‘Borrow… steal… whichever,’ she said coquettishly.
With an effort, Frankenstein disengaged gazes.
‘Could you not consider somewhere nearer home?’ he said, mock grave. ‘Neo-Nelson is at Portsmouth I believe…’
Ada pondered the option for all of a second.
‘No. I think not. Does he have the spark? Doubtful. What has he achieved since revival? More mere victories such as he gained in life. Trafalgar, Yarmouth Harbour, the Battle of Botany Bay. Decisive victories, I grant you, but the same old stuff, much as before. Not a country-crusher amongst them. No, mein herr, I tip Old Boney as the sure-fire certainty if you ask me…’
Julius wasn’t sure he had, or if he had now wished he hadn’t. He sighed yet again and adjusted his collar. It felt over familiar, even grimy.
Yet he had no grounds for complaint, not really. What had she promised him? ‘Escape and adventure.’ Well, this proposal contained both those, beyond all arguing.
After all, what else was death but the ultimate escape and adventure?
Julius beamed at her—or something.
‘Very well, my dear Ada, France it is!’
She frowned at such familiarity but he’d already tipped his hat over his face and settled down to doze. Soon his breathing became shallow. Like many soldiers he had somewhere acquired the knack of seizing sleep in small packages, as and when required.
No longer needful of sleep, Lady Lovelace sat stiff-backed awaiting the next train, watching the colourful galloons, both civil and military, floating over Box Hill.
In her previous life, she and Lord Lovelace had their own private airship. The scarlet and gold dirigible was garaged in a private aerodrome at Horsley Towers, with stables for its Lazaran crew alongside. Husband and wife had been free to fly anywhere their hearts desired—instead of which Ada stuck to her calculations in confined spaces, and Lord Lovelace to politics in Parliament. Now it could have wafted her to France as easy as pie, if things were back as they once were…
But they weren’t. Ada put the possibility out of her mind, along with all related baggage. Awaiting mere public transport and the fourth class carriage that Lazarans were confined to, she felt no nostalgia for those pampered days. Mansions, family, fine meals and clothes, all such refinements of life sought to grip on a place Ada didn’t have, either pre or post-mortem. All she missed was her spark, and that lack would shortly be attended to.
Lady Lovelace’s dulled eyes ranged confidently across the living world, in anticipation of better days.
Toiling up the Zigzag path, Alfred Sturgeon clapped one hand to the back of his neck.
‘Strewth!’ he exclaimed to wife and ankle-biters. ‘Someone’s dancing on me grave!’
‘Have a rest, Alfie love,’ said Mrs Sturgeon, concerned. Foundry work took its toll and he wasn’t the man he once was. This slog up a sheer hill on a hot day might well do their breadwinner a mischief. She proffered a bottle of lemon-cordial from her picnic bag.
‘Here, ‘ave a swig. It’ll cool yer down.’
Mr Surgeon shook his head but accepted anyway.
‘It’s warming up I need. Blimey, Elsie: someone slid a ton of ice down me spine just then.’
He looked back in the perceived direction of the assault, but was none the wiser. All he could see was the tiny dot of someone on Betchworth Station staring up at him.
The only other people in the fifth (or ‘Revived-person’) class compartment were an obvious miser and some Welsh slate roofers, en route to some job somewhere far from home. Plus, of course, various Lazarans—but they didn’t count.
Julius and Foxglove sat either side of Ada on the slat seats to show she was escorted, and the ticket collector had to mask his disdain. After ordering some refreshments brought through from the buffet car they were soon as comfortable as they were ever going to be in a cattle wagon. Along they went, sometimes in excess of thirty miles an hour, chugging away to the south coast.
Paradoxically, down amongst the lowest of the low was where you had greatest freedom of speech. Even if you crossed the bounds, who would believe anything that riffraff claimed to have overheard?
Frankenstein’s natural curiosity had risen from the grave precisely parallel with Ada. Now, as they rolled through the Surrey countryside wreathed in steam, it was a convenient time to indulge it.
‘Can you remember anything from being dead?’
The query was without preface or address but Lady Lovelace accepted delivery. After all, it was unlikely her companion was addressing the Lazaran chain-gang opposite: their low moaning, and indeed existence, had swiftly merged into the general background.
Foxglove frowned at such forwardness.
‘‘No.’ Ada’s reply was considered but succinct.
It was a disappointment, though not unexpected. Frankenstein studied the smoke-dominated view from the window.
‘No, none of you do. Or at least that is what your sort say. If true, it is a great pity: how one longs for a fore-glimpse of Paradise…’ He paused and then reluctantly added, out of honesty: ‘or premonition of Hell. Alas, we must conclude that the chasm between life and death is absolute, too wide to bridge or even glimpse the other side.’
Lady Lovelace dislodged a glowing smut from her bodice with a deft flick of the fan.
‘There is an alternative explanation, mein herr’
‘There is?’
Julius looked for it in vain. So Ada assisted.
‘We may remember nothing because there is nothing. Have you not considered that, dear doctor?’
No, he hadn’t. A sheltered Swiss upbringing, fortified by formative years in the Vatican, plus Frankenstein family guilt, evidently ruled such a hypothesis out of court. Julius was as shocked, shocked, as a maiden menaced by a drunken sailor.
‘Apparently not…,’ Her ladyship observed, and smiled, relishing her naughtiness’ effect on him. Whatever else the grave did to Revived folk she was still her Father’s daughter. ‘Well, such is my conclusion. Personally, I draw great comfort from it…’
Fear of report-backs from the afterlife had fuelled the Church’s earliest and most vociferous objections to Revivalist science. That none ever arrived barely stilled the disquiet. The whole business had… implications—as now.
Ada Lovelace’s irreligion left Julius aghast. Like beholding a blasted heath where you thought to find a garden. When the motion of the train caused their bodies to collide he perceived the chill from her dead flesh anew. Even Foxglove had to assume a stony face.
‘Do not take offence,’ the servant said to Frankenstein, (advice or command?) ‘Her ladyship thought that way before.’
As if that made things better!
Julius calmed himself with deep breaths. He could not entirely quit the field without seeming unmanly, but the subject must be steered to safer shores.
‘I respectfully decline to share in your delusion, madam,’ he said. ‘Although it does at least afford proof of one thing. Consistency with the former life only returns with the most refined serum. Likewise, memories of the former state. Most Lazarans awake to only a blank slate and vague sense of loss…’
Once she dug her dainty heels in, Lady Lovelace wouldn’t budge a inch.
‘How do you—or I, for that matter—know I have all my memories? There may be great swathes missing! How would I miss what I don’t recall having?’
Foxglove stiffened at the horrible suggestion. He straightaway began silent work on a catechism of Lovelace minutiae, names of children and hounds, colours of curtains etc., to quiz his Mistress on later. Whatever she lacked, be it money or memory, it was his sacred duty to supply.