Frankenstein Unbound (21 page)

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.

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.

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 sun 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.