The grand tour of the laboratory grounds was as disturbing as it was
stimulating. Seemingly tireless, Raymond marched him through room after
room where elaborate experiments were going on.
"Serotonin-diffraction goes on in here. This room's plasma research;
remind me to bring you back some time when the big centrifuge is
running. Fascinating. This is Klaus' enzyme lab, and down here--"
Harker puffed along behind the lab director, listening to the flow
of unfamiliar terms, dazzled by the array of formidable scientific
devices. He saw kennels where lively dogs bounded joyfully up and down
and struggled to lick his hands through the cage; it was a little
jarring to learn that every dog in the room had been "dead" at least
once, for periods ranging from a few minutes to twenty-eight hours. He
met a grave little rhesus monkey that held the record; it had been dead
thirty-nine hours, two months before.
"We had a pair of them," Raymond said. "We brought this fellow back at
the 39-hour mark, and held the other off for nine more hours in hopes
of hitting a full two days. We didn't make it. The surviving monk moped
for days about it."
Harker nodded. He was swept on; into a large room lined with ledgers,
which Raymond said contained all the records of the Beller Laboratories
since its opening in 2024. White-smocked researchers turned to look up
as Harker and his guide passed through into a long, well-lit lab room,
then out into the afternoon warmth and across to the other building,
for more of the same.
"Well," Harker said finally, after they had returned to Raymond's
office. "It's a busy place."
Raymond nodded. "We keep it moving. And it gets results. Despite
everything, it gets results."
_Despite everything._ Harker didn't like the implications of that. He
was beginning to form a picture of Raymond as an able man surrounded by
stumbling-blocks and obstacles, and bulling his way through none the
less. He wondered how it would be once he got the campaign into full
swing, not too many weeks from now.
Harker leaned back, trying to relax. Raymond said, "Is it too early for
you to give me an outline of the program you're planning?"
Harker hunched his shoulders forward uneasily. "It's still in the
formative stage. I'm seeing Governor Winstead on Friday, as you know,
and early next week I'll go down to Washington and talk to Senator
Thurman. If we get them on our side, the rest is relatively easy."
"And if we don't?"
Harker did not smile. "Then we have a fight."
"Why do you say that? Can't we just set up an instruction center and
start resuscitating?"
"Pardon me, Mart, if I say that your approach's a naive one. We _can't_
do any such thing. Not even if you limit use of the apparatus to fully
qualified M.D.'s. You see, anything as radical as this will have to be
routed through the Federal Health Department, and they'll simply boot
it on up to the President, and he'll refer it to Congress. What we need
is a law making use of your technique legal."
"Is there any law saying it's _illegal_ to reanimate the dead?" Raymond
asked.
"Not yet. But you can bet there'll be an attempt to ram one through,
before long. Which is why we have to put through a law of our own."
Raymond fell silent; his blue-cheeked face looked grave. An idea
occurred to Harker and he said, "Do you have any idea how big our
public-relations budget is?"
Raymond shrugged. "Pretty big. I guess you can have three or four
hundred thousand, if you need it."
"Three or four hundred _million_ is more in line with what we'll need,"
Harker said. He saw the stunned expression on Raymond's face and added,
"Certainly at least a million, to begin with."
"But why? Why should it be necessary to _sell_ the idea of restoring
life? You'd think the people of America would rise up and acclaim us as
saviors."
"You'd think so, wouldn't you?" Harker shook his head bleakly. "It
doesn't work that way, Mart. For one thing, they'll be afraid to try
it. There'll be plenty of 'zombie' jokes, and behind those jokes
will be unvoiced fear. Uh-uh, Mart. If we're going to put this thing
across, we'll need a big public-relations budget. And we can't let a
bubble-head like Mitchison handle the job."
"It'll take a little time to fire him."
"Why?"
"You heard Barchet. Mitchison's Barchet's man. We'll have to go through
shareholder channels to get rid of Mitchison."
"How long will that take?"
"Two weeks, maybe three," Raymond said. "Will that hold things up too
badly?"
"We'll manage," Harker said tiredly.
* * * * *
Harker spent the next morning, Wednesday, at his office, tidying
up unfinished business. The delayer on the Bryant hearing had come
through, and he read the document carefully, scowled, and jammed it
into his desk drawer. He phoned the Bryant home and learned that the
old man was very low; the penguinoid doctor refused to let Harker speak
with him. Harker suspected the fine hand of Jonathan Bryant lurking
behind that ukase, but there wasn't much he could do about it. The old
man wasn't going to last forever, anyway--but Harker genuinely wanted
him to hold out until after the hearing, at least.
Nasty business. Jonathan had deliberately obtained the stay of hearing
in hopes that his father would die before the case came up.
He left the office at noon, spent some time downtown in the public
library trying to find some books that would give him a little
scientific background, and headed for home about four that afternoon.
His home life had been suffering, a bit, in the week since he had
plunged himself fully into the Beller Labs project. He had been coming
home at odd hours, which upset Lois' routine, and his attitude was one
of withdrawn introversion, which made things tough on the children.
Still, they all were very cooperative about it, Harker thought. He
hoped he could make it up to them when the pressure let up.
_If_ the pressure ever let up.
Thursday passed slowly. Harker remained at home, in his study, and
tried to read the books he had brought from the library. He was
surprised to learn that formal resuscitation research dated from the
middle years of the past century. He traced down a few of the terms
Raymond had thrown at him, and learned a bit about the mechanics of the
Beller reanimation technique.
But, he realized when he put the books down, he knew very little in
detail. He had simply skimmed the surface, acquiring a veneer of terms
which he could use to impress the even-less-educated.
A politician's trick, he thought. But what else could he do?
He woke early on Friday, before six, and made breakfast for himself. By
the time he had turned off the autocook and set the kitchen-servo to
_mop-up_, Lois and the children were moving about upstairs. They had
come down for breakfast before he was ready to leave.
"Morning, Dad," Chris said. "Up early, eh?"
"I have to make a 9:30 jet," he explained. "It's the last one before
noon."
Paul appeared, thumbing his eyes, yawning. "Where you going, Daddy?"
"Albany," Harker said.
The seven-year-old looked awake immediately. "Albany? Are you Governor
again, Daddy?"
"_Hush_, stupid!" Chris said savagely.
But Harker merely smiled and shook his head. "No, I won't be Governor
any more, Paul. I'm going to visit Mr. Winstead. _He's_ the Governor
now."
"Oh," the boy said gravely.
Harker reached the West Side jet terminal at ten after nine. The big
150-seater was out on the field, surrounded by attendants. It would
make the trip to Albany in just under thirteen minutes.
It was a silly business. It took him twice that long to get to the
terminal from his home. But modern transportation was full of such
paradoxes.
At nine-thirty-five the great ship erupted from the landing-strip; not
much later it was roaring over Westchester, and not very much after
that it was taxiing to a smooth and uneventful landing just outside
Albany.
Thirteen minutes. And it took twenty-five minutes more for the jetport
bus to bring them across the Hudson into Albany proper after the flight.
His appointment with Governor Winstead was for eleven that morning.
Declining the public transport service, Harker walked through town to
the governor's mansion--a walk that he had come to know well, in his
four years in Albany.
The town hadn't changed much. Still third-rate, dirty, bedraggled;
one of his proposed reforms had been to move the Capitol downstate
to New York City, where it really belonged, but naturally the
force of sentiment was solidly against him, not to mention the
American-Conservative Party, whose New York stronghold Albany was.
He smiled at the memory. He had fought so many losing battles, in his
four years as Governor.
* * * * *
The guards at Winstead's mansion recognized him, of course, and tipped
their hats. Harker grinned amiably at them and passed through, but he
felt inward discomfort. _Their_ jobs were pegged down by civil-service
regulations; his had not been, and he had lost it. In an odd way it
made him feel inferior.
He traveled the familiar journey upstairs to the Governor's office.
Winstead was there to greet him with outstretched hand and a faintly
abashed smile.
"Jim. So glad you could come up here."
"It's not a courtesy call, Leo. I'm here to ask some advice."
"Any way I can help, Jim, you know I will."
Harker experienced a moment of disorientation as he took a seat facing
Winstead across the big desk that had been his until a few months ago.
It was strange to find himself sitting on _this_ side of the desk.
He looked for ways to begin saying what he had come here to say. He
sensed the other man's deep embarrassment, and shared it in a way,
because the awkwardness of this first meeting between Governor and
ex-Governor was complex and many-leveled.
Winstead was ten years his senior: a good party man, a reliable
workhorse who had come up through the ranks of the Manhattan District
Attorney's office, and who had turned down a judgeship because he
thought he had a shot at the race for Governor. But the party had
chosen the bright, meteorically-rising young Mayor, James Harker, to
be the standard-bearer instead, and an avalanche of Nat-Lib votes from
downstate had swept Harker in.
Then it had been necessary to discard Harker four years later, and good
dependable old Leo Winstead was trotted out of private law practice to
take his place. The Nat-Lib tide held true; Winstead was elected, and
now it was the ex-prodigy who entered private law practice instead of
using the Governorship as a spring-board into the White House.
Harker said, "Leo, you carry weight with the party. I don't any more."
"Jim, I--"
"Don't try to apologize, Leo, because it's my own fault and none of
yours that I'm where I am now. I'm simply asking you to exert some
influence on behalf of a project I'm involved in."
It was a naked attempt at lobbying. Harker hoped Winstead's unconscious
guilt-feelings would lead him to support the Beller people.
"What sort of project is it, Jim?"
"It's--it's a sort of revolutionary breakthrough in science, Leo. A
process to reanimate people who have been dead less than twenty-four
hours."
Winstead sat up. "Are you serious?"
"Dead serious. I'm going down to Washington next week to see Thurman.
This thing really _works_--and I want to get it legally approved."
"And exactly where do I come in?"
"You're a powerful official, Leo. If you came out in praise of this new
development--"
"Dangerous business, Jim. The Church--"
"I know all about the Church. And you can bet our friends the
American-Conservatives will make some kind of political capital about
the news. The Nat-Libs will _have_ to take a favorable stand on this."
"Suppose we don't?" Winstead asked. His voice was tense and off-center;
he ran his knotty hands nervously through his bushy shock of white
hair. "You know as well as I do that this is no time to hop off
supporting anything too far-fetched."
Harker began to feel a sense of exasperation. "Far-fetched? Leo, I saw
a dead man come back to life right in front of me. If you think--"
"I don't think anything. Thinking's not my job. If you'll pardon my
saying so, Jim, you did too much thinking for your own good when you
were in Albany. This thing has to be handled with kid gloves. It would
not surprise me if the government clamps down and bottles it all up
until all its aspects have been fully explored."
"Federal Research Act of '92," Harker said thinly. "It guarantees
freedom of research without government interference, as you know well
enough."
Winstead seemed to be perspiring heavily. "Laws can be repealed or
amended, Jim. Listen here: why don't you go see Thurman? Find out how
_he_ stands on the matter. Then come back here and maybe we can talk
about it again."
It was obviously a dismissal. Winstead had no intentions of getting
involved with something that had so many ramifications as this.
Tiredly Harker rose. "Okay. I'll see Thurman."
"Good."
"One more thing, Leo--this project hasn't been announced to the public
yet. Since you're aware of the fuss it's going to kick up, I hope
you'll be thoughtful enough to keep your mouth shut until we're ready
to spring it ourselves."
"Of course, Jim. Of course."