Michael Moorcock - A Cure for Cancer

Jerry reassured her as they reached the cool main hall. They'll soon be laughing on the other side of their faces.'

It was a lovely day.

Waiting in the courtyard was a white hovertruck with red crosses painted on its sides. When he'd stowed the passengers comfortably at the back Jerry joined Karen in the cockpit and started the engines. Whining, they lifted up and began to move forward through the open gates.

Soon they were whistling down the road, passed the scarlet gloom of Chelsea, and reached the Thames Embankment. 'Oh, it is wunderbar!' Karen von Krupp looked out at the wrecks of the tankers poking up through oil that shone with dozens of bright colours.

'You can't beat it,' Jerry agreed affectionately.

They crossed Waterloo Bridge with the siren going and were waved through by a Marine with a sensitive earnest face who leaned one hand on the butt of his Navy Colt and held a cigar in the other. The white hovertruck sang onwards into the ruined roads of South London that were full of colombine, ragged robin, foxglove, golden rain, dog rose, danewort, ivy, creeping cinquefoil, Venus's Comb, dead-nettle, shepherd's purse and dandelion, then turned towards Greenwich where Jerry's cruiser was moored.

As Jerry directed his patients up the gangplank Karen von Krupp pointed to a battered, broken-looking building in the distance. 'What is that, Jerry?'

'Greenwich Observatory,' he said. 'It's a bit redundant now, I suppose.'

She came aboard and he cast off.

In a moment they were chugging away from London, moving strongly against the current.

The banks of the river and the fields and ruins beyond them were carpeted with flowers of every description. While Jerry switched the boat over to automatic steering, Karen stretched out on the deck, breathing the warm summer air, staring up at the deep blue sky and listening to the bees and the crickets on the shore.

When they were sailing through a forest of oaks and elms Jerry came and lay down beside her. From the cabin came the faint strains of Ives's Symphony No .1.

'That is a favourite of yours, I would say,' she said.

'In a manner of speaking.'

'This is the life, is it not?'

'Which?'

'Which do you like?'

'Oh, all of them really.'

The prow pushed on through the rainbow oil and every so often a quaintly shaped fish would leap out and rest on the surface until the ripples opened the top up and it would fall back under again.

The river turned out of the forest and they sailed between fields and old, ruined farmhouses, deserted villages and abandoned pubs. Once, as they moved under a bridge, an armoured car roared over their heads and moaned off down the road. A little later a scrawny young woman threw stones at them from the bank and screamed incoherent insults. Jerry caught a few words. 'Pantalones — el jardin zoologico — la iglesia inglesa!

Lavabo — negra — queremos un — vino duke — de oro, plata, platino, diamantes, rubies, zafiros, esmeraldas, perlas...'

'American immigrant, poor cow.'

Karen cocked her head, brushing back her long red hair. 'What was that? Not bees.'

The woman had disappeared into the undergrowth. Jerry listened.

'Hornets?' Karen suggested.

Jerry shook his head. 'Westland Whirlwinds. I'd better just...' He jumped up and ran to the bridge. Karen got up and then fell over on her bottom as a small missile launcher purred from the forward hatch. She crawled to the bridge. He was watching the radar.

'About eight of them,' he said. 'Hard to say whose they are.' He peered through the window. They've seen us. They're coming to take a closer look.'

'Are they ours, Jerry?'

'No. I think they're yours. Perhaps your husband...'

'My husband?'

'Maybe.'

Jerry switched on the laservision and tuned it to the radar. Now he had a close-up of the leading Whirlwind and its pilot.

The pilot was thoughtfully chewing a chocolate layer cake as he stared down at Jerry's boat.

'I wonder where he's been.' Jerry's hand went to the launcher's controls. 'I wouldn't like to hurt him.'

'Does he know this is your boat?'

'I shouldn't think so. It's registered in the name of Beesley.'

'A peculiar coincidence.'

'What's peculiar about it?'

But now the helicopters had spotted the launcher and, even though equipped with superior Nord S.S.11air-to-surface missiles, began to bank away.

'Velocidad maxima, I think...' Jerry murmured.

'What?'

The sloop. Time to be on the move.'

'Saints...'

The helicopters vanished over the horizon.

They're heading for London,' she said. 'I think we got away just in time.'

'You could be right.'

'Do you think I'm wrong?'

'Well, they weren't carrying their full complement of missiles, but they were lying rather heavy on the air, wouldn't you say?' He depressed a button and his own launcher disappeared into the bowels of the boat.

Jerry took over the steering as they turned into the Urzel tributary and moved slowly along beneath a canopy of tall aromatic grass. It was evening now and the sun was low, but a little light filtered through to them.

Since the departure of the helicopters, Karen von Krupp had become introspective and had stayed beside him in the cabin, repeatedly playing the Ives piece. Something was bothering her. Finally, as they approached a wooden landing stage, she said, 'Is this, do you think, the answer to our relationship?'

'Of course not.' He squeezed her hand and steered the boat in. 'It's merely the key to the future. Possibly not even that. Don't worry about it.'

With a pout she took the mooring line and jumped to the landing stage, winding the line round and round the oak capstan as he guided the boat into its position. He cut the engines.

'Now let's get those lubbers ashore.' Drawing his vibragun he kicked open the stern hatch. 'All right, mates, out you come. Slowly now.'

Blinking in the last of the sunlight, the transmog patients stumbled on deck and trooped down the gangplank that Karen von Krupp had erected for them.

They all set off along the landing stage towards a field of corn.

'Have you ever wondered about the morality of what you are doing?' she asked. These creatures never asked...'

'They prayed. We heard. We merely serve the people, Karen.'

'Beesley says...'

'... he does, too. I know. Beesley knows what good for them. I simply do what they want me to do. There it is. I'm all for equilibrium.'

They walked along a small path through the corn. A rabbit ran away from them and a partridge whirled into the sky. The roof of a large house could now be seen in the distance. It was Sunnydale Reclamation Centre. Welcoming smoke rose from the chimneys. 'Not much farther now,' Jerry told the transmog patients who tramped ahead, looking at the ground.

'You never question...'

'What is there to question?'

'I...'

'I do what they want me to do.'

'It's like prostitution.'

'It's a lot like prostitution, isn't it?'

'You see nothing wrong...?'

'The customer's always right.'

'And you have no,' she shuddered, 'ethics?'

'I give the public what it wants, if that's what you mean.'

'You have no sense of mission! Ach! At least Beesley has that!' She laughed harshly. 'Ha!'

'I thought it was the same as mine.'

'Nein. It is different. He knows that people want a sense of security.'

'Of course. Do you smell burning?'

'Ja, I do.'

Sunnydale was burning. The staff stood about in the grounds staring helplessly at the Reclamation Centre. Incendiary rockets had done their worst.