In answer, Harker crossed to the table near the window and his fingers sought out the tri-dim of dead Eva, its bright colors losing some of their sharpness now after nine years. "I was trying to picture him as a teen-age 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."
"They tried to revive her. The pulmotor—"
"No. Lois, I had a—a person visit me this morning. A certain Dr. Lurie, from a certain research laboratory in New Jersey. He claims they've developed a technique for bringing the dead back to life, and he wants me to handle promotion and legal aspects. For a fat fee, may I add."
She frowned uncertainly. "Reviving the dead? What kind of crazy joke is that?"
"I don't know. But I'm not treating it as a joke; not until I've seen the evidence, anyway. I made an appointment to go out to Jersey and visit their lab on Friday."
"And you'll take the job, if they've really hit on something?"