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 it 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. His earlier mood of gloom and desperation had washed away, he found, much to his surprise.
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 die 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 postmaster is running hourly deliveries down to us because he doesn’t have room for the stuff up there.”