Sojan the Swordsman ; Under the Warrior Sky

by Michael Moorcock

  What a funny word. Frightened.

  Now, after all I have been through the idea of being frightened by merely wounding a man in self-defense strikes me as little more than amusing.

  I ended up in Alaska. There I was able to hide and use a false name and not need anything much in the way of identification. I worked on a fishing boat briefly, and then ended up helping a fellow named Carruthers fly supplies, and I suspect stolen goods, to different locations in Alaska.

  In over a period of a year I learned to operate the small prop planes, though I never acquired a pilot’s license. I didn’t need one. Carruthers had his own landing strip and flew his own flight plans and there was no one to stop him.

  Alaska is truly the last frontier.

  On Earth.

  But somehow I was tracked by the law, and when I found out they were coming to get me, I panicked and stole one of the planes. I did all right until I was over a great patch of wilderness, flying low, and ended up with an eagle smashing into my propeller. It did damage. The plane went down. I tried to glide it to a landing, but when the plane hurtled earthward, it was as if I and the entire world were in a centrifuge.

  I lost control. As I went down I thought of my parents, both dead some years back from a car wreck, and I thought of the girl I had lost to a man who had once been my friend. I thought of the Olympic opportunity I had missed, and I thought of my old mentor Jack Rimbauld.

  I thought of a dog I had when young.

  No more cheeseburgers.

  And then the plane hit.

  Chapter Two

  The Invisible Project

  When I awoke I was warm. It was night and the main body of the plane was on fire, and pieces of it were scattered along the ground. I had been thrown free, and had somehow survived, perhaps because the plane had skidded on its belly in soft mud near a large body of water. I could see the marks of that slide imbedded in the shoreline near the water. I wasn’t sure how I had managed that landing, or if I had. Perhaps it was nothing more than blind luck.

  The impact had not only thrown me out of the plane, it had knocked me unconscious. And now, as I came slowly awake, saw the debris, felt the heat from the aircraft burning near the edge of the water, I was certain that I had broken more than a few bones.

  In that estimation I was at least partially correct. I could see a bone in my leg jutting through a rip in my pants; it suck out like a jagged stick. The sight of it made me sick. I tried to pull myself up, so that I could rest my back against a large tree. I managed this, but passed out shortly thereafter. I blinked awake once, and saw a shadow moving along the shore in the firelight. And then the author of the shadow presented itself.

  A grizzly bear.

  I reached in my pocket for my clip knife, which was a little like pulling a toothpick, considering the size and strength of a bear, but it was not my nature to give in to anything without a fight. My old instructor, Jack Rimbauld, had established that in me, and it held to my being as tight as the skin on my bones.

  In the process of drawing the knife, I realized my little finger on my right hand was twisted at an odd angle. It hurt to drag the knife from my pocket, but I managed, and was able to flick the blade open.

  The bear turned its head toward me. It was outlined very well in the firelight. It sniffed the air. It was perhaps twenty feet away from me. It began to lumber slowly in my direction. I tried to pull myself even more upright against the tree trunk, but I was all out of energy.

  Then I saw movement off to my left. Someone was coming along the edge of the bank, several people, in fact. Awareness of this was followed by a queasy feeling, perhaps the result of shock. The next thing I knew the world was blinking in and out and there was a popping sound that I recognized on some level, but for some reason could not put a proper thought to it. Later I would determine it came from rifles being fired in the air.

  I passed out.

  Once, I awoke and found myself being bounced along on some sort of support, covered in a warm blanket. I only had this awareness for an instant, and then I plunged back into blackness.

  I don’t know exactly how long I was out, but when I awoke completely, it was bright and the air smelled of disinfectant. I lay in a hard bed with crisp white sheets. My leg was in a cast. So was my hand and little finger. I pulled back the sheet and saw that I was bandaged all over. I had more wounds than I realized.

  I had been awake for only a few moments when a man came into the room. He was tall and thin and balding, except for a white tuft of hair that stood up on his head like a comb on a rooster. I thought he looked like a mad scientist. I wasn’t entirely off in this judgment.

  Leaning over me, he smiled, and gave me a container of water with a straw. My mouth was dry as the desert, so I sipped. He sat in a chair by my bed, waited patiently while I drank. He said, “So, are you feeling a mite better?”

  I said that I was, and then, “Where am I?”

  “Now, that is something I have to admit I’m not going to answer completely.”

  It was a surprising statement, and I said so.

  “No doubt it’s confusing,” he said, “but let me put it this way. This is a private facility, financed by a large number of rich, private investors. You are underground, son.”

  “Underground?”

  He nodded. “That’s right. Deep down. A few of those who work here, having lost interest, at least temporarily, in surviving like a mole, went above for a break, heard the plane crash. They went in search of the explosion, and found you. Good thing too. A bear was about to put you to the taste test. We ran it off by firing shots in the air, and we brought you here, doctored you up.”

  “Who is we?”

  “Me and a hundred employees, fifty of them on site at the moment. I suppose you could say I’m the head honcho here. The question now is what to do with you.”

  I wasn’t sure what he meant by that, so I lay silent.

  “You rest and I’ll think it over. By the way, you may call me Dr. Wright. What shall I call you?”

  “Brax,” I said. “That’ll do.”

  I didn’t leave that room for several days. Finally, I was allowed to visit Dr. Wright. He had an office down the hall from my room. The room I was in was one of three rooms that provided hospital beds. There were a lot of other hallways that led to I knew not where.

  I was given a motorized wheelchair and a large man dressed in black with a large black pistol on his hip. He was my escort. He made sure I went where I was supposed to go, and when he let me in Dr. Wright’s office, he remained outside, the door closed.

  Dr. Wright sat behind a big desk in a rolling leather chair. I could see mounted on the wall behind him a pair of crossed sabers. This, of course, caught my eye right away. He noticed, said, “You like swords?”

  “I love swords,” I said.

  “You know how to use them?”

  “Quite well,” I said, and gave him my history. I planned to leave out the part about my problems in the lower states, but for some reason I let it all spill out. Maybe I was tired of the whole hide-and-seek business I had been conducting for the last year or so. Whatever my inner motives, I held nothing back.

  “So, that one incident led to the plane crash?” he said.

  “Yes,” I said.

  Dr. Wright nodded. He turned and looked at the sabers. “I was once quite good myself. That was a thousand years ago.”

  “What exactly is it you do here?”

  “If I told you, I’d have to kill you,” he said, and the smile that came across his face was narrow and hard, as if it had been pinned there.

  “That wouldn’t be good,” I said.

  “No. No,” he said. “It wouldn’t.”

  I lost track of time, but gradually my leg healed and so did my hand. I never really knew if it was day or night, being underground. My world was a world of electric lights. I was allowed the opportunity to move around on crutches, and sometimes I was allowed to venture down to Dr. Wright’s office. I th
ink he enjoyed the visits as much as I did, and he supplied me with books to read, and once we even played chess. I beat him the first time because he seemed distracted, but no time thereafter. It was a little like my relationship with Jack Rimbauld, but without the physical activity, and though Dr. Wright was pleasant enough, there always seemed to be a point at which he became reserved and unwilling to give more of himself emotionally.

  One day, as we hovered over the chessboard, he said, “I suppose I can tell you something of our work here.”

  I didn’t say anything, not wanting to show too much interest, but I didn’t want to show lack of interest either. I lifted my head and tried to look no more curious than a puppy that has heard a noise.

  “Have you heard of quantum physics?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “What do you know about it?”

  “That it’s called quantum physics, and I believe it’s mostly theoretical.”

  “No, it’s not theoretical at all. There are many things about our universe that can be discovered by the study of it.”

  “I think I heard something about it having to do with, among other things, parallel dimensions.”

  “That’s one thing, yes. One of many amazing things. What we’re doing here, with our studies, and they are purely independent, and paid for by individuals so wealthy that their wealth cannot be measured, is we’re creating a universe in a laboratory.”

  “A universe?”

  He smiled at me. “That’s right.”

  “You telling me this. Does it mean I’m going to be killed?”

  “No. I don’t think so.”

  “That doesn’t seem certain enough.”

  “I’m certain,” he said. “But it is top secret, and I’m not supposed to tell anyone, but it gets lonely here.”

  “With a hundred people?”

  “With a hundred people who are scientists first and foremost. You, you have a good mind, but you have other interests. And, to tell you the truth, I have a proposal for you. I’m somewhat reluctant to mention it, but you seem like a young man that just might like the possible challenge.”

  “Possible?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Because if it doesn’t work, you may die, or perhaps worse, be consigned to some place beyond our understanding, a kind of limbo.”

  “Sounds almost religious.”

  “If the creating of a universe is not an attempt to play God, what is?”

  He leaned forward, supporting himself with his elbows on either side of the chessboard. “Our operation is top secret, and . . . Well, I’m going to make the jump. I’m going to go ahead and tell you. As I said, it is financed by a large number of rich individuals, but those rich individuals do not spend a dime.”

  “Pardon,” I said.

  “They are shills. Fronts to what is in fact a government operation that is not on the books, and is therefore . . .” He grinned at me. “Not a government operation. It is an invisible project, an attempt to not only create a universe but to control it. Theoretically, many believe that if you can create a universe, then you can travel to that universe, and within are worlds that can be used for exploitation. The profit, creating one universe after another, could be beyond understanding, beyond reasoning.”

  “That seems like a considerable jump in thinking,” I said.

  He laughed a little. “I’m making it sound considerably more simple than it actually is. But to be frank, if I were to explain it completely, and in a scientific manner, you would be lost.”

  “I believe that,” I said.

  Dr. Wright nodded. “We have a problem. No volunteers to make the jump.”

  “The jump?”

  “Into our new universe.”

  “You’ve actually created the universe?”

  “We think so. The scientists we have here have been working on the project with me for twenty-five years. And, the truth is, to the layman’s eye, there’s not much to show. Because of that, we are on the verge of being shut down. Perhaps violently.”

  “Why violently?”

  “Because, young man, as I said, we do not exist. And the main government has discovered the secret government’s project. Citizens find out about us, the religions zealots find out about what we’re doing here . . . Well, we would not only lose financing, we might, in fact, lose our lives. The whole project, knowledge of it, those involved, would have to be erased. Overnight, the most amazing discovery in the history of science would end. And we, who do not exist, would continue not to exist. Only for real.”

  Dr. Wright leaned back in his chair and studied me for a long moment. I thought the story sounded fantastic, but considering I was in their underground world, I was more than a little inclined to believe him. At least partly.

  “All of the men and women who work here have families,” he said. “They rotate in and out, spending part of the year at home, part of the year here.”

  “You’re saying they all have something to go back to.”

  “I am.”

  “And you’re saying I do not.”

  Dr. Wright slowly nodded. “From what you’ve told me, that seems to be the case. Your parents are dead. No close family. Wife or girlfriend. Not even a pet. You could go back, of course, possibly work out your problem, and go on with your life. It’s also possible you could spend a few years in jail, if not for the injury you gave the young man, then for stealing an aircraft.”

  Dr. Wright gave me the adoring uncle look. “What I’m offering here, however, is something that is unique.”

  I understood then. Understood why he had been so friendly. He and his nonexistent organization saw me as nothing more than a lab rat.

  Chapter Three

  The Jump

  I was angry and insulted, and when I went back to my room, my first thoughts were of escape, but then it occurred to me, I would be escaping to . . . Where?

  Dr. Wright had befriended me, hastily winning my allegiance to benefit his plans, to show progress so his facility would not be closed down, even destroyed. It was underhanded, but the truth was, I saw it all as a new and amazing opportunity. A chance to try something that had never been tried. After my sojourn in Alaska, flying planes, living by my wits, to return to the lower states, to possibly spend time in prison, or to go about everyday life, a nine-to-five job, was not appealing. Like my old mentor, Rimbauld, I was an adventurer at heart.

  To be part of something never before done . . . I found that vastly appealing. A day-to-day government project would never openly allow an outsider to put him- or herself in jeopardy. Here, however, in a place that was not supposed to exist, it could happen. I decided right then and there, as I sat in the darkness of my room in a soft chair, that I would make it easy for Dr. Wright. I would volunteer.

  My guess was, there was a good chance that if I did not volunteer, I would be made a volunteer. There was no way in the world that he planned to let me go, to be a potential blabbermouth that might reveal not only what was being done here, but its general location.

  I did not have, and had never had, a real choice.

  And I didn’t want one.

  A day later Dr. Wright took me to the laboratory and showed me what was there. When I say laboratory. It was a room the size of warehouse. There were busy men and women in white coats. There were computers with blinking lights on long wooden tables, and there were vials of this and that, and all manner of colors pulsing through tubes, and there were wires, red, blue, green, yellow, and the tubes and wires led to a glassed-in room at the far end of the lab. It was not a small room, but neither was it huge. There were rooms with windows, and looking through one of the windows, I saw spinning colors and stars and little bright planets, and dead center of it all, a prominent solar system revolving around a large star the color of a fresh egg yolk, which Dr. Wright identified as a sun. The room, that little universe behind glass, was breathtaking.

  I was dazed, to say the least. I felt like a god looking in on that universe, those stars and world
s, that solar system, that bright yellow sun.

  “It’s a little like fine-tuning artillery, this traveling about,” he said. “We have used mice up until now, trying to close in on that planet next to that sun in that solar system.”

  He pointed with his finger. “We now believe we can send a human visitor to that planet. We created that universe quite recently, but in the time of the universe itself, billions of years have passed. Life may have formed on those planets. Certainly, we believe the world close to that particular sun is hospitable. Different from what we know here, but maybe not too different. There are other solar systems, and other suns, and other planets, but from what we have researched, and perhaps guessed at a little bit, we feel that one dead center of it all is the most likely to house life, maintain a visitor.”

  “When you say a visitor, I assume you are no longer talking about mice,” I said.

  “No. Not mice. You.”

  “Once I’m there, provided I make it. Can I return?”

  “If we send you successfully, we can bring you back successfully. A timer. We brought three of the five mice back.”

  “What happened to the other two?”

  “Can’t say.”

  “Can’t, or won’t.”

  “Can’t.”

  From the moment I learned that Dr. Wright planned to use me as his guinea pig, and I assumed against my will if I chose not to agree, I looked at him differently. But I decided not to let it show. I wanted to go.

  “How does it work?” I asked.

  “Come.”

  I followed as he led me along a hall, into a room, over to a long metal table. There were computers on it, blinking lights and moving dots across their screens. It made no sense to me. On the table there was a little ball of metal, open in spots; it was shaped in the manner of fingers clutched loosely into a ball, with gaps between the fingers. The gaps were filled with hard glass or plastic, strips of windows.