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:
"_If I could hold you in my arms, Baby!
and cuddle up and--_"
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."