The Mammoth Book of Frankenstein (Mammoth Books) (83 page)

“I’ve been expecting it, Arthur. It wasn’t really such a shock.”

“Susan.”

“I could tell, you know. It’s been different. You’ve been different. Ever since you returned from South America, I’ve been expecting this. I expect you met someone else there . . .”

“No. Please believe that.”

She gave a bitter little smile across the table.

“I love you, Susan. As much as ever. More. Now that I realize how much I’m losing, I want you more than ever.”

“Arthur, you haven’t even made love to me since you came back. How can I believe you?”

“I can’t, Susan.”

“Then tell me why.”

I shook my head.

“You owe me that much, Arthur. At least that much. Some explanation. Whatever it is, I’ll understand. If there’s someone else, if you’re tired of me, if you simply want your freedom, I’ll understand. There’ll be no bitterness. But you can’t simply break it off like this, without even telling me why. It’s inhuman.”

And perhaps she would have understood. Susan, of all people, might have understood. But it was too horrible and I couldn’t bring myself to tell her. I couldn’t tell anyone. I didn’t even tell the doctor who examined me what he was supposed to be looking for. It was a terrible secret, and I had to bear it alone.

“Susan, I can’t tell you.”

She looked towards the window again. The leaded panes distorted the outside world. I thought she was going to cry, then, but she didn’t. Her lip trembled. Waiters moved efficiently past our table,
and the other customers wined and dined and pursued their individual lives, while I sat there alone. Susan was there, but I was alone.

“If only you hadn’t gone,” she whispered.

Yes. If only I hadn’t gone. If only a man could relive the past and undo what had been done. But I had gone, and I looked down at the wine shimmering in my glass and recalled how it had happened; recalled those monstrous things which had been, and could never be undone . . .

It is hard to believe that it was only two months since the director of the museum called me to his office on a grim London afternoon. I was excited and expectant about his summons, as I followed the echo of hollow footsteps through those hoary corridors to his office. I was well aware that Jeffries, the head of the anthropology department, planned to retire at the end of the year, and had hopes of being promoted to his position. I can recall the conflicting thoughts that bounded in my head, wondering if I wasn’t too young to expect such promotion, counterbalancing this by mentally listing the well-received work I’d done since I’d been there, remembering that many of my views were opposed to the director’s, but knowing him as a man who respected genuine disagreement and sought out subalterns who did not hesitate to put forth their own theories, and also, perhaps mainly, thinking how delighted Susan would be if I could tell her I’d been promoted and that we could change and hasten our plans in accordance with my new position. Susan wanted children, but was prepared to wait a few years until we could afford them; she wanted a house in the country but had agreed to move into my flat in town. Perhaps, now, we would not have to wait for these things. Visions of happiness and success danced in my head that afternoon, as they do when a man is young and hopeful.

I was only thirty-one years old that day, although I’m old now.

It was two months ago.

Doctor Smyth looked the part of a museum director, the template from which all men in that position should have been cut. He wore an ancient and immaculate double-breasted suit crossed with a gold watch chain, and reposed like a boulder behind a massive desk in his leather-bound den.

“Ah, Brookes. Sit down.”

I sat and waited. It was difficult to feel so confident now that I faced him. He filled a blackened pipe carefully, pressing the tobacco down with his wide thumb.

“Those reports I sent on to you the other day,” he said. He paused to touch a match to the tobacco, and I watched it uncurl in the
flame. I was disappointed. I’d hoped this meeting would be far more momentous than that. A haze of smoke began to drift between us.

“You’ve studied them?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What’s your opinion?”

I was mildly surprised. I’d been surprised when he sent them to me. They were the sort of thing one usually takes with a grain of salt, various unsubstantiated reports from Tierra del Fuego concerning a strange creature that had been seen in the mountains; a creature that appeared vaguely manlike, but behaved like an animal. It was reported to be responsible for destroying a few sheep and frightening a few people. The museum receives a good many reports of this nature, usually either a hoax or desire for publicity or over-stimulated imagination. True, there had been several different accounts of this creature with no apparent connexion between the men who claimed to have seen it, but I thought myself too much a man of science to place much faith in rumours of this sort.

And yet Smyth seemed interested.

“Well, I don’t really know. Some sort of primate, perhaps. If there is anything.”

“Too large for a monkey.”

“If it weren’t South America, I’d think possibly an ape . . .”

“But it is South America, isn’t it?”

I said nothing.

“You mentioned a primate. It isn’t a monkey, and it can’t very well be an ape. What does that leave?”

“Man, of course.”

“Yes,” he said.

He regarded me through the smoke.

I said: “Of course, the Indians in that area are very primitive. Possibly the most primitive men alive today. Darwin was certainly fascinated by them, running naked in that climate and eating raw mussels. This creature might well be a man, some hermit perhaps, or an aboriginal who has managed to avoid contact with civilization.”

“And more power to him,” Smyth said.

“I should think that’s the answer.”

“I doubt it, somehow.”

“I don’t see . . .”

“Several aboriginals have been known to have seen this creature. Surely they would have recognized him as a man like themselves.”

“Perhaps. But there’s certainly no proof to suggest it is something less than a man. I’d rate the plausibility of anything else well behind the Abominable Snowman, and you know my views on that.”

Smyth smiled rather tolerantly. I had done some research on the
Yeti which had been well received, but my conclusions had been strictly negative. Smyth was inclined to admit the possibility of such creatures, however.

“I thought much the same way, at first,” he said.

“At first?”

“I’ve given it considerable thought. I was particularly impressed by the story that half-breed fellow told in Ushuaia. What was his name?”

“Gregorio?”

“Yes, that’s the one. Hardly the sort of thing a man would imagine without some basis in truth, I should think. In fact, I sent a wire to a fellow I know there. Man named Gardiner. Used to be a manager with Explotadora, when the company was really big. Retired now, but he figured he was too old to start a new life in England and he stayed there. Splendid fellow, knows everyone. Helped us considerably the last time we had a field team out there. Anyway, he replied, and according to him this Gregorio is a fairly reliable sort. That got me wondering if there mightn’t be more to this than I’d supposed. And then, there’s another angle . . .”

His pipe had faltered. He spent several moments and several matches lighting it again.

“What do you know of Hubert Hodson?” he asked.

“Hodson? Is he still alive?”

“Hodson is several years younger than I,” Smyth said, amused. “Yes, he’s still very much alive.”

“He was before my time. Not highly regarded these days, a bit outdated. I’ve read him, of course. A renegade with curious theories and an adamant attitude, but a first-class scientist. Some of his ideas caused quite a stir some twenty years ago.”

Smyth nodded. He seemed pleased that I knew about Hodson.

“I’m rather vague on his work, actually. He specialized in the genetics of evolution, I believe. Not really my line.”

“He specialized in many things. Spread himself too thin, perhaps. But he was a brilliant man.” Smyth’s eyes narrowed, he was recalling the past. “Hodson put forth many theories. Some nonsense, some perhaps not. He believed that the vocal cords were the predominant element in man’s evolution, for instance – maintained that any animal, given man’s power of communication, would in time have developed man’s straight spine, man’s thumb, even man’s brain. That man’s mind was no more than a by-product of assembled experience and thought unnecessary to development. A theory of enormous possibilities, of course, but Hodson, being the man he is, threw it down like a gauntlet, as a challenge to man’s superior powers of reasoning. He presented it as though he
preferred to cause consternation and opposition, rather than seeking acceptance.

“It was much the same with his mutation theory, when he claimed that evolution was not a gradual process, but moved in sudden forward spurts at various points in time, and that the time was different and dependent upon the place. Nothing wrong with these ideas, certainly, but his manner of presentation was such that the most harmless concepts would raise a hue and cry. I can remember him standing at the rostrum, pointing at the assembly with an accusing finger, his hair all wild, his eyes excited, shouting, ‘Look at you! You think that you are the end product of evolution? I tell you, but for a freak Oligocene mutation, you would be no more than our distant cousins, the shrews. Do you think that you and I share a common ancestor? We share a common mutation, no more. And I, personally, find it regrettable.’ You can imagine the reaction among the learned audience. Hodson merely smiled and said, ‘Perhaps I chose my words rashly. Perhaps your relation to the shrews is not so distant after all.’ Yes, I can remember that day clearly, and I must admit I was more amused than outraged.”

Smyth smiled slightly around his pipe.

“The final insult to man came when he claimed all evolution had been through the female line. If I remember correctly, he stated that the male was no more than a catalyst, that man, being weaker, succumbed to these irregular mutations and in turn was merely the agent that caused the female to progress or change, was only necessary to inspire the female to evolve, so to speak. Men, even men of science, were hardly prepared to countenance that, naturally. Hodson was venomously attacked, both scientifically and emotionally, and, strangely enough, the attacks seemed to trouble him this time. He’d always delighted in the furore before, but this time he went into seclusion and finally disappeared entirely.”

“You seem to know a great deal about him, sir,” I said, “Considering he’s rather obscure.”

“I respected him.”

“But how does this tie in with the reports from South America?”

“Hodson is there. That is where he went when he left the country twenty odd years ago, and he’s been there ever since. That’s why you’ve heard nothing from him for the last generation. But God knows what he’s doing there. He’s published nothing, made no statements at all, and that’s very unlike Hodson. He was always a man to make a statement simply for shock value, whether he really believed it or not.”

“Perhaps he’s retired.”

“Not Hubert.”

“And you believe that his presence is connected with those reports?”

“I have no idea. I just wonder. You see, no one knows exactly where he is – I don’t expect anyone has tried to find out, actually – but he’s located somewhere in the Chilean part of Tierra del Fuego, in the south-western section.”

“And that’s where the reports have come from,” I said.

“Exactly. It just makes me wonder a bit.”

We both pondered for a few minutes while he lighted his pipe again. Then I thought I saw a flaw.

“But if he’s been there for twenty years . . . these reports have all been within the last six months. I don’t see how that would tie in.”

“Don’t you?”

I didn’t. He puffed away for a while.

“This creature which may, or may not, have been seen. It was as large as a man. Therefore, we may assume it to be full grown. Say, twenty years old, perhaps?”

“I see. You believe – I mean to say, you recognize the possibility – that Hodson may have heard something about this creature twenty years ago, and went to investigate. That he has been looking for it all this time.”

“Or found it.”

“Surely he wouldn’t keep something of that enormity secret?”

“Hodson is a strange man. He resented the attacks that were mounted against his ideas. He might well be waiting until he has a complete documentation, beyond refutation – a life’s work, all neatly tied up and proven. Perhaps he found this creature. Or creatures. We may safely assume that, if it exists, it had parents. Possibly siblings, as well. I think it more likely that Hodson would have discovered the parents and studied the offspring, or the whole tribe. Lived with them, even. That’s the sort of thing he’d do.”

“It seems – well, far-fetched, sir.”

“Yes, it does, doesn’t it? A science fiction idea. What did they used to call it? The missing link?” He chuckled. “The common ancestor is more accurate, I suppose.”

“But you can’t really believe that a creature like that could be alive now?”

“I admit it is most unlikely. But then, so was the coelacanth, before it was discovered alive.”

“But that was in the sea. God knows what may exist there. We may never know. But on land, if a creature like that existed, it would have been discovered before now.”

“It’s a wild, barren place, Tierra del Fuego. Rough terrain and a sparse population. I say only that it is possible.”

“You realize that the Indians of Tierra del Fuego are prehistoric, so to speak?” I said.

“Certainly.”

“And yet you feel there is a chance this creature might be something other than one of them?”

“A possibility.”

“And still a man?”

Smyth gestured with his pipe.

“Let us say, of the genus homo but not of the species sapiens.”

I was astounded. I couldn’t believe that Smyth was serious. I said, with what I thought admirable understatement, “It seems most unlikely.”