The Steel Tsar by Michael Moorcock

sorry for Makhno (while having little sympathy with his politics) I had had quite enough of this. With a murmur of vague apology I began to move away, to where some of my acquaintances were standing, smoking their pipes and talking airship talk, which at that moment was preferable to anything Wilson had to offer.
    Wilson stopped me. “Hang on just a sec, old man. What I want you to tell me is this: without government, who makes the decisions?”
    “The individual,” said Makhno.
    I shrugged. “Given the hypothesis as it’s put,” I said, “our Ukrainian friend is absolutely right. Who else could make a decision?”
    “Just for himself?”
    “By consensus,” said Makhno.
    “Ha!” Wilson was triumphant. “Ha! And what’s that but democratic socialism. Which is exactly what I believe in.”
    “I thought you believed in machines.” I couldn’t resist this jab.
    Wilson missed my small irony as he had missed all Makhno’s. “A democratic—socialist—machine,” he said, as if to a child.
    “That is not anarchism,” said Makhno stubbornly. But he was not trying to convince Wilson. If anything, he was trying to drive him away.
    “I can see some of my pals want a word,” I said to Wilson. I winked at Makhno and made off. But Wilson pursued me. “You’re an airshipman by all accounts, as are these fellows. Don’t you believe in using the best machinery, the engines least likely to let you down, the control systems which will work as simply as possible...?”
    “Airships aren’t countries,” I said. Unfortunately an unsuspecting second officer from the destroyed Duchess of Salford heard me without noticing Wilson.
    “They can be,” he said. “Like small countries. I mean, everyone has to learn to get on together...”
    I left him to Wilson. When he realized what he had let himself in for a look of patent dismay crossed his young face. I waved at him behind Wilson’s back and sauntered off.
    It was to be one of my easier escapes from the Bore of Rishiri. The fact that I was a prisoner and beginning, like many others, to fret a great deal was bad enough. It was Purgatory. But “Peewee” was making it Hell. I am still surprised that nobody murdered him. He became impossible to avoid.
    At first we tried joshing him to get rid of him and then laughing at him, then downright rudeness, but it was useless to try to insult him or alter him in his course. We would sometimes offend him, but he would either laugh it off or, if hurt, return in a few minutes. And I had everyone’s sympathy because he continued, no matter what I said or did, to claim me as his closest friend.
    I think that must be why, when Nye approached me with his half-baked escape plan, I agreed to join in against all common sense. He and his fellow rugger enthusiasts meant to go under the wire at night and try to capture one of the two Japanese motor-torpedo-boats which had recently anchored in Rishiri’s tiny harbour. From there Nye and Co. intended to try for the Russian mainland which had not fallen to the Japs.
    There had been a number of attempted escapes, of course, but all of them had been unsuccessful. Our guards were vigilant; there were two small scouting airships keeping the tiny island under surveillance. There were searchlights, dogs, the whole paraphernalia of a prison. Moreover, the island was used as a fueling station for raids against Russia (which is why we were there—to stop the base from being bombed) so it usually had several large airships at mast near the harbour.
    It was true, as Nye argued, that no military aerial vessels were in evidence at that moment, but I was not sure that, as he put it, this was “the best chance of getting clear we’ll ever have”.
    I did believe that there was a small chance of escape as well as a fair chance of being killed or wounded. But I argued to myself that even if I were wounded I should spend time in the hospital away from Wilson.
    “Very well, Nye,” I said. “You can count