Recalled to Life

Chapter III

At three minutes past two on Friday afternoon Marker’s secretary buzzed him to let him know Dr. Lurie had arrived. Harker felt momentary apprehension. Cautious, even a little conservative by nature, he felt uneasy about paying a visit to a laboratory of—for all he knew—mad scientists.

He turned on an amiable grin when Lurie arrived. The scientist looked less gawky than before, more sure of himself; he wore what seemed to be the same rumpled clothing.

“The car’s downstairs,” Lurie said.

Harker left word at the front desk that he was leaving for the day, telling the girl to refer all calls to one of the other partners in the firm. He followed Lurie into the gravshaft.

The car idled in the temporary-parking area outside—a long, low, thrumming ’33 turbo-job, sleekly black and coming with a $9000 pricetag at the least. There were three men inside. Lurie touched a knob; the back door peeled back, and he and Harker got in. Harker looked around.

They were looking at him, too. Minutely.

The men at the wheel was a fleshy, hearty-looking fellow in his late fifties, who swivelled in a full circle to peer unabashedly at Harker. Next to him was a thin, pale, intense young man with affectedly thick glasses (no reason why he couldn’t wear contacts instead, Harker thought) and sitting at the far side in back was the third, a coolly self-possessed individual in black clothes.

The fleshy man at the wheel said, “How do you do, Governor Harker. I’m Cal Mitchison—no scientist I, heh-heh! I’m public-liaison man for Seller Labs.”

Harker smiled relatively courteously.

Mitchison said, “Man next to me is Dr. David Klaus, one of Beller’s bright young men. Specialty is enzyme research.”

“H-h-hello,” Klaus said with difficulty. Harker smiled in reply.

“And to your left is Dr. Martin Raymond. Mart’s the Director of Beller Labs,” Mitchison said.

“Pleased to meet you,” said Raymond. His voice was deep, well-modulated, even. Harker sensed that this was a man of tremendous inner strength and purpose. Raymond was a type Harker had seen before, and respected: the quietly intense sort that remained in the background, accumulating intensity like a tightening mainspring, capable of displaying any amount of energy or drive when it was needed.

“And you already know Ben Lurie, of course,” Mitchison said. “So we might as well get on our way.”

The trip took a little over an hour, with Mitchison making a crosstown hop via the 125th Street Overpass, then ducking downtown to 110th Street and taking the Cathedral Avenue rivertube across the Hudson into New Jersey. The Village of Litchfield turned out to be one of those Jersey towns of a thousand souls or so that look just like every other small Jersey town: a railroad siding, a block or two of shopping center, bank, post office, then a string of old split-levels rambling away from the highway in every direction.

Mitchison, handling his big car with an almost sensuous delight, drove on through the main part of town, into the open country again, and about a mile and a half past the heart of the village suddenly turned up a small road prominently labelled PRIVATE: KEEP OUT. TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTUED.

The road wound inward through a thick stand of close-packed spruce for more than a thousand feet, at which point a roadblock became evident. Two apparently armed men stood guard at either side of the road.

Mitchison opened the doors and the five occupants of the car got out. Harker took a deep breath. The air out here was sweet and pure, and not with the mechanical purity of Manhattan’s strained and filtered atmosphere. He liked the feel of fresh air against his nostrils and throat.

Lurie said to the guards, “This is Mr. James Harker. We’ve brought him here to visit the labs.”

“Right.”

The guard who had grunted assent took a red button from his pocket and jammed it against Harker’s lapel. It adhered. “That’s your security tag. Keep it visible at all times or we can’t answer for the consequences.”

“What if it falls off?”

“It won’t.”

Harker and his companions followed round the roadblock while Mitchison took the car somewhere to be parked. Harker saw three large buildings, all of them very old, and several smaller cabins behind them, at the very edge of the encroaching forest.

“Those are the dormitories for the researchers,” Lurie said, pointing to the cabins. “The big building over here is the administrative wing, and the other two are lab buildings.”

Harker nodded. It was an impressive setup. The group turned into the administrative building.

It was every bit as old-fashioned on the inside as outside. The lighting was, of all things, by incandescent bulbs; the air-conditioners were noisily evident, and the windows did not have opaquing controls. Harker followed the other three into a small, untidy, book-lined room—and, suddenly, he realized that Dr. Raymond was taking charge.

“This is my office,” Raymond said. “Won’t you be seated?”

Harker sat. He reached for his cigarettes and Raymond interjected immediately, “Sorry, but no smoking is permitted anywhere on the laboratory grounds.”

“Of course.”

Raymond sat back. Klaus and Lurie flanked him. In a quiet, terribly calm voice, Raymond said, “I think Dr. Lurie has explained the essentials of our situation.”

“All I know is that you claim to have perfected a process for restoring the dead to life, and that you want me to act as legal adviser and public spokesman. Is that right?”

“Indeed. The fee will be $600 per week for as long as your services will be required.”

“For which you’ll insist on my full-time participation, I expect.”

“We have confidence in your ability, Mr. Harker. You may apportion your time as you see fit.”

Harker nodded slowly. “On the surface, I don’t see any objections. But naturally I’ll expect a thorough demonstration of what you’ve achieved so far, if I’m to take on any kind of work for you.”

Levelly Raymond said, “We would hardly think of employing you unless we could take you into our fullest confidence. Come with me.”

He opened an inner door and stepped through; Harker walked around the desk to follow him, with Klaus and Lurie bringing up the rear.

They now were in a large room with the faint iodoform odor Harker associated with hospitals; it was brightly, almost starkly lit, and Harker saw two lab tables, one empty, one occupied by a dog, both surrounded by looming complex mechanical devices. A bearded, grave-looking young man in the white garb of a surgeon stood by the dog-laden table.

“Are we ready, Dr. Raymond?”

Raymond nodded. To Harker he said, “This is Dr. Vogel. One of our surgeons. He will anesthetize the dog you see and kill it.”

Harker moistened his lips nervously. He knew better than to protest, but the idea of casually killing animals in the name of science touched off a host of involuntary repugnance-reactions in him.

He watched stonily as Vogel fitted a mask over the dog’s face—it was a big, shaggy animal of indeterminate breed—and attached instruments to its body.

“We’re recording heartbeat and respiration,” Raymond murmured. “The anesthetic will gradually overcome the dog. In case you’re concerned, the animal feels no pain in any part of this experiment.”

Some moments passed; finally Vogel peered at his dials, nodded, and pronounced the dog in full narcosis. Harker fought against the inner tension that gripped him.

“Dr. Vogel will now bring death to the dog,” Raymond said.

With practiced, efficient motions the surgeon slit the animal’s bloodvessels, inserted tubes, adjusted clamps. An assistant glided forward from the corner of the room to help. Harker found a strange fascination in watching the life-blood drain from the dog into dangling containers. The needle registering the heartbeat sank inexorably toward zero; respiration dropped away. At last Vogel looked up and nodded.

“The dog is dead,” he declared. “The blood has been drained away. This pump will ensure oxygenation of the blood during the period of the animal’s death. We will now proceed to the next table—”

Where, Harker saw, another dog had been placed while his attention had been riveted on the death scene. This dog lay in a slumped furry heap that grotesquely reminded Harker of Eva as she had looked when they pulled her from the sea. His throat felt terribly dry.

“This animal,” Vogel said stiffly, “underwent the killing treatment nine hours and thirteen minutes ago. Its blood has been stored during that time. Now—”

Spellbound, Harker watched the surgeon’s busy hands as he and the assistant fastened tubes to the dead animal’s body and lowered a complicated instrument into place. “We are now restoring blood to the dead animal. When the indicator gauge reads satisfactorily, injection of adrenalin and other hormones will restore ‘life’ to the animal. The blood is being pumped back at the same rate and rhythm that the animal’s own heart uses.”

“In some cases,” Raymond remarked, “we’ve restored dogs dead nearly thirty-six hours.”

Harker nodded. He was forcing himself to a realization of the gulf that lay between these calmly efficient men and himself. Yet they needed him and he needed them; neither type of mind was complete in itself.

The resuscitation of the second dog took fifteen minutes. At length Vogel nodded, withdrew die reviving apparatus. The heart-beat indicator was fluttering; respiration was beginning. The dog’s eyes opened wearily. It wagged its tail feebly and almost comically.

Lurie remarked, “For the next several hours the dog will show signs of having undergone a serious operation—which it has. In a day or two it’ll be as good as new—once the stitches have healed, of course. In Lab Building Two we can show you dozens of dogs that have been through the killing process and were returned to life, happy, hearty—”

“This dog,” Raymond said calmly, “is the son of a dog we temporarily ‘killed’ two years ago. The period of death doesn’t seem to interfere with later mating or with any other life process.”

While they spoke, Vogel was repeating the process of revivification on the dog that had been killed twenty minutes before. This time Harker watched with less revulsion as life returned to the animal.

In a dry voice he said, “Your experiments—are—well, impressive.”

Raymond shook his head. “On the contrary. We’ve merely repeated work that was carried out more than eighty years ago. These techniques are far from new. But our application of them to—”

“Yes,” Harker said weakly. “To hitman life. That’s—that’s the clincher, I’d say.”

Harker realized that Raymond was staring at him coldly, appraisingly, as if trying to read his mind before proceeding to the next demonstration. Harker felt his face reddening under the scrutiny.

“We’re lucky enough to be able to—ah—clinch things,” Raymond said.

“With a human being?”

Raymond nodded. “You understand that getting human specimens for research has been our gravest problem. I’ll have to ask you not to voice any of the questions that may arise in your mind now.”

Harker nodded. He could recognize a security blanket when it was lowered.

Raymond turned and said in a mortuary voice, “Bring in Mr. Doe.”

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.