Michael Moorcock: A Cure for Cancer

Pettishly the chopper sank towards the flat roof of the Beer-A-Gogo, recently built on the site of the old Billabong Club, and hovered there with undisguised impatience.

Jerry opened the hatch and jumped out, falling elegantly through the thin asbestos sheeting and landing with a bump on mouldy sacks of flour that filled his nostrils with a sour smell. Rats scattered and turned to watch him from the shadows. He sighed and got up, dusting his suit, watching, through the jagged hole, the helicopter disappearing into the sky.

Jerry left the storeroom and stood on the landing listening to the lusty sounds from below. The migrants were celebrating 'Piss on a Pom' week, getting drunk on home brewed beer or 'pickling Percy's plums' as they put it.

Jerry could hear them laughing a great deal as the jokes flew back and forth: 'That's a beaut drop of beer, mate! '/'I'm telling you, drong, that sheila was like a flaming glass of cold beer!'/'Watch you don't spill your fucking beer, sport!'

Some of the lusty singing was also about beer or its absence. The migrants seemed fully absorbed. Jerry walked softly downstairs and sneaked past the main room. He was momentarily dazzled by the electric blue drape suits (Kings Cross Blues) but managed to make the front door into Warwick Avenue, full of Dormobiles, Volkswagen minibuses and Land Rovers covered in pictures of kangaroos, emus and kiwis, all marked FOR SALE.

Jerry tossed a silver yen to a Negro boy with a face daubed in white clay. 'Can you find a cab?'

The boy swaggered around a corner and came back at a run. He was followed by a skinny horse drawing a Lavender Cab, its bright paint peeling to reveal old brown varnish and its upholstery cracked and bursting. The gaunt young man on the box wore a long beard and a fur hat; he signalled with his whip for Jerry to climb into the hansom which rocked and creaked as Jerry got aboard.

Then the whip cracked over the jutting bones of the horse; it lurched forward, snorted and began to gallop down the street at enormous speed. Jerry clung on as the cab rocked from side to side and hurtled across an intersection. From over his head he heard a strange, wild droning and realized that the driver was singing in time to the rhythm of the horse's hooves. The tune seemed to be Auld Lang Syne and only after a while did Jerry realize that the song was a favourite of the 1917-20 war.

'We're here because we're here because we're here,' sang the driver, 'because we're here. We're here because we're here because we're here because we're here. We're here because we're here because we're here because we're here. We're here because we're here because we're here because we're here. We're here because we're here because we're here because we're here. We're here because we're here because we're here because we're here. We're here because we're here because we're here because we're here. We're here because we're here because we're here because we're here. We're here because we're here because we're here because we're here.'

Jerry pushed up the trapdoor in the roof and shouted at the singing, glassy-eyed face, giving his address. The driver continued to drone, but gave a sharp tug on the reins and the cab turned, flinging Jerry to his seat and making the trap shut with a thud.

'We're here because we're here because we're here because we're here. We're here because we're here. We're here because we're here because we're here because we're here. ' Through the west London streets, all desolate and beautiful in the soft tree-filtered sunlight, to the high wall fortress in Ladbroke Grove that had once housed the Convent of the Poor Clares, a closed order. Jerry had bought it from the Catholic Church shortly before the reformation. Behind the heavy metal gates topped by electrified barbed wire came the sound of the Beatles singing Sack in the U. S. S. R. Jerry got out of the cab and before he could pay, the driver had whipped up the horse and was off towards Kilburn, his high voice still singing.

'Dear Prudence, won't you came out to play,' began as Jerry rested his palm on the recognition plate and the gate opened. He glanced, as usual, at the slogan 'Vietgrove' painted on the north wall of the convent. It had been there for two years and continued to puzzle him. It didn't seem to be the work of the regular slogan painters.

Crossing the elm-lined courtyard to the bleak, brick house, Jerry heard a tortured scream coming from one of the barred upper windows and recognized the voice of his latest charge (whom he had come to take to the country), an ex-chairman of the Arts Council of Great Britain, well-known in the early forties as a heavy playing opposite Humphrey Bogart, and now awaiting a crash transmog.

A tricky customer, thought Jerry.

Jerry drove the Phantom VI convertible at a rapid lick. The controls of the car, beautifully designed in diamonds, rubies and sapphires by Gilian Packhard, responded with delicate sensuality to his touch. In the back, in his chamois leather strait-jacket, the transmog case continued to scream.

'EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEHELP MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.'

'That's what we're trying to do, old man. Hang on.'

'Aaaaaaaaaaaahhh! Why? Why? Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawhyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawhyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawhyaaa whyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawhyaaaaaahhhhh! YOU WON'T GET AWAY WITH THIS YOUNG MAN! Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! You'll regret thisaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! WHY! WHY! WHY! AAAAAAAAAAH! Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh! Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh! THE AUTHORITIES WILL SOON CATCH UP WITH YOU, MY FRIEND! OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOH. URSH! YAROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! I SAY, STOP IT, YOU ROTTERS! OOOOOOCH! GAARR! EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE EEEEEEEEEEEEEEK! DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM??????'

'Do you? That's what we're trying to fix. Be quiet, there's a good chap.'

'AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA HHHHHHHHH!' said the ex-chairman defiantly.

Jerry pursed his lips and touched the ruby stud of his taper, adjusted sapphire and diamond controls for balance, and turned up the volume. Soon the passenger's voice was more or less drowned by Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey.

Jerry winked at his black face in the overhead mirror.

'Don't worry, we'll soon have him in the fuzz box,' smiled the kindly old matron as Jerry said goodbye to her at the main door of the Sunnydale Reclamation Centre. The matron had formerly been a Greek millionairess, famous for her escapades, and had known the new client in the old days when he had holidayed aboard her yacht Teddy Bear. She handed Jerry the latest issue of The Organ (A Quarterly Review for its Makers, its Players & its Lovers). This came for you today — at the house.'

'No other mail?'

'Not to my knowledge.'

Jerry put the magazine in his pocket and waved goodbye. In the peaceful grounds of the Centre the day was warm and beautiful. His silky pink Phantom VI stood in the drive, contrasting nicely with the grey and yellow gravel. Pines and birches lined the drive and behind them Jerry could see the red roof of his little Dutch mansion which he'd had shipped from Holland in the days before the blockade.

He leapt into the Phantom VI and was away, touching seventy as he passed the gates and hurtled into the road in the path of a slow silver Cadillac that pulled up sharply as he turned and zoomed off towards the metropolis, his milk-white hair streaming in the wind.