Anthology of Speculative Fiction, Volume One

by Short Story Anthology

  My stomach is full of flame and my legs are tingling, as soft as soda water, down to where my feet ache. Don't leave me, sweetheart, with your hair of desire and your mockeries hollow in the moaning dawn. Don't leave me with the salt rain rushing down my cold face. I laugh again and repeat the man's words: 'The people -- the residents!' Ho ho ho! But there is no one to hear my laughter now unless there are inhabitants in the white town's curtained dwellings. Where are you, sweetheart-- where's your taunting body, now, and the taste of your fingernails in my flesh?

  Harsh smoke drowns my sight and the town melts as I fall slowly down towards the cobbles of the street and a pain begins to inch its way through my stinging face.

  Where's the peace that you seek in spurious godliness of another man-- a woman? Why is it never there?

  I regain my sight and look upwards to where the blue sky fills the world until it is obscured by troubled sounds which flow from a lovely face dominated by eyes asking questions which make me frustrated and angry, since I cannot possibly answer them. Not one of them. I smile, in spite of my anger and say, cynically: 'It makes a change, doesn't it?' The girl shakes her head and the worried noises still pour from her mouth. Lips as red as blood-- splashed on slender bones, a narrow, delicate skull. 'Who--? Why are you--? What happened to you?'

  'That's a very personal question, my dear,' I say patronizingly. 'But I have decided not to resent it.'

  'Thank you,' says she. 'Are you willing to rise and be helped somehow?'

  Of course I am, but I would not let her know just yet. 'I am seeking a friend who came this way,' I say. 'Perhaps you know her? She is fat with my life-- full of my soul. She should be easy to recognize.'

  'No-- I haven't...'

  'Ah-- well, if you happen to notice her, I would appreciate it if you would let me know. I shall be in the area for a short while. I have become fond of this town.' A thought strikes me; 'Perhaps you own it?'

  'No.'

  'Please excuse the question if you are embarrassed by it. I, personally, would be quite proud to own a town like this. Is it for sale, do you think?'

  'Come, you'd better get up. You might be arrested. Up you get'

  There is a disturbing reluctance on the part of the residents to tell me the owner of the town. Of course, I could not afford to buy it-- I asked cunningly, in the hope of discovering who the owner was. Maybe she is too clever for me. The idea is not appealing.

  'You're like a dead bird,' she smiles, 'with your wings broken.'

  I refuse her hand and get up quickly. 'Lead the way.'

  She frowns and then says: 'Home I think.' So off we go with her walking ahead. I point upwards: 'Look-- there's a cloud the shape of a cloud!' She smiles and I feel encouraged to such a degree that I want to thank her.

  We reach her house with its green door opening directly on to the street. There are windows with red and yellow curtains and the white paint covering the stone is beginning to flake. She produces a key, inserts it into the large black iron lock and pushes the door wide open, gesturing gracefully for me to enter before her. I incline my head and walk into the darkened hallway of the house. It smells of lavender and is full of old polished oak and brass plates, horse-brasses, candlesticks with no candles in them. On my right is a staircase which twists up into gloom, the stairs covered by dark red carpet.

  There are ferns in vases, placed on high shelves. Several vases of ferns are on the window-sill by the door.

  'I have a razor if you wish to shave,' she informs me. Luckily for her, I am self-critical enough to realize that I need a shave. I thank her and she mounts the stairs, wide skirt swinging, leading me to the upstairs floor and a small bathroom smelling of perfume and disinfectant.

  She switches on the light. Outside, the blue of the sky is deepening and the sun has already set. She shows me the safety-razor, soap, towel. She turns a tap and water gushes out into her cupped hand. 'Still hot,' she says, turning and closing the door behind her. I am tired and make a bad job of shaving. I wash my hands as an afterthought and then go to the door to make sure it isn't locked. I open the door and peer out into the lighted passage. I shout: 'Hey!' and her head eventually comes into sight around another door at the far end of the passage. 'I've shaved.'

  'Go downstairs into the front room,' she says. 'I'll join you there in a few minutes.' I grin at her and my eyes tell her that I know she is naked beneath her clothes. They all are. Without their clothes and their hair, where would they be? Where is she? She came this way-- I scented her trail right here, to this town. She could even be hiding inside this woman-- fooling me. She was always clever in her own way. I'll break her other hand, listen to the bones snap, and they won't catch me. She sucked my life out of me and they blamed me for breaking her fingers. I was just trying to get at the ring I gave her. It was hidden by the blaze of the others.

  She turned me into a sharp-toothed wolf.

  I thunder down the stairs, deliberately stamping on them, making them moan and creak. I locate the front room and enter it. Deep leather chairs, more brass, more oak, more ferns in smoky glass of purple and scarlet. A fireplace without a fire. A soft carpet, multicoloured. A small piano with black-and-white keys and a picture in a frame on top of it.

  There is a white-clothed table with cutlery and plates for two. Two chairs squat beside the table.

  I stand with my back to the fireplace as I hear her pointed-heeled shoes tripping down the stairs. 'Good evening,' I say politely when she comes in, dressed in a tight frock of dark blue velvet, with rubies around her throat and at her ears. There are dazzling rings on her fingers and I shudder, but manage to control myself.

  'Please sit down.' She repeats the graceful gesture of the hand, indicating a leather chair with a yellow cushion. 'Do you feel better now?' I am suspicious and will not answer her. It might be a trick question, one never knows. 'I'll get dinner,' she tells me, 'I won't be long.' Again I've defeated her. She can't win at this rate.

  I consume the foreign meal greedily and only realize afterwards that it might have been poisoned. Philosophically I reflect that it is too late now as I wait for coffee. I will test the coffee and see if it smells of bitter almonds. If it does, I will know it contains poison. I try to remember if any of the food I have already eaten tasted of bitter almonds. I don't think so. I feel comparatively safe.

  She brings in the coffee smoking in a big brown earthenware pot. She sits down and pours me a cup. It smells good and, relievedly, I discover it does not have the flavour of bitter almonds. Come to think of it, I am not altogether sure what bitter almonds smell like.

  'You may stay the night here, if you wish. There is a spare room.

  'Thank you,' I say, letting my eyes narrow in a subtle question, but she looks away from me and reaches a slim hand for the coffee pot. 'Thank you,' I repeat. She doesn't answer me. What's her game? She takes a breath, is about to say something, looks quickly at me, changes her mind, says nothing. I laugh softly, leaning back in my chair with my hand clasped around my coffee cup.

  'There are wolves and there are sheep,' I say, as I have often said. 'Which do you think you are?'

  'Neither,' says she.

  'Then you are sheep,' say I. 'The wolves know what they are-- what their function is. I am wolf.'

  'Really,' she says and it is obvious that she is bored by my philosophy, not understanding it. 'You had better go to bed now-- you are tired.'

  'If you insist,' I say lightly. 'Very well.'

  She shows me up to the room overlooking the unlit street and bids me good night. Closing the door, I listen carefully for the sound of a key turning, but the sound doesn't come. The room contains a high, old-fashioned bed, a standard lamp with a parchment shade with flowers pressed between two thicknesses, an empty bookcase and a wooden chair, beautifully carved. I feel the chair with my fingertips and shiver with delight at the sensation I receive. I pull back the quilt covering the bed and inspect the sheets which are clean and smell fresh. There are two white pillows, both
very soft. I extract myself from my suit, taking off my shoes and socks and leaving my underpants on. I switch off the light and, trembling a little, get into the sheets, I am soon asleep, but it is still very early. I am convinced that I shall wake up at dawn.

  I open my eyes in the morning and pale sunshine forces its way between gaps in the curtains. I lie in bed trying to go back to sleep, but cannot. I push away the covers, which have slipped partly off the bed, and get up. I go to the window and look down into the street.

  Incredibly, a huge hare is loping along the pavement, its nose twitching. A lorry roars past, its gears grating, but the hare continues its imperturbable course. I am tensed, excited. I open my door and run along the passage to the woman's room, entering with a rush. She is asleep, one arm sprawled outwards, the hand dangling over the edge of her bed, her shoulders pale and alive. I take hold of one shoulder in a strong grip designed to hurt her into wakefulness. She cries out, sits up quivering.

  'Quick,' I say-- 'Come and see. There is a hare in the street!'

  'Go away and let me sleep,' she tells me, 'let me sleep.'

  'No! You must come and look at the big hare in the street. How did it get there?'

  She rises and follows me back to my room. I leap towards the window and see with relief that the hare is still there. 'Look!' I point towards it and she joins me at the window. She, too, is amazed. 'Poor thing,' she gasps. 'We must save it.'

  'Save it?' I am astounded. 'Save it? No, I will kill it and we can eat it.'

  She shudders. 'How could you be so cruel?' The hare disappears around a corner of the street. I am furious and all the nerves of my body are taut. 'It has gone!'

  'It will probably be all right,' she says in a self-conciliatory tone and this makes me more angry. I begin to sob with frustration. She puts a hand on my arm. 'What is the matter?' I shrug off the hand, then think better of it, I begin to cry against her breast. She pats me on the back and I feel better. 'Let me come to bed with you,' I plead.

  'No,' she says quietly. 'You must rest.'

  'Let me sleep with you,' I insist, but she breaks from my grasp and backs towards the door. 'No! Rest.'

  I follow her, my eyes hot in my skull, my body full. 'You owe me something,' I tell her viciously. 'You all do.'

  'Go away,' she says threateningly, desperate and afraid of me. I continue to move towards her, beyond the door, along the passage. She starts to run for her room but I run also, and catch her. I catch her before she reaches the room. She screams. I clutch at her fingers. I bend them back slowly, putting my other hand over her mouth to stop her horrible noises. The bones snap in the slim, pale flesh. Not all at once.

  'You made me wolf.' I snarl. 'And sheep must die.' My teeth seek her pounding jugular, my nose scents the perfume of her throat. I slide my sharp teeth through skin and sinew. Blood oozes into my mouth. As I kill her, I sob.

  Why did she suck the soul of me from the wounds she made? Why am I wolf because of her? Or did it always lurk there, needing only the pain she made to release the ferocity?

  But she is dead.

  I had forgotten. I had sought her in this pleasant town.

  Ah, now the other is dead, too.

  Let murder drown me until I am nothing but a snarling speck, harmless and protected by my infinitesimal size.

  Oh, God, my bloody darling...

  London Bone, by Michael Moorcock

  For Ronnie Scott

  ONE

  My name is Raymond Gold and I'm a well-known dealer. I was born too many years ago in Upper Street, Islington. Everybody reckons me in the London markets and I have a good reputation in Manchester and the provinces. I have bought and sold, been the middleman, an agent, an art representative, a professional mentor, a tour guide, a spiritual bridge-builder. These days I call myself a cultural speculator.

  But, you won't like it, the more familiar word for my profession, as I practised it until recently, is scalper. This kind of language is just another way of isolating the small businessman and making what he does seem sleazy while the stockbroker dealing in millions is supposed to be legitimate. But I don't need to convince anyone today that there's no sodding justice.

  'Scalping' is risky. What you do is invest in tickets on spec and hope to make a timely sale when the market for them hits zenith. Any kind of ticket, really, but mostly shows. I've never seen anything offensive about getting the maximum possible profit out of an American matron with more money than sense who's anxious to report home with the right items ticked off the beento list. We've all seen them rushing about in their overpriced limos and mini-buses, pretending to be individuals: Thursday: Changing-of-the-Guard, Harrods, Planet Hollywood, Royal Academy, Tea-At-the-Ritz, Cats. It's a sort of tribal dance they all feel compelled to perform. If they don't perform it, they feel inadequate. Saturday: Tower of London, Bucket of Blood, Jack-the-Ripper talk, Sherlock Holmes Pub, Sherlock Holmes tour, Madame Tussaud's, Covent Garden Cream Tea, Dogs. These are people so traumatized by contact with strangers that their only security lies in these rituals, these well-blazed trails and familiar chants. It's my job to smooth their paths, to make them exclaim how pretty and wonderful and elegant and magical it all is. The street people aren't a problem. They're just so many charming Dick Van Dykes.

  Americans need bullshit the way koala bears need eucalyptus leaves. They've become totally addicted to it. They get so much of it back home that they can't survive without it. It's your duty to help them get their regular fixes while they travel. And when they make it back after three weeks on alien shores, their friends, of course, are always glad of some foreign bullshit for a change.

  Even if you sell a show ticket to a real enthusiast, who has already been forty nine times and is so familiar to the cast they see him in the street and think he's a relative, who are you hurting? Andros Loud Website, Lady Hatchet's loyal laureate, who achieved rank and wealth by celebrating the lighter side of the moral vacuum? He would surely applaud my enterprise in the buccaneering spirit of the free market. Venture capitalism at its bravest. Well, he'd applaud me if he had time these days from his railings against fate, his horrible understanding of the true nature of his coming obscurity. But that's partly what my story's about.

  I have to say in my own favour that I'm not merely a speculator or, if you like, exploiter. I'm also a patron. For many years, not just recently, a niagara of dosh has flowed out of my pocket and into the real arts faster than a cat up a Frenchman. Whole orchestras and famous soloists have been brought to the Wigmore Hall on the money they get from me. But I couldn't have afforded this if it wasn't for the definitely iffy Miss Saigon (a triumph of well-oiled machinery over dodgy morality) or the unbelievably decrepit Good Rockin' Tonite (in which the living dead jive in the aisles), nor, of course, that first great theatrical triumph of the new millennium, Schindler: The Musical. Make 'em weep, Uncle Walt!

  So who is helping most to support the arts? You, me, the lottery?

  I had another reputation, of course, which some saw as a second profession. I was one of the last great London characters. I was always on late-night telly lit from below and Iain Sinclair couldn't write a paragraph without dropping my name at least once. I'm a quintessential Londoner, I am. I'm a Cockney gentleman.

  I read Israel Zangwill and Gerald Kersh and Alexander Barron. I can tell you the best books of Pett Ridge and Arthur Morrison. I know Pratface Charlie, Driff and Martin Stone, Bernie Michaud and the even more legendary Gerry and Pat Goldstein. They're all historians, archeologists, revenants. There isn't another culture-dealer in London, oldster or child, who doesn't at some time come to me for an opinion. Even now, when I'm as popular as a pig at a Putney wedding and people hold their noses and dive into traffic rather than have to say hello to me, they still need me for that.

  I've known all the famous Londoners or known someone else who did. I can tell stories of long-dead gangsters who made the Krays seem like Amnesty International. Bare-knuckle boxing. Fighting the fascists in the East End. Gun-b
attles with the police all over Stepney in the 1900s. The terrifying girl gangsters of Whitechapel. Barricading the Old Bill in his own barracks down in Notting Dale.

  I can tell you where all the music halls were and what was sung in them. And why. I can tell Marie Lloyd stories and Max Miller stories that are fresh and sharp and bawdy as the day they happened, because their wit and experience came out of the market streets of London. The same streets. The same markets. The same family names. London is markets. Markets are London.

  I'm a Londoner through and through. I know Mr Gog personally. I know Ma Gog even more personally. During the day I can walk anywhere from Bow to Bayswater faster than any taxi. I love the markets. Brick Lane. Church Street. Portobello. You won't find me on a bike with my bum in the air on a winter's afternoon. I walk or drive. Nothing in between. I wear a camel-hair in winter and a Barraclough's in summer. You know what would happen to a coat like that on a bike.

  I love the theatre. I like modern dance, very good movies and ambitious international contemporary music. I like poetry, prose, painting and the decorative arts. I like the lot, the very best that London's got, the whole bloody casserole. I gobble it all up and bang on my bowl for more. Let timid greenbelters creep in at weekends and sink themselves in the West End's familiar deodorised shit if they want to. That's not my city. That's a tourist set. It's what I live off. What all of us show-people live off. It's the old, familiar circus. The big rotate.

  We're selling what everybody recognises. What makes them feel safe and certain and sure of every single moment in the city. Nothing to worry about in jolly old London. We sell charm and colour by the yard. Whole word factories turn out new rhyming slang and saucy street characters are trained on council grants. Don't frighten the horses. Licensed pearlies pause for a photo-opportunity in the dockside Secure Zones. Without all that cheap scenery, without our myths and magical skills, without our whorish good cheer and instincts for trade -- any kind of trade -- we probably wouldn't have a living city.