“You are kind, madam,” I replied. “But I fear I am not properly dressed to take supper with such a beautiful hostess...”
She grinned at the compliment. “You are picking up Chinese habits of speech, I see. Your clothes were rescued. You’ll find them in your room. San Chui here will show you where it is. You’ll be able to wash there, too. Until later, then.” She saluted me with the crop and rode off to supervise the unloading of her spoils (which also consisted of most of the weapons which had a short while ago belonged to Mr. Lu’s and the general’s men). I had an opportunity to see one of the machine-guns I had initially only heard and was astonished that it was so light and yet so capable of dealing out death with extraordinary efficiency. This, too, was of a completely unfamiliar pattern. Indeed, it was the sort of weapon I might have expected to find in a city of the future!
San Chui, impassive as his comrades, bowed and led the way into the house, which was carpeted in luxurious style throughout but was otherwise of a somewhat Spartan appearance. In a room near the top of the house I found my baggage and my spare suit already laid out on my sleeping-mat (there was no bed). Shortly afterwards another soldier, who had changed into a smock and trousers of blue linen, brought me a bowl of hot water and I was able to get the worst of the mud and dust off my person, find a reasonably uncrumpled shirt, don the fresh suit and walk down to supper safe in the conviction that I was able to make at least an approximate appearance of civilized demeanour!
I was to dine alone, it seemed, with my hostess. She herself had changed into a simple gown of midnight-blue silk, trimmed with scarlet in the Chinese fashion. With her short hair and her oval face she looked, in the light of the candles burning on the dining-table, almost Chinese. She wore no ornament and there was no trace of paint on her face, yet she looked even more beautiful than the first time I had seen her. When I bowed it was instinctively, in homage to that beauty. The ground-floor room held the minimum of furniture—a couple of chests against the walls and a low Chinese table at which one sat cross-legged on cushions to eat.
Without enquiry, she handed me a glass of Madeira and I thanked her. Sipping the wine, I found it to be amongst the very best of its kind and I complimented her on it.
She smiled. “Don’t praise my taste, Mr. Moorcock. Praise that of the French missionary who ordered it in Shanghai—and who is still, I suppose, wondering what has become of it!”
I was surprised by her easy (even shameless) admission of her banditry, but said nothing. Never having been a great supporter of the established Church, I continued to sip the missionary’s wine with relish, however, and found myself relaxing for the first time since I had left civilization. Although I had so many questions to ask her, I discovered myself to be virtually tongue-tied, not knowing where to begin and hoping that she would illuminate me without my having to introduce the subject, say, of Bastable and how she came to know him. The last I had heard of her she had been aboard the airship which had, in the year 1973, dropped a bomb of immense power upon the city of Hiroshima. For the first time I began to doubt Bastable’s story and wonder if, indeed, he had been describing nothing but an opium dream which had become confused with reality to the extent that he had introduced actual people he had known into it.
We seated ourselves to eat and I decided to begin in a somewhat elliptical manner, enquiring, as I sampled the delicious soup (served, in Western fashion, before the main courses): “Any news of your father, Captain Korzeniowski?”
It was her turn to frown in puzzlement, and then her brow cleared and she laughed. “Aha! Of course—Bastable. Oh, Korzeniowski is fine, I think. Bastable spoke well of you—he seemed to trust you. Indeed, the reason that you are here at all is that he asked me to do a favour for him.”
“A favour?”
“More of that later. Let us enjoy our meal—this is a luxury for me, you know. Recently we have not had the leisure or the means to prepare elaborate meals.”
Once again she had politely—almost sweetly—blocked my questions. I decided to proceed on a new tack.
“This village has sustained a bombardment by the look of it,” I said. “Have you been attacked?”
She answered vaguely. “It was attacked, yes. By General Liu, I believe, before we arrived. But one gets used to ruins. This is better than some I have known.” Her eyes held a distant, moody look, as if she were remembering other times, other ruins. Then she shrugged and her expression changed. “The world you know is a stable world, Mr. Moorcock, is it not?”
“Comparatively,” I said. “Though there are always threats, I suppose. I have sometimes wondered what social stability is. It is probably just a question of points of view and personal experience. My own outlook is a relatively cheerful one. If I were, say, a Jewish immigrant in London’s East End, it would probably not be anything like as optimistic!”
She appreciated the remark and smiled. “Well, at least you accept that there are other views of society. Perhaps that is why Bastable talked to you; why he liked you.”
“Liked me? It is not the impression I received. He disappeared, you know, after our meeting on Rowe Island—without any warning at all. I was concerned for him. He was under a great strain. That, I suppose, is the main reason why I am here. Have you seen him recently? Is he well?”
“I have seen him. He was well enough. But he is trapped—he is probably trapped forever.” Her next phrase was addressed to herself, I thought. “Trapped forever in the shifting tides of Time.”
I waited for her to elaborate, but she did not. “Bastable will tell you more of that,” she said.
“Then he is here?”
She shook her head and her hair swayed like the branches of a willow in the wind. She returned her attention to the meal and did not speak for a while as we ate.
Now I had the strange impression that I was not quite real to her, that she spoke to me as she might speak to her horse or a household pet or a familiar picture on her wall, as if she did not expect me to understand and spoke only to clarify her own thoughts. I felt a little uncomfortable, just as someone might feel who was an unwilling eavesdropper on an intimate conversation. Yet I was determined to receive at least some clarification from her.
“I gather that you intend to take me to Bastable—or that Bastable is due to return here?”
“Really? No, no. I am sorry if I have misled you. I have many things on my mind at present. China’s problems alone... The historical implications... The possibility of so much going wrong... Whether we should be interfering at all... If we are interfering, or only think we are...” She lifted her head and her wonderful eyes stared deep into mine. “Many concerns— responsibilities—and I am very tired, Mr. Moorcock. It is going to be a long century.”
I was completely nonplussed and decided myself to finish the conversation. “Perhaps we can talk in the morning,” I said, “when we are both more rested.”
“Perhaps,” she agreed. “You are going to bed?”
“If you do not think it impolite. The dinner was splendid.”
“Yes, it was good. The morning...”
I wondered if she, like Bastable, was also a slave to opium. There was a trance-like quality in her eyes now. She could hardly understand me.
“Until the morning, then,” I said.
“Until the morning.” She echoed my words almost mindlessly.
“Goodnight, Mrs. Persson.”
“Goodnight.”
I made my way back upstairs, undressed, lay myself down on the sleeping-mat and, it seemed to me, was immediately dreaming those peculiar, frightening dreams of the previous night. Again, in the morning, I felt completely refreshed and purged. I got up, washed in cold water, dressed and went downstairs. The room was as I had left it—the remains of the previous night’s dinner were still on the table. And I was suddenly seized with the conviction that everything had been abandoned hastily—that I had also been abandoned. I walked outside into a fine, pale morning. The rain had stopped and the air smelle
d fresh and clean. I looked for signs of activity and found nothing. The only life I could see in the village consisted of one horse, saddled and ready to ride. Soldiers, women and children had all disappeared. Now I wondered if, inadvertently, I had sampled some of Mr. Lu’s opium and had dreamed the whole thing! I went back into the house calling out:
“Mrs. Persson! Mrs. Persson!”
There were only echoes. Not one human being remained in the ruined village.
I went out again. In the distance the low green hills of the Valley of the Morning were soft, gentle and glowing after the rain which must have stopped in the night. A large, watery sun hung in the sky. Birds sang. The world seemed to be tranquil, the valley a haven of perfect peace. I saw not one gun, one item of the spoils which the bandits had brought back with them. The cooking-fires were still warm, but had been extinguished. The mud was still thick and deep and there was evidence of many horses having left the village fairly recently.
Perhaps the bandits had received intelligence of a large-scale counter-attack from General Liu’s forces. Perhaps they had left to attack some new objective of their own. I determined to remain in the village for as long as possible in the hope that they would return.
I made a desultory perambulation of the village. I explored each of the remaining houses; I went for a walk along the main road out of the place. I walked back. There was no evidence for my first theory, that the village had been about to suffer an attack.
By lunchtime I was feeling pretty hungry and I returned to the house to pick at the cold remains of last night’s supper. I helped myself to a glass of the missionary’s excellent Madeira. I explored the anterooms of the ground floor and then went upstairs, determined, completely against my normal instincts, to investigate every room.
The bedroom next to mine still bore a faint smell of feminine perfume and was plainly Una Persson’s. There was a mirror on the wall, a bottle of eau-de-Cologne beside the sleeping-mat, a few wisps of dark hair in an ivory hairbrush on the floor near the mirror. Otherwise, the room was furnished as barely as the others. I noticed a small inlaid table near a window leading onto a small balcony which overlooked the ruins of the village. There was a bulky package lying on the table, wrapped in oilskin, tied with cord.
As I passed it on my way to look out of the window I glanced at the package. And then I gave it very much of a second glance, for I had recognized my own name written in faded brown ink on yellow paper! Just the word “Moorcock”. I did not know the handwriting, but I felt fully justified in tearing off the wrappings to reveal a great heap of closely written foolscap pages.
It was the manuscript which you, its rediscoverer (for I have no intention of making a fool of myself again), are about to read.
There was a note addressed to me from Bastable—brief and pointed—and the manuscript itself was in the same writing.
This must be, of course, what Una Persson had been referring to when she had told me that Bastable had left something of himself behind in the Valley of the Morning. I felt, too, that it was reasonable to surmise that she had meant to give the manuscript to me before she left (if she had actually known she was going to leave so suddenly).
I took the table, a stool and the manuscript onto the balcony, seating myself so that I was looking out over the mysteriously deserted village and the distant hills containing the valley I had sought for so long, and I settled down to read a story which was, if anything, stranger than the first Bastable had told me...
BOOK ONE
THE WORLD IN ANARCHY
CHAPTER ONE
The Return to Teku Benga
After I left you that morning, Moorcock, I had no intention of departing Rowe Island so hastily. I genuinely intended to do no more than take a stroll and clear my head. But I was very tired, as you know, and inclined to act impulsively. As I walked along the quayside I saw that a steamer was leaving; I observed an opportunity to stow away, did so, was undiscovered, and eventually reached the mainland of India, whereupon I made my way inland, got to Teku Benga (still hoping to get back to what I was convinced was my ‘real’ time), discovered that the way across remained impassable and considered the possibility of chucking myself off the cliff and having done with the whole mystery. But I hadn’t the courage for that, nor the heart to go back to your world, Moorcock—that world that was so subtly different from the one I had originally left.
I suppose I must have gone into a decline of some sort (perhaps the shock, perhaps the sudden cessation of supplies of opium to my system, I don’t know). I remained near the abyss separating me from what might have been the fountainhead of that particular knowledge I sought. I stared for hours at the dimly seen ruins of that ancient and squalid mountain fortress and I believe I must have prayed to it, begging it to release me from the awful fate it (or Sharan Kang, its dead priest-king) had condemned me to.
For some time (do not ask me how long) I lived the life of a wild beast, eating the small vermin I was able to trap, almost relishing the slow erosion of my mind and my civilized instincts.
When the snows came I was forced to look for shelter and was driven slowly down the mountainside until I discovered a cave which provided more than adequate shelter. The cave bore evidence that it had until recently been the lair of some wild beast, for there were many bones—of goats, wild sheep, hill dogs and the like (as well as the remains of more than one human being)—but there was no sign that its previous occupant was still in evidence. The cave was long and narrow, stretching so far back and becoming so dark that I never explored its whole extent and was content to establish myself close to the mouth, building no fire, but wrapping myself in the inadequately cured skins of my prey as the winter grew steadily colder.
The previous resident of the cave had been a huge tiger. I found this out one morning when I heard a peculiar snuffling noise and woke up to see the entrance blocked by a massive striped head and the beginnings of a pair of monstrous feline shoulders. The tiger regarded this cave as his winter home and plainly would not think much of the idea of sharing it equably with me. I leapt up and began to retreat into the depths of the cave, since my exit was completely blocked, as the tiger, who must have grown fatter during his summer in the lowlands, squeezed his way slowly in.
That was how I discovered the cave to be in actuality a tunnel—and moreover a man-made tunnel. It grew as dark as the grave as I continued my retreat along it. I steadied myself with my hands against the walls and slowly began to understand that the rough rock had given way to smooth and that the projections were, in fact, cunning carvings of a familiar pattern. I became a bit flustered, then—a bit mad. I remember giggling, then stopping myself, realizing that the tiger might still be behind me. I paused, feeling carefully on both sides of the narrow passage. I received a sickening sense of disgust as my groping fingers made out details of the carvings; my dizziness increased. And yet at the same time I was elated, knowing for certain that I had stumbled into one of Teku Benga’s many secret corridors and that I might well have found my way back, at last, to that warren of passages which lay beneath the immeasurably ancient Temple of the Future Buddha! There was no question in my mind that, failing to find a way across the gorge, I had inadvertently discovered a way under it, for now the floor of the passage began to rise steeply and I was attacked by a coldness of a quality and intensity which was totally unlike the coldness of the natural winter. I had been terrified when I had first experienced it and I was terrified now, but my terror was mixed with hope. Strange little noises began to assail my ears, like the tinkling of temple bells, the whispering of a wind which carried half-formed words in an alien language. Once I had sought to escape all this, but now I ran towards it and I believe that I was weeping, calling out. And the floor of the passage seemed to sway as I ran on, the walls widened out so that I could no longer stretch my arms and touch them and at last, ahead of me, I saw a point of white light. It was the same I had seen before and I laughed. Even then I found my laughter harsh and mad,
but I did not care. The light grew brighter and brighter until it was blinding me. Shapes moved behind the light; there were nameless, glowing colours; there were webs of some vibrating metallic substance and once more I was reminded of the legends of Hindu gods who had built machines to defy the laws of Space and Time.
And then I began to fall.
Head over heels I spun. It was as if I fell through the void which lies between the stars. Slowly all the little consciousness that remained had left me and I gave myself up to the ancient power which had seized me and made me its toy...
I’m sorry if all this seems fanciful, Moorcock. You know that I’m not a particularly imaginative sort of chap. I began my maturity as an ordinary soldier, doing his duty to his country and his Empire. I should like nothing more than to continue my life in that vein, but fate had ordained otherwise. I awoke in darkness, desperately hoping that my flight through Time had been reversed and that I should discover myself back in my own age. There was no way of knowing, of course, for I was still in darkness, still in the tunnel, but the sounds had gone and that particular sort of coldness had gone. I got up, feeling my body in the hope that I’d discover I was wearing my old uniform, but I was not—I was still dressed in rags. This did not unduly concern me and I turned to retrace myself, feeling that if I was in the age I hoped to have left, then I would give myself up to the tiger and get it all over with.
At last I got back to the cave and there was no tiger. Moreover—and this improved my spirits—there was no sign that I had occupied the cave. I walked out into the snow and stood looking up at a hard, blue sky, taking great gulps of the thin air and grinning like a schoolboy, sure that I was ‘home’.
My journey out of the mountains was not a pleasant one and how I ever escaped severe frostbite I shall never know. I passed through several villages and was treated with wary respect, as a holy man might be treated, and got warmer clothes and food, but none of those I spoke to could understand English and I had no familiarity with their dialect. Thus it was nearly a month before I could begin to hope for confirmation of my belief that I had returned to my own time. A few landmarks began to turn up—a clump of trees, an oddly shaped rock, a small river—which I recognized and I knew I was close to the frontier station which Sharan Kang had attacked and thus been the cause of my first visit both to Teku Benga and, ultimately, the future.