Small Gods

Vorbis.”
    “This bay is lousy with small boats.”
    “With nowhere to go but the open sea, sir.”
    Vorbis looked out at the Circle Sea. It filled the world from horizon to horizon. Beyond lay the smudge of the Sto plains and the ragged line of the Ramtops, all the way to the towering peaks that the heretics called the Hub but which was, he knew, the Pole, visible around the curve of the world only because of the way light bent in atmosphere, just as it did in water…and he saw a smudge of white, curling over the distant ocean.
    Vorbis had very good eyesight, from a height.
    He picked up a handful of gray ash, which had once been Dykeri’s Principles of Navigation , and let it drift through his fingers.
    “Om has sent us a fair wind,” he said. “Let us get down to the docks.”
    Hope waved optimistically in the waters of the sergeant’s despair.
    “You won’t be wanting us to explore the tunnel, lord?” he said.
    “Oh, no. You can do that when we return.”

    Urn prodded at the copper globe with a piece of wire while the Unnamed Boat wallowed in the waves.
    “Can’t you beat it?” said Simony, who was not up to speed on the difference between machines and people.
    “It’s a philosophical engine,” said Urn. “Beating won’t help.”
    “But you said machines could be our slaves,” said Simony.
    “Not the beating sort,” said Urn. “The nozzles are bunged up with salt. When the water rushes out of the globe it leaves the salt behind.”
    “Why?”
    “I don’t know. Water likes to travel light.”
    “We’re becalmed! Can you do anything about it?”
    “Yes, wait for it to cool down and then clean it out and put some more water in it.”
    Simony looked around distractedly.
    “But we’re still in sight of the coast!”
    “ You might be,” said Didactylos. He was sitting in the middle of the boat with his hands crossed on the top of his walking-stick, looking like an old man who doesn’t often get taken out for an airing and is quite enjoying it.
    “Don’t worry. No one could see us out here,” said Urn. He prodded at the mechanism. “Anyway, I’m a bit worried about the screw. It was invented to move water along, not move along on water.”
    “You mean it’s confused?” said Simony.
    “Screwed up,” said Didactylos happily.
    Brutha lay in the pointed end, looking down at the water. A small squid siphoned past, just under the surface. He wondered what it was—
    —and knew it was the common bottle squid, of the class Cephalopoda, phylum Mollusca, and that it had an internal cartilaginous support instead of a skeleton and a well-developed nervous system and large, image-forming eyes that were quite similar to vertebrate eyes.
    The knowledge hung in the forefront of his mind for a moment, and then faded away.
    “Om?” Brutha whispered.
    “What?”
    “What’re you doing?”
    “Trying to get some sleep. Tortoises need a lot of sleep, you know.”
    Simony and Urn were bent over the philosophical engine. Brutha stared at the globe—
    —a sphere of radius r, which therefore had a volume V = (4/3) (pi) rrr, and surface area A = 4(pi) rr—
    “Oh, my god…”
    “What now?” said the voice of the tortoise.
    Didactylos’s face turned towards Brutha, who was clutching at his head.
    “What’s a pi?”
    Didactylos reached out a hand and steadied Brutha.
    “What’s the matter?” said Om.
    “I don’t know! It’s just words! I don’t know what’s in the books! I can’t read!”
    “Getting plenty of sleep is vital,” said Om. “It builds a healthy shell.”
    Brutha sagged to his knees in the rocking boat. He felt like a householder coming back unexpectedly and finding the old place full of strangers. They were in every room, not menacing, but just filling the space with their thereness.
    “The books are leaking!”
    “I don’t see how that can happen,” said Didactylos. “You said you just looked at them. You didn’t read them. You don’t know what they mean.”
    “ They know what they mean!”
    “Listen. They’re just books, of the nature of books,” said Didactylos. “They’re not magical. If you could know what books contained just by looking at them, Urn there would be a genius.”
    “What’s the matter with him?” said Simony.
    “He thinks he knows too much.”
    “No! I don’t know anything! Not really know ,” said Brutha. “I just remembered that squids have an internal cartilaginous support!”
    “I can see that would be a worry,”