Fred Saberhagen - The Frankenstein Papers

One puzzling remark I have heard here was an allusion to "those marvelous boots—you know, Your Honor." And of course I didn't know, and don't. Nor has my tall friend the least idea of what the man who mentioned boots was talking about. The mysterious boots perhaps have something to do with the mysterious Grosser Karl , but what? What boots? Neither of us, to the best of our knowledge, have ever laid eyes on Karl, let alone any footgear he might have had in his possession.

Later_ Just now, talking to another man, we have stumbled over the boots again. He said: "I mean the ones that Karl was wearing, Your Honors, when he came home from Ingolstadt that time. They fit him so marvelously, and never wore out or leaked. I borrowed them from him once—had to pay to do it—and I hadn't worn them for half a day before they fit me as well as they had fit him when he had them on."

At least I think that is what the last man was telling me; as you know, my German is imperfect. That of my companion is notably better, but even I can tell that his is an educated version of the language, and not the German that any of Big Karl's friends and relatives here are speaking.

My friend has now, I think, given up entirely on the strange idea that he is really Karl himself, somehow transformed by electricity and the magic of the laboratory. We have encountered nothing here that would support that notion in the least. Now, when I try to press him on what he currently believes, his face clouds over and he shakes his great head in silence.

By all reports Karl is a physically huge man, comparable in size to my friend—what we have seen of his relatives are all large people too—and is known for a certain cunning, and for his way of keeping his thoughts to himself until he judges that the proper time to act has come.

But where is he now? No one here knows. Or, more likely, no one of these shrewd suspicious peasants is going to tell us, at least not until they have a better idea of why we are asking, what will happen to their fellow villager when he is found.

We try our best to be reassuring on that score, but so far without result.

I shall dispatch this letter through the Ingolstadt post when we reach that city, unless a better opportunity to send it off should present itself before then. And of course I will write you again, as soon as I have something new to report.

Pray with me that the end of this maddening mystery may be somewhere in sight.

In hopes,

B. Freeman

LETTER 13

April 3,1783 Munich

To: Victor Frankenstein, c/o Saville Enterprises, Paris

From: Roger Saville

My dearest Victor—

I hasten to reply to your communication sent to me in care of my banker here in Munich. As for the absurd and poisonous suggestion you say you have received from "an eminent person now residing near Paris"—I can guess who that is—it does not really deserve an answer. But out of respect for your agitated state of mind, I hereby assure you that neither I nor any of my employees or associates had anything at all to do with the tragic deaths of your beloved Elizabeth, your brother William, or our dear friend Henry Clerval.

With that calumny, I trust, disposed of, I must urge you as strongly as possible to give up this wild thought you say you have, of leaving Paris. Or, rather, do not leave that city for anywhere but London, where your laboratory and your work are waiting for you. I wish you had heeded my urgings to remain there; it was a mistake for you to come to Paris in the first place. You say that there are times when you despair of ever succeeding in your work; I answer that a great man like you must never speak of despair, you must put all such foolish thoughts entirely from your mind! We have, both of us, the best reasons in the world to expect renewed success from your labors, and that in the very near future. We have both seen, with our own eyes, the embodiment of your earlier success, walking about the world on two legs like a man.

There, in my London house, my friend, inside your laboratory, is where your future (I might say all our futures) lies.

On the other hand, there is certainly nothing at all that can be gained by your attempting to come on here. As for clearing the air between us, as you put it, I should hope that the atmosphere between two such fast friends cannot be poisoned by the maunderings of one old man, no matter how crafty and demoniacally clever he may be, no matter how much he may love to sow discord between friends, even as he has sown it between a mother nation and her colonies.

But I have things of more importance to communicate.

I urge you to leave to me the problem of recapturing the monster, and of dealing with the criminal agent Freeman. Whether the matter of the stolen aerostat can be hushed up, in the interests of peace, is to me a matter of indifference.

We have not yet cornered Freeman and the fiend, but I am confident that we soon shall. That man, I insist, deserves whatever happens to him, while the unhappy creature of your creation will, as soon as he has given up rebellion, experience only kindness at my hands. I pledge you that I will show him every mercy that circumstances allow me to bestow.

Some of the measures I contemplate against Freeman—and others—may seem stringent to you. That is due to the natural kindness of your heart, and your sweet unwillingness to see the evil of the world in its true blackness. I hope you are still confident that I have at heart only your welfare and that of the world at large (which has so often seemed to me ungrateful for both our contributions, your efforts at research, mine in spreading the blessed effects of commerce and civilization). There is a tone in your letter that implies I have sometimes acted only for personal gain, a tone that would wound me deeply, except that I know you are overwrought by prolonged strain and sharp personal tragedy.

As for the book, that you have only lately taken the time to read in its entirety, I am sure that a moment's calm reflection will suffice to assure you that neither Captain Walton nor myself has ever had the slightest intention of portraying you or any member of your family in any light but the most truthful, and therefore the most complimentary. Those bungling editors, I assure you, shall be made to pay, for introducing falsehoods and exag-gerations on such a scale. I should not be at all surprised to discover that Franklin, the old bookseller and printer, was behind those machinations too.

But all these difficulties, dear Victor, lie properly in my sphere of activity and not in yours. How I wish, my dear friend, that I could persuade you not to waste your precious time upon these affairs of the world of sordid commerce and politics. Your domain is properly that of the spirit, and of the intellect; there you reign as monarch. We all look to you as to the father of the new age that is struggling to be born. The entire world_though in large part still unknowingly—awaits the additional marvels that you are going to create.

Still, I hope you will allow me to leave such considerations, important as they are, aside for now, and proceed to the main purpose of my letter. It is to set your mind totally at ease regarding chances of your continued success in your most vital work—something you must never be allowed to doubt!

Do you think, my friend, that I am an impractical man? My enemies have called me many things over the years, but never that. As sure as I am of your skill and your veracity, do you believe that I would have invested years of my life and thousands of my money, in pursuit of a scheme as impractical-sounding (I must be blunt) as yours? Would I have credited the claim of any man, even you, to be able to revive the dead, had I not the most unimpeachable evidence to support it—the witness of my own eyes and intellect?