Small Gods

“Trying to get some sleep. Tortoises need a lot of sleep, you know.”

Simony and Urn were bent over the philosophical engine. Brutha stared at the globe

-a sphere of radius r, which therefore had a volume V = (4/3)(pi) rrr, and surface area A = 4(pi) rr-

“Oh, my god . . .”

“What now?” said the voice of the tortoise.

Didactylos's face turned towards Brutha, who was clutching at his head.

“What's a pi?”

Didactylos reached out a hand and steadied Brutha.

“What's the matter?” said Om.

“I don't know! It's just words! I don't know what's in the books! I can't read!”

“Getting plenty of sleep is vital,” said Om. “It builds a healthy shell.”

Brutha sagged to his knees in the rocking boat. He felt like a householder coming back unexpectedly and finding the old place full of strangers. They were in every room, not menacing, but just filling the space with their thereness.

“The books are leaking!”

“I don't see how that can happen,” said Didactylos. “You said you just looked at them. You didn't read them. You don't know what they mean.”

“They know what they mean!”

“Listen. They're just books, of the nature of books,” said Didactylos. “They're not magical. If you could know what books contained just by looking at them, Urn there would be a genius.”

“What's the matter with him?” said Simony.

“He thinks he knows too much.”

“No! I don't know anything! Not really know,” said Brutha. “I just remembered that squids have an internal cartilaginous support!”

“I can see that would be a worry,” said Simony. “Huh. Priests? Mad, the lot of them.”

“No! I don't know what cartilaginous means!”

“Skeletal connective tissue,” said Didactylos. “Think of bony and leathery at the same time.”

Simony snorted. “Well, well,” he said, “we live and learn, just like you said.”

“Some of us even do it the other way round,” said Didactylos.

“Is that supposed to mean something?”

“It's philosophy,” said Didactylos. “And sit down, boy. You're making the boat rock. We're overloaded as it is.”

“It's being buoyed upward by a force equal to the weight of the displaced fluid,” muttered Brutha, sagging.

“Hmm?”

“Except that I don't know what buoyed means.”

Urn looked up from the sphere. “We're ready to start again,” he said. “Just bale some water in here with your helmet, mister.”

“And then we shall go again?”

“Well, we can start getting up steam,” said Urn. He wiped his hands on his toga.

“Y'know,” said Didactylos, “there are different ways of learning things. I'm reminded of the time when old Prince Lasgere of Tsort asked me how he could become learned, especially since he hadn't got any time for this reading business. I said to him, `There is no royal road to learning, sire,' and he said to me, `Bloody well build one or I shall have your legs chopped off. Use as many slaves as you like.' A refreshingly direct approach, I always thought. Not a man to mince words. People, yes. But not words.”

“Why didn't he chop your legs off?” said Urn.

“I built him his road. More or less.”

“How? I thought that was just a metaphor.”

“You're learning, Urn. So I found a dozen slaves who could read and they sat in his bedroom at night whispering choice passages to him while he slept.”

“Did that work?”

“Don't know. The third slave stuck a six-inch dagger in his ear. Then after the revolution the new ruler let me out of prison and said I could leave the country if I promised not to think of anything on the way to the border. But I don't believe there was anything wrong with the idea in principle.”

Urn blew on the fire.

“Takes a little while to heat up the water,” he explained.

Brutha lay back in the bow again. If he concentrated, he could stop the knowledge flowing. The thing to do was avoid looking at things. Even a cloud-

-devised by natural philosophy as a means of occasioning shade on the surface of the world, thus preventing overheating-

-caused an intrusion. Om was fast asleep.

Knowing without learning, thought Brutha. No. The other way round. Learning without knowing . . .

Nine-tenths of Om dozed in his shell. The rest of him drifted like a fog in the real world of the gods, which is a lot less interesting than the three-dimensional world inhabited by most of humanity.

He thought: we're a little boat. She'll probably not even notice us. There's the whole of the ocean. She can't be everywhere.

Of course, she's got many believers. But we're only a little boat . . .

He felt the minds of inquisitive fishes nosing around the end of the screw. Which was odd, because in the normal course of things fishes were not known for their-

“Greetings,” said the Queen of the Sea.

“Ah.”

“I see you're still managing to exist, little tortoise.” “Hanging in there,” said Om. “No problems.”

There was a pause which, if it were taking place between two people in the human world, would have been spent in coughing and looking embarrassed. But gods are never embarrassed.

“I expect,” said Om guardedly, “you are looking for your price.”

“This vessel and everyone in it,” said the Queen. “But your believer can be saved, as is the custom.”

“What good are they to you? One of them's an atheist.”

“Hah! They all believe, right at the end.”

“That doesn't seem . . .” Om hesitated. “Fair?”

Now the Sea Queen paused.

“What's fair?”

“Like . . . underlying justice?” said Om. He wondered why he said it.

“Sounds a human idea to me.”

“They're inventive, I'll grant you. But what I meant was . . . I mean . . . they've done nothing to deserve it.”

“Deserve? They're human. What's deserve got to do with it?”

Om had to concede this. He wasn't thinking like a god. This bothered him.

“It's just . . .”

“You've been relying on one human for too long, little god.”

“I know. I know.” Om sighed. Minds leaked into one another. He was seeing too much from a human point of view. "Take the boat, then. If you must. I just wish it was-

“Fair?” said the Sea Queen. She moved forward. Om felt her all around him.

“There's no such thing,” she said. “Life's like a beach. And then you die.”

Then she was gone.

Om let himself retreat into the shell of his shell.

“Brutha?”

“Yes?”

“Can you swim?”

The globe started to spin.

Brutha heard Urn say, “There. Soon be on our way.”

“We'd better be.” This was Simony. “There's a ship out there.”

“This thing goes faster than anything with sails or oars.”

Brutha looked across the bay. A sleek Omnian ship was passing the lighthouse. It was still a long way off, but Brutha stared at it with a dread and expectation that magnified better than telescopes.

“It's moving fast,” said Simony. “I don't understand it?-there's no wind.”

Urn looked round at the flat calm.

“There can't be wind there and not here,” he said.

“I said, can you swim?” The voice of the tortoise was insistent in Brutha's head.

“I don't know,” said Brutha.

“Do you think you could find out quickly?”

Urn looked upwards.

“Oh,” he said.

Clouds had massed over the Unnamed Boat. They were visibly spinning.

“You've got to know!” shouted Om. “I thought you had a perfect memory!”

“We used to splash around in the big cistern in the village,” whispered Brutha. “I don't know if that counts!”

Mist whipped off the surface of the sea. Brutha's ears popped. And still the Omnian ship came on, flying across the waves.

"What do you call it when you've got a dead calm surrounded by winds- Urn began.

“Hurricane?” said Didactylos.

Lightning crackled between sky and sea. Urn yanked at the lever that lowered the screw into the water. His eyes glowed almost as brightly as the lightning.

“Now there's a power,” he said. “Harnessing the lightning! The dream of mankind!”

The Unnamed Boat surged forward.

“Is it? It's not my dream,” said Didactylos. “I always dream of a giant carrot chasing me through a field of lobsters.”

“I mean metaphorical dream, master,” said Urn.

“What's a metaphor?” said Simony.

Brutha said, “What's a dream?”

A pillar of lightning laced the mist. Secondary lightnings sparked off the spinning globe.

“You can get it from cats,” said Urn, lost in a philosophical world, as the Boat left a white wake behind it. “You stroke them with a rod of amber, and you get tiny lightnings . . . if I could magnify that a million times, no man would ever be a slave again and we could catch it in jars and do away with the night . . .”

Lightning struck a few yards away.

“We're in a boat with a large copper ball in the middle of a body of salt water,” said Didactylos. “Thanks, Urn.”

“And the temples of the gods would be magnificently lit, of course,” said Urn quickly.

Didactylos tapped his stick on the hull. “It's a nice idea, but you'd never get enough cats,” he said. The sea surged up.

“Jump into the water!” Om shouted.

“Why?” said Brutha.

A wave almost overturned the boat. Rain hissed on the surface of the sphere, sent up a scalding spray.

“I haven't got time to explain! Jump overboard! It's for the best! Trust me!”

Brutha stood up, holding the sphere's framework to steady himself.

“Sit down!” said Urn.

“I'm just going out,” said Brutha. “I may be some time.”

The boat rocked under him as he half-jumped, half-fell into the boiling sea.

Lightning struck the sphere.

As Brutha bobbed to the surface he saw, for a moment, the globe glowing white-hot and the Unnamed Boat, its screw almost out of the water, skimming away through the mists like a comet. It vanished in the clouds and rain. A moment later, above the noise of the storm, there was a muffled “boom.”

Brutha raised his hand. Om broke the surface, blowing seawater out of his nostrils.

“You said it would be for the best!” screamed Brutha.

“Well? We're still alive! And hold me out of the water! Tortoises can't swim!”

“But they might be dead!”

“Do you want to join them?”

A wave submerged Brutha. For a moment the world was a dark green curtain, ringing in his ears.

“I can't swim with one hand!” he shouted, as he broke surface again.

“We'll be saved! She wouldn't dare!”

“What do you mean?”

Another wave slapped at Brutha, and suction dragged at his robes.