The Ultimate Frankenstein

by Byron Preiss (ed)

  Samantha moaned again and Edward frowned.

  "You shouldn't have any control left over your voluntary nervous system," he said. "Can you talk?"

  Samantha concentrated. "Did . . . you kill them . . . ?"

  Edward nodded apologetically. "Eventually, more or less."

  He's insane, Samantha thought, her sudden panic making her unexpectedly lucid. "Will you . . . kill me . . . too?"

  Edward looked thoughtfully at the ceiling. "Yes and no," he said at last, then met her eyes again. "Some might find it a bit of a philosophical debate."

  Completely insane. Samantha put everything she had into an effort to stand up but all she did was rock forward an inch. Then back again.

  Edward glanced at his watch and Mickey's ear-capped outline gleamed for an instant, leaving a dark afterimage in Samantha's vision. "You are a fighter, aren't you," he said. "A few more minutes then." He aimed the remote and the third alcove lit up.

  Samantha moaned and felt her few mouthfuls of salad churn within her.

  The third body on display wore a dust-covered suit of thick brown fabric. Its pants were belted around its sternum and the diamond-shaped tie it wore barely reached from its neck to the belt buckle. Samantha tried to concentrate on the buckle. Or the neck. Anywhere but on the head. Or where the head should be.

  What was left above the shoulders of the third body was something fissured and scooped out, as if the dead man's head had been cut and emptied like the doctored champagne's hammered sphere of copper.

  "We know what you mean," Edward said consolingly. "Quite crude. Technical problems still to be worked out. Burned notebooks to be reconstructed." He turned away from the ruined body. "His name was Ollie. Came over from the old country . . . years ago. Did a lot of live radio though his name, alas, appears nowhere today. The nature of the business, we're afraid. Quite ephemeral. Though that's not necessarily bad for those in . . . our position."

  Edward turned away from Ollie's body and walked back to Samantha. She could feel herself covered in cold sweat, but whether it was from fear or the chemical he had made her drink, she could not be sure. She watched as Edward leaned down to look at her closely. She didn't understand the concern she saw in his eyes. Then he moved behind her and she couldn't turn to see where he was going or what he was doing.

  "It was a much simpler time back then," he said behind her. "Everything was so new. Nothing was understood." Something tapped against Samantha's forehead and she jerked back a full half-inch in horror. Her vision went white for an instant. She made a dry, gagging sound deep in her throat. Then she realized that Edward was only dabbing at her sweat- covered face with a linen napkin from the table. "Just trying to make you more comfortable, my dear."

  He kept dabbing and Samantha had the terribly disjointed impression that he was trying not to disturb her make-up.

  "You see, dear Samantha, back then, in the beginning, the twenties, the thirties, after the war and almost all the time since then, it was so easy to hide, to stay unknown. . . ."

  Has he been killing people that long? Samantha thought. But he can't have been. He's not old enough. I mean, his plastic surgeon is good . . .

  "But no longer, we're afraid." Edward stepped back to study Samantha's face as if he had just finished painting on it. "One tries to do one's work, staying in the background, never suspecting that one day one might produce a little movie that would become the industry's largest-grossing film of all time." Edward dropped his voice to a whisper, as if passing on an important secret. "Stardreamers was all right as far as such movies go, but honestly, it wasn't that good."

  Samantha could only blink her eyes in confusion.

  "But then," Edward continued, checking his watch again, "who can ever know what it is that the movie-going public wants to see?" He tapped his hand to his chest. "Do you suppose we might have found our calling?"

  Samantha forced more words from her throat with a dry and gasping shudder. Deep inside, she knew the negotiations were at an end and that she was finished in this town. She couldn't even invoke her uncle, the television director's name to help her, though she had sworn to herself never to do that so she could make it here on her own, without the taint of being given work for her uncle's sake. But all of that planning and dreaming was over. The script had been totally abandoned and she had nothing left within herself to use in improvisation. She could only ask the most basic of questions now. Why him? Why her? Why anything?

  ". . . why ... are you here . . ." The words burned like fire as they left her.

  Edward smiled sadly. "Why, my dear, what better place could there be for us?" He pressed the button that lit the fourth alcove, then stepped aside. And even if Samantha could have moved, she doubted she would have, so great was her shock at seeing the fourth body.

  It was improbably tall and grey-skinned and clothed in black with a long grim face topped by a longer forehead, ringed by the heavy stitches of century-old surgery. There was no tie around its neck, no collar. Only the dull gleam from twin metallic bolts imbedded on either side.

  The fourth body's skull was empty, too.

  "You see, my dear," Edward explained, "we're a bit of a sequel ourselves."

  The savage scream of unbearable terror that grew in Samantha emerged only as a slowly dying rasp. He didn't kill those people . . .

  "We never could remember what our name had been," Edward mused, lost in thought. "So this one we just call . . . Frank."

  ... he was those people. And now . . . and now . . .

  Edward walked over to Samantha and effortlessly picked her up from her chair. "And now we've waited long enough. Disney is most insistent about starting pre-production on Stardreamers II, so it is time for Edward Styles to take his leave."

  He carried her past the bodies, all of them with their empty heads— holders for the one part that had lived in them all, and then passed on to the next and the next and the . . .

  Edward paused by the fifth alcove. Samantha could feel him fiddling with the remote as he held her. The lights came on. Brilliant, blinding against immaculate tiled white surfaces, the gleam of chrome, the scent of antiseptic. The glitter of surgical tools laid out so neatly, so professionally. Samantha wondered who could help him. // anyone could help him.

  There were two beds in the alcove and Edward put her on the one with the heavy straps. When he had finished binding her in place, he allowed his hands to slide along the swell of her dress's neckline, almost with respect. "We've often wondered what these might feel like . . . from the inside," he said with a gentle smile.

  Samantha's scream was only a whisper. A dying whisper which cried a final question.

  Edward leaned forward to his guest with a look of genuine curiosity. "We beg your pardon, my dear. What was that you asked?"

  Samantha stared into Edward's eyes, saw his face in gleaming detail. She could see it now, the thin white scar she had guessed lay near his hairline. Though now she knew it was not the scar of a facelift.

  She opened her mouth to try and ask her question again, only then becoming aware of a movement to her side. We're not alone! she thought. Someone else is here! Someone else who can—

  "Did you ask, why you?" Edward said. "Is that it? Why did we choose you?"

  In her sudden hopeful excitement, Samantha was able to nod her head a fraction of an inch. That was exactly what she had asked. But now she didn't care. Now all she wanted to know was who else was with them. Who else was there who could help her.

  "Well, you know what this town is like," Edward said with a genial laugh. "Despite all the glamour and all the stories that are told, Hollywood really is just one big small town."

  Samantha felt Edward pat her shoulder as he straightened up above her. Then the second figure leaned in closer, and just before his rubber-gloved hands pulled up his surgical mask and the glittering scalpel began its descent, Samantha realized she knew who it was.

  Edward's voice came from far away. "We have a friend in common, my dear. Som
eone who knows all the best parts in town. ..."

  Then Dr. Morely's scalpel began its work. The pain reminded Samantha of the fire from a thousand torches, and for as long as she lived, she was right in the middle of it.

  FRANKIE BABY

  Joyce Harrington

  ▼▼▼

  I AM forcing myself to write this. It's not a pleasant task. It makes me think about all the things I could have done, should have done, to prevent the tragedy. But I didn't know, dear God, I had no idea what Francesca had in mind, or what strange roads she had traveled in her researches into the origins and creation of life.

  The creation of life. That's a joke. And a very bad one, at that. Whatever she created, it was not life. And it resulted in the destruction of the single human being that both she and I loved best in the world.

  But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me try to start at the beginning.

  I suppose it all began with two little girls, close friends from the day they met in kindergarten. Francesca, whose parents, Dr. and Mrs. Howard Stein, made a singularly unfortunate choice in the naming of their shy, withdrawn, only daughter, and Johanna, golden-haired, blue-eyed, cute- as-a-button Johanna who grew up to become my wife.

  Almost from the time we met, Johanna told me stories of her brilliant friend. Of how Francesca had excelled in everything in their school days, and how her achievements were always tainted by the cruel teasing of the other children. With her unmanageable curly dark hair, her piercing dark eyes, and her evocative name, it was perhaps, inevitable that she would become known as Frankie Stein, "The Bride of Frankenstein."

  Johanna was her defender and champion in those days, and her only friend. I wish I had known Johanna as a child. I can almost see her battling playground injustices on behalf of one who could not defend herself. When I met her, she had recently graduated from law school and was working on poverty cases for the Legal Aid Society.

  At that time, Francesca was still in medical school in another state, and I didn't meet her until she came to our wedding a few years later. She was Johanna's maid of honor, looking stiff and unnatural in her ruffled gown. I got the sense that she felt betrayed by Johanna's marriage. She barely spoke to me, and not at all to the other wedding guests. Johanna, however, was not disturbed by her friend's ungracious behavior. She merely said, "Well, that's Frankie. We made some silly childish vow years ago never to marry or have children. I guess she still lives by it and thinks I should have, too. She'll get over it."

  I didn't really care whether or not Francesca got over it. Johanna and I set about living our lives together. Like many of our acquaintances, we agreed to put off having children until our careers were established. Johanna decided to specialize in child abuse cases, not the best-paying kind of law practice but enormously fulfilling to her. I earned my half of our bed and board as a newspaper reporter while brooding over the novel I would write some day.

  The city we lived in was small enough for civility and large enough to support a real newspaper. Not that we didn't have our share of modern urban woes. I wrote about muggings, drug busts, corrupt politicians, and thieving company officers almost every day, with the occasional heinous murder thrown in just to prove that our town was holding its own in the rising violent crime statistics. Johanna saw the other side of the statistics, the human side, the bruised and battered children, the raped babies, too frightened or too young to speak of the crimes committed against them.

  The months and years went by. We both felt we were doing important work. We bought a house, nothing grand, but it had a couple of extra bedrooms that we used "temporarily" as our studies, one for each of us. Our work schedules were crazy, so we usually grabbed something to eat whenever and wherever we could. But once or twice a week, we managed to have dinner together. And I became inordinately proud of my Sunday brunches. My pecan waffles were my masterpiece.

  It was a very ordinary life. And we loved it, and each other, very much.

  During those years, we saw nothing of Dr. Francesca Stein. Johanna had an occasional brief note, usually a notification of a new research grant or one of the many honors that began to be heaped upon her head. Once in a while, I'd come across a wire service story that mentioned her name, but these gee-whiz "science of the future" accounts seldom gave more than a brief sketch of what she was up to, something to do with genetic research.

  Then suddenly one day, Johanna heard the alarm go off in her biological clock. "I don't want to be an old bag with a kid in high school," was the way she put it.

  "You're only 37," I reassured her. "Old is 90. And you'll never be a bag, old, young, or in-between."

  "You do understand what I'm saying, don't you?" she asked in her best "you're-so-stupid-but-I'm-willing-to-be-patient" courtroom manner. "I want to have a baby. Now."

  "Now is impossible," I told her. And before she could mount her high horse, I added, "How about nine months from now?" Truth is I had been wondering for some time how to broach the subject myself. I'd graduated to syndicated columnist of the liberal-satirical persuasion, taking on everything from killer bees to gun control, and I had a bit more time to consider the really important things, like the propagation of the species. My own personal species. I thought I'd make a pretty good father.

  Did I say that Johanna was efficient? Efficiency is not the most endearing virtue in the world, but with Johanna it all seemed so effortless and she never used it to make fools of the rest of us bumblers. Nine months to the day, she produced a squalling eight-pound bundle of female energy, which she promptly named Francesca.

  "Are you sure about that?" I asked her. "It's not as if Dr. Frankie is likely to be flattered or put herself out for the kid."

  "You got any alternatives in mind?" she asked. "How about naming her after your mother? Or mine?"

  "Francesca's fine with me," I said. The two grannies are Edwina and Gertrude, respectively.

  Dr. Frankie sent no baby gift but wrote that she had established a trust fund, payable on Francesca's eighteenth birthday, to finance her education, providing she agreed to study some form of science. Johanna said, "Well, that's pretty nice. Frankie wouldn't know how to buy baby goodies and now the kid's got an option on the future."

  "What if she wants to be a lawyer or a writer or a beach bunny?" I asked.

  "She'll be whatever she wants to be," Johanna replied, "but if she wants to be another Frankie, she's got the choice. It wasn't easy scrimping through law school."

  "Okay," I muttered, "but I don't like it. And I don't want her to know about it. A choice is a choice is a choice, but not if one of them is prepaid."

  "Are you feeling just a teeny bit usurped? Don't worry. I won't tell her. I won't steer her. And eighteen is a long way off."

  We forgot about Dr. Frankie's trust fund in the sheer joy of watching this perfect infant creature burp and gurgle and grow. And, yes, I changed diapers. Not as neatly as Johanna did, but adequately enough to do the job. By then, I was working at home. My columns were being picked up by more and more newspapers every week, and I was being invited to speak at journalism schools and all kinds of industry conventions. It was heady stuff for an ex-crime-beat reporter, and my prevailing attitude was "Russell Baker, watch out!"

  It was, perhaps, inevitable that our daughter should become Frankie Baby. Especially when Dr. Frankie called to announce her intention of paying us a visit. Not us exactly. She'd been asked to consult on some work being done at a nearby research center, but she wanted to spend all her free time with us. Our Francesca was then three years old, precocious, of course, and in our eyes the most beautiful little girl in the world. She looked more like Johanna than like me, but she seemed to be developing my long, skinny legs and ironic outlook on life. She flatly refused to watch Mr. Rogers on TV, and thought Big Bird would make a nice Thanksgiving dinner. Johanna accused me of influencing her opinions. Well, maybe I did. A little.

  Dr. Frankie appeared on schedule, with a gray streak neatly dividing the front of her mountain of bristly
curls. It was all I could do to restrain myself from remarking on her uncanny resemblance to Elsa Lanchester. In private, I asked Johanna, "Do you think she does it on purpose?" Johanna pretended not to know what I was talking about.

  By then, Johanna's study had been turned into a bright, primary- colored sleeping and playing room for Frankie Baby. No pink ruffles for our little tigress. There was a day bed for sleepover baby-sitters, and that's where we stashed Dr. Frankie for the three days she was spending with us. There was nowhere else to put her. I needed my own study for the churning out of columns, and I often worked late into the night.

  Frankie Baby took to her namesake like a noodle to chicken soup, and— surprise, surprise—the attraction was mutual. The weird doctor patiently answered all her questions, pertinent and impertinent, and took her along to meetings with the local Dr. Frankie groupies. Excuse me, I mean her fellow research scientists.

  The three days passed quickly and pleasantly enough. Dr. Frankie even

  admitted to reading my column occasionally, although she disagreed with everything I wrote. Just as a lark, her kind of lark, she persuaded Johanna and me to contribute to a gene bank she was establishing. "You're both fine specimens," was the way she put it. "I'd like to have your samples in storage." How could we refuse such a gracious request?

  A week after Dr. Frankie left, Frankie Baby died. There's no other way to say it but straightforward and blunt. It was sudden. It was terrifying. And it had all the doctors baffled. One day, a healthy, active, obstreperous little girl. The next, a pain-wracked, fevered, tormented young animal. There was no medical miracle for Francesca; all they could do was keep her sedated while they frantically tried to diagnose what was killing her. It was all over in twenty-four hours. A weary doctor told me, "It was as if all her systems turned toxic on her and then shut down. I've never seen anything like it before."