The Final Programme

by Michael Moorcock

  “The shit!”

  He pulled the curtains back from the windows and opened them. The night air blew away the odour in the room.

  On her dressing table there were no cosmetics, only bottles of drugs and several hypodermics.

  The labels on the bottles were in Frank’s tiny printing. Frank had been experimenting.

  Outside, someone shouted and began to bang on the metal door. He stared at it uncomprehendingly for a moment, then crossed to it and shot bolts at top and bottom.

  A sharper, colder voice interrupted the yelling.

  “What’s the trouble? Has someone been boorish enough to enter Miss Catherine’s room without her permission?”

  It was Frank’s voice, and Frank doubtless guessed that his brother Jerry was in the room.

  There were confused shouts from the guards, and Frank had to raise his voice. “Whoever you are, you’ll suffer for invading my sister’s privacy. You can’t get out. If she’s harmed or disturbed in any way, you won’t die for a long time, I promise. But you’ll wish you could.”

  “As corny as ever, Frank!” Jerry shouted back. “I know you know it’s me—and I know you’re shit-scared. I’ve more right here than you. I own this house!”

  “Then you should have stayed and not turned it over to me and Catherine. I meant what I said, Jerry!”

  “Send your krauts off and come in and talk it over. All I want is Catherine.”

  “I’m not that naïve. You’ll never know what I fed her, Jerry. Only I can wake her up. It’s like magic, isn’t it? She’s well turned on. If I turned her off now, you wouldn’t be so keen on hopping into bed with her after ten minutes.” Frank laughed. “You’d need a dose of what I’ve got out here before you’d feel up to it—and then you wouldn’t want it any more. You can’t have your fix and make it, Jerry!”

  Frank was in high spirits. Jerry wondered what his brother had found to pep him up. Frank was always after a new synthesis and, as a good chemist, usually came up with a nice new habit every so often. Was it the same stuff as Catherine had in her veins right now? Probably not.

  “Throw in your needle and come in with your veins clear, Frank.” Jerry joined in the spirit of the thing. He took something out of his pocket and waited, but Frank didn’t seem willing to rise to this. Bullets began to rattle on the door. They’d soon stop as the ricochets got too much for Frank. They stopped.

  Jerry went to the bed and heaved his sister off it. Then he put her down again. It was no good. He wouldn’t have a chance of getting out with her. He’d have to leave her and hope that Frank’s mind didn’t turn to thoughts of murder. It was unlikely. Slow death was the only worthwhile kind in Frank’s book.

  From the inside pocket of his coat Jerry brought out a flat box like a snuff box. He opened it. There were two small filters there. He packed one into each nostril and clamped his mouth shut, sealing it with some surgical tape from another pocket.

  Then he unbolted the door and slowly turned the key. He opened the door slightly. Frank stood some distance away, talking to four of his storm troopers. Frank’s skin was grey, drawn over his near-fleshless skeleton like a lifeless film of plastic. They hadn’t yet noticed that the door was open.

  Jerry tossed the grenade into the passage. They saw it fall. Only Frank recognised the nerve grenade for what it was, and he dashed off down the passage without stopping to give the guards the benefit of his knowledge.

  Jerry stepped swiftly out of the room and closed the door tight behind him. The guards tried to aim at him, but the gas was already working. As they jerked like epileptics and fell down to bounce about spasmodically on the floor, Jerry gave them an amused, appreciative glance.

  * * *

  Jerry Cornelius went after Frank Cornelius. Frank pushed the button of the lift that went down to the library. When Frank saw Jerry, he swore and ran towards the end of the passage and the stairs. Jerry decided that he didn’t want Frank alive any more, and he drew out his pistol. The air pistol could hold a magazine of a hundred silver needles and was just as effective at short range as any small-calibre pistol—and far more accurate. Neither was it messy. Its only drawback was that it had to be repressured after every volley.

  Jerry ran after his brother. Frank was evidently unarmed. He was scuttling down the spiral stairs now. Leaning on the banister, Jerry took aim at Frank’s head.

  But when he put his arm down, he realised that he’d caught a sniff of the nerve gas himself, for the arm jumped twice and he involuntarily pulled the trigger. The needles went wide, and Frank had left the stairs on the third floor. He was now out of sight.

  Jerry heard voices and noisy feet and knew that Frank had called in another section of the militia. He had no more nerve bombs with him. It was time, perhaps, to be leaving.

  He ran back down the landing. The lift was waiting for him. Frank might assume that it wasn’t working, since he’d had no luck himself. He got into the lift and went down to the library. It was empty. In the library he paused and hauled his books off the shelf. He opened the door in the window and stepped out onto the balcony. Then he flung the books into the sea, re-entered the library, closed the door carefully, and knocked on the other entrance. It slid back. John was here. He still looked pale.

  “What happened, sir?”

  “Maybe he’ll never guess completely, John, so you might get away with it. He’s fazed, I think. Now it’s up to you. On Sunday you must somehow get Catherine away from the house and into the lodge on the village side of the grounds. There’ll probably be enough confusion and you’ll be able to do it easily. Don’t make a mistake. I want you both at that lodge. And Sunday starts at about 10 p.m., I’d guess.”

  “Yes, sir—but…”

  “No time for details, John. Do it. Don’t bother to see me out.”

  Jerry Cornelius went through the control room, and John shut off the equipment again.

  Then Jerry was on his way, torch in hand, back to his boat.

  Within twenty minutes he was looking up at the house as his launch throbbed towards the English coast. The house was full of light now. It looked as if the residents were having a party.

  It was still an hour until dawn. He had a chance of making it back to Southquay before the new man came on watch at the harbourmaster’s office.

  3

  On Sunday morning Miss Brunner and Dimitri left for Blackheath. She locked the door of her Holland Park house and tucked the note for the milkman into an empty bottle on the step. Dimitri had the Lotus 15 ready and running by the time she had put on her gloves and walked daintily down the path.

  Later, as they waited for the Knightsbridge traffic to move, Miss Brunner decided that she would drive, and she and Dimitri changed places. They were used to changing places; it held them together in these uncertain times.

  “Mr Cornelius had better be there,” Miss Brunner said obsessively as she drove down Sloane Street, which was less crowded than it would have been on a weekday.

  Dimitri sat back and smoked. He’d had a tiring night, and he hadn’t enjoyed himself as much as usual, particularly since Miss Brunner had insisted on calling him Cornelius the whole time.

  Let her work it out, he thought. He was rather jealous of Cornelius, all the same; it had taken him two cups of strong coffee when he’d got up to convince himself that he was not in any way Jerry Cornelius. Miss Brunner, on the other hand, had evidently not been so easily convinced, and she was as bad today as she’d been since Thursday.

  Well, with luck it would all be over by Monday, and they could begin the next phase of their plan—a much more sophisticated phase that involved thought and little energetic action.

  It was a pity that attacking the house was the only way. He hadn’t liked the idea at all when it was first proposed, but since he’d had time to think about it, he was half looking forward to it. The fact disturbed him.

  Miss Brunner drove the throbbing Lotus 15 over Westminster Bridge with gusto, entered the maze of streets beyond, then
went down Old Kent Road.

  She had decided that she must have Jerry Cornelius, but she knew that this was one situation in which she must act for herself and not rely on Dimitri. A savoury chick, she thought, a nice spicy chick. She began to feel better.

  * * *

  Mr Crookshank, the entertainers’ agent, kissed Little Miss Dazzle goodbye. Little Miss Dazzle was quite naked and did not appear on stage like that, if for no other reason than that the public would see that she was in fact equipped with the daintiest masculine genitals.

  It was not yet time, Mr Crookshank had decided, to reveal that particular secret; not while Miss Dazzle was still smoothing up to the number one spot in the Top Ten Girl Chart within three days to a week with every disc she cut. When number five came to be her ceiling, then a few rumours might start. Then perhaps a marriage, he thought, though he’d hate to lose her.

  Mr Crookshank’s Rolls, complete with chauffeur, waited downstairs outside the entrance hall to Miss Dazzle’s Bloomsbury flat.

  The chauffeur knew the way.

  Mr Crookshank lit a panatella as the car cruised off in the general direction of Blackfriars Bridge. He switched on the radio and, as luck would have it, Little Miss Dazzle’s latest hit on Big Beat Call, the non-stop pop programme, was playing. It was a moving song, and Mr Crookshank was duly moved. The words seemed to be for him.

  I am a part of you, the heart of you,

  I want to start with you,

  And know…

  The beat changed from 4/4 to 3/4, and the guitars tumbled into the fifth when she sang:

  Just what it is,

  Just what it is,

  Just what it is,

  I want to know.

  He looked out of the window as the car went down Farringdon Street towards the bridge. The Sunday workers all seemed to be moving in the same direction, as if the voice of the lemming had been heard in the land. In a philosophical mood, Mr Crookshank decided that it had been heard indeed, through the whole of Europe.

  * * *

  Mr Powys was running late, for Sunday was normally his day of rest, and he had got up early only after he had realised that he was due in Blackheath that morning. He left his Hyde Park Gate maisonette with a shaving cut on his face and yesterday’s shirt on his back. He got his blue Aston Martin from the garage round the corner and put the top down so that the wet breeze would wake him up as he drove.

  He switched on the radio for the same purpose, though he was too late to hear Little Miss Dazzle’s ‘Just What It Is’. Instead he came in on the middle of Tall Tom’s Tailmen singing ‘Suckers Deserve It’. If Mr Powys had a destiny, then Tall Tom’s Tailmen were singing its tune—not that it occurred to Mr Powys, but then he was like that. The only thing the song did for him at that moment was to make him feel hungry, though he didn’t know why. His thoughts turned to Miss Brunner and Dimitri, both of whom he knew intimately. In fact, it was extremely unlikely that he would have agreed to this venture if he hadn’t known them so well.

  Miss Brunner and Dimitri had a persuasive manner. Except in moments of extreme sobriety, they were usually mingled together in his mind, Miss Brunner and Dimitri.

  Mr Powys was a baffled, unhappy man.

  He drove through the park under the impression that the air was clearer there, turned left and entered Knightsbridge, London’s fabulous thieves’ quarter, where every shop doorway (or, to be more accurate, every shop) held a thief of some description. Sloane Street was also his choice, but he went over Battersea Bridge and realised only after he’d reached Clapham Common that he’d made a mistake and was going to be later than ever.

  * * *

  By the time all the cars had crossed the river, Mr Smiles was having breakfast in his Blackheath house and wondering how he’d got into this in the first place. His knowledge of the information (probably on microfilm) to be found in old Cornelius’s house had come from a friend of Frank Cornelius, a successful drug importer who supplied Frank with the rarer chemicals for his experiments. In a high moment Frank had let something slip, and Mr Harvey, the importer, had later let the same thing slip to Mr Smiles, also in a high moment.

  Only Mr Smiles had fully realised the significance of the information, if it was correct, for he knew the City better than it knew him. He had told Miss Brunner, and Miss Brunner had organised it from there.

  Mr Smiles had then got in touch with Jerry Cornelius, whom he hadn’t seen for some time—not, in fact, since the day he and Jerry had robbed the City United Bank of some two million pounds and, with a million each, split up. The investigation by the police had been very half-hearted, as if they were concentrating on the important crimes of the day, realising that the inflating pound was no longer worth attempting to protect.

  Mr Smiles could read the signs, for he was something of a visionary. He could see that the entire Western European economy, including Sweden and Switzerland, was soon to collapse. The information Mr Harvey had kindly passed on to him would probably hasten the collapse, but it would, if used properly, put Mr Smiles and his colleagues on top. They would hold pretty well nearly all the power there was to hold when anarchy at last set in.

  Mr Smiles toyed with a fried egg, wondering why the yolks always broke these days.

  * * *

  In his permanently booked room in The Yachtsman, Jerry Cornelius had woken up at seven o’clock that morning and dressed himself in a lemon shirt with small ebony cufflinks, a wide black cravat, dark green waistcoat and matching hipsters, black socks and black handmade boots. He had washed his fine hair, and now he brushed it carefully until it shone.

  Then he brushed one of his double-breasted black car coats and put it on.

  He pulled on black calf gloves and was ready to face the world as soon as he slipped on his dark glasses.

  From the bed, he picked up what appeared to be a dark leather toilet case. He snapped it open to check that his needle gun was pressured. He put the gun back and closed the case.

  Holding the case in his left hand, he went downstairs; nodded to the proprietor, who nodded back; and got into the newly polished Duesenberg.

  He sat in the car for a moment, looking out over the grey sea.

  There was still a quarter of a glass of Bell’s in the clip on the dashboard. He took it out, wound down the window, and threw the glass to the ground. He reached into the glove compartment and found a wrapped, fresh glass, fixed it in the clip and half-filled it from his bottle. Then he started the engine, turned the car around, and drove off, switching on the tape as soon as he was on Southquay’s main street.

  John, George, Paul and Ringo serenaded him with the old standard ‘Baby’s in Black’.

  “Oh dear what can I do, baby’s in black and I’m feeling blue…”

  They were still his favourites.

  “She thinks of him and so she dresses in black, and though he’ll never come back, she’s dressed in black.”

  Halfway to Blackheath he stopped off at a newsagent’s shop and bought himself two Mars bars, two cups of strong black coffee, and two pounds of newsprint labelled NEWS SECTION, BUSINESS SECTION, LEISURE SECTION, ARTS SECTION, POP SECTION, CAR SECTION, COMIC SUPPLEMENT, COLOUR SUPPLEMENT, NOVEL SUPPLEMENT and HOLIDAY ADVERTISING SUPPLEMENT. The News Section was a single sheet and the news was brief, to the point, uninterpreted. Jerry didn’t read it. In fact, he didn’t read anything except part of the Comic Supplement. There was plenty to look at. Jerry was well catered for.

  He ate his sweets, drank his coffee, and folded up his sections and left them on the table, by way of a tip. Then he went back to his car to continue his journey to Blackheath.

  He found that he didn’t need to eat much, because he could live off other people’s energy just as well. It was exhausting for them, of course. He didn’t keep many acquaintances long, and Catherine was the only person off whom he hadn’t fed. Indeed, it had been his delight to feed her with some of his stolen vitality. She hadn’t liked it much, but she’d need it when he eventually got her
away from that house and back to normal again, if he could ever get her back to normal.

  He would certainly kill Frank when they raided the house. Frank’s final needle would come from Jerry’s gun. It would give him his final kick—the one he kept looking for.

  * * *

  Only Mr Lucas hadn’t arrived by two o’clock, and they gave him up, feeling annoyed with him—which wasn’t quite fair, for Mr Lucas had been stabbed to death in Islington the previous evening and robbed of the best part of his casino’s takings by a much-embittered all-time loser who, by the following Monday, would fall downstairs and kill himself while taking the money to the bank.

  Miss Brunner and Dimitri, Mr Smiles, Mr Crookshank and Mr Powys were all looking at a map, which Mr Smiles had laid out on the table. Jerry Cornelius stood by the window smoking a thin cigarette and half-listening to them as they talked over the details of the expedition.

  Mr Smiles pointed one of his strong fingers at a cross that had been drawn roughly in the middle of the English Channel between Dover and Normandy. “That’s where the boat will be waiting. The men were all hired by me in Tangier. They answered an advertisement. At first they thought they were going to shoot Africans, but I managed to talk them round. They consist mainly of white South Africans, Belgians and French. There are a couple of British ex-officers. I put them in charge, of course. Apart from the South Africans, they got keener when I told them that they’d be fighting mainly Germans. Amazing how some people manage to hang on, isn’t it?”

  “Isn’t it?” Mr Powys was, as ever, a trifle uncertain. “They’ll be anchored here waiting for us, will they?”

  “We thought that was best, you know. Actually, coastguard patrols aren’t seen about as often as they were. We won’t need to worry too much.”

  Miss Brunner pointed at the village near the Cornelius mansion. “What about this?”