Frankenstein Unbound

by Aldiss, Brian

  Leaving by a window on the stairs, I was able to avoid the mud that carpeted the ground floor.

  At the front gate, I paused. The sound of a horse in harness, of its hoof idly striking a stone! Peering between the uprights of the gate, I saw that the horse stood before Frankenstein’s gate harnessed to a phaeton—or so I believe that type of carriage was called; it was open and had four wheels. It may have been the horse that roused me from my sleep.

  I got into the street and stood in the shade, waiting to see what happened. In a moment, two figures appeared dimly by the side of the house. A muttered word or two. One disappeared back into the darkness. The other stepped boldly forward, came through the side gate, and climbed into the phaeton. Dark though it was, I had no doubt that it was Victor Frankenstein; the darkness surrounding his present movements was so characteristic of him.

  Directly he was in, he jerked impatiently at the reins, called to the horse, and they were off! I ran across the road and jumped up, clinging to the side of the phaeton. He reached over for a whip in its cup.

  “Frankenstein! It is I, Bodenland! You remember me? I must speak to you!”

  “You, damn you! I thought it was—well, no matter? What the devil do you want at this hour of night?”

  “I mean you no harm. I have to speak to you.” I climbed in beside him. In a fury, he lashed the horse on.

  “This is no hour for conversation. I do not wish to be seen here, do you understand me? I will set you down at the West Gate.”

  “You never wish to be seen—that’s part of your guilt! Because of your elusiveness, I was charged with your murder. Did you know that? They shut me in your filthy prison! Did you know that? Did you make any attempt to get me free?”

  I had intended to adopt a more conciliatory approach, but his whole manner made me angry.

  “I have my own affairs, Bodenland. Yours mean nothing to me. People murder and get murdered—so they have done since the world began. It’s one of the things that must be altered. But I’m too busy to concern myself with your affairs.”

  “My affairs are yours, Victor. You will have to accept me. I know—I know about the monster that haunts your life!”

  He had been driving tremendously. Now he slackened pace and turned the pallid oval of his face towards me.

  “So you hinted when last we met! Don’t think I didn’t hope that you might be buried in the prison forever, or hanged for the murder of which you were accused. I have miseries enough... My life is doomed. I’ve worked only for the common good, humbly trying to advance knowledge...”

  As in our previous meeting, he had switched rapidly from defiance to a defensive self-pity. We had reached the city gate now. I saw the difference the flood had made. The great doors had been wrenched off their hinges, and anyone could come and go at all hours. We bowled through them, and out into open country. Frankenstein had made no effort to set me down. So I had an insight into his feelings. He desperately needed to talk to me, to have me as a confessor if not to gain my active help, but could not see the way to come to terms with me; his need to accept was in conflict with his wish to reject. Recalling what I had glimpsed of his relationships with both Henry Clerval and Elizabeth, it occurred to me that this conflict probably characterized all his friendships. The reflection spurred me to take a less overriding line with him.

  “Your good intentions do you credit, Victor—and yet you are always in flight!” There were crates with us in the carriage; he was escaping from home again.

  “I’m in flight against the evil of the world. I cannot take you where I am going. I must put you down.”

  “Please allow me to come. I shall not be shocked, because I already know what you are up to. Can’t you see that I would be better off with you than going to Elizabeth and telling her the truth?”

  “You’re no more than a blackmailer!”

  “My role is not a glamorous one. I am forced into it, as you are forced into yours.”

  To that he said nothing. It began to snow lightly again, and we had no protection from it. The horse took a side track which led uphill. It began to labor, so that Victor spoke encouragingly to it. Together, horse and driver conspired to surmount the hill. All I could do was stay silent.

  Finally, we bumped to the top. As we pulled through a grove of bedraggled trees, the horse shied violently and stood up on its hind legs, neighing, so that we were tipped backwards.

  “Curse you!” cried Frankenstein, striking out with the whip to one side. Then he applied the lash to the horse’s flank, and we were off at speed. “Did you see it? Where I am, it is! It haunts me!”

  “I saw nothing!”

  “Inhuman and abhorrent thing!— It was steaming! Even this cold weather cannot quell it. It thrives on anything that man detests.”

  Our present track led to a tower. It loomed dimly in the night and snow. Frankenstein jumped down and led the horse, escorting him through the ruins of outer walls until the tower stood above us. I could make out that it was cylindrical. Behind it, a square building had been added, an ugly piece of architecture with only one window, slitted and barred, set by enormous double doors. On these doors, Frankenstein hammered impatiently, and the echo went rolling away through the night. I found myself looking about for steaming strangers.

  The doors opened and a man appeared with a bull’s-eye lantern.

  We made haste inside, horse, carriage, and all. The man closed and barred and bolted the doors behind us.

  “Give me a hand with these crates, Yet,” Frankenstein ordered.

  The man called Yet was large and solid, built with an ugly, muscular body. His skull, which protruded above a filthy cravat, was so small that the features of his face seemed to more than cover it; he was bald, which added to the grotesque effect. His lips were so thick that they met the end of his nose and so wide that they became lost in his side whiskers. He said nothing, simply rolling his eyes and dragging Frankenstein’s crates from the phaeton. Then he went to unharness the horse.

  “You can do that later. Bring the crates up at once, will you?”

  Frankenstein went ahead and I followed. Then came Yet, with a case balanced on one shoulder. Without needing to be told, I knew I had reached Frankenstein’s secret laboratory!

  XVII

  * * *

  We climbed the tower stairs. They were well-lit. The few windows we passed were blocked up, so as to prevent light from escaping. The first floor was full of machines, most noticeably a steam engine with rocking beam. This powered a number of small engines with gleaming copper coils. It was only later, when I had the chance of a closer look, that I realized these smaller machines were generating electricity for the tower. Steam-driven pistons turned horseshoe magnets which rotated inside the coils, to generate alternating current. Although my history was vague on the point, I believed that Victor was—in this development as elsewhere—some decades ahead of his time.

  The floor above contained Victor’s living quarters. Here he bid me stay, saying that there was only the laboratory overhead, and that he did not wish me to enter there. While he went ahead to direct Yet, I looked about me.

  His quarters were unremarkable. I noted a few handsome items of furniture—a desk and a carved fourposter among a welter of packing cases and paper. To one side, a kitchen had been improvised, and was partly shielded from the rest of the room with an embroidered curtain, perhaps as a gesture towards the more gentlemanly side of Victor’s life. I took the chance to examine one of the electric lights. It was an arc lamp with carbon electrodes parallel and vertical, the alternating current ensuring, of course, that the electrodes would wear down equally. The lamp was enclosed in a frosted glass globe to diffuse the light.

  Victor’s books attracted my attention. There were old vellum-bound folios of Serapion, Cornelius Agrippa and Paracelsus and many alchemical works. They were by far outnumbered by recent volumes on chemistry, electricity, galvanism, and natural philosophy. Among Continental names I did not know, such as Waldm
an and Krempe, I was interested to see British ones, including those of Joseph Priestley, represented by his History of Electricity of 1767; and Erasmus Darwin, by The Botanic Garden, Phytologia, and The Temple of Nature. Many books lay open, carelessly scattered about, so that I could see how Frankenstein had scribbled notes in their margins.

  I had picked up a box of letters and was glancing at them when Frankenstein returned from above and caught me. I said, “You have a considerable library here.”

  “My important possessions have been removed to this tower. It is the one place where I can remain private and uninterrupted. You are holding letters from the great Henry Cavendish. Unfortunately, he is dead now, but his knowledge of electricity was great. I wish I had his brain. Why he never troubled to publish his knowledge, I do not know, except that he was an aristocrat, and so perhaps considered it beneath him to publish. We corresponded, and he taught me almost all I know about the conductivity of electricity, and its effect on those bodies through which it passes. Cavendish was far ahead of his time.”

  I uttered some platitude or other. “You seem to be ahead of your time, too.”

  He dismissed the remark. “I still correspond with Michael Faraday. Do you know that name? He visited me here in Geneva in 1814, with Lord and Lady Davy. Lord Humphry Davy was full of remarkable knowledge. For instance, he taught me how to use nitrous oxide for its effect in combating physical pain. I do so. What other man throughout Europe does the same? Even more vital to the quest I am pursuing—”

  He drew himself up. “I am riding my hobby horse. Mr. Bodenland, what are we to do with you? Let me make it plain I do not want you or need you here. If you have information to sell, be so good as to state your price, that I may be left in privacy. My work must go ahead.”

  “No, that is what must not happen! I am here to warn you that your work must stop. I have certain knowledge that it will lead only to further grief. It has already led to grief, but that is just a beginning.”

  His face was pale, his hands were clenched, in the bitter light from the arcs.

  “Who are you to act as my conscience? What is this knowledge of the future you bear?”

  “Do not think of me as your adversary—he already exists on Earth. I wish merely to aid you, and ask your aid. Since I was imprisoned because of you, it is only in common human benevolence that you should help me now. Tell me first, what happened to the world when I was in prison. Tell me what the date is, and tell me what the new lands are where once Lac Léman was.”

  “You don’t even know that much?” His manner relaxed, as if he felt he could cope with ignorance, if not defiance. “This is July still, though you would not judge as much, The temperature dropped as soon as the frigid lands appeared. They surround most of the environs of Geneva. As to what they are, the academics are still arguing about that. They have posted off to Baron Cuvier and Goethe and Dr. Buckland and I know not whom else, but to date have received no answer. Indeed, there is a growing suspicion that Paris and Weimar, and a good many other cities, have ceased to exist. The frigid lands, to my way of thinking, provide good support of the catastrophe theory of Earth’s evolution. Despite Erasmus Darwin—”

  “This is July of 1816?”

  “Indeed.”

  “And if the lake has gone, what of the lake shores eastward? I mean in particular the Villa Diodati, where the poet Milton once stayed? Has it been swallowed by the frigid lands?”

  “How should I know? It is of no interest to me. Your questions—”

  “Wait! You know of Lord Byron, of course. Do you know of another poet called Percy Shelley?”

  “Of course! A poet of science like Marcus Aurelius, a follower of Darwin, and a better writer than that verse-adventurer, Byron. Let me show you how well I know my Shelley!” And he began to quote, dramatically gesturing in the manner of the time.

  “‘Among the ruined temples there,

  Stupendous columns, and wild images

  Of more than man, where marble daemons watch

  The Zodiac’s brazen mystery, and dead men

  Hang their mute thoughts on the mute walls around,

  He lingered, pouring on memorials

  Of the world’s youth—’

  “Gigantic bones, no doubt, of antediluvian animals. How does it go on?...

  “‘And gazed, till meaning on his vacant mind

  Flashed like strong inspiration, and he saw

  The thrilling secrets of the birth of time.’

  “A poetic echo of my own researches! Is that not fine stuff, Bodenland?”

  “I can see why it appeals to you. Victor Frankenstein, Shelley’s future wife, Mary Godwin, will publish a novel about you, using you as a dire example of the way man becomes isolated from Nature when he seeks to control Nature. Be warned—desist from your experiments!”

  He took my arm and said, in friendly terms, “Take care what you say, sir.” Yet was just climbing through the room on the spiral stair, bearing the last of the packing cases up to the laboratory. “There is no need to enlighten my servant as well as me. He will prepare food for us when he comes down, so mind what you say in his presence.”

  “I presume he knows of that—that Doppelgänger of yours outside?”

  “He knows there is a demon in the forest which seeks to destroy me. He knows less of its true nature than you seem to!”

  “Isn’t that terrible shadow over your life enough to make you understand that you should desist from further experiment?”

  “Shelley understood better than you the passionate quest for truth which overrides any other considerations in the heart of those who would open the secrets of Nature, whether scientists or poets. My responsibility must be to that truth, not to society, which is corrupt. Moral considerations are the responsibility of others to pontificate on; I am more concerned with the advancement of knowledge. Did the man who first harnessed the wind in a sail know that his discovery would be perverted into armadas of sailing ships sent out to destroy and conquer? No! How could he foresee that? He had to bestow his new knowledge on mankind; that they might prove unworthy of it is an entirely different question.” Seeing that Yet returned to the room and went behind the curtain to prepare us the meal Frankenstein had promised, he lowered his voice and continued, “I bestow my gift of the secret of life upon mankind. They must make of it what they will. If your argument were to prevail, and to have prevailed, then mankind would still be living in primitive ignorance, habited in the skins of animals, for fear of new things.”

  The argument he used was still being used in the time from which I came, give or take a little rodomontade. I was sick to counter it, since I saw a glimmer of enjoyment in his eye; he had said it all before, and liked saying it.

  “Logic will not sway you, I know. You are in the grip of an obsession. It is useless for me to point out that scientific curiosity by itself is as irresponsible as the curiosity of a child. It amounts to meddling, no more. You have to accept responsibility for the fruits of your actions, in the scientific field as elsewhere. You say you have bestowed your gift of the secret of life on mankind, but in fact you have done nothing of the sort. I happen to know that you have created life through some accident—yes, Victor, an accident, for all your deliberate intent, because understanding of flesh, limb, and organ grafts, of immunology, and a dozen other -ologies, will not come for several generations. Yours is luck, not knowledge. Besides, how have you bestowed this gift? In the most beggarly way possible! By keeping the pride of achievement entirely to yourself and letting only the foul consequences of your activities out on the community! Your younger brother, William, strangled, remember, your excellent servant Justine Moritz wrongly hanged for his death, remember. Are these the gifts you so grandly claim to have bestowed on mankind? If mankind knew to whom it should be grateful, don’t you think they would come storming up the hill and burn down your tower with all its foul secrets?”

  My speech had touched him! I saw in him again that curious crumbling, a moral
crumbling that was evident when he spoke again, almost in a whining tone.

  “Who are you to preach at me? You don’t have my fears, my burdens! Why do you add to my miseries by haunting me and confronting me with my sins?”

  At this juncture, Yet appeared and stood stolidly at Frankenstein’s elbow, bearing a tray. Frankenstein took it automatically and dismissed the man with a curt gesture.

  As he set plates of cold meat, potato, and onion before us, he said, “You don’t know how I am threatened. My creature, my invention, in whom I instilled the gift of life, escaped from my care. In captivity, he would have caused no pain, would have remained ignorant of his lot. In freedom, he managed to hide away in the wilds and educate himself. Education should only be bestowed on the few. Few are they who can manage to live with ideas. My—my monster, if you will, learned to talk and even learned to read. He found a leathern portmanteau containing books. Was that my fault?”

  He had recovered his composure, and faced up to me with a chill warmth.

  “So it befell that he read Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther and discovered the nature of love. He read Plutarch’s Lives, and discovered the nature of human struggle. And, most unfortunately, he read Milton’s great poem, Paradise Lost, from which he discovered religion. You can imagine how damaging such great books were, casting their spells on a completely untutored mind!”

  “Untutored! How can you claim that? Isn’t your creature’s brain stolen from a corpse that once had life and thought?”

  “Pah, nothing’s left from the previous existence—only the mere lees and dregs of thought, dreams of past time that the creature does not heed, or not half as much as the figments he has derived from Milton! He now has himself cast in the role of Satan, and I in the role of God Almighty. And he demands that I create for him a mate, a gigantic Eve to give him solace.”

  “You must not do it!”