Two attendants entered, carrying a sheet-shrouded form on a stretcher. They deposited the figure on the vacant lab table that had held the second dog. Harker saw that it was a man, in his late sixties, bald, dead.
“Mr. Doe has been dead for eleven hours and thirteen minutes,” Raymond said. “He died of syncope during an abdominal operation. Would you care to examine the body?”
“I’ll accept the evidence on faith, thanks.”
“As you will. Dr. Vogel, you can begin.”
While Vogel worked over the cadaver, Raymond went on, “The process is essentially compounded out of techniques used for decades with varying success—that is, a combination of pulmotor respiration, artificial heart-massage, hormone-injection, and electrochemical stimulation. The last two are the keys to the process: you can massage a heart for days and keep it pumping blood, but that isn’t restoration of life.”
“Not unless the heart can continue on its own when you remove the artificial stimulus?”
“Exactly. We’ve done careful hormone research here, with some of the best men in the nation. A hormone, you know, is a kind of chemical messenger. We’ve synthesized the hormones that tell the body it’s alive. Of course, the electrochemical stimulation is important: the brain’s activity is essentially electrical in nature, you know. And so we devised techniques which—”
“Ready, Dr. Raymond.”
Harker compelled himself to watch. Needles plunged into the dead man’s skin; electrodes fastened to the scalp discharged suddenly. It was weird, vaguely terrifying, laden with burdensome implications for the future. All that seemed missing was the eery blue glow that characterized the evil experiments of stereotyped mad scientists.
He told himself that these men were not mad. He told himself that what they were doing was a natural outgrowth of the scientific techniques of the past century, that it was no more terrifying to restore life than it was to preserve it with antibiotics or serums. But he sensed a conflict within himself: he knew that if he accepted this assignment, he could embrace the idea intellectually but that somewhere in the moist jungle-areas of his subconscious mind he would feel disturbed and repelled.
“Watch the needles,” Raymond whispered. “Heartbeat’s beginning now. Respiration. The electroencephalograph is recording brain currents again.”
“The test, of course, is whether these things continue after your machinery is shut off, isn’t it?” Harker asked.
“Of course.”
Time edged by. Harker’s overstrained attention wandered; he took in the barren peeling walls of the lab, the dingy window through which late-afternoon light streamed. He had heard somewhere that the old-fashioned incandescent bulbs emitted a 60-cycle hum, and he tried unsuccessfully to hear it. Sweat-blotches stippled his shirt.
“Now!” Vogel said. He threw a master lever. The equipment whined faintly and cut off.
The heartbeat recorder and the respiration indicator showed a momentary lapse, then returned to their previous level. The EEG tape continued recording.
Harker’s eyes widened slightly. A slow smile appeared on Raymond’s face; behind him, Harker could hear Lurie cracking his knuckles nervously, and bespectacled Dr. Klaus tensely grinding his molars together.
“I guess we did it,” Vogel said.
The dead man’s arms moved slowly. His eyelids fluttered, but the anesthetic insured continued unconsciousness. His lips parted—and the soft groan that came forth was, for Harker, the clincher he had been half-hoping would not be forthcoming.
The man groaned again. Harker felt suddenly weary, and turned his head away.
Chapter IV
Barker’s shock reaction was violent, instinctive, and brief. He quivered uncontrollably, put his hands to his face, and started to lose his balance. Raymond was right there; he caught him, held him upright for a moment, and released him. Harker wobbled and grinned shamefacedly.
“That’s strong stuff,” he said.
“I’ve got stronger stuff in my office. Come on.”
He and the lab director returned to the adjoining room. Raymond closed the door and clicked it; Lurie and Klaus remained in the lab. Raymond reached into his bookcase, pushed a thick black-bound volume to one side, and withdrew a half-empty bottle of Scotch. He poured a double shot for Harker, a single for himself, and replaced the bottle. Harker swallowed the liquor in two frantic gulps. He gasped, grinned again, and shakily set down the glass. “God. I’m roasting in my own sweat.”
“It isn’t a pleasant sight the first time, I guess. I wish I could share some of your emotional reaction, but I’m blocked out. My dad was a biochemist, specialty life-research. He had me cutting up frogs when I was three. I’m numb to any such reactions by now.”
“Don’t let that trouble you,” Harker said. He shivered. “I could live very happily without seeing another demonstration of your technique, you know.”
Raymond chuckled. “Does that mean you’re convinced we aren’t quacks?”
Harker shrugged. “What you’ve got is incredible. I wonder if I’ve got the voltage needed to handle the job you want me to do.”
“You wouldn’t be here if we didn’t think so.”
“I was fourth on the list,” Harker said. “Lurie told me.”
“You were my personal choice. I was outvoted. But I knew you’d accept and the other three would turn us down without even coming out here to investigate.”
“I haven’t said I’ve accepted,” Harker pointed out.
“Well? Do you?”
Harker was silent for a moment, his mind returning to the impact of the scene he had just witnessed. There was still plenty he had to know, of course: the corporate setup of this lab, including knowledge of the powers that had “outvoted” the director; the financial resources behind him; the possible bugs in the technique.
A dozen implications unfolded. His mind was already at work planning the campaign. He was thinking of people to see, wires to pull, angles to check.
“I accept,” he said quietly.
Raymond smiled and reached into his desk. He handed Harker a check drawn on a Manhattan bank for $2400, payable to James Harker, and signed Simeon Barchet, Treasurer.
“What’s this?”
“That’s four weeks salary, in advance. Barchet’s the trustee who administers the Beller Fund. I had him write the check yesterday. I was pretty confident you’d join us, you see.”
Harker spent a quietly tense weekend at home with his family. He told Lois about the assignment, of course; he never kept things from her, even the most unpleasant. She was dubious, but willing to rely on his judgment.
He worked off some of his physical tension by playing ball in the back yard with his sons. Chris, entering adolescence, was developing an athlete’s grace; seven-year-old Paul did not yet have the coordination needed for catching and throwing a baseball, but he gave it a good try.
On Sunday the four of them drove upstate to a picnic-ground, ate out, even went for a brief swim though it was really too early in the season for that. Harker splashed and laughed with his sons, but there was an essential somberness about him that Lois quietly pointed out.
“I know,” he admitted. “I’m thinking.”
“About the Beller Labs business?”
He nodded. “I keep finding new angles in it. I try to guess what the reaction of the organized churches will be, and what political capital will be made. More likely than not the parties will take opposite stands. Somebody will dig up the fact that I used to be a National Liberal bigwig, and that’ll enter into the situation. After a while it’ll become so confused by side-issues that—” He stopped. “I don’t sound very enthusiastic about this job, do I?”