Frankenstein Unbound

by Aldiss, Brian

  “I can see a hut over there, Grampy,” Tony said, pointing.

  It was a poor affair, built of wood. It had wooden slats 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 him 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 defense program at 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 nonfunctioning, 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 the 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 manage it, 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

  IV

  * * *

  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

  V

  * * *

  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?”

  “Well, 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—woods, 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 figured 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 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 defense.”

  PART TWO

  The Tape Journal of

  Joseph Bodenland

  * * *

  I

  * * *

  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 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 signaled 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 just was 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 Bonn had been well spent. I learned to speak German fluently, and had passed as much leave as I could traveling about Europe. Switzerland had become my favorite 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 Sécheron 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 sizable 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 German 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 colored 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.

  “Herr 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-traveler 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. At one of the occupied tables were a man and woman and child, attacking great slabs of meat. At the other occupied table sat a lean-visaged but elegant man in dark clothes, reading a paper by candlelight 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 ref
use. 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 Sécheron 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 town 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.