Elric Swords and Roses - Michael Moorcock [50]
“Now,” says the Rose, “down to business.” And she sketches a plan to move at night between the wheels and find Duntrollin, there to skulk amongst the marching boards until such time as they could gain the stairs—from there Fallogard Phatt would be their bloodhound, his clairvoyance focused to find the three sisters. “But we must discuss the details,” she says, “there could be practicalities, Master Phatt, that I have overlooked.”
“A few, ma’am, to be sure.” Politely, he listed them. The flaps to the marching boards would be guarded. The warrior inhabitants of Duntrollin would almost certainly be prepared for such an attempt as theirs. He had never seen the sisters and therefore his gift would be unreliable. What was more, even when they had reached the sisters there was no certainty they would be welcomed by them. And then, how were they to leave the Gypsy Nation? The barriers of garbage were almost impossible to cross and the guardians always detected would-be escapers. Besides, it was useless for the Family Phatt to consider such things since they were trapped by that peculiar form of psychic gravity which brought so many poor souls to this road, to dwell upon it, or under it, for ever. “We are all of us trapped here by more than a few black-fletched arrows and a refuse heap,” he said. “The Gypsy Nation controls this world, my friends. It has gained a strange, dark power. It has struck bargains. It has harnessed something of Chaos to its own uses. That, I believe, is why they dare not stop. Everything depends on maintaining their momentum.”
“Then we must stop the Nation moving,” said the Rose simply.
“Nothing can do that, madam.” Fallogard Phatt shook a sad and despairing head. “It exists to move. It moves to exist. That is why the road is never changed, but rebuilt, even when land has fallen away, as in the bay we shall soon be crossing. They cannot change the road. I put it to them, when we first arrived. They told me it was too expensive, that the community could not afford it. But the fact is they can no more break their orbit than can a planet change her course around the sun. And if we tried to escape it would be like a pebble attempting to escape gravity. We were told that our main concern here should be to stay in the villages but never below the villages!”
“This is a mere prison,” says Wheldrake, still picking at the cheeses, “not a nation. It is a foul disturbance in the order of things. It is dead and maintained by death. Unjust and maintained by injustice. Cruel and sustained by cruelty. And yet, as we have seen, the folk of Trollon congratulate themselves upon their urbanity, their humanity, their kindness and their graceful manners: while the dead stagger under their feet, supporting them in all their self-deceiving folly! Producing this parody of progress!”
Mother Phatt’s old head turned to regard Wheldrake. She chuckled at him, not mockingly but with affection. “My brother told them as much, and continued to tell them as much. But he died on the marching boards, nonetheless. I was with him. I felt him die.”
“Ah!” said Wheldrake, as if he shared that death also. “This is an evil parody of freedom and justice! It is a lie of profound dishonesty! For while one soul in this world suffers what hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, now suffer, they are culpable.”
“They are fine fellows all, in Trollon,” said Fallogard Phatt ironically. “They are persons of good will and charity. They pride themselves on their wisdom and their equity …”
“No,” says Wheldrake with an angry shake of his flaming comb, “they may accept that they are lucky, but cannot believe themselves either wise or good! For in the end such folk agree to any device which keeps them in privilege and ease, and so maintain their rulers, electing them with every show of democratic and republican zeal. It is the way of it, sir. And they do not ever address the injustice