Michael Moorcock - The Black Corridor

'So...?'

'So the Patriots have offered us a surrogate. They have offered us something to concentrate on that is nothing really to do with the true causes of the ills of Society. It's common enough. Hitler supplied it to the Germans in the form of the Jews and the Bolsheviks. Mc Carthy supplied it to the Americans in the form of the Communist Conspiracy. Even our own Enoch Powell supplied it in the form of the West Indian immigrants in the sixties and seventies. There are plenty of examples.'

James Henry frowned. 'You say they were wrong, eh? Well, I'm not so sure. We were right to get rid of the West Indians when we did. We were right to restrict jobs to Englishmen when we did.

You have to draw the line somewhere, Ryan.'

Ryan sighed. 'And what about these "aliens" from space, then?

Where do they fit in? What are they doing to the economy? They are an invention—a crude invention, at that—of the Patriots to describe anyone who is opposed to their insane schemes. Where do you think the term "witch-hunt" comes from, Henry?'

James Henry sipped his drink thoughtfully. 'Perhaps I did get a bit over-excited...'

Ryan patted him on the shoulder. 'We all are. It's the strain, the tension—and it is particularly the uncertainty. We don't know where we're going. We've no goals, because we can't rely on Society any longer. The Patriots offer certainty. And that's what we've got to find for ourselves.'

'You'd better explain,' John Ryan said from his chair. 'Have you got any suggestions?'

Ryan spread his hands. 'That was my suggestion. That we find a goal—a rational goal. Find a way out of this mess...'

And Ryan, now sitting at his desk in the great ship, reflects that it was that evening which was the turning point, that decision which brought him to where he is now, aboard the spaceship Hope Dempsey, heading towards Munich 15040, Barnard's Star, at point nine of c...

There is no sound here in space. No light. No life. Only the dim glow of distant stars as the tiny craft moves, so slowly, through the great neutral blackness.

And Ryan, as he goes methodically about his duties, thinks with a heavy heart of the familiarity and warmth of his early years—of the births of his children, of studying their first schoolbooks, talking to his friends in the evenings at their flat, of his wife, now resting like some comfortable Sleeping Beauty, unaware of him in the fluids of her casket.

Just a pellet travelling through space, thinks Ryan. Nearly all the living tissue contained in the pellet is unconscious in the waters of the caskets. Once they had moved and acted. They had been happy, until the threats had become obvious, until life had become unbearable for them...

Ryan rubs his eyes and writes out his routine report. He underlines it in red, reads it into the machine, sits down again before the log book.

He writes: Another day has passed.

I am frightened, sometimes, that I am becoming too much of a vegetable. I am an active man by nature. I will need to be active when we land. I wonder if I have become too passive. Still, this is idle speculation...

His speculations were never idle, he reflects. The moment the problem was clearly seen, he began to think along positive lines.

The problem was straightforward: society was breaking down and death and destruction were becoming increasingly widespread. He wished to survive and he wished for his friends and family to survive. There was nowhere in the world that could any longer be considered a safe refuge. Nuclear war was bound to arise soon.

There had been only one answer: the stars. And there had been only one project for reaching the stars. Unmanned research craft had brought back evidence that there was a planetary system circling Barnard's Star and that two of those planets were in many respects similar to Earth.

The research project had been United Nations sponsored— the first important multilateral project between the Great Powers...

It had been a last attempt to draw the nations of the world together, to make them consider themselves one race.

Ryan shakes his head.

It had been too late, of course.

Ryan writes: ... I keep fit as best I can. An odd thought Just popped into my head. It gives some idea of how closely one has to watch oneself. It occurred to me that a way of keeping fit would be to wake one of the other men so that we could have sparring matches, play football or something like that. I began to see the 'sense' of this and began to rationalise it so that it seemed advantageous to all concerned to wake, say, my brother John. Or even one of the women... There are several ways of keeping fit and alert—getting exercise. Ridiculous, undisciplined ideas! It is just as well I keep the log. It helps me keep perspective.

He grins. A great way of cheating on old John. He'd never know...

He shudders.

Naturally, he couldn't...

There was Josephine, too. It would betray the whole ideal of the mission if he betrayed them...

I think I'll go and take a cold shower! He writes jokingly. He signs the book, underlines his entry in red, closes the book, puts it neatly away, gets up, makes a last check of the instruments, asks the computer a couple of routine questions, is satisfied by the answers, leaves the control cabin.

True to his word, Mr Ryan has his cold shower. It does the trick.

He feels much better. Humming to himself he enters his own cabin, selects the tape of Messiaen's Turangalila Symphony and sits down to listen to the strange and beautiful melodies of the Ondes Martenot.

By the Sixth Movement (Jardin du sommeil d'amour) he is asleep...

*

The gallery is vast and made of solid platinum.

He paces it.

It is the bridge of a massive ship. But the ship does not sail across the ocean. It sails through foliage. Dark, tangled foliage.

Foliage that the Douanier himself might have painted. Menacing foliage.

Perhaps it is a jungle river. A river like the Amazon or one of those mysterious, unmapped rivers of New Guinea that, as a boy, he had wished to explore.

Ship... foliage... river...

He is alone on the ship, but for the sound of the engines, strangely melodic, and the cries of the unseen birds in the jungle.

He leans over the rail of the bridge, looking for the waters of the river. But there are no waters. Beneath the ship is only vegetation, crushed and bent by the passage of the great vessel.

The ship rolls.

He falls and from somewhere comes a sound that is oddly sympathetic. Something is pitying him.

He rejects the pity.

He falls to the ground and the ship passes on.

He is alone in the jungle and he hears the sounds of lumbering monsters in the murk. He searches with his eyes for the monsters, but he cannot see them, cannot trace the origin of their noise.

A woman appears. She is dark, lush, exotic. She parts her red lips and takes him by the hand into the shadowy darkness of the tropical foliage. Birds continue to cry and to squawk. He begins to kiss her wet, hot mouth. He feels her hand on his penis. He runs his hand into her crutch and her pants are wet with her juices. He tries to make love to her, but for some reason she is wary, expecting discovery. She will not remove her clothing. They make love as best they can. Then she gets up and leads him through the dark jungle corridors into a clearing.

They are in a bar. Girls—club hostesses or prostitutes, he cannot tell—fill the place. There are a few men. Probably ponces or gigolos. He feels at ease here. He relaxes. He puts his arm around the dark woman and puts his other arm around a young blonde with a lined, decaying face. Someone he knew.

All the faces, in fact, are familiar. He tries to remember them.