A Cure for Cancer

by Michael Moorcock

  The cynics had got through. He was possessed.

  5. SWAMP LUST!

  Jerry crossed to the lab wing, holding his gun tight against his thigh. There were lights. He opened the door. Koutrouboussis looked up red-eyed.

  “You may be black,” he said, “but you look juicy to me.”

  “Any results?” asked Jerry.

  “We needed you. You were fucking about.”

  “Well, I’m not fucking about now.” Jerry tied his gun by its trigger guard to a lock of his hair so that the weapon rested against his neck.

  The black box stood on the bench. A score of fine leads ran from it and were connected to other instruments. Jerry pulled them out.

  “You won’t need those. It’s to do with instinct, you see.” He flexed his fingers.

  “There’s more than one way of skinning a cat,” said Koutrouboussis mildly.

  6. JUST FOUND: $10,000,000 IN PIRATE TREASURE! MILLIONS STILL UNTOUCHED!

  “That ought to do it.” Jerry straightened up and closed the lid of the box. “Ready to go, Mr Koutrouboussis.”

  “Glad to hear it.”

  There was a wet sound behind them. Flora Hargreaves supported a bleary Frank who had his needle gun in his hand.

  “You look nice in rubber,” Jerry said, “but it’s all that’s holding you together.”

  Frank groaned. “I’ve a moral duty to perform, you filth.”

  Jerry tilted his head so that his gun swung onto his shoulder. Frank steadied his hand.

  “Why are you involving yourself in this, Flora?” Jerry folded his arms across his chest.

  “I give back what I get, you bastard.”

  “Then you’d better give me Frank.” Jerry laughed. “You know very well what will happen if you hit the box, Frank.”

  “Well—Jerry—I don’t—have to—take the—risk…” Frank drooled.

  “I suppose not.”

  “You’re the only—one—who knows which—button—to press…”

  “Well. Mr Koutrouboussis…”

  Koutrouboussis screamed as Frank’s gun moved and the needle hit him in the knee.

  “Good,” said Frank thickly. “It’s…” He squeezed the trigger again but Jerry was sliding across the floor and taking cover behind a rustling hallucimat, untangling the vibragun from his hair and brushing the cobwebs from his nose just as the door opened again and Bishop Beesley and Mitzi, closely followed by a man wearing the red robes of a Roman Catholic cardinal, entered the room. They all wore crossed bandoliers of bullets and carried Italian Mausers. Mitzi took Frank’s needle gun away from him and darted a disgusted look at Flora who was nursing her injured breast.

  “By the way, Mr Cornelius,” said Bishop Beesley as he frisked Frank for pleasure. “You’ll be happy to know we’ve taken Karen into the fold again, poor thing.”

  “How is she?”

  Beesley shook his head. “She’s not the woman you remember, I’m afraid. Is that the box? Would you mind, cardinal?”

  The cardinal hung his gun over his shoulder and lifted the box in his arms.

  * * *

  Mitzi glanced at Flora, then at Jerry, and with a gesture of compassion plugged Frank in the heart. Frank slapped down on the floor.

  “Just a minute!” Jerry was offended. “That was my bloody brother!”

  “He was going to kill you, Herr Cornelius.”

  Jerry stayed behind the hallucimat, his vibragun raised. “You’d better put that box down, cardinal. I know religion wants to survive, but…”

  The cardinal turned his swarthy, questioning features in Bishop Beesley’s direction.

  “Oh, Mr Cornelius knows his weapon would seriously upset his machine’s mechanism.” Beesley lowered his rifle. “It’s not our intention to destroy either you or your invention, Mr Cornelius, as you well know. We intend to save both—for everybody’s benefit. We have a great deal of work to undo yet, haven’t we?”

  Jerry sighed.

  “I’ve got a good mind to…”

  “Of course you have. You’re so impulsive.”

  “You couldn’t operate it. It needs love, not—power.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Oh, take the fucker. I haven’t got anything left.”

  Mitzi looked at the needle gun. Then she frowned at Flora and, by way of an experiment, stitched a line of slivers across Flora’s throat.

  As the blood sprang out, Flora put her hand up, then let it fall again, then toppled backwards. Mitzi laughed and shot Koutrouboussis while she was at it.

  “Do you believe in premonitions?” Jerry asked as they left. “Or devils?”

  “It depends on the source, Mr Cornelius.” Bishop Beesley rummaged in his pocket and found a large piece of walnut fudge. “We’ll be seeing you soon, I hope.”

  4. FINAL OPERATION

  Guilt and fear are amongst the most soul-destroying, fatal and disintegrating emotions and experiences that come to man. Guilt because of wrong doing, unconfessed, unrepented of, and uncleansed causes havoc and must be got rid of by Jesus alone. Psychiatrists have their couches to handle this, but they are helpless for only Jesus can meet this need. Did you know that it has now been revealed that there are more psychiatrists that commit suicide than any other profession, so it is obvious they do not have the answer. Jesus, alone, upon full, whole-hearted, and honest confession, is able to deal with a guilt complex and cleanse and deliver utterly.

  —Len J. Jones,

  The Evidence,

  December 1967

  RADIATION TREATMENT

  End result: CANCER OF THE CERVIX

  The March issue of McCalls reports that “Cancer of the cervix seems to be linked with the early loss of virginity and promiscuity on the part of young girls, according to three recent reports … patients with cervical cancer … had a greater number of sexual partners than comparable women who did not develop cancer … Monogamy in sex appeared to reduce the risk of cancer.”

  Newsweek (October 21, 1968) reports that: “Researchers have long suspected that cancer of the cervix, which afflicts some 40,000 women per year, is a venereal disease … most common among promiscuous women.”

  “Enlightened modernists” cry for more sexual freedoms to undo the repressive sexual inhibitions of society and make people better off. How could these self-impressed, lawless intellectuals explain the fact that the large majority of students who need psychiatric help have already experienced this sexual freedom?

  They simply IGNORE these facts. They rant about sexual permissiveness and sexual looseness. Proof? They don’t need it. Satisfy the animal lusts of the people and they will all flock to your side.

  The PLAIN TRUTH, January 1969

  1. COME AWAY MELINDA

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

  It was like something out of 1962.

  He switched off the radio.

  Time to turn the lamp on bright.

  “Una!”

  2. THAT’S NO WAY TO SAY GOODBYE

  A killing scene from now on. You couldn’t stay smooth for ever. Love seemed to have died.

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

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

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

  “Mother.”

  3. SISTERS OF MERCY

  Somewhere a clock had stopped.

  Jerry checked his watches.

  They were running slow, but they were running.

  He checked the car clock. It ticked painfully on.

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

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

  Was it too late?

  Was Beesley’s shit hitting the fan?

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

  “Catherine!”

  4. LOVE ME DO

  The morgue was colder than ever.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Jerry entered the Shifter, nervous as a cat.

  “Love?”

  5. IT’S HARD TO BE A SAINT IN THE CITY

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

  Jerry dashed through the Shifter.

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

  The jewelled air was pretty dull breathing.

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

  * * *

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

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

  He wheeled and the air was cold brass.

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

  Bishop Beesley beamed.

  “My own invention, Mr Cornelius; I order the world. I bring realism—the virtues of the past. You see, you are not the only one capable of building a sophisticated machine. This is the model of perfection—the universe, the Utopia that is to come! This is the Beesley Steam Driven Calliopic Orrery! BEHOLD—THE RHYTHM OF THE SPHERES!”

  * * *

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

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

  “You’ve thrown it out of control, you nihilist!”

  Beesley tried to crawl under the whizzing balls to reach the controls. Jerry lowered his gun.

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

  “You have thrown it into chaos!” wailed Beesley.

  Jerry was sweating. “What do you hate? What do you fear?”

  The steam engine exploded.

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

  The elephants were dead, their skins blistered by napalm.

  But Jerry knew he was home.

  The risk had paid off.

  He felt a twinge of affection returning already.

  6. BRIGHTEN YOUR NIGHT WITH MY DAY

  Some sectors had been overlooked.

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

  Jerry recognised a block of flats at Bow, several streets near Hampstead Heath, the public baths and the ABC Cinema at Bayswater, some half-timbered shops where Holborn had run, the British Museum, the Hilton Hotel in Park Lane.

  At least a few tourist attractions remained.

  Over near the canal eight gulls wheeled in the white sky. Jerry left the zoo and began to tramp across the park, his boots sinking several inches in the fine ash.

  Beesley had almost certainly returned to London, but it was anyone’s guess where he had set up his headquarters.

  Time (in the local sense) was running down at an alarming rate. Beesley was obviously trying to slow the Cycle in order to preserve the present situation and, if possible, return to an earlier phase.

  Also it would be disastrous so far as Catherine were concerned. At least his identity was preserved, up to a point. It was his only advantage.

  * * *

  On the other side of a hedge which had been completely stripped of foliage was a neatly parked minihover with British markings.

  He resheathed his gun to protect it from the ash and vaulted the hedge.

  He opened the minihover’s cabin door and climbed in. The thing shifted under his weight. It was armed with two eight-inch Banning cannon in Hamilton brackets. The cannon seemed to be low on charges.

  The motor started slowly. Jerry rose a few inches in a huge cloud of ash and tilted the joystick forward, heading to where Edgware Road used to be.

  He had on a suit of virgin white silk.

  CHECK TEMPERATURE

  1. WHAT’S WRONG WITH US MEDICINE

  The armoured minihover coughed out of the ash and rode smoothly across the stretch of smooth green crystal. The crystal was what the West End had come to. It wasn’t the sort of fusion Jerry liked to see.

  As he reached the site of Regent Street, he saw an ashcloud approaching on his left. He guided the minihover into a shallow basin in the crystal and watched. He recognised the jeeps and armoured cars. The Americans were coming back at a lick.

  Jerry put the hover’s periscope up and adjusted the magnification.

  General Ulysses Washington Cumberland stood in the lead jeep, a flame-thrower pack on his back, the nozzle in his right hand. His left hand clutched the windshield, he wore dark combat goggles and his clothes were whipped by the wind. The cap on the general’s head bore the legend C-in-C Europe and he wore a green, fringed shawl around his shoulders, a long yellow dress with a tight bodice and red buttons, a huge green sash, puffed sleeves, gored skirts and flounces everywhere. The skirt was flared by at least six starched white petticoats and there was a pair of blue tennis shoes on his feet.

  Behind General Cumberland the jeeps and cars were filled with fine-featured marines in full battle-kit, here to seek and destroy resistance not cleared out by the bombing.

  General Cumberland set an example with his flame thrower.

  It flared at every possible hiding place.

  Jerry shivered. There were signs of snow in the sky. He decided to move on.

  As he started the motor he heard Cumberland’s voice t
hrough his amplifiers.

  “They’re all queer! Queer! Queer! Queer! Burn ’em out! Out! Out! Out!”

  When Jerry reached a higher point on the crystal plain he saw Cumberland leap from his jeep and lead the marines after him.

  The flame thrower shrieked again, but Jerry was no longer in range. Hesitantly some of the marines raised their weapons.

  “Sissies! Pansies! Asslickers!” roared the general. He turned, spraying the soldiers with his flame thrower.

  “Mother lovers! Mother lovers! You sons of bitches!” he sobbed. In a flurry of frilly underclothes he collapsed on a slab of concrete. There was a WHOOMF, a scream of pure ecstasy, and he went up in a roaring fireball.

  At least he died happy, thought Jerry.

  The smoke cleared behind him and he saw that the majority of the marines had fried. The rest were trying to put out their burning clothes or their burning vehicles, but then there were a few more explosions and they were finished off.

  Jerry admired their energy.

  There were flecks of black ash on his suit but it was the sort of price you had to pay.

  2. DAMNED VIRGINS IN THE DEVIL’S LAIR

  The minihover ran out of power sooner than Jerry had expected.

  Near the ABC Cinema, Bayswater, he tramped to where an old Riley was parked. As he opened the door a woman with a pale, haggard face looked up at him from the driving seat.

  “Can I drop you anywhere, Herr Cornelius?”

  “You’re still fond of green and purple, I see.”

  “It’s really all I have left.”

  Jerry put his right boot on the nearside wing and began to brush off what remained of the ash. “Did Beesley send you?”

  “I escaped from Beesley.”

  “How did you come to leave America?”

  “I couldn’t stay on top of the job. A general lassitude, I suppose. Maybe I needed you, Jerry. So little new blood. I’ve become extraordinarily anaemic in recent months. Beesley found me and we flew back to England a few—a few…”