beautiful, graceful, elegant. She looked twenty-five but had been alive only six weeks.
Victor himself, though two hundred and forty, could have passed for forty-five. His youthful appearance had been harder to maintain than hers had been to achieve.
Beauty and grace were not his only criteria for an ideal wife. He also wished her to be socially and intellectually sophisticated.
In this regard, in many small ways, Erika had failed him and had proved slow to learn in spite of direct-to-brain downloads of data that included virtual encyclopedias of etiquette, culinary history, wine appreciation, witticisms, and much else.
Knowledge of a subject did not mean that one could apply that knowledge, of course, but Erika didn’t seem to be trying hard enough. The Cabernet instead of the Merlot, Dickinson…
Victor had to admit, however, that she was a more appealing and acceptable creature than Erika Three, her immediate predecessor. She might not be the final version—only time would tell—but whatever her faults, Erika Four was not a complete embarrassment.
The drivel in the medical journals and Erika reading Dickinson at last drove him up from his armchair. “I’m in a creative mood. I think I’ll spend some time in my studio.”
“Do you need my help, darling?”
“No. You stay here, enjoy yourself.”
“Listen to this.” Her delight was childlike. Before Victor could stop her, she read from Dickinson: “The pedigree of honey / Does not concern the bee / A clover, any time, to him / Is aristocracy.”
“Charming,” he said. “But for variety, you might read some Thom Gunn and Frederick Seidel.”
He could have told her what to read, and she would have obeyed. But he did not desire an automaton for a wife. He wanted her to be free-spirited. Only in sexual matters did he demand utter obedience.
In the immense restaurant-quality kitchen from which staff could serve a sit-down dinner for a hundred without problem, Victor entered the walk-in pantry. The shelves at the back, laden with canned goods, slid aside when he touched a hidden switch.
Beyond the pantry, secreted in the center of the house, lay his windowless studio.
His public labs were at Helios Biovision, the company through which he was known to the world and by which he had earned another fortune atop those he had already accrued in earlier ages.
And in the Hands of Mercy, an abandoned hospital converted to serve his primary work and staffed with men of his making, he pursued the creation of the new race that would replace flawed humanity.
Here, behind the pantry, measuring twenty by fifteen feet, this retreat provided a place for him to work on small experiments, often those on the leading edge of his historic enterprise.
Victor supposed that he was to arcane laboratory equipment what Santa Claus was to gizmo-filled toy workshops.
When Mary Shelley took a local legend based on truth and crafted fiction from it, she’d made Victor a tragic figure and killed him off. He understood her dramatic purpose for giving him a death scene, but he loathed her for portraying him as tragic and as a failure.
Her judgment of his work was arrogant. What else of consequence did
she
ever write? And of the two, who was dead—and who was not?
Although her novel suggested his workplace was a phantasmagoria of gizmos as ominous in appearance as in purpose, she had been vague on details. Not until the first film adaptation of her book did the name Frankenstein become synonymous with the term “mad scientist” and with laboratories buzzing-crackling-humming with frightening widgets, thingums, and doohickeys.
Amusingly, Hollywood had the set design more than half right, not as to the actual machines and objects, but as to ambience. Even the studio behind the pantry had a flavor of Hell with machines.
On the center worktable stood a Lucite tank filled with a milky antibiotic solution. In the tank rested a man’s severed head.
Actually, the head wasn’t
Victor himself, though two hundred and forty, could have passed for forty-five. His youthful appearance had been harder to maintain than hers had been to achieve.
Beauty and grace were not his only criteria for an ideal wife. He also wished her to be socially and intellectually sophisticated.
In this regard, in many small ways, Erika had failed him and had proved slow to learn in spite of direct-to-brain downloads of data that included virtual encyclopedias of etiquette, culinary history, wine appreciation, witticisms, and much else.
Knowledge of a subject did not mean that one could apply that knowledge, of course, but Erika didn’t seem to be trying hard enough. The Cabernet instead of the Merlot, Dickinson…
Victor had to admit, however, that she was a more appealing and acceptable creature than Erika Three, her immediate predecessor. She might not be the final version—only time would tell—but whatever her faults, Erika Four was not a complete embarrassment.
The drivel in the medical journals and Erika reading Dickinson at last drove him up from his armchair. “I’m in a creative mood. I think I’ll spend some time in my studio.”
“Do you need my help, darling?”
“No. You stay here, enjoy yourself.”
“Listen to this.” Her delight was childlike. Before Victor could stop her, she read from Dickinson: “The pedigree of honey / Does not concern the bee / A clover, any time, to him / Is aristocracy.”
“Charming,” he said. “But for variety, you might read some Thom Gunn and Frederick Seidel.”
He could have told her what to read, and she would have obeyed. But he did not desire an automaton for a wife. He wanted her to be free-spirited. Only in sexual matters did he demand utter obedience.
In the immense restaurant-quality kitchen from which staff could serve a sit-down dinner for a hundred without problem, Victor entered the walk-in pantry. The shelves at the back, laden with canned goods, slid aside when he touched a hidden switch.
Beyond the pantry, secreted in the center of the house, lay his windowless studio.
His public labs were at Helios Biovision, the company through which he was known to the world and by which he had earned another fortune atop those he had already accrued in earlier ages.
And in the Hands of Mercy, an abandoned hospital converted to serve his primary work and staffed with men of his making, he pursued the creation of the new race that would replace flawed humanity.
Here, behind the pantry, measuring twenty by fifteen feet, this retreat provided a place for him to work on small experiments, often those on the leading edge of his historic enterprise.
Victor supposed that he was to arcane laboratory equipment what Santa Claus was to gizmo-filled toy workshops.
When Mary Shelley took a local legend based on truth and crafted fiction from it, she’d made Victor a tragic figure and killed him off. He understood her dramatic purpose for giving him a death scene, but he loathed her for portraying him as tragic and as a failure.
Her judgment of his work was arrogant. What else of consequence did
she
ever write? And of the two, who was dead—and who was not?
Although her novel suggested his workplace was a phantasmagoria of gizmos as ominous in appearance as in purpose, she had been vague on details. Not until the first film adaptation of her book did the name Frankenstein become synonymous with the term “mad scientist” and with laboratories buzzing-crackling-humming with frightening widgets, thingums, and doohickeys.
Amusingly, Hollywood had the set design more than half right, not as to the actual machines and objects, but as to ambience. Even the studio behind the pantry had a flavor of Hell with machines.
On the center worktable stood a Lucite tank filled with a milky antibiotic solution. In the tank rested a man’s severed head.
Actually, the head wasn’t
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