Harker held his first news-conference at three-thirty that afternoon,
in the hastily-rigged room that was now his Litchfield office.
By that time, it had occurred to him that he had become not only the
legal adviser of the laboratories, but the public spokesman, publicity
director, and chairman of the board as well. Everyone, Raymond
included, seemed perfectly willing to delegate responsibility to him.
He made a list of eight selected media representatives--three
newspapers, both press services, two video networks and one radio
network, and invited them to send men to his conference. No others were
allowed in.
He told them very concisely what the Beller technique was, how it had
been developed, and what it could do. He used a few technical terms
that he had picked up from his weekend reading. He did not mention the
fact that the technique was not without flaws.
When he had finished his explanation, he called for questions.
Surprisingly few were forthcoming. The news seemed to have stilled the
tongues of even these veteran reporters.
At the close of the conference he said, "Headquarters for further
Beller news will be right here. I'll try to make myself available for
comment about the same time every afternoon."
He watched them go. He wondered how much of what he had said would
reach the public undistorted, and how much would emerge in garbled and
sensationalized form.
Toward evening, he started finding out.
Harker reached his home in Larchmont about seven that evening, utterly
exhausted. Lois was at the door, anxious-faced, tense.
"Jim! I've been listening to the news all day. So have the boys. Your
name's been mentioned every time."
"That's nice," Harker said wearily. He unsnapped his shoes and nodded
hello to his sons, who stared at him strangely as if he had undergone
some strange transformation during the day.
"I'll be spending most of my time at Litchfield until things get
calmer," he said. "I may even have to sleep out there for a while."
The phone rang suddenly. Harker started to go for it, then changed his
mind and said, "Find out who it is, first. If it's anybody official
tell them I'm not home yet. Except Raymond."
Lois nodded and glided off toward the phone alcove. When she returned,
she looked even more pale, more tense.
"Who was it?"
"Some--some crank. There've been a lot of those calls today, Jim."
He tightened his lips. "I'll have the number changed tomorrow.
Nuisances."
The late editions of two of the New York papers lay on the hassock
near his chair. He picked up the Seventh Edition of the _Star-Post_. A
red-inked banner said, CAN LIFE BE RESTORED? READ NOBEL WINNER'S
OPINION!
Harker glanced at the article. It was by Carlos Rodriguez, the Peruvian
poet, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2018. Evidently it
was a philosophical discussion of man's right to bring back the dead.
Harker read about three paragraphs, then abruptly lost interest when
another headline at the lower right-hand corner caught his eye. It said,
RICK BRYANT REMAINS DEAD, SAY SPACE PIONEER'S HEIRS
_New York, May 20--The body of 73-year-old Richard Bryant, early
hero of the space age, will be cremated on schedule tomorrow
morning, according to a family spokesman. Commenting on the growing
public sentiment that the famed Bryant be granted a reprieve from
death for his epochal flight to Mars, Jonathan Bryant, his oldest
son, declared:_
_"The feeling of my family is that my father should go to eternal
rest. He was an old and sick man and frequently expressed the
desire to sleep forever. We emphatically will not subject his
remains to the dubious claims of the so-called reanimators
currently in the headlines."_
Harker looked up.
"Listen to this hogwash, Lois!" He read her the article, bearing down
with sardonic malice on Jonathan's more cynical remarks.
She nodded. "I heard about it before. Seems some people got up a quick
petition to bring old Bryant back to life. Jonathan's statement was
broadcast about five this afternoon."
Scowling, Harker said, "You can bet they'll rush him off to the
crematorium in a hurry, now. They waited four years for him to die, and
they'd be damned before they let him be brought back to life!"
The phone rang again. Lois slipped away to answer it, while Harker
busied himself with the papers. She returned in a moment, looking
puzzled, and said, "It's a Father Carteret. He begged me to let him
talk to you. What should I tell him?"
"Never mind. I'll talk to him."
He picked up in the foyer, where the phone was audio-only. "Father
Carteret? Jim Harker speaking."
"Hello there, Jim." Carteret sounded troubled. "I--I guess you meant
what you said, that day you saw me. It's all over the papers."
"I know. Some knucklehead sprang the thing prematurely and we're stuck
with it now."
"I thought I'd let you know that ecclesiastic circles are in a dither,"
Carteret said. "The Archbishop's been on the phone to Rome half the
day."
Harker's throat tightened. "Any news?"
"Afraid so. The Vatican has issued a hands-off order: no Catholic is to
go near your process in any way whatever until the Church has had ample
time to explore the implications. Which means a few months or a few
centuries; there's no telling."
"So it's a condemnation, then?"
"Pretty much so," Carteret agreed softly. "Until it's determined
whether or not reanimation is sinful, no Catholic can let a member of
his family be reanimated--or even work in your laboratories. I hope
everything works out for you, Jim. There's nothing you can do now but
stick to your guns, is there?"
"No," Harker said. "I guess not."
He thanked the priest for the advance information and hung up.
Storm-clouds were beginning to gather already. But his earlier mood of
gloom and desperation had washed away, he found.
He knew why. The battle had been joined. No more behind-the-scenes
skulking; he was out in the open as the standard-bearer of Beller Labs.
It promised to be a rough fight, but that didn't scare him.
"This is my second chance," he said to Lois.
She smiled palely. "I don't understand, Jim."
"I was elected Governor of New York on a reform platform that nobody in
the party organization took seriously except me. I waded in and started
to make reforms, and I got my teeth rammed down my throat for it. Okay.
I lost round one. But now I'm in the thick of the fight again, fighting
against ignorance and fear and hysteria. Maybe I'll lose again--but at
least I'll have tried."
She touched his arm, almost timidly. Harker realized that he had never
really seen into his wife before: seen the contradictions in her, the
caution, the timidity, and the core of toughness that was there too.
"This time you'll win, Jim," she said simply.
* * * * *
It didn't look that way in the morning.
THURMAN SPEARHEADS REANIMATION INQUIRY, the _Times_ announced,
and the story revealed that Senator Clyde Thurman (N-L, N.Y.) had
urged immediate Congressional investigation of the claims of Beller
Research Laboratories, and from the tone of Thurman's statements it
was obvious that he was hostile to the whole idea of reanimation.
"_Sinful--possibly a menace to the fabric of society_," were two of the
terms quoted in the newspaper.
The _Times_ also printed a full page of extracts from editorials of
other newspapers throughout the country, plus a few comments from
overseas papers that had arrived in time for the early editions.
The prevailing newspaper sentiment was one of caution. The East Coast
papers generally suggested that careful scrutiny be applied to the
alleged statements of Beller Labs before such a process be used on any
wide scale. The Far West papers called for immediate scientific study
of the Beller achievement, and most of them implied that it would be a
tremendous boon to humanity if the claims were found to be true.
The Midwest papers, though, took a different approach, in general. The
Chicago _Tribune_ declared: "_We fear that this new advance of science
may instead be a step backward, that it may sound the trumpet-call for
the decline of civilization as we know it. A society without the fear
of death is one without the fear of God_"--and so on for nearly a full
column.
The overseas notices were mixed: the Manchester _Guardian_ offered
cautious approval, the London _Daily Mirror_ ringing condemnation. From
France came puzzled admiration for American scientific prowess; the
Germans applauded the discovery, while no word was forthcoming from
Russia at the moment. The Vatican statement was about what Carteret had
predicted it would be.
He reached the Litchfield headquarters about quarter-past-ten that
morning. There was the usual gaggle of newsmen cluttering up the
highway, even though the skies held a definite threat of rain. However,
someone had had enough sense to rope off the approach to the laboratory
grounds, and so he had no trouble getting past the gauntlet of
reporters and into the area.
Raymond and Lurie were in the office when Harker got there. They had a
huge pile of newspapers spread out all over the floor.
"Makes interesting reading," Harker said amiably.
Raymond looked up. "We never expected this, Jim. We never expected
anything like this."
Harker shrugged. "Death is the most important word in the language,
right after birth. What comes in between is immaterial; everybody goes
through his days remembering that all his life is just a preparation
for the moment of his death. You've changed all that. Did you expect
the world to take it calmly?"
Lurie said, "Show him the letters, Mart."
Raymond sprang to his feet and shoved a thick file-folder at Harker.
"Take a look at these, will you? It's enough to break your heart."
"They come in truckloads," Lurie said. "The Litchfield post-master is
running hourly deliveries down to us because he does not have room for
the stuff up there."
Harker reached into the folder and pulled out a letter at random. It
was written painstakingly by hand on blue-lined yellow paper. He read
it.
_Dear Sirs,_
_You will probably throw this letter in the wastebasket but I beg
you to consider it sincerely. My wife age 29 and the mother of our
four children is sick in the Hospital with cancer and the Dr. says
she will not live more than 1 more week._
_We have all been praying for her but so far she shows no sign
of getting well and does not recognize us. I read of your miracle
discovery in this morning's paper and hope now you can bring my
Lucy back to life when she is gone. I enclose a self-addressed
envelope so you can let me know if such would be possible, I will
immediately upon her death bring her to you so you can give her
back to me. I speak for our children Charles age 6 Peggy age 4
Clara age almost 3 and Betsy age fourteen months. May God bless all
of you and keep you from suffering what I have been suffering, and
I will live in hope of hearing from you._
_Yours gratefully,
Charles Mikkelsen
R.F.D. #1,
Delaware, Minne._
Harker put the letter down, feeling a strange sense of bitter
compassion. He said nothing.
Raymond said, "We have hundreds like that. Some of the damnedest
things, too. People with relatives dead ten years want to dig them up
and bring them to us."
Harker shook his head. "There's no chance you can help any of these
people? How about this woman?"
"The cancer one? Not a chance. If it's as bad as he says it is, the
malignancy has probably metastasized right up and down her body by
now. Maybe we could bring her back to life, but we couldn't keep her
alive afterward."
"I see. How about other diseases?"
Raymond shrugged. "If the organic damage is beyond repair, we can't
do a thing. But if it's repairable, you can figure a good chance
of success. Take a patient with cardiac tissue scarred by repeated
attacks. One more attack will finish him--and so would any operation
to correct the condition. But now we can 'kill' him ourselves, install
an artificial heart, and reanimate. He could live another thirty years
that way."
"In other words--"
The phone rang. Raymond swiveled around and scooped it lightly off its
cradle without activating the video. He frowned, then said, "Yes. Yes.
I get you. No, we won't make any such concessions. Go ahead, then. Sue,
if you like. We'll counter-sue."
He hung up.
"What the blazes was _that_?" Harker demanded.
"Do you know a lawyer named Phil Gerhardt?"
Harker thought for a moment, then said, "Sure. He's a flashy lawsuit
man, about as honest as snow in the Sahara. What about him?"
"He just called," Raymond said, scratching the lobe of one ear
thoughtfully. "Seems he's representing Mitchison and Klaus. They got
their dismissal notices and they're suing for a million bucks plus
control of the Labs. Isn't that lovely?"