MICHAEL
MOORCOCK
BOOKS
For all the Chabons
WHOEVER NAMED THE PLANET Venice named her well. Her golden
surface was crossed by a million regular waterways so that
from space she resembled a papal orb. Clouds followed the
canals in season and emphasised rather than obscured her
geometric character. Venice was a rich and lively world.
More space travellers deserted to her than to any other of
her nine or so rivals in the star system of Calypso V, whose
ranks included Ur XVII and the extraordinarily beautiful
New Venus where colonists risked every danger to enjoy her
yearningly lovely landscapes.
Like all inhabited worlds, Venice was forbidden to the
great rockets of the IGP and the larger interstellar mercantile
vessels of the Terran service, whose routes were frequently
challenged by privateers in their subtler, sometimes faster
ships, some of which still used the increasingly erratic solar
winds for power. The twelfth intergalactic war, which had
destroyed whole star systems, left by common consent
the planetary prizes unspoiled, and surface conflicts were
confined to the legally conventional weapons of the region.
In Venice's case, these included battle barges of enormous
dimensions, their hulls driven by massive sails whose
canvas covered distances measured in fractions of square
miles rather than cubed metres, and speedy little gondolas
employing oars as regularly as they used wind. These boats
darted along the wide natural waterways like bugs, their
sweeps so many articulated limbs. From space, on the great
V-screens, they appeared as creatures endowed with minds
and purposes of their own. Cornelius the pirate had once
employed those gondolas very successfully in pursuit of his
trade, taking full advantage of the confusions and disguises
offered by war. For the past half-century, however, he had
made little use of them.
There were few land wars on Venice, few conflicts of any
kind now. All traffic was conducted by water. Canals occupied
four-fifths of the planet's surface. Venice was not one of the
many terraformed planets created by the great commercial
world-building companies. Whatever gravities had shaped
her had done so naturally. People had long since discovered
that symmetry was characteristic of most planets, formed
in the nativity of their geology. Even the howling, fruitful
terraces of Arcturus-and-Arcturus owed their existence to
this familiar phenomenon and were merely exploited by the
commercial terraforming families who created mainly Earth-
like worlds for a planet-hungry universe.
In his long Epiconeon, Cornelius, nicknamed 'the Dutchman',
wrote:
Catching the solar winds, the vessel brakes and turns
Upon the brane and all the multiverse is hers.
The yearning void calls out, gloriously perverse,
She spurns a dozen planetary advances.
This latticed orb of silver, gold and glowing pearl
Sustains all reverses and her purse remains
Both threatening prize and perilous temptation.
Yet still my patronage and brain are hers.
To drive me from my chosen station.
His ship is called Paine. His hand light on his great wheel,
he stands at her bridge, proud and insouciant, glorying in
the beauty he commands. She is the most peerlessly perfect
light-powered vessel in all space-time.
Her sails strain against the pressure of countless billion
winking photons; her holds are already crowded with the
invaluable and exotic booty of a hundred beautiful worlds.
Within her mysterious envelope of atmosphere, created from
stolen technologies, her multifarious crew, flesh, metal and
petal, drawn from almost all the sentient creatures of the
galaxy, crowd her decks to look down on a world they have
come to consider their own.
'Ironface' is their name for the man who wears a Pierrot
mask of brazen metal in the style of the ancient Italian
comedy. Cornelius the pirate, ruthless poet, courteous
thief, commander of a vessel feared and familiar, envied as
much for her ethereal loveliness as for the accuracy of her
destructive arsenal, motions with his hand, giving the order
for his men's descent. Only Remembered Lombardy under her
buccaneer captain Hong Hunter could hope to challenge
Paine in open space. It is with relief that Venetians, training
their radio-optics upon her as she appears in their upper
stratosphere, understand how firmly her captain honours
the conventions of his trade. She comes to take her tribute
fair and square, according to the articles signed by all the
brotherhood save the rogue Cervantes. Cervantes claims to
own the one thing Cornelius covets, but neither pirate will
describe it or admit they know what it is.
Captain Cornelius remains as mysterious a figure to his
men as to his mistresses. His posted verse, studied so they
might know him better, only serves to add to his mystique.
It says little of his character save that he favours beauty over
sentiment. A lonely figure, he stands chewing a stick of oily
black tope, offering his commands with quiet economy. He
dines alone or with his bosun Peet Aviv, a woman almost as
distant from the crew as himself, and as respected. None can
say they like their captain or his bosun, but they obey both
with a confidence they offer no other commanders and their
loyalty is well rewarded. When the Paine completes her long
tour of violent adventure every member of her crew will be
worth a fortune great enough to buy presidents and kings.
But Cornelius, they are sure, will not yet have found what or
whom he seeks. Most say it's a woman, maybe his vanished
wife. Some say it's an artefact, once the plaything of a god.
Cornelius gives the order. The ebony boats break free
of their mother ship and sail down, through blazing, sun-
tinged clouds, to fill Venice's morning with all their sad,
commanding dignity.
The pirates, drawn from a hundred worlds and a dozen
space-time continua, have come at last. Only a few, watching
them from their decks and towpaths, refuse to acknowledge
their power. Some even drop to their knees, bowing in
respect to the inevitable, as peasants paying homage to a
feudal lord.
By evening Cornelius is among them, broadcasting his
formal greeting to all the rival factions on the planet, telling
them, canal by canal, how much they must give and in
what form, be it an ingot of newtonium, platinum bullion,
provisions or crew. (Always he requests that ingot. Surely he
knows there is not that much newtoniu
m in existence?) His
price is high, but the price of defiance would be higher.
When the barges are filled and brought to the great central
basin called Grande Bayou, inventories are carefully made
and receipts supplied. Then the recruiting begins to replace
any skilled complement killed in battle or retired.
prosthetics, making notes, quietly relaying orders, while
Cornelius, his features engulfed within the plain, etched
mask he always adopts in public, sits to one side of her desk,
his glowing, melancholy eyes fixed on the distance, looking
towards Saint Marx's islet where once, it is said, he courted a
novice and lost her to the only enemy whose superiority he
has ever acknowledged and whom he calls God.
One burgher, in a hasty attempt to demonstrate his
compliance, offers to show off a marvel to the captain alone.
He leaves a wealthy man, but perhaps a marked man, too.
Captain Cornelius frowns and puts what could be a string
of beads into his pocket, rattling them while brooding on
another matter.
At last, after a week, the peaceful tension is dispelled
and the pirates prepare to leave, their tolls all gathered,
while Saint Marx's bells sound the end of the tax-taking. In
return for this price, Venice will know protection for another
decade. Captain Cornelius nods to Peet Aviv. The ledgers are
signed off by pirates and canal captains in a flurry of silken
pomp and brilliant armour. Then the skiffs rise skyward and
are gone amongst the broad ribbons of cloud. And those
whose eyes strain at their scopes see the Paine standing for
a moment to catch the solar winds, her wide sails filling, her
instruments glowing and winking in the shrouded, perpetual
twilight of her decks. Then she's gone, too, a vast and fleeting
glow against the black glare of space, no doubt making for
her home base in the dwarf galaxy of Canis.
A memory of loss and glory. As if the multiverse had
allowed Venice an audience with her own proud, cold soul.
Captain Cornelius inspects certain items of treasure,
searching for that fabulously valuable ingot of newtonium,
puzzles over his data and his charts, confers with Peet Aviv
and begins to understand that fear he has always exploited
but never until now known. For there are dark tides running
through the universe; currents so powerful they drag whole
galaxies with them, streaming gravities so strong they swallow
light and threaten Captain Cornelius's familiar existence;
ultimately they threaten every form of sentient existence
and if unchecked will absorb the whole of Creation. But for
now the photons press against his sails as he once presumed
they would do for ever, and he tacks into the solar winds,
continuing his long search for the one artefact which might
lead him to something and guarantee his life, his ship's life
and the life of the universe he loves. He sails in from the Rim,
daring the drag of the galactic Hub, still searching. Searching
for the only being he acknowledges as his peer, who might
join him or at least help him; who is known simply as 'the
Doctor'.
Chapter 1
Green
SPRAWLING BACK IN HIS brightly coloured lawn chair and tipping his
panama just a fraction lower over his eyes, Urquart Banning-
Cannon decided there was nothing like the crack of oak on
willow and the smell of new-mown grass to make a chap
feel that all's well with the worlds and probably nothing
too much wrong with the universe in general. His sigh of
contentment was considerable, if a trifle cautious; he feared
that Mrs Enola Banning-Cannon might lift her head 'as a
questing deer' and draw the natural conclusion that he was
not sufficiently busy, for it is a truism in the lives of most
wives that if a man is content then he is not doing enough
to take care of his spouse. A wary glimpse from under his
hat's brim reassured him. Mrs B-C's substantial bosom was
rising and falling at a regular rate and what could reasonably
be called a soft, ladylike snore indicated that she was taking
a short sojourn in the region of semi-consciousness she still
liked to call 'the Land of Nod'. So far this holiday, he had to
admit, was delivering its promise like a champ.
Before the happy pair a game was being played by sports
people of an unusually high level of skill and watched in
the main by a bunch of experts who, at irregular intervals,
would murmur praise or clap in polite acknowledgement of
a particularly well-played moment in a match by now in its
third day and coming to a stately close. This was galaxy-class
sport enjoyed by super-dedicated aficionados.
The greens and whites of the men were brightened by a
flock of top-class pretty girls in lavender, rose, buttercup and
apricot wearing hats mostly of straw known in the millinery
trade as 'cloche'. Mrs Banning-Cannon had already given
this headgear an expert once-over and determined it to be
beneath the interest of a true connoisseur.
Amy Pond was thoroughly enjoying what was a bit of a
holiday for her, too. She liked her comfortable cloche bonnet
and her silky frock, and was even learning the Charleston.
She and the Doctor had spent the past week on Peers while
he got some solid practice in. He was due to shoot next.
She glimpsed him among the players on the veranda of the
pavilion as she came to watch the game. An armoured Judoon
ambled down the pavilion steps and onto the pitch swinging
his whackit and acknowledging the odd bit of polite clapping
from the spectators, while, heading to the other end, trotted a
six-limbed dog-man from Chardone, a bow in his forepaw, a
quiver of tournament arrows on his back.
Amy had to admit she was finding it hard to get used to all
the races of the galaxy taking part in this essentially British
game. She was rather glad the Doctor had proven to have
enough pull to bring her on tour with him. She'd fallen in
love with this bizarre mish-mash of misunderstood mostly
early twentieth-century English culture.
Had they only been doing this for a few days? Was it less
than a week ago that she had been woken up on board the
TARDIS by the sound of loud static? A crackling voice had
been speaking a tongue she could not get her head around
but which the Doctor, or someone sounding like the Doctor,
was answering using the same language:
and pop; hiss, wow and flutter; shriek, scream and twitter.
Zekuneefer. Harrow after me. Sagging lorries. I am a...'
It wasn't a fun mixture of noises to unglue your eyes to.
By the time she joined the Doctor at the TARDIS console,
Amy had swigged some coffee and munched some muesli
and was better equipped to face the barrage of sight and
sound which had his attention. He signed for her to help.
He was speaking English again or at least something
similar to English, playing his nouveau retro control boards
<
br /> and typewriters and clapometers like a Wurlitzer organ,
desperately trying to keep the images and voices coming,
but he was losing them rapidly. He ripped off his jacket and
threw it to the floor. He rolled up his sleeves while she held
the coordinates steady.
'No!' The breakup finally came with a horrible shriek
which sounded to her as if it had issued from a metallic throat.
'Hey! Duroo!' cried the Doctor, both hands struggling to hold
down a big plunger. 'Don't fade on me now! Dor - ic - valley
- rum - ginnan Tom Mix. You're still not coming through
properly. Was that something about the colour pools?' The
chilling shriek sounded again and then slowly faded. 'No.
No. No. No.' He glanced over to where she was standing. 'I'll
swear they said Tom Mix. He was a silent movie film star.
You know him?'
'Never heard of him.'
'We know where they are. Now we need to know who!'
Grimly he tried to re-establish contact for a while until in
the end she brought him a cup of tea and some pop-tarts.
Despite his protests, she made him sit down. Surely those
weren't tears in his eyes?
From what she could tell he was worried about some bad
guys called General Frank/Freddie Force and his Antimatter
Men, who had ventured over to our side of a super-dense
black hole in Sagittarius. They had been there in the far, far
future for some time, apparently, and their malign influence
was spreading backwards to the here-and-now.
'Up to their old-fashioned dirty work,' the Doctor said,
'those Antimatter Men. Dipping in and out of the "Second
Aether". And my guess is they're probably not the only ones.'
He chewed thoughtfully on his pop-tart. 'Someone's messing
with the normal rules of energy flow. Time and space are all
over the place. Quite literally, I mean. Growing increasingly
unstable.'
The Doctor leaped to his feet before Amy could tell him he
was talking what was to her nonsense.
'I suspect,' he went on, stabbing an accusing finger at her,
'that the General's old girlfriend Peggy Steel - the Invisible
Lady Steel - is with them, too. A pretty unsavoury gang. And
Quelchy's up to something, no doubt. You never know what
side hell take. This isn't looking good for us, no matter how
you look at it.'
He went back to munching his pop-tart, worried eyes
returning to the screens. 'They must know they're risking their
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