Free The Steel Tsar by Michael Moorcock Page A

a lot of time now.” He smiled. “Not ‘practical’ help, though.” His eyes were glazed and dreamy and I realized that he had taken some kind of stimulant to offset the effects of the opium. I hated to think what was happening both to his mind and his body. He sat down heavily on my bed.
    “I’m fine.” He spoke as if to reassure himself. “I just thought I’d drop in for a chat. You wanted a chat, eh? Earlier.”
    I sat down in the wicker armchair beside the bed. “Why not?” I said as cheerfully as I could.
    “I told you there’s no need to patronize me. I’ve come to make a sort of confession. I don’t know why it should be you, Bastable. Possibly it’s just because, well, you’re one of the victims. Singapore, and everything...”
    “It’s over,” I said. “And it certainly couldn’t have been anything to do with you. ‘The war is ceaseless. The most we can hope for are occasional moments of tranquility in the midst of the conflict.’ I quote Lobkowitz.”
    His drugged eyes shone for a second with an ironic light. “You read him, too. I didn’t think you were another Red, Bastable.”
    “I’m not. Neither, for that matter, is Lobkowitz.”
    “It’s a matter of opinion.”
    “Besides, I speak from a great deal of experience.”
    “As a soldier?”
    “I have been a soldier. But I have come to the conclusion that the human race is constantly in a state of tension, that those tensions make us what we are and that they will often lead to wars. The greater our ingenuity at inventing weapons, the worse the wars become.”
    “Oh, indeed, I agree with that last statement.” He sighed. “But don’t you believe it’s possible for people to acknowledge the tensions and yet make harmony from those tensions, just as music is made?”
    “My experience would have it otherwise. My hope, of course, is another thing. But I see little point in such a debate when the world is currently in such an appalling state. This frightful Armageddon will probably not be over until the last aerial man-o’-war falls from the skies.”
    “You really see it as Armageddon?”
    I could not tell him what I knew: that I had already passed through three alternative versions of our world and in each seen the most hideous destruction of civilization; that I myself felt responsibility for at least one of those great wars. I merely shrugged. “Perhaps not. Perhaps there will be peace. The Russians and the Japanese have always been at loggerheads. What I can’t understand is how Britain failed to stop it and why the Japs turned on us with such ferocity.”
    “I know why,” he said.
    I patted his arm. “Do you know? Or is it the opium telling you? I’ve been fond of opium in my time, Dempsey. My appearance was once not too different from yours. Can you believe that?”
    “I thought there was something. But why—?”
    “I took part in a crime,” I said. “A very wicked crime. And then...” I paused. “Then I became lost.”
    “But you’re not lost now?”
    “I’m lost now, but I’ve decided to make the best of things. I’ve become a good airshipman. I love airships. There is nothing like being at the helm of one.”
    “I know,” he said. “Of course I know. But I’ll never go aloft again.”
    “Something happened? An accident?”
    A small, wretched laugh came out of his throat. “You could call it that.” He fumbled in his pocket and took something out, placing it on the bed beside him. It was a syringe. “This stuff makes you want to talk, unlike the opium.” From his other pocket he took a handful of ampoules and placed them neatly beside the syringe.
    I got up. “I can’t let you—”
    His eyes were full of pain. “Can’t you?” The words had intense significance. They silenced me. I sat down again with a shrug.
    He put his hand over the syringe and the ampoules and stared at me grimly. “You’ve no choice. I’ve no choice. Our choices are all gone, Bastable. For my own part, one way or