Front matter (continued 3)

"Look at the EEG graph," Raymond said hollowly.

The graph held no meaning for Harker. But he did not need to look there to see what had happened.

The eyes of the body on the table had opened, and were staring toward the ceiling. They were not the beady, alert, eager eyes of Senator Thurman. They were the dull, glazed, slack-muscled eyes of an idiot.

CHAPTER XV

For a moment, no one spoke.

Harker stood some five feet from the operating-table, looking away from the creature under the machine, thinking, These people are like small boys with a new shiny toy. I should never have trusted them alone. I should never have gotten involved in this.

"What do we do now?" Lurie asked. The gangling biologist was nearing a state of hysteria. Sweat-drops beaded his forehead. "The man's mind is gone."

"Permanently?" Harker asked. "There's no way of restoring it?"

Raymond shook his head. "None. The EEG indicates permanent damage to the brain."

Harker took a deep breath. "In that case, there's nothing for us to do but kill him again and dispose of the body."

The suggestion seemed to shock them. Barchet reacted first: "But that's murder!"

"Exactly. And what did you think you were committing the first time you killed Thurman?" There was no answer, so he went on. "According to the present law of the land, you were all guilty of murder the moment you put the chloroform-mask over Thurman's face. The law needs fixing now, but that's irrelevant. You made yourselves subject to the death penalty when you abducted him, incidentally."

"How about you?" Barchet snapped. "You seem to be counting yourself out."

Harker resisted the impulse to lash out at the little man who had caused so much trouble. "As a matter of fact, technically I'm innocent," he said. "The kidnapping and murder both were carried out without my knowledge or consent. But there isn't a court in the world that would believe me, so I guess I'm in this boat with you. At the moment we all stand guilty of kidnapping and first-degree murder. I'm simply suggesting we get rid of the evidence and proceed as if nothing had happened. Either that or call the police right now."

Raymond said, "I think you're right." The lab director's face was green with fear; like the rest of them, he was awakening slowly to the magnitude of their act. "We did this thing because we thought we were serving our goal. We were wrong. But the only way we can continue to serve our goal is to commit another crime. We'll have to dispose of the body."

"That won't be hard," Vogel said. "We dispose of bodies pretty frequently around here. I'll do a routine dissection and then we'll just make sure the parts get pretty widely scattered through the usual channels."

Raymond nodded. He seemed to be growing calmer now. "Better begin at once. Chloroform him again and do the job in the autopsy lab. Make it the most comprehensive damn autopsy you ever carried out."

Silently Vogel and the other surgeon wheeled the body out, with Lurie following along behind. In the empty operating room, Harker glared at Raymond and Barchet. He felt no fear, no apprehension—merely a kind of dull hopeless pain.

"Well done," he said finally. "I wish I could tell you exactly how I feel now."

Raymond pursed his lips nervously. "I think I know. You'd like to strangle us, wouldn't you?"

"Something like that," Harker admitted. "Why did you have to do it? Why?"

"We thought it would help us," said Barchet.

"Help? To kidnap and kill a United States Senator? But—oh, what's the use? Just remember now that there are six of us who know about this. The first one who cracks and talks not only sends all six of us to the gas chamber but finishes reanimation permanently."

Suddenly he did not want to be with them. He said, "I'm going to my office to get some papers, and then I'm going home. Can I trust you irresponsible lunatics for an entire weekend?"

Raymond looked boyishly at his shoes; Barchet tried to glare at Harker, but there was something sickly and unconvincing about the expression. Harker turned and headed out.

He made the long journey from the lab to his home by taxi, an extravagance that he did not often permit himself. Tonight it seemed necessary. He had no heart for facing other people in a public jet, for buying tickets at a terminal, for doing anything else but sitting in the back of a cab, with the driver shrouded off by his compartment wall, sitting alone and staring out at the bright night city lights as he rode home.

Friday, May 24, 2033. Harker thought back to the morning when Lurie had first come to him. That had been a Wednesday; May 8, it had been. Two weeks and two days ago, and in that time so much had happened to him, so many unexpected things.

He had lost his affiliation with the law firm. He had re-entered public life, this time as publicity agent, legal adviser, and general champion of a weird and controversial cause. He had become a stranger to his family, a man bound up entirely in the many-levelled conflicts arising out of the simple announcement that a successful reanimation technique had been developed.

He had watched two dogs and two human beings, both of them dead, return to the ranks of the living. He had watched a third man, a great man, a former idol of his, suffer death in the name of this strange cause.

He had become a murderer and a kidnapper. Unintentionally, true, and after the fact; but his guilt was as sure as that of the man who had lowered the chloroform.

Forces ranked themselves against him: Mitchison, Klaus, Jonathan Bryant—petty little men, those three, but they could cause trouble. Barchet, who was on their side and still managed to hurt them with everything he did. The Church; the American-Conservative Party; the ignorant, fearful people of the world, swayed by whatever hysteria happened to be in the air at the moment.

Had it been worth it?

He thought back, putting himself in the shoes of that James Harker of 8 May 2033 who had made the decision to go ahead. The bait had been the image of Eva, drowned, beyond his grasp. Eva might have lived.

Yes, he thought, it's worth it.

Abruptly the gloom began to lift from him. He realized that none of the things that had happened to him mattered—not the dismissal by Kelly, nor the crimes for which he had assumed the burden, nor the inner turmoil which was exhausting him. How transient everything was!

The important fact was reanimation—the defeat of death. The end of death's dominion. That was his goal, and he would work toward it—and if he destroyed himself and those about him in the process, well, there had been martyrs in man's history before. That Evas of tomorrow might live, Harker thought, I will go ahead.

"Larchmont, mister," the driver called out. "Which way do I go?"

Harker gave him the directions. They reached his home a few minutes later; the fare was over $10, and Harker added a good tip to it.

The cab pulled away. Harker stood for a moment outside his home. The sitting-room lights were on, and one of the upstairs bedroom lights. It was shortly before ten, and since it was the weekend Chris would still be up, though young Paul had long since been tucked away.

And Lois probably sat before the video, waiting patiently for her husband to come home. Harker smiled gently, put his thumb to the identity-plate of the door, and waited for it to open.

Lois came to the door to meet him. She looked pale, tired; when she kissed him, it was purely mechanical, almost ritualistic.

"I was hoping you were in that cab, Jim. How'd everything go?"

He shrugged. "I don't know, Lois. I feel beat."

"Come on inside. Tell me about your day."

He followed her into the sitting-room. The autoknit stood to one side; she had been making socks, it seemed. The video blared some hideous popular song:

Harker jerked a thumb toward the screen. "Is this the sort of junk you've been watching?"

Lois smiled faintly. "It's a good tranquilizer. I just let the sound bellow out and numb my mind."

He thumbed the off-switch set in the table before the couch, and the singing died away, the image shrank to a spot of tri-colored light and then to nothing at all. His hand sought hers.

He found himself wishing she would get up on her back legs and yowl, just once. It would be good for both of them. But she was so wonderfully patient! She had said nothing, or little, when he had stubbornly defied the national committee and gone ahead with the reform program that could only have ended his political career, and did. She had barely objected when he told her of his new affiliation with the Beller people, and she had said nothing in these past ten days, when the pressure of conflicting cross-currents had kept him bottled up within himself, unloving, cold.

He tried to say something affectionate, something to repay her for the suffering he had caused, the lonely evenings, the tense breakfasts.

But she spoke first. "They still haven't found Senator Thurman, Jim. I heard the nine-thirty newscast. Isn't it terrible, an old man like that disappearing?"

Sudden coldness swept through him. "Still—haven't found him?" he repeated inanely. "Well—I guess—ah—that old buzzard's indestructible. He'll turn up."

"How do you think this will affect the hearing on Monday?"

Harker shrugged, only half-listening. He was thinking, You know damn well where Thurman is, and you're afraid to tell her. Why don't you speak up? Don't you trust your own wife? He wet his dry lips. "I—I suppose they'll choose a new chairman if something's happened to Thurman. But—"

"Jim, are you all right? You look terrible!"

"Lois, I—want to tell you something. Today—"

He stopped, wondering how to go on. She was staring intently at him, curious but not overly curious, waiting to hear what he had to say.

The phone rang.

Grateful for the interruption, Harker sprang from the couch and darted around back to take the call on the visual set. He activated it; Mart Raymond's face appeared on the screen.

"Well?" Harker said immediately, in a low voice. "Is the evidence all taken care of?"

Raymond nodded agitatedly. "Yes. But that's not what I called you about. Barchet's dead!"

"What? How?"

"It happened about five minutes ago. He was getting ready to leave, and we were discussing—you know, what happened tonight. He had a heart attack and just dropped. It must have been all the excitement. His heart was weak anyway, he once said."

Harker could not repress the tide of relief that rose in him. Barchet had been the cause of half of his troubles—Mitchison and Klaus, for one, and the Thurman affair for another. Still, a man was dead, and that was no cause for rejoicing, he told himself coldly.

He said, "That's too bad. Did he have a family?"

"Just a wife, but she died years ago. He was alone."

Harker nodded. "You'd better notify the local police right away."

"Jim, what's the matter with you?" Raymond asked incredulously.

"What do you mean?"

"Barchet's in the operating room now. Vogel's getting ready to try a reanimation on him."

"No!" Harker said instantly.

"No? Jim, we can't just let him die like that!"

"Barchet was a troublemaker, Mart. He was the weak link in the organization. Now we're rid of him; let him stay dead. It's one less witness to the thing that happened today."

In a shocked whisper Raymond said, "You can't mean what you're saying, Jim."

"I mean exactly what you're hearing. Barchet was unstable, Mart. He pressured you into doing all sorts of cockeyed things. If he lived, he'd end up revealing the Thurman business before long. Let him stay dead. That's an order, Mart."

Raymond seemed to shrink back from the screen. "It's—almost like committing murder, Jim! That man could be saved if we—"

"No," Harker said, with a firmness he did not feel. "There'll be trouble if you cross me, Mart. Good night."

He broke the contact with a shaky hand.

Lois gasped when she saw him. "Jim! It must be bad news. You're utterly white."

He sat down heavily. "One of the Beller executives just had a heart attack. A man named Barchet—a runty little fellow who enjoyed sticking lead pipes between the spokes of smoothly running machines. I just ordered Mart Raymond not to attempt reanimation."

His hands were quivering. Lois took them between hers. Harker said, "It's like murder, isn't it? To refuse to reanimate a man, when it's possible to do so. But it's better for everyone if Barchet stays dead. Nobody will miss him. God, I feel awful."

"Remember the McDermott case, Jim?"

He frowned, then smiled at her. "Yes," he said. McDermott had been a factory hand, an overgrown moron of 22 who had beaten his 70-year-old father to death one night shortly before Harker had become Governor of New York. The verdict had been speedy, the sentence one of execution. With the boy in the death house and the night of the execution at hand, his aged mother had relented, lost her vindictiveness, pleaded with the new Governor Harker to commute the sentence.

The boy had had a long criminal record. The court had found him guilty. He had murdered his father in cold blood, premeditatively. He deserved the full penalty.

Harker had refused to commute. But then he had spent the rest of the evening staring at his watch, and at the stroke of midnight had burst into an attack of chills.

He nodded slowly now. "I refused to commute Barchet's sentence. That's all there is to it."

CHAPTER XVI

The newspapers Saturday morning gave full play to the Thurman disappearance. Several of them ran biographies of the missing Senator, tracing his political career from the early founding days of the National-Liberal Party to his present anti-reanimation stand.

The police and FBI statements were simply mechanical handouts, repeats of last night's assurances that no stone would be left unturned. Harker read them with some amusement. He had slept well, and a good deal of last night's tension had departed from him.

He had come to a calming conclusion: Raymond and Barchet had done a violent thing, but these were violent times. Somehow he would have to forget about the shocking Thurman affair and continue along the path already entered upon.

The obituary pages contained one item worth note:

Simeon Barchet

Simeon Barchet of 201 Princeton Road, Rockville Centre, L.I., treasurer of the Beller Research Laboratories, died of a heart attack at the Beller office in Litchfield, New Jersey, yesterday. His age was 61.

Mr. Barchet joined the organization of the late oil operator D. F. Beller in 2014, after serving as a vice-president of the Chase Manhattan Bank. Upon Mr. Beller's death ten years later, he became a trustee of the Beller Fund and participated actively in the operation of the laboratory in Litchfield.

He left no survivors. His wife, the former Elsie Tyler, died in 2029.

Harker felt inward relief. Raymond had not dared to defy him; the reanimation of Barchet had been stopped as he had ordered.

It was only to be expected that some keen-eyed reader would read the Barchet obit and wonder why an official of the Beller Laboratories had been allowed to die on the premises, when reanimation equipment was right there. No doubt the question would be raised in the afternoon papers, since any news of the Beller researchers rated a good play.

He was not mistaken. At noon Mart Raymond called; he stared somewhat reproachfully at Harker out of the screen and said, "Some reporters just phoned up, Jim. They saw Barchet's obit and want to know how come he wasn't reanimated. What am I supposed to tell them—the truth?"

Harker scowled. "Don't tell them anything. Let me think. Ah—yes. Tell them Barchet was despondent over personal affairs, and left a memo imploring us not to reanimate him. Naturally, we abided by his last request."

"Naturally," Raymond said acidly. "Okay. I'll tell them. It sounds halfway plausible, anyway."

The newspapers moved fast. By nightfall the story had been promoted to the front pages, generally headed with something like Beller Man Chooses Death. The editorial pages of the Star-Post's evening edition had an interesting comment:

Natural Death or Suicide?

Yesterday Simeon Barchet, an executive of the now-famous Beller Laboratories, died suddenly of a heart attack. According to his colleagues at Beller, Mr. Barchet had been in a despondent frame of mind and left instructions that he was not to be reanimated.

The situation exposed a new facet of the already-explosive reanimation situation. Can willful refusal to undergo reanimation be considered suicide? According to time-honored principles of law, suicide or attempted suicide is an illegal act. In this case, the odd paradox arises of a man already dead committing what can only be termed suicide. Should reanimation be given the cachet of legal approval during the forthcoming Congressional hearings, then it is clear that a testament forbidding reanimation will reach beyond the grave to bind the dead man's survivors, counsel, and physicians in a conspiracy to abet suicide.

Obviously this is an impossible state of affairs. It demonstrates once again that the staggering Beller Laboratories success, which renders death in many cases merely temporary, will unavoidably bring about a massive revolution in our codes of legal and medical ethics, and indeed a change in our entire manner of life.

As he looked through the heap of newspapers, Harker began to feel that the tide was turning. The hysteria was dying down. Men were realizing that reanimation was no grisly joke, no hoax, but something real that had been developed and which could not be stamped out. There were relatively few cries for wholesale suppression of the process. A Fundamentalist minister from Kansas had got his name into the papers by demanding immediate destruction of all equipment and plans for reanimation apparatus, but his was an isolated voice.

The tone of the Star-Post editorial seemed to be the tone of the consensus. Men of intelligence were saying, Reanimation exists, for good or evil. Let's study it for a while and find out what it can do and how it will change society. Let's not scream for its suppression, but let's not unleash it entirely before we know what we're letting loose.

The most authoritative of the secular anti-reanimation voices had belonged to Clyde Thurman, and that voice now was stilled. The act had been one of colossal audacity and thoughtlessness, and even now Harker found it difficult to endure the memory of the noble old warrior's mindless eyes; but, he had to admit it, it had silenced a potent force for suppression.

Perhaps these were times for violence and audacity, Harker thought.

In that case I'm the wrong man for my job. But it's too late to help that now.

Sunday's papers continued the general trend toward reasonable consideration of the reanimation case, and also reported no progress in the search for the missing Senator. It was learned that the reanimation hearings would begin as scheduled on Monday—not in Washington, though, but in New York. Late Sunday evening a messenger appeared at Harker's door and handed him a document.

It was a subpoena, requesting him to be present at 10:00 the following morning at the Hotel Manhattan, where the Congressional hearings would begin.

Harker arrived there half an hour early. The hearings were taking place in a meeting-room on the nineteenth floor of the big hotel. Federal law required the presence of the press at Congressional hearings; television cameras were already set up, and at the back of the room Harker saw the four senators who had visited the labs: Brewster, Vorys, Dixon, Westmore. Two American-Conservatives, two National-Liberals. The fifth seat had been left vacant, obviously for Thurman; but Thurman would not be likely to take part in the hearings, though only a few men knew that fact with any certainty.

Mart Raymond was there already, wearing not his stained lab smock but a surprisingly natty tweed suit. Vogel had been subpoenaed too, but not Lurie. Next to Raymond sat a plumpish woman Harker had never seen before; she was middle-aged and dressed in an obsolete fashion.

"Jim, I want you to meet someone," Raymond called to him as soon as Harker entered. He crossed the room to the front row of seats and Raymond said, "This is Mrs. Beller. She's acting as representative for the Beller Fund since Barchet died."

"Dreadful, about poor Mr. Barchet," the woman said, in a highly masculine baritone. "Pleased to meet you, Mr. Harker. I've heard so much about you. My late husband was deeply interested in your career."

I'm damned sure of that, Harker thought. For as many years as he could remember, the name of Darwin F. Beller had headed the list of contributors to the annual American-Conservative Party campaign fund. He said aloud, "How do you do, Mrs. Beller."

He looked toward the platform where the senators sat. Brewster looked grim, Vorys peeved; Dixon and Westmore, the Nat-Lib members of the commission, both wore identical uneasy smiles.

Television cameramen seemed to be underfoot everywhere, checking camera angles, adjusting mike booms, testing the lighting. A small, harried-looking man with close-cropped hair came scurrying up to him, jabbed a microphone under his nose, and said, "Mr. Harker, would you mind saying a couple of words into this?"

"What do you want me to say?"

"That's fine, sir. Now you, Mr. Raymond, and then after that I'd like to hear the lady speak."

It was a voice-test. Someone yelled out, "Harker's fine! Raymond could use more resonance!"

"Would you mind getting more chest into your voice, Mr. Raymond?"

"I'll do my best," Raymond said.

The man with the microphone scurried away.

Harker watched the time on the big clock above the dais. Ten minutes to ten. The room was slowly filling up, not only with newspapermen. Raymond pointed out a couple of well-known medical men; Harker spotted two lawyers, including one who had issued a ringing denunciation of reanimation a week before.

At ten sharp Senator Westmore rose, smiled apologetically at the video camera, and said, "Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. As acting chairman of the Senate Special Investigating Committee dealing with the problem of discoveries of the Beller Research Laboratories, I hereby ask for your attention and call this meeting to order."

The room fell silent. In the hush, the throbbing purr of the official stenographer's recording machine was clearly audible. After a pause Westmore went on, "We begin this session in the absence of our chairman, Senator Thurman of New York. I'm sure you'll all join me in the hope that the beloved Senator is safe, wherever he is, and that his unusual absence will soon be explained. However, the, shall we say, delicate nature of the Beller discoveries makes it imperative that this Committee elicit facts and present its findings to Congress immediately, and so we are proceeding on schedule despite our chairman's absence.

"Our purpose is to draw forth information on the subject of reanimation. First I think it is well to question the director of the laboratory which developed the technique, Mr. Martin Raymond."

Raymond rose, a trifle awkwardly, and as he did so Senator Vorys requested permission to question him. Permission was granted.

Vorys said, in his thin, penetrating voice, "Dr. Raymond, you recognize me, do you not, as a member of the group of United States Senators who visited your laboratories recently?"

"I recognize you. You were there."

"In our presence you applied your animation technique to a twelve-year-old boy. Am I correct?"

"You are."

"The boy was dead?"

"He had drowned the day before."

"And where is this boy now?"

Raymond said, "Recuperating from the after-effects of his experience. He's in good health, but still pretty weak."

"Ah. Would it be possible for you to bring this boy to a session of this Committee?"

"I don't believe so, Senator. The boy's not ready for any travelling yet. And it would violate our policy to present him to the video audience. We try to keep the identity of our patients secret."

"Why do you do that?"

"To protect them. Reanimation is still in its early stages. The social implications are still unclear."

"Ah. Would you object if the members of this Committee paid the boy a visit, then, to ascertain the current state of his health?"

"That could be arranged," Raymond said.

There was a moment of silence. Vorys stared keenly at Raymond and said, "Would you trace briefly for us the history of your laboratory, the nature of your process, and the results you have obtained so far."

Speaking easily and freely now, Raymond told of the original Beller bequest, the gathering-together of the laboratory staff, the early failures. He outlined a rough sketch of the technique as it was now practiced. "To date we've had about seventy successful reanimations," he finished.

"And how many failures have there been?"

"About ten out of the seventy. Previous to our first successful reanimation we had thirty consecutive failures."

"I see. And what is the nature of these failures?"

Raymond began to fidget. "Ah—well, we don't succeed in restoring life."

"The body remains inanimate?"

"Yes. Most of the time, that is. I mean—"

It was too late. Vorys pounced on the slip gleefully and said, "Most of the time, Dr. Raymond? I don't quite understand. Does that mean that some of your failures result in actual reanimation, or partial reanimation? Will you make yourself clear?"

Panicky, Raymond glanced at Harker, who shrugged and nodded resignedly. It had to come out eventually, Harker thought.

The squirming Raymond was a pitiful sight under the merciless lights. He said in a hopeless voice, "I guess I ought to be more specific."

"That would help, Dr. Raymond."

"Well," Raymond said, "Counting the boy we reanimated when you were at the labs, Senator, we've had 72 reanimations since the first success. No, 73. In 62 of those cases, we've had c-complete success. In four others, it was impossible for us to restore life at all. And in the remaining seven"—now it comes out, Harker thought—"we achieved reanimation with partial success."

"In what way partial?" Vorys pressed.

Raymond had run out of evasions. He said, "We restored the body to functional activity. We were unable to achieve a similar restoration of the mind, in those seven cases."

CHAPTER XVII

The newspapers had a field day with Raymond's unwilling revelation. Even the traditionally sedate Times devoted six of its eight columns to a banner headline about it, and a story which began,

Public faith in the Beller reanimation process was seriously shaken today by the surprising revelation that reanimation sometimes produces a mentally deficient individual.

Dr. Martin Raymond, head of the Beller research organization, made the statement in New York at the opening session of Senate reanimation hearings. He declared that seven out of seventy-three experimental reanimations had produced "mindless beings." In four other instances, neither body nor mind was successfully recalled to life.

In the other papers, it was even worse. The Star-Post, which had been growing more sympathetic each day, demanded atop its editorial column, Why Have They Been Hiding This? The Hearst papers, which had never been sympathetic to the cause of reanimation, grew almost apoplectic now; their key slogan was the label, "The Zombie-Makers," which they used in reference to the Beller researchers not only in the editorial (a vitriolic one) but even in several of the news columns.

At the Litchfield headquarters, the flood of abusive mail threatened to overpower the local post-master. It was impossible to read it all, and after Harker picked up a scrawled letter that threatened assassination for him and his entire family unless reanimation experiments ceased, he decided to read none of it at all. They stored it in one of the supply-buildings in back, and Harker gave orders that any overflow was to be destroyed unread.

On the second day of the hearing, a few new faces were in the auditorium. They were faces Harker did not enjoy seeing. They belonged to Cal Mitchison and David Klaus, and with them was their lawyer, Gerhardt.

With Senator Thurman still not found, Brewster presided at the second session—a heavy-set, slow-moving man with the ponderously tenacious mind that went with those physical characteristics. With the opening formalities out of the way, Brewster said, "We would like to hear from Dr. David Klaus, formerly of the Beller Research Laboratories."

Harker was on his feet immediately. "Senator Brewster, I'd like to enter an objection. This man is the principal in a lawsuit pending against our laboratory. Anything he says in his favor this morning may be prejudicial to us in the lawsuit."

Brewster shook his head slowly. "This is not a court of law, Mr. Harker. We are interested in hearing Dr. Klaus' statements. You will have ample time to refute them later, if you wish."

Harker subsided. Brewster looked at Klaus, who stood with his hands knotted nervously together, a thin, slab-jawed scrawny bright-young-scientific-prodigy type. "Dr. Klaus, you were formerly employed by the Beller Laboratories, were you not? Would you mind telling us why your employment there was terminated?"

Stammering as usual, Klaus said, "I was discharged by order of James Harker shortly after he came to work there. It was a purely malicious act."

Harker fumed, but Brewster waved imperiously at him to keep him quiet. The Senator said, "Please keep personal differences out of this, Dr. Klaus. How long were you employed at the laboratories?"

"Three years. I was in charge of enzyme research."

"I see. And you were aware that the reanimation experiments were occasionally producing—ah—idiots?"

"Yes, sir. We all were aware of that."

"Were attempts being made to safeguard against this unfortunate result, Dr. Klaus?"

Klaus nodded. "My department was working on a chemical method of insuring full recovery of mental powers. I don't know what's been done since my dismissal."

"He's lying!" Raymond shouted. "His group never had anything to do with—"

"Please, Mr. Raymond," Brewster said fiercely. "Your outburst is uncalled-for."

To Klaus he said, "Do you feel that this hazard of the reanimation process can be overcome in the course of further research?"

"Definitely. But the present management of the laboratories is heading in the wrong direction. They've rejected my ideas—which were close to being perfected—and instead chose to suppress the whole affair."

Harker felt his pulse mounting. Klaus seemed icily calm up there, speaking now with cold precision—most unusual for him. He sounded as if he had rehearsed this speech all morning.

Brewster said, "It would seem to me that the directors of the Beller Laboratories were guilty of an act of bad faith. Wouldn't you agree, Dr. Klaus?"

"Definitely, sir."

"Thank you. We would like to hear from Mr. James Harker, now."

Moistening his lips, Harker rose and took his place in the spotlight. Brewster gave place to Dixon, for which Harker was thankful; the American-Conservative Senators had a way of conducting hearings as if they were representatives of the Spanish Inquisition.

Dixon said, "Would you tell us how you became affiliated with the Beller outfit, Mr. Harker?"

"I was approached by Dr. Lurie of Beller," Harker said. "I had retired to private law practice after conclusion of my term as Governor of New York State. Dr. Lurie requested me to handle the legal aspects of reanimation."

"Ah. How long have you been connected with Beller, then?"

"Dr. Lurie first approached me on May 8. Roughly three weeks ago, Senator Dixon."

"And you have acted as spokesman for the laboratory since May 8?"

"No sir. My first public statement for Beller appeared on May 20. It was occasioned by the premature and unauthorized release of information to the public by Dr. Klaus and our then public-relations agent, Mr. Mitchison. This was the act of insubordination for which they were dismissed from the laboratory."

"You infer that the first public announcement of the Beller reanimation experiments was made without your consent or knowledge?"

"That's right, sir."

"Why did you intend to maintain continued secrecy?"

"The process was not quite perfect, sir. A few more weeks of work and we could have eliminated the possibility of mental loss. It was my plan not to bring the matter to the public notice until then—but Dr. Klaus took it upon himself to inform the world without my knowledge."

Harker glanced at Brewster and Vorys. They were frowning; perhaps he had gotten through to them. He wondered if his words would counteract the tide of unfavorable reactions already swelling.

Dixon said, "Could you tell us how close you are to actual elimination of the hazard of insanity?"

"Sorry, I can't. That would be Dr. Raymond's province. But I will say that research at our laboratory has virtually ceased during this period of uncertainty."

There was a whispered conference at the dais, and abruptly Vorys replaced Dixon as interrogator.

"Mr. Harker, does the name Wayne Janson mean anything to you?"

Brewster and Vorys had evidently primed themselves well for the attack. Harker said, "Yes, Senator Vorys. Janson was an industrialist who committed suicide last week."

"It means nothing else to you?"

"No."

"No one of that name underwent reanimation at the Beller Laboratories?"

"No, sir."

Vorys paused momentarily. "The late Mr. Janson was supposed to have undergone reanimation several months before your employment at Beller. Is it possible that he did experience treatment there, and that you don't know about it?"

"I've examined the list of patients at Beller since the beginning of experiments there. No one named Janson is on the list."

"Perhaps he entered under another name."

"We have photographs of all patients, Senator. None of them corresponded to the photo of Mr. Janson published in the newspapers."

"In other words, you deny that he was ever a patient of the laboratories?"

"Exactly."

"But a close friend of the late Mr. Janson claims that he did secretly enter the Beller laboratories of his own free will shortly before his death of natural causes, was reanimated, and suffered such mental disturbance afterward that he took his own life."

Harker said quietly, "It's obvious that one party is lying, isn't it? Our records indicate that no such person ever entered the labs for treatment. The burden of proof, I believe, rests with the other party."

"We have only your word for this," Vorys went on obstinately. "And you are not even under oath. Will you make these records of yours available for public inspection?"

"It would be against our policy."

"We could subpoena the records," Vorys warned.

Harker shrugged. "That's within your rights, of course, I admit. But exposure of the names of our patients would probably have adverse effects on them, pathologically and otherwise."

"That sounds very good, Mr. Harker. But it could also be an excuse for hiding something."

Resisting the impulse to lose his temper—for Vorys was obviously deliberately baiting him—Harker said, "I believe it would be possible to grant you and your three colleagues access to our records, to prove the fraudulent nature of the Janson matter. But public exposure of the names would not be necessary, would it?"

"Quite possibly not. Thank you, Mr. Harker. We will recess for one hour now."

As soon as Harker had left the stand, Mart Raymond approached him and said, "Things are getting rough, eh?"

Harker nodded. "Vorys and Brewster are out for our scalps. The American-Conservatives must be preparing to come down hard."

"I'm sorry about letting that statistic slip yesterday, Jim—"

"Forget it. It had to come out sooner or later, and maybe if we had announced it at the start we wouldn't be having so much trouble now. Well, it couldn't be helped. Let's go get some lunch."

As they rode downward in the gravshaft toward the hotel dining room, Harker said, "Exactly how close are you to getting the bugs out of the process?"

Raymond looked vague. "A week, a month, maybe a year. We know what causes the mental breakdown—most of the time. It's a matter of hormone impurity, generally. Of course, in some cases the brain suffers severe damage in the process of dying, and we'll never be able to lick that any more than we can revive a man who's been blown apart by dynamite. But I'm pretty sure we can lick the defects in our own system soon."

"And what probability of success would you predict after that?"

Raymond shrugged and said, "Who knows? Nine out of ten successes? Ninety-seven out of a hundred? Until we have ten or twenty thousand case histories behind us, our statistics don't mean a hoot."

Harker nodded thoughtfully. The meal was a quiet one; neither man said much. Harker was going back over the morning's session, trying to pick out the phrases the press would leap on.

He hoped he had discredited the Mitchison-Klaus combine and Bryant by his refutation. Surely the public would see that Mitchison and Klaus were vengeful power-seekers and nothing more, and that the whole Janson affair was nothing but a malicious hoax.

But he overestimated the public's ability to distinguish truth from slung mud, it seemed. The early afternoon papers were already on sale by the time the hearing resumed for the afternoon.

The headline on the Star-Post was, Klaus Says Harker Fired Him; Charges Beller 'Bad Faith.'

The story, slanted heavily in Klaus' direction, implied that the enzyme man had been on the verge of a brilliant discovery when Harker maliciously sacked him. As for the Janson case, it referred to Harker's "uncomfortable evasions."

The tide was turning. The public fancy had seized on the one fact, grotesque and horrifying enough, that in a few cases reanimation resulted in dreadful mindlessness. On that slim base, a massive movement aimed at the total suppression of reanimation was beginning to take form and grow in strength.

Harker had seen the phenomenon before, and had been helpless before it. The great insane raging tide of public opinion had sprung up from what had been a smoothly-flowing stream, and once its mighty power had been channelled toward a definite end, there was no standing against it.

He had the uncomfortable feeling that only a miracle could save things, now. And miracles were not easy to come by, in this secular age.

CHAPTER XVIII

As the hearing ground along into its third day, and its fourth, and then its fifth and sixth, things grew even worse. The "zombie" phrase became a favorite, not only of the press and the public, but even of Brewster and Vorys. The fact that seven of seventy-three reanimation subjects had been revived sans intellect had become the main issue. In his rare moments of relaxation, Harker wondered how the world would react if it were ever learned that one of those seven had been none other than the missing Senator Thurman.

Very much as Harker had expected, the American-Conservative Party intensified its previous belief in "caution" into what amounted to condemnation of the whole process. Maxwell of Vermont, the Senate Minority Leader, delivered an off-the-cuff but probably carefully rehearsed speech at a Chicago gathering of American-Conservative committeemen, in which he referred to reanimation as "That mess engineered by a one-time lame duck of a National-Liberal, that unholy conspiracy against human dignity."

Later the same day, the chairman of the Nat-Lib national committee was quick to announce that James Harker had voluntarily severed his party connections in January, was now a private citizen, and in no way represented the membership of the National-Liberal Party. It was a neat disavowal that took the Nat-Libs off the hook in case the reaction against reanimation grew stronger, but left them an avenue of entry just in case public opinion should swing back in favor of Harker.

Work at the lab had come practically to a standstill. "If we only had a few more weeks," Raymond mourned, "we might be able to lick the remaining defects and get public approval. But they won't leave us alone to work."

A delegation of FBI men and the four investigating senators visited the laboratory a week after the hearings had begun, and Raymond and Harker reluctantly showed them the data on the revivifications so far—excluding that of Senator Thurman, which had not been recorded in any way whatever.

They checked through the photos, compared them with those of Wayne Janson, and left. That night the FBI issued an official statement which read, in part, "Examination of the Beller Laboratories' records does not indicate that the late Mr. Janson ever received treatment there. Since there is nothing in Janson's own private papers that leads us to believe he as much as knew of the existence of the Beller organization prior to its public announcement, we must conclude that no reanimation did take place."

This left Jonathan Bryant in an ambiguous position, since he continued to maintain that Janson had undergone reanimation, and had suffered a severe change in personality as a result, leading to his suicide.

"This ought to settle Jonathan for good," Harker crowed when the text of the FBI exoneration reached him. After all, it had to be obvious to everyone that Bryant had perpetrated a hoax designed solely to discredit reanimation and arouse popular fears against it.

But again Harker was wrong. The day after publication of the FBI statement, Jonathan Bryant was subpoenaed to appear before the investigating committee. The questioner was Senator Vorys. The interchange between Bryant and Vorys was widely reported in the late editions that day:

Senator Vorys: You knew the late Wayne Janson well?

Bryant: I was his closest friend.

Vorys: When did he first mention reanimation to you?

Bryant: About January. He said his doctor had told him about the experiments going on in Litchfield.

Vorys: What is the name of this doctor?

Bryant: I'm sorry, I don't know, Senator Vorys.

Vorys: Very well. Go ahead.

Bryant: Well, Wayne suffered a stroke in February and he told me that he was going to Litchfield, that he felt close to death and was volunteering for reanimation.

Vorys: (Interrupting) The FBI did check and found that Janson had been away from home during February and March.

Bryant: Yes, sir. Well, Janson came home late in March and told me of his experiences. He seemed moody, depressed, very different from usual. I tried without success to cheer him up. Then one night several weeks ago he phoned me and said he was going to end it all, to jump off the George Washington Bridge. In his conversation he attributed his desire for death to a morbid change that had come over his mind as a result of the Beller treatment.

Vorys: You're aware, are you not, of the FBI statement which says that to the best of their knowledge Janson never had any contact with the Beller people?

Bryant: Of course. The key phrase there is "to the best of their knowledge." I have no doubt that the Beller people have suppressed this case as they've suppressed so many other things since James Harker started running them.

The ten-minute colloquy between Vorys and Bryant, widely quoted and republished everywhere, served not only to discredit the FBI statement utterly, but to convince the public that Harker had indeed suppressed the records of the Janson reanimation.

A magnificent scientific discovery discredited because of a ten percent imperfection. An FBI investigation thrown into the rubbish-heap because of one man's bitter determination to crush an old enemy.

Harker studied the newspapers each day with increasing bitterness. The original importance of the Beller process seemed to be getting lost under the welter of side-issues, the jackal-like snapping of Klaus-Mitchison and Bryant, the political fencing of the two great parties, the hysteria of the people when faced with something new and beyond easy acceptance.

Only one issue had not been raised yet—luckily, for it was the deadliest of all, having a basis of truth. No one had accused the Beller people of murdering Senator Thurman.

It was a logical accusation, against the background of insane charges already raised. After all, Thurman had been the most vigorous and most important of the enemies of reanimation, and he had disappeared on the eve of the hearings themselves! It seemed obvious to Harker that someone would think of implying that the Beller group had done away with their tough, intractable enemy.

But no one raised the cry, perhaps because it was too obvious. A thousandth time, Harker was grateful for that momentary impulse of steely purposefulness that had led him to condemn Barchet to continuing death. Of the six people who had known the fate of Senator Thurman, only Barchet was likely to crack and reveal the truth—and Barchet was out of the picture now.

The eighth day of the hearing came and went; Vorys grilled poor Luric mercilessly on minor scientific details, while Brewster got Vogel to explain some of the surgical fine points of the reanimation technique.

"You have to admire those two boys," Harker said after that session. "They've really brushed up on the pertinent subjects."

"I haven't had a quizzing like that since I left medical school," Vogel said, nervously tugging at the dark strands of his beard.

"And for what?" Raymond wanted to know. "Just to use up the taxpayers' money. They've found out all they want to know about us."

Harker nodded gloomily. You only had to pick up any newspaper, listen to any reasonably right-wing news commentator, attend any church, even walk in the street and talk to people at random.

The response was the same. Fear.

Fear of reanimation, fear of that one-chance-out-of-six that the result would be a so-called zombie. Desperately Harker tried to counteract the swelling tide of fear. He scraped up money for a full-page ad in the Times, headed, Throw Out the Baby With the Bathwater?

His line of argument was that the reanimation process should not be condemned for its failures, but praised for its successes. It was in the early stages, the experimental years. What if aviation had been suppressed because of the early crashes? Research had to go on.

The response to the advertisement was a lessening of hysteria in responsible places; the Times itself echoed his feelings in its own editorial the next day. But he sensed he was not reaching the people. And the people feared reanimation. There was no doubt of that, now.

The hearing rolled along into early June, and then one day Dixon announced that this was the last week; the committee would enter private deliberations preparatory to delivering its findings to the Senate as a whole.

Harker approached Senator Dixon privately and said, "Tell me, Senator—how are our chances?"

The Wyoming liberal frowned quizzically. "Hard to say. The Committee's deadlocked two-and-two, you see. We may fight all summer about it."

"Vorys and Brewster are dead against it?"

"Absolutely. They heed the voice of the people, you see. Every minority party has to. It's the way they become a majority again."

Harker said doubtfully, "How's the feeling in high Nat-Lib circles?"

Dixon shrugged. "Right now, the feeling runs toward taking the Beller labs over and continuing reanimation research under federal supervision—with you and Raymond still in charge, of course."

"Fine!"

"Not so fast," Dixon warned. "We've got a Congressional majority, but that doesn't mean a thing. The way the people are murmuring, it looks pretty bad for getting that measure through."

"You mean you may have to switch your stand?"

Dixon nodded. "Jim, you know all about political expediency. You tried to knock down the stone wall when you were Governor, and got nowhere. If the people say, 'Junk reanimation,' then we'll have to junk it."

Hotly Harker said, "Junk it? The way I was junked as Governor?"

Dixon smiled. "I'm afraid so. It's this business of the seven idiots, Jim. That scares people more than you can imagine."

"But we can lick that problem—eventually!"

"Maybe you can. But the voters don't believe that. All they see is the short-range possibility. And they're more afraid of having a loved one turn into a zombie than they are of death. After all, you can't very well kill your wife or son or father if you've had him reanimated and he turns out to be an idiot. You have to go on supporting him. It's pretty frightening."

Doggedly Harker said, "I think we can get over that particular hump."

"Then reanimation's in. Jim, I'm not so foolish as to think that we can ever go back to where we were two months ago. The Beller process exists; it can't be destroyed. But it can be batted around in committee and side-channelled and circumvented until the time is ripe for popular acceptance. And the Party may have to do that to you, though I hope it doesn't happen."

"Do you think it will, though?"

Again the sad smile. "Read the newspapers, man. Read your mail!"

Harker read his mail.

He ploughed through hundreds of vicious, sweat-provoking letters. He sorted them out: favorable on one side, unfavorable on the other. The unfavorable pile grew so high it toppled over, and he started a new one; the pile of encouraging letters was no more than three inches thick.

They were letters of raw hate, most of them. The kind of thing that went, My beloved mother/father/sister/brother/son/daughter/aunt/uncle/grandmother/grandfather died last week, and I want to tell you she/he had a decent Christian burial and went to his/her eternal repose. Naturally I feel sorrow at my loss, but I'd rather be dead myself than let a loved one of mine get into your hands. Sure, maybe you'll bring him/her back to life—but who wants to see the hollow mindless shell of someone you once loved? Not me, brother. Not me.

It was an enlarging experience to read those letters. Even when he had held public office, Harker had never received so many, nor such loaded ones.

It was astonishing. They gloated in the triumph of death, they thanked God they had not allowed their beloved ones to be reanimated, they extended curses for Harker and his whole family. He was the target of their hate, the symbol for reanimation.

At first he was irritated, then angered; anger passed, and turned into compassion. Perhaps some of these same people had written to him a month ago, pleading to have a loved one restored to them by the new miracle of science. Now, confused by the haze of conflicting tales, of lies and partial truths, their earlier willingness turned to repulsion.

Harker wearily baled the letters up again, and left Litchfield to spend some time with his puzzled, unhappy family. They were accustomed to seeing their father's name in the headlines; it was old stuff to them. But this public hatred was new to them, and difficult for them to understand.

It was not too late, Harker thought. The forces of confusion could be put to rout; the dominion of death could at last have boundaries staked out.

But the public faith had to be regained. Some spectacular demonstration, some act of faith that would capture their imagination and end the dominating sway of ignorance.

But what? How?

Harker had no answer.

CHAPTER XIX

At Litchfield again, the next day, Harker was reading through a lab report, comprehending not very much of it, when a diffident knock sounded outside his door.

Probably Lurie with the papers, he thought. "Come in!"

A slim figure in ecclesiastical robes entered. Harker blinked and said, "I didn't expect to see you here, Father Carteret."

"Nor I. But I thought I would make the trip."

"Sit down," Harker urged. "What's on your mind?"

"Jim, I asked you to come to me if you ever had any troubles. You have them now. I thought I'd stop over and find out if I could be of any help."

Harker felt faintly irritated. He liked the priest, but he felt no desire for unasked advice. "Father, if you've come to tell me I ought to quit this outfit while I still have my soul, forget it."

"The time for telling you that is past."

Harker stared at the priest coolly. "Then why are you here?"

"To help you. I have a suggestion for you—a rather strange one. But first let me tell you that the Church is reconsidering its stand."

"What?"

Carteret smiled gently. "The Church moves slowly; don't anticipate anything for the next several years. But I have it on good understanding that as soon as your technique is perfect—that is, as soon as you can restore body and mind every time—the Church will no longer withhold its approval from reanimation."

Harker chuckled. "I'd say that bet was pretty well coppered. The if there is a pretty big one."

"I know. But a necessary one. I'm praying for your success, Jim."

"You? But you warned me away from this thing!"

Carteret nodded. "You took the step anyway. And perhaps I made an original error in judgment."

"Well, that's neither here nor there. Reanimation is going to be squashed by Congress anyway."

"What do you mean?"

"Simply that the defect in the process has aroused such public horror that Congress is afraid to legislate in our favor."

"And you don't expect to overcome that defect?"

"Not immediately. Another six months, maybe—but by that time it'll be too late."

Carteret steepled his long thin fingers reflectively. "You tell me, then, that your real problem is a failure of public relations. If you could sell your product to the people, Congress would follow along.

"In a word, that's it."

"I thought so."

"You said you had a suggestion to make," Harker reminded the priest.

"I did. It's an idea for capturing the stream of public opinion. I'm anxious to see your project succeed, Jim. It may sound strange, coming from my lips, but that's the truth. I suffered to reach this option."

"And what's your idea?"

An odd smile appeared on Carteret's thin face. "It's one that bears the test of time, Jim. Our Savior went meekly to the Cross, and on the third day He arose. It was an act that has captured the imaginations and hearts of men for two thousand years."

Harker frowned. "I don't quite see—"

He stopped. Abruptly the deeper meaning of the priest's words was borne in on him, and he stared at Carteret aghast, wondering.

"Would you do something like that?" he asked.

"If I had faith in my cause," Carteret said. "Do you have faith in yours?"

Hesitantly Harker said, "I—think so."

"Therein lies the answer, Jim. Think about it a while. Don't rush yourself. I'll leave you now, and let you get used to the idea."

Alone, Harker stared through the office window at the dark, rain-streaked sky outside. Summer lightning crackled suddenly across the darkness; moments later thunder came rolling down from the hills.

A cold sweat came over him as he revolved Carteret's words in his mind: Our Savior went meekly to the Cross, and on the third day He arose.

Do I dare, he wondered?

It was, he knew without doubt, the act that would settle the fate of reanimation for good. With success would come triumph; failure for him unquestionably meant the downfall of the project.

Shall I risk it?

Do I dare?

He thought back over a life that had lasted forty-three years, a comfortable life, most of it spent in easy circumstances as he rose through law school to political prominence, then down the other side of the curve into a short-lived obscurity. He had never known real danger in his life. There had been enemies, of course—political ones, who had worked his downfall. But that was a gentle kind of strife, a chess-game more than a pitched war.

This was different.

This was life or death, on the line—and for what? For a cause. He had never known a cause he might be willing to risk death for. Now that the risk presented itself, he wondered if he had the courage to submit to it.

Harker sat quietly for perhaps half an hour, thinking. Then he reached for the phone and dialed his home number. Lois answered. In a calm, level voice, he told her exactly what he was going to do.

She was silent for a moment; then she said simply, "Jim, why do you have to do this thing?"

How can I explain? he wondered. How can I show her that a moment can come when you stand between life and death, and the choice is entirely yours?

He said, "I think it's the only way, Lois. It'll prove to the world that reanimation can be trusted."

"But the awful risk, Jim—"

One-chance-out-of-six for idiocy, he thought bleakly. "I wouldn't do it if I thought it was risky, Lois. The whole point is that it isn't risky. You think I want to be a goddam martyr?"

"Sometimes I think you do, Jim," she said very quietly.

He chuckled harshly. "Well, maybe. But I know what I'm doing. It'll hammer home reanimation the way no amount of talking ever could."

After a long pause she said, "When—when would you do this thing?"

"I don't know. I'd have to discuss it with the others here first. And we'd need to arrange for proper publicity. Unless the whole world finds out about it, there's no sense in doing it."

Forty-three years of life converging toward one moment of decision in a bare little room on a rain-soaked New Jersey hill, Harker thought. And this is probably the weirdest motive for suicide in the history of the human species.

Lois said, "Do you have that much faith in those men?"

"Yes. How can we expect the people to trust us, if we don't trust ourselves?"

"All right," she said. Her voice held undertones of quiet resignation. "I guess I ought to fight and cry and tell you not to do it, but I know you too well, Jim. Go ahead, if you think you have to do this thing. I—I guess you might as well have my permission, because I know you'll go ahead and do it anyway."

There was the hint of a crack in her voice. Harker smiled palely, thankful that the roughly-furnished office he had here did not have a visual pickup on the phone. He did not want her to see his face now, for he knew his face was that of a frightened man.

"Everything's going to be okay," he told her, and broke the contact.

It was still raining. He pulled a waterproof from the closet, slung it over his shoulders, and dashed across the clearing to Mart Raymond's office. The sky was dark, gray, bleak.

Raymond was working on records when Harker entered—proceeding mechanically, with the air of a man marking time. They were all marking time, waiting for the Congressional decision.

Harker said, "Mart, tell me something."

"Go ahead."

"How close are you to ironing out the business of loss of mind?"

Raymond shrugged. "I told you. A month's more work, maybe. A little less, if we're lucky."

Nodding, Harker said quietly, "Look here, Mart: I'm going to pull a Mitchison."

"Huh?"

"I mean, I'm going to jump the gun and announce that you've already straightened things up, and that from now on reanimation will work every time, provided no vital organs are damaged and that decay hasn't begun."

"What's the point of doing that? It isn't so."

"It will be so, sooner or later. Sooner, I hope. But I have an idea for a sort of publicity stunt, a grandstand play that should clinch the idea of reanimation's safety. Or else finish us altogether."

Harker walked to the window and stared out. Raymond said, "Jim, what the dickens are you talking about?"

Harker turned sharply. "Very simple. We're going to give a public demonstration of reanimation, sometime in the next couple of days. In order to prove the absolute safety of the process, I'm going to allow you to kill me under laboratory conditions and bring me back to life."

"Are you crazy?"

"Desperate. It's not quite the same thing."

"But suppose it doesn't work? What if—you remember how Thurman looked?"

"I do. I'll take my chances. If it doesn't work, then we're not much worse off than we are now." Harker turned again and stared out the window.

The rain had stopped; the sun was out. A rainbow arched proudly across the low hills, a many-colored ribbon stretching out to the horizon.

Harker drafted two press releases during the afternoon, and by nightfall they had reached print in the newspapers. Both caused sensations.

At seven that evening he tuned in the video at one of the laboratory dorm lounges, and heard a news commentator say, "Exciting news from the Beller Research Laboratories of New Jersey today. The last technical flaw in the reanimation process has been licked, according to lab director Martin Raymond. The Beller Lab statement declared that from now on reanimation will be virtually fool-proof, with no risk of possible insanity as before.

"As if to drive home the importance of this new development, a simultaneous statement comes from James Harker, who of course is closely affiliated with the reanimation researchers. Harker let it be known this afternoon that he is suffering from a rare heart ailment, one which has been hitherto impossible to correct because the necessary surgery cannot be performed on a living man.

"Harker declared that he is so confident of the Beller technique's results that he will submit to the operation, necessitating temporary 'death,' and then will be reanimated at the conclusion of the operation."

Harker listened soberly to this largely fictitious news broadcast. He had no heart ailment; the last technical flaw had not been eliminated.

But never mind, he thought. The essential fact was the last—the reanimation. The rest was camouflage.

Five chances out of six. He felt oddly calm about his decision. At last he found a cause in which he had faith, and he did not expect to be let down.

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 the sound of 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 clashing 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-tendriled machine loomed up over me. Yes.

Vogel is whispering something to someone now; I can't quite 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 nothingness. 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 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, tinged 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 FBI 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 the techniques 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. 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."