Robert Silverberg - Recalled to Life

“There wouldn’t have been one, Tom. They just were waiting for old Bryant to kick off. Jonathan didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of winning while he was alive.”

Auerbach shrugged. “They really didn’t have a claim to the money. Were they just trying to make trouble?”

Harker nodded. “Trouble’s their specialty, Tom.”

“Well, you’re through with having trouble with the Bryants now, I guess.”

Harker shook his head slowly. “No,” he said. “Not by a long shot.”

He rode uptown from the courthouse and stopped off at his law-office for the first time in a week. The girls in the outer office stared at him strangely, as if he had undergone some frightening apotheosis and was no longer just the firm’s newest partner.

He crossed left and rapped on Bill Kelly’s door. The plump lawyer smiled at him as he entered, but without much warmth.

“Morning, Jim. Long time no see.”

“I’ve been busy.”

“I know. I know all about it.”

Harker ignored Kelly’s tone and said, “I’ve just come from the Bryant hearing. Thought I’d let you know that it’s over. Poof: fifteen minutes!”

“The will was upheld?”

“What else? It was just a case of wilful petty obstruction on the part of the Bryant family. They’re mean, twisted people, Bill. They’ve lived all their lives in the shadow of one great man—Rick Bryant—and I guess they chose this time to show him and everyone else just what Great Big Important Persons they really were.” He scowled.

There was a pained expression on Kelly’s face that seemed to have nothing to do with the Bryant affair. Slowly Kelly said, “Jim, this completes all the current work you’re doing here, isn’t that right?”

Harker nodded. “I turned over the Fuller and Heidell cases to Portobello. That was to leave me clear for—”

“Yes. I know.” Kelly’s face reddened even more than normally, and he squirmed wretchedly in his inflated pneumatic desk-chair. “I’ve been following the papers, Jim. I’ve been following the whole thing.”

“I warned you it was hot.”

“I know. I didn’t know how hot it was, though. Jim, this hurts me,” Kelly said. “I’m going to ask a favor of you. It’s a lousy thing to ask, because it shows I don’t have guts or the courage of your convictions or something along those lines. But—”

Harker said, “I’ll spare you the trouble of putting it into words. The answer is yes. If you think my presence on your firm letterhead will hurt the firm, Bill, I’ll resign.”

A look of gratitude appeared on Kelly’s fleshy sweat-shiny face. “Jim, I want you to understand—that is—look here, I asked you to come in with me when your party booted you out, and don’t think I didn’t get my wrist slapped for it. But this reanimation thing is too big. I don’t want to get associated with it in any way. And so-well it seemed to Portobello and Klein and me—”

“Sure, Bill.” Harker had a sudden dizzying vision of himself standing at the rim of a bottomless abyss, but he heard his voice saying, calmly, rock-steady, “I’ll draft a note informing you that I’m resigning because of the pressure of outside activities.”

Hoarsely Kelly said, “Thanks, Jim. And if this thing blows over—if it all works out—we’ll have a spot for you here. Don’t forget that.”

“I won’t.” Not even because you don’t mean it, Harker thought. It wasn’t possible for Kelly to mean it. It was just a formal ritualistic statement, this implication that he could come back at a future time.

He was through here. Probably he was through with private law practice forever. Kelly was a brave and intelligent man, but Kelly had been afraid to keep the hot potato named James Harker on his letterhead any longer. No one else would welcome him either. Beller Labs was the straw to which he had to cling now.

He stood up.

“Okay, Bill. Glad we got everything cleared up. Just thought I’d tell you about the wrapup on the Bryant case. I’ll clear out my office next week.”

“No hurry about it. Oh—nearly forgot.” Kelly consulted a memo slip. “Leo Winstead’s office phoned here for you earlier today. The Governor wants you to call him back between one-thirty and three this afternoon.”

Harker frowned momentarily. Winstead? What does he want with me? He said to Kelly, “Thanks, Bill. And so long.”

He bought a noontime edition of the Star-Post and ate a gloomy little meal by himself in a nineteenth-floor automated restaurant overlooking the East River. He pushed the meal-selector buttons almost at random; the result was largely an assortment of cheap synthetics, but he hardly cared. He ate abstractedly, not looking at his food but at the increasingly more troubling news in the paper.

There was a new statement from Senator Thurman, more doggedly anti-reanimation than the last. Apparently Thurman’s views on the subject mounted in vitriol-content in hourly increments; now he said that “reanimation is of dubious value in mitigating human sorrow—a crude and unsatisfactory process that robs life of dignity.” Evidently he had read about the Janson suicide. And speaking of thatYes. The body had been found and identified, according to a story at the bottom of Page One. Wayne Janson, 58, an unmarried industrialist. Listed as suicide; Jonathan Bryant identified body. Investigation now proceeding as a result of Bryant’s statement that Janson had recently undergone re-animation.

And a statement from David Klaus, too, evidently released by Mitchison: “The Janson case proves that the Beller technique can be a dangerous and destructive instrument in the wrong hands.” He recognized Mitchison’s blunt word—sense, the equating of technique and instrument.

At half past one he made his way to a public phonebooth, sealed himself in, snapped on the privacy-shield, and called the operator.

“I’d like to make a charge-account call to Albany.”

She took his name and home phone, assured him that the call would be billed to his account, and put him through to the Governor’s mansion. A relay of secretaries passed him along to Winstead.

The booth’s screen was small, a seven-incher, and definition was poor. Even with that handicap, though, Harker could see the rings around Winstead’s eyes. New York’s Governor obviously had had little sleep the night before.

“I got your message, Leo. What goes?”

Winstead said, “You know about Thurman and his stand on reanimation, don’t you?”

“Of course. Thurman visited the lab yesterday.”

“And then proceeded to issue a series of statements blasting your project,” Winstead said. The Governor looked like a man about to explode from conflicting tensions. In a tight-strung voice he said, “Jim, we held a caucus on the Thurman situation last night. First let me tell you that the Nat-Libs have decided to issue a public statement praising your outfit and asking for careful consideration of reanimation.”

Harker smiled. “It’s about time someone said he was on our side.”

“Don’t break your arm patting your back,” Winstead warned. “The Amer-Cons forced our hand. It took all night for us to agree to support you. A lot of us aren’t in favor of reanimation at all.”

“And a lot of you aren’t in favor of anything I’m in favor of,” Harker said crisply. “But what’s this about Thurman, now?”

“He’s killing us! How can we come out pro-reanimation when the elder patriarch of our party is issuing statements condemning it?”

Harker shrugged. “I’ll admit you have a problem.”

“Any such inconsistency would make us look silly,” Winstead said. “Jim, would you do us a favor?”