Small Gods

shall surely receive,” said Vorbis. “An inventor of fallacies. This cursed city attracts them like a dung heap attracts flies.”
    “Actually, it’s the climate,” said the voice of the tortoise. “Think about it. If you’re inclined to leap out of your bath and run down the street every time you think you’ve got a bright idea, you don’t want to do it somewhere cold. If you do do it somewhere cold, you die out. That’s natural selection, that is. Ephebe’s known for its philosophers. It’s better than street theater.”
    “What, a lot of old men running around the streets with no clothes on?” said Brutha, under his breath, as they were marched onward.
    “More or less. If you spend your whole time thinking about the universe, you tend to forget the less important bits of it. Like your pants. And ninety-nine out of a hundred ideas they come up with are totally useless.”
    “Why doesn’t anyone lock them away safely, then? They don’t sound much use to me ,” said Brutha.
    “Because the hundredth idea,” said Om, “is generally a humdinger.”
    “What?”
    “Look up at the highest tower on the rock.”
    Brutha looked up. At the top of the tower, secured by metal bands, was a big disc that glittered in the morning light.
    “What is it?” he whispered.
    “The reason why Omnia hasn’t got much of a fleet any more,” said Om. “That’s why it’s always worth having a few philosophers around the place. One minute it’s all Is Truth Beauty and Is Beauty Truth, and Does a Falling Tree in the Forest Make a Sound if There’s No one There to Hear It, and then just when you think they’re going to start dribbling one of ’em says, Incidentally, putting a thirty-foot parabolic reflector on a high place to shoot the rays of the sun at an enemy’s ships would be a very interesting demonstration of optical principles,” he added. “Always coming up with amazing new ideas, the philosophers. The one before that was some intricate device that demonstrated the principles of leverage by incidentally hurling balls of burning sulphur two miles. Then before that, I think, there was some kind of an underwater thing that shot sharpened logs into the bottom of ships.”
    Brutha stared at the disc again. He hadn’t understood more than one-third of the words in the last statement.
    “Well,” he said, “does it?”
    “Does what?”
    “Make a sound. If it falls down when no one’s there to hear it.”
    “Who cares?”
    The party had reached a gateway in the wall that ran around the top of the rock in much the same way that a headband encircles a head. The Ephebian captain stopped, and turned.
    “The… visitors …must be blindfolded,” he said.
    “That is outrageous!” said Vorbis. “We are here on a mission of diplomacy!”
    “That is not my business,” said the captain. “My business is to say: If you go through this gate you go blindfolded. You don’t have to be blindfolded. You can stay outside. But if you want to go through, you got to wear a blindfold. This is one of them life choices.”
    One of the subdeacons whispered in Vorbis’s ear. He held a brief sotto voce conversation with the leader of the Omnian guard.
    “Very well,” he said, “under protest.”
    The blindfold was quite soft, and totally opaque. But as Brutha was led…
    …ten paces along a passage, and then left five paces, then diagonally forward and left three-and-a-half paces, and right one hundred and three paces, down three steps, and turned around seventeen-and-one-quarter times, and forward nine paces, and left one pace, and forward nineteen paces, and pause three seconds, and right two paces, and back two paces, and left two paces, and turned three-and-a-half times, and wait one second, and up three steps, and right twenty paces, and turned around five-and-a-quarter times, and left fifteen paces, and forward seven paces, and right eighteen paces, and up seven steps, and diagonally forward, and pause two seconds, right four paces, and down a slope that went down a meter every ten paces for thirty paces, and then turned around seven-and-a-half times, and forward six paces…
    …he wondered what good it was supposed to do.
    The blindfold was removed in an open courtyard, made of some white stone that turned the sunlight into a glare. Brutha blinked.
    Bowmen lined the yard. Their arrows were pointing downwards, but their manner suggested that pointing horizontally could happen any minute.
    Another bald man