Small Gods (3 page)

“Top man?” said Brutha. He put his hand to his mouth. “You don’t mean…Brother Nhumrod?”

“Who’s he?” said the tortoise.

“The master of the novices!”

“Oh,
Me!
” said the tortoise. “No,” it went on, in a singsong imitation of Brutha’s voice, “I don’t mean the master of the novices. I mean the High Priest or whatever he calls himself. I suppose there
is
one?”

Brutha nodded blankly.

“High Priest, right?” said the tortoise. “High. Priest. High Priest.”

Brutha nodded again. He knew there was a High Priest. It was just that, while he could just about encompass the hierarchical structure between his own self and Brother Nhumrod, he was unable to give serious consideration to any kind of link between Brutha the novice and the Cenobiarch. He was theoretically aware that there was one, that there was a huge canonical structure with the High Priest at the top and Brutha very firmly at the bottom, but he viewed it in the same way as an amoeba might view the chain of evolution all the way between itself and, for example, a chartered accountant. It was missing links all the way to the top.

“I can’t go asking the—” Brutha hesitated. Even the
thought
of talking to the Cenobiarch frightened him into
silence. “I can’t ask
anyone
to ask the High Cenobiarch to come and talk to a
tortoise!
”

“Turn into a mud leech and wither in the fires of retribution!” screamed the tortoise.

“There’s no need to curse,” said Brutha.

The tortoise bounced up and down furiously.

“That wasn’t a curse! That was an order! I am the Great God Om!”

Brutha blinked.

Then he said, “No you’re not. I’ve seen the Great God Om,” he waved a hand making the shape of the holy horns, conscientiously, “and he isn’t tortoise-shaped. He comes as an eagle, or a lion, or a mighty bull. There’s a statue in the Great Temple. It’s seven cubits high. It’s got bronze on it and everything. It’s trampling infidels. You can’t trample infidels when you’re a tortoise. I mean, all you could do is give them a meaningful look. It’s got horns of real gold. Where I used to live there was a statue one cubit high in the next village and that was a bull too. So that’s how I know you’re not the Great God”—holy horns—“Om.”

The tortoise subsided.

“How many talking tortoises have you met?” it said sarcastically.

“I don’t know,” said Brutha.

“What d’you mean, you don’t know?”

“Well, they might all talk,” said Brutha conscientiously, demonstrating the very personal kind of logic that got him Extra Melons. “They just might not say anything when I’m there.”

“I am the Great God Om,” said the tortoise, in a menacing and unavoidably low voice, “and before very long you are going to be a very unfortunate priest. Go and get him.”

“Novice,” said Brutha.

“What?”

“Novice, not priest. They won’t let me—”

“Get him!”

“But I don’t think the Cenobiarch ever comes into our vegetable garden,” said Brutha. “I don’t think he even knows what a melon
is
.”

“I’m not bothered about that,” said the tortoise. “Fetch him now, or there will be a shaking of the earth, the moon will be as blood, agues and boils will afflict mankind and diverse ills will befall. I really mean it,” it added.

“I’ll see what I can do,” said Brutha, backing away.

“And I’m being very reasonable, in the circumstances!” the tortoise shouted after him.

“You don’t sing badly, mind you!” it added, as an afterthought.

“I’ve heard worse!” as Brutha’s grubby robe disappeared through the gateway.

“Puts me in mind of that time there was the affliction of plague in Pseudopolis,” it said quietly, as the footsteps faded. “What a wailing and a gnashing of teeth was there, all right.” It sighed. “Great days. Great days!”

Many feel they are called to the priesthood, but what they really hear is an inner voice saying, “It’s indoor work with no heavy lifting, do you want to be a plowman like your father?”

Whereas Brutha didn’t just believe. He really Believed. That sort of thing is usually embarrassing when it happens in a God-fearing family, but all Brutha had was his grandmother, and she Believed too. She believed like iron believes in metal. She was the kind of woman every priest dreads in a congregation, the one who knows all
the chants, all the sermons. In the Omnian Church women were allowed in the temple only on sufferance, and had to keep absolutely silent and well covered-up in their own section behind the pulpit in case the sight of one half of the human race caused the male members of the congregation to hear voices not unakin to those that plagued Brother Nhumrod through every sleeping and waking hour. The problem was that Brutha’s grandmother had the kind of personality that can project itself through a lead sheet and a bitter piety with the strength of a diamond-bit auger.

If she had been born a man, Omnianism would have found its 8th Prophet rather earlier than expected. As it was, she organized the temple-cleaning, statue-polishing, and stoning-of-suspected-adulteresses rotas with a terrible efficiency.

So Brutha grew up in the sure and certain knowledge of the Great God Om. Brutha grew up
knowing
that Om’s eyes were on him all the time, especially in places like the privy, and that demons assailed him on all sides and were only kept at bay by the strength of his belief and the weight of grandmother’s cane, which was kept behind the door on those rare occasions when it was not being used. He could recite every verse in all seven Books of the Prophets, and every single Precept. He knew all the Laws and the Songs. Especially the Laws.

The Omnians were a God-fearing people.

They had a great deal to fear.

Vorbis’s room was in the upper Citadel, which was unusual for a mere deacon. He hadn’t asked for it. He seldom had to ask for anything. Destiny has a way of marking her own.

He also got visited by some of the most powerful men in the Church’s hierarchy.

Not, of course, the six Archpriests or the Cenobiarch himself. They weren’t that important. They were merely at the top. The people who really run organizations are usually found several levels down, where it’s still possible to get things done.

People liked to be friends with Vorbis, mainly because of the aforesaid mental field which suggested to them, in the subtlest of ways, that they didn’t want to be his enemy.

Two of them were sitting down with him now. They were General Iam Fri’it, who whatever the official records might suggest was the man who ran most of the Divine Legion, and Bishop Drunah, secretary to the Congress of Iams. People might not think that was much of a position of power, but then they’d never been minutes secretary to a meeting of slightly deaf old men.

Neither man was in fact there. They were not talking to Vorbis. It was one of
those
kinds of meeting. Lots of people didn’t talk to Vorbis, and went out of their way to not have meetings with him. Some of the abbots from the distant monasteries had recently been summoned to the Citadel, traveling secretly for up to a week across tortuous terrain, just so they definitely wouldn’t join the shadowy figures visiting Vorbis’s room. In the last few months, Vorbis had apparently had about as many visitors as the Man in the Iron Mask.

Nor were they talking. But if they
had
been there, and if they
had
been having a conversation, it would have gone like this:

“And now,” said Vorbis, “the matter of Ephebe.”

Bishop Drunah shrugged.
*

“Of no consequence, they say. No threat.”

The two men looked at Vorbis, a man who never raised his voice. It was very hard to tell what Vorbis was thinking, often even after he had told you.

“Really? Is this what we’ve come to?” he said. “No
threat
? After what they did to poor Brother Murduck? The insults to Om? This must not pass. What is proposed to be done?”

“No more fighting,” said Fri’it. “They fight like madmen. No. We’ve lost too many already.”

“They have strong gods,” said Drunah.

“They have better bows,” said Fri’it.

“There is no God but Om,” said Vorbis. “What the Ephebians believe they worship are nothing but djinns and demons. If it can be called worship. Have you seen this?”

He pushed forward a scroll of paper.

“What is it?” said Fri’it cautiously.

“A lie. A history that does not exist and never existed…the…the things…” Vorbis hesitated, trying to remember a word that had long since fallen into disuse, “…like the…tales told to children, who are too young…words for people to say…the…”

“Oh. A play,” said Fri’it. Vorbis’s gaze nailed him to the wall.

“You know of these things?”

“I—when I traveled in Klatch once—” Fri’it stuttered. He visibly pulled himself together. He had commanded one hundred thousand men in battle. He didn’t deserve this.

He found he didn’t dare look at Vorbis’s expression.

“They dance dances,” he said limply. “On their holy
days. The women have bells on their…And sing songs. All about the early days of the worlds, when the gods—”

He faded. “It was disgusting,” he said. He clicked his knuckles, a habit of his whenever he was worried.

“
This
one has their gods in it,” said Vorbis. “
Men
in
masks
. Can you believe that? They have a god of
wine
. A drunken old man! And people say Ephebe is no threat! And this—”

He tossed another, thicker scroll on to the table.

“
This
is far worse. For while they worship false gods in error, their error is in their choice of gods, not in their worship. But this—”

Drunah gave it a cautious examination.

“I believe there are other copies, even in the Citadel,” said Vorbis. “This one belonged to Sasho. I believe you recommended him to my service, Fri’it?”

“He always struck me as an intelligent and keen young man,” said the general.

“But disloyal,” said Vorbis, “and now receiving his just reward. It is only to be regretted that he has not been induced to give us the names of his fellow heretics.”

Fri’it fought against the sudden rush of relief. His eyes met those of Vorbis.

Drunah broke the silence.

“
De Chelonian Mobile
,” he said aloud. “‘The Turtle Moves.’ What does that mean?”

“Even telling you could put your soul at risk of a thousand years in hell,” said Vorbis. His eyes had not left Fri’it, who was now staring fixedly at the wall.

“I think it is a risk we might carefully take,” said Drunah.

Vorbis shrugged. “The writer claims that the world…travels through the void on the back of four huge elephants,” he said.

Drunah’s mouth dropped open.

“On the back?” he said.

“It is claimed,” said Vorbis, still watching Fri’it.

“What do they stand on?”

“The writer says they stand on the shell of an enormous turtle,” said Vorbis.

Drunah grinned nervously.

“And what does that stand on?” he said.

“I see no point in speculating as to what it stands on,” snapped Vorbis, “since it does not exist!”

“Of course, of course,” said Drunah quickly. “It was only idle curiosity.”

“Most curiosity is,” said Vorbis. “It leads the mind into speculative ways. Yet the man who wrote this walks around free, in Ephebe,
now
.”

Drunah glanced at the scroll.

“He says here he went on a ship that sailed to an island on the edge and he looked over and—”

“Lies,” said Vorbis evenly. “And it would make no difference even if they were not lies. Truth lies within, not without. In the words of the Great God Om, as delivered through his chosen prophets. Our eyes may deceive us, but our God never will.”

“But—”

Vorbis looked at Fri’it. The general was sweating.

“Yes?” he said.

“Well…Ephebe. A place where madmen have mad ideas. Everyone knows that. Maybe the wisest course is leave them to stew in their folly?”

Vorbis shook his head. “Unfortunately, wild and unstable ideas have a disturbing tendency to move around and take hold.”

Fri’it had to admit that this was true. He knew from experience that true and obvious ideas, such as the inef
fable wisdom and judgment of the Great God Om, seemed so obscure to many people that you actually had to kill them before they saw the error of their ways, whereas dangerous and nebulous and wrong-headed notions often had such an attraction for some people that they would—he rubbed a scar thoughtfully—hide up in the mountains and throw rocks at you until you starved them out. They’d prefer to die rather than see sense. Fri’it had seen sense at an early age. He’d seen it was sense not to die.

“What do you propose?” he said.

“The Council want to parley with Ephebe,” said Drunah. “You know I have to organize a deputation to leave tomorrow.”

“How many soldiers?” said Vorbis.

“A bodyguard only. We have been guaranteed safe passage, after all,” said Fri’it.

“
We have been guaranteed safe passage
,” said Vorbis. It sounded like a lengthy curse. “And once inside…?”

Fri’it wanted to say: I’ve spoken to the commander of the Ephebian garrison, and I think he is a man of honor, although of course he is indeed a despicable infidel and lower than the worms. But it was not the kind of thing he felt it wise to say to Vorbis.

He substituted: “We shall be on our guard.”

“Can we surprise them?”

Fri’it hesitated. “We?” he said.

“I shall lead the party,” said Vorbis. There was the briefest exchange of glances between himself and the secretary. “I…would like to be away from the Citadel for a while. A change of air. Besides, we should not let the Ephebians think they merit the attentions of a superior member of the Church. I was just musing as to the possibilities, should we be provoked—”