Ghosts by Gaslight - Jack Dann [6]
In every case, the challenge was to find an optimum rate at which to replenish the bezalelite anode with fresh quantities of the alloy. If I introduced too many positively charged atoms into the bath, then the cathode—that is, the experimental vertebrate or invertebrate—invariably suffered paralysis. Too few such ions, and the chrysalis became so porous as to allow the soul’s egress.
I was pleased and surprised by how quickly a plated specter learns to move. Within hours of its emergence from the electrolyte solution, each subject variously flew, hopped, slithered, crawled, or ran as adeptly as when alive. To the best of my knowledge, a ghost’s condition entails only one deficit. Because the olfactory sense is actually heightened by the procedure, the creature will undergo a highly unpleasant interval as its former corporeal host decays within the chrysalis. Once decomposition is complete, however, the encapsulated phantom is free to revel in its immortality.
Finding an experimental subject of the species Homo sapiens posed no difficulties. Three months ago my manservant Wolfgang was diagnosed with a cancer of the stomach. His anguish soon proved as unimaginable as the physicians’ palliatives proved useless. The instant I proposed to sever his tormented soul from his ravaged flesh, he surrendered himself to my science.
I shall not soon forget the sight of Wolfgang’s glazed body rising from the wooden vat—eyeless, noseless, mouthless, hairless: the solution had plated all his features, much as an enormous candle burning atop a bust will, drip by drip, sheath the face in wax. In a single deft gesture I removed the breathing pipe and, taking up a permanent bezalelite plug, stoppered the ventilation hole, so that death by asphyxiation occurred in a matter of minutes. Even as the waters of Wolfgang’s rebirth sluiced along his arms and cascaded down his chest, he began teaching his phantom limbs to animate the chrysalis, his phantom eyes to pierce the translucent husk, and so he climbed free of the tar-lined tub without misadventure. The gaslight caught the hardened elixir, causing cold sparks to flash among the bulges and pits. A naïve witness happening upon my golem would have taken him for a knight clad in armor fashioned from phosphorescent brass and polished amber.
“The pain is gone,” the ghost reported.
“Naturally,” I replied. “I have disembodied you. Henceforth your name is Nonentity 101.”
“I can barely see,” he moaned.
“A necessary and—as you will soon realize—trivial side effect.”
“I feel buried alive. Set me free, Herr Doktor Nachtstein.”
“Take heart, Nonentity 101. You are the harbinger of a new and golden race. Welcome to Eden. Before long hundreds of your kind will inhabit this same garden, arrayed in immortal metal, sneering at oblivion.”
“Let me out.”
“Do not despair. In the present Paradise, the lethal Tree of Knowledge is nowhere to be found. This time around, my dear Adam, you will eat only of the Tree of Life.”
THE SPARTAN TRAIN that brings Jonathan Hobbwright eastward from the tiny village of Tübinhausen to the outskirts of Castle Kralkovnik comprises a lone passenger carriage hauled by a decrepit switch engine. Shortly after six o’clock post meridiem, he arrives at a forlorn clapboard railway station, terminus of a spur line created solely to service the late Baron Nachtstein’s estate.
As Jonathan wanders about the platform, a thunderstorm arises in the Schwarzwald, the harsh winds flogging his weary flesh. The station offers no refuge, being as tightly sealed as Dr. Wohlmeth’s grave, its door secured with a padlock as large as a teapot. For a half hour the vibratologist huddles beneath the drizzling eaves and leaky gutters, until at last a humanoid figure comes shambling through the