Small Gods

buggers had the shell for it.
    It would be too much to ask (even if a god had anyone to ask) that a body designed for trundling around a dry wilderness had any hydrodynamic properties other than those necessary to sink to the bottom.
    Oh, well. Nothing else for it. He was still a god. He had rights .
    He slid down a coil of rope and crawled carefully to the edge of the swaying deck, wedging his shell against a stanchion so that he could see down into the roiling water.
    Then he spoke in a voice audible to nothing that was mortal.
    Nothing happened for a while. Then one wave rose higher than the rest, and changed shape as it rose. Water poured upward, filling an invisible mold; it was humanoid, but obviously only because it wanted to be. It could as easily have been a waterspout, or an undertow. The sea is always powerful. So many people believe in it. But it seldom answers prayers.
    The water shape rose level with the deck and kept pace with Om.
    It developed a face, and opened a mouth.
    “Well?” it said.
    “Greetings, oh Queen of—” Om began.
    The watery eyes focused.
    “But you are just a small god. And you dare to summon me? ”
    The wind howled in the rigging.
    “I have believers,” said Om. “So I have the right.”
    There was the briefest of pauses. Then the Sea Queen said, “ One believer?”
    “One or many does not matter here,” said Om. “I have rights.”
    “And what rights do you demand, little tortoise?” said the Queen of the Sea.
    “Save the ship,” said Om.
    The Queen was silent.
    “You have to grant the request,” said Om. “It’s the rules.”
    “But I can name my price,” said the Sea Queen.
    “That’s the rules, too.”
    “And it will be high.”
    “It will be paid.”
    The column of water began to collapse back into the waves.
    “I will consider this.”
    Om stared down into the white sea. The ship rolled, sliding him back down the deck, and then rolled back. A flailing foreclaw hooked itself around the stanchion as Om’s shell spun around, and for a moment both hind legs paddled helplessly over the waters.
    And then Om was shaken free.
    Something white swept down toward him as he see-sawed over the edge, and he bit it.
    Brutha yelled and pulled his hand up, with Om trailing on the end of it.
    “You didn’t have to bite!”
    The ship pitched into a wave and flung him to the deck. Om let go and rolled away.
    When Brutha got to his feet, or at least to his hands and knees, he saw the crewmen standing around him. Two of them grabbed him by the elbows as a wave crashed over the ship.
    “What are you doing?”
    They were trying to avoid looking at his face. They dragged him toward the rail.
    Somewhere in the scuppers Om screamed at the Sea Queen.
    “It’s the rules! The rules !”
    Four sailors had got hold of Brutha now. Om could hear, above the roaring of the storm, the silence of the desert.
    “Wait,” said Brutha.
    “It’s nothing personal,” said one of the sailors. “We don’t want to do this.”
    “I don’t want you to do it either,” said Brutha. “Is that any help?”
    “The sea wants a life,” said the oldest sailor. “Yours is nearest. Okay, get his—”
    “Can I make my peace with my God?”
    “What?”
    “If you’re going to kill me, can I pray to my God first?”
    “It’s not us that’s killing you,” said the sailor. “It’s the sea.”
    “‘The hand that does the deed is guilty of the crime,’” said Brutha. “Ossory, chapter LVI, verse 93.”
    The sailors looked at one another. At a time like this, it was probably not wise to antagonize any god. The ship skidded down the side of a wave.
    “You’ve got ten seconds,” said the oldest sailor. “That’s ten seconds more than many men get.”
    Brutha lay down on the deck, helped considerably by another wave that slammed into the timbers.
    Om was dimly aware of the prayer, to his surprise. He couldn’t make out the words, but the prayer itself was an itch at the back of his mind.
    “Don’t ask me,” he said, trying to get upright, “I’m out of options—”
    The ship smacked down…
    …on to a calm sea.
    The storm still raged, but only around a widening circle with the ship in the middle. The lightning, stabbing at the sea, surrounded them like the bars of a cage.
    The circle lengthened ahead of them. Now the ship sped down a narrow channel of calm between gray walls of storm a mile high. Electric fire raged overhead.
    And then was gone.
    Behind them, a mountain