Small Gods tds-13

by Terry David John Pratchett

"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 threeand-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 threeand-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 generally hard to get, whereas fighting tends to turn up all the time.

  There was a bowl of fruit in Brutha's cell, and a plate of cold meat. But first things first. He fished the God out of the box.

  "There's fruit," he said. "What're these berries?" "Grapes," said Om. "Raw material for wine."

  "You mentioned that word before. What does it mean?"

  There was a cry from outside.

  "Brutha! "

  "That's Vorbis. I'll have to go."

  Vorbis was standing in the middle of his cell.

  "Have you eaten anything?" he demanded.

  "No, lord."

  "Fruit and meat, Brutha. And this is a fast day. They seek to insult us!"

  "Um. Perhaps they don't know that it is a fast day?" Brutha hazarded.

  "Ignorance is itself a sin," said Vorbis.

  "Ossory VII, verse 4," said Brutha automatically.

  Vorbis smiled and patted Brutha's shoulder.

  "You are a walking book, Brutha. The Septateuch perambulatus. "

  Brutha looked down at his sandals.

  He's right, he thought. And I had forgotten. Or at least, not wanted to remember.

  And then he heard his own thoughts echoed back to him: it's fruit and meat and bread, that's all. That's all it is. Fast days and feast days and Prophets' Days and bread days . . . who cares? A God whose only concern about food now is that it's low enough to reach?

  I wish he wouldn't keep patting my shoulder.

  Vorbis turned away.

  "Shall I remind the others?" Brutha said.

  "No. Our ordained brothers will not, of course, require reminding. A
s for soldiers . . . a little licence, perhaps, is allowable this far from home . . ."

  Brutha wandered back to his cell.

  Om was still on the table, staring fixedly at the melon.

  "I nearly committed a terrible sin," said Brutha. "I nearly ate fruit on a fruitless day."

  "That's a terrible thing, a terrible thing," said Om. "Now cut the melon."

  "But it is forbidden!" said Brutha.

  "No it's not," said Om. "Cut the melon."

  "But it was the eating of fruit that caused passion to invade the world," said Brutha.

  "All it caused was flatulence," said Om. "Cut the melon!"

  "You're tempting me!"

  "No I'm not. I'm giving you permission. Special dispensation! Cut the damn melon!"

  "Only a bishop or higher is allowed to giv-” Brutha began. And then he stopped.

  Om glared at him.

  "Yes. Exactly," he said. "And now cut the melon." His tone softened a bit. "If it makes you feel any better, I shall declare that it is bread. I happen to be the God in this immediate vicinity. I can call it what I damn well like. It's bread. Right? Now cut the damn melon."

  "Loaf," corrected Brutha.

  "Right. And give me a slice without any seeds in it.

  Brutha did so, a bit carefully.

  "And eat up quick," said Om.

  "In case Vorbis finds us?"

  "Because you've got to go and find a philosopher," said Om. The fact that his mouth was full didn't make any difference to his voice in Brutha's mind. "You know, melons grow wild in the wilderness. Not big ones like this. Little green jobs. Skin like leather. Can't bite through 'em. The years I've spent eating dead leaves a goat'd spit out, right next to a crop of melons. Melons should have thinner skins. Remember that."

  "Find a philosopher?"

  "Right. Someone who knows how to think. Someone who can help me stop being a tortoise."

  "But . . . Vorbis might want me."

  "You're just going for a stroll. No problem. And hurry up. There's other gods in Ephebe. I don't want to meet them right now. Not looking like this."

  Brutha looked panicky.

  "How do I find a philosopher?" he said.

  "Around here? Throw a brick, I should think."

  The labyrinth of Ephebe is ancient and full of one hundred and one amazing things you can do with hidden springs, razor-sharp knives, and falling rocks. There isn't just one guide through it. There are six, and each one knows his way through one-sixth of the labyrinth. Every year they have a special competition, when they do a little redesigning. They vie with one another to see who can make his section even more deadly than the others to the casual wanderer. There's a panel of judges, and a small prize.

  The furthest anyone ever got through the labyrinth without a guide was nineteen paces. Well, more or less. His head rolled a further seven paces, but that probably doesn't count.

  At each changeover point there is a small chamber without any traps at all. What it does contain is a small bronze bell. These are the little waiting-rooms where visitors are handed on to the next guide. And here and there, set high in the tunnel roof over the more ingenious traps, are observation windows, because guards like a good laugh as much as anyone else.

  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 round 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 to 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 alltime 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 Foorgol," 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.