The next morning--Wednesday--Harker found a neatly typed note sitting
on his desk when he reached his office in Dormitory A. It was from
Raymond. It said simply, _We got a call from Washington at 0800.
Investigating committee headed by Thurman is on its way north to snoop
around the lab. They're arriving noon today._
Methodically Harker destroyed the note and turned his attention to
the morning papers. He felt tense, but not unduly so; the Senatorial
investigation could be the beginning of success in their campaign, and
in any event it would put an end to these days of doubt. He would know
at least how the reanimation project stood in the eyes of the Senate.
On this, the third morning of the Era of Reanimation, almost the
entire front page of every paper was given over to a discussion of the
subject. His press conference had been given a great deal of space,
and as usual the _Times_ had printed the full text. He read the other
articles with a queasy sense of expanding confusion.
* * * * *
_Manhattan--The late Richard Bryant was cremated here today
despite a demonstration urging his reanimation. At least fifty
banner-waving demonstrators attempted to interfere with the
ceremony, but police maintained order._
"_We are sure Father would never have approved of such an
awakening_," _declared Jonathan Bryant, 42, oldest son of the Space
hero_--
* * * * *
_Montreal (UP)--A mob destroyed the home and office of Dr. Joseph
Pronovost this afternoon after he refused to resuscitate a
9-year-old girl who had died the night before. Dr. Pronovost, 58,
a general practitioner, claimed to have no knowledge of the Beller
reanimation technique announced Monday. Despite his statement,
relatives of Nancy St. Leger, a victim of leukemia, broke into the
doctor's home and attacked him._
_Dr. Pronovost was reported to be in good condition at Sacred Heart
Hospital_--
* * * * *
_Corpus Christi, Tex. (AP)--Four men and two women suffered
injuries here this evening as a result of a rumor that a Beller
reanimation was taking place at a local funeral home._
_More than thirty persons entered the Burr Funeral Parlors in
an attempt to prevent the reanimation. A funeral service was
in progress, and the injuries resulted when guests turned back
the intruders. The funeral continued as scheduled after the
disturbance._
* * * * *
There were other similar stories elsewhere in the newspapers: violence
on both sides of the controversy, angry and ill-informed people trying
to prevent or to bring about reanimations. Harker gloomily put the
papers aside.
Dark forces were being unleashed. He suspected there was violence yet
to come. The fabric of society had been unbound; anything might happen
now.
At twenty minutes to twelve, Benedict Lurie stuck his head through
Harker's door and said, "A helicopter full of senators just landed
outside. Raymond's talking to them right now."
"How many?"
Lurie shrugged. "There were ten in the copter. I couldn't tell you how
many are senators."
"I'll be right out," Harker said.
He filed away the newspapers, cleaned his desk, and self-consciously
straightened his clothing before he went outside. A little group stood
in the clearing formed by the area between the three main buildings.
Harker saw Mart Raymond, Vogel, Barchet, and Dr. Smathers, and they
were talking to--among others--Senator Clyde Thurman.
Harker joined them. Thurman was the first to notice him; he stared at
Harker glintingly and rumbled, "Ah--Harker. Hello, there."
"How are you, Senator?"
"Never better. Harker, you know these men? Senators Brewster of Iowa,
Vorys of South Carolina, Dixon of Wyoming, Westmore of California.
Gentlemen, you know Mr. Harker--former Governor of New York, of course."
Harker shook hands all around. He knew most of the senators at least
casually; Dixon and Westmore represented the Far West branch of the
Nat-Libs, while Brewster and Vorys were arch-Conservatives.
Thurman was the chairman of the committee, and would have the deciding
vote in case of a tie. Harker felt apprehensive of that. The venerable
Senator was ostensibly a Nat-Lib; at least he was elected every six
years under that label. But in the past decade he had been trending
increasingly toward conservative ways of thinking, and away from
the party he had helped to found forty years earlier, in the great
political upheaval and reshuffling of the 1990's.
Each of the senators was accompanied by a staff assistant. That made
ten in all.
Thurman said, "The hearings will begin next week, Mr. Harker. We're
here for a preliminary look-see, you understand."
"Of course." Harker glanced at Raymond and said, "Mart, have you been
introduced?"
Raymond nodded.
Harker went on, "Mr. Raymond is the director of the labs. He'll conduct
you wherever you would like to go, on the premises."
Raymond looked worried; Harker had seen the faint harried expression
growing on the dapper lab director's face in the past few days.
It troubled Harker. Raymond was a good organizer, a level-headed
scientist--but he was showing alarming signs of crumbling under the
sudden pressure brought about by Mitchison's treasonous press release.
Harker edged close to him and murmured, "What's on the schedule for the
senators?"
Through tight lips Raymond replied, "The main event's a cadaver."
"You're going to risk it?"
Raymond shrugged. Worry lines tightened his cheeks. "We'll have to do
it sooner or later. Why not now?"
Harker made no reply. Attempting a human reanimation in front of the
senators was a long-shot gamble, even with odds of five to one in favor
of success.
If the experiment succeeded, they had gained very little; if it failed,
they had lost everything right at the start. The odds of five to one
were highly deceptive. But Harker decided to go along with Raymond,
just this one time.
He said, "Shall we begin our tour, gentlemen?"
* * * * *
Raymond had evidently been working frantically all morning to set
things up. The labs were spotlessly clean, everything well-ordered
and well-dusted. The researchers had received their instructions,
too; every one of them looked Constructively Busy, doing something
scientific-looking no matter how trivial. In reality, most of them
spent a good half their time staring into space, making doodles on
scrap paper, or thumbing through textbooks--but senators could never be
expected to believe that such idle acts were part of genuine scientific
research.
The tour began with a rapid and exhausting general survey of the labs;
Raymond served as guide, giving forth bristling scientific terminology
at every possible opportunity. The senators looked impressed.
The senators also looked increasingly weary--all except Thurman, who
strode along next to Raymond and Harker and put forth a never-ending
string of questions, some of them pointless and others embarrassingly
perceptive.
As he struggled to keep pace with Thurman, Harker felt a surge of new
admiration for the Nat-Lib patriarch. Thurman was a ruggedly built man,
well over six feet tall and still erect of bearing; his face was a
craggy affair dominated by massive snowy-white eyebrows and a thatch of
silver hair, and his voice was a commanding rumble.
It was Thurman who had completed the destruction of the old Democratic
and Republican parties by serving as organizer for the National-Liberal
Party that carried the 1990 congressional elections; he had then
persuaded the incumbent President Morrison to run for re-election on
the Nat-Lib, rather than Democratic ticket, in '92--and, by '94, the
obsolete political parties had vanished, replaced by a more logical
alignment of liberal against conservative.
Now, Harker thought, the party lines were blurring again; perhaps
it was an inevitable force at work. There were liberals in the
American-Conservatives, and some early Nat-Libs, especially Thurman,
were with increasing regularity voting for Conservative-sponsored
measures. Perhaps in another fifty years' time a further
re-organization would be needed; it seemed to be necessary about once a
century, judging by past performance.
As they explored the enzyme lab and watched the big centrifuge at work
in the serotonin room, Harker wondered how he stood with Thurman now.
Fifteen years ago, he had virtually been a son to the Senator, serving
for a while as his private secretary before being tapped for prominence
in the New York Nat-Lib organization. Thurman had guided him up through
the Mayoralty, saw him into the governor's mansion in Albany--and then,
when the party decided to ostracize him, Thurman had not said a word in
his defense. It was more than a year since he had spoken to the veteran
legislator.
"These dogs," Senator Vorys said as Raymond and Vogel demonstrated
reanimation on a pair of spaniels, "they feel no pain?" Vorys was
a waspish, bald little man, with seemingly a lifetime tenure as
American-Conservative Senator from South Carolina.
"Absolutely none," Raymond assured him.
"Animal experiments are legal," remarked Senator Westmore, the
Californian Nat-Lib. "No grounds for objecting there."
"I wasn't objecting," snapped Vorys. "Merely inquiring."
Harker smiled to himself.
The dogs were cleared away in due time; Harker saw the tension-lines
reassert themselves on Raymond's face, and he knew the main event was
about to begin.
When Raymond spoke, his voice was thin and strained. "Gentlemen, I know
you've come here for one main purpose--to see if human life can be
restored. The time has come for us to demonstrate our technique."
Raymond licked his lips. Tension mounted in the lab room. The senators
stirred in anticipation; the five staff-men scribbled notes furiously.
Harker felt dry fingers clutching at his windpipe. It was a sensation
he remembered having felt on two election nights, at that moment just
after the polls had closed--when, with the die irretrievably cast,
there was nothing to do but wait until the electronic counters had done
their job and announced the winner.
He waited now. Two white-smocked assistants rolled in an
operating-table on which a covered cadaver lay.
In a harsh, edgy voice Raymond said, "We secure most of our
experimental cadavers from local hospitals. We have permits for this.
The body here is approximately the one hundredth we have used in our
work, and the seventy-second since the first successful reanimation."
The covers were peeled back. Harker flinched slightly; the body was
that of a boy of about twelve or thirteen, and it was not a pretty
sight.
"This boy drowned late yesterday afternoon in a nearby lake," Raymond
said hoarsely. "All conventional methods of resuscitation were tried
without success."
"You mean artificial respiration, heart massage, and things like that?"
Senator Dixon said.
"Yes. The boy was worked over for nearly eight hours, and pronounced
dead early this morning. When I phoned the hospital to arrange for a
demonstration specimen for you gentlemen, I was allowed to speak to the
boy's father, who gave permission for this experiment."
Five minirecorders on five secretarial wrists drank in Raymond's words.
Harker felt growing anxiety; still, he had to admit that using a boy
for the experiment was a good touch--if the experiment worked.
He was not afraid of total failure; that could always be explained
away and accepted tolerantly. It was the one-out-of-six chance that
frightened him, the worse-than-failure of restoring the boy's body and
not his mind.
Raymond nodded to Vogel, who again was presiding over the reanimation.
The bearded surgeon clamped the electrodes to the boy's temples and
wrists, and lowered the great hooded bulk of the reanimator.
"The initial attack will come simultaneously through the electrodes and
through hormone injections," Raymond said droningly. "Heart massage
will follow, as well as artificial operation of the lungs. Keep your
eyes on these instruments; they measure heartbeat, respiration, and the
electrical activity of the brain."
The room was terribly silent. Vogel moved swiftly and smoothly,
confidently, without tension. He threw three switches. The archaic
light-bulbs overhead dimmed slightly at the instant of power-drain.
Driblets of sweat rolled down Harker's face. The five senators
watched eagerly; he wondered what they were thinking now, how they
were reacting as electrical currents rippled through a dead brain and
hormones raced through a stilled bloodstream.
The boy was dwarfed by the hovering instrument that simultaneously
clung to his exposed heart, pumped his lungs, jolted his brain, fed
awakening substances to his blood. The needles on the indicator gauges
began to flicker gently.
Harker felt little of the earlier revulsion this sight had caused in
him. Now he stared at the slim thin-limbed body of the boy, his skin
mottled with the blue imprint of asphyxiation, and waited for the
miracle to take place.
Minutes passed. Once Thurman coughed and it was like a physical blow.
Needles rose on dials, wavered, fell back as Vogel decreased power,
stepped forward again as the delicate fingers nudged the rheostat a few
fractions of an inch upward.
"Watch the EEG indicator," Vogel murmured.
The needle was tracing out an increasingly more agitated line. The
calmness of sleep was ending.
"Respiration approaching normal. I'm shutting off the lung
manipulators."
The heart-pump followed. Frowning, Vogel moistened his lips and yanked
down on toggle-switches, finally drawing the main rheostat back to
point zero.
"Artificial controls are withdrawn," Vogel said. "The life process
continues."
The boy lived. Raymond said quietly to Harker, "The EEG patterns are
normal ones. The boy's mind is okay. We did it."
_We did it._ Harker felt a sharp sense of triumph, as if he personally
had accomplished something. The senators would _have_ to react
favorably to something like this, he thought.
He glanced at Thurman. The old man was gray-faced, disturbed. Harker
said, quietly, "Well, Senator? You've just seen a miracle."
He wasn't prepared for the reply, when it came. Thurman shook his great
head slowly from side to side like a dying bison and said, "Jim, this
is nightmarish. In the name of all that's good, boy, why did you get
mixed up in it?"