Authors: Brian W. Aldiss
Dracula Unbound (29 page)
“Look, guys, it's all over. I don't know the answers. Despite science, much remains a mystery. Don't ask me. Ask some genius from the fiftieth century. I just want to hold my family together on an even keel.”
Stoker patted his shoulder and held it firmly.
“Joe, you are the best of fellows. But you are never going to rest quiet while you still have proof that Dracula still exists and goes about his rotten business.”
“Meaning?”
Stoker indicated the time train, standing silent in the Texas sun.
“Unlike the F-bomb, that train is not an evil weapon. You are yourself its part-inventor, and I regard you as a force for good. But what you need to do, when you have delivered me back to my wife and Irving, is to destroy the train. Eradicate it. Sever that one link between the remote past and the present and future which gave Dracula his chance.”
“Bram, I can't do that. I need to get people working on the train, to see if we can duplicate the technology. I can't destroy it. It's too precious.”
Stoker shook his head vigorously. “You must destroy it. Do not allow your people to work on it. Don't you understandâforgive my brutal nineteenth-century mindâdon't you understand that if they worked on it, you would then solve all this fractal business I don't understand, and you would be entirely responsible for travel through time. You'd be another Frankenstein. And you would know that at some point the train would pass into Dracula's hands. That's what must never happen.”
Once he was persuaded, Bodenland acted swiftly. He took Bram Stoker safely back into the arms of Florence, and bid them both an affectionate farewell. Aided by Larry and Spinksâwho now became part of the Bodenland entourageâhe prepared the time train for its final journey through the Escalante Desert.
So it was that, going forward in time, the train met itself traveling in the opposite direction.
Two strange attractors intersected.
All the windows in Enterprise were shattered by this spectacular collision. The plate glass in the mortician's was shattered and lay scattered over the coffins inside. The train was entirely destroyed and pieces of metal no bigger than confetti were later discovered over the Old John site.
“It was pretty simple to arrange,” Joe told Mina.
“No, it was genius,” Larry said, as his father embarked on a technical explanation. Smiling, Kylie switched on the television as she went over to the other side of the room to unpack her baggage; technical explanation was not for her.
“And,” Bodenland concluded, “as I learned from Larry, much can be done by remote control. We soon rigged that up.”
Mina squeezed his hand. “The less remote we all are in future, the better.”
“Right,” said Larry, laughing, as he broke away to see what Kylie was doing.
As he reached his wife's side, to put an arm round her waist, she unzipped a side pocket of her baggage, and out tumbled her well-thumbed copy of Stoker's famous novel, published and bound, and now signed by its author.
Author's Note
Even the wildest fiction is based in fact.
I have tried not to take too many liberties with Bram Stoker, with his wife, Florence, with Ellen Terry and Sir Henry Irving. The following books proved helpful:
B
RAM
S
TOKER:
Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving
. 1907.
E
LLEN
T
ERRY:
The Story of My Life
. 1908.
E
DWARD
G
ORDON
C
RAIC:
Ellen Terry and Her Secret Self
. N.D.
R
ICHARD
E
LLMAN:
Oscar Wilde
. 1987.
H. C
HANCE
N
EWTON
(“Carados”):
Cues and Curtain Calls
. 1927.
The two biographies of Stoker were also invaluable:
H
ARRY
L
UDLAM:
A Biography of Dracula: The Life Story of Bram Stoker
. 1962.
D
ANIEL
F
ARSON:
The Man Who Wrote Dracula: A Biography of Bram Stoker
. 1975.
(The latter volume gives details of Stoker's death from syphilis in 1912.) I trust my story makes clear my admiration for Stoker.
As for Stoker's wonderful fantasy, it exists in countless printings and editions, of which I have used three:
The old copy which terrified me as a boy, published by Rider & Co. N.D.
The World Classics edition, 1983, which contains an interesting Introduction by A. N. Wilson.
The Annotated Dracula
. Introduction, Notes, and Bibliography by Leonard Wolf. Art by Satty. 1975. (Wolf includes a filmography.)
My earlier thoughts on
Dracula
appear in:
The Survey of Modern Fantasy Literature
, Volume 1, edited by Frank N. Magill (Salem Press, 1983), and in Brian Aldiss and David Wingrove:
Trillion Year Spree
. 1986.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1991 by Brian Aldiss
Cover design by Nate Fernald
ISBN: 978-1-5040-1037-5
This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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