Frankenstein Unbound

by Aldiss, Brian

  In that world, Victor had not reached the point of emerging from possibility to probability. But I had come to an 1816 (and there might be countless other 1816s of which I knew nothing) in which he shared—and his monster shared—an equal reality with Mary and Byron and the rest.

  Such thought opened dizzy vistas of complexity. Possibility and time levels seemed as fluid as the clouds which meet and merge eternally in northern skies, forever changing shape and altitude. Yet even the clouds are subject to immutable laws. In the flux of time, there would always be immutable laws. Would character be a constant? I had regarded character as something so evanescent, so malleable; not that I saw a fatalism there, in Mary’s melancholy, in Victor’s anxious scientific drive, in my own curiosity. These were permanent factors, though they might be reinforced by accidental events, the drowning of Shelley, let us say, or a basic lack of sympathy in Elizabeth.

  Somewhere there might be a 2020 in which I existed merely as a character in a novel about Frankenstein and Mary.

  I had altered no future, no past, I had merely diffused myself over a number of cloud-patch times.

  There was no future, no past. Only the cloud-sky of infinite present states.

  Man was prevented from realizing this truth by the limitations of his consciousness. Consciousness had never evolved as an instrument designed to discover truth; it was a tool to hunt down a mate, the next meal.

  If I came anywhere near to the truth now, it was only because my consciousness was slipping towards the extreme brink of disintegration.

  All this reasoning—if it was that—might in itself be illusion, product of stress, or product merely of the timeslips. Space/time went on in my skull, just as in the rest of the universe!

  I fell into a swooning sleep, drooped over the steering wheel.

  When I woke, Victor was still with me, dying all over again, my hand reaching out as if to save him, as if in ridiculous apology.

  Murder! I dared not think of God.

  Well, I will try to say no more of this.

  Frankenstein had gone. One thing remained for me. I had now to take on his role of monster-killer. Imperfectly though I recalled Mary’s novel, I knew that her Frankenstein had embarked on a pursuit of his creature which had taken them both into those gloomy and icebound regions which held so strong a lure for the Romantic imagination.

  For two days I drove along the fringes of the frigid lands which followed roughly the shores of the old lake, trying to pick up a trace of the two monsters. Wild and awful though I was, no human being questioned my appearance now. Their lives had been utterly disrupted. Their crops were ruined, their livelihood on the lake had vanished, and the winter promised starvation for all of them.

  Extreme though the times were, the two monsters would have remained sufficiently remarkable, prodigies in a time of prodigies.

  Towards sunset on the second day, I happened on a hamlet where a small child had been attacked by wolves in her father’s back garden only the evening before.

  There was a hostelry called the Silver Stag at which I made my inquiries. The owner said that his stable had been broken into the previous night, after he had gone to bed. He heard his dogs howling in the yard, had lit a lantern and gone down to see what was happening. An enormous man—a foreigner, he suspected—had come rushing from the stable, dragging the two best horses with him. After him came another great foreigner, pulling the donkey. He had tried to intervene and had been swept out of the way. He called to his neighbors for help. By the time they arrived, the two enormous thieves had gone, riding down the road with the innkeeper’s best dog, a German shepherd, still snapping at their heels. He took me and showed me how brutally the lock on the stable had been broken, and the adjacent timber shattered. I had seen such damage, such superfluous strength, before.

  Close to starvation though the hamlet was, the lure of profit was still working. I paid dearly for some dried wurst and drove away in the direction the innkeeper indicated.

  Once into the frigid lands, I paused to sleep and bring this account up to date. On the morrow, I would begin the pursuit.

  XXV

  * * *

  Even before the time-broken landscape met my gaze next morning, Victor Frankenstein was there before my eyes as usual, falling as usual behind the old desk, unable as usual to speak Elizabeth’s name for blood.

  I climbed out of the car, performed my natural functions, rinsed my face in an icy stream. Nothing could refresh my soul; I was a Jonas Chuzzlewit, a Raskolnikov. I had lied, cheated, committed adultery, looted, thieved, and ultimately murdered; henceforth my only fit company was the two brutes who journeyed somewhere ahead of me, my only fit surroundings the frigid hinterlands of hell which I now entered. I had taken over Victor’s role. Henceforth, there was only the hunt to the death.

  Of the first part of that journey, I shall tell briefly.

  The country over which I traveled reminded me of the tundra I had seen in parts of Alaska and the Canadian Northwest. It was all but featureless, apart from an occasional lonely pine or birch tree. The surface consisted of uneven tussocks of rough grass and little else. The ground was generally marshy, with frequent pools lying amid the grass, from which I guessed that permafrost had formed underground, preventing the water from draining away.

  Nor was the sun of sufficient power to draw up the surface moisture. I was in a land where sunshine had little effect.

  It would be hard to say that there were tracks in this wilderness. Yet there were indications that men or animals traveled here, and an occasional wooden post had been raised, presumably as a marker. Now and again, a trail emerged.

  Although my progress was slow, I knew that the quarry I sought could scarcely move at a faster rate. The going was quite as bad for horses as for automobiles.

  Day followed day. Nothing can be said of them.

  Then came the day when the nature of the land altered slightly. As I moved slowly forward, I saw the change ahead. It was marked by the land becoming rougher, the clumps of grass coarser and more upstanding, and the dark dull pools more frequent. More bushes stood out.

  It was not impossible that another timeslip had been at work here, amalgamating two similar territories which had formerly lain many thousands of miles and maybe many thousands of centuries apart.

  A slight incline marked the division between the territories. Here I found a distinct trail, branching two ways. I drove to the top of the incline, stopped, and climbed out to look about me, uncertain whether to take the left track or the right, although imbued with such fatalism that I almost believed I should strike the correct one whatever I did. But something had not been content to leave matters so to chance.

  On the left-hand track lay the body of an animal. I went across to it and saw it was the carcass of a fine German sheepdog. Its skull had been shattered by a blow. Its muzzle pointed along the trail.

  Day followed day as I continued the journey. They were without distinction or differentiation. Not only was the weather icily still; the days themselves were without sunset, for the sun no longer sank below the land. Along the northern horizon, night traveled, its stain remaining there even at noon; but so high was the latitude—or so I had to presume—that the solar orb was never extinguished. Nor did it ever manage to rise far towards the zenith. Instead, it undulated round the dismal horizon, never more than a few degrees above its rim. I was in a land where the dews and mists of protracted dawn merged indistinguishably with the damps and veiled splendors of a long-drawn-out sunset.

  A mournful beauty infiltrated this period, in which the only persistent qualities were the most amorphous. Banks of mist, towers of cloud, layers of silvery fog, nondescript pools which reflected the curtained sky—these were the durable features of that place. Amid such a phantasmal landscape, small wonder if I saw phantoms: Victor forever clutching at his coat and falling behind the desk with a last dull glance towards me, the monster steaming as it leapt forward. But of living things there was none.
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br />   I am almost reluctant to say that change came. Yet it is ultimately the one permanent thing until the death of the universe.

  That ineluctable change wrote itself on the envelope of color and moisture around me so gradually, so tentatively, that it was many hours before I came to accept that there were objects ahead of me, materializing in the veils of mist.

  At first they seemed to be merely the tops of tall conifers.

  Then I believed that they were masts of ancient sailing ships, lying becalmed on an ocean somewhere within reach.

  Then I saw that they were spires of old churches, old cathedrals, old towns, ancient cities.

  It was of more immediate concern that I now came on a definite track. Although it was less than a sandy lane, frequently punctuated by pools of water, it gave the landscape purpose, and nothing interested me but purpose; I had become machinelike.

  The track—soon it was marked enough to warrant being called a road—ran straight towards the shrouded horizon without touching on any of the old towns. Never did I see the base of one of those towns or cathedrals. Always, their spires floated on the beds of mist which blanketed the land. I recalled the paintings of a German Romantic artist, Caspar David Friedrich, with his embodiments of all that was gloomy and meager about Nature in the north. I could imagine myself in the still world of his art.

  The towns I passed distantly held no attraction for me; their crumbling roofs, their Gothic spires, no promise. Other matters possessed me.

  Nevertheless, fatigue still played a role in my world. It came to me that my hands were numb from clutching the steering wheel, that my body had stiffened almost immovably, and that I no longer recollected who I was or had been. I was simply a traveling item, wheeled and inexhaustibly propelled. I had not slept for many days—certainly a week, possibly longer.

  I turned down a side track, striking at random for one of the towns.

  Through the mists was the apparition of an ecclesiastical ruin, its gaunt buttresses palely washed in.

  I pursued it, and came at last to the moldering remains of a large abbey. Many stones and arches stood yet, while the entire west wall—its fine triple window a gaping hole—was almost intact, although crowned in ivy and similar parasitic vegetation.

  On leaving the car, I saw an old fallen signpost, its arms pointing to places called Griefswald and Peenemünde. Then I realized it was one of a vast pile of decaying signs, all indicating various towns, and left here to rot indifferently. Perhaps the very destinations were no more.

  In the shell of the once-noble building a much humbler dwelling stood, looking for protection and support from the great wall which towered above it. I went towards it through thistle patches with something like an echo of hope stirring in me, thinking I saw a light burn dimly in one window; it was only the eternal illusory sunset, reflected by glass. I found that the dwelling was deserted, itself a ruin, its walls crumbling, its thatch tumbling down about its upper windows. It seemed I was no longer intended for human company.

  The house was tumbledown, and had been occupied by transients before. I did not care. Stiff and weary as I was, I lowered myself down on a couch to sleep, unmindful of how many mortals had done the same before me.

  XXVI

  * * *

  During that night without darkness, a wind sprang up, causing windows, shutters, and doors to creak. The noises may have accounted for the nature of the visions which besieged me, crowding into a brain long deprived of its dreaming times.

  Dear Mary was with me again. We were never able even to touch, but at least she was with me. Sometimes she was young and beautiful, and walked in the States with me, leading a sheltered life and meeting few people. Or she was a best-selling novelist, going everywhere, speaking to large gatherings, visiting the premieres of the films made from her novels. Sometimes she was with Shelley.

  Sometimes she and I were utterly taken up with a search for Shelley. He was missing, and we moved through the countryside seeking him. Her little face, looking upwards at mine, was pathetic—and not a face at all, I realized, but merely a limp hand, lying in snow. We were hastening along a boulder-strewn shore, searching for Shelley’s boat. We were in the boat, staring down into limpid water. We were in the water, venturing into submarine caves. We were in a cavern, watching leaves blow before us. “Those are the leaves of the Sybil,” said Mary. Once she was with her mother, a radiantly beautiful woman who smiled mysteriously as she climbed into a railway carriage.

  I was with Shelley and Mary in the subordinate role of gardener. They were old now, although I had not aged. Mary was small and frail; she wore a bonnet. Shelley was bent but still amazingly quick in his movements. He had a long beard. He was a cabinet minister. He was my father. He was inventing a plant that would produce sirloin steak. He spoke with the sound of mandolins. He picked Mary up and tucked her into his pocket. He announced publicly that he was going to take over Greece in a week’s time. He sat on a mossy stone and wept, refusing to be comforted. I offered him a bowl of something, but a raven ate it, whatever it was. He flew a kite and climbed swiftly up its string.

  Byron was there. He had grown fat and wore a cocked hat. “Nothing is against Nature,” he told me, laughing, by way of explanation.

  In my dream, I was glad to see Byron. I was asking him to be reasonable about some matter. He was busy being reasonable about something else entirely.

  He opened a green door, and in came Mary and Shelley, eating oranges in rather a disgusting way. Shelley showed me a photograph of himself in which he looked skinny. Mary was old again. She introduced me to a young poet friend whose name was Thomas Hardy. He was doing something with some bricks, and told me he had admired the works of Darwin ever since he was a child. I asked him if he did not mean to name another poet. He smiled and said that Mary would understand better because she had been officially presented with—I forget what, something absurd, the Pomeranian flag...

  So far, the dreams were flashes of trivial nonsense. I need not recall more. Then they took on a more somber tone. An old friend escorted me to an enormous pile of rubbish. A woman was sitting in the sunset, cradling a baby. She was enormous. Her clothes appeared to be smoking. She wore a black hat.

  The child kept up a squealing cry which its mother seemed not to notice. My friend was explaining that the cry was a certain voice-print of brain damage in the infant. He gave an exact name to the kind of damage, which I failed to hear. I was actively searching through the rubbish.

  I found there were many infants in the great heap, all with wakeful eyes. Many had huge malignant pouchy foreheads coming almost to their noses. Maybe they were fetuses; in any case, I appeared to anticipate finding them there.

  They were crying. So was Mina. She had changed. Something had wounded her. I thought her hair was on fire. A pig ran past, although we were in a crowded room. A man she knew was pulling a piano apart.

  The noise of crying mingled with the sound of wind.

  When I roused at last, it was some relief to find myself in that dismal house in the ruins and to some extent at least the master of my waking fate; although, as the nonsense in my brain sank back into its container out stalked the image of Victor again, his face like a medallion, staggering, falling.

  Or sometimes not falling. He was coming back to life. It might be a sign that I was recovering from the first guilt of murder. He no longer invariably collapsed when I shot him.

  Choked and disgusted, I went back to the car and the endless pursuit.

  The wind had blown the mists away. I saw herds of wild ponies on either side. The most striking feature of the landscape newly revealed was a line of mountains, not too far distant. Their peaks strutted above the forsaken cities, capped with snow and slow smoldering cloud. And my road led that way.

  Since the way was clear, I accelerated, driving as fast as possible all that day, and the next, and the one after that. As I drew nearer the mountains, and they rose in my vision, the sun began setting regularly behind them;
or rather, it would give a more accurate picture to say that, during the hours between sunset and sunrise, the mountains cast a great ragged shadow which swung round and outwards from their base, further and further, until it engulfed my tiny speeding vehicle.

  Once I turned to look back in the direction I had come. The cities were still just visible. They all huddled together at one point on the plain—or so it appeared. They remained in sunlight.

  At last the road began to climb. No longer did it run straight forward. It turned and coiled in order to find its way among the foothills.

  There came a point when the plain had fallen some thousands of feet below and behind me. Here was a plateau and again a division of the road. A winding path lay to the left, a straight one—looking as if it might easily run downhill—leading to the right. By the left fork lay a length of muddy and blood-stained bandage. I turned that way and found myself, a day or two later, driving in valleys among snow-capped peaks.

  The sense of repetition that then afflicted me will be familiar to anyone who has driven in mountainous country. The road winds and winds to reach one end of a giant recession into the mountains; then it winds in an opposite direction to reach a point but a short distance from the first as the crow flies. Then the same procedure must be repeated at the next re-entrance... Now this process had to be repeated a hundred times, two hundred, three...

  Occasionally, my tired brain assured me it saw Victor running screaming before the vehicle, a hole in his lungs and blood at his throat.

  I reached the snowline. Nothing grew here, nothing lived.

  Still I drove, thinking my quarry must be near. Surely they could not have rivaled my swiftness over the plain!

  I climbed towards a great pass.

  Beyond were glaciers, snow, huge boulders, a broken line of further peaks. Despite the heating in the Felder, my bones were aware of an intense cold outside.