Michael Moorcock

As I suggested to John Major (a British Prime Minister) when he told us that socialism was dead, he should not be too triumphant. After all, until his predecessor Mrs Thatcher revived it, we thought feudalism pretty much over and done with, too.

“Like most fanatics,” I pointed out coolly, “you share at least one characteristic with children—you want everything now. All improvements take time. You cannot make the world perfect overnight. Things are considerably better for more people today than they were in my—in the early years of this century, for instance.”

Can we break such a law? If we do break our ancient laws, are our customs worth fighting for?”

“We fight for our beliefs, Queen Medhbh,” said Amergin, “just as much as we fight for our lives. We must continue to conduct our affairs according to those beliefs. If we do not then we have no justification for living. Let us question these people fairly and listen to their answers before we judge them innocent or guilty.”

“The fate of sentient life itself sometimes seems to me to be at stake. Yet do I fear? No, I think not. I place no special value upon sentience. I’d as cheerfully become a tree!”

“Who’s to say they are not sentient?” Corum smiled as he set a pan upon the fire and began to lay strips of meat in the slowly boiling water.

“Well, then, a block of marble.”

“Again, we do not know…” Corum began, but Jhary cut him short with a snort of impatience.

“I’ll not play such childish games!”

“You misunderstand me. You have touched on a subject I have been considering only lately, you see. I, too, am beginning to realize that there is no special value to being, as it were, able to think. Indeed, one can see many disadvantages. The whole condition of mortals is created by their ability to analyze the universe and their inability to understand it.”

“How will the doctor fare?” Corum called. “The one who took me in.”

“He will die unless he is clever and denounces you,” Jhary told him.

“But he was a man of great intelligence and humanity. A man of science, too—of learning.”

“All the more reason for killing him, if their priesthood has its way. Superstition, not learning, is respected here.”

The man called himself a wizard, but Corum would have called him a philosopher, someone who enjoyed exploring and discovering the secrets of nature.

“I am dead,” said Corum, “and would be grateful if you would allow me to be dead in peace.”

Chaos delights in creation but swiftly becomes bored with what it creates for it seeks not order or justice or constancy but sensation, entertainment. Sometimes it suits it to create something which you and I would value or find pleasure in. But it is an accident.

“It becomes so easy to believe what one wishes to believe,” Jhary said wearily. “So easy.”

“You think we are in danger there?”

“Danger? It depends what you regard as dangerous. Some wisdom may be dangerous to one man and not to another.”

Mortal, I make no bargains, I obey no laws save the one of which you have already learned. I care not for Law nor for Chaos nor for the Cosmic Balance. Kwll and Rhynn exist for the love of existence and nothing else and we do not concern ourselves with the illusory struggles of petty mortals and their pettier gods. Do you know that you dream of these gods—that you are stronger than they—that when you are fearful, why then you bring fearsome gods upon yourselves? Is this not evident to you?