“Then do we hire someone to stand by the freezer for a few years and make sure it keeps running?” Jake demanded.

“I don’t know,” Corvallis said, “I haven’t thought it through yet.”

Marcus, the junior lawyer, had been silent ever since blundering into Alice’s trap. He spoke up now. “Our law firm has done some work for the Waterhouse-Shaftoe Family Foundation—the primary funder of WABSI, the Waterhouse Brain Sciences Institute,” he announced.

“Of course it has,” Alice said. “Argenbright Vail works for everyone.”

Marcus held up a hand to stay her. “It’s a big firm,” he said, “and we are very careful to avoid conflicts of interest. We have to be. All I’m saying is that, around here, such foundations are pretty common. A lot of people have made a lot of money in tech. When they reach a certain point in their lives, they start giving it away, and that’s how these foundations get established. They interlock”—he laced his fingers together—“in complicated ways. Now, as soon as a death certificate is issued for Richard Forthrast, according to his last will and testament, a new one of those is going to be brought into existence.”

“The Forthrast Family Foundation,” Alice said, “inevitably.”

“You don’t have to buy your own freezer, is my point. I think the odds are that if you go and talk to Wabsy—”

“Wabsy?”

“WABSI, which, as Corvallis points out, is less than a mile away, you can work something out in which Richard’s brain is donated to science.”

“But then they could do anything they like with it!”

Marcus shook his head. “You can write up any contract you want. Be as specific as you like about what is to be done with it.”

“Why would they sign such a contract?” Alice asked.

“Because the Forthrast Family Foundation is going to give them a shit-ton of money,” Zula predicted, “and money talks.”

“I’m just the lawyer here,” Stan said, “but I like this. We cannot make a reasonable argument that Ephrata Cryonics is insolvent, because it is being supported by El Shepherd out of his own seemingly bottomless funds. So. If the family’s preference is that Dodge’s brain not be prematurely subjected to the same destructive scanning process that ELSH is pushing, then, according to the terms of the health care directive, we simply need to make an argument that there is some better process available. And if there’s anything to what Corvallis is saying, that’s going to be easy.”

“Easy enough to satisfy Elmo Shepherd?”

“We don’t have to satisfy him,” Stan said. “We just have to be able to look him in the eye when we’re telling him to fuck off.”

Chapter 5

Chapter 5