Small Gods: Discworld Novel, A

by Terry Pratchett

  All of this was totally lost on Brutha, who padded amiably along the tunnels and corridors without really thinking much about it, and at last pushed open the gate into the late evening air.

  It was fragrant with the scent of flowers. Moths whirred through the gloom.

  “What do philosophers look like?” said Brutha, “When they’re not having a bath, I mean.”

  “They do a lot of thinking,” said Om. “Look for someone with a strained expression.”

  “That might just mean constipation.”

  “Well, so long as they’re philosophical about it…”

  The city of Ephebe surrounded them. Dogs barked. Somewhere a cat yowled. There was that general susurration of small comfortable sounds that shows that, out there, a lot of people are living their lives.

  And then a door burst open down the street and there was the cracking noise of a quite large wine amphora being broken over someone’s head.

  A skinny old man in a toga picked himself up from the cobbles where he had landed, and glared at the doorway.

  “I’m telling you, listen, a finite intellect, right, cannot by means of comparison reach the absolute truth of things, because being by nature indivisible, truth excludes the concepts of “more” or “less” so that nothing but truth itself can be the exact measure of truth. You bastards,” he said.

  Someone from inside the building said, “Oh yeah? Sez you.”

  The old man ignored Brutha but, with great difficulty, pulled a cobblestone loose and hefted it in his hand.

  Then he dived back through the doorway. There was a distant scream of rage.

  “Ah. Philosophy,” said Om.

  Brutha peered cautiously around the door.

  Inside the room two groups of very nearly identical men in togas were trying to hold back two of their colleagues. It is a scene repeated a million times a day in bars around the multiverse—both would-be fighters growled and grimaced at one another and fought to escape the restraint of their friends, only of course they did not fight too hard, because there is nothing worse than actually succeeding in breaking free and suddenly finding yourself all alone in the middle of the ring with a madman who is about to hit you between the eyes with a rock.

  “Yep,” said Om, “that’s philosophy, right enough.”

  “But they’re fighting!”

  “A full and free exchange of opinions, yes.”

  Now that Brutha could get a clearer view, he could see that there were one or two differences between the men. One had a shorter beard, and was very red in the face, and was waggling a finger accusingly.

  “He bloody well accused me of slander!” he was shouting.

  “I didn’t!” shouted the other man.

  “You did! You did! Tell ’em what you said!”

  “Look, I merely suggested, to indicate the nature of paradox, right, that if Xeno the Ephebian said, ‘All Ephebians are liars—’”

  “See? See? He did it again!”

  “—no, no, listen, listen…then, since Xeno is himself an Ephebian, this would mean that he himself is a liar and therefore—”

  Xeno made a determined effort to break free, dragging four desperate fellow philosophers across the floor.

  “I’m going to lay one right on you, pal!”

  Brutha said, “Excuse me, please?”

  The philosophers froze. Then they turned to look at Brutha. They relaxed by degrees. There was a chorus of embarrassed coughs.

  “Are you all philosophers?” said Brutha.

  The one called Xeno stepped forward, adjusting the hang of his toga.

  “That’s right,” he said. “We’re philosophers. We think, therefore we am.”

  “Are,” said the luckless paradox manufacturer automatically.

  Xeno spun around. “I’ve just about had it up to here with you, Ibid!” he roared. He turned back to Brutha. “We are, therefore we am,” he said confidently. “That’s it.”

  Several of the philosophers looked at one another with interest.

  “That’s actually quite interesting,” one said. “The evidence of our existence is the fact of our existence, is that what you’re saying?”

  “Shut up,” said Xeno, without looking around.

  “Have you been fighting?” said Brutha.

  The assembled philosophers assumed various expressions of shock and horror.

  “Fighting? Us? We’re philosophers,” said Ibid, shocked.

  “My word, yes,” said Xeno.

  “But you were—” Brutha began.

  Xeno waved a hand.

  “The cut and thrust of debate,” he said.

  “Thesis plus antithesis equals hysteresis,” said Ibid. “The stringent testing of the universe. The hammer of the intellect upon the anvil of fundamental truth—”

  “Shut up,” said Xeno. “And what can we do for you, young man?”

  “Ask them about gods,” Om prompted.

  “Uh, I want to find out about gods,” said Brutha.

  The philosophers looked at one another.

  “Gods?” said Xeno. “We don’t bother with gods. Huh. Relics of an outmoded belief system, gods.”

  There was a rumble of thunder from the clear evening sky.

  “Except for Blind Io the Thunder God,” Xeno went on, his tone hardly changing.

  Lightning flashed across the sky.

  “And Cubal the Fire God,” said Xeno.

  A gust of wind rattled the windows.

  “Flatulus the God of the Winds, he’s all right too,” said Xeno.

  An arrow materialized out of the air and hit the table by Xeno’s hand.

  “Fedecks the Messenger of the Gods, one of the all-time greats,” said Xeno.

  A bird appeared in the doorway. At least, it looked vaguely like a bird. It was about a foot high, black and white, with a bent beak and an expression that suggested that whatever it was it really dreaded ever happening to it had already happened.

  “What’s that?” said Brutha.

  “A penguin,” said the voice of Om inside his head.

  “Patina the Goddess of Wisdom? One of the best,” said Xeno.

  The penguin croaked at him and waddled off into the darkness.

  The philosophers looked very embarrassed. Then Ibid said, “Foorgol the God of Avalanches? Where’s the snowline?”

  “Two hundred miles away,” said someone.

  They waited. Nothing happened.

  “Relic of an outmoded belief system,” said Xeno.

  A wall of freezing white death did not appear anywhere in Ephebe.

  “Mere unthinking personification of a natural force,” said one of the philosophers, in a louder voice. They all seemed to feel a lot better about this.

  “Primitive nature worship.”

  “Wouldn’t give you tuppence for him.”

  “Simple rationalization of the unknown.”

  “Hah! A clever fiction, a bogey to frighten the weak and stupid!”

  The words rose up in Brutha. He couldn’t stop himself.

  “Is it always this cold?” he said. “It seemed very chilly on my way here.”

  The philosophers all moved away from Xeno.

  “Although if there’s one thing you can say about Foorgal,” said Xeno, “it’s that he’s a very understanding god. Likes a joke as much as the next…man.”

  He looked both ways, quickly. After a while the philosophers relaxed, and seemed to completely forget about Brutha.

  And only now did he really have time to take in the room. He had never seen a tavern before in his life, but that was what it was. The bar ran along one side of the room. Behind it were the typical trappings of an Ephebian bar—the stacks of wine jars, racks of amphorae, and the cheery pictures of vestal virgins on cards of salted peanuts and goat jerky, pinned up in the hope that there really were people in the world who would slatheringly buy more and more packets of nuts they didn’t want in order to look at a cardboard nipple.

  “What’s all this stuff?�
�� Brutha whispered.

  “How should I know?” said Om. “Let me out so’s I can see.”

  Brutha unfastened the box and lifted the tortoise out. One rheumy eye looked around.

  “Oh. Typical tavern,” said Om. “Good. Mine’s a saucer of whatever they were drinking.”

  “A tavern? A place were alcohol is drunk?”

  “I very much intend this to be the case, yes.”

  “But…but…the Septateuch, no less than seventeen times, adjures us most emphatically to refrain from—”

  “Beats the hell out of me why,” said Om. “See that man cleaning the mugs? You say unto him, Give me a—”

  “But it mocks the mind of Man, says the Prophet Ossory. And—”

  “I’ll say this one more time! I never said it! Now talk to the man!”

  In fact the man talked to Brutha. He appeared magically on the other side of the bar, still wiping a mug.

  “Evening, sir,” he said. “What’ll it be?”

  “I’d like a drink of water, please,” said Brutha, very deliberately.

  “And something for the tortoise?”

  “Wine!” said the voice of Om.

  “I don’t know,” said Brutha. “What do tortoises usually drink?”

  “The ones we have in here normally have a drop of milk with some bread in it,” said the barman.

  “You get a lot of tortoises?” said Brutha loudly, trying to drown out Om’s outraged screams.

  “Oh, a very useful philosophical animal, your average tortoise. Outrunning metaphorical arrows, beating hares in races…very handy.”

  “Uh…I haven’t got any money,” said Brutha.

  The barman leaned towards him. “Tell you what,” he said. “Declivities has just bought a round. He won’t mind.”

  “Bread and milk?”

  “Oh. Thank you. Thank you very much.”

  “Oh, we get all sorts in here,” said the barman, leaning back. “Stoics. Cynics. Big drinkers, the Cynics. Epicureans. Stochastics. Anamaxandrites. Epistemologists. Peripatetics. Synoptics. All sorts. That’s what I always say. What I always say is”—he picked up another mug and started to dry it—“it takes all sorts to make a world.”

  “Bread and milk!” shouted Om. “You’ll feel my wrath for this, right? Now ask him about gods!”

  “Tell me,” said Brutha, sipping his mug of water, “do any of them know much about gods?”

  “You’d want a priest for that sort of thing,” said the barman.

  “No, I mean about…what gods are…how gods came to exist…that sort of thing,” said Brutha, trying to get to grips with the barman’s peculiar mode of conversation.

  “Gods don’t like that sort of thing,” said the barman. “We get that in here some nights, when someone’s had a few. Cosmic speculation about whether gods really exist. Next thing, there’s a bolt of lightning through the roof with a note wrapped around it saying ‘Yes, we do’ and a pair of sandals with smoke coming out. That sort of thing, it takes all the interest out of metaphysical speculation.”

  “Not even fresh bread,” muttered Om, nose deep in his saucer.

  “No, I know gods exist all right,” said Brutha, hurriedly. “I just want to find out more about…them.”

  The barman shrugged.

  “Then I’d be obliged if you don’t stand next to anything valuable,” he said, “Still, it’ll all be the same in a hundred years.” He picked up another mug and started to polish it.

  “Are you a philosopher?” said Brutha.

  “It kind of rubs off on you after a while,” said the barman.

  “This milk’s off,” said Om. “They say Ephebe is a democracy. This milk ought to be allowed to vote.”

  “I don’t think,” said Brutha carefully, “that I’m going to find what I want here. Um. Mr. Drink Seller?”

  “Yes?”

  “What was that bird that walked in when the Goddess”—he tasted the unfamiliar word—“of Wisdom was mentioned?”

  “Bit of a problem there,” said the barman. “Bit of an embarrassment.”

  “Sorry?”

  “It was,” said the barman, “a penguin.”

  “Is it a wise sort of bird, then?”

  “No. Not a lot,” said the barman. “Not known for its wisdom. Second most confused bird in the world. Can only fly underwater, they say.”

  “Then why—”

  “We don’t like to talk about it,” said the barman. “It upsets people. Bloody sculptor,” he added, under his breath.

  Down the other end of the bar the philosophers had started fighting again.

  The barman leaned forward. “If you haven’t got any money,” he said, “I don’t think you’re going to get much help. Talk isn’t cheap around here.”

  “But they just—” Brutha began.

  “There’s the expenditure on soap and water, for a start. Towels. Flannels. Loofahs. Pumice stones. Bath salts. It all adds up.”

  There was a gurgling noise from the saucer. Om’s milky head turned to Brutha.

  “You’ve got no money at all?” he said.

  “No,” said Brutha.

  “Well, we’ve got to have a philosopher,” said the tortoise flatly. “I can’t think and you don’t know how to. We’ve got to find someone who does it all the time.”

  “Of course, you could try old Didactylos,” said the barman. “He’s about as cheap as they come.”

  “Doesn’t use expensive soap?” said Brutha.

  “I think it could be said without fear of contradiction,” said the barman solemnly, “that he doesn’t use any soap at all whatsoever in any way.”

  “Oh. Well. Thank you,” said Brutha.

  “Ask him where this man lives,” Om commanded.

  “Where can I find Mr. Didactylos?” said Brutha.

  “In the palace courtyard. Next door to the Library. You can’t miss him. Just follow your nose.”

  “We just came—” Brutha said, but his inner voice prompted him not to complete the sentence. “We’ll just be going then.”

  “Don’t forget your tortoise,” said the barman. “There’s good eating on one of them.”

  “May all your wine turn to water!” Om shrieked.

  “Will it?” said Brutha, as they stepped out into the night.

  “No.”

  “Tell me again. Why exactly are we looking for a philosopher?” said Brutha.

  “I want to get my power back,” said Om.

  “But everyone believes in you!”

  “If they believed in me they could talk to me. I could talk to them. I don’t know what’s gone wrong. No one is worshiping any other gods in Omnia, are they?”

  “They wouldn’t be allowed to,” said Brutha. “The Quisition would see to that.”

  “Yeah. It’s hard to kneel if you have no knees.”

  Brutha stopped in the empty street.

  “I don’t understand you!”

  “You’re not supposed to. The ways of gods aren’t supposed to be understandable to men.”

  “The Quisition keeps us on the path of truth! The Quisition works for the greater glory of the Church!”

  “And you believe that, do you?” said the tortoise.

  Brutha looked, and found that certainty had gone missing. He opened and shut his mouth, but there were no words to be said.

  “Come on,” said Om, as kindly as he could manage. “Let’s get back.”

  In the middle of the night Om awoke. There were noises from Brutha’s bed.

  Brutha was praying again.

  Om listened curiously. He could remember prayers. There had been a lot of them, once. So many that he couldn’t make out an individual prayer even if he had felt inclined to, but that didn’t matter, because what mattered was the huge cosmic susurration of thousands of praying, believing minds. The words weren’t worth listening to, anyway.

  Humans! They lived in a world where the grass continued to be green and the sun rose every day and flowers regularly turned
into fruit, and what impressed them? Weeping statues. And wine made out of water! A mere quantum-mechanistic tunnel effect, that’d happen anyway if you were prepared to wait zillions of years. As if the turning of sunlight into wine, by means of vines and grapes and time and enzymes, wasn’t a thousand times more impressive and happened all the time…

  Well, he couldn’t even do the most basic of god tricks now. Thunderbolts with about the same effect as the spark off a cat’s fur, and you could hardly smite anyone with one of those. He had smitten good and hard in his time. Now he could just about walk through water and feed the One.

  Brutha’s prayer was a piccolo tune in a world of silence.

  Om waited until the novice was quiet again and then unfolded his legs and walked out, rocking from side to side, into the dawn.

  The Ephebians walked through the palace courtyards, surrounding the Omnians almost, but not quite, in the manner of a prisoners’ escort.

  Brutha could see that Vorbis was boiling with fury. A small vein on the side of the exquisitor’s bald temple was throbbing.

  As if feeling Brutha’s eyes on him, Vorbis turned his head.

  “You seem ill at ease this morning, Brutha,” he said.

  “Sorry, lord.”

  “You seem to be looking into every corner. What are you expecting to find?”

  “Uh. Just interested, lord. Everything’s new.”

  “All the so-called wisdom of Ephebe is not worth one line from the least paragraph in the Septateuch,” said Vorbis.

  “May we not study the works of the infidel in order to be more alert to the ways of heresy?” said Brutha, surprised at himself.

  “Ah. A persuasive argument, Brutha, and one that the inquisitors have heard many times, if a little indistinctly in many cases.”

  Vorbis glowered at the back of the head of Aristocrates, who was leading the party. “It is but a small step from listening to heresy to questioning established truth, Brutha. Heresy is often fascinating. Therein lies its danger.”

  “Yes, lord.”

  “Hah! And not only do they carve forbidden statues, but they can’t even do it properly.”

  Brutha was no expert, but even he had to agree that this was true. Now the novelty of them had worn off, the statues that decorated every niche in the palace did have a certain badly made look. Brutha was pretty sure he’d just passed one with two left arms. Another one had one ear larger than the other. It wasn’t that someone had set out to carve ugly gods. They had clearly been meant to be quite attractive statues. But the sculptor hadn’t been much good at it.