The Best of Michael Moorcock

by Michael Moorcock

  Better for the world if he hadn’t been, thought Seward wearily as he lowered his worn-out body into the chair and stared at the table full of notebooks and loose sheets of paper on which he’d been working ever since the result of Experiment Restoration.

  Experiment Restoration. A fine name. Fine ideals to inspire it. Fine brains to make it. But something had gone wrong.

  Originally developed to help in the work of curing mental disorders of all kinds, whether slight or extreme, the hallucinomats had been an extension on the old hallucinogenic drugs such as CO2, Mescalin and Lysergic Acid derivatives. Their immediate ancestor was the stroboscope and machines like it. The stroboscope, spinning rapidly, flashing brightly coloured patterns into the eyes of a subject, often inducing epilepsy or a similar disorder; the research of Burroughs and his followers into the early types of crude hallucinomats, had all helped to contribute to a better understanding of mental disorders.

  But, as research continued, so did the incidence of mental illness rise rapidly throughout the world.

  The Hampton Research Laboratory and others like it were formed to combat that rise with what had hitherto been considered near-useless experiments in the field of Hallucinomatics. Seward, who had been stressing the potential importance of his chosen field since university, came into his own. He was made Director of the Hampton Lab.

  People had earlier thought of Seward as a crank and of the hallucinomats as being at best toys and at worse “madness machines,” irresponsibly created by a madman.

  But psychiatrists specially trained to work with them had found them invaluable aids to their studies of mental disorders. It had become possible for a trained psychiatrist to induce in himself a temporary state of mental abnormality by use of these machines. Thus he was better able to understand and help his patients. By different methods—light, sound-waves, simulated brain-waves, and so on—the machines created the symptoms of dozens of basic abnormalities and thousands of permutations. They became an essential part of modern psychiatry.

  The result: hundreds and hundreds of patients, hitherto virtually incurable, had been cured completely.

  But the birth-rate was rising even faster than had been predicted in the middle part of the century. And mental illness rose faster than the birthrate. Hundreds of cases could be cured. But there were millions to be cured. There was no mass-treatment for mental illness.

  Not yet.

  Work at the Hampton Research Lab became a frantic race to get ahead of the increase. Nobody slept much as, in the great big world outside, individual victims of mental illness turned into groups of—the world had only recently forgotten the old word and now remembered it again—maniacs.

  An overcrowded, over-pressured world, living on its nerves, cracked up.

  The majority of people, of course, did not succumb to total madness. But those who did became a terrible problem.

  Governments, threatened by anarchy, were forced to re-institute the cruel, old laws in order to combat the threat. All over the world prisons, hospitals, mental homes, institutions of many kinds, all were turned into Bedlams. This hardly solved the problem. Soon, if the rise continued, the sane would be in a minority.

  A dark tide of madness, far worse even than that which had swept Europe in the Middle Ages, threatened to submerge civilisation.

  Work at the Hampton Research Laboratory speeded up and speeded up—and members of the team began to crack. Not all these cases were noticeable to the overworked men who remained sane. They were too busy with their frantic experiments.

  Only Lee Seward and a small group of assistants kept going, making increasing use of stimulant-drugs and depressant-drugs to do so.

  But, now that Seward thought back, they had not been sane, they had not remained cool and efficient any more than the others. They had seemed to, that was all. Perhaps the drugs had deceived them.

  The fact was, they had panicked—though the signs of panic had been hidden, even to themselves, under the disciplined guise of sober thinking.

  Their work on tranquillising machines had not kept up with their perfection of stimulatory devices. This was because they had had to study the reasons for mental abnormalities before they could begin to devise machines for curing them.

  Soon, they decided, the whole world would be mad, well before they could perfect their tranquilomatic machines. They could see no way of speeding up this work any more.

  Seward was the first to put it to his team. He remembered his words.

  “Gentlemen, as you know, our work on hallucinomats for the actual curing of mental disorders is going too slowly. There is no sign of our perfecting such machines in the near future. I have an alternative proposal.”

  The alternative proposal had been Experiment Restoration. The title, now Seward thought about it, had been euphemistic. It should have been called Experiment Diversion. The existing hallucinomats would be set up throughout the world and used to induce passive disorders in the minds of the greater part of the human race. The co-operation of national governments and World Council was sought and given. The machines were set up secretly at key points all over the globe.

  They began to “send” the depressive symptoms of various disorders. They worked. People became quiet and passive. A large number went into catatonic states. Others—a great many others, who were potentially inclined to melancholia, manic-depression, certain kinds of schizophrenia—committed suicide. Rivers became clogged with corpses, roads awash with the blood and flesh of those who’d thrown themselves in front of cars. Every time a plane or rocket was seen in the sky, people expected to see at least one body come falling from it. Often, whole cargoes of people were killed by the suicide of a captain, driver or pilot of a vehicle.

  Even Seward had not suspected the extent of the potential suicides. He was shocked. So was his team.

  So were the World Council and the national governments. They told Seward and his team to turn off their machines and reverse the damage they had done, as much as possible.

  Seward had warned them of the possible result of doing this. He had been ignored. His machines had been confiscated and the World Council had put untrained or ill-trained operators on them. This was one of the last acts of the World Council. It was one of the last rational—however ill-judged—acts the world knew.

  The real disaster had come about when the bungling operators that the World Council had chosen set the hallucinomats to send the full effects of the conditions they’d originally been designed to produce. The operators may have been fools—they were probably mad themselves to do what they did. Seward couldn’t know. Most of them had been killed by bands of psychopathic murderers who killed their victims by the hundreds in weird and horrible rites which seemed to mirror those of prehistory—or those of the insane South American cultures before the Spaniards.

  Chaos had come swiftly—the chaos that now existed.

  Seward and his three remaining assistants had protected themselves the only way they could, by erecting the stroboscopic Towers on the roof of the laboratory building. This kept the mobs off. But it did not help their consciences. One by one Seward’s assistants had committed suicide.

  Only Seward, keeping himself alive on a series of ever-more-potent drugs, somehow retained his sanity. And, he thought ironically, this sanity was only comparative.

  A hypodermic syringe lay on the table and beside it a small bottle marked M-A 19—Mescalin-Andrenol Nineteen—a drug hitherto only tested on animals, never on human beings. But all the other drugs he had used to keep himself going had either run out or now had poor effects. The M-A 19 was his last hope of being able to continue his work on the tranquilomats he needed to perfect and thus rectify his mistake in the only way he could.

  As he reached for the bottle and the hypodermic, he thought coolly that, now he looked back, the whole world had been suffering from insanity well before he had even considered Experiment Restoration. The decision to make the experiment had been just another symptom of the world-d
isease. Something like it would have happened sooner or later, whether by natural or artificial means. It wasn’t really his fault. He had been nothing much more than fate’s tool.

  But logic didn’t help. In a way it was his fault. By now, with an efficient team, he might have been able to have constructed a few experimental tranquilomats, at least.

  Now I’ve got to do it alone, he thought as he pulled up his trouser leg and sought a vein he could use in his clammy, grey flesh. He had long since given up dabbing the area with anaesthetic. He found a blue vein, depressed the plunger of the needle and sat back in his chair to await results.

  2

  They came suddenly and were drastic.

  His brain and body exploded in a torrent of mingled ecstasy and pain which surged through him. Waves of pale light flickered. Rich darkness followed. He rode a ferris wheel of erupting sensations and emotions. He fell down a never-ending slope of obsidian rock surrounded by clouds of green, purple, yellow, black. The rock vanished, but he continued to fall.

  Then there was the smell of disease and corruption in his nostrils, but even that passed and he was standing up.

  World of phosphorescence drifting like golden spheres into black night. Green, blue, red explosions. Towers rotate slowly. Towers Advance. Towers Recede. Advance. Recede. Vanish.

  Flickering world of phosphorescent tears falling into the timeless, spaceless wastes of Nowhere. World of Misery. World of Antagonism. World of Guilt. Guilt—guilt—guilt . . .

  World of hateful wonder.

  Heart throbbing, mind thudding, body shuddering as M-A 19 flowed up the infinity of the spine. Shot into back-brain, shot into mid-brain, shot into fore-brain.

  EXPLOSION ALL CENTRES!

  No-mind—No-body—No-where.

  Dying waves of light danced out of his eyes and away through the dark world. Everything was dying. Cells, sinews, nerves, synapses—all crumbling. Tears of light, fading, fading.

  Brilliant rockets streaking into the sky, exploding all together and sending their multicoloured globes of light—balls on an Xmas Tree—balls on a great tree—x-mass—drifting slowly earthwards.

  Ahead of him was a tall, blocky building constructed of huge chunks of yellowed granite, like a fortress. Black mist swirled around it and across the bleak, horizonless nightscape.

  This was no normal hallucinatory experience. Seward felt the ground under his feet, the warm air on his face, the half-familiar smells. He had no doubt that he had entered another world.

  But where was it? How had he got here?

  Who had brought him here?

  The answer might lie in the fortress ahead. He began to walk towards it. Gravity seemed lighter, for he walked with greater ease than normal and was soon standing looking up at the huge green metallic door. He bunched his fist and rapped on it.

  Echoes boomed through numerous corridors and were absorbed in the heart of the fortress.

  Seward waited as the door was slowly opened.

  A man who so closely resembled the Laughing Cavalier of the painting that he must have modelled his beard and clothes on it bowed slightly and said:

  “Welcome home, Professor Seward. We’ve been expecting you.”

  The bizarrely dressed man stepped aside and allowed him to pass into a dark corridor.

  “Expecting me,” said Seward. “How?”

  The Cavalier replied good-humouredly: “That’s not for me to explain. Here we go—through this door and up this corridor.” He opened the door and turned into another corridor and Seward followed him.

  They opened innumerable doors and walked along innumerable corridors.

  The complexities of the corridors seemed somehow familiar to Seward. He felt disturbed by them, but the possibility of an explanation overrode his qualms and he willingly followed the Laughing Cavalier deeper and deeper into the fortress, through the twists and turns until they arrived at a door which was probably very close to the centre of the fortress.

  The Cavalier knocked confidently on the door, but spoke deferentially. “Professor Seward is here at last, sir.”

  A light, cultured voice said from the other side of the door: “Good. Send him in.”

  This door opened so slowly that it seemed to Seward that he was watching a film slowed down to a fraction of its proper speed. When it had opened sufficiently to let him enter, he went into the room beyond. The Cavalier didn’t follow him.

  It only occurred to him then that he might be in some kind of mental institution, which would explain the fortresslike nature of the building and the man dressed up like the Laughing Cavalier. But, if so, how had he got here—unless he had collapsed and order had been restored sufficiently for someone to have come and collected him. No, the idea was weak.

  The room he entered was full of rich, dark colours. Satin screens and hangings obscured much of it. The ceiling was not visible. Neither was the source of the rather dim light. In the centre of the room stood a dais, raised perhaps a foot from the floor. On the dais was an old leather armchair.

  In the armchair sat a naked man with a cool, blue skin.

  He stood up as Seward entered. He smiled charmingly and stepped off the dais, advancing towards Seward with his right hand extended.

  “Good to see you, old boy!” he said heartily.

  Dazed, Seward clasped the offered hand and felt his whole arm tingle as if it had had a mild electric shock. The man’s strange flesh was firm, but seemed to itch under Seward’s palm.

  The man was short—little over five feet tall. His eyebrows met in the centre and his shiny black hair grew to a widow’s peak.

  Also, he had no navel.

  “I’m glad you could get here, Seward,” he said, walking back to his dais and sitting in the armchair. He rested his head in one hand, his elbow on the arm of the chair.

  Seward did not like to appear ungracious, but he was worried and mystified. “I don’t know where this place is,” he said. “I don’t even know how I got here—unless . . .”

  “Ah, yes—the drug. M-A 19, isn’t it? That helped, doubtless. We’ve been trying to get in touch with you for ages, old boy.”

  “I’ve got work to do—back there,” Seward said obsessionally. “I’m sorry, but I want to get back as soon as I can. What do you want?”

  The Man Without A Navel sighed. “I’m sorry, too, Seward. But we can’t let you go yet. There’s something I’d like to ask you—a favour. That was why we were hoping you’d come.”

  “What’s your problem?” Seward’s sense of unreality, never very strong here, for in spite of the world’s bizarre appearance it seemed familiar, was growing weaker. If he could help the man and get back to continue his research, he would.

  “Well,” smiled the Man Without A Navel, “it’s really your problem as much as ours. You see,” he shrugged diffidently, “we want your world destroyed.”

  “What!” Now something was clear, at last. This man and his kind did belong to another world—whether in space, time, or different dimensions—and they were enemies of Earth. “You can’t expect me to help you do that!” He laughed. “You are joking.”

  The Man Without A Navel shook his head seriously. “Afraid not, old boy.”

  “That’s why you want me here—you’ve seen the chaos in the world and you want to take advantage of it—you want me to be a—a fifth columnist.”

  “Ah, you remember the old term, eh? Yes, I suppose that is what I mean. I want you to be our agent. Those machines of yours could be modified to make those who are left turn against each other even more than at present. Eh?”

  “You must be very stupid if you think I’ll do that,” Seward said tiredly. “I can’t help you. I’m trying to help them.” Was he trapped here for good? He said weakly: “You’ve got to let me go back.”

  “Not as easy as that, old boy. I—and my friends—want to enter your world, but we can’t until you’ve pumped up your machines to such a pitch that the entire world is maddened and destroys itself, d’you see?”r />
  “Certainly,” exclaimed Seward. “But I’m having no part of it!”

  Again the Man Without A Navel smiled, slowly. “You’ll weaken soon enough, old boy.”

  “Don’t be so sure,” Seward said defiantly. “I’ve had plenty of chances of giving up—back there. I could have weakened. But I didn’t.”

  “Ah, but you’ve forgotten the new factor, Seward.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The M-A 19.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’ll know soon enough.”

  “Look—I want to get out of this place. You can’t keep me—there’s no point—I won’t agree to your plan. Where is this world, anyway?”

  “Knowing that depends on you, old boy,” the man’s tone was mocking. “Entirely on you. A lot depends on you, Seward.”

  “I know.”

  The Man Without A Navel lifted his head and called: “Brother Sebastian, are you available?” He glanced back at Seward with an ironical smile. “Brother Sebastian may be of some help.”

  Seward saw the wall-hangings on the other side of the room move. Then, from behind a screen on which was painted a weird, surrealistic scene, a tall, cowled figure emerged, face in shadow, hands folded in sleeves. A monk.

  “Yes, sir,” said the monk in a cold, malicious voice.

  “Brother Sebastian, Professor Seward here is not quite as ready to comply with our wishes as we had hoped. Can you influence him in any way?”

  “Possibly, sir.” Now the tone held a note of anticipation.

  “Good. Professor Seward, will you go with Brother Sebastian?”

  “No.” Seward had thought the room contained only one door—the one he’d entered through. But now there was a chance of there being more doors—other than the one through which the cowled monk had come. The two men didn’t seem to hear his negative reply. They remained where they were, not moving. “No,” he said again, his voice rising. “What right have you to do this?”