The Best of Michael Moorcock

by Michael Moorcock

  “Not much of a secret, then,” she says.

  “This is not the secret, though I suppose it has something to do with it. There used to be dovecotes here, Katey, years ago. And that is all I am building. Have you not noticed the little doves about?”

  “I can’t say I have.”

  “Little mourning doves,” he says. “Brown and cream. Like a kind of delicate pigeon.”

  “Well,” she says, “I suppose for the non-expert they’d be lost in the crowd.”

  “Maybe, but I think you would know them when I pointed them out. The City believes me, anyhow, and is anxious to have them back. And it is not costing them a penny. The whole thing is a matter of fifty dollars and a bit of time. An old-fashioned dovecote, Katey. There are lots of accounts of the dovecotes, when this was more or less an independent village.”

  “So you’re building a little house for the doves,” she says. “That will be nice for them.”

  “A little house, is it? More a bloody great hotel.” Mr. Terry erupts with sudden pride. “Come on, Kate. I will take you back to look.”

  7

  She admires him turning the wood this way and that against the whirling lathe he controls with a foot pedal.

  “It is a wonderful smell,” she says, “the smell of shavings.” She peers with casual curiosity at his small, tightly organised workshop. Tools, timber, electrical bits and pieces, nails, screws and hooks are neatly stowed on racks and narrow shelves. She inspects the white-painted sides of the near-completed bird-house. In the room, it seems massive, almost large enough to hold a child. She runs her fingers over the neatly ridged openings, the perfect joints. Everything has been finished to the highest standard, as if for the most demanding human occupation. “When did they first put up the dovecotes?”

  “Nobody knows. The Indians had them when the first explorers arrived from Holland and France. There are sketches of them in old books. Some accounts call the tribe that lived here ‘the Dove Keepers.’ The Iroquois respected them as equals and called them the Ga-geh-ta-o-no, the People of the Circle. But the phrase also means People of the Belt.

  “The Talking Belts, the ‘wampum’ records of the Six Nations, are invested with mystical meanings. Perhaps our tribe were the Federation’s record keepers. They were a handsome, wealthy, civilised people, apparently, who were happy to meet and trade with the newcomers. The famous Captain Block was their admirer and spoke of a large stone circle surrounding their dovecotes. He believed that these standing stones, which were remarkably like early European examples, enclosed their holy place and that the doves represented the spirit they worshipped.

  “Other accounts mention the stones, but there is some suspicion that the writers simply repeated Block’s observations. Occasionally modern construction work reveals some of the granite, alien rock driven into the native limestone like a knife, and there is a suspicion the rock was used as part of a later stockade. The only Jesuit records make no mention of the stones but concentrate on the remarkable similarity of Kakatanawa (as the Europeans called them) myths to early forms of Christianity.”

  “I have heard as much myself,” she agrees, more interested than she expected. “What happened to the Indians?”

  “Nothing dramatic. They were simply and painlessly absorbed, mainly through intermarriage and mostly with the Irish. It would not have been difficult for them, since they still had a considerable amount of blood in common. By 1720 this was a thriving little township, built around the green. It still had its dovecotes. The stones were gone, re-used in walls of all kinds. The Kakatanawa were living in ordinary houses and intermarrying. In those days it was not fashionable to claim native ancestry. But you see the Kakatanawa were hardly natives. They resembled many of the more advanced Iroquois peoples and spoke an Iroquois dialect, but their tradition had it that their ancestors came from the other side of the Atlantic.”

  “Where did you read all this?” she asks in some bewilderment.

  “It is not conventionally recorded,” he says. “But this is my secret.”

  And he told her of Trinovante Celts, part of the Boudicca uprising of 69 A.D., who had used all their wealth to buy an old Roman trading ship with the intention of escaping the emperor’s cruel justice and sailing to Ireland. They were not navigators but good fortune eventually took them to these shores where they built a settlement. They chose Manhattan for the same reason as everyone else, because it commanded a good position on the river, had good harbours and could be easily defended.

  They built their village inland and put a stockade around it, pretty much the same as the villages they had left behind. Then they sent the ship back with news and to fetch more settlers and supplies. They never heard of it again. The ship was in fact wrecked off Cornwall, probably somewhere near St. Ives, but there were survivors and the story remained alive amongst the Celts, even as they succumbed to Roman civilisation.

  When, some hundreds of years later, the Roman legions were withdrawn and the Saxon pirates started bringing their families over, further bands of desperate Celts fled for Ireland and the land beyond, which they had named Hy Braseal. One other galley reached Manhattan and discovered a people more Senecan than Celtic.

  This second wave of Celtic immigrants were the educated Christian stone-raisers, Romanised astronomers and mystics, who brought new wisdom to their distant cousins and were doubtless not generally welcomed for it. For whatever reasons, however, they were never attacked by other tribes. Even the stern Iroquois, the Romans of these parts, never threatened them, although they were nominally subject to Hiawatha’s Federation. By the time the Dutch arrived, the dominant Iroquois culture had again absorbed the Celts, but they retained certain traditions, stories and a few artefacts. Most of these appear to have been sold amongst the Indians and travelled widely through the northeast. They gave rise to certain rumours of Celtic civilisations (notably the Welsh) established in America.

  “But the Kakatanawa spoke with the same eloquence and wore the finery and fashions of the Federation. Their particular origin-legend was not remarkable. Other tribes had far more dramatic conceptions, involving spectacular miracles and wildly original plots. So nobody took much notice of us and so we have survived.”

  “Us?” says Kate Doyle. “We?”

  “You,” he says, “represent the third wave of Celtic settlement of the Circle during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. And I represent the first and second. I am genuinely, Katey, and it is embarrassing to say so, the Last of the Kakatanawas. That was why my father looked forward to an heir, as did I. I suppose I was not up to the burden, or I would have married again.”

  “You’d be a fool to marry just for the sake of some old legend,” she says. “A woman deserves more respect than that.”

  “I agree.” He returns to his work. Now he’s putting the fine little touches to the dowels, the decorations. It’s a wonder to watch him.

  “Do you have a feathered headdress and everything? A peace-pipe and a tomahawk?” Her mockery has hardly any scepticism in it.

  “Go over to that box just there and take out what is in it,” he says, concentrating on the wood.

  She obeys him.

  It is a little modern copper box with a Celtic motif in the lid. Inside is an old dull coin. She picks it up between wary fingers and fishes it out, turning it to try to read the faint letters of the inscription. “It’s Constantine,” she says. “A Roman coin.”

  “The first Christian Emperor. That coin has been in New York, in our family, Katey, since the sixth century. It is pure gold. It is what is left of our treasure.”

  “It must be worth a fortune,” she says.

  “Not much of one. The condition is poor, you see. And I am sworn never to reveal its provenance. But it is certainly worth a bit more than the gold alone. Anyway, that is it. It is yours, together with the secret.”

  “I don’t want it,” she says, “can’t we bury it?”

  “Secrets should not be buried,” he said, “but
kept.”

  “Well, speak for yourself,” she says. “There are some secrets best buried.”

  While he worked on, she told him about Father McQueeny. He turned the wood more and more slowly as he listened. The priest’s favourite joke that always made him laugh was “Little girls should be screwed and not heard.” With her father’s half-hearted compliance, the old wretch had enjoyed all his pleasures on her until one day when she was seventeen she had taken his penis in her mouth and, as she had planned, bitten down like a terrier. He had torn her hair out and almost broken her arm before he fainted.

  “And I did not get all the way through. You would not believe how horrible it feels—like the worst sort of gristle in your mouth and all the blood and nasty crunching, slippery stuff. At first, at least, everything in you makes you want to stop. I was very sick afterwards, as you can imagine, and just able to dial 911 before I left him there. He almost died of losing so much blood. I hadn’t expected it to spurt so hard. I almost drowned. I suppose if I had thought about it I should have anticipated that. And had a piece of string ready, or something. Anyway, it stopped his business. I was never reported. And I don’t know how confessors get the news out, but the Church isn’t taking any chances with him, so all he has now are his memories.”

  “Oh, dear,” says Mr. Terry gravely. “Now there is a secret to share.”

  “It’s the only one I have,” she said. “It seemed fair to reciprocate.”

  8

  Two days later, side by side, they stand looking up at his magnificent birdhouse, complete at last. He’s studied romantic old plans from the turn of the century, so it has a touch or two of the Charles Rennie Mackintosh about it in its white austerity, its sweeping gables. There are seven fretworked entrances and eight beautifully turned perches, black as ebony, following the lines of the park’s paths. He’s positioned and prepared the cote exactly as instructed in Tiffany’s Modern Gardens of 1892 and has laid his seed and corn carefully. At her request, and without much reluctance, he’s buried the Roman coin in the pole’s foundation. Now we must be patient, he says. And wait. As he speaks a whickering comes from above and a small dove, fawn and pale grey, settles for a moment upon the gleaming roof, then takes fright when she sees them.

  “What a pretty thing. I will soon have to get back to my flat,” she says. “My father will be going frantic by now. I put the machine on, but if I know him he’ll be too proud to leave a message.”

  “Of course.” He stoops to pick up a delicately coloured wing feather. It has a thousand shades of rose, beige, pink and grey. “I will be glad to come with you if you want anything done.”

  “I’ll be all right,” she says. But he falls in beside her.

  As they turn their backs on the great bird-house three noisy mourning doves land on the perches as if they have been anticipating this moment for a hundred and fifty years. The sense of celebration, of relief, is so tangible it suffuses Kate Doyle and Mr. Terry McLear even as they walk away.

  “This calls for a cup of coffee,” says Mr. Terry McLear. “Shall we go to Belladonna’s?”

  They are smiling when Father McQueeny, evicted at last, comes labouring towards them along the path from the pub and pauses, suddenly gasping for his familiar fix, as if she has turned up in the nick of time to save his life.

  “Good morning, Katey, dear.” His eyes begin to fill with powerful memories. He speaks lovingly to her. “And Terry McLear, how are you?”

  “Not bad thank you, Father,” says Mr. Terry, looking him over.

  “And when shall we be seeing you in church, Terry?” The priest is used to people coming back to the faith as their options begin to disappear.

  “Oh, soon enough, Father, I hope. By the way, how is Mary’s last supper doing? How is the little hot dog?” And he points.

  It is a direct and fierce attack. Father McQueeny folds before it. “Oh, you swore!” he says to her.

  She tries to speak but she cannot. Instead she finds herself laughing in the old wretch’s face, watching him die, his secret, his sustenance lost for ever. He knows at once, of course, that his final power has gone. His cold eyes stare furiously into inevitable reality as his soul goes at last to the Devil. It will be no more than a day or two before they bury him.

  “Well,” says Katey, “we must be getting on.”

  “Goodbye, Father,” says Mr. Terry McLear, putting his feather in his white hair and grinning like a fool.

  When they look back the priest has disappeared, doubtless scuttling after some mirage of salvation. But the dovecote is alive with birds. It must have a dozen on it already, bobbing around in the little doorways, pecking up the seed. They glance around with equanimity. You would think they had always been here. The distant noise of New York’s traffic is muffled by their excited voices, as if old friends meeting after years. There is an air of approving recognition about their voices.

  “They like the house. Now we must see if, when they have eaten the food, they will stay.” Mr. Terry McLear links a proud arm with his companion. “I never expected it to happen so quickly. It was as if they were waiting to come home. It is a positive miracle.”

  Amused, she looks up at him. “Come on now, a grown man like you with tears in his eyes!

  “After all, Mr. Terry.” She takes his arm as they continue down the path towards Houston Alley. “You must never forget your honour as the Last of the Kakatanawas.”

  “You do not believe a word of it, do you, Kate?” he says.

  “I do,” she says. “Every word, in fact. It’s just that I cannot fathom why you people went to so much trouble to keep it dark.”

  “Oh, you know all right, Kate,” says Mr. Terry McLear, pausing to look back at the flocking doves. “Sometimes secrecy is our only means of holding on to what we value.”

  Whistling, she escorts him out of the Circle.

  The Deep Fix (1964)

  A similar preface to this one—for the first appearance of “The Deep Fix” in Science Fantasy No. 64, edited by John Carnell, in April 1964—said: “This is one of those rare stories which requires reading a second time to fully appreciate the working of the author’s plot. Let us say that none of the events depicted are what they really are—and leave it to you to work them out if you can.”

  Forty-four years later, I am not sure a lot has changed . . .

  “The Deep Fix” was first published under the pseudonym James Colvin, a name adopted by Moorcock for some of his more experimental stories, often with less than conventional structures.

  For William Burroughs, for obvious reasons

  1

  Quickening sounds in the early dusk. Beat of hearts, surge of blood.

  Seward turned his head on the bed and looked towards the window. They were coming again. He raised his drug-wasted body and lowered his feet to the floor. He felt nausea sweep up and through him. Dizzily, he stumbled towards the window, parted the blind and stared out over the white ruins.

  The sea splashed far away, down by the harbour, and the mob was again rushing through the broken streets towards the Research Lab. They were raggedly dressed and raggedly organised, their faces were thin and contorted with madness, but they were numerous.

  Seward decided to activate the Towers once more. He walked shakily to the steel-lined room on his left. He reached out a grey, trembling hand and flicked down three switches on a bank of hundreds. Lights blinked on the board above the switches. Seward walked over to the monitor-computer and spoke to it. His voice was harsh, tired and cracking.

  “GREEN 9/7—O Frequency. RED 8/5—B Frequency.” He didn’t bother with the other Towers. Two were enough to deal with the mob outside. Two wouldn’t harm anybody too badly.

  He walked back into the other room and parted the blind again. He saw the mob pause and look towards the roof where the Towers GREEN 9/7 and RED 8/5 were already beginning to spin. Once their gaze had been fixed on the Towers, they couldn’t get it away. A few saw their companions look up and these automaticall
y shut their eyes and dropped to the ground. But the others were now held completely rigid.

  One by one, then many at a time, those who stared at the Towers began to jerk and thresh, eyes rolling, foaming at the mouth, screaming (he heard their screams faintly)—exhibiting every sign of an advanced epileptic fit.

  Seward leaned against the wall feeling sick. Outside, those who’d escaped were crawling round and inching down the street on their bellies. Then, eyes averted from the Towers, they rose to their feet and began to run away through the ruins.

  Saved again, he thought bitterly.

  What was the point? Could he bring himself to go on activating the Towers every time? Wouldn’t there come a day when he would let the mob get into the laboratory, search him out, kill him, smash his equipment? He deserved it, after all. The world was in ruins because of him, because of the Towers and the other hallucinomats which he’d perfected. The mob wanted its revenge. It was fair.

  Yet, while he lived, there might be a way of saving something from the wreckage he had made of mankind’s minds. The mobs were not seriously hurt by the Towers. It had been the other machines which had created the real damage. Machines like the Paramats, Schizomats, Engramoscopes, even Michelson’s Stroboscope Type 8. A range of instruments which had been designed to help the world and had, instead, virtually destroyed civilisation.

  The memory was all too clear. He wished it wasn’t. Having lost track of time almost from the beginning of the disaster, he had no idea how long this had been going on. A year, maybe? His life had become divided into two sections: drug-stimulated working-period; exhausted, troubled, tranquillised sleeping-period. Sometimes, when the mobs saw the inactive Towers and charged towards the laboratory, he had to protect himself. He had learned to sense the coming of a mob. They never came individually. Mob hysteria had become the universal condition of mankind—for all except Seward who had created it.

  Hallucinomatics, neural stimulators, mechanical psycho-simulatory devices, hallucinogenic drugs and machines, all had been developed to perfection at the Hampton Research Laboratory under the brilliant direction of Prof. Lee W. Seward (33), psychophysicist extraordinaire, one of the youngest pioneers in the field of hallucinogenic research.