Robert Silverberg - Recalled to Life

Four secretaries later, Harker heard the deep, confident voice of Pennsylvania’s Fletcher say, “What can I do for you, Harker? Heard you were in town.”

“I’m here to see Senator Thurman,” Harker said. “Do you know where—”

“Thurman? Where are you now, Harker?”

“At the Senator’s office. He isn’t here, and I thought you might know—”

“Me? Harker, if I knew where Thurman was I’d be talking to him and not to you. I’m looking for him myself.”

Harker’s hopes sank. “Have you phoned his home?”

“Yes. Nobody there has seen him since early last evening. If you get any word, Harker, call me back.”

The line went dead. Harker stared at the phone thoughtfully a moment, then replaced the receiver. He walked over to the smug secretary and said casually, “You better start looking for a new job. Senator Thurman hasn’t been seen since some time last night.”

“What? But—”

Interrupting the agitated reply, Harker said, “You better make some quick phone calls. I’ll be back later if the Senator turns up.”

The next two hours were hectic ones at the Capital. Harker picked up an early afternoon newspaper when he saw the huge scare-head reading WHERE IS SENATOR THURMAN? The article simply said that the 88-year-old Senator had last been seen at his huge bachelor home in nearby Alexandria shortly after dark the previous night, and that nothing had been heard of him since.

Secret Service men were combing Washington and the outlying districts. The three-thirty headlines screamed, THURMAN STILL MISSING!

No word has been received yet of the whereabouts of Senator Clyde Thurman (N-L, N.Y.), who vanished from his home early last evening. The veteran lawmaker is slated to preside over the controversial reanimation hearings beginning Monday, if —

At four o’clock there was still no sign of the missing senator. Harker phoned the jetport, made reservations for a four-thirty flight back to New York. At five, he was at Idle-wild; he phoned Lois from there, told her what had happened, and said he was going straight out to Litchfield and would be home later, after supper.

The New York evening papers were full of the Thurman disappearance. Harker thought of phoning Winstead, then changed his mind; the Governor was well aware by now that Harker could not have kept his appointment with Thurman. Instead he rented a cab and travelled quickly out to the Seller Laboratories.

He got there shortly after six. The place was oddly empty; evidently the reporters had grown tired of clustering around the entrance to the dirt road. Three guards, fully armed, stood by the blockade in the yellow-brown light of very late afternoon.

“Hello, Mr. Harker. You can go in.”

“Where’s Raymond?”

“Main operating lab,” the guard said.

Frowning, Harker moved past and headed across the clearing to the lab building. A late-spring breeze whistled down through the spruces, chilling him momentarily; the sun was a dying swollen reddish ball hovering near the horizon. Harker felt a strange foreboding sense of fear.

Three white-garbed medics guarded the lab entrance. Harker started to go past; one of them shook his head and said, “Very delicate work going on in there, Mr. Marker. If you’re going in, be sure to keep quiet.”

Marker tiptoed past.

Inside, he saw a tense group clustered around the operating table: Raymond, Vogel, Lurie, little Barchet, and a surgeon Marker did not know. There was a figure on the table. Marker could not see it.

Raymond detached himself from the group and came toward him. The lab director’s face was pale, almost clammy; his lips hung slack with tension, and his eyes bulged. He looked frightened half into catatonia.

“What’s going on?” Marker whispered.

“Experiment,” Raymond said, shivering. “God, I wish we hadn’t started this.”

Raymond seemed close to collapse. Puzzled, Marker edged closer to the table, shunting Barchet to one side to get a better view. Five guilt-shadowed faces turned uneasily to stare at him.

For a long moment Marker studied the exposed face of the cadaver on the table, while billowing shock-waves clouded his mind, numbed his body. The enormity of what had been done left him almost incapable of speech for a few seconds.

Finally he looked at Raymond and said, “What have you people done?”

“We—we thought—”

Raymond stopped. Barchet said, “We all agreed on it after you left yesterday. We would bring him here and try—try to convince him that we were right. But he had a heart attack and d-died. So—”

In the yellow light of the unshielded incandescents the lie stood out in bold relief on Barchet’s face. It was Lurie who said finally, “We might as well tell the truth. We had Thurman kidnapped and we chloroformed him. Now we’re going to revive him and tell him he died of natural causes but was reanimated. We figure he’ll support us if—”

Wobbly-legged, Marker groped for a lab stool and sat down heavily, cradling his suddenly pounding head in his hands. The monstrosity of what had been done behind his back stunned him. To kidnap Thurman, kill him, hope that in reviving him he would be converted to their cause—

“All right,” Marker said tonelessly. “I’t’s too late for saying no, I guess. You realize you’ve condemned all of us to death.”

“Jim,” Raymond began, “do you really think—”

“Kidnaping, murder, illegal scientific experimentation—oh, I could strangle you!” Harker felt like bursting into tears. “Don’t you see that when you revive him he’s bound to throw the book at us? Why did you have to do this when I was gone?”

“We planned it a long time ago,” Barchet said. “We didn’t think you’d be back in time to see us doing it.”

Vogel said, “Perhaps if we don’t carry out the resuscitation, and merely dispose of the body—”

“No!” Harker said, half-sobbing. “We’ll reanimate him. And that’ll be the end of this grand crusade. Finish.” He looked down at Thurman’s massive head, imposing even in death. His voice was a harsh hissing thing as he said, “Go on! Get started!”

He watched, numb-brained, as if dream-fogged, while Vogel and the other surgeon prepared the complex reanimating instrument. His heart pounded steadily, booming as if it wanted to burst through his ribcage.

He felt very tired. But now, thanks to this one master blunder, all their striving was at an end. Thurman, awakened, would denounce them for what they had done. After that, they ceased to be scientists and would be mere criminals in the eyes of humanity.

Harker listened to the murmured instructions being passed back and forth over the table, watched the needles entering the flesh, the electrodes being clamped in place. Minutes passed. Vogel’s thin hand grasped the controlling rheostat. Power surged into the dead man’s body.

After a while Harker rose and joined the group round the table. Needles wavered and leaped high, indicating that life had returned. But—

“Look at the EEG graph,” Raymond said hollowly.

The graph held no meaning for Harker. But he did not need to look there to see what had happened.

The eyes of the body on the table had opened, and were staring toward the ceiling. They were not the beady, alert, eager eyes of Senator Thurman. They were the dull, glazed, slack-muscled eyes of an idiot.

For a moment, no one spoke.

Harker stood some five feet from the operating table, looking away from the creature under the machine, thinking, These people are like small boys with a new shiny toy. I should never have trusted them alone. I should never have gotten involved in this.

“What do we do know?” Lurie asked. The gangling biologist was nearing a state of hysteria. Sweat-drops beaded his forehead. “The man’s mind is gone.”