Recalled to Life

Chapter X

Barker looked up the phone number of Gerhardt’s New York office, called, and spoke briefly with the lawyer. It was not a very pleasant conversation. Gerhardt seemed almost offensively bubbling with confidence, gloating as he informed Harker that it was only a matter of days before the court tossed Raymond and Harker out of control of Beller Labs and reinstated Klaus and Mitchison. No, Harker was told, he would not be given the present whereabouts of the two dismissed employees. And yes, the suit had already been filed-control of the labs and $1,000,000 in punitive damages.

“Okay,” Harker said. “I’ll prepare a counter-suit against your clients on grounds of malfeasance, insubordination, and half a dozen other things. I don’t mind fighting, Gerhardt.”

He hung up. After a moment’s thought he pulled a sheet of notepaper from a desk drawer and started to jot down notes for the counteroffensive. This was an additional nuisance; things grew more complicated by the moment.

And Gerhardt was a prominent member of the American-Conservative Party’s national committee. Harker could see the battle-lines beginning to form—with Klaus and Mitchison, Gerhardt, the American-Conservatives, the organized churches, Jonathan Bryant, and Senator Thurman on one side, and, at the moment, nobody but Harker, Raymond, and the staff of Beller Labs on the other.

During the day tension rose at the Litchfield headquarters. The phone rang constantly; from time to time the mail-truck arrived with more letters, and Harker found it necessary to clear out one of the less important lab rooms to store them.

“Have a couple of men start going through them,” he told Lurie. The gangling biologist had slipped easily into the role of messenger-boy and general go-between. “Have all the letters pleading for revivification of long-dead relatives burned immediately. Likewise the ones asking for miracles we can’t perform, like that cancer business.”

“How about the abusive ones?”

“Save those,” Harker said. “It helps to know who our enemies are.”

The afternoon papers again devoted most of their frontpage space to the news, and the Times in addition ran a well-handled four-page symposium in which many noted scientists discussed the entire concept of reanimation with varying degrees of insight. Harker skimmed through it rapidly and paled when he came across a comment by Dr. Louis F. Santangelo of Johns Hopkins. He read it aloud to Raymond:

Raymond looked up, troubled. “Santangelo’s a brain surgeon, and a good one. Too damn good, Jim. He’s smack on the nose.”

Harker shook his head. “I don’t like this for two reasons. One is that it happens to be accurate; two is that it puts the ‘zombie’ stigma again, this time thanks to a reputable scientist.” He reached for a fresh sheet of notepaper. “Mart, give me the figures on human reanimations so far, will you?”

“To date seventy-one attempts. Successful resuscitation in sixty-seven cases.”

“Uh-huh. And how many of your sixty-seven suffered no mental aftereffects?”

“Sixty-one,” Raymond said.

“Which leaves six zombies.” Harker felt a sudden chill. The frenzy of the first few days of publicity had left him no time to discover some of the vital information about the laboratory. “What did you do with the six? ”

“What could we do? We chloroformed them and returned them to the source. It was the merciful thing to do—and it’s no crime to kill a man who’s already been pronounced dead.”

“Where’d you get these seventy-one?”

Raymond looked evasive. “Locally. We got a few from a hospital in Jersey City. That’s where we got the man you saw revived. Some came from auto accidents in the neighborhood. Medical supply houses, too. Three of the bodies were of staff-men at the labs who died naturally.”

“And where are the sixty-one successful revivees?” Harker asked.

“It’s all in the records. Twelve of them are in hospitals, recuperating. Death really jolts the nervous system, you know. It takes two or three months to make a full recovery. Twenty have returned to normal life. Six of these don’t even know they were dead, incidentally. We keep careful watch over them.”

“How about the rest?”

“The recent ones are still on the premises, in Lab B. I guess I didn’t get a chance to show you the ward.”

“I guess not,” Harker said wryly. “Well, we’re going to have to issue a general statement on your experiments so far. Get Vogel and Smathers to write it up, and I’ll revise it into releaseable form. Tell them not to say anything about the six idiots, but it’s okay to mention the fact that four of the cadavers couldn’t be revived.”

Vogel delivered the first draft of the statistical summary about one-thirty that afternoon. Harker read it through once, made a couple of changes, and typed it out. He stressed the fact that many of the reanimatees had returned to normal life. He did not mention that six of the revivals had been unsuccessful, and that the patient had had to be destroyed.

The release was mimeographed and was ready in time for his daily three-o’clock press conference. He handed out the sheets and waited.

Times said, “Could we have the names of the successful revivifications?”

“Flatly impossible. This is to protect them, naturally. They still aren’t in perfect health.”

“When was the first successful reanimation?” asked Associated Press.

Harker glanced at Raymond, who said, “Exactly ten months ago. To be exact, it was at 3:30 in the afternoon on Tuesday July 17 of last year. Dr. Vogel operated.”

“What was the name of the patient?” United Press shot out quickly.

Harker laughed. “Good try, but no score. Patients’ names will not be revealed.”

“How many unsuccessful attempts were there before the July 17 success?” Times wanted to know.

“I don’t have the exact figure,” Harker said, because Raymond had neglected to give it to him. “Mart, what would you say? About—”

He hesitated. Raymond caught the hint and said, “I’d estimate approximately thirty attempts over a period of two years.”

“And there have been seventy-one tries since then?” Transcontinental TV said.

“Right. With sixty-seven reanimations.”

“All completely successful?” the sharp Times man said.

Harker looked vague. “Varying degrees of success,” he replied ambiguously.

“Would you care to elaborate on that, Mr. Harker?”

“Not just now.”

Video cameras recorded his statement. He was used to the televised press-conference, from long experience in public office, and he maintained a perfectly guileless expression while uttering the evasion.

The Scripps-Howard-Cauldwell man said, “As you know, Senator Thurman is pressing for a detailed Senate investigation of your laboratory. Would you welcome such an investigation?”

“If it’s conducted fairly and without prejudice,” Harker said, “of course we’d welcome it. We’re not trying to fool anyone. We’ve discovered something wonderful and we want the people of the world to share in it.”

“How do you feel about the American-Conservative party stand on reanimation?” Times asked.

“I wasn’t aware there was one.”

“They issued a statement at noon today. It implies that the National-Liberal Party is going to exploit the discovery for its own personal advantage. They point to your presence as legal adviser as proof of that.”

Harker smiled, but beneath the smile was sudden bitterness.

So it would be political capital too? He said, “This comes as a big surprise to me. I don’t have any formal affiliation with the National-Liberals, though of course I generally support their program. I’m not even a member of the national committee. And we’ve received no encouragement or anything else from them.”

“But you were a former Nat-Lib governor, Mr. Harker. Doesn’t that make you a major figure in the party hierarchy?” Scripps-Howard-Cauldwell asked.

It was a loaded question. Harker mopped the sweat from his forehead, glared straight into the eye of the video camera, and said, “I still vote Nat-Lib, if that’s what you mean. But ex-governors are just ex-governors, period.”

“How about the claim of Cal Mitchison and David Klaus that there have been unethical practices in this lab?” Transcontinental TV asked slyly.

Harker said, “I hardly think that’s worth talking about. Mitchison and Klaus are former employees who didn’t perform competently and who were discharged. It’s as simple as that.”

“You were the lawyer for the late Richard Bryant,” said the Times man. “Did you make any attempts to have Mr. Bryant resuscitated?”

“I did not. The family issued a statement expressing no desire to have Mr. Bryant revivified, and at no time did anyone here suggest that he should be. The movement to revive Richard Bryant was strictly unofficial.”

Harker was starting to weary under the barrage of questions. He looked at his watch; the half-hour he allotted to these conferences had elapsed. He felt as if he were wrung dry.

“I’ll have to ask you to cut it short now,” he said. “Unless there are any other very urgent questions, we’ll stop here.”

Times said, “One question, Mr. Harker. Have any reanimations taken place since the announcement of the process yesterday morning?”

Harker shook his head. “The answer is no. Until the legal status of reanimation is settled, we’re not proceeding with further experiments on human beings”—he regretted the unfortunate word experiments as soon as it passed his lips, but by then it was too late—“although we’re continuing with other phases of our research. We’ve been bombarded with requests for reanimations, but we don’t intend to attempt any.

Obviously a legal decision on the validity of our process is needed first. The death-certificate laws, for instance; they’ll have to be considered. And a host of other things. Well, gentlemen, I think our time is just about up.”

The fearsome blaze of the video cameras died away, and the newsmen packed up their pocket recorders and left. Marker sank down wearily behind the desk and looked at Mart Raymond.

The scientist smiled admiringly. “Jim, I don’t know how you do it. Stand up to those eagles, I mean. The pressure doesn’t let up for a second.”

“I’m used to it,” Harker said with forced casualness. His stomach felt knotted, tight; his throat was dry and seemed to be covered with hundreds of small blisters. His legs, under the desk, quivered of their own volition.

Gradually, as the minutes passed, he recovered his poise. The press-conference had been a sort of purgative; he had put forth all the thoughts that had been boiling within him during the day.

The battle, he saw now, would be fought on a number of fronts—but the essential standpoint was a politico-legal one. They had to secure Congressional approval for the process. And they had to win friends and influence people in a hurry, before die various splintered opponents of reanimation, the Beller Labs, and James Harker could join forces and provide a united front.

What would happen if reanimation lost? No doubt the technique would survive, no matter what the legal verdict was. But it would become an undercover, furtive activity, as abortion had been before the permissive laws of the late twentieth century. And undercover meant dangerous, illegal equated with deadly. The tools of medicine are always deadly in unskilled hands.

No doubt about it, the fight was on. It was, thought Harker, the old, old struggle—the battle to give humanity something it craved, despite the obstacles provided by fear, greed, and ignorance. The essential fact—that of the conquest of death—could easily be clouded over by half-truths, distortions, and the well-meant fanaticism of self-righteous pressure groups.

I fought this fight once before, Harker thought. And I let myself be beaten. Em this time Ym not giving up. There’s too much at stake.