Modem Times 2.0 - Michael Moorcock [28]
“Wait till they burn your bloody car.” Jerry was still upset about what had happened in Marseilles.
“They are citizens. They have the same rights and responsibilities as me.” Max Pardon swung his legs on his stool. He had rewaxed his moustache. Possibly with cocoa butter.
Jerry lit a long, black Sherman. “At least you’ve brought back smoking.”
“That’s the Republic, Jerry.”
Max Pardon raised his hat to a passing Bedouin. “God bless the man who discovered sand-power.” Overhead the last of the great aerial steamers made its stately way into the sunrise just as the muezzin began to call the faithful to prayer. Monsieur Pardon unrolled his mat and kneeled. “If you’ll forgive me.”
11. WHY I LOVE METAL
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“I AM SICK of people who can’t distinguish the taste of sugar from the taste of fruit, who can’t tell salt from cheese, who think watching CNN makes them into intellectuals and believe that Big Brother and The Bachelor are real life. The richest, most powerful country in the world is about as removed from reality as Oz is from Kansas or Kansas is from Kabul or Obama is from Kenya.” Major Nye was in a rare mood as he leaned over the rail of The Empress of India searching with his binoculars for his old station. His long, ancient fingers with their thin tanned skin resembled the claws of an albino crow he had once kept at the station. “Which half knows Africa best? Bleeding Africa …”
From somewhere among the bleak rolling downs, puffs of smoke showed the positions of the Pashtoon.
“I remember all the times the British tried to invade and hold Afghanistan. What surprises me is why these Yanks think they are somehow better at it, when they’ve never won a war by themselves since the Mexicans decided to let them have California. Every few years they start another bloody campaign and refuse to listen to their own military chaps and go swaggering in to get their bottoms kicked for the umpteenth time. Then they turn on the French and the Italians whom they consider inferior warriors to themselves. The Europeans learned their lessons. They knew how easy it was to start a war and how difficult it was to finish one. The Americans learned an unfortunate lesson from their successes against the Indians, such as they were. If you ask me, they would have done better to have taken a leaf from Custer’s book.”
“Education’s never been their strength.” Holding her hat with her left hand, Miss Brunner waved and smiled at someone in the observation gallery. “It’s windy out here, don’t you think?”
“Better than that fug in there.” Major Nye indicated the Smoking Room. With a gesture close to impatience, he threw his cigarette over the side.
As if in answer, another rifle-shot echoed below.
Miss Brunner looked down disapprovingly. “There should be more public shootings, if you ask me. Why are the decent ones always the first to be taken? They should just be more selective.” She looked up, directing a frigid smile at Mitzi Beesley, who came out to join them. Mitzi was wearing a borrowed flying helmet, a short, pink divided skirt, a flounced white blouse, a knitted bolero jacket.
Mitzi was going through her radical phase. “That’s exactly what the YCFA says. You pinched that from the Left.”
“Oh, we pinched a lot from the Left. Just as the Right pinched from us. When the Left have become Centre Right and the Right has become reactionary, you know exactly where you stand, eh? Exactly. How many times in the last century did you see that?” Miss Brunner laughed happily. “Oh, I do love old times, don’t you? And the one-party system.”
Jerry remembered her closing the gate of her Hampstead Garden Village bijou cottage, as she left him in charge for a week.