Frankenstein Unbound. Brian Aldiss

      1

      A record must be kept, for the sanity of all concerned. Luckily, old habits die hard, and I had my tape-memory stowed in the car, together with a stack of other junk. I’ll start from the time that darkness came on.

      I’d managed to drive over the terrible roads to a village or small town. When I saw buildings coming up, I drove the Felder off the track behind an outcrop of rock, where I hoped it was both safe and unobtrusive for the night. However much of a challenge the town presented, I figured I would cause less stir if I went in on foot than in a four-wheeled horseless vehicle. They did not possess such things here, that was for sure.

      All I had to eat was some chocolate Tony had left in the car, washed down by a can of beer in the freeze compartment. My need for a meal and bed overcame my apprehensions.

      Although I had kept away from people and villages so far, I knew this was a well inhabited part of the world. I had seen many people in the distance. The scenery was alpine, with broad green valleys surmounted by mountain peaks. More distant were higher peaks, tipped with snow. The bottoms of the valleys contained dashing streams, winding tracks, and picturesque little villages made of pretty wooden houses huddling together. Every village had its church spire; every hour was signalled by a bell chiming in the spires; the sound came clear down the valleys. The mountainsides were strewn with spring flowers. There were cows among the tall grasses – cows with solemn bells about their necks which donged as they moved. Above them, little wooden huts were perched in higher meadows.

      It was a beautiful and soothing place. It was just not anything you might encounter in Texas, not if you went back or forward a million years. But it looked mighty like Switzerland.

      I know Switzerland well, or did on my own time track.

      My years in the American Embassy in Brussels had been well spent. I learnt to speak French and German fluently, and had passed as much leave as I could travelling about Europe. Switzerland had become my favourite country. At one time I had bought a chalet just outside Interlaken.

      So I walked into the town. A board on the outskirts gave its name as Sècheron and listed times of Holy Mass. Overhanging balconies, neat piles of kindling wood against every wall. A rich aroma of manure and wood smoke, pungent to my effete nostrils. And a sizeable inn which, with antique lettering, proclaimed itself to be the Hôtel Dejean. The exterior was studded with chamoix horns and antlers of deer.

      What gave me a thrill – why, outside the low door, two men were unloading something from a cart; it was the carcass of a bear! I had never seen that before. What was more, I could understand what the men were saying; although their accents were strange, their French was perfectly comprehensible.

      As soon as I entered a cheerful low room with oil lamps burning, I was greeted by the host. He asked me a lot of suspicious questions, and eventually I was shown to what must have been the poorest room in his house, over the kitchen, facing a hen-run. It mattered not to me. A servant girl brought me up water, I washed and lay back on the bed to rest before dinner. I slept.

      When I woke, it was without any idea of time. The timeslip had upset my circadian rhythms. I knew only that it was dark, and had been for some while. I lay there in a sort of wonderment, listening to a rich world of sound about me. The great wooden chalet creaked and resonated like a galleon in full sail. I could hear the voices of the wood, and human voices, as well as snatches of song and music. Somewhere, cowbells sounded; the animals had been brought in for the night, maybe. And there was that wonderful world of smells! You might say that the thought uppermost in my mind was this: Joe Bodenland, you have escaped the twenty-first century!

      My sleep had done something for me. Earlier in the day, I had been close to despair. Driving the Felder, I looked back towards the ranch and found it had disappeared. I had left it only twenty minutes earlier. In complete panic, I turned the car around and drove back to where the house had been. I knew exactly where it stood because one of our pampas bushes was there and, in the middle of it, a coloured ball of Tony’s. Nothing else. The ranch, the children, all had snapped back to their normal time.

      Blackest despair – now total euphoria! I was a different man, full of strength and excitement. Something the innkeeper had said when I made apologies for possessing no luggage had begun to tip my mood.

      ‘General Bonaparte has a lot to answer for. He may be safely out of the way again now, but a lot of decent people have no safety and no homes.’

      He had taken me for some kind of refugee from the Napoleonic Wars! They had finished in 1815, with Napoleon’s banishment to St Helena.