The Steel Tsar by Michael Moorcock Read Free Book Online Page A

Dressed in a dirty, faded European suit and a frayed native shirt, he was barefooted, unshaven, emaciated and plainly under the influence of opium. I knew the signs well enough, for I had once been slave to the drug’s consolations. I could not make out his age, but the voice was of quite a young man from the upper middle class.
    “I’d have thought you’d be ashamed...” Begg’s face was full of disgust.
    “Who are you to deny them their only pleasure, Begg?” drawled the newcomer reasonably. “Let them alone, for God’s sake.”
    Lieutenant Begg wheeled his trim cob about and shouted an order to his men. “All right, quick march.” He trotted away without answering the decrepit Englishman.
    I watched them go, the Ghoorkas dragging their frightened prisoners back the way they had come.
    The Englishman shrugged and turned to re-enter the house.
    “Just a minute,” I called. “I must try to get this chap to the hospital. He’s half-dead. Could you give me a hand?”
    The man leaned wearily against the door frame. “He’d be better off with his ancestors, believe me.”
    “A moment ago you were defending these people.”
    “Not defending them, old boy. I’m a fatalist, you see. I told Begg to let them alone. And I tell you the same. What’s the point? He’ll die soon enough.”
    But he left the doorway and shuffled into the square, blinking in the sunshine. “Who are you, anyway?”
    “I’m an airshipman. I got here a week or so ago.”
    “Ah, the shipwrecked mariner. They were talking about you up at the hotel. All right, I’ll help you with him, for what it’s worth.”
    The opium-drunk Englishman was no stronger than I was, but together we managed to carry the coolie down the street and along the quay until we reached the hospital.
    After a couple of nuns had been called and had taken the wounded man away, I stood panting in the lobby, staring curiously at my helper. “Thanks.”
    He smiled slowly. “Think nothing of it. Nothing at all. Cheerio.”
    He raised his hand in a sort of ironic salute and then went out. He had gone before Dr. Hira came down the stairs into the lobby.
    “Who was that chap?” I asked Hira, describing the wretched Englishman.
    Hira recognized the description. He fiddled with his stethoscope. “A castaway, like yourself. He arrived in the airship which came to take off the mine people. He chose to stay on Rowe Island. I don’t know why. It meant they could take one more passenger so they didn’t argue. They call him The Captain sometimes, up at the hotel. Supposed to have been the commander of a merchant airship which crashed in China before the war. A bit of a mystery.”
    “Begg doesn’t like him.”
    Hira laughed softly. “No, Begg wouldn’t. Captain Dempsey lets the side down, eh? Begg’s for the Europeans keeping up appearances at all costs.”
    “Begg certainly works hard.” I wiped a spot of blood off my sleeve.
    “I don’t think he ever sleeps. His wife left with the mine people, you know...” Hira glanced at his watch. “Well, it’s almost lunchtime. Fish and rice, as usual, but I’ve managed to get a couple of bottles of beer, if you’d...”
    “No thanks,” I said. “I think I’ll head up to the hotel again.”

CHAPTER SEVEN
Dead Man
    T he port where I was staying was the only real town on the island. It was called New Birmingham. Its buildings were clustered close together near the waterfront and were several storeys high. As they wandered up the slopes they drew apart as if fastidious of each other’s squalor and grew smaller until the houses near the top were little more than isolated shanties erected in shallow hollows in the hillside.
    Above the shanty district the hill leveled out for a while and became a small plateau on which the airpark had been built. Olmeijer’s hotel stood on the edge of the airpark, which was now overgrown and desolate. I wondered if young Lieutenant Begg would have approved of the hotel, for it had