The Warlord of the Air (3 page)

The man was dressed in a filthy linen suit, had no hat, no shirt. He was unshaven and there were native sandals on his feet. I had seen his type before. Some wretch whom the East had ruined, who had discovered a weakness within himself which he might never have found if he had stayed safely at home in England. As he straightened up, however, I was startled by an expression of intense misery in his eyes, a certain dignity of bearing which was not at all common in the type. He shouldered his bag and began to make his way towards the town.

“And don’t try to get back aboard, mister, or the law will have you next time!” screamed the mate of the
Maria Carlson
after him. The down-and-out hardly seemed to hear. He continued to plod along the quayside, jostled by the coolies, frantic for work.

The mate saw me and gesticulated impatiently. “No mail! No mail!”

I decided to believe him, but called: “Who is that chap? What’s he done?”

“Stowaway,” was the curt reply.

I wondered why anyone should want to stowaway on a ship bound for Rowe Island and on impulse I turned and followed the man. For some reason I believed him to be no ordinary derelict and he had piqued my curiosity. Besides, my boredom was so great that I should have welcomed any relief from it. Also I was sure that there
was
something different about his eyes and his bearing and that, if I could encourage him to confide in me, he would have an interesting story to tell. Perhaps I felt sorry for him, too. Whatever the reason, I hastened to catch him up and address him.

“Don’t be offended,” I said, “but you look to me as if you could make some use of a square meal and maybe a drink.”

“Drink?”

He turned those strange, tormented eyes on me as if he had recognized me as the Devil himself. “Drink?”

“You seem all up, old chap.” I could hardly bear to look into that face, so great was the agony I saw there. “You’d better come with me.”

Unresistingly, he let me lead him down the harbour road until we reached Olmeijer’s. The Indian servants in the lobby weren’t happy about my bringing in such an obvious derelict, but I led him straight upstairs to my suite and ordered my houseboy to start a bath at once. In the meantime I sat my guest down in my best chair and asked him what he would like to drink.

He shrugged. “Anything. Rum?”

I poured him a stiffish shot of rum and handed him the glass. He downed it in a couple of swallows and nodded his thanks. He sat placidly in the chair, his hands folded in his lap, staring at the table.

His accent, though distant and bemused, had been that of a cultivated man—a gentleman—and this aroused my curiosity even further.

“Where are you from?” I asked him. “Singapore?”

“From?” He gave me an odd look and then frowned to himself. He muttered something which I could not catch and then the houseboy entered and told me that he had prepared the bath.

“The bath’s ready,” I said. “If you’d like to use it I’ll be looking out one of my suits. We’re about the same size.”

He rose like an automaton and followed the houseboy into the bathroom, but then he re-emerged almost at once. “My bag,” he said.

I picked up the bag from the floor and handed it to him. He went back into the bathroom and closed the door.

The houseboy looked curiously at me. “Is he some—some relative, sahib?”

I laughed. “No, Ram Dass. He is just a man I found on the quay.”

Ram Dass smiled. “Aha! It is the Christian charity.” He seemed satisfied. As a recent convert (the pride of one of the local missions) he was constantly translating all the mysterious actions of the English into good, simple Christian terms. “He is a beggar, then? You are the Samaritan?”

“I’m not sure I’m as selfless as that,” I told him. “Will you fetch one of my suits for the gentleman to put on after he has had his bath?”

Ram Dass nodded enthusiastically. “And a shirt, and a tie, and socks, and shoes—everything?”

I was amused. “Very well. Everything.”

My guest took a long time about his ablutions, but came out of the bathroom at last looking much more spruce than when he had gone in. Ram Dass had dressed him in my clothes and they fitted extraordinarily well, though a little loose, for I was considerably better fed than he. Ram Dass behind him brandished a razor as bright as his grin. “I have shaved the gentleman, sahib!”

The man before me was a good-looking chap in his late twenties, although there was something about the set of his features which occasionally made him look much older. He had golden wavy hair, a good jaw and a firm mouth. He had none of the usual signs of weakness which I had learned to recognize in the others of his kind I had seen. Some of the pain had gone out of his eyes, but had been replaced by an even more remote—even dreamy— expression. It was Ram Dass, sniffing significantly and holding up a long, carved pipe behind the man, who gave me the clue.

So that was it! My guest was an opium eater! He was addicted to a drug which some had called the Curse of the Orient, which contributed much to that familiar attitude of fatalism we equate with the East, which robbed men of their will to eat, to work, to indulge in any of the usual pleasures with which others beguile their hours—a drug which eventually kills them.

With an effort I managed to control any expression of horror or pity which I might feel and said instead:

“Well, old chap, what do you say to a late lunch?”

“If you wish it,” he said distantly.

“I should have thought you were hungry.”

“Hungry? No.”

“Well, at any rate, we’ll get something brought up. Ram Dass? Could you arrange for some food? Perhaps a cold collation? And tell Mnr. Olmeijer that I shall have a guest staying the night. We’ll need sheets for the other bed and so on.”

Ram Dass went away and, uninvited, my guest crossed to the sideboard and helped himself to a large whisky. He hesitated for a moment before pouring in some soda. It was almost as if he were trying to remember how to prepare a drink.

“Where were you making for when you stowed away?” I asked. “Surely not Rowe Island?”

He turned, sipping his drink and staring through the window at the sea beyond the harbour. “This is Rowe Island?”

“Yes. The end of the world in many respects.”

“The what?” He looked at me suspiciously and I saw a hint of that torment in his eyes again.

“I was speaking figuratively. Not much to do on Rowe Island. Nowhere to go, really, except back where you came from. Where did you come from, by the way?”

He gestured vaguely. “I see. Yes. Oh, Japan, I suppose.”

“Japan? You were in the foreign service there, perhaps?”

He looked at me intently as if he thought my words had some hidden meaning. Then he said: “Before that, India. Yes, India before that. I was in the Army.”

“How—?” I was embarrassed. “How did you come to be aboard the
Maria Carlson
—the ship which brought you here?”

He shrugged. “I’m afraid I don’t remember. Since I left— since I came back—it has been like a dream. Only the damned opium helps me forget. Those dreams are less horrifying.”

“You take opium?” I felt like a hypocrite, framing the question like that.

“As much as I can get hold of.”

“You seem to have been through some rather terrible experience,” I said, forgetting my manners completely.

He laughed then, more in self-mockery than at me. “Yes. Yes. It turned me mad. That’s what you’d think, anyway. What’s the date, by the way?”

He was becoming more communicative as he downed his third drink.

“It’s the twenty-ninth of May,” I told him.

“What year?”

“Why, 1903!”

“I knew that really. I knew it.” He spoke defensively now. “1903, of course. The beginning of a bright new century— perhaps even the last century of the world.”

From another man, I might have taken these disconnected ramblings to be merely the crazed utterances of the opium fiend, but from him they seemed oddly convincing. I decided it was time to introduce myself and did so.

He chose a peculiar way in which to respond to this introduction. He drew himself up and said: “This is Captain Oswald Bastable, late of the 53rd Lancers.” He smiled at this private joke and went and sat down in an armchair near the window.

A moment later, while I was still trying to recover myself, he turned his head and looked up at me in amusement. “I’m sorry, but you see I’m in a mood not to try to disguise my madness. You’re very kind.” He raised his glass in a salute. “I thank you. I must try to remember my manners. I had some once. They were a fine set of manners. Couldn’t be beaten, I dare say. But I could introduce myself in several ways. What if I said my name was Oswald Bastable—Airshipman.”

“You fly balloons?”

“I have flown
airships
, sir. Ships twelve hundred feet long which travel at speeds
in excess of one hundred miles an hour!
You see. I am mad.”

“Well, I would say you were inventive, if nothing else. Where did you fly the airships?”

“Oh, most parts of the world.”

“I must be completely out of touch. I knew I was receiving the news rather late, but I’m afraid I haven’t heard of these ships. When did you make the flight?”

Bastable’s opium-filled eyes stared at me so hard that I shuddered.

“Would you really care to hear?” he said in a cold, small voice.

My mouth felt dry and I wondered if he were about to become violent. I moved towards the bell-rope. But he knew what was in my mind because he laughed again and shook his head. “I won’t attack you, sir. But you see now why I smoke opium, why I know myself to be mad. Who but a madman would claim to have flown through the skies faster than the fastest ocean liner? Who but a madman would claim to have done this in the year 1973 A.D.— nearly three-quarters of a century in the future?”

“You believe that you have done this? And no-one will listen to you. Is that what makes you so bitter?”

“That? No! Why should it? It is the thought of my own folly which torments me. I should be dead—that would be just. But instead I am half-alive, hardly knowing one dream from another, one reality from another.”

I took his empty glass from his hand and filled it for him. “Look here,” I said. “If you will do something for me, I’ll agree to listen to what you have to say. There’s precious little else for me to do, anyway.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“I want you to eat some lunch and try to stay off the opium for a while—until you’ve seen a doctor, at least. Then I want you to agree that you’ll put yourself in my care, perhaps even return with me to England when I go back. Will you do that?”

“Perhaps.” He shrugged. “But this mood could pass, I warn you. I’ve never had the inclination to speak to anyone about—about the airships and everything. Yet, perhaps history is alterable...”

“I don’t follow you.”

“If I told you what I know, what happened to me—what I saw—it might make a difference. If you agreed to write it down, publish it, if you could, when you got back.”

“When
we
got back.” I said firmly.

“Just as you like.” His expression altered, became grim, as if his decision had a significance I had not understood.

And so the lunch was brought up and he ate some of the cold chicken and the salad. The meal seemed to do him good, for he became more coherent.

“I’ll try to begin at the beginning,” he said, “and go through to the end—telling it as it happened.”

I had a large notebook and several pencils by me. In the early days of my career I had earned my living as a Parliamentary reporter and my knowledge of shorthand stood me in good stead as Bastable began to speak.

He told me his story over the next three days, in which time we scarcely left that room, scarcely slept. Occasionally Bastable would revive himself by recourse to some pills he had—which he swore to me were not opium—but I needed no other stimulant than Bastable’s story itself. The atmosphere in that hotel room became unreal as the tale unfolded. I began by thinking I listened to the fantastic ravings of a madman but I ended by believing without any doubt that I had heard the truth—or, at least,
a
truth. It is up to you to decide if what follows is fiction or not. I can only assure you that Bastable said it was not fiction and I believe, profoundly, that he was right.

MICHAEL MOORCOCK,

Three Chimneys,

Mitcham, Surrey.

October 1904

I
don’t know if you’ve ever been in North-East India (began Bastable) but if you have you’ll know what I mean when I say it’s the meeting place of worlds both old and immeasurably ancient. Where India, Nepaul, Tibet and Bhutan come together, about two hundred miles north of Darjiling and about a hundred west of Mt. Kinchunmaja, you’ll find Kumbalari: a state which claims to be older than Time. It’s what they call a “theocracy”—priest-ridden in the extreme, full of dark superstitions and darker myths and legends, where all gods and demons are honoured, doubtless to be on the safe side. The people are cruel, ignorant, dirty and proud—they look down their noses at all other races. They resent the British presence so close to their territory and over the past couple of hundred years we’ve had a spot or two of trouble with them, but never anything much. They won’t go far beyond their own borders, luckily, and their population is kept pretty low thanks to their own various barbaric practices. Sometimes, as on this occasion, a religious leader pops up who convinces them of the necessity of some kind of
jehad
against the British or British-protected peoples, tells them they’re impervious to our bullets and so forth, and we have to go and teach them a lesson. They are not regarded very seriously by the army, which is doubtless why I was put in charge of the expedition which, in 1902, set off for the Himalayas and Kumbalari.