“Ossory. Ossory,” said the tortoise. “No…no…can’t say I—”
“He said that you spoke unto him from out of a pillar of flame,” said Brutha.
“Oh, that Ossory,” said the tortoise. “Pillar of flame. Yes.”
“And you dictated to him the Book of Ossory,” said Brutha. “Which contains the Directions, the Gateways, the Abjurations, and the Precepts. One hundred and ninety-three chapters.”
“I don’t think I did all that,” said Om doubtfully. “I’m sure I would have remembered one hundred and ninety-three chapters.”
“What did you say to him, then?”
“As far as I can remember it was ‘Hey, see what I can do!’” said the tortoise.
Brutha stared at it. It looked embarrassed, insofar as that’s possible for a tortoise.
“Even gods like to relax,” it said.
“Hundreds of thousands of people live their lives by the Abjurations and the Precepts!” Brutha snarled.
“Well? I’m not stopping them,” said Om.
“If you didn’t dictate them, who did?”
“Don’t ask me. I’m not omnicognisant!”
Brutha was shaking with anger.
“And the Prophet Abbys? I suppose someone just happened to give him the Codicils, did they?”
“It wasn’t me—”
“They’re written on slabs of lead ten feet tall!”
“Oh, well, it must have been me, yes? I always have a ton of lead slabs around in case I meet someone in the desert, yes?”
“What! If you didn’t give them to him, who did?”
“I don’t know. Why should I know? I can’t be everywhere at once!”
“You’re omnipresent!”
“What says so?”
“The Prophet Hashimi!”
“Never met the man!”
“Oh? Oh? So I suppose you didn’t give him the Book of Creation, then?”
“What Book of Creation?”
“You mean you don’t know?”
“No!”
“Then who gave it to him?”
“I don’t know! Perhaps he wrote it himself!”
Brutha put his hand over his mouth in horror.
“Thaff blafhngf!”
“What?”
Brutha removed his hand.
“I said, that’s blasphemy!”
“Blasphemy? How can I blaspheme? I’m a god!”
“I don’t believe you!”
“Hah! Want another thunderbolt?”
“You call that a thunderbolt?”
Brutha was red in the face, and shaking. The tortoise hung its head sadly.
“All right. All right. Not much of one, I admit,” it said. “If I was better, you’d have been just a pair of sandals with smoke coming out.” It looked wretched. “I don’t understand it. This sort of thing has never happened to me before. I intended to be a great big roaring white bull for a week and ended up a tortoise for three years. Why? I don’t know, and I’m supposed to know everything. According to these prophets of yours who say they’ve met me, anyway. You know, no one even heard me? I tried talking to goatherds and stuff, and they never took any notice! I was beginning to think I was a tortoise dreaming about being a god. That’s how bad it was getting.”
“Perhaps you are,” said Brutha.
“Your legs to swell to tree trunks!” snapped the tortoise.
“But—but,” said Brutha, “you’re saying the prophets were…just men who wrote things down!”
“That’s what they were!”
“Yes, but it wasn’t from you!”
“Some of it was, perhaps,” said the tortoise. “I’ve…forgotten so much, the past few years.”
“But if you’ve been down here as a tortoise, who’s been listening to the prayers? Who has been accepting the sacrifices? Who has been judging the dead?”
“I don’t know,” said the tortoise. “Who did it before?”
“You did!”
“Did I?”
Brutha stuck his fingers in his ears and opened up with the third verse of Lo, the infidels flee the wrath of Om.
After a couple of minutes the tortoise stuck its head out from under its shell.
“So,” it said, “before unbelievers get burned alive…do you sing to them first?”
“No!”
“Ah. A merciful death. Can I say something?”
“If you try to tempt my faith one more time—”
The tortoise paused. Om searched his fading memory. Then he scratched in the dust with a claw.
“I…remember a day…summer day…you were…thirteen…”
The dry little voice droned on. Brutha’s mouth formed a slowly widening O.
Finally he said, “How did you know that?”
“You believe the Great God Om watches everything you do, don’t you?”
“You’re a tortoise, you couldn’t have—”
“When you were almost fourteen, and your grandmother had beaten you for stealing cream from the still-room, which in fact you had not done, she locked you in your room and you said, ‘I wish you were—’”
There will be a sign, thought Vorbis. There was always a sign, for the man who watched for them. A wise man always put himself in the path of the God.
He strolled through the Citadel. He always made a point of taking a daily walk through some of the lower levels, although of course always at a different time, and via a different route. Insofar as Vorbis got any pleasure in life, at least in any way that could be recognized by a normal human being, it was in seeing the faces of humble members of the clergy as they rounded a corner and found themselves face-to-chin with Deacon Vorbis of the Quisition. There was always that little intake of breath that indicated a guilty conscience. Vorbis liked to see properly guilty consciences. That was what consciences were for. Guilt was the grease in which the wheels of the authority turned.
He rounded a corner and saw, scratched crudely on the wall opposite, a rough oval with four crude legs and even cruder head and tail.
He smiled. There seemed to be more of them lately. Let heresy fester, let it come to the surface like a boil. Vorbis knew how to wield the lance.
But the second or two of reflection had made him walk past a turning and, instead, he stepped out into the sunshine.
He was momentarily lost, for all his knowledge of the byways of the church. This was one of the walled gardens. Around a fine stand of tall decorative Klatchian corn, bean vines raised red and white blossoms towards the sun; in between the bean rows, melons baked gently on the dusty soil. In the normal way, Vorbis would have noted and approved of this efficient use of space, but in the normal way he wouldn’t have encountered a plump young novice, rolling back and forth in the dust with his fingers in his ears.
Vorbis stared down at him. Then he prodded Brutha with his sandal.
“What ails you, my son?”
Brutha opened his eyes.
There weren’t many superior members of the hierarchy he could recognize. Even the Cenobiarch was a distant blob in the crowd. But everyone recognized Vorbis the exquisitor. Something about him projected itself on your conscience within a few days of your arrival at the Citadel. The God was merely to be feared in the perfunctory ways of habit, but Vorbis was dreaded.
Brutha fainted.
“How very strange,” said Vorbis.
A hissing noise made him look around.
There was a small tortoise near his foot. As he glared, it tried to back away, and all the time it was staring at him and hissing like a kettle.
He picked it up and examined it carefully, turning it over and over in his hands. Then he looked around the walled garden until he found a spot in full sunshine, and put the reptile down, on its back. After a moment’s thought he took a couple of pebbles from one of the vegetable beds and wedged them under the shell so that the creature’s movement wouldn’t tip it over.
Vorbis believed that no opportunity to acquire esoteric knowledge should e
ver be lost, and made a mental note to come back again in a few hours to see how it was getting on, if work permitted.
Then he turned his attention to Brutha.
There was a hell for blasphemers. There was a hell for the disputers of rightful authority. There were a number of hells for liars. There was probably a hell for little boys who wished their grandmothers were dead. There were more than enough hells to go around.
This was the definition of eternity; it was the space of time devised by the Great God Om to ensure that everyone got the punishment that was due to them.
The Omnians had a great many hells.
Currently, Brutha was going through all of them.
Brother Nhumrod and Brother Vorbis looked down at him, tossing and turning on his bed like a beached whale.
“It’s the sun,” said Nhumrod, almost calm now after the initial shock of having the exquisitor come looking for him. “The poor lad works all day in that garden. It was bound to happen.”
“Have you tried beating him?” said Brother Vorbis.
“I’m sorry to say that beating young Brutha is like trying to flog a mattress,” said Nhumrod. “He says ‘ow!’ but I think it’s only because he wants to show he’s willing. Very willing lad, Brutha. He’s the one I told you about.”
“He doesn’t look very sharp,” said Vorbis.
“He’s not,” said Nhumrod.
Vorbis nodded approvingly. Undue intelligence in a novice was a mixed blessing. Sometimes it could be channeled for the greater glory of Om, but often it caused…well, it did not cause trouble, because Vorbis knew exactly what to do with misapplied intelligence, but it did cause unnecessary work.
“And yet you tell me his tutors speak so highly of him,” he said.
Nhumrod shrugged.
“He is very obedient,” he said. “And…well, there’s his memory.”
“What about his memory?”
“There’s so much of it,” said Nhumrod.
“He has got a good memory?”
“Good is the wrong word. It’s superb. He’s word-perfect on the entire Sept—”
“Hmm?” said Vorbis.
Nhumrod caught the deacon’s eye.
“As perfect, that is, as anything may be in this most imperfect world,” he muttered.
“A devoutly read young man,” said Vorbis.
“Er,” said Nhumrod, “no. He can’t read. Or write.”
“Ah. A lazy boy.”
The deacon was not a man who dwelt in gray areas. Nhumrod’s mouth opened and shut silently as he sought for the proper words.
“No,” he said. “He tries. We’re sure he tries. He just does not seem to be able to make the…he cannot fathom the link between the sounds and the letters.”
“You have beaten him for that, at least?”
“It seems to have little effect, deacon.”
“How, then, has he become such a capable pupil?”
“He listens,” said Nhumrod.
No one listened quite like Brutha, he reflected. It made it very hard to teach him. It was like—it was like being in a great big cave. All your words just vanished into the unfillable depths of Brutha’s head. The sheer concentrated absorption could reduce unwary tutors to stuttering silence, as every word they uttered whirled away into Brutha’s ears.
“He listens to everything,” said Nhumrod. “And he watches everything. He takes it all in.”
Vorbis stared down at Brutha.
“And I’ve never heard him say an unkind word,” said Nhumrod. “The other novices make fun of him, sometimes. Call him The Big Dumb Ox. You know the sort of thing?”
Vorbis’s gaze took in Brutha’s ham-sized hands and tree-trunk legs.
He appeared to be thinking deeply.
“Cannot read and write,” said Vorbis. “But extremely loyal, you say?”
“Loyal and devout,” said Nhumrod.
“And a good memory,” Vorbis murmured.
“It’s more than that,” said Nhumrod. “It’s not like memory at all.”
Vorbis appeared to reach a decision.
“Send him to see me when he is recovered,” he said.
Nhumrod looked panicky.
“I merely wish to talk to him,” said Vorbis. “I may have a use for him.”
“Yes, lord?”
“For, I suspect, the Great God Om moves in mysterious ways.”
High above. No sound but the hiss of wind in feathers.
The eagle stood on the breeze, looking down at the toy buildings of the Citadel.
It had dropped it somewhere, and now it couldn’t find it. Somewhere down there, in that little patch of green.
Bees buzzed in the bean blossoms. And the sun beat down on the upturned shell of Om.
There is also a hell for tortoises.
He was too tired to waggle his legs now. That was all you could do, waggle your legs. And stick your head out as far as it would go and wave it about in the hope that you could lever yourself over.
You died if you had no believers, and that was what a small god generally worried about. But you also died if you died.
In the part of his mind not occupied with thoughts of heat, he could feel Brutha’s terror and bewilderment. He shouldn’t have done that to the boy. Of course he hadn’t been watching him. What god did that? Who cared what people did? Belief was the thing. He’d just picked the memory out of the boy’s mind, to impress, like a con-juror removing an egg from someone’s ear.
I’m on my back, and getting hotter, and I’m going to die…
And yet…and yet…that bloody eagle had dropped him on a compost heap. Some kind of clown, that eagle. A whole place built of rocks on a rock in a rocky place, and he landed on the one thing that’d break his fall without breaking him as well. And really close to a believer.
Odd, that. Made you wonder if it wasn’t some kind of divine providence, except that you were divine providence…and on your back, getting hotter, preparing to die…
That man who’d turned him over. That expression on that mild face. He’d remember that. That expression, not of cruelty, but of some different level of being. That expression of terrible peace…
A shadow crossed the sun. Om squinted up into the face of Lu-Tze, who gazed at him with gentle, upside-down compassion. And then turned him the right way up. And then picked up his broom and wandered off, without a second glance.
Om sagged, catching his breath. And then brightened up.
Someone up there likes me, he thought. And it’s Me.
Sergeant Simony waited until he was back in his own quarters before he unfolded his own scrap of paper.
He was not at all surprised to find it marked with a small drawing of a turtle. He was the lucky one.
He’d lived for a moment like this. Someone had to bring back the writer of the Truth, to be a symbol for the movement. It had to be him. The only shame was that he couldn’t kill Vorbis.
But that had to happen where it could be seen.
One day. In front of the Temple. Otherwise no one would believe.
Om stumped along a sandy corridor.
He’d hung around a while after Brutha’s disappearance. Hanging around is another thing tortoises are very good at. They’re practically world champions.
Bloody useless boy, he thought. Served himself right for trying to talk to a barely coherent novice.
Of course, the skinny old one hadn’t been able to hear him. Nor had the chef. Well, the old one was probably deaf. As for the cook…Om made a note that, when he was restored to his full godly powers, a special fate was going to lie in wait for the cook. He wasn’t sure exactly what it was going to be, but it was going to involve boiling water and probably carrots would come into it somewhere.
He enjoyed the thought of that for a moment. But where did it leave him? It left him in this wretched garden, as a tortoise. He knew how he’d got in—he glared in dull terror at the tiny dot in the sky that the eye of memory knew was an eagle—and he’d better f
ind a more terrestrial way out unless he wanted to spend the next month hiding under a melon leaf.
Another thought struck him. Good eating!
When he had his power again, he was going to spend quite some time devising a few new hells. And a couple of fresh Precepts, too. Thou shalt not eat of the Meat of the Turtle. That was a good one. He was surprised he hadn’t thought of it before. Perspective, that’s what it was.
And if he’d thought of one like Thou Shalt Bloody Well Pick up Any Distressed Tortoises and Carry Them Anywhere They Want Unless, And This is Important, You’re an Eagle a few years ago, he wouldn’t be in this trouble now.
Nothing else for it. He’d have to find the Cenobiarch himself. Someone like a High Priest would be bound to be able to hear him.
And he’d be in this place somewhere. High Priests tended to stay put. He should be easy enough to find. And while he might currently be a tortoise, Om was still a god. How hard could it be?
He’d have to go upwards. That’s what a hierarchy meant. You found the top man by going upwards.
Wobbling slightly, his shell jerking from side to side, the former Great God Om set off to explore the citadel erected to his greater glory.
He couldn’t help noticing things had changed a lot in three thousand years.
“Me?” said Brutha. “But, but—”
“I don’t believe he means to punish you,” said Nhumrod. “Although punishment is what you richly deserve, of course. We all richly deserve,” he added piously.
“But why?”
“—why? He said he just wants to talk to you.”
“But there is nothing I could possibly say that a quisitor wants to hear!” wailed Brutha.
“—Hear. I am sure you are not questioning the deacon’s wishes,” said Nhumrod.
“No. No. Of course not,” said Brutha. He hung his head.
“Good boy,” said Nhumrod. He patted as far up Brutha’s back as he could reach. “Just you trot along,” he said. “I’m sure everything will be all right.” And then, because he too had been brought up in habits of honesty, he added, “Probably all right.”
There were few steps in the Citadel. The progress of the many processions that marked the complex rituals of Great Om demanded long, gentle slopes. Such steps as there were, were low enough to encompass the faltering steps of very old men. And there were so many very old men in the Citadel.
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