The Condition of Muzak (19 page)

“Funny little bloke, wasn’t he?” Collier glanced at the Timor Sea. “I hope he makes it.”

“They’re marvellous, really,” said Jerry. “They can find their way through anything.”

“Didn’t seem to realise there was a war on.” Collier hummed to himself as he made adjustments to his panel. “Number four’s looking dodgy again.”

“It sounds fine to me.”

“Well, it’s bloody dodgy. It’s conked out twice.”

“It missed a couple of times, that’s all.”

Collier sighed. “All right. Christ I wish we had some cannon with us. I don’t half feel naked. We’ve seen a fair bit of the fleet, but what are they doing with all their bloody Fujis or Kawasakis or whatever it is they’re flying these days?”

“Probably down near Sydney and Canberra or Melbourne,” suggested Jerry. “This isn’t a very strategic area, by and large.”

“Luckily for us. Why were they hiding in the ruins when we first arrived?”

“Probably thought we were military. Hoped to take us by surprise.”

“They did that all right.” Mo waved his grazed arm. “Cor! It makes me want to vomit. All that fighting and no chance of hitting back. I’m joining up when we get to Singapore. Then I’ll come straight to bleedin’ Darwin with a great big tommy gun. Except,” he said mournfully, “that they always jam on you. Bastards, tommies are.”

“What about a Schmeiser?” Jerry was glad that only blue water and sky surrounded them on all sides now.

“You’re bloody talking, me old son!” Mo whistled through his teeth. “There’s even a couple of Yank machine pistols I wouldn’t mind trying. They don’t have a lot of style, though, Yanks don’t. Not in the military stuff. All their invention goes into the private sector. Funny that. Is it free enterprise, d’you think?”

“It’s the cars I like best,” said Jerry. “I’m going to miss the cars.”

“They won’t stop making cars just because they’ve got a few problems on their borders.”

Jerry wasn’t so sure. “I can’t bear to think what the Canadians will do with Detroit.”

“They might give it back. Swap it for that other place they want. Pig’s Eye, is it?”

“St Paul? Maybe. It doesn’t seem a fair swap, though.”

“The wars can’t last for ever. Things are sorting themselves out already.” Mo was depressing himself as he tried to cheer up his friend. “Eh?”

“It’ll take ten years.” Una Persson shut the door of the cabin behind her, sat down and put her elbows on the chart table.

“What’s ten years?” said Mo.

“Bishop Beesley says he can see a pattern emerging already.” Una toyed with a map.

Jerry laughed. “He’s always seeing patterns. There aren’t any. Not really. The disordered mind sees order everywhere—systems take shape from the movement of the wind in the leaves of the trees—patterns merge as the mad eye selects only what it wishes to see. Patterns are madness, for the most part. That’s the bishop. He’s barmy.”

“Oh, come on, Jerry.” Mo turned in his seat. “There’s some sort of shape to what’s going on, isn’t there?”

“If there is, I haven’t detected any.”

“You’ve got to believe in some kind of order, man!”

“Order isn’t patterns.”

“It’s a perfectly easy shape, I think,” said Una Persson. “But it—well, it shifts. It’s a prism. A classically cut diamond, perhaps. It isn’t strictly linear. By selecting a linear pattern from the larger design you certainly distort things. I think that’s what you mean, don’t you, Jerry?”

Mo belched. Then he farted. “Pardon,” he said.

Jerry gave up. “All I know is that there’s too much going on at once and I’ve had about enough. All the bleeding possibilities occurring at the same time. That’s not what I joined for. I wanted a simple life. I remember. I wanted a set of nice straight tracks from A to B. And what did I bloody get? I wish I was out of it. I’m too old and this century’s too familiar. Any bloody aspect of it. You can’t win. Only the bloody Japanese can win.”

“It’s worse than that,” said Una with a smirk. “Nobody wins. Nobody loses.”

“That’s life,” said Mo Collier. The engines began to falter, to rumble. He licked his teeth.

“You’re wrong. The Japanese win. It’s all in inverse proportion to the amount of ego you have. These days, at any rate. The bigger the ego, the more you lose. And it’s big egos make the biggest, stupidest patterns. Look at Hitler.”

“I used to enjoy him,” said Mo cheerfully, “in the
Dandy
. Or was it the
Beano
? Hitler?” Mo giggled. “What, that little bloke in Berlin? The copper?”

Jerry raised his hands to his head. “Sorry,” he said. “I was forgetting.”

There were fifty keels lying at anchor over Kiev when Prinz Lobkowitz woke up and looked out of the diamond-paned window of the house he had rented near the Cathedral of St Vladimir, with its view of the Botanical Gardens.

The artillery-fire, which had been almost constant for the past week, was now only intermittent and, as a result, Lobkowitz felt a peculiar, unspecific anxiety, as one does when faced with the unfamiliar, however welcome. From several rooftops, as he watched, rose puffs of grey smoke and he heard the crack of rifle-shots. The defenders of Kiev were firing hopelessly at the airships which swayed overhead obscuring the thin morning sunlight. It seemed to Lobkowitz that the siege was as good as over, but he could not be quite sure which side had won. Then he caught a glimpse of a German uniform on the roof and guessed that the airships, silhouettes against the dawn sky and impossible to identify from any markings as yet, were here in support of the besieging Makhnoviks, returned at last to avenge the murder of their leader over twenty years previously. They were led now by a Don Cossack styling himself Emalyan Pugachev, claiming to be a descendant of the Peasant Tsar and (incidentally) renouncing all claim to the throne in the name of the Democratic Union of Free Cossack Anarchists. Although Pugachev refused a title he was universally accepted as Hetman by the Cossacks. Now, as one of the ships turned in the wind, Lobkowitz could make out a fluttering black flag inset with the blue cross of St Andrew. The Highlanders, having established their position north of the Clyde, had linked up with their Ukrainian brothers to push back the Russians and their German mercenaries and once more establish the Ukraine as an independent state. Lobkowitz, whose sympathies were with the Makhnoviks, reflected aloud to Auchinek who had wandered in, still in nightshirt and dressing gown, smoking a briar pipe, a copy of
The Master of Ballantrae
under his arm: “Perhaps Kiev will come alive again. It used to be such a vital city.”

“It won’t make much difference to the Jews,” said Auchinek with a shrug. “Every new government winds up promoting a fresh pogrom. It’s a wonder there’s any Jews left.”

Lobkowitz frowned. He was forced to admit that his friend was right. “I can’t see Pugachev allowing such a thing.”

“Pugachev’s a Cossack. Cossacks have a metaphysical and instinctive desire to butcher the members of any race originating east of the Urals or south of the Caucasus. They can’t help themselves. I think they hate Jews most of all because they think of us as being a kind of decadent Tartar. Nothing to do with our habit of sacrificing Christian babies, raping Christian virgins, ruining Christian merchants or, of course, crucifying Christ. Their instinct goes back much further than that. They’ll tolerate Teutons and maintain a wary trust for other Slavs who, in turn, are regarded as effete versions of themselves, but Latins belong to a caste hardly higher than the Jews…”

Lobkowitz was amused. He jerked his thumb behind him at the sky. “What about Celts?”

“Honorary Cossacks. They can find many points of similarity, you see. The Highlanders were traditionally used to expand the frontiers of Empire, just as the Cossacks were sent into Siberia. From time to time they have done well in uprisings against the central government and have the same tendency to fling themselves willy-nilly into a conflict. Oh, you’d have to ask a Cossack for the rest.” Auchinek scratched under his eye with the stem of his pipe. Then he scratched his nose. “I just hope the papers you got will see me through, Lobkowitz. Every time Kiev falls I get nervous. Still, I welcome it politically, this development. The Ukraine was the last major state to break free of the Russian Empire. And the Chinese have at last given up their attempts to expand their territories or to re-impose their rule on Cochin China and Korea. And if the Japanese did nothing else, they broke the chain that held the British and American colonies to their masters, without actually managing to retain a foothold in those colonies themselves. All the Empires are going down at once. It’s reassuring. Did I read that the Peuhl finally took Fort Lamy?”

“I seem to recall…”

“And Arabia is rising. Can it mean that the long era of Empire-building is over at last?”

“You think the world will learn to cultivate its own gardens? The wars continue. They are just as bloody.”

“It will take a while, I grant you, to achieve a reasonable status quo. But Makhno’s dreams may yet become the final reality. The same equilibrium of anarchy.”

Lobkowitz was impressed by this new confidence in his old friend. He was heartened. “I should work on your enthusiasm for Makhno,” he advised. There was a noise on the stair. “Hello! Who’s this?” The voice of his housekeeper rose up to them. Heavy feet ascended. “It will stand you in good stead.”

Auchinek was grinning as the door of Lobkowitz’s rooms burst open and Colonel Pyat, splendid in his white-and-green uniform, his boots shining with some dark liquid, came in, hastily removing his cap and gloves. “We’ve lost everything,” he said. “I know you’re not sympathetic—but those fools of peasants wouldn’t listen to reason.” Pyat had been acting as a go-between for the Russians and the Ukrainians. As a veteran of the Indian and Chinese campaigns he had some standing with the wilder Cossack elements and for a short time had served as one of their officers. “The Germans are leaving, so we can’t even negotiate from a position of relative strength. You’ve heard nothing from Prague?”

“We can’t help, I’m afraid,” said Lobkowitz. “I might as well tell you that it’s my opinion Prague will recognise the Pugachev government as soon as they have official control of Kiev.”

Pyat nodded. He was fatalistic. “Then can I ask you a favour?”

“Of course.” Lobkowitz felt an increased friendship for Pyat now that the man’s efforts to maintain Russian rule had come to nothing.

“Make me a temporary member of your staff—until you get to Prague. I won’t stay in Bohemia. I’ll go on to Bavaria, where I have friends. A great many of my old colleagues are already there and apparently have been decently received.”

Lobkowitz drew a deep breath. “I think I can arrange it, so long as Prague is quick to recognise Pugachev. If that happens I’ll probably have enough prestige to get away with one or two irregularities. You’re not, after all, who they’re really after. What about your cousin, the Governor?”

Colonel Pyat was bitter. “He took the last train to Moscow yesterday evening, after he had announced that he was making me his deputy.”

“That creates complications, eh?” Auchinek looked sardonically to Lobkowitz.

Pyat smiled as he shook his head. “I tore the order up. It would have been suicide to accept.”

Outside, the gunfire suddenly increased its intensity and then stopped altogether.

“Then who is governor now?” asked Auchinek. He had a passion for knowing the names of those in authority.

“Cornelius accepted the job.”

“But he’s a known Makhnovik sympathiser!”

Lobkowitz went to the window again, staring across the frosty Botanical Gardens to the distant bulk of the new governor’s palace. He laughed. “Look,” he said, “the Black Flag is already hoisted over Kiev.”

Pyat sat down in the large leather armchair. “The man is a blatant opportunist. He bends with every wind. I wish I knew his secret.”

“Everyone envies him that.” Auchinek spat into the ashes of last night’s fire.