Michael Moorcock - A Cure for Cancer

Jerry didn't mind the bombs as much as the rock scene. He wouldn't care what they sent so long as it wasn't Simon and Garfunkel.

It was like something out of 1962.

He switched off the radio.

Time to turn the lamp on bright.

A killing scene from now on. You couldn't stay smooth for ever.

He began to assemble his gun again, ignoring Matron's panicky knock on the door.

He picked a scarlet shirt with a huge rolled button-down collar and frilly cuffs, scarlet velvet bell-bottoms, crimson suede boots, vermilion frock coat, scarlet cord cap. He combed his milk-white hair and crooned a tune to himself, clipped on his yellow chamois shoulder holster and stepped out into the soft night and his smooth car.

As he drove, he considered the stars. It would all be over in a flash.

Somewhere a clock had stopped.

Jerry checked his watches.

They were running slow, but they were running.

He checked the car clock. It ticked painfully on.

Overwhelmed by a sense of urgency Jerry took the car up to a hundred and fifty. As it flew towards the dawn, he sighted Oxford's dreaming dome.

The day brightened. The sun appeared. Jerry glared at it with tears in his eyes. His heart beat rapidly, but he was filled with a growing stillness.

Was it too late?

Was Beesley's shit hitting the fan?

He roared into the concrete cavern and drove past the gloomy spires, squealing to a stop outside the Ashmolean, charging through its doors and running down the dark avenue of slurring longcase clocks.

The morgue was colder than ever.

He opened the drawer and saw that a thin veil of ice had formed over Catherine's body.

He pressed his hands to her breasts and forced his heat into her.

This time she did not stir, but the ice gradually evaporated, then reformed on his body. Feebly he brushed at it, leaned on the drawer until it was closed, stumbled from the morgue to the room where the red, gold and silver machine took him into its webs.

The machine's voice was faint, its rustling sluggish, and it was a very long time before Jerry revived enough to hear the clock within him begin to move again.

Jerry Cornelius ran across the hall and into another steel room that contained nothing but a huge tape deck. He activated the deck and the twenty-inch spools slowly started to revolve.

He twisted the volume control up to full; gave it maximum and treble response.

The Deep Fix began to play That's My Baby. The old strobes went bravely at it. The wall drifted apart.

Jerry entered the Shifter, nervous as a cat.

Sweet Orb Mace appeared for a moment. She looked sad.

Jerry dashed through the Shifter.

Scenes took a long time to come and a long time to go.

The jewelled air was pretty dull breathing.

Jerry saw himself sixteen times — black, white, male, female -and he was dead.

He raced across the flat, grey, infinite plain, his gun in his hand, sniffing the frigid wind.

There was no doubt that Beesley was operating the machine, had somehow managed to put it into reverse. Though it would mean the same thing in the end, Ragnarok Day was being put back and it didn't suit him. It had to be this Cycle or nothing.

He wheeled and the air was cold brass.

Bishop Beesley stood beside a contraption. At its centre were the belching boiler and the frantically moving pistons and cogs of an ancient red and black steam engine. A system of clockworks had been erected on top of the engine and from a large axle at the top ran a series of iron rods of different length and at different angles. At the ends of the rods were pewter balls of different sizes painted in bright primary colours. Jangling calliope music came from the box that had been geared up at the side of the steam engine. It hurt Jerry's ears as the rods turned, creaked and jerked to the calliope's rhythm.

Bishop Beesley beamed.

'My own invention, Mr Cornelius! You see, you are not the only one capable of building a sophisticated machine. This is the Beesley Steam Driven Calliopic Orrery! BEHOLD — THE RHYTHM OF THE SPHERES!'

Jerry ran at the machine and was hurled back by Pluto striking him on the side of the jaw. He raised his gun.

But the balls whirled faster and faster and the music shrilled and the steam engine bounced and bellowed. Bishop Beesley waved his pale hands.

'You've thrown it out of control, you assassin!'

Beesle'y tried to crawl under the whizzing balls to reach the controls. Jerry lowered his gun.

The balls began to shoot off in all directions. The steam engine screamed. Neptune narrowly missed Jerry's head.

'You have thrown it into chaos!' wailed Beesley.

The steam engine exploded.

Jerry was hurled into a field of lilies where a herd of giant antelopes grazed. He got up and kept on running, dodging into Fleet Street's horse-drawn traffic, weaving through the shallows of a tropical river and avoiding mangrove roots and alligators, loping into Wencslaslas Square as Russian tanks burned, and side-stepping into Regents Park Zoo by the Elephant Enclosure.

The elephants were dead, their skins blistered by napalm.

Jerry knew he was home.

The risk had paid off.

Some sectors had been overlooked.

Little monuments of trees, grass and buildings, undamaged by the bombing, stood out against the ash-covered rubble of London.