The Mammoth Book of Frankenstein (Mammoth Books) (41 page)

But he stayed with the team, never striking to the front even when they needed that, when it was clear to him that they’d never reach Jamesay before darkfall unless they sprinted. Displace Josephine, he thought, and he was lost, they were all lost.

In fact, they reached open water with just enough light left to show them Jamesay’s shadow on the horizon. They could camp again, there’d be time enough tomorrow to make the rendezvous; but camping meant going back, it was half a mile or more since they’d past any land they could beach on. And there’d be no food, no shelter there. They’d be expected to make Jamesay today; there were no allowances for failure.

Clustering together and shouting between canoes, they agreed to go on. Michaela had a compass, she’d take a bearing now and keep them straight. Besides, there were houses on the island, there’d be lights. One last push, they said, and they’d be done. Credit to the team, they thought, to travel by night at need.

Nathaniel took no part in that decision. His only suggestion was that they should call out their names in order as they paddled, so that none of them was separated in the dark.

The life-jackets had luminescent strips also, activated by contact with seawater; those helped to keep them in touch. It was as a group that they headed into the surge of open water, though Nathaniel held himself deliberately a little adrift of the pack, to see more clearly if tiredness or lack of concentration pulled any of the others off course.

And it was as a group, if not as a team, that they met disaster when it came.

Disaster was high and fast and fitting, evidence perhaps of some higher order, envious of its prerogatives: a freak wave aimed at a bunch of freaks, and Nathaniel only the freakiest among them.

No time, no anticipation. Only a sudden warning cry, shrill as a
gannet’s, and then the water abruptly rising contrary to the steady swell, and the canoes tipping and tumbling and the dark that closed over, cut them off and contained them, gave them cold and crushing weight and nothing to breathe or hope for . . .

Except that these kids didn’t hope and didn’t panic, they kicked. Training and good sense and life-jackets all dragged them upwards; and when Nathaniel broke surface, when he sucked in a lungful of good wet salty air at last, he looked around and saw figures gasping in the water all around him, amid the dark bobbing shapes of empty canoes.

Those were first priority, and didn’t need discussing. Nathaniel struck out for the nearest, and took the nylon painter between his teeth to keep his hands free. Hearing a high whooping call he looked around, saw someone silhouetted briefly against the stars and waving; saw a general drift of his dim-lit companions in that direction and joined it.

It was Josephine, of course, calling them in. Counting lights, counting heads as he swam, Nathaniel counted seven eventually, though he wasn’t certain until they were all gathered, all rising and falling together in the heavy swell. Seven meant the whole team, no one missing; but of those seven, only three had brought in their canoes.

Not enough. Lifting himself as high as he could on the one he towed, before it ducked and slithered out from under him, Nathaniel thought he could make out a couple more, slim shadows sliding further into the dark. He took the painter from his mouth and pressed it into the nearest hand he could grab, Raoul’s; grunted, “Hold on to that, for God’s sake,” and plunged off after them, swimming hard for warmth and speed when he should be swimming slow for survival, preserving energy.

Behind him, Josephine’s voice called sharply after, but he ignored it. If she couldn’t see the need, he didn’t have time to explain.

Hard to orient in this heaving, heavy darkness, with the horizon always shifting and tilting and his eyes stinging with wind-hurled water, though he swam head-high and always looking, trying to fix on the stars when he wasn’t watching for canoes. Vampire cold sucked at his muscles, for all the heat he could make; without the wet suits, he thought, they might be dead in an hour. With them, with luck and intelligence, they could survive maybe three or four. Till morning, not. He’d doubted it before; he was certain now.

Intelligence they had, luck they could manufacture or achieve – as
he did now, chasing the luck that hadn’t lost these two canoes, fighting to conserve it.

As much stubborn as strong, bred in part for precisely a need such as this – and sent here, of course, to meet it – he caught up with the luck at last and brought it back, though towing two canoes with his teeth was far harder than one, and reaching the others again against the sea’s tug was harder even than finding them.

“What’s the point of that?” Josephine demanded when he did rejoin the group. “We had enough already to use as floats, we don’t need one each . . .”

And they were doing that already, clinging two or three to a canoe, only kicking their legs sluggishly to keep the blood flowing; but he said, “No, we can do better. Look, with five we can make a frame, four in a square and one diagonal to hold it open. Lash them together with the painters. Then some of us at least can get right out of the water, the ones who need to rest most. We can take it in turns, spell each other . . .”

And again he was right, and they knew it. No one argued. And again they were none of them grateful, though he was maybe saving lives here; he saw resentment in their faces, clear as daylight. And knew that they saw it in each other, and suddenly this felt dangerous. Fire and flood, irresistible forces feeding, massing against him: he knew no way to meet them except to try harder, to be better still.

So it was Nathaniel who swam from canoe to canoe, upturning those that weren’t already hull-up and drawing them together, numbed fingers fumbling with nylon rope to knot them into his vision, a raft-frame to support exhausted bodies.

And it was Nathaniel who helped the smallest, the coldest, the most tired aboard, and devised the most stable way for them to lie across the slippery hulls; Nathaniel who was last among the others to reach for a handhold, reaching to grip and cling and be buoyed up against the dragging depths.

Nathaniel who was the only one missing when the helicopter’s searchlight finally found them, after twenty minutes’ probing of dark waters.

Reason is sleeping
: and of course everyone applauds the team’s survival, offers comfort to their grief at a companion’s loss, encourages the media stories about the boy genius who turned hero at the last and sacrificed himself in his great effort to save others.

And of course no one who was at the camp believes those stories. Reason is sleeping, yes, but not that deeply. Not dreaming in fantasies.

Rumours are mostly unspoken, as the team itself is not speaking of Nathaniel; but rumours spread none the less. People have pictures in their minds: dark water and determined faces,
he shan’t be a hero and live, he shan’t make us accessories to his triumph. Not again
. . .

Dark water and determined, desperate faces;
No room! No room!
and hands that thrust and punched, nails that clawed and pinched and gouged at flesh and eyes. Too many hands and too much hatred, those are the themes in people’s private pictures in the camp.

But those too are dreams, perhaps, though dreaming close to true.

They found the panic button knotted at one of the canoe-frame’s corners, the button submerged but the aerial cord above the waterline. Tied there and squeezed and held it was, deliberately set off; and none of the team has mentioned it at all.

Nathaniel must have set it there, set it and left it and gone. And maybe the kids did as everyone secretly believes they did, maybe they drove him off; but what haunts the people who know about the button, what draws pictures in their minds is the other possibility.

Maybe, facing the team’s active and relentless hostility, Nathaniel had faced in that moment a lifetime of the same, and made his own choice.
Start stupid, learn fast
. Cued by the throbbing in his hand, maybe, he’d maybe quietly tied the button where they needed it, and turned, and swum away.

Maybe it was they after all who were not good enough, the world which failed. That’s the thought that haunts their waking dreams, those few who know. And no, they don’t discuss it either.

Reason is sleeping, and their beautiful children never stay
.

But in the castle, the doctor perseveres; and in the village they are not downcast. They forget the light that failed, and look still for the dawn. Next time, they tell themselves; next time, they tell each other
.

And this time, next time, every time they queue to give what they can, and are glad to do it. The doctor honours them, by taking what they have. What they most prize, they give most freely; and what’s new
?

Manly Wade Wellman (1903–1986) was born in Portuguese West Africa. He was one of the great pulp writers of the 1930s and ’40s, with more than seventy-five books and over two hundred short stories to his credit. During his long and distinguished career he wrote in almost every genre, including biographies, mysteries, science fiction, fantasy, horror, juvenile and regional fiction
.

He twice won the World Fantasy Award, and some of his best stories are collected in
Who Fears the Devil?
(filmed in 1972)
, Worse Things Waiting, Lonely Vigils
and
The Valley So Low.

“Pithecanthropus Rejectus” is generally considered to be one of the author’s very best science fiction stories. However, it infuriated a young Lester del Rey, who read it at Christmas time, and inspired him to start writing science fiction to prove he could do much better. Thus was a memorable career launched
.

M
Y FIRST MEMORIES
seem to be those of the normal human child – nursery, toys, adults seriously making meaningless observations with charts, tape measures and scales. Well, rather more than average of that last item, the observations. My constant companion was a fat, blue-eyed baby that drooled and gurgled and barely crept upon the nursery linoleum, while I scurried easily hither and thither, scrambling up on tables and bedposts, and sometimes on the bureau.
I felt sorry for him now and then. But he was amazingly happy and healthy, and gave no evidence of having the sudden fearful pains that struck me in head and jaw from time to time.

As I learned to speak and to comprehend, I found out the cause of those pains. I was told by the tall, smiling blond woman who taught me to call her “Mother”. She explained that I had been born with no opening in the top of my skull – so needed for bone and brain expansion – and that the man of the house – “Doctor” – had made such an opening, governing the growth of my cranium and later stopping the hole with a silver plate. My jaw, too, had been altered with silver, for when I was born it had been too shallow and narrow to give my tongue play. The building of a chin for me and the remodeling of several tongue-muscles had made it possible for me to speak. I learned before the baby did, by several months. I learned to say “Mother,” “Doctor,” to call the baby “Sidney” and myself “Congo”. Later I could make my wants known although, as this writing shows and will show, I was never fluent.

Doctor used to come into the nursery and make notes by the hour, watching my every move and pricking up his ears at my every sound. He was a stout, high-shouldered man, with a strong, square beard. He acted grave – almost stern – where I was involved. But with baby Sidney he played most tenderly. I used to feel hurt and would go to Mother for sympathy. She had enough for me and Sidney, too. She would pick me up and cuddle me and laugh – give me her cheek to kiss.

Once or twice Doctor scowled, and once I overheard him talking to Mother just beyond the nursery door. I understood pretty well even then, and since that time I have filled in details of the conversation.

“I tell you, I don’t like it,” he snapped. “Showering attentions on that creature.”

She gave him a ready laugh. “Poor little Congo!”

“Congo’s an ape, for all my surgery,” he replied coldly. “Sidney is your son, and Sidney alone. The other is an experiment – like a shake-up of chemicals in a tube, or a grafting of twigs on a tree.”

“Let me remind you,” said Mother, still good-natured, “that when you brought him from the zoo, you said he must live here as a human child, on equal terms with Sidney. That, remember, was part of the experiment. And so are affection and companionship.”

“Ah, the little beast!” Doctor almost snarled. “Sometimes I wish I hadn’t begun these observations.”

“But you have. You increased his brain powers and made it possible for him to speak. He’s brighter than any human child his age.”

“Apes mature quickly. He’ll come to the peak of development and Sidney will forge ahead. That always happens in these experiments.”

“These experiments have always been performed with ordinary ape-children before,” said Mother. “With your operations you’ve given him something, at least, of human character. So give him something of human consideration as well.”