Chapter 6: Get Her Out
"We're done here."
Nathan closed the patent file hard enough to make a sound, which is the closest he came all night to losing his temper, and I noticed that the thing which finally did it was not any accusation. It was the inventor field.
Beyond the partitions, the lobby had filled up rather than emptied. Lenses against the glass. Somebody's producer holding a light. Anything said loudly enough in that enclosure would be a silent clip with subtitles by six in the morning, and every person at that table knew it, and it changed what they were each prepared to say out loud.
"The board has not adjourned," Anneke said.
"There is an unauthorized competitor sitting inside a privileged meeting."
He meant me. Julian had already stepped out past the partition with the other non-participants and was standing where everyone could see he was standing.
Rhea slid one page across the table.
"Before anybody removes anybody, paragraph three."
Nathan left it lying there.
My father picked it up, and that told me something about the two of them I filed away for later.
It was the trust's designation of its scientific representative for the compliance review. It named me. It defined my access, narrowly. And it cited the clause obliging Sterling to seat that representative in any meeting where the disputed rights were under discussion — a clause my mother had put in after being excluded from a meeting about her own work in 2009, though the document does not say so.
"This doesn't waive conflicts," Nathan said.
"No," Rhea said. "It discloses them. Which is the part your office skipped."
Celeste took the crown off.
She did it without ceremony, mid-argument, and set it on the board table between us, carefully enough that the silver made no sound at all against the wood. Nobody commented. It sat there for the rest of the night, in front of the empty chair, catching the overhead light.
"Evelyn works for the company trying to take our programme."
"Which is why Mercer Nova is outside," I said.
"You're not outside."
"The patent didn't move when I changed employers. It stayed exactly where my mother put it."
My father read the designation twice. "Who appointed you?"
"The acting trustees. After independent counsel reviewed the conflict and imposed the restrictions in the appendix."
"I should have been consulted."
"That would rather defeat the word independent."
His thumb pressed a crescent into the corner of the page. Those hands taught me to load a microscope stage when I was nine years old — the pressure to use, how to tell by sound when the slide is seated. They also signed a statement, thirteen years later, that ended my career in a paragraph.
Anneke turned to the corporate secretary. "Ms. Vale. Is the designation valid on its face?"
Ms. Vale checked the seal, then the electronic verification, then — because she has been doing this for nineteen years and does not skip steps when people are watching her — the registry endorsement.
"It is."
"Then Dr. Sterling remains until independent counsel advises this board otherwise."
Nathan leaned toward her. "You are permitting an adverse party to hear confidential company information."
"I am permitting the licensor's representative to hear information the licence obliges us to provide. If you believe a specific item is privileged, identify it when we reach it, and I will rule on it."
Specificity has always been the enemy of men who survive on sweeping statements. He had nothing to identify, because he hadn't read the licence recently enough to know what was in it, and admitting that in front of the audit chair was worse than losing the point.
The two security officers stepped back from the opening.
The younger one wouldn't look at Nathan on his way out. He had wanted written authority before putting his hands on somebody, and he'd been right to want it, and I hope he understood that. Nobody in that building asked for written authority the night they walked me out. I have wondered since whether anybody would have refused if they had.
Celeste was looking at the row of empty chairs along the far side. The nearest one had been held for Sterling's largest institutional investor, whose representative had left within ninety seconds of the trial hold appearing on the screen. The place card was still standing on the table, folded, with his name on it in the same gold as the gala programme.
Anneke picked it up and passed it to Ms. Vale.
"Give Dr. Sterling a board packet."
Celeste's voice dropped. "Not that chair."
Nobody answered her. Ms. Vale was already moving.
I went round the table and sat down where an investor had been expected to spend his evening telling my sister she was the future, and Ms. Vale put a black binder in front of me, and I opened it before I sat all the way down.
It was thinner than Nathan's.
Which told me nearly as much as anything inside it did.
Mine had the public licence summary, the trial notice, and Celeste's appointment resolution. Nathan's had four additional coloured tabs down the fore-edge, and when he saw me counting them he moved his hand across the top of the stack — not quickly, not obviously, but he moved it.
"Same packet?" I asked Ms. Vale.
She checked the distribution list. "It should be."
"Then preserve every version distributed tonight. All of them, including the ones on the table."
Anneke nodded before Nathan had finished inhaling to object. Ms. Vale collected the electronic identifiers from both binders and added them to the hold, and I watched Nathan work out that the tabs were now evidence.
"We'll take the licence history," Anneke said.
My father had not sat down through any of it.
"Helena transferred the technology to Sterling before she died."
Rhea opened the second case.
"Then it's fortunate," she said, "that Helena kept the original."