Small Gods

He tried to say “Urn?”

“Shut up, you,” said the other man, pressing the knife to his throat.

“Brutha?” said Urn. “You're alive?”

Brutha moved his eyes from his captor to Urn in a way which he hoped would indicate that it was too soon to make any commitment on this point.

“He's all right,” said Urn.

“All right? He's a priest!”

“But he's on our side. Aren't you, Brutha?”

Brutha tried to nod, and thought: I'm on everyone's side. It'd be nice if, just for once, someone was on mine.

The hand was unclamped from his mouth, but the knife remained resting on his throat. Brutha's normally careful thought processes ran like quicksilver.

“The Turtle Moves?” he ventured.

The knife was withdrawn, with obvious reluctance.

“I don't trust him,” said the man. “We should shove him down the hole at least.”

“Brutha's one of us,” said Urn.

“That's right. That's right,” said Brutha. “Which ones are you?”

Urn leaned closer.

“How's your memory?”

“Unfortunately, it is fine.”

“Good. Good. Uh. It would be a good idea to stay out of trouble, d'you hear . . . if anything happens. Remember the Turtle. Well, of course you would.”

“What things?”

Urn patted him on the shoulder, making Brutha think for a moment of Vorbis. Vorbis, who never touched another person inside his head, was a great toucher with his hands.

“Best if you don't know what's happening,” said Urn.

“But I don't know what's happening,” said Brutha.

“Good. That's the way.”

The burly man gestured with his knife towards the tunnels that led into the rock.

“Are we going, or what?” he demanded.

Urn ran after him and then stopped briefly and turned.

“Be careful,” he said. “We need what's in your head!”

Brutha watched them go.

“So do I,” he murmured.

And then he was alone again.

But he thought: Hold on. I don't have to be. I'm a bishop. At least I can watch. Om's gone and soon the world will end, so at least I might as well watch it happen.

Sandals flapping, Brutha set off towards the Place.

Bishops move diagonally. That's why they often turn up where the kings don't expect them to be.

“You godawful idiot! Don't go that way!”

The sun was well up now. In fact it was probably setting, if Didactylos's theories about the speed of light were correct, but in matters of relativity the point of view of the observer is very important, and from Om's point of view the sun was a golden ball in a flaming orange sky.

He pulled himself up another slope, and stared blearily at the distant Citadel. In his mind's eye, he could hear the mocking voices of all small gods.

They didn't like a god who had failed. They didn't like that at all. It let them all down. It reminded them of mortality. He'd be thrust out into the deep desert, where no one would ever come. Ever. Until the end of the world.

He shivered in his shell.

Urn and Fergmen walked nonchalantly through the tunnels of the Citadel, using the kind of nonchalant walk which, had there been anyone to take an interest in it, would have drawn detailed and arrow-sharp attention to them within seconds. But the only people around were those with vital jobs to do. Besides, it was not a good idea to stare too hard at the guards, in case they stared back.

Simony had told Urn he'd agreed to this. He couldn't quite remember doing so. The sergeant knew a way into the Citadel, that was sensible. And Urn knew about hydraulics. Fine. Now he was walking through these dry tunnels with his toolbelt clinking. There was a logical connection, but it had been made by someone else.

Fergmen turned a corner and stopped by a large grille, which stretched from floor to ceiling. It was very rusty. It might once have been a door-there was a suggestion of hinges, rusted into the stone. Urn peered through the bars. Beyond, in the gloom, there were pipes.

“Eureka,” he said.

“Going to have a bath, then?” said Fergmen.

“Just keep watch.”

Urn selected a short crowbar from his belt and inserted it between the grille and the stonework. Give me a foot of good steel and a wall to brace . . . my . . . foot . . . against-the grille ground forward and then popped out with a leaden sound-and I can change the world . . .

He stepped inside the long, dark, damp room, and gave a whistle of admiration.

No one had done any maintenance for-well, for as long as it took iron hinges to become a mass of crumbling rust-but all this still worked?

He looked up at lead and iron buckets bigger than he was, and a tangle of man-sized pipes.

This was the breath of God.

Probably the last man who knew how it worked had been tortured to death years before. Or as soon as it was installed. Killing the creator was a traditional method of patent-protection.

There were the levers and there, hanging over pits in the rock floor, were the two sets of counterweights. Probably it'd only take a few hundred gallons of water to swing the balance either way. Of course, the water'd have to be pumped up-

“Sergeant?”

Fergmen peered round the door. He looked nervous, like an atheist in a thunderstorm.

“What?”

Urn pointed.

“There's a big shaft through the wall there, see? At the bottom of the gear-chain?”

“The what?”

“The big knobbly wheels?”

“Oh. Yeah.”

“Where does the shaft go to?”

“Don't know. There's the big Treadmill of Correction through there.”

Ah.

The breath of God was ultimately the sweat of men. Didactylos would have appreciated the joke, Urn thought.

He was aware of a sound that had been there all the time but was only now penetrating through his concentration. It was tinny and faint and full of echoes, but it was voices. From the pipes.

The sergeant, to judge by his expression, had heard them too.

Urn put his ear to the metal. There was no possibility of making out words, but the general religious rhythm was familiar enough.

“It's just the service going on in the Temple,” he said. “It's probably resonating off the doors and the sound's being carried down the pipes.”

Fergmen did not look reassured.

“No gods are involved in any way,” Urn translated. He turned his attention to the pipes again.

“Simple principle,” said Urn, more to himself than to Fergmen. “Water pours into the reservoirs on the weights, disturbing the equilibrium. One lot of weights descends and the other rises up the shaft in the wall. The weight of the door is immaterial. As the bottom weights descend, these buckets here tip over, pouring the water out. Probably quite a smooth ac?tion. Perfect equilibrium at either end of the move?ment, too. Nicely thought out.”

He caught Fergmen's expression.

“Water goes in and out and the doors swing open,” he translated. “So all we've got to do is wait for . . . what did he say the sign would be?”

“They'll blow a trumpet when they're through the main gate,” said Fergmen, pleased to be of service.

“Right.” Urn eyed the weights and the reservoirs overhead. The bronze pipes dripped with corrosion.

“But perhaps we'd better just check that we know what we're doing,” he said. “It probably takes a min?ute or two before the doors start moving.” He fum?bled under his robe and produced something that looked, to Fergmen's eye, very much like a torture instrument. This must have communicated itself to Urn, who said very slowly and kindly: “This is an ad-just-ab-ble span-ner.”

“Yes?”

“It's for twisting nuts off.”

Fergmen nodded miserably.

“Yes?” he said.

“And this is a bottle of penetrating oil.”

“Oh, good.”

“Just give me a leg up, will you? It'll take time to unhook the linkage to the valve, so we might as well make a start.” Urn heaved himself into the ancient machinery while, above, the ceremony droned on.

Cut-Me-Own-Hand-Off Dhblah was all for new prophets. He was even in favor of the end of the world, if he could get the concession to sell religious statues, cut-price icons, rancid sweetmeats, ferment?ing dates, and putrescent olives on a stick to any watching crowds.

Subsequently, this was his testament. There never was a Book of the Prophet Brutha, but an enterprising scribe, during what came to be called the Renovation, did assemble some notes, and Dhblah had this to say:

"I. I was standing right by the statue of Ossory, right, when I noticed Brutha just beside me. Everyone was keeping away from him because of him being a bishop and they do things to you if you jostle bishops.

"II. I said to him, hello, Your Graciousness, and offered him a yoghurt practically free.

"III. He responded, no.

"IV. I said, it's very healthy, it's a live yoghurt.

"V. He said, yes, he could see.

"VI. He was staring at the doors. This was about the time of the third gong, right, so we all knew we'd got hours to wait. He was looking a bit down and it's not as if he even ate the yoghurt, which I admit was on the hum a bit, what with the heat. I mean, it was more alive than usual. I mean, I had to keep hitting it with a spoon to stop it getting out of the . . . all right. I was just explaining about the yoghurt. All right. I mean, you want to put a bit of color in, don't you? People like a bit of color. It was green.

"VII. He just stood there, staring. So I said, got a problem, Your Reverence? Upon which he vouch?safed, I cannot hear him. I said, what is this he to whom what you refer? He said, if he was here, he would send me a sign.

"VIII. There is no truth whatsoever in the rumor that I ran away at this juncture. It was just the pressure of the crowd. I have never been a friend of the Quisition. I might have sold them food, but I always charged them extra.

"IX. Anyway, right, then he pushed through the line of guards what was holding the crowd back and stood right in front of the doors, and they weren't sure what to do about bishops, and I heard him say something like, I carried you in the desert, I believed all my life, just give me this one thing.

“X. Something like that, anyway. How about some yoghurt? Bargain offer. Onna stick.”

Om lifted himself over a creeper-clad wall by grasping tendrils in his beak and hauling himself up by the neck muscles. Then he fell down the other side. The Citadel was as far away as ever.

Brutha's mind was flaming like a beacon in Om's senses. There's a streak of madness in everyone who spends quality time with gods, and it was driving the boy now.

“It's too soon!” Om yelled. “You need followers! It can't be just you! You can't do it by yourself! You have to get disciples first!”

Simony turned to look down the length of the Turtle. Thirty men were crouched under the shell, looking very apprehensive.

A corporal saluted.

“The needle's there, sergeant.”

The brass whistle whistled.

Simony picked up the steering ropes. This was what war should be, he thought. No uncertainty. A few more Turtles like this, and no one would ever fight again.

“Stand by,” he said.

He pulled the big lever hard.

The brittle metal snapped in his hand.