The Condition of Muzak Read online

  Also available from Michael Moorcock, Titan Books and Titan Comics

  A NOMAD OF THE TIME STREAMS

  The Warlord of the Air

  The Land Leviathan

  The Steel Tsar

  THE ETERNAL CHAMPION SERIES

  The Eternal Champion

  Phoenix in Obsidian

  The Dragon in the Sword

  THE CORUM SERIES

  The Knight of the Swords

  The Queen of the Swords

  The King of the Swords

  The Bull and the Spear

  The Oak and the Ram

  The Sword and the Stallion

  THE CORNELIUS QUARTET

  The Final Programme

  A Cure for Cancer

  The English Assassin

  THE MICHAEL MOORCOCK LIBRARY

  Elric of Melniboné

  Elric: Sailor on the Seas of Fate

  MICHAEL MOORCOCK’S ELRIC

  Volume 1: The Ruby Throne

  Volume 2: Stormbringer

  The Condition of Muzak

  Print edition ISBN: 9781783291830

  E-book edition ISBN: 9781783291823

  Published by Titan Books

  A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

  144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

  First Titan edition: May 2016

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Copyright © Michael and Linda Moorcock, 1977, and Multiverse Inc. Revised version copyright © Michael and Linda Moorcock, 2016, and Multiverse Inc. All characters, the distinctive likenesses thereof, and all related indicia are TM and © 2016 Michael and Linda Moorcock and Multiverse Inc.

  Edited by John Davey.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  This book is dedicated with gratitude to the following people who, at different times, encouraged me through the eleven years this tetralogy took to complete: Clive Alison, Hilary Bailey, Jimmy Ballard, Edward Blishen, Alan Brien, John Clute, Barry Cole, Mal Dean, Michael Dempsey, Tom Disch, George Ernsberger, Giles Gordon, Mike Harrison, Doug Hill, Langdon Jones, Richard Glyn Jones, Philip Oakes, Keith Roberts, Jim Sallis, Norman Spinrad, Jack Trevor Story, Jon Trux, Angus Wilson.

  NOTE TO THE READER

  Although these books may be read in any order, the reader might wish to know that the structure of this volume reflects the structure of the overall tetrology.

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Also by Michael Moorcock

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Note to the Reader

  Epigraph

  TUNING UP (1)

  PRELUDE

  J.C.

  Major Nye

  Una Persson

  Sebastian Auchinek

  Mrs C. and Colonel P.

  EARLY REPORTS

  TUNING UP (2)

  INTRODUCTION

  1. The dog-fight missile designed to dominate its decade

  2. Matra ubiquity with 2nd and 3rd generation missiles

  3. Acquire targets simply, reliably and accurately…

  4. Introducing a new dimension of realism in visual simulators, Vital III

  5. Need actuators that won’t freeze, burn, dry out, or boil?

  6. In the beginning was flight…

  7. Optics for defence

  8. The BL 755 cluster bomb…

  9. The Strim antitank rocket launcher…

  10. Rapier, ultra low-level air defence system…

  EARLY REPORTS

  TUNING UP (3)

  DEVELOPMENT

  1. Seven years for bank-raid vicar

  2. Society hostess death riddle

  3. An important message to every man and woman in America losing his or her hair

  4. Cross country rape and slay spree of the frustrated bondage freak

  5. Spirit voices help me—Peter Sellers talks about the strange power that has entered his life

  * * *

  THE REUNION PARTY

  * * *

  6. BAC cools hopes of airship boom

  7. UFOs—occupants and artifacts in Eastern Indiana

  8. The girl next door could be a witch

  9. A Bicentennial celebration. The 1976 Guns & Ammo Annual…

  10. High intensity colour (that’s actually good for your eyes!)

  EARLY REPORTS

  TUNING UP (4)

  RECAPITULATION

  1. The God from the machine

  2. With the flag to Pretoria

  3. The Pathfinder

  4. The outcast of the islands

  5. What is art?

  * * *

  6. The Birth and Adventures of Harlequin

  7. Harlequin Invisible; or, The Emperor of China’s Court

  8. The Metamorphosis of Harlequin

  9. The Death of Harlequin

  10. The Mirror; or, Harlequin Everywhere

  EARLY REPORTS

  TUNING UP (5)

  CODA

  Mrs C. and Frankie C.

  Auchinek

  Persson

  Nye

  A Bundle

  * * *

  Appendix I

  Appendix II

  Appendix III

  Also Available from Titan Books and Michael Moorcock

  Also Available from Titan Comics

  Praise for Michael Moorcock

  All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music. For while in all other works of art it is possible to distinguish the matter from the form, and the understanding can always make this distinction, yet it is the constant effort of art to obliterate it.

  —Pater

  What’s more in HERCULES than HARLEQUIN.

  One slew the Hydra, this can kill the Spleen;

  In him Behold the Age’s Genius bright;

  A Patch-Coat Hero, this great Town’s delight.

  With Craft and Policy, his humour tends

  To publick Mirth, and profitable ends.

  Let Envy gnash her teeth, let Poets rail

  Whilst PIERO is his Guide he cannot fail.

  Satirical print: The Stage’s Glory, 1731

  Each flower and fern in this enchanted wood

  Leans to her fellow, and is understood;

  The eglantine, in loftier station set,

  Stoops down to woo the maidly violet.

  In gracile pains the very lilies grow:

  None is companionless except Pierrot.

  Music, more music! how its echoes steal

  Upon my senses with unlooked for weal.

  Tired am I, tired, and far from this lone glade

  Seems mine old joy in route and masquerade,

  Sleep cometh over me, how will I prove,

  By Cupid’s grace, what is this thing called love?

  [Sleeps]

  —Dowson,

  Pierrot of the Minute

  Hop! enlevons sur les horizons fades

  Les menuets de nos pantalonnades!

  Tiens! l’Univers

/>   Est à l’envers…

  —Tout cela vous honore,

  Lord Pierrot, mais encore?

  —Laforgue,

  Complainte de Lord Pierrot

  TUNING UP (1)

  As Major Nye tried to brush some green and brown stains from the collar of his tropical combat jacket a little damp earth fell from his neck and struck the fused stone of the timeless causeway. Around him what remained of the ruins of Angkor merged with the blackened boles of a defoliated jungle; the area was at peace; it had ceased to be of strategic importance. About fifty feet away a huge stone head of Ganesh, elephant god of trade and good luck, lay on its side where a 105mm shell had shot it between the eyes, blasting a deep gash in the stone above the base of its trunk: the wound glinted white and crystalline against the surrounding mossy grey of the forehead; the god seemed to have acquired a disenchanted third orb. Though a few monkeys and parrots (no longer the rowdy insouciants of more glorious pre-war years) crept about in the higher terraces, pausing cautiously if they disturbed a fragment of plaster or dislodged a twig, there were few sounds of life in the city.

  Major Nye had at first found the city peaceful but he was becoming increasingly uneasy with the tensions which had gone to produce that peace. He lifted his head towards his right as, from the twisted and fire-blasted turret of a wrecked tank, a poor copy of a Vickers Mark I Main Battle (the ‘Shiva’), emerged the chubby khaki bottom of a small Brahmin. Behind the tank the jungle brooded. “It’s no go, I’m afraid, major.” The Brahmin wiped fat hands on his oily fatigues and wriggled round so that he could face Nye. “Not a scrap.” He flourished an empty picnic hamper.

  This was the Shiva which had scored the hit on Ganesh: its occupant was the only survivor of retaliatory rocket-fire which had, in turn, taken out the tank. He called himself “Hythloday” but Nye knew his real name. ‘Hythloday’ had been a technical advisor with the Indian mercenary mechanised cavalry in its now famous sweep from Darjeeling to Saigon. Some months earlier, having no room for passengers, the cavalry had left him behind with his broken tank, and two days ago Major Nye, making a routine search-and-destroy operation in the area on behalf of his Khmer employers, had found him, recognising him as a former acquaintance. Major Nye had not reported his capture—there would have been little point, for yesterday he had intercepted a radio report: Phnôm Penh had sustained a tactical nuclear strike, possibly Tasmanian in origin. Without question it was curtains for the Khmers.

  Unemployed again, bereft of the loyalties he needed so badly, Major Nye stroked his ancient tash and drew grey brows together. His pale hair, thin and sandy, his pale blue eyes, stood out in contrast to the heavy tan on his near fleshless face and neck. “Ah, well,” he said in answer to Hythloday’s statement, “there are always the emergency rations. I must say the world is not the one I knew as a boy.” He lowered his Armbrust 300 anti-tank weapon to the ground and unpacked the box at his belt. “Still, peace has been restored and that’s important. Though at a price, of course.”

  From behind a crackling mass of fried foliage a third figure climbed up the masonry and sat beside him on the slab: a young man in tatty out-of-date clothing, haunted and demoralised by something more than war. The major offered him a strip of pemmican. “You seem cold, old chap. Are you sure you haven’t picked up a spot of fever?”

  “It depends what you mean, major.” Jerry Cornelius turned the ragged collar of his black car coat so that it framed his face. He accepted the dehydrated meat and raised it reluctantly to his lips. His eyes were hot, his skin flushed. He was shivering.

  Professor Hira joined them. “You’ve had the last of the medical kit, I regret to say, Mr Cornelius.”

  Cornelius had revealed himself to them on the previous day. From what he had told them he seemed to have been hiding in the ruins for a long time, since well before the final battle. Today he was, physically, slightly better than when they had found him, though he continued to deny that there was anything wrong with him. He had accepted the morphine, he said, because he hated to look a gift-horse in the mouth. Similarly the quinine, the penicillin and the valium. There was at least a score of recent holes in his forearms.

  “It’s industrialisation I need.” Jerry shifted himself so that he squatted at Major Nye’s feet. “I’ve developed this horrible antipathy towards peasant communities. Particularly Slavs and South-East Asians. What makes them so cruel?”

  “It’s hard to sympathise, isn’t it?” Professor Hira nodded his head. “Original sin, I suspect. The devil come to Eden. It can’t be the climate or the terrain.” He had decided to skip the jerky and was gnawing, instead, on a root. “It can’t be poverty.”

  “The very opposite, in my view,” said Major Nye. “The richest New Guinea tribes were always the nastiest. Don’t Kiev and Bangkok have a great deal in common with Crawley or Brighton?”

  “Or Skokie,” said Professor Hira with a certain amount of feeling.

  They looked at him in surprise. He shrugged. “It was a long time ago.”

  Major Nye carefully packed up the rest of the rations. “I wouldn’t mind getting back to Blighty myself. Better the devil you know, eh? A return to reality.”

  “Oh, Christ.” Jerry began to shiver again. He rose. “That’s the last thing I need.”

  PRELUDE

  As Errant Knight of Table Round,

  In high resolve shall Harlequin fulfil his quest;

  And thus his judges all confound.

  Harlequin Disguised as a Warrior

  (French print c. 1580)

  MOTHER AND THREE CHILDREN DIE FROM ASPHYXIA

  No definite explanation for the cause of a fire which swept through two attic rooms in North Kensington on 14 January, killing a mother and her three young children, was forthcoming at the resumed inquest on Wednesday. Verdicts of “Accidental Death” were recorded. “I left the three children sleeping there when I went to work that morning,” said Mr Colum Cornelius who had been staying in the house at the time. Fire Officer Cyril Powell said after the fire had been put out the bodies of the mother and her three children were found in the front attic room. Pathologist Dr R.D. Teare said that the cause of death was asphyxia due to the inhalation of fire fumes.

  Kensington Post, 12 February, 1965

  J.C.

  Affluence and poverty are here in their extremes. Bohemians and traders, prostitutes, millionaires and famous actresses, writers, painters, street singers, drug-pushers, pop-stars, rag-and-bone dealers and antique dealers, immigrants from every part of the world—West Indians, Greeks, Pakistanis, Irish, Italians, Americans—and rich women from South Kensington come to London’s finest vegetable market to shop cheaper. Just a few of the types in one of the world’s most exotic streets…

  ‘The Portobello Road’, Golden Nugget, September 1966

  Some two miles north of the abandoned shell of Derry & Toms department store (now, like the ruins of Tintagel and Angkor, a mere relic) there once stood a grey-brown collection of nineteenth-century brick buildings surrounded by a high wall, also of brick: the Monastery of the Poor Clares Colettines, Westbourne Park Road, established in 1857 at the request of Dr Henry Manning, Superior of the Oblates of St Charles. The buildings themselves were erected in 1860, modelled on those of the Convent of the Poor Clares at Bruges which supplied the first nuns. Notting Hill, according to the Building News of the period (quoted in the Greater London Council’s Survey of North Kensington, 1973), was nothing more than a dreary waste of mud and stunted trees, where the convent shared “the sole interest” of this desolate district with “Dr Walker’s melancholy church” of All Saints’, then still unfinished, and a lonely public house, now called The Elgin, in Ladbroke Grove. A number of “low Irish” had settled in the vicinity, and already there had been “a plentiful crop of Romish conversions there”. The convent looked east onto Ladbroke Grove, north onto Westbourne Park Road and south onto Blenheim Crescent, while to its west were rows of run-down Victorian terraces separated, back-to-back, by
tiny yards.

  During the decade 1965–75 (the period during which the major part of our story probably took place) the convent was sold to the Greater London Council who subsequently built on the site a number of blocks of flats and a multistorey car park to serve the needs of their richer tenants. The nuns were moved to Barnes, across the river.

  Before the convent was demolished it had been possible for people living on the upper floors of the surrounding houses to glimpse occasionally the activities of the nuns, members of an enclosed order, in the convent gardens, where vegetables and flowers were grown. In the summer the nuns would enjoy a game of rounders on the lawn or take picnics under the shade of the many elm trees whose old branches could be seen by those who passed by on the other side of the time-worn brick. The walls provided the nuns with a tangle of rambling roses and ivy and on their reverse offered the public slogans, some cryptic (VIETGROVE) and some relatively clear (QPR RULE OK), as well as the usual spray-painted selection of quotations from the works of Blake and Jarry. For those residents of Blenheim Crescent, Ladbroke Grove and Westbourne Park Road who found themselves with time on their hands the convent represented a regular diversion. At any one time during the height of the summer at least fifty pairs of eyes would be trained on the convent from a variety of angles, from windows, balconies and roofs, waiting for a glimpse of a figure at a window, the sight of a black habit crossing from a residential wing to the chapel or, more rarely, the spectacle of a cricket match. The convent proper, being, according to local legend, forbidden to any man (apart from the confessor, the electrician and the plumber who attended to the failing central heating) and most women, represented an ideal, a mystery, a goal, a challenge. Some doubtless hoped for a glance of flesh, a suggestion of illicit love between the nuns, while others were merely curious as to how the inhabitants spent their time. To certain ladies the convent represented a haven, a sanctuary from the complications of children, husbands, lovers, relatives and jobs.