Carteret frowned reprovingly. "You told me yesterday it was an urgent matter. To me urgency means--well, _urgency_. My column for the _Intelligencer_ can wait a few hours, I guess." His voice was dramatically resonant. He flashed his famous smile. Harker said, "Fair enough. I'm here seeking an ecclesiastical opinion." "I'll do my best. You understand that any _real_ opinion on a serious matter would have to come from the Bishop, not from me--and ultimately from Rome." "I know that. I wouldn't want this to get to Rome just yet. I want a private, off-the-record statement from you." "I'll try. Go ahead." Harker took a deep breath. "Father, what's the official Church position on resurrection of the dead? Actual physical resurrection here and now, I mean, not the Last Trump." Carteret's eyes twinkled. "Officially? Well, I've never heard Jesus being condemned for raising Lazarus. And on the third day after the crucifixion Jesus Himself was raised, if that's what you mean. I don't see--" "Let me make myself clear," Harker said. "The resurrections of Jesus and of Lazarus both fall into the miracle category. Suppose--suppose a mortal being, a doctor, could take a man who had been dead eight or nine hours, or even a day, and bring him back to life." Carteret looked momentarily troubled. "You speak hypothetically, of course." When Harker did not answer he went on, "Our doctrine holds that death occurs at the moment of 'complete and definitive separation of body and soul.' Presumably the process you discuss makes no provision for restoring the soul." Harker shrugged. "I'm not capable to judge that. Neither, I'd say, are the men who have developed this--ah--hypothetical process." "In that case," Carteret said, "the official Church position would be that any human beings revived by this method would be without souls, and therefore no longer human. The whole procedure would be considered profoundly irreligious." "Blasphemous and sacrilegious as well?" "No doubt." Harker was silent for a moment. He said at length, "How about artificial respiration, heart massage, adrenalin injections? For decades seemingly dead people have been brought back to life with these techniques. Are _they_ all without souls too?" Carteret seemed to squirm. His strong fingers toyed with a cruciform paperweight on his desk. "I recall a statement of Pius XII, eighty or ninety years ago, about that. The Pope admitted that it was impossible to tell precisely when the soul had left the body--and that so long as the vital functions maintained themselves, it could be held that the person in question was not dead." "In other words, if resuscitation techniques could be applied successfully, the patient is considered never to have been dead?" Carteret nodded slowly. "But if the patient had been pronounced dead by science and left in that state for half a day or more, and _then_ reanimated by a hypothetical new technique--?"