Brian Aldiss - Frankenstein Unbound

‘Don’t go too far,’ she called. So she had some sensations of fear!

‘No harm will come to us,’ I replied. I figured that would reassure all of us.

Well, no harm came to us, but I was in a constant state of worry. Supposing the house snapped back to 2020, leaving us stuck in whatever benighted neck of the woods we had come across? Or supposing – I’m ashamed to put it on paper now – something dreadful came and attacked us, something we didn’t know about?

And there was a third worry, shadowy but no pleasanter for that. Supposing that what was happening was just a subjective phenomenon, something going on purely inside my own skull? It was hard to believe that we weren’t in a kind of dream.

The kids wanted to go and see if they could see the woman in the wooden house. I made them walk the other way. There was a dog lying inside the picket fence. I had a dread about trying to talk to anyone from – this world, or whatever you should call it.

Poll was the first to see the horseman.

He was riding over the brow of one of the nearby hillocks, accompanied by a man on foot, who held the stirrup with one hand and led a large hound on a leash with the other. They approached slowly, warily, and were still some distance away. All the same, they looked determined; the man on the horse was dressed in tunic and tight trousers, and held a short sword in his hand and wore a curving helmet.

‘Pretend you haven’t seen them, and we’ll walk back to the house,’ I said.

Hypocrite! But for the dear children, I would have gone forward to meet him.

The children came along meekly, Poll putting her small hand in mine. Neither of them looked back. We got to the front door, stood on the step and then looked back.

The horseman and his companion came steadily on. The dog strained at its leash. All three of them kept their eyes fixedly on us. When they reached the line where the grass ended and the Texan ground began, they halted.

The horse was a poor spavined creature. The man on the horse looked rather grand. He had a beard and steady dark eyes. His hair and complexion were dark. His attitude was easy in the saddle and expressed determination. The man by his side – I judged it to be the peasant from the wooden house – was a stocky creature whose bodily gestures suggested disquiet.

‘Who are you? Do you speak English?’ I called.

They just stared back.

‘Are you from New Houston?’ Tony called bravely.

They made no verbal answer. Instead, the man on horseback raised his sword aloft. In greeting or threat? Then he turned the nag around and, almost sadly, I thought, led back the way he had come.

‘I told you they wouldn’t hurt us,’ Nurse Gregory said, giving me a look of relief.

Tony called once, but they did not turn back, and we watched them until both had disappeared over the brow of the little hill.

You will think this thrilling tale ends in an awful anticlimax, my dear, and be glad that it is so. We never saw those men again. We remained in that timeslip for thirty-five hours or thereabouts, but saw no one else approach.

My anxiety was that the horseman had gone to get reinforcements. Perhaps there was a castle nearby, as Tony had immediately assumed. I summoned the three serviles and reprogrammed them to keep watch – fortunately, I had a defence programme to hand. Reede and I reinforced their watch from time to time, especially during the night, when we also floodlit the house and grounds. I should add that our phones to the outside world were non-functioning but of course the nuclear core supplied us with all the power we needed.

During the night, we heard dogs barking and yapping in the hills. Maybe there were jackals as well. That was all.

This morning, we flipped back into The Present as easily and quietly as we had left it. Here we are, as before – except that the area which returned is not entirely the area which went! I rode round in the buggy this morning, after a brief nap, surveying the damage. Nurse Gregory brought the children along and made an outing of it.

You remember what we call the green cottage – the apple store, beyond the garaging. It has gone. In its place, rough green pasture which will soon wilt in our Texan sun. And where the driveway was we have a line of massive oaks and beeches. The robots are working to clear way between them to the road. Luckily, the road gate is still there – it stayed in 2020 all the while, or so we must assume.

I’m getting one of the oaks sawn down and will dispatch it with soil samples to the Historical Ecology Department at the University. Sitgers there might be able to discover something of its original locality from analysis, though he will never have faced a problem like this before. Where did we go? England? Europe? The Balkans? The guy on the horse was Caucasian. What time was it, what century? I presume it was Earth. Or was it some alternate Earth? Did I stand with the kids on some possible Earth where the year was 2020 and the Industrial Revolution never happened? Am I sheer blind cracked to ask such questions?

When does the next timeslip strike?

You must come back, my dear Mina, if you can get here, war or no war. The war must inevitably fall apart if this schism in the fabric of space/time continues. Come back! The children need their grandmother.

At such a time, I must invoke God and say, God knows, I need you!

Your ever-loving husband, JOE

CompC Cable from Nurse Gregory to Mrs Mina Bodenland:

August 25th, 2020

New Houston

GREATLY REGRET ANNOUNCE DISAPPEARANCE MR JOSEPH BODENLAND DURING BRIEF TIMESLIP DAWN THIS MORNING DURATION TWENTY-FIVE MINUTES STOP POLICE ARE SEARCHING AREA WITH NEGATIVE RESULTS STOP CHILDREN DISTRESSED AND ASKING FOR YOU STOP PLEASE INSTRUCT URGENT AND RETURN NEW HOUSTON URGENT STOP NURSE SHEILA GREGORY CMPC1535 0825 901AA593 C144

Extract from W. Central Telecable Record of Conversation over open phone between Mrs Mina Bodenland and Nurse Sheila Gregory:

‘I hope to be with you by ten thirty tomorrow morning, your time, if there are no delays in flight schedules as there well may be. Just give me the details of my husband’s disappearance, will you, Nurse?’

‘Sure. The timeslip took place at oh-six-forty this morning. It woke me up and it woke Mr Bodenland up, but the children stayed asleep. I met him in the hall, and he said, “There’s a lake with mountains behind right outside—” I’d already seen it from my bedroom. Snow on the mountains and a road by the lake with a coach being pulled along by two horses.’

‘And my husband went out alone?’

‘He insisted I stay indoors. I went to the living-room and saw him drive the Felder out of the garage. He drove into the new landscape. There was no road, just pasture, and he went very slowly. Then I couldn’t see him any more for a clump of trees – a wood, I guess it was. I was anxious.’

‘Couldn’t you have persuaded him to stay indoors?’

‘He was determined to go, Mrs Bodenland. You see, my guess is that he figgered this timeslip would have the same duration as the last one – a day and a half. Maybe he thought he’d just drive to the lake and find out where it was – it was a much pleasanter looking place than the other dump, where the guy on the horse came to stare at us. I went off to fix myself a coffee and just as I was coming back, I was entering the living room and – wham! – the timeslip ceased, just like that, and everything went back to normal. I ran out and called your husband’s name but it was no good.’

‘Twenty-five minutes, you say?’

‘That was all. I came back inside and phoned the police, and then I cabled you. Tony and Polly were real upset when they woke up. They’ve been crying for you and their Mummy all day, on and off.’