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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
Copyright 1958, Royal Publications, Inc. All rights reserved. Printed in theU.S.A.
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.
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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
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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.”
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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,
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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.
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