The Uncanny Reader (29 page)

Frost dutifully returned the old man's thin smile as he added, “Fortunately his patron was Cardinal Richelieu—the affair was smoothed over. He had to burn his books, of course, but … Before that … twelfth-century Sieur d'Aveyrand … brought back books on alchemy and physics from the East—and a wife too, a Moorish astrologer…”

“Indeed,” Frost commented, politely concealing irritation and boredom. Now he remembered Menispe, aged twelve, airily boasting, “Of course I was named after a Saracen princess that one of our ancestors brought back from the Crusades. Don't you think it's rather
parvenu
not to know your family history?” “Snobbish little thing,” he had teased her. “
Non, ce n'est pas snobbisme, oncle Frank, c'est pratique!
”

“What a very commendable record of your ancestors you have kept, Professor;” he remarked. “I'm afraid in our family we can hardly trace our forebears beyond a pork butcher in 1893; but perhaps that is just as well. I daresay they were nothing to brag about.”

The professor's pained, reluctant acknowledgment of this pleasantry made it evident that his views on the subject were widely divergent from those of Frost; he said, “Well, it is true … must be admitted that there are advantages … but now, let me show you my specifications.”

He levered himself out of his chair—his arms looked as frail as celery stalks—and limped as fast as he was able to an Empire escritoire beside a lace-curtained window which looked into a dark interior well. The desk was piled high with papers which were plainly in no sort of order; it took the professor a little while to find what he wanted.

“Here, now—these, you see, are my diagrams—and these are the figures—it is all clear, I think, but my English is not adequate for the technical language—I do not know the proper terms for ‘Unified Field theory' or ‘planetary wave particle duality'—” He had fallen into French, which Frost read and understood well, though he did not speak it with great fluency.

“Yes, I see, Professor. I don't think there will be any problem about that. Look, I have brought over some blank application forms. You fill them in like this—here, see—I will of course take care of the registration, and so forth—you will need a clear diagram of course; yes, this one should serve perfectly well. Put your name at the beginning, ‘I, Charles-Edouard Aveyrand—'”

“De Froissart Aveyrand,” put in the professor fussily.

“‘Being a subject of the French Republic, do hereby declare the invention, for which I pray that a patent be granted to me, and the method by which it is to be performed, to be particularly described in and by the following statement—' Incidentally, do you have a madeup model of the—of your invention?”

“Naturally, Monsieur Frost, naturally I have.”

To Frost's considerable surprise, he then lifted up his voice and called, “Carloman! Allo, Carloman!

“I have programmed it to respond to my voice frequencies,” he explained. “Of course, for another person, it would only be needed to slip in a different tape. All that is entered in the specification. I thought it most practical. I am, you see, sometimes very stiff with my rheumatic trouble, hardly able to rise from my chair; it is so with many of my age, I daresay: but the voice is always at command.
Bien,
here it comes; like its inventor, it does not move very fast.”

A shuffling tread could now be heard in the corridor, and soon, round the open door, appeared a smallish figure, rather less than five foot high. Frost could not repress a start of surprise at the sight of it, for it appeared to be a knight in fourteenth-century armour. It moved slowly into the room and carefully positioned itself in the exact centre of a small threadbare rug about six feet away from the professor.

“Carloman, change the lights,” ordered Aveyrand, and the model accordingly proceeded to shuffle slowly round the room altering the illumination; first it switched on various table lamps by pulling down their strings with its mailed hand; after this it turned off the switch by the door which governed the overhead light, encountering a little difficulty in getting its metal fingers on to the target; finally it switched off the standard lamp beside the professor's chair by pressing a floor switch with its mailed foot. Then it returned to the centre of the rug and stood, apparently awaiting further orders.

“Remarkable,” said Frost. “Will it do anything else?”

“Oh,
bien sûr
, but that is all I have programmed it for at present. Later it could be instructed to make beds, use the vacuum cleaner … But I thought, do you see, how useful for people who are afraid of thieves … I must confess I am often in anxiety about brigands breaking into this place and stealing my valuables when I am out.” He glanced, almost apologetically, over his shoulder. “One can leave the model, you see, with instructions to go round at irregular intervals of time, changing all the lights, so that it must appear some living person is there. A time switch could not be so irregular. Whereas I could give Carloman a random series of changes which would continue for one hundred days without repeating.”

“Is it plugged into the mains? Or run off a battery?”

“Neither, monsieur; wholly self-contained. The planetary influence is sufficient to power it indefinitely on its present programme.”

“Very clever indeed,” said Frost. “I should certainly think you could find a ready market for such an invention.”

“Oh, my dear sir! Without doubt! There are so many people who, like myself, fear thieves, fear to go away and leave their possessions.”

Frost could not help being somewhat struck by the irony of this; looking round the dismal apartment he wondered what in it was worth taking? In any case, surely the professor was almost always at home?

“Tell me, why are you applying first for a British patent? Why not begin in your own country?”

The professor gave a classic Gallic shrug. “There is too much corruption here. I should have to grease too many palms. I cannot afford it. And otherwise, it would not be achieved in my lifetime, I would not reap the benefit … Although I am a sick old man, I still have some things left to offer the world—to render my name historic—this is only one of the uses of planetary energy which I propose.”

A somewhat febrile glitter came into his eyes; he began muttering about Mars, Venus, and Saturn, until he was interrupted by a fit of coughing and obliged to stop, holding a soiled handkerchief to his lips. When the paroxysm went on and on, Frost, feeling that he ought to make some attempt at assistance, went into the next room, an indescribably sordid and untidy kitchenette. The sink was piled high with dirty dishes and there seemed nothing fit to eat or drink—not even a bottle of Evian water. However, the professor called out, “Coffee! Coffee!” in a feeble voice amid his eructations, and so Frost heated up a pan which contained mostly grounds and some discoloured liquid over the tiny gas stove, and brought a cupful of the stuff back to the old man. How could Louise have been so happy to spend so many holidays here? he wondered in amazed disgust, glancing round him. But of course that had been years ago, when the professor was still teaching at the Institute of Astronomy; there had been money enough for a
bonne
to help out in those days.

After drinking the gritty coffee, the professor in due course recovered sufficiently to complete the patent-application forms, which Frost then slipped into his briefcase.

“What do you call it, by the way? The invention has to have some sort of a title.”

“I call it
l'Assistant
—the Helper.”

“Would there be any chance of taking a—a specimen?” Frost then inquired. “To England, I mean? It might facilitate—speed up the process, you know—if I could present a model as well as the drawings. Do you, perhaps, have others?”

“Other models?
Non, non
—Carloman
seulement,
” the professor replied, after looking vaguely round the room, as if there might possibly be another, somewhere, only just at present his memory failed him regarding its whereabouts. He added, after a moment, “I suppose you might perhaps take that one; doubtless I could construct another without too much trouble.”

“Why did you make it in the form of a crusader?” Frost asked. He looked with dislike at the motionless figure on the rug; it filled him with a slight, uneasy feeling of repugnance. He had always been annoyed by phoney antiquity, cigarette lighters in the shape of jousting knights, mock-baronial coalscuttles—he found Carloman in decidedly poor taste.

“Why in that shape? Oh, merely because I happened to have the armour. There were various pieces left from the collection in our family château—now sold, alas, to foreigners. But possessing the armour already saved me some tedious construction work. Also it is convenient—
regardez—”
Aveyrand flipped up Carloman's visor and revealed a mass of wires and connections where the face should have been. He added absently, “I do have other pieces of armour,
bien sûr,
I would be able to construct another model. It is just that I am so pressed for time.” He reflected. “Carloman is not too heavy. We could, I daresay, pack him into a golf bag. Somewhere, I will recollect in a moment, there used to be such an article. Thus you might carry it back to England.”

“Perhaps I could help you find the bag?”

Frost glanced around the overfurnished room. The sooner he was out of this dreary place, the better.

“Merci, mon ami.”
The professor rubbed his forehead uncertainly. “It might be on top of the armoire in my bedroom … You forgive that I do not accompany you? I have to husband my strength these days.”

Passing a couple of rooms rammed to the ceiling with the accretions of years—from which he nervously averted his eyes—Frost searched in the bedroom's dusty disorder, and did, after a while, manage to unearth the golf bag among a stack of photographic equipment, rucksacks, telescopes, botanical specimen cases, and aged wicker luggage. On a chiffonier he was disconcerted to encounter a photograph of his daughter Louise and her friend Menispe, arm in arm, laughing and squinting into the sunshine of a Paris street; from this he hastily averted his eyes. He left the bedroom and carried the bag back into the salle.

Aided rather ineffectually by the professor, who, by the end of the interview, very evidently had little energy to spare, Frost managed to pack the armour-suited model into the golf bag, wadding it with copies of
Le Monde
and
France Soir.
“What about the programming?” he thought to ask. “It will need your voice, won't it?”

“There is a tape built in—no problem. You merely move the switch to the second position—
voilà
—to re-record.”

“Yes, yes, of course. Well, I will say good-bye, Professor—I'm sure I have tired you long enough. It has been extremely interesting—”

“I regret infinitely that I cannot offer you
déjeuner
—but the resources of my kitchen these days are so limited, I go out so seldom—”

“No, no, my dear sir—don't think of such a thing—” Frost suppressed a shudder as he thought of that kitchen.

“I am deeply sorry, also, that my daughter Menispe did not return in time to see you again.”

“Menispe? You mean that she is still living here?” Frost was not sure why this information startled him so. Menispe had not seemed the kind of daughter who would remain under the parental roof a day longer than she was obliged to. He recalled that last occasion; her all-too-evident boredom and scorn …

“But of course she still lives here!” The professor seemed quite shocked. “Who, if not she, my daughter, would look after me and charge herself with my errands?”

Although Frost entertained no very kind feelings towards Menispe, he could not avoid a shiver at this calm statement by her father. What a fate for the wretched girl, he thought, and he asked, “Did she not marry, then? What became of her fiancé—Lucien, was it?”

“Ah, Lucien? Poor young man, he died, some years ago. He contracted an unfortunate addiction—”

Like Louise. Frost found himself inquiring dispassionately, “Menispe herself never did so?”

“No, monsieur. Menispe is not liable to such habits.”

No. She merely observes the results of them in her friends, Frost thought, but Aveyrand continued, “She has problems, though, she will not eat enough—sometimes I am very disquieted about her. Ah, but—
à la bonheur
—there she comes now!” he exclaimed in a tone of triumph as the outer door rattled.

Frost let out a silent, heartfelt oath. In all the world the last person he wanted to see was Menispe Aveyrand; if only he had cut short his visit by five minutes, this encounter could have been avoided.

Now she came strolling in with a faint smile, lifting her chin, staring at him impudently under lowered sandy eyelashes; they might have met five minutes before, instead of seven years. She was wet through from the rain which was beating down in earnest now, but seemed unaware of the fact; she did not remove her outer clothes for she had none to take off, her garments consisting of worn jeans, thong sandals, and a draggled Indian shirt. Her hair was close-cropped, and her face resembled that of some starving waterbird—she was skeleton-thin, seemed smaller, if possible, than in those bygone days when she had come to stay in Wimbledon.

“Menispe!”

He could not be cordial, his tongue refused the hypocritical forms of greeting, all that he could muster, lamely enough, was, “Fancy seeing you again.”

“Monsieur Frost—what a surprise!” Her tone was ironic, she did not seem in the least surprised. She slung a leg over the scrolled end of a dusty green velvet chaise-longue, and sat watching him with a slight smile as he gathered together the handles of the golf bag.