Frankenstein’s Legions
- Автор: Whitbourn John
- Год: 2011
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Попаданец
Электронная книга - «Frankenstein’s Legions». Краткое содержание книги:
but the Governments who have hijacked his discoveries see the advantage of
resurrection on an industrial scale. What better way to fight their
never-ending wars than with armies of obedient undead soldiers, recycled from
earlier battles? And how better to silence their own citizens who protest at
ceaseless conflict and plundered graveyards?
Set in the 1830s,
Frankenstein’s Legions details an alternative history in which Frankensteinian
science is a reality, revived after patchy prohibition by a second and even
more fanatical French Revolution. The republican regime, inspired by zeal and
desperation, has swept over Europe, employing inexhaustible swarms of
zombie-like (or Lazaroid) troops. The remaining independent nations, including
England, are obliged to shed their scruples and likewise raise Lazaroid
armies.
Across this crazed and Gothic history stride Julius Frankenstein,
soldier nephew of the notorious scientist; Charles Babbage inventor of the
proto-computer Difference Engine; and the Honourable Augusta Ada, Countess of
Lovelace, genius daughter of Lord Byron. Pulling their strings – they believe
– are the puppetmasters Talleyrand, French statesman par excellence and now a
renegade in English employ; and Sir Percy Blakeney, sometime Scarlet Pimpernel
and current head of the British Secret Service.
Meanwhile, the French
have been unwise enough to revive their recently deceased Emperor. The
intention was simply to pick the brain of history’s foremost military mind.
However, the risen Emperor Napoleon is developing fresh ambitions of his own…
‘Please tell me,’ said Ada, ‘I beseech you, that this is the low point in our adventure…’
Frankenstein looked all around again, as if he couldn’t trust first impressions. Finding nothing for his comfort, he tried to light a cheroot but the lucifer wouldn’t flare. He flung both away, losing both smoke and dignity.
‘I can only observe,’ he said, ‘that here is indeed low, madam. In fact, positively sea-level. Therefore, it is difficult to conceive of deeper depths, but one cannot rule it out. As I found out in the Heathrow Hecatomb, Fate sometimes drives our fortunes positively subterranean…’
Lady Lovelace slumped down onto the suitcase Foxglove carried for her.
‘In which case,’ she sighed, ‘I propose to throw myself under the next train to arrive.’
Foxglove prematurely stepped between Ada and the platform’s edge, although the track was visibly empty for miles either way.
Her proposal would do the trick. If anything, Lazarans were even more delicate than living humans, and disturbance of the serum sustaining their frames invariably did for them. The mangling attentions of a train’s iron wheels would certainly put Lady Lovelace beyond reviving as an entity, leaving just loose limbs fit only for spare parts. A dreadful waste of Frankenstein’s hard work…
He decided to risk a second cheroot and this one took.
‘Even if sincere,’ he commented, puffing away, ‘your proposal may be long delayed, madam. This hardly seems the busiest of lines: your despair must stew awhile…’
Inadvertent mention of food reminded them they were hungry. Simultaneously, the rain arrived.
‘Perhaps,’ said Foxglove, keen to get his mistress away from the rails, ‘we should seek shelter nearby. And eat something. And then think about things.’
‘‘Things’?’ said Lady Lovelace bitterly. ‘Don’t talk to me about things!’
But she arose and went with them into the days to come.
To their pleasant surprise, two of the low cottages transpired to be joined-into-one—and an inn besides! ‘The Star of Bethlehem,’ no less. Though a mystery how it found custom out here in the back of beyond, the gift-horse’s mouth was not inspected. It meant there was no need to share a fisher-family’s limited hospitality.
Even so, there might still have been problems. Regardless of former status, Lazarans were—at best—only tolerated in public houses, and then only in the public bar, or that portion of it designated for day-labourers, gypsies and sundry hoi polloi. There the undead formed a reassuring bottom-of-Life’s-barrel for even them to feel superior to. Ada and Foxglove wouldn’t have enjoyed that.
Fortunately, the Star was so far flung it only had the one bar—a sort of rough Sussex equality. There they found funny looks galore but also, compared to the cold and rain outside, a welcome, and warmth, and food for sale. And, as it turned out, not only food.
Whilst the landlord went off to assemble their ‘luncheon’ (which got laughs), one of his customers peeled away from the bar huddle and came over, drink in hand. He looked capable of anything: a gnarled tree-trunk of a mariner with wind-reddened face and wind-slitted eyes. Yet they probably appeared as exotic to him as he to them.
‘Come for the whale, ave ye?’ he asked, without preamble. The lower classes were meant to preface unsolicited conversation with ‘excuse me saying’s and ‘might I make so bold’s…
‘No. We’ve ordered lamb cutlets,’ replied Foxglove, who was prickly on points of etiquette.
The mariner smiled but remained. Frankenstein’s curiosity got the better of him.
‘What whale?’
‘Only you’ve missed he,’ the mariner went on. ‘The big ole stranded whale what trippers came to see, that the Railway company put the halt in for, he clean rotted away two year back. And good riddance: all pong and no eating.’
‘Don’t you have a go at old whaley!’ said the landlord, returning with a tray of brandies. ‘He were good business while he lasted. And put us on the map too, with a new name.’
‘The Railway company didn’t much fancy ‘Pevensey Sluice,’’ the mariner explained. ‘Normans Bay sounded much sweeter to they…’
‘Really?’ Frankenstein delivered the variant of that wonderfully multi-purpose English word which implied he didn’t give a damn. ‘No, not here for the whale,’ he then confirmed, and left it at that.
The visitors downed their drinks and when the spirits reached their spirits they felt revived enough to converse—amongst themselves.
‘Are you still here?’ Foxglove asked the mariner. Somehow, by tone alone, it was conveyed he’d happily make it otherwise.
The mariner ignored words and intonation alike. He focused on the gentry.
‘So,’ he said, softly, ‘if ain’t the whale of blessed memory, then you must be for France…’
That got their attention.
‘What on earth do you mean?’ asked Ada, taking command in full aristo mode.
The mariner cut her dead, or as good as. His gaze remained on Julius.
‘Not ‘earth’: I’m talking sea. Earth’s where this here deader belongs. Sea is how you’s trying to escape: is why you’s here in Normans Bay. Now Mr Whale’s gone there ain’t no other reason.’
Frankenstein installed a finger erect before Lady Lovelace’s opening jaw. Slowly she closed it again, in order to bite her tongue.
Julius spoke quietly, though he now suspected it little mattered in this place. The mystery of the Star’s location was solved: it lived and thrived on illicit trade, born of being in prime position for it.
‘That,’ he said, ‘is loose talk. Your country is at war with France: all contacts with it are capital crimes…’
The mariner smiled. The exercise screwed his eyes up still more till they were mere beads of light.
‘If we weren’t in mixed company,’ he answered, ‘I’d have this shirt off and show you my back. Red and ridged as bacon! Twelve years in his Majesty’s navy flogged all the patriotism out of I! Now are you France bound or not? Are we in business?’
They were. They certainly were.
Since it was cold and dull upon the beach at midnight, they made conversation. It is unlikely Lady Lovelace would have exerted herself otherwise.
The only alternative sound around, save the sea, was moaning from Lazaran gangs working sluice gates out on the Levels. Not that cold, wet and dark signified anything to them: it was merely their response to being ripped from eternal rest. Owners had to accept that perpetual lamentation was a feature of the low-grade Lazaran. Even muzzles and beatings only reduced it to a hum.
Accordingly, almost anything was an improvement on that distant but depressing dirge.
‘Have you ever played rounders, mein herr?’
She persisted in calling him that, for reasons all her own. Julius speculated that she wished to emphasise his foreignness, the better to stress her own belonging here. Nationality might be all Lady Ada Lovelace (deceased) had left. In the modern world to be born (or even re-born) English was to have done well in the lottery of life.
Frankenstein skimmed a flat pebble at the waves. It sank like… a stone.
‘Rounders?’ he said. ‘It is a card game, no?’
‘No,’ Ada replied. ‘It involves a bat and ball and running between four stations. One played it as a girl, but that is not material. One only mentions it because the sport employs an apposite phrase: ‘Three strikes and you’re out.’ I strongly believe that applies to us.’