Recalled to Life

Chapter VIII

Barker had thought Idlewild was in a state of confusion, but he realized he still had a lot to learn about ultimate chaos when he reached Litchfield, an hour later. Cars clogged the highway for a quarter of a mile on each side of the private road leading to the laboratories. He saw television cameras, sound trucks, men who looked like reporters.

He ducked through the milling mob and tried to slip unobtrusively along the spruce-bordered dirt road to the administration building. But it was a foolhardy attempt; he hadn’t taken more than ten steps before someone yelled: “Hey! There’s Governor Harker!”

A dozen of them surrounded him in a minute. Harker recognized a few of the faces from his mayoralty days-a Times man, one from the Star-Post, one from the Hearst combine. Harker strode doggedly along, trying to ignore them, but they blocked his path.

“What are you doing here, Governor?”

“What’s your opinion on the reanimation bit? You think they’re serious?”

“How will the Nat-Libs react?”

“Do you figure there’ll be a congressional investigation?”

They crowded around him, waving their minirecorders and notebooks. In a loud voice Harker said, “Hold on, all of you! Quiet down!”

They quieted.

“In answer to half a dozen of your questions, I’m here because I’m legal adviser to Beller Laboratories. The statement that was released to the press earlier today was an unofficial and possibly inaccurate one. I’ll have an official statement for you as soon as things are under control here.”

“Does that mean the reanimation process doesn’t actually exist?”

“I repeat: I’ll have an official statement later.” It was the only way to handle them. He spun, pushed his way forcefully but with care between the Times and Scripps-Howard-Cauldwell, and made his way up the hill.

The roadblock still functioned-only this time there were five guards there instead of two, and three of them held mul-tishot rifles, the other two machine-pistols. Harker approached and said, “How come the firearms?”

“It’s the only way we can keep them back, Mr. Harker. You better go in. Dr. Raymond wants to see you.”

Harker nodded grimly and stepped through the cordon. He half-trotted the rest of the way.

Raymond’s office was crowded. Barchet was there, and Lurie, and two or three of the other researchers. Raymond, his face gray and stony, sat quietly back of his desk.

“Here,” he said. “Read this. It’s the text of the handout Mitchison released.”

Harker scanned it.

Harker dropped the sheet contemptuously to Raymond’s desk. “Bad grammar, bad writing, bad thinking-not even a good mimeograph job. Mart, how the dickens could a thing like this have happened?”

Klaus and Mitchison must have cooked it up last night or early this morning. They handed copies of it to the local press-service stringers in town, and phoned it in to all the New York area newspapers.”

“We didn’t even have time to fire him,” Harker muttered. “Well? Where is he now?”

Raymond shrugged. “He and Klaus are gone. I sent men looking for them as soon as I found out about the newsbreak, but no sign of them.”

“Operation Barn Door,” Harker snapped. “Most likely they’re in Manhattan getting themselves interviewed on video. I see Mitchison didn’t bother to mention anyone’s name but Klaus’ in this alleged handout.”

“What would you expect?”

Harker whirled on Barchet, who looked very small and meek suddenly, with none of his earlier blustery self-assurance. “You! You’re the one who brought Mitchison into this outfit!”

In a tiny voice Barchet said, “Recriminations are useless now, Mr. Harker.”

“The hell with that. Did you tell Mitchison I was going to have him sacked?”

“Mr. Harker, I—”

“Did you?”

Helplessly Barchet nodded. Harker glared at him, then turned to Raymond and said, “There you have it, Mart. Mitchison heard he was getting canned, so he whipped this thing out now, while he could get fat on us. Well, we’re stuck with this statement. There are 500 hundred reporters on the front lawn waiting for official word from us.”

Raymond had not shaved that morning. He ran his fingers through a blue-stubbled growth of beard and then locked his hands over his forehead. In a sepulchral voice he said, “What do you suggest? Deny the Mitchison release?”

“Impossible,” Harker said. “The word has gone out. If we deny it, the public will never believe a further word we say. Uh-uh.”

“What then?”

“Don’t worry about it. First thing is to prepare a release saying that the early announcement was premature, that Mitchison and Klaus are no longer connected with this organization—”

“Klaus has a contract.”

“The contract has a clause in it about insubordination or else it isn’t worth a damn. Have somebody send a special-delivery letter to Klaus informing him that his contract is voided. Keep a couple of carbons. Send a letter of dismissal to Mitchison, too.”

Harker paused to wipe sweat from his face. Even in the small room, the airconditioners had little effect.

He went on, “Next thing: I’ll draft a release confirming the fact that you’ve developed this technique, and I’ll sign my name to it. When I’m done, have it mimeographed and distributed to everybody out there. That cancels out Mitchison’s poop, anyway. After that—” he frowned—“do you have any human cadavers around the place? Revivable ones, I mean?”

Raymond shook his head.

“Too bad. Find one. We’ll give a demonstration of the technique to any of the pressmen who have strong enough stomachs to want to watch. And then—”

“Don’t you think that’s a little risky?” Lurie asked mildly.

“What? The demonstration?”

Lurie nodded, grinning foolishly. “Well, I mean, something might go wrong—”

“Like what?”

“There are flaws in the process,” Raymond cut in. “We haven’t fully perfected it. I was meaning to talk about them to you, but of course this thing coming up makes it impossible to iron the bugs out in time, and—”

“Hold it,” Harker said. He felt a chill start to rise up his back. In a flat voice he said, “You gave me the impression that this process worked all the time. That if the body was in good enough shape to live, and hadn’t started to decay, you could revive it. Suppose you tell me about these so-called ‘bugs,’ right here and now.”

There was a brief, ominous silence in the room. Harker saw Raymond glare sourly at Lurie, who cowered; the other staff researchers looked uneasy, and Barchet nibbled at his nails.

At last Raymond said, “Jim, I’m sorry. We didn’t play it square with you.”

“Go on. Bare your soul to me now, Raymond. I want to know everything.”

“Well—ah—the process doesn’t always work. About one out of twenty times, we can’t bring the patient back to life.”

“Understandable. If that’s the whole trouble—”

“It isn’t. Jim, you have to understand that death is a tremendous shock to the nervous system-the biggest shock there is. That goes without saying. Sometimes the shock is so great that it short-circuits the brain, so to speak. And so even though we can achieve physiological reanimation, the mind—ah—the mind is not always reanimated with the body.”

Harker was stunned as if by a physical blow. He took one step backward, groped for a chair, and lowered himself into it. Forcing himself to keep calm he said, “Just how often does this happen?”

“About one out of every six tries, so far.”

“I see. ” He drew in his breath sharply, cleared his throat, and fought to hang on to his self-control. The whole thing had taken on an unreal dreamlike atmosphere in the past two hours. And this was the crusher.

So one out of six revivifications produced a live idiot? Great, Harker thought. So a public demonstration will be like a game of Russian Roulette. One chance out of six that the whole show will blow up in our faces.

“How long will it take you to iron this thing out?” he asked.

“All I can say is that we’re working toward it.”

“Okay. Forget the demonstration. We don’t dare try it until things calm down. Remind me to cut your throat for this, Mart. Later.”

There was a knock on the door. Harker nodded to Barchet, who opened it. One of the laboratory guards stood outside.

“The reporters are getting out of hand,” he said. “They want to know when they’re getting their statement.”

Harker stood up and said, “It’s five minutes to eleven now. Tell them that I’ll have a statement for them before noon.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Get me a typewriter,” Harker said to Raymond.

A typewriter was produced. Harker fed a sheet of paper in, switched on the current, and began to type. He composed a hasty 250-word statement disowning Mitchison, crediting Raymond as head of the project, and declaring that full details of the technique would be released as soon as they were ready.

He signed it James Harker, and added parenthetically, (Former Governor of New York—now legal adviser to Seller Research Laboratories.)

“Here,” he said, handing the release to Raymond. “Read this thing through and approve it, Mart. Then get it mimeographed and distributed to that wolfpack out there. Is there a vidset around anywhere?”

“In A Lounge,” Lurie offered.

A Lounge was in the small dormitory in back. Harker said, “I’m going there to pick up the news reports. Lurie, I’m requisitioning you to set up office space for me someplace in Dormitory A. I want a phone, a vidset, a radio, and a typewriter. And I don’t care who has to get pushed out of the way.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good.”

He jogged across the clearing toward Dormitory A, pausing only to look back briefly at the horde of newsmen straining at the barrier down the hill. A Lounge was packed with lab researchers, clustered around the video. They moved to one side as Harker entered.

He recognized Vogel and said to the bearded surgeon, “Has there been much about us on yet?”

Vogel laughed. “Much? Hardly anything but!”

Harker stared at the screen. A newscaster’s solemn face stared back. “... a discovery of staggering importance, if we can credit this morning’s release. Further details will be brought to you as bulletins the moment information is received at the network newsroom.”

Harker wrenched the channel-selector dial one turn to the left. A new voice, equally crisp and solemn, was saying: “. . . called for an immediate Senate investigation. The cry was echoed by Nat-Lib Senator Clyde Thurman, who declared that such a scientific finding would have to be placed under careful Federal regulation.”

A third channel offered: “. . . the President had no comment on the news, pending further details. Vice-President Chalmers, attending a meeting in Detroit, coimnented: ‘This is not as incredible a development as superficial appearances would indicate. Science has long had the power to save human lives; this is merely the next step. We should not lose our sense of proportion in considering this matter? ”

Harker felt a sudden need for fresh air. He muscled his way through the crowded lounge and out onto the dormitory porch.

Confusion reigned everywhere. His tentative plans for making a careful survey of the situation had gone up in one puff of press-agentry; from now on, he would have to improvise, setting his course with desperate agility.

He tried to tell himself that things would quiet down before long, once the initial impact had expended itself. But he was too well schooled in the study of mass human behavior to be able to make himself believe any such naive hope.

The man in the street could only be thinking one thing now: that the power of death over humanity had ended. In future days, death would have no dominion.

But how would they react? Jubilantly, or with terror? What would they say when they learned that five times out of six, life could be restored—but the sixth time a mindless idiot was the product?

Fear and trembling lay ahead, and days of uncertainty. Harker let the warm mid-May sun beat down on him; he stared up at the sky as if looking into tomorrow.

The sky held no answers. Confusion would be tomorrow’s watchword. And there was no turning back, now, not for any of them.