Small Gods (15 page)

The road wound up steeply around the rocky hill. Most of the city seemed to be built on outcrops or was cut into the actual rock itself, so that one man’s patio was another man’s roof. The roads were really a series of shallow steps, accessible to a man or a donkey but sudden death to a cart. Ephebe was a pedestrian place.

More people watched them in silence. So did the statues of the gods. The Ephebians had gods in the same way that other cities had rats.

Brutha got a look at Vorbis’s face. The exquisitor was staring straight ahead of himself. Brutha wondered what the man was seeing.

It was all so new!

And devilish, of course. Although the gods in the statues didn’t look much like demons—but he could hear the voice of Nhumrod pointing out that this very fact made them even more demonic. Sin crept up on you like a wolf in a sheep’s skin.

One of the goddesses had been having some very serious trouble with her dress, Brutha noticed; if Brother Nhumrod had been present, he would have had to hurry off for some very serious lying down.

“Petulia, Goddess of Negotiable Affection,” said Om. “Worshiped by the ladies of the night and every other time as well, if you catch my meaning.”

Brutha’s mouth dropped open.

“They’ve got a goddess for
painted jezebels?
”

“Why not? Very religious people I understand. They’re used to being on their—they spend so much time looking at the—look, belief is where you find it. Specialization. That’s safe, see. Low risk, guaranteed returns. There’s even a God of Lettuce somewhere. I mean, it’s not as though any one else is likely to try to become a God of Lettuce. You just find a lettuce-growing community and hang on. Thunder gods come and go, but it’s
you
they turn to every time when there’s a bad attack of Lettuce Fly. You’ve got to…uh…hand it to Petulia. She spotted a gap in the market and filled it.”

“There’s a God of Lettuce?”

“Why not? If enough people believe, you can be god of anything…”

Om stopped himself and waited to see if Brutha had noticed. But Brutha seemed to have something else on his mind.

“That’s not right. Not treating people like that. Ow.”

He’d walked into the back of a subdeacon. The party had halted, partly because the Ephebian escort had stopped too, but mainly because a man was running down the street.

He was quite old, and in many respects resembled a frog that had been dried out for quite some time. Something about him generally made people think of the word “spry,” but, at the moment, they would be much more likely to think of the words “mother naked” and possibly also “dripping wet” and would be one hundred
percent accurate, too. Although there was the beard. It was a beard you could camp out in.

The man thudded down the street without any apparent self-consciousness and stopped outside a potter’s shop. The potter didn’t seem concerned at being addressed by a little wet naked man; in fact, none of the people in the street had given him a second glance.

“I’d like a Number Nine pot and some string, please,” said the old man.

“Yes sir, Mr. Legibus.” The potter reached under his counter and pulled out a towel. The naked man took it in an absent-minded way. Brutha got the feeling that this had happened to both of them before.

“And a lever of infinite length and, um, an immovable place to stand,” said Legibus, drying himself off.

“What you see is what I got, sir. Pots and general household items, but a bit short on axiomatic mechanisms.”

“Well, have you got a piece of chalk?”

“Got some right here from last time,” said the potter.

The little naked man took the chalk and started to draw triangles on the nearest bit of wall. Then he looked down.

“Why haven’t I got any clothes on?” he said.

“
We’ve
been having our
bath
again, haven’t we?” said the potter.

“I left my clothes in the bath?”

“I think you probably had an idea while you were in the bath?” prompted the potter.

“That’s right! That’s right! Got this splendid idea for moving the world around!” said Legibus. “Simple lever principle. Should work perfectly. It’s just a matter of getting the technical details sorted out.”

“That’s nice. We can move somewhere warm for the winter,” said the potter.

“Can I borrow the towel?”

“It’s yours anyway, Mr. Legibus.”

“Is it?”

“I said, you left it here last time. Remember? When you had that idea for the lighthouse?”

“Fine. Fine,” said Legibus, wrapping the towel around himself. He drew a few more lines on the wall. “Fine. Okay. I’ll send someone down later to collect the wall.”

He turned and appeared to see the Omnians for the first time. He peered forward and then shrugged.

“Hmm,” he said, and wandered away.

Brutha tugged at the cloak of one of the Ephebian soldiers.

“Excuse me, but why did we stop?” he said.

“Philosophers have right of way,” said the soldier.

“What’s a philosopher?” said Brutha.

“Someone who’s bright enough to find a job with no heavy lifting,” said a voice in his head.

“An infidel seeking the just fate he shall surely receive,” said Vorbis. “An inventor of fallacies. This cursed city attracts them like a dung heap attracts flies.”

“Actually, it’s the climate,” said the voice of the tortoise. “Think about it. If you’re inclined to leap out of your bath and run down the street every time you think you’ve got a bright idea, you don’t want to do it somewhere cold. If you
do
do it somewhere cold, you die out. That’s natural selection, that is. Ephebe’s known for its philosophers. It’s better than street theater.”

“What, a lot of old men running around the streets with no clothes on?” said Brutha, under his breath, as they were marched onward.

“More or less. If you spend your whole time thinking about the universe, you tend to forget the less important bits of it. Like your pants. And ninety-nine out of a hundred ideas they come up with are totally useless.”

“Why doesn’t anyone lock them away safely, then? They don’t sound much use to
me
,” said Brutha.

“Because the hundredth idea,” said Om, “is generally a humdinger.”

“What?”

“Look up at the highest tower on the rock.”

Brutha looked up. At the top of the tower, secured by metal bands, was a big disc that glittered in the morning light.

“What is it?” he whispered.

“The reason why Omnia hasn’t got much of a fleet any more,” said Om. “That’s why it’s always worth having a few philosophers around the place. One minute it’s all Is Truth Beauty and Is Beauty Truth, and Does a Falling Tree in the Forest Make a Sound if There’s No one There to Hear It, and then just when you think they’re going to start dribbling one of ’em says, Incidentally, putting a thirty-foot parabolic reflector on a high place to shoot the rays of the sun at an enemy’s ships would be a very interesting demonstration of optical principles,” he added. “Always coming up with amazing new ideas, the philosophers. The one before that was some intricate device that demonstrated the principles of leverage by incidentally hurling balls of burning sulphur two miles. Then before that, I think, there was some kind of an underwater thing that shot sharpened logs into the bottom of ships.”

Brutha stared at the disc again. He hadn’t understood more than one-third of the words in the last statement.

“Well,” he said, “does it?”

“Does what?”

“Make a sound. If it falls down when no one’s there to hear it.”

“Who cares?”

The party had reached a gateway in the wall that ran around the top of the rock in much the same way that a headband encircles a head. The Ephebian captain stopped, and turned.

“The…
visitors
…must be blindfolded,” he said.

“That is outrageous!” said Vorbis. “We are here on a mission of diplomacy!”

“That is not my business,” said the captain. “My business is to say: If you go through this gate you go blindfolded. You don’t have to be blindfolded. You can stay outside. But if you want to go through, you got to wear a blindfold. This is one of them life choices.”

One of the subdeacons whispered in Vorbis’s ear. He held a brief
sotto voce
conversation with the leader of the Omnian guard.

“Very well,” he said, “under protest.”

The blindfold was quite soft, and totally opaque. But as Brutha was led…

…ten paces along a passage, and then left five paces, then diagonally forward and left three-and-a-half paces, and right one hundred and three paces, down three steps, and turned around seventeen-and-one-quarter times, and forward nine paces, and left one pace, and forward nineteen paces, and pause three seconds, and right two paces, and back two paces, and left two paces, and turned three-and-a-half times, and wait one second, and up three steps, and right twenty paces, and turned around five-and-a-quarter times, and left fifteen paces, and forward seven paces, and right eighteen paces, and up seven steps, and diagonally forward, and pause two seconds, right
four paces, and down a slope that went down a meter every ten paces for thirty paces, and then turned around seven-and-a-half times, and forward six paces…

…he wondered what good it was supposed to do.

The blindfold was removed in an open courtyard, made of some white stone that turned the sunlight into a glare. Brutha blinked.

Bowmen lined the yard. Their arrows were pointing downwards, but their manner suggested that pointing horizontally could happen any minute.

Another bald man was waiting for them. Ephebe seemed to have an unlimited supply of skinny bald men wearing sheets. This one smiled, with his mouth alone.

No one likes us much, Brutha thought.

“I trust you will excuse this minor inconvenience,” said the skinny man. “My name is Aristocrates. I am secretary to the Tyrant. Please ask your men to put down their weapons.”

Vorbis drew himself up to his full height. He was a head taller than the Ephebian. Pale though his complexion normally was, it had gone paler.

“We are entitled to retain our arms!” he said. “We are an emissary to a foreign land!”

“But not a barbarian one,” said Aristocrates mildly. “Weapons will not be required here.”

“Barbarian?” said Vorbis. “You burned our ships!”

Aristocrates held up a hand.

“This is a discussion for later,” he said. “My pleasant task now is to show you to your quarters. I am sure you would like to rest a little after your journey. You are, of course, at liberty to wander anywhere you wish in the palace. And if there is anywhere where
we
do not wish you to wander, the guards will be sure to inform you with speed and tact.”

“And we can leave the palace?” said Vorbis coldly.

Aristocrates shrugged.

“We do not guard the gateway except in times of war,” he said. “If you can remember the way, you are free to use it. But vague perambulations in the labyrinth are unwise, I must warn you. Our ancestors were sadly very suspicious and put in many traps out of distrust; we keep them well-greased and primed, of course, merely out of a respect for tradition. And now, if you would care to follow me…”

The Omnians kept together as they followed Aristocrates through the palace. There were fountains. There were gardens. Here and there groups of people sat around doing nothing very much except talking. The Ephebians seemed to have only a shaky grasp of the concepts of “inside” and “outside”—except for the palace’s encircling labyrinth, which was very clear on the subject.

“Danger attends us at every turn,” said Vorbis quietly. “Any man who breaks rank or fraternizes in any way will explain his conduct to the inquisitors. At length.”

Brutha looked at a woman filling a jug from a well. It did not look like a very military act.

He was feeling that strange double feeling again. On the surface there were the thoughts of Brutha, which were exactly the thoughts that the Citadel would have approved of. This was a nest of infidels and unbelievers, its very mundanity a subtle cloak for the traps of wrong thinking and heresy. It might be bright with sunlight, but in reality it was a place of shadows.

But down below were the thoughts of the Brutha that watched Brutha from the inside…

Vorbis looked wrong here. Sharp and unpleasant. And any city where potters didn’t worry at all when naked,
dripping wet old men came and drew triangles on their walls was a place Brutha wanted to find out more about. He felt like a big empty jug. The thing to do with something empty was fill it up.

“Are you doing something to me?” he whispered.

In his box, Om looked at the shape of Brutha’s mind. Then he tried to think quickly.

“No,” he said, and that at least was the truth. Had this ever happened before?

Had it been like this back in the first days? It must have been. It was all so hazy now. He couldn’t remember the thoughts he’d had then, just the shape of the thoughts. Everything had been highly colored, everything had been growing every day—
he
had been growing every day; thoughts and the mind that was thinking them were developing at the same speed. Easy to forget things from those times. It was like a fire trying to remember the shape of its flames. But the
feeling
—he could remember that.

He wasn’t doing anything to Brutha. Brutha was doing it to himself. Brutha was beginning to think in godly ways. Brutha was starting to become a prophet.

Om wished he had someone to talk to. Someone who understood.

This
was
Ephebe, wasn’t it? Where people made a
living
trying to understand?

The Omnians were to be housed in little rooms around a central courtyard. There was a fountain in the middle, in a very small grove of sweet-smelling pine trees. The soldiers nudged one another. People think that professional soldiers think a lot about fighting, but
serious
professional soldiers think a lot more about food and a warm place to sleep, because these are two things that are gen
erally hard to get, whereas fighting tends to turn up all the time.