"Any way I can help, Jim, you know I will." Harker experienced a moment of disorientation as he took a seat facing Winstead across the big desk that had been his until a few months ago. It was strange to find himself sitting on _this_ side of the desk. He looked for ways to begin saying what he had come here to say. He sensed the other man's deep embarrassment, and shared it in a way, because the awkwardness of this first meeting between Governor and ex-Governor was complex and many-leveled. Winstead was ten years his senior: a good party man, a reliable workhorse who had come up through the ranks of the Manhattan District Attorney's office, and who had turned down a judgeship because he thought he had a shot at the race for Governor. But the party had chosen the bright, meteorically-rising young Mayor, James Harker, to be the standard-bearer instead, and an avalanche of Nat-Lib votes from downstate had swept Harker in. Then it had been necessary to discard Harker four years later, and good dependable old Leo Winstead was trotted out of private law practice to take his place. The Nat-Lib tide held true; Winstead was elected, and now it was the ex-prodigy who entered private law practice instead of using the Governorship as a spring-board into the White House. Harker said, "Leo, you carry weight with the party. I don't any more." "Jim, I--" "Don't try to apologize, Leo, because it's my own fault and none of yours that I'm where I am now. I'm simply asking you to exert some influence on behalf of a project I'm involved in." It was a naked attempt at lobbying. Harker hoped Winstead's unconscious guilt-feelings would lead him to support the Beller people. "What sort of project is it, Jim?" "It's--it's a sort of revolutionary breakthrough in science, Leo. A process to reanimate people who have been dead less than twenty-four hours." Winstead sat up. "Are you serious?" "Dead serious. I'm going down to Washington next week to see Thurman. This thing really _works_--and I want to get it legally approved." "And exactly where do I come in?" "You're a powerful official, Leo. If you came out in praise of this new development--" "Dangerous business, Jim. The Church--" "I know all about the Church. And you can bet our friends the American-Conservatives will make some kind of political capital about the news. The Nat-Libs will _have_ to take a favorable stand on this." "Suppose we don't?" Winstead asked. His voice was tense and off-center; he ran his knotty hands nervously through his bushy shock of white hair. "You know as well as I do that this is no time to hop off supporting anything too far-fetched." Harker began to feel a sense of exasperation. "Far-fetched? Leo, I saw a dead man come back to life right in front of me. If you think--"