Small Gods

you’re walking the wrong way, too.”
    “No. I’m still heading away from the coast.”
    “That’s what I mean.”
    “How far can a lion go with a spear wound like that in him?”
    “What’s that got to do with anything?”
    “Everything.”
    And, half an hour later, a black shadowy line on the silver moonlit desert, there were the tracks.
    “The soldiers came this way. We just have to follow the tracks back. If we head where they’ve come from, we’ll get where we’re going.”
    “We’ll never do it!”
    “We’re traveling light.”
    “Oh, yeah. They were burdened by all the food and water they had to carry,” said Om bitterly. “How lucky for us we haven’t got any.”
    Brutha glanced at Vorbis. He was walking unaided now, provided that you gently turned him around whenever you needed to change direction.
    But even Om had to admit that the tracks were some comfort. In a way they were alive, in the same way that an echo is alive. People had been this way, not long ago. There were other people in the world. Someone, somewhere, was surviving.
    Or not. After an hour or so they came across a mound beside the track. There was a helmet atop it, and a sword stuck in the sand.
    “A lot of soldiers died to get here quickly,” said Brutha.
    Whoever had taken enough time to bury their dead had also drawn a symbol in the sand of the mound. Brutha half-expected it to be a turtle, but the desert wind had not quite eroded the crude shape of a pair of horns.
    “I don’t understand that,” said Om. “They don’t really believe I exist, but they go and put something like that on a grave.”
    “It’s hard to explain. I think it’s because they believe they exist,” said Brutha. “It’s because they’re people, and so was he.”
    He pulled the sword out of the sand.
    “What do you want that for?”
    “Might be useful.”
    “Against who?”
    “Might be useful.”
    An hour later the lion, who was limping after Brutha, also arrived at the grave. It had lived in the desert for sixteen years, and the reason it had lived so long was that it had not died, and it had not died because it never wasted handy protein. It dug.
    Humans have always wasted handy protein ever since they started wondering who had lived in it.
    But, on the whole, there are worse places to be buried than inside a lion.

    There were snakes and lizards on the rock islands. They were probably very nourishing and every one was, in its own way, a taste explosion.
    There was no more water.
    But there were plants…more or less. They looked like groups of stones, except where a few had put up a central flower spike that was a brilliant pink and purple in the dawn light.
    “Where do they get the water from?”
    “Fossil seas.”
    “Water that’s turned to stone?”
    “No. Water that sank down thousands of years ago. Right down in the bedrock.”
    “Can you dig down to it?”
    “Don’t be stupid.”
    Brutha glanced from the flower to the nearest rock island.
    “Honey,” he said.
    “What?”

    The bees had a nest high on the side of a spire of rock. The buzzing could be heard from ground level. There was no possible way up.
    “Nice try,” said Om.
    The sun was up. Already the rocks were warm to the touch. “Get some rest,” said Om, kindly. “I’ll keep watch.”
    “Watch for what?”
    “I’ll watch and find out.”
    Brutha led Vorbis into the shade of a large boulder, and gently pushed him down. Then he lay down too.
    The thirst wasn’t too bad yet. He’d drunk from the temple pool until he squelched as he walked. Later on, they might find a snake…When you considered what some people in the world had, life wasn’t too bad.
    Vorbis lay on his side, his black-on-black eyes staring at nothing.
    Brutha tried to sleep.
    He had never dreamed. Didactylos had been quite excited about that. Someone who remembered everything and didn’t dream would have to think slowly, he said. Imagine a heart, * he said, that was nearly all memory, and had hardly any beats to spare for the everyday purposes of thinking. That would explain why Brutha moved his lips while he thought.
    So this couldn’t have been a dream. It must have been the sun.
    He heard Om’s voice in his head. The tortoise sounded as though he was holding a conversation with people Brutha could not hear.
    Mine!
    Go away!
    No .
    Mine!
    Both of them!
    Mine!
    Brutha turned his head.
    The tortoise was in a gap between two rocks, neck extended and weaving from side to side.