Dracula Unbound

by Brian W Aldiss

  Larry left the discussion early, dragging Kylie away, though she was clearly inclined to pitch into the debate.

  One of the students who had been engaged in the previous night’s scuffle increasingly monopolized the discussion.

  “You guys are all crazy if you think this was some kind of an enemy secret weapon. If there was such a thing, America would have had it first and we’d know about it. Equally, it ain’t some kind of Scientology thing, just to challenge your I.Q.’s to figure it out or join the Church. It’s clear what happened. We’re all suddenly stuck here in this desert, forbidden to communicate with our parents or the outside world, and we’re feeling oppressed. Insecure. So what do we do? Why, it’s natural—we get a mass hallucination. Nothing but nothing happened in Old John last night, except we all freaked out. So forget it. It’ll probably happen again tonight till we all go crazy and get ourselves shipped to the funny farm.”

  Bodenland stood up.

  “People don’t go crazy so easily, son. You’re just shooting your mouth off. Why, I want to know, are you so keen to discount what you actually saw and experienced?”

  “Because that thing couldn’t be,” retorted the student.

  “Wrong. Because you try to fit it in with your partial systems of belief and it won’t fit. That’s because of an error in your beliefs, not your experience. We all saw that fucking thing. It exists. Okay, so we can’t account for it. Not yet. Any more than we can account for the ancient grave up there on the bluff. But scientific inquiry will sort out the truth from the lies—if we are honest in our observations!”

  “So what was that ghost train, then?” demanded one of the girls. “You tell us.”

  Bodenland sat down next to Mina again. “That’s what I’m saying. I don’t know. But I’m not discounting it on that account. If everything that could not be readily understood was discounted by some crap system of belief, we’d still be back in the Stone Age. As soon as we can talk to the outside world again, I’m getting on to the various nearby research establishments to find out who else has observed this so-called ghost train.”

  Clift said quietly, “I’ve been working this desert fifteen years, Joe, and I never saw such a thing before. Nor did I ever hear of anyone else who did.”

  “Well, we’ll get to the bottom of it.”

  “Just how do you propose to do that, Mr. Bodenland?” asked the girl who had spoken up before. Supportive murmurs came from her friends.

  Bodenland grinned.

  “If the train comes again tonight, I’m going to be ready to board it.”

  The students set up such a racket he hardly heard Mina say at his side, “Jesus, Joe, you really are madder than they are …”

  “Maybe—but we’ve got a helicopter and they haven’t.”

  Toward evening, Mina climbed with Bernard Clift to an eminence above the camp and looked westward.

  Joe had been away most of the day. After having persuaded Larry and Kylie to stay on a little longer, he had ridden out with them to see if they could track down any signs of the ghost train.

  “What’s out there?” Mina asked, shielding her eyes from the sun.

  “A few coyotes, the odd madman rejecting this century, preparing to reject the next one. Not much else,” Clift said. “Oh, they’ll probably come across an old track leading to Enterprise City.”

  She laughed. “Enterprise City! Oh, Joe’ll love the sound of that. He’ll take it as an omen.”

  “Joe doesn’t believe what we’ve got here, does he? That’s why he’s allowing this train thing to distract him, isn’t it?”

  Mina continued to stare westward with shielded eyes.

  “I have a problem with my husband and my son, Bernard. Joe is such an achiever. He can’t help overshadowing Larry. I feel very sorry for Larry. He tried to get out from his father’s shadow and rejected the whole scientific business. Unfortunately, he moved sideways into groceries, and I can see why that riles Joe. No matter that he’s made a financial success and supplies the whole southeastern area of the USA. Now marrying into Kylie’s family’s transport system, he’ll be a whole lot more successful. Richer, I should say.”

  “Doesn’t that please Joe?”

  She shook her head doubtfully. “Whatever else Joe is, he’s not a mercenary man. I guess at present he’s just waiting to see if a nice girl like Kylie can cure Larry of his drinking habits.”

  “As you say, she’s a nice girl right enough. But can she?”

  She looked straight at Clift. “There’s danger just in trying. Still, there’s danger in everything. I should know. My hobby’s free-fall parachuting.”

  “I remember. And I’ve seen the articles on you in the slick magazines. Sounds like a wonderful hobby.”

  She looked at him rather suspiciously, suspecting envy. “You get your kicks burrowing into the earth. I like to be way above it, with time and gravity in suspense.”

  He pointed down the trail, where three figures on mules could be discerned in a cloud of dust.

  “Your husband’s on his way back. He was telling me he’s also got time in suspense, in his laboratories.”

  “Time isn’t immutable, as the science of chaos proves. Basically Joe’s inertial disposal system is a way of destabilizing time. Ten years ago the principles behind it were scarcely glimpsed. I like that. Basically, I’m on Joe’s side, Bernard, so it’s no good trying to get round me.”

  He laughed but ignored the jibe.

  “If time isn’t immutable, what is it? Being up against millions of years, I should be told.”

  “Time’s like a fog with a wave structure. It’s all to do with strange attractors. I can send you a paper about it. Tamper with the input, who knows what output you’ll get.”

  Clift laughed again.

  “Just like life, in fact.”

  “Also subject to chaos.”

  They climbed down the hill path to meet Bodenland and his companions, covered in dust after the ride.

  “Oh, that was just wonderful,” Kylie said, climbing off her mule and giving Mina a hug. “The desert is a marvelous place. Now I need a shower.”

  “A shower and a dozen cans of beer,” supplemented Larry.

  “It was wonderful, but it achieved nothing,” Bodenland said. “However, we have left a pretty trail of flags behind. All I hope is that the ghost train calls again tonight.”

  “What about Larry?” she asked, when they were alone.

  “He’s off with Kylie tomorrow, whatever happens tonight.”

  “Don’t look so sour, Joe. They are supposed to be on their honeymoon, poor kids. Where would you rather be—on a beach in Hawaii or in this godforsaken stretch of Utah?”

  He smiled at her, teasingly but with affection. “I’d rather be on that ghost train—and that’s where I’m going to be tonight.”

  But Bodenland was in for a disappointment.

  The night brought the stars, sharp as diamonds over the desert, but no ghost train. Bodenland and his group stayed by the mobile canteen, which remained open late to serve them. They drank coffee and talked, waiting, with the helicopter nearby, ever and again looking out into the darkness.

  “No Injuns,” Kylie said. “No John Wayne stagecoach. The train made its appearance and that was it. Hey, Joe, a student was telling me she saw ghostly figures jumping—no, she said ‘floating’—off the train and landing somewhere by the dig, so she said. What do you think of that?”

  “Could be the first of later accretions to what will be a legend. Bernie, these students are going to want to bring in the media—or at least the local press. How’re you going to handle that?”

  “I rely on them,” Clift said. “They know how things stand. All the same—Joe, if this thing shows up tonight, I want to be on that helicopter with you.”

  “My god, here it comes,” Mina screamed before Bodenland could reply.

  And it was there in the darkness, like something boring in from outer space, a traveler, a voyager, an invader: full of spee
d and luminescence, which seemed to scatter behind it, swerving across the Escalante. Only when it burst through mesas did its lights fade. This time it was well away from the line of flags planted during the day, heading north, and some miles distant from the camp.

  Bodenland led the rush for the helicopter. Larry followed and jumped into the pilot’s seat. The others were quickly handed up, Mina with her videocam, Clift last, pulling himself aboard as the craft lifted.

  Larry sent it scudding over the ground, barely clearing the camper roofs as it sped up into the night air.

  “Steady,” Kylie said. “This isn’t one of your models, Larry!”

  “Faster,” yelled Mina, “or we’ll lose it.”

  But they didn’t. Fast though the ghost train sped, the chopper cut across ground to it. Before they were overhead, Joe was being winched down on the helicopter’s wire ladder, swinging wild as they banked.

  The strange luminous object—dull when seen up close, shaped like a phosphorescent slug—was just below them. Bodenland steadied himself, clasped the wire rope, made to stand on the roof as velocities matched—and his foot went through nothingness.

  He struggled in the dark, cursing. Nothing of substance was below his boots. Whatever it was, it was as untouchable as it was silent.

  Bodenland dangled there, buffeted by wind from the rotors overhead. The enigmatic object tunneled into the night and disappeared.

  The closeup shots of the ghost train were as striking as the experience had been. Figures were revealed—revealed and concealed—sitting like dummies inside what might have been carriages. They were gray, apparently immobile. Confusingly, they were momentarily replaced by glimpses of trees, perhaps of whole forests; but the green flickered by and was gone as soon as it was seen.

  Mina switched the video off.

  “Any questions?” she asked flippantly.

  Silence fell.

  “Maybe the trees were reflections of something—on the windows, I mean,” Larry said. “Well, no … But trees …”

  “It was like a death train,” Kylie said. “Were those people or corpses? Do you think it could be—No, I don’t know what we saw.”

  “Whatever it was, I have to get back to Dallas tomorrow,” Joe said. “With phantom trains and antediluvian bones, you have a lot of explaining to do to someone, Bernie, my friend.”

  Next morning came the parting of ways at St. George Airport. Bodenland and Mina were going back to Dallas, Larry and his bride flying on to their Hawaii hotel. As they said their farewells in the reception lounge, Kylie took Joe’s hand.

  “Joe, I’ve been thinking about what happened at Old John. You’ve heard of near-death experiences, of course? I believe we underwent a near-death experience. There’s a connection between what we call the ghost train and that sixty-five-million-year-old grave of Bernard Clift’s. Otherwise it’s too much of a coincidence, right?”

  “Mm, that makes sense.”

  “Well then, the shock of that discovery, the old grave, the feeling of death which prevailed over the whole camp—with vultures drifting around and everything—all that precipitated us into a corporate near-death experience. It took a fairly conventional form for such experiences. A tunnel-like effect, the sense of a journey. The corpses on the train, or whatever they were. Don’t you see, it all fits?”

  “No, I don’t see that anything fits, Kylie, but you’re a darling and interesting girl, and I just hope that Larry takes proper care of you.”

  “Like you take care of me, eh, Pop?” Larry said. “I’ll take care of Kylie—and that’s my affair. You take care of your reputation, eh? Watch that this ancient grave of Bernie’s isn’t just a hoax.”

  Bodenland clutched the silver bullet in his pocket and eyed his son coldly, saying nothing. They parted without shaking hands.

  No word had come from Washington in Bodenland’s absence. Instead he received a phone call from the Washington Post wanting an angle on governmental procrastination. Summoning his publicity liaison officer, Bodenland had another demonstration arranged.

  When a distinguished group of political commentators was gathered in the laboratory, clustering round the inertial disposal cabinet, Bodenland addressed them informally.

  “The principle involved here is new. Novelty in itself takes a while for governmental departments to digest. But we want to get there first. Otherwise, our competitors in Japan and Europe will be there before us, and once more America will have lost out. We used to be the leaders where invention was concerned. My heroes since boyhood have been men like Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Alva Edison. I’m going to do an Edison now, just to prove how safe our new principal of waste disposal is.”

  He glanced at Mina, giving her a smile of reassurance.

  “My wife’s anxious for my safety. I welcome that. Washington has different motivations for delay.”

  This time, Bodenland was taking the place of the black plastic bag. He nodded to the technicians and stepped into the cabinet. Waldgrave closed the door on him.

  Bodenland watched the two clocks, the one inside the cabinet with him and the one in the laboratory, as the energy field built up round him. The sweep hand on the inside clock slowed and stopped. The blue light intensified rapidly and he witnessed all movement ceasing in the outside world. The expression on Mina’s face froze, her hand paused halfway to her mouth. Then everything disappeared. It whited out and went in a flash. He stood alone in the middle of a grayish something that had no substance.

  Yet he was able to move again. He turned round and saw a black plastic bag some way behind him, standing in a timeless limbo. He tried to reach it but could not. He felt the air grow thick.

  The stationary clock started to move again. Its rate accelerated. Through the gray fog, outlines of the laboratory with its frozen audience appeared. As the clock in the cabinet caught up with the one outside, everything returned to normal. Waldgrave released him from the cabinet.

  The audience clapped, and there were murmurs of relief.

  Bodenland wiped his brow with a handkerchief.

  “I became stuck in time, just for five minutes. I represented a container of nuclear waste. Only difference, we would not bring the waste back, as Max Waldgrave just brought me back. It would remain at that certain time at which it was disposed of, drifting even further back into the past, like a grave.

  “This cabinet is just a prototype. Given the Department of the Environment’s approval, Bodenland Enterprises will build immense hangars to cope with waste, stow it away in the past by the truckload, and become world monopolists in the new trade.”

  “Could we get the stuff back if we ever wanted to?” someone asked. “I mean, if future ages found what we consider waste to be valuable, worth reclamation.”

  “Sure. Just as I have been brought back to the present time. The point to remember is that at the moment the technology requires enormous amounts of energy. It’s expensive, but security costs. You know we at Bodenland Enterprises are presently tapping solar energy, beamed down from our own satellite by microwave. If and when we get the okay from the DOE, we can afford to research still more efficient methods of beaming in power from space.”

  The two men from the Post had been conferring. The senior man said, “We certainly appreciate the Edison imitation, Mr. Bodenland. But aren’t you being unduly modest—haven’t you just invented the world’s first time machine? Aren’t you applying to the wrong department? Shouldn’t you be approaching the Defense top brass in the Pentagon?”

  Laughter followed the question, but Bodenland looked annoyed. “I’m against nuclear weapons and, for that matter, I’m enough of a confirmed Green to dislike nuclear power plants. Hence our research into PBS’s—power-beam sats. Solar energy, after many decades, is coming into its own at last. It will replace nuclear power in another quarter century, if I have anything to do with it.

  “However, to answer your question—as I have often answered it before—no, I emphatically reject the idea that the inert
ial principle has anything to do with time travel, at least as we understand time travel since the days of H. G. Wells.

  “What we have here is a form of time-stoppage. Anything—obviously not just toxic wastes—can be processed to stay right where it is, bang on today’s time and date, forever, while the rest of us continue subject to the clock. That applies even to the DOE.”

  As the last media man scooped up a handful of salted almonds and left, Mina turned to Bodenland.

  “You are out of your mind, Joe. Taking unnecessary risks again. You might have been killed.”

  “Come on, it worked on mice.”

  “You should have tried rats.”

  He laughed.

  “Birdie, I had an idea while I was in limbo. Something Kylie said stuck in my mind—that the ghost train and the discovery of Bernie Clift’s grave were somehow connected. Suppose it’s a time connection … That train, or whatever it is, must have physical substance. It’s not a ghost. It must obey physical laws, like everything else in the universe. Maybe the connection is a time connection. If we used the inertial principle in a portable form—rigged it up so that it would work from a helicopter—”

  “Oh, shucks!” she cried, seeing what was in his mind. “No, no more funnies, please. You wouldn’t want to be aboard that thing even if you could get in. It’s packed with zombies going god knows where. Joe, I won’t let you.”

  He put his hands soothingly on her shoulders. “Mina, listen—”

  “How many years have I listened? To what effect? To more stress and strain, to more of your bullshit?”

  “I have to get on that train. I’m sure it could be done. It’s no worse than your skydiving. Leap into the unknown—that’s what we’re all about, darling.”