Книга - Frankenstein Unbound

Frankenstein Unbound
Brian Aldiss


When Joe Bodenland is suddenly transported back in time to the year 1816, his first reaction is of eager curiosity rather than distress…This is Aldiss’ response to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, available for the first time in eBook.When Joe Bodenland is suddenly transported back in time to the year 1816, his first reaction is of eager curiosity rather than distress. Certainly the Switzerland in which he finds himself, with its charming country inns, breathtaking landscapes and gentle, unmechanised pace of life, is infinitely preferable to the America of 2020 where the games of politicians threaten total annihilation. But after meeting the brooding young Victor Frankenstein, Joe realises that this world is more complex than the one he left behind. Is Frankenstein real, or are both Joe and he living out fictional lives?BRIAN SAYS: Developed as a tribute to Mary Shelley’s work, following the writing of Billion Year Spree, with its proposal, since widely adopted, that Frankenstein is the first seminal work to which the label “SF” can be logically attached. Frankenstein makes a female monster to accompany the male; Bodenland, lost from our time, hunts down first Frankenstein and then the monsters, becoming monstrous himself in the process.









BRIAN ALDISS

Frankenstein Unbound








For Bob and Kathy Morsberger, who appreciate

what Mary Shelley started


Alas, lost mortal! What with guests like these

Hast thou to do? I tremble for thy sake:

Why doth he gaze on thee, and thou on him?

Ah, he unveils his aspect: on his brow

The thunder-scars are graven: from his eye

Glares forth the immortality of hell …

Byron, Manfred

Make the beaten and the conquered pallid, with brows raised and knit together, and let the skin above the brows be all full of lines of pain; at the sides of the nose show the furrows going in an arch from the nostrils and ending where the eye begins, and show the dilation of the nostrils which is the cause of these lines; and let the teeth be parted after the manner of such as cry in lamentation.

Leonardo da Vinci, Treatise on Painting


Table of Contents

Title Page (#uaf61e515-a6bb-5861-ae4a-5b5721e9f622)

Dedication (#u725dd981-464f-5beb-baa8-d4acbf1d3000)

Epigraphs (#u114bdf08-5051-5276-a671-39008f418383)

Introduction (#u62f692b6-f61e-5ec8-ba01-e55df02b66c1)

Part One (#u7564facb-10db-543a-a4ef-dc0848af0dce)

Chapter 1 (#u530f108d-2a33-5e34-9bd2-63b91887bd94)

Chapter 2 (#u988a4905-03b2-521f-8da2-603f5a18ab1b)

Chapter 3 (#u5f847241-f791-5d44-b72b-6901b4c80721)

Chapter 4 (#ud5d58ce0-0ac8-5497-ac27-557b117f39c0)

Chapter 5 (#u9551a8af-68c5-5555-bf06-6ec3f816d885)

Part Two: The tape-journal of Joseph Bodenland (#u7673a279-00e9-5f35-a3b6-eaa5198da3cb)

Chapter 1 (#u0f7491b8-5ac0-5cba-ae46-d9a0f90b182d)

Chapter 2 (#u3a70e1b9-86e7-5e5c-9090-3e7e09f54469)

Chapter 3 (#u8bebedc9-d3d3-5f29-8ff9-4cb70de2dfe9)

Chapter 4 (#ub09b1795-b659-5bf6-81fc-75cbf4c6d975)

Chapter 5 (#u5331373c-d4da-5fd6-aaa0-a7d35ec0e716)

Chapter 6 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 7 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 27 (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)




Introduction


I had no hesitation. I was obsessed with the matter of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: its tenderness and brutal remorse, and, beyond all that, its consideration of the difficulties of life that face us. So I got up one morning and eagerly began writing this novel.

In a sense, I was just doing a duty, for I felt that anyone interested in the macabre or the mystical should not fail to read Mary Shelley’s novel. I was determined that my answering novel should embody simple human joys and sorrows: the loss of a mother, the loss of direction, the loss of a feeling for common humanity. But for all that, it should just be a grand little story …

Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein whilst still in her teens – a remarkable feat. We feel in her writing resonances of Caleb Williams, arguably the finest novel written by her father, the political philosopher William Godwin.

When I wrote my history of science fiction (Billion Year Spree), I claimed Frankenstein to be the first British work to which the label science fiction can be logically attached – particularly impressive in a field long dominated by men.

My sensibilities were already telling me that for science fiction to really find acknowledgement as literature it should not simply embrace science, but should attempt to involve that wider world in which we live and move and have our being.

So I embarked on this present book. It was first published by Jonathan Cape in 1973.

My main character, Joe Bodenland, is taken back in time from our present to a period early in the nineteenth century, where Mary Shelley is beginning to write her book in Switzerland. There Bodenland stands, in a realm where Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron are nearby.

Though Bodenland ultimately has to meet the monster, he fares best when he meets Mary herself. She tells him she is ‘setting up shop as a connoisseur of grave stories’. Her knowledge of science, or some science, is first demonstrated when they discuss the variety of weather conditions. In fact, the weather in 1816 was bizarre – an immense volcanic eruption off an Indonesian island caused ‘the year without summer’ in Europe.

Bodenland encounters the monster near a great unaccountable city (a materialisation of the distant volcanic eruption, perhaps). Such events inevitably echo alarming proceedings in my own life. The novel ends with the same phrase concluding Mary Shelley’s novel.

Mary went on to make a career of writing. Among other things, she wrote six other novels. None of them have the strength of her first, which, we may conjecture, is imbued with the misery of her mother dying just a few days after Mary’s birth.

In Frankenstein Unbound, Bodenland and Mary take a swim together, and then make love. (This is what authors do when they are half in love with a female character. They call it sublimation. Bodenland, c’est moi!) The text declares that the Mary and Bodenland were ‘scarcely less than phantoms to each other’. There’s an admission! But the solid world beyond the lovers was no phantom, and it is there that the rest of my story lies.

Brian Aldiss

Oxford, 2013



PART ONE




1


Letter from Joseph Bodenland to his Wife, Mina:

August 20th, 2020

New Houston

My dearest Mina,

I will entrust this to good old mail services, since I learn that CompC, being much more sophisticated, has been entirely disorganized by the recent impact-raids. What has not? The headline on today’s Still is: SPACE/TIME RUPTURED, SCIENTISTS SAY. Let us only hope the crisis will lead to an immediate conclusion of the war, or who knows where we shall all be in six months’ time!

But to more cheerful things. Routine has now become re-established in the house, although we still all miss you sorely (and I most sorely of all). In the silence of the empty rooms at evening, I hear your footfall. But the grandchildren keep the least corner occupied during the day. Nurse Gregory is very good with them.

They were so interesting this morning when they had no idea I was watching. One advantage about being a deposed presidential advisor is that all the former spy-devices may now be used simply for pleasure. I have to admit I am becoming quite a voyeur in my old age; I study the children intensely. It seems to me that, in this world of madness, theirs is the only significant activity.

Neither Tony nor Poll have mentioned their parents since poor Molly and Dick were killed; perhaps their sense of loss is too deep, though there is no sign of that in their play. Who knows? What adult can understand what goes on in a child’s mind? This morning, I suppose, there was some morbidity. But the game was inspired by a slightly older girl, Doreen, who came round here to play. You don’t know Doreen. Her family are refugees, very nice people from the little I have seen of them, who have arrived in Houston since you left for Indonesia.

Doreen came round on her scouter, which she is just about old enough to drive, and the three of them went to the swimming pool area. It was a glorious morning, and they were all in their swimsuits.

Even little Poll can swim now. As you predicted, the dolphin has been a great help, and both Poll and Tony adore her. They call her Smiley.

The children had a swim with Smiley. I watched for a while and then struggled with my memoirs. But I was too anxious to concentrate; Sec. of State Dean Reede is coming to see me this afternoon and frankly I am not looking forward to the meeting. Old enemies are still old enemies, even when one is out of office – and I no longer derive pleasure from being polite!

When I looked in on the children again, they were very busy. They had moved to the sand area – what they call the Beach. You can picture it: the grey stone wall cutting the leisure area off from the ranch is now almost hidden by tall hollyhocks in full bloom. Outside the changing huts are salvia beds, while the jasmines along the colonnade are all in flower and very fragrant, as well as noisy with bees. It is a perfect spot for children in a dreadful time like the present.

The kids were burying Doreen’s scouter! They had their spades and pails out, and were working away with the sand, making a mound over the machine. They were much absorbed. No one seemed to be directing operations. They were working in unison. Only Poll was chattering as usual.

The machine was eventually entirely buried, and they walked solemnly round it to make sure the last gleaming part was covered. After only the briefest discussion, they dashed away to different parts of the area to gather things. I saw their quick brown bodies multiplied on the various screens as I called more and more cameras into action. It looked as if the whole world was tenanted by little lissom savages – an entirely charming illusion!

They came back to the grave time and time again. Sometimes they brought twigs and small branches snapped off the sheltering acacias, more often flower-heads. They called to each other as they ran.

Nurse Gregory had the morning off, so they were playing entirely alone.

You may recall that the cameras and microphones are concealed mainly in the pillars of the colonnade. I was not picking up what the children were saying very well because of the constant buzzing of bees in the jasmine – how many secrets of state were saved by those same insects?! But Doreen was talking about a Feast. What they were doing, she insisted, was a Feast. The others did not question what she said. Rather, they echoed it in excitement.

‘We’ll load on lots of flowers and then it will be a huge, huge Feast,’ I heard Poll say.

I gave up work and sat watching them. I tell you, theirs seemed the only meaningful activity in the crazy warring world. And it was inscrutable to me.

Eventually, they had the grave covered with flowers. Several branches of acacia were embedded on top of the mound, which was otherwise studded with big hollyhock flowers, crimson, mauve, maroon, yellow, orange, with an odd scarlet head of salvia here and there, and a bunch of blue cornflowers that Poll picked. Then round the grave they arranged smaller twigs.

The whole thing was done informally, of course. It looked beautiful.

Doreen got down on her knees and began to pray. She made our two solemn grandchildren do likewise.

‘God bless you, Jesus, on this bright day!’ she said. ‘Make this a good Feast, in Thy name!’

Much else she said which I could not hear. The bees were trying to pollinate the microphones, I do believe. But chiefly they were chanting, ‘Make this a good Feast, in Thy name!’ Then they did a sort of hopping dance about the pretty grave.

You must wonder about this unexpected outbreak of Christianity in our agnostic household. I must say that at first it caused me some regret that I have for so long stifled my own religious feelings in deference to the rationalism of our times – and perhaps partly in deference to you, whose innocent pagan outlook I always admired and hopelessly aspired to. As far as I know, Molly and Dick never taught their children a word of prayer. Perhaps the traditional comforts of religion were exactly what these orphans needed. What if those comforts are illusions? Even the scientists are saying that the fabric of space/time has been ruptured and reality – whatever that may be – is breaking down.

I need not have worried overmuch. The Feast ceremony was basically pagan, the Christian formulae mere frills. For the dance the children did among their plucked flowers was, I’m sure, an instinctual celebration of their own physical health. Round and round the grave they went! Then the dance broke up in rather desultory fashion, and Tony popped his penis out of his trunks and showed it to Doreen. She made some comment, smiling, and that was that. They all ran and jumped into the pool again.

When the gong sounded for lunch and we all assembled on the verandah, Poll insisted on taking me to look at the grave.

‘Grampy, come and see our Feast!’

They live in myth. Under the onslaught of school, intellect will break in – crude robber intellect – and myth will wither and die like the bright flowers on their mysterious grave.

And yet that isn’t true. Isn’t the great overshadowing belief of our time – that ever-increasing production and industrialization bring the greatest happiness for the greatest number all round the globe – a myth to which most people subscribe? But that’s a myth of Intellect, not of Being, if such distinction is permissible.

I’m philosophizing again. One of the reasons they chucked me out of the government!

Dean Reede arrives soon. My just deserts, some would say …

Write soon.

Ever your loving husband, JOE

PS. I enclose a still of the leader in today’s London Times. Despite the measured caution of its tone, there’s much in what it says.




2


The Times First Leader, August 20th, 2020:

DEADLY RELATIONSHIPS

Western scientists are now in general although not entire accord – for even in the domain of science opinion is rarely unanimous – that mankind is confronted with the gravest crisis of its existence, a crisis not to survive which is not to survive at all.

Crises which in prospect appear uniquely ominous have a habit of assuming family resemblances in retrospect. We observe that they were critical but not conclusive. To say this is not to be facetious. Professor James Ransome’s comment in San Francisco yesterday brought a sense of proportion to the increasingly alarmist news of the instability of the infrastructure of space – a sense of proportion particularly welcome to that large general public unaware until a fortnight ago that there was such a thing as an infrastructure of space, let alone that nuclear activity might have rendered it unstable. The professor’s remark that the present instability represents, in his words, ‘the great grey ultimate in pollution’ should remind us that the world has survived serious pollution scares for over fifty years.

However, there are sound reasons for regarding our present crisis as nothing less than unique. All three opposed sides in the war, Western, South American and Third World Powers, have been using nuclear weapons of increasing calibre within the orbits of the Earth-Luna system. Nobody has gained anything, unless one includes the doubtful benefit of having destroyed the civilian Moon colonies, but the general feeling has been one of relief that these weapons were used above rather than below the stratosphere.

Such relief, we now see, was premature. We are learning yet another bitter lesson on the indivisibility of Nature. We have long understood that sea and land formed an interrelated unit. Now – far too late, according to Professor Ransome and his associates – we perceive a hitherto undiscerned relationship between our planet and the infrastructure of space which surrounds and supports it. The infrastructure has been destroyed, or at least damaged, to the point at which it malfunctions unpredictably, and we are now faced with the consequences. Both time and space have gone ‘on the blink’, as the saying has it. We can no longer rely even on the sane sequence of temporal progression; tomorrow may prove to be last week, or last century, or the Age of the Pharaohs. The Intellect has made our planet unsafe for intellect. We are suffering from the curse that was Baron Frankenstein’s in Mary Shelley’s novel: by seeking to control too much, we have lost control of ourselves.

Before we go down in madness, the most terrible war in history, largely an irrational war of varying skin-tones, must be brought to an immediate halt. If the plateau of civilization, on to which mankind climbed with such long exertion, now has to be evacuated, let us at least head away into the darkness in good order. We should be able to perceive at last (and that phase ‘at last’ now contains grim overtones) that, as the relationship between space, planets, and time is more intimate and intricate than we had carelessly imagined, so too may be the relationship between black, white, yellow, red, and all the fleshtones in between.




3


Letter from Joseph Bodenland to his Wife, Mina:

August 22nd, 2020

New Houston

My dearest Mina,

Where were you yesterday, I wonder? The ranch, with all its freight of human beings – in which category I include those supernatural beings, our grandchildren – spent yesterday and much of the day before in a benighted bit of somewhere that I presume was medieval Europe! It was our first taste of a major Timeslip. (How easily one takes up the protective jargon – a Timeslip sounds no worse than a landslide. But you know what I mean – a fault in the spatial infrastructure.)

Now we are all back here in The Present. That term, ‘The Present’, must be viewed with increasing suspicion as Timeslips increase. But you will understand that I mean the date and hour shown unflinchingly on the calendar-chronometer here in my study. Are we lucky to get back? Could we have remained adrift in time? One of the most terrifying features of this terrifying thing is that so little is understood about it. And in no time at all – I wrote down the phrase unthinkingly – there may be no chance for men of intellect to compare notes.

I can’t think straight. Don’t expect a coherent letter. It is an absolute shock. The supreme shock outside death. Maybe you have experienced it … Of course I am wild with anxiety about you. Come home at once, Mina! Then at least we shall be among the Incas or fleeing Napoleon together! Reality is going to pot. One thing’s for sure – we never had as secure a grasp on reality as we imagine. The only people who can be laughing at present are yesterday’s nutcases, the para-psychologists, the junkies, the E.S.P.-buffs, the reincarnationists, the science-fiction writers, and anyone who never quite believed in the homogeneous flow of time.

Sorry. Let me stick to facts.

The ranch got into a timeslip (there’s more than one: ours does not merit a capital T). Suddenly we were back – wherever it was.

Sec. of State Dean Reede was with me at the time. I believe I told you last letter that he was coming to see me. Of course, he is firmly in the President’s pocket – a Glendale man every inch of him, and as tough as Glendale, as we always knew. He says they will never cease the fight; that all history gives inescapable precedents of how an inferior culture must go down to a superior one. Gives as examples the destruction of Polynesia, the obliteration of the Amazon Indians.

I told him that there was no objective way of judging which side was inferior, which superior: that the Polynesians seemed to have maximized happiness, and that the Indians of the Amazon seemed to be in complete and complex harmony with their environment. That both goals were ones our culture had failed to achieve.

Reede then called me a soft-head, a traitorous liberal (of course I had our conversation played in tape-memory, knowing he would be doing as much). He said that many of the West Powers’ present troubles could be blamed on me, because I pursued such a namby-pamby role while acting as presidential advisor. That I should have known that my minor reforms in police rule, housing, work permits, etc., would lead to black revolt. Historically, reform always led to revolt. Etc.

A thoroughly useless and unpleasant argument, but of course I had to defend myself. And I remain sure that history, if there is to be any, will vindicate me. It will certainly have little good to say for Glendale and his hatchetmen. He even had the gall to instance our private picture gallery as an example of my wrong-headness!

We had got to shouting at each other when the light changed. More than that – the texture of the atmosphere changed. The sky went from its usual washed blue to a dirty grey. There was no shock or jar – nothing like an earth-tremor. But the sensation was so abrupt that both Reede and I ran to the windows.

It was amazing. Cloud was rolling in overhead. Over the plain, coming in fast, was thick mist. In a few moments, it surged over the wall like a sea and burst all over the garden and patio.

And not only that. Ahead, I could see the land stretching as usual, and the low roofs of the old stables. But beyond the roofs, the hills had gone! And to the left, driveway and pampas grass had disappeared. They were replaced by a lumpy piece of country, very green and broken and dotted with green trees – like nowhere in Texas.

‘Holy saints! We’ve been timeslipped!’ Reede said. Dazed though I was, I thought how characteristic of him to speak as if this was some personal thing that had been done to him. No doubt that was exactly how he saw it.

‘I must go to my grandchildren,’ I said.

With shrill shouts, Poll and Tony were already running outside. I caught up with them and held their hands, hoping I might be able to protect them from danger. But there was no danger except that most insidious one, the threat to human sanity. We stood there, staring into the mist. Nurse Gregory came out to join us, taking everything with her usual unflustered calm.

When a few minutes had passed, and we were recovering from our first shock, I stepped forward, towards where the drive had been.

‘I’d stay where I was, if I was you, Joe,’ Reede advised. ‘You don’t know what might be out there.’

I ignored him. The children were straining to go ahead.

There was a clean line where our sand ended. Beyond it was rank grass, growing as high as the children’s knees, and beaded silver with rain. Great shaggy oaks stood everywhere. A path was worn among them.

‘I can see a hut over there, Grampy,’ Tony said, pointing.

It was a poor affair, built of wood. It had wooden slates on the roof. Behind it was an outhouse, also wooden, and a picket fence, with bushes by it. With an increase in unease, I saw that two people, I thought a man and a woman, stood behind the fence, staring in our direction. I pointed them out to the children.

‘Better get back in the house,’ Reede advised. ‘I’m going to phone the police and see what the hell’s happening.’ He disappeared.

‘They won’t hurt us, will they?’ said Tony, staring across at the two strangers.

‘Not unless we threaten them,’ Nurse Gregory said – which I thought was a little optimistic.

‘I should imagine they’re as startled by us as we are by them,’ I said.

Suddenly, the man by the fence turned away and went behind the house. When we next saw him, he was running into the distance, heading uphill. The woman slid out of sight and went into the house.

‘Let’s have a walk round, Grampy, can we?’ Tony said. ‘I’d love to go to the top of that hill and see where the man went. Perhaps there’s a castle over there.’

It seemed a likely suggestion, but I was too uneasy to leave the relative shelter of our house. I recalled that I had an old-fashioned Colt .45 automatic pistol in my desk; yet the idea of carrying it was repugnant to me. The children kept plaguing me to take them forward. Eventually I gave in. The three of us walked together under the trees, leaving Nurse Gregory to stand on the house side of the danger line.

‘Don’t go too far,’ she called. So she had some sensations of fear!

‘No harm will come to us,’ I replied. I figured that would reassure all of us.

Well, no harm came to us, but I was in a constant state of worry. Supposing the house snapped back to 2020, leaving us stuck in whatever benighted neck of the woods we had come across? Or supposing – I’m ashamed to put it on paper now – something dreadful came and attacked us, something we didn’t know about?

And there was a third worry, shadowy but no pleasanter for that. Supposing that what was happening was just a subjective phenomenon, something going on purely inside my own skull? It was hard to believe that we weren’t in a kind of dream.

The kids wanted to go and see if they could see the woman in the wooden house. I made them walk the other way. There was a dog lying inside the picket fence. I had a dread about trying to talk to anyone from – this world, or whatever you should call it.

Poll was the first to see the horseman.

He was riding over the brow of one of the nearby hillocks, accompanied by a man on foot, who held the stirrup with one hand and led a large hound on a leash with the other. They approached slowly, warily, and were still some distance away. All the same, they looked determined; the man on the horse was dressed in tunic and tight trousers, and held a short sword in his hand and wore a curving helmet.

‘Pretend you haven’t seen them, and we’ll walk back to the house,’ I said.

Hypocrite! But for the dear children, I would have gone forward to meet him.

The children came along meekly, Poll putting her small hand in mine. Neither of them looked back. We got to the front door, stood on the step and then looked back.

The horseman and his companion came steadily on. The dog strained at its leash. All three of them kept their eyes fixedly on us. When they reached the line where the grass ended and the Texan ground began, they halted.

The horse was a poor spavined creature. The man on the horse looked rather grand. He had a beard and steady dark eyes. His hair and complexion were dark. His attitude was easy in the saddle and expressed determination. The man by his side – I judged it to be the peasant from the wooden house – was a stocky creature whose bodily gestures suggested disquiet.

‘Who are you? Do you speak English?’ I called.

They just stared back.

‘Are you from New Houston?’ Tony called bravely.

They made no verbal answer. Instead, the man on horseback raised his sword aloft. In greeting or threat? Then he turned the nag around and, almost sadly, I thought, led back the way he had come.

‘I told you they wouldn’t hurt us,’ Nurse Gregory said, giving me a look of relief.

Tony called once, but they did not turn back, and we watched them until both had disappeared over the brow of the little hill.

You will think this thrilling tale ends in an awful anticlimax, my dear, and be glad that it is so. We never saw those men again. We remained in that timeslip for thirty-five hours or thereabouts, but saw no one else approach.

My anxiety was that the horseman had gone to get reinforcements. Perhaps there was a castle nearby, as Tony had immediately assumed. I summoned the three serviles and reprogrammed them to keep watch – fortunately, I had a defence programme to hand. Reede and I reinforced their watch from time to time, especially during the night, when we also floodlit the house and grounds. I should add that our phones to the outside world were non-functioning but of course the nuclear core supplied us with all the power we needed.

During the night, we heard dogs barking and yapping in the hills. Maybe there were jackals as well. That was all.

This morning, we flipped back into The Present as easily and quietly as we had left it. Here we are, as before – except that the area which returned is not entirely the area which went! I rode round in the buggy this morning, after a brief nap, surveying the damage. Nurse Gregory brought the children along and made an outing of it.

You remember what we call the green cottage – the apple store, beyond the garaging. It has gone. In its place, rough green pasture which will soon wilt in our Texan sun. And where the driveway was we have a line of massive oaks and beeches. The robots are working to clear way between them to the road. Luckily, the road gate is still there – it stayed in 2020 all the while, or so we must assume.

I’m getting one of the oaks sawn down and will dispatch it with soil samples to the Historical Ecology Department at the University. Sitgers there might be able to discover something of its original locality from analysis, though he will never have faced a problem like this before. Where did we go? England? Europe? The Balkans? The guy on the horse was Caucasian. What time was it, what century? I presume it was Earth. Or was it some alternate Earth? Did I stand with the kids on some possible Earth where the year was 2020 and the Industrial Revolution never happened? Am I sheer blind cracked to ask such questions?

When does the next timeslip strike?

You must come back, my dear Mina, if you can get here, war or no war. The war must inevitably fall apart if this schism in the fabric of space/time continues. Come back! The children need their grandmother.

At such a time, I must invoke God and say, God knows, I need you!

Your ever-loving husband, JOE




4


CompC Cable from Nurse Gregory to Mrs Mina Bodenland:

August 25th, 2020

New Houston

GREATLY REGRET ANNOUNCE DISAPPEARANCE MR JOSEPH BODENLAND DURING BRIEF TIMESLIP DAWN THIS MORNING DURATION TWENTY-FIVE MINUTES STOP POLICE ARE SEARCHING AREA WITH NEGATIVE RESULTS STOP CHILDREN DISTRESSED AND ASKING FOR YOU STOP PLEASE INSTRUCT URGENT AND RETURN NEW HOUSTON URGENT STOP NURSE SHEILA GREGORY CMPC1535 0825 901AA593 C144




5


Extract from W. Central Telecable Record of Conversation over open phone between Mrs Mina Bodenland and Nurse Sheila Gregory:

‘I hope to be with you by ten thirty tomorrow morning, your time, if there are no delays in flight schedules as there well may be. Just give me the details of my husband’s disappearance, will you, Nurse?’

‘Sure. The timeslip took place at oh-six-forty this morning. It woke me up and it woke Mr Bodenland up, but the children stayed asleep. I met him in the hall, and he said, “There’s a lake with mountains behind right outside—” I’d already seen it from my bedroom. Snow on the mountains and a road by the lake with a coach being pulled along by two horses.’

‘And my husband went out alone?’

‘He insisted I stay indoors. I went to the living-room and saw him drive the Felder out of the garage. He drove into the new landscape. There was no road, just pasture, and he went very slowly. Then I couldn’t see him any more for a clump of trees – a wood, I guess it was. I was anxious.’

‘Couldn’t you have persuaded him to stay indoors?’

‘He was determined to go, Mrs Bodenland. You see, my guess is that he figgered this timeslip would have the same duration as the last one – a day and a half. Maybe he thought he’d just drive to the lake and find out where it was – it was a much pleasanter looking place than the other dump, where the guy on the horse came to stare at us. I went off to fix myself a coffee and just as I was coming back, I was entering the living room and – wham! – the timeslip ceased, just like that, and everything went back to normal. I ran out and called your husband’s name but it was no good.’

‘Twenty-five minutes, you say?’

‘That was all. I came back inside and phoned the police, and then I cabled you. Tony and Polly were real upset when they woke up. They’ve been crying for you and their Mummy all day, on and off.’

‘Tell them I’m on my way home. And please keep them indoors. You’ve probably heard – organization is breaking down. The world’s going plain crazy. Keep the robots programmed for defence.’



PART TWO




1


A record must be kept, for the sanity of all concerned. Luckily, old habits die hard, and I had my tape-memory stowed in the car, together with a stack of other junk. I’ll start from the time that darkness came on.

I’d managed to drive over the terrible roads to a village or small town. When I saw buildings coming up, I drove the Felder off the track behind an outcrop of rock, where I hoped it was both safe and unobtrusive for the night. However much of a challenge the town presented, I figured I would cause less stir if I went in on foot than in a four-wheeled horseless vehicle. They did not possess such things here, that was for sure.

All I had to eat was some chocolate Tony had left in the car, washed down by a can of beer in the freeze compartment. My need for a meal and bed overcame my apprehensions.

Although I had kept away from people and villages so far, I knew this was a well inhabited part of the world. I had seen many people in the distance. The scenery was alpine, with broad green valleys surmounted by mountain peaks. More distant were higher peaks, tipped with snow. The bottoms of the valleys contained dashing streams, winding tracks, and picturesque little villages made of pretty wooden houses huddling together. Every village had its church spire; every hour was signalled by a bell chiming in the spires; the sound came clear down the valleys. The mountainsides were strewn with spring flowers. There were cows among the tall grasses – cows with solemn bells about their necks which donged as they moved. Above them, little wooden huts were perched in higher meadows.

It was a beautiful and soothing place. It was just not anything you might encounter in Texas, not if you went back or forward a million years. But it looked mighty like Switzerland.

I know Switzerland well, or did on my own time track.

My years in the American Embassy in Brussels had been well spent. I learnt to speak French and German fluently, and had passed as much leave as I could travelling about Europe. Switzerland had become my favourite country. At one time I had bought a chalet just outside Interlaken.

So I walked into the town. A board on the outskirts gave its name as Sècheron and listed times of Holy Mass. Overhanging balconies, neat piles of kindling wood against every wall. A rich aroma of manure and wood smoke, pungent to my effete nostrils. And a sizeable inn which, with antique lettering, proclaimed itself to be the Hôtel Dejean. The exterior was studded with chamoix horns and antlers of deer.

What gave me a thrill – why, outside the low door, two men were unloading something from a cart; it was the carcass of a bear! I had never seen that before. What was more, I could understand what the men were saying; although their accents were strange, their French was perfectly comprehensible.

As soon as I entered a cheerful low room with oil lamps burning, I was greeted by the host. He asked me a lot of suspicious questions, and eventually I was shown to what must have been the poorest room in his house, over the kitchen, facing a hen-run. It mattered not to me. A servant girl brought me up water, I washed and lay back on the bed to rest before dinner. I slept.

When I woke, it was without any idea of time. The timeslip had upset my circadian rhythms. I knew only that it was dark, and had been for some while. I lay there in a sort of wonderment, listening to a rich world of sound about me. The great wooden chalet creaked and resonated like a galleon in full sail. I could hear the voices of the wood, and human voices, as well as snatches of song and music. Somewhere, cowbells sounded; the animals had been brought in for the night, maybe. And there was that wonderful world of smells! You might say that the thought uppermost in my mind was this: Joe Bodenland, you have escaped the twenty-first century!

My sleep had done something for me. Earlier in the day, I had been close to despair. Driving the Felder, I looked back towards the ranch and found it had disappeared. I had left it only twenty minutes earlier. In complete panic, I turned the car around and drove back to where the house had been. I knew exactly where it stood because one of our pampas bushes was there and, in the middle of it, a coloured ball of Tony’s. Nothing else. The ranch, the children, all had snapped back to their normal time.

Blackest despair – now total euphoria! I was a different man, full of strength and excitement. Something the innkeeper had said when I made apologies for possessing no luggage had begun to tip my mood.

‘General Bonaparte has a lot to answer for. He may be safely out of the way again now, but a lot of decent people have no safety and no homes.’

He had taken me for some kind of refugee from the Napoleonic Wars! They had finished in 1815, with Napoleon’s banishment to St Helena. So the date was some time shortly after that.

You think I could take such knowledge calmly? Mina, will you ever hear these tapes? Don’t you see, as far as I knew, I was the first man ever to be displaced in time, though no doubt the timeslips were now making a regular thing of it. I remembered reading the old nursery classic, Herbert Wells’s The Time Machine, but Wells’s time-traveller had gone ahead in time. How much nicer to go back. The past was safe!

I was back in history! Something had come over me. Rising from the bed, I felt curiously unlike myself. Or rather, I could feel the old cautious Bodenland inside, but it seemed as if a new man, fitted for decision and adventure, had taken control of me. I went downstairs to demand supper.

Men were drinking there by a fire, beneath a cuckoo-clock. There were tables, two empty, two occupied. One of the occupied tables contained a man and woman and child, tucking in to great slabs of meat. At the other occupied table sat a lean-visaged but elegant man in dark clothes, reading a paper by candle-light as he ate.

Ordinarily, I would have chosen an empty table. In my new mood, I went over to the solitary man and said easily, pulling out a chair, ‘May I sit at your table?’

For a moment I thought my accent had not been understood. Then he said, ‘I can’t stop you sitting here,’ and lowered his head to his paper again.

I sat down. The innkeeper’s daughter came across to me, and offered me a choice of trout or venison. I ordered trout with white wine to accompany it. She was back promptly with a chilled wine and bread rolls with crisp brown crust and thick doughy interior, which I broke and ate with covert greed. How heady was my excitement, tasting that historic food!

‘May I offer you a glass of wine?’ I said to my table companion. He had an earthenware jug of water by his side.

He looked up and studied me again. ‘You may offer, sir, and I may refuse. The social contract countenances both actions!’

‘My action may be more mutually beneficial than yours.’

Maybe my answer pleased him. He nodded, and I summoned the girl to bring another wine glass.

My hesitant companion said, ‘May I drink to your health without necessarily wishing to listen to your conversation? You will think me discourteous, but perhaps I may excuse myself by explaining that it is the discourtesy of grief.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that. To hear that you have cause for grief, I mean. Some find distraction welcome at such times.’

‘Distraction? All my life I have been a man who scorned distraction! There’s work to be done in the world – so much to be found out—’ He checked himself abruptly, lifted his glass at me and took a sip from it.

How good that wine tasted, if only because I secretly thought, what a rare old vintage I must be quaffing, laid down no doubt before the Battle of Trafalgar!

I said, ‘I am older than you, sir (how easily that polite “sir” crept in as a mode of address!) – old enough to discover that finding out often leads to less pleasurable states of mind than mere ignorance!’

At that he laughed curtly. ‘That I find an ignorant point of view. I perceive nevertheless that you are a man of culture, and a foreigner. Why do you stay in Sècheron and deny yourself the pleasures of Geneva?’

‘I like the simple life.’

‘I should be in Geneva now … I arrived there too late, after sunset, and found the gates of the city shut, confound it. Otherwise I’d be at my father’s house …’

Again an abrupt halt to his speech. He frowned and stared down at the grain of the table. I longed to ask questions but was wary of revealing my complete lack of local knowledge.

The girl brought me soup and then my trout, the best and freshest I had ever tasted, though the potatoes that accompanied it were not so good. No refrigeration, I thought; not a can to be found throughout the land! A shock went through me. Cultural shock. Temporal shock.

My companion took this opportunity to hide himself in his papers. So I listened to the talk of the travellers about me, hoping for a bit of instant history. But were they talking about the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars? Were they talking about the increasing industrialization of the times? Were they talking about the first steamship crossing the Atlantic? Were they talking about Walter Scott or Lord Byron or Goethe or Metternich? Were they talking about the slave trade or the Congress of Vienna? (All matters which I judged to be vital and contemporary!) Did they spare one word for that valiant new American nation across the Atlantic?

They did not.

They talked about the latest sensation – some wretched murder – and about a woman, a maidservant, who was to be tried for the murder in Geneva the next day! I would have sighed for human nature, had it not been for the excellence of my trout and the wine which accompanied it.

At last, as I set my knife and fork down, I caught the gloomy eye of my table-companion and ventured to say, ‘You will be in Geneva tomorrow in time to see this wretched woman brought to justice, I presume?’

His face took on severe lines, anger glowed in his eyes. Setting his papers down, he said in a low voice, ‘Justice, you say? What do you know of the case that you prejudge this lady’s guilt beforehand? Why should you be so anxious that she should hang? What injury did she ever do you – or any living soul, for that matter?’

‘I must apologize – I see you know the lady personally.’

But he had dropped his eyes and lost interest in me. Shrinking back in his chair, he seemed to become prey to some inner conflict. ‘About her head hangs purest innocence. Deepest guilt lies heavy on the shoulders …’ I did not catch his last words; perhaps he said, ‘… of others’.

I rose, bid him good evening, and went outside to stand in the road and enjoy the scents of darkness and the sight of the moon. Yes, I stood in the middle of the road, and gloried that there was no danger of being knocked down by traffic.

The sound of a running stream invited me over to a bridge. Standing there in shade, I observed the man and woman who had also been eating in the hotel emerge with their child.

He said, ‘I wonder if Justine Moritz will sleep peacefully tonight!’ They both chuckled and passed on down the road.

Justine Moritz! I divined that they spoke of the woman who was on trial for her life in Geneva on the morrow. More! I had heard that name before, and searched my memory to discover its associations. I recalled de Sade’s heroine, Justine, and reflected that he too would be alive now, if now was when I believed it to be. But my new superior self told me that Justine Moritz was somebody else.

As I stood with my hands resting on the stone of the bridge, the door of the hotel was again thrown open. A figure emerged, pulling a cloak about him. It was my melancholy friend. An accordion sounded within the hotel, and I guessed that the distractions of music might have driven him outside.

His movements suggested as much. He paced about with arms folded. Once, he threw them wide in a gesture of protest. He looked in every way a man distraught. Although I felt sorry for him, that prickliness in his manner made me reluctant to reveal myself.

Of a sudden, he made up his mind. He said something aloud – something about a devil, I thought – and then he began striding away as if his life depended on it.

My superior self came to an immediate decision. Normally, I would have returned indoors and gone meekly to bed. Instead, I began to follow my distraught friend at a suitable distance.

The way he went led downhill. The road curved, and I emerged from a copse to confront a splendid panorama. There was the lake – Lake Geneva, Lac Léman, as the Swiss call it – and there, not far distant, lay the spires and roofs of Geneva!

It was a city I had loved in my time. Now, how it was shrunken! The moonlight lent it enchantment, of course, but what a pokey place it looked, lying by the lakeside in the clear night. Romantic behind its walls, yes, but nothing to the great city I had known. In my day – why, Sècheron would have been swallowed up by inner suburbs clustering round the old U.N. building.

But my superior self made nothing of that. We moved down the hill, my quarry and I. There was a village clinging to the lakeside. Somewhere lay the sound of singing – I say lay for the voice seemed to float on the waters as gently as a slight mist.

My friend went on down the winding road for about two miles, finishing at the quayside, where he rapped smartly on a door. I hung about further down the street, hoping not to be seen by the few people who were strolling there. I watched as he engaged a man who led him down to a boat; they climbed in, and the man began to haul away on his oars. The boat slipped through shadow and then could be seen heading across the lake, already slightly obscured by the tenuous mist. Without thinking, I went to the edge of the quay.

At once a man came up to me bearing a dim lantern and said, ‘Are you requiring a ferry to the other side of the lake, good sir?’

Why not? The chase was on. In no time, we had arranged terms. We climbed down to his fishing boat and were pushing off against the stonework. I told him to dowse his lantern and follow the other boat.

‘I expect you are acquainted with the gentleman in the other vessel, sir,’ my oarsman said.

These villagers – of course they would make it their business to know anyone who was rich and whose father lived so near! Here was the chance to have my suspicions confirmed.

‘I know his name,’ I said boldly. ‘But I’m surprised you should!’

‘The family is well-known in these parts, good sir. He is young Victor Frankenstein, his famous father’s son.’




2


Frankenstein’s boat moored at the Plainpalais Quay, on the other side of sleeping Geneva. In my day, the area formed part of the centre of that city. It was but a village, and four small sailing boats, sails drooping and oars plying, moved out from a tiny wooden jetty as we moved in.

Telling him to wait, I followed Frankenstein at a distance. Can you imagine what my excitement was? I assume you cannot, for already the feelings I had at the time are inscrutable to me, so imbued was I with an electric sense of occasion. My superior self had taken over – call it the result of time-shock, if you will, but I felt myself in the presence of myth and, by association, accepted myself as mythical! It is a sensation of some power, let me tell you! The mind becomes simple and the will strong.

Frankenstein, the Frankenstein, walked briskly, and I followed briskly. Despite the peace of the early night, lightning was flickering about the horizon. Horizon may be an appropriate word in Texas, but it does no justice to the country beyond Plainpalais, for there the horizon includes Mont Blanc, the highest mountain in the Alps, or in Europe, for that matter. The lightning bathed the peak in intricate figures, which seemed to grow brighter as clouds rolled up and hid the moon. At first, the lightning was silent, almost furtive; then peals of thunder accompanied it.

The thunder helped to camouflage the noise of my steps. We were now climbing fairly steeply into the mountains and silence was impossible if I were not to lose my quarry. He paused at one point on a low hill and cried aloud – perhaps not without a touch of relish for the dramatic, characteristic of his age – ‘William, dearest little brother! Close by this spot wast thou murdered and thy dear innocence cast down!’

He raised his hands. Then he said, more soberly, ‘And the guilt rests with me …’ and lowered his arms to his side.

I should be more particular in my description of this singular man. A side-view of his face was reminiscent of profiles seen on coins and medals, for his features were clear-cut and sharp. And one has to have some distinction to appear on a medal. This clarity, aided by his youth, made him handsome, though there was about the handsomeness something of the coldness of a coin. His features were a little too set. The melancholy that had struck me at first was very much a part of his character.

Rain began to fall in large heavy drops. As I recalled, storms spring up rapidly about the Swiss lakes, appearing to arrive from all corners of the sky at once. The thunder burst with a grand crash above our heads, and the heavens flung down their contents upon us.

Over to the north-west, the dark bulk of the Jura was flickeringly lit. The lake became an intermittent sheet of fire. The heavy clouds that had gathered about the summit of Mont Blanc boiled from within. The world was full of noise, dazzling light, blinding darkness, torrential rain.

All of which served merely to raise Frankenstein’s spirits. He walked more briskly now, still climbing, picking his way fast and carelessly, so that he could keep his face turned up as much as possible to the source of the storm.

He was shouting aloud. Much of what he said was lost in the noise, but once, as we climbed a precipitous path and were no more than four metres apart, I heard him cry aloud the name of William again. ‘William, my dear little angel! This is thy funeral, this thy dirge!’

With similar cries, he staggered out on to more level ground. I was about to break from sheltering rock and follow when I saw him stop aghast and raise one arm involuntarily in a gesture of self-protection.

In that broken place, rocks and shattered boulders lay in a half-circle, ruinous pines growing among them. My immediate thought was that Frankenstein had encounted a bear, and might at any moment come dashing back and discover me. Blunderingly, I moved to my left among the boulders, being careful to keep behind them and not be seen. Then, crouching down, I peered out through the pouring rain and saw such a sight as I will never forget.

Frankenstein was backing away, still holding that defensive gesture. His jaw hung open, and he was near enough for me to see the rain dashing from his face – when lightning showed him at all. Before him, a monstrous shape had emerged from a clump of shattered pines.

It was no bear. In most respects it was human in shape, but gigantic in stature, and there seemed nothing of the human being in the way it suddenly paced forward from the trees. The lightning came again, and a tremendous stroke of thunder. I was staring at Frankenstein’s monster!

As if to increase my terror, there came at that instant a pause in the electric war overhead. Only far away among the trees did a flickering still galvanize the distant Jura. We were cast into impenetrable blackness, with the rain still cascading down and that devilish thing on the loose!

I slipped limply to my knees in extreme terror, still staring ahead, never daring even to blink, though the rain poured down my forehead and over my staring eyeballs.

There was another streak of lightning overhead. Frankenstein had slumped back against a tree-trunk for support, his head lolling back as if he were about to collapse in a faint. His monster, the creature he had created, was striding towards him. Then blackness again.

Then more lightning. The gigantic figure had passed by Frankenstein as if the latter did not exist. But it was coming towards me. I saw that its arms did not swing properly as it walked – but, oh, how fast it walked!

Another great peal of thunder, then more lightning. The abominable thing took a tremendous leap. It was above me on the rocks, and then it sprang into the darkness behind me. For a moment I heard its footsteps in something between a walk and a run, then it was gone. I was left crouching in the rain.

After a while, I pulled myself together and stood up. The storm seemed to be moving over a little. Frankenstein still leaned against the tree, bereft of movement.

During one flash of lightning, I saw a refuge, standing some way behind me. I could take the rain no longer. I was frozen, although the weather had only a half-share in that. As I headed towards shelter, I glanced south, where the broad shoulders of a mountain – its name is Mont Salève – stood against the troubled sky. There I saw the monster again, swarming up the cruel face. It went like a spider, climbing almost perpendicularly. It was superhuman.

I burst into the hut, gasping and shuddering, and stripped off jacket, shirt, and undervest. Between chattering teeth, I was talking to myself.

In the hut were a wooden bed, a stove, a table, and rope. A rough blanket lay neatly folded on the bed. I snatched it up and flung it round me, sitting there shaking.

Gradually, the rain petered out. A wind blew. All was silence, save for the dripping roof outside. The lightning ceased. My trembling ceased. My earlier excitement returned.

I – I – had seen Frankenstein’s monster! There was no mistaking it.

Of its face I had no clear idea. The twenty-first century 4-D representations had prepared me for something horrific; yet my impression was of features more frightening than strictly horrifying. I could not recall the face. The light was so confusing, the monster’s movements so fast, that I had a memory only of an abstraction of sculptured bone. The overall impression had been fully as alarming as anyone could have anticipated. Its creator’s reaction to it had merely added to my alarm.

Putting on my wet clothes, I moved out of the hut.

I had thought the moonlight was diffused through cloud, so general was the dim light. Once I was outside, however, I saw that the sky was almost free of cloud and the moon had set. Dawn was breaking over the world once more.

Victor Frankenstein was still in the clearing where I had last seen him. As if immune to discomfort and pain, he stood in his damp cloak with one foot up on a stone. Resting his weight on his bended knee, he was staring motionless over a precipice towards the lake. What he looked at inwardly, I know not. But his immobility, long maintained, hinted at the heaviness of his thoughts, and lent him something of the awe that attached to his odious creation.

I was about to make quietly down the hillside when he moved. Slowly, he shook his head once or twice, and then began to make the descent. Since daylight was flooding into the world, I was able to stay at a distance and keep him in sight. So we both came down from the mountain. Truth was, I more than once looked back over my shoulder to see if anything was following me.

The gates of Geneva were open. Wagons were going out empty, heading for the forest. I saw a spanking stage emerge and take the road that led to Chamonix, its four horses stepping high. Frankenstein entered between the grey walls, and I ceased to follow him.




3


This record so far has been dictated in one long burst. After watching Victor Frankenstein walk towards his father’s house, I came through Geneva and back to Sècheron and my automobile. The Felder was as I had left it; I climbed in and put this account in my portable tape-memory.

My heart-searchings must have no place here. Before getting to the murder trial, I will note two incidents that occurred in Geneva. Two things I wanted above all, and one of them was money, for I knew old systems of currency were in operation throughout the nineteenth century. The second thing I found quickly by looking at a newspaper in a coffee-shop: the day’s date. It was May 23rd, 1816.

I scanned the paper for news. It was disappointingly empty of anything I could comprehend; mainly there was local news, with a great deal of editorializing about the German Constitution. The name of Carl August of Saxe-Weimar figured largely, but I had heard neither of him nor of it. Perhaps I had naively expected headlines of the HUMPHRY DAVY INVENTS MINERS’ SAFETY LAMP, ROSSINI WRITES FIRST OPERA, HENRY THOREAU BORN, kind of thing! At least the newspaper’s editorial columns served to remind me that Geneva had become part of Switzerland only in the previous year.

My quest for money also held its disappointments. I had on my wrist – besides my CompC phone, now useless – a new disposable watch, powered by a uranium isotope and worth at least seventy thousand dollars at current going price in U.S.A., 2020. As a unique object in Geneva, 1816, how much greater should its value be! Moreover, the Swiss watchmakers were the best equipped in the world at this time to appreciate its sophistication.

Full of hope, I took the watch in to a smart business in the Rue du Rhône, where it was examined by a stately manager.

‘How do you open it?’ he asked.

‘It won’t open. It is sealed shut.’

‘Then how does one examine the works if something goes wrong?’

‘That is the whole virtue of this particular make of watch. It does not go wrong. It is guaranteed never to go wrong!’

He smiled very charmingly at me.

‘Certainly its defects are very well concealed. So too is the winder!’

‘Ah, but it does not wind. It will go forever – or at least for a century. Then it stops, and one throws it away. It is a disposable watch.’

His smile grew still sweeter. He looked at my clothes, all creased and still damp from the night’s activities. ‘I observe you are a foreigner, m’sieu. I presume this is a foreign watch. From the Netherlands, perhaps?’

‘It’s North Korean,’ I said.

With the tenderest of smiles, he proffered my watch to me in an open palm. ‘Then may I suggest you sell your unstoppable watch back to the North Koreans, m’sieu!’

At two other establishments I had no better luck. But at a fourth I met an inquisitive little man who took greatly to the instrument, examining it under magnifying glasses and listening to its working through a miniature stethoscope.

‘Very ingenious, even if it is powered by a bee who will expire as you leave my premises!’ he said. ‘Where was it made?’

‘It’s the latest thing from North America.’ I was learning caution.

‘Such a timepiece! What is this “N.K.” inscribed on its face?’

‘It stands for New Kentucky.’

‘I have not even seen this metal before. It interests me, and I shall have pleasure taking it apart and examining its secrets.’

‘Those secrets could set you a century ahead of all rival watchmakers.’

We began arguing over prices. In the end, I accepted a derisory sum, and left his shop feeling sore and cheated. Yet, directly I stepped out into the sunshine again, my superior self took over, and I looked at the matter differently. I had good solid francs in my pocket, and what did the watchmaker have? A precision instrument whose chief virtues were useless to anyone in this age. Its undeviating accuracy in recording the passage of time to within one twenty-millionth of a second was a joke in a world that still went largely by the leisurely passage of the sun, where stage-coaches left at dawn, noon, or sunset. That wretched obsession with time which was a hallmark of my own age had not yet set in; there were not even railway timetables to make people conform to the clock.

As for the workings of the watch, there was another item this world was mercifully without: uranium. That element had been a twentieth-century discovery and, within a few years of its first refinement, had been used in new and more powerful weapons of destruction.

Even in the United States of Korea – in my day, one of the foremost manufacturing countries of the world, with the deepest mantle-mines – in 1816, the peoples of the Korean peninsula would be painting exquisite scenes on silk and carving delicate ivory. Between slaying each other by the sword, admittedly, in preparation for more energetic centuries to come …

The more I thought about it, the shedding of my watch became symbolic, and I rejoiced accordingly.

If I was learning about time, I was also learning about my legs. They brought me through the city and back to Sècheron in good order. I had not walked so far for years.

I’m in the automobile now, my last little bastion of the twenty-first century. It is uranium-powered too. I returned to the spot where my home once stood, looked affectionately at Tony’s bright plastic ball in the knot of pampas, and left a plastic message pad beside it with a message for Mina, in case the area does a timeslip again and she happens to be there.

This brings my record up-to-date. I must sleep before relating what happened at the murder trial. I am fit and charged with excitement, beside myself in a strangely literal way. Maybe it is obvious what I shall be compelled to do next.




4


Before I describe the trial of Justine Moritz, I must set down what I know about Frankenstein, in the hope of clarifying my mind.

The little I know is little enough. Victor Frankenstein is the eponymous central character of a novel by Mary Shelley. He amalgamated parts of human bodies to create a ‘monster’, which he then brought to life. The monster wreaked destruction on him and his house. Among the general public, the name of creator and created became confused.

I remember reading the novel as a child, when it made a great impression on me, but the deplorable pastiches and plagiarizations put out by the mass media have obliterated my memory of the original details. Although I know that the novel was published in the nineteenth century, the actual date escapes me. The author was Mary Shelley, wife of the Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, but very little of her life comes back to memory. Also, I had the impression that Victor Frankenstein was purely an invented character; however, recent events have somewhat shaken my preconceptions of probability!

From the first moment I set eyes on Frankenstein, at the hotel in Sècheron, I had the impression of a man with a burdensome secret. After selling my watch, I thought further about him, and perceived a link between his past and my future. The aspirations of the society of my day were mirrored in miniature in that watch: the desire that it should never need maintenance, should never run down. Such were Victor Frankenstein’s perfectionist obsessions in relation to human anatomy, when he began his investigations into the nature of life. When he reflected on how age and death laid waste man’s being, and saw a means of interfering with that process, he acted as harbinger to the Age of Science then in its first dawn.

Was that not the whole burden of his song, that nature needed in some way to be put to rights, and that it was man’s job to see it was put to rights? And had not that song passed like a plague virus to every one of his fellow men in succeeding generations? My supremely useless watch, product of endless refinement and research, target of envy for those who did not possess one, was a small example of how his diseased mentality had triumphed. The Conquest of Nature – the loss of man’s inner self!

You see the leaps my mind takes. I lived but one day of the spring in 1816 and I was full of love for it – and of hate for what man had done to change that sturdy and natural order.

Even as I say it, I know my statement to be sentimental and truth to be more complex than that. To regard the people and society of 1816 as ‘better’ than those of my day would be a mistake. For I had already sat through a grave miscarriage of justice.

The trial of Justine Moritz began at eleven. The court was packed. I managed to get a fairly good seat, and it was my fortune to sit next to a man who delighted in explaining the nuances of the case to a foreigner.

He pointed out to me the benches where the Frankenstein family sat. They were noticeable enough. While the rest of the courtroom was filled with excited anticipation, covert but gloating, the faces of the Frankensteins were all gloomy. They could have been members of the House of Atreus.

First came old syndic Alphonse Frankenstein, bent of shoulder, grey of hair; but his gaze, as he looked about the court, was still commanding. As my companion informed me, he had held many important posts in Geneva, and was a counsellor, as his father and grandfather had been before him.

The counsellor was consoled by Elizabeth Lavenza, who sat next to him. I thought she was startlingly beautiful, even in her grief, with her fair hair tucked under a dainty mourning bonnet, and her slim upright figure. She had been adopted as a small child by the counsellor’s wife, now dead – so said my companion, adding that it was well known that she would marry Victor, and so come into a deal of money. She had instigated a series of protracted lawsuits in her own right with authorities in Milan, Vienna and a German city, trying to reclaim a fortune supposedly left her by a defecting father. Maybe news of these extensive litigations, as well as her beauty, drew many pairs of eyes towards where she sat.

Victor sat on her other side. He was pale and composed at first, his features rigidly set. He held his head defiantly lifted, as if he wished no man to see him in dejection; somehow I felt the gesture very characteristic, and was able for the first time to recognize his arrogance.

Next to Victor was his brother Ernest, slender and rather dandyish in his dress although, like the rest of his family, he was in deep mourning. Ernest fidgeted and looked about him, occasionally addressing remarks to his elder brother, which Victor made no noticeable attempt to answer. The two brothers were present in court because of the foul murder of their younger brother, William, who had been found strangled.

‘Poor little lad, only six-and-a-half years old!’, said my companion. ‘They do say he was sexually assaulted, but the family’s trying to keep it hushed up.’

‘If that was so, surely his nurse would not have tampered with him.’

‘Oh, she did it right enough, make no mistake about that! The evidence all points to it. You never know about people nowadays, do you?’

‘Where was the child murdered? At home?’

‘No, no, outside the city, up in the hills, where he was playing with his brother Ernest. Out by Plainpalais, towards Mont Salève.’

Then I understood more fully Frankenstein’s quest in the storm of the previous night! He had been seeking out the spot on which his little brother was strangled – and we had encountered the murderer there.

Waves of cold ran over me, over my flesh and through my body. I thought I was about to faint, and could pay no attention as my companion pointed out the Clervals, a wealthy merchant family, of whom Henry Clerval was a close friend of Victor’s; Duvillard, a rich banker, and his new wife; Louis Manoir; and many other local notables. Victor turned once, to nod to Henry Clerval.

What struck me about the Frankensteins was their youth, the father excepted, of course. Set-faced though he was, Victor was certainly not more than twenty-five, and Elizabeth probably younger, while Ernest was still in his mid-teens.

When Justine Moritz was led into the box, I saw that she also was extremely young. A rather plain girl, but with the radiance of youth on her face, though that radiance was well subdued by her present predicament. She spoke up properly when questioned.

I cannot go into the whole trial; time is too short. Despite excellent character-witnesses, among them Elizabeth, who delivered an impassioned plea on her maid’s behalf, Justine stood condemned by one piece of circumstantial evidence: a locket containing a picture of her late mistress had been found in her belongings – a locket which the child William had been wearing only the day before the murder. The girl could not explain how the locket came to be among her clothes, and it was clear that her protestations of innocence were in vain. The feeling of the court was almost a tangible thing: something vile had happened and someone had to pay for it. Justine was captive: Justine must pay.

Tremors of horror were still racking me. For only I and one other person in that courtroom knew the truth, knew that the hand which had dispatched William had been neither a female hand nor a male one, but the hand of a terrible neuter thing!

My gaze went frequently to the other bearer of that awful secret. Whereas Elizabeth was composed, though pale, Victor became increasingly nervous, rubbing his forehead and his lips with a handkerchief, hiding his eyes in his palms, staring about in a distraught fashion.

Would he rise and declare his knowledge? But what could he say that would find credence here? Nobody else had seen his monster! Such a tale as he would have to tell would be instantly dismissed, the court being in the frame of mind it was. As well might I have risen and said, ‘I will tell you what really happened, for this trial and the real issues involved will one day become the subject of a great novel, and I am a man from two centuries into your future who read that book as a lad …’

Preposterous! But the temptation to intervene grew nevertheless, particularly as I saw things turning against the innocent maidservant.

Victor could bear it no longer. There was a scuffle and he stood up, pushed past brother and friends, and dashed from the courtroom.

Elizabeth stood up, a commanding little figure with one hand half-extended, and watched him go. The proceedings continued.

When all had been said that could be said, the judge made a brief summary, the ballots were cast, and the verdict was solemnly delivered. Justine Moritz was found guilty of the murder of William Frankenstein, and was sentenced to be hanged within the space of two days.




5


If the phrase is not inappropriate here, there was no time to be lost. I tied a tarpaulin over the car and paid a farmer with a horse to drag it through the streets of the city and out to the Plainpalais gate. Fortunately, the good citizens of Geneva had enough else to think about at this juncture.

I knew that there was one place, and one place only – and there one person only – to which I might turn for help!

When I had paid the farmer off, I started my car, my remaining outpost of another century, and drove along a road which led close to the lake. Little I cared then who saw me. My superior self was on a quixotic errand!

Quixotic or not, I had no real idea of where I was going. Or rather, I had an idea, but it was of the vaguest. Far more clear in my mind were recurrent pictures of Victor trembling as if with fever; Elizabeth, fair and beautiful and composed; Justine, pleading without effect for her life before a room full of people covertly eager for her blood; and the creature Frankenstein had made – that gigantic figure without a face, striking fear and worse than fear wherever it went. Although I knew it moved rapidly, all I had of it in my memory was a series of still pictures, captured in rain by lightning. It was enemy to the world, yet the world knew nothing of it! What a madman Frankenstein was to have created such a thing, and to hope to keep its existence a secret!

I tried to recall details of Frankenstein’s ghastly history. How would he act if he knew that his career was to be made into fiction, to serve as an object lesson, and a name of opprobrium, to the generations that followed him? Unfortunately, I had not read Mary Shelley’s novel since I was a lad; such recollection of it as I had was obscured by the travesties of it I had watched in 4-D on film, TV, and CircC.

At this juncture, I realized that I had driven close to the point where the boat had landed me the previous evening. I was not far from where the boy William had been murdered. I stopped the car.

There were binoculars in the Felder. Nor had I forgotten the swivel-gun mounted on the roof. The thought that such armament was compulsory for anyone privileged enough to own a private car in my own time reminded me that, Napoleonic Wars apart, I was now in an age where the safety and sanctity of the individual was taken for granted. If you read this, Mina, no doubt you will realize what was in my mind; supernaturally fast Frankenstein’s creation might be, but the swivel-gun would stop him.

Through the binoculars, I traced the path I had taken the night before when following Victor.

As I half-expected, Victor had returned to the scene of his younger brother’s murder. No doubt he had fled straight there from the pressures of the court. I could not see him well; he was mainly hidden behind trees, and motionless. Although I scanned the terrain round about him anxiously, I could discover no sign of the monster.

Locking the car, I began to climb the hill.

So far, I have evaded a central issue. Now it was forced on me. The accidents that had brought me back into the past were real enough. My whole being accepted the fact that I was, at least in some fashion, in Switzerland in the year 1816, in the month of May.

But Frankenstein? He was a fictitious character, a myth, wasn’t he? There was no way that I could understand whereby he could exist. The fact that I was where I was might be highly unlikely; that did not make his being there any more likely. In fact, I had to admit it. I found his existence impossible to explain. Although I was about to confront him, my experience told me that he was – well, I’ve no words for it: on a different plane of reality.

At last I was up on a level with him. The lake was below, the dull tinkle of cowbells came up to me. A peaceful enough spot, yet made profoundly melancholy by reason of its associations. The trees in their light spring foliage held no cheer.

Frankenstein was walking to and fro now, muttering to himself. In my hesitation to step forth lay this question: supposing that this encounter revealed my unreality rather than his …? As I was about to move forward, a whole cloud of doubt precipitated itself upon me. The frail web of human perceptions was laid bare. I stood outside myself and saw myself there, a poor creature whose energies were based on a slender set of assumptions, whose very identity was a chancy affair of chemicals and accidents.

‘Who’s there? Come forth if you still haunt this place, damned being!’

Maybe I had made some inadvertent noise. Victor was confronting me, his face white and drawn. I saw no fear there.

I stood forth.

‘Who are you, and what do you want with me? Are you from the court?’

‘Monsieur Frankenstein, my name is Bodenland, Joseph Bodenland. We met at the hotel yesterday. I apologize for intruding upon you.’

‘No matter, if you have news. Is a verdict out yet?’

‘Yes.’ I had recovered myself by now. ‘Justine has been condemned to death. The verdict was the inevitable one in view of your silence.’

‘What do you know of my affairs? Who sent you here?’

‘I am here on my own account. And I know little of your affairs, except the one crucial thing which nobody else seems to know – the central secret of your life!’

He was still confronting me in a pugnacious attitude, but at this he took a step back.

‘Are you another phantom sent to plague me? A product of my imagination?’

‘You are sick, man! Because of your sickness, an innocent woman is going to die, and your fair Elizabeth is going to be plunged into misery.’

‘Whoever or whatever you are, you speak truth. Unhappy wretch that I am, I left my native fireside and alienated my home to seek strange truths in undiscovered lands. My responsibility is too great, too great!’





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