Small Gods

Terry Pratchett

Summary

Brutha is the Chosen One.

His god has spoken to him, admittedly while currently in the shape of a tortoise.

Brutha is a simple lad. He can't read. He can't write. He's pretty good at growing melons. And his wants are few.

He wants to overthrow a huge and corrupt church.

He wants to prevent a horrible holy war.

He wants to stop the persecution of a philosopher who has dared to suggest that, contrary to the Church's dogma, the Discworld really does go through space on the back of an enormous turtle (which is true, but when has that ever mattered?).

He wants peace and justice and brotherly love.

He wants the Inquisition to stop torturing him now, please.

But most of all, what he really wants, more than anything else, is for his god to Choose Someone Else...

Quotes

[The tortoise] has survived while the rest of evolution flowed past it by being, on the whole, no threat to anyone and too much trouble to eat.

Gravity is a habit that is hard to shake off.

...history, contrary to popular theories, is kings and dates and battles. And these things have to happen at the right time. This is difficult. In a chaotic universe there are too many things to go wrong. It's too easy for a general's horse to lose a shoe at the wrong time, or for someone to mishear an order, or for the carrier of the vital message to be waylaid by some men with sticks and a cash flow problem.

Every month the abbot and two senior monks go into the cave where the books [of history] are kept. It used to be the duty of the abbot alone, but two other reliable monks were included after the unfortunate case of the 59th Abbot, who made a million dollars in small bets before his fellow monks caught up with him.

Time is a drug. Too much of it kills you.

...the Church redoubled its efforts to be holy. This was very much like the bustle you get in any large concern when the auditors are expected, but tended towards taking people suspected of being less holy and putting them to death in a hundred ingenious ways. This is considered a reliable barometer of the state of one's piety in most of the really popular religions.

And it came to pass that in that time the Great God Om spake unto Brutha, the Chosen One:

"Psst!"

There was something creepy about that boy, Nhumrod thought. It was the way he looked at you while you were talking, as if he was listening.

Brutha obeyed immediately. Brutha did not know the meaning of the word disobedience. It was only one of a large number of words he didn't know the meaning of.

All the novices knew about those kinds of voices. Except that usually they talked about fairly straightforward things, like the pleasures of night-time manipulation and the general desirability of girls.

The trouble with being a god is that you've got no one to pray to.

...Vorbis was the head of the Quisition, whose job it was to do all those things that needed to be done and which other people would rather not do.

You do not ask people like that what they are thinking about in case they turn around very slowly and say "You."

...there were things to suggest to a thinking man that the Creator of mankind had a very oblique sense of fun indeed, and to breed in his heart a rage to storm the gates of heaven.

And it all meant this: that there are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot easily be duplicated by a normal, kindly family man who just comes in to work every day and has a job to do.

Brother Preptil, the master of the music, had described Brutha's voice as putting him in mind of a disappointed vulture arriving too late at the dead donkey.

Brutha: "How would you like a grape, little tortoise?"
Tortoise: "How would you like to be an abomination in the nethermost pit of chaos?"

Brutha hesitated. It dawned on him, very slowly, that demons and succubi didn't turn up looking like small old tortoises. There wouldn't be much point. Even Brother Nhumrod would have to agree that when it came to rampant eroticism, you could do a lot better than a one-eyed tortoise.

[Brutha] knew there was a High Priest. It was just that, while he could just about encompass the hierarchical structure between his own self and Brother Nhumrod, he was unable to give serious consideration to any kind of link between Brutha the novice and the Cenobiarch. He was theoretically aware that there was one, that there was a huge canonical structure with the High Priest at the top and Brutha very firmly at the bottom, but he viewed it in the same way as an amoeba might view the chain of evolution all the way between itself and, for example, a chartered accountant.

"You can't trample infidels when you're a tortoise. I mean, all you could do is give them a meaningful look."

Tortoise: "How many talking tortoises have you met?"
Brutha: "I don't know."
Tortoise: "What d'you mean, you don't know?"
Brutha: "Well, they might all talk. They just might not say anything when I'm there."

"Fetch him now, or there will be a shaking of the earth, the moon will be as blood, agues and boils will afflict mankind and diverse ills will befall. I really mean it," it added.

"I'll see what I can do," said Brutha, backing away.

"And I'm being very reasonable, in the circumstances!" the tortoise shouted after him.

Many feel they are called to the priesthood, but what they really hear is an inner voice saying, "It's indoor work with no heavy lifting, do you want to be a ploughman like your father?"

The Omnians were a God-fearing people.

They had a great deal to fear.

Not, of course, the six Archpriests or the Cenobiarch himself. They weren't that important. They were merely at the top. The people who really run organizations are usually found several levels down, where it is still possible to get things done.

[Fri'it] knew from experience that true and obvious ideas, such as the ineffable wisdom and judgement of the Great God Om, seemed so obscure to many people that you actually had to kill them before they saw the error of their ways...

...many novices volunteered for cleaning out the cesspits and bull cages, out of a strange belief that holiness and piety had something to do with being up to your knees in dirt.

"I daresay you heard the voice of the Great God when you were Called [to the Church], didn't you? Mmm?"

Metaphor was lost on Brutha. He remembered hearing the voice of his grandmother. He hadn't been Called so much as Sent.

"Your intestines to be wound around a tree until you are sorry!"

An upturned tortoise is the ninth most pathetic thing in the entire multiverse.

An upturned tortoise who knows what's going to happen to it next is, well, at least up there are number four.

...orders from the hierarchy were to be obeyed without question, unless the questioner wanted to find himself faced with more important questions like whether or not it is possible to go to heaven after being roasted alive.

"I think I recall him," said the tortoise. "Eyes wobbled when he talked. And he talked all the time. To himself. Walked into rocks a lot."

"He wandered in the wilderness for three months," said Brutha.

"That explains it, then," said the tortoise. "There's not a lot to eat there that isn't mushrooms."

"I swear to me that I am the Great God Om, greatest of gods!"

"It's a big bull," said the tortoise.

"The very likeness of the Great God Om in one of his worldly incarnations!" said Brutha proudly. "And you said you're him?"

"I haven't been well lately," said the tortoise.

It was the problem of all tentative conspirators throughout history: how to conspire without actually uttering words to an untrusted possible fellow-conspirator which, if reported, would point the accusing red-hot poker of guilt.

In the rain-forests of Brutha's subconscious the butterfly of doubt emerged and flapped an experimental wing, all unaware of what chaos theory has to say about this sort of thing...

Om: "Opened my eyes ... my eye ... and I was a tortoise."
Brutha: "Why?"
Om: "How should I know? I don't know!"
Brutha: "But you're ... you're omnicognisant."
Om: "That doesn't mean I know everything."

Brutha: "And you dicted to him the Book of Ossory. Which contains the Directions, the Gateways, the Abjurations, and the Precepts. One hundred and ninety-three chapters."
Om: "I don't think I did all that. I'm sure I would have remembered one hundred and ninety-three chapters."
Brutha: "What did you say to him, then?"
Om: "As far as I can remember it was 'Hey, see what I can do!'"

"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?"

"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!"

"I said, that's blasphemy!"

"Blasphemy? How can I blaspheme? I'm a god!"

"So," it said, "before unievers get burned alive ... do you sing to them first?"

"No!"

"Ah. A merciful death."

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.

On the whole, Vorbis discouraged red-hot irons, spiked chains, and things with drills and big screws on, unless it was for a public display on an important Fast day. It was amazing what you could do, he always said, with a simple knife...

Most gods find it hard to walk and think at the same time.

There were all sorts of ways to petition the Great God, but they depended largely on how much you could afford, which was right and proper and exactly how things should be. After all, those who had achieved success in the world clearly had done it with the approval of the Great God, because it was impossible to believe that they had managed it with his disapproval.

"One day," said a dull voice from down below, "I'm going to be back on form again and you're going to be very sorry you said that. For a very long time. I might even go so far as to make even more Time just for you to be sorry in."

Dhblah: "Two bags of sugared dates for the price of one, how about it? And that's cutting my own hand off."
Woman: "Ere, there's flies all over everything!"
Dhblah: "Currants, madam."
Woman: "Why'd they just fly away, then?"
Dhblah: "A miracle! The time of miracles is at hand!"

"I mean, there's something very godly about an eagle. King of the birds, am I right?"

"It's only a better-looking turkey," said the voice from under the statue. "Brain the size of a walnut."

It is a popular fact that nine-tenths of the brain is not used and, like most popular facts, it is wrong. ... It is used. And one of its functions is to make the miraculous seem ordinary and turn the unusual into the usual.

Because if this was not the case, then human beings, faced with the daily wondrousness of everything, would go around wearing big stupid grins, similar to those worn by certain remote tribesmen who occassionally get raided by the authorities and have the contents of their plastic greenhouses very seriously inspected.

Gods don't like people not doing much work. People who aren't busy all the time might start to think.

"What's the eagle trying to do to you?" said Brutha.

"It wants to carry me off to its nest and give me dinner," snarled the tortoise. "What do you think it wanted to do?" There was a short pause in which it contemplated the futility of sarcasm in the presence of Brutha; it was like throwing meringues at a castle.

"That doesn't worry eagles," said the tortoise darkly. "They pick you up, carry you up a few hundred feet, and then ... drop you."

"Urrgh."

"No. More like ... crack ... splat."

Everyone in the city knew Cut-Me-Own-Hand-Off Dhblah, purveyor of suspiciously new holy relics, suspiciously old rancid sweetmeats on a stick, gritty figs, and long-past-the-sell-by dates.

...most of the pilgrims were coming for the first time and therefore lacked the essential thing you needed in dealing with Dhblah, which was the experience of having dealt with him before.

"Pets are always a great help in times of stress. And in times of starvation too, o'course."

There were twenty-three other novices in Brutha's dormitory, on the principle that sleeping alone promoted sin. This always puzzled the novices themselves, since a moment's reflection would suggest that there were whole ranges of sins only available in company.

People allowed to be by themselves overmuch might indulge in solitary cogitation. It was well known that this stunted your growth. For one thing, it could lead to your feet being chopped off.

He'd even been to far Ankh-Morpork, across the water, where they'd worship any god at all so long as he or she had money.

When the least they could do to you was everything, then the most they could do to you suddenly held no terror.

"I -- I do not know how to ride, my lord," said Brutha.

"Any man can get on a mule," said Vorbis. "Often many times in a short distance."

Vorbis had a terrible memory for names. He knew every one.

Fri'it: "You're Death, aren't you?"
Death: INDEED.
Fri'it: "I know you. I have faced you many times."
Death: NO YOU HAVEN'T.
Fri'it: "I assure you--"
Death: YOU HAVE FACED MEN. IF YOU HAD FACED ME, I ASSURE YOU ... YOU WOULD HAVE KNOWN.

You couldn't put off the inevitable. Because sooner or later, you reached the place where the inevitable just went and waited.

"Nothing is impossible for the strong in faith," said Vorbis.

"Try striking a match on jelly, mister."

Despite his size, Brutha was easy not to notice. Practically everyone had something better to do with their time than notice someone like Brutha.

"Can't you read my thoughts?"

"Mortal thoughts aren't like that," snapped Om... "Intentions, yes. Emotions, yes. But not thoughts. Half the time you don't know what you're thinking, so why should I?"

Where he was, and the existence of Om, had been the only two certainties in [Brutha's] life.

It was something he shared with tortoises. Watch any tortoise walking, and periodically it will stop while it files away the memories of the journey so far. Not for nothing, elsewhere in the multiverse, are the little traveling devices controlled by electric thinking-engines called "turtles."

Another pause, a tar pit of silence ready to snare the mastodons of unthinking comment. Earlier exquisitors had shouted and ranted confessions out of people. Vorbis never did that. He just dug deep silences in front of them.

"Yes, but humans are more important than animals," said Brutha.

"This is a point of view often expressed by humans," said Om.

People said there had to be a Supreme Being because otherwise how could the universe exist, eh?

And of course there had to be, said Koomi, a Supreme Being But since the universe was a bit of a mess, it was obvious that the Supreme Being hadn't in fact made it.

Or, to put it another way, the existence of a badly put-together watch proved the existence of a blind watchmaker.

Gods liked games, provided they were winning.

"It's nothing personal," said one of the sailors. "We don't want to do this."

"I don't want you to do it either," said Brutha. "Is that any help?"

Words are the litmus paper of the minds. If you find yourself in the power of someone who will use the word "commence" in cold blood, go somewhere else very quickly. But if they say "Enter", don't stop to pack.

The shepherd had a hundred sheep, and it might have been surprising that he was prepared to spend days searching for one sheep; in fact, it was because he was the kind of man prepared to spend days looking for a lost sheep that he had a hundred sheep.

"I told you, I never made the world," said Om. "Why should I make the world? It was here already. And if I did make a world, I wouldn't make it a ball. People'd fall off. All the sea'd run off the bottom."

"Come to that, a turtle is a perfect shape."

"A perfect shape for what?"

"Well, the perfect shape for a turtle, to start with."

Brutha had never been any good at lying. The truth itself had always seemed so incomprehensible that complicating things even further had always been beyond him.

"[My grandmother] used to give me a thrashing every morning because I would certainly do something to deserve it during the day," said Brutha.

"A most complete understanding of the nature of mankind," said Vorbis, with his chin on one hand.

Om: "Doesn't look like we're to lay down the law to a defeated enemy. Looks like we took a pasting and don't want to take any more. Looks like we're suing for peace. That's what it looks like to me."
Brutha: "In the Citadel everyone said it was a glorious victory."
Om: "That's a funny thing. Winners never talk about glorious victories. That's because they're the ones who see what the battlefield looks like afterward. It's only the losers who have glorious victories."

"Tortoises are cynics. They always expect the worst."

"Why?"

"I don't know. Because it often happens to them, I suppose."

"Brother Nhumrod said Ephebians eat human flesh," said Brutha. "He wouldn't tell lies."

A small [Ephebian] boy regarded Brutha thoughtfully while excavating a nostril. If it was a demon in human form, it was an extremely good actor.

"There's one of 'em [gods] that sits around playing a flute most of the time and chasing milkmaids. I don't call that very divine. Call that very divine? I don't."

Om: "Petulia, Goddess of Negotiable Affection. Worshipped by the ladies of the night and every other time as well, if you catch my meaning."
Brutha: "They've got a goddess for painted jezebels?"
Om: "Why not? Very religious people I understand. They're used to being on their-- they spend so much time looking at the-- look, belief is where you find it."

Something about him generally made people think of the word "spry," but, at the moment, they would be much more likely to think of the words "mother naked" and possibly also "dripping wet" and would be one hundred percent accurate, too.

Legibus: "I'd like a Number Nine pot and some string, please."
Potter: "Yes sir, Mr. Legibus."
Legibus: "And a lever of infinite length and, um, an immovable place to stand."
Potter: "What you see is what I got, sir. Pots and general household items, but a bit short on axiomatic mechanisms."

"What's a philosopher?" said Brutha.

"Someone who's bright enough to find a job with no heavy lifting," said a voice in his head.

"An infidel seeking the just fate he shall surely receive," said Vorbus. "An inventor of fallacies. This cursed city attracts them like a dung heap attracts flies."

"Actually, it's the climate," said the voice of the tortoise. "Think about it. If you're inclined to leap out of your bath and run down the street every time you think you've got a bright idea, you don't want to do it somewhere cold. If you do do it somewhere cold, you die out."

"Ephebe's known for its philosophers. It's better than street theater."

"If you spend your whole time thinking about the universe, you tend to forget the less important bits of it. Like your pants."

"That's why it's always worth having a few philosophers around the place. One minute it's all Is Truth Beauty and Is Beauty Truth, and Does A Falling Tree in the Forest Make A Sound if There's No one There to Hear It, and then just when you think they're going to start dribbling one of 'em says, Incidentally, putting a thirty-foot parabolic reflector on a high place to shoot the rays of the sun at an enemy's ships would be a very interesting demonstration of optical principles."

Brutha: "Well, does it?"
Om: "Does what?"
Brutha: "Make a sound. If [a tree] falls down when no one's there to hear it."
Om: "Who cares?"

People think that professional soldiers think a lot about fighting, but serious professional soldiers think a lot more about food and a warm place to sleep, because these are two things that are generally hard to get, whereas fighting tends to turn up all the time.

Brutha: "I nearly committed a terrible sin. I nearly ate fruit on a fruitless day."
Om: "That's a terrible thing, a terrible thing. Now cut the melon."
Brutha: "But it is forbidden!"
Om: "No it's not. Cut the melon."
Brutha: "But it was the eating of fruit that caused passion to invade the world."
Om: "All it caused was flatulence."

The labyrinth of Ephebe is ancient and full of one hundred and one amazing things you can do with hidden springs, razor-sharp knives, and falling rocks.

The furthest anyone ever got through the labyrinth without a guide was nineteen paces. Well, more or less. His head rolled a further seven paces, but that probably doesn't count.

"What do philosophers look like?" said Brutha. "When they're not having a bath, I mean."

"They do a lot of thinking," said Om. "Look for someone with a strained expression."

"That might just mean constipation."

"Well, so long as they're philosophical about it..."

Inside the room two groups of very nearly identical men in togas were trying to hold back two of their colleagues. It is a scene repeated a million times a day in bars around the multiverse -- both would-be fighters growled and grimaced at one another and fought to escape the restraint of their friends, only of course they did not fight too hard, because there is nothing worse than actually succeeding in breaking free and suddenly finding yourself all alone in the middle of the ring with a madman who's about to hit you between the eyes with a rock.

"Yep," said Om, "that's philosophy, right enough."

"But they're fighting!"

"A full and free exchange of opinions, yes."

"That's right," he said. "We're philosophers. We think, therefore we am."

"Gods?" said Xeno. "We don't bother with gods. Huh. Relics of an outmoded belief system, gods."

There was a rumble of thunder from the clear evening sky.

"Except for Blind Io the Thunder God," Xeno went on, his tone hardly changing.

Lightning flashed across the sky.

"And Cubal the Fire God," said Xeno.

A gust of wind rattled the windows.

"Flatulus the God of the Winds, he's all right too," said Xeno.

An arrow materialized out of the air and hit the table by Xeno's hand.

"Fedecks the Messenger of the Gods, one of the all-time greats," said Xeno.

Behind it were the typical trappings of an Ephebian bar -- the stacks of wine jars, racks of amphorae, and the cheery pictures of vestal virgins on cards of salted peanuts and goat jerky, pinned up in the hope that there really were people in the world who would slatheringly buy more and more packets of nuts they didn't want in order to look at a cardboard nipple.

"Oh, a very useful philosophical animal, your average tortoise. Outrunning metaphorical arrows, beating hares in races ... very handy."

"Tell me," said Brutha, sipping his mug of water, "do any of them know much about gods?"

"You'd want a priest for that sort of thing," said the barman.

"No, I mean about ... what gods are ... how gods came to exist ... that sort of thing," said Brutha.

"Gods don't like that sort of thing," said the barman. "We get that in here some nights, when someone's had a few. Cosmic speculation about whether gods really exist. Next thing, there's a bolt of lightning through the roof with a note wrapped around it saying 'Yes, we do' and a pair of sandals with smoke coming out. That sort of thing, it takes all the interest out of metaphysical speculation."

"I don't know what's gone wrong. No one is worshipping any other gods in Omnia, are they?"

"They wouldn't be allowed to," said Brutha. "The Quisition would see to that."

"Yeah. It's hard to kneel if you have no knees."

Humans! They lived in a world where the grass continued to be green and the sun rose eveery day and flowers regularly turned into fruit, and what impressed them? Weeping statues. And wine made out of water! A mere quantum-mechanistic tunnel effect, that'd happen anyway if you were prepared to wait zillions of years. As if the turning of sunlight into wine, by means of vines and grapes and time and enzymes, wasn't a thousand times more impressive and happened all the time...

The Ephebians believed that every man should have the vote. [Footnote: Provided that he wasn't poor, foreign, nor disqualified by reason of being mad, frivolous, or a woman.]

"Forget Your Gods. Be Subjugated. Learn to Fear. Do not break the chain -- the last people who did woke up one morning to find fifty thousand armed men on their lawn."

-- The Chain Letter to the Ephebians

Vorbis: "What is it you fear? Here in your desert, with your... gods? Is it not that, deep in your souls, you know that your gods are as shifting as your sand?"
Tyrant: "Oh, yes We know that. That's always been a point in their favor. We know about sand. And your God is a rock -- and we know about rock."

Although one of the most quoted and popular philosophers of all time, Didactylos the Ephebian never achieved the respect of his fellow philosophers. They felt he wasn't philosopher material. He didn't bathe often enough or, to put it another way, at all.

His philosophy was a mixture of three famous schools -- the Cynics, the Stoics and the Epicureans -- and summed up all three of them in his famous phrase, "You can't trust any bugger further than you can throw him, and there's nothing you can do about it, so let's have a drink."

Urn: "Mrs. Bylaxis came in this morning. She said the proverb you did for her last week has stopped working."
Didactylos: "Which one was that?"
Urn: "You gave her 'It's always darkest before dawn.'"
Didactylos: "Nothing wrong with that. Damn good philosophy."
Urn: "She said she didn't feel any better. Anyway, she said she'd stayed up all night because of her bad leg and it was actually quite light just before dawn, so it wasn't true. And her leg still dropped off."

"Slave is an Ephebian word. In Om we have no word for slave," said Vorbis.

"So I understand," said the Tyrant. "I imagine that fish have no word for water."

"Slaves get three meals a day, at least one with meat. And one free day a week. And two weeks being-allowed-to-run-away every year. And I don't do ovens or heavy lifting, and worldly-wise repartee only by arrangement."

"Yes, but you're not free," said Brutha, intrigued despite himself.

"What's the difference?"

"Er ... you don't get any days off." Brutha scratched his head. "And one less meal."

"Really? I think I'll give freedom a miss then, thanks."

...Omnianism encouraged early marriage as a preventive against Sin, although any activity involving any part of the human anatomy between neck and knees was more or less sinful in any case.

"Yeah," said Urn, grinning. "Use your left hand, do you?"

"Er, I use both," said Brutha. "But not very well, everyone says."

"Ah," said Didactylos. "Ambi-sinister?"

"What?"

"He means incompetent with both hands," said Om.

"You're blind aren't you?" he said.

"That's right."

"But you carry a lantern?"

"It's all right," said Didactylos. "I don't put any oil in it."

"You got to remember there's three basic approaches to philosophy in these parts," said Didactylos. "Tell him, Urn."

"There's the Xenoists," said Urn promptly. "They say the world is basically complex and random. And there's the Ibidians. They say the world is basically simple and follows certain fundamental rules."

"And there's me," said Didactylos, pulling a scroll out of its rack.

"Master says basically it's a funny old world," said Urn.

"And doesn't contain enough to drink," said Didactylos.

"Map? What's a map?"

"It's a sort of picture that shows you where you are," said Didactylos.

Brutha stared in wonderment. "And how does it know?"

Brutha: "But is all this true?"
Didactylos: "Could be. Could be. We are here and it is now. The way I see it is, after that, everything tends towards guesswork."
Brutha: "You mean you don't know it's true?"
Didactylos: "I think it might be. I could be wrong. Not being certain is what being a philosopher is all about."

Didactylos: "I remember, before I was blind, I went to Omnia once. This was before the borders were closed, when you still let people travel. And in your Citadel I saw a crowd stoning a man to death in a pit... it was a horrible sight."
Brutha: "The state of the body is not--"
Didactylos: "Oh, I'm not talking about the poor bugger in the pit. I'm talking about the people throwing the stones. They were sure all right. They were sure it wasn't them in the pit. You could see it in their faces. So glad it wasn't them that they were throwing just as hard as they could."

"He says gods like to see an atheist around. Gives them something to aim at."

Brutha: "How can people talk like that? Acting as if they're glad they don't know things! Finding out more and more things they don't know! It's like children proudly coming to show you a full potty!"
Om: "But they find things out."

"I must admit you're not the chosen one I would have chosen."

Brutha: "The great prophets had vision. Even if they ... even if you didn't talk to them, they had something to say. What could I say? I haven't got anything to say to anyone. What could I say?"
Om: "Believe in the Great God Om."
Brutha: "And then what?"
Om: "What do you mean, and then what?"
Brutha: "...Believe in the Great God Om or be stricken with thunderbolts."
Om: "Sounds good to me."

"You're not one of us."

"I don't think I'm one of them, either," said Brutha. "I'm one of mine."

"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."

"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."

Brutha awoke with the smell of sea in his nostrils.

At least it was what people thought of as the smell of the sea, which is the stink of antique fish and rotten seaweed.

"All holy piety in public, and all peeled grapes and self-indulgence in private."

"I am ashamed for Omnia," said Simony. "Look at us. Stuck in the past. Held back by repressive monotheism. Shunned by our neighbors. What good has our God been to us? Gods? Hah!"

"Steady on, steady on," said Didactylos. "We're on seawater and that's highly conductive armor you're wearing."

...the worst thing about Vorbis isn't that he's evil, but that he makes good people do evil. He turns people into things like himself. You can't help it. You catch it off him.

"I'm reminded of the time when old Prince Lasgere of Tsort asked me how he could become learned, especially since he hadn't got any time for this reading business. I said to him, 'There is no royal road to learning, sire,' and he said to me, 'Bloody well build one or I shall have your legs chopped off. Use as many slaves as you like.' A refreshingly direct approach, I always thought. Not a man to mince words. People, yes. But not words."

"But what I mean was ... what I mean ... they've done nothing to deserve [death]."

"Deserve? They're human. What's deserve got to do with it?"

Om had to concede this. He wasn't thinking like a god.

Urn: "Now there's a power. Harnessing the lightning! The dream of mankind!"
Didactylos: "Is it? It's not my dream. I always dream of a giant carrot chasing me through a field of lobsters."

Gods are not very introspective. It has never been a survival trait. The ability to cajole, threaten, and terrify has always worked well enough. When you can flatten entire cities at a whim, a tendency towards quiet reflection and seeing-things-from-the-other-fellow's-point-of-view is seldom necessary.

Gods never need to be very bright when there are humans around to be it for them.

Captain: "Sir! We must reef sail! We can't outrun this!"
Vorbis: "It is all for the glory of Om. Trust is our sail, and glory is our destination."
Captain: "The ocean floor is our destination!"
Vorbis: "I did not say there would not be stops along the way."

The Captain frowned. "It's a funny thing," he said, "but why is it that the heathens and the barbarians seem to have the best places to go when they die?"

"A bit of a poser, that," agreed the mate. "I s'pose it makes up for 'em ... enjoying themselves all the time when they're alive, too?"

Seagulls never ventured this far along the desert coast. Their niche was filled by the scalbie, a member of the crow family that the crow family would be the first to disown and never talked about in company.

The Ephebians had been very interested in astronomy. Expletius had proved the Disc was ten thousand miles across. Ferbius, who'd stationed slaves with quick reactions and carrying voices all across the country at dawn, had proved that light travelled at about the same speed as sound. And Didactylos had reasoned that, in that case, in order to pass beneath the elephants, the sun had to travel at least thirty-five thousand miles in its orbit every day or, to put it another way, twice as fast as its own light. Which meant that mostly you could ever see where the sun had been, except twice every day when it caught up with itself, and this meant the whole sun was a faster-than-light particle, a tachyon or, as Didactylos put it, a bugger.

Brutha: "But you found water. Water in the desert."
Om: "Nothing miraculous about that. There's a rainy season near the coast. Flash floods. Wadis. Dried-up river beds. You get aquafiers."
Brutha: "Sounds like a miracle to me. Just because you can explain it doesn't mean it's not still a miracle."

"Take it from me, whenever you see a bunch of buggers puttering around talking about truth and beauty and the best way of attacking Ethics, you can bet your sandals it's all because dozens of other poor buggers are doing all the real work around the place..."

Brutha: "I still don't see how one god can be a hundred thunder gods. They all look different..."
Om: "False noses."
Brutha: "What?"
Om: "And different voices. I happen to know Io's got seventy different hammers. Not common knowledge, that. And it's just the same with mother goddesses. There's only one of 'em. She just got a lot of wigs and of course it's amazing what you can do with a padded bra."

"It needs some sort of governor device," said Urn, scratching a design on the side of the boat. "Something that'd open the valve if there was too much steam. I think I could do something with a pair of revolving balls."

"It's funny you should say that," said Didactylos. "When I felt us leave the water and the sphere exploded I distinctly felt my--"

"People sat up all night, on guard, while other people made copies," said Simony ... "Passing them from hand to hand! Everyone making a copy and passing it on! Like a fire spreading underground!"

"Would this be lots of copies?" said Didactylos cautiously.

"Hundreds! Thousands!"

"I suppose it's too late to ask for, say, a five per cent royalty?" said Didactylos, looking hopeful for a moment.

"Right. Now bring me down again. And head for that rock that looks like ... that looks very unexpected, really."

Brutha stared. "It does, too," he croaked, eventually. "Amazing to think it was carved by the wind."

"The wind god has a sense of humor," said Om. "Although it's pretty basic."

"There's bones everywhere!"

"Well? What did you expect? This is a desert! People die here! It's a very popular occupation in this vicinity!"

"Anyway, he's done much worse to thousands of people. He'll be dying for a good cause."

"A good cause?"

"I like it."

"You can't do that to people just because they're helpless!"

"You know, I can't think of a better time?"

It wasn't much of an ecological niche, but the lions were hanging on to it like grim death, which was what happened to most people who met a desert lion.

"Who were the people who lived here?" said Brutha.

"I don't know."

"What god did they worship?"

"I don't know."

"The statues are made of granite, but there's no granite near here."

"They were very devout, then. They dragged it all the way."

"And the altar block is covered in grooves."

"Ah. Extremely devout."

"You don't know. That's what stops everyone going mad, the uncertainty of it, the feeling that it might work out all right after all."

Brutha: "Well ... do you know what it's like, being human?"
Om: "Compared to a god? Easy. Get born. Obey a few rules. Do what you're told. Die. Forget."

"Why do you bother with him? He's had thousands of people killed!"

"Yes, but perhaps he thought that you wanted it."

"You could have helped people," said Brutha. "But all you did was stamp around and roar and try to make people afraid. Like ... like a man hitting a donkey with a stick. But people like Vorbis made the stick so good, that's all the donkey ends up believing in."

"That could use some work, as a parable," said Om sourly.

Om: "It's not my fault if people misuse the--"
Brutha: "It is! It has to be! If you muck up people's minds just because you want them to believe in you, what they do is all your fault!"

The figures looked more or less human. And they were engaged in religion. You could tell by the knives (it's not murder if you do it for a god).

The trouble was that he was talking in philosophy, but they were listening in gibberish.

"He's muffed it," said Simony. "he could have done anything with them. And he just told them the facts. You can't inspire people with facts. They need a cause. They need a symbol."

Om: "That's because [the other gods] don't know what to offer you. So they try to offer you anything. Generally they start with visions of food and carnal gratification."
Brutha: "They got as far as the food."
Om: "Good job I overcame them, then. No telling what they might have achieved with a young man like yourself."
Brutha: "Will they be back?"
Om: "Oh, yes. It's not as if they've got anything else to do."
Brutha: "When they do, could you wait until they've shown me visions of carnal gratification?"

-- Temptation at work

Brutha had heard of anchorites, who were a kind of one-way prophet. They went out into the desert but did not come back, preferring a hermit's life of dirt and hardship and dirt and holy contemplation and dirt.

The Omnian Church encouraged [hermits], on the basis that it was best to get madmen as far away as possible where they couldn't cause any trouble and could be cared for by the community, insofar as the community consisted of lions and buzzards and dirt.

"I've had to pick up hermiting as I went along, of course," he said. "I taught myself. I'm entirely self-taught. You can't find a hermit to teach you herming, because of course that rather spoils the whole thing."

"Any mushrooms in these parts?" said Brutha innocently.

St. Ungulant nodded happily.

"After the annual rains, yes. Red ones with yellow spots. The desert becomes really interesting after the mushroom season."

"Full of giant purple singing slugs? Talking pillars of flame? Exploding giraffes? That sort of thing?" said Brutha carefully.

"Good heavens, yes," said the saint. "I don't know why. I think they're attracted by the mushrooms."

He was, of course, mad. He'd occassionally suspected this. But he took the view that madness should not be wasted. He dined daily on the food of the gods, drank the rarest vintages, ate fruits that were not only out of season but out of reality. Having to drink the occassional mouthful of brackish water and chew the odd lizard leg for medicinal purposes was a small price to pay.

Om, bumping along in Brutha's pack, began to feel the acute depression that steals over every realist in the presence of an optimist.

"It's a god-eat-god world."

"People are saying you could be made a bishop, or even an Iam," said Nhumrod. "There's a precedent, you know. The Most Holy St. Bobby was made a bishop because he was in the desert with the Prophet Ossory, and he was a donkey."

There was a chorus of nervous laughs, such as there always is from people who owe their jobs and possibly their lives to a whim of the person who has just cracked the not very amusing line.

Dhblah sidled closer. This was not hard. Dhblah sidled everywhere. Crabs thought he walked sideways.

Cusp had formed an opinion that Vorbis was somewhere on the other side of madness. Ordinary madness he could deal with. In his experience there were quite a lot of mad people in the world, and many of them became even more insane in the tunnels of the Quisition. But Vorbis had passed through that red barrier and had built some kind of logical structure on the other side. Rational thoughts made out of insane components...

Brutha: "You don't understand anything I'm talking about, do you?"
Lu-Tze: "Not much."
Brutha: "You can talk?"
Lu-Tze: "Big secret."

"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."

Brutha: "But he told me nothing! Where's all this wisdom? All the other prophets came back with commandments!"
Lu-Tze: "Where they get them?"
Brutha: "I ... suppose they made them up."
Lu-Tze: "You get them from the same place."

Although it was against the thread, Deacon Cusp had his head screwed on.

...last night, with Lu-Tze, it had all seemed so clear. Last night he had been in a mood to confront Vorbis there and then. Last night there seemed to be a chance. Anything was possible last night. That was the trouble with last nights. They were always followed by this mornings.

"All right? He's a priest!"

"But he's on our side. Aren't you, Brutha?"

Brutha tried to nod, and thought: I'm on everyone's side. It'd be nice if, just for once, someone was on mine.

"Best if you don't know what's happening," said Urn.

"But I don't know what's happening," said Brutha.

"Good. That's the way."

Bishops move diagonally. That's why they often turn up where the kings don't expect them to be.

"Eureka," he said.

"Going to have a bath then?"

Probably the last man who knew how it worked had been tortured to death years before. Or as soon as it was installed. Killing the creator was a traditional method of patent protection.

Cut-Me-Own-Hand Off Dhblah was all for the new prophets. He was even in favor of the end of the world, if he could get the concession to sell religious statues, cut-price icons, rancid sweetmeats, fermenting dates, and putrescent olives on a stick to any watching crowds.

Give anyone a lever long enough and they can change the world. It's unreliable levers that are the problem.

Eagles have never evolved much imagination or forethought, beyond that necessary to know that a turtle smashes when you drop it on the rocks. But it was forming a mental picture of what happened when you let go of a heavy tortoise that was still intimately gripping an essential bit of you.

No tortoise had ever done this before. No tortoise in the entire universe. But no tortoise had ever been a god, and knew the unwritten motto of the Quisition: Cuius testiculos habes, habeas cardia et cerebellum.

When you have their full attention in your grip, their hearts and minds will follow.

This was the best and the worst of civil war, at least at the start -- everyone wore the same uniform. It was much easier when you picked enemies who were a different color or at least spoke with a funny accent. You could call them "gooks" or something. It made things easier.

Simony: "Look, Brutha's going to die anyway. But this way it'll mean something... We can make Brutha's death a symbol for people, don't you see?"
Urn: "A symbol?"
Simony: "It has to be."
Urn: "You know. Now I know Vorbis is evil. He burned my city... And he lies and cheats and claws power for himself, and lots of people do that, too. But do you know what's special? Do you know what it is?"
Simony: "Of course. It's what he's doing to--"
Urn: "It's what he's done to you."

"So I give the signal and a few hundred of us attack thousands of them? And he dies anyway and we die too? What difference does that make?"

Urn's face was gray with horror now.

"You mean you don't know?" he said.

Om: VI. Your Commandments?
Brutha: "I thought they were supposed to come from you. I don't know if I can think of any..."
Urn: "How about 'Think for Yourself'?"
Simony: "No. Try something like 'Social Cohesiveness is the Key to Progress.'"
Urn: "Can't say it rolls off the tongue."

"I think... you should do things because they're right. Not because gods say so. They might say something different another time."

XVII. You Can't Use Weakness As A Weapon.

"It's the only one I've got."

XIX. You Want A Constitutional Religion?

"Why not? The other sort didn't work."

"Will you help?"

V. You Don't Even Believe In Me!

"Yes, but I'm a practical man."

VI. And Brave, Too, To Declare Atheism Before Your God.

"Look ... listen ... We died for lies, for centuries we died for lies." He waved a hand toward the god. "Now we've got a truth to die for!"

"No. Men should die for lies. But the truth is too precious to die for."

Simony: "I was told it was the finest thing to die for a god."
Brutha: "Vorbis said that. And he was... stupid. You can die for your country or your people or your family, but for a god you should live fully and busily, every day of a long life."

VI. What Is Your Name?

"Dhblah, god."

VII. Ah, Yes. And What Is It You Wish?

The merchant hopped anxiously from one foot to the other. "You couldn't manage just a small commandment? Something about eating yoghurt on Wednesdays, say? It's always very difficult to shift, midweek."

Death paused. YOU HAVE PERHAPS HEARD THE PHRASE, he said, THAT HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE?

"Yes. Yes, of course."

Death nodded. IN TIME, he said, YOU WILL LEARN THAT IT IS WRONG.

Occasionally one of the soldiers would give [Brutha] a push. It's not allowed for an enemy to walk freely into a camp, even if he wants to.

Argavisti waved a hand irritably. "Who sent you, boy?"

"No one. I came by myself. But you could say I come from the future."

"Are you a philosopher? Where's your sponge?"

"You've come to wage war on Omnia. This would not be a good idea."

"From Omnia's point of view, yes."

"From everyone's. You will probably defeat us. But not all of us. And then what will you do? Leave a garrison? For ever? And eventually a new generation will retaliate. Why you did this won't mean anything to them. You'll be the oppressors. They'll fight. They might even win. And there'll be another war. And one day people will say: why didn't they sort it all out, back then? On the beach. Before it all started. Before all those people died. Now we have that chance. Aren't we lucky?"

As St. Ungulant preached to any who would listen, there were plus points in being a madman. People hesitated to stop you, in case it made things worse.

Om: V. I Don't Seem To Recall Any Discussion About Other Gods Being Worshipped Im Omnia?
Brutha: "Ah, but it'll work for you. People will soon see that those other ones are no good at all, won't they?"
Om: VI. This Is Religion, Boy, Not Comparison Bloody Shopping. You Shall Not Subject Your God To Market Forces!

"Fight first, talk after. That's how it works, boy. That's history."

Il. I Could Make Them As Dust. Just Say The Word.

"No. That's worse than war."

III. But You Said A God Must Protect His People.

"What would we be if I told you to crush honest men?"

IV. Not Stuck Full Of Arrows?

"You know, I used to think I was stupid, and then I met philosophers."

Brutha: "I thought philosophers were supposed to be logical?"
Didactylos: "Well, the way I see it, logic is only a way of being ignorant by numbers."

Brutha: "I thought it would all be over when Vorbis was dead."
Didactylos: "It takes a long time for people like Vorbis to die. They leave echoes in history."

The central spire of Cori Celesti rises up from the mountains at the Hub, ten vertical miles of green ice and snow, topped by the turrets and domes of Dummanifestin.

There the gods of the Discworld live.

At the least, any god who is anybody. And it is strange that, although it takes years of work and effort and scheming for a god to get there, once there they never seem to do a lot apart from drink too much and indulge in a little mild corruption. Many systems of government follow the same broad lines.

Om rubbed his head. This wasn't god-like thinking. It seemed simpler when you were up here. It was all a game. You forgot that it wasn't a game down there.

P'tang-P'tang: "But you have thousands [of followers]. You fight for thousands."
Om: "I think... I think, if you want thousands, you have to fight for one."

"I like the idea of democracy. You have to have someone everyone distrusts," said Brutha. "That way, everyone's happy."

"Simony?"

"Yes?"

"I'm making you head of the Quisition."

"What?"

"I want it stopped. And I want it stopped the hard way."

"You want me to kill all the inquisitors? Right!"

"No. That's the easy way."

Fasta Benj's people had no word for war, since they had no one to fight and life was quite tough enough as it was. P'Tang-P'Tang's words had arrived as: "remember when Pacha Moj hit his uncle with big rock? Like that, only more worse."

The abbot waited to see what long-term, devious strategies were being evolved. Then his opponent tapped a piece with a bony finger.

REMIND ME AGAIN, he said. HOW THE LITTLE HORSE-SHAPED ONES MOVE.

-- Death plays chess

There were one thousand, two hundred and eighty-three religious books in [the library] now, each one -- according to itself -- the only book any man need ever read.

"Ah. There really is a desert. Does everyone get this?" said Brutha.

WHO KNOWS?

"And what is at the end of the desert?"

JUDGEMENT.

Brutha considered this.

"Which end?"

"But Vorbis died a hundred years ago!"

YES. HE HAD TO WALK IT ALL ALONE. ALL ALONE WITH HIMSELF. IF HE DARED.

"He's been here for a hundred years?"

POSSIBLY NOT. TIME IS DIFFERENT HERE. IT IS ... MORE PERSONAL.

"Ah. You mean a hundred years can pass like a few seconds?"

A HUNDRED YEARS CAN PASS LIKE INFINITY.

HE WAS A MURDERER, said Death. AND A CREATOR OF MURDERERS. A TORTURER. WITHOUT PASSION. CRUEL. CALLOUS. COMPASSIONLESS.

"Yes. I know. He's Vorbis," said Brutha. Vorbis changed people. Sometimes he changed them into dead people. But he always changed them. That was his triumph.

He sighed.

"But I'm me," he said.

Vorbis stood up, uncertainly, and followed Brutha across the desert.