"Well . . . it's not entirely like that now."
"Just so long as it all turns out all right in the end," said the abbot.
"Yes, lord," said the history monk.
"There are a few weeks before your next assignment. Why don't you have a little rest?"
"Thank you, lord. I thought I might go down to the forest and watch a few falling trees."
"Good practice. Good practice. Mind always on the job, eh?"
As Lu-Tze left, the abbot glanced up at his opponent.
"Good man, that," he said. "Your move."
The opponent looked long and hard at the board.
The abbot waited to see what long-term, devious strategies were being evolved. Then his opponent tapped a piece with a bony finger.
REMIND ME AGAIN, he said. HOW THE LITTLE HORSESHAPED ONES MOVE.
Eventually Brutha died, in unusual circumstances.
He had reached a great age, but this at least was not unusual in the Church. As he said, you had to keep busy, every day.
He rose at dawn, and wandered over to the window. He liked to watch the sunrise.
They hadn't got around to replacing the Temple doors. Apart from anything else, even Urn hadn't been able to think of a way of removing the weirdly contorted heap of molten metal. So they'd just built steps over them. And after a year or two people had quite accepted it, and said it was probably a symbol. Not of anything, exactly, but still a symbol. Definitely symbolic.
But the sun did shine off the copper dome of the Library. Brutha made a mental note to enquire about the progress of the new wing. There were too many complaints about overcrowding these days.
People came from everywhere to visit the Library. It was the biggest non-magical library in the world. Half the philosophers of Ephebe seemed to live there now, and Omnia was even producing one or two of its own. And even priests were coming to spend some time in it, because of the collection of religious books. There were one thousand, two hundred and eighty-three religious books in there now, each one-according to itself-the only book any man need ever read. It was sort of nice to see them all together. As Didactylos used to say, you had to laugh.
Ix was while Brutha was eating his breakfast that the subdeacon whose job it was to read him his appointments for the day, and tactfully make sure he wasn't wearing his underpants on the outside, shyly offered him congratulations.
"Mmm?" said Brutha, his gruel dripping off the spoon.
"One hundred years," said the subdeacon. "Since you walked in the desert, Sir."
"Really? I thought it was, mm, fifty years? Can't be more than sixty years, boy."
"Uh, one hundred years, lord. We had a look in the records."
"Really. One hundred years? One hundred years' time?" Brutha laid down his spoon very carefully, and stared at the plain white wall opposite him. The subdeacon found himself turning to see what it was the Cenobiarch was looking at, but there was nothing, only the whiteness of the wall.
"One hundred years," mused Brutha. "Mmm. Good lord. I forgot." He laughed. "I forgot. One hundred years, eh? But here and now, we-”
The subdeacon turned round.
"Cenobiarch?"
He stepped closer, the blood draining from his face.
"Lord?"
He turned and ran for help.
Brutha's body toppled forward almost gracefully, smacking into the table. The bowl overturned, and 'gruel dripped down on to the floor.
And then Brutha stood up, without a second glance at his corpse.
"Hah. I wasn't expecting you," he said.
Death stopped leaning against the wall.
HOW FORTUNATE YOU WERE.
"But there's still such a lot to be done . . ."
YES. THERE ALWAYS IS.
Brutha followed the gaunt figure through the wall where, instead of the privy that occupied the far side in normal space, there was . . .
. . . black sand.
The light was brilliant, crystalline, in a black sky filled with stars.
"Ah. There really is a desert. Does everyone get this?" said Brutha.
WHO KNOWS?
"And what is at the end of the desert?"
JUDGEMENT.
Brutha considered this.
"Which end?"
Death grinned and stepped aside.
What Brutha had thought vas a rock in the sand was a hunched figure, sitting clutching its knees. It looked paralyzed with fear.
He stared.
"Vorbis?" he said.
He looked at Death.
"But Vorbis died a hundred years ago!"
YES. HE HAD TO WALK IT ALL ALONE. ALL ALONE WITH HIMSELF. IF HE DARED.
"He's been here for a hundred years?"
POSSIBLY NOT. TIME IS DIFFERENT HERE. IT IS . . . MORE PERSONAL.
"Ah. You mean a hundred years can pass like a few seconds?"
A HUNDRED YEARS CAN PASS LIKE INFINITY.
The black-on-black eyes stared imploringly at Brutha, who reached out automatically, without thinking . . . and then hesitated.
HE WAS A MURDERER, said Death. AND A CREATOR OF MURDERERS. A TORTURER. WITHOUT PASSION. CRUEL. CALLOUS. COMPASSIONLESS.
"Yes. I know. He's Vorbis," said Brutha. Vorbis changed people. Sometimes he changed them into dead people. But he always changed them. That was his triumph.
He sighed.
"But I'm me," he said.
Vorbis stood up, uncertainly, and followed Brutha across the desert.
Death watched them walk away.
Notes
1
Or, if you are a believer in Omnianism, the Pole.
(<< back)
2
Which were of the one-size-fits-all, tighten-the-screws variety.
(<< back)
3
Or would have done. If he had been there. But he wasn't. So he couldn't.
(<< back)
4
It takes forty men with their feet on the ground to keep one man with his head in the air.
(<< back)
5
Words are the litmus paper of the mind. If you find yourself in the power of someone who will use the word "commence" in cold blood, go somewhere else very quickly. But if they say "Enter," don't stop to pack.
(<< back)
6
Provided that he wasn't poor, foreign, nor disqualified by reason of being mad, frivolous, or a woman.
(<< back)
7
i.e., before the inhabitants had let goats graze everywhere. Nothing makes a desert like a goat.
(<< back)
8
But not enough.
(<< back)
9
Like many early thinkers, the Ephebians believed that thoughts originated in the heart and that the brain was merely a device to cool the blood.
(<< back)
10
Fasta Benj's people had no word for war, since they had no one to fight and life was quite tough enough as it was. P'Tang-P'tang's words had arrived as: "remember when Pacha Moj hit his uncle with big rock? Like that, only more worse."
(<< back)
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Small Gods tds-13 Page 30
