Elric Swords and Roses - Michael Moorcock [49]
Memory follows memory, memory defeats memory; some things are banished only into the realms of our rich imaginings—but this does not mean that they do not or cannot or will not exist—they exist! They exist!
The last Melnibonéan thinks of his people’s history and legends, and he tells his human friends some of what he knows and one day a human scribe will write these remembered words which will become in turn the foundation for whole cycles of myths, whole volumes of legend and superstition, so that a grain of a grain of prehuman memory is carried over to us, blood to blood, life to life. And the cycles turn and spin and intersect at unpredictable points in an eternity of possibilities, paradoxes and conjunctions, and one tale feeds another and one anecdote provides others with entire epics. Thus we influence past, present and future and all their possibilities. Thus are we all responsible for one another, through all the myriad dimensions of time and space that make up the multiverse …
“Human love,” says Fallogard Phatt, turning his eyes from his vision, “it is finally our only real weapon against entropy …”
“Without Chaos and Law in balance,” says Wheldrake, reaching for some cheese and wondering, idly, which terrorized region along the road provided that particular tribute, “we rob ourselves of the greatest possible number of choices. That is the singular paradox of this conflict between the Higher Worlds. Let one become dominant and half of what we have is lost. I cannot but sometimes feel that our fate is in the hands of creatures hardly more intelligent than a stoat!”
“Intelligence and power were never the same thing,” murmurs the Rose, departing from her own train of thought for a moment. “Frequently a lust for power is nothing more than an impulse of the stupidly baffled who cannot understand why they have been treated so badly by Dame Fortune. Who can blame those brutes, sometimes? They are outraged by random Nature. Perhaps these gods feel the same? Perhaps they make us endure such awful trials because they know we are actually superior to them? Perhaps they have become senile and forget the point of their old truces?”
“You speak truth in one area, madam,” said Elric. “Nature distributes power with about the same lack of discrimination as she distributes intelligence or beauty or wealth, indeed!”
“Which is why mankind,” says Wheldrake, revealing a little of his own background, “has a duty to correct such mistakes of justice that Nature makes. That is why we must provide for those whom random Nature creates poor, or sick or otherwise distressed. If we do not do this, I think, then we are not fulfilling our own natural function. I speak,” he said hastily, “as an agnostic. I am a thorough-going Radical, make no mistake. Yet it does seem to me that Paracelsus had it when he suggested …”
Whereupon the Rose, growing skillful at such things, halted his ascent into the realms of abstraction by enquiring loudly of Mother Phatt if she required more cheese.
“Cheese enough tonight,” said the old woman mysteriously, but her smile was friendly. “Always moving. Always moving. Heel and toe, the walkers go. Heel and toe, heel and toe. All walking, my dear, in the hope of escaping their damnation. Unchanging; generation upon generation; injustice upon injustice; and sustained by further injustice. Heel and toe, the walkers go. Always moving. Always moving …” And she subsided almost gratefully into staring silence.
“Ah, such an infamous society, sir,” says her son, with a sage nod, an approving wave of a biscuit. “Infamous. It is a lie, sir. A mighty deception, this ‘free nation’ that always seems to proceed, yet never changes! Is that not true decadence, sir?”
“Shall it be Engeland’s fate, I wonder,” mused Wheldrake of some lost home. “Is it the fate of all unjust empires? Oh, I fear I see the future of my country!”
“Certainly it became the only