"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 o'clock 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 that—
Yes. 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 reanimation.
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.