Small Gods

workshops belonging to the Church’s civilian population honeycombed the Citadel. * This was only one of them, a smoky-ceilinged cellar whose focal point was an arched fireplace. Flames roared up the flue. Turnspit dogs trotted in their treadmills. Cleavers rose and fell on the chopping blocks.
    Off to one side of the huge hearth, among various other blackened cauldrons, a small pot of water was already beginning to seethe.
    “The worms of revenge to eat your blackened nostrils!” screamed Om, twitching his legs violently. The basket rocked.
    A hairy hand reached in and removed the herbs.
    “Hawks to peck your liver!”
    A hand reached in again and took the carrots.
    “Afflict you with a thousand cuts!”
    A hand reached in and took the Great God Om.
    “The cannibal fungi of—!”
    “Shut up!” hissed Brutha, shoving the tortoise under his robe.
    He sidled toward the door, unnoticed in the general culinary chaos.
    One of the cooks looked at him and raised an eyebrow.
    “Just got to take this back,” Brutha burbled, bringing out the tortoise and waving it helpfully. “Deacon’s orders.”
    The cook scowled, and then shrugged. Novices were regarded by one and all as the lowest form of life, but orders from the hierarchy were to be obeyed without question, unless the questioner wanted to find himself faced with more important questions like whether or not it is possible to go to heaven after being roasted alive.
    When they were out in the courtyard Brutha leaned against the wall and breathed out.
    “Your eyeballs to—!” the tortoise began.
    “One more word,” said Brutha, “and it’s back in the basket.”
    The tortoise fell silent.
    “As it is, I shall probably get into trouble for missing Comparative Religion with Brother Whelk,” said Brutha. “But the Great God has seen fit to make the poor man shortsighted and he probably won’t notice I’m not there, only if he does I shall have to say what I’ve done because telling lies to a Brother is a sin and the Great God will send me to hell for a million years.”
    “In this one case I could be merciful,” said the tortoise. “No more than a thousand years at the outside.”
    “My grandmother told me I shall go to hell when I die anyway,” said Brutha, ignoring this. “Being alive is sinful. It stands to reason, because you have to sin every day when you’re alive.”
    He looked down at the tortoise.
    “I know you’re not the Great God Om”—holy horns—“because if I was to touch the Great God Om”—holy horns—“my hands would burn away. The Great God would never become a tortoise, like Brother Nhumrod said. But it says in the Book of the Prophet Cena that when he was wandering in the desert the spirits of the ground and the air spoke unto him, so I wondered if you were one of those.”
    The tortoise gave him a one-eyed stare for a while. Then it said: “Tall fellow? Full beard? Eyes wobbling all over the place?”
    “What?” said Brutha.
    “I think I recall him,” said the tortoise. “Eyes wobbled when he talked. And he talked all the time. To himself. Walked into rocks a lot.”
    “He wandered in the wilderness for three months,” said Brutha.
    “That explains it, then,” said the tortoise. “There’s not a lot to eat there that isn’t mushrooms.”
    “Perhaps you are a demon,” said Brutha. “The Septateuch forbids us to have discourse with demons. Yet in resisting demons, says the Prophet Fruni, we may grow strong in faith—”
    “Your teeth to abscess with red-hot heat!”
    “Pardon?”
    “I swear to me that I am the Great God Om, greatest of gods!”
    Brutha tapped the tortoise on the shell.
    “Let me show you something, demon.”
    He could feel his faith growing, if he listened hard.

    This wasn’t the greatest statue of Om, but it was the closest. It was down in the pit level reserved for prisoners and heretics. And it was made of iron plates riveted together.
    The pits were deserted except for a couple of novices pushing a rough cart in the distance.
    “It’s a big bull,” said the tortoise.
    “The very likeness of the Great God Om in one of his worldly incarnations!” said Brutha proudly. “And you say you’re him ?”
    “I haven’t been well lately,” said the tortoise.
    Its scrawny neck stretched out further.
    “There’s a door on its back,” it said. “Why’s there a door on its back?”
    “So that the sinful can be put in,” said Brutha.
    “Why’s there another one in its