Free Byzantium Endures by Michael Moorcock, Alan Wall

believed I could perform the function of a conventional tailplane. I tested the engine and had the satisfaction of seeing the screw spin properly. It was gone midnight, so I left everything ready for the morning and returned home. My mother was in a state of great excitement. She had become convinced I had been murdered. She worried so much about me because there had, in fact, been a child murdered quite close to us. It had been a ritual murder performed by a band of fanatical Zionists and I do not believe they ever caught the Jews responsible. The body had been hidden in a cave in a gorge and its discovery, as I recall, had resulted in a particularly rigorous pogrom. I very much regret the grief I caused my poor mother with my escapades, but she never could understand that certain sacrifices are required not only of those who themselves advance the cause of science, but of those who share our jives.
     
    Early on the Sunday morning I met Esmé and took her to the workshop. There she helped me load all my equipment onto the hand-cart and we trundled it to the Babi ravine, which, being wide, was the most suitable for my experiment. I had to reassure Esmé several times that the flight would be quite safe. There was a certain amount of danger, of course, because this would be the first test, but I expected no real problems. With her help I struggled into the frame and strapped on the wings. I stood at the top of the cliffs, on a path which led to a small ledge and a bench where courting couples would often stop. I planned to run along the path until I came to the ledge and thus give myself a good launch over the gorge (which had a small river going through it). It was a wonderful morning. Esmé wore a white dress and a red pinafore. I wore my oldest clothes. There was mist coming up from the ravine and the sun shone through it. Above us the sky was a perfect, pale blue, and in the distance the smoke from Podol’s tireless factories drifted across the glinting domes and spires of the churches. The morning was very still. As I instructed Esmé how to throw the propellor into motion, the Sunday bells of all our places of worship began to ring at once. I made my first flight to the sound of a hundred pealing tunes!
     
    I remember the way the motor’s shriek drowned the bells. Then I was moving. I ran in long strides down the path. Esmé kept pace with me for part of the way, but fell back. Then I had reached the ledge and had spread my arms, brought up my feet - and began to fall...
     
    The fall lasted only a few seconds. A movement of my hands and I was gaining height again. I rose higher and higher above the gorge until I could see the whole of Kiev before me, could see the Dnieper stretching back into the steppe, could see it rushing down towards the Zaporizhian rapids on its way to the ocean. I could see forests, villages and hills. And, as I floated downward again, I saw Esmé, red and white, looking at me in wonderment and admiration. It was Esmé’s face which distracted me. Somehow I lost control. The motor stopped. There was the noise of rushing air. There was the sound of a scream. Then the bells began to toll again and I was dropping helplessly towards the river at the bottom of the gorge. My thought before my body struck the water was that at least I was to die a noble death. A second Icarus!
     
    * * * *
     
    TWO
     
     
    THE NEWS OF MY FLIGHT had appeared in all the Kiev papers. I had soared over the city for several minutes. This flight was witnessed by many people on their way to Church that Sunday morning. Until the Bolsheviks conquered Ukraine my achievement was a matter of record: I had dived and pirouetted in the clear sky; I had been seen over St Andrew’s, St Sophia’s and St Michael’s. I remember a drawing of me in one of the papers, in which I was shown as perching on the green central dome of the Church of the Three Saints. These records were destroyed by the Cheka’s mad desire to simplify the