The Best of Michael Moorcock

by Michael Moorcock

  Seward felt his body tightening, growing cold. Part of him began to scream for the M-A 19. He clung to the machine’s carrying handles. He turned a dial from Zero to 50. There were 100 units marked on the indicator. The machine was now sending at half-strength. Seward consoled himself that if anything went wrong he could not do any more harm to their ruined minds. It wasn’t much of a consolation.

  He quickly saw that the combined simulated brain-waves, sonic vibrations and light patterns were having some effect on their minds. But what was the effect going to be? They were certainly responding. Their bodies were relaxing, their faces were no longer twisted with insanity. But was the tranquilomat actually doing any constructive good—what it had been designed to do? He upped the output to 75 degrees.

  His hand began to tremble. His mouth and throat were tight and dry. He couldn’t keep going. He stepped back. His stomach ached. His bones ached. His eyes felt puffy. He began to move towards the machine again. But he couldn’t make it. He moved towards the half-full ampoule of M-A 19 on the table. He filled the blunt hypodermic. He found a vein. He was weeping as the explosions hit his brain.

  7

  This time it was different.

  He saw an army of machines advancing towards him. An army of malevolent hallucinomats. He tried to run, but a thousand electrodes were clamped to his body and he could not move. From nowhere, needles entered his veins. Voices shouted SEWARD! SEWARD! SEWARD! The hallucinomats advanced, shrilling, blinking, buzzing—laughing. The machines were laughing at him.

  SEWARD!

  Now he saw Farlowe’s car’s registration plate.

  YOU 110

  YOU 111

  YOU 119

  SEWARD!

  YOU!

  SEWARD!

  His brain was being squeezed. It was contracting, contracting. The voices became distant, the machines began to recede. When they had vanished he saw he was standing in a circular room in the centre of which was a low dais. On the dais was a chair. In the chair was the Man Without A Navel. He smiled at Seward.

  “Welcome back, old boy,” he said.

  Brother Sebastian and the woman, Magdalen, stood close to the dais. Magdalen’s smile was cool and merciless, seeming to anticipate some new torture that the Man and Brother Sebastian had devised.

  But Seward was jubilant. He was sure his little tranquilomat had got results.

  “I think I’ve done it,” he said quietly. “I think I’ve built a workable tranquilomat—and, in a way, it’s thanks to you. I had to speed my work up to beat you—and I did it!”

  They seemed unimpressed.

  “Congratulations, Seward,” smiled the Man Without A Navel. “But this doesn’t alter the situation, you know. Just because you have an antidote doesn’t mean we have to use it.”

  Seward reached inside his shirt and felt for the vial taped under his arm. It had gone. Some of his confidence went with the discovery.

  Magdalen smiled. “It was kind of you to drink the drugged brandy.”

  He put his hands in his jacket pocket.

  The gun was back there. He grinned.

  “What’s he smiling at?” Magdalen said nervously.

  “I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. Brother Sebastian, I believe you have finished work on your version of Seward’s hypnomat?”

  “I have,” said the sighing, cold voice.

  “Let’s have it in. It is a pity we didn’t have it earlier. It would have saved us time—and Seward all his efforts.”

  The curtains behind them parted and Mr. Hand, Mr. Morl and the Laughing Cavalier wheeled in a huge, bizarre machine that seemed to have a casing of highly polished gold, silver and platinum. There were two sets of lenses in its domed, headlike top. They looked like eyes staring at Seward.

  Was this a conditioning machine like the ones they’d probably used on the human populace? Seward thought it was likely. If they got him with that, he’d be finished. He pulled the gun out of his pocket. He aimed it at the right-hand lens and pulled the trigger.

  The gun roared and kicked in his hand, but no bullet left the muzzle. Instead there came a stream of small, brightly coloured globes, something like those used in the attraction device on the tranquilomat. They sped towards the machine, struck it, exploded. The machine buckled and shrilled. It steamed and two discs, like lids, fell across the lenses. The machine rocked backwards and fell over.

  The six figures began to converge on him, angrily.

  Suddenly, on his left, he saw Farlowe, Martha and Sally step from behind a screen.

  “Help me!” he cried to them.

  “We can’t!” Farlowe yelled. “Use your initiative, son!”

  “Initiative?” He looked down at the gun. The figures were coming closer. The Man Without A Navel smiled slowly. Brother Sebastian tittered. Magdalen gave a low, mocking laugh that seemed—strangely—to be a criticism of his sexual prowess. Mr. Morl and Mr. Hand retained their mournful and cheerful expressions respectively. The Laughing Cavalier flung back his head and—laughed. All around them the screens, which had been little more than head-high were lengthening, widening, stretching up and up.

  He glanced back. The screens were growing.

  He pulled the trigger of the gun. Again it bucked, again it roared—and from the muzzle came a stream of metallic-grey particles which grew into huge flowers. The flowers burst into flame and formed a wall between him and the six.

  He peered around him, looking for Farlowe and the others. He couldn’t find them. He heard Farlowe’s shout: “Good luck, son!” He heard Martha and Sally crying goodbye.

  “Don’t go!” he yelled.

  Then he realised he was alone. And the six were beginning to advance again—malevolent, vengeful.

  Around him the screens, covered in weird designs that curled and swirled, ever-changing, were beginning to topple inwards. In a moment he would be crushed.

  Again he heard his name being called. SEWARD! SEWARD!

  Was it Martha’s voice? He thought so.

  “I’m coming,” he shouted, and pulled the trigger again.

  The Man Without A Navel, Magdalen, Brother Sebastian, the Laughing Cavalier, Mr. Hand and Mr. Morl—all screamed in unison and began to back away from him as the gun’s muzzle spouted a stream of white fluid which floated in the air.

  Still the screens were falling, slowly, slowly.

  The white fluid formed a net of millions of delicate strands. It drifted over the heads of the six. It began to descend. They looked up and screamed again.

  “Don’t, Seward,” begged the Man Without A Navel. “Don’t, old man—I’ll make it worth your while.”

  Seward watched as the net engulfed them. They struggled and cried and begged.

  It did not surprise him much when they began to shrink.

  No! They weren’t shrinking—he was growing. He was growing over the toppling screens. He saw them fold inwards. He looked down and the screens were like cards folding neatly over the six little figures struggling in the white net. Then, as the screens folded down, the figures were no longer in sight. It got lighter. The screens rolled themselves into a ball.

  The ball began to take on a new shape.

  It changed colour. And then, there it was—a perfectly formed human skull.

  Slowly, horrifyingly, the skull began to gather flesh and blood and muscles to itself. The stuff flowed over it. Features began to appear. Soon, in a state of frantic terror, Seward recognised the face.

  It was his own.

  His own face, its eyes wide, its lips parted. A tired, stunned, horrified face.

  He was back in the laboratory. And he was staring into a mirror.

  He stumbled away from the mirror. He saw he wasn’t holding a gun in his hand but a hypodermic needle. He looked round the room.

  The tranquilomat was still on the window-sill. He went to the window. There, quietly talking among the ruins below, was a group of sane men and women. They were still in rags, still gaunt. But they were sane. That wa
s evident. They were saner than they had ever been before.

  He called down to them, but they didn’t hear him.

  Time for that later, he thought. He sat on the bed, feeling dazed and relieved. He dropped the needle to the floor, certain he wouldn’t need to use it again.

  It was incredible, but he thought he knew where he had been. The final image of his face in the mirror had given him the last clue.

  He had been inside his own mind. The M-A 19 was merely an hallucinogenic after all. A powerful one, evidently, if it could give him the illusion of rope marks on his wrists, bites on his neck and the rest.

  He had escaped into a dream world.

  Then he wondered—but why? What good had it done?

  He got up and went towards the mirror again.

  Then he heard the voice. Martha’s voice.

  SEWARD! SEWARD! Seward, listen to me!

  No, he thought desperately. No, it can’t be starting again. There’s no need for it.

  He ran into the laboratory, closing the door behind him, locking it. He stood there, trembling, waiting for the withdrawal symptoms. They didn’t come.

  Instead he saw the walls of the laboratory, the silent computers and meters and dials, begin to blur. A light flashed on above his head. The dead banks of instruments suddenly came alive. He sat down in a big chrome, padded chair which had originally been used for the treating of test-subjects.

  His gaze was caught by a whirling stroboscope that had appeared from nowhere. Coloured images began to form in front of his eyes. He struggled to get up but he couldn’t.

  YOU 121

  YOU 122

  YOU 123

  Then the first letter changed to a V.

  VOU 127

  SEWARD!

  His eyelids fell heavily over his eyes.

  “Professor Seward.” It was Martha’s voice. It spoke to someone else. “We may be lucky, Tom. Turn down the volume.”

  He opened his eyes.

  “Martha.”

  The woman smiled. She was dressed in a white coat and was leaning over the chair. She looked very tired. “I’m not—Martha—Professor Seward. I’m Doctor Kalin. Remember?”

  “Doctor Kalin, of course.”

  His body felt weaker than it had ever felt before. He leaned back in the big chair and sighed. Now he was remembering.

  It had been his decision to make the experiment. It had seemed to be the only way of speeding up work on the development of the tranquilomats. He knew that the secret of a workable machine was imbedded in the deepest level of his unconscious mind. But, however much he tried—hypnosis, symbol-association, word-association—he couldn’t get at it.

  There was only one way he could think of—a dangerous experiment for him—an experiment which might not work at all. He would be given a deep-conditioning, made to believe that he had brought disaster to the world and must remedy it by devising a tranquilomat. Things were pretty critical in the world outside, but they weren’t as bad as they had conditioned him to believe. Work on the tranquilomats was falling behind—but there had been no widespread disaster, yet. It was bound to come unless they could devise some means of mass-cure for the thousands of neurotics and victims of insanity. An antidote for the results of mass-tension.

  So, simply, they conditioned him to think his efforts had destroyed civilisation. He must devise a working tranquilomat. They had turned the problem from an intellectual one into a personal one.

  The conditioning had apparently worked.

  He looked around the laboratory at his assistants. They were all alive, healthy, a bit tired, a bit strained, but they looked relieved.

  “How long have I been under?” he asked.

  “About fourteen hours. That’s twelve hours since the experiment went wrong.”

  “Went wrong?”

  “Why, yes,” said Doctor Kalin in surprise. “Nothing was happening. We tried to bring you round—we tried every darned machine and drug in the place—nothing worked. We expected catatonia. At least we’ve managed to save you. We’ll just have to go on using the ordinary methods of research, I suppose.” Her voice was tired, disappointed.

  Seward frowned. But he had got the results. He knew exactly how to construct a working tranquilomat. He thought back.

  “Of course,” he said. “I was only conditioned to believe that the world was in ruins and I had done it. There was nothing about—about—the other world.”

  “What other world?” Macpherson, his Chief Assistant asked the question.

  Seward told them. He told them about the Man Without A Navel, the fortress, the corridors, the tortures, the landscapes seen from Farlowe’s car, the park, the maze, the Vampire, Magdalen . . . He told them how, in what he now called Condition A, he had believed himself hooked on a drug called M-A 19.

  “But we don’t have a drug called M-A 19,” said Doctor Kalin.

  “I know that now. But I didn’t know that and it didn’t matter. I would have found something to have made the journey into—the other world—a world existing only in my skull. Call it Condition B, if you like—or Condition X, maybe. The unknown. I found a fairly logical means of making myself believe I was entering another world. That was M-A 19. By inventing symbolic characters who were trying to stop me, I made myself work harder. Unconsciously I knew that Condition A was going wrong—so I escaped into Condition B in order to put right the damage. By acting out the drama I was able to clear my mind of its confusion. I had, as I suspected, the secret of the tranquilomat somewhere down there all the time. Condition A failed to release that secret—Condition B succeeded. I can build you a workable tranquilomat, don’t worry.”

  “Well,” Macpherson grinned. “I’ve been told to use my imagination in the past—but you really used yours!”

  “That was the idea, wasn’t it? We’d decided it was no good just using drugs to keep us going. We decided to use our drugs and hallucinomats directly, to condition me to believe that what we feared will happen had happened.”

  “I’m glad we didn’t manage to bring you back to normality, in that case,” Doctor Kalin smiled. “You’ve had a series of classic—if more complicated than usual—nightmares. The Man Without A Navel, as you call him, and his ‘allies’ symbolised the elements in you that were holding you back from the truth—diverting you. By ‘defeating’ the Man, you defeated those elements.”

  “It was a hell of a way to get results,” Seward grinned. “But I got them. It was probably the only way. Now we can produce as many tranquilomats as we need. The problem’s over. I’ve—in all modesty—” he grinned, “saved the world before it needed saving. It’s just as well.”

  “What about your ‘helpers,’ though,” said Doctor Kalin helping him from the chair. He glanced into her intelligent, mature face. He had always liked her.

  “Maybe,” he smiled, as he walked towards the bench where the experimental tranquilomats were laid out, “maybe there was quite a bit of wish-fulfilment mixed up in it as well.”

  “It’s funny how you didn’t realise that it wasn’t real, isn’t it?” said Macpherson behind him.

  “Why is it funny?” He turned to look at Macpherson’s long, worn face. “Who knows what’s real, Macpherson? This world? That world? Any other world? I don’t feel so adamant about this one, do you?”

  “Well . . .” Macpherson said doubtfully. “I mean, you’re a trained psychiatrist as well as everything else. You’d think you’d recognise your own symbolic characters?”

  “I suppose it’s possible.” Macpherson had missed his point. “All the same,” he added. “I wouldn’t mind going back there some day. I’d quite enjoy the exploration. And I liked some of the people. Even though they were probably wish-fulfilment figures. Farlowe—father—it’s possible.” He glanced up as his eye fell on a meter. It consisted of a series of code-letters and three digits. VOU 128 it said now. There was Farlowe’s number-plate. His mind had turned the V into a Y. He’d probably discover plenty of other symbols around, which he
’d turned into something else in the other world. He still couldn’t think of it as a dream world. It had seemed so real. For him, it was still real.

  “What about the woman—Martha?” Doctor Kalin said. “You called me Martha as you were waking up.”

  “We’ll let that one go for the time being,” he grinned. “Come on, we’ve still got a lot of work to do.”

  The Birds of the Moon (1995)

  “The Birds of the Moon” is, by a narrow margin, probably my favourite Michael Moorcock story. It was originally commissioned for, submitted to (on time) and apparently accepted by the magazine New Statesman & Society.

  For some reason, however, it never appeared.

  It was to have formed part of a special feature which the magazine had intended to run on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Glastonbury music festival.

  The issue in question was due for publication on 23rd June, 1995, two days after the Summer Solstice which, for a quarter of a century, had loomed large over Glastonbury and its folklore.

  Having missed this window, the story was to have awaited publication as the epilogue to Fabulous Harbours later in 1995.

  So, upon its non-appearance in New Statesman & Society, I wasted no time in asking if I could publish the story first in its own one-off edition.

  Not long after that—and not that long after the event it was written to commemorate—it was finally published by Jayde Design in July 1995.

  A Travellers’ Tale

  For Jon Trux

  The established migratory patterns of certain species of birds are now well understood. While some birds fly South in the Winter or North in the Summer, others migrate regularly to the Moon where, at the warm heart of our Satellite, they feed off a rich diet of moon-worms and other grubs. The great under-ground Gardens of the Moon, developed from the natural character of the Asteroid by generations of settlers, are a source of wonder to all travellers privileged to visit them.