Small Gods

the Library, Brutha couldn’t help noticing a strange construction in the aisles. Wooden laths had been fixed between the rows of stone shelves about two meters from the floor, so that they supported a wider plank of no apparent use whatsoever. Its underside had been decorated with rough wooden shapes.
    “The Library,” announced Didactylos.
    He reached up. His fingers gently brushed the plank over his head.
    It dawned on Brutha.
    “You’re blind aren’t you?” he said.
    “That’s right.”
    “But you carry a lantern?”
    “It’s all right,” said Didactylos. “I don’t put any oil in it.”
    “A lantern that doesn’t shine for a man that doesn’t see?”
    “Yeah. Works perfectly. And of course it’s very philosophical.”
    “And you live in a barrel.”
    “Very fashionable, living in a barrel,” said Didactylos, walking forward briskly, his fingers only occasionally touching the raised patterns on the plank. “Most of the philosophers do it. It shows contempt and disdain for worldly things. Mind you, Legibus has got a sauna in his. It’s amazing the kind of things you can think of in it, he says.”
    Brutha looked around. Scrolls protruded from their racks like cuckoos piping the hour.
    “It’s all so…I never met a philosopher before I came here,” he said. “Last night, they were all…”
    “You got to remember there’s three basic approaches to philosophy in these parts,” said Didactylos. “Tell him, Urn.”
    “There’s the Xenoists,” said Urn promptly. “They say the world is basically complex and random. And there’s the Ibidians. They say the world is basically simple and follows certain fundamental rules.”
    “And there’s me,” said Didactylos, pulling a scroll out of its rack.
    “Master says basically it’s a funny old world,” said Urn.
    “And doesn’t contain enough to drink,” said Didactylos.
    “And doesn’t contain enough to drink.”
    “Gods,” said Didactylos, half to himself. He pulled out another scroll. “You want to know about gods? Here’s Xeno’s Reflections , and old Aristocrates’ Platitudes , and Ibid’s bloody stupid Discourses , and Legibus’s Geometries and Hierarch’s Theologies …”
    Didactylos’s fingers danced across the racks. More dust filled the air.
    “These are all books?” said Brutha.
    “Oh, yes. Everyone writes ’em here. You just can’t stop the buggers.”
    “And people can read them?” said Brutha.
    Omnia was based on one book. And here were…hundreds…
    “Well, they can if they want,” said Urn. “But no one comes in here much. These aren’t books for reading. They’re more for writing.”
    “Wisdom of the ages, this,” said Didactylos. “Got to write a book, see, to prove you’re a philosopher. Then you get your scroll and free official philosopher’s loofah.”
    The sunlight pooled on a big stone table in the center of the room. Urn unrolled the length of a scroll. Brilliant flowers glowed in the golden light.
    “Orinjcrates’ On the Nature of Plants ,” said Didactylos. “Six hundred plants and their uses…”
    “They’re beautiful,” whispered Brutha.
    “Yes, that is one of the uses of plants,” said Didactylos. “And one which old Orinjcrates neglected to notice, too. Well done. Show him Philo’s Bestiary , Urn.”
    Another scroll unrolled. There were dozens of pictures of animals, thousands of unreadable words.
    “But…pictures of animals…it’s wrong…isn’t it wrong to…”
    “Pictures of just about everything in there,” said Didactylos.
    Art was not permitted in Omnia.
    “And this is the book Didactylos wrote,” said Urn.
    Brutha looked down at a picture of a turtle. There were… elephants, they’re elephants , his memory supplied, from the fresh memories of the bestiary sinking indelibly into his mind…elephants on its back, and on them something with mountains and a waterfall of an ocean around its edge…
    “How can this be?” said Brutha. “A world on the back of a tortoise? Why does everyone tell me this? This can’t be true!”
    “Tell that to the mariners,” said Didactylos. “Everyone who’s ever sailed the Rim Ocean knows it. Why deny the obvious?”
    “But surely the world is a perfect sphere, spinning about the sphere of the sun, just as the Septateuch tells us,” said Brutha. “That seems so…logical. That’s how things ought to be.”
    “Ought?” said Didactylos. “Well, I don’t know about ought . That’s not a