Philip José Farmer's The Dungeon 06] - The Final Battle Read Online Free PDF

in his cyborg's equivalent of an assenting nod. "Come, then, Being Clive. We will do our best together!"
    Chang Guafe scuttered through the opening, onto the ice floe outside the cave. As the opening of the cave was too narrow to accommodate both of them at once, Clive permitted the cyborg to precede him.
    He halted, then, for a final glimpse around the cave. How long had the monster stood frozen in ice? His mind raced, trying to recapture all it had ever known of Frankenstein's monster. Mrs. Shelley had written her famous romance and published it many years before Clive's birth. By the time he was a growing boy on his father's, Baron Tewkesbury's, rural estates,
Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus
was a world-famed tale, printed in countless editions in England and abroad and performed in mime, drama, and even musical form on stages round about the globe.
    Both Clive and his elder twin, Neville, had read the book as children, had seen it in several performances on visits to London, and had even been introduced once to the great Mrs. Shelley. The twins were mere stripling lads of fifteen at the time, and she a dignified widow within two years of her death. But even in that single encounter, the young Clive had been struck by the haunted expression in Mrs. Shelley's eyes and the distracted manner of her conversation.
    It was as if there were more to
Frankenstein
than fantasy, than the supposed ghost story concocted by the young Mary Wollstonecraft. She was not yet Mrs. Shelley when she wrote the tale, and in truth was little older than the Folliot lads at the time of their meeting in 1849. Could this girl of nineteen truly create the wild tale, or had she received her data from some other source?
    Clive shook himself back to the present. He would discuss this with his friend du Maurier if he ever had the opportunity to do so. But for now, he must deal with the mortal potentialities of the real world as it now confronted him. He strode from the cave and stood facing the alien cyborg and the monster.
    "We must get off this ice floe," he volunteered.
    "How, Being Clive?"
    "I think I have a plan. We can walk to the end of the ice—at least, we can attempt that."
    "And then?"
    "Build a boat, and sail to land."
    The monster glared at Clive. "An excellent plan, insect. And of what materials shall we build that boat? Know you of a forest where we can fell trees for timber?"
    "I'm afraid not. But I remember a lesson in natural philosophy that I learned at Cambridge. We can build a boat of ice."
    "Ice!" Chang Guafe's metallic grate and the monster's booming bass echoed in unison.
    "Yes, ice! You can produce a heating filament similar to the one you used to thaw the monster from his frozen tomb, Chang Guafe?"
    "Yes, I can do that."
    "We can use it to scoop out a concave shell, and launch it from the edge of this ice floe."
    "And as we sail to warmer climes and our ice shell melts, Man?" the monster questioned. "What then? Do we swim the rest of the way?"
    "I'll admit that there's an element of risk," Clive conceded. "But there's a good chance that we'll drift to some northern island, or even to the mainland or Europe or Asia or the New World. Or we may encounter a sailing ship on the high seas. It's true that we'll be gambling our lives. But not to gamble them means to remain here and die."
    "I was frozen here before. I can survive again," the monster boomed.
    "Then that is your choice."
    There was a pregnant pause. Then the monster said, "No, Folliot. I shall accompany you."
    Clive nodded.
    "I perceive upon your countenance an expression of skepticism," the monster resumed. "You wonder why I should accompany you, puny human bug, and your peculiar companion. But I tell you this: Even in extremis, when I sought oblivion in the eternal cold and silence of this distant realm, I was not left unmolested by Man. Man—the scourge of Creation! Man it was who created me, and lived to regret that deed—and Man it was who