Small Gods

overwhelming. Time is a drug. Too much of it kills you.
    The 493rd Abbot folded his wrinkled hands and addressed Lu-Tze, one of his most senior monks. The clear air and untroubled life of the secret valley was such that all the monks were senior; besides, when you work with Time every day, some of it tends to rub off.
    “The place is Omnia,” said the abbot, “on the Klatchian coast.”
    “I remember,” said Lu-Tze. “Young fellow called Ossory, wasn’t there?”
    “Things must be… carefully observed ,” said the abbot. “There are pressures. Free will, predestination…the power of symbols…turning-point…you know all about this.”
    “Haven’t been to Omnia for, oh, must be seven hundred years,” said Lu-Tze. “Dry place. Shouldn’t think there’s a ton of good soil in the whole country, either.”
    “Off you go, then,” said the abbot.
    “I shall take my mountains,” said Lu-Tze. “The climate will be good for them.”
    And he also took his broom and his sleeping mat. The history monks don’t go in for possessions. They find most things wear out in a century or two.
    It took him four years to get to Omnia. He had to watch a couple of battles and an assassination on the way, otherwise they would just have been random events.

    It was the Year of the Notional Serpent, or two hundred years after the Declaration of the Prophet Abbys.
    Which meant that the time of the 8th Prophet was imminent.
    That was the reliable thing about the Church of the Great God Om. It had very punctual prophets. You could set your calendar by them, if you had one big enough.
    And, as is generally the case around the time a prophet is expected, the Church redoubled its efforts to be holy. This was very much like the bustle you get in any large concern when the auditors are expected, but tended towards taking people suspected of being less holy and putting them to death in a hundred ingenious ways. This is considered a reliable barometer of the state of one’s piety in most of the really popular religions. There’s a tendency to declare that there is more backsliding around than in the national toboggan championships, that heresy must be torn out root and branch, and even arm and leg and eye and tongue, and that it’s time to wipe the slate clean. Blood is generally considered very efficient for this purpose.

    And it came to pass that in that time the Great God Om spake unto Brutha, the Chosen One:
    “Psst!”
    Brutha paused in mid-hoe and stared around the Temple garden.
    “Pardon?” he said.
    It was a fine day early in the lesser Spring. The prayer mills spun merrily in the breeze off the mountains. Bees loafed around in the bean blossoms, but buzzed fast in order to give the impression of hard work. High above, a lone eagle circled.
    Brutha shrugged, and got back to the melons.
    Yea, the Great God Om spake again unto Brutha, the Chosen One:
    “Psst!”
    Brutha hesitated. Someone had definitely spoken to him from out of the air. Perhaps it was a demon. Novice master Brother Nhumrod was hot on the subject of demons. Impure thoughts and demons. One led to the other. Brutha was uncomfortably aware that he was probably overdue a demon.
    The thing to do was to be resolute and repeat the Nine Fundamental Aphorisms.
    Once more the Great God Om spake unto Brutha, the Chosen One:
    “Are you deaf, boy?”
    The hoe thudded on to the baking soil. Brutha spun around. There were the bees, the eagle and, at the far end of the garden, old Brother Lu-Tze dreamily forking over the dung heap. The prayer mills whirled reassuringly along the walls.
    He made the sign with which the Prophet Ishkible had cast out spirits.
    “Get thee behind me, demon,” he muttered.
    “I am behind you.”
    Brutha turned again, slowly. The garden was still empty.
    He fled.

    Many stories start long before they begin, and Brutha’s story had its origins thousands of years before his birth.
    There are billions of gods in the world. They swarm as thick as herring roe. Most of them are too small to see and never get worshiped, at least by anything bigger than bacteria, who never say their prayers and don’t demand much in the way of miracles.
    They are the small gods—the spirits of places where two ant trails cross, the gods of microclimates down between the grass roots. And most of them stay that way.
    Because what they lack is belief .
    A handful, though, go on to greater things. Anything may trigger it. A shepherd, seeking a lost lamb, finds