Frankenstein's Legions

by John Whitbourn

  Down the Great West Road the Legions of the Dead marched to war. From a high window in the Hecatomb their creator watched them go.

  * * *

  At Longford, not a mile off, they were intercepted by emissaries so senior they could stop the column in its tracks. The colonel of the regiment didn’t like that: once you got new Lazarans going it was as well to keep them moving till they grew accustomed to military life.

  Yet there was nothing he could do. The seals on the emissaries’ orders left no room for wrangling. The bugle call for halt rang out and most of the Lazarans remembered its meaning.

  It was a dangerous moment. The living escorts were ordered to ‘stand ready.’

  Meanwhile, the undead looked around and took in what little there was to see. God alone knew what their blank-palette minds thought, for their faces weren’t designed for expression. That quality of serum was reserved for higher grade revivals.

  There’d been one occasion—and mercifully only one—when a whole corps had gone berserk and brushed aside their convoy. Acting on herd instinct they’d headed for inhabited areas and it eventually took massed cannon to stop them reaching Hampstead. Army gossip said their commander had been demoted so low he was currently saluting civilians in Shetland.

  Praise be, there was no repetition now. Those who’d forgotten the stop signal were clubbed back into line and the ranks redressed with whips. Meanwhile, the emissaries reviewed this guard of no honour.

  They picked a few of the best from the front: sturdy near good-as-new revivals, plus some immature specimens from the rear. Ideal candidates to become Ada’s Lovelace’s murderers and Mr Babbage’s bed-fellows. Then the silken strangers left with their selection and that was all the regiment ever knew of it.

  The colonel wasn’t favoured with names or explanations: not even a receipt. Old fashioned courtesy was just another casualty of the ‘Forty Year War.’ Government by dictat was something people gradually got used to: a subset of the purely temporary suspension of democracy.

  It didn’t really matter. What did matter now, save winning the War and getting through life still vaguely human? Besides, the colonel’s command would have bigger gaps than this torn from it soon enough.

  ‘March on!’

  The colonel rode along the column, brandishing his sabre as encouragement —or something. He studied the Lazarans and they studied him.

  ‘I don’t know what effect they’ll have on the enemy’ he mused, ‘but by God they frighten me...’

  It required a brace of ‘examples’ to be made before the regiment complied but eventually the march resumed.

  Half a dozen ‘men’ down even before they’d passed Longford. It didn’t bode well.

  * * *

  Unfulfilled omens. Day two’s tally revealed only a couple had slipped away, off to terrorise the English countryside before the Yeomanry or peasantry hunted them down. Not bad considering.

  The only fly in the ointment was a tight schedule. The necessary wide berth of London had taken longer than expected, made sticky by blocked roads. Clouds of cattle and sheep, on their way to feed the War just as the regiment was, were easily dispersed, for animals naturally sensed Lazarans and scattered. The curses of military shepherds were nothing to worry about.

  Protesting Christians were more of a trial however. At Runnymede they met demonstrators. When they wouldn’t listen to authority or reason, the colonel had to resort to condign measures.

  Shooting Quakers he had no problem with. Canting po-faced types for the most part, though the ladies in their prim bonnets excited not only his charity. It was the Catholics the colonel disliked dispersing the rough way. His Aunt had been a Papist and they suffered enough under the Penal laws as it was.

  Still, if people put up barricades—even token flimsy barricades—on the King’s highway, they couldn’t complain when His Majesty’s new recruits were sent in. Which was ironic, considering these were the very same creatures the protest was on behalf of. Shocking scenes ensued.

  Why, the colonel wondered, did Lazarans want to rape people when, strictly speaking, there was no point? They were incapable of either pleasure or conceiving children. He sadly concluded it must be something innate in human (or ex-human) nature.

  Living troops mopped up any resistance with bayonets and collected the bodies for recycling.

  By Kingston the colonel concluded that only forced marches would get them to their ship on time. That meant moving by both day and night and snatched sleep in the saddle for those who needed it. He posted cavalry ahead to warn the natives.

  Fortunately, Surrey was mostly heath and sparsely settled once you got past the London sprawl. Very ‘light land’ as surveyors termed it. Local magistrates did a good job and sent word so that minor roads paralleling the main one were cleared. After that, they made good time without further incident.

  Though the colonel never knew it, besides the North Downs, where the old ‘Pilgrims’ Way’ brushed the Portsmouth Road, a man ruling an Empire which spanned one third of the globe (though only he recognised his rule) watched them go by.

  From a drawing room in Loseley House, a mansion requisitioned from its ancient but ‘unpatriotic’ family, the man trained a spy-glass on the regiment as it shambled through the—now his—hamlet of Littleton. And since no one could see him, he shuddered.

  It was imperfect picture in every sense. The elegant mother-of-pearl opera-glasses were not designed for such long-seeing. They gave only a fuzzy image: which given the view was perhaps just as well.

  Another thing neither parties knew was that it was from this very regiment the observer had drawn Ada’s assassins and Babbage’s boys. Again, ignorance of the connection was probably for the best and thus bliss.

  The peasantry had been recalled from the fields and children from their play. Presently, they huddled behind barred cottage doors and gripped rustic weaponry. The local militia stood to arms hidden from sight behind a barn. No less frightened, the livestock had scented something and crowded against field boundaries as far away as possible. Yet the sun still shone bright, and wayside wild-flowers abounded. Together, their splendid normality almost overcame the affliction traversing Littleton’s narrow lane. Almost.

  As the regiment passed his drive the man had his best view of the drab column, glimpsing details right down to paper-white flesh and dead eyes. Accordingly, the opera glasses were set aside.

  ‘How did things come to this?’ he reflected. ‘It really is appalling!

  But that was mere emotion (high emotion by his standards) and therefore unworthy of him or any man. Plus nothing to do with anything. As he’d famously once said (and shocked his audience): ‘Thought is everything—but also leads nowhere.’

  No, civilised minds should transcend first thoughts and come to cooler conclusions, thereby building their house on rock (as Scripture so wisely advised). What did he really think about the unnatural horror show parading before his very window? Or, broader still, about the world-as-it-was come to see him in all its glory?

  Answer came easy, in the form of another of his infamous epithets, said long before but in a similar death-connected context: ‘It is worse than a crime; it is a mistake!’ Which said it all as far he was concerned.

  That settled, the man then chided himself that any old world-class intellect could describe the world. That was the easy bit. The point (and problem) was how to change it.

  More difficult still, how could just one individual—even an exceedingly clever individual (such as he)—amend things for the better?

  And, of course, have monstrous fun at the same time?

  * * *

  It was a quite a trip for name checks. Another important personage happened to see the new-forged regiment too. They crossed paths with Admiral Nelson, (Lord Merton, Duke of Bronte, Knight-commander of Naples, etc. etc.) as boats ferried him in his capsule to HMS Victory and them to their troopship.

  Nelson curled his lip at their wafting stench of serum mixed with d
ecaying meat—though, strictly speaking, in no position to cast stones himself.

  * * *

  In Germania the regiment proved its worth.

  A stubborn salient of churned mud and rubble still described on maps as ‘The Prince-Archbishopric of Dresden’ was holding up the French armies. Any breakthrough by them there might lead to the recapture of Berlin for the umpteenth time. Occasion, it was decided, for a rare Allied counter-attack.

  Disposed against that were legions of Lazarans (though the Conventionary army more tactfully termed them ‘New-Citizens’), backed by massed French cannon in unassailable positions.

  Unassailable, that is, to soldiers with a life to lose. A life which they valued. And families. And souls.

  The colonel’s ‘413th regiment of Revived Foot’ had few such qualms. Or if they did, bayonets and barbed-whips overcame them. They rushed the French emplacements and blocked grapeshot with their second-hand bodies whilst live troops manoeuvred and won the battle elsewhere.

  So it was worth all the grave-robbing and serum and upsetting Littleton and Nelson after all.

  Afterwards, men from the ‘Charon brigades’ went and collected any identifiable bits in order that the glorious 413th might become the glorious 414th.

  Accordingly, Berlin didn’t fall for a further fortnight.

  Chapter 2: A DAY IN THE LIFE OF JULIUS FRANKENSTEIN

  ‘…how pleased you would be to remark the improvement of our Ernest! He is sixteen, and full of activity and spirit. He is desirous to be a true Swiss, and to enter into foreign service... My uncle is not pleased with the idea of a military career in a distant country; but Ernest has never had your powers of application. He looks upon study as an odious fetter;—his time is spent in the open air, climbing the hills or rowing on the lake. I fear that he will become an idler, unless we yield the point, and permit him to enter on the profession he has selected.’

  Letter from Elizabeth Lavenza to Victor Frankenstein

  Geneva; March 18th 1793.

  * * *

  ‘Admitted this day of our Lord and Salvation, 23rd March 1801 as sergeant first class, Herr Ernest Frankenstein, citizen of Geneva, aged 24. Widower. One dependent accompanying: son, infant, named Julius.

  ‘Bears own arms. Previous service with the forces of Genoa, Knights of St John, Poland, the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and sundry others. Numerous citations and medals from same, cited in the appendix attached. References received from the Grand Master of Malta and Cardinal-Archbishop of Smyrna.’

  Subsequently annotated, in French: ‘Deceased—Battle of the Pontine Gate, Rome, during the last conquest.’

  From the Vatican muster rolls of the Swiss Guard,

  stored in the Musée de la Victoire, Paris.

  * * *

  The previously mentioned pale face at the Heathrow Hecatomb window kept a diary. The day before she came the diary entry read: ‘Same. Breakfast. Visitor, with menaces. Pretend researches. Drink. Bed.’

  Which was essentially it. But to expand:

  ‘You are at risk of being a disappointment to us, Frankenstein. I tell you in all candour: it does not do to be a disappointment to us.’

  The visitor, presumably another Secret Service man, leant back to let his words sink in.

  Other senior staff enjoyed a cheroot and coffee after breakfast. It was some compensation for sitting behind steel mesh watching the new revivals relearn to eat. Increasingly however, Julius Frankenstein got hauled over the coals instead.

  Yet there was flattery in this. Julius was fairly shooting up the scale of threatening interviews. Slanging matches with local management and ‘final written warnings’ were left far behind. Now there was this nameless man from nowhere, with all the assurance in the world and silky skills to match it.

  ‘A pity,’ Frankenstein replied. ‘I have significant aptitude in that specialist field. I was a disappointment to my father as he was to his, as I am now to you. It is a family trait polished from generation to generation. However, if my presence is not required...’

  The visitor steepled his fingers.

  ‘I am not a child to be humoured, Herr Frankenstein...’

  Indeed not. The visitor was in his seventies if he was a day, though the legacies of a lusty youth still hung around. Particularly in the eyes. As for Julius, he was less afflicted with years but equally steeped in experience.

  ‘You must know that this is not a post one resigns from,’ the visitor continued. ‘Your current status is a curious one: both a bucket of blessings and the sword of Damocles hang over your head. It is in my power to decide which one falls.’

  ‘But not in mine to influence the decision.’

  The visitor pursed his lips. Julius decided he must have been a fop in earlier days, a dandy about town but with a steely core. Only now the silk and lace contained a withered frame and the man of the world had expanded round the equator.

  ‘Au contraire, dear sir, au contraire. As the Heathrow Hecatomb’s Head of Research you are very much master of your own destiny. Which you would find out if only we saw some research from you. As it is, at best we get only grade three and four Lazarans from your laboratory: Revivals I wouldn’t trust to make tea. Or look after my library...’

  Frankenstein guessed that tea took priority over books in this man’s life by a factor of five at least. The chill between them grew accordingly.

  The visitor sensed it, even if he did not understand. He frowned.

  ‘You must understand, sir, that such mediocrity can be matched by myriad English technicians. Trustworthy technicians. Whereas you possess neither of those admirable qualities…’

  Julius Frankenstein looked round the little interview room. It was bare of consolation. Yet he knew full well that if he directed his gaze within it would only meet a similarly bleak vista.

  It was open to him to say he’d not asked for the post but had it thrust upon him. But then the visitor would counter he had asked for asylum in England—and got it, which not many did nowadays—and a job besides. A good job, vital to the War effort and his new adopted nation. It was cold and harsh out in the big wide world at the best of times (which this was most certainly not) and he should be grateful for his generous reception. Other nations, even his motherland, would not be so kind: especially those ones who actively sought him. Given his family name, the guillotine was high on the list of likely outcomes should he fall into their hands—once his brain was sucked dry that is.

  All true and reasonable, from a certain cock-eyed perspective. So Julius jumped ahead several exchanges to the nub of the matter.

  ‘I have doubts,’ he said.

  * * *

  He’d said exactly the same thing when much writing and pleading secured him an interview with the Prime Minister. A four hour wait in an overheated antechamber rubbing shoulders with Field Marshals and Admirals secured him two minutes of the great man’s time.

  ‘I have doubts,’ concluded Julius, at the end of a long chain of argument, briskly stated.

  The Duke of Wellington had not interrupted. Indeed, he’d nodded sympathetically and made notes as Frankenstein explained the whys and wherefore of his ‘doubts.’ Then The ‘Iron Duke’ looked up with his cold-as-iron eyes and said he would:

  ‘Waste no time looking into it.’

  A mere Swiss, innocent of the subtleties of the English language, Julius didn’t straightaway understand.

  Yet though Frankenstein was foreign he wasn’t deaf. Before the door had even closed behind him he overheard the Duke tell his secretary:

  ‘I never want to see that man again!’

  * * *

  Julius’ present visitor and the Duke were obviously of one mind. The caller sighed but stoically forged on.

  ‘We all have doubts from time to time, Frankenstein. Let me assure you that we do. Yet I am no priest or confessor. I have no more power to dispel your misgivings than I have my own. ‘Doubt’ is the lot of mankind until we are admitted beyond the veil. When doubtless we
shall see clearly, if you’ll excuse the pun. Meanwhile, we must live with it as best we can. Blame the War, Herr Frankenstein, blame the damn Frenchies if it helps. Meanwhile, make use of the days your eyes are graciously permitted to see. Utilise that gifted brain.’

  It was an honest speech, as far as it went, with the menaces well in the background. The best Julius had had so far.

  ‘I will think on what you say.’

  The visitor studied him, undeluded, a stranger to illusions.

  ‘Hmmm. Well, see that you do but don’t dilly-dally about it. Meanwhile, think of me as a chimney-sweep. There is a blockage and a variety to methods to deal with it. First one tries the simple, gentler, less messy, means; then, if success does not attend, the more robust. Ultimately it is always open to a sweep to just thrust a brush up the chimney to... pop the offending item out of there. And as to where that damned blockage falls: who knows? Or cares? It is of no worth to anyone.’

  An unfortunate metaphor. The Hecatomb had a chimney which never rested. Up it went the surplus to requirement body parts, producing succulent smoke and spreading horrified sniffs all over Middlesex.

  ‘I shall dwell on the simile this very day, Mr...’

  The visitor arose and handed Julius his card.

  The richly embossed rectangle simply read:

  Sir Percy Blakeney

  and nothing else. Which said a great deal.

  * * *

  Despite the jostling of his coach heading home, Sir Percy Blakeney jotted a note in Frankenstein’s case file: ‘Matthew. Ch.3 v.10.’ (Which is to say: “Therefore every tree which bring not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.”)