Frankenstein’s
World
By John M.
Burt
Chapter
Eight
The
door to Dr. Brandreth’s home was answered by a dusky hoover who bowed and
touched his fingertips to his lips to let Locke know he was mute. Locke gave the hoover his card and expected
to have to wait while it was conveyed inside, but the hoover looked closely at
it, nodded and gestured for Locke to follow.
The hoover led him to a small room furnished only with two chairs and a
low table between them. A carafe and
glasses stood on the table, and the footman offered by gesture to pour Locke a
drink. Locke nodded, and the hoover
poured a glass of what appeared to be water, and then left. Locke sipped cautiously and found that it was
indeed water -- wonderfully clear spring water, recently drawn, he would
say. He’d almost finished his glass when
the door opened again and a very thin man with grayish skin and snow-white hair
entered, accompanied by another hoover with the same dusky hue that indicated
his face and hands, at least, had come from a man with dark skin, probably an
old slave whose remains had been sold to make hoovers after his death.
The
hoover gave Locke the same “mute’s salute”, and Brandreth seemed to echo his
servant by holding up an index finger asking for patience.
Once
Brandreth was seated, the grey-faced footman left the room and returned pushing
a wheeled machine with a long pump handle on its top. He uncoiled a black rubber hose and attached
it to a leather bag like what was in a set of bagpipes and placed the bag in
Brandreth’s lap. Next, he undid
Brandreth’s ascot to reveal a valve implanted in the notch between his
collarbones. The hoover uncoiled a
smaller hose attached to the bag and attached it to Brandreth’s valve. The hoover began working the pump, and the
bag filled with air. After a few
strokes, Brandreth opened his mouth, pressed down on the bag like a piper, and
spoke.
“Good
afternoon, Mister Locke. I’m sorry I had
to wait so long to greet you, but I lacked the breath to speak. Had my lungs removed. Cancer, you know.”
Locke
had known about Brandreth’s cancer, but not how he had
dealt with it. Given the bizarre
conditions under which he spoke, Brandreth’s voice was quite clear and normal
sounding.
This,
Locke realized, was the meaning behind the “Dr. Lackobreath” sketch at the
Prometheus Club: a satire on Dr. Brandreth’s condition. Locke repressed the urge to shudder at this
seeming callousness and briskly opened his notebook.
“Doctor,
as you know I am investigating the death of Gideon Bullivant.”
“Yes. We were not closely acquainted, but I knew
his reputation. His death was certainly
a loss to the field.”
Another
silent, dusky servant entered, this one wearing a cook’s dress and apron. She carried a bucket with a long hose
dangling from it, and a jar of liquid.
As she hung the bucket from a hook on the wall, Locke thought this was
an additional part of Brandreth’s speaking apparatus, but then she rolled up
the doctor’s sleeve, tied a thong around his arm to make the veins swell up,
and jabbed the needle at the end of the hose into her master’s arm. Locke tried not to look, but noticed that
there was a long track of fading marks down his arm, presumably from earlier
infusions.
The
cook opened the jar and poured a substance that smelled of bleach into the
bucket. As she untied the thong, Locke
heard Brandreth interrupt his monologue momentarily with a soft hiss.
“Not
as comfortable or as convenient as respiration, I fear,” Brandreth said
regretfully, “but better than the alternative.”
“Well,
Dr. Brandreth, you say Dr. Bullivant’s death was a loss to the field. How would you describe his place in it?”
Brandreth
pressed down on the bag and opened his mouth in a long breathy sigh. He shook
his head.
“I
can talk all right with this contraption, but a sigh doesn’t feel like a sigh, and I miss the
ability.”
He
pushed out another long and presumably unsatisfying sigh, evidently in honor of
the lost sighs of bygone days.
Despite
his sighing, though, Bradreth seemed to be looking healthier than he had when
he’d entered: his skin had taken on a ruddy pinkish hue, his lips had become
almost shockingly red, making an even stronger contrast with his snowy hair.
“Bullivant
was inventive and innovative, while still being a gentleman. He understood what things could be cast aside
and what had to be held onto. Not like .
. . not like some, who think innovation means throwing out everything old and
embracing anything new just because it is new.”
Brandreth
muffled a belch.
“Please
excuse me. That always happens when I’m
getting my oxidizer.”
Brandreth
belched again, and giggled.
“Oh,
Flora, you must get me a match!”
“So,
Doctor, you were saying?”
“Oh,
you must let me show you, Mister Locke, this is simply too droll!”
“Yes,
Dr. Brandreth, of course, but –”
The
hoover brought a box of matches.
Brandreth took one and lit it, holding it close to his mouth. After a moment, he belched again, and the
flame leapt up vigorously, burning up the matchstick in an instant.
Brandreth
gasped in pain and shook out the match, sucked at his burnt fingertips, still
giggling.
“You
see? Pure oxygen!”
Locke
put away his notebook, thanked Dr. Brandreth and offered him his hand. The old vitalogist giggled and slapped
Locke’s palm in a way he had previously only seen Freedmen do by way of
greeting.
Leaving
Dr. Brandreth’s home, Locke noticed that it had become quite dark. It was later than he had supposed.
He
ought to send a telegram to the Sun
offices to update Mr. Day about his progress.
Down the block he saw the unmistakable silhouette of a constable, tall
leather helmet on his head and billy club on his belt.
“Officer,”
Locke began as he approached the constable’s back, realizing how tall he was as
he approached.
The
constable executed a military about-face and Locke saw he was a hoover.
“I
beg your pardon, Citizen, but I am no officer, merely a Leatherhead. How may I help you?”
Locke
was startled into silence for an awkwardly long time. He’d heard that some cities were deploying
hoovers as police auxiliaries, but the practice hadn’t reached New York. Even the fact that the “Leatherhead” could
talk was a bit startling after the silence of Brandreth’s servants.
“Citizen?”
“Er,
sorry – could you, er, direct me to the nearest post office?”
The
hoover inclined his head politely.
“Certainly,
Citizen. Just go past that corner to the
next one and turn left onto Delancy Street.
You can’t miss it.”
Locke
nodded and turned away. He’d almost
thanked the hoover, but figured he had already lowered himself enough by
apologizing for his falling silent.
The
post office was indeed hard to miss, with its carved wooden figure of a hoover
mailman standing out front and a cast-zinc eagle spreading its gilt wings above
the door. It was built of
marble-veneered brick and took up about half the block, flanked by a grocery
store and a tavern that held the corners.
It projected an air of solid civic life: security, stability,
reliability. It seemed to promise not
merely that people’s mail would be delivered quickly and securely, but that all
the organs of civilization were in working order.
That
sense of stability was somewhat tempered once Locke pushed through the doors
into the noisy rush of work. It seemed
as though the post office were being used to its limits just at the moment,
with people waiting in long lines as human and hoover postal clerks hurried
back and forth with carts piled high with sacks of letters and stacks of
packages. Three long lines of people
mailing letters and postcards, two for packages, one each for telegrams and for
messenger ravens.
Locke
found the end of the line for telegrams and took his place. To his relief, the line did at least move
quickly.
When
he neared the head of the line, he saw that a human clerk was training a hoover
clerk. Fortunately, the hoover’s
training had reached the point where his teacher merely had to watch him
perform his task and offer occasional cues when he strayed or hesitated. Locke took up his place at the marble counter
and grabbed a yellow pad of telegram blanks.
He hastily filled in the form, copying over his scribbled notes in a
neat hand and using the Sun’s
standard abbreviation codes. By the time
he reached the window, he had his interview with Brandreth ready to send to the
Sun’s rewrite desk, on three
neatly-lettered yellow forms.
As
the clerk was checking the address for Locke’s telegram, Locke looked over the
hoover’s shoulder and saw two long rows of desks. One was clearly hoover telegraphers, thin
silvery strands of nerve tissue grafted to their forearms, their hands tracing
over the letters on yellow telegraph sheets.
Locke had seen telegraphers like these since he was a boy.
The
opposite row was like nothing Locke had ever seen before. Normally there would be a second row of
hoovers in chairs, scratching out messages in response to the signals coming
through their nerve grafts (afferent nerves, Locke recalled from somewhere, as
opposed to the efferent nerves of the sending telegraphers – or was it the
other way around?). Here, there was only
a sort of long table, with pens held by disembodied hands that moved in response
to their own nerve grafts. The hands
hung suspended in braces, liquid dripping into their veins through tubes from
hanging bottles of pale golden fluid, and ink into their pens from black
bottles, also through tubes.
A
hoover clerk moved up and down the aisle between the hoovers and the hands,
delivering slips to the telegraphers and collecting finished messages from the
hands.
As
Locke handed over his telegram, the human clerk noticed him staring at the
bodiless hands.
“The
moving finger writes, eh? It’s the
latest thing. We used to need a whole
hoover with a nerve graft to receive telegrams.
Now it’s just the hand, and all we have to feed it is a tablespoon of
honey and half a cup of Demikhov’s Oxygenator in a quart of water.”
Locke
managed to control his nausea sufficiently to nod and say, “Much cheaper, no
doubt.”
There
was a commotion off to Locke’s right, shouts and flappings and a voice like a
rusty door hinge shrieking “Nevermore!”
A
raven had suddenly started fussing while a message was being dictated to it.
“Nevermore!”
the bird cried again, launching itself into the air.
A
senior clerk called out, “It’s gone bad -- wring its neck!”
“Nevermore!”
Clerks
reached for it but it eluded their fingers. The bird circled near the ceiling
two or three times, still repeating that same word, then flew out an open
window. Its black-feathered body was
instantly invisible in the dark of night.
The
clerks shrugged and went back to their work, and Locke supposed it was really
just a small accident in the workplace, no great harm done, yet there was
something deeply disturbing
about the whole incident....
“Sorry
about that, Sir,” the telegraph clerk said calmly. “Will you be waiting for a reply?”
Only
then did Locke realize he was still standing at the window. He shook himself.
“Er,
no, thank you.”
Locke
moved out of the way. As he left the
post office, he wondered why the incident with the raven had so shaken
him. He wondered if it were simply the
mournful sound of the word, “nevermore” itself.
That thought led him to considering the character of the various sounds
of the English language, a subject which was still occupying his mind as he
prepared for bed.
No comments:
Post a Comment