“I guess… if that’s what it says.”
“And there, at the bottom of the second page, that’s your signature, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Indicating that you had received this copy of the warnings, had read them, and understood them?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you. I have nothing more.” Ephraim’s face showed relief as he came down from the stand. Funny, Erin didn’t have any trouble reading his expressions anymore.
“Is that it for me?” he whispered, as soon as he sat at their table.
“Yeah,” she told him. “Now it’s NeuroTek’s turn.”
Clark proceeded to call a progression of expert witnesses—a neurobiologist, a product safety warnings expert, an implant design expert, and a production cost analyst. By now they, along with Clark and his legal assistants, were a smoothly running litigation team. They had all been through this many times before, and each expert made his or her points quickly and clearly.
On cross, Erin brought out how much they were being paid by NeuroTek, how many times they had worked for that company before, how even the foundations or institutions that employed them were partly funded by NeuroTek. As she inquired, she scanned thousands of lines of their prior deposition and trial testimony, looking for any inconsistency she might use to undermine their credibility. But there were no major discrepancies, and explanations for the minor inconsistencies had all been ironed out in the previous NeuroTek trials.
“NeuroTek’s commercials don’t make any mention of the risk of memory loss, do they?” she asked the safety warnings expert. She displayed a series of holo images from the implant’s advertising: a stockbroker calling up quotations by the second, students cramming for exams, a couple blissfully engaging in sex from hotel rooms in different cities, with none of the encumbering hardware.
“No,” the witness conceded.
“And these fine-print warnings didn’t do much for a thousand other NeuroTek users who have been mind-damaged by the implant, did they?”
For the space of a heartbeat, the expert looked at her. Then he raised his eyebrows. Erin had gone too far; and in that strange, involuntary communion that sometimes forms between lawyer and hostile witness, they both knew it.
“Objection!” Clark shouted. “That’s irrelevant and highly prejudicial!”
“Sustained.” The judge looked at Erin, and the waving spectacles now did not make her face look funny, only grotesque. “Ms. Mendel, this is your second violation, and a serious one: that remark also violates the court’s pretrial order. You are personally fined five thousand dollars, and the plaintiff is sanctioned with removal of your final rebuttal argument.” The judge turned toward the juror. “You are instructed to disregard Ms. Mendel’s remark. The only injury at issue in this case is the plaintiff’s.” Then the judge adjourned for the day, and Ephraim looked at her, eyes open wide.
“It went a little better today,” she said. “You did great. I’m the one who screwed up.” He had actually done better than great. His testimony had been the most compelling she had ever seen from the witness stand. She could only hope that Calendri, the juror, had seen it the same way.
Erin closed her eyes. She hadn’t slept more than three hours a night since taking this case. Today she had not done much, if anything, to shake NeuroTek’s expert testimony. And she had lost one of the few plaintiff’s advantages, the opportunity to address the juror last. Tomorrow would be her final chance.
Ephraim cleared his throat. She came back to awareness, realized they were still at their table, alone in the now-empty courtroom. How long had he been sitting there quietly beside her?
“I… didn’t think you understood when you walked out yesterday,” he said. “But you did. And you made me… say it. I didn’t want to—at first I was angry. I’m not anymore.”
“I think I do understand, Ephraim. The problem is I just don’t know how to put it into words. Maybe if I tried what you do… scan all night, find the right images…”
He was shaking his head, then smiled wryly. “A little late to be learning new tools.” His smile faded. “If you hadn’t stopped me out there… I would have evoked the interface.” He paused, his eyes on her face. “You have everything you need,” he said finally. “But it doesn’t just come from here.” He pointed to his head. “It comes from here, too.” He touched her lightly, just below her collarbone, and that brief contact ran through her like an electrical current.
“Maybe so.” She managed to smile. It would be nice to be able to talk to him about something beside this case. “This is my problem from here on. You should go home, get some rest. Tomorrow’s a big day.”
“I think we both should get some rest. No more working most of the night, okay?”
How had he known that? “Sure,” she lied. “I’ll go home and get some sleep.”
Ephraim didn’t go home. Instead, he rode the mag-lev out into the countryside beneath the darkening sky, getting off finally at a deserted ag platform far beyond the urban lights. The leaves of tall crop plants whispered in the night breeze beneath billions of stars. The green-scented darkness between the plants was the darkness that lurked inside his head, waiting to eat him. He summoned the access code images, and then, face turned to the stars, he banished them. Forever.
He had made a promise to Erin, in that moment on the stand when she had cried out to him to stop. He would go on. The stored data would leak slowly through the faulty interface, taking a birthday here, overwriting a moment of love or laughter or loss there, until it was all gone. Then, the process would end. He would be left with whatever scraps of yesterday remained. Enough to know how much he had lost.
He wondered if he would remember Erin.
The lights of the city-bound mag-lev appeared on the horizon, sliding across the flat land toward him. It was time to go back, if he was going to be in court on time. Ephraim turned his back on the beckoning darkness and trudged back to the platform.
Erin closed her eyes and went somewhere else. In bed, sleeping gloriously late, in a cabin somewhere in the countryside with real windows. The sun is shining outside and quail are calling and a slight breeze lifts the drapes. The breeze carries the faint scents of wildflowers and pine needles, and from beside her comes the smell of a man and recent sex, how a certain man might smell after sex. Ephraim…
She raised her head, opened her eyes, and checked the time: 12:47 P.M. She had no time for fantasy. Her chin was wet, there was a sour taste in her mouth, and it was not wildflowers nor pine needles nor man-scent she smelled, but vomit. She flushed the toilet and went to the sink, wiped off her face, rinsed her mouth. She hadn’t thrown up like that for years, not since right before her first trial.
God, she was a mess! A good thing she kept her hair so short; long hair hanging into the toilet bowl while you’re puking your guts out could really spoil the appearance. She checked: 12:52.
The testimony of NeuroTek’s last two experts that morning had gone no better for Ephraim than the day before. Afterward, they had gone to lunch; she had just lost what little she had been able to eat. And now, in five minutes, she had to go in and give the final argument she was nowhere near good enough to give.
Erin wanted nothing so much as to run—down the hall, into the elevator, out of the building. They couldn’t catch her and make her come back to do this. But Ephraim would be left sitting in that courtroom by himself.
12:58. She had to go now. She walked into the courtroom and when the judge called her name she got up and stumbled to the podium, leaned on it for support. They were all waiting for her to speak—the juror, the judge, Clark, the media reps, a million viewers, Ephraim. Why would any sane person put herself through this? It was, like his art, nothing but an act of blind and unreasoning courage, like diving from a cliff into a dark, unfathomable sea. And all she had were her words.