Shadow Conspiracy (37 page)

“You are trying to deceive me,” Jane said. “You are a man; you cannot be the abnormal creature made so many years ago.”

“Mary, my dear, here is yet more evidence that your fiction has misled even the smartest leaders among those who seek to destroy me. If even Elizabeth Freemantle and her highly competent ward are searching for a hideous monster, we may be safer than we thought.”

Jane did not intend to be deterred by frivolous conversation. “Where is the Prometheus?”

The woman spoke. “Miss Freemantle, please sit down and join us for coffee.” The words were polite, but the tone of voice brooked no argument.

Jane surprised herself by complying, though she kept a firm grip on her gun and did not take any coffee. “I presume you are Mrs. Shelley.”

“I write my stories under that name, yes, but in my private life I am now known as Mary Dessins. My husband, Immanuel.”

Jane recognized the name and could not keep a look of surprise off her face.

The man nodded politely. “We have corresponded, I believe. I much appreciated your kind letter complimenting my essay on new theories of disease.”

Jane started to reply in kind—the essay had been most intriguing—but remembered her purpose. “Then the Prometheus must be somewhere on the premises,” Jane said. “Please be so kind as to take me to it at once.”

“Miss Freemantle. We have brought you here to tell you the truth—the whole truth—but we shall do it on our terms. Please be good enough to listen.”

Most people were likely cowed by the steel in Mary’s voice, but Jane, after years of living with Elizabeth, was not easily intimidated by women of strength and purpose. “You did not bring me here.”

Immanuel said, “Oh surely you were not completely taken in by our ambassador in the churchyard, a young woman as intelligent as you? You must have had some reservations about whether he spoke truly.”

Jane gave a hesitant nod.

“We brought you here,” Mary said, “to kill the Prometheus. Not to actually commit a murder, because the monster of popular imagination does not exist, but rather so that you can say the creature is dead and stop this endless wasteful effort to hunt it down.”

“Why did you choose me?”

“Because you were most likely to find us on your own. The blithering idiots of the Anti-Prometheus League are unlikely to do more than make it impossible to address the real concern, the possibility that someone may once again find a way to create life artificially. We are on the same side, Miss Freemantle.”

“But you ran away, taking the creature with you. It is hard to believe that you oppose the artificial creation of life.”

“Have you read my novel, Miss Freemantle? I would have thought no one could read those words and not grasp the danger in what John Polidori wanted to do.”

“The monster captured the popular imagination, my dear,” Immanuel said.

“Polidori?” Jane said.

“The true man behind the Dr. Frankenstein of my story. He had developed a process by which he could transfer the mind and soul of one person into the body of another recently deceased. The process was used only once: by myself, to save the life of Immanuel, who was dying of a hideous disease.”

“And perhaps it should not have been used even that one time,” Immanuel said. “Morally...”

“Undoubtedly there is a great ethical debate that could be had,” Mary said, “but I would still do the same thing again. Saving you was right and just; you have done much good in the world.”

“After saving me,” Immanuel said, “Mary destroyed the machine and all of Polidori’s notes about the process. He was never able to reconstruct it, and he died a few years later, a broken man.”

“They are all dead now, the ones that Polidori sought to save, to make immortal. Lord Byron. My...husband, Percy. That is why I destroyed it all, you see. John Polidori planned to make those he chose immortal; once their bodies began to fail, he would move their essential selves into new ones. Of course, only the select few would live forever by this process.

“Death is a necessary part of life, Miss Freemantle.” Mary leaned forward in her chair and looked intently into Jane’s eyes. “Advances in medical science can, and should, prevent untimely death, but immortality is for gods and mythology, not for humans.”

Jane turned to look at Immanuel and saw no monster, but a gentle man. “You will not live forever?”

He shook his head. “My life is as finite as yours.”

“And there truly is no immortal monster?” She phrased it as a question, but realized that she had come to accept it. The story of Mary and Immanuel Dessins made much more sense than all the preposterous theories she had heard. And a woman might well cross an ethical boundary for someone she had come to love.

Mary nodded.

Jane laid her weapon on the floor. “What do you want me to do?”

Jane sat on the deck of the
Mermaid
, sipping tea and staring at the vast expanse of ocean. Packed carefully in her trunk was an image of the “dead” Prometheus, created by the new photographic process. While the photographic exposure had taken an hour, creating a monster who resembled the Prometheus of everyone’s fancy had required a week of careful construction. Frayle’s gun had provided the crowning touch of vast holes in the creature’s head and heart.

Jane wondered whether she should tell Elizabeth the truth. The truth was more simple, more elegant—like a mathematical proof—but Elizabeth had developed an obsession. Steering her talents into a more constructive campaign might require deceit.

For there were others working to create a race of immortals, of that she had no doubt. They would not simply save a life from an untimely end, as Mary had. No, they would go on to build monsters. Very few people had the strength of character required to keep one from going too far.

She would decide what to tell Elizabeth when she arrived home. Now, though, Jane thought of Immanuel, who, even more than she, was other. The only one of his kind. A kindred spirit, in a way.

And a man whose medical research would save lives. A singular man, doing good in the world.

Jane resolved to follow his example.

It’s no accident that Nancy Jane Moore’s collection from PS Publishing is called
Conscientious Inconsistencies
: She refuses to stick to one genre or even one style of writing. Her other book,
Changeling
, from Aqueduct Press, is a novella, and despite the name it’s not about fairies. Nancy Jane’s short fiction has appeared in numerous anthologies, including
Treachery and Treason
,
Imaginings
, and
Polyphony 5
, as well as in magazines ranging from
Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet
to
Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine
to the
National Law Journal
. Her initial project for Book View Café was a series of flash fictions—very short stories of multiple genres—but she’ll be doing something different in 2010. Nancy Jane is a member of SFWA and Broad Universe, and holds a fourth-degree black belt in Aikido. After many years in Washington, D.C., she now lives in Austin, Texas.

… by Brenda Clough

“In considering any new subject, there is frequently a tendency, first, to overrate what we find to be already interesting or remarkable; and, secondly, by a sort of natural reaction, to undervalue the true state of the case.”

—Ada King, Countess Lovelace

 from: Note A to “The Sketch of the Analytic Engine”

The arching glass roof of the Crystal Palace was wonderfully high. But it was not high enough for the Chinese dragon, which had to be housed outside the Great Exposition of 1851. Throngs of English and foreign visitors crowded close to gape, even daring to extend a hand to feel the steam-hot wood. Its sinuous neck, cunningly jointed and riveted, flexed with a creak of bamboo against bamboo. When steam shot from the red-painted nostrils the mob gasped with amazement.

“Oh, my stars!” Mrs. Grace Stulting held her bonnet onto her head and leaned back to look as the carven head swayed above.

“Purely mechanical.” Mr. Bucket laid a fat forefinger to his ear. “You can hear the metal gears, moving the neck.
And
the stokers for the steam.”

“Still, it’s a marvel,” Grace sighed.

Mr. Bucket drew her gloved hand through his arm. His tweed coat was too warm for the London summer and shiny at the elbows. His grey curly sidewhiskers were enormous, and in conjunction with his baldness formed the strange impression that, unequal to the struggle against gravity, his hair had parted company at the top and slid helplessly down each cheek to be halted by his high white collar. He looked like the elderly uncle taking a country cousin to see the Prince Albert’s Great Exposition.

“Let’s pay attention to the job here,” he said quietly. “That monster’s just a show—a fancy steam engine. Scotland Yard’s got a tip about some bigger magic here. So now we’re going to edge in closer, Mrs. S, and you keep your ears sharp. Those Chinese, they won’t be expecting a young white lady to understand their lingo. They might let fall something we need to hear.”

In her happy excitement, Grace hardly listened. She had been recruited into this jaunt merely because the preferred candidate, her husband, was busy addressing the Anglo-American Mission to the Orient Society. But Hermanus would have dismissed the Great Exposition as frivolous time-wasting, unlikely to further the spread of the Gospel. Now, on a legitimate patriotic mission with no less than the famous Inspector Bucket paying the late-season one-shilling entrance fee, Grace intended to enjoy herself.