Small Gods

“I don't understand,” said Brutha.



“Let me put it another way,” said the tortoise. “I am your God, right?”



“Yes.”



“And you'll obey me.”



“Yes.”



“Good. Now take a rock and go and kill Vorbis.”



Brutha didn't move.



“I'm sure you heard me,” said Om.



"But he'll . . . he's . . . the Quisition would-



“Now you know what I mean,” said the tortoise. “You're more afraid of him than you are of me, now. Abraxas says here: `Around the Godde there forms a Shelle of prayers and Ceremonies and Buildings and Priestes and Authority, until at Last the Godde Dies. Ande this maye notte be noticed.' ”



“That can't be true!”



“I think it is. Abraxas says there's a kind of shellfish that lives in the same way. It makes a bigger and bigger shell until it can't move around any more, and so it dies.”



“But . . . but . . . that means . . . the whole Church . . .”



“Yes.”



Brutha tried to keep hold of the idea, but the sheer enormity of it kept wrenching it from his mental grasp.



“But you're not dead,” he managed.



“Next best thing,” said Om. “And you know what? No other small god is trying to usurp me. Did I ever tell you about old Ur-Gilash? No? He was the god back in what's now Omnia before me. Not much of one. Basically a weather god. Or a snake god. Some?thing, anyway. It took years to get rid of him, though. Wars and everything. So I've been thinking . . .”



Brutha said nothing.



“Om still exists,” said the tortoise. “I mean the shell. All you'd have to do is get people to under?stand.”



Brutha still said nothing.



“You can be the next prophet,” said Om.



“I can't! Everyone knows Vorbis will be the next prophet!”



“Ah, but you'll be official. ”



“No.”



“No? I am your God!”



“And I am my me. I'm not a prophet. I can't even write. I can't read. No one will listen to me.”



Om looked him up and down.



“I must admit you're not the chosen one I would have chosen,” he said.



“The great prophets had vision,” said Brutha. “Even if they . . . even if you didn't talk to them, they had something to say. What could I say? I haven't got anything to say to anyone. What could I say?”



“Believe in the Great God Om,” said the tortoise.



“And then what?”



“What do you mean, and then what?”



Brutha looked out glumly at the darkening court?yard.



“Believe in the Great God Om or be stricken with thunderbolts,” he said.



“Sounds good to me.”



“Is that how it always has to be?”



The last rays of the sun glinted off the statue in the center of the courtyard. It was vaguely feminine. There was a penguin perched on one shoulder.



“Patina, Goddess of Wisdom,” said Brutha. “The one with a penguin. Why a penguin?”



“Can't imagine,” said Om hurriedly.



“Nothing wise about penguins, is there?”



“Shouldn't think so. Unless you count the fact that you don't get them in Omnia. Pretty wise of them.”



“Brutha!”



“That's Vorbis,” said Brutha, standing up. “Shall I leave you here?”



“Yes. There's still some melon. I mean loaf.”



Brutha wandered out into the dusk.



Vorbis was sitting on a bench under a tree, as still as a statue in the shadows.



Certainty, Brutha thought. I used to be certain. Now I'm not so sure.



“Ah, Brutha. You will accompany me on a little stroll. We will take the evening air.”



“Yes, lord.”



“You have enjoyed your visit to Ephebe.”



Vorbis seldom asked a question if a statement would do.



“It has been . . . interesting.”



Vorbis put one hand on Brutha's shoulder and used the other to haul himself up on his staff.



“And what do you think of it?” he asked.



“They have many gods, and they don't pay them much attention,” said Brutha. “And they search for ignorance.”



“And they find it in abundance, be sure of that,” said Vorbis.



He pointed his staff into the night. “Let us walk,” he said.



There was the sound of laughter, somewhere in the darkness, and the clatter of pans. The scent of evening-opening flowers hung thickly in the air. The stored heat of daytime radiating from the stones, made the night seem like a fragrant soup.



“Ephebe looks to the sea,” said Vorbis after a while. “You see the way it is built? All on the slope of a hill facing the sea. But the sea is mutable. Nothing lasting comes from the sea. Whereas our dear Citadel looks towards the high desert. And what do we see there?”



Instinctively Brutha turned, and looked over the rooftops to the black bulk of the desert against the sky.



“I saw a flash of light,” he said. “And again. On the slope.”



“Ah. The light of truth,” said Vorbis. “So let us go forth to meet it. Take me to the entrance to the labyrinth, Brutha. You know the way.”



“My lord?” said Brutha.



“Yes, Brutha?”



“I would like to ask you a question.”



“Do so.”



“What happened to Brother Murduck?”



There was the merest suggestion of hesitation in the rhythm of Vorbis's stick on the cobbles. Then the exquisitor said, “Truth, good Brutha, is like the light. Do you know about light?”



“It . . . comes from the sun. And the moon and stars. And candles. And lamps.”



“And so on,” said Vorbis, nodding. “Of course. But there is another kind of light. A light that fills even the darkest of places. This has to be. For if this metalight did not exist, how could darkness be seen?”



Brutha said nothing. This sounded too much like philosophy.



“And so it is with truth,” said Vorbis. “There are some things which appear to be the truth, which have all the hallmarks of truth, but which are not the real truth. The real truth must sometimes be protected by a labyrinth of lies.”



He turned to Brutha. “Do you understand me?”



“No, Lord Vorbis.”



“I mean, that which appears to our senses is not the fundamental truth. Things that are seen and heard and done by the flesh are mere shadows of a deeper reality. This is what you must understand as you progress in the Church.”



“But at the moment, lord, I know only the trivial truth, the truth available on the outside,” said Brutha. He felt as though he was at the edge of a pit.



“That is how we all begin,” said Vorbis kindly.



“So did the Ephebians kill Brother Murduck?” Brutha persisted. Now he was inching out over the darkness.



“I am telling you that in the deepest sense of the truth they did. By their failure to embrace his words, by their intransigence, they surely killed him.”



“But in the trivial sense of the truth,” said Brutha, picking every word with the care an inquisitor might give to his patient in the depths of the Citadel, “in the trivial sense, Brother Murduck died, did he not, in Omnia, because he had not died in Ephebe, had been merely mocked, but it was feared that others in the Church might not understand the, the deeper truth, and thus it was put about that the Ephebians had killed him in, in the trivial sense, thus giving you, and those who saw the truth of the evil of Ephebe, due cause to launch a-a just retaliation.”



They walked past a fountain. The deacon's steelshod staff clicked in the night.



“I see a great future for you in the Church,” said Vorbis, eventually. “The time of the eighth Prophet is coming. A time of expansion, and great opportunity for those true in the service of Om.”



Brutha looked into the pit.



If Vorbis was right, and there was a kind of light that made darkness visible, then down there was its opposite, the darkness where no light could ever reach: darkness that blackened light. He thought of blind Didactylos and his empty lantern.



He heard himself say, “And with people like the Ephebians, there is no truce. No treaty can be held binding, if it is between people like the Ephebians and those who follow a deeper truth?”



Vorbis nodded. “When the Great God is with us,” he said, “who can stand against us? You impress me, Brutha.”



There was more laughter in the darkness, and the twang of stringed instruments.



“A feast,” sneered Vorbis. “The Tyrant invited us to a feast! I sent some of the party, of course. Even their generals are in there! They think themselves safe behind their labyrinth, as a tortoise thinks himself safe in his shell, not realizing it is a prison. Onward.”



The inner wall of the labyrinth loomed out of the darkness. Brutha leaned against it. From far above came the chink of metal on metal as a sentry went on his rounds.



The gateway to the labyrinth was wide open. The Ephebians had never seen the point of stopping people entering. Up a short side-tunnel the guide for the first sixth of the way slumbered on a bench, a candle gut?tering beside him. Above his alcove hung the bronze bell that would-be traversers of the maze used to sum?mon him. Brutha slipped past.



“Brutha?”



“Yes, lord?”



“Lead the way through the labyrinth. I know you can.”



"Lord-



“This is an order, Brutha,” said Vorbis, pleasantly.



There is no hope for it, Brutha thought. It is an order.



“Then tread where I tread, lord,” he whispered. “Not more than one step behind me.”



“Yes, Brutha.”



“If I step around a place on the floor for no reason, you step around it too.”



“Yes, Brutha.”



Brutha thought: perhaps I could do it wrong. No. I took vows and things. You can't just disobey. The whole world ends if you start thinking like that . . .



He let his sleeping mind take control. The way through the labyrinth unrolled in his head like a glow?ing wire .



. . . diagonally forward and right three and-a-half paces, and left sixty-three paces, pause two seconds?where a steely swish in the darkness suggested that one of the guardians had devised something that won him a prize-and up three steps . . .



I could run forward, he thought. I could hide, and he'd walk into one of the pits or a deadfall or some?thing, and then I could sneak back to my room and who would ever know?



I would .



. . . forward nine paces, and right one pace, and forward nineteen paces, and left two paces . . .



There was a light ahead. Not the occasional white glow of moonlight from the slits in the roof, but yel?low lamplight, dimming and brightening as its owner came nearer.



“Someone's coming,” he whispered. “It must be one of the guides!”



Vorbis had vanished.



Brutha hovered uncertainly in the passageway as the light bobbed nearer.



An elderly voice said, “That you, Number Four?”



The light came round a corner. It half-illuminated an old man, who walked up to Brutha and raised the candle to his face.



“Where's Number Four?” he said, peering around Brutha.



A figure appeared behind the man, from out of a side?passage. Brutha had the briefest glimpse of Vorbis, his face strangely peaceful, as he gripped the head of his staff, twisted and pulled. Sharp metal glittered for a moment in the candlelight.