“You should not judge me as typical,” Guido replied. “If I appear uncommonly cheerful and content, that’s partly because I am so far away from him. If I like my work, that’s because it so often takes me away. You are not mistaken, though–because I know what he really is, I am not prey to the same exaggerated dread as the greater number of my fellows. I know that he does not really feed on blood, any more than the South Sea islanders are really cannibals... but he is not a noble and innocently virtuous individual, either, as Rousseau would have us believe that men unspoiled by civilization would be.”
“He will be able to step into the daylight soon enough,” Ned said. “The Grey Men will not have to hide themselves away much longer.”
“Don’t be too optimistic,” Guido said. “You have not yet seen the outcome of your current experiment. You know well enough, I think, how exceptional Frankenstein’s Adam is.”
“The process is in dire need of perfection,” Ned agreed, “but once experiments can be carried out on a grand scale, in adequate security, progress will be swift.”
“And within two or three generations,” Guido said, skeptically, “the reanimated dead will outnumber the living, and will set the world to rights. We’ve a great deal of trouble to endure, my friend, before the empires of the living will condescend to live alongside the empires of the dead. These Tuscan craftsmen may want their beloved stray sheep back, but do you really believe that they would rejoice in the news that Bonaparte and all his hawkish generals might return? Not, you understand, that I am making the mistake of assuming that your General Mortdieu is Bonaparte, merely because he is dwelling in Bonaparte’s dead body.”
“It seems that our alliance has been a modest success after all,” Ned observed, mildly, “despite its shaky start. We are scattering our secrets recklessly now–but I’d like to know a good deal more about your master before I agree to act as his emissary and spokesman.”
“I dare say that we still have a few secrets in reserve,” Guido said. “We are spies after all. I’d like to know a good deal more about your second paymaster, before I make him an offer of amity on my master’s behalf.”
“I don’t even know the name of your vampire,” Ned pointed out, feeling obliged to play the careful diplomat, in spite of his physical exhaustion.
“He calls himself Szandor, and poses as a Count–but I do not suppose that the name and the title were his before he died. That does not matter–you must have discovered by now that men successfully resurrected from the dead do not consider themselves to be the same men they were when they were alive.”
Ned had, in fact, taken due note of the fact that “Lazarus” preferred a obvious pseudonym to the name he had owned in life. “The world is overfull of imaginary Counts,” he said, still dutifully beating around the bush. “What the French Revolutionaries began, Bonaparte completed–the old aristocracy is gone, and the new one is open to anyone who can make his claim persuasive. I do want to open negotiations with you, on behalf of Comte Henri de Belcamp–which is only one of my own employer’s many names–but I wonder whether it can wait until I’ve had a few hours’ sleep. My first priority is to be able to work as hard and efficiently as I can to make Frankenstein’s new experiment a success. May we postpone the remainder of this conversation until tomorrow?”
“Yes, if that’s your wish. You do seem very tired. If the Tuscan army puts in an appearance, though, I might be forced to retreat. If so, tell Frankenstein, his Grey Adam and your Comte that my Count would be very interested in a meeting, to discuss matters of mutual interest. Paris might be the most suitable venue. I’ll find you again, when I can.”
“Do you think the Tuscan army is likely to intervene?” Ned asked.
“They are a good deal more likely to do so now that half of Spezia has taken up arms,” Guido told him. “A few foreigners dabbling in conspiracy can be regarded as a matter of marginal concern, but local populations forming associations of self-interest is something else. Don’t get carried away by your enthusiasm, Monsieur Knob. You might be full of optimism just now, because of the strange turn that events have taken here, but the Church has sharper blades than Malo de Treguern, and the many political wounds inflicted by the war are still very sore. The individuals we represent must make what alliances they can against the new crusade. You and I must try to keep in touch.”
“I’ll do my best,” Ned agreed. “Is your Count Szandor also interested in meeting Gregory Temple, then?”
“I suspect that Temple and his political masters will be more ready to align themselves with Treguern, for all that they are Protestants. For the time being, it will surely be sufficient to bring the parties I named together.”
“Do you know how Shelley is?” Ned asked, abruptly.
“Bearing up, I believe. No worse, at any rate. His wife is said to be improving too–but it’s too soon to tell whether or not they’ll need Frankenstein’s services, as it’s too soon to tell whether he’ll still be able to offer them this time tomorrow. You’d better sleep now–I’ll try to find out what the other Hospitaller is doing, and hinder him if I can.”
The rival spy left by means of the door, his slippered feet making hardly any noise on the wooden stairway as he went downstairs. Ned drank a cupful of water and then lay down on his bed, fully dressed. Exhaustion sent him to sleep without delay, in spite of the fact that he had not eaten for more than 24 hours.
Chapter Ten
Between Death and Life
By the time Ned was able to return to Walton’s house, dusk was falling. The crowd surrounding the grounds parted silently to let him through. He found Malo de Treguern sitting on the step of the main door, haggard and dispirited. The warrior monk did not reply to Ned’s polite greeting.
The stove in Frankenstein’s laboratory was blazing, and the room was exceedingly hot, although the French windows opening to the rear of the house had been thrown open to the light breeze that drifted down the steep hillside towards the cooling waters of the Ligurian Sea. Trelawny, Walton and Hay were all in the garden outside, talking in low voices.
All the carefully-stacked supportive apparatus had now been established around the three large enameled bathtubs in the center of the room. The wires carrying the electrical fluid had been gathered into clumps and tied in bundles, but still seemed to be running back and forth in chaotic confusion. Only a few of them were attached to the arrays electrodes immersed in the liquid that each bath contained. Lazarus and Frankenstein were working steadily to put the final touches on this phase of the labor, apparently in perfect harmony.
Ned was delighted to see the Grey Man and his maker united in their purpose. The man of science no longer seemed haunted or unready for anything; he was fully absorbed in his quest again, working with calm determination. Lazarus was at ease too, as if this were his vocation too–as well it might be, Ned supposed, given that he was bravely working for the better future of his own kind in a hostile world.
The apparatus Ned had seen in Patou’s cellar in Purfleet had seemed makeshift enough, but the many polished relics of James Graham’s pretentious “Temples of Health and Hygiene” that Patou had acquired had given the ensemble a certain style and grandeur, and the cellar itself had been large enough to allow the individual units to be sensibly spaced out. There was no style or grandeur here; all the equipment communicated an impression of hasty improvisation, and the sitting-room that had adapted for use as a laboratory seemed decidedly cramped and inappropriately overcrowded now that so much metal and so many ponderous ceramic vessels had been accumulated within it.
The viscous liquid in the baths was conspicuously darker in hue than the fluid Ned had seen in Patou’s baths, but it did not seem, as yet, to be alive in its own right. Patou’s life-endowing fluid had resembled brightly streaming protoplasm observed with the assistance of strong light and a magnifying lens, but this was more like sullen molasses accumulated in the gutters of a sugar refinery.
The three dead bodies had not yet been
immersed in the baths; they were still laid out on a table adjacent to the wall opposite the French windows. Their congealed blood had been re-liquefied and drained from their bodies into huge jars; while Ned watched, waiting to discover whether there was anything his hands and mind could usefully contribute, Frankenstein set about replacing it with a different fluid, whose function was not to embalm the bodies but to assist in their revitalization.
Lazarus stood up and nodded to Ned. “It looks ugly,” he said, “but I believe that it will work.” The Grey Man’s voice now had a tremor of anxious excitement in it, but there was none of the nervous agitation that possessed Frankenstein.
“What do you want me to do?” Ned asked.
“Help Frankenstein with the injections,” Lazarus said. “Your fingers are nimbler than mine, and he’s almost ready to drop.”
Ned moved to do as he was asked. The bodies were largely unmarked. Ned recognized the one Guido had strangled and the one whose throat Lazarus had crushed. The third man had been stabbed in the heart, but the wound was not gaping, and seemed as if might disappear altogether if its edges were carefully placed together.
Frankenstein looked up as Ned appeared by his side. “This requires expert hands,” the scientist said. “Thank you, but I’d better do it myself.” In the end, though, once Ned had watched him subject the first body to the necessary preparations, he reluctantly accepted that his weariness was beginning to get the better of him, and contented himself with watching Ned repeat the operation twice more under his instruction.
I am a resurrectionist now! Ned thought, exultantly. I am a true collaborator in the great work. I have surely seen and understood enough, now, to direct such an operation myself, when the need and opportunity arise. He knew that he was assuming and claiming a little too much, but his spirit was over-full of enthusiasm and ambition.
“When you’re done,” Frankenstein told him, “we must place the bodies in the fluid. After that, there’ll be little to do but wait, and hope. With luck, at least one or two of them will recover some semblance of life–and we shall have to pray that the crowd outside find enough to satisfy them in that appearance.” His voice became noticeably less robust as this speech was concluded; the man of science seemed to be faltering in his resolve again now that his work was almost complete. When Ned finally set the last syringe down and turned to look at his instructor, he saw a slight flash of resentment in Frankenstein’s bloodshot eyes. It was as if Frankenstein saw something in Ned’s fervent determination to carry the resurrectionist cause forward that made him jealous.
Ned went back to Lazarus, who was testing the tangled wiring. “Will there be sufficient electrical fluid?” Ned asked.
“We must hope so,” the Grey Man replied, in a low voice. “Frankenstein’s provision in that regard was barely adequate, but the extra batteries the townspeople secured should give us a margin for error. My maker has concentrated his recent research on the chemical aspects of the revivifying process, as is only to be expected.”
“Why is that?” Ned asked.
The Grey Man hesitated momentarily, but then said: “Because the resurrection of the dead can only be a preliminary and partial goal, so far as he is concerned. His ultimate objective has always been the preservation of the living against the possibility of death, to the extent that such preservation might be possible.”
“The discovery of an elixir of life, you mean?”
“Yes–or, perhaps, an elixir of metamorphosis, which would permit a living body to remake its own substance, greatly augmenting its resilience in respect of disease and injury.”
“Alchemists and magicians sought such a device in vain for centuries,” Ned reminded him.
“Their chemistry was fatally flawed. They had not even begun to understand the chemistry of life. We have only made a beginning, even now, but at least we have begun. I am the living proof of the rewards that may flow from progress yet to be made. Let us hope that we can show the people outside a little more, while they are still hungry for it. They have opened a window of opportunity for us, and it will be a tragedy if we cannot keep it open. If Frankenstein were able to continue to work here in peace, under the protection of his neighbors, it would be very advantageous to our cause.”
“I admire your optimism,” murmured a newcomer to their conversation, “but conspicuous success in this endeavor might prove more disastrous than total failure.”
Ned looked round, and found himself looking up into Robert Walton’s anxious eyes. “In what way?” he asked.
“As King George’s spy, you should understand that quite well,” Walton told him, bitterly. “If Victor’s method demonstrates its worth publicly, at this relatively early stage in his research, the Church’s objections to necromancy will be the least of our problems. Do you think that the Tuscan authorities, or any other government, will be content to let us be, so that we may revive bandits and the poor? What do you think the fate would have been of any alchemist who actually discovered the rudiments of a method of making gold or the elements of a technique that might deliver immortality? It was not for fear of madmen like Treguern that we set out to operate in secret, but for fear of possessive monopolists who might fight for our custody like starving dogs over a joint of meat, in order to reserve the proceeds of our further progress for their own profit. Whatever the result of this experiment is, we need to get out of here and vanish as soon as we can.” The last remark was aimed at Lazarus, who could not now be excluded from Walton’s narrow conception of “we.”
“Guido seems to be thinking along the same lines,” Ned said, uneasily.
“We can surely deal with properly constituted authorities by diplomatic means,” Lazarus said to Walton. “We may yet have cause to be thankful that we have a representative of His Majesty’s government here.”
Remembering what Guido had said about the side that Gregory Temple and his political masters might take, Ned was not so sure that His Majesty’s government would be behind him, or even that it would be as readily amenable to diplomacy as the Grey Man naively assumed–but he did not say so.
“Time is on our side now,” Lazarus said, “provided that Treguern’s companion cannot summon reinforcements.”
“The Tuscan Light Horse is a greater danger by far,” Walton opined. “A detachment could ride from Pisa in a matter of hours. They already have a score to settle with us, and might not be in a mood to negotiate. If they do come, Trelawny, Taaffe and Hay agree with me that the vital thing is to spirit you and Frankenstein away–on the Bolivar if that is possible, the Don Juan if not.”
“San Terenzo is conveniently close,” Ned observed, addressing himself to Lazarus, “for a man who can walk freely and at his leisure. In a chase or a hunt, as you’ve already had occasion to notice, the same distance might seem a very long way.”
“It’s the only escape route we have,” Walton stated, baldly. “What’s King George’s position on the matter, Mr. Knob? Would he rather we surrendered to the local authorities, or that we killed a few in making good our escape?” He spoke the King’s name with a contemptuous curl of his lip. Ned knew that the King and Lord Byron had once been on good terms, in the days when the Prince had not yet surrendered himself completely to a life of idle debauchery, but no one seemed to like him now that he had ascended to the throne.
“In His Majesty’s absence,” Ned said, airily, “I must obviously act on my own initiative. I’ll help you, to the extent that I can–but I’d rather we didn’t have to kill anyone, if that’s possible, even if we are forced to run.”
“Good,” said Walton. “I’ll pass the word along.” He turned and strode back through the open French windows, leaving Lazarus and Ned to assist Frankenstein in moving the bodies into the tanks. Walton brought his companions in from the garden while the three bodies were being carefully immersed and the electrodes connected. Lazarus and Frankenstein made the final adjustments, and then there was nothing to do but wait.
Lazarus went out to tel
l the crowd that everything had been done that needed to be done, but that no result could be expected for at least 12 hours, and perhaps 24.
The crowd began to disperse, but left a cohort behind that was more than sufficient to form a cordon around the house. These guardians did not prevent John Taaffe from leaving, in order to carry news to Casa Magni, but they grew far more attentive when Frankenstein stepped out for a breath of air, and Ned deduced that they knew exactly what the value of each of their hostages was.
Ned felt duty-bound to go to Frankenstein and say: “If you care to come to England, sir, I can guarantee you the protection of Gregory Temple, who is a man of considerable influence and ability.”
“Perhaps you could,” Frankenstein said. “The government of Switzerland would probably do more, given that I’m a citizen of Geneva, and I’d be sure of a welcome in Prussia, too–but I’m too much a Calvinist to tolerate overseers of my conscience, whoever they might be.”
“I’m a radical myself, sir, despite my profession,” Ned said, “and I sympathize with your position.”
When Lazarus came back indoors, Ned went to sit with him, and asked the Grey Adam to tell him the true story behind the melodrama of Frankenstein. Lazarus did so, and also undertook to complete Ned’s practical education in the art and science of resurrection by telling him everything he knew and supposed about the process by which Grey Men were made. All this took several hours, but the new Adam did not pause or hesitate–nor, seemingly, did he hold any anything in reserve. “Take all that to England, if you will,” he said, when he had finished. “Make a full report to Gregory Temple, by all means–but if anything should happen to my maker and myself as this particular affair proceeds to its culmination, make sure the information reaches Humphry Davy and Erasmus Darwin. I don’t know whether the Royal Society or the Lunar Society will be the better motivated to use it, but one of them must.”
Tales of the Shadowmen 4: Lords of Terror Page 40
