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

certainly made an attempt to “keep up appearances”. Its big gilt sign was brightly polished and its splendid wooden Gothic exteriors had recently been given a fresh coat of white paint. It looked out of place in its surroundings.
    The airpark was dominated by the rusting airship mast erected in its centre. To one side of the park was a single airship hangar, its grey paint peeling, and beside it a pole at which drooped a torn and filthy windsock. Near the pole stood, like the skeletons of large, unearthly insects, the remains of two hovergyros which had been stripped of most of their essential parts. On the other side of the hangar was the shell of a light monoplane, probably the property of some long-gone sportsman, which had been similarly dismembered. The island seemed to be populated by a variety of wrecks, I thought. It seemed to be feeding off corpses, including, as in Begg’s case, the corpses of dead ideas.
    After a glance towards the abandoned administration and control buildings to assure myself that they were uninhabited, I made for the hotel.
    Pushing open a pair of well-oiled double doors, I walked into the lobby. It was clean, scrubbed, polished and cool. A Malay houseboy was operating the cords of a big punka attached to the ceiling. It fanned air into my face as I entered. I was grateful for this after the heat outside but amused by the fresh incongruity. I nodded to the Malay, who didn’t seem to notice me and, seeing no one at the desk, strolled into the adjacent bar.
    In the shady gloom were two men. One sat in his shirtsleeves behind the bar reading a book while the other sat drinking a gin fizz in the far corner near French windows opening onto a verandah. Beyond the windows I could see the airpark and beyond the airpark the slopes of the mountain, covered in thick forest.
    As I seated myself on a stool by the bar the man behind it put down his book and looked at me in some surprise. He was very fat and his big, red face was beaded with sweat. His rolled-up sleeves revealed a variety of tattoos of the more restrained kind. There were several gold rings on his thick fingers. He spoke in a deep, guttural accent.
    “What can I do for you?”
    I began apologetically, “I’m afraid I brought no money, so...”
    The fat man’s face broke into a broad smile. “Ja! No money! That’s too bad!” He shook with laughter for a moment. “Now, what will you drink. I’ll put it on the slate, eh?”
    “Very good of you. I’ll have a brandy.” I introduced myself. “Are you the hotel’s proprietor?”
    “Ja. I am Olmeijer, certainly.” He seemed inordinately proud of the fact. He took a large ledger from under the counter, selected a fresh page and entered my name at the top. “Your account,” he said. “When things are better, you can pay me.” He turned to take down a bottle of cognac.
    “You’ve a chap called Underwood staying here, I believe?” I said.
    “Underwood, certainly.” He put a large brandy on the bar. “Twenty cents. On the slate.” He made an entry in the ledger and replaced it out of sight.
    It was good brandy. Perhaps it tasted even better for being the first drink I had had since Singapore. I savoured it.
    “But Underwood,” said Olmeijer with a wink and a jerk of his thumb, “has gone up the mountain.”
    “And you’ve no idea when he’ll be back.”
    I heard one of the wicker chairs scrape on the polished floor, then footsteps approached me. I turned. It was the man who had been sitting near the window. He held his empty glass in his hand.
    “Underwood will be back when the gin he borrowed from Mr. Olmeijer runs out.”
    He was a thin, heavily tanned man in his fifties, wearing a khaki bush shirt and white shorts. He had a small, greying moustache and his blue eyes seemed to have a permanent hint of ironic humour in them. “My name’s Nye,” he said as he joined me at the bar. “You must be the airship chap they found in the dugout. Singapore, eh? Must have