Small Gods

believe—”
    Y ES ?
    A ND NOW , IF YOU WILL EXCUSE ME …
    Fri’it took a deep breath, purely out of habit. Perhaps he could find a couple of rocks out there. A small rock to hold and a big rock to hide behind, while he waited for Vorbis…
    And that thought was habit, too. Revenge? Here?
    He smiled.
    Be sensible, man. You were a soldier. This is a desert. You crossed a few in your time.
    And you survive by learning about them. There’s whole tribes that know how to live in the worst kinds of desert. Licking water off the shady sides of dunes, that sort of thing…They think it’s home . Put ’em in a vegetable garden and they’d think you were mad.
    The memory stole over him: a desert is what you think it is. And now, you can think clearly…
    There were no lies here. All fancies fled away. That’s what happened in all deserts. It was just you, and what you believed.
    What have I always believed?
    That on the whole, and by and large, if a man lived properly, not according to what any priests said, but according to what seemed decent and honest inside, then it would, at the end, more or less, turn out all right.
    You couldn’t get that on a banner. But the desert looked better already.
    Fri’it set out.

    It was a small mule and Brutha had long legs; if he’d made the effort he could have remained standing and let the mule trot out from underneath.
    The order of progression was not as some may have expected. Sergeant Simony and his soldiers rode ahead, on either side of the track.
    They were trailed by the servants and clerks and lesser priests. Vorbis rode in the rear, where an exquisitor rode by right, like a shepherd watching over his flock.
    Brutha rode with him. It was an honor he would have preferred to avoid. Brutha was one of those people who could raise a sweat on a frosty day, and the dust was settling on him like a gritty skin. But Vorbis seemed to derive some amusement from his company. Occasionally he would ask him questions:
    “How many miles have we traveled, Brutha?”
    “Four miles and seven estado, lord.”
    “But how do you know?”
    That was a question he couldn’t answer. How did he know the sky was blue? It was just something in his head. You couldn’t think about how you thought. It was like opening a box with the crowbar that was inside.
    “And how long has our journey taken?”
    “A little over seventy-nine minutes.”
    Vorbis laughed. Brutha wondered why. The puzzle wasn’t why he remembered, it was why everyone else seemed to forget.
    “Did your fathers have this remarkable faculty?”
    There was a pause.
    “Could they do it as well?” said Vorbis patiently.
    “I don’t know. There was only my grandmother. She had—a good memory. For some things.” Transgressions, certainly. “And very good eyesight and hearing.” What she could apparently see or hear through two walls had, he remembered, seemed phenomenal.
    Brutha turned gingerly in the saddle. There was a cloud of dust about a mile behind them on the road.
    “Here come the rest of the soldiers,” he said conversationally.
    This seemed to shock Vorbis. Perhaps it was the first time in years that anyone had innocently addressed a remark to him.
    “The rest of the soldiers?” he said.
    “Sergeant Aktar and his men, on ninety-eight camels with many water-bottles,” said Brutha. “I saw them before we left.”
    “You did not see them,” said Vorbis. “They are not coming with us. You will forget about them.”
    “Yes, lord.” The request to do magic again.
    After a few minutes the distant cloud turned off the road and started up the long slope that led to the high desert. Brutha watched them surreptitiously, and raised his eyes to the dune mountains.
    There was a speck circling up there.
    He put his hand to his mouth.
    Vorbis heard the gasp.
    “What ails you, Brutha?” he said.
    “I remembered about the God,” said Brutha, without thinking.
    “We should always remember the God,” said Vorbis, “and trust that He is with us on this journey.”
    “He is,” said Brutha, and the absolute conviction in his voice made Vorbis smile.
    He strained to hear the nagging internal voice, but there was nothing. For one horrible moment Brutha wondered if the tortoise had fallen out of the box, but there was a reassuring weight on the strap.
    “And we must bear with us the certainty that He will be with us in Ephebe, among the infidel,” said Vorbis.
    “I am sure He will,” said Brutha.
    “And prepare