"Well," Raymond said, "Counting the boy we reanimated when you were at the labs, Senator, we've had 72 reanimations since the first success. No, 73. In 62 of those cases, we've had c-complete success. In four others, it was impossible for us to restore life at all. And in the remaining seven"—now it comes out, Harker thought—"we achieved reanimation with partial success."
"In what way partial?" Vorys pressed.
Raymond had run out of evasions. He said, "We restored the body to functional activity. We were unable to achieve a similar restoration of the mind, in those seven cases."
CHAPTER XVII
The newspapers had a field day with Raymond's unwilling revelation. Even the traditionally sedate Times devoted six of its eight columns to a banner headline about it, and a story which began,
Public faith in the Beller reanimation process was seriously shaken today by the surprising revelation that reanimation sometimes produces a mentally deficient individual.
Dr. Martin Raymond, head of the Beller research organization, made the statement in New York at the opening session of Senate reanimation hearings. He declared that seven out of seventy-three experimental reanimations had produced "mindless beings." In four other instances, neither body nor mind was successfully recalled to life.
In the other papers, it was even worse. The Star-Post, which had been growing more sympathetic each day, demanded atop its editorial column, Why Have They Been Hiding This? The Hearst papers, which had never been sympathetic to the cause of reanimation, grew almost apoplectic now; their key slogan was the label, "The Zombie-Makers," which they used in reference to the Beller researchers not only in the editorial (a vitriolic one) but even in several of the news columns.
At the Litchfield headquarters, the flood of abusive mail threatened to overpower the local post-master. It was impossible to read it all, and after Harker picked up a scrawled letter that threatened assassination for him and his entire family unless reanimation experiments ceased, he decided to read none of it at all. They stored it in one of the supply-buildings in back, and Harker gave orders that any overflow was to be destroyed unread.