Michael Moorcock - The Steel Tsar

The Steel Tsar

Oswald Bastable Trilogy

Book III

Michael Moorcock

Content

The discovery and subsequent publication of two manuscripts left in the possession of my grandfather has led to a considerable amount of speculation as to their authenticity and authorship. The manuscripts consisted of one made in my grandfather's hand and taken down from the mysterious

Captain Bastable whom he met on Rowe Island in the early years of this century, and another, apparently written by Bastable himself, which was left with my grandfather when he visited China searching for the man who had become, he was told, 'a nomad of the time-streams'.

These very slightly edited texts were published by me as THE WARLORD OF THE AIR and THE LAND LEVIATHAN and I was certain that it was the last I should ever know of Bastable's adventures. When I remarked in a concluding note to THE LAND LEVIATHAN that I hoped Una Persson would some day pay me a visit I was being ironic. I did not believe that I should ever meet the famous chrononaut . As luck would have it, I began to receive visits from her very shortly after I had prepared THE LAND LEVIATHAN. She seemed glad to have me to talk to and gave me permission to use much of what she told me about her experiences in our own and others' time-streams. On the matter of Oswald Bastable , however, she was incommunicative and I learned very quickly not to pump her. Most of my references to him in other books (for instance THE DANCERS AT THE END OF TIME) were highly speculative.

In the late spring of 1979, shortly after I had finished a novel and was resting from the consequent exhaustion, which had left my private life in ruins and my judgment considerably weakened, I had a visit from Mrs. Persson at my flat in London. I was in no mood to see another human being, but she had heard from somewhere (or perhaps had already seen from the future) that I was in distress and had come to ask if there was anything she could do for me. I said that there was nothing. Time and rest would deal with my problems.

She acknowledged this and, with a small smile, added: 'But eventually you will need to work.'

I suppose I said something self-pitying about never being able to work again (I share that in common with almost every creative person I know) and she did not attempt to dissuade me from the notion.

'However,' she said, 'if you do ever happen to feel the urge, I'll be in touch.'

Curiosity caught me. 'What are you talking about?'

'I have a story for you,' she said.

'I have plenty of stories,' I told her, 'but no will to do anything with them. Is it about Jherek Carnelian or the Duke of Queens?'

She shook her head. 'Not this time.'

'Everything seems pointless,' I said.

She patted me on the arm. 'You should go away for a bit. Travel.'

'Perhaps.'

'And when you come back to London, I'll have the story waiting,' she promised.

I was touched by her kindness and her wish to be of use and I thanked her. As it happened a friend fell ill in Los Angeles and I decided to visit him. I stayed far longer in the United States than I had originally planned and eventually, after a short stay in Paris, settled in England for a while in the spring of 1980.

As Una Persson had predicted, I was, of course, ready to work. And, as she had promised, she turned up one evening, dressed in her usual slightly old-fashioned clothes of a military cut. We enjoyed a drink and some general talk and I heard gossip from the End of Time, a period that has always fascinated me. Mrs. Persson is a seasoned time-traveler and usually knows what and what not to tell, for incautious words can have an enormous effect either on the time-streams themselves or on that rarity, like herself , the chrononaut who can travel through them more or less at will.

She has always told me that so long as people regard my stories as fiction and as long as they are fashioned to be read as fiction then neither of us should be victims of the Morphail Effect, which is Time's sometimes-radical method of readjusting itself. The Morphail Effect is manifested most evidently in the fact that, for most time-travelers, only 'forward' movement through time (i.e. into their own future) is possible. 'Backward' movement (a return to their present or past) or movement between the various alternative planes is impossible for anyone save those few who make up the famous Guild of Temporal Adventurers. I knew that Bastable had become a member of this Guild, but did not know how he had been recruited, unless it had been in the Valley of the Dawn by Mrs. Persson herself.

'I have brought you something,' she said. She settled herself in her armchair and reached down for a black document case. 'They are not complete, but they are the best I can do. The rest you will have to fill in from what I tell you and from your own perfectly good imagination.' It was a bundle of manuscript. I recognized the hand at once. It was Bastable's .

'Good God!' I was astonished. 'He's turning into a novelist!'

'Not exactly. These are fresh memoirs that are all. He's read the others and is perfectly satisfied with what you've done with them. He was extremely fond of your grandfather and says that he would be quite glad to continue the tradition with you. Particularly, he says, since you've had rather better success in getting his stories published!' She laughed.

The manuscript was a sizable one. I weighed it in my hand. 'So he was never able to find his own period again? Or return to the life he so desperately wanted?'

'That's not for me to say. You'll notice from the manuscript that there's little explanation as to how he came to the particular alternative time-stream he describes. Suffice to say he returned to Teku Benga , crossed into yet another continuum and found his way to the airship-yards at Benares . This time he was reconciled to what had happened and, being an experienced airshipman , claimed slight

Amnesia and a loss of papers. Eventuall y he got himself a mate's certificate, though it was impossible for him, without impeccable credentials, to find a berth with any of the major lines.'

I smiled. 'And he's still haunted by angst, I suppose?'

'To a degree, He has many lives on his conscience. He knows only worlds at war. But we of the Guild understand what a responsibility we carry and I think membership has helped him.'

'And I'll never meet him?'

'It's unlikely. This stream would probably reject him, turn him into that poor creature your grandfather described, flung this way and that through Time, with no control whatsoever over his destiny.'

'He has that in common with most of us,' I remarked.

She was amused. 'I see you're still not completely over your self-pity, Moorcock.'

I smiled and apologized. 'I'm very excited by this.' I held up the manuscript. ' Bastable presumably wants it published as soon as possible. Why?'

'Perhaps it's mere vanity. You know how people become once they see their names in print.'

'Poor?'

We both laughed at this.

'He trusts you, too,' she continued. 'He knows that you did not tamper with his work and also that he has been of some use to you in your researches.'

'As have you, Mrs. Persson .'

'I'm glad. We enjoy what you do.'

'You find my speculations funny?' I said.

'That, too. We leave it to your rather strange imagination to produce the necessary obfuscations!'

I looked at the manuscript. I was surprised to notice a few peculiar correspondences and coincidences when compared with my grandfather's first manuscript. Yet Bastable appeared not to make some of the connections the reader might make. I remarked on it to Mrs. Persson .

'Our minds can hold only so much,' she said. 'As I've mentioned before, sometimes we do suffer from genuine amnesia, or at least a kind of blocking out of much of our memory. It is one of the ways in which we are sometimes able to enter time-streams not open to the general run of chrononauts .'