“And what probability of success would you predict after that?”
Raymond shrugged and said, “Who knows? Nine out of ten successes? Ninety out of a hundred? Until we have ten or twenty thousand case histories behind us, our statistics don’t mean anything.”
Harker nodded thoughtfully. The meal was a quiet one; neither man said much. Harker was going back over the morning’s session, trying to pick out the phrases the press would leap on.
He hoped he had discredited the Mitchison-Klaus combine and Bryant by his refutation. Surely the public would see that Mitchison and Klaus were vengeful power-seekers and nothing more, and that the whole Janson affair was nothing but a malicious hoax.
But he overestimated the public’s ability to distinguish truth from slung mud, it seemed. The early afternoon papers were already on sale by the time the hearing resumed for the afternoon.
The headline on the Star-Post was, KLAUS SAYS HARKER FIRED HIM; CHARGES BELLER ‘BAD FAITH’
The story, slanted heavily in Klaus’ direction, implied that the enzyme man had been on the verge of a brilliant discovery when Harker maliciously sacked him. As for the Janson case, it referred to Marker’s “uncomfortable evasions.”
The tide was turning. The public fancy had seized on the one fact, grotesque and horrifying enough, that in a few cases reanimation resulted in dreadful mindlessness. On that slim base, a massive movement aimed at the total suppression of reanimation was beginning to take form and grow in strength.
Harker had seen the phenomenon before, and had been helpless before it. The great insane raging tide of public opinion had sprung up from what had been a smoothly-flowing stream, and once its mighty power had been channelled toward a definite end, there was no standing against it.
He had the uncomfortable feeling that only a miracle could save things, now. And miracles were not easy to come by, in this secular age.
Chapter XVIII
As the hearing ground along into its third day, and its fourth, and then its fifth and sixth, things grew even worse. The “zombie” phrase became a favorite, not only of the press and the public, but even of Brewster and Vorys. The fact that seven of the seventy-three reanimation subjects had been revived sans intellect had become the main issue. In his rare moments of relaxation, Harker wondered how the world would react if it were ever learned that one of those seven had been none other than the missing Senator Thurman.
Very much as Harker had expected, the American-Conservative Party intensified its previous belief in “caution” into what amounted to condemnation of the whole process. Maxwell of Vermont, the Senate Minority Leader, delivered an off-the-cuff but probably carefully-rehearsed speech at a Chicago gathering of American-Conservative committee-men, in which he referred to reanimation as “That mess engineered by a one-time lame duck of a National-Liberal, that unholy conspiracy against human dignity.”
Later the same day, the chairman of the Nat-Lib national committee was quick to announce that James Harker had voluntarily severed his party connections in January, was now a private citizen, and in no way represented the membership of the National-Liberal Party. It was a neat disavowal that took the Nat-Libs off the hook in case the reaction against reanimation grew stronger, but left them an avenue of entry just in case public opinion should swing back in favor of Harker.
Work at the lab had come practically to a standstill. “If we only had a few more weeks,” Raymond mourned, “we might be able to lick the remaining defects and get public approval. But they won’t leave us alone to work.”
A delegation of FBI men and the four investigating senators visited the laboratory a week after the hearings had begun, and Raymond and Harker reluctantly showed them the data on the revivifications so far-excluding that of Senator Thurman, which had not been recorded in any way whatever.
They checked through the photos, compared them with those of Wayne Janson, and left. That night the FBI issued an official statement which read, in part, “Examination of the Belter Laboratories’ records does not indicate that the late Mr. Janson ever received treatment there. Since there is nothing in Janson’s own private papers that leads us to believe he as much as knew of the existence of the Beller organization prior to its public announcement, we must conclude that no reanimation did take place.”
This left Jonathan Bryant in an ambiguous position, since he continued to maintain that Janson had undergone reanimation, and had suffered a severe change in personality as a result, leading to his suicide.
“This ought to settle Jonathan for good,” Harker crowed when the text of the FBI exoneration reached him. After all, it had to be obvious to everyone that Bryant had perpetrated a hoax designed solely to discredit reanimation and arouse popular fears against it.
But again Harker was wrong. The day after publication of the FBI statement, Jonathan Bryant was subpoenaed to appear before the investigating committee. The questioner was Senator Vorys. The interchange between Bryant and Vorys was widely reported in the late editions that day:
SENATOR VORYS: You knew the late Wayne Janson well?
BRYANT: I was his closest friend. VORYS: When did he first mention reanimation to you?
BRYANT: About January. He said his doctor bad told him about the experiments going on in Litchfield.
VORYS: What is the name of this doctor?
BRYANT: I’m sorry, I don’t know, Senator Vorys.
VORYS: Very well. Go ahead.
BRYANT: Well, Wayne suffered a stroke in February and he told me then that he was going to Litchfield, that he felt close to death and was volunteering for reanimation.
VORYS (Interrupting): The FBI did check and found that Janson had been away from home during February and March.
BRYANT: Yes, sir. Well, Janson came home late in March and told me of his experiences. He seemed moody, depressed, very different from usual. I tried without success to cheer him up. Then one night several weeks ago he phoned me and said he was going to end it all, to jump off the George Washington Bridge. In his conversation he attributed his desire for death to a morbid change that had come over his mind as a result of the Seller treatment.
VORYS: You’re aware, are you not, of the FBI statement which says that to the best of their knowledge Janson never had any contact with the Seller people?
BRYANT: Of course. The key phrase there is “to the best of their knowledge.” I have no doubt that the Beller people have suppressed this case as they’ve suppressed so many other things since James Harker started running them.
The ten-minute colloquy between Vorys and Bryant, widely quoted and republished everywhere, served not only to discredit the FBI statement utterly, but to convince the public that Harker had indeed suppressed the records of the Janson reanimation.
A magnificent scientific discovery discredited because of a ten percent imperfection. An FBI investigation thrown into the rubbish-heap because of one man’s bitter determination to crush an old enemy.
Harker studied the newspapers each day with increasing bitterness. The original importance of the Beller process seemed to be getting lost under the welter of side-issues, the jackal-like snapping of Klaus-Mitchison and Bryant, the political fencing of the two great parties, the hysteria of the people faced with something beyond easy acceptance.