Read The Warlord of the Air Online
Authors: Michael Moorcock
The Warlord of the Air (25 page)
Bastable looked at me seriously. “I was afraid to. You see this is not completely the world I remember. I’m sure it’s my memory. Something caused by my passage to and fro in Time. But there are small details which seem wrong...” He cast about with a wild eye, like one who suddenly realizes he is lost in a place he presumed familiar. “Small details...”
“The opium, perhaps?” I murmured.
“Maybe.”
“And that’s why you’re afraid to go home. In case your relatives
don’t
recognize you?”
“That’s why. I think I will have that drink.” He crossed the room and poured himself a large glass of rum. He had exhausted his supply of drugs while talking to me. “After being kicked out by my C.O.—I recognized
him,
by the way—I wandered up to Teku Benga. I got as far as the chasm and sure enough the whole place was in ruins. I had a horrifying feeling that if I
could
cross that chasm I’d find a corpse and it would be mine. So I didn’t try. I had a few shillings and I bought some native clothes—begged my way across India, sometimes riding the trains, looking, at first, for some sort of confirmation of my own identity, somebody to tell me I really was alive. I talked to mystics I met and tried to get some sense out of them, but it was all no good. So I decided I’d try to forget my identity. I took to swallowing opium in any form I could get it. I went to China. To Shantung. I found the Valley of the Morning. I don’t know what I expected it to be. It was as beautiful as ever. There was a little, poor village in it. The people were kind to me.”
“Then you came here?”
“After a few other places, yes.”
I didn’t know what to make of the chap. I could not but believe every word of what he had said. The conviction in his voice was so strong.
“I think you’d better come back to London with me,” I said. “See your relatives. They’ll be bound to identify you.”
“Perhaps.” He sighed. “But you know, I think I’m not
meant
to be here. That explosion—that awful explosion over Hiroshima—it—spat me out of one time in which I didn’t belong—into another...”
“Oh, nonsense.”
“No, it’s true. This is 1903—or
a
1903—but it—it isn’t
my
1903.”
I thought I understood what he meant, but I could hardly believe that such a thing could be remotely true. I could accept that a man had gone forward in Time and been returned to his own period—but I couldn’t believe that there might be an
alternative
1903.
Bastable took another drink. “And pray to God that it wasn’t
your
1973,” he said. “Science run wild—revolutions—bombs which can destroy whole cities!” He shuddered.
“But there were benefits,” I said hesitantly. “And I’m not sure the natives you mention weren’t, on the whole, well off.”
He shrugged. “Different ages make the same people think in different terms. I did what I did. There’s nothing else to be said. I probably shouldn’t do it now. Besides, there
is
more freedom in this world of ours, old man. Believe me—there is!”
“It’s disappearing every day,” I said. “And not everyone’s free, I admit that privilege exists...”
He raised a silencing hand. “No discussions of that kind, for God’s sake.”
“All right.”
“You might as well tear those notes up,” he said. “Nobody will believe you. Why should they? Do you mind if I take a bit of a stroll—get some fresh air, while I think what to do?”
“Yes. Very well.”
I watched him walk tiredly out of the room and heard his feet on the stairs. What a strange young man he was.
I glanced through my notes. Giant airships—mono-railways— electric bicycles—wireless telephones—flying machines—all the marvels. They could not have been invented by the mind of one young man.
I lay down on my bed, still mulling the problem over, and I must have fallen asleep. I remember waking briefly once and wondering where Bastable was, then I slept till morning, assuming he was in the next room.
But when I got up Ram Dass told me that the bed had not been slept in. I went and enquired of Olmeijer if he knew where Bastable was, but the fat Dutchman had not seen him.
I asked everyone in the town if they had come across Bastable. Someone told me that they had seen a young man staggering down by the harbour late at night and assumed him drunk.
A ship had left that morning. Perhaps Bastable had got aboard. Perhaps he had thrown himself into the sea.
I heard no more of Bastable, though I advertised for news of him and spent more than a year making enquiries, but he had vanished. Perhaps he had actually been snatched through Time again—to the past or the future or even to the 1903 he thought he should belong in?
And that was that. I’ve had the whole manuscript typed up, put it into order, cut out repetitions and some unnecessary comments Bastable made while he spoke. I’ve clarified where I could. But essentially this is Bastable’s account as he told it to me.
N
ote
(1907): Since I saw Bastable, of course, the air has been conquered by the Wright brothers and the powered balloon is being developed apace. Radiotelephony has become an actuality and I heard recently that there are several inventors experimenting with monorail systems. Is it all coming true? If so, for my own selfish reasons, I look forward to a world made increasingly peaceful and convenient, for I shall be dead before the world sees the revolutionary holocaust Bastable described. And yet there are a few things which do not coincide with his description. The heavier-than-air flying machine is an actuality already. People in France and America are flying them and there is even some talk of flying across the Channel in one! But perhaps these aeroplanes will not last or are not capable of very great speeds or sustained flight.
I have tried to interest a number of publishers in Bastable’s account, but all judge it too fantastical to be presented as fact and too gloomy to be presented as fiction. Writers like Mr. Wells seem to have the corner in such books. Only this one is true. I’m sure it is true. I shall continue to try to get it published, for Bastable’s sake.
N
ote
(1909): Bleriot has flown the Channel in an aeroplane! Again I tried to interest a publisher in Bastable’s story and, like several others, he asked me to alter it—“put in more adventures, a love story, a few more marvels” is what he said. I cannot alter what Bastable told me and so I consign the manuscript to the drawer for perhaps another year.
N
ote
(1910): Off to China soon. Might look for the Valley of the Morning to see what it is like and perhaps hope to find Bastable there. He seemed to like the place, and the villagers, he said, looked after him well. China
is
full of revolutionists these days, of course, but I expect I’ll be safe enough. I may even be there when it becomes a republic! Certainly things are shaky and it’s likely the Russians and Japanese will try to grab large chunks of the country.
If I do not return from China, I should be grateful if someone continues to try to get this published.
MCM
T
he above was the last note my grandfather made on the manuscript—or the last we have found, anyway. He did return from China, but doubtless he didn’t find Bastable there or he would have mentioned it. I think he must have given up trying to get the book published after 1910.
My grandfather went to France in 1914 and was killed on the Somme in October, 1916.
MICHAEL MOORCOCK,
1971
B
orn in London in 1939, Michael Moorcock is a prolific and award-winning writer with more than eighty works of fiction and non-fiction to his name. He is the creator of Elric of Melniboné, the Eternal Champion Jerry Cornelius and Colonel Pyat, amongst many other memorable characters. He is also the author of the
Hawksmoon
series of science fantasy novels and the original
Doctor Who
novel,
The Coming of the Terraphiles.
He lives in Austin, Texas.
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