Frankenstein's Legions (8 page)

Chapter 6: DUCK ISLAND DISCUSSIONS

That too had been another of Frankenstein’s bright ideas. Where better to leave a purloined police vehicle than among a throng of others?  Word was out on the street but it might escape notice for ages buried amongst its brethren.

Foxglove parked at the end of a line of Marias outside constabulary headquarters. When nothing untoward happened he tapped the roof to say the coast was clear.

Still chagrined, not so much about the money but for being bested, Frankenstein didn’t even offer to hand Ada down. His first failure in etiquette to the fairer sex since youth.

So Lady Lovelace sorted for herself. Whilst Foxglove tethered the horses as though they were his and always had been, she exited from the blind side, away from the station entrance. A shapely questing foot found the coach step and then the ground. Meanwhile, she smoothed down her dress—and rubbed Frankenstein up the wrong way.

In other words, still crowing.

‘Am I such a disappointment to you, herr doctor?  Dear me, I believe there is a word for young gentlemen who care only for a lady’s financial attributes!  I would not have suspected you of being such. You have the dashing looks, I’ll grant, but persons of that... profession are usually far less starchy...’

This was neither the time or place. He and she could both be convicted of capital charges, and Foxglove, as their accomplice, was hardly in any happier position. Instead, Frankenstein cut her dead (that word again) and looked around for safe avenues of escape.

‘This way, and give me your arm.’

He didn’t really want the chill limb but Ada cheerfully complied. With bonnet lowered in maidenly modesty she might pass for a living, breathing, belle out for a promenade with her beaux.

As Big Ben sounded ‘one’ they walked briskly towards St James’s Park, with Foxglove patrolling their perimeter, sniffing out pursuit.

Their ruse called for a modicum of small-talk, granted, but Ada was relentless: a wildcat in defeat and insufferable in victory.

‘Silly man: why else do you think I was so interested in Mr Babbage’s calculating machine?’

‘My indifference knows no bounds,’ answered Frankenstein, speaking through a false smile.

Ada expounded nevertheless.

‘People say Fortune or Fortuna is the goddess of gambling, but if so I am an atheist. No, I say that mathematics is the key that unlocks the treasury of gaming table or track!  King Probability rules all. Now that sir, I believe with all my heart!’

‘Selling the family jewellery works too,’ Frankenstein added sourly. ‘I am told it greatly speeds one’s trajectory to debtors’ prison.’

Ada took it on the chin.

‘That also, good doctor. My once dear husband, Lord Lovelace, would have shot or divorced me had he known, but my researches were simply ravenous in their consumption of cash. Taking on the roulette wheel or the vagaries of the turf are not for the financially faint-hearted, I can assure you. However, the great project had to continue at all costs and so I liquidated the capital contained in my finery. A Hebrew in Hatton Gardens had replicas made.’

‘In that case, madam, I wonder that you’ve bothered to burden your britches with them.’

Julius blunted his barb by blushing again. Such tavern-talk was not his natural weaponry.

‘Do not let pique make you vulgar,’ Ada instructed. ‘You’ve been almost gentlemanly so far—for a foreigner and mercenary. Why spoil it?  Also, have a care, for Foxglove does not take kindly to impudence in my presence.’

Hearing his name mentioned, if nothing more, the servant looked over from his orbital patrol. To Julius’ horror, Lady Lovelace waved back in precisely the way fugitives shouldn’t. Then she resumed.

‘If I had spurned such valuables, alone amongst all the pillaged items, it would have aroused suspicions and my ruse might have been exposed. But not only that, I keep them for a better day. Had not death and Mr Babbage’s... misfortune not intervened it was my firm intention to make good the deception one day. No one need ever have known.’

‘Save yourself,’ said Julius, ‘when wearing them; deceiving all who those admired their beauty.’

Lady Lovelace laughed, raising her white face dangerously high.

‘Oh, I know all manner of wicked secrets, Mr Swiss!  You can hardly conceive... One more hardly makes any difference, does it. And are you still so very cross with me, mein herr?  Can you not be just a little... mollified?’

Happily, the play on words sailed over Frankenstein’s head. He was not to know that ‘mollie’ was the low-English term for bachelors who had not met the right girl yet (and never would).

Even so, he quickened their pace and frowned.

‘Madam, I refer you to my earlier statement on indifference.’

Ada squeezed his arm, a disconcertingly marital gesture.

‘I don’t believe you, gold-digger doctor. But comfort yourself: the jewellery and all manner of other things shall be restored to how they should be. In due course, just as soon as I have conquered the deities of chance...’

They were passing by the lake and Duck Island, secure avian HQ in the centre of the metropolis. From it birds quested out to demand dinner from passers-by.

Fortunately for Julius and Ada there were a lot of the latter. Both place and hour provided perfect concealment in tidal flows of Westminster government workers taking lunch or otherwise about their business. The generation-long War had greatly inflated both their numbers and busy-ness.

Though excellent cover, Ada placed too much faith in it. She dilly-dallied and chit-chatted. The world was her oyster again and she was peckish.

‘Did you know,’ she enquired, indicating the tiny islet, ‘that on a whim and in his cups, King Charles II appointed a exiled French poet ‘military governor’ of Duck Island?  Complete with handsome salary and title?  I should have liked that post; and to confound the giver I would have taken it seriously, with tours of inspection and schemes of defence. That would have been most amusing, don’t you think?’

Julius knew she hadn’t been drinking, for he’d been with her all the time. Therefore this must be the madness of the British aristocracy he’d heard about—doubtless a function of inbreeding and lack of mental exercise. It would make a fascinating medical study for a student who gave a damn.

‘No,’ he said, ‘I don’t,’—and dragged her on.

Once past the island of Ada’s obsession, Frankenstein headed for another concentration of cover. At the fringes of the park, where they wouldn’t be in the way of their betters, a crowd of Revived clerks and menials were gathered round a street-preacher on a soapbox. Since the established church barred Lazarans from its places of worship they had to meet their spiritual needs as and when they could. In practice, this meant during those rare occasions when anyone deigned to address them and their masters didn’t know where they were. Therefore the throng was avid, their yearning palpable.

And the preacher was fit to meet it: his eyes were as wild as his hair; his voice powered with passion.

‘… Souls?’ he was shouting, all the time looking round for the Park Police who’d inevitably move him on. Or arrest him. Or truncheon him. ‘Of course you have souls!  Let no man tell you otherwise: least of all the venal prelates of the lickspittle state church!  ‘Archbishop of Canterbury’?  ‘False shepherd of Babylon’ more like!  What does he know?  Can mere Man burgle the Afterlife?  Can the created steal from its Creator?  Rubbish!  Purchased dogma!  Bought-and-paid-for Blasphemy!  No: I tell you most solemnly: you all—all—have souls. Somewhere... in some inexpressible form known only to God...’

‘Testify!’ the recalled dead cried out, inspired by their own version of joy and urging him on. ‘Testify!’

A smattering of living supporters present, eccentrics and/or idealists, approved more measuredly. Some bore banners. Julius saw one that read:

‘ARE THEY NOT

AS WE

SHALL BE?’

A sort-of truth which only prompted him to think ‘God forbid!,’ and stunned all sympathy.

‘Therefore,’ the preacher continued, waving his arms, ‘I assure you, dear brothers, dear sisters, that you are far more than cannon-fodder!  Better than mere meat machines!  You are alive again—and thus basking in Divine love—for better reasons than accountancy!’

That got a cheer. Some masters had no mercy and drafted their Lazarans into the drearier professions. Likewise the sad fields where their already cold hearts came in handy. Lawyers now employed more undead than living.

 ‘Wherefore, you deserve the dignity that comes with those Divine origins. Are ye latter-day Gibeonites: those whom Scripture says the Israelites enslaved to be forever ‘hewers of wood and drawers of water’?  No, You are men: children of God and made in his image!’

Here was a weak point in his thesis, for many of those images gathered round him didn’t look very god-like. Rhetoric demanded he either get louder or more daring.

He did both. The Preacher looked about, even more haunted than before, and bellowed:

‘Nor are you beasts!  Mere vermin to be hunted for perverse pleasure!’

This was pushing his luck. Lazaran blood-sports were forbidden (a waste of war material for a start) but everyone knew it went on. It was a melancholy fact that hardcore hunters found former-humans so much more challenging, more mettlesome and miles-for-your-money than a fox or deer. However, those who (allegedly) indulged tended to be both addicted and aristocratic: that is to say committed, well-connected, people averse to the limelight. The ‘Earl of This’ or ‘Lord That’ didn’t care for loose talk which might spoil the fun. There was even rumours of a Parliamentary Pack. It most certainly ‘didn’t do’ to go public about it.

And sure enough, soon afterwards someone must have ‘told’ on all the subversive talk. A constabulary whistle signalled suppression was on its way.

Which meant Frankenstein and friends must be likewise. They left the preacher and his assistants hurriedly packing up their portable pulpit.

‘Do not despair, brothers!’ the preacher roared as he worked. ‘We shall overcome!  God will chastise Pharaoh and permit ye into the Promised Land!  God shall feed His flock!’

‘With crumbs of comfort...’ thought Frankenstein dismissively, once they’d fled far enough. ‘Stale crumbs.’  Then he realised with a far from delicious shock that his family stood responsible for the terrible hunger they’d just witnessed. Hunger so gnawing that sufferers were willing to feed off crumbs from the Christian banquet they were barred from.

Julius was furious with himself for his lack of sensitivity (or something). What had he become?  What still worse creature might he become given time?  It was the Frankenstein family curse: first making monsters, then making monsters of themselves. That ancestral legacy followed him everywhere like a cloud; a big black cloud cancelling every holiday from care.

Anger (like all energy) cannot be destroyed, merely diverted. This particular fiery bolt ricocheted off towards Lady Lovelace. Julius permitted himself a scoff at Ada’s expense, resuming their last serious exchange as though the Duck Island nonsense had never been.

‘So, you plan—no, intend—to conquer the deities of chance, do you?  ‘Just as soon as’ is it, madam?  Really?  And when might that be?  And how?’

Anger aside, up till then they had remained arm-in-arm for cover’s sake. Now Ada dared to disengage and turned to face him. Frankenstein ‘ahemed’ and gestured she should remember who—and what—she was.

To no avail. There Lady Lovelace stood, hands on scarlet silken hips, regarding him as though he were the king—nay, emperor—of idiots.

‘‘When’?’ she shot back. ‘When?  Well, when you’ve got me my spark back, of course.’

Chapter 7: DEAD MAN WALKING

‘Is there anything else you can tell me?  The slightest scrap?’

France’s Minister of Police had aquatic eyes, cold and watery as a fish. They blinked behind their rimless glasses when no reply came.

A interrogator brandishing pliers stepped up but the Minster waved him away. That was not the best way with this prisoner: different dogs itched in different places.

The Minister cleared his throat: polite, almost apologetic, about his persistence in probing.

‘It is a matter of some import. Consider this: you are in no fit state to judge what is relevant or not. Moreover, this is a issue for consideration by someone imbued with civic virtue, someone with humanity’s best interests at heart: in short a citizen of the glorious French Republic—which you, of course, no longer are...’

Touché!  The doomed man awoke from reverie and lifted his head. He looked up at the Minister through a curtain of matted hair.

‘There you are wrong, monsieur,’ he said, in gasps. ‘Wrong!  No matter what your tribunal says, I shall be a citizen until my dying breath!’

He had been harshly treated, both before and after condemnation. His half-healed wound had re-opened, patterning his prison shirt with blood. Only the trial itself (a rushed five minute fiasco) had not presented opportunities for mental and physical violence against him. Now, contesting the verdict of the sacred State took what little reserves the prisoner had left. His chains barely shifted.

‘Alas,’ said the Minister, consulting his pocket watch, ‘that ‘breath’ you refer to is mere hours away. Meanwhile, I implore you to ponder, to review recent events: is there not some residual snippet?  Some last service to render to the Republic?’

Actually, any such service would not be his absolute last. Not from some perspectives. The flow of bodies from Madame Guillotine was too bounteous to commit to the grave. In short order this man must rise again as a ‘New-Citizen’—or Lazaran as enemy nations disparaged them. With permanent semblance of a red ribbon round his neck, he would take his place amongst myriad others, whether it be as a foot-soldier or undead ploughboy.

Let the Church and other reactionaries protest as they will,  The Minister could not see anything wrong in it. Nature recycled all that it created, and the Convention sensibly emulated Nature. It was both virtuous and instructive that former enemies of the State might make good for their life’s misdeeds in the only after-life the State believed in.