The Condition of Muzak by Michael Moorcock Read Free Book Online Page A

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