The Science of Discworld II

is a very personal one. He runs his own life by it. In contrast, Deacon Vorbis believes that the role of religion is to run everybody else’s life. Vorbis is head of the Quisition, whose role is ‘to do all those things that needed to be done and which other people would rather not do’. Nobody ever interrupts Vorbis to ask what he is thinking about, because they are scared stiff that the answer will be ‘You’.
    The Great God’s manifestation takes the form of a small tortoise. Brutha finds this hard to believe:
    I’ve seen the Great God Om … and he isn’t tortoise-shaped. He comes as an eagle, or a lion, or a mighty bull. There’s a statue in the Great Temple. It’s seven cubits high. It’s got bronze on it and everything. It’s trampling infidels. You can’t trample infidels when you’re a tortoise.
    Om’s power has waned because of a lack of belief. He tests his strength by silently cursing a beetle, but it makes no difference and the insect plods away unperturbed. He curses a melon unto the eighth generation, but with no evident effect. He inflicts a plague of boils on it, but all it does is sit there, slowly ripening. He vows that when he returns to his rightful state, the Tribes of Beetle and Melons will regret not responding. For on Discworld, the size of a god is determined by the strength, and amount, of belief in him (or her, or it). Om’s church had become so corrupt and powerful that the fearful belief of the common people had been transferred to the church itself – it’s very easy to believe in a red-hot poker – and only Brutha, simple soul, still truly believes. No god ever dies, because there is always some tiny pocket of belief remaining somewhere in the world, but a tortoise is pretty much as low as you can get.
    Brutha is going to become the Eighth Prophet of Om. (His grandmother would have made it two generations before, but she was a woman, and narrative imperative forbids female prophets.) Vorbis’s job is to ensure that all Omnians remain true to the teachings of the Great God Om, which is to say, they do what Vorbis tells them. The presence on the Discworld of the god itself, causing changes to all theold teachings and generally making trouble, is not greatly to Vorbis’s taste. Neither is the presence of a genuine prophet. Vorbis is faced with the inquisitor’s spiritual dilemma, and resolves it in the time-honoured manner of the Spanish Inquisition (which, basically, is to tell oneself that torturing people is fine because it’s for their own good, in the long run).
    Brutha has a much simpler vision of Omnianism: it is something for individuals to live by. Vorbis shows Brutha a new instrument that he has had made: an iron turtle upon which a man or woman can be spreadeagled, with a firebox inside. The time it takes for the iron to heat up will give them plenty of time to reflect on their heresies. In a flash of prophecy, Brutha realises that its first victim will be himself. And in due course, he finds himself chained to it, and uncomfortably warm, with Vorbis watching over him, gloating. Then the Great God Om intervenes, dropped from the talons of an eagle.
    One or two people, who had been watching Vorbis closely, said later that there was just time for his expression to change before two pounds of tortoise, travelling at three metres per second, hit him between the eyes.
    It was a revelation.
    And that does something to people watching. For a start, they believe with all their heart.
    The Great God Om now is truly great. He rises over the Temple, a billowing cloud shaped like eagle-headed men, bulls, golden horns, all tangled and fused into one another. Four bolts of fire whir out of the cloud and burst the chains that fastened Brutha to the iron turtle. The Great God declares Brutha to be Prophet of Prophets.
    The Great God gives Brutha the opportunity to make some Commandments. The Prophet declines, having decided that ‘You should do things because they’re right. Not because gods say so. They might say something different another time’. And he tells Om that there will be no Commandments unless the god agrees to obey them, too.
    Which is a new thought, for a god.
    Small Gods has many wise words to say about religion and belief, andit makes the point that in their own terms the Inquisitors believe they are doing good. Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov has a scene