The Frankenstein Factory

by Edward D. Hoch

  “Never heard of it!”

  “I’m not surprised. We’re fairly new. I work for a man named Carl Crader, who in turn reports directly to the President.”

  “Is that supposed to impress me?”

  “I don’t care if it impresses you or not. It’s the truth.”

  She stepped back, hands on hips, and studied him. “Is this another one of those private groups the President sets up in secret without anybody knowing?”

  “No. I assure you we’re legit. The New York Times even ran an article on us and called us the ‘computer cops.’”

  “So what are you doing here? There are no computers on Horseshoe Island—at least, not that I’ve seen.”

  “Our investigations sometimes spill over into what might generally be called crimes of the new technology. Cryogenics is certainly a new technology.”

  “And what is the crime?”

  “Well, that’s what I’m here to find out.” He gave her a broad grin to cover his obvious evasion. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t reveal this to anyone else—not even to Tony Cooper.”

  “Don’t worry—I don’t go running to him with everything I know.”

  “Good.”

  She sat down and took out a cigarette, accepting the light he offered. “Then you’re not really a medical photographer at all?”

  “They gave me a cram course back in New York so that I could play the part.”

  “Do you know what happened to old Miss Watson?”

  He shook his head. “I wish I did.”

  “Is it tied in to your investigation?”

  “It might be.”

  Her blue eyes were studying him. “You’re so mysterious.”

  “Sorry about that.” He wondered if it was an invitation of some sort, and decided to pursue it a bit. “But you’re mysterious too. What about you and Cooper and O’Connor. Tony said just now he’d tell me about it someday.”

  She shrugged and got to her feet. “Let him.”

  “But you won’t tell me?”

  “We’d better join the others, don’t you think?”

  FOUR

  BY DINNERTIME THERE WAS still no change in Frank’s condition. His pulse and heartbeat were strong, according to Dr. Armstrong, but as yet he had not awakened. There’d been a great deal of talk about notifying the mainland of Emily Watson’s disappearance, but the feeling (Lawrence Hobbes’s feeling) was that the arrival of authorities at this time would endanger the successful completion of their experiment with Frank.

  “Wait until he’s conscious, at least,” Hobbes pleaded. “Whatever’s happened to Emily, a few hours or a day isn’t going to make any difference.”

  After dinner there was a distinct chill to the gathering. Even Freddy O’Connor’s remarks had dwindled into silence. It was as if the coming of night had made them all aware that one of their number might well have caused Emily Watson’s disappearance.

  Earl walked upstairs with Dr. MacKenzie who said he was retiring early. “That surgery last night took a lot out of me. It made me realize I’m not as young as I once was. You know, I kid the ladies and try to act like a schoolboy at times, but I’m not a schoolboy anymore. I’m a middle-aged man who once walked on the moon, and that’s not worth much at all these days.”

  “You’re one of the world’s best surgeons,” Earl reminded him. “I know. I watched you for three hours last night.”

  “Surgery is a matter of dexterity, like fixing a car. There are no famous surgeons in the history books. Even Christiaan Barnard is only a footnote today. That fellow with the mechanical heart gets more space. Invention always wins out over dexterity.”

  “Well, have a good night,” Earl said, leaving him at his door. He felt vaguely sorry for MacKenzie, but at the moment he had enough other problems to concern him.

  For one thing, he had to decide how soon he should notify Crader, back in New York, of the strange turn of events. The disappearance—and possible murder—of Emily Watson had a meaning, but it was one he hadn’t yet been able to fathom.

  He’d just reached his own door when Lawrence Hobbes came up the stairs. “Would you care to join in a game of laser? We need a fourth.”

  “Who’s playing?”

  “Freddy and Whalen and I.”

  “All right,” Earl decided, and followed him back downstairs.

  Laser, widely promoted as the first new parlor game of the twenty-first century, was a chesslike tournament among four players, each seated on an opposite side of the grid. The pieces were large, irregularly shaped blocks of polished glass, some surfaces of which had been silvered. The so-called laser beam was in truth merely a beam of high-intensity light. It was directed across the playing grid as the opponents attempted to position their pieces in such a manner that the beam would be deflected away from them. A mirrored piece could deflect the beam, but of course it passed straight through an unmirrored one.

  Earl Jazine had played the game a bit back in New York but he was far from an expert at it, a fact he quickly discovered when seated across the grid from Hobbes. The man rolled the dice and moved his pieces with a skillfulness that showed long hours of practice.

  “I often played the two-man game with Emily,” he said, rolling a four and moving his chance-man into position to intercept the laser beam. “But the four-man version is really more aggressive.”

  Within five rounds of the dice the light beam penetrated Whalen’s defenses and hit him full on the chest. “You’re dead!” Hobbes chuckled. “Out of the game!”

  Freddy O’Connor rolled a seven and debated which piece to move. “This game is the next best thing to a good fuck!”

  Lawrence Hobbes frowned disapprovingly. “I wish you wouldn’t use that word. If you don’t have respect for me, at least show some respect for Emily, wherever she is.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake!” Freddy growled, shifting a piece in sudden anger that Earl could see was a mistake. In three more rounds he was eliminated and stalked out of the room.

  “Just you and me now,” Hobbes said.

  “Yes.” Earl glanced around but their audience had faded away. Only the deaf and dumb Hilda stood watching from a position a few feet behind Hobbes’s chair. Earl studied her deeply tanned face and realized for the first time that she was younger than he’d imagined. Her face had a sort of quiet beauty one often found among Mexican women, especially the peasants of the interior. He could imagine Cortez when he first saw a face like that.

  Hobbes rolled the dice and scored a twelve, which allowed him to move two pieces. “It’s my lucky day,” he said, shifting a mirror-man and a chance-man.

  “You’re a good player.”

  “Tony Cooper claims he could beat me, but he wouldn’t play.”

  Earl rolled a three. He moved a chance-man into position to block Hobbes’s advance. “There now.”

  Hobbes grinned and tapped the beam button. The false laser shot out again, reflected off two men, passed through two others, and ended up on Earl’s chest. “Dead man! I win.”

  “Damn!” Earl got up from the grid and poured himself a stiff shot of scotch.

  “Better luck next time, Jazine.”

  Hilda smiled her approval and moved away in the direction of the kitchen. A short time later Earl went up to bed.

  He’d often had the experience of sudden inspirations coming to him in the morning, with his waking thoughts. The following morning it happened again. It was barely daylight when he awakened from a deep sleep, and he knew with a sudden certainty where Emily Watson’s body was hidden.

  He dressed quickly and went through the dim halls to Lawrence Hobbes’s room. “Hobbes! Wake up! I have to see you!”

  The stocky man opened the door after a moment. “What is all this? It’s still the middle of the night! Why didn’t the alarms go off with you roaming the halls?”

  “I don’t know about that. I want you to come with me to the operating room. I know where Emily Watson’s body is!”

  “Go back
to bed.” He started to close the door but Earl blocked it with his foot.

  “We have to check now!”

  The door across the hallway opened and Whalen stuck his head out. “What’s all the fuss?”

  “Come on,” Earl urged. “Down to the operating room. I know where Emily Watson is.”

  “The operating room was searched.”

  “But there’s one place nobody thought to look.”

  Phil Whalen was skeptical. “Where?”

  “Five tubes were brought up on the elevator from the vaults. In four cases only organs were removed and the tubes were sent back down for refreezing. But what happened to the fifth tube—the one that contained the shell body?”

  “I sent it back down empty,” Hobbes said, “just to get it out of the way. It’s probably still on the elevator because I didn’t want to freeze it without a body.”

  “Come on!”

  They followed him downstairs, along the by-now familiar passages to the operating amphitheater. Frank still rested on the table, his bare chest rising and falling with regularity. The room seemed unchanged from the last time Earl had seen it.

  Hobbes walked to the elevator and pressed the button. There was a faint familiar humming as it rose from the vault area. “All this foolishness is for nothing,” he said. “The tube is empty.”

  “We’ll see. If I’m wrong, we can all go back to bed.” He glanced at Whalen, wondering whether he wore his gun with pajamas too.

  “Here it is.”

  The long metal tube slid out of the elevator on its cart. The end was screwed tightly in place, and when Hobbes was slow at opening it Earl took over. He felt the end plug begin to turn under his hands and quickly unscrewed it.

  There was a body in the tube.

  But it wasn’t Emily Watson. It was Dr. Eric MacKenzie, the brain surgeon, and he was dead.

  They assembled in the dining room, all eight of them, but this time it wasn’t for breakfast. Lawrence Hobbes stood at the head of the table, and as he spoke there was a quiver of uncertainty (or fear?) to his voice.

  “I don’t really know what’s going on here, but it appears we’re in some danger. Dr. MacKenzie was certainly murdered. He was strangled by a cord around his throat. Someone killed him during the night and carried his body down to the operating room.”

  “Isn’t there another possibility?” Vera asked, raising her hand to speak like a student at a college seminar. “Couldn’t he have gone down to the operating room for some reason and been killed there?”

  “Certainly, that’s possible.”

  “But Miss Watson got it in her room,” Freddy pointed out. “Chances are old MacKenzie did too.”

  Hobbes nodded just a bit sadly. “Someone deactivated the alarm system during the night. The killer could have prowled the house at will.”

  “Strange,” Earl remarked. “The system wasn’t touched the previous night, was it?”

  “No.”

  He glanced around at their faces and saw expressions ranging from the sheer terror of the cook, Hilda, to the solemn indifference of Phil Whalen. It was Vera Morgan who demanded action. “We have to call the mainland and get the authorities out here.”

  “The authorities,” Hobbes stated categorically, “consist of one aging Mexican sheriff and his usually drunk assistant. The twenty-first century has not yet reached Baja California. Besides, as I pointed out before, any authorities who arrive here would have to be told about our patient downstairs. That should be avoided for as long as possible.”

  “Sure should,” Freddy O’Connor agreed. “I can see the headlines on the video printouts now: Murder at Frankenstein Factory—Did Monster Kill Its Creator?”

  “Certainly you don’t think—”

  “Why not? Hell, I’d much rather believe that Frank down there did it than consider the possibility that I’m sitting at a table with a murderer!”

  Earl turned to Dr. Armstrong. “Is Frank conscious and able to move?”

  “He’s shown no signs of it as yet. As I previously reported, both breathing and pulse rate are normal. He certainly could awaken at any time.”

  “He could awaken and pretend to be still asleep,” Vera suggested, lighting a cigarette. “After all, he’s been dead nearly thirty years. He might not know what to expect.”

  “But he doesn’t know what year this is,” Armstrong pointed out logically. “I don’t believe anyone’s mentioned it in his hearing.”

  “If he’s prowling the house at night he knows,” Freddy argued.

  “Wait, wait!” Lawrence Hobbes pleaded. “You’re making a monster of him! He’s a young man who probably never harmed anyone in his life!”

  “The body is young,” Tony Cooper said quietly. “What about the brain?”

  “The brain?”

  “Are we all overlooking the fact that the brain came from someone else? You managed to keep it quite a secret, and we went along with you, but now the time has come to tell all, Dr. Hobbes. If you really are a doctor.”

  “Listen, you—!”

  “Now, now.” Tony Cooper was suddenly on his feet and looked ready to do battle if necessary. “It should be a simple thing for you to tell us the identity of the brain donor, shouldn’t it? You must have records.”

  “I have records.”

  “Well then?”

  “The matter is confidential. I already explained about lawsuits. Although all five of the bodies used had passed into my possession because of nonpayment of fees, there exists a strong possibility that some relative could make trouble.”

  “If Frank wakes up he’ll tell everyone who he is,” Tony pointed out logically.

  “Yes,” Hobbes agreed. “You’re right there, I suppose.”

  “Then what can be the harm in identifying the brain?”

  “All right. I’ll get the records.”

  While he was gone Freddy took the floor. He stood with hands behind his back, acting just a bit like a somewhat vulgar schoolmaster. “Well, boys and girls, this is the way I see it. We’re going to have to take turns guarding that guy downstairs. We’ve been lax in letting him slumber along unwatched till now.”

  “The bell would have rung if he’d started moving around down there,” Vera pointed out.

  “No bell rang last night, my dear girl. Though I venture a guess that with Tony keeping you occupied you wouldn’t have heard it anyway.”

  “I’ve had enough of your lip,” Cooper said, and sprang at him without warning. His first punch connected with Freddy’s jaw.

  Freddy went back against the wall as Cooper grabbed him about the throat. Earl was the first to move. He was on them in an instant, pulling them apart. “Come on, you two! Let’s start behaving like adults!”

  Freddy O’Connor wiped a drop of blood from his lip. “And for this I became a brain surgeon!”

  Hobbes came back into the room, clutching a file folder. “What’s been going on here?”

  “Nothing, nothing,” Freddy assured him. “Just a little of man’s usual beastliness. What did you find?”

  The stocky man cleared his throat. “Nothing I haven’t known all along. The shell body belongs to a young man named John Kaval.”

  “He’ll still be Frank to me,” Freddy said.

  “Please.” Hobbes gave him a freezing glance. “There are times when your sheer childishness amazes me, O’Connor.” He cleared his throat once more. “As I already told you, Kaval died of a brain tumor. Certain other organs were affected before death, necessitating the multiple transplant operation performed here the other night.”

  Earl suddenly realized that he had no notion of what day it was. He’d arrived on a Sunday, and the operation had been performed Sunday night. That made this Tuesday morning. Was it possible he’d been on Horseshoe Island less than forty-eight hours in all? He glanced at his watch. Yes, just about forty-eight hours.

  Lawrence Hobbes was still speaking. “The other organs are unimportant at the moment. I gather you’re most interested in th
e brain as the controlling mechanism. The brain was from the body of a middle-aged professor of English named Theodore Ruskin.”

  “How did he die?” Freddy asked.

  Hobbes cleared his throat again. “He killed himself, actually. Jumped in front of a subway train in New York City. He died two days later at the hospital. Happily, he’d already arranged for his body to be quick-frozen at the moment of death. And the brain was undamaged.”

  “Why did he kill himself?”

  “His wife was found dead in their East Side apartment. She’d been shot in the head. She had cancer. The police assumed he killed her and then threw himself in front of that subway train.”

  “You mean he was a murderer?” Vera asked. “We’ve put a murderer’s brain into that young man’s body?”

  “Now, now! Hobbes held up a calming hand. “At worst his crime was mercy killing.”

  “But he killed once,” Freddy said. “And he could kill again.”

  “He’ll have to be guarded,” Armstrong agreed. “Especially now that the alarm system’s inoperative.”

  Earl turned to Hobbes. “Can’t it be fixed?”

  “Not without supplies from the mainland. A whole stretch of wire was removed.”

  “Why would anyone take a piece of electrical cord?” Vera asked.

  “Don’t you know, my dear?” Freddy responded. “That’s the cord we found around Dr. MacKenzie’s neck.”

  Hilda went out and gathered some of the stiff tall grass that grew near the side door and then cut it into five long blades and a sixth, shorter one. While Vera held them in her hand with just the tips showing, the six men drew straws to see who would be the first to sit with Frank in the downstairs operating room.

  “You’re it,” Freddy said as Phil Whalen drew the short stem.

  Whalen nodded agreeably. “How long do I stay there?”

  “How about a four-hour shift?” Freddy suggested. “That’ll make it noon, and we’ll draw again to see who relieves you.”

  As Whalen started downstairs he caught Earl’s eye. “Want to have a little talk?”