Green Grow the Dollars Page 7

Hilary Davis had long since satisfied herself that Scott Wenzel was a first-class scientist.

  Otherwise she would not have been living with him. There was no room in Hilary’s life for bush league efforts of any description. So she felt no qualms about abandoning their discussion at this point.

  “Well, you should know,” she agreed, rising and neatly sweeping her debris, but not one particle more, into a trash basket. “And don’t forget that we’re running for Environmental Clean-Up tomorrow morning. I’ll probably go to bed early.”

  Thanks to her training, Scott’s first response was to dispose of his own chicken bones. “I’ll remember but, if I work late, I may not make it,” he warned her.

  This was nothing more than a declaration of his formal right to refuse, and they both knew it. The reality was that at six o’clock the next morning he would automatically join Hilary in donning winter gear and running ten miles to promote a worthy cause. Even so, his participation on a freezing Saturday morning was regarded, by himself at least, as doing Hilary a favor. Fortunately Hilary was always willing to settle for substance as she went about the onerous process of socializing Scott Wenzel.

  How far she had come along that road became clear to her when the triumphant runners were digging into blueberry pancakes.

  “Hilary’s got all that stuff about high-carbohydrate preparation for a marathon,” he was saying casually to the man on his other side. “I’ll bring it to Sally and Ed’s tomorrow if you want to take a look at it.”

  Scott was not only planning to attend a cocktail party voluntarily, he was also using it as an occasion for a mild interaction with someone else. Four years ago she had to haul him, kicking and screaming, to any function that was not heavily larded with plant geneticists.

  But by the time they were driving home from Sally and Ed’s, she realized that there were forces at work far beyond her own tuition. For Scott to listen to a 20-minute lecture on the bond market was downright unnatural. The tide of well-being she had sensed in him on Friday night had been swelling steadily all weekend. And every increment was the result of a session at the laboratory.

  “Have a good time?” she began, as neutrally as possible.

  “Great!”

  This was so uncharacteristic that Hilary began to be worried. “Then it’s a good thing we made it. You were so late getting back from the lab, I thought you might have decided to give the party a miss.”

  “Hell, no. I just forgot the time while I was planning the new greenhouses. You wouldn’t believe the amount of computerization we can introduce.”

  Euphoria was all very well and good but, at the rate that Scott’s was running, it threatened to break the dam.

  “Don’t you think you’d better win your case before you start spending the royalties?” she advised.

  Scott swung the car into the parking lot with a joyful swerve. “I’m just going to be in a posture of intelligent anticipation when all that money starts rolling in.”

  Hilary sighed. In some ways Scott was an innocent. He seemed to regard a law court as a medieval tourney where the champion of right and purity automatically prevailed. She had been in practice long enough to know better.

  “Look, Scott, the Vandams have been in this business a long time. They’re not going to show up at the hearing with empty hands. I know you’ve got wonderful lab records. Has it ever occurred to you that they do, too?”

  Scott had already swung open his door and clambered out. As he turned back to her, his face was under the dome light and she could see that his eyes were dancing.

  “It doesn’t make any difference what records they’ve got. We’re still going to wipe them out.”

  In their own ways, both of the women close to Scott Wenzel had tried to urge compromise. Both had been rebuffed. There the similarity ended. When Monday morning rolled around, Hilary Davis was engulfed by different concerns but Barbara Gunn returned to Wisconsin Seedsmen.

  As she hung up her coat, she saw that Wenzel’s parka and boots were dry enough to indicate that he had been at work for over an hour. The pile of dictation cassettes in her basket, the result of his weekend labors, seemed to confirm her view of his monastic regimen.

  By the time Ned Ackerman arrived she was well launched into the first cassette and receiving confirmation of other opinions as well.

  “I was right,” she announced as soon as they had exchanged their usual greetings.

  Still bundled up, Ackerman had headed straight for the coffee pot. Now he came to her side, his cheeks still rosy with cold, his hands cradling the cup so that his fingers could share its warmth.

  “About what?” he asked.

  “About Scott,” she retorted as if it were the only subject possible. “You said the VR-117 was the most important thing in the world to him. But he’s spent the whole weekend working on this new thing of his, the MF-23 or whatever it is. That’s what he’s excited about now. I can hear it in his voice as he dictates. Another month and it will be all he thinks of. Then, he’ll be too busy for this lawsuit. So why don’t you make him stop being pigheaded now?”

  Ackerman smiled. “Scott would die if he didn’t have some project going in the lab, that’s what keeps him alive. And he’s bound to get enthusiastic about whatever’s on the fire. That doesn’t mean he’s forgotten VR-117. Not when it could mean so much to his career.”

  “Oh.”

  He laughed outright at her disappointment. “But you’ve got the real corporation mind, Barbara,” he congratulated her. “That’s the way big companies think. If you were a betting woman, I’d offer you five to one that we’ll still hear talk about compromise. But from them, not us.”

  The possibility had never occurred to her.

  “From Vandam’s?” she gasped, awestruck.

  “That’s right!” he said buoyantly. “I can smell it in the air.”

  Chapter 7

  Meaty Pods

  WITHIN 24 hours, other noses were twitching as well. John Thatcher’s first whiff came from his luncheon guest.

  Paul Jackson was all affability as he strolled up to Thatcher’s table at the Banker’s Club. But the wolfish gleam in his dark eyes was more pronounced than usual and it was he, not Thatcher, who took the plunge.

  “When Ackerman and Wenzel came to me about going after Vandam’s, I knew that meant Standard Foods. But I must have been asleep at the switch. I didn’t plug the Sloan in until a few days ago.”

  Thatcher had more sense than to rise to this bait. He waited courteously.

  Jackson was not perturbed. “Tell me, how much is losing Numero Uno going to cost SF, John?” he asked.

  On Wall Street, information is paid for in kind. According to Vandam’s and SF, the Numero Uno case was open and shut. But, as the injunction against the Vandam spring catalog demonstrated, there was another side represented by Paul Jackson. Within the limits of propriety, Thatcher wanted to round out his picture. To do so, he had to be willing to trade.

  “Standard Foods is solid as a rock,” he said, submerging thoughts about their most recently acquired subsidiary. “They can get along very nicely without Numero Uno. But you know better than I do that Numero Uno will be worth millions to whoever controls it. Standard Foods will fight tooth and nail to keep that right.”

  Usually the prospect of battle exhilarated Jackson. But now he said only, “Don’t be too sure of that. This morning we got the nibble I’ve been expecting.”

  “The nibble being . . . ?”

  “An offer to compromise,” said Jackson. “Oh, that’s not how they put it, but that’s what it amounts to. They want to talk.”

  So much for Dick Vandam’s defiance! Thatcher’s reflection was interrupted when Jackson went on to say, “In many ways I suppose it’s the only sensible solution.” Thatcher cocked his head thoughtfully. Jackson, in spite of his joy in combat, was far too able a counselor not to employ sweet reason when it was desirable. There might have been grounds for Paul Jackson to sound disappointed, but why the tone of
wry detachment?

  Jackson grinned. “It doesn’t make any difference what I suppose,” he confessed. “There is no way anybody can make my boys budge an inch. Even me.”

  “They’re confident they have a strong case?” Thatcher suggested.

  He was talking to a man who made strong cases out of straw. “They’re confident—period. Even if it means going to the Supreme Court,” said Jackson with approval. “When they finally agreed at least to attend this confab, I was willing to fly out and sit in. You know what Ackerman told me? He said not to bother, he and Scotty could handle this one themselves. They’re saving me for courtroom work, and they want to keep costs to a minimum.”

  Thatcher was suitably impressed. “I thought, when you took a case, you were the one who called the tune.” Jackson shook his head in mock despair. “It’s a hell of a note when the clients know more than the lawyers about what’s going on. But this plant genetics business has been an eye-opener for me. And it sure as hell isn’t a subject you bone up on overnight.”

  They had now reached the point Thatcher was interested in. “I admit that until recently I thought of plant protection as something that covered a few roses and shade trees. Then Bowman filled me in on the new legislation, and I realized it was much bigger than that.”

  “The Plant Variety Protection Act of 1970,” Jackson said glibly. “Did you know that tomatoes were originally excluded from its coverage? Standard Foods damn near split a gut lobbying to keep them out—and a few other things like celery and carrots. They were scared to death that they’d end up paying through the nose for the vegetables they use the most. But the act resulted in so many new varieties that nobody could justify continued exclusion of tomatoes. So there was an amendment and the boys in the back room got busy. Anyway, at least one boy got busy.”

  “And Standard Foods decided to guarantee itself low- cost tomatoes by getting its hands on the tomato patent,” Thatcher continued. “That’s why they bought Vandam’s.”

  “If you can’t do it one way, you do it another,” Jackson said cheerfully. “But I wasn’t talking about legislation. It’s the experimentation itself that’s surprised me. You do realize that you can get patent protection only for propagation by asexual reproduction?”

  “I don’t like the sound of that,” Thatcher observed.

  “Who would?” replied Jackson. “But it means propagating by seed is out. It’s got to be a lot more basic than that. And the media boys have distracted us with all their hype. They’ve scared us to death with talk about creating new forms of animal life, cloning human beings, unleashing deadly viruses by accident. And while we’ve been bird- dogging the zoologists, it’s the botanists who’ve been having a field day, juggling one phylum with another. We’re probably all going to be killed by a man-eating petunia.”

  Thatcher was prepared to defer his anxieties about homicidal flower beds. Instead he reminded Jackson of the statistics about high-yield rice and high-yield wheat. “In the meantime the world gets a better supply of food, as you well know. But I suppose what you’re really complaining about is that you don’t feel you’re on top of this patent suit.”

  “You’ve got to let the scientists call the shots. They’re the only ones who know what’s going on. In an infringement suit, you just have to prove that the defendant has been poaching. That means everyone’s gotten into manufacture. But, with an interference hearing, you’re still in the laboratory stage. When Wenzel tells me that there’s no way on earth his experiments could have been duplicated by accident, I take his word for it. What else can I do?”

  On examination Thatcher decided this statement of faith was not as broad as it might be. “You take his word that there’s been stealing,” he murmured. “Do you also take his word on who’s doing it?”

  “How the hell can I tell a crooked plant geneticist from a straight one? I’ve never seen one before,” Jackson grumbled irritably before passing to one small blessing. “But what the hell! I’m a lot better off than poor Art Bixby, who’s representing Vandam’s. His mad scientist is down in Puerto Rico and hasn’t even been consulted.”

  “It sounds to me as if they should get him up here.”

  “They should have done it months ago. I’ve had the benefit of talking with the guy who’s in on the ground floor. Art’s been getting everything filtered through Dick Vandam. The only reason Pendleton’s attending the conference is that he was coming to the States anyway for the meetings.”

  Thatcher frowned. Paul Jackson’s gusto occasionally made him incomprehensible. The conference was clearly the first attempt at negotiating a compromise. “Then what are the meetings?”

  “The plant geneticists are having their annual powwow in Chicago next week,” Jackson explained.

  “Ah! A professional convention. That should make for an interesting coming together of the principals. From what you say, it’s the one arena with a lot of people competent to judge some of these claims.”

  “More interesting than you think. Vandam’s had been planning to stage a big demonstration of their tomato, hard on the heels of their catalog publicity. Now there’s a court order squelching that program.” Jackson grinned complacently. “That’s the peg on which they plan to hang these discussions with my clients.”

  The self-confidence obtaining at Wisconsin Seed must be infectious, Thatcher decided. Even if Scott Wenzel were one of those rare scientists who were not for an age but for all time, what did he know about the kind of business conference where an opening gambit could win the entire game?

  Paul Jackson answered his unspoken question. “Wenzel may be God’s gift in the laboratory, but Ackerman’s pretty useful outside it. He wasn’t satisfied with the tempo of the Patent Office. It was his bright idea to get an injunction, and really shake things up.”

  “Yes, but that’s only temporary,” Thatcher pointed out. “At some time the new catalog will be released and normalcy will return.”

  “Don’t you believe it.” Jackson was full of admiration for his client. “Now that Vandam’s is off-balance, Ackerman wants to keep them that way. His latest dodge has been to step up the schedule for depositions. He’s got a nice feeling for tactics, does Ackerman. Half the time I think he should be sitting in my chair. I can tell you a lot of people at Vandamia are in for a real experience.”

  “Vandamia?”

  “Vandam’s headquarters in downstate Illinois. That’s where they plan to do their bargaining. Between you and me, that’s another one of their mistakes. They think that, on their own turf, they can overawe Ackerman and Wenzel. Take it from a man who’s tried. It can’t be done.”

  Thatcher was beginning to be curious about the guiding lights at Wisconsin Seed.

  “I hope to meet this pair someday,” he said incautiously. Fate obliged him sooner than he expected.

  Earl Sanders caught him ten minutes after he got back from lunch. Sanders’ version of coming attractions differed markedly from Paul Jackson’s. In the first place, the word compromise was not mentioned.

  “. . . getting together both sides and exploring the situation,” he said earnestly. “After all, Numero Uno is a complex issue, and we don’t want to get hung up on disagreements that may not go to the heart of the matter.”

  Thatcher, while accustomed to clients lulled by the sound of their own meaningless words, did not have unlimited patience. “Do the Vandams agree with you?”

  In a rapid descent from the stratosphere, Sanders said, “Like hell they do! We had to twist their arm—hard.”

  With Paul Jackson’s confidences about Wisconsin Seed fresh in his mind, Thatcher did not comment, as he might have, that the outlook for rapprochement was dim.

  “But . . . well, we’re hoping that everybody will see reason,” Sanders continued heartily. “Now, Thatcher, I’m calling because . . .”

  Thatcher had seen this one coming. He understood, none better, why Standard Foods wanted the Sloan by its side. A show of big guns, or, in this case, big bucks, never hu
rts. The Sloan accommodated a select few of its customers this way, and Standard Foods was as select as they came.

  “. . . since you yourself have become so familiar with the Numero Uno controversy,” Sanders was saying persuasively.

  Not even Standard Foods rated Thatcher himself. But the scales had been tipped in their favor. Five minutes earlier Thatcher’s second-in-command had reported from Chicago where he was overseeing the collapse of Wenonah industries, Incorporated.

  “So far, I’ve been talking to stone walls,” Charlie Trinkam had said. “These guys aren’t in the mood to listen to sense. I may have to use a club.”

  Roughly translated, this meant that Charlie could use reinforcements. Thatcher, who had been thinking of which subordinate to dispatch, now saw his duty clear. When you can kill two birds with one stone, a trip to the heartland is small price to pay.

  “Yes,” he said to Sanders, meanwhile buzzing for Miss Corsa, “I will be able to join you. . . . Fine. . . . Miss Corsa, I’m going to have to fly out to Chicago tomorrow.”

  Seeing protest forming, he added, “So that I can be in Vandamia for a morning conference, about your precious Vandam catalog.”

  This rearrangement of the truth distracted her from appointments that must be canceled and meetings that must be rescheduled. “Vandamia,” she said wistfully, with all the warmth lacking in her references to London, Paris, and Rome.

  “I expect to be gone a day or two . . . at most. On the way back I’ll look in on Trinkam and see if I can help get the Wenonah talks moving.”

  But, even while he outlined an optimistic itinerary, he was congratulating himself. Joining Trinkam in Chicago would repay time and effort but Vandamia, he suspected, was going to be a total loss, except for Miss Corsa.

  Whether she knew it or not, there was an all-expenses paid tour of the world famous Vandam gardens in her future.

  Chapter 8

  Resistant to Heat

  MISS Corsa would be visiting Vandamia in June, July or August, Thatcher reminded himself the following morning. Then, no doubt, it would be roses, roses, all the way. On this icy Wednesday in January, Vandamia consisted of miles of snow-covered fields under a menacing grey sky.