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."