Small Gods

rising from the hole was also wearing a filthy robe, there was no mistaking the paintbrush hairstyle.
    He tried to say “Urn?”
    “Shut up, you,” said the other man, pressing the knife to his throat.
    “Brutha?” said Urn. “You’re alive?”
    Brutha moved his eyes from his captor to Urn in a way which he hoped would indicate that it was too soon to make any commitment on this point.
    “He’s all right,” said Urn.
    “All right? He’s a priest!”
    “But he’s on our side. Aren’t you, Brutha?”
    Brutha tried to nod, and thought: I’m on everyone’s side. It’d be nice if, just for once, someone was on mine.
    The hand was unclamped from his mouth, but the knife remained resting on his throat. Brutha’s normally careful thought processes ran like quicksilver.
    “The Turtle Moves?” he ventured.
    The knife was withdrawn, with obvious reluctance.
    “I don’t trust him,” said the man. “We should shove him down the hole at least.”
    “Brutha’s one of us,” said Urn.
    “That’s right. That’s right ,” said Brutha. “Which ones are you?”
    Urn leaned closer.
    “How’s your memory?”
    “Unfortunately, it is fine.”
    “Good. Good. Uh. It would be a good idea to stay out of trouble, d’you hear…if anything happens. Remember the Turtle. Well, of course you would.”
    “What things?”
    Urn patted him on the shoulder, making Brutha think for a moment of Vorbis. Vorbis, who never touched another person inside his head, was a great toucher with his hands.
    “Best if you don’t know what’s happening,” said Urn.
    “But I don’t know what’s happening,” said Brutha.
    “Good. That’s the way.”
    The burly man gestured with his knife towards the tunnels that led into the rock.
    “Are we going, or what?” he demanded.
    Urn ran after him and then stopped briefly and turned.
    “Be careful,” he said. “We need what’s in your head!”
    Brutha watched them go.
    “So do I,” he murmured.
    And then he was alone again.
    But he thought: Hold on. I don’t have to be. I’m a bishop. At least I can watch. Om’s gone and soon the world will end, so at least I might as well watch it happen.
    Sandals flapping, Brutha set off towards the Place.
    Bishops move diagonally. That’s why they often turn up where the kings don’t expect them to be.

    “You godawful idiot! Don’t go that way!”
    The sun was well up now. In fact it was probably setting, if Didactylos’s theories about the speed of light were correct, but in matters of relativity the point of view of the observer is very important, and from Om’s point of view the sun was a golden ball in a flaming orange sky.
    He pulled himself up another slope, and stared blearily at the distant Citadel. In his mind’s eye, he could hear the mocking voices of all small gods.
    They didn’t like a god who had failed. They didn’t like that at all. It let them all down. It reminded them of mortality. He’d be thrust out into the deep desert, where no one would ever come. Ever. Until the end of the world.
    He shivered in his shell.

    Urn and Fergmen walked nonchalantly through the tunnels of the Citadel, using the kind of nonchalant walk which, had there been anyone to take an interest in it, would have drawn detailed and arrow-sharp attention to them within seconds. But the only people around were those with vital jobs to do. Besides, it was not a good idea to stare too hard at the guards, in case they stared back.
    Simony had told Urn he’d agreed to this. He couldn’t quite remember doing so. The sergeant knew a way into the Citadel, that was sensible. And Urn knew about hydraulics. Fine. Now he was walking through these dry tunnels with his toolbelt clinking. There was a logical connection, but it had been made by someone else.
    Fergmen turned a corner and stopped by a large grille, which stretched from floor to ceiling. It was very rusty. It might once have been a door—there was a suggestion of hinges, rusted into the stone. Urn peered through the bars. Beyond, in the gloom, there were pipes.
    “Eureka,” he said.
    “Going to have a bath, then?” said Fergmen.
    “Just keep watch.”
    Urn selected a short crowbar from his belt and inserted it between the grille and the stonework. Give me a foot of good steel and a wall to brace…my…foot…against—the grille ground forward and then popped out with a leaden sound—and I can change the world…
    He stepped inside the long, dark, damp room, and gave a whistle