Small Gods

head.
    “Perhaps there is no reason why you should,” said Vorbis. “We are going to discuss political matters with the Tyrant. Do you understand?”
    Brutha shook his head.
    “Good,” said Vorbis. “Very good. Oh, and—Brutha?”
    “Yes, lord?”
    “You will forget this meeting. You have not been in this room. You have not seen us here.”
    Brutha gaped at him. This was nonsense. You couldn’t forget things just by wishing. Some things forgot themselves—the things in those locked rooms—but that was because of some mechanism he could not access. What did this man mean?
    “Yes, lord,” he said.
    It seemed the simplest way.

    Gods have no one to pray to.
    The Great God Om scurried towards the nearest statue, neck stretched, inefficient legs pumping. The statue happened to be himself as a bull, trampling an infidel, although this was no great comfort.
    It was only a matter of time before the eagle stopped circling and swooped.
    Om had been a tortoise for only three years, but with the shape he had inherited a grab-bag of instincts, and a lot of them centered around a total terror of the one wild creature that had found out how to eat tortoise.
    Gods have no one to pray to.
    Om really wished that this was not the case.
    But everyone needs someone .
    “Brutha!”

    Brutha was a little uncertain about his immediate future. Deacon Vorbis had clearly cut him loose from his chores as a novice, but he had nothing to do for the rest of the afternoon.
    He gravitated towards the garden. There were beans to tie up, and he welcomed the fact. You knew where you were with beans. They didn’t tell you to do impossible things, like forget . Besides, if he was going to be away for a while, he ought to mulch the melons and explain things to Lu-Tze.
    Lu-Tze came with the gardens.
    Every organization has someone like him. They might be pushing a broom in obscure corridors, or wandering among the shelves in the back of the stores (where they are the only person who knows where anything is) or have some ambiguous but essential relationship with the boiler-room. Everyone knows who they are and no one remembers a time when they weren’t there, or knows where they go when they’re not, well, where they usually are. Just occasionally, people who are slightly more observant than most other people, which is not on the face of it very difficult, stop and wonder about them for a while…and then get on with something else.
    Strangely enough, given his gentle ambling from garden to garden around the Citadel, Lu-Tze never showed much interest in the plants themselves. He dealt in soil, manure, muck, compost, loam, and dust, and the means of moving it about. Generally he was pushing a broom, or turning over a heap. Once anyone put seeds in anything he lost interest.
    He was raking the paths when Brutha entered. He was good at raking paths. He left scallop patterns and gentle soothing curves. Brutha always felt apologetic about walking on them.
    He hardly ever spoke to Lu-Tze, because it didn’t matter much what anyone ever said to Lu-Tze. The old man just nodded and smiled his single-toothed smile in any case.
    “I’m going away for a little while,” said Brutha, loudly and distinctly. “I expect someone else will be sent to look after the gardens, but there are some things that need doing…”
    Nod, smile. The old man followed him patiently along the rows, while Brutha spoke beans and herbs.
    “Understand?” said Brutha, after ten minutes of this.
    Nod, smile. Nod, smile, beckon.
    “What?”
    Nod, smile, beckon. Nod, smile, beckon , smile.
    Lu-Tze walked his little crab-monkey walk to the little area at the far end of the walled garden which contained his heaps, the flowerpot stacks, and all the other cosmetics of the garden beautiful. The old man slept there, Brutha suspected.
    Nod, smile, beckon.
    There was a small trestle table in the sun by a stack of bean canes. A straw mat had been spread on it, and on the mat were half a dozen pointy-shaped rocks, none of them bigger than a foot high.
    A careful arrangement of sticks had been constructed around them. Bits of thin wood shadowed some parts of the rocks. Small metal mirrors directed sunlight towards other areas. Paper cones at odd angles appeared to be funneling the breeze to very precise points.
    Brutha had never heard about the art of bonsai, and how it was applied to mountains.
    “They’re…very nice,” he said uncertainly.
    Nod, smile, pick up a small rock,