Small Gods

to him, making him promise not to wage war on some place he’d never heard of. He’d agreed. *
    Some of the new people had shown him this amazing way of making lightning. You hit this rock with this piece of hard stuff and you got little bits of lightning which dropped on to dry stuff which got red and hot like the sun. If you put more wood on it got bigger and if you put a fish on it got black but if you were quick it didn’t get black but got brown and tasted better than anything he’d ever tasted, although this was not difficult. And he’d been given some knives not made out of rock and cloth not made out of reeds and, all in all, life was looking up for Fasta Benj and his people.
    He wasn’t sure why lots of people would want to hit Pacha Moj’s uncle with a big rock, but it definitely escalated the pace of technological progress.

    No one, not even Brutha, noticed that old Lu-Tze wasn’t around any more. Not being noticed, either as being present or absent, is part of a history monk’s stock in trade.
    In fact he’d packed his broom and his bonsai mountains and had gone by secret tunnels and devious means to the hidden valley in the central peaks, where the abbot was waiting for him. The abbot was playing chess in the long gallery that overlooked the valley. Fountains bubbled in the gardens, and swallows flew in and out of the windows.
    “All went well?” said the abbot, without looking up.
    “Very well, lord,” said Lu-Tze. “I had to nudge things a little, though.”
    “I wish you wouldn’t do that sort of thing,” said the abbot, fingering a pawn. “You’ll overstep the mark one day.”
    “It’s the history we’ve got these days,” said Lu-Tze. “Very shoddy stuff, lord. I have to patch it up all the time—”
    “Yes, yes—”
    “We used to get much better history in the old days.”
    “Things were always better than they are now. It’s in the nature of things.”
    “Yes, lord. Lord?”
    The abbot looked up in mild exasperation.
    “Er…you know the books say that Brutha died and there was a century of terrible warfare?”
    “You know my eyesight isn’t what it was, Lu-Tze.”
    “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.
    R EMIND ME AGAIN , he said. HOW THE LITTLE HORSE-SHAPED 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.
    It 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