Small Gods: Discworld Novel, A

by Terry Pratchett

  It had taken months. A third of the men had died, of heat and dehydration and wild animals and worse things, the worse things that the desert held…

  You had to have a mind like Vorbis’s to plan it.

  And plan it early. Men were already dying in the desert before Brother Murduck went to preach; there was already a beaten track when the Omnian fleet burned in the bay before Ephebe.

  You had to have a mind like Vorbis’s to plan your retaliation before your attack.

  It was over in less than an hour. The fundamental truth was that the handful of Ephebian guards in the palace had no chance at all.

  Vorbis sat upright in the Tyrant’s chair. It was approaching midnight.

  A collection of Ephebian citizens, the Tyrant among them, had been herded in front of him.

  He busied himself with some paperwork and then looked up with an air of mild surprise, as if he’d been completely unaware that fifty people were waiting in front of him at crossbow point.

  “Ah,” he said, and flashed a little smile.

  “Well,” he said, “I am pleased to say that we can now dispense with the peace treaty. Quite unnecessary. Why prattle of peace when there is no more war? Ephebe is now a diocese of Omnia. There will be no argument.”

  He threw a paper on to the floor.

  “There will be a fleet here in a few days. There will be no opposition, while we hold the palace. Your infernal mirror is even now being smashed.”

  He steepled his fingers and looked at the assembled Ephebians.

  “Who built it?”

  The Tyrant looked up.

  “It was an Ephebian construction,” he said.

  “Ah,” said Vorbis, “democracy. I forgot. Then who”—he signaled one of the guards, who handed him a sack—“wrote this?”

  A copy of De Chelonian Mobile was flung on to the marble floor.

  Brutha stood beside the throne. It was where he had been told to stand.

  He’d looked into the pit and now it was him. Everything around him was happening in some distant circle of light, surrounded by darkness. Thoughts chased one another around his head.

  Did the Cenobiarch know about this? Did anyone else know about the two kinds of truth? Who else knew that Vorbis was fighting both sides of a war, like a child playing with soldiers? Was it really wrong if it was for the greater glory of…

  …a god who was a tortoise. A god that only Brutha believed in?

  Who did Vorbis talk to when he prayed?

  Through the mental storm Brutha heard Vorbis’s level tones: “If the philosopher who wrote this does not own up, the entirety of you will be put to the flame. Do not doubt that I mean it.”

  There was a movement in the crowd, and the sound of Didactylos’s voice.

  “Let go! You heard him! Anyway…I always wanted a chance to do this…”

  A couple of servants were pushed aside and the philosopher stumped out of the crowd, his barren lantern held defiantly over his head.

  Brutha watched the philosopher pause for a moment in the empty space, and then turn very slowly until he was directly facing Vorbis. He took a few steps forward then, and held the lantern out as he appeared to regard the deacon critically.

  “Hmm,” he said.

  “You are the…perpetrator?” said Vorbis.

  “Indeed. Didactylos is my name.”

  “You are blind?”

  “Only as far as vision is concerned, my lord.”

  “Yet you carry a lantern,” said Vorbis. “Doubtless for some catchword reason. Probably you’ll tell me you’re looking for an honest man?”

  “I don’t know, my lord. Perhaps you could tell me what he looks like?”

  “I should strike you down now,” said Vorbis.

  “Oh, certainly.”

  Vorbis indicated the book.

  “These lies. This scandal. This…this lure to drag the minds of men from the path of true knowledge. You dare to stand before me and declare”—he pushed the book with a toe—“that the world is flat and travels through the void on the back of a giant turtle?”

  Brutha held his breath.

  So did history.

  Affirm your belief, Brutha thought. Just once, someone please stand up to Vorbis. I can’t. But someone…

  He found his eyes swiveling toward Simony, who stood on the other side of Vorbis’s chair. The sergeant looked transfixed, fascinated.

  Didactylos drew himself up to his full height. He half-turned and for a moment his blank gaze passed across Brutha. The lantern was extended at arm’s length.

  “No,” he said.

  “When every honest man knows that the world is a sphere, a perfect shape, bound to spin around the sphere of the Sun as Man orbits the central truth of Om,” said Vorbis, “and the stars—”

  Brutha leaned forward, heart pounding.

  “My lord?” he whispered.

  “What?” snapped Vorbis.

  “He said ‘no,’” said Brutha.

  “That’s right,” said Didactylos.

  Vorbis sat absolutely motionless for a moment. Then his jaw moved a fraction, as if he was rehearsing some words under his breath.

  “You deny it?” he said.

  “Let it be a sphere,” said Didactylos. “No problem with a sphere. No doubt special arrangements are made for everything to stay on. And the Sun can be another larger sphere, a long way off. Would you like the Moon to orbit the world or the Sun? I advise the world. More hierarchical, and a splendid example to us all.”

  Brutha was seeing something he’d never seen before. Vorbis was looking bewildered.

  “But you wrote…you said the world is on the back of a giant turtle! You gave the turtle a name!”

  Didactylos shrugged. “Now I know better,” he said. “Who ever heard of a turtle ten thousand miles long? Swimming through the emptiness of space? Hah. For stupidity! I am embarrassed to think of it now.”

  Vorbis shut his mouth. Then he opened it again.

  “This is how an Ephebian philosopher behaves?” he said.

  Didactylos shrugged again. “It is how any true philosopher behaves,” he said. “One must always be ready to embrace new ideas, take account of new proofs. Don’t you agree? And you have brought us many new points”—a gesture seemed to take in, quite by accident, the Omnian bowmen around the room—“for me to ponder. I can always be swayed by powerful argument.”

  “Your lies have already poisoned the world!”

  “Then I shall write another book,” said Didactylos calmly. “Think how it will look—proud Didactylos swayed by the arguments of the Omnians. A full retraction. Hmm? In fact, with your permission, lord—I know you have much to do, looting and burning and so on—I will retire to my barrel right away and start work on it. A universe of spheres. Balls spinning through space. Hmm. Yes. With your permission, lord, I will write you more balls than you can imagine…”

  The old philosopher turned and, very slowly, walked towards the exit.

  Vorbis watched him go.

  Brutha saw him half-raise his hand to signal the guards, and then lower it again.

  Vorbis turned to the Tyrant.

  “So much for your—” he began.

  “Coo-ee!”

  The lantern sailed through the doorway and shattered against Vorbis’s skull.

  “Nevertheless…the Turtle Moves!”

  Vorbis leapt to his feet.

  “I—” he screamed, and then got a grip on himself. He waved irritably at a couple of the guards. “I want him caught. Now. And…Brutha?”

  Brutha could hardly hear him for the rush of blood in his ears. Didactylos had been a better thinker than he’d thought.

  “Yes, lord?”

  “You will take a party of men, and you will take them to the Library…and then, Brutha, you will burn the Library.”

  Didactylos was blind, but it was dark. The pursuing guards could see, except that there was nothing to see by. And they hadn’t spent their lives wandering the twisty, uneven
and above all many-stepped lanes of Ephebe.

  “—eight, nine, ten, eleven,” muttered the philosopher, bounding up a pitch-dark flight of steps and haring around a corner.

  “Argh, ow, that was my knee,” muttered most of the guards, in a heap about halfway up.

  One made it to the top, though. By starlight he could just make out the skinny figure, bounding madly along the street. He raised his crossbow. The old fool wasn’t even dodging…

  A perfect target.

  There was a twang.

  The guard looked puzzled for a moment. The bow toppled from his hands, firing itself as it hit the cobbles and sending its bolt ricocheting off a statue. He looked down at the feathered shaft sticking out of his chest, and then at the figure detaching itself from the shadows.

  “Sergeant Simony?” he whispered.

  “I’m sorry,” said Simony. “I really am. But the Truth is important.”

  The soldier opened his mouth to give his opinion of the truth and then slumped forward.

  He opened his eyes.

  Simony was walking away. Everything looked lighter. It was still dark. But now he could see in the darkness. Everything was shades of gray. And the cobbles under his hand had somehow become a coarse black sand.

  He looked up.

  ON YOUR FEET, PRIVATE ICHLOS.

  He stood up sheepishly. Now he was more than just a soldier, an anonymous figure to chase and be killed and be no more than a shadowy bit-player in other people’s lives. Now he was Dervi Ichlos, aged thirty-eight, comparatively blameless in the general scheme of things, and dead.

  He raised a hand to his lips uncertainly.

  “You’re the judge?” he said.

  NOT ME.

  Ichlos looked at the sands stretching away. He knew instinctively what he had to do. He was far less sophisticated than General Fri’it, and took more notice of songs he’d learned in his childhood. Besides, he had an advantage. He’d had even less religion than the general.

  JUDGMENT IS AT THE END OF THE DESERT.

  Ichlos tried to smile.

  “My mum told me about this,” he said. “When you’re dead, you have to walk a desert. And you see everything properly, she said. And remember everything right.”

  Death studiously did nothing to indicate his feelings either way.

  “Might meet a few friends on the way, eh?” said the soldier.

  POSSIBLY.

  Ichlos set out. On the whole, he thought, it could have been worse.

  Urn clambered across the shelves like a monkey, pulling books out of their racks and throwing them down to the floor.

  “I can carry about twenty,” he said. “But which twenty?”

  “Always wanted to do that,” murmured Didactylos happily. “Upholding truth in the face of tyranny and so on. Hah! One man, unafraid of the—”

  “What to take? What to take?” shouted Urn.

  “We don’t need Grido’s Mechanics,” said Didactylos. “Hey, I wish I could have seen the look on his face! Damn good shot, considering. I just hope someone wrote down what I—”

  “Principles of gearing! Theory of water expansion!” shouted Urn. “But we don’t need Ibid’s Civics or Gnomon’s Ectopia, that’s for sure—”

  “What? They belong to all mankind!” snapped Didactylos.

  “Then if all mankind will come and help us carry them, that’s fine,” said Urn. “But if it’s just the two of us, I prefer to carry something useful.”

  “Useful? Books on mechanisms?”

  “Yes! They can show people how to live better!”

  “And these show people how to be people,” said Didactylos. “Which reminds me. Find me another lantern. I feel quite blind without one—”

  The Library door shook to a thunderous knocking. It wasn’t the knocking of people who expected the door to be opened.

  “We could throw some of the others into the—”

  The hinges leapt out of the walls. The door thudded down.

  Soldiers scrambled over it, swords drawn.

  “Ah, gentlemen,” said Didactylos. “Pray don’t disturb my circles.”

  The corporal in charge looked at him blankly, and then down at the floor.

  “What circles?” he said.

  “Hey, how about giving me a pair of compasses and coming back in, say, half an hour?”

  “Leave him, corporal,” said Brutha.

  He stepped over the door.

  “I said leave him.”

  “But I got orders to—”

  “Are you deaf? If you are, the Quisition can cure that,” said Brutha, astonished at the steadiness of his own voice.

  “You don’t belong to the Quisition,” said the corporal.

  “No. But I know a man who does,” said Brutha. “You are to search the palace for books. Leave him with me. He’s an old man. What harm can he do?”

  The corporal looked hesitantly from Brutha to his prisoners.

  “Very good, corporal. I will take over.”

  They all turned.

  “Did you hear me?” said Sergeant Simony, pushing his way forward.

  “But the deacon told us—”

  “Corporal?”

  “Yes, sergeant?”

  “The deacon is far away. I am right here.”

  “Yes, sergeant.”

  “Go!”

  “Yes, sergeant.”

  Simony cocked an ear as the soldiers marched away.

  Then he stuck his sword in the door and turned to Didactylos. He made a fist with his left hand and brought his right hand down on it, palm extended.

  “The Turtle Moves,” he said.

  “That all depends,” said the philosopher, cautiously.

  “I mean I am…a friend,” he said.

  “Why should we trust you?” said Urn.

  “Because you haven’t got any choice,” said Sergeant Simony briskly.

  “Can you get us out of here?” said Brutha.

  Simony glared at him. “You?” he said. “Why should I get you out of here? You’re an inquisitor!” He grasped his sword.

  Brutha backed away.

  “I’m not!”

  “On the ship, when the captain sounded you, you just said nothing,” said Simony. “You’re not one of us.”

  “I don’t think I’m one of them, either,” said Brutha. “I’m one of mine.”

  He gave Didactylos an imploring look, which was a wasted effort, and turned it towards Urn instead.

  “I don’t know about this soldier,” he said. “All I know is that Vorbis means to have you killed and he will burn your Library. But I can help. I worked it out on the way here.”

  “And don’t listen to him,” said Simony. He dropped on one knee in front of Didactylos, like a supplicant. “Sir, there are…some of us…who know your book for what it is…see, I have a copy…”

  He fumbled inside his breastplate.

  “We copied it out,” said Simony. “One copy! That’s all we had! But it’s been passed around. Some of us who could read, read it to the others! It makes so much sense!”

  “Er…” said Didactylos. “What?”

  Simony waved his hands in excitement. “Because we know it—I’ve been to places that—it’s true! There is a Great Turtle. The turtle does move! We don’t need gods!”

  “Urn? No one’s stripped the copper off the roof, have they?” said Didactylos.

  “Don’t think so.”

  “Remind me not to talk to this chap outside, then.”

  “You don’t understand!” said Simony. “I can save you. You have friends in unexpected places. Come on. I’ll just kill this priest…”

  He gripped his sword. Brutha backed away.

  “No! I can help, too! That’s why I came. When I saw you in front of Vorbis I knew what I could do!”

  “What can you do?” sneered Urn.

  “I can save the Library.”

  “What? Put it on your back and run away?” sneered Simony.

  “No. I don’t me
an that. How many scrolls are there?”

  “About seven hundred,” said Didactylos.

  “How many of them are important?”

  “All of them!” said Urn.

  “Maybe a couple of hundred,” said Didactylos, mildly.

  “Uncle!”

  “All the rest is just wind and vanity publishing,” said Didactylos.

  “But they’re books!”

  “I may be able to take more than that,” said Brutha slowly. “Is there a way out?”

  “There…could be,” said Didactylos.

  “Don’t tell him!” said Simony.

  “Then all your books will burn,” said Brutha. He pointed to Simony. “He said you haven’t got a choice. So you haven’t got anything to lose, have you?”

  “He’s a—” Simony began.

  “Everyone shut up,” said Didactylos. He stared past Brutha’s ear.

  “There may be a way out,” he said. “What do you intend?”

  “I don’t believe this!” said Urn. “There’s Omnians here and you’re telling them there’s another way out!”

  “There’s tunnels all through this rock,” said Didactylos.

  “Maybe, but we don’t tell people!”

  “I’m inclined to trust this person,” said Didactylos. “He’s got an honest face. Speaking philosophically.”

  “Why should we trust him?”

  “Anyone stupid enough to expect us to trust him in these circumstances must be trustworthy,” said Didactylos. “He’d be too stupid to be deceitful.”

  “I can walk out of here right now,” said Brutha. “And where will your Library be then?”

  “You see?” said Simony.

  “Just when things apparently look dark, suddenly we have unexpected friends everywhere,” said Didactylos. “What is your plan, young man?”

  “I haven’t got one,” said Brutha. “I just do things, one after the other.”

  “And how long will doing things one after another take you?”

  “About ten minutes, I think.”

  Simony glared at Brutha.

  “Now get the books,” said Brutha. “And I shall need some light.”

  “But you can’t even read!” said Urn.