Modem Times 2.0

by Michael Moorcock

  Bessy had none of her father Bunny’s lean, lunatic wit. Her full name was Timobeth, a combination of those her parents had chosen for a girl or a boy. Bunny believed that old-fashioned names were an insult to the future. They pandered to history. Her parents still hated history. A sense of the past was but a step on the road to nostalgia and nostalgia, as Bunny was fond of saying, was a vice that corrupts and distorts.

  Jerry remembered his lazy lunches at Rules. Bunny had loved Rules. But he had come to hate the heritage industry as “a brothel disguised as a church.” Jerry wasn’t sure what he meant and had never had a chance to find out. If he turned up, as promised, by the Sphinx, perhaps this would be a good time to ask him.

  “Dad loves it out here.” Pulling her veil from her hat to her face, Bessy began to follow him across the hard sand towards the big pyramid. “Apart from the old stuff. He hates the old stuff. But he loves the beach. The old stuff can crumble to dust for all he cares.” She paused to wipe her massive cheeks and forehead. That last box of Turkish delight was beginning to tell on her. She had been raised, by some trick of fate, by Bishop Beesley as his own daughter until Mitzi had finally objected and Bunny had been recalled from Tangier to perform his paternal duties.

  “You don’t like to be connected to the past?” asked Karen von Krupp, bringing up a lascivious leer and with a curious-looking whip thwacking her “Charlie” on its rump. “I love history. So romantic.”

  “Hate it. Loathe it. History disgusts me. Hello! Who’s this type, I wonder?”

  “Good god!” Suddenly fully awake, Jerry pushed back his hat. “Talk about history! It’s Major Nye.”

  Major Nye, in the full uniform of Skinner’s Horse, rode up at a clip and brought his grey to a skidding stop in the sand.

  “Morning, major.”

  “Morning, Cornelius. Where’s that hotel gone?”

  “I gather it had its day, major. Demolished. I can’t imagine what’s going up in its place.” His knees were cramping.

  “I can.” With a complacent hand, Bessy patted a brochure she produced from a saddlebag. “It’s going to be like The Pyramid. That’s why I asked you all here. Only three times bigger. And in two buildings. You’ll be able to get up in the morning and look down on all that.” She waved vaguely in the direction of the pyramids. “It’ll be a knockout. It will knock you unconscious! Really!” She nodded vigorously, inviting them, by her example, to smile. “It did me. I daren’t ask what diverting the Nile’s going to cost. But it’s guaranteed terrorist free.”

  “Gosh,” said Jerry. Major Nye peered gravely down at his horse’s mane.

  “We are born unconscious and we die unconscious.” Karen von Krupp gestured with her whip. “In between we suffer precisely because we are conscious, whereas the other creatures with whom we share this unhappy planet are unconscious forever, no? I was not. I am. I shall not be. Is this the past, present and future? Is this what we desire from Time?”

  “Rather.” Bessy nodded for good luck, approval and physical power. All the things deprived her in her childhood. Massive tears of self-pity ran rhythmically down her face. “This heat! These allergies!”

  “I must apologize, dear lady. I’m not following you, I fear.”

  “This hotel I’m talking about. Two big pyramids. Sheraton are interested already.”

  “Ah, but the security.” Karen von Krupp laid her whip against her beautiful leg and arranged her pleated skirt. “These days. What can you guarantee?”

  “No problem. Indonesians. Germans. French. British. The cream of the crop.”

  “I prefer Nubians,” said Jerry.

  “These will be as stated. No Saudis or Pashtoon, either. That’s non-negotiable.”

  Jerry looked up. From the far horizon came the steady thump of helicopter engines, then the sharper thwacking oftheir blades. He had a feeling about this. “Nubians or nothing,” he said. And began to run back towards his camel.

  Almost at ground level, rising and falling with the dunes, eight engines roaring in a terrible, shrill chorus, the massive, two-tiered monster of mankind’s miserable imagination, the Dornier DoX flying boat appeared over the oasis and attempted to land on the brackish water from which their camels were now shying. Their clothing and harnesses were whipped by the wind from its propellers. As soon as she had made a pass or two over the watering hole and failed, the Dornier lumbered up into the air and out of sight, still seeking to complete the round-the-world-flight she had begun to break when she set out from the Bavarian lakes four and a half years ago.

  “What I can’t work out,” said Jerry, “is how it took them so long to get the power-weight ratio right.”

  He cocked his head, listening for the plane’s return.

  “I wonder who’s flying her this evening.”

  2. THE BRANDY AND SELTZER BOYS

  According to quantum theory, a card perfectly balanced on its edge will fall down in what is known as a “superposition”— the card really is in two places at once. If a gambler bets money on the queen landing face up, the gambler’s own state changes to become a superposition of two possible outcomes—winning or losing the bet in either of these parallel worlds, the gambler is unaware of the other outcome and feels as if the card fell randomly.

  —Nature, July 5, 2007

  “WE NEED RITUALS, Jerry. We need repetition. We need music and mythology and the constant reassurance that at certain times of the day we can visit the waterhole in safety. Without ritual, we are worthless. That’s what the torturer knows when he takes away even the consistent repetition of our torment.” Bunny Burroughs ordered another beer. There were still a few minutes to Curtain Up. This was to be the first time Gloria Cornish and Una Persson had appeared on the same stage. A revival. The Arcadians.

  “These are on me.” Jerry signed for the bill. “Repetition is a kind of death. It’s what hopeless people do—what loonies do—sitting and rocking and muttering the same meaningless mantras over and over again. That’s not conscious life.”

  “We don’t want conscious life.” Miss Brunner, coming in late, gave her coat to Bishop Beesley to take to the cloakroom. “Have I got time for a quick G&T? We don’t want real variety. From the catchphrase of the comedian to the reiteration of familiar opinions, they’re the beating of a mother’s heart, the breathing of a sleeping father.”

  “Maybe we’ve at last dispossessed ourselves of the past. We name our children after bathroom products, fantasy characters, drugs, diseases, and candy bars. We used to name them after saints or popular politicians …” Jerry finished his beer. A bell began to ring.

  “That’s just a different kind of continuity. The trusted brand has taken over from the trusted saint.” Miss B picked up her program. “We’re still desperate for the familiar. We try to discard it in favour of novelty, but it isn’t really novelty, it’s just another kind of familiarity. We tell ourselves of our self-expression and self-assertion. When I was a girl, my days were counted in terms of food. Sunday was a hot joint. Tuesday was cold sliced meat, potatoes and a vegetable. Wednesday was shepherd’s pie. Thursday was cauliflower cheese. Friday was fish. Saturday, we had a mixed grill. With chips. Just as lessons came and went at school, we attended the Saturday matinee, Sunday at a museum. Something uplifting, anyway, on Sunday. We move forward by means of rituals. We just try to find the means of keeping the carousel turning. We sing work songs as we build roads. Music allows a semblance of progression, but it isn’t real progression. Real progress leads where? To the grave, if we’re lucky? Our stories are the same, with minor variations. We’re comfortable, withminor variations, in the same clothes. The sun comes up and sets at the same time and we welcome the rise and fall of the workman’s hammer, the beat of the drum. If we really wanted to cut our ties with the past we would do the only logical thing. We would kill ourselves.”

  “Isn’t that just as boring?”

  “Oh, I guess so, Mr. Cornelius.” Bunny petted at his face and put down his empty glass.

>   As they walked towards their box, the overture was striking up.

  3. FROM CLUE TO CLUE

  The theme of the Wandering Jew has a history of centuries behind it, and many are the romances which that sinister and melancholy figure has flitted through. In this story you will see how the coming of the mythical Wanderer was a direct threat to the existence of our Empire, and how, when he, as the figurehead of revolt faded out of the picture, Sexton Blake tackled the real causes behind it.

  —”The Case of the Wandering Jew,” Sexton Blake Annual, 1940

  “I’M RUNNING OUT of memory.” Jerry put his head on one side, like a parrot. “Or at best storage. I’m forgetting things. I think I might have something.”

  “Oh, god, don’t give it to us.” Miss Brunner became contemplative. “Is it catching? Like Alzheimer’s?”

  “I don’t remember.” Jerry took an A to Z from the pocket of his black car coat. “It depends whether it’s the past or the present. Or the future. I remember where Berwick Street is in Soho and I could locate Decatur Street. I’m not losing my bearings any worse than usual. Why is everyone trying to forget?”

  “It wasn’t part of the plan. I’m a bit new to this.” Bunny Burroughs glanced hopefully at Miss Brunner. “I think.”

  Now Jerry really was baffled. “Plan?”

  “The plan for America. Remember Reagan?”

  “Vaguely,” said Jerry. He pointed ahead of him. “If that’s not a mirage, we’ve found an oasis.”

  “He’s all turned around, poor thing,” said Miss von Krupp.

  4. THE NEW XJ - LUXURY TRANSFORMED BY DESIGN

  Freighter captains avoid them as potential catastrophes, climate scientists see them as a bellwether of global warming. But now marine biologists have a more positive take on the thousands of icebergs that have broken free from Antarctica in recent years. These frigid, starkly beautiful mountains of floating ice turn out to be bubbling hot spots of biological activity. And in theory at least they could help counteract the buildup of greenhouse gases that are heating the planet.

  —Michael D. Lemonick, Time magazine, August 6, 2007

  “THEY’VE BEEN IN Trinity churchyard digging up the famous. I can’t tell you how much they got for Audubon.” Jerry sipped his chicory and coffee. The Café du Monde wasn’t what it had been but they’d taken the worst of the rust off the chairs, and the joss sticks helped. From somewhere down by the river came the broken sound of a riverboat bell. Then he began to smile at his friend across the table. “That was you, wasn’t it?”

  Max Pardon shrugged. “We were downsized. What can I say? We have to make a living as best we can. The bottom dropped out of real estate. I’m a bone broker, these days, Mr. Cornelius. It’s an honest job. Some of us still have an interest in our heritage. Monsieur Audubon was a very great man. He made his living, you could say, as a resurrectionist. Mostly. He killed that poor, mad, golden eagle. Do I do anything worse?”

  Jerry took a deep breath and regretted it.

  The oil had not proved the blessing some had predicted.

  5. THE FLOODS THAT REALLY MATTER ARE COMPOSED OF MIGRANT LABOUR

  Intimate talk about loving your age, finding true joy. and the three words that can change your life.

  —Good Housekeeping, June 2005

  IN ISLAMABAD, JERRY traded his Banning for an antique Lee-Enfield 303 with a telescopic sight. He had come all the way by aerial cruiser, the guest of Major Nye, with the intention of seeing, if he could do it secretly, his natural son Hussein, who was almost ten. Slipping the beautifully embellished rifle into his cricket bag, he made for an address on Kabul Street, ridding himself of two sets of “shadows.” The most recent Islamic government was highly suspicious of all Europeans, even though Jerry’s Turkish passport gave his religion as Moslem. He wore a beautifully cut coat in two shades of light blue silk, with a set of silver buttons and a turban in darker blue. To the casual eye he resembled a prosperous young stockbroker, perhaps from Singapore.

  Arriving at Number Eight, Jerry made his way through a beautiful courtyard to a shaded staircase, which he climbed rapidly after a glance behind him to see if he was followed. On the third floor about halfway down the landing he stopped and knocked. Almost immediately the recently painted door was opened and Bunny Burroughs let him in, his thin lips twisting as he recognized the cricket bag.

  “Your fifth attempt, I understand, Jerry. Did you have a safe trip? And will you be playing your usual game this Sunday?”

  “If I can find some whites.” Jerry set the bag down and removed his rifle. With his silk handkerchief he dabbed at his sleeve. “Oil. Virgin. Is the boy over there?”

  “With his nanny. The mother, as I told you, is visiting her uncle.”

  Jerry peered through the slats of a blind. Across the courtyard, at a tall window, a young woman in a sari was mixing a glass of diluted lemon juice and sugar. Behind her the blue screen of a TV was showing an old Humphrey Bogart movie.

  “Casablanca,” murmured Bunny.

  “ The Big Sleep.” Jerry lifted the rifle to his shoulder and put his eye close to the sight.

  He would never know another sound like that which followed his pulling of the trigger and the bang the gun made.

  He had done the best he could. That at least he understood.

  Was that a mosquito? He slapped his face.

  6. THE PHANTOM OF THE TOWERS

  International trade in great white sharks now will be regulated, which is especially important for fish who range far beyond the shelter of regional protection. The humphead or Napoleon wrasse—worth tens of thousands of dollars on the market—also received protections, in turn saving coral reefs from the cyanide used to capture them.

  —Animal Update, Winter 2005

  HUBERT LANE AND Violet Elizabeth Bott were waiting on the corner for Jerry as soon as he reached the outskirts of the village. He had driven over from Hadley to see old Mr. Brown. Hubert smirked when he saw Jerry’s Phantom IV. “You’ve done a lot better for yourself than anyone would have guessed a few years ago.”

  Jerry ignored him.

  “Hewwo, Jewwy,” lisped Violet Elizabeth, rather grotesquely coy for her age. “Wovely to see you.”

  Jerry scowled. He was already regretting his decision but he opened the gate and began to walk up the surprisingly overgrown path. The Browns clearly hadn’t kept their gardener on. Things had deteriorated rather a lot since 1978. The front door of the double fronted Tudor-style detached house could do with a lick of paint. The brass needed a polish, too. He lifted the knocker.

  The door was opened by a woman in uniform.

  “Mr. ‘Cornelius’?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Mr. Brown said you were coming. He’s upstairs. I’m the District Nurse. I hung on specially. This way.”

  She moved her full lips in a thin, professional smile and took him straight upstairs. The house smelled familiar and the wallpaper hadn’t changed since his last visit. Mrs. Brown had been alive then. The older children, Ethel and Robert, had been home from America and Australia respectively.

  “They’re expected any time,” said the nurse when he asked. She opened the bedroom door. Now the medicinal smell overwhelmed everything else. Old Mr. Brown was completely bald. His face was much thinner. Jerry no longer had any idea of his age. He looked a hundred.

  “Hello, boy.” Mr. Brown’s voice was surprisingly vibrant. “Nice of you to drop in.” His smile broadened. “Hoping for a tip, were you?”

  “Crumbs!” said Jerry.

  7. A GAME OF PATIENCE

  The new centre-right government in UK unveiled on Tuesday the first of its series of measures to curb immigration, saying Indians must now pass English tests if they wanted to marry a British citizen.

  —The Times of India, June 9, 2010

  BANNING BEHIND HIM, Mo put the Humvee in gear and set off across a desert which reminded him of Marilyn Monroe, Charles Manson and Clark Gable. Tumbleweed, red dust, the occasiona
l cactus, yucca, jasper trees. He was heading west and south, trying to avoid the highways. Eventually he saw mountains.

  A couple of days later, he woke Jerry who had been asleep in the back since Banning.

  “Here we are, Mr. C.”

  Jerry stretched out on the old rug covering the floor of the vehicle. “Christmas should be Christmas now we’ve presents.” He blinked out of the window at a butte. There were faces in every rock. This was the Southwest as he preferred it.

  Mo was dragging his gun behind him as he squeezed into a narrow fissure, one of several in the massive rockface. According to legend, a hunted Indian army had made this its last retreat. Somewhere within, there was water, grass, even corn. The countless variegated shades of red and brown offered some hint of logic, at least symmetry, swirling across the outcrops and natural walls as if painted by a New York expressionist. They reminded Jerry of those ochre Barsoomian Dead Sea bottoms he had loved in his youth. He had been born in London, but he had been raised on Mars. He could imagine the steady movement of waves overhead. He looked up.

  Zuni knifewings had been carved at intervals around the entrance of the canyon; between each pair was a swastika.

  “I wonder what they had against the Jews,” said Mo. He paused to take a swig from his canteen.

  Jerry shrugged. “You’d have thought there was a lot in common.”

  Now Mo disappeared into the fissure. His voice echoed. “It’s huge in here. Amazing. I’ll start placing the charges, shall I?”

  Jerry began to have second thoughts. “This doesn’t feel like Christmas anymore.”

  Behind them, on the horizon, a Diné or Apaché warband sat on ponies so still they might have been carved from the same ancient rock.