The Frankenstein Factory (18 page)

“I had a boyfriend once who showed me.”

“A safe cracker?”

“He was doing secret government work, if you must know.”

“That figures.” Earl knew that the Washington scene hadn’t changed a great deal since the Nixon scandals.

“Well? How about it?”

“Sure—why not? We’ve got nothing to lose but our lives, and they’re not worth much anyway.”

They left Armstrong on guard again and headed for the downstairs lab. “He probably thinks you’re screwing me down here,” Vera said.

“Why not? Every hour on the hour.”

Again he was impressed by her skill in the laboratory. She assembled the correct amounts of glycerol and acid, set the autoclave for the necessary reaction, and stepped back. “With a laboratory this good, it’s almost automatic. I just watch and press a few buttons from time to time.”

“Did I tell you before you’d make a great cook?”

After a time she produced a vial of clear, oily liquid. “All right, now. The only tricky part is getting it upstairs to that safe without blowing us both up. Think you can do that?”

“I sure as hell hope so!”

Back in the office, with the vial of nitro, Earl had a new cause for concern. “Don’t we have to drill holes or something?”

“Not with this method. Watch!”

She went down on her knees before the safe and started working on the hinges, wadding bits of cotton around them. Then she carefully—ever so carefully—moistened the cotton with the nitro. They worked in silence for several minutes, prompting Dr. Armstrong to stick his head in.

“What in hell are you two up to now?”

“Shhh! Blowing a safe!”

He grunted, not quite believing it.

“Okay,” Vera said, hopping to her feet. “Everybody out!”

“What detonates it?”

“A well-aimed bullet should do the trick. Just leave the door open a crack. Dr. Armstrong, will you do the honors?”

“I don’t know if I can. …”

“Let me try,” Earl said. He took the pistol and aimed it carefully through the doorway. “Here goes!”

His aim was perfect. The blast slammed the door shut before them, shielding them from the worst of it. When the vibrations stopped and the smoke cleared they pushed the door open and surveyed the results. The explosion had been confined to a relatively small area, and it had done its job. The door of the safe was off its hinges, lying half on the floor.

“Satisfied?” Vera asked.

“You’re a wizard! First woman I ever knew who could blow a safe!”

Earl pushed the door aside and searched through the contents for what he sought. There was another thick ledger book inside, together with a thick wad of documents secured by a rubber band. He pulled them out and flipped through the pages of the ledger.

“Any luck?” Armstrong asked.

“This is more like it! I think we’ve found something!”

The ledger dated back to the first year of operation for the International Cryogenics Institute. It showed the names of the first clients and the amount of money they’d paid to ICI. There were other cash payments over the years, apparently from a continuing trust fund set up for the purpose. The figures swam before his eyes as he tried to calculate the total cost of these early clients over the years. It was staggering. In most cases the relatives and heirs must have simply ignored the whole thing. The dying person’s last wish had been adhered to, and the money had been paid. And paid again, over the years.

He noticed a transfer account—items of increasing size which were being taken out of the general corporate fund for some other use. Something about the figures looked familiar. He returned to the first set of ledgers and looked up the list of Emily Watson’s gifts. The amounts and dates coincided.

“What is it?” Vera asked, seeing his expression.

“I’ve got to check further to be sure, but it looks as if the generous Miss Watson wasn’t that generous after all. The money she donated was ICI money in the first place. It was transferred out of the corporation and then back in again through Miss Watson’s gifts.”

“What was the purpose of that?”

“Hobbes was making big profits but he didn’t want to admit it. He must have felt it would look better if his abundance of cash seemed the result of Miss Watson’s generosity.”

“But
why?
This is still a capitalist system. There’s nothing wrong with big profits.”

Earl had to admit that she was right. There was still some piece of the puzzle that wasn’t in place. ICI wasn’t like a food monopoly that the government might go after if their profits were too big. Who cared if ICI’s profits were huge? They (meaning Hobbes) could charge whatever the traffic would bear.

“Suppose …” he began.

“What?”

“Just suppose … those capsules in the vault are empty.”

“Empty?”

“Suppose Hobbes had a surplus of funds because he had no expenses, because he wasn’t keeping those people on ice after all. Then he’d need a cover story—something to explain the source of the extra money. And he might have invented Emily Watson.”

“But that’s fantastic!”

“No more so than his whole setup, with this island and everything. We’re going to check it, Vera. We’re going to break the seal and open one of those capsules.”

Armstrong was still listening from the doorway. “Wouldn’t it be more to the point if you spent less time at those books and more time figuring a way to get us off this island?”

“Oh, I know how to get us off. I know how to bring help here.”

“Without having to go outside and light the fire?”

“Yep,” Earl confirmed. “It all came to me when Vera blasted the door off that safe. She’s going to get us off.”

“By blowing up the island?”

“No.” Earl got to his feet and brushed some of the plaster dust from his pants. “By making us some fireworks.”

Vera looked blank. “Fireworks?”

“Sure. There must be enough chemicals down there for you to make up some really colorful skyrockets. Something that’s sure to be seen from the mainland. If I remember correctly, a small quantity of nitroglycerin, mixed with other chemicals, makes a quite effective rocket propellant.”

She nodded. “You know, it just might work!”

W
HILE VERA WENT ON
to the underground laboratory to see what she could make up in the way of colorful skyrockets, Earl enlisted Armstrong’s aid in checking the capsules in the subbasement vault.

“It’s a ticklish job,” the doctor observed. “For all we know there’s a body in every one of these tubes. By opening one we could ruin any possibility of reanimation.”

“You’re sounding like Hobbes himself now. Look, most of these people were already dead for hours or days before they reached here anyway. If there is a body in the capsule we open, we could seal it up again before there’s any chance of thawing. Certainly a few more minutes in the open air won’t do any more damage than has been done already.”

Armstrong agreed with some reluctance. “All right, which one?”

Earl looked over the rows of tubes. “He produced five real bodies from somewhere, so we have to assume that some of the capsules are occupied. But look here—the track for his automatic elevator thing doesn’t even quite reach to the end of the aisle! Let’s try this last one and see what happens.”

They went to work on the seal of capsule #563-A. It broke easily enough, and the screw top yielded to their tools. “According to the records, this capsule should contain the remains of a wealthy Midwestern banker,” Earl said, consulting the list he’d found among the banded papers in the upstairs safe. “Let’s see if it really does.”

The top came off easily and Armstrong looked inside. “Empty,” he reported. “You were right!”

Earl shined a light inside, studying the smooth interior. “No sign that it was ever used. All that money for upkeep, changing the nitrogen gas, storage—all for nothing.”

“What do you think he did with the bodies?”

“The sea is quite deep out there.”

“But if that’s true,” Armstrong argued, his face pale as death, “why go through all this claptrap with the operation?”

“I can only guess at that. Maybe someone was getting suspicious. Certainly my bureau was suspicious when they arranged for me to come out here. If Hobbes could bring one person back to life, it wouldn’t matter if there were no others to be brought back.”

“No, no, no!” Armstrong insisted. “It would matter all the more! Don’t you see—if he can bring back Larry, son or not, he can bring back the ex-president! And people would want him to!”

“I haven’t found any ex-president’s name on the list,” Earl pointed out.

“Of course he’d be under a pseudonym.”

“I hadn’t thought of that. The ultimate class—to have your body frozen under a pseudonym!”

“Hey, you two!” Vera called down from the top of the spiral stairs. “Finished down there yet?”

“Just about! How’re you coming with the fireworks?”

“No good, but I think I’ve got something even better. Come on up and see.”

Satisfied that they’d done all they could in checking out the vaults, Earl and Armstrong climbed back up. Vera met them at the top, holding a slender metal tube that was plugged with cork at both ends. “A magnesium flare!” she announced proudly. “When it goes off it’ll light up the sky like high noon! They’ll see it fifty miles away!”

“Great! How do we get it up there?”

“A nitro propellant, as you suggested. But we’ll need some sort of launch ramp to get it off to a straight start.”

“That should be easy enough.”

As they hurried along the brightly lit corridor toward the stairs to the main floor Armstrong suddenly grabbed Earl.
“What’s that?”

There was the sound of breaking glass from above. “My God, he’s getting in!” Vera gasped.

Earl broke into a run. “Come on! We can’t hide from him this time!”

He was the first one onto the main floor, and he saw the broken front window at once. Then his eyes went to the hallway just inside the locked front door. Old Hobbes’s body was still sprawled in its circle of blood, but now he’d been joined by a visitor.

Frank was kneeling by the body, reaching out a tentative hand to stroke the cold, wrinkled skin of the corpse.

“Easy,” Earl whispered, warning the others back. “Let’s not alarm him.”

“Should I shoot him?” Armstrong whispered back.

“What do you think?”

“He’s still my patient. I’d hate to do it unless it’s absolutely necessary.”

“It could become just that at any moment,” Earl cautioned. “Keep that gun handy!”

He moved a step nearer, tensed to jump back at the first sign of aggression. But when Frank suddenly lurched forward from his kneeling position neither he nor Armstrong was ready for it. Vera gave a sudden scream and then Frank grabbed Armstrong’s pants, pulling the man forward and knocking the gun from his hand. Earl was on him in an instant, feeling the unreal flesh beneath his fingers. The three rolled over, tussling, and then Frank retreated, realizing that he was outnumbered. He grabbed up the fallen pistol and tried to aim it at the two men.

That was when Vera hurled the lamp.

It missed him, but he retreated into the living room.

Vera followed, grabbing up the lightweight plastic grid for the laser game. She hurled that too, before he could aim the gun. It hit the side of his head, stunning him, and he shook himself with a sort of shudder. Then, as Armstrong and Earl rushed to capture him, he dived headlong through the shattered window by which he’d entered, then scampered to his feet and ran off into the night.

“He’s got the gun,” Armstrong said. “Now we’re without a weapon. He can wait out there and shoot us down. He may not know how to operate a laser pistol, but he sure knows how to fire a revolver!”

Earl put a gentle arm about Vera’s shoulders. “Thanks—you probably saved our lives.”

“I think he was only defending himself,” she said. “When we found him he really seemed upset at the sight of Hobbes’s body.”

“He’s not awfully strong,” Armstrong said. “Without the gun, I think we could take him easily enough.”

Earl agreed. “That left arm of his still doesn’t work very well. And it seems he can’t speak. There wasn’t a sound out of him while we were struggling.”

Armstrong nodded. “Probably that partial brain damage that was bothering O’Connor before he died.”

“Could brain damage turn him into a killer?” Earl asked.

“Anything’s possible.”

He turned to Vera. “Let’s get that flare launched.”

“We still need a launching platform.”

“A couple of lengths of wood should do it.” Earl remembered the cabinet where the sharksticks had been stored. He walked over to it, wishing that he still had the laser pistols. “Get me that ax, will you, Armstrong? The one that was used to kill Whalen. I left it in the kitchen when we brought the body in.”

It wasn’t much of a tool, but it did the job. He split the cabinet door in two lengthwise, then nailed the halves together at right angles to each other. The result was a ramp some seven feet long which could aim and support the flare as it was launched. In cross-section it was exactly like the portable V-ramps developed in the 1980s to fire cloud-seeding rockets.

“Where’ll we do it?” Vera asked.

“Upstairs,” Earl decided. “As close to heaven as we can get.”

With Armstrong and Vera looking on, he clambered out his bedroom window to stand unsteadily on the sloping roof over the back porch. He lit the makeshift fuse with a table coil, then covered his eyes just in case the magnesium ignited too soon.

But the rocket took off with a great whoosh, as if designed by an expert. The rear cork popped out on schedule and they watched its fiery trail rise in a gentle arc across the night sky.

“Why doesn’t it burst?” Earl asked as it started to dip toward the sea.

“Don’t be impatient. It will.”

The words were hardly out of her mouth when the sky was flooded with a blaze of white light. For an instant it almost blinded them with its brilliance. Then the shreds of burning magnesium drifted slowly down toward the water, steaming as they hit and died.

“Fantastic!” Earl breathed.

“It didn’t last long enough. We should have rigged a parachute so it would fall more slowly.”