Recalled to Life

Chapter XIII

The headline the next morning, black against the faint green of the paper, was, THURMAN TO OPPOSE LEGALIZED REANIMATION. Harker read the story at breakfast; it seemed the veteran senator had had a chance to think things over, and his conclusion was that reanimation was unmitigatedly evil and should be suppressed.

Harker tried to pretend he had not seen it. It was a staggering setback; it negated any possible gains they might make at the hearing next week. With the vote of the tie breaking chairman already committed to their opposition, Harker thought, what chance did they stand?

He glanced quickly over the rest of the front page. Riot in Des Moines; accusation of reanimation leads to attack on doctor in Missouri. And—Harker nearly choked on his breakfast coffee—what was this?

“Excuse me,” Harker muttered to his wife. Clutching the paper, he ran to the phone and tapped out Mart Raymond’s number.

“Mart? Jim. Have you seen this Wayne Janson thing in the paper?”

“What’s that?”

Harker rapidly read the article. Raymond was silent for a moment, then said, “Huh? Who does he think he’s kidding?”

“What do you mean?”

“We’ve never had anyone of that name here. Bryant’s obviously fabricating something.”

“I figured that when I saw his name in the article. You better check the records, though. We’ve got grounds for a suit if you’re right.”

“Jim, I tell you we’ve never carried out any reanimations on anyone named Wayne Janson. Bryant is obviously trying to smear us.”

“Smear me,” Harker corrected. “But I guess it amounts to the same thing.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Nothing yet,” Harker said. “I’ll wait until the police find the body and then demand proof from Bryant.”

“But there is no body, Jim! It’s just a hoax!”

Grimly Harker said, “It may be a hoax, but I’m willing to bet there’s a body. Jonathan isn’t that foolish!”

The long delayed Richard Bryant will hearing took place at last at half past ten that morning, in the gray-walled, luminolit chambers of District Judge T. H. Auerbach. The affair was almost a farce; it lasted no more than twenty minutes.

Jonathan Bryant was not there. His sister Helen was the official representative of the Bryant children, and she explained curtly that Jonathan was “overcome with grief at the death of a very dear friend last night” and would not attend.

Six other Bryants were in court, all of them hungry for the old man’s millions. They had retained a lawyer named Martinson who briefly and concisely explained that the old man had not been in sound mind at the time of making the will, and that it was therefore invalid.

It was a flimsy stand, and Harker said so. He spoke for no more than ten minutes. Judge Auerbach smiled politely, said he had studied the briefs from both sides with care, and ruled in favor of upholding the will.

Just as simple as that. Helen Bryant tossed Harker a glance of molten hatred and flounced out, followed by her younger brothers and sisters. Auerbach leaned forward from his bench and said to Harker, “I’m glad that’s over with. One more delaying injunction—”

“There wouldn’t have been one, Tom. They just were waiting for old Bryant to kick off. Jonathan didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of winning while he was alive.”

Auerbach shrugged. “They really didn’t have a claim to the money. Were they just trying to make trouble?”

Harker nodded. “Trouble’s their specialty, Tom.”

“Well, you’re through with having trouble with the Bryants now, I guess.”

Harker shook his head slowly. “No,” he said. “Not by a long shot.”

He rode uptown from the courthouse and stopped off at his law-office for the first time in a week. The girls in the outer office stared at him strangely, as if he had undergone some frightening apotheosis and was no longer just the firm’s newest partner.

He crossed left and rapped on Bill Kelly’s door. The plump lawyer smiled at him as he entered, but without much warmth.

“Morning, Jim. Long time no see.”

“I’ve been busy.”

“I know. I know all about it.”

Harker ignored Kelly’s tone and said, “I’ve just come from the Bryant hearing. Thought I’d let you know that it’s over. Poof: fifteen minutes!”

“The will was upheld?”

“What else? It was just a case of wilful petty obstruction on the part of the Bryant family. They’re mean, twisted people, Bill. They’ve lived all their lives in the shadow of one great man—Rick Bryant—and I guess they chose this time to show him and everyone else just what Great Big Important Persons they really were.” He scowled.

There was a pained expression on Kelly’s face that seemed to have nothing to do with the Bryant affair. Slowly Kelly said, “Jim, this completes all the current work you’re doing here, isn’t that right?”

Harker nodded. “I turned over the Fuller and Heidell cases to Portobello. That was to leave me clear for—”

“Yes. I know.” Kelly’s face reddened even more than normally, and he squirmed wretchedly in his inflated pneumatic desk-chair. “I’ve been following the papers, Jim. I’ve been following the whole thing.”

“I warned you it was hot.”

“I know. I didn’t know how hot it was, though. Jim, this hurts me,” Kelly said. “I’m going to ask a favor of you. It’s a lousy thing to ask, because it shows I don’t have guts or the courage of your convictions or something along those lines. But—”

Harker said, “I’ll spare you the trouble of putting it into words. The answer is yes. If you think my presence on your firm letterhead will hurt the firm, Bill, I’ll resign.”

A look of gratitude appeared on Kelly’s fleshy sweat-shiny face. “Jim, I want you to understand—that is—look here, I asked you to come in with me when your party booted you out, and don’t think I didn’t get my wrist slapped for it. But this reanimation thing is too big. I don’t want to get associated with it in any way. And so-well it seemed to Portobello and Klein and me—”

“Sure, Bill.” Harker had a sudden dizzying vision of himself standing at the rim of a bottomless abyss, but he heard his voice saying, calmly, rock-steady, “I’ll draft a note informing you that I’m resigning because of the pressure of outside activities.”

Hoarsely Kelly said, “Thanks, Jim. And if this thing blows over—if it all works out—we’ll have a spot for you here. Don’t forget that.”

“I won’t.” Not even because you don’t mean it, Harker thought. It wasn’t possible for Kelly to mean it. It was just a formal ritualistic statement, this implication that he could come back at a future time.

He was through here. Probably he was through with private law practice forever. Kelly was a brave and intelligent man, but Kelly had been afraid to keep the hot potato named James Harker on his letterhead any longer. No one else would welcome him either. Beller Labs was the straw to which he had to cling now.

He stood up.

“Okay, Bill. Glad we got everything cleared up. Just thought I’d tell you about the wrapup on the Bryant case. I’ll clear out my office next week.”

“No hurry about it. Oh—nearly forgot.” Kelly consulted a memo slip. “Leo Winstead’s office phoned here for you earlier today. The Governor wants you to call him back between one-thirty and three this afternoon.”

Harker frowned momentarily. Winstead? What does he want with me? He said to Kelly, “Thanks, Bill. And so long.”

He bought a noontime edition of the Star-Post and ate a gloomy little meal by himself in a nineteenth-floor automated restaurant overlooking the East River. He pushed the meal-selector buttons almost at random; the result was largely an assortment of cheap synthetics, but he hardly cared. He ate abstractedly, not looking at his food but at the increasingly more troubling news in the paper.

There was a new statement from Senator Thurman, more doggedly anti-reanimation than the last. Apparently Thurman’s views on the subject mounted in vitriol-content in hourly increments; now he said that “reanimation is of dubious value in mitigating human sorrow—a crude and unsatisfactory process that robs life of dignity.” Evidently he had read about the Janson suicide. And speaking of thatYes. The body had been found and identified, according to a story at the bottom of Page One. Wayne Janson, 58, an unmarried industrialist. Listed as suicide; Jonathan Bryant identified body. Investigation now proceeding as a result of Bryant’s statement that Janson had recently undergone re-animation.

And a statement from David Klaus, too, evidently released by Mitchison: “The Janson case proves that the Beller technique can be a dangerous and destructive instrument in the wrong hands.” He recognized Mitchison’s blunt word—sense, the equating of technique and instrument.

At half past one he made his way to a public phonebooth, sealed himself in, snapped on the privacy-shield, and called the operator.

“I’d like to make a charge-account call to Albany.”

She took his name and home phone, assured him that the call would be billed to his account, and put him through to the Governor’s mansion. A relay of secretaries passed him along to Winstead.

The booth’s screen was small, a seven-incher, and definition was poor. Even with that handicap, though, Harker could see the rings around Winstead’s eyes. New York’s Governor obviously had had little sleep the night before.

“I got your message, Leo. What goes?”

Winstead said, “You know about Thurman and his stand on reanimation, don’t you?”

“Of course. Thurman visited the lab yesterday.”

“And then proceeded to issue a series of statements blasting your project,” Winstead said. The Governor looked like a man about to explode from conflicting tensions. In a tight-strung voice he said, “Jim, we held a caucus on the Thurman situation last night. First let me tell you that the Nat-Libs have decided to issue a public statement praising your outfit and asking for careful consideration of reanimation.”

Harker smiled. “It’s about time someone said he was on our side.”

“Don’t break your arm patting your back,” Winstead warned. “The Amer-Cons forced our hand. It took all night for us to agree to support you. A lot of us aren’t in favor of reanimation at all.”

“And a lot of you aren’t in favor of anything I’m in favor of,” Harker said crisply. “But what’s this about Thurman, now?”

“He’s killing us! How can we come out pro-reanimation when the elder patriarch of our party is issuing statements condemning it?”

Harker shrugged. “I’ll admit you have a problem.”

“Any such inconsistency would make us look silly,” Winstead said. “Jim, would you do us a favor?”

The idea of doing favors to the party leaders who had summarily expelled him less than a year ago did not appeal to him. But he said, in a cautious voice, “Maybe. What do you want?”

“We haven’t approached Thurman directly yet. We’d like you to do it.”

“Me?”

Winstead nodded. “Go down to Washington and appeal to the old gorilla’s sense of sentiment. Plead with him to come back to the fold. Thurman was once very high on you, Jim. Maybe he still is.”

Harker said, “I saw Thurman yesterday and he wasn’t running over with sentiment. He came, he saw, and he condemned. What more can I say to him?”

Winstead’s face grew agitated. Harker wondered what pressures had been exerted on the Governor to make this phone call. “Jim, this is for your sake as well as ours. If you can win Thurman over, Congressional approval of reanimation’s a cinch! You’re just cutting your own throat by refusing to go down.”

“You know I’m not anxious to do favors for—”

“We understand that! But can’t you see you’ll be helping yourself as well? We’ll try to make things easier for you if you convince Thurman.”

Harker grinned pleasantly. It was fun to see Winstead squirm. “Okay,” he said finally. “I’ll go down to see Thurman first thing tomorrow morning.”