Small Gods

said.
    “The great prophets had vision,” said Brutha. “Even if they…even if you didn’t talk to them, they had something to say. What could I say? I haven’t got anything to say to anyone. What could I say?”
    “Believe in the Great God Om,” said the tortoise.
    “And then what?”
    “What do you mean, and then what?”
    Brutha looked out glumly at the darkening courtyard.
    “Believe in the Great God Om or be stricken with thunderbolts,” he said.
    “Sounds good to me.”
    “Is that how it always has to be?”
    The last rays of the sun glinted off the statue in the center of the courtyard. It was vaguely feminine. There was a penguin perched on one shoulder.
    “Patina, Goddess of Wisdom,” said Brutha. “The one with a penguin. Why a penguin?”
    “Can’t imagine,” said Om hurriedly.
    “Nothing wise about penguins, is there?”
    “Shouldn’t think so. Unless you count the fact that you don’t get them in Omnia. Pretty wise of them.”
    “Brutha!”
    “That’s Vorbis,” said Brutha, standing up. “Shall I leave you here?”
    “Yes. There’s still some melon. I mean loaf.”
    Brutha wandered out into the dusk.
    Vorbis was sitting on a bench under a tree, as still as a statue in the shadows.
    Certainty, Brutha thought. I used to be certain. Now I’m not so sure.
    “Ah, Brutha. You will accompany me on a little stroll. We will take the evening air.”
    “Yes, lord.”
    “You have enjoyed your visit to Ephebe.”
    Vorbis seldom asked a question if a statement would do.
    “It has been…interesting.”
    Vorbis put one hand on Brutha’s shoulder and used the other to haul himself up on his staff.
    “And what do you think of it?” he asked.
    “They have many gods, and they don’t pay them much attention,” said Brutha. “And they search for ignorance.”
    “And they find it in abundance, be sure of that,” said Vorbis.
    He pointed his staff into the night. “Let us walk,” he said.
    There was the sound of laughter, somewhere in the darkness, and the clatter of pans. The scent of evening-opening flowers hung thickly in the air. The stored heat of daytime radiating from the stones, made the night seem like a fragrant soup.
    “Ephebe looks to the sea,” said Vorbis after a while. “You see the way it is built? All on the slope of a hill facing the sea. But the sea is mutable. Nothing lasting comes from the sea. Whereas our dear Citadel looks towards the high desert. And what do we see there?”
    Instinctively Brutha turned, and looked over the rooftops to the black bulk of the desert against the sky.
    “I saw a flash of light,” he said. “And again. On the slope.”
    “Ah. The light of truth,” said Vorbis. “So let us go forth to meet it. Take me to the entrance to the labyrinth, Brutha. You know the way.”
    “My lord?” said Brutha.
    “Yes, Brutha?”
    “I would like to ask you a question.”
    “Do so.”
    “What happened to Brother Murduck?”
    There was the merest suggestion of hesitation in the rhythm of Vorbis’s stick on the cobbles. Then the exquisitor said, “Truth, good Brutha, is like the light. Do you know about light?”
    “It…comes from the sun. And the moon and stars. And candles. And lamps.”
    “And so on,” said Vorbis, nodding. “Of course. But there is another kind of light. A light that fills even the darkest of places. This has to be. For if this meta-light did not exist, how could darkness be seen?”
    Brutha said nothing. This sounded too much like philosophy.
    “And so it is with truth,” said Vorbis. “There are some things which appear to be the truth, which have all the hallmarks of truth, but which are not the real truth. The real truth must sometimes be protected by a labyrinth of lies.”
    He turned to Brutha. “Do you understand me?”
    “No, Lord Vorbis.”
    “I mean, that which appears to our senses is not the fundamental truth. Things that are seen and heard and done by the flesh are mere shadows of a deeper reality. This is what you must understand as you progress in the Church.”
    “But at the moment, lord, I know only the trivial truth, the truth available on the outside,” said Brutha. He felt as though he was at the edge of a pit.
    “That is how we all begin,” said Vorbis kindly.
    “So did the Ephebians kill Brother Murduck?” Brutha persisted. Now he was inching out over the darkness.
    “I am telling you that in the deepest sense of the truth they did. By their failure to embrace his words, by