2
They made a fire in the center of the courtyard, well away from any walls that might decide to give up their long and losing battle against gravity during the night. Dinner consisted of salt pork, boiled potatoes, and carrots, all courtesy of Adam and Maggie, plus a bag of dried fruit and some Ho-Hos, both of which Bob had liberated from the ruins of a Bugg’s SuperMart a few weeks ago. Freud, of course, ate nothing.
As he herded together the last crumbs on his plate with his fork, Bob said, “That pork was excellent. Where did you get it?”
“We raised it ourselves,” Maggie said. “We still have a good deal of it left if you would care to take some when our job is done.”
“Wow. You raised pigs?”
“Yes,” said Adam. “For over a decade we lived on an abandoned manor far to the east of here. We were forced to vacate the area three months ago.”
“Why? What happened?”
“A peculiar variety of fungus overran the area. It was bright green and slightly slimy to the touch, and it grew in thick shrouds upon anything made of wood, which it ate, dissolving it with a rapidity I would have believed impossible had I not witnessed it myself. So precise and cunning were its responses to our various stratagems to rid ourselves of it that I often wondered if it were sentient. Before long, we decided to flee the now-dilapidated manor and find a new, more hospitable home. It has been hard finding such a place, of course; my gruesome visage makes us undesirable as neighbors. One of the great benefits of the manor was its relative isolation.”
“But because of that, it was also very lonely,” said Maggie.
“Yes. You and your sister deserve better company than me. You should be out gracing your fellow humans with your charms.”
Maggie rolled her eyes. “You should, as well.” To Bob she said, “We have these debates all the time. He thinks he is ill-suited to human company simply because his looks are initially fearsome.” She turned back to Adam. “But have Anna and I not acclimated ourselves to you appearance? Do we not treat you as the man you are?”
“That is different. We are linked. We are, in a sense, family.”
“Yeah,” Bob said. He set his plate aside. “That was something I wanted to ask you about. Are you really the, uh, the being created by Dr. Victor Frankenstein?”
“I am. I see you, too, have read this book about which I have heard so much since the Cataclysm.”
“Well, yeah. I’ve seen some of the movies too, though most of them didn’t really follow the book too closely. I take it you’ve never read the book yourself?”
“Alas—or perhaps fortunately—no. After I learned of it, I scoured the ruins of bookstores and libraries whenever we came across them, hoping to find a copy, but I have not yet uncovered one. From what I hear, though, it sounds reasonably accurate. I wonder how this author, this…Shelby, was it?”
“Shelley. Mary Shelley.”
“Ah, yes. Shelley. I wonder how she learned my history.”
“Well, as far as I know, she made it up.”
“So others have said. But I am here, am I not? I am no fiction.”
“No. Obviously not.” Bob stared into the fire, deep in thought. Then his eyes swiveled back to Adam.
“Can I ask something?” he said.
The gravity in his voice made Adam stiffen.
“If you wish,” Adam said.
“I have to know: Is it true, what it says in the book? About you murdering all those people? Dr. Frankenstein’s wife, and his little brother William, and all them?”
His eyes remained locked on Adam’s face as Adam looked away, fixing his gaze upon a rotted wooden door that hung askew in the wall of the keep. Adam had been expecting the question, but that didn’t make it any easier to deal with.
“Yes,” Adam said in a low voice. “It is all true. Every crime.”
Bob glanced at Maggie and saw her eyes shifting back and forth between Adam and himself, her expression tense and uncertain. She was clearly concerned about where the conversation would go. Bob knew he was stomping off into sensitive and possibly dangerous territory, but what else could he do? He was a crime-fighter, and he had to find out if he was in the presence of a criminal.
As if reading Bob’s thoughts, Adam said, “I do not act in that manner any longer. I was younger then, and more foolish. I sought to share the pain of my lonely, accursed existence with he who had given me that existence. My goal was to render him as lonely and accursed as myself, which meant stripping him of those dearest to him. They were innocent of any crime against me, of course, yet I cared nothing for that; I was sure that had they but known of me, they would have unthinkingly despised me because of my unfortunate appearance, the way so many other men did. But as I said, I was foolish, immature, my head filled with Miltonic melodrama.” He raised his huge, thick hands and held them in front of his face. “Could I take back the hateful work of these hands, I would. But what is done cannot be undone.” His hands fell back into his lap and he sighed. “My only goal now is to live out my days without causing further harm. And the only logical way to do that is to isolate myself from mankind, whose blind hate would inspire within me those murderous feelings.”
Bob pondered this for a moment, then said, “I thought you died at the end of the book. Or at least it was pretty clear that’s what you were planning to do—to burn yourself to death or something like that, up in the Arctic.”
Adam nodded. “Yes. After I had destroyed my creator by murdering those dearest to him and then leading him on a round-the-world chase that essentially exhausted him to death, I sought to end my life by building a pyre and setting myself ablaze. And that is nearly what happened, but…”
“But what? What stopped you?”
Adam gave a small, tight, almost rueful smile. “My maker did his work too well. He made me too human, with not only human emotions, but a human will to live. As I knelt, torch in hand, atop the oil-soaked pyre that I had spent most a day constructing, something within me recoiled in terror at the thought of the annihilation of my self. With a wild, animalistic cry, I flung the torch away and hurled myself off the pyre and onto the ice‑sheet upon which I had built it. For a long time I lay there on my back in the snow, weeping, cursing my weakness and my creator and the uncaring, unforgiving universe. Eventually, cheeks glazed with frozen tears, I fell asleep.
“The following morning I set out across the ice-sheet in search of dry land, and after several days came to a desolate rocky waste unspoiled by man’s ruinous touch. I soon found a large, deep cave, and there I made my home.”
“But…” Bob shook his head. “Where do Maggie and her sister fit in? I don’t remember them from the book at all. Um, no offense.”
This latter comment had been made to Maggie, who dismissed it with a wave of her hand. “No offense is taken. It is impossible for you to remember us from the book since from the sound of things, it ended well before we were ever born.”
“They were the daughters of Ernest Frankenstein,” Adam said.
Bob thought hard, then gave a wincing, apologetic smile and shook his head. “I don’t remember any Ernest. Sorry. Then again, it’s been a long time since I read the thing, so I guess it’s no surprise I don’t remember too much.”
“Ernest was Victor’s brother and the only surviving member of the family after Victor’s death. While I dwelt in Arctic isolation, he remained in Geneva, became a syndic, married, and had twin daughters.”
“So did you go back home, or did the girls go in search of you, or what?”
“No, I returned to Geneva.”
“Why?”
Adam drew in a breath as if about to speak, paused, then slumped forward a little and let the breath out in a long sigh.
“That is…hard to explain. After ruminating at great length upon my misdeeds and the beliefs that fostered them, I came to see that my rage at my creator and at mankind in general was born of ignorance and childishness. I could not continue blaming my creator for all the ills of my life. He had
acted unwisely, yes; but I was here now on this Earth, and the manner of my origin was of little consequence in regard to what I chose to do in the present. And hating men for fearing that which is unpleasant and unfamiliar is pointless. Human nature is what it is. The solution to my problems was to stay exactly where I was, to remain isolated from human society for the rest of my existence.
“But as time wore on, I discerned no change in my body. My mind and muscles remained as strong as ever, my joints flexible, my endurance excellent. No gray hairs intertwined with my familiar black locks; no wrinkles, save those already present, marred my flesh; no haze clouded my vision. The infirmities of man were not mine. The unique circumstances of my creation ensured that I did not age as he did.
“My continued vigor made me realize I could not remain a hermit forever, for eventually my isolation would drive me mad. On the heels of this realization came a nostalgic yearning to see the faces and places of men, particularly those already familiar to me. For a long time I tried to ignore these feelings, but there came a day when they could no longer be denied. Thus I packed up my few belongings and made my way back to Geneva. I was startled to discover that fifteen years had passed since my departure.”
“Time flies, huh?” Bob said.
“On the contrary, I believed that I had been away far longer than that. My time in the Arctic had seemed an eternity.” He watched the flames leap and snap, his face cast in wavering shades of red and orange, his moist eyes gleaming in the ever-shifting light. He shook his head a little at some private thought or memory.
“So how’d you connect up with Maggie and her sister, then?” Bob asked. “I mean, I can’t imagine you just knocked on their door and said, ‘Howdy, I’m your long-lost cousin Adam from Amsterdam.’” He had hoped his attempt at levity would lighten Adam’s mood, but Adam just moved his head slightly in what might have been a shake, or a nod, or simply an acknowledgement of the feeble joke. Bob glanced at Maggie. Her expression was blank.
“It was an accident,” Adam said. “I had no intention of ever again inflicting myself upon that unfortunate family. Although some undeniable urge compelled me to view what remained of the family line, I knew I had no right or reason to do or expect more than that and so I vowed I would only watch them from afar.
“And so I did, grieved to discover that Ernest looked far older than was normal for a man of his years, a condition no doubt caused by my hateful slaughter of his birth family. Fortunately, the kindness and irrepressible good cheer of his young wife helped assuage his sorrows, as did the numerous charms of his twin daughters, upon whom my attention came to focus more and more. Then only seven years old, they were the most delightful creatures I had ever laid eyes on—merry, inquisitive, laughing, full of joy at the world’s wonder. Whenever I watched them at their play, my cares and burdens vanished, and I felt my spirits buoyed by a sense of joyful optimism.
“Their favorite pastime, it seemed, was to chase butterflies in a field on the east side of the family estate. Between this field and a road that ran past the property was a stand of pines from which I could observe the girls unseen. One day while I stood ensconced therein, smiling at these two lovely angels as they harassed a hapless pink butterfly, I heard a scream from the road behind me. Afraid that I had been seen, I whirled and peered out through the trees at the road. It proved to be a false alarm: A woman’s child had tumbled from the back of a passing cart, and though the mother was in hysterics, the child was unhurt. Seeing that all was well, I turned back around to resume my watch on the girls.
“But the girls were watching me. While I had been distracted, they had pursued the butterfly into the pines, and when I turned, there they stood, staring at me.
“Horror seized me, for I was certain that the sight of my hideous form would scar their delicate minds and send them racing away in fright. Instead, my horror turned to utter bemusement when one of the girls—Maggie here, as I learned later—smiled at me and said, ‘You’re very tall.’”
She chuckled. “At first, we were frightened. When he turned, we thought we had discovered one of the ogres from the books of fairy stories our father sometimes read to us. Yet when we saw the dread that flooded his face upon seeing us, we realized that was impossible. No monster would be so shaken by the sight of two little girls. So extreme was his distress that we were overwhelmed with sympathy for him, and when we spoke, it was to ease that distress.
“For a moment he said nothing. Then he stammered out something along the lines of ‘Um, yes, I suppose I am quite tall indeed.’
“‘Why is your face all yellow and wrinkly?’ Anna then asked. ‘Did something bad happen to you?’
“And then…” She glanced at Adam, who was staring fixedly at the campfire.
Without looking up, his voice low and tight, as if he were trying to choke off the words even as he uttered them, he said, “No one had spoken to me in such a friendly manner before. No one, that is, except one poor blind man, who upon learning the truth of my appearance, fled in panic. To hear those well-meant words, to be spoken to as a man rather than a monster—and this by those whose kindness I had most desired yet least expected or deserved—all of that overwhelmed me, and…” He paused, then looked up at Bob, face set, defiant. “I broke down. I wept. I am not ashamed.”
“No reason you should be,” Bob said.
Adam nodded and looked away, a trace of puzzlement in his eyes, as if he hadn’t received the response he had been expecting.
“Anna and I tried to console him,” Maggie said, “Too young and ignorant to grasp the real reasons for his sorrow, we feared that we had done something to precipitate it. By the end of the day, we had all become fast friends.
“This was the first of many secret meetings between us, meetings that were to continue for over a decade. During these meetings, we would tell him about our family, our lives, our juvenile and ill-formed opinions on anything and everything. He gave us advice and told us stories about the other lands he had visited and the interesting people he had seen.
“When we turned sixteen, he took us aside and told us the truth about himself, leaving out nothing no matter how horrible we might think it. We were understandably aghast. He told us that he could not blame us if we chose to sever all ties with him, but that he thought he owed us the truth no matter how detrimental it might prove to our relationship.
“Indeed as a result of these revelations, the friendship between us chilled to a great degree. But after a time, Anna and I concluded that all people can change and that even the worst criminal can learn to better himself. And Adam had clearly changed. More importantly, he had done so of his own free will. How then could we responsibly reject him?”
Bob nodded. “That’s exactly what I’ve learned from a lifetime of fighting crime. People deserve a second chance, but only if they earn it. No homework, no gold star. But if they do the work and we don’t acknowledge it, then, heck, we’re no better than the bad guys.”
“Exactly.” She frowned. “I think. Some of your expressions are rather perplexing.”
“So I take it your parents never found out about Adam?”
“No. Never. Had they survived the Cataclysm, no doubt we would have shared the truth with them then. As it was…” She shrugged. “You lived through the Cataclysm. You know what it was like. The earth shook. A hum filled the air.”
“And then there was a light,” Bob said, his voice soft, his eyes distant, his usual good humor only a memory. “A blinding white light.”
“And with it came unconsciousness. And when we awoke, it was to a world altered beyond anyone’s wildest imaginings. Unfortunately for us, the Cataclysm occurred at night, after darkness had fallen though not late enough for everyone to be in bed. Thus, lamps were still burning in our house, and the Cataclysm’s tremors caused those lamps to fall and break, setting the house aflame. Anna and I managed to escape the blaze; our parents did not.”
“I’m sorry.”
She gave him a sad smil
e. “Everyone lost someone or something in the Cataclysm.”
“Yeah.” Bob opened his mouth, shut it, then shook his head and said, “Geez, I’ve got all kind of questions I want to ask and stuff I want to say, but it’s late. Maybe tomorrow.”
Adam grunted. “We can only hope that tomorrow will be quiet and uneventful enough to permit more talk.”
“Heh. Amen to that.”
As Bob turned to grab his sleeping bag, he noticed that Maggie was looking at him. The moment his eyes met hers, however, hers sidled away. A faint smile curved her lips, and it looked as if she were flushing slightly, though the red and orange hues of the fire made it impossible to tell for sure.
With a small, thoughtful smile of his own, Bob unrolled his sleeping bag.
Chapter 3
Research Lab B