Small Gods

was waiting for them. Ephebe seemed to have an unlimited supply of skinny bald men wearing sheets. This one smiled, with his mouth alone.
    No one likes us much, Brutha thought.
    “I trust you will excuse this minor inconvenience,” said the skinny man. “My name is Aristocrates. I am secretary to the Tyrant. Please ask your men to put down their weapons.”
    Vorbis drew himself up to his full height. He was a head taller than the Ephebian. Pale though his complexion normally was, it had gone paler.
    “We are entitled to retain our arms!” he said. “We are an emissary to a foreign land!”
    “But not a barbarian one,” said Aristocrates mildly. “Weapons will not be required here.”
    “Barbarian?” said Vorbis. “You burned our ships!”
    Aristocrates held up a hand.
    “This is a discussion for later,” he said. “My pleasant task now is to show you to your quarters. I am sure you would like to rest a little after your journey. You are, of course, at liberty to wander anywhere you wish in the palace. And if there is anywhere where we do not wish you to wander, the guards will be sure to inform you with speed and tact.”
    “And we can leave the palace?” said Vorbis coldly.
    Aristocrates shrugged.
    “We do not guard the gateway except in times of war,” he said. “If you can remember the way, you are free to use it. But vague perambulations in the labyrinth are unwise, I must warn you. Our ancestors were sadly very suspicious and put in many traps out of distrust; we keep them well-greased and primed, of course, merely out of a respect for tradition. And now, if you would care to follow me…”
    The Omnians kept together as they followed Aristocrates through the palace. There were fountains. There were gardens. Here and there groups of people sat around doing nothing very much except talking. The Ephebians seemed to have only a shaky grasp of the concepts of “inside” and “outside”—except for the palace’s encircling labyrinth, which was very clear on the subject.
    “Danger attends us at every turn,” said Vorbis quietly. “Any man who breaks rank or fraternizes in any way will explain his conduct to the inquisitors. At length.”
    Brutha looked at a woman filling a jug from a well. It did not look like a very military act.
    He was feeling that strange double feeling again. On the surface there were the thoughts of Brutha, which were exactly the thoughts that the Citadel would have approved of. This was a nest of infidels and unbelievers, its very mundanity a subtle cloak for the traps of wrong thinking and heresy. It might be bright with sunlight, but in reality it was a place of shadows.
    But down below were the thoughts of the Brutha that watched Brutha from the inside…
    Vorbis looked wrong here. Sharp and unpleasant. And any city where potters didn’t worry at all when naked, dripping wet old men came and drew triangles on their walls was a place Brutha wanted to find out more about. He felt like a big empty jug. The thing to do with something empty was fill it up.
    “Are you doing something to me?” he whispered.
    In his box, Om looked at the shape of Brutha’s mind. Then he tried to think quickly.
    “No,” he said, and that at least was the truth. Had this ever happened before?
    Had it been like this back in the first days? It must have been. It was all so hazy now. He couldn’t remember the thoughts he’d had then, just the shape of the thoughts. Everything had been highly colored, everything had been growing every day— he had been growing every day; thoughts and the mind that was thinking them were developing at the same speed. Easy to forget things from those times. It was like a fire trying to remember the shape of its flames. But the feeling —he could remember that.
    He wasn’t doing anything to Brutha. Brutha was doing it to himself. Brutha was beginning to think in godly ways. Brutha was starting to become a prophet.
    Om wished he had someone to talk to. Someone who understood.
    This was Ephebe, wasn’t it? Where people made a living trying to understand?

    The Omnians were to be housed in little rooms around a central courtyard. There was a fountain in the middle, in a very small grove of sweet-smelling pine trees. The soldiers nudged one another. People think that professional soldiers think a lot about fighting, but serious professional soldiers think a lot more about food and a warm place to sleep, because these are two things that are generally hard