Small Gods (14 page)

He jerked awake.

Old Ur-Gilash. Weather god, wasn’t he? Yes. No. Maybe one of your basic giant spider gods? Something like that. Whatever happened to him?

What happened to me? How does it happen? You hang around the astral planes, going with the flow, enjoy the rhythms of the universe, you think that all the, you know, humans are getting on with the believing back down there, you decide to go and stir them up a bit and then…a tortoise. It’s like going to the bank and finding the money’s been leaking out through a hole. The first you know is when you stroll down looking for a handy mind, and suddenly you’re a tortoise and there’s no power left to get out.

Three years of looking up at practically everything…

Old Ur-Gilash? Perhaps he was hanging on as a lizard somewhere, with some old hermit as his only believer. More likely he had been blown out into the desert. A small god was lucky to get one chance.

There was something wrong. Om couldn’t quite put his finger on it, and not only because he didn’t have a finger. Gods rose and fell like bits of onion in a boiling soup, but
this
time was different. There was something wrong this time…

He’d forced out Ur-Gilash. Fair enough. Law of the jungle. But no one was challenging
him
…

Where was Brutha?

“Brutha!”

Brutha was counting the flashes of light off the desert.

“It’s a good thing I had a mirror, yes?” said the captain hopefully. “I expect his lordship won’t mind about the mirror because it turned out to be useful?”

“I don’t think he thinks like that,” said Brutha, still counting.

“No. I don’t think he does either,” said the captain gloomily.

“Seven, and then four.”

“It’ll be the Quisition for me,” said the captain.

Brutha was about to say, “Then rejoice that your soul shall be purified.” But he didn’t. And he didn’t know why he didn’t.

“I’m sorry about that,” he said.

A veneer of surprise overlaid the captain’s grief.

“You people usually say something about how the Quisition is good for the soul,” he said.

“I’m sure it is,” said Brutha.

The captain was watching his face intently.

“It’s flat, you know,” he said quietly. “I’ve sailed out into the Rim Ocean. It’s flat, and I’ve seen the Edge, and it moves. Not the Edge. I mean…what’s down there. They can cut my head off but it will still move.”

“But it will stop moving for you,” said Brutha. “So I should be careful to whom you speak, captain.”

The captain leaned closer.

“The Turtle Moves!” he hissed, and darted away.

“Brutha!”

Guilt jerked Brutha upright like a hooked fish. He turned around, and sagged with relief. It wasn’t Vorbis, it was only God.

He padded over to the place in front of the mast. Om glared up at him.

“Yes?” said Brutha.

“You never come and see me,” said the tortoise. “I know you’re busy,” it added sarcastically, “but a quick prayer would be nice, even.”

“I checked you first thing this morning,” said Brutha.

“And I’m hungry.”

“You had a whole melon rind last night.”

“And who had the melon, eh?”

“No, he didn’t,” said Brutha. “He eats stale bread and water.”

“Why doesn’t he eat fresh bread?”

“He waits for it to get stale.”

“Yes. I expect he does,” said the tortoise.

“Om?”

“What?”

“The captain just said something odd. He said the world is flat and has an edge.”

“Yes? So what?”

“But, I mean, we know the world is a ball, because…”

The tortoise blinked.

“No, it’s not,” he said. “Who said it’s a ball?”

“You did,” said Brutha. Then he added: “According to Book One of the Septateuch, anyway.”

I’ve never thought like this before, he thought. I’d never have said “anyway.”

“Why’d the captain tell me something like that?” he said. “It’s not normal conversation.”

“I told you, I never made the world,” said Om. “Why should I make the world? It was here already. And if I
did
make a world, I wouldn’t make it a ball. People’d fall off. All the sea’d run off the bottom.”

“Not if you told it to stay on.”

“Hah! Will you hark at the man!”

“Besides, the sphere is a perfect shape,” said Brutha. “Because in the Book of—”

“Nothing amazing about a sphere,” said the tortoise. “Come to that, a turtle is a perfect shape.”

“A perfect shape for what?”

“Well, the perfect shape for a turtle, to start with,” said Om. “If it was shaped like a ball, it’d be bobbing to the surface the whole time.”

“But it’s a heresy to say the world is flat,” said Brutha.

“Maybe, but it’s true.”

“And it’s really on the back of a giant turtle?”

“That’s right.”

“In that case,” said Brutha triumphantly, “what does the turtle stand on?”

The tortoise gave him a blank stare.

“It doesn’t stand on anything,” it said. “It’s a
turtle
, for heaven’s sake. It swims. That’s what turtles are for.”

“I…er…I think I’d better go and report to Vorbis,” said Brutha. “He goes very calm if he’s kept waiting. What did you want me for? I’ll try and bring you some more food after supper.”

“How are you feeling?” said the tortoise.

“I’m feeling all right, thank you.”

“Eating properly, that sort of thing?”

“Yes, thank you.”

“Pleased to hear it. Run along now. I mean, I’m only your
God
.” Om raised its voice as Brutha hurried off. “And you might visit more often!

“And pray louder, I’m fed up with straining!” he shouted.

Vorbis was still sitting in his cabin when Brutha puffed along the passage and knocked on the door. There was no reply. After a while, Brutha pushed the door open.

Vorbis did not appear to read. Obviously he wrote, because of the famous Letters, but no one ever saw him do it. When he was alone he spent a lot of time staring at the wall, or prostrate in prayer. Vorbis could humble himself in prayer in a way that made the posturings of power-mad emperors look subservient.

“Um,” said Brutha, and tried to pull the door shut again.

Vorbis waved one hand irritably. Then he stood up. He did not dust off his robe.

“Do you know, Brutha,” he said, “I do not think there is a single person in the Citadel who would dare to interrupt me at prayer? They would fear the Quisition.
Everyone
fears the Quisition. Except you, it appears. Do you fear the Quisition?”

Brutha looked into the black-on-black eyes. Vorbis looked into a round pink face. There was a special face that people wore when they spoke to an exquisitor. It was flat and expressionless and glistened slightly, and even a half-trained exquisitor could read the barely concealed guilt like a book. Brutha just looked out of breath but then, he always did. It was fascinating.

“No, lord,” he said.

“Why not?”

“The Quisition protects us, lord. It is written in Ossory, chapter VII, verse—”

Vorbis put his head on one side.

“Of course it is. But have you ever thought that the Quisition could be wrong?”

“No, lord,” said Brutha.

“But why not?”

“I do not know why, Lord Vorbis. I just never have.”

Vorbis sat down at a little writing table, no more than a board that folded down from the hull.

“And you are right, Brutha,” he said. “Because the Quisition
cannot
be wrong. Things can only be as the God wishes them. It is impossible to think that the world could run in any other way, is this not so?”

A vision of a one-eyed tortoise flickered momentarily in Brutha’s mind.

Brutha had never been any good at lying. The truth itself had always seemed so incomprehensible that complicating things even further had always been beyond him.

“So the Septateuch teaches us,” he said.

“Where there is punishment, there is always a crime,” said Vorbis. “Sometimes the crime follows the punishment, which only serves to prove the foresight of the Great God.”

“That’s what my grandmother used to say,” said Brutha automatically.

“Indeed? I would like to know more about this formidable lady.”

“She used to give me a thrashing every morning because I would certainly do something to deserve it during the day,” said Brutha.

“A most
complete
understanding of the nature of mankind,” said Vorbis, with his chin on one hand. “Were it not for the deficiency of her sex, it sounds as though she would have made an excellent inquisitor.”

Brutha nodded. Oh, yes. Yes, indeed.

“And now,” said Vorbis, with no change in his tone, “you will tell me what you saw in the desert.”

“Uh. There were six flashes. And then a pause of about five heartbeats. And then eight flashes. And another pause. And two flashes.”

Vorbis nodded thoughtfully.

“Three-quarters,” he said. “All praise to the Great God. He is my staff and guide through the hard places. And you may go.”

Brutha hadn’t expected to be told what the flashes meant, and wasn’t going to enquire. The Quisition asked the questions. They were known for it.

Next day the ship rounded a headland and the bay of Ephebe lay before it, with the city a white smudge on the horizon which time and distance turned into a spilling of blindingly white houses, all the way up a rock.

It seemed of considerable interest to Sergeant Simony. Brutha had not exchanged a word with him. Fraternization between clergy and soldiers was not encouraged; there was a certain tendency to
unholiness
about soldiers…

Brutha, left to his own devices again as the crew made ready for port, watched the soldier carefully. Most soldiers were a bit slovenly and generally rude to minor clergy. Simony was different. Apart from anything else, he gleamed. His breastplate hurt the eyes. His skin looked scrubbed.

The sergeant stood at the prow, staring fixedly as the city drew nearer. It was unusual to see him very far away from Vorbis. Wherever Vorbis stood there was the sergeant, hand on sword, eyes scanning the surroundings for…what?

And always silent, except when spoken to. Brutha tried to be friends.

“Looks very…white, doesn’t it?” he said. “The city. Very white. Sergeant Simony?”

The sergeant turned slowly, and stared at Brutha.

Vorbis’s gaze was dreadful. Vorbis looked through
your head to the sins inside, hardly interested in you except as a vehicle for your sins. But Simony’s glance was pure, simple hatred.

Brutha stepped back.

“Oh. I’m sorry,” he muttered. He walked back somberly to the blunt end, and tried to keep out of the soldier’s way.

Anyway, there were more soldiers, soon enough…

The Ephebians were expecting them. Soldiers lined the quay, weapons held in a way that stopped just short of being a direct insult. And there were a lot of them.

Brutha trailed along, the voice of the tortoise insinuating itself in his head.

“So the Ephebians want peace, do they?” said Om. “Doesn’t look like that. Doesn’t look like we’re going to lay down the law to a defeated enemy. Looks like we took a pasting and don’t want to take any more. Looks like we’re suing for peace. That’s what it looks like to me.”

“In the Citadel everyone said it was a glorious victory,” said Brutha. He found he could talk now with his lips hardly moving at all; Om seemed able to pick up his words as they reached his vocal cords.

Ahead of him, Simony shadowed the deacon, staring suspiciously at each Ephebian guard.

“That’s a funny thing,” said Om. “Winners never talk about glorious victories. That’s because they’re the ones who see what the battlefield looks like afterward. It’s only the losers who have glorious victories.”

Brutha didn’t know what to reply. “That doesn’t sound like god talk,” he hazarded.

“It’s this tortoise brain.”

“What?”

“Don’t you know anything? Bodies aren’t just handy things for storing your mind in. Your shape affects how
you think. It’s all this morphology that’s all over the place.”

“What?”

Om sighed. “If I don’t concentrate, I think like a tortoise!”

“What? You mean slowly?”

“No! Tortoises are cynics. They always expect the worst.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Because it often happens to them, I suppose.”

Brutha stared around at Ephebe. Guards with helmets crested with plumes that looked like horses’ tails gone rogue marched on either side of the column. A few Ephebian citizens watched idly from the roadside. They looked surprisingly like the people at home, and not like two-legged demons at all.

“They’re people,” he said.

“Full marks for comparative anthropology.”

“Brother Nhumrod said Ephebians eat human flesh,” said Brutha. “He wouldn’t tell lies.”

A small boy regarded Brutha thoughtfully while excavating a nostril. If it was a demon in human form, it was an extremely good actor.

At intervals along the road from the docks were white stone statues. Brutha had never seen statues before. Apart from the statues of the SeptArchs, of course, but that wasn’t the same thing.

“What are they?”

“Well, the tubby one with the toga is Tuvelpit, the God of Wine. They call him Smimto in Tsort. And the broad with the hairdo is Astoria, Goddess of Love. A complete bubblehead. The ugly one is Offler the Crocodile God. Not a local boy. He’s Klatchian originally, but
the Ephebians heard about him and thought he was a good idea. Note the teeth. Good teeth.
Good
teeth. Then the one with the snakepit hairdo is—”

“You talk about them as if they were real,” said Brutha.

“They are.”

“There is no other god but you. You told Ossory that.”

“Well. You know. I exaggerated a bit. But they’re not that good. There’s one of ’em that sits around playing a flute most of the time and chasing milkmaids. I don’t call that very divine. Call that very divine? I don’t.”