Frankenstein Unbound

by Aldiss, Brian

  The walls of the pass were high eroded cliffs. The road ran under one cliff. To the other side was the first fan-shaped outcrop of a glacier. The glacier became larger as I drove along by its side, so that the road narrowed, trapped between cliff and glacier. Soon it was squeezed almost to nothing, so that I was forced to stop. There was no way to go further. My path was barred by the debris from the glacier.

  Although I knew I had to get up the pass, there was nothing for it but to back away. I returned to the point where a moraine of stones and boulders marked the forward edge of the glacier.

  At one spot, a way had been cleared among the stones. Something was lying there. Despite the cold, I climbed out to look. The bloodied leg of a horse, apparently wrenched from its socket, lay with its hoof pointing up into the heart of the glacier.

  There was no choice for me but to accept this horrid invitation. I drove the vehicle forward on to the ice.

  Traveling with caution, I soon discovered that the surface of ice provided no bad road. It was almost free of debris. Possibly it would be more correct to speak of my being on an ice stream rather than a glacier proper; but I am no expert in such matters. All I can say is that it looked increasingly as if I were in some part of Greenland.

  The surface had a ripple pattern, rather like barred sand on a shore where the tide had gone out, which gave the tires something to grip.

  I had increased speed when a crevasse appeared ahead. Braking immediately, I slowed the engine and threw it into reverse. But the automobile went into a skid, and its front wheels slipped over into the gulf.

  I had to climb out. The crevasse was not deep, and not a meter wide. Yet I was securely trapped. I could fit an attachment to the vehicle’s nuclear plant which would melt the ice. Or I could try to jack up the front axle. But neither expedient held any guarantee that the Felder would be freed.

  Straightening, I looked about helplessly. What a wilderness of rock and ice! Far, far behind and below me, I could catch a glimpse of the plain between two crags. It was marked by little more than a blue-green line. How greatly I had ventured beyond all human contact!

  Staring up the ice, in the direction I was planning to go, I saw a familiar figure. Pallid face, black coat, hand at throat as he moved dying over the ice. Victor, eternally returning.

  He was calling to me, voice echoing hollowly over the unsympathetic surfaces about us.

  I hid my eyes in the palms of my hands, but the voice still called. I looked again.

  Two figures were up there, monstrous in outline, partly canceled by the black-lit clouds that came boiling up from behind them and the peaks in the background. They were waving their clumsy arms above their heads to attract my attention. I could make out that they had with them a string of horses, some with packs on their backs. These were presumably a few of the wild horses I had observed on the plain.

  For a moment, I was too much taken aback by their waving to make any gesture back to them. Yet I was glad to see them there. They spoke my language. They were living things, or replicas thereof. Belatedly, it occurred to me that my mission was to kill them; by then, I had acknowledged their presence by waving.

  Climbing back into the front seat, I raised the blister in the roof and brought up the muzzle of the swivel gun. If I killed them now, I could take over their horses and make my way back to human society. But with the auto resting on the front axle the firing angle was bad. I squinted at them through the telescopic sights and already they were half lost among shattered stones. Evidently satisfied that they had attracted my attention, they were moving on. As much for my own satisfaction as their dismay, I sent half-a-dozen rounds whining over their heads.

  They disappeared. Only a pair of black horses remained to be seen. Laying my cheek against the gun, I stared up there where the world seemed to end, too blank of mind to wonder about my predicament. Only gradually did it dawn on me that, though the two immense figures had gone with their train, the two horses remained tethered where they were. My quarry had left me a means of following them, of continuing the chase.

  XXVII

  * * *

  I attempted to hitch the two horses to the front axle and pull the vehicle out of the crevasse; but it moved only to fall back again. So I had to abandon it.

  All I took from it were the remains of my food and water, this tape-memory, my sleeping bag, a stove from the camp locker (last used on a picnic with Poll and Tony many worlds ago), and the swivel gun, which I unbolted from its frame. With the swivel gun went several magazines of ammunition.

  This equipment I loaded onto the smaller of the two horses. I dressed myself in as many clothes as I could, and mounted the other horse. We began to pick our way slowly up the glacier, which now became littered with detritus. The Felder was lost behind us; I left it with less regret than I had parted from my watch.

  Night fell. Cold streams of air, evenly flowing, breathed on us. Overhead were stars; neither moon was in sight. I looked upwards to identify familiar constellations. Never had so many stars blazed forth—never so unrecognizably. I had been an amateur astronomer; the night sky was no stranger to me; yet I was puzzled. There seemed to be a pole star where it should be, and the constellation of Ursa Major, but with additional stars scattered across it. Yet was not that also Ursa Major and the stars over there, lower down the sky and some degrees away, half concealed by a shoulder of mountain? We picked our way forward so that more stars came into view...

  Yes, I traveled in a dual universe. The rupture of space/time was spreading in a chain reaction. Who knew what galaxies might exist tomorrow night?

  It was absurd to imagine that this damage would be allowed to go on. Already, back in the time from which I came, scientists would be working on the problem, producing some daring solution to it which would successfully put a patch on the damage done. As I intended to put a patch on the damage Victor Frankenstein had done.

  Then I reflected that these thoughts could hardly be mine. At first, the jettisoning of my vehicle, like the earlier selling of my watch, had been meaningful to me. Now I was thinking like Victor himself. Tiredness was again invading my mind, conjuring up some of the shadows I had had to battle with back in the ruined cottage.

  Rather than rest, I climbed off my horse and led the two beasts forward, determined to stay on my feet for the rest of the night.

  But the night seemed to go on forever. Possibly winter had now come, and the sun had slipped below the horizon. It was still dark—or at least not light—when finally I reached the end of my climb and the glacier became level.

  Sleep and its delusions had infiltrated my mind. Now I was completely awake again.

  A great plateau stretched before me, its limits hidden. It was not entirely flat, exhibiting here and there broad depressions or swells, rather like a calm but frozen sea. Only later did I realize that it was almost that. The plateau was formed of ice, a tremendous weight of ice which completely covered the great mountains below, although a few peaks broke the surface here and there in the form of nunataks. Over this great icefield, the nunataks formed the only landmarks, with one staggering exception.

  Far away across the icefield was a mighty building.

  I halted the animals.

  From where I stood, it was hard to grasp the size of that distant structure. It appeared to be round and to consist of little more than an immense outer wall. It was certainly inhabited. From within the walls came a glow of light—almost an atmosphere of light, reddish in color, and punctuated by intenser beams of brightness moving within the central cloud.

  Elsewhere, dull depression reigned. Yet this was no bastion of light. For all its brightness, it too—I attempt no paradox—radiated drabness.

  My speculation was that this was the last refuge of humanity. The place was so remote that I could only believe the timeslips to have delivered me at a point many centuries—maybe many thousands or even millions of centuries—into futurity. So that I might be witnessing the last outpost of mankind after the s
un had died, when the universe itself was far gone towards the equipoise of its death. I looked at my two mounts, their eyes reflecting the distant glow. They waited indifferently. At least I could rejoin my own kind, however unpropitious the circumstances.

  As I moved forward at a better pace, it occurred to me to wonder why the enemy should have led me here to a refuge, rather than onward to destruction. Could it be that they also were intending to enter this place? Or were they waiting somewhere to tear me apart before I reached shelter?

  Clouds were boiling across the sky, obscuring the maze of constellations and bringing snow. The blaze from the city (I will call it that, for cities have taken many forms in history) was reflected on the clouds. Everything appeared to be getting brighter. It was almost as if the city housed a number of active volcanoes. Sparks were now flying above the ramparts, sending bouquets of multicolored flame from one end to the other. The searchlight effect was also more powerful. It was as if some kind of celebration was taking place.

  Drawing nearer, I could make out that there were gates set in the immense outer walls. And I saw towers within, obscured rather than illuminated by the flickering blaze. It was difficult to gauge size. I suspected they were enormous buildings. Certainly they were imposing; but dystrophian visions of buildings come so close to celestial visions that I hardly knew whether the sight of them filled me with comfort or foreboding.

  The horses shook their heads and whinnied. I went cautiously, for we were approaching a nunatak, and I feared ambush. I brought up my automatic in a gloved hand.

  By now, I appreciated the fact that we rode over thick ice. Shards of it, and shattered slate and stone, fringed the nunatak like a bleak shore. It was possible that this low and scoured dune marked the top of some once-proud mountain, now all but lost under the ice sheet. In its shelter stood a line of four horses, bridled and hobbled. My quarry had abandoned them, and must be on foot.

  There was no sign of the two monsters.

  I unloaded the swivel gun and carried it to the top of the nunatak, sheltering it from the falling snow with my canvas packs. To protect myself from the cold to some extent, I climbed into my sleeping bag before lying down. Then I peered through the telescopic sights and endeavored to find trace of my quarry.

  There they were! Their figures were difficult to discern against the great dark walls ahead. But their outlines were fitfully picked out by the red light as the moon first shows itself in crescent form. They had reached the city and were about to go in.

  A new suspicion came coldly upon me. I had no guarantee that this city was built by human hands. To what human city would these two outcasts go in such a manner? This was a city that might welcome them—that indeed might be heralding them by a tremendous extravagance of light. This was their sort of city. This was a city built and occupied by their own kind. The future might be theirs and not ours.

  Speculation. Confirmation or otherwise must come later.

  I jammed a magazine into the breach of the gun. Its code told me that one bullet in five was tracer. A gate was opening in the distant city. From beyond it, light poured over the two enormous figures. I began firing as they started to enter.

  A bright line of fire plunged across the intervening space. I saw the first bullets strike, and kept on firing, mouth tight, eye jammed to the sight. One of the figures— the woman—seemed to blaze. She spun about. Her arms jerked up in anger. More tracer poured into her. She appeared to break apart as she fell.

  He—he also was hit! But he ran away from the light, so that I no longer had a silhouette as target. I had lost him. Then the sight found him again! He was coming! Making full use of that terrible deadly speed, he was racing across the ice towards me, arms and legs plunging with a fleetness no human could rival. There was a glimpse of that cruel grinning helmet of a face as I wrenched the barrel round for better aim. It stuck.

  Cursing, I looked down. One side of my sleeping bag had caught in the gun’s track. It was a moment’s work to tear it loose, but in that moment he was nearly up to me.

  With a strength almost beyond myself, I raised the gun and fired it from my hip. The tracer caught him as he charged up the slope.

  Fire burned at his chest. A great bellow of fury broke from him. He fell backwards, tearing at his burning clothes.

  Shooting off just one burst of tracer had almost broken my body in two. I had to drop the swivel gun, collapsing to my knees as I did so.

  But fear of the monster drove me on. I saw him roll smoking down the slope of the nunatak, to lie face down among rock and ice shards, flames licking at his foul greatcoat. The horses, in wild dismay, broke their tethers and went galloping away across the plains of ice.

  Clutching my automatic, I went slowly down to where the great figure lay. It stirred now, turned over, drew itself into a sitting position. Its face was black. Smoke obscured it.

  Even in ruin, the monster still exerted that tremendous paralysis of fascination which had deflected my purpose before. I leveled the gun at him, but did not fire—not even when I saw him gather himself to spring to his feet.

  He spoke. “In trying to destroy what you cannot understand, you destroy yourself! Only that lack of understanding makes you see a great divide between our natures. When you hate and fear me, you believe it is because of our differences. Oh, no, Bodenland!—it is because of our similarities that you bring such detestation to bear upon me!”

  He could not rise. A hollow cough burst from him, and a change took place in that abstract helmet which was his face. The sutures of Frankenstein’s surgery parted, ancient cicatrices opened at every contour; the whole countenance cracked, and I saw slow blood ooze in the apertures. He put a hand up—not to his cheeks but to his chest, where the greater pain was.

  “We are of different universes!” I said to him. “I am a natural creature, you are a—a horror, unalive! I was born, you were made—”

  “Our universe is the same universe, where pain and retribution rule.” His words were thick and slow. “Our deaths are both a quenching out. As for our births—when I first opened my eyes, I knew I existed—as did you. But who I was, or where, or from what cause, I knew not—no more did you! As for those intervals between birth and destruction, my intentions, however warped, are more lucid to me than yours to you, as I suspect. You know not compassion—”

  A spasm of pain possessed him, so that he could not speak.

  Again I nerved myself to fire; a rocket flashed into the sky and burst overhead, deflecting me from my purpose. It opened into three great clusters of flame which hung there, silent, before fading. A signal, perhaps—to whom or what I knew not.

  Before the lurid light went out, the monster at my feet said, “This I will tell you, and through you, all men, if you are deemed fit to rejoin your kind: that my death will weigh more heavily upon you than my life. No fury I might possess could be a match for yours. Moreover, though you seek to bury me, yet will you continuously resurrect me! Once I am unbound, I am unbounded!”

  On the word “resurrect,” delivered with ferocity, the fallen creature heaved himself to his feet and stood confronting me, fire still creeping at his chest and throat. Although he was below me on the slope, he dominated me.

  I fired three times, aiming into that voluminous greatcoat. On the third shot, he went down onto one knee and gave a loud cry, clutching his head. When he looked up again, one side of his face, it appeared to me, had fallen away.

  “There will be no more of you!” I said. Sudden triumph and calm filled me.

  The creature was gone beyond my influence. He saw me no more. But he spoke again before he died. “They thought me gone, for I that day was absent, as befell, bound on a voyage uncouth and obscure, far on excursion towards the gates of hell, where...”

  A last attempt to rise, then he lost balance and fell forward, lying face down, one arm twisted out sideways with a clumsy gesture, palm upwards. I left him amid ice and thin smoke, to climb back up the nunatak. The monster was finished,
and my quest.

  Trembling, I set the swivel-gun to rights. If other attackers came for me, they should meet the same reception as the monster before I met my Maker. Or there might be men in the city; I must assume nothing more until more was known. Certainly they were aware of my presence. Since the rocket died overhead, the lights were being extinguished behind the great ramparts, the activity was ending, the displays were being put away. They would know where I was, and what I had done.

  So I would wait here until someone or something came for me, biding my time in darkness and distance.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Brian W. Aldiss began his career as a bookseller in Oxford before becoming literary editor of the Oxford Mail. For many years a film reviewer and poet, Mr. Aldiss has since acquired a reputation as the author of two outspoken and best-selling novels, The Hand-Reared Boy and A Soldier Erect, the beginning of a series of six novels covering the life span of one man. But his main reputation, built up over many years, is as an innovative and imaginative writer of science fiction. His first novel, Non-stop, was published in 1958, and among his more recent books in this field have been The Dark Light Years, Earthworks, Hothouse and Report on Probability A. He is also the author of a history of science fiction called Billion Year Spree. In his midforties, Aldiss is twice married, has four children, and lives in tumbledown splendor in the Vale of the White Horse.