Introduction

   The discovery and subsequent publication of two manuscripts left in the 
possession of my grandfather has led
to a considerable amount of speculation as to their authenticity and authorship. 
The manuscripts consisted of one
made in my grandfather's hand and taken down from the mysterious
Captain Bastable whom he met on Rowe Island in the early years of this century, 
and another, apparently written
by Bastable himself, which was left with my grandfather when he visited China 
searching for the man who had
become, he was told, 'a nomad of the time-streams'.
   These very slightly edited texts were published by me as THE WARLORD OF THE 
AIR and THE LAND
LEVIATHAN and I was certain that it was the last I should ever know of 
Bastable's adventures. When I remarked
in a concluding note to THE LAND LEVIATHAN that I hoped Una Persson would some 
day pay me a visit I was
being ironic. I did not believe that I should ever meet the famous chrononaut. 
As luck would have it, I began to
receive visits from her very shortly after I had prepared THE LAND LEVIATHAN. 
She seemed glad to have me
to talk to and gave me permission to use much of what she told me about her 
experiences in our own and others'
time-streams. On the matter of Oswald Bastable, however, she was incommunicative 
and I learned very quickly
not to pump her. Most of my references to him in other books (for instance THE 
DANCERS AT THE END OF
TIME) were highly speculative.
   In the late spring of 1979, shortly after I had finished a novel and was 
resting from the consequent exhaustion,
which had left my private life in ruins and my judgment considerably weakened, I 
had a visit from Mrs. Persson at
my flat in London. I was in no mood to see another human being, but she had 
heard from somewhere (or perhaps
had already seen from the future) that I was in distress and had come to ask if 
there was anything she could do for
me. I said that there was nothing. Time and rest would deal with my problems.
   She acknowledged this and, with a small smile, added: 'But eventually you 
will need to work.'
   I suppose I said something self-pitying about never being able to work again 
(I share that in common with
almost every creative person I know) and she did not attempt to dissuade me from 
the notion.
   'However,' she said, 'if you do ever happen to feel the urge, I'll be in 
touch.'
   Curiosity caught me. 'What are you talking about?'
   'I have a story for you,' she said.
   'I have plenty of stories,' I told her, 'but no will to do anything with 
them. Is it about Jherek Carnelian or the
Duke of Queens?'
   She shook her head. 'Not this time.'
   'Everything seems pointless,' I said.
   She patted me on the arm. 'You should go away for a bit. Travel.'
   'Perhaps.'
   'And when you come back to London, I'll have the story waiting,' she 
promised.
   I was touched by her kindness and her wish to be of use and I thanked her. As 
it happened a friend fell ill in
Los Angeles and I decided to visit him. I stayed far longer in the United States 
than I had originally planned and
eventually, after a short stay in Paris, settled in England for a while in the 
spring of 1980.
   As Una Persson had predicted, I was, of course, ready to work. And, as she 
had promised, she turned up one
evening, dressed in her usual slightly old-fashioned clothes of a military cut. 
We enjoyed a drink and some general
talk and I heard gossip from the End of Time, a period that has always 
fascinated me. Mrs. Persson is a seasoned
time-traveler and usually knows what and what not to tell, for incautious words 
can have an enormous effect either
on the time-streams themselves or on that rarity, like herself, the chrononaut 
who can travel through them more or
less at will.
   She has always told me that so long as people regard my stories as fiction 
and as long as they are fashioned to
be read as fiction then neither of us should be victims of the Morphail Effect, 
which is Time's sometimes-radical
method of readjusting itself. The Morphail Effect is manifested most evidently 
in the fact that, for most time-
travelers, only 'forward' movement through time (i.e. into their own future) is 
possible. 'Backward' movement (a
return to their present or past) or movement between the various alternative 
planes is impossible for anyone save
those few who make up the famous Guild of Temporal Adventurers. I knew that 
Bastable had become a member
of this Guild, but did not know how he had been recruited, unless it had been in 
the Valley of the Dawn by Mrs.
Persson herself.
   'I have brought you something,' she said. She settled herself in her armchair 
and reached down for a black
document case. 'They are not complete, but they are the best I can do. The rest 
you will have to fill in from what I
tell you and from your own perfectly good imagination.' It was a bundle of 
manuscript. I recognized the hand at
once. It was Bastable's.
   'Good God!' I was astonished. 'He's turning into a novelist!'
   'Not exactly. These are fresh memoirs that are all. He's read the others and 
is perfectly satisfied with what
you've done with them. He was extremely fond of your grandfather and says that 
he would be quite glad to
continue the tradition with you. Particularly, he says, since you've had rather 
better success in getting his stories
published!' She laughed.
   The manuscript was a sizable one. I weighed it in my hand. 'So he was never 
able to find his own period again?
Or return to the life he so desperately wanted?'
   'That's not for me to say. You'll notice from the manuscript that there's 
little explanation as to how he came to
the particular alternative time-stream he describes. Suffice to say he returned 
to Teku Benga, crossed into yet
another continuum and found his way to the airship-yards at Benares. This time 
he was reconciled to what had
happened and, being an experienced airshipman, claimed slight
Amnesia and a loss of papers. Eventually he got himself a mate's certificate, 
though it was impossible for him,
without impeccable credentials, to find a berth with any of the major lines.'
   I smiled. 'And he's still haunted by angst, I suppose?'
   'To a degree, He has many lives on his conscience. He knows only worlds at 
war. But we of the Guild
understand what a responsibility we carry and I think membership has helped 
him.'
   'And I'll never meet him?'
   'It's unlikely. This stream would probably reject him, turn him into that 
poor creature your grandfather
described, flung this way and that through Time, with no control whatsoever over 
his destiny.'
   'He has that in common with most of us,' I remarked.
   She was amused. 'I see you're still not completely over your self-pity, 
Moorcock.'
   I smiled and apologized. 'I'm very excited by this.' I held up the 
manuscript. 'Bastable presumably wants it
published as soon as possible. Why?'
   'Perhaps it's mere vanity. You know how people become once they see their 
names in print.'
   'Poor?'
   We both laughed at this.
   'He trusts you, too,' she continued. 'He knows that you did not tamper with 
his work and also that he has been
of some use to you in your researches.'
   'As have you, Mrs. Persson.'
   'I'm glad. We enjoy what you do.'
   'You find my speculations funny?' I said.
   'That, too. We leave it to your rather strange imagination to produce the 
necessary obfuscations!'
   I looked at the manuscript. I was surprised to notice a few peculiar 
correspondences and coincidences when
compared with my grandfather's first manuscript. Yet Bastable appeared not to 
make some of the connections the
reader might make. I remarked on it to Mrs. Persson.
   'Our minds can hold only so much,' she said. 'As I've mentioned before, 
sometimes we do suffer from genuine
amnesia, or at least a kind of blocking out of much of our memory. It is one of 
the ways in which we are
sometimes able to enter time-streams not open to the general run of 
chrononauts.'
   'Time makes you forget?' I said ironically.
   'Exactly.'
   'As someone who affects anarchism,' I said. 'I'm curious about the references 
here to Kerensky's Russia. Could
it be that-?'
   She stopped me. 'I can't tell you any more until you have read the 
manuscript.'

   'A world in which the Bolshevik Revolution did not take place. He hints at it 
in the other story . . .' I had often
wondered what the Russian Empire would have been like in such circumstances, for 
one of my other abiding
interests is in the Soviet Union and its literature, which was so badly stifled 
under Stalin.
   'You must read what Bastable has written, then ask me some questions. I'll 
answer where I can. It is up to you,
he says, how much "shape" you give it, as a professional writer. But he trusts 
you to preserve the basic spirit of the
memoir.'
   'I shall do my best.'
   And here, for better or worse, is Oswald Bastable's third memoir. I have done 
as little work on it as possible
and present it to the reader pretty much as I received it. As to its 
authenticity, that is for you to judge.


Michael Moorcock, Three Chimneys, Yorkshire, England.
June 1980






Part One
An English Airshipman's Adventures in the Great War of 1941

1. The Manner of My Dying

   It was, I think, my fifth day at sea when the revelation came. Just as at 
some stage of his existence a man can
reach a particular decision about how to lead his life, so can he come to a 
similar decision about how to encounter
death. He can face the grim simple truth of his dying, or he can prefer to lose 
himself in some pleasant fantasy,
some dream of heaven or of salvation, and so face his end almost with pleasure.
   On my sixth day at sea it was obvious that I was to die and it was then that 
I chose to accept the illusion rather
than the reality.
   I had lain all morning at the bottom of the dugout. My face was pressed 
against wet, steaming wood. The
tropical sun throbbed down on the back of my unprotected head and blistered my 
withered flesh. The slow
drumming of my heart filled my ears and counter pointed the occasional slap of a 
wave against the side of the boat.
   All I could think was that I had been spared one kind of death in order to 
die alone out here on the ocean. And I
was grateful for that. It was much better than the death I had left behind.
   Then I heard the cry of the seabird and I smiled a little to myself. I knew 
that the illusion was beginning. There
was no possibility that I was in sight of land and therefore I could not really 
have heard a bird. I had had many
similar auditory hallucinations in recent days.
   I began to sink into what I knew must be my final coma. But the cry grew more 
insistent. I rolled over and
blinked in the white glare of the sun. I felt the boat rock crazily with the 
movement of my thin body. Painfully I
raised my head and peered through a shifting haze of silver and blue and saw my 
latest vision. It was a very fine
one: more prosaic than some, but more detailed, too.
   I had conjured up an island. An island rising at least a thousand feet out of 
the water and about ten miles long
and four miles wide: a monstrous pile of volcanic basalt, limestone and coral, 
with deep green patches of foliage
on its flanks.
   I sank back into the dugout, squeezing my eyes shut and congratulating myself 
on the power of my own
imagination. The hallucinations improved as any hopes of surviving vanished. I 
knew it was time to give myself
up to madness, to pretend that the island was real and so die a pathetic rather 
than a dignified death.

   I chuckled. The sound was a dry, death rattle.
   Again the seabird screamed.
   Why rot slowly and painfully for perhaps another thirty hours when I could 
die now in a comforting dream of
having been saved at the last moment?
   With the remains of my strength I crawled to the stern and grasped the 
starting cord of the outboard. Weakly I
jerked at it. Nothing happened. Doggedly, I tried again. And again. And all the 
while I kept my eyes on the island,
waiting to see if it would shimmer and disappear before I could make use of it.
   I had seen so many visions in the past few days. I had seen milk-white angels 
with crystal cups of pure water
drifting just out of my reach. I had seen blood-red devils with fiery pitchforks 
piercing my skin.
   I had seen enemy airships, which popped like bubbles just as they were about 
to release their bombs on me. I
had seen orange-sailed schooners as tall as the Empire State Building. I had 
seen schools of tiny black whales. I
had seen rose-colored coral atolls on which lounged beautiful young women whose 
faces turned into the faces of
Japanese soldiers as I came closer and who then slid beneath the waves where I 
was sure they were trying to
capsize my boat. But this mirage retained its clarity no matter how hard I 
stared and it was so much more detailed
than the others.
   The engine fired after the tenth attempt to start it. There was hardly any 
fuel left. The screw squealed, rasped
and began to turn. The water foamed. The boat moved reluctantly across a flat 
sea of burnished steel, beneath a
swollen and throbbing disc of fire, which was the sun, my enemy.
   I straightened up, squatting like a desiccated old toad on the floor of the 
boat, whimpering as I gripped the tiller, for
its touch sent shards of fire through my hand and into my body.
   Still the hallucination did not waver; it even appeared to grow larger as I 
approached it. I completely forgot my pain
as I allowed myself to be deceived by this splendid mirage.
   I steered under brooding gray cliffs, which fell sheer into the sea. I came 
to the lower slopes of the island and saw
palms, their trunks bowed as if in prayer, swaying over sharp rocks washed by 
white surf. There was even a brown crab
scuttling across a rock; there was weed and lichen of several varieties; 
seabirds diving in the shallows and darting
upwards with shining fish in their long beaks. Perhaps the island was real, 
after all . . .?
   But then I had rounded a coral outcrop and at once discovered the final 
confirmation of my complete madness. For
here was a high concrete wall: a harbor wall encrusted above the water line with 
barnacles and coral and tiny plants. It
had been built to follow the natural curve of a small bay. And over the top of 
the wall I saw the roofs and upper stories
of houses, which might have belonged to a town on any part of the English coast. 
And as a superb last touch there was a
flagpole at which flew a torn and weather-stained Union Jack! My fantasy was 
complete. I had created an English
fishing port in the middle of the Indian Ocean.
   I smiled again. The movement caused the blistered skin of my lips to crack 
still more. I ignored the discomfort. Now
all I had to do was enter the harbor, step off onto what I believed to be dry 
land - and drown. It was a fine way to die. I
gave another hoarse, mad chuckle, full of self-admiration, and I abandoned 
myself to the world of my mind.
   Guiding my boat round the wall I found the harbor mouth. It was partly 
blocked by the wreck of a steamer. Rust-red
funnels and masts rose above the surface. The water was unclouded and as I 
passed I could see the rest of the sunken
ship leaning on the pink coral with multicolored fish swimming in and out of its 
hatches and portholes. The name was
still visible on her side: Jeddah, Manila.
   Now I saw the little town quite clearly.
   The buildings were in that rather spare Victorian or Edwardian neoclassical 
style and had a distinctly run-down
look about them. They seemed deserted and some were obviously boarded up. Could 
I not perhaps create a few
inhabitants before I died? Even a laskar or two would be better than nothing, 
for I now realized that I had built a
typical Outpost of Empire. These were colonial buildings, not English ones, and 
there were square, largely
undecorated native buildings mixed in with them.
   On the quay stood various sheds and offices. The largest of these bore the 
faded slogan Welland Rock
Phosphate Company. A nice touch of mine. Behind the town stood something 
resembling a small and pitted
version of the Eiffel Tower. A battered airship mooring mast! Even better!
   Out from the middle of the quay stretched a stone mole. It had been built for 
engine-driven cargo ships, but
there were only a few rather seedy looking native fishing dhows moored there 
now. They looked hardly seaworthy.
I headed towards the mole, croaking out the words of the song I had not sung for 
the past two days.
   'Rule Britannia, Britannia rules the waves! Britons never, never shall be - 
marr-I-ed to a mer-MI-ad at the
bottom of the deep, blue sea!'
   As if invoked by my chant Malays and Chinese materialized on the quayside. 
Some of them began to run along
the jetty, their brown and yellow bodies gleaming in the sunshine, their thin 
arms gesticulating. They wore
loincloths or sarongs of various colors and wide coolie hats of woven palm-
leaves shaded their faces. I even heard
their voices babbling in excitement as they approached.
   I laughed as the boat bumped against the weed-grown jetty. I tried to stand 
up to address these wonderful
creatures of my imagination. I felt godlike, I suppose. And to talk to them was 
the least, after all, that I could do.  I
opened my mouth. I spread my arms.
   'My friends-'
   And my starved body collapsed under me. I fell backwards into the dugout, 
striking my shoulder on the empty
petrol can, which had contained my water.
   There came a few words shouted in Pidgin English and a brown figure in 
patched white shorts jumped into the
canoe, which rocked violently, jolting the last tatters of sense from my skull.
   White teeth grinned. 'You okay now, sar.'
   'I can't be,' I said.
   'Jolly good, sar.'
   Red darkness came.
   I had set off to sail over a thousand miles to Australia in an open boat. I 
had barely managed to make two
hundred, and most of that in the wrong direction.
   The date was May 3rd, 1941. I had been at sea for about a hundred and fifty 
hours. It was three months since
the Destruction of Singapore by the Third Fleet of the Imperial Japanese Aerial 
Navy.




































2. The Destruction of Singapore

   It had been a Utopia of sorts, which the Japanese destroyed.
   Designed as a model for other great settlements which would in the future 
spring up throughout the East,
Singapore's white graceful skyscrapers, her systems of shining monorails, her 
complex of smoothly-run airparks,
had been lovingly laid out as an example to our Empire's duskier citizens of the 
benefits which British rule would
eventually bring them.
   And Singapore was burning. I am probably the last European to have witnessed 
her destruction.
After serving on the Portuguese aerial freighter, Palmerin, for a couple of 
months, I took several berths for single
voyages, usually filling in for sick men, or men on leave, until I found myself 
in Rangoon without any chance of a
job. I ran out of money in Rangoon and was willing to begin any kind of 
employment, even considered enlisting as
a private in the army, when I was told by one of my bar acquaintances of a 
mate's position which had become
vacant the night before.
   'Chap was killed in a fight in Shari's house,' he said, nodding down the 
street. 'The skipper started the fight.
He's not offering good money, but it could get you somewhere better than 
Rangoon, eh?'
   'Indeed.'
   'He's just over there? Want to meet him?'
   I agreed. And that was how I came, eventually, to Singapore, though not in 
the ship on which I had signed.
   A greasy Greek merchantman, the Andreas Papadakis, from some disgusting 
Cypriot port, trading in any
marginally lucrative cargo which more fastidious captains would reject, had 
originally been bound for Bangkok
when her engines had given out during an electrical storm which also affected 
our wireless telephone. We had
drifted for two days, trying to make repairs aloft and losing two of our
Crew in the process, by the time the old windbag began to sag badly in the 
middle and drift towards the ground.
   The Papadakis was not much suited to rough weather of any kind and could not 
be relied upon in even a minor
crisis. The gondola cables and our steering cables both were badly in need of 
repair and we should have waited our
moment and come down over water if we hoped for any chance of landing without 
serious damage, but by now the
captain was drunk on retsina and refused to listen to my advice, while the rest 
of the crew, a mixed bunch of cut-
throats from most parts of the Adriatic, were in a panic. I did my best to 
persuade the captain to let go our
remaining gas, but he told me he knew best. The result was that we had begun to 
drop rapidly as we neared the
coast of the Malay Peninsula, the Andreas Papadakis groaning and complaining the 
whole time and threatening to
come apart at the seams.
   She shivered and trembled in every section as the captain stared blearily 
through the forward ports and began, it
seemed to me, to argue in Greek with the powers of Fate, on whom he blamed the 
entire disaster. It was as if he
thought he could talk or soothe his way out of the inevitable fact. I kept my 
hands on the wheel, praying to sight a
lake or at least a river, but we were heading over dense jungle. I remember a 
mass of waving green branches, an
appalling screech of metal and wood as they met, a blow to my ribs, which 
knocked me backwards into the arms of
the captain who must have died muttering some wretched Cypriot remonstration.
   He saved my life, as it happened, by cushioning my own fall and breaking his 
back. I came to once or twice
while I was being pulled from the wreckage, but only really regained my senses 
when I woke up in St Mary's
Hospital, Changi, Singapore. I had a few broken bones, which were mending, some 
minor internal injuries, which
had been tended to, and I would soon be recovered, thanks to the Airshipmen's 
Distress Fund, which had paid for
my medical, treatment and the period during which I would recuperate.
   I had been lucky. There were only two other survivors. Five more had died in 
one of the native hospitals to
which they had been taken.
   While I rested, somewhat relieved not to be worrying about work and glad to 
be in Singapore, where there
was every chance of finding decent employment, I began to read about the 
tensions growing between several
of the Great Powers. Japan was disputing territory with Russia. The Russians, 
even though they were now a
republic, had almost as much imperial determination as the Japs. However, we 
knew nothing of the War until
the night of February 22nd, 1941: the night of the attack by Japan's Third 
Fleet: the night when a British
dream of Utopia was destroyed perhaps forever.
   We were trying to escape what was left of the colony. An ambulance ship was 
moored to an improvised
mast and the vessel all but filled the blackened, ruined grounds of St Mary's: a 
huge airship silhouetted
against a sky which was ruby red with the flames of a thousand fires. The scene 
was surreal. I think of it
today as the flight from Sodom and Gomorrah, but in Noah's Ark! Tiny figures of 
patients and staff rushed,
panic-stricken, into the vessel's swollen belly while everywhere overhead moved 
monstrous, implacable
Japanese flying ironclads. They had come suddenly, mindless beasts of the upper 
regions, to seed Singapore
with their incendiary spawn.
   Our resistance had been impotent. Far away a few searchlight beams wandered 
about the sky, sometimes
showing a dense cloud of smoke from which could be glimpsed a section of one of 
the vast aerial men-o'-war.
Then the three remaining anti-aircraft guns would boom and send up shells, which 
either missed or exploded
harmlessly against the side of the attacking craft. There were several of our 
monoplanes still buzzing through
the blackness at speeds of over four hundred miles an hour, firing uselessly 
into hulls stronger than steel.
They were picked off by tracer bullets shrieking from armored gun-gondolas. I 
saw a hover gyro whirl like a
frightened humming bird out of the flames, and then it, too, was struck by 
magnesium bullets and went
spinning into the flaming chaos below.
   Our ship was not the latest type. Few hospital ships ever were. The cigar-
shaped hull protecting the gasbags
was of strong boron-fiberglass, but the two-tiered gondola below was more 
vulnerable. This gondola contained
crew and passenger accommodation, engines, fuel and ballast tanks, and into it 
we were packing as many human
beings as we could. I, of course, almost fully recovered, was helping the 
doctors and medical staff.
   Without much hope of the ship's being able to get away, I helped carry 
stretchers up one of the two folding
staircases lowered from the bowels of the ship. This in itself was a hard enough 
task, for the vessel was insecurely
anchored and it swayed and strained at the dozen or so steel cables holding it 
to the ground.
   The last terrified patient was packed in and the last nurses, carrying 
bundles of blankets and medical supplies,
hurried aboard while airmen unpegged the gangways so they could be folded back 
into the ship. The stairs began
to bounce like a cakewalk at a fair as, with the riggers, I managed to climb 
into the ship, losing my footing several
times, shaken so much I felt my body would fall to pieces.
   Suddenly several incendiary bombs struck the hospital at once. The darkness 
exploded with shouting flame.
More bombs burst in the grounds, but incredibly none hit the airship direct. For 
a moment I was blinded by
brilliant silver light and a wave of intense heat struck my face and hands.
   From somewhere above I heard the captain shout 'Let slip!' even before the 
gangway was fully raised.
   I clutched and found a handrail, dropped the box I had been carrying and 
desperately tried to grope my way up
the few final rungs before I should be crushed by the automatically closing 
steps. My vision returned quickly and I
saw the cables lashing as if in fury at having to release their grip on the 
ship.
   And then I stood on the embarkation platform itself and my immediate danger 
was past.







3. The Crash

   Not much later I sighted the large conglomeration of tightly crowded together 
buildings, which was the port of
Surabaya. A busy city of mixed European and Malayan architecture, it was one of 
the few big ports to survive the
decline of conventional shipping in favor of the air-going cargo vessels. Its 
harbor was still crammed with
steamers and the whole place looked unnaturally peaceful in the early morning 
light. I felt an irrational surge of
jealousy, a desire that Surabaya too might one-day experience what Singapore had 
experienced. What right had
this dirty, ugly port to survive when a mighty monument to a humane and 
idealistic Empire had perished in
flames?
   I pushed these dreadful ideas from my head. In a few more moments we should 
be crashing into the sea.
Without power of any kind, the ship was going to have great difficulty in 
landing short of the harbor itself.
   The whole vessel suddenly shuddered and I called for the staff to stand by as 
some patients began to moan
questions or whimper in fear. The ship turned and began to drift in a clumsy, 
barely controlled maneuver and I lost
sight of the town altogether. I saw only a stream launch surging over the waves 
and turning to follow us, leaving a
white scar in the sea. There came a peculiar creaking and groaning from overhead 
as if some unusual strain had
been placed on the gasbags and the hull containing them.
   We began to drop.
   A wailing went up from the patients then and we did our best to reassure them 
that everything was in order and
that soon they would be in safe hospital beds in Surabaya.
   I saw the sea shoot up to meet us, and then retreat again. We began to move 
in a series of shuddering leaps as if
riding a gigantic switchback. Somewhere a whole collection of crockery smashed 
to the deck and it was all I could
do to hold myself upright by the safety rail.
   And then, to my horror, I saw the roofs of the city below. Our gondola was 
almost scraping the highest of
the buildings as we sped over them. We had missed the sea altogether and were 
traveling rapidly inland! The
captain had left his decision until it was too late.
   I heard the intercom buzz and then came the first officer's strained tones. A 
sudden strong following wind
had blown up just as we were about to descend and this had completely thrown out 
everyone's calculations.
The captain intended to try to take the ship right across the island and land in 
the sea near Djogjakarta, which
was the nearest town we were likely to reach, considering the present direction 
of the wind. However, a lot of
gas had already been valved out and we might not be able to gain enough height. 
In that event we must be
prepared for a crash-landing on the ground.
   I well knew what that would mean. The ship was considerably overburdened. If 
she fell from the sky to
the land there was every chance we should all be killed.
   A patient, wakened from sedation by the first officer's voice, screamed in 
alarm. A nurse hurried to soothe
him.
   The ship shivered and her nose came up sharply so that the deck tilted at a 
steep angle. Then the nose
dipped and a few objects not secured began to slide down towards the bow. I 
jammed my foot against the rail.
Through the ports I saw a Dutch flying boat follow us as if trying to make out 
the reason for our change of
plan. Then, perhaps despairing of us, it turned back towards the sea.
   Surabaya was behind us. Below us now lay a wide expanse of neat rice paddies, 
rows of tamarind trees
and fields of tall sugar cane. We were so low that I could make out the heads of 
peasants looking up at us as
our shadow moved across their fields. Then I was thrown against the rail as a 
fresh gust of wind caught the
ship and slewed round again, revealing the kapok plantations on the slopes of 
Java's grim volcanic hillsides.
   I thought we were bound to crash into the hills, for they were rising steeply 
and were beginning to turn
into the gray flanks of mountains. From some of these drifted wisps of yellowish 
white smoke. Instinctively I
braced myself, but we just managed to cross the first line of mountains. And 
ahead I could see denser clouds of
pale gray smoke, coiling and boiling like a tangle of lazy serpents.
   The ship jerked her nose up again and we ascended a few feet. The damaged 
tail planes caused us to make a
crazy zigzag over the landscape and I could see our elongated shadow moving 
erratically below. Then our motion
steadied, but it seemed inevitable to me that we must soon crash into one of the 
many semi-active volcanoes,
which dominated Java's interior.
   I was unprepared for the next lurch and I lost my grip on the rail as we 
started to go up rapidly. Clambering to
my feet I saw that the ship had released her water ballast. It sprayed like a 
sudden rainstorm over the dusty slopes
of the mountains. Perhaps, after all, we would make the sea on the other side.
   But a few moments later the captain's voice came through the loudspeakers. It 
was calm enough under the
circumstances. It told us that we were going to have to lighten the ship as much 
as possible. We were to make
ready all non-essential materials and the crew would collect them from us in a 
couple of minutes.
   Frantically we stumbled about the ward gathering up everything, which could 
be thrown overboard. Eventually
we had handed to the airshipmen a great pile of books, food, medical supplies, 
clothing, bedding, oxygen cylinders
and more. All went overboard.
   And the ship rose barely enough to clear the next range of mountains.
   I wondered if the captain would ask for volunteers to jump from the ship 
next. We were by this time flying over
a bleak and barren wasteland of cold lava ridges, with not so much as a clump of 
palms to break our descent
should we crash. The tension in the wards had increased again and those patients 
not still asleep were talking in
high, panicky voices.
   Some of the questions were difficult to answer. Among the 'non-essential' 
materials taken from us had been the
bodies of those who had died in transit.
   But even this act of desperate callousness had bought us very little time.
   The intercom crackled again. The first officer began to speak.
   'Please ready yourselves for - Oh, God!'
   The next moment I saw the gray mountainside rushing towards us and before we 
fully realized it, we were
engulfed in clouds of white-white smoke and our keel was making a frightful 
screaming sound as it scraped
the sides of the cliff.
   The screams of the patients joined the scream of the ship itself. I heard a 
monstrous creaking noise and
then I was flung away from the rail and felt myself sliding towards the bunks.
   The vessel bounced and juddered, seemed to gain height for a moment and then 
came down with a
horrifying crack, which sent the bunks crashing loose from their moorings. I had 
the impression of waving
arms and legs, of terrified faces. I heard trays of instruments clattering and 
saw bodies flying about like rag
dolls. A great wail filled my ears and then the ship rolled, went up again and 
came down for the last time. In a
flailing mass of bodies I was flung towards the starboard side. I saw my head 
rushing towards a fiberglass
strut near the observation ports. I tried to put out my hands to stop the 
impact, but the bodies and objects on
top of me trapped them. There came the final crash of impact and I remember 
being filled with an almost
cheerful sense of relief that I had been killed and the ordeal was over at last.









4. Prisoners

   I think I must have awakened briefly once and heard peculiar squeaky voices 
babbling from somewhere far
away and I realized that the hydrogen was escaping and thus causing the speakers 
to talk in high-pitched tones.
Deciding that I was alive and sure to be rescued, I fell back into 
unconsciousness.
   When I next awoke I tried to move but could not. I thought that perhaps my 
back was broken, for there was
little sensation save for the impression that something heavy was pressing down 
on me.
    Because of this pressure I found it very difficult to breathe in deeply 
enough to shout for the help that I was
sure must be near, for I could hear people moving about quite close by.
   The voices were no longer squeaky but they were not familiar either. I 
listened carefully. The voices were
shouting some variant of Malay difficult for me to understand. I thought at 
first that the local peasantry, the
sulphur gatherers who work the volcanoes, had come to rescue us. I could smell 
the acrid smoke and it made
breathing even harder. My next attempt to cry out failed. Then I heard more 
shouts.
   And the shouts were followed by sharp reports, which I did recognize. Gun 
shots.
   With a feeling of terrible impotence I tried to move my head to see what was 
happening.
   The shouting stopped. There was stillness. Then a thin, hysterical scream. 
Another shot. Silence. A Malay
voice giving rapid, savage commands.
   Painfully, at last, I managed to turn my head and peer out of a jumble of 
twisted struts and wreckage. I saw
bodies impaled on jagged shards of fiberglass and beyond them a pall of smoke 
through which dim figures moved.
As the smoke cleared I saw bright flashes of green, red and yellow
Silk. These Malays were not sulphur-gatherers that were certain.
   Then I saw them clearly. They were clad in the familiar style of Malay 
bandits and pirates from Koto Raja
to Timor. They wore richly colored sarongs and embroidered jackets. On their 
heads were pitjis, turbans or
wide coolie hats. There were sandals of painted leather on their brown feet and 
their bodies were crossed with
bandoliers of cartridges. At their belts hung bolstered revolvers, knives and 
parangs and they had rifles in
their hands. I saw one come towards me, a look of cruel hatred frozen on his 
features. I dropped my head and
shut my eyes, hearing him poke about in the wreckage above me. I heard a shot 
close to my face and thought
he had fired at me, but the bullet landed in a corpse lying on top of me. He 
moved away.
I looked up again.
   The bandits were herding the survivors down the mountain. Through the smoke I 
could see nurses in
smudged, torn white uniforms, doctors still dressed in medical overalls or in 
shirtsleeves, airshipmen in sky
blue, staggering ahead of their captors. But there were no patients among them. 
I watched in dazed despair
until the smoke swallowed them up.
   Then slowly, as it dawned on me what had happened to my companions, pain 
began to flood through my
body. I strained to twist myself round and see what pinned me in the wreckage.
   One of the relatively light bunks had fallen on top of me and in the bunk was 
the body of a child. Its dead
face, the eyes wide open, stared into mine. I shuddered and tried to lift the 
bunk clear. It moved slightly. The
child's head rolled. I turned, reached out with bleeding hands and grasped a 
broken strut in front of me,
pulling myself desperately from under the bunk until I was free and my breathing 
was easier. But my legs
were still numb and I could not stand. I leaned forward and got a hold on 
another strut, using that to pull my
body a few more inches over the wreckage, then I think I fainted for a few 
minutes.
   It took me a long time to pull myself over the struts and the broken slabs of 
hull, and the corpses until I lay
on the outer areas of the wreckage on hard stone.
   For all I was bruised and bleeding, I had no bones broken. The bodies of 
those who had died had saved me
from the worst of the impact. Gradually the feeling came back to my legs and I 
was able to stand, gritting my teeth
against the pain. I looked around me.
   I was standing by the main wreckage of the ship on a mountain coated with 
streamers of yellow sulphur dust.
Everywhere were bodies - crumpled, broken bodies of men, women and children, of 
patients in nightgowns and
pajamas, of wounded soldiers in tattered uniforms, of airship officers and 
crewmen, of nurses, orderlies and
doctors. Nearly two thousand bodies and not one of them stirred as the wind 
moved the slow smoke over them,
and the yellow dust swirled, and shreds of fabric fluttered amongst the crumpled 
ruins of the giant airship. Without
hope I wandered through the piles of dead.
   Two thousand human beings who had sought to escape death in the fires of 
Singapore, only to find it on the
barren, windswept rocks of an unknown Javanese hillside. I sighed and sat down, 
picking up a crushed packet of
cigarettes I had seen. I opened the packet and took out one of the flattened 
cigarettes, lighting it and trying to think.
But it was no good, my brain refused to function.
   I looked about me. Jagged holes gaped in the airship's hull. Most of the 
gasbags had been ripped open and the
helium lost. The wreckage covered a vast area of the mountainside. There was 
nowhere I looked which was not
littered with it. And over it all moved thick ribbons of smoke from the volcano.
   The smoke stroked the broken bones of the ship, the smashed gondolas, and the 
ruined engine nacelles, like the
phantoms of the dead welcoming others into their ranks.
   I got up and put out the cigarette with a stained, scratched boot. I coughed 
on the fumes and I shivered with
reaction and with cold. The slope was probably a thousand feet above sea level. 
It was not surprising that the
overloaded ship had crashed. Numbly I continued my search for survivors but at 
the end of two hours I had found
only corpses. What was still more horrifying was that many had actually survived 
the crash. As I searched I found
little girls and boys who had been shot through the head or had their throats 
cut, young and old women butchered
by parangs, men who had been decapitated. The bandits had been through the 
survivors systematically killing all
those who for one reason or another had been unable or unwilling to walk. As the 
horror increased I was suddenly
seized by nausea and stood with one hand leaning on a rock while I vomited again 
and again until all that came out
of me were dry, retching coughs. Then I walked back to the main wreckage and 
found a blanket and a plastic
container of water. I stripped off my useless lifejacket and wrapped myself in 
the blanket, stumbling up the
mountainside until I was clear of the corpses. Then I slept.
   I awoke before dawn and I was shivering. From somewhere below came a chilling 
howl which at first I
mistook for that of a human being. Then I realized that the howl came from a 
wild dog hunting in the forest at the
foot of the mountain. As dawn broke I went back to the wreck.
   By now I had worked out roughly what had happened. Plainly the crash had been 
witnessed by one of the many
rebel gangs who normally occupied these heights and, from time to time, would 
raid the Dutch towns and
farmsteads below. Inspired by the support of both the Japanese and their more 
sophisticated nationalist
countrymen, these rebels had recently grown bolder and had come to offer a 
serious threat to the colonists.
Whether they called themselves bandits, pirates or 'nationalists', all hated the 
whites in general and the Dutch in
particular. They had captured the survivors probably as hostages or possibly to 
deliver to their Japanese friends in
return for more guns or supplies. Possibly they might just want to take pleasure 
in killing them slowly. I couldn't
be sure. But I did know that if they found me I should suffer the same fate and 
none of the prospects were pleasant.
   There had been few weapons aboard the hospital ship and for all I was 
inclined to arm myself I did not bother
to hunt among the dead for a gun. The rebels would probably have found any there 
were. Instead I rescued another
plastic container of water, a box of rather stale sandwiches, discovered a 
kitbag of medical supplies which I
shouldered and then, thoughtfully, for I knew I might sooner or later find 
myself in thick jungle, tugged a parang
from the body of one of the very nurses who had restored me to health at Changi.
   I stumbled away from the broken hulk of the aircraft, going down the 
mountain. My eyes stung and my throat
felt clogged with sulphur.
   I was still moving as if in a trance - moving, as it were, from one dream and 
into another. Nothing had seemed
completely real since the first ships of the Japanese Air Fleet had been sighted 
in the skies over Singapore.
   Yet for all that I went warily through the drifting smoke. I had no wish to 
be plunged into the nightmare of
capture by the Malay bandits.
   At last I emerged into hot sunshine, saw blue, calm sky above me and the 
rich, variegated greens of a forest
below. I looked about for signs of the bandits and their captives but I could 
see nothing.
Beyond the forest was a faint line in the sky. It was the horizon of the sea. 
The airship had almost succeeded in
crossing the island and would have done if the wind had not driven it against 
what I now saw was the highest
mountain in the region. I would try for the ship's destination of Djogjakarta 
and pray that the city was still in Dutch
hands. My best bet would be to cross the intervening land to the sea and then 
follow the beach more or less
westward until I got to the town, or, with luck, find a road on which I could 
get a lift.
   There was no point in trying to do anything for the captured survivors 
myself. Once in Djogjakarta I could tell
the authorities what had happened and hope that Dutch hover-gyros would go out 
with soldiers and save the
people.
   And so I began my journey to the sea.
   It took three days, first through the thick jungle and out on to the plains 
until I came to the paddy fields which I
had to wade through, making wide detours around villages in case the local 
peasants were, as was often the case, in
league with the bandits.
   It was an exhausting trip and I was half-starved by the time I saw the beach 
ahead, not an hour's march away.
In some relief I began to wade through the last paddy, my ruined boots dragged 
at the clinging mud and then I
stopped, hearing a familiar sound in the distance.
   It was the drone of an airship's engines. I looked up and located the source. 
A silver flash in the sky.
   Tears came into my eyes and my shoulders slumped as I realized my struggle 
was over. I was delivered. I
started to yell and wave, though it was unlikely that the crew could even see me 
at that height, let alone distinguish
me for a shipwrecked Englishman!
   But the ship was coming down. It did seem to be looking for me. Perhaps a 
rescue ship from Surabaya? I
cursed myself for not staying near the wreck where I might have been seen 
earlier. Up to my waist in water,
surrounded by the neat rows of rice plants, I waved my parang and yelled still 
louder.
   Then I saw the motif on the ship's hull and instantly I had plunged up to my 
neck among the plants, pulling
them over my head.
   The ship bore the red disc of the sun blazoned on its flanks. It was a vessel 
of the Imperial Japanese Air Fleet.
   For a few moments the ship circled the area and then flew off towards the 
mountains. I waited until it had
disappeared before daring to emerge from the water. I had become a timid 
creature in the past twenty-four hours.
   More warily than ever I crept to the seashore until at last I lay exhausted 
in the shadow of the rock on a warm
beach of black, volcanic sand against which beat the heavy white surf of the 
Indian Ocean.
The presence of the scout ship over Java was ominous. It meant that Japan felt 
strong enough to ignore Dutch
neutrality. It could even mean that Japan, or the bandits who served her, had 
taken the island.
   I wondered if there was now any point in my trying to reach Djogjakarta. I 
knew that the Japanese were not
kind to their captives.
   The sound of the surf seemed to grow louder and louder and more and more 
restful until soon the
questions ceased to plague me as I stretched out on the soft sand and let my 
weary brain and body sink into
sleep.









5. The Price of Fishing Boats

   At noon on the next day I saw the fishing village. It was a somewhat 
ramshackle collection of log and wattle
huts of various sizes. All the huts were thatched with palm leaves and some had 
been raised on stilts. The dugouts,
moored to rickety wooden jetties built out into the shallows, were primitive and 
hardly looked seaworthy. Tall
palms whose curving trunks and wide leaves appeared to offer greater shelter 
than the houses themselves shaded
the huts.
   I shrank back behind a hillock and deliberated for a few moments. There was a 
chance that the villagers were in
league with either the Japanese or the bandits or both. Yet, for all I was 
desperate to get to safety, I was tired of
hiding, I was dreadfully hungry, and had reached a point where I did not much 
care who those villagers were, or to
whom they felt loyalty -just as long as they fed me something and let me lie 
down out of the glare of the sun.
   I made my decision and plodded forward. I thought I knew the kind of white 
man these people would be most
prepared to tolerate and feed.
   I had reached the center of the village before they began to emerge, first 
the adult men, then the women, and
the children. They glowered at me. I smiled back, holding up my pack. 
'Medicine,' I said, desperately trying to
recall my vocabulary.
   They all looked to me as if they could use what I had to offer.
   A few villagers emerged from the general crowd. These all carried old guns, 
parangs and knives, which, in
spite of their age, looked pretty serviceable.
   'Medicine,' I said again.
   There was a stirring from the back of the crowd. I heard words in an 
unfamiliar dialect. I prayed that some of
them spoke Malay and that they would give me a chance to talk to them before 
they killed me. There was no
question that my presence was resented.
   An older man pushed his way through the armed villagers. He had bright, 
cunning eyes, and a calculating
frown. He looked at my bag and uttered a couple of words in his dialect. I 
replied in Malay. This had to be the
headman, for he was far better dressed than his fellows in a yellow and red silk 
sarong. There were sandals on his
feet.
   'Belanda?' he said. 'Dutch?'
   I shook my head. 'Inggeris.' I was not sure if he saw any difference between 
a Dutchman and an Englishman.
But his brow cleared a little. He nodded.
   'I have medicine.' Carefully I enunciated the Malay words, for his dialect 
was not one with which I was
familiar. 'I can help your sick.'
   'Why do you come like this, without a boat or a car or a flying machine?'
   'I was on a ship.' I pointed out to sea. 'It caught fire. I swam here. I wish 
to go to - to Bali. If you want me to
cure your sick, you must pay me.'
   A slow smile crossed his lips. This made sense to him. I had come to bargain. 
Now he looked at me almost in
relief.
   'We have little money,' he said. 'The Dutch do not pay us for our fish now 
that the Orang Djepang war against
them.' He pointed up the coast towards Djogjakarta. 'They fight.'
   I disguised my despair. So now there was no point in trying to reach the 
town. I would have to think of another
plan.
   'We have rice,' said the headman. 'We have fish. But no money.'
   I decided to continue with my original idea. If it worked I would be a little 
better off. 'I want a boat. I will cure
what sickness I can, but you must give me one of the boats with the engines.'
The headman's eyes narrowed. The boats were their most valuable possessions. He 
sniffed and he frowned and he
pursed his lips. Then he nodded. 'You will stay with us until ten men fall ill 
and are cured and five women and five
male children,' he said, lowering his eyes.
   I guessed that he was trying to hide any hint in his eyes that he might be 
getting the best of the bargain. 'Five
men,' I said. 'Ten men.' I spread my hands. 'I agree.'
   And that was how I came to spend more weeks than I had planned in a remote 
and faintly hostile little Javanese
fishing village, for the headman, of course, had tricked me.
   The men-proved disappointingly healthy and the women and children seemed 
constantly sick of minor
complaints so that, with my limited medical knowledge, I treated many more 
people than had been called for in the
original bargain, but I never seemed in sight of making up the male quota. The 
headman had realized at once that
he was on to a good thing and it was soon evident that even when the men did 
fall sick they did not report to me
but stuck to their usual methods of cure. At least two died while I was there. 
They were prepared to forego any
attention from me so that I should continue treating the women and children.
   For all that, I was scarcely angry. The routine was an anodyne to my weary 
brain and I lost myself in it. My
awareness of any reality beyond the confines of the village grew steadily more 
vague. Chaos had come again to the
outside world, but the day-to-day life of the village was the model of simple 
order and I might have lived my life
there if the outside world had not, at last, intruded.
   Looking back, I understand that it was inevitable, but I was surprised when 
it happened.
   One morning I saw a cloud of dust in the distance. It seemed that the sand of 
the beach was being disturbed, but
I could not distinguish the cause of the disturbance.
   Then as the dust cloud came closer I realized what it meant and I ran to hide 
in the doorway of a hut.
   The tires of military cars - big, square utilitarian things with heavy-duty 
steam turbines driving their massive
wheels, threw up the dust. And the military cars were crammed with Japanese 
soldiers. Almost certainly they had
conquered the whole island by now and, as certainly, had heard some rumor of my 
presence in the village. They
were coming to investigate.
   It was at this point that I decided to sail for Australia. There was nowhere 
else to go.
   Although I had failed to fulfill my original bargain with the headman, I 
still had the moral right to do what
I did, for I had dealt fairly enough with the villagers. And I would leave what 
there was of my medical kit
behind for them.
   Taking only a petrol can full of water, I crept down to the shore, using a 
jetty as cover. Then I waded to
one of the outboards and began to untie it. All the villagers were watching the 
oncoming cars and it was my
only chance to escape. I started to push the boat slowly towards the open sea 
while the villagers ran about in
excitement at the arrival of their new masters.
   I was lucky. A current soon caught the dugout and carried it more rapidly 
away from the shore. At last the
villagers saw me, realized what was happening just as the Japanese cars drew up 
in the village square. I was
now some distance out and having trouble trying to climb into the dugout without 
upsetting it.
   The villagers began to gesticulate and point towards me. With a heave I 
managed to get into the wildly
rocking boat and tried to get the battered outboard going.
   It fired after only three false starts. I adjusted the tiller and headed for 
the open sea, noticing with
satisfaction that there was two spare cans of fuel stowed amidships.
   I heard pistol shots, then rifle shots.
   Then a machine gun started up and bullets buzzed about my ears and struck the 
water all around me. I
kept changing course and at one point did a complete circle and headed in the 
opposite direction to Darwin,
my proposed destination, hoping that this would confuse them when they came to 
radio their headquarters
and instruct them to send out airships and patrol boats to look for me.
The gunfire stopped for a moment. I looked back and saw the tiny figures of the 
villagers. They seemed to
be kneeling before the Japanese.
   Then the machine gun started up again, but this time it did not fire out to 
sea.
   A few hours later I began to think that the chances of pursuit had 
disappeared. I had sighted only one
airship in the distance and soon it would be night. I had been lucky.
   As I chugged out over the smooth and blazing mirror of the ocean, 
congratulating myself and with my
thoughts increasingly turning to abstractions, I did not realize that the 
Japanese patrols must have been
searching waters where I might logically be. It seems that I had already lost my 
bearings, in more senses than
one.
As the burning days and the cold nights passed, I began to realize that I had no 
chance at all of reaching
Australia, and I started to indulge in debates with my starving, thirsty self on 
the nature of life, the nature
of death and the nature of what seemed to me a continuing struggle between Chaos 
and Order, with the
former tending to come off rather better in the long run.
And it was this babbling and foolish wretch - once a practical and pragmatic 
soldier in a more orderly world -
who eventually sighted Rowe Island and decided, reasonably, that it was nothing 
more than a splendidly
detailed illusion.



































6. The Mysterious Dempsey

   Rowe Island was discovered in 1615 by the British explorer Richard Rowe.
   In 1887 it was found to contain formations of almost pure calcium and in 1888 
the island was annexed by Great
Britain. That year the first settlers arrived and by 1897 they had obtained a 
concession from the mother country to
work the phosphate deposits. From being uninhabited before 1888, it had by the 
first third of this century achieved
a population of more than two thousand, mainly Malay and Chinese miners who had 
come there to work for the
Welland Rock Phosphate Company which was the island's sole industrial concern.
   Rowe Island lies - or lay - in the Indian Ocean, 224 miles South, 8° East of 
Java Head and 259 miles North, 79°
East of the Keeling Islands. It is 815 miles from the ruins of Singapore and 
1,630 miles from what is left of
Fremantle, Western Australia. Its European population used to number a hundred 
or so: the Official Representative
and his staff; the manager and administrative staff of the Welland Rock 
Phosphate Company; various private
residents there for their health (Rowe Island was a very healthy place); a young 
lieutenant commanding the small
garrison of Ghoorkas; some restaurant-, shop- and hotel-keepers; various 
missionaries and the airpark and dock
officials. When I arrived most of these, of course, had already gone and neither 
airships nor steamers came to
collect the island's only export.
   The settlement had a mosque, a Buddhist temple, a Catholic church, a 
Methodist chapel and a mission hospital
run by the Church of England. The hospital was staffed by a group of young 
Pakistani nursing nuns under the
direction of a layman, Dr Hira, a Singhalese. The hospital's missionary and his 
wife had departed for Australia
soon after the Destruction of Singapore.
   It was in this hospital that I woke up and slowly realized Rowe Island was 
not, after all, a hallucination.
   I was sore and my body stung all over, but I no longer felt thirsty, merely 
hungry. I lay between the rather
rough linen sheets of what was evidently a white hospital bed. The walls were 
white and there was an ivory
crucifix on the wall, a few tropical flowers stuck in a pot on the ledge by the 
partially opened window. I felt
the urge to scratch, but discovered both hands were bandaged. I moved and my 
joints throbbed. I tried to sit
upright, but fell back wearily. It was still hard to believe I was safe, after 
all. I had survived.
   A little while later the door opened and in came a shy, beautiful Pakistani 
girl in a cream-colored nun's
habit. She nodded and smiled gravely at me, standing aside to admit a very tall, 
very thin Singhalese whose
gangling frame was draped in an elegant white suit. Around his neck was a 
stethoscope on which the fingers
of his right hand seemed to be playing a tune. His long, handsome face stared 
rather sardonically at me. He
glanced at the watch on his bony wrist. 'Not bad. Almost exactly on time.'
   My first attempt at speaking was not very successful. My second was better. 
'You,' I said, 'or me?'
   'Both of us.' He took a silver case from his pocket and opened it, offering 
the cigarettes to me. I showed
him my bandaged hands. He smiled apologetically. 'The nurse will light it for 
you if you
want one.'
   'Not now. Thanks.'
   He lit a cigarette for himself. 'Well, you're on the mend I'm glad to say. We 
put you in this room because
your shouting kept the other patients awake. You're an airship-man are you?
   'I am,' I said. 'I was on an airship which crashed.' I told him my name and 
what had happened to me. I
asked where I was.
   'I'm Dr Hira. This is St Charles' Hospital, Rowe Island.' He smiled 
ironically. 'I can see you've never heard
of Rowe Island. Few have. Perhaps that's why the war hasn't touched us directly. 
Nobody passes this way
either by air or by sea. In a few more months I wouldn't be surprised if we're 
the last outpost of civilization on
the globe.' He drew heavily on his cigarette and glanced out of the window at 
the harbor. The Pakistani nurse got
extra pillows and helped me sit up.
   'If you can call this civilization,' said Hira. 'Are you hungry?'
   'Very.'
   'Good.' Hira patted the shy nun on the shoulder. 'Fetch the patient some 
soup, my dear.'
   When the nurse had gone, closing the door behind her, I gestured with my 
bandaged hands. 'I thought this
whole bloody place was a mirage, at first.'
   Hira shrugged. 'Maybe it is. A pretty run-down dream, though. You survived 
Singapore, eh?'
   'It's hard to believe it really happened,' I said.
   'It happened. We heard.'
   'So there's some communication with the outside world?'
   'The mine people took all the decent equipment when they left. It was the 
news of Singapore that caused the
evacuation. A needless panic as it turned out.'
   'I see. So there's no way of contacting, say, Darwin?'
   'We've a radio which occasionally works. Hand-cranked thing.'
   'And those dhows are the only means of leaving the island. No ships of any 
kind?'
   'Not any more, Mr. Bastable. The mine people scuttled our only steamer with 
some idea of stopping the island
being used as a base for enemy shipping.' Hira pointed out of the window of the 
harbor where the rusting
superstructure of the wreck could still be seen.
   'So I'm stuck here unless the radio can be made to work. You said it was 
"hand-cranked". Haven't you any
proper power?'
   'No more fuel. We use oil-lamps for lighting now.'
   'When is there a chance of my getting a message to Darwin?'
   'That depends on the state of the radio and the state of Shawcross, the 
operator. I'll ask someone to go up to the
airpark tomorrow and see if Shawcross is sober enough to work the radio. That's 
about the best I can do. Eager to
get back into the fray, eh?'
   I looked suspiciously at him, trying to detect irony in a face, which now 
regarded me blandly.
   'I've a duty,' I said. 'They'll need experienced airmen, after all.'
   'I'm sure they will. I must be off on my rounds now. See you soon, Mr. 
Bastable.'
   Hira raised the stethoscope in a kind of salute and left the room.
   I sank back into the bed and sighed. An old radio and a drunken operator. I 
was pessimistic about my
immediate chances of leaving Rowe Island.
   A week went by and every day I grew stronger. I was making splendid recovery 
from what had been a very
serious case of exposure. But I also grew more and more impatient and plagued 
Doctor Hira with questions about
the radio and the condition of the operator. The news initially brought back to 
the hospital had been bad. Shortly
after I'd arrived Shawcross had gone up on the mountain somewhere. He had taken 
a Chinese girl and a case of gin
with him and he couldn't be found.
   About ten days after I had awakened from my coma I stood by the window 
wearing a rather ridiculous hospital
dressing gown which was too short for me, talking to Hira who had come in to 
give me the latest lack of news
about Shawcross. In the harbor there was a lot of confusion and noise.
    Since dawn groups of half-starved Malays had been moving along the jetty, 
packing their possessions into one
of the fishing dhows. Apparently my appearance on Rowe Island had started 
something. They had realized that the
mining company would not be back for a long while and they had decided to try to 
make it to Java, in spite of their
having been warned of atrocities committed on their countrymen by the Japanese. 
I felt sorry for those Malays.
The boat would probably sink before they got more than a few miles out. 
Miserably I looked back into the room at
Hira.
   The government should be helping these people - flying in supplies or 
something. I wish that damned operator
would turn up.'
   'I think the government has a lot of problems at the moment.' Hira was 
sitting on my bed, fiddling with his
stethoscope. He spoke almost with satisfaction. 'I don't know when we'll see 
Shawcross. He often goes to earth like
this. He's probably hiding out in one of the mines.'
   'I could have a try at working the radio myself,' I said. 'It would be better 
than this. I'm well enough to go out
now. If you could find me a suit, perhaps . . .'
   'I think we can discover something in your size. But Shawcross has locked his 
office up. Always does. He likes
to be indispensable. It keeps his credit good at the hotel.'
   'Which hotel?'
   'Olmeijer's. The Royal Airpark Hotel on the edge of the airpark. It used to 
be the biggest. Now it's the only one.
Olmeijer carries on running it from sentiment, I think.'
   'I'll take a stroll out there, anyway.' I was curious to have a look at the 
island.
   'Why not?' said Hira. 'Get to know the place. After all, you could be here 
for some time.' He seemed amused.
   As I dressed in my borrowed suit, Hira took my place by the window. From the 
harbor came a babble of voices
as the Malays readied the ship for the sea. He shook his head. 'They'll drown 
themselves for certain.'
   'Won't anybody stop them?' I pulled on my jacket. The linen suit was a 
surprisingly good fit, as was the white
shirt Hira had lent me. 'Isn't there some sort of governor here? You mentioned 
someone . . .'
'Brigadier L. G. A. Nesbit is the Official Representative and has been since 
1920.' Hira shrugged.
   'He's eighty-seven and has been senile for at least ten years. I think that's 
why he decided to stay when the big
exodus was on. His staff now consists of a valet as old as himself and a Bengali 
secretary who spends his whole
time making endless inventories and who hasn't, apparently, left his office 
since the war began. There is, of course,
young Lieutenant Allsop, who commands our local military. I don't think Allsop 
will be sorry to see a few of his
troubles going.'
   'The Malays are a problem, eh?' I tried on one of the panama hats lying on 
the bed. It was a good fit, too.
   Hira gestured wearily. 'There, are a thousand Malays and Chinese here at 
least. The Malays are in the main
Moslems and the Chinese are chiefly Buddhists or Christians. They are, when they 
have nothing better to do,
highly critical of each other's ways of life. And they have nothing better to do 
- their work went when the mine
closed and now they're living off the land and sea as best they can.'
   'Poor bastards,' I said.
   Hira gave a peculiar smile. 'I wonder if you'll say that when they tarn on 
the whites. They will, you know, quite
soon. Presently they hate each other more than they hate Europeans, but it will 
take just one excuse for them to
begin a general massacre. We'll all go, then. Technically, you see, the sisters 
and myself are regarded as
Europeans.'
   'And you're prepared to stay until that happens?'
   'Should I go back to Ceylon and care for our Japanese conquerors?'
   'You could go to Australia or even England. There must be need of doctors 
everywhere.'
   'I should have made it plain.' Hira opened the door for me. 'I have a couple 
of principles. One of them is that I
refuse to work for Europeans. It's the reason I came to Rowe Island in the first 
place.
    Until the evacuation this hospital was for colored people only, Mr. 
Bastable.'
   As I left the hospital I adjusted my hat and paused to watch the dhow easing 
its way past the wreck of the
steamer. Every inch of its deck was covered with brown-skinned men, women and 
children. It brought back the
terrible image of the doomed hospital ship and I could hardly bear to think what 
would become of them all. Slowly
I started to walk along the weed-grown quay, beside deserted hotels, offices and 
warehouses outside which were
parked the useless cars, lorries and buses.
   A few disconsolate Malays were dragging their bundles back down the jetty, 
having failed to squeeze
themselves aboard the boat. The lucky ones, I thought.


   I reached a corner and turned into a narrow, silent side street lined with 
gray and brown featureless workers'
houses and a few boarded-up shops. The street rose quite steeply and I realized 
how weak I still was, for I had to
labor the last few paces until I reached a small square dominated by a battered 
statue of Edward VIII which
somewhat incongruously decorated a dried-up ornamental fountain. The concrete 
bowl of the fountain was full of
empty bottles, torn newspapers and other, less savory, refuse.
    There were a few Chinese children playing around it while their mothers sat 
blank-faced in their doorways,
staring into space. Gratefully, I sat on the edge of the fountain's bowl, 
ignoring the smell, which came from it and
smiling at the undernourished children. They at once stopped playing and looked 
warily up at me.
   'Tso sun,' I said gravely, using Cantonese. 'Good morning.'
   Not one of them replied. A bit nonplussed I wished I had something to offer 
them. Some sweets, perhaps, for
money was worthless on Rowe Island.
   I removed my hat and wiped my forehead. It was growing very hot and I had 
become wary of the sun. I had
better get on to the hotel while I could.
   Then I heard the sound of hoof beats and turned in astonishment to see a 
rider enter the square. He looked
distinctly out of place as he sat stiff-backed and arrogant in the saddle of his 
well-groomed cob. A tall, fair-haired
Englishman of about thirty, he wore a gleaming white coat and jodhpurs with his 
military insignia on the jacket.
His boots, belt, shoulder strap and holster were as highly polished as the badge 
on his solar tope. He saw me at
once, but pretended that he hadn't. He stroked his blond moustache with his 
baton and brought his horse to a halt
on the other side of the square.
   I looked around at the empty, silent windows, wondering what he could be 
doing here.
   'Get these children out of the way, sergeant!' His voice was sharp, 
commanding.
   At this order six crisply turned out little Ghoorkas led by a sergeant 
emerged from another side street and
waved the children back with their rifles. Their bayonets were fixed. They wore 
dark green uniforms with scarlet
facings and they had their long, curved knives at their belts. The women needed 
no warnings but dragged the
children inside and slammed their doors. Now I was the only civilian in the 
square.
   'What's going on here, lieutenant?' asked.
   The lieutenant turned cold, blue eyes on me. 'I would suggest, sir, that you 
get away from here at once. It's a
police matter. There could be trouble.'
   There seemed to be no point in arguing. I humored him instead. 'Thank you, 
lieutenant.' I walked across the
square but remained in the shadows of a side street, peering curiously at what 
was going on.
   Now the young officer dismounted and ordered his sergeant to enter one of the 
houses. The Ghoorkas rushed in
and the lieutenant followed behind.
   I watched in puzzlement, not knowing what to make of the scene at all. There 
was dead silence in the square
for a little while, then a horrible babble of screams and yells issued from the 
house. I heard a woman shouting in
Cantonese. There were a couple of shots and then the raised voice of the officer 
giving a series of orders. Another
scream - a man's this time - then out into the street poured a score of coolies. 
They were staggering and screwing
their eyes up against the sunlight. Every one of them was dazed and scared 
stiff.
   There came another shot from inside the house and then more shouting. The 
coolies outside began to scatter,
some rushing into nearby doorways, others running off down towards the harbor. A 
further series of commands
came from the officer and then a terrible wailing, the sound of flesh being 
struck, presumably with rifle butts.
Appalled, I was about to step forward when a panic-stricken coolie burst from 
the house, hesitated, glanced around
wildly holding a bleeding hand, and then ran in my direction. I stepped aside to 
let him pass and he fled around a
corner and vanished. But I had seen his pupils. The man had been drugged.
   Now I understood. The soldiers were raiding some sort of local opium den.
   Hearing a moan, I re-entered the square and saw that one of the opium smokers 
had fallen to the flagstones. He
had been stabbed badly with a bayonet in his shoulder. I knelt beside him, tore 
back his shirt and did my best to
stop the flow of blood while he stared at me in terror, small moans escaping his 
lips.
   Boots tramped from the house.
   'Good God, man, what are you doing?'
   I looked up to see the lieutenant striding from the house. He looked pretty 
pleased with himself.
   'This chap's been stabbed by one of your soldiers,' I said harshly. 'I'm 
trying to help him. Was there any need
to-'
   The lieutenant glanced contemptuously at the coolie. 'Doubtless he tried to 
kill someone. Crazed by opium -
they all are. His own people will look after him. We're trying to teach them a 
lesson, after all.'
   With strips of the man's shirt I bandaged up the wound as best I could. He 
tried to speak and then fainted.
Helplessly, I tried to lift him, but it was impossible.
   Now the Ghoorkas emerged holding three terrified Chinese in black and red 
smocks; two men and a woman, all
badly bruised and probably the proprietors of the den.
   The lieutenant's baton stabbed in their direction. He raised his head and 
spoke to the empty windows and doors.
'Now no more opium! You savvy! Opium bad! These people bad! Go to prison.
   We lock up long time! Savvy?'
   Angrily he tapped his riding boot with his baton. He glared at me and opened 
his mouth to speak.
   'I'm going to try to get this chap to the hospital,' I said. 'Can somebody 
give me a hand?'
   The officer took the reins of his horse and looked from me to his soldiers 
who held their miserable prisoners
much more firmly than was necessary.
   'One of your men-' I began.
   The lieutenant remounted. 'I told you, sir. His own people will look after 
him. You obviously don't understand
the conditions on this island. There's a dreadful opium problem.
   It's increasing daily. They grow the poppies rather than food. I . . .'
   'What else have the bastards got to live for, Allsop?' A tired drawl came 
from the shadowy doorway of the
raided house. An English voice.
   Lt Allsop turned in his saddle and shook his baton at the unseen speaker. 
'You stay out of this. You're lucky we
didn't arrest you, too.'
   A figure emerged into the sunlight. Dressed in a dirty, faded European suit 
and a frayed native shirt, he was
barefooted, unshaven, emaciated and plainly under the influence of opium. I knew 
the signs well enough, for I had
once been slave to the drug's consolations. I could not make out his age, but 
the voice was of quite a young man
from the upper middle class.
   'I'd have thought you'd be ashamed...' Allsop's face was full of disgust.
   'Who are you to deny them their only pleasure, Allsop?' drawled the newcomer 
reasonably. 'Let them alone, for
God's sake.'
   Lt Allsop wheeled his trim cob about and shouted an order to his men. 'All 
right, quick march.' He trotted away
without answering the decrepit Englishman.
   I watched them go, the Ghoorkas dragging their frightened prisoners back the 
way they had come.
   The Englishman shrugged and turned to re-enter the house.
   'Just a minute,' I called. 'I must try to get this chap to the hospital. He's 
half-dead. Could you give me a hand?'
   The man leaned wearily against the doorframe. 'He'd be better off with his 
ancestors, believe me.'
   'A moment ago you were defending these people.'
   'Not defending them, old boy. I'm a fatalist, you see. I told Allsop to let 
them alone. And I tell you the same.
What's the point? He'll die soon enough.'
   But he left the doorway and shuffled into the square, blinking in the 
sunshine. 'Who are you, anyway?'
   'I'm an airshipman. I got here a week or so ago.'
   'Ah, the shipwrecked mariner. They were talking about you up at the hotel. 
All right, I'll help you with him, for
what it's worth.'
   The opium-drunk Englishman was no stronger than I was, but together we 
managed to carry the coolie
down the street and along the quay until we reached the hospital.
   After a couple of nuns had been called and had taken the wounded man away, I 
stood panting in the lobby,
staring curiously at my helper. 'Thanks.'
   He smiled slowly. 'Think nothing of it. Nothing at all. Cheerio.'
   He raised his hand in a sort of ironic salute and then went out. He had gone 
before Dr Hira came down the
stairs into the lobby.
   'Who was that chap?' I asked Hira, describing the wretched Englishman.
   Hira recognized the description. He fiddled with his stethoscope. 'A 
castaway, like yourself. He arrived in
the airship, which came to take off the mine people. He chose to stay on Rowe 
Island. I don't know why. It
meant they could take one more passenger so they didn't argue. They call him The 
Captain sometimes, up at
the hotel. Supposed to have been the commander of a merchant airship, which 
crashed in China before the
war. A bit of a mystery.'
   'Allsop doesn't like him.'
   Hira laughed softly. 'No, Allsop wouldn't. Captain Dempsey lets the side 
down, eh? Allsop's for the
Europeans keeping up appearances at all costs.'
   'Allsop certainly works hard.' I wiped a spot of blood off my sleeve.
   'I don't think he ever sleeps. His wife left with the mine people, you know. 
Hira glanced at his watch.
'Well, it's almost lunchtime. Fish and rice, as usual, but I've managed to get a 
couple of bottles of beer, if
you'd . . .'
   'No thanks,' I said. 'I think I'll head up to the hotel again.'


























7. Dead Man

   The port where I was staying was the only real town on the island. It was 
called New Birmingham. Its
buildings were clustered close together near the waterfront and were several 
stories high. As they wandered up the
slopes they drew apart as if fastidious of each other's squalor and grew smaller 
until the houses near the top were
little more than isolated shanties erected in shallow hollows in the hillside.
   Above the shanty district the hill leveled out for a while and became a small 
plateau on which the airpark had
been built. Olmeijer's hotel stood on the edge of the airpark, which was now 
overgrown and desolate. I wondered
if young Lt Allsop would have approved of the hotel, for it had certainly made 
an attempt to 'keep up appearances'.
Its big gilt sign was brightly polished and its splendid wooden Gothic exteriors 
had recently been given a fresh
coat of white paint. It looked out of place in its surroundings.
   The rusting airship mast erected in its center dominated the airpark. To one 
side of the park was a single airship
hangar, its gray paint peeling, and beside it a pole at which drooped a torn and 
filthy windsock. Near the pole
stood, like the skeletons of large, unearthly insects, the remains of two hover 
gyros, which had been stripped of
most of their essential parts. On the other side of the hangar was the shell of 
a light monoplane, probably the
property of some long-gone sportsman, which had been similarly dismembered. The 
island seemed to be populated
by a variety of wrecks, I thought. It seemed to be feeding off corpses, 
including, as in Allsop's case, the corpses of
dead ideas.
   After a glance towards the abandoned administration and control buildings to 
assure myself that they were
uninhabited, I made for the hotel.
Pushing open a pair of well-oiled double doors, I walked into the lobby. It was 
clean, scrubbed, polished and cool.
A Malay houseboy was operating the cords of a big punka attached to the ceiling. 
It fanned air into my face as I
entered. I was grateful for this after the heat outside but amused by the fresh 
incongruity. I nodded to the Malay
who didn't seem to notice me and, seeing no one at the desk, strolled into the 
adjacent bar.
   In the shady gloom were two men. One sat in his shirtsleeves behind the bar 
reading a book while the other sat
drinking a gin fizz in the far corner near French windows opening onto a 
verandah. Beyond the windows I could
see the airpark and beyond the airpark the slopes of the mountain, covered in 
thick forest.
   As I seated myself on a stool by the bar the man behind it put down his book 
and looked at me in some
surprise. He was very fat and his big, red face was beaded with sweat. His 
rolled up sleeves revealed a variety of
tattoos of the more restrained kind. There were several gold rings on his thick 
fingers. He spoke in a deep, guttural
accent.
   'What can I do for you?'
   I began apologetically, 'I'm afraid I brought no money, so . . .'
   The fat man's face broke into a broad smile. 'Ja! No money! That's too bad!' 
He shook with laughter for a
moment. 'Now, what will you drink. I'll put it on the slate, eh?'
   'Very good of you. I'll have a brandy.' I introduced myself. 'Are you the 
hotel's proprietor?'
   'Ja. I am Olmeijer, certainly.' He seemed inordinately proud of the fact. He 
took a large ledger from under the
counter, selected a fresh page and entered my name at the top. 'Your account,' 
he said.
   'When things are better, you can pay me.' He turned to take down a bottle of 
cognac.
   'You've a chap called Shawcross staying here, I believe?' I said.
   'Shawcross, certainly.' He put a large brandy on the bar. 'Twenty cents. On 
the slate.' He made an entry in the
ledger and replaced it Out of sight.
   It was good brandy. Perhaps it tasted even better for being the first drink I 
had had since Singapore. I savored
it.
   'But Shawcross,' said Olmeijer with a wink and a jerk of his thumb, 'has gone 
up the mountain.'
   'And you've no idea when he'll be back.'
   I heard one of the wicker chairs scrape on the polished floor, then footsteps 
approached me. I turned. It was the
man who had been sitting near the window. He held his empty glass in his hand.
   'Shawcross will be back when the gin he borrowed from Mr. Olmeijer runs out.'
   He was a thin, heavily tanned man in his fifties, wearing a khaki bush shirt 
and white shorts. He had a small,
graying moustache and his blue eyes seemed to have a permanent hint of ironic 
humor in them. 'My name's
Greaves,' he said as he joined me at the bar. 'You must be the airship chap they 
found in the dugout. Singapore, eh?
Must have been awful.'
   Greaves told me he'd been left behind to protect the interests of the Welland 
Rock Phosphate Company while
the rest of the white employees went back to England or Australia. He was keen 
to hear about the attack on
Singapore. Briefly, for the memory was still hard to bear, I told him what had 
happened.
   'I still can't believe it,' I concluded. 'There was a peace treaty.'
   He smiled bitterly and sipped his drink. 'Everyone had a peace treaty, didn't 
they? We'd abolished war, hadn't
we? But human nature being what it is . . .' He looked up at the rows of bottles 
in front of him, 'Bloody Japs. I
knew they'd start something sooner or later. Greedy bastards!'
   'The Japanese would not have blown up their own-' began Olmeijer. Greaves 
interrupted him with a sharp
laugh.
   'I don't know how that city got blown up, but it was the excuse everybody 
needed to start scrapping.' He tilted
his glass to his lips. 'I suppose we'll never know how it happened or who did 
it. But that's not the point. They'd
have been fighting by now even if it hadn't happened.'
   'I wish you were right!'
   I recognized the new voice and turned to see Dempsey walking wearily into the 
bar. He nodded to Greaves
and me and placed a dirty hand on the counter. 'Large scotch please, Olmeijer.'
   The Dutchman didn't seem pleased to see his latest customer, but he poured 
the drink and carefully wrote
the cost down in his ledger.
   There was an embarrassed pause. For all he had interrupted our conversation, 
Dempsey apparently wasn't
prepared to amplify his remark.
   'Afternoon, Dempsey,' I said.
   He smiled faintly and rubbed at his unshaven chin. 'Hello, Bastable. Moving 
in?'
   'I was looking for Shawcross.'
   He took a long pull at his drink. 'There's a lot of people looking for 
Shawcross,' he said mysteriously.
   'What do you mean?'
   He shook his head. 'Nothing.'
   'Another drink, Bastable?' said Greaves. 'Have this one on me.' And then, as 
if with a slight effort. 'You,
Dempsey?'
   'Thanks.' Dempsey finished his drink and put his glass back on the bar. 
Olmeijer poured another gin,
another brandy, and another scotch.
   Greaves took a case of cheroots from his shirt pocket and offered them 
around. Olmeijer and Dempsey
accepted, but I refused. 'What did you mean, just then?' Greaves asked Dempsey. 
'You don't care about all
this, surely? I thought you were the chap so full of oriental fatalism.'
   Dempsey turned away. For a moment his dead eyes had seemed to burn with a 
terrible misery. He took his
glass to a nearby table and sat down. 'That's me,' he said.
   But Greaves wouldn't let it go. 'You weren't in Japan when the bombing 
started were you?'
Dempsey shook his head. 'No, China.' I noticed that his hands were shaking as he 
lifted his glass to his mouth
and he seemed to be muttering something under his breath. I thought I heard the 
words 'God forgive me'. He
finished the drink quickly, got up and shambled towards the door.
   'Thanks, Greaves. See you later.'
   His wasted body disappeared through the doors and I saw him begin to climb 
the flight of wooden stairs, which
led up, from the lobby.
   Greaves raised his eyebrows in a quizzical look. He shrugged. 'I think 
Dempsey has become what we used to
call an "island case". We had a few of them going native, in the old days, or 
taking up opium, like him. The stuff's
killing him, of course, and he knows it. He'll be dead within six months, I 
shouldn't wonder.'
   'I'd have given him longer than that,' I said feelingly. 'I've known opium 
smokers who live to a ripe old age.'
   Greaves drew on his cheroot. 'It's not just the opium, is it? I mean, there's 
such a thing as a will to die. You
know that as well as I do.'
   I nodded soberly. I had encountered my own share of such desires.
   'I wonder what did it,' Greaves mused. 'A woman, perhaps. He was an 
airshipman, you know. Perhaps he lost
his ship, or deserted her or something?'
   Olmeijer grunted and looked up from his book. 'He's just a weak man. Just 
weak, that's all.'
   'Could be.' I got up. 'I think I'll head back now. Mind if I come up 
tomorrow? I'd like to be here when
Shawcross returns.'
   'See you tomorrow.' Greaves lifted his hand in a salute. 'I wish you the best 
of luck, Bastable.'
   That night I dined on fish and fruit with Hira. I told him about my 
conversation at the hotel and my second
encounter with Dempsey. His earlier remark had aroused my curiosity and I asked 
Hira if he knew anything at all
of Dempsey's reasons for coming to the island.
   Hira could add little about the opium eater. 'All I know is that he was in 
better condition when he arrived than
he is now. I don't have much to do with the European community, as you may have 
noticed.' He looked sardoni-
cally at me. 'Englishmen often start acting strangely when they've been out
   East a few years. Maybe they feel guilty about exploiting us, eh?'
   I refused to rise to this and we completed our meal in relative silence.
   After dinner we sat back in our chairs and smoked, discussing the health of 
the coolie I had found.
   Hira told me he was recovering reasonably quickly. I was just about to go up 
to bed when the door opened
suddenly and a nun rushed into Hira's room. 'Doctor - quickly - it is 
Shawcross!' Her face was full of anxiety. 'He
has been attacked. I think he is dying.'
   We hurried downstairs to the little entrance hall of the hospital. In the 
light from the oil lamp I saw Olmeijer
and Greaves standing there. Their faces were pale and tense and they were 
staring helplessly down at something,
which lay on an improvised stretcher they had placed on the floor. They must 
have carried it all the way from the
hotel.
   Hira crouched down and inspected the man on the stretcher. 'My God!' he said.
Greaves addressed me. 'He was dumped on the steps of the hotel about an hour 
ago. I think some Chinaman
objected to his wife or maybe his daughter running off with Shawcross. I don't 
know.'
   Grimly he wiped his face with his handkerchief. 'This couldn't have happened 
before the bloody war . . .'
   I gagged as I got a good look at the battered mess of flesh on the stretcher. 
'Poor devil!'
   Hira straightened up and looked significantly at me. There was no hope for 
Shawcross. He turned to Greaves
and Olmeijer. 'Can you take the stretcher up to the ward, please?'
   I followed as the two men picked up the stretcher and staggered as they 
climbed the short flight of steps to the
ward. With the nurses, I helped get him onto the bed, but it was plain that 
virtually every bone in his body had
been broken. He was scarcely recognizable as a human being. They had taken their 
time in beating him up and he
couldn't last long.
   Hira began to fill a hypodermic. The beaten man's eyes opened and he saw us. 
His lips moved.
I bent to listen.   'Bloody Chinks ... bloody woman ... done for me. Found us in 
the mine . . . The sheets . . . Oh,
God . . . The bloody clubs...'
   Hira gave him a hefty injection. 'Cocaine,' he said to me. 'It's about all we 
have now.'
   I looked at the next bed and saw the coolie I had rescued staring at 
Shawcross with an expression of quiet
satisfaction.
   'This couldn't be some sort of retaliation, could it?' I asked Hira.
   'Who knows?' Hira looked down at the Australian as the man's eyes glazed and 
closed again.
Greaves put his fist to his lips and cleared his throat. 'I wonder if somebody 
ought to tell Nesbit . . .' He looked
at Shawcross and pursed his lips. 'There'll be hell to pay when Allsop hears 
about this.'
   Hira seemed almost amused. 'It could mean the end.'
   Thoughtfully, Olmeijer rubbed at his neck. 'Need Allsop be told?'
   'The man has been attacked,' I said. 'A couple of hours or so and it will be 
murder. He can't last the night.'
   'If Allsop goes on the rampage, old boy, we all stand a chance of being 
murdered,' Greaves pointed out. 'Allsop
will anger the Malays and Chinese so much they're bound to turn on us. These 
aren't the old days. What do you
think a dozen bloody Ghoorkas can do against a thousand coolies?'
   There was a glint of malice in Hira's eyes. 'So you don't want me to report 
this to the Official Representative,
gentlemen?'
   'Better not,' said Greaves. 'We'll all keep mum, eh?'
   I watched the nurse cleaning the blood from Shawcross's body. The cocaine had 
knocked him out completely. I
walked to the door of the ward and lit a cigarette, watching the mosquitoes and 
the moths fluttering around the oil
lamp in the lobby. From beyond the open door came the sound of the sea striking 
the stones of the quay. It no
longer seemed peaceful. Instead the silence had become ominous. As the other 
three men joined me I inclined my
head.
   'Very well,' I said. 'I'll say nothing.'
   Next morning New Birmingham was deathly quiet. I walked through empty 
streets. I felt a thousand pairs of
eyes watched me as I made my way up to the airpark.
   I did not call in at the hotel. There was no point now in hoping to see 
Shawcross there. He had died in the
night at the hospital. I carried on past it and stood by one of the ruined hover 
gyros, kicking at a broken rotor,
which lay on the weed-grown concrete beside the machine. From the forest behind 
me came the sounds of
dawn. At this hour some of the nocturnal animals were still about and the 
diurnal inhabitants were beginning
to wake. Hornbills, cockatoos, fairy bluebirds and doves fluttered among the 
trees, filling the air with song
and with color. They seemed to be celebrating something, perhaps the end of the 
human occupation of the
island. The air was rich with the stink of the forest, of animal spoor and 
rotting tree trunks. I heard the chatter
of gibbons and saw tiny shrews skipping along branches heavy with dew. On the 
wail of the hangar the beady
eyes of lizards regarded me coldly as if I had no business to be there.
   I turned towards what had been the main control building where the murdered 
man had locked up his
wireless apparatus before going off on what was to prove his final orgy.
   The whole building had been sealed before the airship personnel had left. The 
windows on all three stories
had been covered by steel shutters and it would take special tools and a lot of 
hard work to get even one of
them down. All the doors were locked and barred and I could see where various 
attempts to open them had
failed.
   I walked round and round the concrete building, pushing uselessly at the 
shutters and rattling the handles
of the doors. The chirring sounds from the forest seemed to mock my helplessness 
and at length I stopped by
a door which had evidently been in recent use, tried the handle once more, then 
leaned against the frame,
looking back across the deserted park, with its broken bones of flying machines 
and its rusting mast, at the
spruce hotel beyond. The sun glinted on Olmeijer's gilded sign: ROYAL AIRPARK 
HOTEL, it said, THE
ISLAND'S BEST.
   A little later someone came out through the French windows leading from the 
bar and stood on the verandah.
Then they saw me and began to walk slowly through the tall grass towards me.
   I recognized the figure and I frowned. What could he want?










8. The Message

   It was Dempsey, of course. He had shaved and put on a suit slightly cleaner 
than the one he had worn on the
previous day, but he wore the same tattered native shirt underneath it. By the 
pupils of his eyes I saw he had not
yet had his first pipe of opium.
   He shuffled towards me, coughing on the comparatively cold air of the early 
morning. 'I heard about
Shawcross,' he said. He crossed the cracked concrete and stood looking at me.
   I offered him a cigarette, which he accepted, fumbling it from my case and 
trembling slightly as I lit it for him.
   'You knew the Chinese were after Shawcross, didn't you?' I said. 'That's what 
you meant yesterday when you
said a lot of people were looking for him.'
   'Yesterday? I don't remember.' He puffed on the cigarette, drawing the smoke 
deep into his lungs.
   'You might have saved him, Dempsey, if you'd warned someone at the time.'
   He straightened up a little and he seemed amused as he glanced towards the 
forest. 'On the other hand I might
have done everyone else more harm. It's a bit of a luxury, a social conscience, 
isn't it Bastable?' He felt in his
pocket. 'I came to give you this. I found it on the steps.' He held out a Yale 
key. 'Must have fallen from
Shawcross's pocket when they dumped him.'
   I hesitated before accepting the key. Then I turned and tried it in the lock. 
The wards clicked back and the door
swung open. The interior smelled of stale liquor and burnt rubber.
   'All that's left of Shawcross is his stink,' said Dempsey. 'Now you're going 
to try to wireless for help, I suppose.'
   'I'll try,' I said. 'If I can get through to Darwin I'll ask them to reroute 
the first available airship to pick me up -
and anyone else who wants to leave the island.'
   'Better tell them it's an emergency.' Dempsey waved his hand in the general 
direction of the town. 'Make
no bones about it. There are half a dozen excuses for an uprising now. Allsop 
finding out about Shawcross
will be just one more. The Chinese are in a mood to slaughter all the Malays and 
if the whites interfere, they'll
probably get together and kill us first. It's true.' A ghost of a smile appeared 
on his lips. 'I know. I'm in rather
closer touch with the natives than most, after all. Shawcross was just a 
beginning.'
   I nodded. 'All right. I'll tell Darwin.'
   'You know how to work the wireless?'
   'I've had some training
   Dempsey followed me into the gloomy interior of the office. It was a filthy 
litter of empty beer cans,
bottles and bits of broken wireless equipment. He pulled back the shutters and 
light came through the dusty
windows. I saw what could only be the wireless set in one corner and I picked my 
way across the floor
towards it.
   Dempsey showed me the pedals underneath the bench. I sat down and put my feet 
on them. They turned
slowly at first and then more easily.
   Dempsey inspected the set. 'Seems to be warming up,' he said. He began to 
fiddle with the dials. There
was a faint crackle from the phones. He picked them up and listened, shaking his 
head. 'Valve trouble,
probably. You'd better let me have a go.'
   I rose and Dempsey sat down in the chair. After a while he found a 
screwdriver and took part of the casing
off the set. 'It's the valves, all right,' he said. 'There should be a box of 
spares behind you on the other bench.
Could you bring it over?'
   I found the box and placed it beside him as he continued to work.
   'Did you learn about radios on airships?' I asked him.
   He tightened his mouth and went on with the job.
   'How did you happen to turn up here?' I said, my curiosity overcoming my 
tact.
   'None of your bloody business, Bastable. There, that should do it.' He 
screwed in the last valve and began
pedaling, but then he fell back in the chair coughing. 'Too bloody weak,' he 
said. 'You'd better do the pumping, if
you wouldn't mind...' He lapsed into another fit of coughing as he got up and I 
replaced him.
   While I pedaled, he twisted the dials again until we heard a faint voice 
coming through the earphones.
Dempsey settled the headset over his ears and -adjusted the microphone. 'Hello 
Darwin, this is Rowe Island. Over.'
He turned a knob.
   He flipped a toggle switch and spoke impatiently into the mike. 'No, I'm 
sorry, I don't know our bloody call
sign. Our operator's been killed as a matter of fact. No, we're not a military 
base. This is Rowe Island in the Indian
Ocean and the civilian population is in danger.'
   While I continued to pedal the generator, Dempsey told Darwin our situation. 
There was some confusion, a
wait of nearly twenty minutes while the operator checked with his superiors, 
some more confusion over the
location of the island and then at last Dempsey leaned back and sighed. 'Thank 
you, Darwin.'
   As he stripped off the headset he glanced down at me. 'You're lucky. They'll 
have one of their patrol ships over
here in a day or two - if it hasn't been shot down. You'd better tell the others 
to pack their bags and be ready.'
   'I'm very grateful, Dempsey,' I said. 'I don't think I'd have had a chance of 
getting through if it hadn't been for
you.'
   The problems with the wireless had exhausted him. He got up and began to 
rummage around in the office until
he found an almost full bottle of rum. He opened it, took a long drink, and then 
offered it to me.
   I accepted the bottle and sipped the rum, gasping. It was raw stuff. I handed 
it back and watched with a certain
amount of respect as he finished it.
   We left the office and began to walk across the airpark. As we approached the 
mast he paused and looked up
through the girders. The passenger lift was at the top of the mast, presumably 
left there by the last hasty group to
go aboard the ship when it had taken the bulk of the Europeans off the island. 
This won't be any good,' he said.
'Nobody to work it, even if it was in decent condition. The ship will have to 
come right down. It's going to be a
problem. Everybody will have to muck in.'
   'Will you help me?'
   'If I'm conscious.'
   'I heard you commanded an airship once,' I said.
   Then I regretted my curiosity for a peculiar look of pained amusement came 
over his face. 'Yes. Yes, I did. For
a very short time.'
   I dropped it. 'Let me get you a drink,' I said.
   Olmeijer was in his usual spot at the bar, reading his book. Greaves was not 
there. The Dutchman looked up
and nodded to us. He made no mention of the previous night's business and I 
didn't bring it up. I told him that we
had managed to get through to Darwin and that they were sending an airship. He 
seemed unimpressed. I think he
enjoyed his role as the last hotelier on the island. He would rather have 
customers who couldn't pay than no
customers at all. Dempsey and I took our drinks to one of the tables near the 
window.
   'You've been a great help, Dempsey,' I said.
Cynically he stared at me over the rim of his glass. 'Am I helping? I may be 
doing you a disservice. Do you
really want to go back to all that?'
   'I think it's my duty.'
   'Duty? To support the last vestiges of a discredited imperialism?'
   It was the first time I had heard him utter anything like a political 
opinion. I was surprised. He sounded like a
bit of a Red, I thought. I could think of no answer, which wouldn't have been 
impolite.
   He downed the rest of his scotch and stared out over the airpark, speaking as 
if to himself. 'It's all a question of
power and rarely a question of justice.' He looked sharply at me. 'Don't 
patronize me, Bastable. I don't need your
kindness, thanks. If you knew . . .' He broke off. 'Another?'
I watched Dempsey walk unsteadily to the bar and then get fresh drinks. He 
brought them back almost reluctantly.
   'I'm sorry,' I said. 'It's just - well, you seem to have a lot on your mind. 
I thought a sympathetic ear . . .'
   'There was a very strange look in his eyes now. 'Sympathetic? I wonder how 
sympathetic you would stay if I
told you what was really on my mind. There's a war on, Bastable. I heard you 
speculating yesterday about how it
started. I know how the war started. I know who started it, too. It was a bloody 
accident.'
   I restrained my exclamation of astonishment and waited to hear more, but 
Dempsey leaned back in the wicker
chair and closed his eyes, his lips moving as he spoke to himself.
   I went to get him another drink, but he was already asleep when I returned. I 
let him sleep and joined Olmeijer
at the bar.
   Shortly afterwards Greaves came in. He looked tired, as if he had not been to 
bed since I had seen him.
   'Give me a triple gin, Olmeijer, quickly. Morning, Bastable. I don't advise 
you to go back through the town
alone. There's a lot of trouble. Big gangs of Malays and Chinese fighting each 
other. Arson, rape and bloody
murder all over the place.'
   'Has Allsop found out about . . .?'
   'Not yet, but pretty well everyone else knows: He'll hear soon. The Chinese 
managed to steal a Malaysian boat
last night and buggered off with it - probably poor Shawcross's murderers making 
their getaway. The Malays
roughed up some Chinese families. The Chinese retaliated. I think we're in very 
hot water this time.'
   I told him about the wireless message to Darwin and the probability of a ship 
coming. He looked more than
relieved. 'You'd better send one of your chaps into New Brum, Olmeijer. Tell him 
to let everyone know - to get up
here as fast as possible.'
   Grumbling, Olmeijer rolled off to find a servant.
   Greaves walked round to the other side of the bar. 'I think another drink is 
called for - on the house. Bastable?' I
nodded. 'Dempsey?'
   I saw that Dempsey had woken up and was making for the door. He shook his 
head and said with a tight,
crooked smile. 'I've some business in town. Cheerio.'
   'It's dangerous,' I said.
   'I'll be all right. Hope to see you later, Bastable.'
   We watched him leave.
   'Poor bastard,' said Greaves. He shuddered and downed his gin.


9. Hopes of Salvation

   Allsop came up to the hotel in the afternoon and asked suspiciously after 
Shawcross. We said that we had heard
he'd had some sort of accident. He didn't believe us, of course, but he had his 
hands full in the town and couldn't
wait to question us further. He'd escorted some clergymen to the hotel and some 
Chinese nuns from the Catholic
mission. They sat huddled in the far corner of the bar and didn't talk much to 
us. Nesbit's secretary, a round-faced,
anxious Bengali, had come with Allsop and he remained almost constantly by the 
window, looking out as if he
expected the airship to arrive at any minute. I asked Allsop about Dempsey and 
the soldier glowered at me,
muttering that Dempsey had been seen with some of the Chinese 'rebels' and might 
find himself in real trouble
with the authorities if he wasn't careful. I also learned that Hira had decided 
to stay on at the hospital along with
most of his nuns.
   By that evening a few more people had drifted up, including two Irish priests 
who joined the others in the
corner. Olmeijer seemed delighted to have so many new guests and rushed around 
seeing that rooms were
prepared for them. Even I received a room on the second floor.
Allsop returned looking tired and angry. His normally neat uniform was dusty and 
he had a bruise over his right
eye. He seemed to be blaming Greaves and me for his problems and wouldn't speak 
to us at all on this second visit.
He had brought us three of his twelve-man army for protection. The rest were 
remaining in the town to 'keep
order', though from the noise below there was precious little of that, and to 
protect the Official Representative's
residence, for Brigadier Nesbit, it emerged, had elected to stay, along with his 
valet.
   Allsop rode back a little later. He was alone and as stiff-backed as ever as 
he guided his horse down the hill and
disappeared into the darkness and the cacophony below. I don't believe he was 
seen alive again.
   By midnight the ladies and gentlemen of the cloth had all gone to bed and 
Greaves, Olmeijer and myself were
in our usual places at the bar while the little Bengali paced back and forth 
beside the windows.
   Even Greaves seemed a trifle nervous and once he expressed the belief that we 
'might not quite last out'. Then
he, too, went to bed and the Bengali followed him. Olmeijer had his big account 
book open on the bar and for a
while seemed cheerfully engrossed in his arithmetic before closing the book with 
a crash, nodding goodnight to
me, and heaving his huge bulk away to his own quarters.
   Now, save for the Ghoorkas on guard outside, I was the only one up. I felt 
exhausted but not particularly
sleepy. I decided to go outside and see if I could detect any activity in the 
town.
   As I entered the lobby I heard voices by the main entrance. I peered out, but 
the oil lamp wasn't bright enough
to show me anything. I opened the door. One of the Ghoorka guards was shouting 
at a man I could dimly see in the
moonlight. The Ghoorka gestured with his bayoneted rifle and the man turned 
away. For a moment I saw his face
in the faint glow from the lamp in the lobby. I pushed past the soldier and 
hurried outside.
   'Dempsey? Is that you?'
   He looked back. His shoulders were bowed and his jacket had been ripped. His 
face was deathly pale, his
eyelids almost closed. 'Hello, Bastable.' The speech was slurred -the voice of a 
cretin.
   'Thought this was my hotel.'
   'It is.' I went towards him and took a limp arm. 'Come inside.'
   The Ghoorka made no attempt to stop us as I took Dempsey into Olmeijer's. The 
man was staggering and
shivering. A dry retching noise came from his throat. He was gripping something 
tightly in his right hand. There
was no point in questioning him and I did my best to get him up the stairs and 
along the passage to his room.
   The door was unlocked. I half-carried Dempsey in, let him sit on the bed 
while I lit the oil lamp.
The light revealed a room, which was surprisingly neat. The bed was made up and 
there was no litter. In fact the
room was completely impersonal. I got Dempsey onto the bed and he stretched out 
with a sigh. The shivering
came in brief spasms now. He blinked and looked up at me as I took his pulse.
   'Thank you very much, Bastable,' he said. 'I thought I might have a word with 
you.'
   'You're in bad shape,' I said. 'Better sleep if you can.'
   'They're looting down there,' he said. 'Killing each other. Perhaps it's 
something in the air...' He coughed and
then started to choke. I got him upright and tried to pry the packet he held 
from his fingers, but he reacted angrily,
with surprising strength. He pulled his hand away. 'I can look after myself now, 
old man.' There were tears in his
eyes as he sank back onto the pillow. 'I'm just tired. Sick and tired.'
   'Dempsey, you're killing yourself. Let me-'
   'I hope you're right, Bastable. It's taking too bloody long, though. I wish 
I'd had the guts to do it properly.'
   I stood up, telling him that I would call back later to see how he was. He 
closed his eyes and seemed to fall
asleep.
   I had that feeling of impotence common to many who have themselves 
experienced the relief of drug addiction.
I knew only too well that there was little I could do for the poor, tormented 
wretch. He could only help himself.
And Dempsey seemed genuinely haunted, perhaps by a special insight into things, 
as they really were, perhaps by
something in himself, some aspect of his own character, which he could not 
reconcile with his moral outlook. For
it was becoming increasingly clear that Dempsey, in spite of his denials, had a 
very moral outlook and that he
didn't think much of himself.
   I went to my own room along the passage and took off my jacket and trousers. 
I lay down on the bed in the
darkness, listening to the insects hurling themselves against the woven wire of 
the window screens. Moonlight
flooded the room. Soon I fell into a light sleep.
   I woke up suddenly.
   My door was creaking as it slowly opened and I looked around for a weapon, 
thinking that the coolies had
attacked the hotel-while I slept.
   Then, with a sigh of relief, I saw that it was Dempsey. He was leaning almost 
nonchalantly on the door handle.
His face was as pale as ever but he seemed to have recovered his strength.
   'Sorry to disturb you Bastable.'
   'Do you need help?' I got up and pulled on my trousers:
   'Perhaps I do. There isn't a lot of time now.' He smiled. 'Not "practical" 
help, though.' His eyes were glazed and
dreamy and I realized that he had taken some kind of stimulant to offset the 
effects of the opium. I hated to think
what was happening both to his mind and his body. He sat down heavily on my bed.
   'I'm fine.' He spoke as if to reassure himself. 'I just thought I'd drop in 
for a chat. You wanted a chat, eh?
Earlier.'
   I sat down in the wicker armchair beside the bed. 'Why not?' I said as 
cheerfully as I could.
   'I told you there's no need to patronize me. I've come to make a sort of 
confession. I don't know why it should
be you, Bastable. Possibly it's just because, well, you're one of the victims. 
Singapore and everything . . .'
   'It's over,' I said. 'And it certainly couldn't have been anything to do with 
you. "The War is ceaseless. The most
we can hope for are occasional moments of tranquility in the midst of the 
conflict". I quote Lobkowitz.'
   His drugged eyes shone for a second with an ironic light. 'You read him, too. 
I didn't think you were another
Red, Bastable.'
   'I'm not. Neither, for that matter, is Lobkowitz.'
   'It's a matter of opinion.'
   'Besides, I speak from a great deal of experience.'
   'As a soldier?'
   'I have been a soldier. But I have come to the conclusion that the human race 
is constantly in a state of tension,
that those tensions make us what we are and that they will often lead to wars. 
The greater our ingenuity at
inventing weapons, the worse the wars become.'
   'Oh, indeed, I agree with that last statement.' He sighed. 'But don't you 
believe it's possible for people to
acknowledge the tensions and yet make harmony from those tensions, just as music 
is made?'
   'My experience would have it otherwise. My hope, of course, is another thing. 
But I see little point in such a
debate when the world is currently in such an appalling state. This frightful 
Armageddon will probably not be over
until the last aerial man-o'-war falls from the skies.'
   'You really see it as Armageddon?'
   I could not tell him what I knew: that I had already passed through three 
alternative versions of our world and
in each seen the most hideous destruction of civilization; that I myself felt 
responsibility for at least one of those
great wars. I merely shrugged. 'Perhaps not. Perhaps there will be peace. The 
Russians and the Japanese have
always been at loggerheads. What I can't understand is how Britain failed to 
stop it and why the Japs turned on us
with such ferocity.'
   'I know why,' he said.
   I patted his arm. 'Do you know? Or is it the opium telling you? I've been 
fond of opium in my time, Dempsey.
My appearance was once not too different from yours. Can you believe that?'
   'I thought there was something. But why-?'
   'I took part in a crime,' I said. 'A very wicked crime. And then . . .' I 
paused. 'Then I became lost.'
   'But you're not lost now?'
   'I'm lost now, but I've decided to make the best of things. I've become a 
good airshipman. I love airships. There
is nothing like being at the helm of one.'
   'I know,' he said. 'Of course I know. But I'll never go aloft again.'
   'Something happened? An accident?'
   A small, wretched laugh came out of his throat. 'You could call it that.' He 
fumbled in his pocket and took
something out, placing it on the bed beside him. It was a syringe. 'This stuff 
makes you want to talk, unlike the
opium.' From his other pocket he took a handful of ampoules and placed them 
neatly beside the syringe.
   I got up. 'I can't let you-'
   His eyes were full of pain. 'Can't you?' The words had intense significance. 
They silenced me. I sat down
again with a shrug.
   He put his hand over the syringe and the ampoules and stared at me grimly. 
'You've no choice. I've no
choice. Our choices are all gone, Bastable. For my own part, one way or another, 
I'm going to kill myself.
You can take that for granted. And I'd rather you let me do it this way.'
   'I know the state of mind you're in, old man. I was in it once. And, without 
wishing to make a stupid
comparison, I feel I've had as much reason as anyone on Earth to want to do it. 
But you see me alive. I've
gone beyond suicide.'
   'Well, I haven't.' Yet he hesitated. 'I wanted to talk to you, Bastable.'
   'Then talk.'
   'I can't without this stuff.'
   Once again, I shrugged. But I knew what it was to have an unbearable weight 
on one's conscience. 'Take a
little, then,' I suggested. 'Just a little. And talk. But don't try to kill 
yourself, at least until you have confided in
me.'
   He shuddered. 'Confided! What a word. You sound like a priest.'
   'Just a fellow-sufferer.'
   'You're a bit of a prig, Bastable.'
   I smiled. 'So I've been told by others.'
   'Yet you're a decent sort. And you don't judge people much. Only yourself. Am 
I right?'
   'I'm afraid you probably are.'
   'You don't hold with socialism, do you? With my brand, at any rate.'
   'What's your brand?'
   'Well, Kropotkin called it anarchism. But the word's come to mean something 
very different in the public
mind.'
   'You don't blow things up, then?'
   Again he began to shake. He tried to speak, but no words came. I had, 
accidentally, struck a nerve. I
moved towards him. 'I'm sorry, old man. I didn't mean . . .'
   He drew away from me. 'Get out,' he said. 'For God's sake leave me alone.'
   I felt very foolish. 'Dempsey. Believe me. I meant nothing serious. I was 
being facetious.'
   'Get out!' It was almost a shout, a plea. 'Get out, Bastable! The ship's 
coming. Save yourself, if you can.'
   'I'm not going to let you kill yourself.' I grabbed up some of the ampoules. 
'I want to listen, Dempsey.'
   He fell back on the bed. His head hit the wall. He groaned. His body fell 
sideways. He had passed out.
   I checked his pulse and his breathing, and then I went to look for help. I 
recalled that there was a
missionary doctor now in the hotel.
   As I reached the ground floor and headed to the bar where I would find 
Olmeijer, I heard people near the
windows begin to mutter, then to talk excitedly. A beam of bright light suddenly 
broke the darkness outside.
   Olmeijer saw it. He seemed disappointed. When I reached him he muttered: 
'it's the ship. It's coming in.'
He was going to lose all his customers.
   I told him to send someone to look after Dempsey, and then I ran from the 
hotel towards the park. My
intention was to guide the ship to her mast.
   To my astonishment there were already uniformed men on the ground. I rushed 
towards one. They must
have parachuted from the ship.
   'Thank God you've come,' I said.
   'The nearest figure turned. I looked into the expressionless face of a 
captain in the Imperial Japanese
Army. 'Go back inside,' he said. 'Tell them that if anyone attempts to leave the 
building it will be bombed to
rubble.'


10. Lost Hopes

   We were never to discover how the Japanese had found us. Either they had 
traced the wireless messages or they
had trailed and destroyed the rescue ship. The fact was there was nothing we 
could do against them.
   Soon Olmeijer's place was full of small soldiers in off-white uniforms, their 
politeness to their prisoners
contrasting with the long bayonets fixed on their rifles. The officer had a 
grim, self-controlled manner, but
occasionally, it seemed to me, an expression of straightforward hatred crossed 
his face when he looked at us. We
stood with our baggage (if we had any) in the middle of the floor.
    The women were sent aboard first. The Japs had managed to get the mast 
working and had winched the ship to
ground level.
   It was a large, modern ship. I was surprised that they had felt they could 
spare it, merely to pick up a few
civilians, but I guessed that it had already been patrolling the area when its 
captain had been alerted to our
presence.
   Greaves was closer to the windows than I. He turned to me. 'My God, they've 
fired the town!' He pointed,
addressing the officer. 'You damned barbarians! Why did you have to do that?'
'Barbarians?' The Japanese captain smiled sardonically. 'I am amused you should 
think that of us, Englishman,
after what you did to us.'
   'We did nothing! Whatever happened was a mistake. It suits you to blame us.'
   The captain dismissed this. 'However, we have not set fire to the buildings. 
It's your own workers. A riot of
some kind. I gather they're on their way, en masse.'
   It was credible. Thinking that they might get free of the island aboard a 
ship, the coolies could have persuaded
themselves that it was possible to capture the vessel and sail it to freedom.
   'Don't worry,' continued the Jap, 'we intend to protect you as well as 
ourselves.' His voice, pleasant and yet
sharp, had a degree of contempt in it. I saw that Greaves was upset by the 
exchange.
   Greaves blustered a little, but he could not argue with the man's logic. We 
had far more to fear from the
coolies, immediately at any rate, than from the Japanese.
   It was possible to smell the smoke from where we stood; and traces of red 
firelight were reflected in the
windows and mirrors of Olmeijer's. The Dutchman had given up his despair and was 
now offering to serve
drinks to his new customers (as he saw them). I think he had half a hope that 
Rowe Island was to be occupied
and that he would be allowed to continue (as a neutral) to run the hotel. The 
soldiers motioned him to join us
at the center of the floor. He sat down on one of his own tables. I thought he 
might be going to cry. 'I am
Dutch,' he told the officer. 'I am a private hotelier. A civilian. You cannot 
just remove me from the place I
have spent most of my life building.'
   'We have orders to arrest all Europeans,' said the Japanese. 'And you are 
most definitely European, sir. We
have nothing against the Dutch. However, if you were to be realistic you would 
understand that your country
is an ally of Britain and that it is only a matter of days before you are 
involved in this war.'
   'But we are not involved today!'
   'Not as far as I know. Essentially our mission is to evacuate you from the 
island.'
   'And what will happen to us?' asked Greaves, still in an aggressive mood.
   'You will be interned for the duration of hostilities.'
   'We're not spies!'
   'Neither were those you interned in your South African war, you'll recall.'
   'That was entirely different. The reasons were complex
   'Our reasons are also complex. You are foreign belligerents, potentially 
dangerous to our War Effort.'
   'My God! And you infer that we are hypocritical!'


   'You will not deny, sir, that this is effectively a military base.'
   'It's a mining concern!'
   'But very useful as a fuelling station. We shall be leaving troops behind. A 
garrison. This is conquered territory.
When you go outside you will see that the Japanese flag now flies over the 
airfield.'
   'Then why remove us? Is it usual practice?'
   'It has become so. You will be interned at the European civilian prisoner-of-
war camp on Rishiri.'
   'Where the hell is Rishiri?'
   'It's a small island off the coast of Hokkaido,' said one of the Irish 
priests. Hokkaido was the large island North
of Honshu, Japan's main island. 'Quite a pretty place, as I recollect. We did 
some missionary work there a few
years ago.'
   The Japanese captain smiled. 'You'll have to concentrate on Europeans now, 
Father. But you will have plenty
of time to make converts, I'm sure.'
   Greaves fell silent. He finished the last of his gin fizz with the air of a 
man who was not likely to see another
again for many years.
   With the women gone, the older men were next to be taken from the room. The 
Japanese were by no means
cruel to us. Those who were too weak to move easily were helped by soldiers, who 
even carried bundles and
suitcases for their prisoners, shouldering their rifles in order to do so. There 
was no point in trying to resist them,
and they knew it. The ship's guns could have destroyed Olmeijer's in seconds, 
and we had so many other people to
consider.
   A few minutes later the Japanese captain went outside and then returned to 
issue commands to his men. The
rifles were unshouldered and they ran into the night, leaving only one man to 
guard us. We heard shouts, then
shots; a terrible scream, which rose and fell, then rose again: the scream of a 
mob.
'The coolies!' Olmeijer waddled towards the window. We all followed him. The 
guard did not attempt to stop us.
He stood by the door, looking back in some trepidation.
   The red firelight silhouetted the Malays and Chinese now trying to rush the 
airship, which was defended by a
line of well-disciplined Japanese soldiers. The coolies were badly armed, though 
one or two had rifles and pistols.
For the most part the best weapons they had been able to muster were parangs and 
large picks and hammers. Panic,
anger and hatred drove them against the rifle-fire. Not a bullet was wasted. 
They continued to fall until the corpses
of the dead and wounded hampered the advance of those who still lived.
   They appeared to have some sort of rough organization, however, because they 
now fell back. Their efforts
were being directed by a figure in a crumpled European suit armed with a pistol.
I recognized him as he disappeared with the surviving coolies into the darkness.
   How Dempsey had managed to leave the hotel in the condition in which I'd last 
seen him I didn't know. But
there he was, capering like a maniac, trying to help the coolies in their 
desperate attack.
They came in from two sides now, trying to divide the Japanese fire. This time 
two or three soldiers were hit. They
retreated in order until they were closer to the ship.
   Greaves whispered to me: 'this would be our chance to get out of here. Rush 
the guard and get into the bush,
eh?'
I considered this. 'Between the Japanese and the surviving coolies we'd have no 
chance,' I said. 'There isn't any
food to speak of, either.'
   'You've no guts, Bastable.'
   'Perhaps. But I've a great deal of experience,' I told him. 'There's quite 
likely to be an exchange of civilian
prisoners of war. We could all be in England in a matter of weeks.'
   'But what if we're not?'
   'My view is that we'll be better off with the Japs for the moment. If we're 
going to escape, let's escape from
somewhere closer to Russian territory.'
   Greaves was disgusted. 'You're not exactly impetuous, are you Bastable?'
   'I suppose not.' I had seen too much of warfare and destruction in three 
worlds to place much value on
romantic. Impulsive schemes. I preferred to bide my time. I let Greaves think 
what he liked and noticed that,
without my agreement, he made no attempt to get free of Olmeijer's.
   The firing outside continued but was more spasmodic. Below, in the town, the 
flames were rising higher.
Firelight was reflected on the white hull of the Japanese ship as it swayed 
slowly at its mast.
   Dempsey must have made full use of his stimulants. From time to time I saw 
him, sometimes with a pistol,
sometimes with a parang, leaping here and there amongst the shrubs and trees 
surrounding the airpark. He was
demented. For what obscure, perhaps sentimental, reasons he had leagued himself 
with the coolies, I could not
fathom. Perhaps he saw hope in turning them against the Japanese and saving the 
Europeans, but I doubted it. In
his ragged jacket and trousers he was distinguished from the rabble largely by 
the fact that he was evidently in
control. He had been trained in the navy and his old instincts for leadership 
were coming out.
   The Japanese had also identified him and their fire was concentrated against 
him. He was courting their bullets.
To me, it seemed he wanted them to kill him. He had been talking of suicide and 
perhaps this was in his eyes a
more positive way of dying. Nonetheless he showed courage and I could only 
admire the way he harried the Japs,
sending in coolies from every direction, sometimes at once, sometimes from a 
single angle.
   His eyes glittered; filled with flames. There was a strange, cold grin on his 
lips. And for a moment I was
consumed by an enormous sense of comradeship for him. It was as if I looked at 
some other incarnation of myself,
in those dreadful days before I had learned to live with the guilt, the pain and 
the hopelessness of my own
situation.
   Then Dempsey rushed for the ship, all the remaining coolies at his back. He 
hacked down two soldiers before
they could defend themselves. He fenced with the parang, warding off bayonets 
and bullets. He took another two
of the Japanese and had actually reached the gangway into the gondola when, both 
arms lifted as if to some blood-
greedy battle-god, he dropped.
   I saw his body lying spread-eagled on the gangway. It twitched for a moment 
or two. I didn't know if a bullet
had struck him or if the stimulants had caused a stroke. The captain, sword in 
hand, ran up to the body and turned
it over, instructing two of his men to drag it inside.
   I heard one of the soldiers utter his name: 'Dempsey'. And I wondered how on 
earth they could know him.
   With Dempsey down, the coolies were quickly scattered. The captain returned 
to Olmeijer's and ordered the
rest of us aboard the ship. I asked him: 'how's the white man? Is he shot? Did 
he collapse?' But the captain refused
to answer.
   Greaves said: 'Look here, captain. You could tell us if Dempsey's alive or 
dead!'
The Japanese drew in his breath and looked hard at Greaves. 'You have certain 
rights as a civilian prisoner of war.
Captain Dempsey also has certain rights. However, I am not obliged to answer 
enquiries as to the fate of another
prisoner.'
   'You inhuman devil. It's not a question of rights, but simple decency!'
   The Japanese captain gestured with his sword and gave a command in his own 
tongue. The guards began to
march us out.
   As we left, I heard him say: 'if we were not a civilized people none of you 
would be alive now. And Captain
Dempsey would have been torn to pieces by my men.'
   The captain seemed mad. Perhaps he did not enjoy his trade. Many soldiers did 
not, when real warfare
developed.
   I wondered what crime Dempsey had committed to make him so loathed by those 
who believed him guilty of
it. It was almost certain, anyway, that he had paid the price of the crime with 
his life. I regretted very much that he
had not had time to tell me his own story.
   An hour later we were aloft, leaving the remnants of Rowe Island and its 
population behind. Through a small
porthole I could see the flames spreading through the town. They had even caught 
some of the foliage. Small
figures ran about in the inferno. It was still possible to hear shots as the 
Japanese continued to defend their newly
conquered territory. Our quarters were crowded, but not intolerable. Dempsey was 
not amongst us. Everyone
assumed he had been killed.
   It was dawn by the time we had gained our cruising altitude. Most of us were 
silent, dozing to the steady
drumming of the engines. I suppose we were all wondering what would become of us 
once we reached the civilian
camp on Rishiri. If the War continued, as I had known other wars to continue, 
then it might be years before we
were free.
   I realized, with no particular dismay that I might even die of old age before 
this particular conflict were
resolved.
   I was almost relieved that in no way was my fate any longer in my own hands.


Part Two
'Neither Master nor Slave!'

1.The Camp on Rishiri

   The civilian prisoner-of-war camp was well organized and clean. The food was 
simple and adequate and our
treatment was by no means harsh. There was a permanent Red Cross supervisor and 
a representative of the Swiss
Government who had elected at the invitation of the Japanese to act as a sort of 
umpire. There were civilians of
most nationalities here and those belonging to neutral countries (no longer the 
Dutch) were efficiently repatriated,
so long as they could prove their identity and place of origin. There were a 
good many angry Poles, Bohemians
and Latvians present, for instance.
   Technically they were Russian citizens, but vociferously denied their loyalty 
to any land save their own. Since
Poles and Czechs were fighting in Russian armies there was not a great deal of 
weight to their protestations.
   I found the mixture of races fascinating and made the most of my imprisonment 
to learn as much as I could
about the world in which I had found myself. Here was a future in which O'Bean 
had not existed; yet it contained
many of the inventions familiar to me in that future where I had originally 
encountered General O. T. Shaw. It
seemed that whether they were the work of an individual genius or a variety of 
hard-working scientists, the
airships and the sub aquatic boats, the electrical wonders, the wireless 
telegraph and so on, would nonetheless
come into existence at some time. In this world Britain's Empire was even larger 
than in my own. Certain
mainland territories in South and Central America were hers, as were some parts 
of what I had known as the
Southern United States. These had been regained; it appeared, during the 
American Civil War, when Britain had
leant positive support to the Confederacy in return for control over coastal 
regions. With the victory of the
Confederacy it had suited everyone, I learned, to retain this contact. The lands 
had been leased from the CSA for a
period of a hundred years. This meant that in thirty years' time, the 
Confederacy would reclaim them. I was curious
as to whether slavery continued to flourish and learned to my surprise that not 
only did it not, but that
economically it had suited everyone to see a strong black middle class emerging. 
In America there was greater
racial equality than in my own day! North and South were virtually autonomous 
and these smaller units seemed to
have produced greater coherence rather than less. Although America was not quite 
so rich in industry, not quite so
powerful a military nation, she seemed in many other ways to have benefited from 
the truce, which had followed
the Civil War and allowed both sides to recover and begin to trade.
   France, on the other hand, was no longer a Great Power. She had never 
recovered from the Franco-Prussian
Wars. Germany now controlled much of the old French Empire and the French 
themselves seemed content enough
in the main, without the responsibilities of their colonies. Germany had become 
a close ally of Britain, although
not bound to join in the current conflict. She formed part of an alliance with 
the Scandinavian countries; a very
powerful trading pact which suited everyone. Austria-Hungary moldered on, a 
romantic, decaying Empire,
constantly in debt, constantly being helped out by richer nations. The only new 
Great Power of any significance
was the Ottoman Empire, which had expanded significantly into Africa and the 
Middle East to form a strong
Islamic union.
    Greece, I learned, was all but non-existent. Most of her people were now 
Moslems and to all intents and
purposes Turkish. The Japanese Empire controlled large areas of what had been 
China and her inroads along
borders of the Russian Empire had been the chief reason for the present 
struggle. I learned why the Japanese
attacked British targets with far greater ferocity than they attacked others. 
They believed that Britain had
deliberately started the War, with a raid on Hiroshima. I was reminded of my own 
part - my own guilt - in a similar
raid, when I had sailed aboard the flagship of General Shaw.
   If I had known only one world I might have thought that History was repeating 
itself, but I knew that it was
human nature, which lay at the root of History and that no matter where I found 
myself, I was bound to discover
superficial similarities expressing and exemplifying that nature. It was human 
idealism and human impatience and
human despair which continued to produce these terrible wars. Human virtues and 
vices, mixed and confused in
individuals, created what we called 'History'. Yet I could see no way in which 
the vicious circle of aspiration and
desperation might ever be broken. We were all victims of our own imagination. 
This I had realized in all my
strange journeys across what Mrs. Persson calls 'the multiverse'. The very thing 
which makes us human, which
produces the best, is also the thing which will make us behave worse than the 
maddest wild beast could ever
behave. We live through example and emulation, which can turn into envy if 
circumstances create for us
misfortunes. That is all I have come to believe, and I am not entirely sure I 
believe that. But I am reconciled to
human nature, if not to human folly, and that is what my own particular 
misfortunes have achieved for me.
   Olmeijer was soon in his element once again. He somehow managed to get 
himself put in charge of the camp
shop and ran it with all the grandeur of a Chef de la Maison at the Ritz.
   Greaves joined a group of English and Australian merchant seamen who had been 
captured at the fall of
Shanghai. They spent most of their time choosing sides for Rugby football games 
and talking about Home. I
supposed that this was how they managed to avoid thinking too much about the 
truth of their situation, but I could
only stand half-an-hour or so of their schoolboy stuff. I knew very well that 
not long before my first visit to Teku
Benga I might well have joined in with some enthusiasm. I had changed beyond 
redemption. I would never be
quite the same as that idealistic and naive young army officer who had first led 
his men into the mountains in
search of the bandit, Sharan Kang. I felt, indeed, like a cross between Rip van 
Winkle and the Flying Dutchman,
with a touch of the Wandering Jew besides. I sometimes felt that I had lived for 
as long as the human race had
existed.
   Quite soon after arriving at the camp I myself fell in with a mixed bag of 
civilian airshipmen, the survivors of a
variety of wrecks. Some had been accidentally shot down; others had been rescued 
by Japanese patrols. Some had
simply been lost in the general chaos and wandered into Japanese hands. I 
learned that all merchant airships now
moved in convoys these days, protected by military vessels.
   It was about a week later that Harry Birchington attached himself to me. He 
was a thin-faced, angular man,
with an awkward, unspontaneous way of moving, a flat forehead and cheekbones and 
a reddish discoloration under
the eyes of the sort I often identify with a certain mental imbalance. He 
approached me as I came out of Olmeijer's
hut. He regarded me, he said, as a fellow intellectual; someone who had a bit 
more education than most of these
riff-raff'. Since there were a number of clergymen and academics amongst the 
prisoners in our compound alone, as
well as a couple of journalists, I did not find his remarks particularly 
flattering. He wore a khaki shirt and a striped
tie, gray flannel trousers and, no matter what the temperature, would often have 
on a tweed sports-jacket with
leather patches on the elbows. He was a bore. He was, in fact, the camp bore. 
Every army unit has one, every
airship crew has one, and every office and factory in the world doubtless has 
one. However, Birchington was, I'll
admit, a bit above the average.
   He drew me across the compound to the wire fence corner. Leaning against one 
of the struts of the fence was a
short, moody Slav in a dirty peasant shirt. I had seen him before. His name was 
Makhno and he was from the
Ukraine. For bizarre idealistic reasons of his own he had elected to make his 
way to Tokyo in the cause of
international brotherhood. He was an anarchist, I gathered, of the old Kropotkin 
school and, I thought then, like
most anarchists would rather talk than anything else. He was a likeable enough 
fellow who, having failed to
convert the camp, kept his own counsel. Birchington introduced us. 'This chap's 
not too good with the English,' he
said. 'I talk a spot of Rooshian, but I'm having trouble getting through to him. 
We were talking about money.'
   'You're trying to buy something?' I asked.
   'No, no. Money. International finance and that.'
   'Aha.' I exchanged glances with the Ukrainian, who raised a sardonic eyebrow.
   'Now I'm a socialist, right?' continued Birchington. 'Have been all my life. 
You might ask what we mean by the
word socialism, and you'd be correct in doing so, because socialism can mean 
many different things to many
different people...' He went on in this vein, doubtless word for word repeating 
himself for the nth time. There are
some people who never appear to realize to what degree they have this habit. I 
have come to believe that it has the
effect on them of a soothing lullaby sung to them. It has a completely opposite 
effect, of course, on anyone
attempting (or forced) to listen to them.
   The anarchist, Makhno, was not bothering to listen. It was obvious that he 
could understand many of the words
but that he had instinctively recognized Birchington's type.
   'Now this chap,' Birchington stabbed an unhealthy finger in Makhno's 
direction, 'would also call himself a
socialist. I suppose the term would be "anarcho-socialist". That is to say, he 
believes in the brotherhood of man,
the emancipation of the working classes of the world and so on and so forth. He 
comes, after all, from a so-called
socialist country, though what it's doing with an emperor still there, for all 
he's got no real power, I don't know.
And he's against his own government.'
   The Russian government,' said Makhno. 'I am against all governments. 
Including the so-called Ukrainian Rada,
which is only a puppet of the Central Government in Petersburg.'
   'Just so,' said Birchington, dismissing this. 'So you're a socialist and 
you're against socialists. Am I right or
wrong?'
   'Kerensky's Duma is socialist in name only,' said Makhno in deep, Slavic 
tones. 'In name only.'
   'Exactly my own point. Not proper socialists. Just Tories under another name, 
right?'
   'Politicians,' said Makhno laconically.
   'That's where you're wrong, old chap. Just because they're not real 
socialists doesn't mean that real socialists
can't make good politicians.'
   I was already trying to extricate myself from this, but Birchington held on 
to my arm. 'Hang on a minute, old
man. I want you to umpire this one. Now, what do we mean by this word "politics" 
of ours? See, I'm an engineer
by profession, and I like to think a pretty good one, and to me politics is just 
a matter of getting the engineering
right. If you have a machine which functions properly without much attention, 
then it's obviously a good machine.
That's what politics should be about. And if the machine has simple working 
parts which any layman can
understand, then it's, as it were, your democratic machine. Am I right or am I 
wrong?'
   'Crazy,' said Makhno, and scratched his nose.
   'What?'
   'You're not right or wrong. You're crazy.'
   This amused me and Makhno could tell, but Birchington was baffled.
   'Sane, I'd say,' he said. 'Very sane indeed. Like a good machine. That's 
sane, isn't it? What's more sane than a
properly functioning steam turbine, for instance?'
   'Rationalist nonsense,' pronounced Makhno, and rolled the 'r' in that ironic 
way only Slavs have.
   'And what about your own romantic twaddle?' Birchington wanted to know. 'Blow 
everything up and start
again, eh?'
   'No worse a solution than yours. But this is not what I argued.'
   'It's what it comes down to, old chap, that's your anarchism for you. Boom!' 
And he laughed as one who had
never known humor.
   Although I felt sorry for Makhno (while having little sympathy with his 
politics) I had had quite enough of this.
With a murmur of vague apology I began to move away, to where some of my 
acquaintances were standing,
smoking their pipes and talking airship talk, which at that moment was 
preferable to anything Birchington had to
offer.
   Birchington stopped me. 'Hang on just a sec, old man. What I want you to tell 
me is this: without government,
who makes the decisions?'
   'The individual,' said Makhno.
   I shrugged. 'Given the hypothesis as it's put,' I said, 'our 'Ukrainian 
friend is absolutely right. Who else could
make a decision?'
   'Just for himself?'
   ''By consensus,' said Makhno.
   'Ha!' Birchington was triumphant. 'Ha! And what's that, but democratic 
socialism. Which is exactly what I
believe in.'
   'I thought you believed in machines.' couldn't resist this jab.
   Birchington missed my small irony as he had missed all Makhno's. 'A 
democratic - socialist - machine.' He
said, as if to a child.
   'That is not anarchism,' said Makhno stubbornly. But he was not trying to 
convince Birchington. If anything, he
was trying to drive him away.
   'I can see some of my pals want a word,' I said to Birchington. I winked at 
Makhno and made off. But
Birchington pursued me. 'You're an airshipman by all accounts, as are these 
fellows. Don't you believe in using the
best machinery, the engines least likely to let you down, the control systems 
which will work as simply as possible
. . .?'
   'Airships aren't countries,' I said. Unfortunately an unsuspecting second 
officer from the destroyed Duchess of
Salford heard me without noticing Birchington.
   'They can be,' he said. 'Like small countries. I mean, everyone has to learn 
to get on together . . .'
   I left him to Birchington. When he realized what he had let himself in for a 
look of patent dismay crossed his
young face. I waved at him behind Birchington's back and sauntered off.
   It was to be one of my easier escapes from the Bore of Rishiri. The fact that 
I was a prisoner and beginning,
like many others, to fret a great deal was bad enough. It was Purgatory. But 
Birchington was making it Hell. I am
still surprised that nobody murdered him. He became impossible to avoid.
   At first we tried joshing him to get rid of him and then laughing at him, 
then downright rudeness, but it was
useless to try to insult him or alter him in his course. We would sometimes 
offend him, but he would either laugh it
offer, if hurt, return in a few minutes. And I had everyone's sympathy because 
he continued, no matter what I said
or did, to claim me as his closest friend.
   I think that must be why, when Greaves approached me with his half-baked 
escape plan, I agreed to join in
against all common sense. He and his fellow Rugger enthusiasts meant to go under 
the wire at night and try to
capture one of the two Japanese motor-torpedo-boats which had recently anchored 
in Rishiri's tiny harbor. From
there Greaves and Co. intended to try for the Russian mainland, which had not 
fallen to the Japs.
   There had been a number of attempted escapes, of course, but all of them had 
been unsuccessful. Our guards
were vigilant; there were two small scouting airships keeping the tiny island 
under surveillance, there were
searchlights, dogs, and the whole paraphernalia of a prison. Moreover the island 
was used as a fuelling station for
raids against Russia (which is why we were there - to stop the base from being 
bombed) so it usually had several
large airships at mast near the harbor.
   It was true, as Greaves argued, that no military aerial vessels were in 
evidence at that moment, but I was not
sure that, as he put it, this was 'the best chance of getting clear we'll ever 
have'.
   I did believe that there was a small chance of escape as well as a fair 
chance of being killed or wounded. But I
argued to myself that even if I were wounded I should spend time in the hospital 
away from Birchington.
   'Very well, Greaves,' I said. 'You can count me in.'
   'Good man.' He patted my shoulder.
   That night we assembled in twos and threes at Olmeijer's shop. The Dutchman 
was not in evidence. He would
have been too portly to squeeze himself into the tunnel.
   Greaves and his Rugger chums had been digging. It was usual to meet in the 
hut in the evening, to play table
tennis or the variety of board games supplied by the Red Cross. We had only 
occasional trouble from the guards,
who were inclined to look in on us at random. Because they did not check our 
numbers, we stood a fair chance of
all getting down the tunnel before they suspected anything. A few of the 
airshipmen had elected to stay behind to
cover us.
   Greaves was to go first and I was to go last. One by one the men disappeared 
into the earth. And it was as I was
about to follow them that I realized Fate was almost certainly singling me out 
for unusual punishment. Birchington
walked through the door of the hut.
   I was halfway down. I think I remember smiling at him weakly.
   'My lord, old man! What are you up to?' He asked. Then he brightened. 'An 
escape, eh? Good show. A secret is
it? Shan't breath a word. I take it anyone can join in.'
   'Urn,' I said. 'Actually Greaves . . .'     'my pal Greaves, eh? His idea. 
Jolly good. That's all right with me, old
man. I trust Greaves implicitly. And he'd want me along.'
   One of the airshipmen near the window hissed that a couple of guards were on 
their way.
   I ducked into the tunnel and began to wriggle along it. There was no time to 
argue with Birchington. I heard his
voice behind me:
   'Make way for a little 'un.'
   I knew that he had joined me in the tunnel before the light vanished as the 
airshipmen above replaced the
floorboards.
   I seemed to crawl for eternity, with Birchington muttering and apologizing, 
constantly bumping into my feet,
criticizing what he called the 'poor engineering job of the tunnel. He wondered 
why they hadn't thought of asking
him for his expert help.
   We emerged into sweet-smelling darkness. Behind us were the wire and the 
lights of the camp. We were close
to the earth road, which wound down to the harbor. Greaves and the merchant 
seamen were whispering and
gesticulating in the darkness, just as if they were still choosing sides for a 
game.
Birchington said in a voice which seemed unnaturally loud, even for him: 'what's 
the problem? Need a volunteer?'
   Greaves came up to me urgently. 'Good God, man. Why did you tell him?'
   'I didn't. He found out just as the guards were on their way.'
   'I thought you could do with an extra chap,' said Birchington. 'So I 
volunteered. Don't forget I'm an expert
engineer.'
   I heard someone curse and murmur: 'Shoot the blighter.' Birchington, of 
course, was oblivious.
   Greaves sighed. 'We'd better start getting down to the harbor. If we're 
separated-'
   He was interrupted by the unmistakable sounds of airship engines high 
overhead. 'Damn! That complicates
things.'
   The sound of the engines grew louder and louder and it was evident that the 
ships were coming in lower. We
began to duck and weave through the shrubs and trees at the side of the road, 
heading for the harbor.
   Then, suddenly, there was light behind us, and gunfire, the steady pounding 
of artillery. A dying scream as a
bomb descended some distance from the camp. Up the road came several trucks full 
of soldiers, as well as a couple
of armored cars and some motor-bicycles. The firing continued until I realized 
that the ships were attacking.
Something whizzed past me, just above my head. It felt like a one-man glider. 
These ingenious devices were far
more manageable than parachutes in landing troops. It seemed there was a raid on 
and we had become caught in
the middle of it.
   Greaves and his lads decided not to vary from their plan. 'We'll use the 
confusion,' he said.
Birchington called: 'I say, steady on. Perhaps we should wait and see what-'
   'No time!' shouted Greaves. 'We don't know what this is all about. Let's get 
to that boat.'
   'But suppose-'
   'Shut up, Birchington,' I said. I was prepared to follow Greaves' lead. I 
felt I had little choice now.
   'Wait!' cried the engineer. 'Let's just stop and think for a minute. If we 
keep our heads-'
   'You're about to lose yours to a samurai sword,' called Greaves. 'Now for 
God's sake shut up, Birchington.
Either stay where you are or come with us quietly.'
   'Quietly? I wonder what you mean to say when you say-'
   His droning voice was a greater source of fear than any bombs or bullets. We 
all put on an excellent burst of
speed. By now machine-guns were going, both from the ground and from the rear. I 
have never prayed before for
another human being's death, but I prayed that night that somebody would take 
Birchington directly between the
eyes and save us.
   The Japanese were all making for the camp. As a result we were lucky. They 
weren't looking for escaped
prisoners just yet. Even when we were spotted, we were taken for enemy soldiers. 
We were shot at, but we were
not pursued.
   We reached the outskirts of the town. Getting through the streets unobserved 
was going to be the difficult part.
   Again we were lucky in that whatever was going on behind us was diverting all 
troops, all attention. It was
Birchington crying: 'I say, you fellows, wait for me!' that brought us the 
greatest danger. A small detachment of
Japanese infantry heard his voice and immediately began to fire along the alley 
we had entered. Greaves went
down, together with a couple of others.
   I kneeled beside Greaves. I tested his pulse. He had been shot in the back of 
the head and was quite dead.
Another chap was dead, also, but the survivor was only slightly wounded. He got 
his arm over my shoulder and we
continued to make for the harbor. By this time we were fairly hysterical and 
were yelling wildly at Birchington as
Japanese soldiers opened fire again behind us. 'Shut up, you damned fool! 
Greaves is dead!'
   'Dead? He should have been more careful . . .'
   'Shut up, Birchington!'
   We got to the quayside and went straight into the water, as planned, swimming 
for the nearest boat, a white and
red blur in the misty electric light from the harbor. I heard Birchington behind 
me.
   'I say, you chaps. I say! Didn't your realize I couldn't swim?'
   This intelligence seemed to lend me greater energy. Supporting the wounded 
man, I swam slowly towards the
MTB. Some of the seamen were already climbing its sides. I was relieved to hear 
no further gunshots. Perhaps we
had managed to surprise them, after all.
   By the time I eventually got to the MTB a rope ladder had been thrown down 
for me. I lifted the wounded man
on to it, holding it while he ascended. I think I could still hear Birchington's 
dreadful cries from the harbor:
   'I say, chaps. Hang on a minute. Can somebody send a boat to fetch me?'
   I hardened my heart. At that moment I must admit I didn't give a fig for 
Birchington's life.
   By the time I reached the deck I was gasping with exhaustion. I looked around 
me, expecting to see captured
Japanese sailors. Instead I saw the white uniforms of Russian Navy personnel. A 
young lieutenant, his cap on the
side of his head, his tunic unbuttoned, a revolver and a saber in his hands, 
saluted me with his sword. 'Welcome
aboard, sir,' he said in perfect English. He grinned at me with that wild, 
careless grin which only Russians have.
'We both appear to have had the same idea,' he said. 'I am Lieutenant 
Pyatnitski, at your service. We took this boat
only twenty minutes before you arrived.'
   'And the airships back there?'
   'Russian. We are rescuing the prisoners, I hope, at this very moment.'
   'You're using an awful lot of stuff for a few prisoners,' I said.
   'While the prisoners are on the island,' said Pyatnitski pragmatically, 'we 
cannot bomb the fuelling station.'
   One of the English seamen said. 'Poor bloody Greaves. He died for absolutely 
nothing.'
   I leaned on the rail. From the quayside I could still hear Birchington's 
awful voice, pleading and desperate: the
wailing of a frightened child.


2. Back in Service

   If someone had told me, before I ever entered the Temple of Teku Benga, that 
I should one day be glad to join
the Russian Service, I should not only have laughed at them I should, if they 
had persisted, probably have punched
them on the nose. In those days Russia was the greatest menace to our frontiers 
in India. There was often the threat
of open war, for it was. Well-known that they had territorial ambitions in 
Afghanistan, if nowhere else. The fact
that the Japanese Empire and the Russian Empire had clashed over which parts of 
South-East Asia and China came
under their control was probably fortunate for the British. The War might well 
have taken a different turn, with
Japan and Britain as allies, if Russian ambitions had not, in this world, been 
diverted towards the crumbling
remains of the Chinese Empire. A great deal of the reason for this, of course; 
was Kerensky himself.
    The old President of Russia (and the chief power in the so-called Union of 
Slavic Republics -fundamentally
the countries conquered by Imperial Russia before the socialist Revolution) was 
anxious to keep the friendship of
Europe and America and this meant that he had become extremely cautious about 
offending us. Russia needed to
import a great many manufactured goods even now, and she needed markets for her 
agricultural produce.
Moreover she required as much foreign investment as she could get and was 
especially interested in attracting"
British and American capital. She had taken huge steps forward since the 
successful - and almost bloodless -
Revolution of 1905, which had occurred at a time when another war between Russia 
and Japan was brewing. Her
brand of humanist socialism had produced almost universal literacy and her 
medical facilities were amongst the
best in the world. She had produced a thriving and liberal middle class and it 
was very rare, these days, to
encounter the kind of poverty for which Russia, when I was a boy, was famous. AH 
in all, even amongst the most
conservative people, there was no doubt that Russia and her dominions were much 
improved for Kerensky and his
socialists.
   Whatever the historical reasons, there was nothing dishonorable in joining 
the Russians against our common
enemy. When sub aquatic liner, took us, first to Vladivostok and then, by 
airship, to Khabarovsk, I wondered how
long it would be before I could begin doing something again. The imprisonment 
alone had left me frustrated.
When news came through that any British citizens with airship experience were 
needed for the aerial arm of the
Russian Volunteer Fleet and that
   Whitehall was actively encouraging us to join up, I put my name down 
immediately, and as did most of the
chaps I was with. Those few of us, like myself, with military experience were 
given the choice of serving on armed
merchantmen, flying in convoys, or on the escorting aerial frigates and cruisers 
themselves. I elected to join the
frigates. I had no particular urge to kill my fellow men but something in me 
felt it wanted to take something less
than a passive role through the rest of this particular War. I have learned from 
my experiences that the politicians
of any one country against any other can manufacture hatred and racial 
antagonism, so I was no longer the patriot I
had been. Personally, however, and I know now that this was an infantile 
impulse, I felt that I had been put to a
great deal of trouble by the Japanese and I might as well fight them as anyone 
else. I also, I must admit, rather
hoped there would not be too much conflict. I wanted to fly good, fast ships. 
And here, at last, was my chance.
   We had a two-week training program in and around Samara, in which We learned 
the specifics of the Russian
ships, which were mainly built and equipped according to the designs of the 
great engineer Sikorski and at that
time were amongst the most modern in the world; then we were assigned to various 
ships to get general
experience. I joined the aerial cruiser Vassarion Belinsky. She was a fine, 
easily handled ship, sailing out of the
great Lermontov Airpark a few miles to the north of Odessa, that marvelous 
cosmopolitan seaport from which
have come so many fine Russian-speaking poets, novelists, painters, and 
intellectuals. I had a few days' leave in
Odessa before we sailed and I enjoyed those days to the full. Being on the Black 
Sea the port was relatively
untouched by the War and there was more merchant shipping in her harbors than 
there was naval. Her streets were
crowded with people of every color and nation. She smelled of spices, of the 
food of the five continents, and there
was a merry, carefree quality about her, even in wartime, which seemed to me to 
exemplify the very best of the
Slavic soul.
   Odessa has a large Jewish population (for it is the capital of Russian Jewry 
beyond the pale, even though the
pale itself, together with all anti-Semitic laws, has been abolished in 
Kerensky's Russia) and so is full of music,
intelligent commercial enterprise, and romance. I fell in love with her 
immediately. I know of no other city quite
like her and often wish that I could have spent longer exploring her winding 
streets, her avenues and promenades,
her resorts and watering places. She is not strictly speaking a Russian city.  
She is Ukrainian, and the Ukrainians
will insist that the 'goat-beards' (their word for great Russians) are 
interlopers, that Kiev, capital of the Ukraine, is
the true center of Slavic culture, that the Muscovites are upstarts, parvenus, 
johnny-come-latelies, tyrants,
imperialists, thieves, carpet-baggers, and almost anything else of the kind you 
care to think of. It is true that the
Central Government of Moscow has most power over the Ukraine, but there is a 
spirit about Odessa, which, I
think, denies any of its denizens' allegations.
   In Odessa I learned a great deal about the progress of the war. On land the 
Japanese had made many early
gains, but were now being beaten back by Russian and British infantry - indeed 
they had held less territory than
before the war. They were still pretty powerful in the air and at sea, and were 
masters of strategy, but all in all we
were optimistic about the way the conflict was turning, for the Dutch and 
Portuguese were also on out side and
although their navies were not large, they were extremely capable.
   It is certain that the War would have been as good as over if it had not been 
for Russia's domestic problems.
These tended, amongst Odessa's population, to be a more important topic than the 
War itself. Perhaps because of
the War, there was a threat of revolution in several parts of the USSR. Indeed 
whole parts of the Ukraine were
currently in the hands of large armies calling themselves Free Cossacks -many of 
them deserters from various
cavalry regiments. I gathered that they were intense Slavophils, opposed to 
Kerensky's 'Europeanisation' of their
lands, were 'nationalists' in that they argued for the independence of all 
territories currently making up the Russian
Empire - Bohemia, Moravia, Poland, Finland, Latvia, Estonia, Bulgaria and so on. 
Their policies and demands
seemed vague, though socialistic in terminology, even when I heard them 
discussed from all aspects, but if it was
possible to argue forever about the interpretation of their ideology, all agreed 
to a degree of fascination with the
leading personality amongst the revolutionists, the mysterious man known 
popularly as The Steel Tsar. He was
believed to have come originally from Georgia and his real name was thought to 
be Josef" Vissarionovich
Djugashvili, an ex-priest with a record of messianism. He was known as the Steel 
Tsar because he tended to wear
an ancient metal helmet covering most of his face. There were many explanations 
of this; some thought him
disfigured in battle, others thought that his features had been hideously 
deformed since birth. He was supposed to
have a withered arm, be a hunchback, have artificial legs, and to be not a human 
being at all, but some sort of
automaton.
Because of the atmosphere surrounding Djugashvili, I myself became quite as 
curious about him as the natives. I
followed the news of the Free Cossacks as eagerly as I followed news of the 
British airship battles in the skies of
the Pacific.
   In Odessa I met one of the chaps with whom I had been imprisoned. He was 
about to join a British
merchantman. He told me that Birchington, too, was working for the Russians, but 
he wasn't sure where. 'Some
sort of engineering job, I gather.' Olmeijer was in Yalta, managing a State-
owned hotel.
    The worst news, however, concerned Dempsey. 'I heard he jumped it before we 
ever got to Japan. Seemed so
scared of what they'd do to him that, wounded as he was, he preferred to dive 
out. God knows why they hated him
so. Do you have any idea, Bastable?'
   I shook my head. But again I experienced that peculiar frisson; a sort of 
recognition, as if somewhere within me
I actually knew what Dempsey had done.
   My experience of Odessa was as intense as it was brief and I missed it, when 
I left for the airpark on the train,
as if I had lived there for years.
   The Vassarion Belinsky was a joy. She used liquid ballast, which could, like 
her gas, be heated or cooled to
alter her weight, and her ascent acceleration was, if we needed it, rocket-like 
in its speed. She had a top-speed of
200 mph but could be pushed quite a bit faster than that with a good wind behind 
her. She could turn and dive like
a porpoise and there was almost nothing you couldn't do with her.
    All the crew, except me, was Russian. Captain L. V. Leonov was a thoroughly 
experienced airshipman with an
excellent grasp of English. My own Russian was, naturally, limited, but enough 
to receive and convey the
appropriate orders. England had for many years maintained herself as 
successfully in the air as she had on the sea,
so that most airshipmen tended to use English as their first language while 
aloft.
   As we left Lermontov Airpark on a cool, sunny dawn, gaining height through a 
slow, gentle curve which
revealed more and more of the steppe through our observation ports, Captain 
Leonov broke open his orders on the
control deck and, standing with his back to our helmsman, informed his officers 
of the Belinsky's mission.
   I was not the only one both surprised and disappointed. It seemed that we 
were victims of a typical piece of
Muscovite bureaucratic muddle, and there I was (since I had signed up for a 
minimum of a year) with absolutely
nothing I could do about it.
   Leonov's heavy Russian face was sober and his voice sonorous as he began to 
read the orders. With typical
Russian courtesy, he spoke English for my benefit.
   'We are to proceed at all fastest speed to Yekaterinaslav which is currently 
sustaining heavy attack from rebel
forces. We are to join other ships under the command of Air Admiral Krassnov.' 
He pinched his eyebrows
together. It was obvious that he had no taste for the commission, which would 
involve him in giving orders, which
would inevitably lead to the death of other Russians.
   Everyone was agitated by the news. They had been expecting to defend their 
country against the Japanese.
Instead they were assigned to domestic policing duties of a kind which all the 
officers found distasteful and
demeaning. I did not really mind missing a scrap with the Japanese, but I was 
bitterly sorry that I was unlikely to
see any real aerial action. I had joined the Service out of a mixture of 
desperation and boredom. I appeared to be
doomed to a continuation of those circumstances.
   Moreover I should sooner or later have blood on my hands, and it would be the 
blood of people I had
absolutely nothing against. I had no idea of the issues. Socialists are always 
quarrelling amongst themselves, be-
cause of the strong element of messianism in their creeds, and I could see 
little difference between Kerensky's
brand or Djugashvili's. My only consolation was that at least I might have the 
opportunity of observing the Steel
Tsar (or at any rate his works) at first hand.
   Pilniak, a 2nd Lieutenant of about my own age, with huge brown eyes and a 
rather girlish face (though he was
in no way effeminate) grasped my uniformed shoulder (like him I wore the pale 
blue of the Russian Volunteer Air
force) and laughed.
   'Well, Mr. Bastable, you're going to see some Cossacks, eh? A bit of the 
reality most Europeans miss.' He
dropped his voice and became sympathetic. 'Does that bother you? The Steel Tsar 
rather than the Mikado?' 'Not a
bit,' I said. After all, I thought wickedly, I had originally been trained to 
fight Russians. But I have never been able
to find consolation in cynicism for long and this lasted a few seconds. 'Perhaps 
we'll find out if he's human or not.'
   Pilniak became serious. 'He's human. And he's cruel. This whole thing is 
essentially mediaeval in its overtones,
for all they claim to be socialists and nationalists. They want to put the clock 
back to the days of Ivan the Terrible.
They could destroy Russia and everything the Revolution achieved. There have 
even been instances of pogroms in
one or two of the towns they've taken, and God alone knows what's going on in 
the rural districts. They should be
stopped as quickly as possible. But they're gaining popular support all the 
time. War brings out these basic
feelings. They are not always controllable. Our newspapers beat the drum of 
Slavophilia, of nationalism, in an
effort to stir up patriotic feeling against the Japanese - and this happens.'
   'You seem to speak as if this uprising was inevitable.'
   'I think it was. Kerensky promised us Heaven on Earth many years ago. And now 
we find that not only have we
not made Heaven, but also we are threatened with Hell, in the form of invasion. 
This War will leave many scars,
Mr. Bastable. Our country will not be the same when it is over.'
   'The Steel Tsar is a genuine threat?'
   'What he represents, Mr. Bastable, is a genuine threat.'


3. Cossack Revolutionists

   Yekaterinaslav was soon below us and it was obvious that the city was 
undergoing attack. We could see smoke
and flames everywhere, little groups of figures running hither and yonder in the 
suburbs, the occasional boom of
cannon fire or the tiny snapping noises of rifle-shots.
   Yekaterinaslav was an old Russian-style city, with many of its buildings made 
of wood. Tall houses with
elaborately carved decoration; the familiar onion-domes of churches; spires, 
steeples, several brick-built apartment
blocks and shops near the center.
   On the nearby Dnieper River most of the boats were burning or had been sunk. 
Occasionally a ship, its paddles
foaming the water, would go by the city, and sometimes it would loose off a 
shell or two. Evidently these were
naval ships commandeered by the revolutionists.
   Pilniak knew Yekaterinaslav pretty well. He stood beside me, naming streets 
and squares. Some distance from
the city, amongst demolished farmhouses and ruined fields, we saw the main 
Cossack camp: a mixture of all kinds
of tents and temporary shacks, including more than one railway carriage, for the 
main railway line ran to
Yekaterinaslav and much of its stock had been captured.
   'That's it,' said Pilniak in some excitement. 'The Free Cossack Host. 
Impressive, you must admit.' He raised
binoculars to his eyes. 'Most of their heavy artillery is further down the line, 
along with their armored vehicles.
They're saving up the cavalry for the final charge. There must be ten thousand 
horses down there.'
   'Not much good against airships,' I said. 'They look a pretty unruly mob to 
me.'
   'Wait until you see them fight. Then you'll know what cavalry tactics are all 
about.'
   As a matter of fact it did my heart good to hear someone talking in those 
terms. The last time I had heard
people discussing cavalry tactics had been in the mess in my own world of 1902.
   'You talk as if you're on their side,' I said.
   He paused, lowering his glasses, then he said seriously: 'everything free in 
the Russian heart is represented by
our Cossacks. Every yearning we have is symbolized by their way of life. They 
are cruel, they are often illiterate
and they are certainly unsophisticated by Petersburg standards, but they are - 
they are the Cossacks. The Central
Government should never have imposed conscription. They would have volunteered 
in time, but they wanted to
show that they were making their own decisions, not Petersburg's.'
   'This rebellion came about as the result of conscription?' I had not heard 
this mentioned in Odessa.
   'It is one reason. There are many. Traditionally, the Cossacks have enjoyed a 
certain amount of autonomy.
When the Tsars tried to take it away they always found themselves in trouble. 
They have large communities - we
call them Hosts -which elect their own officers, their own leader - the ataman - 
and are very touchy, Mr. Bastable,
about these things.'
   'Apparently,' I said. 'So in destroying this rebellion, you feel you are in 
some way destroying your own sense of
freedom, of romance.'
   'I think so,' said Pilniak. He shrugged. 'But we have our orders, huh?'
   I sighed. I did not envy him his dilemma.
   The Cossacks had sighted the ship. There was some sporadic artillery fire 
from the ground, a few rifle shots,
but luckily they had little or no anti-aircraft weaponry. The poor devils would 
be sitting ducks for our bombs.
   The ship was turning slowly, heading for the airpark on the southern side of 
the city. Here we were to
rendezvous with the other ships of the Volunteer Fleet.
   Pilniak continued to peer through his binoculars. 'Looks as if they're 
missing,' he said. 'They know they haven't
much time now.'
   'They're going to try to take the city entirely with cavalry?'
   'It's not the first time they've done it. But they have covering fire to some 
extent, and some armored battle cars.'
   'Who's defending Yekaterinaslav?' I asked.
   'I think we dropped some infantry a couple of days ago, and there's some 
artillery, too, as you can see. They
were only sent to hold out until we arrived, if I'm not mistaken.'
   Now we could see the airpark. There were already half-a-dozen good-sized 
ships tethered at mast.   'Those are
troop-carriers,' he said, pointing to the largest. 'By the way they're sitting 
in the air I'd say they still had most of
their chaps on board.'
   Even as he spoke the captain came on deck behind us and saluted us. 
'Gentlemen, we have our wireless orders.'
   We approached him. He was mopping his brow with a large, brown handkerchief. 
He seemed to be barely in
control of his own agitation. 'We are to proceed in squadron with three other 
ships, let by the Afanasi Turchaninov,
and there we shall release our bombs on the rebel camp before they can move 
their horses out.' He was plainly
sickened by the statement. Whatever the Cossacks had done, however cruel they 
were, however insane in their
ambitions, they did not deserve to die in such a manner.
   His announcement was greeted with silence throughout the control deck.
   The captain cleared his throat. 'Gentlemen, we are at War. Those soldiers 
down there are just as much enemies
of Russia as the Japanese. They could be said to be a worse enemy, for they are 
traitors, turning against their
country in her hour of greatest need.'
   He spoke with no real authority. It would not have mattered a great deal if 
the horsemen were Japanese, it still
seemed appallingly unsporting to do what we were about to do. I felt that Fate 
had once again trapped me in a
moral situation over which I had no control.
   Some of my fellow officers were beginning to murmur and scowl. Pilniak 
saluted. Captain Leonov. 'Sir, are we
to place bombs directly on the Cossacks?'
   'Those are our orders.'
   'Could we not simply bomb around them, sir?' said another young officer. 
'Give them a fright.'
   Those are not our orders, Kostomarov.'
   'But sir, we are airshipmen. We . . .'
   'We are servants of the State,' insisted the captain, 'and the State demands 
we bomb the Cossacks.' He turned
his back on us. 'Drop to two hundred feet, height coxswain.'
   'Two hundred feet, sir.'
   The grumbling continued until the captain whirled round, his face red with 
anger. 'To your posts, gentlemen.
Bombardiers: look to your levers.'
   Grimly we did as we were instructed. From the masts, which were now behind 
us, there floated up three other
ships. Two positioned themselves on our port and starboard, while the leader 
went ahead of us. There was a
funereal atmosphere about the whole operation. As he gave his orders, the 
captain's voice was low and bleak.
   The wireless began to buzz. Our operator lifted his instrument. 'It is the 
flagship, sir,' he told the captain. The
captain came to the equipment and began to listen. He nodded once or twice and 
then gave fresh orders to the
helmsman. He seemed almost cheerful. 'Gentlemen,' he said, 'the Cossacks are 
already charging. Our job will now
be to try to break them up.'
   The task was hardly congenial, but anything had begun to seem better than 
bombing a camp. At least it would
be a moving target.


4. The Black Ships

   I very much doubt, Moorcock, that you will ever know the experience of 
confronting a Cossack battle-charge,
or, indeed, that you will ever witness it from the control deck of a 
sophisticated aerial cruiser!
   Led by Admiral Krassnov's flagship, we raced lower and lower to the ground, 
to give specific accuracy to our
aerial torpedoes. As we approached we were barely fifty feet up and ahead of us 
was a mountain of black dust in
which were silhouetted the massed forms of men and horses. This, at least, felt 
more like a fair fight.
   Standing on the bridge, peering forward, Captain Leonov issued the command:
   'Let go Volley Number One.'
   Levers were depressed and, from their tubes in the bow of the gondola, aerial 
torpedoes buzzed towards the
yelling Cossack Host. The torpedoes made a high-pitched noise as their stubby 
wings sliced the air and then a
deep-throated boom sounded as they entered the Cossack ranks. Yet for all they 
were inevitably deadly the
torpedoes hardly seemed to make a scrap of difference to the momentum of the 
charge.
   Next, as the riders passed below us, we released our bombs, lifting to about 
a hundred and fifty feet as we did
so and then dipping down again to fire off another volley of torpedoes. The ship 
creaked to the helmsman's rapid
turning and returning of the wheel, to the height coxswain's sure hand on his 
valve-controls. I've never flown in a
tighter ship and as we do our bloody work I prayed for the chance of a real 
engagement with ships of equal
maneuverability.
   The Cossacks split ranks as we came down on them again and at first it seemed 
they were in panic. Then I
realized they were tactical breaks to move out of our direct line of fire. They 
showed enormously disciplined
horsemanship. Now I understood what Pilniak had been talking about. And, 
admiring such courage and skill, I felt
even less pleased with myself for what I was involved in.
   On a wireless order from the flagship we released the last of our bombs and 
went rapidly aloft. Now we could
see the results of our attack. Dead and dying men and horses were strewn 
everywhere. The ground was pitted with
craters, scattered with red flesh and broken bones. It was sickening.
   Pilniak had tears in his eyes. 'I blame that staretz for this -the mad priest 
Djugashvili. He's not a socialist. He's a
lunatic nihilist, throwing away those poor lads' lives!'
   It's common enough to transfer one's own guilt onto an easy villain, but I 
was bound to agree with him about
the so-called Steel Tsar.
   Not for the first time, however, I wished that the airship had never been 
conceived. Its capacity for destruction
was horrifying.
   On the bridge Captain Leonov was pale and silent. He gave his orders in 
quiet, tense Russian.
   Whenever my eyes met those of one of my fellow airshipmen it seemed we shared 
the same thoughts. This
could be the beginning of Civil War. There is no kind more distressing, no kind, 
which so rapidly describes the
pointlessness of human killing human. I have been fated, for a reason I cannot 
comprehend or for no reason at all,
to witness the worst examples of insane warfare (and all warfare, it seems to me 
now, is that) and having to listen
to the most ridiculous explanations as to its 'necessity' from otherwise 
perfectly rational people, I have long since
become weary, Moorcock, of the debate. If I appear to you to be in a more 
reconciled mood than when your
grandfather first met me it is because I have learned that no individual is 
responsible for War - that we are all, at
the same time, individually responsible for the ills of the human condition. In 
learning this - and I am about to tell
you how I learned it - I learned a certain tolerance for myself and for others 
which I had never previously
possessed.
   We had not managed to halt the Cossack charge, even though we had weakened 
it. As we returned to the airpark I
saw the second stage of our strategy. On the outskirts of the city the larger 
troop carriers were releasing their 'cargo'.
   Each soldier fell from the great gondolas on his own thin wings.
   In rough formation, the airborne infantry began to glide towards the earth, 
guiding themselves on pairs of silken sails
to the ground where they reformed, folded their wings into their packs and 
marched towards the trenches already pre-
pared for them. Next, on large parachutes, artillery pieces were landed and 
moved efficiently to their positions. As the
Cossack Host approached the suburbs, it was met by a sudden burst of fire. I 
heard rifles and machine-guns, the boom of
howitzers and field guns.
   Pilniak said to me: 'I wish I was down there with them.'
   I merely wished that I were nowhere near Yekaterinaslav. 'Does the Steel Tsar 
lead his own charges?' I asked.
Perhaps I was hoping that the man had at least died for his folly.
   'They say he does.' Pilniak grimaced. 'But who can be sure? He's quite an old 
man, I gather.'
   'I wonder how a Georgian priest became a Cossack ataman? I said. 'Doesn't 
that seem strange to you?'
   'He's been in this part of the world for years. A Cossack is a kind of 
person, not a member of a race, as such. They
elect their leaders, as I told you. He must have courage and he must have a 
powerful personality. Also, I suspect, he has
the knack of appealing to people's pride. The Central Government has humiliated 
the Cossacks who know that if they
had not supported the Revolution it would have collapsed.
   The Revolution started where our old uprisings always used to start, here in 
the South, on the "borderlands" (that is
what Ukraine means). It could have degenerated into pogroms and civil slaughter, 
but the Cossacks had been mistreated
by the Tsar, used badly in the War against Japan, so they sided with the 
socialists and helped establish the first effective
parliament, our Duma, which in turn caused Tsar Nicholas to abdicate. It was 
Cossacks who seated Kerensky in the
Presidential Chair. It was Cossacks who put his picture in place of the Tsar's.'
   'You and your icons-' I began, but Pilniak was in full, impassioned stride.
   'Naturally the Cossacks feel humiliated by Kerensky. They gave him the power 
in return for their own
autonomy. They see him as betraying them, as attacking their freedoms. On that 
day in October 1905 when
he stood before the Duma and the representatives of all the Cossack Hosts, he 
spoke of "eternal liberty" for
the Cossacks. Now he appears to be making exactly the same mistakes Tsar 
Nicholas made - and is paying
the price.'
   'You seem confused in your loyalties,' I said.
   'I'm loyal to our socialist ideals. Kerensky is old. Perhaps he takes poor 
advice, I don't know.'
   I looked back at the carnage, astonished that those wild, atavistic horsemen 
could have so much influence
on the course of modern history. If it was true that they had only demanded 
their own freedom, rather than
political power as such, then it was not surprising that they felt betrayed by 
those they had supported. There
were many peoples who had shared their experience throughout history.
   'Djugashvili promises them their old liberties back,', said Pilniak bitterly, 
'and the only freedom he
actually brings is the freedom of death. He's still a peasant priest at heart. 
They curse Russia. They have
something which the Russian people find hard to resist.'
   'Hope?' I said dryly.
   'Once, yes. But now? Our country has almost universal literacy, a free 
medical service which is the envy
of the world, our living standards are higher than most. We are prosperous. Why 
should they need a staretz?'
   'They expected Heaven. You said so yourself. Your Socialist Duma appears to 
have provided them only
with Earth - a familiar reality, however improved.'
   Pilniak nodded. 'We Slavs have always hoped for more. But until Kerensky we 
achieved far less. What
could the Steel Tsar do for us?'
   'Remove personal responsibility,' I said.
   Pilniak laughed. 'We have never been fond of that. You Anglo-Saxons have the 
lion's share, eh?'
   I failed to take his point. Seeing this, Pilniak added kindly: 'we are still 
ruled, in some ways, by our Church. We
are a people more cursed by religion and its manifestations and assumptions than 
any other. The Steel Tsar, with
his messianic socialism, offers us religion again, perhaps. You English have 
never had quite the same need for
God. We have known despair and conquest too often to ignore Him altogether.' He 
shrugged. 'Old habits, Mr.
Bastable. Religion is the panacea for defeat. We have a great tendency to 
rationalize our despair in mystical and
Utopian terms.'
   I began to understand him. 'And your Cossacks are prepared to kill to achieve 
that dream, rather than accept
Kerensky's philosophy of compromise?'
   'They are, to be fair, also prepared to die for the dream,' he said. 'They 
are children. They are Old Believers, in
that sense. Not long ago, all Russians were children. If Djugashvili has his 
way, they'll become children again.
Kerensky's mistake has always been that he has refused to become a patriarch -
or, as you said, an icon.' He smiled.
'Though he's come close in his time. Petersburg socialism seems cold to the 
likes of our Cossacks, who would
rather worship personalities than embrace ideas.'
   I shared his irony. 'You make them sound like Americans.'
   'We all have it in us, Mr. Bastable, particularly in times of stress.'
   The cruisers were nearing the masts now and making ready to anchor. Captain 
Leonov reminded us of our
duties and we returned to our posts on the bridge.
   We were never to dock.
   As the sun began to sink over the steppe, filling the landscape with that 
soft Russian twilight, Pilniak pointed
with alarm to the East.
   'Ships, sir!' he shouted to the captain. 'About ten of them!'
   They were moving in rapidly - medium-sized warships, black from crown to 
gondola, without insignia or
markings of any kind, and as they flew they fired.
   We had only our light guns and no bombs or torpedoes left. Before attacking 
us, these ships had evidently
waited until we had spent our main firepower.
   One of the other cruisers received a terrific bombardment, so heavy that it 
was knocked sideways in the air the
moment before its mooring cables linked with the mast. It made an attempt to 
come up, nose-first, but explosive
shells struck hull and gondola with enormous force. One or two of its guns went 
off and were answered by an even
fiercer barrage. They must have hit fuel supplies, for fire burst out in the 
starboard stern of her gondola. She was
holed, too, and jerking like a harpooned whale as she dropped towards the 
buildings of the airpark, fell against a
mast, scraped down it and collapsed uselessly on the ground. Ground crew ran 
rapidly towards her, preparing to
fight the fire and save her complement if they could.
   Hastily Captain Leonov ordered our gunners to their various positions about 
the gondola.
   'Whose ships are they?' I shouted to Pilniak.
   He shook his head. 'I don't know, but they're evidently not Japanese. They're 
fighting for the Cossacks.'
   Captain Leonov was at the wireless equipment, conferring with Krassnov's 
flagship, which, we could see, was
receiving a heavy bombardment. The black ships appeared to single out one of our 
vessels at a time. He spoke
rapidly in Russian. 'Da -da -ya panimayu...' Then: 'Two thousand feet, height 
coxswain. Full speed, minimum
margin.' This means we were going to have to hang on to our heads and stomachs 
as the ship began to shoot
upwards.
   We clung to the handrails. As we climbed we also turned to bring our larger 
recoilless thirty-pounders to bear
on the black ships below. It was a beautiful piece of airmanship and it was 
rewarded almost immediately as we
scored two good hits on one of the leading enemy craft. Though my head was 
swimming, I was elated. This was
what I had joined the Service for!
   Two enemy ships split away from the fleet and began to come up towards us, 
but without the speed, the
efficiency or the sheer skill of the Vassarion Belinsky. We had little else, at 
that point, but our superior airmanship,
for we were outgunned and outnumbered. We continued to rise, but at a slower 
rate, still firing down on the two
black ships which swam upwards, implacable and deadly, like sharks moving in for 
the kill.
   We reached the clouds.
    'Forward at half-speed,' Captain Leonov instructed the helmsman. He was very 
calm now and there was a peculiar
little smile on his face. Evidently he preferred this kind of fighting, no 
matter how dangerous, to the sort we had first
been forced to take part in.
   'Cut engines,' ordered the captain. We were now drifting, partially hidden by 
the clouds, inaudible to our enemies.
   'Are we going to engage them, sir?' Pilniak wanted to know.
   Leonov pursed his lips. 'I think we might have to, Lieutenant Pilniak. But I 
want to get us as much advantage as
possible. Turn the main vanes two points to port, helmsman.'
   The ship began to come about slowly.
   'Another two points,' said the captain. His eyes were cold and hard as he 
peered into the cloud.
   'Another point.' We had almost made a complete turn.
   'Engines active!' said Leonov. 'Full speed ahead.'
   Our diesels shrieked into life as we plunged into the open sky again. It was 
a gray limbo, with clouds below us and
the darkening heavens above. We might well find ourselves fighting at night, 
using our searchlights to seek out antagon-
ists. It would be a game of hide-and-seek, which could last until dawn or even 
longer. Captain Leonov was plainly
preparing for this, attempting to buy time. By now our surviving sister ships 
would have attempted the same tactics. We
had little choice, for we were all but helpless in any kind of direct 
engagement.
   'Cut engines.' Again we were drifting, waiting for a sight of the black 
ships. A wind was striking our outer cables,
making them sing. Stars had begun to appear overhead.
   Pilniak shivered. 'It's as if the world's ceased to exist,' he murmured.
   Then we spotted them, below and about half-a-mile ahead.
   They had seen us, as well, and were coming up rapidly.
   'Engines! Full!'
   Again our diesels screamed.
   'Three points starboard, hard, helmsman.'
   We swung so that we faced the black ships side-on.
   'Fire all guns!'
   We offered them a broadside, which was, in my view, a masterpiece of gunnery, 
sending a stream of shells in a
vector towards both ships, which were sailing virtually side-by-side.
   We hit one badly, evidently damaging its engines, because it began to turn in 
the wind, virtually out of control. We
had no explosive shells and the enemy hulls could resist everything but a close-
range total hit from our guns, so we were
concentrating on their engines and their control-vanes. It was the best we could 
do.
   The second ship began to go to cover in the lower clouds and now we could see 
that it was in wireless-telephone
contact with its companions, for as the wounded ship withdrew, two more started 
to ascend. We could see nothing of our
own sister-ships and had to assume that they had taken evasive action or had 
been brought down.
   The gondola shook violently and I nearly lost my footing as our hull received 
at least one direct hit.
   'Rapid descent, height coxswain,' ordered our captain.
   We fell through the skies like a stone until we were actually below the enemy 
craft, slowing, it seemed to me, just
before we struck the ground.
   'Full speed astern.'
   We raced backwards over a deserted steppe. The city and the Cossacks were 
nowhere to be seen. Captain Leonov
had chosen his own area of battle.
   The black ships were in hot pursuit, attempting to imitate our tactics.
   One of the ships did not pull up in time. She hit the ground with a massive 
thump. Her gondola and all aboard her
must have been smashed to fragments. She began to bump upwards again and we 
could see that she had left a great deal
of debris behind. She was nothing but a drifting hulk.
   Leonov seized his chance. 'We'll use her for cover. Get behind her if you 
can, helmsman. Forward, half-speed.
One point to port.'
   Just as we swam in beside the ruined ship, her companion's guns began to go 
off. They hit the hulk and shells
burst all over her, but we received only minor concussion. We moved up over her, 
all our cannon going at once
and again we managed to damage vanes and engines on the nearest warship.
It was getting dark. Searchlights suddenly came on, blinding us as we stood on 
the bridge. Captain Leonov gave
the order to switch on our own electrics. It would make us visible to the enemy, 
but at least we would not be
entirely blinded.
   'Give them another broadside,' said Captain Leonov quietly.
   Our guns sought the source of the searchlights and we saw the last black ship 
begin to retreat upwards, perhaps
trying to lure us into pursuit.
   Captain Leonov smiled a grim, experienced smile and shook his head. 'Half-
speed ascent, engines slow astern.'
   We climbed away from our enemy, into the clouds again. Our captain's superb 
tactics mightily impressed me.
   Pilniak was elated, in spite of himself. 'That's showing them what real air 
fighting's all about,' he said. He
clapped me on the shoulder. 'What do you think, Mr. Bastable?'
   I was not naturally capable of the same display of emotion as the Russian, 
but I turned, grinning, and shook
him by the hand. 'I've never seen anything like it,' I said.
   The black ship had extinguished her searchlights and had vanished.
   'We must wait until morning now, I think,' said Captain Leonov. 'Thank you, 
gentlemen. You are an excellent
crew.'
   The half-moon was now visible, seemingly huge in the sky. Again the captain 
gave the order to stop all
engines. The Russians were cheering and hugging one another, absolutely 
delighted by what could only be
considered a victory against almost impossible odds.
   It was an hour or two later, as we rested and debated the morning's moves, as 
our operator attempted to get
wireless instructions from Yekaterinaslav and then, when that failed, from 
Kharkov, that the ship was suddenly
shaken by an almighty thump.
   At first we thought we had been hit, but the ship was moving strangely in the 
air and had not descended a
fraction. If anything, we had gained a little height.
   We were asking ourselves what had happened when Captain Leonov came racing 
from his cabin, glaring
upwards. It was as if he, alone, knew what had happened.
   'I'd never have believed it,' he said. 'They're better than I guessed.'
   'What is it, sir?' I asked.
   'An old tactic, Mr. Bastable. They've been following us all along, using 
nothing but their steering gear to keep
track of us, drifting as we've drifted.'
   'But what's happened, sir?'
   'Grappling clamps, Mr. Bastable. They're sitting on our crown. Their gondola 
to our hull. Like a huge, damned
parasite.'
   'We're captured?'
   He grimaced. 'I think it's more in the nature of a forced marriage, Mr. 
Bastable.'
   He shook his head, his fingers stroking his mouth. 'My fault. It's the one 
tactic I didn't anticipate. If they get
through our inspection hatches, ' He began to issue more commands in Russian. 
Rifles and pistols were broken out
of our tiny arsenal and a gun put into every hand. 'Everyone to the inspection 
hatches!' cried Pilniak. 'Prepare to
repel boarders.'
   I had never heard that phrase used before.
   Above us the enemy ship's engines were shrilling now as we were borne 
forward.
   'All engines full astern,' said the captain. He turned to me. 'It could rip 
them and us apart. But we have no
choice, I fear.'
   The ship began to shake as if it was undergoing a gigantic fit.
   Through the quivering companionways we raced for the inspection hatches, 
listening carefully, through the
general row, and hearing noises from inside the hull which could only be men 
climbing slowly down towards us.
To fire upwards into the inspection tunnels risked a gas-escape and the 
possibility of being incapacitated by the
fumes. Fewer than half our riggers were issued with breathing equipment, for the 
Vassarion Belinsky had never
expected to be captured by boarders.
   'We're going to have to shoot when they emerge,' said Pilniak. 'It will be 
our only chance.'
   I held my revolver at my side, four of five armed riggers with rifles stood 
immediately behind me in the narrow
passage as the ship shuddered and wailed in her efforts to free herself from our 
captors.
   Pilniak said: 'it was a daring move of theirs. Who could have guessed they'd 
try it?'
   'They're as likely to destroy their own ship as they are ours,' I said.
   Pilniak offered me one of his wild, Russian grins. 'Exactly,' he said.
   The hatch cover had begun to open.
   We readied our firearms.


5. A Question of Attitudes

   In the dim moonlight entering from the overhead ports, it was impossible to 
identify the figures that first broke
through. In Russian, Pilniak ordered them to throw down their arms or we should 
open fire. Then we noticed that
they were waving a piece of bed sheet on a stick. A white flag. They wished to 
parley.
   Pilniak was disconcerted. He told the invaders to hold their position while 
he sent for orders. One of the riggers
ran back along the passage towards the control deck.
   The men in the hatches appeared to be amused and made some cryptic jokes 
which I failed to understand and
which Pilniak, it seemed to me, refused to hear. It was pretty obvious to me, 
however, that none of us wanted to
fight in those close confines. Few could survive.
   I think Captain Leonov had realized this, for he returned with the rigger. 
Pilniak told him what was going on.
He nodded, and then addressed the man holding the white flag.
   'You know that this is an impossible situation for both of us. Is your leader 
amongst you?'
   A small, stocky man pushed forward and gave Captain Leonov a mock military 
salute. 'I represent these
people,' he said.
   'You are the leader?'
   'We have no leaders.'
   'You are their spokesman, then?'
   'I think so.'
   'I am Captain Leonov, commander of this vessel.'
   'I am Nestor Makhno, speaking for the anarchist cause.'
   I was astonished. Before I could check myself, I uttered his name: 'Makhno!' 
It was the man with whom I had
been imprisoned in Japan. I had never expected to see him again. I had no idea 
that he knew anything at all about
airships.
   He   recognized   me   and   smiled.   'Good evening, Mr. Bastable. You are 
once more a prisoner, it seems.'
   'You are not much less of one,' I remarked.
   He smiled. It was a quiet, sardonic smile, almost gentle.
   He wore an old, elaborate Cossack coat, with a great deal of green and gold 
frogging, an astrakhan hat pulled
onto the side of his head, a peasant shirt, belted at the waist, baggy trousers 
and high riding boots. He looked the
picture of the romantic Cossack of fiction and I had half-an-idea that he 
deliberately cultivated this appearance.
There was even a Cossack sword at his side and one hand toyed with the butt of 
an automatic pistol stuck into his
silver-studded belt.
   'You serve the rebel Djugashvili, I take it,' said our captain. 'Are you 
trying to talk peace terms?'
   'I've given that up,' said Makhno. 'It doesn't appear to work. You mention 
peace and everyone tries to shoot you
or jail you. I do not, as it happens, serve anyone, save those who elect me. But 
we have agreed to give Djugashvili
our help during this campaign. We do not support his ideology, only the spirit 
of the revolution, and the spirit of
the true Cossack. We are anarchists. We refuse to acknowledge government or 
despots of any description.'
   'You'd not agree the Steel Tsar was a despot?' I said.
   Makhno acknowledged my remark with a short bow. 'I would agree absolutely. We 
believe neither in masters
nor in slaves, Mr. Bastable.'
   'Merely in Chaos!' said Pilniak with a sneer.
   'Anarchy means "no government", not disorder.' Makhno dismissed Pilniak's 
remarks as those of a naive child.
'And it has nothing whatsoever to do with Djugashvili's idiotic so-called 
socialism. We do not support him, as I
told you. We support the spirit of the uprising.'
   Captain Leonov was confused by this information. 'Then how do we negotiate? 
What do you want?'
   Makhno said: 'you are our prisoners. We want no bloodshed. We would rather 
have your ship in one piece.'
   Captain Leonov became stern. 'I will not surrender my ship.'
   'You have little choice,' said Makhno. He looked to the outer ports.
   We all followed his gaze. On flexible steel ladders dangling from the black 
ship, armed men were clambering
down towards our engine nacelles.
   'In a few moments your engines will be out of action, captain.'
   Even as he spoke one of our screws stopped turning. One by one the other 
engines stopped. From outside, in
the chill wind, came the sound of cheering.
   The captain put his hands in his pockets and spread his legs. 'What now?' he 
asked stoically.
   'You will admit that you are completely in our power.'
   'I will admit that you are an expert pirate.'
   'Come now, captain. This is not piracy. We are at War. And we have won this 
particular engagement.'
'You are a bandit and you have seized a vessel representing the government of 
the Union of Slavic Republics.
That is an act of piracy, of rebellion, of treason. We are indeed at War, 
Captain Makhno. You will recall the
enemy, I think. It is Japan.'
   'A war between authoritarian governments, not a war between peoples,' 
insisted Makhno. 'What sort of socialist
are you, Captain?'
   Leonov scowled. 'I am not a socialist at all. I am a loyal Russian.'
   'Well, I am not a "loyal Russian". I am an anarchist and, as my birthplace 
seems important to you, a Ukrainian.
We oppose all governments and in particular the Central Government of 
Petersburg. In the name of the people,
Captain Leonov, we demand that you surrender your ship.'
   Leonov was in a dreadful position. He did not wish to waste the lives of his 
crew and he could not, in
conscience, hand over his command.
   'You are a democrat, I take it?' said Makhno.
   'Of course.'
   'Then put it to your men,' said the anarchist simply. 'Do they wish to live 
or die?'
   'Very well,' said Leonov, 'I will ask them.' He turned to us. 'Gentlemen? 
Airshipmen?'
   'We'll fight,' said Pilniak. 'If they win, let them scrub our blood from the 
decks.'
   Not one of us protested.
   Makhno accepted this. Indeed, he seemed to have expected nothing else. 'I 
will give you a chance to debate
your position,' he said. He began to move back towards the hatches. 'You cannot 
escape now. We are already
carrying you to our headquarters. If any of you wishes to join our cause, we 
shall be happy to accept you as
brothers.'
   Captain Leonov did not order us to fire. We watched as the anarchists 
retreated, pulling the hatches closed
behind them. It was then that I realized we had been subject to a diversion. 
While we had parleyed, we had not
given attention to what had been going on outside the ship. I think Leonov 
understood this, too. It was obvious, as
we returned to the control deck, that he did not hold a very good opinion of 
himself at that moment. As an aerial
tactician he had no equal. As a negotiator he was by no means as successful. It 
seemed that Makhno (as I learned
was his wont) had achieved checkmate without losing a single life on either 
side.
   Helplessly, we watched the stars and the clouds go by around us as, with 
engines straining, the anarchist airship
bore us steadily towards its base.
   On the control deck, Captain Leonov was sending a wireless message through to 
Kharkov, attempting to
receive instructions and to give some idea of our position. Eventually, after 
several attempts, the operator turned to
him. 'They have cut our antennae, sir. We can neither send nor receive.'
   Leonov nodded. He looked at Pilniak and myself. 'Well, gentlemen, have you 
any suggestions?'
   'Makhno has us completely in his power,' I said. 'Unless, we attempt to reach 
his ship through our inspection
hatches, we have no way of stopping, him.'
   Leonov bent his head, as if in thought. When he looked up he was in control 
of himself. 'I think we can all get
some sleep,' he said. 'I regret that I did not anticipate this particular 
problem, gentlemen, and that we have no
orders to cover it. I think I had better say here and now that I release you 
from my command.'
   It was a strange, almost oriental thing to say. Again it gave me a better 
insight into the Russian temperament
than I had a few months before. I respected Captain Leonov's attitude, however. 
He was a man of honor who
believed that he had failed in his duty. He was not giving us carte blanche to 
act individually as we thought best.
In a sense I had been extraordinarily impressed by the exchange between Makhno 
and Leonov.
   Both appeared, for all that they seemed to be in conflict, to have at root 
the same sense of duty to those they
led. Once Leonov had been proven, in his own eyes, incompetent, he no longer 
felt that he had any right to
command at all. I had the feeling that Makhno, and perhaps many of the Cossack 
atamans took the same view.
Unlike so many politicians or military leaders they made no attempt to justify 
their mistakes, to cling to power. For
them power held enormous responsibility and was merely invested in them 
temporarily. I was learning, I think,
one or two things about the fundamental issues surrounding Russian politics - 
something that was not normally put
into words by any side, by any observer. These issues were at once simpler and 
more complex than I had once
supposed.
   Pilniak was saluting. 'Thank you, sir,' he said. I had no choice but to 
salute as well. Leonov returned the salute
and then went slowly back to his cabin.
   A notion suddenly came into my head. 'Good God, Pilniak, he doesn't intend to 
shoot himself I hope.'
   Pilniak watched the departing captain. 'I doubt it, Mr. Bastable. That, too, 
would be cowardly. He will resume
command should we ask him. When there is something to command. In the meanwhile 
he releases us so that we
may take whatever actions we think will help us best, as individuals, to 
survive.
   We are a primitive people, Mr. Bastable, in some ways. Rather like Red 
Indians, eh? In a way? If our war-
leaders fail us, they resign immediately, unless we insist they continue. That 
is true democratic socialism, isn't it?'
   'I'm no politician,' I told him. 'I don't really understand the difference 
between one "ism" and another. I'm a
simple soldier, as I've said more than once.'
   I returned with Pilniak to our tiny cabin with its two bunks, one on top of 
each other. We slept fitfully, both of
us having merely removed our jackets and trousers. By dawn we were up, taking 
coffee in the mess. Captain
Leonov was absent.
   A few minutes later, he joined us. 'You will be interested to learn,' he 
said, 'that we appear to have reached the
bandits' camp.'
   We all rushed out of the mess and up to the observation ports. The ship was 
dropping close to the ground.
Trailing mooring ropes had been dropped from the hull. Even as we watched we saw 
a mass of Cossack horsemen
racing towards the ropes. One by one at least half-a-dozen riders seized them.
   In triumph, the Cossacks dragged our ship back to their headquarters, while 
Makhno's black battle cruiser let go
its grapples and drifted some yards off, to fly beside us. We saw anarchists 
waving to us from their own gondola. I
was almost tempted to wave back. There was no mistaking Makhno's feat.
    He was a very clever man, and plainly no fiery charlatan. I could make no 
sense of his politics, but I continued
to keep a high opinion of his intelligence.
   Slowly, ignominiously, the whooping Cossacks hauled our ship to the ground. 
These were evidently not the
same men who had attacked Yekaterinaslav, but it was equally evident that they 
knew what we had done during
the Cossack charge. I got a better look at them now. In the main they were small 
men, swarthy, heavily bearded,
dressed in a mixture of clothing, much of it fairly ragged.
   All were festooned with weapons, with bandoliers, with daggers and swords; 
all rode wonderfully. They were
plainly rogues but were not by any means mere bandits.
   Soon our keel was bumping along the ground as the ship was tied to wooden 
stakes set for that purpose into the
ground on the outskirts of a small, one-street town, which seemed to have been 
taken over piecemeal by the rebels.
We stood there looking out at the Cossacks while they grinned and gesticulated 
at us. They did not seem to be
threatening our lives. They were overjoyed with the capture of a Central 
Government ship and seemed to bear us very
little malice. I mentioned this to Pilniak.
   'I agree,' he said. 'It's true they don't hate us. But that's the last thing 
which will stop a Cossack from killing you, if he
so feels like it.'
   I realized that we were in somewhat greater danger than I had originally 
thought. The Cossacks did not accept the
usual conventions concerning a captured enemy and it was questionable now 
whether or not we should experience the
next day's dawn.
   Captain Leonov remained in his cabin. As we stared out at our captors the 
tension in the gondola began to grow.
Overhead we could hear men climbing over our hull, laughing and exchanging jokes 
with the Cossacks on the ground.
   Eventually Pilniak looked at me and the other officers and he said: 'Let's 
get this over with, shall we?'
We all agreed.
   Pilniak gave the order to lower our gangways and, as the side of the gondola 
opened out, we marched in good order
down the steps towards the Cossacks.
   We had expected everything but the cheer, which went up. The Cossacks are the 
first to acknowledge nerve when it
is displayed as we displayed it. Perhaps Pilniak had known this.
   Only Captain Leonov refused to leave the ship and we accepted his decision.
   Pilniak and I were in the forefront. As we left the gangway he approached the 
nearest Cossack and saluted.
'Lieutenant L.I. Pilniak of the Volunteer Air fleet.'
   The Cossack said something in a dialect, which defeated my imperfect Russian. 
He pushed his military cap back on
his forehead, by way of returning the salute. Then he made his horse walk 
backwards, in order to clear a space for us,
waving us on towards the village.
   Still rather nervous of what the Cossacks might decide, on a whim, to do, we 
began to walk in double-file towards
the rebel headquarters. Pilniak was smiling as he spoke and I returned the 
smile. 'Chin up, old man! Is this what the
British call "showing the flag"?'
   'I'm not quite sure,' I said. 'It's been a long while since I had occasion to 
do it.'
   The Cossacks, some mounted, some on foot, were crowding in on us. They were 
pretty filthy and many of them were
evidently drunk. I've never smelled so much vodka. Some of them appeared to have 
dowsed themselves in the stuff.
They offered us catcalls and insults as we walked ' between their lines and we 
were almost at the first buildings of the
village when the press became so tight that we could no longer move.
It was then that one of our riggers, near the rear, must have struck out at a 
Cossack and a fight between the two began.
Our carefully maintained front threatened to crack.
   I think we probably would have been torn to pieces if, from our right, a 
horse-drawn machine-gun cart had not
suddenly parted the ranks. One man drove the little cart while another 
discharged a revolver into the air, shouting to the
Cossacks to desist.
   The man with the revolver was Nestor Makhno.
   'Back, lads,' he cried to his men. 'We've no grudge against those who 
misguidedly serve the State, only against the
State itself.'
   He smiled down at me. 'Good morning, Captain Bastable. So you decided to join 
us, eh?'
   I made no reply to this. 'We are heading for your camp,' I said. 'We accept 
that we are your prisoners.'
   'Where's the commander?'
   'In his cabin.'
   'Sulking, no doubt.' Makhno shouted something in dialect to the Cossacks and 
once more the ranks fell back,
enabling us to continue on through the street until Makhno's cart stopped in 
front of a large school-house which flew the
rebel flag: a yellow cross on a red field. He invited Pilniak and myself to join 
him and told the rest of our chaps that they
could get food and rest at a nearby church.
   We were reluctant to part from the crew and fellow officers, but we had 
little choice.
   Makhno jumped from the cart and, limping slightly, escorted us into the 
schoolhouse. Here, in the main
classroom, several Cossack chiefs awaited us. They were dressed far more 
extravagantly than their men, in
elaborately embroidered shirts and kaftans, with a great deal of silver and gold 
about their persons and decorating
their weapons.
   The strangest sight, however, was the man who sat at the top of the 
classroom, where the teacher would
normally be. He lounged forward on the desk, his face completely covered by a 
helmet, which had been forged to
represent a fierce, mustachioed human face. Only the eyes were alive and these 
seemed to me to be both mad and
malevolent. The man was not tall, but he was bulky, wearing a simple, gray 
moujik shirt, gray baggy trousers
tucked into black boots. He had no weapons, no insignia on his costume, and one 
of his arms seemed thinner than
the other. I knew that we must be confronting the Steel Tsar himself; the rebel 
leader Djugashvili.
   The voice was muffled and metallic from within the helm. The English 
renegade, Bastable. We've heard of
you.' The tones were coarse, aggressive. The man seemed to me to be both insane 
and drunk.
   'Is it good sport, then? Killing honest Cossacks?'
   'I am an officer in the Volunteer Air Service,' I told him.
   The metal mask lifted to offer me a direct stare. 'What are you, then? Some 
sort of mercenary?'
   I refused to explain my position.
   He leaned back in his chair, heavy with his own sense of power. 'You joined 
to fight the Japs, is that it?'
   'More or less,' I said.
   'Well you'll be pleased to learn that the Japs are almost beaten.'
   'I am pleased. I'd be glad to see an end to the War. To all wars.'
   'You're a pacifist!' Djugashvili began to laugh from within the helm. It was 
a hideous sound. 'For a pacifist, my
friend, you've a lot of blood on your hands. Two thousand of my lads died at 
Yekaterinaslav. But we took the city.
And destroyed the air fleet you sent against us. What d'you say to that?'
   'If the war with Japan is almost over,' I said, 'then your triumph will be 
short-lived. You must know that.'
   'I know nothing of the sort.' He signaled to one of his men, who went to a 
side-door, opened it and called
through. Moments later I saw Harry Birchington emerge. The Bore of Rishiri Camp 
back again as large as life.
   'Hello, Bastable, old man,' he said. 'I knew there must be some decent 
socialists in Russia. And I've found the
best.'
   'You're working with these people?'
   'Certainly. Very glad to put my talents at their disposal.'
   The familiar self-congratulatory drone was already beginning to grate, after 
seconds.
   'Mr. Birchington keeps our airships running,' said the Steel Tsar. 'And he's 
been very helpful in other areas.'
   'Nice of you to say so, sir.' Birchington gave a peculiar twisted smile, half 
pride, and half embarrassment.
   'Good morning, Mr. Bastable.' I recognized the warm, ironic voice 
immediately. I looked towards the door to
see Mrs. Una Persson standing there. She had crossed bandoliers of bullets over 
her black military coat, a Smith
and Wesson revolver on her hip, a fur hat pulled to one side of her face. She 
was as beautiful as ever, with her oval
face and clear, gray eyes.
   I bowed. 'Mrs. Persson.'
   I had not seen her for some time, since together we had inhabited the world 
of the Black Attila.
   Her eyes held that look of special recognition which one traveler between the 
planes reserves for another.
   'You've come to join our army, I take it,' she said significantly.
   I trusted her completely and took her hint at once. Much to Pilniak's 
astonishment, I nodded. 'My intention all
along,' I said.
Djugashvili seemed unsurprised. 'We have many well-wishers abroad. People who 
know how much we have suffered
under Kerensky. But what of your companion?'
   Pilniak drew himself up and brought his heels together with a click. 'I 
should like to join my fellow prisoners,' he
said.
   The Steel Tsar shrugged. The metal glinted and seemed to be reflected in his 
eyes. 'Very well.' He signed to one of
his men. 'Dispose of him with-'
   Makhno suddenly interposed. 'Dispose? What are you suggesting, comrade?'
   Djugashvili waved his hand. 'We have too many mouths to feed as it is, 
comrade. If we let these survive-'
   'They are prisoners of war, captured fairly. Send them back to Kharkov. All I 
wanted was their ship. Let them go!'
   Pilniak looked from one to the other. He had never expected to be the subject 
of a moral argument between two
bandits.
   'I am responsible for all decisions,' said Djugashvili. 'I will choose 
whether-'
   'I captured them.' Makhno was cold and angry. His voice dropped, but as the 
tone lowered it carried increased
authority. 'And I will not agree to their murder!'
   'It is not murder. We are sweeping up the rubbish of History.'
   'You are planning to kill honest men.'
   'They attack Socialism.'
   'We must live by example and offer example to others,' said Makhno. 'It is 
the only way.'
   'You are a fool!' Djugashvili rose and brought his sound hand down on the 
desk. 'Why feed them? Why send them
back so they can fight against us again?'
   'Some will fight against us - but others will understand the nature of our 
cause and tell their comrades.'
   Makhno folded his arms across his chest. 'It is always so. If we are brutal, 
then it gives them a further excuse for
brutality. By God, Djugashvili, these are simple enough arguments. What do you 
want? Blood-sacrifices? How can you
claim to represent enlightenment and liberty? You have already been responsible 
for the slaughter of Jews, the
destruction of peasant villages, the torturing of innocent farmers. I agreed to 
bring my ships to you because you
promised that these things were accidental, that they had stopped. They have not 
stopped. You are proving to me
as you stand there that they will never stop.
   You are a fraud, an authoritarian hypocrite!'
   The voice within the helm grew louder and louder as Makhno's became quieter.
   'I'll have you shot, Makhno. Your anarchist notions are a mere fantasy. 
People are cruel, greedy, ruthless. They
must be educated to holiness. And they must be punished if they fail!' He was 
breathing heavily. 'It is what all
Russians understand! It is what Cossacks understand.'
   'You have no claim as a Cossack,' said Makhno with a faint sneer. 'I withdraw 
my help. I shall inform the
people I represent and ask them if they wish to withdraw also.' He began to turn 
away.
   The Steel Tsar became placatory. 'Nonsense, Makhno. We share the same cause. 
Send the prisoners to Kharkov
if you wish. What do you think, Mrs. Persson?'
   Una Persson said: 'I think it would show the Central Government that the 
Cossacks have mercy, that they are
not bandits, that their grievances are justified. It would be a good thing to 
do.'
   She seemed to have considerable influence over him, for he nodded and agreed 
with her.
   Makhno did not seem completely satisfied, but he was evidently thinking of 
the safety of Pilniak and the rest.
He drew a deep breath and inclined his head. 'I shall assume charge of the 
prisoners,' he said.
   As he left with Makhno, Pilniak called back over his shoulder: 'I wish you 
luck with your new masters,
Bastable.'
   I only knew that my loyalty was to Mrs. Persson and that I had faith in her 
judgment.
   When Makhno had disappeared, Djugashvili began to laugh. 'What a silly, 
childish business. Was it worth an
argument over the lives of a few goat-beards?'
   Mrs. Persson and I exchanged glances. In the meanwhile Harry Birchington 
echoed the Steel Tsar's laughter.
Neither seemed possessed of what I should have called a natural sense of humor.
   'Is it true the Japanese are almost beaten?' I asked Mrs. Persson.
   'Certainly,' she said. 'A matter of days. They have already begun to talk 
armistice terms.'
   'Then these people are doomed,' I said. 'There is no way that the Cossacks 
can resist the whole might of the
Russian Aerial Navy.'
   Birchington had heard me. 'That's where you're wrong old man,' he said. 
'That's where you're very wrong
indeed!'
   I thought I heard Mrs. Persson sigh.


6. Secret Weapons

   Later, when the Cossack chieftains had returned to their men, the Steel Tsar 
stretched and suggested that we all
dine in the rooms upstairs. I had not had a chance to speak privately to Mrs. 
Persson and, indeed, had been
cornered by Birchington who had told me how he had been picked up during the 
raid on Rishiri and 'dumped' (as
he put it) in Kharkov because he had 'made the mistake' of telling people he was 
an engineer and they had needed
engineers in the railway works at Kharkov. He had left the city soon afterwards 
and had been on a train, which had
been captured by rebels. The rebels had brought him to Djugashvili and the 
revolutionist had taken a liking to him.
   'He's got real imagination, old man. Unlike the imbeciles in London and 
Shanghai, who wouldn't give me a
chance. All I needed was a bit of faith and some financial support. You wouldn't 
believe the inventions I've got in
my brain, old man. Big ideas! Important ideas! Ideas, old man, which will shake 
the world!'
   I found myself nodding, almost asleep.
   'The Steel Tsar, old man, is giving me an enormous opportunity to build stuff 
for him which will help him win
the revolution. And then we'll have real socialism. Everything properly managed, 
like a well-oiled machine. Every-
one will be a happy dog. You'll see. And all it will take is Birchington. I'm 
the key factor, old man. I'm going to be
remembered in History. The Chief says so.'
   'The Chief?'
   He indicated Djugashvili.
   We followed the Steel Tsar upstairs. He had Mrs. Persson on his arm and was 
walking rather heavily, as if
drunk. He turned back to me. 'I had not realized you were friends. You will be 
able to help Birchington in his
work, I hope.'
   'Certainly he will,' said Mrs. Persson, 'won't you, Mr. Bastable?'
   'Of course.' I tried to sound as enthusiastic as possible, but the prospect 
of even another five minutes in
Birchington's company was more, at that moment, than I could contemplate.
   The room above was fairly bare, but a long table had been laid with wholesome 
Ukrainian food, including a
bowl of red borscht on every place. Djugashvili seated himself at the top of the 
table, with Mrs. Persson on his
right and Birchington on his left. I sat next to Mrs. Persson. A few moments 
later Nestor Makhno stepped into the
room. It was obvious that he was a reluctant guest. He had another man with him 
whom I recognized. I began to
wonder if Mrs. Persson had not arranged all of this.
   The other man was Dempsey, whom I had thought killed on his way to a Japanese 
prison. He was pale and thin
and seemed ill. Possibly the drugs had begun to poison his system. When he saw 
me he gave a crooked smile and
came forward, lurching a trifle, though he was not obviously drunk. 'Hello, 
Bastable. Very good to see you. Come
along for the final battle, eh?'
   'What?'
   'Armageddon, Bastable. Haven't they told you?'
   The Steel Tsar began to laugh that strange laugh of his. 'Nonsense. You 
exaggerate, Captain Dempsey.
Professor Marek assures us that everything is much safer now. After all, you 
took part in an experiment.'
   Dempsey sat down and began to stare at his borscht. He made no attempt at all 
to eat it. Nestor Makhno seated
himself across from me. He seemed puzzled by me, perhaps surprised by the 
alacrity with which I had joined 'the
other side'.
   'It's a prisoners' reunion, eh?' he said. 'Did you know, Comrade Djugashvili, 
that four of the people at this table
have been prisoners of the Japanese?'
   'So I gather.' The Steel Tsar was opening a small plate in his helmet, to 
expose a mouth pitted with pockmarks.
   Now I was prepared to believe the rumor that it was vanity, which caused him 
to wear the ferocious mask. He
began to feed himself with small, careful movements.
   He looked at Makhno. 'Did you deliver the prisoners to Kharkov?'
   'Not personally. They are on their way.'
   'In padded railway carriages lined with silk, no doubt.'
   'They were sent in a cattle-train we requisitioned.' Makhno knew the Steel 
Tsar was baiting him.   He stroked
his neat moustache and kept his eyes on his plate.
   'For so cunning a tactician, you are lily-livered as a warrior,' continued 
Djugashvili. 'It would seem to me,
comrade, that there is even a chance you are weakening our endeavors.'
   'We are fighting against the Central Government,' said Makhno obstinately. 
'We are not fighting "for" you,
comrade. I made that plain when we brought in our ships.'
   'You brought your ships because you know you are not strong enough to fight 
alone. Your ridiculous notions of
"honor" are inappropriate at 'this time.'
   'Our notions are never inappropriate,' said Makhno. 'We simply refuse to 
rationalize murder. If we have to kill,
we kill, in self-defense. And we continue to name it for what it is. We don't 
dress it up with fancy pseudo-scientific
words.'
   'The people like those words. It makes them feel secure,' said Mrs. Persson 
sardonically, as if to an intimate
friend.
   I wondered if she knew Makhno. It was even possible that he was a colleague. 
There was something out of the
ordinary about the anarchist. Although the logic of his politics was beyond me, 
I was impressed by his recognition
of fundamental principles, which so many idealists seem to forget as soon as 
their ideals are rationalized in the
language of political creeds. He carried within him a sort of self-control which 
did not deny passion and which, I
thought, was almost wholly conscious, in contrast to Djugashvili, who relied on 
doctrine and masks for his
authority.
   Djugashvili continued to dig at Makhno.
   'Your kind of individualism is an arrogant crime against society,' he said. 
'But worse than that - it never
succeeds.
   What good is Revolution when it fails?'
   Makhno rose from the table. 'It is proving impossible to enjoy my food,' he 
said. He bowed to the rest of us and
apologized. 'I'll return to my ship.'
   There was a light of triumph in the Steel Tsar's eyes, as if he had 
deliberately engineered Makhno's departure,
goading him until he had no choice but to leave.
   Makhno looked enquiringly at Dempsey, who shook his head slightly and reached 
for his vodka.
The anarchist left the room. Djugashvili seemed to be smiling behind his mask.
   Dempsey was frowning slightly to himself as Makhno went out. Birchington 
began to babble about 'rational
socialism' or some such thing and for once he broke a sense of tension, which 
nonetheless remained in the air.
   A few moments later there came the sound of several pistol shots from 
outside. There were footfalls on the
stairs, and then Makhno reappeared. His left arm was wounded. In his right hand 
was his revolver. He waved it at
Djugashvili, but he was not threatening.
   'Assassination, eh? You'll find at least two of your men shot. I know your 
methods, Djugashvili.' He paused,
reholstering his empty pistol. 'The black ships leave their moorings tonight.'
   Then he was gone.
   Djugashvili had half-risen from his place, the light from the oil lamps 
making it seem that his metal mask
constantly changed expression. The cold eyes were full of unpleasant passion. 
'We don't need him. He was
attacking our cause from within. We have science on our side now. Tomorrow I 
intend to display Birchington's
first invention to our men.'
   Birchington seemed taken by surprise. 'Well, Chief, I think you might find 
it's not quite-'
   'It will be ready in the morning,' said 'the Chief.
   Dempsey had taken an interest in this aspect of the conversation, though he 
had hardly moved when Makhno
had reappeared and made his declaration. Una Persson merely looked thoughtfully 
from face to face.
   Djugashvili walked towards the door and called down the stairs. 'Bring the 
professor up.'
   Mrs. Persson and Dempsey both appeared to know what was going on, but I was 
completely at sea.
Djugashvili waited by the door until a small man with graying hair and round 
spectacles arrived. He seemed
almost as unhealthy as Dempsey. There seemed to be something wrong with his skin 
and his eyes were watering
terribly, so that he dabbed at them constantly with a red handkerchief.
   'Professor Marek. You already know Captain Dempsey. You have met Mr. 
Birchington. Una Persson? Captain
Bastable?'
   The professor blinked in our general direction and waved his handkerchief by 
way of greeting.
   'Your bombs are ready, eh? And Birchington's invention is prepared.' 
Djugashvili was swaggering back to his
place. 'Sit down, professor. Have some vodka. It's very good; Polish.'
   Professor Marek rubbed at his cheek with the handkerchief. It appeared to me 
that some of his skin flaked
away.
   'What sort of bombs are these?' I asked the professor, more from politeness 
than anything.
   'The same as I dropped on Hiroshima,' said Dempsey with sudden vehemence. 
'Aren't they Professor Marek?'
   'The bombs, which are supposed to have started the War?' I said in surprise.
'One bomb.' Dempsey lifted a finger. Mrs. Persson put a gentle hand on his arm. 
'One bomb. Wasn't it, Mrs.
Persson?'
   'You shouldn't-'
   'That was experimental,' said Professor Marek. 'We could not have predicted-'
   Suddenly I was filled with that same frisson, that same terrifying resonance 
I had already experienced, to a
slighter degree, in Dempsey's company. I felt that I stared into a distorting 
mirror, which reflected my own guilt.
   In a small voice I asked the professor: 'What sort of bomb was it that you 
caused to be dropped on Hiroshima?'
   Marek sniffed and dabbed at his eyes. He spoke almost casually. 'A nuclear 
fission bomb, of course,' he said.


7. A Mechanical Man

   For several hours thereafter, as I sat in stunned silence, we were forced to 
listen to Djugashvili's boastings and
diatribes. He made us drink with him. He poured glass after glass of vodka into 
that little aperture which revealed his
lips and he spoke of conquest. He planned to conquer Russia, the whole of the 
Slav world; both East and West would
eventually succumb 'to the justice of World Revolution'. That revolution 
appeared to be little more than Djugashvili's
attempts to control as much of the globe as possible. Like so many fanatics, he 
drew a picture of the world which was far
different to the one most of us saw, at once simplified and changed into 
something which reflected his own needs, his
own fears. We were probably bored and terrified together -all of us save 
Birchington, who hung on the Steel Tsar's every
word, and Professor Marek, who scarcely understood anything.
   Both Captain Dempsey and Mrs. Persson seemed to be waiting something out, as 
if they knew all this, as if they had
anticipated the evening.
   I kept looking across at Dempsey, who scarcely lifted his eyes from the table 
but continued steadily to down vodka
after vodka.
   'How many bombs are ready, professor?' I heard Djugashvili ask. I gave him 
more attention.
   'Four,' said Marek. 'All of about the same strength. I have their measure 
now.'
   'And you are able to produce more?'
   'Of course. With Mr. Birchington's help. The Yekaterinaslav laboratories had 
everything we needed, as I told you
they would.'
   'We were lucky to find the stuff.'
   Una Persson said: 'I thought Yekaterinaslav was retaken.'
   Djugashvili dismissed this. 'So it was. But we got what we wanted. The whole 
attack was in order to supply
Professor Marek with certain materials he needed. At Yekaterinaslav they were 
working along similar lines to the
professor.'
   I felt sick and I felt weary. I wanted to leap from my chair and beg them to 
stop talking so easily about those hell-
bombs. I, of all people, knew what sort of effect they could have. They could 
destroy entire cities as if they had hardly
existed. But, because of a look from Mrs. Persson, I held my peace.
   Dempsey said drunkenly: 'You'd better hurry up and use 'em, Djugashvili, or 
the Central Government will be here to
claim its materials back. There's a huge force on its way, as you know.'
   'Certainly I shall use them soon. It only needs one ship, after all. That's 
why I could dispense with Makhno so
readily. We have a ship. Your ship, Captain Bastable.'
   'The Vassarion Belinsky?'
   'That's her name, yes.'
   'Captain Leonov is still aboard.'
   'He was aboard. Since he refused to leave, we were forced to dispose of him. 
He has been liquidated.'
   'You killed him?'
   Djugashvili shrugged. 'If you like.'
   Again it was all but impossible for me not to display my feelings, but I knew 
it was important to Mrs. Persson that I
seemed to be in agreement with the Steel Tsar, so I held my tongue.
   'You will command the Belinsky,' Djugashvili told me. 'You have been promoted 
to commander, Congratulations.'
   I ignored this. Before I could speak, Dempsey was on his feet, leaning 
heavily upon the table. 'I demand that
privilege,' he said. 'I am the more experienced airshipman. After all, I dropped 
the first bomb!' He spoke urgently.
'Bastable can help me.'
   'You've developed a taste for mass-murder?' I asked in a quiet voice.
   'Oh, yes.' He seemed completely mad at that moment and his eyes were merry 
with a demon's light. 'Oh, yes,
Bastable. Quite a taste for it. Quite a taste.'
   Djugashvili said: 'we must demonstrate our power to the Central Government. 
The first bomb will be dropped
on Makhno's camp.'
   'What a splendid idea,' said Mrs. Persson.
   It was much later when Djugashvili decided to go to bed, having ordered us to 
be at headquarters the next
morning. We watched him lumber from the room, all unchecked ego and ruthless 
power.
Dempsey had collapsed over the table. Birchington and Professor Marek were still 
deep in conversation about
some technical point or other. Mrs. Persson asked me to give her a hand getting 
Dempsey back to the house we
were to share. He was very drunk and mumbling to himself. When I took him under 
the shoulders I was surprised
at how light he was. He laughed at some bitter joke he had made. He was very 
close to madness. I said as much to
Mrs. Persson after we had put Dempsey to bed and sat together drinking coffee in 
the tiny parlor. It was a pleasant
house. I wondered what well-to-do peasants had been killed or evicted in order 
to provide us with so much
comparative luxury.
   'Poor Dempsey is as good as mad,' she agreed. 'His judgment has been 
destroyed and he has managed to keep
himself going on a mixture of guilt and cynicism. It's a familiar enough 
combination. I think he feels he must pay
some kind of price for what he did. What do you think?'
   'Think?' I was very tired. 'I'm pretty much beyond rational thought myself! 
I'm beginning to suspect you of
engineering this whole affair - especially the meeting with Dempsey. How is it 
possible? He carries the identical
burden to the one I carry. Under what circumstances could he have dropped a 
nuclear fission bomb on Hiroshima?'
   'Similar circumstances to your own. He's a socialist. He became 
idealistically involved with Chinese
nationalists trying to get foreigners out of their country. At that time 
Professor Marek was also working for the
Chinese socialists. They were the only people desperate enough to believe that 
he could develop such a bomb.
Other countries are working on the idea, of course, including the refining of 
uranium.
   That's what was going on at Yekaterinaslav. Like you, they had no idea of the 
power of the crude bomb they
made. They intended only to drop it on the airship yards-'
   This is too much!' I held my head in my hands. 'It is madness! It isn't 
possible!'
   'They dropped it and destroyed the entire city. Dempsey's vessel was his own, 
with a London registration. It
was all the Japanese needed. If there had not been a delay in the detonation, of 
course, nothing of the ship would
have survived. As it was they found the wreckage. Dempsey had been picked up 
before that. Most of the crew was
dead. But the Japanese took a couple of prisoners. It was their excuse. Everyone 
was preparing for War, anyway.
The Japanese decided that the British Government had committed an act of War . . 
.'
   'And so struck first. It explains everything, including their ferocity.'
   'Exactly.'
   'Millions of people killed!' I groaned. 'Both Dempsey and I have that on our 
conscience. No wonder the poor
man is the way he is!'
   'You were both catalysts - no more than that. Do you still not realize what 
you are seeing? No individual can
claim so much personal guilt. We are all guilty of supporting the circumstances, 
the self-deceptions, and the
misconceptions, which lead to War. Every lie we tell ourselves makes something 
like the destruction of Hiroshima
all the more likely. More than one man has destroyed Hiroshima in more than one 
world, over and over again. The
circumstances are often different, but the people die just the same, and some 
men (or women) feel that they carry
the whole weight of responsibility. We are all victims, Mr. Bastable, just as, 
in other ways, we are all aggressors.
At root we are victims of the comforting lies we tell ourselves, of our 
willingness to have leaders, religions, of our
wish to shift responsibility onto others, whether it be politicians, Gods or 
creatures from other planets.'
   'You sound like Makhno,' I said.
   'I have much in common with Nestor Makhno.'
   'You're an anarchist?'
   'I don't believe in governments or religions, if that's what you mean.'
   Somehow Mrs. Persson's revelations had relieved me. I had clarity, when I had 
up to now been confused. I no
longer felt a victim of Fate, though in a sense, of course, I regained one - as 
much a victim, if not more of one, as
Captain Dempsey.
   'We should get some sleep,' said Mrs. Persson. 'We have to, witness 
Birchington's display tomorrow.'
   'Why are you going along with all this?' I asked her.
   She put a finger to her lips. 'Trust me,' she said.
   'I do.' I was smiling. 'But I want no more innocent blood on my hands.'
   She finished her coffee. 'Captain Bastable, if all goes well, we should have 
completed our task here by
tomorrow, then you and I shall leave.'
   'Leave? Where?'
   'To a base. You are being invited to join the League of Temporal 
Adventurers.'
   'Mrs. Persson, I am trying to get home. Back to my own time, my own world.'
   'Captain Bastable, you must reconcile yourself to the fact that you will 
never know that particular form of
security again. Once you have experienced what you have experienced, your own 
time will simply not allow you
to remain. But be assured that the League offers some sort of substitute. You 
will be somewhat more in control of
your own fate than hitherto.'
   'That would also mean a great deal to me,' I said.
   'In the meanwhile,' she told me, 'please continue to follow my lead. This is 
a very complicated business indeed,
Captain Bastable. A circle must be completed. A job must be done.'
   In the morning we assembled outside the school, in a large quadrangle at the 
back. Cossacks were coming and
going everywhere. The entire camp was busy with the noise of horses and 
soldiers, guns and armored vehicles. In the
distance, an armored train went by, loaded with men and armaments. Everyone knew 
that Yekaterinaslav had been
recaptured, that the Japanese were suing for peace and that Central Government 
troops were on their way to the Cossack
headquarters.
   Djugashvili reassured his atamans. 'This attack will be easily resisted. And 
very shortly now Moscow will be at our
mercy.'
   One ataman, splendid in black and silver, tugged at his huge, gray beard and 
grumbled. 'The airships will destroy us.
They are cowards. We can't get at them. Cossack courage is useless against 
them.'
   'We shall use our own science - a far better science - to deal with the 
threat of airships,' Djugashvili reassured him.
The steel mask glinted as he raised his eyes towards the sun. 'You will see. 
Within a week we shall be riding through the
streets of Petersburg. If Petersburg still exists.'
   The ataman became nervous. 'By God, hetman, I hope you use no Devil's magic. 
I am a good Christian . . .'
   'We fight for God and Socialism,' said Djugashvili, changing his tack. 'And 
for the Freedom of the Cossack Host.
God had put an instrument into our hands which will ensure that freedom for all 
time and which will enable us, as
socialists, to do His work.'
   Again I was forced to make sure that my incredulity did not appear on my 
features. I had to avoid Mrs. Persson's
sardonic eye.
   'For God and Socialism,' she said, 'we will destroy all who stand against 
us.'
   The Cossack was mollified and went back to get his pony. He rode away to join 
his men.
   Mrs. Persson murmured to me in English: 'it is in the nature of any good 
despot that he will say to those he needs
anything they wish to hear. Only when he does not need them does he say what he 
really thinks. And sometimes, even
then, he doesn't bother. The secret of becoming a great tyrant lies in an early 
ability to be all things to all men.'
   'You sound as if you'd trained him yourself,' I said.
   She made no reply to this.
   Djugashvili had heard her speaking and turned his intense stare on her. 
'Where is Dempsey?' he asked. 'Is he fit
to take command of the ship?'
   'Of course.'
   I had seen Dempsey that morning. I was pretty certain that he was sustaining 
himself on drugs. He had,
however, been absolutely determined to captain the Vassarion Belinsky. He had 
asked us to go ahead of him,
saying he would join us shortly.
   Djugashvili turned his back on us, rubbing at his steel helmet as if it were 
a real face. I wondered if he had slept
in it. 'He had better be in control of himself,' he said threateningly. 'Ah, Mr. 
Birchington.'
   Birchington had appeared, walking ahead of several Cossacks who were carrying 
something on their shoulders.
It was wrapped in a mixture of canvas and sacking and was about twice as long as 
a tall man.
   Birchington seemed ill at ease. 'Good morning, Chief. I hope-'
   'So do I, Mr. Birchington. Is it ready?'
   'Oh, there are no major problems-'
   'Good. This will do our morale a lot of good. Have you heard the news? Enemy 
scouts have already been
sighted in the air to the South and West.'
   'But-'
   'Believe me, Mr. Birchington. I know what impresses Cossacks.'
   Birchington ordered the men to lower the thing to the ground. They planted it 
upright. It looked like a huge
corpse, swathed in unsanitary winding clothes.
   'Let Captain Bastable and Mrs. Persson see it. I can tell they're curious.' 
Djugashvili's joviality was sinister.
   Birchington began to tug at the canvas and sacking. The thing was made of 
metal, which was obvious. As he
stripped away the coverings we saw that it was a gigantic figure of a man in 
Cossack costume, cast in steel.
   'There is a Steel Tsar to strike terror into the hearts of our enemies!' 
cried Djugashvili. 'What do you think?'
   Neither Mrs. Persson nor I spoke.
   The face was the identical face to the one on Djugashvili's own mask. 
Birchington had produced a model of the
Cossack hetman more than double life-size. The whole scene seemed increasingly 
bizarre to me.
   'What do you think?'
   'It's splendid,' said Mrs. Persson.
   I nodded enthusiastically. It was the best I could muster.
   'We'll show him to our troops in a moment,' said Djugashvili. 'He will lead 
them into battle. And while our
Cossacks fight the Central Government, you will fly the ship to Makhno's camp 
and drop the first bomb.'
   Birchington seemed unusually silent and not nearly as full of himself as 
usual. He ordered the men to pick up
the metal statue and carry it towards the main Cossack camp.
   Djugashvili was elated. 'Come along,' he said to us.
   Dempsey arrived. He had had a shave and was wearing an airshipman's uniform. 
The clothes seemed far too
big for him. He was haggard, but he walked steadily and seemed to have lost the 
attitude of despair I had begun to
identify with him. He even winked at me. 'Morning, Bastable. Ready for going 
aloft?'
   'We're all ready,' said Mrs. Persson.
   Professor Marek now joined the party, as we walked along behind 'the Chief. 
Marek was shaking his head. 'Too
soon,' he mumbled. 'Far too soon.'
   None of us had any idea what he meant. He seemed half-mad and still very ill. 
We ignored him.
We reached the outskirts of the town. The Cossack Host was assembling, rank upon 
rank of horsemen, stretching
almost as far as the eye could see. Armored vehicles and field guns were also 
drawn up. A platform had been
erected in front of them and beside that a dais. Djugashvili mounted the dais 
and saluted his troops.
   Birchington supervised the men as they pushed the heavy metal figure to its 
feet.
'Free Cossacks!' cried Djugashvili. 'Your blood has been spilled in the holy 
cause of liberty and socialism. The
Central Government has sent its might against us and all the power of its 
science has been brought to bear on us. Yet we
are not defeated. Now we have our own science - our own miracles. Behold!' He 
made a grandiose gesture with his arm
in the direction of the metal man. 'Here is a Tsar made truly of steel. An 
impregnable battle-leader worthy of the Free
Cossacks.' He murmured to Birchington. 'Set him in motion.'
   Birchington reached up to the figure's waist and depressed a lever. Suddenly 
the steel creature came to life. With
awkward, spastic movements it reached to its belt and began to draw the huge 
saber, which had evidently been designed
as a match for the mechanical man's size. With a screech the saber cleared its 
scabbard.
   The Cossacks were impressed. Djugashvili evidently knew them well. As the 
mechanical man raised the saber over
its head, the Cossacks began to cheer. They drew their own swords and waved 
them; they made their horses rear. The
noise of their approval was deafening.
   Slowly, the mechanical monster turned its head, as if listening. It inclined 
its gaze to stare down on Birchington. It
lifted its head. Evidently Birchington had previously designed all these 
movements. It walked forward a few paces,
towards the huge gathering of horsemen. It stopped, the saber still raised. 
Again they cheered.
   Mrs. Persson put her lips close to my ear. 'They love icons. They would 
rather have statues than real people. It has
been their undoing over the centuries.'
   Dempsey had begun to laugh and only grew silent when Mrs. Persson signed to 
him to stop. I, for my part, found the
whole scene nightmarish.
   The mechanical Steel Tsar began to wave its saber over its head, as if in 
imitation of the Cossacks. It moved forward
again.
   Then one knee bent. I think Birchington had meant this series of movements to 
show the mechanical creature's
supplication to its master, Djugashvili. But the motion was halted. The knee 
jerked a couple of times. There was a
squeak and a clash of metal. It began to turn, but the leg dragged. It swayed.
   Djugashvili maintained his posture but he was angry. 'Set the thing to 
rights, Birchington, or you're finished.'
   Birchington ran towards his mechanical man, reaching up for the lever at the 
waist.
   The thing seemed to sense him and completed its turn. Swiftly the sword-arm 
began to descend.
   Birchington shouted: 'Oh, no. This isn't supposed to happen!' Then the saber 
had sliced him from crown to
breastbone. Blood flew everywhere.
   Suddenly the Cossacks were silent.
   Birchington's body fell to the black earth. With a grinding of cogs and 
wheels, the mechanical man began to
topple. It crashed onto its creator's corpse.
   I heard Professor Marek behind me. 'I said it was too soon. He didn't give 
himself enough time . . .'
   I could hear the wind, sighing over the steppe.
   And then came the dry, dreadful sound of Djugashvili's laughter.
   'Well, well, Mr. Birchington. How neat.' He addressed the bewildered Cossack 
Host. 'The traitor Birchington is
the first to die beneath the vengeful sword of the Steel Tsar! This spy for the 
Central Government was trying to
sabotage our War Effort. We are revenged, brothers! Freedom!'
   'Poor Birchington,' said Mrs. Persson. 'What a dreadful lesson.'
   'What a final one,' said Dempsey. He moved away.
   Djugashvili spoke to us. 'Professor Marek. Revive the mechanical man, if you 
can. Get it back to the
laboratories.'   'Too soon,' said Marek. He signed to the soldiers to lift the 
creature onto their shoulders once again.
   'Captain Dempsey. Are the bombs aboard?'
   'They're aboard,' said Dempsey.
   'Then get to your first target. Be quick, Captain Dempsey. I want to witness 
no more disloyalty.'
   I looked up at the sky. I pointed. 'You had better concern yourself with 
immediate problems,' I said.
   There were troop-ships on their way. Even as we stared, the first gliding 
infantry began to leave the craft and drift
towards us, firing as they came.


8. A Kind of Revolution

   Professor Marek hurried aboard just as we were about to go aloft. On the 
familiar control deck of the Vassarion
Belinsky I stood between Captain Dempsey and Mrs. Persson, staring through the 
observation ports as the ship rose
swiftly into the air. We had a ramshackle crew of half-trained Cossacks, some of 
whom were deserters from the
Volunteer Air fleet. As Dempsey had said to me: 'They're good enough for this 
work, Bastable, never fear.'
   Through the ports we could witness the first battles between Cossacks and 
Central Government troops. The expert
riflemen of the steppe were picking off the gliding infantry even as they left 
their ships. They fell like stricken
butterflies.
   'We'd better let them get on with it,' said 'Dempsey carelessly. 'All right, 
height coxswain - put us up to five thousand
feet: moderate ascent. Helmsman - North-by-North West, if you please. Half-
speed, Mr. Bastable.'
   All at once he had become a capable airship commander -everything he had been 
before he had helped in an
appalling crime of mass-murder, in the name of an idealistic principle. But, why 
had he agreed to bomb Makhno's camp?
Had cynicism, like a cancer, corroded him completely?
   Dempsey's hands were hardly shaking at all as he stood on the bridge, his 
arms folded across his chest, watching the
ground fall away. Our ship still flew Russian colors, so we were not attacked. 
Indeed, Dempsey made the wireless
operator send a message offering to join the battle. We were told to return to 
Odessa for fresh armaments and to report
on our condition.
   The last thing I saw were the first aerial torpedoes buzzing down upon the 
Cossack riders. I turned away from the
observation ports.
   'Dempsey,' I said. 'Are you really going to drop another of those hell-bombs. 
Are you going to kill Makhno and all
his people?'
   Dempsey turned his sad, self-mocking eyes on me. 'Of course-'
   'But-'
   'Of course he is,' said a voice behind me.
   It was Djugashvili, flanked by a couple of well-armed Cossacks. He had not 
trusted any of us.
   The Steel Tsar laughed within his mask. 'I want to see Makhno's end for 
myself.'
   'But your men,' I said. 'They are leaderless! It seems that the entire 
Volunteer Fleet is going against them.'
   'They have Birchington's giant. It's down there somewhere, giving them 
strength, giving them hope.'
   'It's a useless icon!'
   'They need nothing else. Besides, Captain Bastable, those chaps have pretty 
much served their turn. They are an
anachronism - their attitudes hamper the course of Scientific Socialism.'
   I could feel the blood drain from my features. 'You are sacrificing those 
men. They trusted you absolutely. You
gave them the rhetoric and the goals to make them fight. They will not 
surrender. They could all be killed. For
what?'
   'For History,' he said. He seemed impatient with me, as if I was asking 
childishly naive questions. 'For the
Future.'
   Mrs. Persson interrupted us. 'The idea of the Future,' she said, 'will 
gradually come to replace the idea of God.
The two conceptions, however, will be all but identical in the manner in which 
they are self-contradictory and
therefore confusing to their worshippers. By remaining confused, and therefore 
weakened, their priests more easily
manipulate the worshippers, or whatever those priests call themselves. Since the 
priests are often as confused as
those they pretend to lead, they will become angry if their rationales are in 
any way questioned. They will kill the
questioners. In the meantime-'
She was speaking rapidly in English. Djugashvili strode up to the bridge and 
stood beside Dempsey, raising his
withered arm to silence her. 'You'll be our first admiral, Captain Dempsey. You 
will be a Hero of Socialism. Never
fear. There are hundreds, thousands of disaffected people in Moscow and 
Petersburg alone. They'll rise up to join
us, after our demonstration of what Scientific Socialism can achieve.'
   Dempsey leaned forward, checking various instruments. 'Three-quarter speed, 
Mr. Bastable.'
Three-quarter speed.' I conveyed the order to the engineers.
   'You will lead our airships to Petersburg,' Djugashvili continued. 'You are a 
brave, fine man, Captain Dempsey.
You will be rewarded with every honor . . .'
   We all knew that this was his method of cajoling what he needed from people. 
We all knew that as soon as
Dempsey had served his turn, he, too, could be 'liquidated' in the name of the 
Future.
   'Thank you, sir,' said Dempsey. He looked towards Professor Marek, who sat 
jotting down calculations on a
pad of paper.
   Djugashvili clapped Dempsey on the back. 'I know how to show my gratitude, 
captain.'
   'Oh, indeed, sir.' Dempsey gave a further instruction to the helmsman.
   The skies were gray today, and vast. A little rain began to spot the 
observation ports. We heard it drumming on
our hull. Grey light filled the bridge, increasing Dempsey's pallor and 
emphasizing the unhealthy, peeling skin of
Professor Marek. The ship seemed like a ship of the dead already, to me.
   Dempsey detected a change in the forward starboard engine. He cocked his head 
to one side. Like any good
airship captain he was listening all the time. An airship's running depends as 
much on the ears as on the eyes.
'Something wrong, Mr. Bastable. Could you go and check the nacelle?'
   'Very good.'
   I left the control cabin and, to my surprise, found that Mrs. Persson had 
followed me.
   'How much further to Makhno's camp?' I asked her, as we walked along the 
companionway. There was cloud
all around us now.
   'About half-an-hour. We have to disarm those bombs, Captain Bastable.'
   'What?'
   'It's the whole point of this. We disarm them, they're dropped, and they 
prove useless. It is why we've been
going along with Djugashvili up to now. However, we hadn't expected him to join 
us aboard the ship.'
   I was enlightened. 'I know very little about bombs,' I said, 'especially this 
kind.'
   'I know a great deal about them. Come. We'll go to the bomb bay this way. It 
isn't guarded.' She opened a hatch
door and let me into semi-darkness. We descended a steel ladder. I could hear 
the familiar creaking of the bomb-
racks and at last saw four crudely-made cases of roughly standard size, lettered 
in Old Slavic and decorated with
peculiar designs of the kind I had seen on Cossack weapons. Were these the 
bombs, which could threaten the
destruction of the entire world?
   Mrs. Persson said: 'the detonating devices are in the noses. We have to 
unscrew them.' With her legs straddling
the bomb-flaps, she reached for a large wrench. 'Use this,' she said.
   Below I could see a little daylight from time to time, as the flaps gave 
slightly. I had the feeling that we could
as easily fall through the flaps as the bombs and began to tread very carefully 
as I strove to remove the nose of the
first bomb.
   We had not been working more than five minutes before we heard voices from 
the gallery above us.    'There's
no need for that.' It was Dempsey, sounding like the Wrath of God. 'There's no 
need for that, at all. Leave my
bombs alone.'
   'Dempsey!' Una Persson became agitated. 'Are you really crazy? This was what 
we agreed we should do-'
   'It was your plan, Mrs. Persson. Not mine.'
   'You surely aren't going to help Djugashvili!'
   Dempsey was pointing a large revolver at us. 'Move away,' he said.
   'Dempsey!' I had never seen Mrs. Persson so obviously frightened. 'You can't. 
Makhno-'
   'Those bombs must be detonated,' said Dempsey. 'Nothing else will do.'
   'But we intend to prove they can't work . . .'
   'It will prove nothing!'
   Mrs. Persson continued to persevere with the nose of the bomb. Dempsey 
ordered his men towards us.
   Mrs. Persson seemed almost to be crying as she struggled. I must admit that I 
gave up. Quietly, I handed my
wrench to the first Cossack to approach me. He put a pack into my hands, as if 
in exchange. I did not know what it
was.
   The bomb bays were full of Cossacks now, completely surrounding us.
   'You're interfering with my plan,' said Dempsey coldly. 'And I have the 
right, not you, to decide what to do
with these.'
   'You have no right. No more than anyone. You assume too much guilt, Captain 
Dempsey.' Mrs. Persson
struggled as the Cossacks held her, forcing her to drop the spanner.
   'And you assume too much responsibility,' he said. 'I have the right.'
   'And what about you, Captain Bastable?' she said. 'Haven't you an equal 
right?'
   'Not here,' I said. I looked up at Dempsey. I didn't know what he planned to 
do, but I now respected his
judgment completely. 'And I agree with Captain Dempsey, Mrs. Persson. He has the 
right, together with Professor
Marek.'
   Dempsey bowed slightly. My words seemed to cheer him. He raised an eyebrow. 
'Mrs. Persson?'
She shrugged. 'Very well. Captain Dempsey. But if you kill Makhno...`
   'That will be my responsibility, I think.'
   'And mine, if I haven't attempted to stop you.'
   I interrupted. 'Is this the moment for moral discussions?' I asked.
   'Those packs contain gliding apparatus,' said Dempsey. He rubbed at his 
sunken eyes. His voice became
suddenly weary. 'You'll use them to escape.'
   'Where is the Steel Tsar?' asked Mrs. Persson. 'He has the real power on this 
ship . . .'
   'Not any longer,' said Dempsey.
   'Where is he?'
   'Safe.' Dempsey turned away. 'I'll say goodbye to you both. It's unlikely 
we'll ever meet again.'
   'Goodbye, Dempsey,' I said. And I added: 'And good luck.'
   He was laughing as he climbed back up the steel ladder, towards his control 
deck. 'Thank you, Bastable. Thank
you very much.'
   The gliding apparatus was strapped onto us and we were pushed roughly through 
the bomb-flaps. Seconds later
the wings opened out and we were drifting slowly down towards the barren steppe. 
There was no sign of human
life anywhere below us. We looked back.
   The airship was making good speed away from us, heading north East.
   We landed rather bumpily on coarse turf. I hurt my ankle slightly, but had no 
serious injury.
   As I was helping Mrs. Persson remove her apparatus I was suddenly bathed in 
brilliant light, as if the sun had
emerged, unexpectedly, from behind the clouds. Mrs. Persson flung herself down 
and I followed suit, without quite
understanding why.
   Moments later the ground began to shake as a huge, echoing boom began to 
sound throughout the world.
   We both recognized it for what it was, of course. Dempsey had exploded the 
bombs in the air over the steppe.
We saw a massive column of smoke, just as ash began to fall like rain across the 
landscape.
   Mrs. Persson said: The fool. I knew he'd try it. I thought I'd convinced him. 
But he outguessed me, after all. His
guilt was too great. But it was completely unnecessary.'
   'I understand why he wanted to do it this way,' I said.
   She was impatient. 'Understand? So do I. But what's that got to do with it? 
This is another loss.'
   I still do not know what she meant. She was crying.
   I made some attempt to comfort her, but Una Persson is not an easy woman to 
comfort. She recovered herself
as she began to walk stolidly across the steppe, her back to the bomb cloud. The 
wind blew against our faces. She
said: 'the bomb, its inventor, the despot prepared to use it and the despot's 
servants are all gone now. But while that
syndrome continues to exist so will that particular circle continue. I'd hoped 
to break it. To make a different circle.'
   'Can that circle ever be broken?' I asked her.
   'It's what I'm trying to find out,' she said.
   A day and a half later we were discovered by some of Nestor Makhno's 
horsemen. We were weary and
depressed, and the news that Makhno had gained concessions from the Central 
Government, of territory in which
to conduct his 'anarchist experiment' only slightly cheered us.
   That evening, during an open-air celebration, beneath the masts of Makhno's 
black cruisers, I became quite
drunk and asked Mrs. Persson: 'Did Dempsey really die for nothing?'
   'I suppose not. But what good is a martyr, Captain Bastable? While people 
believe in the magic power of
personalities, rather than the human fallibility of individuals, they will never 
be free.'
   'But Dempsey wished only to make amends. He said it was his right: and it was 
his right.'
   Nestor Makhno leaned forward. He was even drunker, I think, than me. 'We are 
all guilty. We are all innocent.
Only when we accept responsibility for our own actions are we free - and only 
then will the world be safe for us
all. Dempsey had an old-fashioned sense of honor. He destroyed himself because 
of it. He saved many lives, it is
true, but Mrs. Persson's plan might have saved more. While we compete with 
ourselves in that way, while we
compete with each other, blame one another for our misfortunes, there will 
always be the chance of conflicts such
as the one which is now over.'
   Makhno's words meant something to me. But then so had Dempsey's actions. At 
last I was relieved of that
terrible lack of faith in myself, of that awful bewilderment and, as Mrs. 
Persson told me later, was ready to become
a conscious traveler between the worlds, to join that strange body of people 
known as the League of Temporal
Adventurers. I felt that what had begun in the Temple of Teku Benga was now 
finished. A new phase in my life
was beginning - perhaps a more positive phase.
   Time, as they say, will tell, Moorcock. I have learned only one thing in all 
my adventures: that despots are all
pretty much the same, but there are many different kinds of victims.
   I hope this manuscript reaches you and that you will be able to publish it. I 
have a feeling it is the last you will
ever receive from me. The time for reviewing my past is over.
   Now I look forward, if that's the appropriate word, to life in the eternal 
present.

   Captain Oswald Bastable,
   Airshipman,
   Somewhere in the Lower Devonian.


Editor's Afterword

   And that, as best I can present it, is the final story of Oswald Bastable. As 
many readers will already 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