"Michael Moorcock - Oswald Bastable 3 - The Steel Tsar" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moorcock Michael)

Michael Moorcock
1


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