively reached out for it with her free
        hand. The instant her fingers touched it, the bearded
        man released his hold.

             "My name is Ron Czernek, attorney for the mother
        of the baby known as Renata Chandler. You have just
        been served on behalf of Valerie Dalton with a civil
        lawsuit demanding the return of Valerie Dalton's and my
        daughter, the payment of thirty million dollars in
        actual and punitive damages, and a permanent injunction
        against your practice of medicine in the state of
        California. Have a nice night."

             Evelyn stood in the pool of light staring
        wordlessly at Czernek. She felt like an old woman who
        had just been mugged. Her fingers shifted the smooth
        surface of the envelope around in her hand.

             He turned to leave.

             "I only meant to save a child's life," she said.

             Czernek whipped about to stare at the doctor with
        icy contempt. "And how many lives have you ruined doing
        so? Valerie's nearly mad with confusion and guilt. She
        went through the pain of an abortion and had finally
        learned to deal with it when she discovered that she
        had to undergo more pain to save the life she thought
        she'd ended. Why? Because a doctor's little experiment
        screwed up."

             "That's not how it was at--"

             "I don't care how it \was\." He pointed at the
        envelope. "This is how it \is\. We're taking our
        daughter back." He waited just long enough for a
        riposte from Fletcher, received none, and walked into
        the night. His feet crunched against the gravel and
        broken glass in the alleyway.

             Evelyn unlocked the door to the stairwell and
        stepped inside. In the harsh fluorescent light she
        leaned against the wall to examine the lawsuit.

             It was all he had said, naming her, Mr. and Mrs.
        Chandler, and Bayside University Medical Center as co-
        defendants. She walked up the stairs feeling old,
        tired, and shaken. She had always known that her
        research would be viewed with hostility by her peers.
        She knew enough history to realize that medical
        innovations in any particular age were rarely accepted
        by the physicians then practicing. Usually the old
        generation of researchers had to die off, clinging
        intransigently to outmoded ideas and procedures, while
        a new generation accepted the new concepts as the norm.
        That's why it took a generation for practically any
        idea or invention to gain widespread approval. The
        thought gave her scant comfort. If how she felt after
        today's ordeal was any indication, she didn't think she
        could hold out that long.

             The first action she took upon entering her
        apartment was to throw the blue-backed insult on the
        coffee table. Locking and chaining the door, she lit up
        a Defiant and located her patient-address book. Finger
        stabbing like a dagger, she punched in Valerie's phone
        number.

             The line was busy.

             She hit the redial button. Busy.

             \Probably being interviewed by\ People \magazine\,
        she mused.
                                   #

        Karen Chandler sat in the ICU, weeping in David's arms.
        She had tried not to cry, but watching the blood
        transfusion a few hours ago had been the first blow.
        Renata hardly reacted as the nurse tried to pierce a
        slender vein with the tiniest of IV needles. The blood
        brought a pink glow to her skin, but it didn't seem to
        last.

             Now Renata slept motionlessly inside the isolation
        chamber. Minuscule electrodes, stuck with gel and taped
        to her head and chest, delivered vital information to
        the machinery against the wall. Except for the
        electronic musings of the equipment and Karen's sobs,
        the room was quiet.

             The sound on the television set had been turned
        off, but David looked up to see a silent montage of the
        day's events: the line of demonstrators outside the
        hospital; the arrival of the DA; the hospital
        administrator fending off questions; Dr. Fletcher in
        handcuffs, walking tall through the clog of reporters;
        her reaction as a clod of dirt hits her; an interview
        with the man Chandler knew had to be Renata's father.

             Her \real\ father.

             And finally, the news anchor with an insert behind
        her that read "TRANSOPTION"--SURGICAL KIDNAPPING? The
        accompanying artwork was that of a fetus surmounted by
        a gleaming scalpel.

             He watched the image fade, to be replaced by an ad
        for disposable diapers. He looked away, buried his face
        in Karen's sweet-smelling hair, and tried to soothe
        her.

             A man in dark blue jeans and a navy turtleneck
        sweater strode quietly down the hospital hallway toward
        the ICU.
                                   #

        The phone rang. Valerie, just finished talking with her
        mother in Colorado, picked up the handset.

             "Hello?"

             "Valerie, this is Dr. Fletcher."

             She felt as if her hands had been plunged into ice
        water. "Y-yes?"

             "I just ran into Ron."

             "Dr. Fletcher," she said, her words running
        together in a breathless plea for understanding, "I
        didn't want it to come to this but everything seemed so
        terrible when I heard that my baby was alive and I'd
        have to give her a transplant and all. It was Ron's
        idea but we both want that baby to live and wouldn't it
        stand a better chance with me? I'm her real mother
        after all and it's not as if we can't provide for her
        even without that money that he asked for. You know I
        don't care about the money; I just want her to be all
        right."

             "Valerie, I don't harbor any ill feelings. I only
        want to know that this suit won't interfere with our
        working relationship. With helping the baby get well."

             "Oh, it won't, Dr. Fletcher, it won't." She
        sniffed back tears, wiped a tissue against her nose.

             "You've got to realize that all this publicity is
        going to be tough on us. You've got to keep your
        spirits up and stay healthy for Renata's sake as well
        as yours."

             "I will," Valerie said. "I will."

             "Your HLA type is close enough to Renata's that we
        can do a marrow transplant. Can I expect you to show up
        at ten tomorrow morning?"

             "Yes. Ten A.M."

             "All right, Valerie." Dr. Fletcher's tone
        softened. "Thank you."

             "I want my baby to live," she said, choking back
        the urge to break into tears.

             "We all do. Get some rest. Good night."

             Valerie said, "Good night," and switched off the
        remote. She lay back on the bed and tried to think
        about how all this would affect her, her job, and Ron.
        She'd need more time off for the appointment tomorrow.
        \And trials are usually held during daytime\. She
        wondered if Ernie would understand. He always seemed
        very sympathetic to her problems.

             Her mother had been so sweet, talking to her just
        a few minutes before. She'd called from Colorado
        Springs to find out what was going on. She'd heard her
        daughter's name on CNN and called immediately. They
        talked for nearly an hour about it all, both crying,
        Valerie assuring her mother that there was no need for
        her to fly out--Ron was doing everything he could to
        take care of her.

             The phone rang, startling her back to the present
        time. She picked up the remote. "Hello?"

             "Is this Valerie Dalton?" The man's voice sounded
        guarded.

             "Yes. May I ask who's--"

             "I'm a stringer with the \National Midnight Star\.
        I'd like to check a few facts about the changeling for
        our next issue. I think we can definitely swing a cover
        headline, though the royal triplets get priority for
        the pho--"

             "What?" was all that she could muster. A sick
        tightness gripped her stomach.

             "Hey, I'm sorry, but we've already got the color
        separations done on their photo. We'll do the best we
        can on interior layout, though. Now, let's start off
        with vital stats. What's the baby's birth weight and
        length?"

             "I--I don't--"

             "You're right, I can get that from the mother.
        Now, do you suspect that the doctor was in the service
        of the CIA, KGB, or extraterrestrial forces?"

             Valerie stared at the phone in revulsion and
        switched it off. It promptly rang again. She let it.
        After four rings, the answering machine took over.

             "Hello?" her voice said.

             "Good evening," said another man's voice. "I'm--"

             "Oh, hi! You have reached Ron and Valerie's
        place..."

             Following the tone, the caller, obviously annoyed
        at having been tricked by the recording, said, "My name
        is Bobby Roy Jensen, and I heard about you on the TV. I
        know you must be going through a terrible crisis, and I
        considered it my Christian duty to offer you Bible
        counseling during your time of troubled decision.
        Please call me at Klondike five four-one-eight-oh. If
        you need immediate help, please turn to psalm eighty-
        eight, especially verse te--"

             The recorder's thirty-second timer ran out,
        cutting him off. The phone rang again. This time the
        message activated on the first ring. Valerie numbly
        listened to it play through, waiting for the caller's
        message as if she were tuned in to a radio drama.

             There was no message. The caller hung up. The
        phone rang again a few seconds later.

             "I think you're a real sick bitch," said a man's
        voice tinged with the slur of alcohol. "You and your
        money-hungry boyfriend. You live in sin and try to kill
        your bastard to cover up your evil, but you got
        tricked, didn't you, and now you try to gouge some
        money out of it."

             She listened to the voice in a nauseated, drifting
        blur of unreality. The world was invading her bedroom,
        and it was a world of hate and invective directed at
        \her\.

             "Whaddayou want your baby back \now\," the voice
        rambled, "after you'd given it up for dead? `Cuz
        there's a buck in it? Or is your boyfriend running for
        office? Your kind makes me--"

             When the tape cut off, the caller rang again. At
        the sound of his voice Valerie reached out to switch
        off the unit's monitor. Then she walked slowly through
        the house, turning the switches on all the telephones
        to silence. The messages would accumulate, but she
        wouldn't have to hear them.

             In the silence, the words of the last message
        echoed relentlessly in her mind. She'd given up her
        baby months ago when it was nothing more than a little
        blob of tissue. Just a \potential\ baby. Now that it
        was real, did she have any right to demand it back? Did
        the money matter? Why did Ron put that in the lawsuit?
        She understood that it was a way to make the defendants
        sit up and take notice, but it all seemed so venal. All
        she wanted was Jennifer.

             Someone knocked at the door. She ignored it.
        Whoever it was rang the doorbell again and again.

             "Stop it!" she screamed. Running to the bathroom,
        she seized a thick green towel and ran to the foyer.
        She rammed folds of cloth between the hanging chimes,
        deadening the sound to the muffled thunk of the
        solenoids.

             The thunking stopped suddenly, accompanied by a
        flare of camera lights and flashes, a scuffling sound
        on the front steps, and a familiar voice shouting, "Get
        the hell off!"

             Ron quickly entered, closing and locking the door
        behind him. He hugged Valerie with fierce intensity.

             Through sobs and tissues she told him about their
        hour apart. He guided her to the bedroom, where he laid
        her down on the covers and helped to undress her.

             "And the really awful part of it was those phone
        calls." She looked at Ron as he pulled her blouse off.
        "I don't want to go through with this, Ron. Can't we
        just let them have the baby?"

             Ron helped her under the sheets and pulled the
        comforter over her before answering. She could tell
        that he was marshaling his thoughts for a convincing,
        logical statement.

             "Val, you know I love you and I don't want to put
        you through any pain. But what Dr. Fletcher did to you
        is just unconscionable."

             He pulled off his turtleneck and jeans, undressing
        quickly to slide into bed beside her. "Doctors can't be
        allowed to treat women and children like experimental
        cattle. She can't go around taking babies as if they
        were livestock to be sold to the highest bidder. That
        sort of thinking leads to political eugenics. To
        breeding and killing programs for the good of the state
        or the good of the race. Dr. Fletcher may think she has
        the noblest of motives, but she's really no different
        from a Nazi scientist--"

             Valerie buried her head in Ron's arm and cried,
        her tears hot and unyielding.

             "This will be a very important case, Val. A
        landmark decision. I \have\ to be the lawyer who sees
        this through, who makes sure it never happens again.
        Don't you understand that?"

             She stopped crying. A drunken voice reverberated
        at the back of her mind.

             \"Or is your boyfriend running for office?"\

             "You'd be famous," she said softly.

             "Remember," he whispered, "what my dad always used
        to say about doing well by doing right? It's \right\ to
        fight for your baby, and we'll be rewarded for it by a
        jury of good people."

             Without a word, Valerie rolled over to stare
        silently at the wall.


                                   XI

        "This will be the easiest case I've ever had." Terence
        Johnson's voice sounded bright and cheerful in Evelyn's
        ear. She had only just a few minutes before hung up
        from her conversation with Valerie.

             "I've been thinking about it over dinner," he
        continued, "and I know that after a few days, when all
        the facts come out on this, there'll be a broad base of
        support for you."

             Fletcher stretched out on her bed, pulled the
        covers over her, and curled up with the phone.
        Exhausted, not looking forward to the marrow job
        tomorrow, she shared little of the young lawyer's
        enthusiasm.

             "If I had seen any such support among my
        colleagues," she said, "I wouldn't have worked in
        secret."

             Johnson's voice tutted dismissively. "Doctor's are
        a stodgy bunch. Don't you see how transoption cuts
        across the traditional divisions? The antiabortionists
        will cheer you because you've finally found a way to
        save the lives of all those unborn babies. And the pro-
        choice feminists will applaud you because you're giving
        women the freedom to terminate a pregnancy without the
        stigma of death that has always surrounded abortion.
        Free choice without guilt. Babies saved without
        oppression of women. You've brought the world to a new
        pinnacle of civilization. Single-handedly, you--"

             "Since I seem to have taken you on as my lawyer in
        all this," she said levelly, "what exactly am I paying
        you?"

             His tone returned to earth from its stratospheric
        courtroom excesses. "Oh, just expenses. The other guy
        is doing this for the publicity, so can I. In fact, I
        probably have lower overhead."

             "Why?"

             "I'm unemployed."

             "Unemp--" She cut the word off. "Just what legal
        experience do you have?"

             "Well, I passed the bar last year."

             "Yes."

             "And before that I worked as a paralegal while at
        law school."

             "And after your bar?"

             "There are a lot of amoral and immoral law firms
        out there, Dr. Fletcher." His voice took on a curiously
        cautious tone. "I have yet to find anyone who views the
        law the way I do. It was hard enough to get through law
        school. I had to keep my opinions to myself and just
        parrot back what the profs told us. Study section was
        the place where conformity of opinion really got
        bullied into... Why am I telling you this? You've been
        through med school."

             Fletcher smiled at the memories of her own run-ins
        with professors and facilitators at every stage of the
        hierarchy in her teaching hospital.  She rolled over on
        her side, switching the phone to her other ear. "So
        you've never really practiced law, have you?"

             "I've \practiced\ a lot. Now I want to \do\ it."

             "And your plans for this trial?"

             "Character witnesses. Expert witnesses. Convince
        the jury that transoption is literally a giant step
        forward in human rights and that all who understand it
        agree."

             Fletcher said nothing for a moment, then, "You
        know where to reach me."

             After she switched off the phone, she stared at
        the darkness, where the ceiling hung, until sleep
        enveloped her.
                                   #

        Valerie faced the morning with a dread that approached
        terror. She lay on the bed, fully dressed, staring at
        the ceiling, listening to the sound of vehicles
        stopping in front of her house. She would have to
        penetrate that wall. And another at the hospital.

             Ron stepped out of the bathroom, vigorously drying
        his hair and beard. "You understand why I can't go with
        you," he said.

             "No," she said without emotion.

             "I've got to get the ball rolling on this lawsuit.
        The other side's probably going to try to stall for as
        long as possible, taking the full thirty days to demur,
        so I've got to be ready to get it to trial ASAP. And
        I've got to assemble witnesses, prepare a strategy for
        jury selection, rearrange my schedule--"

             "I understand. You'll be busy."

             "Val," he said, sitting on the bed to lay an arm
        on her shoulder. His dark eyes gazed at her with firm
        intensity. "It's good that you're going. If the baby
        has to have a bone-marrow transplant, I'm behind you
        all the way. It can only help the case if we cooperate
        in every way with her medical needs. But we can't let
        that sap our momentum."

             "It's supposed to hurt. A lot."

             He hugged her. "Honey, I'll \be there\. You'll be
        spending the night at the hospital, right?"

             "Right."

             "So I'll be there after five." He kissed her cheek
        tenderly. "Just relax and concentrate on saving our
        little girl."

             He escorted her to the Porsche. The reporters
        flashed pictures, shouted questions, and pointed their
        videocams. Wisely, they stayed on the other side of the
        property line.

             "How do I get past them?" she whispered.

             "Just tell them that you can't comment on the case
        but that all you're interested in is seeing \your\ baby
        get the medical care she needs." He shut the door with
        a firm push. "Drive carefully and remember--The press
        can be our best friends in this."

             She pulled slowly out of the driveway. A crush of
        newshounds encircled the vehicle, thrusting microphones
        into the half-lowered window.

             "What did you feel when you found out your baby
        hadn't been aborted?"

             "Can you explain what's wrong with the baby?"

             "Why do you want her back?"

             "What name do you have picked out for her?"

             "What do you feel toward the surrogate mother?"

             Valerie just said, "I want my baby to be healthy,"
        and rolled up the window.

             "How sick is she?"

             "Did you foresee your decision to abort having
        such repercussions?"

             "How do you feel helping the doctor who did this
        to you?"

             She rammed her foot on the accelerator and peeled
        away.

             The newspaper and radio teams hastened to form a
        convoy behind her, leaving the TV crews to tape wrapup
        segments using the house as a backdrop.

             The trip down the hill toward Harbor City unnerved
        Valerie. Trying to concentrate on the simple act of
        driving, she nonetheless kept gazing into the rearview
        mirror in an effort to observe the cars and vans behind
        her. She counted six, several sporting the logo of a
        radio station or newspaper. Curious glances from
        drivers and passengers in other lanes made her blush
        with embarrassment and fury.

             She pulled into the medical center's north parking
        lot after a quick survey of the entrance. The line of
        protesters was longer than ever. Several policemen
        stood at the periphery, quietly watching the
        proceedings, making their presence tangibly felt with
        that projected mixture of self-assurance and mortal
        threat that members of their profession so effectively
        exude.

             As soon as she parked her car, reporters
        surrounded it, quickly joined by the others from the
        convoy.

             "Ms. Dalton--Why are you here?"

             "Is it true the baby needs an organ transplant?"

             "Do you think you'll be a fit mother?"

             "Did you want an abortion because you weren't
        married?"

             "Why aren't you pressing criminal charges?"

             "Can you get us inside to see Renata?"

             She found it impossible to move away from her car.
        They had her surrounded by an impassable wall of
        polyester and power cables. Her breath stopped. Ahead
        of her she saw a tiny pinpoint of scintillating
        darkness appear. It grew, expanding across her field of
        vision as something drummed in her ears with growing
        power. She remembered having fainted in the cafeteria
        and welcomed the feeling as an escape that would
        temporarily solve her problems.

             A huge hand reached out of the shimmering
        blackness to seize her arm. Another equally massive
        hand shoved something under her nose. The sharp odor of
        ammonia brought her to with a startling memory of her
        mother cleaning the kitchen floor. Just a flash of that
        lovely, sweet face laboring with a sponge mop and a
        pail and then the crowds returned.

             This time, though, she was in motion.

             The beefy pair of arms, clad in white, served
        double duty. The left arm held her by her right upper
        arm as the right plowed a path through the reporters,
        huge elbow out like a powerful wedge driving through
        the field of inquiring minds.

             The arms were attached to a singularly huge brute,
        nearly as wide as he was tall. Topped with close-
        cropped platinum hair that curled like the wool of a
        highland sheep, the face was contorted by the sneering
        smile of a man who enjoyed this sort of confrontation
        and probably did not get to see it often enough.

             "Move it or lose it," bellowed a deep voice with
        an unplaceable accent. The speed of their progress
        stunned Valerie. They glided through the crowd, which--
        though small--replenished itself from rear to front as
        they moved.

             "You'll be all right, ma'am," the deep voice
        reassured. "They sent me out to get you. Doc Fletcher
        figured you'd be bothered by these guys."

             The elbow threatened, swung, cut swaths through
        the reporters, never hitting, barely touching. They all
        quite professionally avoided getting bruised.

             "The name's Mason, ma'am. Johnny Mason." He
        charged with her toward the line of protesters. "I'll
        be around to take you back through tomorrow." He turned
        his head to smile at her. Under a gnarled brow framed
        by thick silver eyebrows, emerald eyes smiled as his
        fighter's lips twisted into a grin. "I used to be a
        movie-star bodyguard before I became an orderly."

             He elbowed the chest of a particularly obstinate
        paparazzo. "It was tough leaving show business, but I
        knew medicine was my calling."

             Mason and Valerie moved almost as one into the
        thick of the pickets. They all stopped what they were
        doing to stare at the woman and her burly escort. Most
        gazed at her, not knowing how to react. Were they to
        hate her because she had wanted an abortion or support
        her because she came to save her baby? Or vice versa?

             Rather than make a hasty decision, they simply
        stared.

             Valerie saw a few of their signs as Mason rammed
        through the gap that opened to let them pass.

                   BAYSIDE UNIVERSITY STEALS BABIES.

             ABORTION IS MURDER--TRANSOPTION IS KIDNAPPING.

             One sign merely read: I COR. 1:28.

             There were more signs than she could read before
        the entry doors swung open to admit the pair into the
        reception area. They breezed past everyone, Mason
        leading her into Dr. Fletcher's office.

             "Sit down and take a rest, ma'am," Johnny said.
        "That little girl in there needs you in the best
        health." He smiled gently and patted her on the
        shoulder with a thick, soft hand.

             Valerie thanked him and lowered herself into the
        brown vinyl easy chair.

             Dr. Fletcher entered a moment later, crisp white
        lab coat over baggy hospital greens. She looked calm.
        Without any enmity in her voice, she said, "Good
        morning, Valerie."

             Valerie hesitated a moment before replying. "Good
        morning, Dr. Fletcher. I--I just want to let you
        know--"

             Fletcher held up her hand. "Please. I understand
        your position, and I accept it. Let's separate that
        from why we're here. There's a little baby down the
        hall who's in great danger. Usually there's enough time
        for me to confer with prospective donors and give them
        a few days to think things over. As it is, I'm going to
        explain the procedure to you and give you only a few
        minutes to consider.

             "A bone-marrow transplant is far easier on the
        recipient than the donor. What we'll do when we have
        the bone marrow is inject it into Renata's bloodstream.
        The stem cells will find their way to her bone-marrow
        cavities and set up shop, turning out the three kinds
        of cells she needs. It will take anywhere from two to
        four weeks, though, for us to be sure that all three
        cell lines have taken hold and are producing."

             Valerie reclined a bit in her seat, unconsciously
        worrying at the nail on her left index finger. All her
        nails were in disrepair, opalescent polish chipped and
        dull, but the left index had cracked near the quick.
        She levered the nail back and forth gently, without
        even noticing her action.

             "What happens then?"

             "Then we'll know whether she'll be all right or
        whether we have to try again." Evelyn shifted in her
        seat, craving a cigarette. "The marrow creates the red
        blood cells, the white cells of the immune system, and
        the platelets that are essential for blood coagulation.
        If any one of those three is missing, life is
        impossible. We already have to keep her in reverse
        isolation to prevent others from infecting her.
        Luckily, her infant's digestive system lacks the bowel
        flora that could turn deadly in such a condition.
        That's why a transplant is of crucial importance."

             "That's why I'm here," Valerie said, puzzled.

             "I hope that's why," Fletcher said, "because a
        bone-marrow transplant is a far greater trial for the
        donor."

             Valerie's nail snapped between her fingers.
                                   #

        She lay on the table in the same small operating room
        where, months ago, her baby had been taken from her.
        Entering the room, she caught memories of the
        operation, flashes of remembrance that caused her to
        tremble with fear and anger. She steeled her nerves and
        concentrated on a mental image of Renata lying helpless
        in her electronic cradle. She stared overhead at the
        red-brown spot on the ceiling. Its familiar presence
        comforted her. Amidst all the madness of the past two
        days, it had appeared to her, when she lay down, as a
        steady, old friend. All the activity that must have
        taken place in here between March and October had not
        changed it. Scores of women must have stared up at the
        ceiling. Had any of them seen it? Could any of them
        have missed it?

             She felt a kinship with all of them, all the women
        who had given up their unwanted children to Evelyn
        Fletcher. What were \they\ thinking about at this
        moment, hearing the news of transoption?

             As Dr. Fletcher explained it, this would be a
        simple but slow operation, assisted only by Nurse Dyer
        and an anesthetist. Nurse Dyer looked different.
        Valerie realized that the tall woman wore a minimal
        amount of makeup today. The pants and short-sleeved
        shirt of hospital greens showed beneath her lab coat
        instead of a dress. She could not have had a good night
        last night, Valerie thought, and probably wasn't
        expecting one tonight.

             "Do you and Dr. Fletcher work very closely?" she
        asked impulsively.

             "I'm her right hand," Dyer replied with brusque
        formality. "Please roll on your side into a fe-- Into a
        curled-up position."

             She curled up as requested, sensing the hostility.
        "She didn't really do it for the money, did she?"

             "No more," Dyer said, "than I presume you're suing
        her for the money. She did it because it was right.
        Knees up toward your chest."

             Valerie knew the dangers of anatagonizing a nurse.
        Dyer exposed the patient's back, swabbing a small patch
        high on the back with Betadine.

             "How could she be so sure it was right," Valerie
        asked, "if she never sought the opinion of other
        doctors?"

             Dyer snorted. "If she couldn't figure out on her
        own whether it was right or wrong, how could any other
        doctor or group of doctors? She knew at the outset what
        she wanted. And she worked for years finding a way to
        do it. That's what nobody seems to see. It's not as if
        she stumbled onto transoption in an old book and
        thought, `Gee, let's try it.'"

             "Drugs, anyone?" The door to the room opened,
        pushed by a rolling cart maneuvered by a smiling older
        man in greens, surgical gown, and cap. Sallow but
        cheerful, his face regained decorum when he saw the two
        serious gazes turned his way.

             "Riiight," he said with a pronounced drawl.
        "Dyer." He nodded curtly in her direction while pulling
        on a double pair of surgical gloves.

             "Tom." A reply just as curt.

             "How're you feeling?" he asked the patient as his
        cool gloved fingers explored her upper spine.

             "I'm ready."

             "Fine. I'm going to give you a high spinal block.
        That'll numb you from the neck down."

             She could not see what he was doing from her
        position, but she heard the sounds of instruments and
        bottles clattering gently on the tray.

             "Okay, Valerie." He pressed his thumb between two
        vertebrae. "I'm going to poke you right there. It's
        very important that you don't move. Just relax." He
        dabbed something cool on the spot. "Juuust relax."

             Her first reflex was to flinch, but she resisted
        the urge. The sting was not nearly as bad as she had
        feared, but to think about what he was doing made her
        want to shudder. She thought instead about the clouds
        rolling in over Lunada Bay in the winter. About the fog
        that sometimes filled the cove so that one could stand
        on the bluffs and not see the ocean churning a scant
        hundred feet below the cliff. In all of L.A. nothing
        was more like a seaside village to her. It soothed her.

             Something had gone quite wrong with her hands.
        They tingled.

             "Very good," the voice drawled. Something tugged
        out of her back. "Let's roll her over."

             Nurse Dyer pulled at her legs, though she felt
        nothing but a sensation of pressure and a vague
        tingling that diminished quickly into an eerie numbness
        from the neck down. Looking up, she saw Dr. Fletcher
        gazing at her. She hadn't heard her come in. Gowned,
        gloved, capped, and masked, as was Dyer, now, she
        nodded to Valerie and said, "Remember what I told you.
        Just relax and think about pleasant things."

             Valerie nodded, looking up to concentrate on the
        spot. It seemed to scintillate a bit. A motion at the
        side of her head caused her to turn. The anesthetist
        taped a capsule of smelling salts to the pillow. She
        was fairly certain that it was for her, but for a
        moment she wondered.

             Nurse Dyer brought forward a cart with the
        aspiration device. It hissed in much the same way the
        suction device had. Grasping a large, long needle
        attached to clear silicone plastic tubing, Fletcher
        hovered over Valerie's exposed sternum. Positioning the
        needle squarely on the midline between her patient's
        breasts, she leaned on the device and gave it a hearty,
        firm push.

             Valerie felt only the pressure of something
        against her chest. The aspirator make a sucking noise.
        That was when the pain hit her. She tried to visualize
        the cliffs on Oahu's windward side where she and Ron
        had flown kites on their vacation two years back. It
        wasn't working.

             Another shove. Again the needle pierced skin,
        muscle, and bone. Another gasp from the machine.
        Another lance of searing agony. Valerie chanced to gaze
        downward to see a clump of thick, dark-red glop slowly
        moving halfway up the tube. Needle out, reposition,
        push hard. She felt no sting but heard the faintest of
        crunches underneath the sound of the pump. The pain
        came with aspiration.

             How long would this go on?

             She felt a panic overwhelm her. There must be some
        other way to help Renata. She'd donate a thousand pints
        of blood just to be free of the spike that plunged into
        her chest every few seconds. Sweat beaded up on her
        face. She watched the spot overhead waver, turn grey.

             A hand stroked at her hair. Looking to the side,
        her gaze met Nurse Dyer's. Above her mask, her eyes
        revealed a compassion Valerie hadn't seen before. The
        nurse's gloved hand tenderly stroked her long blond
        hair. "Be brave," she whispered. "This is the only way
        to save Renata. Your daughter's counting on you."

             Tears leaked out of Valerie's eyes. Dyer picked up
        a piece of gauze to dab at them, all the while stroking
        her head. "You've a great deal of courage," she said.
        "The courage to do right no matter what the--"

             "Gauze," Dr. Fletcher said quietly.

             Dyer stopped stroking Valerie and assisted the
        doctor. Fletcher continued to probe, drive home the
        needle, and aspirate the bone-marrow.

             \Where would it end?\ Valerie wondered. Not just
        the operation. All of it.

             The needle punctured her, inches from her heart.


                                  XII

        Terry Johnson sat on the brushed grey fabric couch in
        the reception area of Women for Reproductive Freedom,
        reading their position paper on surrogate mothering.
        Before he could get more than a few paragraphs into it,
        the woman at the desk, who looked as if she had just
        stepped out of \Cosmopolitan\, said, "Ms. Burke will
        see you now."

             Johnson followed the woman to an austere office
        that, though spacious, contained little more than a
        large mahogany desk, executive chair, two conference
        chairs, and a matched pair of Jackson Pollock
        paintings. A trio of woodgrain-painted metal filing
        cabinets stood to one side. There were no bookcases.

             Jane Burke stepped in a moment later. She was of
        moderate height, though she seemed taller due to her
        high-heeled pumps. They were purple and perfectly
        matched to the suit she wore. On her lapel, a gold
        Venus symbol, surmounted by two slender hands clasping,
        indicated that she was a member of the Sisters Network,
        a sororal order of female executives. Her brown hair
        was full-bodied, permed, and businesslike. Behind her
        aviator-style glasses, she could have been a mid-
        forties executive at any Fortune 500 company whose old-
        boy network had relinquished control to the new-woman
        network.

             "What's up, Mr. Johnson?" She sat behind her desk,
        smiling courteously.

             Realizing that she favored brevity, he jumped
        immediately to the point. "I am representing Dr. Evelyn
        Fletcher in the Baby Renata case. I'd like to enlist
        your assistance as an expert witness for the
        defendants." He paused to await a reply, received none,
        and continued. "This case is certain to be a landmark
        in human rights, and I knew you would be interested in
        having a part in the outcome."

             Burke leaned back in her chair, peaked her
        fingers, and watched Johnson with a cool, noncommittal
        gaze.

             "As a champion of freedom of choice," he
        continued, "I knew you'd be the person to speak out on
        this issue from a feminist viewpoint."

             "Oh," Burke said with a smile, "I plan to. You
        see, I've already volunteered to be an expert witness
        for the plaintiff."

             Johnson's jaw dropped. Trying to recover, he
        stammered in disbelief. The words caught somewhere down
        inside him and refused to escape in any intelligible
        form.

             "If you're that composed in court," Burke said,
        lowering her hands, "perhaps your client should leave
        the country tonight."

             "How can you be on the plaintiff's side?" he
        demanded. His voice cracked at the end in an almost
        boyish squeak. "How can you be opposed to a technique
        that gives women a new option in birth control?"

             Her smile faded to a glare of undisguised
        contempt. "A new option? What good has any sex
        technology done for women? Did contraceptives liberate
        women? No. They merely allowed men to demand \more\ sex
        of women without the burden and responsibility of
        fatherhood." She leaned forward, one elbow on the desk.
        "Women didn't invent contraceptives, you know. Men did.
        For \camels\. They applied those methods to women with
        the same lack of regard for their health and well-
        being."

             "Well," Johnson said warily, "I don't know about
        that, but transoption seems to be a way for a woman to
        rid herself of a pregnancy while freeing her from the
        guilt feelings associ--"

             "Don't try to convince \me\ that this latest
        medical meddling frees women. Not when I've seen women
        injured and killed by IUDs, pills, and botched
        abortions. You won't get \me\ to say that it's anything
        more than a scheme to turn women into interchangeable
        breeding units so that one womb is no more important
        than any other." She smiled stonily and leaned back in
        her chair. "Do you know where embryo-transfer research
        began, Mr. Johnson?"

             "I think you'll tell me."

             "It began with \cattle breeding\. And \that\ is
        what this male technology seeks to reduce us to."

             "Evelyn Fletcher is a woman."

             Burke's glare deepened. "And she's doing a man's
        work, the traitor. I haven't met a female doctor yet
        who hasn't been spayed by the act of attending medical
        school. I'll make sure that she receives no sympathy
        from the women she's betrayed."

             The lawyer stared at Burke for a long moment, his
        sensibilities rocked by the unexpected hostility. "How-
        -" He stopped to think. "If you consider all medical
        technology to be anti-woman, why does your organization
        so fervently support legalized abortion?"

             Her expression retreated ever so slightly to one
        of cautious reserve. "Because," she said, "no matter
        how it has been abused, abortion still allows a woman
        to have final, absolute control over what becomes of
        part of her body--something this transoption madness
        would destroy."

             "I see." He didn't, really, but he knew wasted
        effort when he stared it in the face.

             Burke smiled a crooked, nearly impish smile. "Why
        don't you trot over to Avery Decker?" Her tone bordered
        on sarcasm. "Protecting blobs of protoplasm is his holy
        mission."

             "He was next on my list," Johnson said.
                                   #

        Since Jane Burke and Pastor Avery Decker were
        diametrically opposed on the abortion issue, Johnson
        expected his meeting with the fundamentalist minister
        to be much less strained and much more productive than
        his run-in with the feminist. He mulled her arguments
        on the drive from Santa Monica over to Decker's Tustin
        office. Passing Disneyland's Matterhorn on Interstate
        5, its artificial snow resisting the afternoon's heat,
        he wondered at the woman's position. Was her outlook
        the norm? Why did she support abortion but oppose
        transoption? They both ended pregnancy in exactly the
        same way. Wasn't that what they were after--the right
        to expel an unwanted fetus? Why should she care what
        became of it afterward?

             His lawyer's mind filed the question away. If he
        was to meet her on the other side of the lawsuit, it
        might be worth bringing up. He ran through possible
        cross-examination scenarios in his mind, trying to
        anticipate her responses to certain questions, forming
        his counterresponses.

             He missed the Tustin exits entirely.

             Five miles of backtracking brought him to the new
        office building situated under the approach path to the
        marine helicopter air station. A huge Sikorsky Skycrane
        thundered overhead, with basso pulsations that rumbled
        straight through Johnson's guts. The slamming of his
        car door faded to inaudibility amidst the roar.

             He watched the copter descend toward the airfield.
        The noise level dropped abruptly, though a throbbing,
        ringing sound lingered in his ears.

             The building was only two stories high, the
        offices of the Committee for Preborn Rights occupying
        the second floor. Johnson glanced at his watch and
        bounded up the stairs.

             "Sorry I'm late," he announced to the elderly
        woman at the reception desk. "I'm Terry Johnson. I have
        an appointment with--"

             "Yes, young man. Please step right in." She
        gestured with an age-spotted hand toward a frosted
        glass door.

             Pastor Avery Decker stood when Johnson entered. He
        extended a chubby hand to the taller, younger man. The
        fluorescent light overhead reflected from his balding
        pate, seeming to wink at Johnson along with the
        minister's twinkling eyes.

             "Greetings, Mr. Johnson. I'm Avery Decker, this is
        James Rosen." He indicated a young, intense man
        standing by a bookcase in the bright room. Tall and
        darkly handsome, he seemed more suited to the Colonial
        furnishings than did the overweight middle-aged
        preacher. "Jim's my assistant and legal advisor. I hope
        you don't mind his sitting in on this meeting."

             "Not at all." Johnson shook Rosen's hand, making
        the usual small-talk introductions.

             "Won't you have a seat?" Rosen pointed to a well-
        stuffed wing chair.

             Johnson eased happily into the soft leather
        recesses. This, at least, was a warmer reception than
        Burke had given him.

             Rosen sat in a chair off to Decker's right. He
        watched Johnson with a studied alertness that marked
        him as more of a bodyguard than an assistant. It made
        sense. Decker was a hated man.

             "You know," Decker began, leaning back in his
        swivel chair and placing his hands in his pockets,
        "when I spoke to you on the phone, I wasn't too aware
        of what this whole transoption thing was about. I had
        Jim, here, do what he does with his computer and search
        the AP news wire to get us up to date." He tapped at a
        thin stack of printout on his desk. "I don't like it.
        Not one bit. I'm afraid the answer has to be \no\."

             Johnson dove right in, unwilling to lose the
        argument to slow response. "I don't know what's in
        there, but the truth of the matter is that Dr. Fletcher
        has found a way to save the lives of fet-- of
        \preborns\ and she's being persecuted for rescuing a
        defenseless victim of abortion."

             "And who did the aborting, Mr. Johnson? She didn't
        just stumble across this `victim.' She \created\ it in
        the first place. If she had refused to perform
        abortions, this new technique would be unnecessary."

             "Oh, come on!" A strange anger grew inside
        Johnson. "Women would just go to some other doctor, and
        the preborns would still be aborted and dead, and the
        problem would remain. Is that what you'd prefer?"

             "We'd prefer," Rosen said, "that all the doctors
        obey their Hippocratic--or is it \hypocritic\--oath and
        `not aid a woman to procure abortion.' A very simple
        solution--just say \no\."

             "You can't expect that," Johnson said with a
        sharpness that surprised him. \Why are\ they \acting
        like the enemy, too?\ "Some women will always need
        abortions and there will always be a market to perform
        them. Dr. Fletcher has found a way to give women what
        they want and yet \save the babies\. Isn't that what
        you're fighting for?"

             Decker cleared his throat and put his hands on the
        desk, clasping them as if in prayer. "What we're
        fighting for, Mr. Johnson, is an end to all
        interference with God's plan. If God had wanted that
        baby to be born inside of Mrs. Chandler, he wouldn't
        have needed Dr. Fletcher to act as a go-between. It's
        not just a preborn's right to life we're struggling to
        defend here. It's the right to live and be born
        \according to God's will\. Anything that disrupts or
        interferes with that plan--be it abortion or
        contraception or transoption--is contrary to God's holy
        plan."

             "I suppose adoption is evil, too?"

             Decker smiled with condescending patience. "I
        would say that it is the least of many evils, the
        minimum in a wide spectrum of meddling in God's will."

             "You'd outlaw that, too?" Johnson leaned forward a
        few inches, as if the increased closeness could deepen
        his understanding of Decker's position.

             "We don't seek to outlaw anything," Rosen
        interjected in a calm, conversational tone. "What we
        seek is a world in which evil actions are never chosen.
        We don't fool ourselves that it's going to be an easy,
        overnight task. Caesar's laws are only a temporary
        expedient toward the implementation of God's law."

             Johnson looked from Rosen to Decker. "And are you
        the infallible interpreters of God's plans?"

             The minister smiled. "I never laid claim to such
        an honor."

             "Then perhaps," Johnson said, "there's a slim
        chance--however inscrutable to you--that Dr. Fletcher
        \is\ part of God's plan and you are just too bullheaded
        to see it." He rose to leave.

             Decker spoke to Johnson's departing back. "If the
        plaintiff doesn't accept my offer to appear on her
        behalf, I'll be making our position clearer in the
        \amicus\ we'll be filing."

             "Thanks for nothing" was the sharpest retort
        Johnson could summon. He slammed the door with
        unprofessional force and strode angrily to his car. As
        a pair of Huey Cobras whined a few thousand feet away,
        his brain burned with fury and incomprehension.

             What was going wrong? Everything had seemed so
        clear and logical to him just that morning. Pro-lifers
        say abortion is murder; pro-choicers say forced
        motherhood is slavery. A doctor finds a way to end
        pregnancies without killing the fetus. Why weren't both
        sides of the issue rushing to her aid? Where was the
        united front he'd hoped to present? Why wasn't \either\
        side burning with rage at the persecution of a maverick
        scientist?

             He sat in the car amid the noise and doubted his
        own ability to present his case cogently. \Maybe I just
        wasn't making myself clear enough. Maybe I'm just going
        to submarine the entire case by\...

             He took a deep breath. He wasn't going to let such
        juvenile fears force him to give up the case. He knew
        what another more experienced lawyer would do: demur to
        the complaint, delay, argue trivial points of law, find
        loopholes, delay and attempt a settlement. That wasn't
        what he wanted.

             Johnson wondered what it was he \did\ want. In his
        fury at the dual snubbings, he realized what it was. He
        wanted to blow the whole abortion issue to pieces.
        \Decker and Burke. They're both petrified that
        transoption would put an end to their crusades. And
        they're both too lazy to find new evils to battle or
        just give up and get along, so they continue to fight
        each other and gang up on anyone who threatens to wage
        peace.\

             He gazed up at the warbirds circling overhead. He
        felt that he had a tenuous grasp on some deeper wisdom.
        Something that could apply to more than just a custody
        trial.

             The trial.

             He keyed the ignition and floored the accelerator.
        He had thirty days to answer or demur. The game,
        though, had to be won \right now\, in the blaze of
        publicity.

             He grinned with feral glee as tires squealed. He'd
        confuse Czernek by answering the complaint \today\ and
        pushing for the earliest trial date possible, based on
        urgency.


                                  XIII

        Karen insisted on watching the transplant. "I don't
        care what any lawsuit says." She spoke through the mask
        of her isolation garb. "She's my daughter, and I want
        to be there for her."

             Dr. Fletcher nodded, laying two sacks of pulpy red
        material on the cart. "Marrow transplants are no big
        thing. It'll be just like receiving an injection."

             David stood by his wife to place a protective arm
        around her. "Will it hurt?"

             "Oh, no," the doctor said in an easygoing tone.
        "We'll be injecting right into that IV tube."

             Karen's eyes goggled when she saw the two huge 60
        cc syringes Fletcher had prepared. She quavered
        slightly upon seeing the thick, soupy fluid withdrawn
        from the sacks. The doctor calmly and efficiently
        unfastened the tubing from the bag of IV fluid,
        connected the syringe, and bore down on the plunger.

             Renata was awake now and stared at her parents
        with the blank, noncommittal stare of a newborn. Karen
        knew in her heart that the little girl was taking all
        of this in without any idea of what was going on. Being
        fed by tubes and diapered regularly, she was physically
        content. She must assume, Karen thought, that
        everything else must also be the normal way of life:
        electrodes, lights, beeps, plastic cribs, heat lamps,
        people in white robes wandering in and out.

             She wondered what effect all this would have on
        her daughter's later perceptions of life. She wanted so
        much just to hold and cuddle the pale little child.
        Renata looked up at her, jerked her arms suddenly, and
        grinned a wide, toothless grin. The tubes shook.

             "Hi, sweetie," Karen said, her voice catching
        despite her brave smile. She waved with broad motions.
        "We love you, little honey."

             Evelyn met with the expected resistance. Bone-
        marrow stem cells were much thicker than blood. She put
        her shoulder into play, pressing firmly against the
        plunger with the palm of her hand. Slowly, a red strand
        of color mixed in with the IV fluid at the top of the
        tube. The entire length of clear plastic took on a red
        hue, then grew cloudy. The line of crimson life entered
        the isolation box, disappeared under cloth tape on
        Renata's chest, and began its short but vital journey
        along her veins to hidden chambers in her young bones.

             After a minute of steady pushing, the first
        syringe was empty. Fletcher quickly inserted the second
        and continued the transplant.

             David coughed into his mask. "Will we see some
        change?"

             "Not immediately." Fletcher pushed the remaining
        few milliliters of Valerie Dalton's bone marrow into
        Renata's bloodstream. "It will take a couple weeks or
        even a month before we know if all three cell lines
        recover. Until then, it'll be touch and go, with
        ordinary blood transfusions as needed. There are a few
        new things we're doing to make it easier for her. We've
        found that the drug thalidomide can prevent graft
        versus host disease."

             David immediately grew worried. "Doesn't that
        cause birth defects?"

             Fletcher shook her head, nodding toward Renata.
        "She's already born. Its use is only contraindicated
        for women during pregnancy, something she's a bit young
        for. What I wish we could get is a lymphokine called
        GM-CSF. It could speed her recovery dramatically. It's
        only just been developed, though, and it's still hard
        to come by."

             Karen put an arm around her husband for support.
        "I guess I did expect something dramatic. You think of
        transplants, you think of teams of doctors and hours of
        surgery and an instant improvement as the new parts
        replace the old."

             Fletcher shrugged. "On the other hand, she wasn't
        put in such a dangerous situation as surgery. The wait
        will be tougher on you than on her. She has no idea
        what's going on." She waggled her fingers at the baby.
        "Do you, you little huggly wuggly?" She looked up at
        the parents. "I received a message from my lawyer,
        Terry Johnson. He wants us to know that everything is
        going according to plan. He's pushing for an early
        trial date so that we can get this cleared up as soon
        as possible. I don't think we have anything to worry
        about."

             "What about the--" Karen's voice caught on a word.
        "What about Valerie Dalton? What does she think of all
        this?" She waved an arm at the syringes.

             "She was very cooperative. I think we can avoid
        quite a bit of enmity if we remember one thing." The
        doctor covered the stained syringes on the tray with a
        Tyvek cloth, then turned to check the monitors
        recording Renata's heart rate and temperature.
        "Whatever the trial decides, the more important outcome
        is that the baby regains her health, right?"

             The Chandlers nodded in urgent agreement.

             "Then we're all on the same side." She looked at
        the young pair and spoke in soft tones. "We've all made
        choices that will have consequences for the rest of our
        lives. If we can come to a civilized decision about
        what to do next, our lives--and especially Renata's--
        will be made easier. We musn't see Valerie and Ron as
        strangers who are trying to steal your baby. I will do
        my best in court to convince them that \we\ aren't,
        either. The blame for all of this will fall on me, and
        I'll gladly handle it. You should just concentrate on
        letting Renata see how much you love her. That will
        help her recover as much as anything I can do. Babies
        need smiles." She waved at the little one. "I wish you
        could give her hugs, too. Real ones, not glove-box
        caresses." She fell silent, staring at the protective
        cage that kept out both germs and affection.

             "How's Valerie?" Karen asked. Her voice was
        subdued.

             "She was very cooperative. We tranqued her out so
        that she could sleep without pain. But with ninety-
        three holes in her sternum, she's going to feel it
        tomorrow morning."

             Karen turned white.
                                   #

        A burning pain in Valerie's chest awakened her from a
        dreamless sleep. Somehow, she had rolled over onto her
        stomach. Now the aching forced her eyes open. In groggy
        semiconsciousness, she pushed up on an elbow and rolled
        over again.

             That's when it hit.

             In a surge of intense fire, the agony seared every
        nerve in her body. It caught her by surprise, rendered
        her unable to take a breath. Every drop of adrenaline
        in her body seemed to jet into her bloodstream at once.

             "Ron!" she cried out breathlessly. Fingers
        clenched around the low bars of the hospital bed, eyes
        tried to shut out the red haze within them, teeth
        ground together for a hellishly long instant.

             She forced herself not to move. Lowering ever so
        slowly back to the sheets, she rediscovered the ability
        to inhale. The events of the previous day came back to
        her in an overpowering rush of memory.

             "Ron?"

             "He's in court," said an unfamiliar voice,
        "arranging the trial."

             Valerie rolled her head over toward the speaker.
        The dark-haired woman standing near the bed watched
        Valerie with undisguised curiosity and apprehension.

             "You're Mrs. Chandler."

             Karen nodded. After a moment of hesitation, she
        extended her hand. "I want to thank you for what you
        did."

             Just staring at the proffered hand caused her
        chest to ache. "I didn't do it for you. I did it for my
        baby."

             "Please." Karen lowered her head, fighting hard to
        suppress her conflicting emotions. Here, after all, was
        the real mother of the child she gave birth to, ready
        to use the might of the state to force her return. Even
        so, she had endured a torturous operation for that same
        child. "We both love Renata. What you did yesterday may
        very well save her life. I just want to thank you...
        for her."

             When Karen gently grasped her hand, Valerie did
        not pull away. She returned the clasp, tears coming to
        her eyes. The small sobs hurt deep in her chest. It
        didn't matter. So much more pain was being released by
        the tears.

             "Hey!"

             Both women looked up to see Ron standing in the
        doorway. With a dozen white roses in one arm and a box
        of Godiva chocolates in the other, he looked like a
        suitor coming to call. But he looked none too pleased.

             "I won't have you in here disturbing Valerie."

             "It's all right, Ron." Valerie reached for a
        tissue, but the pain stopped her arm. Karen pulled one
        out of the wall box and handed it to her. "She's here
        to tell me how Renata's doing."

             Ron's lips curled inward meditatively until beard
        and mustache met. "Okay," he said with a sigh. "But I
        don't think it's a good idea for plaintiff and
        defendant to fraternize." He smiled with a reflexive
        sort of mock-friendliness. "I guess I mean sororize."
        He extended his hand. "I'm Ron Czernek."

             "Yes," Karen said, taking his hand for a minimal
        duration. "I've seen you on the news."

             "Well," he said cheerily, "you'll see a lot more
        of both of us real soon. Jury selection begins on
        Monday."

             "What?" Valerie cringed at the pain associated
        with speaking.

             "I asked the court to exercise its inherent power
        to set the earliest possible date. Much to my
        surprise"-- he stared at Karen-- "the other side agreed
        not to demur. I pointed out that the immediate health
        risks to the baby required that we determine custody as
        soon as possible."

             A wave of illness permeated Karen.

             "Fletcher's lawyer got the judge to spike my
        application for our taking temporary custody. The judge
        said that it was moot, since the child was in the
        hospital for the time being. And Shawn Deyo--the
        hospital's lawyer--he got the judge to sever the case
        against Bayside from the rest of the suit because
        they'd turned Fletcher in the moment they found out
        about it. We lost a deep pocket, but on the other hand,
        we'll get this over with in no time. Don't worry." He
        stood over Valerie and stroked her golden hair.

             Karen stepped back from the bed. "I'll go, now. I
        hope you'll feel better soon."

             "Thank you," Valerie said.

             Ron muttered something under his breath.

             When Karen's footsteps receded down the corridor,
        Valerie asked him what he had said.

             "Nothing." He continued to stroke her head. "I'm
        sorry I couldn't show up earlier. It's just been a
        bitch of a morning. Want to hear it?"

             Valerie closed her eyes for a moment. "Not
        really." She opened them. Her voice was soft but
        strained. "Could you call the nurse? I really need
        something to handle this pain."
                                   #

        Mark Landry would have preferred not to run into Dr.
        Fletcher, but by the time he saw her, there was no
        graceful means of escape.

             "`Morning, Doctor," he mumbled. He tried to keep
        walking, but Fletcher took him by the arm.

             "Don't worry," she said in an even voice. "I'm not
        going to break your neck." Her hand released him. "It
        was all bound to come out sooner or later. I just
        objected to your sneaking around instead of confronting
        me directly."

             "You evaded my questions."

             "You didn't ask what was on your mind." She folded
        her arms and looked at him with that weary expression
        doctors reserve for when they are particularly
        professionally frustrated. "Look, let's just ignore all
        that. I've got to concentrate on Renata \and\ all my
        other patients \and\ a lawsuit. You saw that line of
        pickets out there this morning. And the cops. And the
        reporters. Anyone in white coming and going here is
        going to be considered fair game. I admit I brought
        this down on all of us, but--"

             "You certainly did," growled the voice of Dr.
        Lawrence.  He strode up to the pair, dark anger across
        his brow. "I wish the board would get off its duff and
        agree to file a cross-suit against you. We had to admit
        one of our own residents with a gash on his head from
        one of the protesters. Damned pro-lifer tried to beat
        the kid to death with her picket sign." He narrowed his
        gaze to Fletcher. "I hear the trial begins next week."

             "Actually, just jury sel--"

             "I'd advise for everyone's safety that you attend
        all the proceedings and come here only under the most
        urgent necessity."

             "I can't do that," she replied.

             "Try." He turned to the young man. "And you,
        Landry. Back to the lab." He continued on his way.

             "Pompous jerk," Landry muttered after the
        administrator turned a corner. He looked at Dr.
        Fletcher. "I always wondered why you seemed so
        unconcerned to be running both the baby factory and the
        abortion mill. I think I understand why you had to do
        things the way you did. Maybe after the trial I'll find
        out why you bothered at all. It doesn't seem to pay to
        rock the boat either way."

             Fletcher's voice was grim. "Sometimes a boat has
        to be rocked hard to steer a new course."


                                  XIV

        Terry smiled with satisfaction. Using every peremptory
        challenge in his possession, he had managed to put
        three women on the six-person jury. Czernek had
        engineered three men. Now the battle for their souls
        could proceed.

             He gazed at the six. He had wanted the full
        twelve, but Judge Lyang had pressured him to settle for
        six in order to save court time. He agreed--it was only
        fair, since Lyang had been kind enough to arrange for a
        speedy trial. Two of the women were in their thirties,
        both housewives. The third was in her fifties, a real
        estate professional. He figured he could get the young
        ones to side with Karen, the older one to identify with
        Dr. Fletcher. His task was to convince the men to see
        his side of it.

             \Piece of cake\.

             Ron smiled with satisfaction. Having exhausted his
        peremptory challenges, he wound up with three men to
        counter Johnson's women. He wanted men who would side
        with his own interests as the genetic father in this
        case. While he worried that his unmarried status might
        put them off, he hoped that he had tap-danced around
        the problem by making Valerie the sole plaintiff. The
        three men were all fathers, in their forties, from
        working-class backgrounds that most likely did not
        cotton to newfangled medical shenanigans. He pondered
        the women with amusement. If Johnson thought they would
        save him, he was wrong.

             \Rhetoric Ron will have you weeping for Valerie by
        summation time\.

             L.A. Superior Court Judge Madeline Lyang watched
        the court clerk swear in the jury. \They had to demand
        a jury\, she thought. Since the odd, hybrid suit dealt
        with issues of fact, though, and not just equitable
        relief, they had a right to it. A small sigh escaped
        her. Juries always meant greater histrionics on the
        part of the lawyers. In her fifteen years on the bench,
        she had developed a fair instinct for determining how a
        case would proceed.

             \This one will be a killer\.

             She was a woman of moderate height. Sitting at the
        bench, though, she looked impressive and forbidding. At
        fifty, she still retained the smooth, sculpted features
        of her Chinese ancestry. Open and expansive in private
        life, she capitalized upon the myth of oriental
        inscrutability in the courtroom setting, maintaining an
        impassive, unreadable expression when she wanted or
        needed to. Custody cases usually demanded that. Such
        trials involved few villains and fewer heroes--just two
        people trying to do what they saw as best for the
        children.

             While this was not strictly a simple custody
        battle, it had wound up in her docket by those most
        powerful of judicial forces, expediency and mere
        chance. She knew on first sight, though, that this case
        would be a publicity H-bomb.

             She used the gavel she'd received in high school,
        where she had served as chief (and only) justice of the
        student court.

             "Court will come to order. In the case of Valerie
        Dalton versus Evelyn Fletcher and David and Karen
        Chandler, jointly, I'd like first to address the
        question of televised proceedings." \Here we go\, she
        thought, expecting the first of many tugs of war.
        "Counsels will please approach the bench."

             "The plaintiff," Ron whispered to the judge,
        "favors allowing the presence of the press."

             Terry chimed in immediately. "The defendants
        welcome the opportunity to let the truth be heard."

             Judge Lyang permitted a smile to cross her face.
        \Publicity hounds\. "Fine." She addressed the
        courtroom. "Permission is gran--"

             The sound of plastic and metal scraping and
        sliding emanated from the back of the courtroom.
        Photographers and video crews lined the back wall,
        eagerly setting up their equipment.

             Lyang rapped once. "Granted, but on condition that
        courtroom decorum is maintained back there. Quiet
        down." She gazed at the plaintiff. Valerie Dalton sat
        beside Czernek. She wore a stereotypically middle-
        American house dress in light blue. It made her eyes
        take on a sapphire hue and went flatteringly well with
        her blond hair and very light makeup. Perfect, the
        judge decided, for someone playing the part of betrayed
        innocent. She admired Czernek for stopping at a solid
        color and not going all the way to gingham and bows.
        His own outfit was a solid navy business suit with a
        light blue oxford cloth shirt under a midnight-blue tie
        with the smallest, most tasteful maroon-dot pattern.

             The defendants seemed to be using much the same
        tactic. David Chandler wore an unimpressive grey
        business suit, not expensive enough to seem like a
        spendthrift, yet just well fitting enough to imply
        fitness for fatherhood status. His wife wore a simple
        beige Victorian-collared blouse and matching skirt.
        Neither woman wore any extra jewelry, though--in
        addition to her wedding ring--Mrs. Chandler sported a
        nice little cameo on the collar of her blouse.

             \Darling\, thought Lyang. Their lawyer, she mused,
        must have been brought up watching reruns of \The Paper
        Chase\--he wore appropriately rumpled brown tweed
        slacks and jacket over a sky-blue shirt with thin white
        vertical and horizontal lines. His tie was tan and
        narrow. He indeed looked the part of an energetic,
        young defense lawyer working sleepless nights to
        prepare his valiant case.

             Dr. Fletcher was the only one who failed to fit
        in. Dressed in a dramatically white business suit that
        Lyang had seen the week before at Nordstrom's, she sat
        between Johnson and Mrs. Chandler with a notebook and
        pen at the ready. Her black hair, peppered with grey,
        was in place but for one strand that curled toward her
        right eye despite occasional efforts to brush it back.

             She was the magnet that drew the gaze of the
        jurors and the spectators. Who, they must wonder, was
        this doctor who had performed such bizarre surgery?
        Judge Lyang took a deep breath and prepared to find
        out.

             "Counsel for the plaintiff, you may present your
        opening statement."

             Ron Czernek stepped from behind his table to
        address the jury. He made a point of stepping around
        the overhead projector that Johnson had asked to have
        available.

             "Ladies and gentlemen," he said in a
        conversational, undramatic voice. "We're here today to
        decide something that's never been decided before.
        There have been countless trials in the past between
        husband and wife over the custody of their children.
        There have been battles between unmarried persons for
        children born out of wedlock. There have even been
        highly publicized cases of surrogate mothers demanding
        custody of the children they gave birth to under
        contract to others.

             "But no one, ever before, has been asked to decide
        the fate of a child," he turned to gaze at Dr.
        Fletcher, "\kidnapped before it was even born\, and
        secretly planted in the womb of another woman."

             Johnson rose to object to the prejudicial remark
        but hesitated. Maybe he would want equal latitude with
        his own opening statement. Letting the lawyer get away
        with it, however, was no guarantee that Czernek would
        reciprocate. He quietly sat down. It was worth the
        gambit.

            Czernek pointed to Karen. "The evidence will show
        that this woman--Karen Chandler--paid a surgeon several
        thousand dollars to `get pregnant.'" Ron made little
        quote marks with his fingers as he turned back to face
        the jury. "She got pregnant, all right. With a fetus
        ripped out of Valerie Dalton's womb and stitched into
        Karen Chandler's in a clandestine medical experiment
        carried out in the dead of night last March."

             Valerie lowered her head, a vortex of conflicting
        emotions seeking to pull her down into despair. She
        looked to her side to see that everyone--\everyone\--
        was staring at her, including the unwavering glass eyes
        of video cameras. She thought her heart would seize up
        and never start again. And Ron, the only one there who
        could sit beside her to put an arm around her, paced
        around telling his tale, unable to comfort her. Watched
        by all, she had never felt more alone.

             "A medical experiment," Czernek continued, "that
        the facts will reveal had been performed on human
        beings without the approval of the hospital in which it
        took place. Without any basis in animal research or
        medical theory. In short"--he leaned over Dr. Fletcher-
        -"an experiment that used Valerie Dalton as an
        unknowing guinea pig in a conspiracy to sell her stolen
        embryo to a woman willing and able to buy it!"

             Johnson sat quietly, gazing at his opponent with
        an unreadable expression. Inwardly, he burned with the
        desire to interject his own statements. \Just keep
        talking\, he thought as he took notes without even
        glancing down at the paper. \I'll tear you apart in\ my
        \opener\.

             Ron took a deep, emotional breath and let out a
        sigh. The courtroom smelled of air-conditioned humanity
        and stale autumn air. His face became a mask of hurt.
        "I can't pretend to maintain objectivity in this case.
        As Valerie Dalton's fiance and the father of her child,
        I am as much an injured party as she." He leaned on the
        jury box rail to gaze at each person there as he spoke.
        "Did Karen and David Chandler want a child to raise and
        love as their own? Then why didn't they adopt one? We
        shall show that this baby is as far removed from them
        genetically as an adopted child. And Lord knows there
        are plenty of children rotting in orphanages who could
        use a little love and tenderness. No, their interests
        were not with the child itself." He stared coldly over
        at the Chandlers. Karen buried her face into David's
        chest. He comforted her and stared back at Czernek,
        wishing looks could not only kill but maim as well.

             "No," Ron said. "To them, the fetus they bought
        was simply an amusement. A way to play at being
        pregnant, at giving birth to a child. No matter to them
        that a woman had been invaded--raped, more accurately--
        to tear the living child from within. No matter that
        the true father and mother would never know their
        daughter, never even know that they \had\ a daughter.
        No matter that the child could have died at any point
        in this outrageous procedure. No, pregnancy at any
        price was the Chandler's goal, and they got it."

             He took a moment to calm his anger, flamed by his
        own well-rehearsed words. He faced the couple. "But
        what happens when the novelty fades? They've had the
        fun part. The baby showers, the expectation, the
        approval of relatives, and the excitement of
        anticipation. They've shared the ecstatic joy of seeing
        a life come into this world--a joy denied to the true
        father and mother--and now what? Now begins the
        drudgery of child rearing. Will they maintain an
        interest in the little gadget they'd bought? Or will
        they lose interest, shunt Renata off somewhere while
        they pursue other amusements? Will they regret their
        purchase?"

             David tried to suppress his anger, gazing up at
        Czernek. His head, held stiffly by his rage-clenched
        neck, began to tremble in an effort to remain still.
        Karen lowered her gaze to hide from the lawyer's eyes,
        convinced she had entered hell.

             Ron turned back toward the jury. "The evidence
        will show that--as we speak--the baby they call Renata
        lies in the infant intensive care unit of Bayside
        University Medical Center. She is deathly ill. Can
        Karen and David Chandler do anything to save her? No.
        She needed bone marrow from her nearest relative. Is
        her nearest relative the woman who gave birth to her?"
        He pointed at Karen. "It is not. Her bone marrow would
        at best do nothing to save the baby's life. At worst it
        could kill her." Turning to Valerie, he said, "The only
        person in the entire world who can save that little
        baby is right here in this room. Valerie Dalton, the
        \real\ mother of Renata Chandler."

             Dead silence in the courtroom, the absence of any
        muttering, let Czernek know that he had everyone caught
        up in the web he spun.

             "You are here," he said to the jurors, "to make a
        simple choice. You are here to declare that a baby
        should not be cut away from its mother without her
        knowledge or consent. That brutal, unauthorized medical
        experiments have no place in civilized society." He
        stared at Fletcher. "And that Dr. Evelyn Fletcher
        should pay for the misdeeds she performed in full
        knowledge of their danger and impropriety."

             He gazed at each member of the jury, silent for a
        long moment. Every one of them, he was certain, had
        listened to and appreciated his statement. No sleepers
        or blockheads on this jury.

             "Thank you." He walked sedately to his table to
        sit beside Valerie, who--having waited for him alone in
        the crowded courtroom--clasped his shoulders and placed
        her head against him.

             The cameras zoomed in.

             Judge Lyang avoided any show of emotion, though
        Czernek's arguments made sense to her. She wondered if
        Johnson had anything that might sound equally as
        compelling. It was not often that a judge usually stuck
        with family law cases had an opportunity to preside
        over a landmark suit. Yet this, she realized with a
        warm glow of satisfaction, is what she had entered the
        judiciary for.

             "Thank you, counselor," she said. "Counsel for the
        defense may make his opening statement."

             Johnson stepped in front of his table. "Thank you,
        Your Honor." He paused for a moment, seeming to gather
        his thoughts.

             \God, that was good\, he marveled in panic. \How
        can I top that?\ He turned to face the jury and looked
        up at their inquisitive faces. He had watched their
        reactions at listening to Czernek. \Hit them on the
        same points, I guess\.

             "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury," he said. "This
        is not a custody battle. This lawsuit is not the result
        of righteous indignation at discovery of some sort of
        evil crime. We are all here because of a nuisance suit
        brought by a money-hungry couple who are more
        interested in the thirty-million-dollar so-called
        `damages' than they are in the welfare of Renata
        Chandler."

             He looked down at the plaintiff. Czernek took
        notes, while Valerie stared at Terry in disbelief.

             He turned back to the jury box. "Mr. Czernek may
        indeed view himself and his live-in lover as the
        injured parties, but the tale he spins is one of purest
        fantasy. What he skillfully neglects to mention--and
        what the evidence will show--is that we are here today
        because Renata Chandler was rescued from death nearly
        eight months ago."

             Johnson's hands began to move as he spoke, weaving
        their spell. "Think back to a day in early March when
        Valerie Dalton discovers that she is pregnant. It's
        unplanned, a surprise. Well, Valerie's a modern woman.
        She has a job of her own, and she's just gotten a
        promotion. She's living pretty well in a Palos Verdes
        home overlooking the ocean. She has no need for the
        commitment of marriage to enjoy life with the
        moderately successful lawyer Ron Czernek, her lover of
        several years."

             Valerie, despite her best efforts, turned red with
        anger and embarrassment. She knew she had no reason to
        react to what everyone who mattered already knew. But
        \strangers\ were hearing about it, here and on TV all
        around the country. People who had no way to judge her
        life except for the selective words uttered by a
        hostile attorney.

             "What's a modern woman to do?" Terry paced slowly
        about, looking as if he were thinking on his feet.
        "Giving birth to a baby would just be an intrusion on
        her life. How could she work effectively at her job?
        How could she take pleasant vacations in Hawaii and
        Europe?"

             \That bastard\, Czernek thought, \has done his
        homework\.

             "How indeed?" Johnson gazed from juror to juror.
        "Some of you have children. You know what they can do
        to your lives. A baby changes you forever. Some of you
        are unmarried. I know a couple of you are career women.
        You know what I mean. You know what Valerie feared.
        Being tied down. Having to care for a defenseless,
        demanding infant. She wasn't ready for it. Wasn't ready
        to commit the rest of her life to supporting and
        nurturing the child she and Ron Czernek had begotten."
        He smiled at the word, paused to scratch at his chin.

             "What's a modern woman to do? Well, she sought the
        venerable solution of abortion, a convenience women
        have turned to for thousands of years." He paused to
        let them mull that over.

             "What is abortion? The word comes from Latin.
        \Oriri\ means to rise, appear, be born. \Ab\, meaning
        off or away; it's a prefix that means `badly,' as in
        abnormal or abuse. So an abortion is a bad birth. The
        dictionary describes abortion as `the \fatally\
        premature expulsion of a fetus, whether natural or
        induced.'" He stopped in front of the plaintiff's
        table. "We're here today because Valerie Dalton and Ron
        Czernek sought to abort their child. Attempted to kill
        it. And it survived."

             This time, he managed to coax a murmur out of the
        spectators.

             Valerie tried to look straight ahead without
        emotion, but tears leaked from her eyes. As she dabbed
        at them with a tissue, Ron stopped taking notes to put
        his arm around her.

             Terry wandered over to the jury box. "You'll
        probably hear a lot of talk during this trial about a
        wicked medical experiment conducted in secrecy by a mad
        doctor." He waved a hand in Fletcher's general
        direction; she smiled imperceptibly at the description.
        "You'll hear a lot about a woman so desperate for a
        child that she paid for her pregnancy. I intend to
        demonstrate, however, that this was a far nobler act
        than that of the plaintiff, who paid to have a living
        being torn from the womb of its mother and disposed of
        like so much garbage. A living being actually \rescued\
        by Dr. Fletcher and Karen Chandler. If they had not
        done what they did, Renata Chandler would not be alive
        today to be reclaimed by the very people who eight
        months ago paid for her \death\." He looked at each
        member of the jury. "A killing that, I assure you, Dr.
        Evelyn Fletcher was fully certified to perform by the
        laws of the United States and the codes of the American
        Medical Association."

             He walked back to his table. "Had Dr. Fletcher not
        had a rare and amazing conscience coupled with an
        astounding medical insight, Renata Chandler would have
        been just one of millions of aborted fetuses tossed
        away every year. Instead, she is a beautiful, living
        baby girl who is the center of a controversy that is
        shocking to behold: her attempted killers demanding
        custody on the specious argument that \they\ would be
        better parents!"

             Terry Johnson shook his head and stepped to his
        seat between Evelyn and Karen. "That's all I've got to
        say for now. Let's see what happens." With that, he sat
        down.

             The murmuring behind the bar grew louder. The
        judge rapped gently a couple of times to bring silence.
        "Mr. Czernek, you may call your first witness."

             Valerie looked at Ron with apprehension. He
        clasped her shoulders, looked her in the eyes, and
        whispered, "Just be brave and tell it the way it
        happened. Make eye contact with the jurors. Answer my
        questions and nothing more." He stood.

             "Your Honor, I'd like to call the plaintiff,
        Valerie Dalton, to the stand."

             Valerie approached the stand and was sworn in by a
        tall, aging Latino court clerk who spoke with a deep,
        solemn voice. She sat in the wooden chair, adjusted the
        drape of her dress, and tried to be calm.

             Czernek's first few questions were standard. She
        stated her name, her address, her age, her educational
        and business background. The recitation of such simple
        facts soothed her. The sense of panic subsided.

             "Now tell us what happened on March third of this
        year."

             "Well, I had discovered that I was pregnant, so I
        made an appointment with Dr. Fletcher for an... an
        abortion."

             "Something," Czernek said, "that millions of
        Americans do every year with no complications."

             Valerie nodded. "You drove me out there and helped
        me fill out what I thought was an ordinary consent form
        for the operation."

             "What time was this?" he asked.

             "About seven in the evening."

             "Basically," he said, "after hours."

             "Yes."

             "Did the hospital appear fully staffed at that
        hour?"

             "I don't know. It seemed pretty empty there."

             "Go on."

             Valerie looked at the jurors. They appeared to be
        listening with interest and without prejudice. "I was
        led into an operating room and got undressed."

             "Was this a big operating room?" Ron asked. "With
        several surgeons and lots of equipment and lights?"

             "No," she replied, events of the evening unfolding
        in her memory. "It was small, more like an examination
        room. Just the table and stirrups and some cabinets and
        a sink. The only equipment was the thing the nurse
        wheeled in." At Czernek's request, she described as
        much as she remembered of its white exterior, the video
        monitor and switches.

             "Did you know what this device was for?"

             Valerie looked at Evelyn. "Dr. Fletcher told me
        that it was for a suction abortion."

             "Objection!" Johnson stood forcefully and walked
        to the bench. "Your Honor," he whispered, "use of the
        word abortion to refer to transoption will be
        prejudicial to my clients' case."

             Judge Lyang looked down at the man. "Does this
        really have any bearing?"

             "Immense bearing, Your Honor."

             She shrugged. "Sustained."

             Czernek asked his question again. Valerie answered
        uneasily. "She told me that it was a suction device. I
        was given a local anesthetic, which didn't do much
        good. Then she turned the machine on, and it started to
        make these hissing and sucking sounds."

             Ron turned around as if in thought. "At any time,"
        he asked, "were you aware that anything was out of the
        ordinary?"

             "Well..." She frowned. "I had never seen an
        abortion before, so I had nothing to compare it to.
        High school sex education classes and college women's
        studies both seemed to ignore the actual medical
        procedure--"

             "Please, just answer my question."

             She frowned again, this time at Ron. "I'd never
        seen an abortion, so, no, I didn't think anything was
        wrong. I figured I knew it might hurt, so when she
        inserted the tube, the pain was no real surprise, I
        guess."

             "Was there any talk between Dr. Fletcher and her
        nurse that might have aroused your suspicions?"

             "I can't remember any."

             "So as far as you were concerned," he said, facing
        the jury, "Dr. Fletcher had performed an abortion by
        medically approved means."

             "Yes."

             "Did you later find out that this was not the
        case?"

             "Yes," she said, rage at the memory of the day
        growing in her.

             "When?"

             "Twelve days ago when Dr. Fletcher called me to
        ask for a blood test. She said a sick baby needed a
        transfusion."

             Czernek nodded and stroked at his beard. "Did she
        tell you at this time that the baby was yours?"

             "No."

             Dr. Fletcher gazed steadily at Valerie, though she
        noted through peripheral vision that the jurors stared
        at her now, not the witness. She labored to avoid
        looking guilty at hearing her deception revealed.

             "Did you later discover this fact?"

             "Yes."

             He asked her when she found out.

             She replied with obvious bitterness. "The next day
        in the hospital. A lab technologist was interested in
        why my blood would be more useful to a baby than the
        blood of its own supposed mother. He left the room
        while I was donating the pint, and when he came back,
        he started asking me what I thought were crazy
        questions about whether I'd regretted having my
        abortion and what if my baby had lived."

             "What did you say?"

             "Nothing. Before he could finish, Dr. Fletcher
        walked in, and he stopped talking."

             "Did Dr. Fletcher tell you then that Renata was
        your child?"

             "No. First she asked if I would agree to a bone-
        marrow transplant. I said I wanted to see the baby.
        When I did, I had the feeling that she was mine. Then
        the technologist--"

             "Do you remember his name?" Ron asked.

             "Yes. Mark Landry. He told me his theory that Dr.
        Fletcher had invented some way to implant aborted
        fetuses into other women and that the child born to
        Karen and David Chandler was actually mine."

             "What happened then?"

             "I fainted. Mr. Landry brought me about with
        smelling salts. Then Dr. Fletcher walked in."

             "Did she tell you then?"

             "No. Only when I confronted her did she bother to
        tell me that my child had been given to someone else."

             Throughout the morning, Czernek questioned her on
        every minute detail with repetitive precision and
        through her answers painted a portrait of irresponsible
        medical experiments performed on an unsuspecting woman
        without benefit of informed consent. All the while, Dr.
        Fletcher watched with intense concentration.

             "Valerie," Czernek finally asked softly, "would
        you be a good mother for Renata?"

             "Yes," she said, barely audible.

             "Could you tell the court why?"

             Valerie thought about the question for a moment,
        though the time was mostly spent remembering what she
        and Ron had decided the night before. She turned to the
        jury. "My baby was born to another woman, who claims
        that makes her the child's mother. Yet when the baby
        fell ill, \I\ was the only one who could save her. Dr.
        Fletcher would not have been forced to bring everything
        out in the open if there were anyone else who could
        help. That baby needs me. She needs her real mother in
        order to survive." Her voice was level, unemotional.
        "She needs her true parents to love her, not two
        strangers. Strangers who considered her a commodity to
        be purchased. And I hope that, along with returning my
        little girl to me, this court decides that no one else
        should ever have to suffer this deception again."

             Ron waited for her words to sink in, then asked,
        "Did you bring this lawsuit just to get money?"

             "No! What Dr. Fletcher did to me was wrong. She
        should be stopped. That's why I brought this lawsuit.
        To get my baby back and to prevent future abuses."

             He paused again. "Thank you, Ms. Dalton. No
        further questions."

             Judge Lyang looked over to Johnson. "Would the
        defense care to cross-examine?"

             Terry rose. "Yes, Your Honor." He sidled out from
        behind the table to approach the witness stand. He put
        his hands in his pockets as if in deep thought. He
        looked up at the ceiling. "Ms. Dalton, when you
        discovered you were pregnant, what did you see as your
        options?"

             "Objection," Ron said. "Counsel must restrict
        himself to areas covered in direct examination."

             Johnson snorted and looked at Lyang. "Counsel for
        the plaintiff is trying to restrict me a bit too much.
        He \did\ cover her choice to get an abortion."

             "Overruled," the judge said flatly.

             "What options did you consider, Ms. Dalton?"

             Valerie sat admirably still. Inside, she wanted to
        shake free. "I had no option besides abortion."

             "Did you consider giving birth?  Raising the
        child?"

             "We weren't ready for that. I wasn't ready."

             "That's fine," Johnson said in a calm, accepting
        tone. "Lots of people have abortions. It's legal. It's
        relatively safe. Were you aware at that time that
        abortion was the only \known\ method of pregnancy
        termination?"

             "I certainly didn't know about transoption, if
        that's what you mean."

             "It is indeed." Johnson put his hands back in his
        pockets and strolled around with a meditative air. "Did
        you know that abortion entailed the killing of the
        fetus?"

             "Objection," Czernek said. "To use the term
        `killing' in regards to abortion implies that a first-
        trimester fetus is a living human being, something
        denied by every major court decision of the past
        thir--"

             "Sustained, Mr. Czernek. I am familiar with the
        law."

             Johnson smiled. \Right where I wanted you, you
        litigious bastard\. "Allow me to rephrase the question.
        Did you know when went in for an abortion that the
        individual cells in the tissue removed from you during
        the abortion would, one by one, cease to function after
        said removal?"

             Valerie shook her head. "I don't understand the
        que--"

             "Surely, Ms. Dalton," Johnson's voice rose, "you
        can comprehend that when a piece of living tissue is
        deprived of its source of nutrients, it won't survive
        long. Did you know that extraordinary measures are
        taken during organ transplants to keep a heart or a
        liver viable--'alive'--while being transported to its
        new host?"

             "Yes. I guess I--"

             "Did you know that once aborted, your fetus would
        soon cease to be a fetus and become a mass of
        nonfunctioning tissue?"

             "Well, yes. Of course."

             He turned to her. "So you didn't really consider
        it alive to begin with?"

             "No. I mean, not in the sense of it being a
        person. That's the way I learned it." She sounded more
        confident.

             "And if you had lived in the South a century ago
        and had `learned it' that blacks weren't human, you'd
        believe that, too, right?"

             "Objection!" Czernek shouted, Johnson mouthing the
        word in perfect synchrony.

             "Sustained." Judge Lyang leaned slightly forward
        to address Johnson. "Your analogy is totally
        prejudicial. The difference between a fetus and a human
        is far greater than that of mere skin color. And may I
        remind you that the Supreme Court has long ago
        recognized the humanity of all races."

             "At one time it had not," Johnson replied. "Just
        as at one time it had not considered children to have
        human rights." He stared at Lyang. "Or women." Before
        the judge could react, he immediately said, "I'll
        retract the question, of course, and ask Ms. Dalton if
        she did not in fact sign a waiver of claim to the non-
        living bit of tissue she wanted removed. Did you?"

             "I signed something."

             Johnson reached into his briefcase. With a
        flourish, he placed a transparency on the overhead
        projector and threw the switch. On the screen opposite
        the jury box glowed several pages of typescript. "Would
        this be the contract?"

             She looked at it. "Yes," she said, "it is."

             "Am I correct that it says nowhere on that
        contract that you were to receive an abortion?"

             She looked at Ron, then at the jury. "Yes. I
        thought the wording was a bit strange, but the way
        people use euphemisms for everything these days--"

             "What term do you see that you \thought\ meant
        `abortion?'"

             "The term was `pregnancy termination.'"

             "And you thought that the only way to terminate a
        pregnancy was through an abortion?"

             "Of course."

             Johnson pointed at the screen. "It says right here
        that the undersigned--that's you, Ms. Dalton--
        'relinquishes any and all claim to tissues removed
        during said pregnancy termination.' Did you agree to
        that?"

             "I don't remember," she said. She took a deep
        breath to calm herself.

             "Are you in the habit of forgetting what you
        sign?"

             "No, I remember it."

             "Did Ron Czernek read it?"

             "Yes."

             "I see." Johnson began walking about again. He
        handed a copy of the contract to Czernek, then to the
        clerk, saying, "Please make this contract Exhibit A."
        He put his hands in his pockets. "So you knew that the
        abortion you wanted would result in the-- Well, I want
        to say `death,' but how about the `cessation of
        viability' of the fetus?"

             "Yes," Valerie said.

             "Since you didn't consider it a living human
        being, though, you contracted with Dr. Fletcher to have
        it vacuumed out of you and disposed of. Is that a clear
        statement of the facts?"

             Valerie paused, looking to Ron for guidance. The
        lawyer's jaw tightened. He could object to the
        argumentative nature of the question, but the issue
        would remain. His head nodded ever so slightly.

             "Yes," Valerie said without emotion.

             "And you meant to sign away any claim to this non-
        living bit of tissue?"

             "Yes."

             Johnson walked over to the witness stand, placed
        both hands on the rail, and looked her fiercely in the
        eye. "Why, then, are you now laying claim to this bit
        of garbage you threw out?"

             Czernek shouted a loud objection. Johnson shouted
        even louder over the other lawyer's protest. "Why do
        you suddenly care about this child that a few short
        months ago you paid to have killed?"

             "\Objection!\ I want that stricken from the
        record! Harassing the wit--"

             "I am capable," the judge said loudly, "of
        discerning harassment, Mr. Czernek."

             Ron sat down, fuming. Lyang laid down her gavel
        and folded her hands. "Approach the bench." The lawyers
        stepped toward the judge.

             "Mr. Johnson," she whispered, "the entire subject
        of abortion and the rights of the unborn is frightfully
        emotion laden, as the two groups of protesters outside
        this courtroom demonstrate. You do your clients' case
        no good by harassing the plaintiff." She glanced down
        at the court reporter, a young man fingering the keys
        of a battered old Stenotype. "The last two questions
        shall be stricken from the record, and"--she turned to
        the jury box--"the jury is to disregard the nature of
        the question and any inferences they may draw having
        heard it. You may continue, Mr. Johnson."

             "No further questions, Your Honor." \I've never
        heard of a jury yet that could erase its own memory\.

             "Then I suggest we recess for lunch," Lyang said,
        knocking once with her gavel.


                                   XV
        "If his tactic is to act self-righteous and abusive,"
        Ron said, "it can only help our case."

             He faced Valerie across a small blue table in the
        courthouse cafeteria. A few yards away sat Johnson, the
        Chandlers, and Dr. Fletcher. Johnson spoke quietly, but
        with intense emphasis about something. Czernek glanced
        over at them, then turned his attention back to
        Valerie.

             "I'm not going to redirect you, so I don't think
        you'll have to worry about any more testimony." He bit
        down into the club sandwich, chewed on it while
        thinking. "I'm going to call Mrs. Chandler next. If I
        can establish that she was a knowing accessory to the
        transoption, that'll draw a pretty bad picture of her
        for the jury. Then I'll follow up with the expert
        witnesses--"

             "Is it okay if I talk to Dr. Fletcher now? There
        aren't any reporters around."

             "Legally you can, but I don't think you should,"
        he said.

             She stood. "I just want to find out about Renata."

             Ron grunted and took another bite of the sandwich.
        Mentally, he rehearsed his line of questioning, knowing
        that if he kept it narrow enough, Johnson would have
        practically nothing to seize on in the cross-
        examination. Calling a hostile witness was risky, but
        he calculated that he could turn that hostility to his
        advantage.

             "How's Renata?" Valerie asked, sitting in an
        available chair next to Dr. Fletcher.

             Fletcher gave her a comforting smile. "She's still
        in guarded condition. We just won't know for a while.
        She's hanging in there, so \we've\ got to, too."

             "Valerie?" Terry looked at her.

             "What?" Her voice was as cool as the air in a
        glacial cavern.

             "I'm sorry I put you through that. You know why I
        had to, don't you?"

             "Lawyers will be lawyers," she said, rising.

             "Mr. Czernek will be just as rough on Karen," he
        said. His tone was matter-of-fact, but his eyes
        revealed an apprehension about something, the nature of
        which Valerie was unaware.

             She chalked it up to the trial jitters she assumed
        everyone else also felt and returned to Ron. He hovered
        over his coffee, searching his notes to prepare for the
        afternoon.

             "How is she?" he asked without looking up.

             "They don't know yet."

             It was strange reporting to him in such a way. His
        attitude seemed almost that of a man in some gothic
        romance. Dark and brooding, he pondered his own
        thoughts while expressing only a cursory interest in
        their child. He flipped over a sheet of the yellow
        legal pad, continuing to read his hasty shorthand.

             Suddenly, a repetitive beep erupted from his
        jacket. For a moment, he was unsure what it meant. Then
        he remembered that in his haste to bring the case to
        trial, he had rented a pager to keep in contact with
        his office. He pulled it from his pocket, noted the
        phone number on the LCD display, and switched it off.

             "That's my callback from the doctor I asked to be
        an expert witness." He headed for the phone booths. "I
        hope he agrees to testify--it's cutting things close to
        do this so far into the trial."

             Valerie watched him go, then turned to observe the
        defendants. It was her first opportunity to view them
        together in a relaxed climate.

             David Chandler doted on his wife so sweetly, she
        thought. Always an arm around her or a hand touching
        hers. She knew it couldn't be an affectation. Ron
        sometimes did that: a pat on the hand or an obligatory
        hug. The impression she received, though, was one of
        distraction, as if her lover had more on his mind than
        pleasing or soothing her.

             Karen had that troubled look of a mother concerned
        about her child. Valerie could tell that the woman was
        unable to concentrate on the courtroom proceedings; her
        mind was miles away in a hospital room at Bayside.
        Renata created a bond between the two of them that was
        even stronger than the one between Ron and her. It was
        a bond, though, with built-in stress, one that could
        never be acknowledged as long as they vied for
        possession of Renata.

             It was Dr. Fletcher's fault. Valerie glared at the
        woman, at her black and silver hair, at her starched
        white demeanor. She acted as if she cared about Renata,
        about Valerie--indeed, about everyone. Was it a sham?
        Just so much bedside manner repeated rote? What really
        lurked behind that doctorly exterior? Was she trying to
        help all women and unborn children, as Johnson implied?
        Or was Ron more correct that she had used her and Karen
        as a means to test her theories?

             She knew Ron's reasons for being here. What were
        Johnson's? He seemed sincere to the point of a stroke,
        yet he used every nasty rhetorical technique available.
        Stuff she'd seen Ron use in other trials. He knew how
        to play the jury, just as Ron did. Was that the key?
        Would the best player win regardless of who was right
        or wrong?

             "He's in!" Ron returned to the table, scraping the
        chair across the linoleum to sit. "He'll be available
        tomorrow to give expert testimony on embryo transfer.
        And here's something I didn't know; he's on the ethics
        committee of his own hospital, so he \really\ knows the
        implications of Fletcher's actions."

             "Tomorrow." Valerie finished her coffee in one
        swallow. It went down bitter despite the two packets of
        Equal. "What about today?"

             Ron grinned and looked across the room at Karen.
        "Leave that to me."
                                   #

        Karen sat in the witness stand, determined to answer
        the questions without overreaction.

             "We had exhausted all other--"

             "Just a yes or no answer," Czernek said coolly.
        "Did you enter the Bayside University Medical Center
        fertility program to become pregnant by any means
        possible?"

             "Yes."

             Rather than stroll around before the bench in
        Johnson's manner, Czernek stayed close to Karen, facing
        her to ask his barrage of questions in a clipped,
        businesslike manner.

             "Were you aware that your problem could have been
        solved by the medically accepted method of non-surgical
        ovum transfer?"

             "We'd tr--"

             "Yes or no?"

             "Yes, but--"

             "So you knew about non-surgical ovum transfer?"

             "Yes. We tried--"

             "Just yes or no, Mrs. Chandler. Did you know that
        clinics performing the procedure regularly contract
        with women as conscious, informed ovum donors?"

             "Yes."

             "And you knew that the Bayside clinic had a frozen
        supply of fertilized and unfertilized eggs available
        for you to pick and choose the traits you want in a
        child?"

             "Yes." Karen burned to tell the jury about her
        failures with the procedure.

             "Yet you instead allowed Dr. Fletcher to implant
        an embryo in you by surgical means?"

             "Yes."

             "And you allowed this even though you knew that
        such an embryo must have been torn from the womb of
        another woman?"

             Johnson popped up. "Objection! The question is
        argumentative and establishes nothing new."

             Judge Lyang nodded. "Sustained."

             "Were you aware that the embryo must have come
        from an abortion?" Czernek asked.

             "Yes," she answered firmly.

             "And yet you allowed Dr. Fletcher to perform this
        procedure?"

             "Yes."

             "And you carried this child to term and gave birth
        to it?"

             "Yes."

             "And you filled out a birth certificate naming you
        and David Chandler as the mother and father even though
        the child bore no genetic relation to either of you?"

             "Dr. Fletcher told--" She stopped just as Czernek
        opened his mouth. "Yes, I did."

             "And you had no compunctions about that? You
        didn't think that perhaps there was something dishonest
        or perhaps even illegal about it all?"

             "I object!" Johnson said. "Mrs. Chandler is not a
        legal expert."

             "Sustained."

             Czernek rubbed the bridge of his nose. "It's a
        simple question, Mrs. Chandler. Did you suspect that
        you were involved in something that was wrong?"

             "No, I did not."

             "I see. And now that you have been caught, do you
        feel any remorse?"

             Johnson shot to his feet again. "Objection, Your
        Honor! The question of remorse is totally irrelevant."

             Judge Lyang sustained.

             Czernek shrugged and turned to face Karen. "I have
        no more questions."

              On his way to the witness stand, Johnson glared
        at the more experienced lawyer, turning his head so
        that his expression was hidden from the jurors' view.
        Czernek smiled cordially and regained his seat.

             "Mrs. Chandler," Johnson began, his hands in his
        pants pockets, jacket bottoms draped over his wrists.
        "Please tell the court why you had to seek out the
        services of a fertility clinic."

             She looked at the women in the jury, speaking
        softly. "David and I had always wanted to have
        children, and we tried right from our wedding night.
        But nothing ever seemed to happen. We went to doctors,
        and they determined that it was sort of both our
        faults." She lowered her head for a moment, then looked
        up, this time at the men. "I had very poorly developed
        ovaries, and David had an industrial accident when he
        was twenty and had a very low sperm count."

             "And what options did you consider?"

             "Non-surgical ovum transfer was one method," she
        said, glancing over at Czernek in pleasure that the
        truth could now get out. "Of course, since David
        couldn't contribute the sperm, we used eggs that had
        already been fertilized."

             "Did you actually undergo such an operation?"

             "Yes. Four times."

             The spectators began to trade whispered sounds of
        astonishment. Johnson stepped close to Karen.

             "What was the outcome of each?"

             "I miscarried all four."

             The murmuring in the courtroom increased an
        increment. The judge gaveled for quiet. The sounds
        abated momentarily.

             "At what point did these pregnancies spontaneously
        abort?"

             "All of them within the first three weeks."

             "And were these your first attempts?"

             "No. We had tried \in vitro\ fertilization with
        donor ova and sperm."

             "How many tries there?"

             "Three."

             "Any other methods?"

             "Yes," she said in an almost ashamed tone. "Three
        attempts at artificial insemination before my problem
        was properly diagnosed. But that was long before I
        found Dr. Fletcher."

             "So altogether, how many times had you tried
        orthodox methods of artificial impregnation?"

             "Ten times."

             "And the outcome each time?"

             She looked straight at the jury. "They all
        miscarried."

             "How soon after each procedure?"

             "All within the first three weeks, when they took
        at all."

             Johnson gazed at the members of the jury as if to
        drive his point home. Actually, he scanned their faces
        for some sense of their reaction. He read sympathy on
        most, but the two young women seemed a bit put off by
        the idea of such colossal efforts. One of the older
        men, too, appeared embarrassed by the clinical details.

             "Did Dr. Fletcher," he asked, "say why she
        suggested surgical embryo transfer? Transoption, as she
        calls it."

             "She said she suspected that a more fully
        developed embryo might have a better chance of
        thriving. We were at our wits' end. We'd tried
        everything else under the sun." Tears welled in her
        eyes. She pressed at them with a tissue. "We just
        wanted a baby."

             Terry held up his hand and nodded in sympathy. He
        ran the hand through his curly mop of hair and said,
        "Did Dr. Fletcher ever speak to you about abortion?"

             "Yes."

             "What did she say?"

             Karen put her hand in her lap and crumpled the
        tissue in its grasp. "She said that transoption was
        something that she hoped would make abortion obsolete."

             "I object," Czernek said loudly. "This line of
        questioning is not germane--"

             "On the contrary, Your Honor." Johnson stepped
        over to face the judge. "Counsel for the plaintiff has
        raised the question of the defendant's awareness of
        abortion. I am merely probing the question further."

             Lyang mulled the problem for a moment.
        "Overruled," she said.

             Johnson strolled around the witness stand. "Mrs.
        Chandler," he said, "were you aware of the identity of
        the embryo donor?"

             "No. Dr. Fletcher insisted that we have no contact
        with the donor."

             "Did you know that the donor was unaware of the
        use to which her aborted-- I'm sorry." He nodded at Dr.
        Fletcher. "I mean her \transopted\ fetus. That she was
        unaware of the use to which it would be put?"

             "No. She never really discussed the source with
        us. Just that embryos were available."

             "Where did you think the embryo must have come
        from?"

             "An abortion," Karen replied. "I mean, that was
        pretty obvious, don't you think?"

             Several spectators laughed in a nervous sort of
        way and almost immediately shut up.

             "Was it your intent to become pregnant simply to
        enjoy being pregnant?"

             Karen shook her head, an inadvertent smile
        crossing her face. "Pregnancy isn't something you do
        for fun. David and I wanted to bring a child into the
        world. To raise it with love."

             "Did it make any difference to you that the donor
        was totally unaware that her child would be
        transopted?"

             "No."

             The muttering increased. People nodded to
        themselves and one another.

             Karen continued, staring squarely at the jurors.
        "I had \no\ uncertainties. I knew that I wasn't taking
        a child from someone who would miss it. It's not as if
        the donor had an abortion just to provide me with a
        fetus. I knew that I was saving a child from absolutely
        certain death."

             Looking out at the spectators, she saw and heard
        dozens of people arguing with one another. Some
        expressed astonishment at her blatant statement; others
        spread their hands in reluctant agreement with her
        logic. She glanced down at Valerie.

             The plaintiff lowered her head in an attempt to
        hide her tears. Unsuccessful, she grasped Ron's
        shoulders and clung to him.

             "Please, Val," he said. "I've got to stand up to
        object." He stood, letting her arms slide down him.
        "Objection!" he shouted. "The defendant's personal
        opinions are of no consequence here."

             "Sustained," Lyang said. She looked down at the
        court reporter. "Strike the last question and answer
        from the record. And counsels will please approach the
        bench."

             Czernek and Johnson stepped over to the base of
        Judge Lyang's dark wooden tower. She looked down at
        both of them and whispered.

             "What is going on here? This is a custody lawsuit
        we're hearing, and neither of you has addressed the
        issue of the best interests of the child." She pointed
        a dismissive hand at Czernek. "Well, maybe \you\ have,
        perfunctorily. Neither of you, however, has bothered to
        raise questions of financial resources, parental
        fitness, personal habits, or any issues of fact that I
        would normally hear in this court."

             "Your Honor--" Johnson glanced hesitantly at
        Czernek. "This case is not one of divorced parents
        deciding on custody. That is why we all agreed to
        forego the discovery phase. This is a case of two sets
        of parents, both well-off, who dispute the--I don't
        know how to put it--the \parentship\ of a child, who
        dispute its \maternity\. \That\ is an issue of fact. I
        am of the opinion that the standard criteria for
        determining the best interests of the child are
        superfluous here and that once we determine whether or
        not transoption is a legitimate medical procedure, the
        answer to the question of Renata's custody will follow
        \ipso facto\."

             Czernek frowned at his adversary. "I'm afraid I
        have to agree," he whispered to Lyang. "The entire
        question of custody hinges on whether or not Dr.
        Fletcher kidnapped my daughter. If she did so by
        performing an illegal operation--"

             "If the question is one of legality," Lyang said,
        "I can end this trial right now by taking judicial
        notice of transoption one way or the other. Transoption
        is not on trial here."

             "The contract is," Johnson said. "Whether Ms.
        Dalton's contract is legally enforceable--"

             "Or fraudulently induced," Czernek muttered.

             "--determines what claim Dr. Fletcher had to the
        fetus after its removal. That's the impasse we
        encountered at the mandatory settlement--"

             "All right," Lyang said in a harsh whisper. "So
        both of you think we'll be creating big precedents
        here. Fine. Just remember that the law is what the
        judge says it is, and don't either of you be so eager
        for headlines that you abuse these women." She nodded
        at Johnson. "You may resume."

             "I have no further questions, Your Honor," he said
        to the court at large.

             "Does counsel for the plaintiff wish to redirect?"

             "No, Your Honor," Czernek said, "I would now like
        to call on expert testimony. Will Pastor Avery Decker
        please step forward."

             The minister hefted himself out of his seat next
        to his assistant, James Rosen, in the first row of the
        spectator's area. Karen looked at the large man in his
        fine dark brown business suit, light blue shirt, and
        silk rep tie. She stepped out of the witness box,
        passing him as she returned to her seat.

             "Is that the man you interviewed?" she asked
        Johnson.

             The lawyer nodded in annoyance. "You're about to
        hear the self-proclaimed pro-life stance on saving
        Renata's life." He poised his pen over his legal pad,
        ready for anything.

             "Do you swear," the clerk said, "that the
        testimony you are about to give shall be the truth, the
        whole truth, and nothing but the truth?"

             Decker pressed his palm lovingly on the Bible. "So
        help me \God\," he said with pride, "I do."

             Czernek strode over to the witness stand. "Please
        state your name for the record."

             "Avery Hamilton Decker."

             "What are your qualifications as an expert witness
        in ethics?"

             Decker eased back in the wooden chair, which
        creaked under the load. Looking at Dr. Fletcher, then
        at the jury, he said, "I'm a minister in the Universal
        World Christian Church and president of the Committee
        for Preborn Rights. I have a Doctorate of Div--"

             Johnson stood quickly to interrupt the recitation
        of credentials. "The defense stipulates that Pastor
        Decker is qualified."

             Czernek smiled. He stepped closer to the witness.
        "What, Pastor Decker, are the ethical problems with
        transoption?"

             Evelyn looked over to Johnson, waited, then
        scrawled a hasty note and slid it under him. He read
        it.

             \No objection?\

             He wrote at the bottom and handed it back.

             \Let Decker braid his rope. I want to hang the SOB
        on X-exam\.

             Fletcher read it and smiled. Karen tapped her arm
        to see. When the younger woman read it, she frowned.

             "The problem," Decker said, "simply stated, is
        that transoption is an unwarranted intrusion into the
        bodies of two separate women and a threat to the life
        of the preborn. There can be no justification for such
        interference with God's plan." He smiled cordially at
        the spectators, recognizing Jane Burke in their midst.
        "Or, to those who refuse to acknowledge God,
        interference with the functioning of nature."

             "Isn't it ethically proper," Czernek asked, "to
        bring more children into the world?"

             "Outlawing abortion outright would be a far
        greater step in that direction," Decker replied. "If
        even one preborn died as a result of transoption, it's
        reason enough to forbid the entire procedure. At the
        very least, it is an unnecessarily risky procedure,
        since the real mother could always have given the child
        up for adoption \after\ birth. At the worst,
        transoption is nothing more than kidnapping, child
        abuse, rape, and murder. It is an offense against God
        and the dignity of man."

             "For the purpose of such an ethical position,
        where would you say human life begins?" Czernek
        realized that he was on shaky ground. Anything Decker
        might accidentally say attacking abortion could redound
        to the detriment of Valerie's character. He had
        discussed the problem with Decker, who had agreed to
        stick to lambasting transoption. Ron, though, remained
        alert and ready for anything.

             Decker smiled. "Life begins at conception. Most
        people assume that because a preborn grows inside the
        mother, it must be part of the mother. Not true." He
        settled in, folding hefty arms across a stout belly. He
        nodded toward Dr. Fletcher and smiled sardonically.
        "I'm no medical expert, but I believe it has been
        confirmed that the preborn actually creates a barrier
        against the mother, which is called the placenta, out
        of its own genetic material. The placenta filters the
        mother's blood and only permits certain nutrients
        through into the preborn's own bloodstream. The
        placenta is Checkpoint Charlie for the fetus."

             "And what is your conclusion?"

             "A fetus is a human being with full human rights"
        Decker made an expansive gesture with his hands. "And a
        doctor has no more right to relocate a fetus--by force-
        -on an adult's whim than a government has to relocate
        its citizens by force. No surgeon should be allowed to
        play pharaoh."

             "Who then, has the ethical right to claim
        motherhood of the baby named Renata?"

             "Without a doubt, in the name of God and morality,
        she is the daughter of Valerie Dalton, though stolen
        even before infancy."

             "Thank you, Pastor Decker." Ron returned to
        Valerie's side. "No more questions."

             "Well," Johnson said, rising to his feet, "I have
        a few." With controlled eagerness, he walked over to
        the witness box and leaned forward.

             "You told the court little about your
        organization. Does it not in fact advocate the right to
        life of preborns?"

             "Indeed it does, sir."

             "And you take a rather zealous approach to
        opposing abortion, do you not?"

             "What do you mean?"

             "I mean," Johnson said, striding to the jury box,
        "that you picket abortion clinics, lobby for
        legislation banning abortions, and counsel pregnant
        women against having abortions, correct?"

             "All true."

             "Has your rage against abortion ever led you to
        engage in illegal activities?"

             "Objection!" Czernek shouted. "Counsel is asking
        the witness to incriminate himself."

             Judge Lyang sustained, but Decker raised a hand.

             "I'd like to answer that at length, if I may."

             "As you wish," Lyang said, her dark eyes observing
        the man with curiosity. She held up a finger of
        caution. "However, bear in mind that what you say
        becomes part of the public record and you are \not\
        under a grant of immunity."

             "My life," he replied, "is part of the public
        record." He shifted about to lean against the wooden
        rail before him.

             "Your Honor, members of the jury--I understand
        what Mr. Johnson's question attempts to wrest from me.
        If the defense can show that I have ever broken the law
        in my opposition to abortion, then Dr. Fletcher and the
        Chandlers could jump on the coattails of my moral
        position to prove that they were acting in the best
        interests of the child. I have never broken any law in
        my quest to outlaw what I and God consider to be murder
        in the first degree. Some supporters of the cause
        \have\ bombed abortuaries and physically assaulted
        abortionists. If you encountered a man or woman who
        freely admitted to having murdered thousands of
        defenseless babies and merely shrugged their deaths off
        as the removal of unwanted tissue, you'd be shocked and
        moved to violent outrage, too. I mean, how did the Jews
        feel when confronted with doctors who treated them as
        little more than experimental animals? Imagine our rage
        and understand our reactions."

             He sat up straight, hands on his knees. "But none
        of us has ever assaulted a pregnant woman. None of us
        has ever wrenched a living baby from inside a woman and
        claimed that we were \saving\ it. And \that\ is what
        separates the sometimes illegal actions of a pro-life
        activist from the unconscionably evil actions of this
        mercenary doctor and her child buyers."

             Decker stopped, leaning back. Johnson said nothing
        for a moment, merely looking the minister in the eye.
        \Now what?\ he thought.

             "An interesting point of view, in that it reveals
        a good deal of bias on your part."

             "Is it biased," Decker asked with an astonished
        tone, "to reach an ethical opinion and then act upon
        it?"

             Johnson smiled. "No. The evidence is clearly
        demonstrating that Dr. Fletcher did just that." He
        resumed his stroll around the courtroom, hands in
        pockets. "So, your group seeks to preserve the life of
        the preborn?"

             "Yes. And its right to be born according to God's
        plan."

             "And you seek to outlaw abortion. At least until
        people come to their senses and never choose it as an
        option."

             "Correct," Decker agreed.

             "And do you acknowledge that simply by outlawing
        abortion, you will not put an end to the practice?" He
        stopped to stare at Decker.

             "You'd certainly cut down on--"

             "Just yes or no, Pastor."

             "Yes."

             "So even with laws forbidding it, women will still
        seek abortion, and preborns will still be murdered--at
        \far greater\ risk to the mother from botched, illicit
        abortions. Correct?"

             "They'd get what they des--"

             "\Yes or no?\"

             "Yes. Women will break the laws of the state \and\
        the laws of God." He shook his head. "The curse of
        Eve."

             "Curse or no, Pastor, if you so highly value the
        lives of these preborn babies, why are you opposed to
        the only technique that gives them a fighting chance
        for life?"

             Decker jabbed a finger into his palm with emphatic
        force. "Leaving the preborn \alone\ gives it an even
        better chance for life."

             "Does it?" Johnson stepped over to the jury box
        without looking toward the jurors. "Are you aware of
        how many pregnancies end in spontaneous abortions and
        stillbirths?"

             "No." A small laugh erupted from his depths. "It
        must be small or we wouldn't have overpopulation
        problems."

             "The answer is about fifty percent."

             "Objection," Czernek said.

             "Sustained." Lyang gazed down at the defense
        counsel. "A lawyer's statements are not evidence, Mr.
        Johnson."

             Johnson paused to rephrase his question. He was
        surprised at how he considered each objection to be a
        personal affront. It hadn't seemed that way in law
        school. After a moment, he asked Decker, "I you knew it
        was fifty percent, would transoption be less ethically
        objectionable?"

             "No."

             "You mentioned that the preborn builds a barrier
        against the mother. Did you know that from the point of
        conception onward, the mother's immune system wages an
        unrelenting war against the embryo?"

             "I've read about it." Decker smiled wryly. "The
        curse of Eve again."

          "You didn't know, however, that most pregnancies
        abort spontaneously--miscarry--within the first month?"

             "No." Decker shifted restlessly in the chair.

             Johnson turned toward the jury. "All those actual
        human beings with rights to life, all dying without the
        mothers even knowing they're pregnant." He turned back
        toward the pastor, raising his voice. "Where, Mr.
        Decker, did \you\ receive the godlike ability to
        determine who shall live and who shall die? Or do you
        simply resent the idea that a woman can have her
        freedom of choice without any moral complications?"

             "Objection, Your Honor." Czernek's voice boomed
        with stern force. "The witness's personal opinions do
        not affect his expert testimony."

             "On the contrary," Johnson countered. "It bears
        heavily on the issue of bias."

             "Overruled."

             The younger lawyer nodded thanks toward the judge.
        "Is it not ethically superior for a woman to terminate
        an unwanted pregnancy \without\ becoming a murderess?"

             "Not," Decker said angrily, "if she becomes a
        party to kidnapping."

             "Do you feel that you have lost a little of your
        moral high ground to Dr. Fletcher, who labored for
        years to find a way to protect the rights of the
        preborn while you just pushed for laws to make pregnant
        women a new criminal class?"

             "Not at all."

             Johnson shrugged. "You said that if just one
        preborn were lost in a transoption, that was reason
        enough to forbid the procedure entirely. Would you say
        the same for prenatal heart surgery? I submit that if
        transoption \saves\ even one preborn that might
        otherwise be lost to abortion--\as it has\--then Dr.
        Evelyn Fletcher is closer to the spirit of God than you
        or anyone in this room!"

             Turning his back on the minister, Johnson looked
        triumphantly at Czernek and said, over his shoulder,
        "No further questions."

             Czernek, annoyed at being upstaged by his
        opponent, glowered at the tangled-haired young man.
        Looking up at the judge, he said, "I wish to call Ms.
        Jane Burke to the stand."

             Burke arose, catching the attention of the
        courtroom cameras not simply because she was the next
        witness. Years ago, Jane had realized that it did her
        movement no good for their proponents to look and dress
        like frumps. Men \and\ women, it turned out, rejected
        the feminist message from women who looked as if they
        spoke through a mouthful of sour grapes. She had lost
        weight, toned up, and dressed for the public eye.
        Looking more like someone from the cover of a fashion
        magazine than someone from a politically active
        organization, she wore a white-and-mauve business suit
        with broad shoulders, narrow waist, and a skirt that
        ended a few inches above the knee. She clasped a thin,
        matching mauve notebook in her hand. Striding
        gracefully past the bar, she nodded cordially to the
        departing sour-faced minister.

             "Do you swear," the court clerk said in sonorous
        tones, "that the testimony you are about to give shall
        be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the
        truth?"

             "I do," she said simply, and sat in the witness
        seat.

             She inadvertently cringed at the warmth left by
        Decker's corpulent flesh, as if both his girth and his
        philosophy might be contagious. She suppressed it
        almost instantly, though, sitting up with composure and
        elegance. Her walnut-hued hair possessed a fashionable
        wave, and she left her glasses in her purse.

             "Please state your name for the record," Czernek
        said, approaching her casually.

             "Jane Harrison Burke."

             "And what are your qualifications as an expert in
        reproductive ethics?"

             She touched her Sisters Network pin unconsciously
        and said, "I am the president of Women for Reproductive
        Freedom. I have a Ph.D. in--"

             "Defense stipulates she's qualified." Johnson knew
        the breadth of her education and did not want the jury
        to hear it.

             "Ms. Burke, as an expert in reproductive ethics,
        tell the court your observations concerning
        transoption."

             She sat back, straight in the chair, like a queen
        on a throne. "Ethically, transoption is a dehumanizing
        abomination."

             Czernek nodded toward the jurors. "Could you tell
        the court why?"

             She turned toward the jury. They watched her and
        listened, some with admiration, some with cautious
        distrust. "Over the past decade, advances in
        reproductive science have been made in an absolute
        moral vacuum. Purely in the interest of male genetic
        narcissism, doctors have labored mightily to devise
        ways that a man can have a child--usually a male child-
        -in spite of a woman's inability to conceive.
        Transoption is just another part of the mosaic."

             She used her long, graceful hands to explain,
        emphasize, illustrate. "New treatments for infertility,
        whose basic tenet is that an infertile woman is `sick'
        and must be `healed' at any cost, really do nothing
        more than reduce women to depersonalized breeding
        machines. Billions of dollars are being poured into
        research that tells a woman, `Look--all that you have
        done with your life is meaningless if you can't make
        babies. We'll find a way to make them in spite of your
        shortcomings. You are superfluous.'

             "\In vitro\ fertilization meant that a woman who
        once could not conceive normally could now be forced to
        bear an heir for her husband. Surrogate motherhood went
        one step further by cutting the woman out of the man's
        plans for fatherhood entirely. Now he could hire a
        woman--usually someone who had no choice but to accept
        the thousands of dollars offered--to undergo a
        pregnancy that would shove his chromosomes forward one
        more generation. Thank goodness laws are being made to
        ban \that\ bit of mercenary bondage." She looked at the
        women in the jury. "Transoption goes totally beyond
        anything yet encountered. It allows a man to seize a
        fetus from one woman and force it into another woman so
        that he can claim an heir even if that heir has
        absolutely no relation to him whatsoever! It is the
        ultimate cruelty for the ultimate in hollow victories.
        For the maintenance of the sham of fatherhood, women
        are now to become completely interchangeable wombs,
        totally robbed of any say in the use and disposition of
        their bodily tissues.

             "Mr. Decker made a big point about the fetus being
        genetically different from the woman simply because it
        contains a little genetic matter from a man. May I
        point out that it receives \everything else\ from the
        woman? It wouldn't be able to convert nutrients into
        its own genetic matter if there weren't a woman eating,
        breathing, and living to surround and protect it.

             "Or does Dr. Fletcher intend to cut out the woman
        entirely? Why should a man even marry? Is Dr. Fletcher
        working on ways to remove the entire uterus from a
        woman, connect it to a machine, and churn out babies on
        male demand? All for a price?" She stared hatefully at
        Fletcher. "A price not calculated just in dollars but
        also in the immeasurable suffering and oppression of
        the entire female species."

             Applause erupted in scattered portions of the
        courtroom. Cameras swung about for reactions. Judge
        Lyang gaveled for silence.

             Czernek let out a breath he had been holding,
        spellbound. "Thank you, Ms. Burke. Thank you for your
        insight on this. I have no further questions. You've
        covered it all." He returned to his seat.

             Johnson stood, running a hand through his hair.
        "Ms. Burke," he said with a touch of confusion, "you
        leave me at a loss for words. I can't understand how
        someone who battles so valiantly for women's rights can
        support something as brutally murderous as abortion.
        Doesn't abortion deprive an unborn woman of her right
        to life?"

             Burke smiled at the obvious baiting. "There is no
        such thing as an unborn woman," she said with a touch
        of condescension. "A fetus is a piece of tissue inside
        a woman, just as much a part of her as an appendix. It
        cannot reason, it cannot survive outside her body. It
        only has the \potential\ of someday being a human
        being. And that point comes at birth, when it becomes a
        separate and distinct human being."

             "Maybe I'm a little thickheaded," Johnson said.
        "Doesn't the fact that we are here today arguing over
        the custody of Baby Renata \prove\ that a fetus can
        survive outside its mother's body?"

             "By planting it in another woman's body,
        certainly. But that's the same as saying a parasite can
        survive without its host if one can move it around from
        host to host."

             Terry raised a surprised eyebrow. "Fetuses are now
        parasites?"

             "In a sense, yes. It is an invading organism that
        takes nourishment from its host."

             "So now you admit that it is a distinct organism."

             "No," she said. "Well, yes, inasmuch as it is a
        tumorlike growth that swells at a fantastic rate."

             "Tumor, parasite." He stared at her for a moment,
        then back at the jury. "Don't these words describe
        unnatural invasions of the human body that can happen
        to both men and women?"

             "Of course."

             "Isn't pregnancy, though, something that is not
        only natural but \vital\ to the human race, which can
        \only\ occur in women?"

             "Put that way, yes. But--"

             "Parasites stay with their hosts until the host
        dies. A fetus stays with a woman for nine months \max\,
        correct?"

             "Yes," Burke replied in a tight voice. She knew
        where he was leading her.

             Mild laughter mixed with whispered comments from
        the spectators.

             "It's common knowledge," he continued, "that a
        tumor can either remain one size indefinitely or grow
        until it kills the victim but a fetus grows at a
        specific rate to a specific point at which it signals
        the woman's body to expel it. Why do you support a
        woman's right to expel a fetus and let it die but not
        another woman's right to rescue an expelled fetus and
        implant it in her own body? Shouldn't that \also\ be a
        reproductive freedom?"

             "The fetus is not another woman's property."

             "True. And I'd question whether it is the first
        woman's property. Let's assume, though, that it is. If
        I abandon my property, can't someone come along and
        claim it?"

             "This is the problem, don't you see?" Burke
        pounded her fist on the chair arm. "Treating human
        beings like property whose title can be--"

             "Excuse me?" Johnson nearly shouted. "What is
        \that\ conclusion based on? When did fetuses become
        human beings to you? How can you object to the buying
        and selling of tumors and parasites?"

             "That's not what I mean. A fetus is like a
        houseguest of the woman. The uterus is the home, and
        the woman is the landlord. She has a perfect right as
        landlord to evict the tenant at any point. To demand
        that she care for the tenant against her will is
        slavery. But that doesn't mean a landlord can \sell\
        the tenant to another landlord."

             Johnson waved his hand dismissively. "Once again,
        only human beings can be considered tenants. But let's
        get back to body tissue. I presume you have your hair
        and nails done at a salon?"

             "Objection!" Czernek said loudly. "What possible
        bearing does the witness's groom--"

             "I am trying to establish a line of questioning,
        Your Honor."

             Judge Lyang, intrigued by the left-field nature of
        the question, said, "Overruled. Be aware, though, that
        I may interrupt at any time if I think you are
        harassing the witness."

             "Thanks, Your Honor," Johnson said. Turning back
        to Burke, he lowered his voice "Well?"

             "Yes," she said. "I do."

             "And when your hair and nails are trimmed, do you
        demand that the trimmings be burned in your presence?"

             "Hair and nails are composed of already dead
        cells."

             "Just yes or no, Ms. Burke."

             "No, of course not."

             "Have you had your appendix removed?"

             "Yes."

             "Do you have any idea what the surgeon did with it
        afterward?"

             Burke smiled wryly. "No."

             "I see." He paced around for a moment. "Have you
        ever had an abortion?"

             Some spectators frowned at hearing such an
        intrusive question.

             Burke sat up straight. "Yes, I have," she
        announced with pride.

             "Oh? And what did the surgeon do with the
        abortus?"

             "I don't know. I presume she disposed of it
        properly."

             Johnson slammed his fist on the rail. "You
        \presume\?" Did you know that aborted fetuses are the
        major source of liver cells for transplant research?"

             "No."

             "Did you know that their pancreatic islets are cut
        out and used for insulin experiments?"

             "No." She shifted uncomfortably in her chair.

             She wasn't alone. Spectators and members of the
        jury found images coming to mind that generated a
        queasy discomfort.

             Johnson pressed on. "Did you know that some brands
        of hair spray contain human placental extract?"

             "Yes." She laughed nervously without realizing it.

             "Did you know that fetal brain tissue is being
        used to treat Parkinson's disease? That fetal nerve
        fibers and astrocytes can be used to treat spinal
        injuries?"

             "I've read something about it."

             "And none of this disturbs you?"

             "Why should it?"

             Johnson turned toward the jury to make a helpless
        gesture with his hands. "You attack the mercenary
        nature of surrogate mothering and of doctors who charge
        fees for their services, but you seem unconcerned that
        there exists an entrenched financial interest involved
        in the practice of abortion. Researchers, after all,
        are getting valuable fetal material for free from
        women--in fact, charging women for having the material
        removed after the dubious privilege of being
        incubators. Do you find no ethical conflict in that?"

             Burke tried to formulate a reply to the lawyer's
        question.

             "At first glance," she said, "there might seem to
        be..." Her voice trailed off, her confidence slipping
        like a worn stocking.

             "Why do you support abortion and not transoption?
        Is it because abortion allows a woman to ensure that
        her mistakes don't live to haunt her?"

             Czernek shot to his feet. "Objection, Your Honor.
        Badgering the witness won't--"

             "Sustained."

             "--make up for his dearth of--"

             "\Sustained\, Mr. Czernek."

             Ron sat down. Terry slipped his hands into his
        pants pockets.

             "What, Ms. Burke, makes you think that Valerie
        Dalton was deprived of control over her body by
        transoption but that \you\ were not deprived by
        abortion? Neither of you knew what became of your fetal
        tissue. Would it have been better if Renata had been
        sent to a lab to have her liver, pancreas, and brain
        removed? Would it really have been better?"

             Burke stammered for a moment, her composure
        faltering. "I..." She stiffened. "Valerie Dalton
        expected an abortion, not an embryo transfer."

             "What she expected," Johnson said, "is what she
        \contracted for\. To be free of her pregnancy." He
        pointed to the screen. "Exhibit \A\ once again. Does
        the word `abortion' appear anywhere on it?"

             "A legalistic, semantic trick," Burke replied.

             "Is it? Valerie Dalton went into Bayside Medical
        pregnant. She came out not pregnant. She contracted for
        a pregnancy termination, and that's what she received.
        She explicitly signed away any claim to the tissue
        removed. She took full responsibility for her body, Ms.
        Burke, when she signed this paper. Her pregnancy was
        terminated just as surely as \your\ pregnancy was, Ms.
        Burke. Now what's the difference? Why didn't \you\ sue
        \your\ abortionist?"

             "Because \I\ received an abortion. \Her\ fetus
        \lived\!"

             "So it's not the right to a terminated pregnancy
        that you defend. It is the right to a dead fetus. Your
        ethical concern is with the life or death of the child.
        Is that correct?"

             "A fetus is not a child, God damn you!"

             Johnson slammed both hands on the rail and stood
        inches away from her. Sweat beaded on his face. An
        anger that was not feigned burned in his expression. In
        a voice that thundered, he said, "Everything you say
        and support \screams\ that a fetus is a child. You have
        no objection to individual fetal cells living on inside
        another person's liver or pancreas or brain. The only
        thing you object to is letting those cells remain
        intact to become a living, breathing human being!"

             "Mr. Johnson!" Lyang slammed her gavel. "You--"

             "No more questions, Your Honor."

             He turned away from Burke and returned to his
        seat. Karen Chandler hugged him, tears flowing down her
        face. Dr. Fletcher patted his arm with approval.

             The whispering from the spectators threatened to
        erupt into loud arguments. Everywhere, opinions
        polarized. Judge Lyang pounded away to no avail.

             "Court is recessed until"-- she glanced down at
        her calendar--"November tenth. Jurors are instructed
        not to discuss this case with anyone. Bailiff, clear
        everyone out!"

                   \\END OF EXCERPT OF CHAPTERS 9-15\\

                                  ###


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                            SOLOMON'S KNIFE
                            by Victor Koman
                              Price $4.95

                                 # # #
        -----------------------------------------------------------

                             Egalitarianism
                         By Sheldon L. Richman

             Reproduced from *The Free Market*, July 1990.

         Copyright (C) 1990 by the Ludwig von Mises Institute,
            851 Burlway Road, Burlingame, California 94010,
         [phone], and Auburn University, the O.P. Alford
        Center for Advanced Studies in Austrian Economics; the
          University of Nevada, Las Vegas; the Lawrence Fertig
        Student Center; and the *Review of Austrian Economics*.

              The magazine, The Free Market, included this
             statement in the front of its July 1990 issue:
            "Permission to reprint articles is hereby granted
              provided full credit and address are given."



        The *Washington Post* recently devoted front-page space
        to report a decline in support for egalitarianism.
        More than 70% of the people responding to a poll said
        they disagreed that "redistributing" wealth from those
        who earn it to those who do not was a proper function
        of government.  The story, of course, could barely
        conceal the paper's concern over the apparent growing
        opposition to the welfare state and its policies to
        "narrow the gap between the rich and the poor."
        Nevertheless, this represents a breakthrough.

        The people who worry about these things attribute the
        decline to Ronald Reagan and the 1980s, the alleged
        Decade of Greed.  That it might have something to do
        with developments in Eastern Europe, where governments
        preaching egalitarianism have failed so miserably, has
        not occurred to them.

        One is always entitled to be skeptical about polls, so
        it is too early to celebrate the demise of
        egalitarianism in America.  Besides, the evidence that
        it is really out of favor is scant.  How are we to
        explain most of the pending legislation in Washington,
        including the Americans with Disabilities Act and the
        Civil Rights Act?  There could be a lag between a
        change in the people's attitude about the welfare state
        and the legislative process, but I doubt that
        egalitarianism is dead or could die so easily.

        It is quite possible that egalitarianism still
        functions as an ideal, but that people have grown
        doubtful about whether it can be carried out.  Here the
        experience of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union has
        been instructive.  The governments in these countries
        assumed nearly complete power, ostensibly to fulfill
        the principle "from each according to his ability, to
        each according to his need."  The result was a caste
        society in which the rulers lived in relative luxury --
        compared to their subjects, if not the working class in
        the West.  Practice fell short of theory.  That ought
        to make people rethink the theory, but many will just
        chalk it up to flaws in human nature.  The last thing
        they will conclude is that the flaw is in the theory,
        not ourselves.

        Before sorting all this out, let's dispose of an
        economic point first:  the government cannot
        "redistribute" wealth.  The word in quotation marks
        implies that wealth is initially *distributed*.  It is
        not.  In the market there is no common pot from which
        someone ladles wealth.  The incomes we observe result
        from a long series of voluntary exchanges.  In each
        transaction, two parties decide that what they will get
        is more valuable than what they will give up.  If each
        did not believe that, no transaction would occur.  (The
        exception, of course, is income derived from government
        sources.)

        Since there is no distribution, it cannot be judged
        fair or unfair.  No one decided how much each person
        would get.  Rather, everyone had opportunities to enter
        or not enter into transactions, depending on their
        values and what contribution they could make to the
        productive process.  It makes no sense to call the
        "distribution" of income unfair if each step in the
        series of exchanges that brought that outcome was fair,
        that is, voluntary.

        But this basic economic point is not likely to persuade
        the egalitarian.  To him, the impersonal market process
        is unfair precisely because it does not take into
        account his feeling (for that is all it is) that
        something is wrong with variations in income.  If the
        market's principle of reward is contribution to
        production, he argues, and if that principle leads to
        unequal rewards, then the principle should be changed.

        Changed to what?  Different egalitarians have given
        different answers.  The differences are not important
        here; only the principle is.  Every egalitarian has
        presumed to call for interference in the peaceful
        system of voluntary exchange to bring about an
        arrangement of wealth fairer than the one the market
        would create.

        The egalitarian is right about one thing:  left to its
        own devices, the market will "distribute" wealth
        unequally.  It is an elementary truth, requiring no
        proof beyond simple pointing, that people are different
        in almost every way.  The have different degrees of
        intelligence, different talents, different levels of
        ambition, different qualities of alertness to
        opportunities, different physical capacities.
        Difference -- inequality -- is the rule.  We have no
        say in the matter, and we should be thankful for it.
        Imagine a world where everyone was the same.  The
        division of labor would not work, and we would all be
        equally poor.  It is precisely because we are different
        that the law can treat us in the same way and not cause
        a catastrophe.

        The law is the only realm where equality is properly
        recognized.  But equality in this context means one law
        for everybody.  A free society is one in which there
        are no castes, that is, no legally enforced divisions
        as found in feudal and socialist societies.  It is not
        a classless society.  Classes are merely groupings,
        based on income and other criteria, that result from
        voluntary association.  Using Ludwig von Mises's
        distinction, a class is not legally closed to entry; a
        caste is.

        The egalitarian is not satisfied with equality under
        the law.  In fact, he resents it because it accepts the
        natural differences between people.  In his effort to
        bring about equality in the economic realm, he must
        establish inequality in the legal realm.  Those thought
        to have too much will be treated differently from those
        thought to have to little.  The first will be deprived,
        the second endowed.  Bad equality therefore drives out
        good equality.  But notice that the egalitarian merely
        succeeds in substituting one set of inequalities for
        another.

        Only a dreamer would maintain that under an egalitarian
        regime all inequalities are wiped out (or even
        diminished).  On the contrary, the system rewards those
        excelling in the manipulation of the political process.
        Obviously, these skills are not equally "distributed."
        Instead of the market system, which rewards people for
        satisfying consumers, the egalitarian favors a system
        that rewards people for winning political office or
        currying favor with politicians and bureaucrats.  The
        egalitarian no doubt is the best judge of which kind of
        skill he has.

        What motivates the egalitarian?  Maybe at one point in
        history the motive was naive humanitarianism.  But no
        more.  The consequences of the interventionist state
        are too stark to be missed.  The poor are its first
        victims.  They are made humiliatingly dependent on the
        state, while regulations deprive them of the freedom to
        help themselves and taxes choke off economic
        opportunity.  In their name, a multitude of bureaucrats
        (and "private"-sector consultants) grow rich.  The
        politicians gain a constituency, but no matter how much
        money is spent, the problem is always worsening and the
        producers of wealth are always expected to give more.
        It is hard to find humanitarianism in this.  Honest
        humanitarians would have given up on the welfare state
        long ago.

        Those who cling to it are motivated by something else:
        envy.  What else can explain a system that worsens the
        condition of the purported beneficiaries as well as
        society's achievers?  At some point all innocent
        explanations fall away and what is left is hatred -- of
        achievement in itself.

        It is bad enough that the administrators of the welfare
        state are moved by a hatred of ability.  The greater
        tragedy is that they poison the minds of the
        constituency they so desperately need.  Instead of the
        poor learning to admire the productive and aspire to be
        like them, they are taught by the system that their
        poverty is caused by others' affluence.  They learn to
        resent achievement and to prefer seeing the achievers
        dragged down.  That is all the welfare state can bring
        about.

        Egalitarianism rests on the principle that people are
        not responsible for themselves.  It is not a poor
        person's fault that he is poor; nor do the rich deserve
        their wealth.  The opposing view need not hold that
        everything is in a person's control.  Luck can play a
        part in wealth and poverty.  Nevertheless, no two
        people react the same way in the same circumstances.  A
        person's perceptiveness, judgment, and ambition play a
        large part in his fortunes.

        The welfare statist will cry out that we have
        responsibility to those less fortunate.  We do, but in
        a sense other than the egalitarian imagines.  We have a
        responsibility to create and maintain a free society so
        that all may go as far as their abilities and
        determination will take the

                                  ###
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