The Steel Tsar (24 page)

Her fist was white upon the line. Her voice was full of a weary melancholy.

I heard a movement behind me and saw Nestor Makhno limping up, a bottle in his hand. “I was wondering why you’d wandered off. Are we getting too noisy for our intellectuals?”

I did not bother to deny his presumption. I was no more or less than an ordinary English soldier, albeit a somewhat confused one.

Makhno had heard what Dempsey’s instructions had been and he was grateful to us—especially grateful to Dempsey.

“Dempsey wished only to make amends,” I said. “He said it was his right to do what he did. And, Una, it
was
his right.”

Nestor Makhno leaned his back against one of the taut ropes. He moved limply, like a corpse on a gibbet. He was very drunk. “We are all guilty,” he said. “We are all innocent. Only when we accept responsibility for our own actions do we become free. And only when every one of us accepts their share of responsibility will the world become safe for us all. Lobkowitz tells us this. Dempsey had an old-fashioned sense of honour. He destroyed himself because of it. Sometimes, as you say, Mrs. Persson, we must re-examine our ideas—look carefully at what ‘honour’ means, for instance.”

She offered him a wan smile. “You enjoy this kind of conversation, eh? I think you’re right, comrade.”

“Dempsey saved all our lives,” I said. “That, surely, is worth remembering.”

“He saved many lives,” Makhno agreed. He was more sober now. He put down his bottle and began to pace about, looking up at the swaying, faintly lit hulls overhead. “It is true. But Mrs. Persson’s plan might have saved more. While we compete with one another in that way—while we compete against ourselves, even—and while we blame one another for our misfortunes, there will always be such conflicts as the one we’ve just seen resolved. They go on forever. Violence creates nothing but violence, no matter what we call it and what the excuse. And so it goes, down all the centuries. Our experiment will show that this is not necessary. We shall be a guiding light for the people of the next century.” He began to hum some old Ukrainian melody.

Somehow I was cheered by Makhno’s words. At last I felt relieved of that terrible burden, that almost unbearable failure of faith in myself. That awful sense of bewilderment had gone and I had confidence, now, that I was indeed ready to join the League of Temporal Adventurers, perhaps to take Dempsey’s vacant place and in my own turn make amends for his noble failures.

Eventually, the anarchist stumbled away, genially waving to us almost by way of a blessing.

I reached out my arms to Una Persson and we fell together like children, so glad of the warmth of our love, which kept all the loneliness in the multiverse at bay. I felt the events which began in the temple of Teku Benga were at last resolved. I could begin a new existence, learning how to move at will through the wild currents and waves of an infinity of dimensions. I again had a worthwhile task ahead of me, though I had no notion of what that entailed.

I trusted Mrs. Persson. She would be my mentor and my guide through the complexities of the ever-shifting tides of Time, the constantly changing, infinitely self-reproducing dimensions of Space.

I looked forward to perpetual uncertainty, perpetual change, perpetual love. A nomad of the time streams, I would explore a multiverse as complex and as subtle and as creative as my own mind. And I had a companion to help me.

I looked forward to life in an eternal present.

T
hat’s the story, Moorcock, as far as it goes. I now know far more about the League than I did and we have various “safe” zones where we rest and recuperate from our adventures. Our work is never completed and never will be. Our self-interest and the interests of the human race are all that guide us and, suicidal as I was when your grandfather first found me, I am completely dedicated to our tasks. The evil that we do does indeed live after us—it reverberates and is amplified throughout the multiverse— but the good that we do also lives on and, somehow, we maintain a ramshackle sort of harmony.

I hope this manuscript reaches you. I have a feeling it is the last you’ll ever receive from me. The time for reviewing my own career, my own past, is over. I have more interesting things on my mind.

So I’ll say goodbye, Moorcock, and hope that you, too, will one day find tranquility in an “eternal present”.

Good luck, old chap!

CPT. OSWALD BASTABLE

Airshipman,

Somewhere in the Lower Devonian

A
nd that, as best I can present it, is the final story of Oswald Bastable. As many readers will know “The Steel Tsar” Djugashvili sounds remarkably like “the Man of Steel”, that well-known ex-priest, the Georgian who chose for himself the name of Josef “Stalin”. But then it is not uncommon, in all the worlds of the multiverse, for the same kind of personalities to emerge in roughly similar roles. What is usually more interesting is when, through altered circumstances, they appear in very different roles. Although I expect further visits from Mrs. Persson, I gather that there will be no more special news of Bastable now that he has joined the famous League. I am glad, however, to learn that he has found himself at last, found some sort of direction, and is reconciled both to his “crime” and his loss of home.

MICHAEL MOORCOCK

Yorkshire

June 1980

B
orn in London in 1939, Michael Moorcock is a prolific and award-winning writer with more than eighty works of fiction and non-fiction to his name. He is the creator of Elric of Melniboné, the Eternal Champion Jerry Cornelius and Colonel Pyat, amongst many other memorable characters. He is also the author of the
Hawksmoon
series of science fantasy novels and the original
Doctor Who
novel,
The Coming of the Terraphiles.
He currently divides his time between Austin, Texas and Paris.

www.multiuerse.org

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