Robert Silverberg - Recalled To Life

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RECALLED TO LIFE

ROBERT SILVERBERG

“You’ve condemned all of us to death,” Harker said tonelessly.

The men he addressed were geniuses. The astonishing technique they had discovered enabled them to

restore corpses to full, healthy life. But when faced with opposition, they fought back blindly and stupidly.

As a lawyer, Harker could scarcely count the charges that might be made against them: kidnapping,

murder, illegal scientific experimentation. . . .

They had one chance. If they could revive the dead Senator Thurmond, they might still find a way to

present their gift to humanity and to save themselves. Harker watched, numb-brained, while Vogel and

the other surgeon prepared the complex reanimating instrument.

Minutes passed. The eyes of the body on the table opened and stared at the ceiling. But they were the

dull, glazed eyes of an idiot!

Acclaimed by experts, raved over by readers when it originally appeared, Robert Silverberg’s greatest

novel has been unaccountably ignored by book publishers until now.

Here it is.

RECALLED TO LIFE

ROBERT SILVERBERG

LANCER BOOKS •NEW YORK

A LANCER SCIENCE FICTION CLASSIC • 1962

To Larry T. Shaw

RECALLED TO LIFE

LANCER BOOKS, INC. •26 WEST 47thSTREET •NEW YORK 36, N.Y.

Chapter I

THAT MORNING James Harker was not expecting anything unusual to happen. He had painstakingly

taught himself, these six months since the election, not to expect anything. He had returned to private law

practice, and the Governorship and all such things were now bright memories, growing dimmer each

month.

Morning of an Ex-Governor. There was plenty to do: the Bryant trust-fund business was due for a

hearing next Thursday, and before that time Harker had to get his case in order. A pitiful thing: old

Bryant, one of the glorious pioneers of space travel, assailed by greedy heirs in his old age. It was enough

to turn a man cynical, Harker thought, unless a man happened to be cynical already.

He reached across his desk for the file-folder labelled BRYANT: Hearing 5|16|33. The sound of the

outer-office buzz trickled into the room, and Harker realized he had accidentally switched on the

interoffice communicator. He started to switch it off; he stopped when he heard a dry, thin voice say, “Is

the Governor in?”

His secretary primly replied, “Do you mean Mr. Harker?”

“That’s right.”

“Oh. He-he doesn’t like to be called the Governor, you know. Do you have an appointment with him?”

“I’m afraid not. Terribly foolish of me-I didn’t realize I’d need one. I don’t live inNew York , you see,

and I’m just here for a few days-“

“I’m extremely sorry, sir. I cannot permit you to see Mr. Marker without an appointment. He’s

extremely busy, you see.”

“I’m quite aware of that,” came the nervous, oddly edgy voice. “But it’s something of an emergency,

and-“

“Dreadfully sorry, sir. Won’t you phone for an appointment?”

To the eavesdropping Harker, the conversation sounded like something left over from hisAlbany days.

But he was no longer Governor of New York and he was no longer the fair-haired boy of the National

Liberal Party. He wasn’t being groomed for the Presidency now. And, suddenly, he found himself

positively yearning to be interrupted.

He leaned forward and said, “Joan, I’m not very busy right now. Suppose you send the gentleman in.”

“Oh-uh-Mr. Harker. Of course, Mr. Harker.” She sounded startled and irritated; perhaps she wanted to

scold him for having listened in. Harker cut the audio circuit, slipped the Bryant file out of sight, cleared

his desk, and tried to look keenly awake and responsive.

A timid knock sounded at his office door. Harker pressed the open button; the door split laterally, the

segments rising into the ceiling and sliding into the floor, and a man in short frock coat and white

unpressed trousers stepped through, grinning apologetically. A moment later the door snapped shut

behind him.

“Mr. Harker?”

“That’s right.”

The visitor approached Harker’s desk awkwardly; he walked as if his body were held together by

baling wire, and as if his assembler had done an amateur job of it. His shoulders were extraordinarily

wide for his thin frame, and long arms dangled loosely. He had a wide, friendly, toothy grin and much too

much unkempt soft-looking brown hair. He handed Harker a card. The lawyer took it, spun it round

right-side-up so he could read it, and scanned the neat engraved characters. It said:

BELLER RESEARCH LABORATORIES

Litchfield,N.J.

Dr. Benedict Lurie

Harker frowned in concentration, shook his head, and said, “I’m sorry, Dr. Lurie. I’m afraid I’ve never

heard of this particular laboratory.”

“Understandable. We don’t seek publicity. I’d be very surprised if you had heard of us.” Lurie’s head

bobbed boyishly as he spoke; he seemed about as ill-at-ease a person as Harker had ever met.

“Cigarette?” Harker asked.

“Oh, no-never!”

Grinning, Harker took one himself, squeezed the igniting capsule with his index-finger’s nail, and put the

pack away. He leaned back. Lurie’s awkwardness seemed to be contagious; Harker felt strangely

fidgety.

“I guess you’re wondering why I came here to see you, Mr. Harker.”

“Yes, I am.”

Lurie interspliced his long and slightly quivering fingers, then, as if dissatisfied, separated his hands again,

crossed his legs, and gripped his kneecaps. He blinked and swivelled his chair slightly to the left. Sensing

that the sun slanting through the window behind the desk was bothering Lurie, Harker pressed the

opaque button and the room’s three windows dimmed.

Lurie said finally, “I’ll begin at the beginning, Mr. Harker. The Beller Research Laboratories were

established in 2024 by a grant from the late Darwin F. Beller, of whom you may have heard.”

“The oil magnate,” Harker said. And a notorious crank. The lawyer began to regret his impulsive action

in inviting the gawky stranger in to see him.

“Yes. Beller of Beller Refineries. Mr. Beller provided our group with virtually unlimited funds,

established us in a secluded area inNew Jersey , and posed us a scientific problem: could we or could we

not develop a certain valuable process? I’ll be more specific in a moment. Let me say that many of the

men Mr. Beller assembled for the project were openly skeptical of its success, but were willing to try-a

triumphant demonstration of the scientific frame of mind.”

Or of the willingness to grab a good thing when it comes along, Barker thought. He had had little

experience with scientists, but plenty with human beings. Lurie’s speech sounded as if it had been

carefully rehearsed.

“To come to the point,” Lurie said, uncrossing his legs again. “After eight years of research, our project

has reached the point of success. In short, we’ve developed a workable technique for doing what we

had hoped to do. Now we need a legal adviser.”

Harker became more interested. “This is where I’m to come in, I suppose?”

“Exactly. Our process is, to say the least, a controversial one. We foresee multitudes of legal difficulties

and other problems.”

“I’m not a patent lawyer, Dr. Lurie. That’s a highly specialized field of which I know very little. I can

give you the name of a friend of mine-“

“We’re not interested in a patent,” Lurie said. “We want to give our process to mankind without strings.

The problem is, will mankind accept it?”

A little impatiently Harker said, “Suppose you get down to cases, then. It’s getting late, and I have a lot

of work to do before lunch-time.”

A funny little smile flickered at the corners of Lurie’s wide mouth. He said, flatly, “All right. We’ve

developed a process for bringing newly-dead people back to life. It works if there’s no serious organic

damage and the body hasn’t been dead more than twenty-four hours.”

For a long moment there was silence in Harker’s office. Harker sat perfectly still, and it seemed to him

he could hear the blood pumping in his own veins and the molecules of room-air crashing against his

ear-drums. He fought against his original instincts, which were to laugh or to show amazement.

Finally he said, “I’ll assume for the sake of discussion that what you tell me is true. If it is, then you know

you’re holding down dynamite.”

“We know that. That’s why we came to you. You’re the first prominent figure who hasn’t thrown me

out of his office as soon as I told him why I had come.”

Sadly Harker said, “I’ve learned how to reserve judgment. I’ve also learned to be tolerant of crackpots

or possible crackpots. I learned these things the hard way.”

“Do you think I’m a crackpot, Mr. Harker?”

“I have no opinion. Not yet, anyway.”

“Does that mean you’ll take the case?”

“Did I say that?” Harker stubbed his cigarette out with a tense stiff-wristed gesture. “It violates

professional ethics for me to ask you which of my colleagues you approached before you came to me,

but I’d like to know how many there were, at least.”

“You were fourth on the list,” Lurie said.

“Umm. And the others turned you down flat?”

Lurie’s open face reddened slightly. “Absolutely. I was called a zombie salesman by one. Another just

asked me to leave. The third man advised me to blow up the labs and cut my throat. So we came to

you.”

Harker nodded slowly. He had a fairly good idea of whom the three others were, judging from the

nature of their reactions. He himself had made no reaction yet, either visceral or intellectual. A year ago,

perhaps, he might have reacted differently-but a year ago he had been a different person.

He said, “You can expect tremendous opposition to any such invention. I can guess that there’ll be

theological opposition, and plenty of hysterical public outbursts. And the implications are immense-a new

set of medical ethics, for one thing. There’ll be a need for legislation covering-ah-resurrection.” He

drummed on the desk with his fingertips. “Whoever agrees to serve as your adviser is taking on a giant

assignment.”

“We’re aware of that,” Lurie said. “The pay is extremely good. We can discuss salary later, if you like.”

“I haven’t said I’m accepting,” Harker reminded him crisply. “For all I know right now this is just a pipe

dream, wishful thinking on the part of a bunch of underpaid scientists.”

Lurie smiled winningly. “Naturally we would not think of asking you to make a decision until you’ve seen

our lab. If you think you’re interested, a visit could be arranged some time this week or next-“

Harker closed his eyes for a moment. He said, “If I accepted, I’d be exposing myself to public abuse.

I’d become a storm-center, wouldn’t I?”

“You should be used to that, Mr. Harker. As a former national political figure-“

The former stung. Harker had a sudden glaring vision of his rise through the Nat-Lib Party ranks, his

outstanding triumph in the 2024 mayoralty contest, his natural ascension to the gubernatorial post four

years later-and then, the thumping fall, the retirement into private life, the painful packing-away of old

aspirations and dreams-

He nodded wearily. “Yes, I know what it’s like to be on the spot. I was just wondering whether it’s

worth-while to get back on the firing line again.” He moistened his lips. “Look, Dr. Lurie, I have to think

about this whole business some more. Is there someplace I can call you this afternoon?”

“I’m staying at the Hotel Manhattan,” Lurie said. He retrieved his calling-card and scribbled a phone

number on it, then a room number, and handed it back to Harker. “I’ll be there most of the afternoon, if

you’d like to call.”

Harker pocketed the card. “I’ll let you know,” he said.

Lurie rose and shambled toward the door. Harker pressed the open button and the two halves of the

door dropped into their slots. Rising from the desk, he accompanied Lurie through the door and into the

outer office. The scientist’s stringy frame towered five or six inches over Harker’s compact, still-lean

bulk. Harker glanced up at the strangely soft eyes.

“I’ll call you later, Dr. Lurie.”

“I hope so. Thank you for listening, Governor.”

Harker returned to the office, reflecting that the final Governor had either been savagely unkind or else a

bit of unconscious absent-mindedness. Eigher way, he tried to ignore it.

He dumped himself behind his desk, frowning deeply, and dug his thumbs into his eyeballs. After a

moment he got up, crossed to the portable bar, and dialed himself a whiskey sour. He sipped

thoughtfully.

Resurrection. A crazy, grotesque idea. A frightening one. But science had come up with a method for

containing the hundred-million-degree fury of a fusion reaction; why not a method for bringing the recent

dead back to life?

No, he thought. He wasn’t primarily in doubt of the possibility of the process. It was dangerous to be

too skeptical of the potentialities of science.

It was his own part in the enterprise that made him hold back. What Lurie evidently had in mind was for

him to act as a sort of public advocate, arguing their case before the courts of law and of human opinion.

It was a frighteningly big job, and if the tide swept against him he would be carried away.

Then he smiled. What have I to lose?

He eyed the tridims of his wife and sons that occupied one corner of his desk. His political career, he

thought, couldn’t be any deader than it was now. His own party had cast him loose, refusing to name him

for a second term when he indiscreetly defied the state committee in making a few appointments. His law

practice did well, though not spectacularly; in any event, he was provided for financially by his

investments.

He had nothing to lose but his good name, and he had already lost most of that in the political mess. And

he had a whole world to win.

Revival of the dead? How about a dead career, Harker wondered. Could I revive that too?

Rising from his desk, he paced round the office, pausing to depolarize the windows. Bright morning

sunshine poured in. Through his window he could see the playground of the public school across the

street. Thin-legged girls of nine or ten were playing a punchball game; he could hear the shrieks of delight

or anguish even at this distance.

A sudden sharp image came to him: himself, nine years before, standing spreadlegged on the beach

atRiisPark , with Lois staring whitefaced at him and three-year-old Chris peeking strangely around her

legs. It was a blisteringly hot day; his skin, to which sand had adhered, was red, raw, tender. He heard

the booming of the surf, the overhead zoop of a Europe-bound rocket, the distant cry of

refreshment-venders and the nearer laughter of small girls.

He was not laughing. He was holding a small, cold, wet bundle tight, and he was crying for the first time

in twenty years. He huddled his drowned five-year-old daughter to him, and tried to pretend it had not

happened.

It had happened, and Eva was dead-the girl-child who he had planned would beAmerica ’s darling

when he reached the White House, fifteen years or so from now.

That had been nine years ago. Eva would have been nearly fifteen, now, flowering into womanhood. He

had no daughter. But she could have lived, Harker thought. Maybe.

He returned to his desk and sat quietly for a while. After twenty minutes of silent thought he reached for

the phone and punched out Lurie’s number.

Chapter II

BARKER HAD an appointment to visit old Richard Bryant at three that afternoon. He was not looking

forward to it. Since Bryant was confined to his home by doctor’s orders, it meant that Harker would

have to visit the old man, and that meant entering a house where death seemed to hang heavy over the

threshold, a house filled with graspingly impatient relatives of the venerable hero of space-travel’s infancy.

At half past two Harker notified his secretary that he was leaving; he gathered up the portfolio of

relevant papers, locked his office, and took the gravshaft down to street level. He emerged onFirst

Avenue , and walked quickly downtown toward125thStreet .

It was a bright, warmish, cloudless May afternoon. A bubble of advertising was the only blot on the

otherwise flawless sky. TheManhattan air was clean, tingling, fresh. Harker never breathed it in without

thinking of the vast dynamos of the puritron stations every ten blocks apart, gulping in tons and tons of

city soot each second. In his second year as Mayor, the entireBrooklyn puritron assembly had

“accidentally” conked out for four hours, thanks to some half-forgotten labor squabble. Harker

remembered the uproar that had caused.

At125thStreet he boarded the crosstown monorail and moments later found himself disembarking at

theRiverside Drive exit. He signalled for a cab; while he waited, a bleary-eyed old man shuffled over to

him, shoved a gaudy pamphlet in his hands, greeted him by name, and shuffled away.

He looked at it. It was one of the many official organs of the Watchtower Society. As he stuffed it in the

corner disposal-bin, he smiled in recollection of that organization’s motto: MILLIONS NOW LIVING

WILL NEVER DIE.

Gravely he proposed a substitute: MILLIONS NOW DEAD WILL LIVE AGAIN.

The attendant images effectively choked off the mood of good humor that had been stealing over him.

He remembered that in only two days he would be journeying across theHudson to see whether the

Beller Laboratories people had actually hit on something or not.

The cab drew up. Harker slid into the back seat and said, “Seventy-ninth andWest End , driver.”

The house was a massive, heavily-chromed representative of late twentieth-century architecture, settling

now into respectable middle age. Harker had visited it on three separate occasions, and each time his

discomfort had increased.

It had no gravshaft; he rode up in a human-operated elevator. The operator said, “I guess you’re going

to visit Mr. Bryant, eh, Mr. Harker?”

“That’s right.”

“The old gentleman’s been poorish lately, sir. Ah, it’ll be a sad thing when he goes, won’t it?”

“He’s one of our greatest,” Harker agreed. “Many people up there today? “

“The usual lot,” the operator said, halting the car and opening the door. It opened immediately into the

foyer of the huge Bryant apartment. Almost at once, Harker found himself staring at the fishy, cold-eyed

face of Jonathan Bryant, the old man’s eldest son.

“Good afternoon, Jonathan.”

“Hello, Harker.” The reply was sullenly brusque. “You’re here to see my father?”

“I didn’t come for tea,” Harker snapped. “Will you invite me in, or should I just push past you?”

Jonathan muttered something and gave ground, allowing Harker to enter. The livingroom was crowded:

half-a-dozen miscellaneous Bryants, plus two or three whom Harker did not know but who bore the

familiar Bryant features. A horde of vultures, Harker thought. He nodded to them with professional

courtesy and passed on, through the inner rooms, to the old man’s sickroom.

The place was lined with trophies-one room, Harker knew, consisted of the cockpit of the Mars One,

that slender needle of a ship that had borne Rick Bryant to the red planet nearly fifty years ago, an

epoch-making flight that still stood large in the annals of space-travel. Trophy-cases in the halls held

medals, souvenir watches, testimonial dinner-menus. Old Bryant had been a prodigious collector of

souvenirs.

His doctor, a tiny man with the look of an irritated penguin, met him at the door to the sickroom. “I’ll

have to ask you to limit your stay to thirty minutes, Mr. Harker. He’s very low today.”

“I’ll be as brief as I can,” Harker promised. He stepped around the barricade and entered.

Helen Bryant, oldest of the daughters, sat solicitously by her father’s bedside, glaring at him with the

tender expression of a predatory harpy.

Harker said, “If you’ll excuse me, Miss Bryant, your father and I have some important business to

discuss.”

“I’m his daughter. Can’t I-“

“I’m afraid not,” Harker said coldly. He waited while she made her proud retreat, then took her seat at

the side of the bed.

“Afternoon, Harker,” Bryant said in a tomb-like croak.

He was not a pretty sight. He was seventy-three, and could easily pass for twice that age-a shrunken,

leathery little man with rheumy, cataracted eyes and a flat, drooping face. There was little about him that

was heroic, now. He was just a dying old man.

The needles of an intravenous feed-line penetrated his body at various points. He no longer had the

strength to swallow or to digest. It was difficult to believe that this man had made the first successful

round-trip flight to another planet, back in 1984, and that from his early thirties until his stroke four years

ago he had been a figure of world importance, whose words were eagerly rushed into print whenever he

cared to make a statement.

He said, “How does it look for next Thursday?”

Harker’s jaws tightened. “Pretty good. I hope to be able to swing it.”

“How have you set it up?”

Harker drew the papers from his portfolio. “Twenty million is to be established as a trust fund for your

grandchildren and for the children of your grandson Frederick. Thirty million is to be granted to the

Bryant Foundation for Astronautical Research. Fifty thousand is to be divided among your children, ten

thousand to each.”

“Is that last bit necessary?” Bryant asked with sudden ferocity.

“I’m afraid it is.”

“I wanted to cut those five jackals off without a penny!” he thundered. Then, subsiding, he coughed and

said, “Why must you give them so much?”

“There are legal reasons. It makes it harder for them to overthrow the will, you see.”

The old man was reluctant to accept the idea of giving his children anything, and in a way Harker could

see the justice of that. They were a hateful bunch. Bryant had garnered millions from his space-journey,

and had invested the money wisely and well; there had been an undignified scramble for the old hero’s

wealth when a stroke appeared to have killed him in ‘28. He had confounded them all by recovering, and

by cutting most of them out of his revised will-a document that was being contested in the courts even

while the old man still lived.

At three-thirty, the penguinish doctor knocked discreetly at the bedchamber door, poked his head in,

and said, “I hope you’re almost through, Mr. Harker.”

At that moment old Bryant was trying to sign a power-of-attorney Harker had prepared; his palsied

hand could barely manage the signature, but in time he completed it. Harker looked at it: a wavy scrawl

that looked like a random pattern on a seismograph drum.

“I’m leaving now,” Harker told the doctor.

Bryant quavered, “What time is the hearing next Thursday, Harker?”

“Half past eleven.”

“Be sure to call me when it’s finished.”

“Of course. You just relax, Mr. Bryant. Legally they can’t trouble you at all.”

He reaped a harvest of sour glances as he made his way through the trophy-cluttered halls to the

elevator. It was a depressing place, and the sight of the shattered hero always clouded his mind with

gloom. He was glad to get away.

Riding a cab downtown to Grand Central, he boarded the 4:13 express to Larchmont, and eleven

minutes later was leaving the Larchmont tube depot and heading in a local cab toward his home. At

quarter to five, he stepped through the front door.

Lois was in the front room, standing on a chair and doing something to the ceiling mobile. Silently Harker

crept in; standing with arms akimbo at the door, he said, “It’s high time we junked that antique, darling.”

She nearly fell off the chair in surprise. “Jiml What are you-“

“Home early,” Harker said. “Had an appointment with old Bryant and the medics tossed me out quick,

so I came home. Gah! Filthy business, that Bryant deal.”

He slipped out of his jacket and loosened his throat-ribbon. He paused for a moment at the mirror,

staring at himself: the fine, strong features, the prematurely iron-gray hair, the searching blue eyes. It was

the face of a natural leader, an embryo President. But there was something else in it now-a coldness

around the eyes, a way of quirking the corners of his mouth-that showed a defeated man, a man who has

climbed to the top of his string and toppled back to the ground. With forty years of active life ahead of

him.

“Hello, Dad. Want a drink?”

It was the already-deepening voice of twelve-year-old Chris that drew him away from his reverie. In

recent months he had let the boy prepare his homecoming cocktail for him. But today he shook his head.

“Sorry, son. I don’t happen to be thirsty tonight.”

Disappointment flashed briefly in the boy’s handsome face; then it faded. Minor setbacks like this meant

little to a boy who had expected once to live in the White House, and who knew now it wouldn’t be

happening.

“Where’s Paul?” Harker asked.

“Upstairs doing his homework,” Chris said. He snorted. “The ninny’s learning long division. Having fits

with it, too.”

Harker stared at his son strangely for a moment; then he said, “Chris, go upstairs and give him some

help. I want to talk to Mum.”

“Sure, Dad.”

When the boy had gone, Harker turned to his wife. Lois at forty-three years his junior-was still slim and

attractive; her blonde hair had lost its sheen and soon would be shading into gray, but she seemed to

welcome rather than fear the imprint of age.

She said, “Jim, why did you look at Chris that way?”

In answer, Harker crossed to the table near the window and his fingers sought out the tridim of dead

Eva, its bright colors losing some of their sharpness now after nine years. “I was trying to picture him as a

teenage girl,” he said heavily. “Eva would have been fifteen soon.”

Her only outward reaction was a momentary twitch of the lower lip. “You haven’t thought of her for a

long time.”

“I know. I try not to think of her. But I thought of her today. I was thinking that she didn’t have to be

dead, Lois.”

“Of course not, dear. But it happened, and there was no help for it.”

He shook his head. Replacing Eva’s picture, he picked up instead a tiny bit of bric-a-brac, a

kaleidoscopic crystal in whose depths were swirling streaks of red and gold and dark black. He shook it;

the color-patterns changed. “I mean,” he said carefully, “that Eva might have been saved, even after the

accident.”

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摘要：

RECALLEDTOLIFEROBERTSILVERBERG “You’vecondemnedallofustodeath,”Harkersaidtonelessly.Themenheaddressedweregeniuses.Theastonishingtechniquetheyhaddiscoveredenabledthemtorestorecorpsestofull,healthylife.Butwhenfacedwithopposition,theyfoughtbackblindlyandstupidly.Asalawyer,Harkercouldscarcelycountthecha...

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Robert Silverberg - Recalled To Life

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