Small Gods

constantly discharges itself among the peaks of Cori Celesti, the central mountain. And at this time of year the sun rises over the desert in Ephebe and over the sea in Omnia, so keep the hublights on the left and the sunset glow behind you—
    “Did you ever go to Cori Celesti?” said Brutha.
    Om, who had been nodding off in the cold, woke up with a start.
    “Huh?”
    “It’s where the gods live.”
    “Hah! I could tell you stories,” said Om darkly.
    “What?”
    “Think they’re so bloody elite!”
    “You didn’t live up there, then?”
    “No. Got to be a thunder god or something. Got to have a whole parcel of worshipers to live on Nob Hill. Got to be an anthropomorphic personification, one of them things.”
    “Not just a Great God, then?”
    Well, this was the desert. And Brutha was going to die.
    “May as well tell you,” muttered Om. “It’s not as though we’re going to survive…See, every god’s a Great God to someone. I never wanted to be that great. A handful of tribes, a city or two. It’s not much to ask, is it?”
    “There’s two million people in the empire,” said Brutha.
    “Yeah. Pretty good, eh? Started off with nothing but a shepherd hearing voices in his head, ended up with two million people.”
    “But you never did anything with them,” said Brutha.
    “Like what?”
    “Well…tell them not to kill one another, that sort of thing…”
    “Never really given it much thought. Why should I tell them that?”
    Brutha sought for something that would appeal to god psychology.
    “Well, if people didn’t kill one another, there’d be more people to believe in you?” he suggested.
    “It’s a point,” Om conceded. “Interesting point. Sneaky.”
    Brutha walked along in silence. There was a glimmer of frost on the dunes.
    “Have you ever heard,” he said, “of Ethics?”
    “Somewhere in Howondaland, isn’t it?”
    “The Ephebians were very interested in it.”
    “Probably thinking about invading.”
    “They seemed to think about it a lot.”
    “Long-term strategy, maybe.”
    “I don’t think it’s a place, though. It’s more to do with how people live.”
    “What, lolling around all day while slaves do the real work? Take it from me, whenever you see a bunch of buggers puttering around talking about truth and beauty and the best way of attacking Ethics, you can bet your sandals it’s because dozens of other poor buggers are doing all the real work around the place while those fellows are living like—”
    “—gods?” said Brutha.
    There was a terrible silence.
    “I was going to say kings,” said Om, reproachfully.
    “They sound a bit like gods.”
    “Kings,” said Om emphatically.
    “Why do people need gods?” Brutha persisted.
    “Oh, you’ve got to have gods,” said Om, in a hearty, no-nonsense voice.
    “But it’s gods that need people ,” said Brutha. “To do the believing. You said.”
    Om hesitated. “Well, okay,” he said. “But people have got to believe in something. Yes? I mean, why else does it thunder?”
    “Thunder,” said Brutha, his eyes glazing slightly, “I don’t—
    “—is caused by clouds banging together; after the lightning stroke, there is a hole in the air, and thus the sound is engendered by the clouds rushing to fill the hole and colliding, in accordance with strict cumulodynamic principles.”
    “Your voice goes funny when you’re quoting,” said Om. “What does engendered mean?”
    “I don’t know. No one showed me a dictionary.”
    “Anyway, that’s just an explanation,” said Om. “It’s not a reason .”
    “My grandmother said thunder was caused by the Great God Om taking his sandals off,” said Brutha. “She was in a funny mood that day. Nearly smiled.”
    “ Metaphorically accurate,” said Om. “But I never did thundering. Demarcation, see. Bloody I’ve got-a-big-hammer Blind Io up on Nob Hill does all the thundering.”
    “I thought you said there were hundreds of thunder gods,” said Brutha.
    “Yeah. And he’s all of ’em. Rationalization. A couple of tribes join up, they’ve both got thunder gods, right? And the gods kind of run together—you know how amoebas split?”
    “No.”
    “Well, it’s like that, only the other way.”
    “I still don’t see how one god can be a hundred thunder gods. They all look different…”
    “False noses.”
    “What?”
    “And different voices. I happen to know Io’s got seventy different hammers. Not common knowledge, that. And