Modem Times 2.0 - Michael Moorcock [17]
“That whimpering you heard was the sound of cowards finding it harder and harder to discover sanctuary.
“Where can you hide? The Bahamas? Grand Cayman? The BVAs? The Isle of Man or Monaco? Not now that you’ve stopped burying treasure, melted the icebergs, called up the tsunamis and made the oceans rise. All that’s left is Switzerland with her melting glaciers and strengthened boundaries. The monsters respond by playing dead. This is their moment of weakness when they can be slain, but it takes a special hero to cut off their heads and dispose of their bodies so that they can’t rise again. Some Charlemagne, perhaps? Some doomed champion? There can be no sequels. Only remakes. Only remakes. But, because we have exhausted a few of the monsters, that doesn’t mean they no longer move amongst us, sampling our souls, watching us scamper in fear at the first signs of their return. We are thoroughly poisoned. We have inhaled the despairing dust of Burundi and Baghdad.”
“Well, that was a mouthful.” The three of them had crossed the Seine from the Isle St. Louis. It began to get chilly. Jerry pulled on his old car coat and checked his heat. His resurrected needle-gun, primed and charged, was ready to start stitching up the enemy. “Shall we go?”
“You know what my French is like.” Mo stared with some curiosity at Max Pardon. A small, neatly wrapped figure wearing an English tweed cap, Pardon had exhausted himself and stood with his back to a gilded statue. “What’s he saying?”
“That his taxes are too high,” said Jerry.
7. PUMP UP YOUR NETWORK
“Daran habe ich gar nicht gedacht!”
—Albert Einstein
“NOW LOOK HERE, Mr. Cornelius, you can’t come in here with your insults and your threats. What will happen to the poor beggars who depend on their corps for their healthcare and their massive mortgages? Would you care to have negative equity and be unemployed?” Rupert Fox spread his gnarled antipodean hands, then mournfully fingered the folds of his features, leaning into the mirror-cam. This facelift had not taken as well as he had hoped. He looked like a poorly rehydrated peach. “Platitudes are news, old boy.” He exposed his expensive teeth to the window overlooking Green Park. In the distance, the six flags of Texas waved all the way up the Mall to Buckingham Palace. “We give them reality in other ways. The reality the public wants. Swelp me. I should know. I’ve got God. What do you have? A bunch of idols.”
“I thought idolatry was your stock in trade.”
“Trade makes the world go round.”
“The great idolater, eh? All those beads swapped with the natives. All those presents.”
“I don’t have to listen to this crap.” Rupert Fox made a show of good humour. “You enjoy yourself with your fantasies, while I get on with my realities, sport. You can’t live in the past forever. Our Empire has to grow and change.” He motioned towards his office’s outer door. “William will show you to the elevator.”
8. IS HE THE GREATEST FANTASY PLAYER OF ALL TIME?
One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief … My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it. If I have a chance to invade … if I had that much capital, I’m not going to waste it …
—George W. Bush to Mickey Herskowitz, 1999
BANNING NEVER REALLY changed. Jerry parked the Corniche in the disabled parking space and got out. A block to the east, I-10 roared and shook like a disturbed beast. A block to the west, and the town spread to merge with the scrub of semi-desert,