by Joan Aiken
He levered himself out of his chair—his arms looked as frail as celery stalks—and limped as fast as he was able to an Empire escritoire beside a lace-curtained window which looked into a dark interior well. The desk was piled high with papers which were plainly in no sort of order; it took the professor a little while to find what he wanted.
“Here, now—these, you see, are my diagrams—and these are the figures—it is all clear, I think, but my English is not adequate for the technical language—I do not know the proper terms for ‘Unified Field theory’ or ‘planetary wave particle duality—” He had fallen into French, which Frost read and understood well, though he did not speak it with great fluency.
“Yes, I see, Professor. I don’t think there will be any problem about that. Look, I have brought over some blank application forms. You fill them in like this—here, see—I will of course take care of the registration, and so forth—you will need a clear diagram of course; yes, this one should serve perfectly well. Put your name at the beginning, ‘I, Charles-Edouard Aveyrand—’”
“De Froissart Aveyrand,” put in the professor fussily.
“‘Being a subject of the French Republic, do hereby declare the invention, for which I pray that a patent be granted to me, and the method by which it is to be performed, to be particularly described in and by the following statement—’ Incidentally, do you have a made-up model of the—of your invention?”
“Naturally, Monsieur Frost, naturally I have.”
To Frost’s considerable surprise, he then lifted up his voice and called, “Carloman! Allo, Carloman!”
“I have programmed it to respond to my voice frequencies,” he explained. “Of course, for another person, it would only be needed to slip in a different tape. All that is entered in the specification. I thought it most practical. I am, you see, sometimes very stiff with my rheumatic trouble, hardly able to rise from my chair; it is so with many of my age, I daresay: but the voice is always at command. Bien, here it comes; like its inventor, it does not move very fast.”
A shuffling tread could now be heard in the corridor, and soon, round the open door, appeared a smallish figure, rather less than five foot high. Frost could not repress a start of surprise at the sight of it, for it appeared to be a knight in fourteenth-century armour. It moved slowly into the room and carefully positioned itself in the exact centre of a small threadbare rug about six feet away from the professor.
“Carloman, change the lights,” ordered Aveyrand, and the model accordingly proceeded to shuffle slowly round the room altering the illumination; first it switched on various table lamps by pulling down their strings with its mailed hand; after this it turned off the switch by the door which governed the overhead light, encountering a little difficulty in getting its metal fingers on to the target; finally it switched off the standard lamp beside the professor’s chair by pressing a floor switch with its mailed foot. Then it returned to the centre of the rug and stood, apparently awaiting further orders.
“Remarkable,” said Frost. “Will it do anything else?”
“Oh, bien sur, but that is all I have programmed it for at present. Later it could be instructed to make beds, use the vacuum cleaner . . . But I thought, do you see, how useful for people who are afraid of thieves . . . I must confess I am often in anxiety about brigands breaking into this place and stealing my valuables when I am out.” He glanced, almost apologetically over his shoulder. “One can leave the model, you see, with instructions to go round at irregular intervals of time, changing all the lights, so that it must appear some living person is there. A time switch could not be so irregular. Whereas I could give Carloman a random series of changes which would continue for one hundred days without repeating.”
“Is it plugged into the mains? Or run off a battery?”
“Neither, monsieur; wholly self-contained. The planetary influence is sufficient to power it indefinitely on its present programme.”
“Very clever indeed,” said Frost. “I should certainly think you could find a ready market for such an invention.”
“Oh, my dear sir! Without doubt! There are so many people who, like myself, fear thieves, fear to go away and leave their possessions.”
Frost could not help being somewhat struck by the irony of this; looking round the dismal apartment he wondered what in it was worth taking? In any case, surely the professor was almost always at home?
“Tell me, why are you applying first for a British patent? Why not begin in your own country?”
The professor gave a classic Gallic shrug. “There is too much corruption here. I should have to grease too many palms. I cannot afford it. And otherwise, it would not be achieved in my lifetime, I would not reap the benefit . . . Although I am a sick old man, I still have some things left to offer the world—to render my name historic—this is only one of the uses of planetary energy which I propose.”
A somewhat febrile glitter came into his eyes; he began muttering about Mars, Venus, and Saturn, until he was interrupted by a fit of coughing and obliged to stop, holding a soiled handkerchief to his lips. When the paroxysm went on and on, Frost, feeling that he ought to make some attempt at assistance, went into the next room, an indescribably sordid and untidy kitchenette. The sink was piled high with dirty dishes and there seemed nothing fit to eat or drink—not even a bottle of Evian water. However, the professor called out, “Coffee! Coffee!” in a feeble voice amid his eructations, and so Frost heated up a pan which contained mostly grounds and some discoloured liquid over the tiny gas stove, and brought a cupful of the stuff back to the old man. How could Louise have been so happy to spend so many holidays here? he wondered in amazed disgust, glancing round him. But of course that had been years ago, when the professor was still teaching at the Institute of Astronomy; there had been money enough for a bonne to help out in those days.
After drinking the gritty coffee, the professor in due course recovered sufficiently to complete the patent-application forms, which Frost then slipped into his briefcase.
“What do you call it, by the way? The invention has to have some sort of a title.”
“I call it l’Assistant—the Helper.”
“Would there be any chance of taking a—a specimen?” Frost then inquired. “To England, I mean? It might facilitate—speed up the process, you know—if I could present a model as well as the drawings. Do you, perhaps, have others?”
“Other models? Non, non—Carloman seulement,” the professor replied, after looking vaguely round the room, as if there might possibly be another, somewhere, only just at present his memory failed him regarding its whereabouts. He added, after a moment, “I suppose you might perhaps take that one; doubtless I could construct another without too much trouble.”
“Why did you make it in the form of a crusader?” Frost asked. He looked with dislike at the motionless figure on the rug; it filled him with a slight, uneasy feeling of repugnance. He had always been annoyed by phoney antiquity, cigarette lighters in the shape of jousting knights, mock-baronial coalscuttles—he found Carloman in decidedly poor taste.
“Why in that shape? Oh, merely because I happened to have the armour. There were various pieces left from the collection in our family chateau—now sold, alas, to foreigners. But possessing the armour already saved me some tedious construction work. Also it is convenient—regardez—” Aveyrand flipped up Carloman’s visor and revealed a mass of wires and connections where the face should have been. He added absently. “I do have other pieces of armour, bien sur, I would be able to construct another model. It is just that I am so pressed for time.” He reflected. “Carloman is not too heavy. We could, I daresay, pack him into a golf bag. Somewhere, I will recollect in a moment, there used to be such an article. Thus you might carry it back to England.”
“Perhaps I could help you find the bag?”
Frost glanced around the overfurnished room. The sooner he was out of this dreary place, the better.
“Merci, mon ami.” The professo
r rubbed his forehead uncertainly. “It might be on top of the armoire in my bedroom . . . You forgive that I do not accompany you? I have to husband my strength these days.”
Passing a couple of rooms rammed to the ceiling with the accretions of years—from which he nervously averted his eyes—Frost searched in the bedroom’s dusty disorder, and did, after a while, manage to unearth the golf bag among a stack of photographic equipment, rucksacks, telescopes, botanical specimen cases, and aged wicker luggage. On a chiffonier he was disconcerted to encounter a photograph of his daughter Louise and her friend Menispe, arm in arm, laughing and squinting into the sunshine of a Paris street; from this he hastily averted his eyes. He left the bedroom and carried the bag back into the salle.
Aided rather ineffectually by the professor, who, by the end of the interview, very evidently had little energy to spare, Frost managed to pack the armour-suited model into the golf bag, wadding it with copies of Le Monde and France Soir. “What about the programming?” he thought to ask. “It will need your voice, won’t it?”
“There is a tape built in—no problem. You merely move the switch to the second position—voilà—to re-record.”
“Yes, yes, of course. Well, I will say good-bye, Professor—I’m sure I have tired you long enough. It has been extremely interesting—”
“I regret infinitely that I cannot offer you dejeuner—but the resources of my kitchen these days are so limited, I go out so seldom—”
“No, no, my dear sir—don’t think of such a thing—” Frost suppressed a shudder as he thought of that kitchen.
“I am deeply sorry, also, that my daughter Menispe did not return in time to see you again.”
“Menispe? You mean that she is still living here?” Frost was not sure why this information startled him so. Menispe had not seemed the kind of daughter who would remain under the parental roof a day longer than she was obliged to. He recalled that last occasion; her all-too-evident boredom and scorn . . .
“But of course she still lives here!” The professor seemed quite shocked. “Who, if not she, my daughter, would look after me and charge herself with my errands?”
Although Frost entertained no very kind feelings towards Menispe, he could not avoid a shiver at this calm statement by her father. What a fate for the wretched girl, he thought, and he asked, “Did she not marry, then? What became of her fiancé—Lucien, was it?”
“Ah, Lucien? Poor young man, he died, some years ago. He contracted an unfortunate addiction—”
Like Louise. Frost found himself inquiring dispassionately, “Menispe herself never did so?”
“No, monsieur. Menispe is not liable to such habits.”
No. She merely observes the results of them in her friends, Frost thought, but Aveyrand continued, “She has problems, though, she will not eat enough—sometimes I am very disquieted about her. Ah, but—a la bonheur—there she comes now!” he exclaimed in a tone of triumph as the outer door rattled.
Frost let out a silent, heartfelt oath. In all the world the last person he wanted to see was Menispe Aveyrand; if only he had cut short his visit by five minutes, this encounter could have been avoided.
Now she came strolling in with a faint smile, lifting her chin, staring at him impudently under lowered sandy eyelashes; they might have met five minutes before, instead of seven years. She was wet through from the rain which was beating down in earnest now, but seemed unaware of the fact; she did not remove her outer clothes for she had none to take off, her garments consisting of worn jeans, thong sandals, and a draggled Indian shirt. Her hair was close-cropped, and her face resembled that of some starving waterbird—she was skeleton-thin, seemed smaller, if possible, than in those bygone days when she had come to stay in Wimbledon.
“Menispe!”
He could not be cordial, his tongue refused the hypocritical forms of greeting, all that he could muster, lamely enough, was, “Fancy seeing you again.”
“Monsieur Frost—what a surprise!” Her tone was ironic, she did not seem in the least surprised. She slung a leg over the scrolled end of a dusty green velvet chaise-longue, and sat watching him with a slight smile as he gathered together the handles of the golf bag.
“What, you are taking away our poor Carloman? Kidnapping him? Shall we never see him again?”
“It is very kind of Monsieur Frost to interest himself in our affairs,” her father said repressively. “Considering—”
“Considering?” Menispe lit a thin brown cigarette and blew a smoke-ring. “Considering that his wife and daughter are dead? Monsieur Frost probably has time on his hands.”
“Menispe! Monsieur Frost kindly undertakes the English patent for us.”
“So; soon, then, we shall be rich?”
“I hope so,” Frost said coldly. “Of course you can never tell whether these things will get taken up by manufacturers.”
Now he was overcome by weary distaste for the whole project. Why should he take any pains to enrich this hateful pair? In any case, Aveyrand looked to be at death’s door, would probably go off within the next year or so, while his daughter seemed like a cadaver as it was. And then—to remember Louise. With all her happy intelligence, her bright promise cut short—
“I will write to you from London as soon as I have any news,” Frost said hastily to the Professor, and manoeuvred himself and his burden awkwardly out of the door.
“Do not let Carloman get rusty!” Menispe called after him.
Going down in the lift—he had to hold Carloman vertically in order to fit him in—Frost was reminded again of Louise by the question of whether he would be able to find a taxi.
Back at his cottage in Essex—for he had left Wimbledon after the death of Louise and his wife’s subsequent suicide—he did not immediately unpack the bag containing Aveyrand’s model. There was plenty to do after a three-day absence—the house needed cleaning, the lawn had grown shaggy. And on the following morning at the Patent Office, he found his desk piled high with accumulated work which would require several days to clear.
Nevertheless, it was not the outcome of will, of premeditated plan, his slowness to take action on Aveyrand’s behalf. He had sincerely meant to respond to the old man’s appeal for help. When he decided to go to Paris, his intentions had been disinterested and benevolent; he felt it was not his business to make judgments or withhold professional advice when it was requested.
But now . . . All he could feel was a profound lethargy and reluctance. No doubt the profits from the manufacture and marketing of Carloman’s issue would in time earn the old man—and Menispe—a considerable amount of money. What would they do with it? That was no affair of Frost’s.
He asked himself once or twice why he did not simply turn the professor’s application over to a colleague to deal with—that would be the rational solution to his problem. But still, day after day, he let the papers lie on his desk, and for some weeks Carloman remained zipped into the golf bag under the copies of France Soir.
Nearly four months after his trip to Paris, Frost received an Eiffel Tower card addressed to him in a familiar looped untidy black handwriting.
“My father has asked me to inquire if there is any news of his patent,” wrote Menispe—no “cher Oncle Frank” this time. “He grows discouraged at your long silence and would be pleased to receive a letter from you.”
Prompted by this, guilty and resentful, Frost unpacked the model and set it up. Winter had come with promise of snow, and several lights were burning in his cottage. Following the professor’s instructions, Frost re-recorded the tape, slotted it back into the visor, and then, clearing his throat, feeling somewhat foolish, he ordered the model:
“Carloman, change the lights.”
Obediently the model began moving about Frost’s living room, switching on any lights that were off, and turning off those that were already on; evidently this was its all-purpose programme if not provided with more specific instructions. Its movements were slow, fumbling and hesitant, as it
worked over this new course, but thorough. When the lights were all changed, it returned to the spot where it had first stood, and took up its position there, motionless, waiting.
“All right, Frankenstein, that’s enough,” muttered Frost, with a slight shiver—there was something disagreeably like Aveyrand himself about the model’s uncertain, cautious movements—and he hastily clicked off the master switch on the breastplate.
“I’ll put the application in today,” he resolved.
That day was unusually harassed, though; and on the following morning he received a long letter from a friend in Australia, a distant cousin of his wife, who by some mischance had never been informed of her death and proposed visiting England next month; that necessitated a long letter going through, yet again, the whole miserable story of how, following the death of Louise from an overdose, Mary had sunk into such a deep depression that one night when Frost was kept late at the office by a rush of work she had decided to end it all . . .
By the time he had finished his letter, Frost was feeling so bitterly hostile towards the Aveyrand family that he deliberately decided to put aside the professor’s application for another month. He could not, he simply could not take any action about it just at present. Why should he be the one to act for them? Let them wait a little longer.
And a month later his eye was caught by a small paragraph in the Times as he travelled home one evening: “French Academician dies. Charles-Edouard Aveyrand, for many years Professor in Astrophysics at the Paris Faculté des Sciences . . . author of La Revolution Astrophysique, Opuscules Astronomiques, Employant Venus et Saturne, etc., etc. . . . holder of the following academic honours and decorations . . . was found dead in his Paris apartment yesterday. He lived alone, having been predeceased by his daughter, who had died in hospital of anorexia nervosa two weeks before. By a sad piece of irony, the professor, too, it is thought, died of undernourishment and hypothermia. Neighbours were alerted to his fate because the lights in his apartment remained on day and night for a week.”