The Condition of Muzak

by Michael Moorcock

“Services,” said Jerry. “Power and communications.”

  “Only I heard he was dealing.”

  “It’s the same thing, isn’t it?”

  “Everything is…” Mo returned to the sofa and curled up. He went to sleep. Jerry pulled a huge silver metallic sheet over him to retain what heat was left in his body and headed for the kitchen. He searched amongst the collection of Coronation biscuit barrels and jugs and cottage-shaped teapots until he found the half-full bottle of Prioderm. He climbed the stained white carpet of the curving staircase and went into the bathroom, glad to find that the hot water was working in the shower. He stripped naked and, bottle in hand, stepped into the stall.

  Soon his head was engulfed in hellfire.

  4. INTRODUCING A NEW DIMENSION OF REALISM IN VISUAL SIMULATORS, VITAL III

  Jerry rarely visited his father’s fake Le Corbusier château and this was probably the first time he had used the front entrance, but he was in unusually high spirits as he eased his Phantom V up the weed-grown drive and depressed the horn button to let his father’s faithful retainer know he had arrived. Beyond the broken outline of the house was the grey Normandy sea. Rain was coming in from England and with it waves of inspirational music interspersed with the babbling voices of that crazed brotherhood of the coast, the pirate deejays. Jerry stepped out of the car and took a deep breath of the cold, moody air. His father—or the man who had claimed to be his father—had died without leaving a will, so Frank (who was convinced that he was both the only legitimate and the true spiritual successor to the old man) had claimed the house and its contents as his inheritance; but John Gnatbeelson swore the dying scientist had bequeathed his roof and its secrets to his namesake Jeremiah (there was even a rumour that old Cornelius had changed his name to Jeremiah soon after his son’s birth). The matter had been settled, in Jerry’s view, by his letting Frank use the place whenever he wanted to. In spite of the complications, Jerry had been glad that his father had died. It removed an uncomfortable ambiguity. Jerry hated keeping things from his mother.

  Before he could put his palm against the print-plate the grey steel door moved upwards and John Gnatbeelson, in tattered Norfolk jacket, grey moleskin britches and scarlet carpet slippers, greeted him awkwardly. He was thin, his cancerous skin given a semblance of life by the many broken blood vessels spreading purple and red beneath it. His chin sprouted a few long, grey wisps of hair, perhaps the remains of a beard, and his cheekbones were set so low as to give his head an oddly unbalanced look. A stooping six foot four, he looked fondly down on his young master who strode into the dark interior. Originally the house had possessed enormous windows, but these were now shielded with steel-plate. As old Cornelius’s suspicion of the outside world had increased he had introduced more and more modifications of this sort.

  “Have you come to stay, sir?” Gnatbeelson whispered habitually. His former employer had hated the sound of the human voice and had communicated almost entirely by a variety of mechanical means, never leaving his heavily guarded laboratories. Neither Jerry, Catherine or Frank had ever met their father personally, though they had all lived here from time to time. The house trembled with profound and unusual memories; it stank of the experiences of a hundred lifetimes, centuries of technomania tinged with the desperate eroticism of those who cast desperately about for their lost humanity and found only flesh.

  “Just a flying visit,” Jerry said. “I’d have phoned, but you’ve been cut off.”

  “The bill seemed unreasonable, sir. It was all Mr Frank’s reverse-charge calls. I did write to you…”

  “As long as the generators are working.”

  “I tested them last week. They’re just fine.”

  “I want you to activate the defences as soon as possible,” Jerry told him. He walked rapidly through haunted galleries, Gnatbeelson, his limbs moving irregularly, lolloping in his wake. “Particularly those towers.”

  “The hypnomats, sir?”

  “Set every one at go.”

  “Are you expecting trouble, Mr Cornelius?”

  “From Mr Frank. He’s on his way. I don’t know what he’s up to, but I know it involves this place. He mustn’t get in.”

  “I thought you didn’t mind, sir.”

  “I don’t normally.”

  “Is anything up, sir? Some sort of situation?”

  “It’s all instinctive. I couldn’t really pin it down.”

  “I’ve been reading about it in the book, sir. The millennium and so on.”

  Jerry stopped as the corridor opened onto another gallery. He looked down through filthy light at the scattered shells of computers, their innards spread at random over the large black and white tiles of the floor. “That wasn’t here last time.” He put his hand on the balustrade, close to a fragment of canvas on which had been painted a patchwork of red, yellow and blue diamond shapes, faintly bloodstained. His foot struck a gilt frame on the floor. “The sod’s eaten it!” He was shocked. “Watteau!”

  “What ho, sir…” Gnatbeelson’s face sagged a little lower. “Mr Frank was looking for something, I think. He kept sucking at those vacuum tubes in the corner. He said the marrow was good for his piles. He’s not himself, sir.”

  “Then who is?” Jerry put the scrap of canvas into his pocket and continued his inspection of the house.

  “I’m glad you’ve decided on a firm line at last, sir.” Gnatbeelson’s legs bent and straightened, bent and straightened. “I took the liberty of saving one of those books you gave me to put in the furnace. The Million Spears and the Coming Corruption. Do you think—?”

  “It’s lies. It’s your moral duty to burn it.”

  “Then of course I shall, sir. But are you sure this isn’t to do with that?”

  “It’s all a question of how you look at it. What about the reactor?” Jerry peered over the rail of another gallery. Below was a swimming pool, the water stagnant, filled with every kind of rubbish. Something living seemed to move just below the surface. “I’ve changed my mind. Things are settling down. They’ve never been better.”

  “Then why are you so anxious?” The whisper came from miles away but when Jerry turned Gnatbeelson was at his shoulder.

  “Because I want to maintain the balance. I’ve a right to take a few precautions.” Jerry was defensive. “What’s wrong with that?” He peered down at the far wall. Written in a substance resembling, in colour, the ichor of spent batteries, were the words:

  Encore un de mes pierrots mort;

  Mode d’un chronique orphelinisme;

  C’était un coeur plein de dandyisme

  Lunaire, en un drôle de corps.

  Jerry became sentimental. “How we loved to luxuriate in terror.” There had been good times here, when the three of them had spent their holidays, at play amongst their father’s discarded inventions, stretched upon heaps of confused circuits, with a bag of apples and a Wodehouse or a Sade. Simpler, if not sunnier, days.

  “I’m in full agreement with you, sir.” The old retainer’s voice seemed closer now, almost normal. “But why have you rejected all those books out of hand?”

  Desperately Jerry rounded on Gnatbeelson, displaying glowing eyes. “Can’t you see? It’s my last bloody chance to achieve a linear mode!”

  5. NEED ACTUATORS THAT WON’T FREEZE, BURN, DRY OUT, OR BOIL?

  It might be 196–, thought Jerry, but the countryside beyond Dover had returned with incredible speed to its medieval state. Kent was wild and beautiful again; so lush that few would have guessed it had sustained and recovered from a major nuclear bombardment during the ‘Proof of Good Faith’ contests between the major powers. There were disadvantages: poor roads and slow progress; but his car wasn’t badly affected, even when it was forced to inch through bramble thickets or cross small patches of ploughed land where angry peasants occasionally appeared, to pelt him with pieces of rock or crude spears. The people of Kent, happy at last in their proper primitive state, were much more at one with themselves.

 
A fairly unspoiled stretch of road took him close to the remains of Canterbury where skin-clad monks had erected a timber reproduction of the Cathedral, almost the same size as the original. The unseasoned scaffolding still surrounded it and more monks were at work with what was probably liquified chalk, painting the exterior in an effort to make it resemble stone. Elsewhere a project to restore the shopping precinct was in hand; soon Canterbury in facsimile would flourish again: triumph of Man’s optimism, of his faith in the future. Jerry hooted his horn and waved, turning up the stereo, to give them a friendly blast of ‘Got to Get You into My Life’, pursing his lips regretfully as one of the monks lost his footing on the scaffold and fell fifty feet to the ground.

  Soon he was nearing London. In the evening light the city was phosphorescent, like a neon wound; it glowed beneath a great scarlet sun turning the clouds orange and purple. And Jerry was filled with a sudden deep love for his noble birthplace, the City of the Apocalypse, this Earthly Paradise, the oldest and greatest city of its Age, virgin and whore, mother, sister, mistress, sustainer of life, creator of nightmare, destroyer of dreams, harbourer of twenty million chosen souls. Abruptly he left the Middle Ages and entered the future, the great grey road, a mile wide at this point, gradually narrowing to its apex at Piccadilly Circus. Now, as night drenched the tall buildings and their lights burst into shivering life, he could again relax in his natural environment.

  Against all the available evidence he was betting everything on simple cyclic time, on cause and effect, on karma. He passed through the first toll-check; now the road was covered; its perspex roof reflected the myriad colours of the headlamps below. He took the first exit up to the fast tier and joined the hundred-and-seventy mph stream; within a minute or two he was leaving it again, spiralling down the Notting Hill exit and making for home through the crowded park. The booths and tents of the nightly fair were only, he noticed, doing moderate business. At his favourite roadside fish-and-chip bar he stopped and paid four pounds for a piece of warm carp and some fried reconstituted mashed potato. It had been days since he’d had any real food. He wasn’t looking after himself properly. There were too many fresh shadows. He enjoyed the meal, eating it off the passenger seat as he drove, but felt sick afterwards and had to munch a couple of Milky Way bars to make himself better. He was already improving by the time he drove through the back gates of his house and garaged the Phantom beside the Duesenberg.

  He went into the house and found his old black car coat, his black flared trousers, his high-heeled boots, his white linen and, as he dressed, he became depressed. It was probably association, he thought. Dark clothes often brought him down. He turned away from the wardrobe, seeking a stereo, and at last found a deck and amplifier where he must have shoved them under an old-fashioned bentwood and china washstand. He switched the kit on. From the ceiling came the miserable, neurotic drone of the Everly Brothers. He let it play, deepening his mood. If a mood was worth having, he thought, it was worth having profoundly.

  He went downstairs and turned up some mail which must have come with one of the last runners to get through. There was a letter from Mr Harvey, one of Frank’s wholesalers, saying that he had some information which might be useful to Jerry and Mr Smiles, Jerry’s sometime business partner. Although he had made at least a million in the last job he was disinclined to work with Mr Smiles again. Smiles usually claimed to have a ‘purpose’ to his ventures and thus tended to confuse Jerry. He crumpled the letter, wondering why Harvey should wish to double-cross Frank, an excellent customer for any new chemical to come in.

  Jerry began to worry about Catherine again. She was his ideal, his goddess, his queen; he loved her and she represented everything else he loved, no matter how she changed, whereas Frank represented everything Jerry hated: greedy hypocrisy. If Frank got hold of Catherine again Jerry knew that he would have to risk repercussions and kill his brother. It would be a shame, since events were just beginning to stabilise into a fixed pattern, like a clockwork train on its little oval track. After a while one got to know the dodgy bits of line. Any deaths at this stage would produce a whole new train set, with all kinds of bends and twists, moebius strips and dead ends: exactly what he was hoping to escape. He gave in to his instincts’ demands. He must check to see if Catherine were all right, no matter how irrational the impulse was.

  He left the house, taking the Duesenberg to Westbourne Park Road and stopping outside the convent. There was no other traffic. The walls of the convent seemed higher than usual in the darkness.

  Against every desire his mind had filled up with prescience, with a knowledge of the futures he refused to accept.

  With a groan he went straight over the wall, using the hooked nylon ladder from the back of the car. He dropped amongst runner-bean poles, scraping his shin, trod as lightly as possible through the flower beds and vegetable patches, crossed the garden, hit his shoulder on the corner of the potting shed, and arrived at the main door. There was some sluggish movement from within, but not much. He got the door open and went inside; raced on tiptoe through the corridors until he came to the top of the flight of stairs leading under ground. So far he had not been spotted by a single nun. He went down the stairs and reached the cold corridor. There were stirrings, now, behind many of the doors; they were conclusive. As he approached, lights went off one by one in the cells until only the light in Catherine’s cell remained. Her door was open. He looked in on a discarded habit, an unmade bed, an empty lipstick case, an unread paperback with a cover reproducing an Adolphe Willette poster, the smell of Guerlain Mitsouko. He was too late. Frank had struck already. He would have reached the fake Le Corbusier château just after Jerry left. There would have been no time for John Gnatbeelson to activate the defences. Sister and house were now Frank’s.

  Jerry howled. His eyes blazed red in the gloom of the convent cell. His lips snarled back from wolfish teeth. An era had ended for him and he was never to know such innocence again.

  Rebellion or insurrection, on the other hand, being guided by instinct rather than reason, being passionate and spontaneous rather than cool and calculated, do act like shock therapy on the body of society, and there is a chance that they may change the chemical composition of the societal crystal. In other words they may change human nature, in the sense of creating a new morality, or new metaphysical values.

  —Herbert Read,

  Revolution and Reason

  It is essential to take the greatest pains to rouse the might of the German people by increasing its confidence in its own strength and thus also bringing a stability into the minds of our people to assist their appreciation of political problems. I have often, and I have to add this in speaking to you, felt doubts on one single matter, and that is the following: if I look at the intellectual elements of our society, I think what a pity, unfortunately they are needed; otherwise, one day one might, well, I don’t know, exterminate them or something like that. But unfortunately one needs them. If now I take a good look at these intellectual elements and imagine, and check, their behaviour towards me, and towards our work, I feel almost afraid.

  —Adolf Hitler, private speech to German Press, Munich,

  10 November, 1938 (day after Kristellnacht).

  S.A.B. Zeman, Nazi Propaganda

  6. IN THE BEGINNING WAS FLIGHT–TODAY IT’S SECURITY AND SECURITY MEANS CHIEFLY ELECTRONICS

  Jerry clambered out of his stockings and suspenders and threw them on top of his Courrèges suit. All he had left now was his perm; he wondered why he had ever thought red hair would suit him. He needed a complete change of identity. He searched through the heaps of clothes he had brought with him to the deserted convent but could find nothing he wanted to wear. He walked the length of the cool guest room, with its hard beds and green radiators, to the pine writing table where he had placed his little Sony cassette player. He pressed the play button. Slow, heavy sounds crept from the speaker; the batteries were exhausted.

  He switched off. For a second he thought
he had heard footsteps in the passage outside, but it was unlikely that anyone could have traced him here now that London was almost entirely depopulated. The exodus had been a huge success. He touched his forehead, glad to find that his temperature was dropping at last. Whistling, he stirred a skirt with his toe just as the door opened and Miss Brunner came in.

  She glanced disapprovingly around at the mess. She wore some kind of standard Slavic peasant costume and had an MG42 tucked under her muscular right arm. Crossing to one of the beds she lowered the heavy machine gun onto the grey blanket which was as neat and clean as the last occupant had left it.

  “There’s evidently been some confusion,” she said. She sat down beside her gun and began to stroke its stock. “What on earth are you doing?”

  “I’d heard you were dead—or, at least, transferred.” He picked up the nearest pair of underpants—Dayglo yellow—and put them on.

  “You more than anyone should know about temporal shifts, Mr Cornelius. Everything’s well and truly up the spout.” She drew in a sour breath. “I thought I had you under control this time. There’s a rumour about your black box, that you’ve got it back. If that’s true you haven’t really used it to your advantage, have you, eh?”

  “I’ve been resting.” He began to sulk. He found two orange socks that almost matched. He sat opposite her and pulled them onto his grubby feet. “Anyway, if we’re being accusatory, what happened to you? I thought we were going to be together always.”

  “It’s your sentimentality I can’t stand.” She rose like a disturbed wasp, leaving her gun where it was. “It’s your main drawback. You could have been a brilliant physicist. If you’d only had a better grip on the scientific method.”

  “My black box…”

  “Your father’s invention, and you know it. You developed it, certainly, but to ends that were completely irresponsible. Think how much better things could be if you hadn’t started experimenting for your own amusement rather than for the good of the world.”