The Adventures of Una Persson and Catherine Cornelius in the Twentieth Century by Michael Moorcock

Author:Michael Moorcock [Moorcock, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

ELEVEN

In which Miss Persson attends a meeting of veterans

A fly, one of the last survivors of the season, buzzed wearily about her face. Down below, in the thickly wooded valley, a wounded airship sank towards the waters of the Rhine. She heard the distant echo of a roar, primeval; she might at that moment have fancied herself some Parsifal, her quest Arthurian. It was the autumn of 1933. Although the afternoon sunlight was misty, every detail of the landscape was sharply defined in greens, browns and golds, with the sky a sharp blue-grey above.

She had arrived too late to witness the battle, bound to be decisive, between the tanks and the airships, but now, as she stepped deliberately into the middle of a wide unpaved forest track of churned orange mud, she came upon a camouflaged tank. There was every indication that the machine had been abandoned; its cannon pointed towards the tops of the pines, its engines were silent, a beam of dusty sunshine illuminated a section of its tracks like a delicate searchlight. The tank bore no markings, but seemed to be of a familiar Bavarian type; it was probably, therefore, part of the victorious fleet, unless it had been requisitioned by an enemy.

From within the tank there was a creak of metal. The hatch of the turret began to open. Una Persson cocked her Lee-Enfield and raised it to her shoulder, sighting on the hatch.

As if squeezed from a blackhead a yellow face slid into view. A frightened, bloodshot eye regarded her weapon.

'Oh.' Una lowered the rifle a trifle. 'It's you, you little wanker.'

Jerry Cornelius offered her a weak wink and then, as his confidence increased, raised his shoulders above the level of the hatch.

Again, he hesitated. 'Um . . . ' He was wondering if she were friend or foe.

'How did you manage to get out of this one?' she asked severely. To have reached his present position he would have to have left the battle early. The odds were that he had not even taken part in the fighting. 'Another breakdown?'

'Oh, come on!' He was getting cocky now. T survive, Una.' He pulled his mean body into the soft daylight and began to slide down the dented armour of his tank until his feet touched the thick pile of pine needles rasied by his vehicle's tracks. He glanced at his flashy watch. 'Have you seen Frank?'

'It was probably him I shot,' she said. 'I thought it was you. He ran away.' She pointed towards the barbed wire, visible through the trees, the remains of some earlier and forgotten battle. 'He must have left a good deal of himself behind. I've never seen anyone go through wire so fast.'

'You're on foot?'

'My motorbike ran out of petrol about three kilometres back.'

'So you missed it?'

'Yes. Frank wasn't on our side, was he?'

She could tell by the way that he leaned his back against his tank, with folded arms and crossed legs, that she had frightened him. She knew

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