Small Gods

a—” Simony began.
    “Everyone shut up,” said Didactylos. He stared past Brutha’s ear.
    “There may be a way out,” he said. “What do you intend?”
    “I don’t believe this!” said Urn. “There’s Omnians here and you’re telling them there’s another way out!”
    “There’s tunnels all through this rock,” said Didactylos.
    “Maybe, but we don’t tell people!”
    “I’m inclined to trust this person,” said Didactylos. “He’s got an honest face. Speaking philosophically.”
    “ Why should we trust him?”
    “Anyone stupid enough to expect us to trust him in these circumstances must be trustworthy,” said Didactylos. “He’d be too stupid to be deceitful.”
    “I can walk out of here right now,” said Brutha. “And where will your Library be then?”
    “You see?” said Simony.
    “Just when things apparently look dark, suddenly we have unexpected friends everywhere,” said Didactylos. “What is your plan, young man?”
    “I haven’t got one,” said Brutha. “I just do things, one after the other.”
    “And how long will doing things one after another take you?”
    “About ten minutes, I think.”
    Simony glared at Brutha.
    “Now get the books,” said Brutha. “And I shall need some light.”
    “But you can’t even read!” said Urn.
    “I’m not going to read them.” Brutha looked blankly at the first scroll, which happened to be De Chelonian Mobile .
    “Oh. My god,” he said.
    “Something wrong?” said Didactylos.
    “Could someone fetch my tortoise?”

    Simony trotted through the palace. No one was paying him much attention. Most of the Ephebian guard was outside the labyrinth, and Vorbis had made it clear to anyone who was thinking of venturing inside just what would happen to the palace’s inhabitants. Groups of Omnian soldiers were looting in a disciplined sort of way.
    Besides, he was returning to his quarters.
    There was a tortoise in Brutha’s room. It was sitting on the table, between a rolled-up scroll and a gnawed melon rind and, insofar as it was possible to tell with tortoises, was asleep. Simony grabbed it without ceremony, rammed it into his pack, and hurried back towards the Library.
    He hated himself for doing it. The stupid priest had ruined everything! But Didactylos had made him promise, and Didactylos was the man who knew the Truth.
    All the way there he had the impression that someone was trying to attract his attention.

    “You can remember them just by looking?” said Urn.
    “Yes.”
    “The whole scroll?”
    “Yes.”
    “I don’t believe you.”
    “The word LIBRVM outside this building has a chip in the top of the first letter,” said Brutha. “Xeno wrote Reflections , and old Aristocrates wrote Platitudes , and Didactylos thinks Ibid’s Discourses are bloody stupid. There are six hundred paces from the Tyrant’s throne room to the Library. There is a—”
    “He’s got a good memory, you’ve got to grant him that,” said Didactylos. “Show him some more scrolls.”
    “How will we know he’s remembered them?” Urn demanded, unrolling a scroll of geometrical theorems. “He can’t read! And even if he could read, he can’t write!”
    “We shall have to teach him.”
    Brutha looked at a scroll full of maps. He shut his eyes. For a moment the jagged outline glowed against the inside of his eyelids, and then he felt them settle into his mind. They were still there somewhere—he could bring them back at any time. Urn unrolled another scroll. Pictures of animals. This one, drawings of plants and lots of writing. This one, just writing. This one, triangles and things. They settled down in his memory. After a while, he wasn’t even aware of the scroll unrolling. He just had to keep looking.
    He wondered how much he could remember, but that was stupid. You just remembered everything you saw. A tabletop, or a scroll full of writing. There was as much information in the grain and coloring of the wood as there was in Xeno’s Reflections .
    Even so, he was conscious of a certain heaviness of mind, a feeling that if he turned his head sharply then memory would slosh out of his ears.
    Urn picked up a scroll at random and unrolled it part-way.
    “Describe what an Ambiguous Puzuma looks like,” he demanded.
    “Don’t know,” said Brutha. He blinked.
    “So much for Mr. Memory,” said Urn.
    “He can’t read , boy. That’s not fair,” said the philosopher.
    “All right. I mean—the fourth picture in the third