The Condition of Muzak by Michael Moorcock Read Free Book Online

Shades is on the dole and wondered if you had any ideas.”
    “I thought he was in the States.”
    “Things have dried up there, as well. You know how fashions change. Last year it was all assassinations, this year it’s all sex scandals and religion. Could we have a little music?”
    Jerry fiddled with an already glowing console. Faintly Zoot Money’s band gave them ‘Big Time Operator’.
    “That’ll do,” said Mo. “It doesn’t need to be loud. Just there. Anyway, Shades thought you might be looking around.”
    Jerry smiled. “You have to, don’t you, with Shades. Tell him I’ll probably be in touch.”
    Mo nodded. “He says all he needs is a pair of kings.”
    “It’s good news for everyone else.” Absently Jerry toyed with a decaying packet of Chocolate Olivers. “Though his interpretations are all his own.”
    “And I saw Mr Smiles. He says to get in touch sometime. It’s about what Simons and Harvey are after, he says.”
    Jerry shrugged. “All that’s in the past.” He glanced through an electron microscope. “Or maybe the future.”
    Mo had lost interest in the conversation. He began to move slowly about the room, experimentally fingering any loose wires he discovered. “Oh, and I saw your mum in the pub. When was it? Tuesday?”
    “Did you tell her I was back?”
    “What do you think? But she’d heard you was living around here. She was more interested in knowing where Cathy was.”
    Jerry smiled at this. “They always were close.”
    “She said Frank was doing very well for himself but was looking a bit tired. What is he doing with himself, these days, anyway?”
    “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