The Steel Tsar by Michael Moorcock

been awful.”
    Nye told me he’d been left behind to protect the interests of the Welland Rock Phosphate Mining Company while the rest of the white employees went back to England or Australia. He was keen to hear about the attack on Singapore. Briefly, for the memory was still hard to bear, I told him what had happened.
    “I still can’t believe it,” I concluded. “There was a peace treaty.”
    He smiled bitterly and sipped his drink. “Everyone had a peace treaty, didn’t they? We’d abolished war, hadn’t we? But human nature being what it is...” He looked up at the rows of bottles in front of him. “Bloody Japs. I knew they’d start something sooner or later. Greedy bastards!”
    “The Japanese would not have blown up their own—” began Olmeijer. Nye interrupted him with a sharp laugh.
    “I don’t know how that city got blown up, but it was the excuse everybody needed to start scrapping.” He tilted his glass to his lips. “I suppose we’ll never know how it happened or who did it. But that’s not the point. They’d have been fighting by now even if it hadn’t happened.”
    “I wish you were right!”
    I recognized the new voice and turned to see Dempsey walking wearily into the bar. He nodded to me and Nye and placed a dirty hand on the counter. “Large scotch please, Olmeijer.”
    The Dutchman didn’t seem pleased to see his latest customer, but he poured the drink and carefully wrote the cost down in his ledger.
    There was an embarrassed pause. For all he had interrupted our conversation, Dempsey apparently wasn’t prepared to amplify his remark.
    “Afternoon, Dempsey,” I said.
    He smiled faintly and rubbed at his unshaven chin. “Hello, Bastable. Moving in?”
    “I was looking for Underwood.”
    He took a long pull at his drink. “There’s a lot of people looking for Underwood,” he said mysteriously.
    “What do you mean?”
    He shook his head. “Nothing.”
    “Another drink, Bastable?” said Nye. “Have this one on me.” And then, as if with a slight effort. “You, Dempsey?”
    “Thanks.” Dempsey finished his drink and put his glass back on the bar. Olmeijer poured another gin, another brandy, another scotch.
    Nye took a case of cheroots from his shirt pocket and offered them around. Olmeijer and Dempsey accepted, but I refused. “What did you mean, just then?” Nye asked Dempsey. “You don’t care about all this, surely? I thought you were the chap so full of oriental fatalism.”
    Dempsey turned away. For a moment his dead eyes had seemed to burn with a terrible misery. He took his glass to a nearby table and sat down. “That’s me,” he said.
    But Nye wouldn’t let it go. “You weren’t in Japan when the bombing started, were you?”
    Dempsey shook his head. “No, China.” I noticed that his hands were shaking as he lifted his glass to his mouth and he seemed to be muttering something under his breath. I thought I heard the words “God forgive me”. He finished the drink quickly, got up and shambled towards the door. “Thanks, Nye. See you later.”
    His wasted body disappeared through the doors and I saw him begin to climb the flight of wooden stairs which led up from the lobby.
    Nye raised his eyebrows in a quizzical look. He shrugged. “I think Dempsey has become what we used to call an ‘island case’. We had a few of them going native, in the old days, or taking up opium, like him. The stuff’s killing him, of course, and he knows it. He’ll be dead within six months, I shouldn’t wonder.”
    “I’d have given him longer than that,” I said feelingly. “I’ve known opium smokers who live to a ripe old age.”
    Nye drew on his cheroot. “It’s not just the opium, is it? I mean, there’s such a thing as a will to die. You know that as well as I do.”
    I nodded soberly. I had encountered my own share of such desires.
    “I wonder what did it,” Nye mused. “A woman, perhaps. He was an airshipman, you know. Perhaps he lost his ship, or