Small Gods

back when you’ve finished with it,” said Didactylos.
    “Is that how people read in Omnia?” said Urn.
    “What?”
    “Upside down.”
    Brutha picked up the tortoise, glared at Urn, and strode as haughtily as possible out of the Library.
    “Hmm,” said Didactylos. He drummed his fingers on the tables.
    “It was him I saw in the tavern last night,” said Urn. “I’m sure, master.”
    “But the Omnians are staying here in the palace.”
    “That’s right, master.”
    “But the tavern is outside .”
    “Yes.”
    “Then he must have flown over the wall, do you think?”
    “I’m sure it was him, master.”
    “Then…maybe he came later. Maybe he hadn’t gone in when you saw him.”
    “It can only be that, master. The keepers of the labyrinth are unbribable.”
    Didactylos clipped Urn across the back of the head with his lantern.
    “Stupid boy! I’ve told you about that sort of statement.”
    “I mean, they are not easily bribable, master. Not for all the gold in Omnia, for example.”
    “That’s more like it.”
    “Do you think that tortoise was a god, master?”
    “He’s going to be in big trouble in Omnia if he is. They’ve got a bastard of a god there. Did you ever read old Abraxas?”
    “No, master.”
    “Very big on gods. Big gods man. Always smelled of burnt hair. Naturally resistant.”

    Om crawled slowly along the length of a line.
    “Stop walking up and down like that,” he said, “I can’t concentrate.”
    “How can people talk like that?” Brutha asked the empty air. “Acting as if they’re glad they don’t know things! Finding out more and more things they don’t know! It’s like children proudly coming to show you a full potty!”
    Om marked his place with a claw.
    “But they find things out,” he said. “This Abraxas was a thinker and no mistake. I didn’t know some of this stuff. Sit down!”
    Brutha obeyed.
    “Right,” said Om. “Now…listen. Do you know how gods get power?”
    “By people believing in them,” said Brutha. “Millions of people believe in you.”
    Om hesitated.
    All right, all right. We are here and it is now. Sooner or later he’ll find out for himself…
    “They don’t believe,” said Om.
    “But—”
    “It’s happened before,” said the tortoise. “Dozens of times. D’you know Abraxas found the lost city of Ee? Very strange carvings, he says. Belief, he says. Belief shifts . People start out believing in the god and end up believing in the structure.”
    “I don’t understand,” said Brutha.
    “Let me put it another way,” said the tortoise. “I am your God, right?”
    “Yes.”
    “And you’ll obey me.”
    “Yes.”
    “Good. Now take a rock and go and kill Vorbis.”
    Brutha didn’t move.
    “I’m sure you heard me,” said Om.
    “But he’ll…he’s…the Quisition would—”
    “ Now you know what I mean,” said the tortoise. “You’re more afraid of him than you are of me, now. Abraxas says here: ‘Around the Godde there forms a Shelle of prayers and Ceremonies and Buildings and Priestes and Authority, until at Last the Godde Dies. Ande this maye notte be noticed.’”
    “That can’t be true!”
    “I think it is. Abraxas says there’s a kind of shellfish that lives in the same way. It makes a bigger and bigger shell until it can’t move around any more, and so it dies.”
    “But…but…that means…the whole Church…”
    “Yes.”
    Brutha tried to keep hold of the idea, but the sheer enormity of it kept wrenching it from his mental grasp.
    “But you’re not dead,” he managed.
    “Next best thing,” said Om. “And you know what? No other small god is trying to usurp me. Did I ever tell you about old Ur-Gilash? No? He was the god back in what’s now Omnia before me. Not much of one. Basically a weather god. Or a snake god. Something, anyway. It took years to get rid of him, though. Wars and everything. So I’ve been thinking…”
    Brutha said nothing.
    “Om still exists,” said the tortoise. “I mean the shell. All you’d have to do is get people to understand.”
    Brutha still said nothing.
    “You can be the next prophet,” said Om.
    “I can’t! Everyone knows Vorbis will be the next prophet!”
    “Ah, but you’ll be official .”
    “No!”
    “No? I am your God!”
    “And I am my me. I’m not a prophet. I can’t even write. I can’t read. No one will listen to me.”
    Om looked him up and down.
    “I must admit you’re not the chosen one I would have chosen,” he