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Jennings’ face was flushed, his lips tightly pursed. “Walter,” he said, “you’re the nearest thing to an expert we’ve got around here on this transplant business. Have you ever heard anyone argue against declaring a man dead because his kidney or heart was still alive in someone else?”

Sturbridge stared at him. “Well, no. The early transplants were kidneys taken from identical twins, and the question didn’t come up. When they started doing hearts and lungs and more and more kidneys, they had to use organs from people who were legally dead, but they had to work fast. Of course all kinds of releases are signed, and I’ve never heard of any legal tangle about it.”

“I told you so,” Hartman cried, jumping up and waving his hands at Jennings. “John Phillpott Tanker was legally dead. Five doctors at University Hospital said so. No whiz-kid lawyer can change that.”

“Is that so?” said Jennings. “Well, how about the fellows who were hung by the neck until some doctor said they were dead, but the relatives took them down and revived them; how about the ones that came to in an undertaker’s shop after some trusty sawbones said all was over; do they have to stay legally dead? Hell, no. You know that and I know that.”

“The whole body was revived,” Hartman cried. “The same person was still there. The doctor’s mistake was obvious.”

“Does it have to be the whole body?” Jennings demanded.

“How about filling me in?” Sturbridge said. “I can hear the shooting but what are you shooting at?”

“It’s the damnedest thing,” Jennings said. “You know about Tony Krillus. Well, Yates is determined to get money. Old man Krillus won’t part with any. Holly here— he pointed at Hartman—is in Probate Court starting on John’s estate. Yates has brought in this New York fellow, and Holly can’t even get the death certificate admitted. They argue that it is an inaccurate and unsatisfactory statement inasmuch as Tanker just isn’t totally dead.”

Hartman snorted. “I never expected in all my days to sit in a courtroom and hear it argued that a man wasn’t totally dead when he’s been out in Spring Valley for months with a big marble stone on top of him. I feel like I’m watching one of those way-out television shows.”

“Damn it all, Holly,” Jennings said, “transplanting hearts and kidneys was way-out television just a damned short while ago. I don’t want any calm superior legal air about this. This is my ass. I expect to inherit a damn big chunk of John’s estate as you both well know. Anything, and I mean anything, God damn it, that threatens to get in my way is a matter of deep personal concern.”

There was a pause.

“What does Yates hope to gain with all this hoopla about the death certificate?” Sturbridge asked.

“Now you’re getting to the nub of it,” Jennings said. “My spies tell me that Yates has dreamed up the idea of filing suit against the Tanker estate. He is going to claim that without Tanker’s kidney Tony Krillus would be dead. So what Yates is going to say is that if Tony Krillus killed the Andrews boy, he did it only because Tanker’s kidney kept him alive to do it. So he is going to sue the hell out of Tanker. So what I am asking Holly is, does the whole body have to be revived? I’m worried as hell about this. A man can lose an arm or a leg or even both arms and both legs and his eyes and the Lord knows what else and still be John B. Citizen. But can a kidney or a heart lose everything else and keep on living and be John B. Anybody? Or just what the hell is the situation?”

Sturbridge couldn’t take his eyes off Hartman. God, he thought, he's really got the wind up. He watched a muscle jump in Hartman’s cheek beneath the handkerchief he was rubbing over his face.

Hartman cleared his throat and got a grip on himself. “I think you are getting excited without good reason, Lawrence. Judge Cotton has to let them present whatever arguments they want, but you’ll see he’ll throw the whole business out fast enough. The estate will be settled just about as you expect.”

“I’m not sure Judge Cotton gives a damn,” Jennings said. “He’s due to retire soon. What do you think, Walter?”

“He’s going to be sitting on a case that’s hotter than the Scopes monkey trial,” Sturbridge said. “If the old boy has to write new law or change old law, he’s going to do his damnedest to make sure the Supreme Court finally says he’s right.”

“Damn it all,” Jennings said, “my wife will skin me alive. And you too, Holly. We figured we were all set. Now everything makes me feel worse and worse. Holly, how little of a person is still that person? Hell, with accidents and operations nowadays you lawyers must have some irreducible bit in mind.”

“No,” Hartman said. “As long as there’s anything there it’s a person. They can be deaf, dumb, blind, and completely paralyzed and still be a legal person. But with this transplant business, I just don’t know. I want to call up a few people and do a little reading. I’ll find something.” He stood up, watching Jennings.

“O.K., Holly, do the best you can.” Jennings waved him away and watched him out of the office. “He’s damn near as scared as I am, and I’m not kidding you one single bit, Walter, when I tell you I’m scared as hell. Last few months you’ve had a little taste of money, the way those articles of yours have been selling. I see your new car and things like that and I’m glad for you. But just ask yourself, Walter, how you’d feel if you had been looking at five million dollars as being so nearly your own that you could feel it in the way people spoke to you, the way your wife treated you, the way you treated yourself, and then you just begin to smell faintly, like a far-off forest fire, the chance that you may lose it.”

He lifted his big body out of the chair and went into his office and returned with two cold bottles of beer. He looked at Sturbridge. “Got any ideas, Walter?”

“None that are much help,” Sturbridge said. “I’m no lawyer but my first guess would be that transplants will be thrown out and the estate will be whacked up in the usual fashion.”

“I’d like that,” Jennings said. “But how’re they going to throw it out? You might like to disown your father or your brother but you can’t do it. The relationship is a fact. Tony Krillus is part John Tanker. Tanker was worth ten million bucks. It’s new. It’s different. But I don’t see how you can say they’ll throw it out.”

Sturbridge held up his hand. “What I really meant to say is that it’s just going to be too confusing. Next thing you’ll be saying this Tony Krillus is somehow related to the fellow that got Tanker’s other kidney or even his heart or liver.”

“That’s just the point,” Jennings said. “Isn’t he? What do we mean by related? Events don’t care how confused we are. The lawyers might figure a Martian space ship should be covered by the laws of trespass, but will that make any damn difference to the Martians? You have a new kind of person here and the lawyers are just blowing smoke out their ears when they talk as if present law will cover everything.”

Jennings looked tired, but he was able to pound the table with his half-empty beer bottle. “I have to face it, Walter,” he said. “That bunch of quacks at University Hospital is so damned anxious to get a Nobel Prize, they’d put the balls from a bull on a refugee eunuch and lease him out for stud if they thought that would do it. Why, Christ, from what I read in our paper, they can’t even say for sure Tanker was dead and make it stick. When I think of that smoothie from the hospital office giving us that ‘everything for science’ bit and rolling his eyes toward the ceiling like some damned undertaker’s assistant, while all the time John was in Recovery fighting for his life, I tell you, Walter, it makes my blood boil. The fact is I’ve been screwed—and my wife and all my relatives will soon be shouting it at me—I’ve been screwed. Should have listened to you at the hospital that night. You smelled a rat—probably just instinct. But Holly, he was so damned happy with all those papers and being the big father advisor, he never even stopped to wonder what he might be getting my ass into.”