The Frankenstein Papers

by Fred Saberhagen

  It was he who spoke first. "You are the son of Benjamin Franklin," he declared, looking down from his great height and speaking in a deep voice. "And, as such, you need fear no harm from me."

  "And you," I replied—bravely enough, I trust, before this awesome being—"are the nameless person of the book."

  He took my meaning instantly. "If by 'book' you mean that most malign and perfidious publication, the supposed letters of the sea-captain to his sister, then I am indeed the person most slandered and defamed in it. If you have read it, then you must fear me."

  "I have read it. But it contains so much that I do not believe, that I think I would fear you more if it gave you a good character."

  My visitor laughed, a surprising, very human, yet almost frightening sound. "Then bless you for an intelligent man. Your apprehensions of me, if you have any such, are needless. Your father has been my friend, and my enemies are also yours, and his." Saying this, he reached to close the window behind him, shutting out the blasting wind and cold.

  We moved a little closer to the fire, toward which he stretched out a pair of enormous hands. "But," I demanded, "how can you possibly know who I am?"

  The giant nodded toward the window where he had come in. "Since yesterday I have been out there, in the grounds. Last night, and again tonight, I have prowled for hours around the house, from window to window and from door to door, trying to plan what my next course of action ought to be."

  "I heard the dogs tonight," I remarked. "I thought that they were after something."

  "The dogs are frightened of me, and do not interfere. The humans—except for you now—do not yet know that I am here."

  "You are living out of doors?"

  "I have found shelter of a kind. And what to you is the fierce blast of winter, is to me little more than a chill breeze. I have survived the Arctic storm, and the Atlantic gale. Still I confess that at the moment this fire is welcome." He had opened his cloak partially to the warmth, and, in doing this, had loosed the muffling fold across his face. A moment later the cloth fell completely back. Having read the book, I was forewarned, and made no sudden cry or motion. Still—as you must know if the meeting between you did take place—the book, in its description of his personal appearance, is nearly accurate.

  "And are you aware," I asked my caller, "that your creator is here too?"

  "I have known that for some hours. I looked in at your dining table tonight, from outside, and became a silent and unseen member of your party. The ivy and the decorations on the outside walls offer enough in the way of handholds and footholds to allow me to explore virtually the entire exterior of the house.

  "My astonishment was very great when I beheld him alive, entering the room where you were. And yet, on reflection, I am not tremendously surprised.

  I had thought Frankenstein dead because of the circumstances under which I last saw him, in the Arctic; yet it is greatly to Saville's interest, and Walton's, or they believe it is, that he should survive, and labor for them."

  "What were those circumstances, then?" I asked. "The book says—"

  "The book lies," he rejoined calmly. "In that scene as in much else. I fled from the vicinity of the ship under a hail of bullets, Saville having lost his temper totally at last, and decided that I must be taken, dead or wounded, even fatally so, after his repeated efforts to take me alive had all come to nothing. I headed into the north, resolved to shake off my tormentors finally or to lead them to their destruction if they still persisted in the chase. Frankenstein, who had endeavored again to save me, had been struck down on the deck, and as I thought murdered. Now he is here, and I suppose has been convinced that what happened on the ship was my fault too, or a mere accident."

  "After dinner," I said, "Frankenstein spoke to me alone."

  "Ah. When you walked in the conservatory."

  "Precisely."

  "I saw you, but could not hear what was said there between you."

  "He said that he was a mere prisoner here now. He urged me not to help our hosts, and to keep you out of their control, to such an extent as that might lie in my power. The trouble, I suspect, is that I have now become a prisoner too."

  "No doubt you have." The creature stood regarding me, but said nothing more for a moment;

  I received the impression that he was uncertain in his own mind as to what his attitude ought to be toward the man who had created him. "Then he has changed his mind yet again." He murmured the last words without surprise.

  "You have not yet told me," I persisted, "how you know who I am."

  My visitor shrugged enormous shoulders. "I have said that I could hear much of what you said around the table during dinner—I heard enough to be certain of your identity.

  "And what will you do now?"

  "Take vengeance, upon Saville, and Walton—is there a man named Small here in the house? He is small indeed, ill-favored, and dangerous, though he prides himself upon his attractiveness to women. I have not seen him here."

  "Nor I, anyone matching that description."

  "—upon them for attempting to steal from me what miserable measure of a life I had. For treating me as their property, by right of conquest or discovery, to be disposed of as they choose. For killing…" Here he fell silent, staring once more into the fire.

  "And Frankenstein?"

  "He too should be punished, for letting himself be ruled by those… but it was he who gave me life." Again my visitor shrugged massive shoulders. "Perhaps I cannot bring myself to punish him."

  "My father has been very curious about that. The bringing-to-life, I mean. How it was accomplished."

  "Ah. He must ask Victor, then. I know but little more about it now than when I last spoke to your father. But I should be greatly interested to hear any explanation that Doctor Franklin can conceive."

  We talked for a time of the more abstruse points of electrical science; or at least my new acquaintance talked on that subject, and I endeavored to understand. His knowledge surpasses mine enormously, but then I am sure that mine does not begin to approach yours, either. His discourse on the subject, embodying what I gather are some new ideas, may be quite intelligible to you.

  My new acquaintance—I find I can no longer bring myself to write "the creature," and I scarcely know what other term to use—has said that he too has observed the light from that high window, protected by iron bars, that must show where Frankenstein's new laboratory has been established. We had just touched upon this subject when suddenly he announced a decision to go there, to confront his creator once more if he could, even though the laboratory windows are so elevated and guarded by barriers that it seems impossible for anyone to reach them from the outside. He said that he would infallibly return to my room, whatever befell with regard to the final confrontation that he sought; and would then take counsel with me, and try to help me, before he acted on his decision to seek revenge upon Saville and the others.

  I am now, as I write, awaiting his return.

  If his decision as to what he wants to do next strikes me as at all reasonable, I am ready to act in concert with him. I have no qualms about acting boldly against Saville, who is, I am sure, prepared to hold me a prisoner here against my will, which implies that he is also ready to do even worse. He is, besides, my political enemy and yours—and the enemy of our new country.

  Later_My new friend has returned, through the window as before, to watch me pen these remaining lines. He says that the approach to Frankenstein's laboratory proved at last too difficult for him, and that we are to make our plans and act without consideration of the scientist. But he was gone for a long time, and I wonder. Meanwhile, I will seal this message, and hand it over for delivery to one who can, with little difficulty, pass the high walls and fences that make a prison and a fortress of this estate. This message will be added, he says, to a pile of letters that are already awaiting sending at the gatekeeper's lodge—and I have no reason to doubt what he says.

  He will return from that errand
well before morning, he says, and we shall then make our plans.

  Your Affectionate Son,

  Benjamin Freeman

  Chapter 13

  February 21, 1783 Somewhere in Kent

  It is now my turn to write, whilst my short companion watches. I suppose he may very well be curious, as was Father Jacques, as to what I am so industriously setting down in my worn notebook. I did not read Freeman's letter to his famous parent, but I have assured him, as I assured the priest, that he may read in my journal if he likes. But Freeman says that he is too weary to read anything, and that the light is bad—and now I see that despite the cold and the wet he is asleep. It is almost a cave, this embrasure in the seaside rocks where we are huddled. The sound of the surf is loud, and at high tide I suppose there will be spray—but by then, if all goes well, we shall be gone.

  From the moment I identified Freeman as the son of Benjamin Franklin, I was determined to make use of him somehow. But now I confess that I am coming to like him as well.

  It has been an exhausting day, for man and creature alike. Too much happened for me to be able to remember it all in proper detail. Yet it is necessary that I write down what I can… though when I think of it, why should it be necessary that I write down today's events, or indeed, that I keep this journal at all? I cannot tell why. I only know that the urge to record my experiences is nearly as powerful as my desire to live. Did my brain once belong to a natural philosopher?

  One thing I should certainly record as carefully as possible is my final interview with Frankenstein—I suppose that encounter under Saville's highest roof is likely to be the last meeting that my creator and I will ever have. I felt a reluctance to talk about it with Freeman, immediately afterward—I had known him only a few minutes—and so told him that I had been unable to reach Frankenstein in his high laboratory. Perhaps—who knows?_we should all be better off if that were true.

  Clinging precariously to the wall, in the darkness outside the high, barricaded window, I had watched Frankenstein for several minutes before attempting to get his attention. I wondered as I watched him if now he were really going mad. His arms were filthy up to the elbows with the fat, blood, and offal of murdered women—or perhaps these latest specimens had not been murdered, but how could he know? I supposed that he was persisting in his efforts to create a female—if he is anything he is persistent. I assumed further that the bodies that surrounded him, in several stages of dismemberment, were those of women. But from the angle of the window I could not really tell.

  His gaze was wild, and a certain new look of indecision in his movements suggested to my experienced eye that his mind was under strain, if not actually unbalanced. He was muttering to himself as he went through the laboratory procedures that I knew so well from watching him in Scotland.

  As I watched him from outside, I was on the verge of deciding that there was no point in my trying to talk to him again.

  But in the end I tapped at the window. It must have been a loud sound in his quiet room, but he went on with the task before him, suturing something, and did not hear me until my tapping had sounded for the third time.

  Once Frankenstein's attention had been caught, he came over to the window at once, and looked out at me without demonstrating any great astonishment. To my surprise he behaved almost as if he had been expecting such a visit.

  Victor opened the glass and the shutters of the window from inside, but the iron bars that guarded it were fixed in stone. Exerting all my strength, I managed to wrench one of the bars from its sockets, and, squeezing through the space thus created, climbed in to confront my creator.

  I closed the shutters behind me, and for a long moment we stood staring at each other, I dripping with rain, he, less copiously, with preservatives and blood. We must have looked like two men—or two monsters—who had never met before and who perhaps might have nothing to communicate to each other. Seeing him at close range for the first time in many months, I thought that he looked ill.

  It was left to me to utter the first words. "You have come back to them." The way I spoke the sentence made it an accusation, and I saw his face tighten.

  I continued: "But never mind that. The window is open behind me, and if you wish to get away I will see you safely to the ground, and outside the wall of the estate. Beyond that your fate is up to you."

  Frankenstein shook his head. "I suppose young Freeman has somehow communicated with you. But I do not wish to flee. You should do so, though, and quickly, for you will be in great danger if you are discovered here."

  "I am not the only one."

  He did not understand me, and shrugged irritably, thinking, I suppose, that I meant him. "I intend to stay," he replied. "It is the only way I have found that will allow me to do my work. It is not the money, I have that of my own. But I need privacy, protection. Saville has promised there will be no more—no more excesses on his part. I have exacted a solemn promise from him, and from Walton too."

  "I see," I replied, after a moment. What I saw was that, with Frankenstein, argument would be as hopeless as remonstrance. There are some humans, like Molly, who insist on walking to their own destruction. And I had another purpose in climbing to his new laboratory, one that I felt was more urgent than trying to save him from himself. "Tell me," I pleaded. "Withhold no secrets from me now. Who am I? Where did my brain come from? And the parts of my body?"

  He did not hesitate, but made a gesture embodying hopelessness. "I do not know."

  "Not know! How is it possible that you should not know?"

  "Because of the methods by which I worked." My creator seemed irritated, that anyone should bother him with such a question. "I should have kept better records, but I thought I could not take the time. Every minute I wanted to press on with the work itself—Metzger and Big Karl brought me my materials. They might remember, but I have never considered it important."

  "Not important!"

  "I told them what I wanted, the physical types and conditions, and paid them, and left the details to them. I cared nothing for the names of the people who had inhabited the bodies before I got them."

  "You're telling me you don't know whose brain you used? Was it a single brain, can you at least tell me that?"

  "Oh yes, yes." Frankenstein made a gesture of surprise and impatience, and looked at me as if I should have known better than to ask such a stupid question. "The brain is a very delicate organ anyway; the nervous connections are incredibly complex. Even with a single brain, the grafting would have been impossible, had I not been able to rely upon the almost miraculous effects of the electric fluid. I wouldn't have attempted to use parts of more than one."

  "But—you can't say whose brain it was? What kind of a head did it come in?" I gestured helplessly.

  "Oh. I can't say where the head came from. It was a man's, of course. Large, as I recall. There was something—noble—about the face, though of course in fact one gets that impression sometimes even in peasants. The medical school at Ingolstadt had a constant requirement for bodies, and the suppliers got them whenever people died in the homes for the poor and indigent in that area. Also…" He let his words trail off. Something changed subtly in his face.

  "Also what?" I promoted, after a brief silence. "You have said that my brain is not that of a condemned criminal."

  "No." Frankenstein shook his head judiciously. "I have no reason to think that it is that."

  "What, then?"

  "Well," he admitted reluctantly, "besides the poorhouses, that contributed bodies for research, there were the asylums."

  A silence fell between us. But I felt no shock. With something of a thrill of pride I realized that I had become firmly confident in my own sanity. Calmly I asked: "Are you telling me I am a madman, then? But the languages I know, the history, the natural philosophy—how do you explain it all?"

  "I cannot explain it," Frankenstein said simply. Then the tones of a professor crept into his voice. "A madman may know many languages. Or some stimulatio
n by the electrical fluid may have had a healing effect upon the mind as well as the body. And the effect upon the body is undeniable. Even the marks of the sutures are gone—"

  "Bah." Talking to him, trying to find out from him the facts of his science, was worse than useless. The electrical fluid dissolved everything, facts and logic along with all doubts, all questions. I had experienced it many times before, but never before so clearly realized the fact. Was it a clever reluctance to reveal secrets, as I had assumed for a long time, or was it possible that my creator really did not know what he was babbling about?

  How could that be possible? He possessed a facility with jargon, certainly, and who, listening to an expert discuss his own field, really expects to understand all that they hear?

  "Victor," I said. "I am less than seven and a half feet tall."

  "Eh? But what has that…" He blinked at me, and became authoritarian again. "You are eight feet tall."

  "No."

  "There may have been some slight shrinkage."

  "It isn't that."

  "Then someone has been lying to you, or has taken faulty measurements. You are the work of my hands, and you belong to me, and I know everything there is to know about you." He cannot manage his own life, but has perfect confidence in what he knows, or thinks he knows, of mine.

  I turned back to the window. "I am going, then," I told him over my shoulder. "If you are ready to decide that what Freeman says is true—if you are now ready for yet another change, and would like to be free of Saville and his friends once more_then come with me now, and let me see you safely outside the grounds."

  He turned from me to stare at the table, where his work awaited him. "Freeman misunderstood me if he thinks I want to leave. That cannot be, just now. This experiment is on the verge of completion."

  I could see that, indeed, the body on the table looked as alive and ready as any of his experimental bodies ever did. It was female, and it—or most of its parts—had recently been young and healthy.