Raymond shrugged. “I told you. A month’s more work, maybe. A little less, if we’re lucky.”
Nodding, Harker said quietly, “Look here, Mart: I’m going to pull a Mitchison.” “’Huh?”
“I mean, I’m going to jump the gun and announce that you’ve already straightened things up, and that from now on reanimation will work every time, provided no vital organs are damaged and that decay hasn’t begun.”
“What’s the point of doing that? It isn’t so.”
“It will be so, sooner or later. Sooner, I hope. But I have an idea for a sort of publicity stunt, a grandstand play that should clinch the idea of reanimation’s safety. Or else finish us altogether.”
Harker walked to the window and stared out. Raymond Mid, “Jim, what the dickens are you talking about?”
Harker turned sharply. “Very simple. We’re going to give a public demonstration of reanimation, sometime in the next couple of days. In order to prove the absolute safety of the process, I’m going to allow you to kill me under laboratory conditions and bring me back to life.”
“Are you crazy?”
“Desperate. It’s not quite the same thing.”
“But suppose it doesn’t work? What if—you remember how Thurman looked?”
“I do. I’ll take my chances. If it doesn’t work, then we’re not much worse off than we are now.” Harker turned again and stared out the window.
The rain had stopped; the sun was out. A rainbow arched proudly across the low hills, a many-colored ribbon stretching out to the horizon.
Harker drafted two press releases during the afternoon, and by nightfall they had reached print in the newspapers. Both caused sensations.
At seven that evening he tuned in the video at one of the laboratory dorm lounges, and heard a news commentator say, “Exciting news from the Seller Research Laboratories of New Jersey today. The last technical flaw in the reanimation process has been licked, according to lab director Martin Raymond. The Seller Lab statement declared that from now on reanimation will be virtually foolproof, with no risk of possible insanity as before.
“As if to drive home the importance of this new development, a simultaneous statement comes from James Harker, who of course is closely affiliated with the reanimation researchers. Harker let it be known this afternoon that he is suffering from a rare heart ailment, one which has been hitherto impossible to correct because the necessary surgery cannot be performed on a living man.
“Harker declared that he is so confident of the Bellar technique’s results that he will submit to the operation, necessitating temporary ‘death’ and then will be reanimated at the conclusion of the operation.”
Harker listened soberly to this largely ficticious news broadcast. He had no heart ailment; the last technical flaw had not been eliminated.
But never mind, he thought. The essential fact was the last—the reanimation. The rest was camouflage.
One chance out of six. He felt oddly calm about his decision. At last he had found a cause in which he had faith, and he did not expect to be let down.
Chapter XX
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 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 meshing 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-tendrilled machine looming up over me. Yes.
Vogel is whispering something to someone now; I can’t 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 nothingless. 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 to 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, ringed 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.