Small Gods

walled gardens. Around a fine stand of tall decorative Klatchian corn, bean vines raised red and white blossoms towards the sun; in between the bean rows, melons baked gently on the dusty soil. In the normal way, Vorbis would have noted and approved of this efficient use of space, but in the normal way he wouldn’t have encountered a plump young novice, rolling back and forth in the dust with his fingers in his ears.
    Vorbis stared down at him. Then he prodded Brutha with his sandal.
    “What ails you, my son?”
    Brutha opened his eyes.
    There weren’t many superior members of the hierarchy he could recognize. Even the Cenobiarch was a distant blob in the crowd. But everyone recognized Vorbis the exquisitor. Something about him projected itself on your conscience within a few days of your arrival at the Citadel. The God was merely to be feared in the perfunctory ways of habit, but Vorbis was dreaded .
    Brutha fainted.
    “How very strange,” said Vorbis.
    A hissing noise made him look around.
    There was a small tortoise near his foot. As he glared, it tried to back away, and all the time it was staring at him and hissing like a kettle.
    He picked it up and examined it carefully, turning it over and over in his hands. Then he looked around the walled garden until he found a spot in full sunshine, and put the reptile down, on its back. After a moment’s thought he took a couple of pebbles from one of the vegetable beds and wedged them under the shell so that the creature’s movement wouldn’t tip it over.
    Vorbis believed that no opportunity to acquire esoteric knowledge should ever be lost, and made a mental note to come back again in a few hours to see how it was getting on, if work permitted.
    Then he turned his attention to Brutha.

    There was a hell for blasphemers. There was a hell for the disputers of rightful authority. There were a number of hells for liars. There was probably a hell for little boys who wished their grandmothers were dead. There were more than enough hells to go around.
    This was the definition of eternity; it was the space of time devised by the Great God Om to ensure that everyone got the punishment that was due to them.
    The Omnians had a great many hells.
    Currently, Brutha was going through all of them.
    Brother Nhumrod and Brother Vorbis looked down at him, tossing and turning on his bed like a beached whale.
    “It’s the sun,” said Nhumrod, almost calm now after the initial shock of having the exquisitor come looking for him. “The poor lad works all day in that garden. It was bound to happen.”
    “Have you tried beating him?” said Brother Vorbis.
    “I’m sorry to say that beating young Brutha is like trying to flog a mattress,” said Nhumrod. “He says ‘ow!’ but I think it’s only because he wants to show he’s willing. Very willing lad, Brutha. He’s the one I told you about.”
    “He doesn’t look very sharp,” said Vorbis.
    “He’s not,” said Nhumrod.
    Vorbis nodded approvingly. Undue intelligence in a novice was a mixed blessing. Sometimes it could be channeled for the greater glory of Om, but often it caused…well, it did not cause trouble, because Vorbis knew exactly what to do with misapplied intelligence, but it did cause unnecessary work.
    “And yet you tell me his tutors speak so highly of him,” he said.
    Nhumrod shrugged.
    “He is very obedient,” he said. “And…well, there’s his memory.”
    “What about his memory?”
    “There’s so much of it,” said Nhumrod.
    “He has got a good memory?”
    “Good is the wrong word. It’s superb. He’s word-perfect on the entire Sept—”
    “Hmm?” said Vorbis.
    Nhumrod caught the deacon’s eye.
    “As perfect, that is, as anything may be in this most imperfect world,” he muttered.
    “A devoutly read young man,” said Vorbis.
    “Er,” said Nhumrod, “no. He can’t read. Or write.”
    “Ah. A lazy boy.”
    The deacon was not a man who dwelt in gray areas. Nhumrod’s mouth opened and shut silently as he sought for the proper words.
    “No,” he said. “He tries. We’re sure he tries. He just does not seem to be able to make the…he cannot fathom the link between the sounds and the letters.”
    “You have beaten him for that, at least?”
    “It seems to have little effect, deacon.”
    “How, then, has he become such a capable pupil?”
    “He listens,” said Nhumrod.
    No one listened quite like Brutha, he reflected. It made it very hard to teach him. It was like—it