The Rituals of Infinity Read online

  The Rituals Of Infinity

  This is Michael Moorcock at his ebullient, provocative best, conjuring humour out of the most unusual situations and creating a fantasy of epic proportions.

  THE RITUALS OF INFINITY portrays the Earth as merely one of twenty-four similar yet alternate planets. But even twenty-four planets cannot last for long and one by one they mysteriously become space dust.

  Enter one of Moorcock's fantastic creations in the form of Dr Faustaff, a larger-than-life character who is as imposing as his seventeenth century counterpart and every bit as important, finding himself battling to save the world he knows ...

  The Rituals of

  Infinity

  ________________

  Michael Moorcock

  NEW ENGLISH LIBRARY

  Hodder and Stoughton

  Copyright ©Michael Moorcock 1965

  First serialised in New Worlds 1965-66 First published in Great Britain in 1971 by Arrow Books

  New English Library Paperback Edition 1986

  British Library C.I.P.

  Moorcock, Michael [The rituals of inifinity, or. The new adventures of Doctor Faustus]. The rituals of infinity.

  I. [The rituals of infinity, or, The new adventures of Doctor Faustus] II. Title 823'914[F] PR6062.059

  ISBN 0-450-39532-4

  The characters and situations in this book are entirely imaginary and bear no relation to any real person or actual happening

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which this is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Printed and bound in Great Britain for Hodder and Stoughton Paperbacks, a division of Hodder and Stoughton Ltd., Mill Road, Dunton Green, Sevenoaks, Kent (Editorial Office: 47 Bedford Square, London, WC1 3DP) by Cox & Wyman

  For Jimmy Ballard

  When all the world dissolves,

  And every creature shall be purified,

  All place shall be hell that is not heaven.

  Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus

  Prologue

  There they lay, outside of space and time, each hanging in its separate limbo, each a planet called Earth. Fifteen globes, fifteen lumps of matter sharing a name. Once they might have looked the same, too, but now they were very different. One was comprised almost solely of desert and ocean with a lew forests of gigantic, distorted trees growing in the northern hemisphere; another seeemed to be in perpetual twilight, a planet of dark obsidian; yet another was a honeycomb of multicoloured crystal and another had a single continent that was a ring of land around a vast lagoon. The wrecks of Time, abandoned and dying, each with a decreasing number of human inhabitants for the most part unware of the doom overhanging their worlds. These worlds existed in a kind of subspacial well created in furtherance of a series of drastic experiments...

  1

  The Great American Desert

  In Professor Faustaff s code-book this world was designated as Earth 3. The professor steered his flame-red Buick convertible along the silted highway that crossed the diamond-dry desert, holding the wheel carefully, like the captain of a schooner negotiating a treacherous series of sandbanks.

  The desert stretched on all sides, vast and lonely, harsh and desolate beneath the intense glare of the sun swelling at its zenith in the metallic blue sky. On this alternate Earth there was little but desert and ocean, the one a flat continuation of the other.

  The professor hummed a song to himself as he drove, his bulk sprawling across both front seats. Sunlight glinted off the beads of sweat on his shiny red face, caught the lenses of his polaroid glasses and brightened those parts of the Buick not yet dulled by the desert dust. The engine roared like a beast and Professor Faustaff chanted mindlessly to its rhythm.

  He was dressed in a Hawaiian shirt and gold beach-shorts, a pair of battered sneakers on his feet and a baseball cap tilted on his head. He weighed at least twenty stone and was a good six and a half feet tall. A big man. Though he drove

  with care his body was completely relaxed and his mind was at rest. He was at home in this environment as he was in more than a dozen others. The ecology of this Earth could not, of course, support human life. It did not. Professor Faustaff and his teams supported human life here and on all but two of the other alternates. It was a big responsibility. The professor carried it with a certain equanimity.

  The capital of Greater America, Los Angeles, was two hours behind him and he was heading for San Francisco where he had his headquarters on this alternate Earth. He would be there the next day and planned to stop at a motel he knew en route, spend the night there, and continue in the morning.

  Peering ahead of him Faustaff suddenly saw what appeared to be a human figure standing by the side of the highway. As he drove closer he saw that it was a girl dressed only in a swimsuit, waving at him as he approached. He slowed down. The girl was a pretty redhead, her hair long and straight, her nose fairly sharp and freckled. Her mouth was large and pleasant.

  Faustaff stopped the car beside the girl.

  'What's the trouble?'

  Truck driver was giving me a lift to 'Frisco. He dumped me when I wouldn't go and play amongst the cactus with him.' Her voice was soft and a trifle ironic.

  'Didn't he realise you could have died before someone else came along?'

  'He might have liked that. He was very upset.'

  'You'd better get in.' Most young women attracted Faustaff and the redhead particularly appealed to him. As she squeezed into the passenger seat beside him he began to breathe a little more heavily than usual. Her face seemed to assume a more serious expression as he glanced at her but she said nothing.

  'My name's Nancy Hunt,' she said. I'm from L.A. You?'

  'Professor Faustaff, I live in 'Frisco.'

  'A professor—you don't look like a professor—a business man more, I guess, but even then—a painter, maybe.'

  'Well, I'm sorry to say I'm a physicist—a physicist of all work you could say.' He grinned at her and she grinned back, her eyes warming. Like most women she was already attracted by Faustaffs powerful appeal. Faustaff accepted this as normal and had never bothered to work out why he should be so successful in love. It might be his unquestioning enjoyment of love-making and general liking for women. A kindly nature and an uncomplicated appreciation for all the bodily pleasures, a character that demanded no sustenance from others, these were probably the bases for Faustaffs success with women. Whether eating, boozing, smoking, love-making, talking, inventing, helping people or giving pleasure in general, Faustaff did it with such spontaneity, such relaxation, that he could not fail to be attractive to most people.

  'What are you going to 'Frisco for, Nancy?' he asked.

  'Oh, 1 just felt like travelling. I was with this swimming party, I got sick of it, I walked out on to the street and saw this truck coming. I thumbed it and asked the driver where he was going. He said 'Frisco—so I decided to go to 'Frisco.'

  Faustaff chuckled. 'Impulsive. I like that.'

  'My boyfriend calls me moody, not impulsive,' she smiled.

  'Your boyfriend?'

  'Well, my ex-boyfriend as from this morning I suppose. He woke up, sat up in bed and said "Unless you marry me, Nancy, I'm going now." I didn't want to marry him and told him so. He went.' She laughed. 'He was a nice guy.'

  The highway wound on through the barren world and Faustaff and Nancy talked until naturally they moved closer together and Faustaff put his arm around the girl and hugged her and a little later kissed her.

  By late
afternoon they were both relaxed and content to enjoy one another's company silently.

  The convertible sped on, thudding tyres and pumping

  pistons, vibrating chassis, stink and all, sand slashing against the windscreen and the big yellow sun in the hot blue above. The vast, gleaming desert stretched for hundreds of miles in all directions, its only landmarks the few filling stations and motels along the rare highways, the occasional mesa and clumps of cactus. Only the City of Angels, in the exact centre of the desert, lay inland. All other cities, like San Francisco, New Orleans, Saint Louis, Santa Fe, Jacksonville, Houston and Phoenix, lay on the coast. A visitor from another Earth would not have recognised the continental outline.

  Professor Faustaff chanted wordlessly to himself as he drove, avoiding the occasional crater in the highway, or the place where sand had banked up heavily.

  His chant and his peace were interrupted by a buzzing from the dashboard. He glanced at the girl and made a decision with a slight shrug of his shoulders. He reached inside the glove compartment and flicked a hidden switch there. A voice, urgent and yet controlled, began to come from the radio.

  "Frisco called Professor F. 'Frisco calling Professor F.'

  'Professor F. receiving,' said Faustaff watching the road ahead and easing off a little on the accelerator. Nancy frowned.

  'What's that?' she asked.

  Must a private radio -I keep in touch with my headquarters this way.' 'Crazy,' she said.

  'Professor F. receiving you,' he said deliberately. 'Suggest you consider Condition C Faustaff warned his base that he had someone with him.

  'Understood. Two things. A U.M. situation is anticipated imminent on E-15, Grid areas, 33, 34, 41, 42, 49 and 50. Representatives on E-15 have asked for help. Would suggest you use I-effect to contact.'

  'It's that bad?'

  'From what they said, it's that bad.' 'Okay. Will do so as soon as possible. You said two things.'

  'We found a tunnel—or traces of one. Not one of ours. A D-squader we think. He's somewhere in your area, anyway. Thought we'd warn you.'

  Faustaff wondered suddenly if he'd been conned and he looked at Nancy again.

  'Thanks,' he said to the radio. I'm arriving in 'Frisco tomorrow. Keep me informed of any emergency.'

  'Okay, professor. Cutting out.'

  Faustaff put his hands into the glove compartment again and flicked the switch off.

  'Phew!' grinned Nancy. 'If that was a sample of the kind of talk you physicists go in for I'm glad I only had to learn Esperanto at school.'

  Faustaff knew that he should feel suspicious of her but couldn't believe that she was a threat.

  His 'Frisco office did not use the radio unless it was important. They had told him that an Unstable Matter Situation was imminent on the fifteenth and last alternate Earth. An Unstable Matter Situation could mean the total break-up of a planet. Normally, representatives of his team there could cope with a U.M.S. If they had asked for help it meant things were very bad. Later Faustaff would have to leave the girl somewhere and use the machine that lay in the trunk of his car—a machine called an invoker, which could summon one of Faustaffs representatives through the subspacial levels so that Faustaff could talk with him directly and find out exactly what was happening on Earth Fifteen. The other piece of information concerned his enemies, the mysterious D-squad who were, Faustaff believed, actually responsible for creating the U.M. Situations wherever they arose. A member—or members— of the D-squad were already on this Earth and could be after him. That was why he knew he should suspect Nancy Hunt

  and be cautious. Her appearance on the highway was mysterious, after all, although he was still inclined to believe her story.

  She grinned at him again and reached into his shirt pocket to get cigarettes and his lighter, putting a cigarette between his lips and cupping the flame of the lighter so that he was forced to bend his large head towards it.

  As evening came and the sun began to set the sky awash with colours, a motel-hoarding showed up. The sign read:

  LA PLEJ BONAN MOTELON Nagejo-Muziko-A muzoj

  A little later they could just make out the buildings of the motel and another sign.

  'PLUVATA MORGAU' Bonvolu esti kun ni

  Faustaff read Esperanto fluently enough. It was the official language, though few people spoke it in everyday life. The signs offered him the best motel, swimming, music and amusements. It had humorously been called The Rain Tomorrow and invited him to join the host.

  Several more hoardings later they turned off the road into the car park. There were only two other cars there under the shade of the awning. One was a black Ford Thunderbird, the other was a white English M.G. A pretty girl in a frilly ballerina skirt that was obviously part of her uniform, a peaked cap on her head, strode towards them as they got stiffly out of the car.

  Faustaff winked at her, his body dwarfing her. He put his sunglasses in his pocket and wiped his forehead with a yellow handkerchief.

  'Any cabins?' he asked.

  'Sure,' smiled the girl, glancing quickly from Faustaff to Nancy. 'How many?'

  'One double or two singles,' he said 'It doesn't matter.'

  'Not sure we've got a bed to take you, mister,' she said.

  'I curl up small,' Faustaff grinned. 'Don't worry about it. I've got some valuables in my car—if I close the roof and lock it will they be safe enough?'

  The only thieves in these parts are the coyotes,' she said, 'though they'll be learning to drive soon when they find that cars are all that's left to steal'

  'Business bad?'

  'Was it ever good?'

  There are quite a few motels between here and 'Frisco,' Nancy said, linking her arm in Faustaff's. 'How do they survive?'

  'Government grants mainly,' she replied. 'There've got to be filling stations and motels through the Great American Outback, haven't there? Otherwise how would anyone get to Los Angeles?'

  'Plane?' the redhead suggested.

  'I guess so,' said the girl. 'But the highways and motels were here before the airlines, so I guess they just developed. Anyway some people actually like crossing the desert by car.'

  Faustaff got back into the car and operated the hood control. It hummed and extended itself, covering the automobile. Faustaff locked it and got out again. He locked the doors. He unlocked the trunk, flipped a switch on a piece of equipment, relocked it. He put his arm around the redhead and said: 'Right, let's get some food.'

  The girl in the cap and the skirt led the way to the main building. Behind it were about twelve cabins.

  There was one other customer in the restaurant. He sat near the window, looking out at the desert. A big full moon was rising.

  Faustaff and the redhead sat down at the counter and looked at the menu. It offered steak or hamburger and a variety of standard trimmings. The girl who'd first greeted

  them came through a door at the back and said: 'What'll it be?'

  'You do all the work around here?' asked Nancy.

  'Mostly. My husband runs the gas pumps and does the heavy chores. There isn't much to do except maintain the place.'

  'I guess so,' said Nancy. T'll have a jumbo steak, rare with fries and salad.'

  'I'll have the same, but four portions,' said Faustaff. 'Then three of your Rainbow Sodas and six cups of coffee with cream.'

  'We should have more customers like you,' the girl said without raising an eyebrow. She looked at Nancy. 'Want anything to follow, honey?'

  The redhead grinned. Til have vanilla icecream and coffee with cream.'

  'Go and sit down. It'll be ten minutes.'

  They crossed to a window table. For the first time Faustaff saw the face of the other customer. He was pale, with his close-cropped black hair growing in a widow's peak, a neat, thin black beard and moustache, his features ascetic, his lips pursed as he stared at the moon. He turned suddenly and glanced at Faustaff, gave a slight inclination of the head and looked back at the moon. His eyes had been bright, black and s
ardonic.

  A little while later the girl came with the order on a big tray. 'Your other steaks are in that dish,' she said as she set it on the table. 'And your trimmings are in those two smaller dishes. Okay?'

  'Fine,' Faustaff nodded.

  The girl put all the contents of the tray on to the table and then stood back. She hesitated and then looked at the other customer.

  'Anything else you want—er—Herr Stevel ... sir ... ?' 'Steifflomeis,' he said smiling at her. Although his expression was perfectly amiable, there was still a touch of

  the sardonic gleam Faustaff had seen earlier. It seemed to faze the girl. She just grunted and hurried back to the counter.

  Steifflomeis nodded again at Faustaff and Nancy.

  i am a visitor to your country I am afraid,' he said. T should have invented some sort of pseudonym that could be more easily pronounced.'

  Faustaff had his mouth full of steak and couldn't respond at once, but Nancy said politely: 'Oh, and where are you from, Mr ...?'

  'Steifflomeis,' he laughed. 'Well, my present home is in Sweden.'

  Over here on business or holiday?' Faustaff asked carefully. Steifflomeis was lying.

  'A little of both. This desert is magnificent isn't it?'

  "Hot, though,' giggled the redhead. T bet you're not used to this where you come from.'

  'Sweden does have quite warm summers,' Steifflomeis replied.

  Faustaff looked at Steifflomeis warily. There was very little caution in the professor's make-up, but the little there was now told him not to be forthcoming with Steifflomeis.

  'Which way are you heading?' asked the girl. 'L.A. or 'Frisco?'

  'Los Angeles. I have some business in the capital.'

  Los Angeles—or more particularly Hollywood, where the presidential Bright House and the Temple of Government were situated—was the capital of the Greater American Confederacy.

  Faustaff helped himself to his second and third steaks. 'You must be one of those people we were talking about earlier,' he said, 'who prefer to drive than go by plane.'