Small Gods

“Thank you. Thank you very much.”
    Nod, smile.
    “Nearly done,” said Urn, more or less to himself. “Just got to let it cool now. Got to let it cool really slowly . Otherwise it crystallizes, you see.”
    Nod, smile, nod.
    It was good tea.
    “S’not ’n important cast anyway,” said Urn, swaying. “Jus’ the control levers—”
    Lu-Tze caught him carefully and steered him to a seat on a heap of charcoal. Then he went and watched the forge for a while. The bar of steel was glowing in the mold.
    He poured a bucket of cold water over it, watched the great cloud of steam spread and disperse, and then put his broom over his shoulder and ran away hurriedly.
    People to whom Lu-Tze was a vaguely glimpsed figure behind a very slow broom would have been surprised at his turn of speed, especially in a man six thousand years old who ate nothing but brown rice and drank only green tea with a knob of rancid butter in it.
    A little way away from the Citadel’s main gates he stopped running and started sweeping. He swept up to the gates, swept around the gates themselves, nodded and smiled at a soldier who glared at him and then realized that it was only the daft old sweeper, polished one of the handles of the gates, and swept his way by passages and cloisters to Brutha’s vegetable garden.
    He could see a figure crouched among the melons.
    Lu-Tze found a rug and padded back out into the garden, where Brutha was sitting hunched up with his hoe over his knees.
    Lu-Tze had seen many agonized faces in his time, which was a longer time than most whole civilizations managed to see. Brutha’s was the worst. He tugged the rug over the bishop’s shoulders.
    “I can’t hear him,” said Brutha hoarsely. “It may mean that he’s too far away. I keep on thinking that. He might be out there somewhere. Miles away!”
    Lu-Tze smiled and nodded.
    “It’ll happen all over again. He never told anyone to do anything. Or not to do anything. He didn’t care!”
    Lu-Tze nodded and smiled again. His teeth were yellow. They were in fact his two-hundredth set.
    “He should have cared.”
    Lu-Tze disappeared into his corner again and returned with a shallow bowl full of some kind of tea. He nodded and smiled and proffered it until Brutha took it and had a sip. It tasted like hot water with a lavender bag in it.
    “You don’t understand anything I’m talking about, do you?” said Brutha.
    “Not much,” said Lu-Tze.
    “You can talk?”
    Lu-Tze put a wisened finger to his lips.
    “Big secret,” he said.
    Brutha looked at the little man. How much did he know about him? How much did anyone know about him?
    “You talk to God,” said Lu-Tze.
    “How do you know that?”
    “Signs. Man who talk to God have difficult life.”
    “You’re right!” Brutha stared at Lu-Tze over the cup. “Why are you here?” he said. “You’re not Omnian. Or Ephebian.”
    “Grew up near Hub. Long time ago. Now Lu-Tze a stranger everywhere he goes. Best way. Learned religion in temple at home. Now go where job is.”
    “Carting soil and pruning plants?”
    “Sure. Never been bishop or high panjandrum. Dangerous life. Always be man who cleans pews or sweeps up behind altar. No one bother useful man. No one bother small man. No one remember name.”
    “That’s what I was going to do! But it doesn’t work for me.”
    “Then find other way. I learn in temple. Taught by ancient master. When trouble, always remember wise words of ancient and venerable master.”
    “What were they?”
    “Ancient master say: ‘That boy there! What you eating? Hope you brought enough for everybody!’ Ancient master say: ‘You bad boy! Why you no do homework?’ Ancient master say: ‘What boy laughing? No tell what boy laughing, whole dojo stay in after school!’ When remember these wise words, nothing seems so bad.”
    “What shall I do? I can’t hear him! ”
    “You do what you must. I learn anything, it you have to walk it all alone.”
    Brutha hugged his knees.
    “But he told me nothing! Where’s all this wisdom? All the other prophets came back with commandments!”
    “Where they get them?”
    “I…suppose they made them up.”
    “You get them from same place.”

    “You call this philosophy?” roared Didactylos, waving his stick.
    Urn cleaned pieces of the sand mold from the lever.
    “Well… natural philosophy,” he said.
    The stick whanged down on the Moving Turtle’s flanks.
    “I never taught you this sort of thing!” shouted the