The Book of Koli (Rampart Trilogy #1) - M. R. Carey Page 0,166
of the old times is what we live by,” I says. “You as well as me. We couldn’t thrive without it, not for a day. So what we got, we keep a hold of, and if we lose some piece of it, then that’s a woeful thing.”
I was thinking of Mardew and the cutter when I said this. My throat got a kind of a block in it for a second, and I had got to swallow it down. “I’m the proof of it my own self,” I went on when I could. “I risked everything I had to grab a piece of tech I could own. I broke the law to get my hands on the DreamSleeve. Got myself made faceless, and almost got my whole family hanged on a gallows. Well, how many more you think there are like me, Ursala, that has dreamed of being Ramparts since they was born, and chafes every day at how that blessing went into other people’s hands?”
Ursala lifted up one eyebrow. “I don’t suppose there are too many who are exactly like you, Koli. But go on.”
“Everyone wants tech. And there’s a place where it’s said to be so plentiful you couldn’t get to the end of counting it. A place where the treasure houses of the old times was builded, and where they still stand now.”
“You’re talking about London.”
I nodded. “Yeah, I am. Well, suppose the road to London was open after all. Suppose we was to go there, proving it could be done, and then come back and told everyone. Wouldn’t they want to go and claim some of them riches for themselves? A piece of that Rampart power and a chance to be better than they was? And once they was there – once enough of them was there – then wouldn’t they want to stay and be part of something bigger and better than what they knowed before?”
Ursala was looking at me cold, or maybe just blank. But I kept on with my big speech, having gone too far to stop in the middle of it. “Coming together is what people is wont to do after all. Them people that come to Senlas, they didn’t come because they believed his word. Not right away. It’s more like they believed because they come. Because believing was the one rule they had got to follow if they wanted to stay. Just like if you want to stay in Mythen Rood you got to follow Rampart law. And if you want to stay in Half-Ax you got to kneel before the Peacemaker. People will do what they got to do to be together. But it’s the being together that matters more than the rules or the place.
“If we was to go to London and then come back and tell the tale of it, I’m sure there’d be others that would follow. The thought of all that old tech would bring them, and then when they was there I guess they would see the wonder of it and they would want to stay. More and more of them, until in the end you would have so many people they would be a village. Only bigger than any village that yet was. A village the size of Tokyo. And then, I guess, there’d be… a gene pull, was it?”
“Gene pool.”
“That, then. There would be babies, and the babies would come out into the world alive, and live on after.”
There was more coals I could of throwed on the fire, as they say, but I judged I had said enough and so I stopped. Ursala was looking at me different now, so that was something. Maybe I didn’t persuade her, but I explained myself as good as I knowed how to do.
She shaked her head, kind of like she stood up too fast and got dizzy. “Well, I didn’t see that coming,” she said.
“If I got it wrong,” I says, “then tell me.”
“I’m not saying you got it wrong, Koli. Your scheme has the genius of simplicity. It runs aground on one hard fact, though.”
“What fact is that, Ursala?”
“London was bombed to the ground, in the Unfinished War. It’s just a ruin now. Even if what you’ve got in mind is possible, it’s not possible there.”
“Have you been to London?” I asked her. “Did you see it with your own eyes?”
Ursala got to her feet. “We should check those traps now,” she said. “It’s about time.”