Sand blew in all the time from the desert. Drifts built up on the steps and in the courtyards, despite everything that an army of brush-wielding novices could do.
But a tortoise has very inefficient legs.
“Thou Shall Build Shallower Steps,” he hissed, hauling himself up.
Feet thundered past him, a few inches away. This was one of the main thoroughfares of the Citadel, leading to the Place of Lamentation, and was trodden by thousands of pilgrims every day.
Once or twice an errant sandal caught his shell and spun him around.
“Your feet to fly from your body and be buried in a termite mound!” he screamed.
It made him feel a little better.
Another foot clipped him and slid him across the stones. He fetched up, with a clang, against a curved metal grille set low in one wall. Only a lightning grab with his jaws stopped him slipping through it. He ended up hanging by his mouth over a cellar.
A tortoise has incredibly powerful jaw muscles. He swayed a bit, legs wobbling. All right. A tortoise in a crevassed, rocky landscape was used to this sort of thing. He just had to get a leg hooked…
Faint sounds drew themselves to his attention. There was the clink of metal, and then a very soft whimper.
Om swiveled his eye around.
The grille was high in one wall of a very long, low room. It was brightly illuminated by the light-wells that ran everywhere through the Citadel.
Vorbis had made a point of that. The inquisitors shouldn’t work in the shadows, he said, but in the light.
Where they could see, very clearly, what they were doing.
So could Om.
He hung from the grille for some time, unable to take his eye off the row of benches.
On the whole, Vorbis discouraged red-hot irons, spiked chains, and things with drills and big screws on, unless it was for a public display on an important Fast day. It was amazing what you could do, he always said, with a simple knife…
But many of the inquisitors liked the old ways best.
After a while, Om very slowly hauled himself up to the grille, neck muscles twitching. Like a creature with its mind on something else, the tortoise hooked first one front leg over a bar, then another. His back legs waggled for a while, and then he hooked a claw on to the rough stonework.
He strained for a moment and then pulled himself back into the light.
He walked off slowly, keeping close to the wall to avoid the feet. He had no alternative to walking slowly in any case, but now he was walking slowly because he was thinking. Most gods find it hard to walk and think at the same time.
Anyone could go to the Place of Lamentation. It was one of the great freedoms of Omnianism.
There were all sorts of ways to petition the Great God, but they depended largely on how much you could afford, which was right and proper and exactly how things should be. After all, those who had achieved success in the world clearly had done it with the approval of the Great God, because it was impossible to believe that they had managed it with His disapproval. In the same way, the Quisition could act without possibility of flaw. Suspicion was proof. How could it be anything else? The Great God would not have seen fit to put the suspicion in the minds of His exquisitors unless it was right that it should be there. Life could be very simple, if you believed in the Great God Om. And sometimes quite short, too.
But there were always the improvident, the stupid, and those who, because of some flaw or oversight in this life or a past one, were not even able to afford a pinch of incense. And the Great God, in His wisdom and mercy as filtered through His priests, had made provision for them.
Prayers and entreaties could be offered up in the Place of Lamentation. They would assuredly be heard. They might even be heeded.
Behind the Place, which was a square two hundred meters across, rose the Great Temple itself.
There, without a shadow of a doubt, the God listened.
Or somewhere close, anyway…
Thousands of pilgrims visited the Place every day.
A heel knocked Om’s shell, bouncing him off the wall. On the rebound a crutch caught the edge of his carapace and whirled him away into the crowd, spinning like a coin. He bounced up against the bedroll of an old woman who, like many others, reckoned that the efficacy of her petition was increased by the amount of time she spent in the square.
The God blinked muzzily. This was nearly as bad as eagles. It was nearly as bad as the cellar…no, perhaps nothing was as bad as the cellar…
He caught a few words before another passing foot kicked him away.
“The drought has been on our village for three years…a little rain, oh Lord?”
Rotating on the top of his shell, vaguely wondering if the right answer might stop people kicking him, the Great God muttered, “No problem.”
Another foot bounced him, unseen by any of the pious, between the forest of legs. The world was a blur.
He caught an ancient voice, steeped in hopelessness, saying, “Lord, Lord, why must my son be taken to join your Divine Legion? Who now will tend the farm? Could you not take some other boy?”
“Don’t worry about it,” squeaked Om.
A sandal caught him under his tail and flicked him several yards across the square. No one was looking down. It was generally believed that staring fixedly at the golden horns on the temple roof while uttering the prayer gave it added potency. Where the presence of the tortoise was dimly registered as a bang on the ankle, it was disposed of by an automatic prod with the other foot.
“…my wife, who is sick with the…”
“Right!”
Kick—
“…make clean the well in our village, which is foul with…”
“You got it!”
Kick—
“…every year the locusts come, and…”
“I promise, only…!”
Kick—
“…lost upon the seas these five months…”
“…stop kicking me!”
The tortoise landed, right side up, in a brief, clear space.
Visible…
So much of animal life is the recognition of pattern, the shapes of hunter and hunted. To the casual eye the forest is, well, just forest; to the eye of the dove it is so much unimportant fuzzy green background to the hawk which you did not notice on the branch of a tree. To the tiny dot of the hunting buzzard in the heights, the whole panorama of the world is just a fog compared to the scurrying prey in the grass.
From his perch on the Horns themselves, the eagle leapt into the sky.
Fortunately, the same awareness of shapes that made the tortoise so prominent in a square full of scurrying humans made the tortoise’s one eye swivel upwards in dread anticipation.
Eagles are single-minded creatures. Once the idea of lunch is fixed in their mind, it tends to remain there until satisfied.
There were two Divine Legionaries outside Vorbis’s quarters. They looked sideways at Brutha as he knocked timorously at the door, as if looking for a reason to assault him.
A small gray priest opened the door and ushered Brutha into a small, barely furnished room. He pointed meaningfully at a stool.
Brutha sat down. The priest vanished behind a curtain. Brutha took one glance around the room and—
Blackness engulfed him. Before he could move, and Brutha’s reflexes were not well coordinated at the best of times, a voice by his ear said, “Now, brother, do not panic. I order you not to panic.”
There was cloth in front of Brutha’s face.
“Just nod, boy.”
Brutha nodded. They put a hood over your face. All the novices knew that. Stories were told in the dormitories. They put a cloth over your face so the inquisitors didn’t know who they were working on…
“Good. Now, we are going into the next room. Be careful where you tread.”
Hands guided him upright and across the floor. Through the mists of incomprehension he felt the brush of the curtain, and then was jolted
down some steps and into a sandy-floored room. The hands spun him a few times, firmly but without apparent ill-will, and then led him along a passageway. There was the swish of another curtain, and then the indefinable sense of a larger space.
Afterward, long afterward, Brutha realized: there was no terror. A hood had been slipped over his head in the room of the head of the Quisition, and it never occurred to him to be terrified. Because he had faith.
“There is a stool behind you. Be seated.”
Brutha sat.
“You may remove the hood.”
Brutha removed the hood.
He blinked.
Seated on stools at the far end of the room, with a Holy Legionary on either side of them, were three figures. He recognized the aquiline face of Deacon Vorbis; the other two were a short and stocky man, and a very fat one. Not heavily built, like Brutha, but a genuine lard tub. All three wore plain gray robes.
There was no sign of any branding irons, or even of scalpels.
All three were staring intently.
“Novice Brutha?” said Vorbis.
Brutha nodded.
Vorbis gave a light laugh, the kind made by very intelligent people when they think of something that probably isn’t very amusing.
“And, of course, one day we shall have to call you Brother Brutha,” he said. “Or even Father Brutha? Rather confusing, I think. Best to be avoided. I think we shall have to see to it that you become Subdeacon Brutha just as soon as possible; what do you think of that?”
Brutha did not think anything of it. He was vaguely aware that advancement was being discussed, but his mind had gone blank.
“Anyway, enough of this,” said Vorbis, with the slight exasperation of someone who realizes that he is going to have to do a lot of work in this conversation. “Do you recognize these learned fathers on my left and right?”
Brutha shook his head.
“Good. They have some questions to ask you.”
Brutha nodded.
The very fat man leaned forward.
“Do you have a tongue, boy?”
Brutha nodded. And then, feeling that perhaps this wasn’t enough, presented it for inspection.
Vorbis laid a restraining hand on the fat man’s arm.
“I think our young friend is a little overawed,” he said mildly.
He smiled.
“Now, Brutha—please put it away—I am going to ask you some questions. Do you understand?”
Brutha nodded.
“When you first came into my apartments, you were for a few seconds in the anteroom. Please describe it to me.”
Brutha stared frog-eyed at him. But the turbines of recollection ground into life without his volition, pouring their words into the forefront of his mind.
“It is a room about three meters square. With white walls. There is sand on the floor except in the corner by the door, where the flagstones are visible. There is a window on the opposite wall, about two meters up. There were three bars in the window. There is a three-legged stool. There is a holy icon of the Prophet Ossory, carved from aphacia wood and set with silver leaf. There is a scratch in the bottom left-hand corner of the frame. There is a shelf under the window. There is nothing on the shelf but a tray.”
Vorbis steepled his long thin fingers in front of his nose.
“On the tray?” he said.
“I am sorry, lord?”
“What was on the tray, my son?”
Images whirled in front of Brutha’s eyes.
“On the tray was a thimble. A bronze thimble. And two needles. On the tray was a length of cord. There were knots in the cord. Three knots. And nine coins were on the tray. There was a silver cup on the tray, decorated with a pattern of aphacia leaves. There was a long dagger, I think it was steel, with a black handle with seven ridges on it. There was a small piece of black cloth on the tray. There was a stylus and a slate—”
“Tell me about the coins,” murmured Vorbis.
“Three of them were Citadel cents,” said Brutha promptly. “Two were showing the Horns, and one the sevenfold-crown. Four of the coins were very small and golden. There was lettering on them which…which I could not read, but which if you were to give me a stylus I think I could—”
“This is some sort of trick?” said the fat man.
“I assure you,” said Vorbis, “the boy could have seen the entire room for no more than a second. Brutha…tell us about the other coins.”
“The other coins were large. They were bronze. They were derechmi from Ephebe.”
“How do you know this? They are hardly common in the Citadel.”
“I have seen them once before, lord.”
“When was this?”
Brutha’s face screwed up with effort.
“I am not sure—” he said.
The fat man beamed at Vorbis.
“Hah,” he said.
“I think…” said Brutha “…it was in the afternoon. But it may have been the morning. Around midday. On Grune 3, in the year of the Astounded Beetle. Some merchants came to our village.”
“How old were you at that time?” said Vorbis.
“I was within one month of three years old, lord.”
“I don’t believe this,” said the fat man.
Brutha’s mouth opened and shut once or twice. How did the fat man know? He hadn’t been there!
“You could be wrong, my son,” said Vorbis. “You are a well-grown lad of…what…seventeen, eighteen years? We feel you could not really recall a chance glimpse of a foreign coin fifteen years ago.”
“We think that you are making it up,” said the fat man.
Brutha said nothing. Why make anything up? When it was just sitting there in his head.
“Can you remember everything that’s ever happened to you?” said the stocky man, who had been watching Brutha carefully throughout the exchange. Brutha was glad of the interruption.
“No, lord. Most things.”
“You forget things?”
“Uh. There are sometimes things I don’t remember.” Brutha had heard about forgetfulness, although he found it hard to imagine. But there were times in his life, in the first few years of his life especially, when there was…nothing. Not an attrition of memory, but great locked rooms in the mansion of his recollection. Not forgotten, any more than a locked room ceases to exist, but…locked.
“What is the first thing you can remember, my son?” said Vorbis, kindly.
“There was a bright light, and then someone hit me,” said Brutha.
The three men stared at him blankly. Then they turned to one another. Brutha, through the misery of his terror, heard snatches of whispering.
“…is there to lose?…” “Foolishness and probably demonic…” “Stakes are high…” “One chance, and they will be expecting us…”
And so on.
He looked around the room.
Furnishing was not a priority in the Citadel. Shelves, stools, tables…There was a rumor among the novices that priests towards the top of the hierarchy had golden furniture, but there was no sign of it here. The room was as severe as anything in the novices’ quarters although it had, perhaps, a more opulent severity; it wasn’t the forced bareness of poverty, but the starkness of intent.
“My son?”
Brutha looked back hurriedly.
Vorbis glanced at his colleagues. The stocky man nodded. The fat man shrugged.
“Brutha,” said Vorbis, “return to your dormitory now. Before you go, one of the servants will give you something to eat, and a drink. You will report to the Gate of Horns at dawn tomorrow, and you will come with me to Ephebe. You know about the delegation to Ephebe?”
Brutha shook his head.
“Perhaps there is no reason why you should,” said Vorbis. “We are going to discuss political matters with the Tyrant. Do you understand?”
Brutha shook his head.
“Good,” said Vorbis. “Very good. Oh, and—Brutha?”
“Yes,
lord?”
“You will forget this meeting. You have not been in this room. You have not seen us here.”
Brutha gaped at him. This was nonsense. You couldn’t forget things just by wishing. Some things forgot themselves—the things in those locked rooms—but that was because of some mechanism he could not access. What did this man mean?
“Yes, lord,” he said.
It seemed the simplest way.
Gods have no one to pray to.
The Great God Om scurried towards the nearest statue, neck stretched, inefficient legs pumping. The statue happened to be himself as a bull, trampling an infidel, although this was no great comfort.
It was only a matter of time before the eagle stopped circling and swooped.
Om had been a tortoise for only three years, but with the shape he had inherited a grab-bag of instincts, and a lot of them centered around a total terror of the one wild creature that had found out how to eat tortoise.
Gods have no one to pray to.
Om really wished that this was not the case.
But everyone needs someone.
“Brutha!”
Brutha was a little uncertain about his immediate future. Deacon Vorbis had clearly cut him loose from his chores as a novice, but he had nothing to do for the rest of the afternoon.
He gravitated towards the garden. There were beans to tie up, and he welcomed the fact. You knew where you were with beans. They didn’t tell you to do impossible things, like forget. Besides, if he was going to be away for a while, he ought to mulch the melons and explain things to Lu-Tze.
Lu-Tze came with the gardens.
Every organization has someone like him. They might be pushing a broom in obscure corridors, or wandering among the shelves in the back of the stores (where they are the only person who knows where anything is) or have some ambiguous but essential relationship with the boiler-room. Everyone knows who they are and no one remembers a time when they weren’t there, or knows where they go when they’re not, well, where they usually are. Just occasionally, people who are slightly more observant than most other people, which is not on the face of it very difficult, stop and wonder about them for a while…and then get on with something else.
Small Gods: Discworld Novel, A Page 6
