Small Gods (8 page)

There was no sign of any branding irons, or even of scalpels.

All three were staring intently.

“Novice Brutha?” said Vorbis.

Brutha nodded.

Vorbis gave a light laugh, the kind made by very intelligent people when they think of something that probably isn’t very amusing.

“And, of course, one day we shall have to call you Brother Brutha,” he said. “Or even Father Brutha? Rather confusing, I think. Best to be avoided. I think we shall have to see to it that you become Subdeacon Brutha just as soon as possible; what do you think of that?”

Brutha did not think anything of it. He was vaguely aware that advancement was being discussed, but his mind had gone blank.

“Anyway, enough of this,” said Vorbis, with the slight exasperation of someone who realizes that he is going to have to do a lot of work in this conversation. “Do you recognize these learned fathers on my left and right?”

Brutha shook his head.

“Good. They have some questions to ask you.”

Brutha nodded.

The very fat man leaned forward.

“Do you have a tongue, boy?”

Brutha nodded. And then, feeling that perhaps this wasn’t enough, presented it for inspection.

Vorbis laid a restraining hand on the fat man’s arm.

“I think our young friend is a little overawed,” he said mildly.

He smiled.

“Now, Brutha—please put it away—I am going to ask you some questions. Do you understand?”

Brutha nodded.

“When you first came into my apartments, you were for a few seconds in the anteroom. Please describe it to me.”

Brutha stared frog-eyed at him. But the turbines of recollection ground into life without his volition, pouring their words into the forefront of his mind.

“It is a room about three meters square. With white walls. There is sand on the floor except in the corner by the door, where the flagstones are visible. There is a window on the opposite wall, about two meters up. There were three bars in the window. There is a three-legged stool. There is a holy icon of the Prophet Ossory, carved from aphacia wood and set with silver leaf. There is a scratch in the bottom left-hand corner of the frame. There is a shelf under the window. There is nothing on the shelf but a tray.”

Vorbis steepled his long thin fingers in front of his nose.

“On the tray?” he said.

“I am sorry, lord?”

“What was on the tray, my son?”

Images whirled in front of Brutha’s eyes.

“On the tray was a thimble. A bronze thimble. And
two needles. On the tray was a length of cord. There were knots in the cord. Three knots. And nine coins were on the tray. There was a silver cup on the tray, decorated with a pattern of aphacia leaves. There was a long dagger, I think it was steel, with a black handle with seven ridges on it. There was a small piece of black cloth on the tray. There was a stylus and a slate—”

“Tell me about the coins,” murmured Vorbis.

“Three of them were Citadel cents,” said Brutha promptly. “Two were showing the Horns, and one the sevenfold-crown. Four of the coins were very small and golden. There was lettering on them which…which I could not read, but which if you were to give me a stylus I think I could—”

“This is some sort of trick?” said the fat man.

“I assure you,” said Vorbis, “the boy could have seen the entire room for no more than a second. Brutha…tell us about the other coins.”

“The other coins were large. They were bronze. They were
derechmi
from Ephebe.”

“How do you know this? They are hardly common in the Citadel.”

“I have seen them once before, lord.”

“When was this?”

Brutha’s face screwed up with effort.

“I am not sure—” he said.

The fat man beamed at Vorbis.

“Hah,” he said.

“I think…” said Brutha “…it was in the afternoon. But it may have been the morning. Around midday. On Grune 3, in the year of the Astounded Beetle. Some merchants came to our village.”

“How old were you at that time?” said Vorbis.

“I was within one month of three years old, lord.”

“I don’t believe this,” said the fat man.

Brutha’s mouth opened and shut once or twice. How did the fat man know? He hadn’t been there!

“You could be wrong, my son,” said Vorbis. “You are a well-grown lad of…what…seventeen, eighteen years? We feel you could not really recall a chance glimpse of a foreign coin fifteen years ago.”

“We think that you are making it up,” said the fat man.

Brutha said nothing. Why make anything up? When it was just sitting there in his head.

“Can you remember everything that’s ever happened to you?” said the stocky man, who had been watching Brutha carefully throughout the exchange. Brutha was glad of the interruption.

“No, lord. Most things.”

“You forget things?”

“Uh. There are sometimes things I don’t remember.” Brutha had heard about forgetfulness, although he found it hard to imagine. But there were times in his life, in the first few years of his life especially, when there was…nothing. Not an attrition of memory, but great locked rooms in the mansion of his recollection. Not forgotten, any more than a locked room ceases to exist, but…locked.

“What is the first thing you can remember, my son?” said Vorbis, kindly.

“There was a bright light, and then someone hit me,” said Brutha.

The three men stared at him blankly. Then they turned to one another. Brutha, through the misery of his terror, heard snatches of whispering.

“…is there to lose?…” “Foolishness and probably
demonic…” “Stakes are high…” “One chance, and they will be expecting us…”

And so on.

He looked around the room.

Furnishing was not a priority in the Citadel. Shelves, stools, tables…There was a rumor among the novices that priests towards the top of the hierarchy had golden furniture, but there was no sign of it here. The room was as severe as anything in the novices’ quarters although it had, perhaps, a more opulent severity; it wasn’t the forced bareness of poverty, but the starkness of intent.

“My son?”

Brutha looked back hurriedly.

Vorbis glanced at his colleagues. The stocky man nodded. The fat man shrugged.

“Brutha,” said Vorbis, “return to your dormitory now. Before you go, one of the servants will give you something to eat, and a drink. You will report to the Gate of Horns at dawn tomorrow, and you will come with me to Ephebe. You know about the delegation to Ephebe?”

Brutha shook his head.

“Perhaps there is no reason why you should,” said Vorbis. “We are going to discuss political matters with the Tyrant. Do you understand?”

Brutha shook his head.

“Good,” said Vorbis. “Very good. Oh, and—Brutha?”

“Yes, lord?”

“You will forget this meeting. You have not been in this room. You have not seen us here.”

Brutha gaped at him. This was nonsense. You couldn’t forget things just by wishing. Some things forgot themselves—the things in those locked rooms—but that
was because of some mechanism he could not access. What did this man mean?

“Yes, lord,” he said.

It seemed the simplest way.

Gods have no one to pray to.

The Great God Om scurried towards the nearest statue, neck stretched, inefficient legs pumping. The statue happened to be himself as a bull, trampling an infidel, although this was no great comfort.

It was only a matter of time before the eagle stopped circling and swooped.

Om had been a tortoise for only three years, but with the shape he had inherited a grab-bag of instincts, and a lot of them centered around a total terror of the one wild creature that had found out how to eat tortoise.

Gods have no one to pray to.

Om really wished that this was not the case.

But everyone needs
someone
.

“Brutha!”

Brutha was a little uncertain about his immediate future. Deacon Vorbis had clearly cut him loose from his chores as a novice, but he had nothing to do for the rest of the afternoon.

He gravitated towards the garden. There were beans to tie up, and he welcomed the fact. You knew where you were with beans. They didn’t tell you to do impossible things, like
forget
. Besides, if he was going to be away for a while, he ought to mulch the melons and explain things to Lu-Tze.

Lu-Tze came with the gardens.

Every organization has someone like him. They might be pushing a broom in obscure corridors, or wandering
among the shelves in the back of the stores (where they are the only person who knows where anything is) or have some ambiguous but essential relationship with the boiler-room. Everyone knows who they are and no one remembers a time when they weren’t there, or knows where they go when they’re not, well, where they usually are. Just occasionally, people who are slightly more observant than most other people, which is not on the face of it very difficult, stop and wonder about them for a while…and then get on with something else.

Strangely enough, given his gentle ambling from garden to garden around the Citadel, Lu-Tze never showed much interest in the plants themselves. He dealt in soil, manure, muck, compost, loam, and dust, and the means of moving it about. Generally he was pushing a broom, or turning over a heap. Once anyone put seeds in anything he lost interest.

He was raking the paths when Brutha entered. He was good at raking paths. He left scallop patterns and gentle soothing curves. Brutha always felt apologetic about walking on them.

He hardly ever spoke to Lu-Tze, because it didn’t matter much what anyone ever said to Lu-Tze. The old man just nodded and smiled his single-toothed smile in any case.

“I’m going away for a little while,” said Brutha, loudly and distinctly. “I expect someone else will be sent to look after the gardens, but there are some things that need doing…”

Nod, smile. The old man followed him patiently along the rows, while Brutha spoke beans and herbs.

“Understand?” said Brutha, after ten minutes of this.

Nod, smile. Nod, smile, beckon.

“What?”

Nod, smile, beckon. Nod, smile,
beckon
, smile.

Lu-Tze walked his little crab-monkey walk to the little area at the far end of the walled garden which contained his heaps, the flowerpot stacks, and all the other cosmetics of the garden beautiful. The old man slept there, Brutha suspected.

Nod, smile, beckon.

There was a small trestle table in the sun by a stack of bean canes. A straw mat had been spread on it, and on the mat were half a dozen pointy-shaped rocks, none of them bigger than a foot high.

A careful arrangement of sticks had been constructed around them. Bits of thin wood shadowed some parts of the rocks. Small metal mirrors directed sunlight towards other areas. Paper cones at odd angles appeared to be funneling the breeze to very precise points.

Brutha had never heard about the art of bonsai, and how it was applied to mountains.

“They’re…very nice,” he said uncertainly.

Nod, smile, pick up a small rock, smile, urge, urge.

“Oh, I really couldn’t take—”

Urge, urge. Grin, nod.

Brutha took the tiny mountain. It had a strange, unreal heaviness—to his hand it felt like a pound or so, but in his head it weighed thousands of
very, very small
tons.

“Uh. Thank you. Thank you very much.”

Nod, smile, push away politely.

“It’s very…mountainous.”

Nod, grin.

“That can’t really be snow on the top, can—”

“Brutha!”

His head jerked up. But the voice had come from inside.

Oh, no, he thought wretchedly.

He pushed the little mountain back into Lu-Tze’s hands.

“But, er, you keep it for me, yes?”

“Brutha!”

All that was a dream, wasn’t it? Before I was important and talked to by deacons.

“No, it wasn’t! Help me!”

The petitioners scattered as the eagle made a pass over the Place of Lamentation.

It wheeled, only a few feet above the ground, and perched on the statue of Great Om trampling the Infidel.

It was a magnificent bird, golden-brown and yellow-eyed, and it surveyed the crowds with blank disdain.

“It’s a sign?” said an old man with a wooden leg.

“Yes! A sign!” said a young woman next to him.

“A sign!”

They gathered around the statue.

“It’s a bugger,” said a small and totally unheard voice from somewhere around their feet.

“But what’s it a sign of?” said an elderly man who had been camping out in the square for three days.

“What do you mean,
of?
It’s a sign!” said the wooden-legged man. “It don’t have to be a sign
of
anything. That’s a suspicious kind of question to ask, what’s it a sign of.”

“Got to be a sign of something,” said the elderly man. “That’s a referential wossname. A gerund. Could be a gerund.”

A skinny figure appeared at the edge of the group, moving surreptitiously yet with surprising speed. It was wearing the
djeliba
of the desert tribes, but around its neck was a tray on a strap. There was an ominous suggestion of sticky sweet things covered in dust.

“It could be a messenger from the Great God himself,” said the woman.

“It’s a bloody eagle is what it is,” said a resigned voice from somewhere among the ornamental bronze homicide at the base of the statue.

“Dates? Figs? Sherbets? Holy relics? Nice fresh indulgences? Lizards? Onna stick?” said the man with the tray hopefully.

“I thought when He appeared in the world it was as a swan or a bull,” said the wooden-legged man.

“Hah!” said the unregarded voice of the tortoise.

“Always wondered about that,” said a young novice at the back of the crowd. “You know…well…swans? A bit…lacking in machismo, yes?”

“May you be stoned to death for blasphemy!” said the woman hotly. “The Great God hears every irreverent word you utter!”