Frankenstein's Legions (25 page)

2. ‘Revolutions or the fear of revolutions had more to do with the dissolution of the Holy Alliance against France than the Battle of Second Agincourt.’  Discuss Gibbon’s cynical and fatuous contention.

3. Prince Talleyrand said that the restored Bourbon monarchy had both ‘forgotten and learnt nothing. Against stupidity even the Almighty struggles in vain.’ Discuss this d*mnable slander on legitimist principles.

4. Outline the 10 (ten) main ethical objections to Lazaran legal rights and acquisition of legal personality by the Revived. Would a Revived monarch undermine rights of succession?  Is the Revived Incan monarchy ‘utterly illegitimate and unholy’ as Pope Leo XX brazenly declared?

*  *  *

Regulations for Scholars of Trinity College, Oxford, as revised, reissued and delivered of the Master and Proctors, this Year of Grace 1834.

‘Stricture number the 314th:  no undergraduate shall retain in College any animal, excepting with permission ONE hound, ONE hawk, ONE horse, donkey or mule or other beast of conveyance. Nor shall any scholar feed and sustain any other such creature, whether wild or tame, two or four-legged, as their particular pet. Ratters shall be maintained by the College and no other party. The definition of ‘animal,’ ‘pet,’ and ‘ratter’ shall be at the entire discretion of the Master. Loss of one or more limb shall not preclude any beast from inclusion in the category of two or four-legged. BEARS are zealously excluded from all aspects of College life, regardless of Lord Byron’s precedent.

‘Stricture number the 315th:  no undergraduate shall be attended by more than TWO Lazarans as his body servants or protectors, their given names to be supplied in writing to the proctors before the commencement of term in which residence begins. Excepting peers of the Realm who may be attended by up to FOUR undead. To avoid scandal and vice all Lazaran retainers shall be demonstrably MALE—this fact to be self-evident without need of disrobing.

Such permitted attendants are to be entirely fed, clothed and ordered by their master. They shall wear adequate apparel at all times, said apparel to prominently display both their given name and that of their master. The College shall have the entire prerogative to dispose of any Lazaran that offends against decency, public sensitivities, the statutes of Trinity or the law of England. Undergraduates are not permitted to exercise capital punishment upon any Lazaran in their charge in accordance with the stipulations above, save with the express permission of the College authorities. All such condign penalties shall be exacted upon the College gallows ONLY.

‘Stricture number the 316th:  No whore-mongering shall be permitted. Neither shall any undergraduate avail himself of more than ONE bottle of fortified wine before morning divine service or TWO before evensong, unless...’

PART TWO: LIFE

(From the ‘Provincial News’ page of
The Daily Sans-Culotte
, Paris departement edition, 2nd Thermidor, Year 13.)

ANTI-CITIZENS APPREHENDED

Intelligence is received from the village of Vertillac, near Bergerac, that a cell of counter-revolutionaries has been detected red-handed in the practice of its iniquities. Readers can be straightaway reassured that these sub-humans in mortal guise were speedily liquidated according to the enlightened norms of Revolutionary justice.

However, the shocking facts as reported by our Bordeaux Department correspondent merit relating for their instructional value.

Burial

It appears that a citizen by the name of Charles Dubois, a farrier by trade, died of the ague in his nineteenth or twentieth year. His carcass (he being in life a well-made and robust fellow) was duly required by the People in order to rise again and serve as a New-Citizen.

However, mired in rustic backwardness, his parents and young wife conspired to give Dubois wasteful burial, compounding their crimes by commissioning illegal ‘Christian’ rites. Lying words were put about that rapid putrefaction had set in, making Revival impossible.

Grenade

Vigilant village Commissioner for Public Virtue, Victor Guadet, was not deceived. Acting on information, he led a force of Revolutionary Marshals to the secret midnight interment and ventured seizure of the corpse.

Disgusting to relate, force was offered against his lawful acts and injuries inflicted on both sides. Worse still, a grenade had, with evil forethought, been placed atop the coffin for just such an eventuality. When detonated it forever denied the People the continued service of Charles Dubois (deceased) and Commissioner Guadet likewise.

Immortal

Arrests were made of the surviving counter- revolutionaries, including the dead man’s parents and spouse. After swift Tribunal hearings sentence was executed in Bergerac before a large and appreciative audience.

The family Dubois have taken their son’s place and now march as cleansed New-Citizens in the service of our great cause!  Their former names shall be blotted out forever from the immortal roll-call of the People!

Therefore harken oh citizens!  Read and learn to your education and benefit: the Revolution is not thwarted in this life or beyond the grave!

Chapter 1: A DAY IN THE LIFE OF JULIUS FRANKENSTEIN (2).

For symmetry’s sake he started keeping a diary of captivity again. The day the two letters arrived it would have said.

‘Same. Petit déjeuner. Pretend to do research. Drink. Bed.’

The regime at the Grand Mausolée de Compiégne was less liberal than the Heathrow Hecatomb’s—incredible as that might seem. There was no need to send any Gallic equivalent of Sir Percy Blakeney to give Frankenstein a rocket for his lack of discoveries. Every single day he had to interact with Coventionary overseers: rough revolutionaries with no respect, and no manners; and not the slightest delicacy when they bristled their great moustaches and said what they thought of him. Each day he thought of killing one with his bare hands and getting it over with.

What stopped him was sure knowledge of the consequences. There was a guillotine facility in the central yard which saw daily use. After a travesty of a ‘tribunal’ they’d slice his head off. Within the hour both he and the man he killed would be stitched up and in the storage vats waiting to be reborn.

Conventionary Revivalist science was neither neat nor painstaking. They had no time for refinements. Their wars and purges and policy of ‘perpetual terror’ both demanded and supplied a massive flow of ‘New-citizens.’  Accordingly, under that ceaseless pressure Compiegne’s standard products made even the worst Heathrow ‘patchwork job’ looked polished. Frankenstein had seen women’s—even girls’—heads on male bodies, and recycled battle casualties so battered only mummy-style coiled bandages kept them whole. And in his case, if he transgressed they’d be in vengeful mood. God alone knew what freak-show they’d revive him as.

The danger was, that though his gaolers might be coarse as coal-bunkers in their studied way, some had the subtlety of torturers too. They sensed his particular fears and played upon them.

‘If you do go,’ they crowed (and ‘go’ in the Compiegne context meant one thing only: to the meat vats), ‘we’ll make sure you get extra serum. Just so that afterwards you’re aware.’

They really meant it. They laughed about it and chatted about that happy prospect over their evening bottle. They brought him especially botched examples of their handiwork and made them dance for him.

For a sad fact was starting to dawn on the Convention as it had on the English. Frankenstein was not the find they thought they’d made, and all he shared with his genius great-uncle was a surname. He’d been given his own mini Promethean facility but what emerged from it could just as well have rolled off the main production line, and with only half the time and trouble. The daily moustache-bristling grew ever more insolent.

Therefore, the sole promising option Julius had left to consider was escape—and the ball and chain about his ankle forced him to be realistic on that score.

So, he secured extra days with cunning. The bloody-hysteria-as-standard of the Mausoleum meant that his guardians were busy men and liable to distraction. When their attention wavered Frankenstein stole and stored exceptional body parts like robust torsos and thick-hewed limbs. Bribes and threats to lowly carters and ‘Charon-men’ also secured him first pick of any grenadier or guardsman that came in. Accordingly, in moments of crisis he could revive a sturdy New-citizen soldier twice as good as the ramshackle basic product. He’d explain it with mumbo-jumbo about ‘vascular enhancement’ or ‘muscle augmentation,’ (largely made up on the hoof) and the ‘Quality Control’ auditors would be sufficiently intrigued to give him a little while longer. But when stocks failed and he couldn’t directly repeat the trick those same old doubts about him spread. The dreadful day inched nearer.

The Revolution had its own special version of redundancy, notified via a sharp descending blade, and made all the more fearful by surprise. One day a man might be at his desk and the next he was gone and not to be mentioned again.

As motivational regimes went, it worked well. The Convention had long ago observed that fear made far better citizens than love.

*  *  *

Julius was still in good enough grace with the management to receive full rations.
Petit déjeuner
consisted of bread and sausage and a carafe of wine. Granted, the baguette was gritty
pain de guerre
, the sausage dubious and wine already dilute, but it counted as haute cuisine in a nation at continual war with itself or others for four decades.

Julius ate it mechanically, without pleasure, merely as a means of strength for another day, whilst trying not to think of the vile rumours circulated about what went into the sausage.

Before being perverted to its current usage, the Mausoleum had been a chateau, and quite a grand one. The usual thing had happened to its owners when the ‘mobile columns’ of the Second Revolution surged out into the countryside, and a few of their of their skulls remained perched on prominent architectural features.

After that the history of the place grew obscure and Frankenstein didn’t enquire too closely. It wouldn’t have been wise even if he’d actually wanted to know. The Convention didn’t care for too much dwelling on the past, holding it to be a symptom of reactionary tendencies—an invariably fatal disease. Suffice then to say that a succession of notables made the place their commandeered home as they rose and then fell in the bloody cauldron of revolutionary struggle. Often it all happened too quick for them to even take possession or enjoy much more than a weekend there. None left an impression, save for some bloodstains on the walls during contested evictions.

Then finally, when the chateau had become ill-omened and dilapidated enough to excite no one’s envy, the ‘Peoples’ Promethean Brigade’ arrived to stay. Beforehand, the unit had been in Paris itself, close to the guillotines and source of supply, but there’d been too many escapes and scandalous sights for the capital of a regime with a keen sense of its own dignity. Therefore, the Convention’s central committee (who’d recently deified ‘Reason’ as the State religion), deemed it reasonable to move things to less sensitive surrounds, a bit nearer the Front. There were already trains of wagons carrying the condemned from prison to Madame Guillotine, and so it took only minor administrative adjustments for them to press on a bit further and ferry the finished product to the Mausoleum.

Those wagon trains had been rolling for a decade now. There’d been ample time to purge the town of Compiegne of reactionary objectors, and restock it with patriots and Mausoleum workers and their families. Now the whole locality was predicated on Promethean science and thus rather prosperous, in a grim sort of way.

Or so Frankenstein had heard, because he hadn’t actually ever seen the place, having arrived by night and in a sealed coach under escort. The Mausoleum’s gate slammed shut behind him and there he’d stayed ever since, as quarantined from normal life as if moved to the Moon. For, in its ten years of operation, there’d been opportunity to erect multiple high walls right round the former Chateau, both to keep ‘New-citizens’ in and prying eyes out. Therefore, all Julius could view now as he ate his breakfast sitting before high (barred) windows was a rumour of forest: a few tree-tops glimpsed over the fortifications, plus smoke columns from where the chimneys of Compiegne must be.

Other than that there was only sky to study—and the sincere wish to fly into it—whether in a galloon or on angel’s wings didn’t much matter.

It was quiet there as soon as (like all hardened Promethean scientists) you ceased to hear the continual Lazaran-lament. Similar to its English counterpart, the Mausoleum functioned in too much of a rush to get round to fitting steam-driven devices throughout. Instead, use was made of the muscle-power of its myriad reject products to make conveyor belts turn and serum-spears descend. They toiled for free, didn’t require coal to function, and when they finally broke down were readily replaced without recourse to mechanics. It… worked, by and large, and that sufficed.

Elsewhere, in less streamlined parts of Europe, scholars criticised Revivalist science’s sedative effect on all other fields of technological progress. They said that exploiting Lazaran power was like the mass slavery of Classical Times, removing the incentive for innovation. And as for its effect on public morals…!

But the Convention didn’t give a fig for what ivory-towered academics or theologians might think. Let them burble on, peddling ‘morality’ for their masters. The Revolution would get to their sleepy hollows sooner or later, and then there’d be an end to such idealist nit-picking...