The Mammoth Book of Frankenstein (Mammoth Books)

by Stephen Jones

“How can you tell?”

  “No high water mark. Where the surf’s reaching now, that must be its limit.”

  “Okay. So the tide’s in. So?”

  “So if there’s no boat and they’re not expecting us to swim, we can walk off. Or scramble, anyway. Look,” pointing, “there’s a bigger island to the east there. It’s hardly any distance, if we could see clearly. And the tidal fall is bound to be significant, in an environment like this. At low water, I bet we’ll be able to make our way over, pretty much dryshod. You can see, those rocks almost make a causeway already, or the start of one . . .”

  He was right, and they knew it; and they weren’t grateful, but he hadn’t expected that.

  They sheltered in the driest crevice they could find, where the island was split down to bedrock. Six hours more or less to kill, before they tried the crossing; and Raoul produced a knife.

  “We’re a team,” he said, “we depend on each other. We need to bond. A sign, a symbol would be helpful. What I feel, you all feel also.”

  And he laid the blade across the palm of his hand; but Josephine stopped him.

  “No,” she said. “I’ll do it. I’ll do it for all of you. I’m leader.”

  She took the knife from him, held his open hand firmly in hers and drew the blade deeply through the pad of flesh below his thumb. He flinched but didn’t pull away, didn’t take his eyes from hers.

  “Good,” she said. “You’ll feel that. But it won’t bleed for long in this cold, and the salt’ll keep it clean. Who’s next?”

  One by one, they offered their hands to her knife, and their blood all mingled on her skin.

  Nathaniel came last, thinking this foolish and unnecessary: why do the team damage, when it most needed all its strength? But it would be damaged more by his refusal; he kept his face neutral and held out his hand, already subvocalizing a mantra he had taught himself, a mental trick to suppress pain.

  Josephine’s hard fingers closed around his, she looked into his eyes, she smiled; and the blade stabbed down, and the point drove through all the flesh of his hand, grating against bone and almost shaking him out of his mantric flux.

  Almost, but not quite. Pain’s shout was lost in the murmuring of his mind; he held her gaze, and thought he saw more hurt in her than she would have seen in him.

  He sat unmoving, until she jerked the knife free; then she held up her hand, and yes, she was bleeding too. The blade had gone all the way through his hand and into hers, as perhaps it had been meant to.

  Correction: as certainly it had been meant to.

  “If we harm each other,” she said – making a virtue, making a lie of it, though not one meant to be believed, by him or anyone – “we also harm ourselves. We’re a team, we’re bonded now. The team has primacy. Let’s remember that.”

  At the tide’s turn, as Nathaniel had predicted, exposed rocks made a road from calf to mother, their small island to its far larger neighbour.

  It was a hard road to follow, jumping from one sharp wet tooth of rock to the next, while vicious currents sucked at ice-grey water only a little below their feet. But they helped each other: the brave encouraged the nervous or else abused them, whichever was more prolific of result; the strongest made the journey twice or three times, ferrying packs across and offering a hand to grip where it was most needed; and at last they might be soaked with spray and shivering, they might have torn their jeans and the skin on their hands to add more blood-loss to what they’d given already, but they were all safely over. Tumbled together on scant grass, they grinned exhaustedly at each other, punched the air and whooped with what little breath they had left.

  No one grinned at Nathaniel, no one so much as glanced in his direction although he’d found the road for them and been both the first and the last across, though he’d carried more than anyone and had barely made it back with his final load, leaping from toehold to toehold on vanishing rocks as the waters rose more quickly than they’d guessed.

  He nodded unsmilingly, wishing not to feel it, not to care; he rested for five minutes, and then he went to search along the shoreline.

  Under a pegged tarpaulin, he found seven canoes with life-jackets, helmets and paddles.

  * * *

  There were rations there also, a collapsible stove and billy-cans, everything they needed. No tents, but the tarpaulin was large enough to shelter them all, stretched over a framework of paddles; weighted with rocks and lashed together, the canoes made a useful windbreak.

  After they’d eaten they built a fire of driftwood, lighting it – Nathaniel’s idea – with wood chips dried in a billy on the stove.

  “No map,” Tarian said. “They haven’t given us a map. How’re we going to find Jamesay?”

  “Follow the islands down,” Nathaniel said. “They’re like a chain, all the way; if we stay on the landward side, we’ll miss the worst of the weather and the high seas, too. Then there’s just a mile of open water, we go dead south and there’s Jamesay.”

  “You knew,” Charlotte accused him. “You knew what we’d be doing, that’s how come you’re so well sussed about it all.”

  “No,” he said.

  “You just happen to have memorized the charts, then, is that right?”

  He shrugged. “I suppose, yes. I looked at them, on the schooner,” which was quite enough; he’d learned them at a glance, and he’d never understood about forgetting. Once learned, a thing was with him always. “It’s a trick, that’s all. Useful, but not significant.”

  “Like you, then. Right?”

  He just looked at her, looked at her frustrated anger and recognized it from their chess games earlier. Emotional maps were no different. Any kind of lesson, the same applied: once learned, never forgotten.

  Alas, he thought, and turned his eyes to the fire, where bright flames burned green with salt.

  Barely sheltered where he slept, furthest from the windbreak and least in touch, least belonging, he felt no constraint to stay with the team when he woke, when they were still close-huddled in sleep. He rolled out from under the canopy, got to his feet and walked down to the sea’s fretful edge. The wind’s bite was fierce through damp clothing, but he welcomed the cold of it, and the hard spray in his face.

  Staring out at dark water in the hiss and crash of water breaking on rock, he neither saw nor heard her until she was there beside him, touching his arm for attention.

  Josephine, of course. Team captain, prime mover: not a bad choice after all, given that any team with himself in charge would have been in a state of constant rebellion. Start stupid, learn fast: lessons in the psychology of leadership would never be enough for someone like him, and so he’d tell people if he could only make them listen. In case they meant to try again. You got me wrong, he’d tell them, it doesn’t work this way. Evolution’s got muddied by democracy, you can’t just overleap the majority any more. You’ll have to be more careful next time, give the poor bastard some handle on normality or there’ll be nothing to hang on to, first or last . . .

  “Remember,” Josephine said, her voice tight with distaste, “what he said at breakfast, about sleeping with each other? If it was good for the team?”

  “Yes,” neutral as he could make it.

  “Well, I’ve been thinking about it. I thought, anything that would make you a part of us, it had to be worth it . . . But it wouldn’t work, would it?”

  “No,” he agreed, still neutral. Still separate.

  “It’s too late for that.”

  “Yes.” It had been too late for a long time now, since his first week in camp. Ever since he’d started stupid, measuring himself publicly against the others.

  “You’re – artificial,” she said, seeking to explain it to herself. “Built to be better than us. That’s what it is . . .”

  “No. Doesn’t matter how I happened, I’m as real as you are. No different.”

  “Better is different. State of the art, right? Real maybe, but – well, hell, human kind cannot bear very muc
h reality. You know?”

  “I know,” he said, burdened by too much knowledge, far too much reality.

  “Okay, then. Nothing changes, I guess.”

  “I guess not.” Nothing ever changed, nor ever would.

  He thought she nodded in the darkness, as though she’d caught the thought; and then she turned, back to her sleeping team. And stopped, and turned again, and said, “You know Goya?”

  He smiled briefly, bitterly; and killed the smile before he spoke, so that she wouldn’t hear it in his voice. “El sueño de la razón produce monstruos,” he said.

  “Yeah. Right. Hang on to that.” And then she was gone, and for once in his life he was uncertain, he was confused. The sleep of reason begets monsters: that was inarguable, it was a constant theme in his life. But he couldn’t be sure if she’d meant it as an accusation, or an apology.

  They set off at first light, with weary work ahead of them if they were to reach Jamesay today. They kept in the lee of the island chain, and swung their paddles in a constant rhythm; and here at least Nathaniel could fool some imagined observer if not himself, if none of the others. He could echo the rhythm precisely and imitate the power of their strokes, he could keep his place and seem no different.

  At noon they broke for a meal and a rest in a sheltered bay, and he was again no part of what they were together; and then it was back to the water and aching muscles locked into relentless rhythm, and yes, dwelling on the pain in his hand, he could understand their need for bonding. It would be the only way for some of them to survive this. As usual, though, he understood without sharing. Keeping time was only a pretence. He’d have been better on his own, setting his own rhythms and timing his own rests.

  But he stayed with the team, never striking to the front even when they needed that, when it was clear to him that they’d never reach Jamesay before darkfall unless they sprinted. Displace Josephine, he thought, and he was lost, they were all lost.

  In fact, they reached open water with just enough light left to show them Jamesay’s shadow on the horizon. They could camp again, there’d be time enough tomorrow to make the rendezvous; but camping meant going back, it was half a mile or more since they’d past any land they could beach on. And there’d be no food, no shelter there. They’d be expected to make Jamesay today; there were no allowances for failure.

  Clustering together and shouting between canoes, they agreed to go on. Michaela had a compass, she’d take a bearing now and keep them straight. Besides, there were houses on the island, there’d be lights. One last push, they said, and they’d be done. Credit to the team, they thought, to travel by night at need.

  Nathaniel took no part in that decision. His only suggestion was that they should call out their names in order as they paddled, so that none of them was separated in the dark.

  The life-jackets had luminescent strips also, activated by contact with seawater; those helped to keep them in touch. It was as a group that they headed into the surge of open water, though Nathaniel held himself deliberately a little adrift of the pack, to see more clearly if tiredness or lack of concentration pulled any of the others off course.

  And it was as a group, if not as a team, that they met disaster when it came.

  Disaster was high and fast and fitting, evidence perhaps of some higher order, envious of its prerogatives: a freak wave aimed at a bunch of freaks, and Nathaniel only the freakiest among them.

  No time, no anticipation. Only a sudden warning cry, shrill as a gannet’s, and then the water abruptly rising contrary to the steady swell, and the canoes tipping and tumbling and the dark that closed over, cut them off and contained them, gave them cold and crushing weight and nothing to breathe or hope for . . .

  Except that these kids didn’t hope and didn’t panic, they kicked. Training and good sense and life-jackets all dragged them upwards; and when Nathaniel broke surface, when he sucked in a lungful of good wet salty air at last, he looked around and saw figures gasping in the water all around him, amid the dark bobbing shapes of empty canoes.

  Those were first priority, and didn’t need discussing. Nathaniel struck out for the nearest, and took the nylon painter between his teeth to keep his hands free. Hearing a high whooping call he looked around, saw someone silhouetted briefly against the stars and waving; saw a general drift of his dim-lit companions in that direction and joined it.

  It was Josephine, of course, calling them in. Counting lights, counting heads as he swam, Nathaniel counted seven eventually, though he wasn’t certain until they were all gathered, all rising and falling together in the heavy swell. Seven meant the whole team, no one missing; but of those seven, only three had brought in their canoes.

  Not enough. Lifting himself as high as he could on the one he towed, before it ducked and slithered out from under him, Nathaniel thought he could make out a couple more, slim shadows sliding further into the dark. He took the painter from his mouth and pressed it into the nearest hand he could grab, Raoul’s; grunted, “Hold on to that, for God’s sake,” and plunged off after them, swimming hard for warmth and speed when he should be swimming slow for survival, preserving energy.

  Behind him, Josephine’s voice called sharply after, but he ignored it. If she couldn’t see the need, he didn’t have time to explain.

  Hard to orient in this heaving, heavy darkness, with the horizon always shifting and tilting and his eyes stinging with wind-hurled water, though he swam head-high and always looking, trying to fix on the stars when he wasn’t watching for canoes. Vampire cold sucked at his muscles, for all the heat he could make; without the wet suits, he thought, they might be dead in an hour. With them, with luck and intelligence, they could survive maybe three or four. Till morning, not. He’d doubted it before; he was certain now.

  Intelligence they had, luck they could manufacture or achieve – as he did now, chasing the luck that hadn’t lost these two canoes, fighting to conserve it.

  As much stubborn as strong, bred in part for precisely a need such as this – and sent here, of course, to meet it – he caught up with the luck at last and brought it back, though towing two canoes with his teeth was far harder than one, and reaching the others again against the sea’s tug was harder even than finding them.

  “What’s the point of that?” Josephine demanded when he did rejoin the group. “We had enough already to use as floats, we don’t need one each . . .”

  And they were doing that already, clinging two or three to a canoe, only kicking their legs sluggishly to keep the blood flowing; but he said, “No, we can do better. Look, with five we can make a frame, four in a square and one diagonal to hold it open. Lash them together with the painters. Then some of us at least can get right out of the water, the ones who need to rest most. We can take it in turns, spell each other . . .”

  And again he was right, and they knew it. No one argued. And again they were none of them grateful, though he was maybe saving lives here; he saw resentment in their faces, clear as daylight. And knew that they saw it in each other, and suddenly this felt dangerous. Fire and flood, irresistible forces feeding, massing against him: he knew no way to meet them except to try harder, to be better still.

  So it was Nathaniel who swam from canoe to canoe, upturning those that weren’t already hull-up and drawing them together, numbed fingers fumbling with nylon rope to knot them into his vision, a raft-frame to support exhausted bodies.

  And it was Nathaniel who helped the smallest, the coldest, the most tired aboard, and devised the most stable way for them to lie across the slippery hulls; Nathaniel who was last among the others to reach for a handhold, reaching to grip and cling and be buoyed up against the dragging depths.

  Nathaniel who was the only one missing when the helicopter’s searchlight finally found them, after twenty minutes’ probing of dark waters.

  Reason is sleeping: and of course everyone applauds the team’s survival, offers comfort to their grief at a companion’s loss, encourages the media stories about the boy ge
nius who turned hero at the last and sacrificed himself in his great effort to save others.

  And of course no one who was at the camp believes those stories. Reason is sleeping, yes, but not that deeply. Not dreaming in fantasies.

  Rumours are mostly unspoken, as the team itself is not speaking of Nathaniel; but rumours spread none the less. People have pictures in their minds: dark water and determined faces, he shan’t be a hero and live, he shan’t make us accessories to his triumph. Not again . . .

  Dark water and determined, desperate faces; No room! No room! and hands that thrust and punched, nails that clawed and pinched and gouged at flesh and eyes. Too many hands and too much hatred, those are the themes in people’s private pictures in the camp.

  But those too are dreams, perhaps, though dreaming close to true.

  They found the panic button knotted at one of the canoe-frame’s corners, the button submerged but the aerial cord above the waterline. Tied there and squeezed and held it was, deliberately set off; and none of the team has mentioned it at all.

  Nathaniel must have set it there, set it and left it and gone. And maybe the kids did as everyone secretly believes they did, maybe they drove him off; but what haunts the people who know about the button, what draws pictures in their minds is the other possibility.

  Maybe, facing the team’s active and relentless hostility, Nathaniel had faced in that moment a lifetime of the same, and made his own choice. Start stupid, learn fast. Cued by the throbbing in his hand, maybe, he’d maybe quietly tied the button where they needed it, and turned, and swum away.

  Maybe it was they after all who were not good enough, the world which failed. That’s the thought that haunts their waking dreams, those few who know. And no, they don’t discuss it either.

  Reason is sleeping, and their beautiful children never stay.

  But in the castle, the doctor perseveres; and in the village they are not downcast. They forget the light that failed, and look still for the dawn. Next time, they tell themselves; next time, they tell each other.

  And this time, next time, every time they queue to give what they can, and are glad to do it. The doctor honours them, by taking what they have. What they most prize, they give most freely; and what’s new?