I spent a considerable amount of time in the company of Miss Persson, but she continued to remain a mysterious figure. I attempted to engage her in conversation about my previous adventures in a future age and she listened politely to me, but refused to be drawn. However, rightly or wrongly, I conceived the impression that she, like me, had also travelled through time and in various 'alternate' worlds. I also felt that she could so travel at will and I desperately hope that one day she will admit this and help me in returning to my own world. As it is, I have given her this manuscript and told her about you, the Valley of the Morning, and how important it is to me that you should read it. The rest I have left to her. It is quite possible that my convictions about her are wholly erroneous, but I think not. I even wonder how much she was responsible for Hood's successes.
Black America is now a full partner in the Ashanti Empire. Her wealth returns and Negroes are running the country. The remaining whites are in menial positions, generally speaking, and will remain so for some time. Hood told me that he intends 'to punish one generation for the crimes of its forefathers'. As the older generation dies out, according to Hood's plan, he will gradually lift his heel from the neck of the white race. I suppose that it is justice, of a sort, though I cannot find it in my heart to approve wholly.
Myself and Una Persson, of course, are hated by the majority of whites in America. We are regarded as traitors and worse. But Miss Persson seems thoroughly unmoved by their opinion and I am only embarrassed by it.
However, I am a creature of my own age, and a year was about the most I could take of Hood's America. Many of his men were good enough to tell me that they did not think of me as white, at all, but got on with me as easily as any black man. I appreciated what they meant, but it by no means made up for the thinly disguised distaste with which I was regarded by many of the people with whom I had to mix at Hood's 'court'. Thus, eventually, I begged the Black Attila's permission to rejoin the service of Bantustan. Tomorrow I shall board an airship which will take me back to Cape Town. Once there I'll decide what to do.
You'll remember I speculated on my fate once - wondering if I was doomed to wander through a variety of different ages, of worlds slightly different from my own, to experience the many ways in which Man can destroy himself or rebuild himself into something better. Well, I still wonder that, but I have the feeling that I do not enjoy the role. One day, I'll probably go back to Teku Benga and enter that passage again, hope that it will take me through to a world where I am known, where my relatives will recognize me and I them, where the good old British Empire continues on its placid, decent course and the threat of a major war is very remote indeed. It's not much to hope for, Moorcock, is it?
And yet, just as I feel a peculiar loyalty to you to try to get this story to you somehow, so I am beginning to develop a loyalty not to one man, like Hood or even Gandhi, not to one nation, one world or even one period of history! My loyalty is at once to myself and to all of mankind. It's hard for me to explain, for I'm not a thinking man, and I suppose it looks pretty silly written down, but I hope you'll understand.
I don't suppose, Moorcock, that I shall ever see you again, but you never know. I could turn up on your doorstep one day, with another 'tall tale' to tell you. But if I do turn up, then perhaps you should start worrying, for it could mean another war!
Good luck, old man.
Yours, Oswald Bastable.
EPILOGUE
It was getting on towards evening by the time I read the last few pages of Bastable's manuscript, then picked up his note again, plainly written some time later, when he had become more depressed:
I am going to try my luck again. This time if I am not successful I doubt I shall have the courage to continue with my life (if it is mine).
I sighed, turning the note over and over in my hand, baffled and feeling that I must surely, this time, be dreaming.
Miss Persson had gone - vanished into nowhere with her bandits and her guns of peculiar design and unbelievable efficiency (surely proof of Bastable's own story and of his theories concerning her!). All I had left was the horse which, if I was lucky, if I did not lose my bearings, if I wasn't slaughtered by bandits, might get me back, say, to Shanghai. I had lost most of my baggage, a fair amount of money and a good deal of time, and all I had to show for it was a mystifying manuscript! Moreover, Miss Persson herself had become just as tantalizing a mystery as Bastable. I was very little better off, as regards my own peace of mind, than when I set out.
Eventually I rose, went to my own room, and fell immediately asleep. In the morning I felt almost surprised when I saw the manuscript still beside me and, as I peered from my window, the horse placidly cropping at some sparse grass. I found a piece of paper and scribbled a note to Miss (or was it Mrs?) Persson, thanking her for her hospitality and her manuscript. Then, by way of a joke that was half serious, I scribbled my address in London and invited her to drop in and see me 'if you are ever in my part of the twentieth century again'.
A month later, thin and exhausted, I arrived in Shanghai. I spent no more time in China than was necessary to get a passage home.
And here, sitting at my desk in my little study with its window overlooking the rolling, permanent hills of the West Riding, I read through Bastable's manuscript and I try to understand the implications of his adventures, and I fail.
If anyone else ever reads this, perhaps they will be able to make more of it than I.
EDITOR'S NOTE
Bastable was mystified, my grandfather was mystified, and I must confess to being mystified myself -though such speculations are supposed to be my stock-in-trade. I have used, quite shamelessly, in novels of my own, some of the ideas found in the book I've named The Warlord of the Air, and, indeed, one or two of the characters (specifically Una Persson, who appears in The English Assassin) have been 'lifted'. Perhaps Miss Persson will some time come across one of these books. If she does, I very much hope she will pay me a visit - and possibly give me an answer to the mystery of Oswald Bastable. I assure you that the moment she does, I shall pass the news on!
Michael Moorcock
Somewhere in the twentieth century