Recalled to Life

Chapter XX

There seemed to be a sheath of fog wrapped around him, or perhaps it was a section of cloud. White, soft, without substance, it buoyed him up. He did not open his eyes. He did not need to; the images he saw against the inner surfaces of his eyelids far eclipsed any the mundane world might hold.

Harker saw glowing masses of color, a sky of red bordered with turquoise, clouds of gold, smaller flecks of chocolate and ultramarine. He heard the distant rumble of voices, or was it thunder?

He remembered things.

He remembered someone (Mart Raymond?) looking down at him, lips drawn, eyes ringed with shadows, saying, “Jim, do you really want to go through with this thing?”

He remembered Lurie, looking awkward and ungainly. Poor Lurie. Lurie had got him into this whole mess in the beginning, hadn’t he?

Lois had been there too, her face a blank emotionless mask. And there had been others—the four senators, Vorys, Brewster, Dixon, Westmore. The four horsemen of the Apocalypse. The ghostly riders of death.

Reporters? Video men? Yes, there had been quite a crowd.

Harker stirred gently in the cradling mass of fog that held him. He had never been so comfortable in his life as now, lying in what seemed to be free fall, no weight on him, no conflicts meshing in his tired brain, nothing to do but relax and dream of yesterday.

There’s Vogel, he thought. The surgeon, wielding his tools. Complex dark many-tendrilled machine looming up over me. Yes.

Vogel is whispering something to someone now; I can’t catch it.

They lower something over my face. Sweet, too sweet; I breathe deeply.

I sleep. Time passes.

Harker floated gently, guiding himself with his arms, travelling lightly down a river of radiant brightness. No weight. No sensations. Only the endless lovely bath of color, and the distant rumble of thunder.

This is heaven, he thought, pleasantly. Not a bad place at all.

Timeless, voiceless, airless, lifeless. A kaleidoscope of blues and violets overhead. I am pure energy, he thought, unfettered by the ties of flesh.

This is the kingdom of death. There was the odor of lilies somewhere, a cool sweet white smell. I James Harker being of sound mind—

A golden flame, child-sized, soared near him in the nothingless. It’s Eva, he thought. Hello, Eva. Don’t you remember your dad?

The golden flame swooped laughingly past him and was gone. Harker felt a momentary pang, but it too passed on; this was heaven, where there was no sadness.

The rumble of thunder grew louder.

(Voices?)

(Here, Harker thought?)

I have given myself voluntarily into the hands of death, he announced silently. Of my own free will did I consent to have the sanctity of my body violated and the free passage of air through my nostrils interfered with. And with the stoppage of the heart came death.

Frowning, he tried to remember more. Recollection grew dim, though, as if he were glimpsing the world he had left behind through a series of warped mirrors. He could see faintly into the world of living people, but the surface was oddly glazed, unreal.

Again came thunder, louder, closer.

Someone said, “I think he’s waking up.”

Harker remained perfectly still, struggling to penetrate the meaning of those words. I think he’s waking up.

Waking up? From death?

“He’s definitely coming out of it.”

Yes, Harker thought, I’m waking up. Returning to the blurred world I left behind so long ago.

He was still bound to that world. It would not release its grip on him. It wanted him, was calling him.

Recalled to life!

With a sudden convulsive moan and whimper, Harker woke.

His mouth tasted cottony, and at first his eyes would not focus. Gradually the world took shape about him. He saw three faces hovering above the bed in which he lay; behind them were green electroluminescent hospital walls, broken by a window through which warm summer sunshine Streamed in. Yes, he thought. Recalled to life. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil…

He matched faces with identities. The squarish face badly in need of a shave—that belonged to Mart Raymond. The Oval one, ringed by blonde hair shading into gray—that face belonged to Lois. And the other, the lean ascetic rectangle of a face, that was owned by Father Carteret.

Harker said, “I guess it worked. Where am I?” His voice was hoarse and rusty-sounding, like a musical instrument long neglected.

Mart Raymond said, “It worked beautifully. You’re in Newark General Hospital. You’ve been here in anesthetic coma for two weeks. Ever since the operation.”

Two weeks, Harker thought. It seemed like two minutes ago that Vogel had lowered the anesthesia cone over his face.

“How—did things work out?” he asked.

It was the priest who spoke. “Perfectly, Jim. You’re a national hero.”

He glanced at Lois, who bent over Harker and clutched his hand. Hers seemed cold, Harker thought.

They left him after a while, and he lay back in the bed, thinking that it was good to be alive again. The sunlight was bright and warm in the room; it should be nearly August, he thought.

Some time later he was fed, and some time after that a nurse appeared bearing a thick stack of newspapers. “The Times since your operation, Mr. Harker. Your wife thought you’d like to see them.”

He thanked her and reached hungrily for the topmost paper. It was today’s; the latest edition. The banner headline was, HARKER OUT OF COMA, and they had the picture of him that had been used for his campaign posters back in 2028.

He leafed back. . . . July 30, July 29, July 28. ...

At the bottom of the heap was the July 16 paper, with the account of his sensational submission to death. They described the event in detail: how, cheerful to the last, he had been wheeled into the operating room, anesthetized, killed. The operating room had then been cleared of all but the surgeons, who proceeded with the cardiac operation according to the papers. When the “operation” had been “successfully concluded,” an hour later, the observers were called back. Thirty-eight people had watched his untroubled return to life.

He thumbed on through the papers. The suit of Klaus and Mitchison against Beller Laboratories had been thrown out of court on the 18th. The next day, the F.B.I, had repeated its earlier statement exonerating the labs of any guilt in the matter of the death of Wayne Janson, and this time there was no further statement from Jonathan Bryant.

There were statements from various ranking government officials, though. They unanimously favored setting up a federal research grant project for studying further applications of reanimation.

The nurse appeared and said, “Mr. Raymond would like to see you, sir.”

“Send him in.”

Raymond grinned and remarked, “You look like you’ve been getting up to date.”

“I have been. Things look pretty good, don’t they?”

“They look tremendous,” Raymond said. “Dixon phoned from Washington to say that Vorys and Brewster have been won over. The Committee’s recommending a multi-million dollar federal grant to us for continuing research.”

“Great! Now I suppose you can lick the business of insanity, Mart.”

Raymond grinned cheerfully again. “Didn’t I tell you? We broke through that wall about four days ago. It’s a matter of insulating the hormone feed lines. Yours was the last risky reanimation.”

Before Harker could reply, the phone by the side of his bed chimed briefly. He picked it up and heard a voice say, “Albany calling for Mr. James Harker.”

“That’s me,” Harker said.

“Go ahead, Albany.”

There was a pause; then a new voice said, “Jim? Leo Winstead here. Just heard the news. Everything all right?”

“Couldn’t be okayer, Leo.”

Winstead coughed. “Jim, maybe this is too soon to ask you to think about returning to work, but I want to put a proposition to you.”

“What kind?”

“New York State is short one senator right now. I have to appoint somebody to replace Thurman, I guess. And it seemed to me that you—”

Harker nearly let the phone drop. When he had recovered his poise he said, “I’m still a sick man, Leo. Don’t shock me like that.”

“Sorry if I did. But it’s a job I think you’re equipped to handle. Interested?”

“I sort of think I am,” Harker said wryly.

When he had finished talking to Winstead, he hung up the phone and looked at Mart Raymond. “That was Governor Winstead. He’s naming me to the Senate to fill the rest of Thurman’s term.”

“Wonderful!”

“I suppose it is,” Harker admitted.

He sent for Lois and told her about it, and she wept a little, partly for joy and partly, he suspected, because she did not want him to take on any new responsibilities.

Harker flicked the tears away. He stretched gently, mindful of his sutures.

Lois said, “It’s all finished, isn’t it? The struggling and the conniving, the plotting and scheming? Everything’s going to be all right now.”

He smiled at her. He was thinking that the stream of events could have come out much worse. He had taken a desperate gamble, and he and humanity both were that much the richer for it.

But the world as he had known it for forty-odd years was dead, and would not return to life. This was a new era—an era in which the darkest fact of existence, death, no longer loomed high over man.

Staggering tasks awaited mankind now. A new code of laws was needed, a new ethical system. The first chapter had closed, but the rest of the book remained to be written.

He squeezed her hand tightly. “No, Lois. It isn’t all finished. The hardest part of the job is just beginning. But everything’s going to be all right, now. Yes. Everything’s going to be all right.”